BODY SIGNAL ALERT DISCHARGE FROM BREAST: DESCRIPTION AND POSSIBLE MEDICAL PROBLEMS
The only time in a woman’s life when her breasts produce milk is obviously immediately after giving birth. However, a very small percentage of women will sometimes have a milky discharge from their breasts that is not associated with pregnancy oê childbirth. Even less often a man will have a discharge from his nipples.
Anytime the body produces milk when a woman is not pregnant—or at any time in a man—the condition is called galactorrhea. The discharge may be whitish or greenish in color, and it usually comes out of both breasts.
Galactorrhea may appear for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is caused by too much estrogen in the bloodstream; an oral contraceptive or another estrogen-based medication could be the culprit. Or the hormone prolactin—which stimulates the production of breast milk— might have been activated by the presence of a tumor on the pituitary gland, which controls growth in the body and produces the hormone.
Certain drugs—antihypertensive medications such as Aldomet or tricyclic antidepressants such as amitriptyline—can also cause the breasts to produce milk in the absence of pregnancy or childbirth. Phenothiazine—a tranquilizer—and amphetamines can also stimulate the production of prolactin. If you have hypothyroidism, you may also be prone to galactorrhea.
However, in about half the cases, there is no traceable cause.
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