Do large breasts always hurt, or can some women carry them without problems?

In My Humble Opinion
61

This is a hard question to actually answer, because there are small breasted women who also have back pain. So if you have larger breasts and back pain, is it because of the breasts or would you have had the back pain anyway?

I don’t think I have any back or breast pain. The back pain I get is usually more from standing in the kitchen cooking while barefoot*. Hard floors plus no footwear seem to kill my lower back. I definitely have a large cup size but the key is I wear bras that fit properly. My band is smaller (34), I have cups the right size so the underwires fully support each breast and touch the ribcage all over, including between the breasts (this is the place where I see most women wearing the wrong size; her boobs fill in the space between the cups at the front).

When you wear a proper bra, you don’t get shoulder gouges because the band is doing the supporting, not the straps. If I move my straps off my shoulders, my breasts will loose a tiny bit of perky lift, but they’re still supported fully. I’m saying this as a G cup, so don’t snort at me, saying that it wouldn’t work for big boobs. :slight_smile: If your straps are carrying most of the load, get a new bra.

  • though not pregnant. :wink:
62

Thanks for the link! I ended up digging out an old compression/uniboob-type sports bra, and it hurt when it smooshed me in, so I will definitely check out that company.

63

I’m another German peasant-built type with 38 DDD with back pain and deformed shoulders from the straps digging in for thirty years. I used to wear underwires until a wire wore through the bra and dug four inches into my breast. I didn’t even feel it or notice it until someone mentioned blood on my shirt. I would love to get a breast reduction, but it is out of the question with all the other health issues circling around.

64

I’m a 34B if the tag on the last bra I bought can be trusted, and one reason why I like having bathtubs is that showering during the bad day of my period hurts, even if the water isn’t pointed anywhere near the boobs. So that doesn’t seem to be related to breast size at all.

65

I think the back pain issue is going to vary primarily as a matter of proportion, not necessarily size. As many others have pointed out, 38DDs on Godzilla are not going to be same as 38DDs on a 5’5" 135lb female (and I’m not talking about the scales and green color variation).

Speaking from personal experience, prior to my breast reduction (which I highly, highly advise to anybody in a similar situation to get one if you can) I hovered around a 40G at 21. I’m 5’8", and have always had a curvy, medium-large figure, though just up to the surgery I was bordering on plus sizes (primarily because my boobs were so huge I couldn’t exercise–back pain, shoulder pain from the bra straps, putting an eye out, the previously mentioned underboob rash, the hassle of having to wear two or three bras [one to contain, one to lift, and one to smooth everything else so it didn’t look like I had quadraboobs]plus all the people staring). Even with the extra baggage I wound up carrying because of them, my boobs were way too big for my body. The back pain wasn’t excruciating, but it was nearly constant, though sometimes way worse than others. Even the best-fitting properly-sized bras also caused some pain in terms of the straps cutting in to my shoulders, the under-wires poking out, etc. (And I hear you guys on having to shell out 3xs as much for a hideous bra that only lasts a quarter of the time before it warps). I tried weight-lifting, yoga, the whole bit, but the help was minimal to non-existent, and I figured the back pain was only going to get worse as I got older.

A year after the surgery, (which it took 3 years before I could convince health care to cover) I’m still what a lot of you would consider extremely big-breasted, but I don’t, considering where I was. (I’m in the 38DD-range, but it’s going down a little as I continue to lose weight). I’d like it if they were a little smaller, but am so much happier and healthier with them as they are now. Exercize is not some horrific undertaking, and the back pain/bra strap rut issue is completely gone. Being able to fit into normal clothes, get the tops and bottoms to swimsuits in the same place–and have the top in stock–is also amazing. The amount of time and level of pain I’d experience in terms of just the boobs themselves hurting is identical (other than the two weeks post op) to what it was before, with only minimal pain with my period from time to time.

So to answer the OP, I’d say having EXTREMELY super large breasts almost always causes back pain. Having pretty big breasts (when taking into consideration the size of the person they’re on) doesn’t, necessarily. It’s a matter of how big we’re talking about.

66

I didn’t say the same size bra would fit them - I said the boob was objectively similar in volume.

I am 32D and very, very few people would guess I wear a D. Honestly, they aren’t that big, even on my 5’2" frame. I was in fact wearing a 34C before I got my bra size “corrected” by an expert. They are a “normal typical size” just as you describe. Most people would guess they are high B to C. Even my husband was surprised. “D” does not necessarily = big breasted.

67

I’m the same way, I never even thought to try a D cup on because my boobs just weren’t that big. I just have a narrow ribcage, I guess.

To sort of address the OP, my husband briefly dated a woman who supposedly wore a MMM cup. Yup, MMM. Apparently, she hated them, and didn’t really like guys to touch them, as they tended to be sore, plus she had all the back problems people in the thread have mentioned.

68

Whoa. Damn.

69

lmbao!

70

I used to do ballet, and dancers with larger breasts tended to have more problems with elements involving elevation (like leaps). And when some girls suddenly developed large breasts when they were going through puberty, it really messed up their center of balance, their elevation, their timing, and things like that. I’d imagine that it would be cumbersome to carry them while performing some of the skills.

71

I used to be a 44H. I had regular back pain, which has lessened since my reduction. Oddly, I never felt like it was cause and effect. I didn’t feel like my back pain was caused by my large breast size, my back just hurt.

I do still get some back pain, but not like I used to, so clearly there was some cause and effect.

What I did notice was everything else also because easier! Cooking, and not having to try to desperately peer around a mountain on my chest. Reading, without having to hold the book up to my face. Wearing bra’s that no matter how much I spent, dug into my skin and left marks. Buying clothes that actually fit. Being able to use the machines at the gym! OMG!! That was a major change. I didn’t realize how much I’d modified all my movements to accommodate my over-sized chest. And yeah, bouncing would hurt.

So now that I think about it, of course I had back pain. It was probably not just the forward weight, but all the modifications to daily life that I made for a chest that came swanning into a room 5 minutes before I did.

72

Just a 34D checking in - smaller than most everyone else, but finding a good sports bra was certainly trying. The Champion Powerback is a great option - thick, padded underwire, little movement, but the drawback is you can’t hook it yourself unless you’re really flexible.

I was curious about others’ experiences with shirts - for example, I wear an XL in a JCrew tshirt, even though a Large fits me best around my stomach, waist, and shoulders (I wear a size 8 in jeans, skirts, etc). But because my boobs take up some extra room, I find a Large shirt to be much too short - and I have an average length torso. This is fairly common in other brands, as well. Are there any brands that have longer torsos, or more “room” in the chest area?

73

I’ve never found any, and it’s a real problem since I have a long torso (or short legs, really) but I’m around an M. Often, the reason I can’t buy a shirt I like is because it will keep popping out of whatever’s on the bottom.

74

A 36DD/DDD here. No back pain related to boobs, I have a herniated L5 but it’s not boob-related. As nice as it is sometimes to be so…um… female the boobs can be a royal pain. Like others have said you literally have to move them out of the way to see downwards. Jogging is quite a circus and I can’t STAND the uniboob sports bras. I need them lifted and separated.

One of the worst things is the “Hooter River”. In the summer when you get a lovely pool of uncontrollable sweat under your breasts, it’s all I can do if I’m in public to not drag a tissue under my bra to soak it up.

During that time of the month, having large breasts means it’s just that more of them to be sensitive and achey. Yeah real fun.

I’ve gotten stuck in clothes before. Just last week I was trying on dresses in Kohls and some of the dresses had those weird half-zippers where the dress is still connected on top but a zipper is in the middle or side of the dress. Anyway, I got the dress on but couldn’t get it OFF as the boobs kept getting caught on the connected part of the dress. After a bit of panic, struggling, and profanity I got it off with my dignity intact.

75

To the ladies who’ve had reduction: would it be possible to make a reduction from a cup D to an A? I really like small boobs, and would love if I could go down to an A, a B as a second choice.

76

I was told the surgeons prefer not to go down more than 3 sizes. Which is why I was still wearing a DD-DDD after my surgery.

I lost weight, probably because I could finally go to the gym without it being a spectacle all in itself, and wound up at a C cup. Which… wait for it… feels too small now. For me, going down more than three sizes really was a mental hurdle I couldn’t overcome. It still bothers me - I feel miniature. I look down and feel like I might as well be a boy. A lifetime of being over-sized, it turns out that “normal” doesn’t feel right.

So yeah, you could definitely go down to a B from a D. Maybe an A, depends on the surgeon.

77

I use to be an AA cup, before kids.

Now I am a C cup and would gladly hack off my bewbs for smaller girls.

When I breastfed they were even bigger, like milk torpedos and I hated the size.

78

Certainly possible, but your surgeon may advise against it. Depending on whether you’re paying for it out of pocket or if insurance is covering it may have something to do with the decision, as well. (My reduction was only covered if such and such an amount of ccs were going to be removed). A cosmetic procedure might provide you with more freedom in that regard–“I don’t care if you think it’ll look disproportionate, it’s how I want to look/feel, and it’s what I’m paying you to do, so do it.” I can’t imagine what a purely “medical” (as opposed to aesthetic) rationale would be for denying you this. Posture problems? Balance? Seems kind of ridiculous, since going bigger isn’t ruled out on those grounds.

After the “joys” of having enormous hell breasts for years, I was angling for Cs. My surgeon said that might wind up with me looking a more disproportionate than I was picturing, and he talked me into staying a little larger, [DD range] especially since I planned on losing weight after the surgery, which would result in them being even smaller. I’m content with where I am now, but hope to lose enough weight to meet my goal. So between the reduction and weight loss afterward, I could conceivably be exactly where I’d hoped.

Of course, the size you get after surgery is, to some degree, an approximation. During the operation there is a lot of cutting and repositioning of tissue, making it difficult to say, “okay, what’s left will amount to exactly a __ cup.” After the surgery, there is a lot of bruising, swelling, etc., so it takes a while for them to even out (I think my doctor told me it would be about a year before they’re fully “Settled,” but I think it was probably closer to three or four months). Needless to say, if you gain or lose a good amount of weight after the reduction, you’re quite likely to go right back up/even further down in breast size.