Your Guide to Healthy Breasts: What Those Lumps, Bumps, and Weird Conditions Really Mean

How to Do a Breast Self-Exam

No clue how to do a breast self-exam? No worries. "Just touch your breasts often -- especially the week after your period, because that's when they're least lumpy -- and watch for anything that changes or feels different," says Therese Bevers, MD, of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. This habit is one of your best defenses against breast cancer, particularly before you start getting mammograms at age 40. In addition to feeling for lumps, be alert for these lesser-known signs of breast cancer: flattening or indentations in one area of the breast, dimpled skin that looks like an orange peel, redness, and pulling or dimpling of the nipple.

Originally published in FITNESS magazine, October 2011.