Are Your Breasts Dropping With Age?

If your spirits are sagging in solidarity with the girls, Pratika Yashaswi has tips on how to stop the drop

- Pratika Yashaswi

Age is a sneaky thief, and gravity, its trusty sidekick. Together they can really bring you down. Watching your once youthful breasts sag defeatedly into your moulded cups can be hard. But there are a few ways to arrest the descent and generally feel a bit perked up.

A few things affect the shape of your breasts and their tendency to sag: your fitness level, breast size (smaller sizes are luckier), lifestyle and the number of times you’ve been pregnant. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t breast-feeding but the post-pregnancy weight fluctuation that makes breasts sag. Breasts are made of soft, fatty tissue wrapped in skin. As weight accumulates in your breasts, skin stretches as it does on any other part of the body and does not go back to its original shape when you drop those kilos. Also, skin loses its natural elasticity and suppleness with age, and droops with the weight.

We reached out to celebrity fitness instructor and author Deanne Panday for advice on how to arrest the sag. Panday’s clientele includes Bipasha Basu, Jacqueline Fernandez and Lara Dutta, all known for their strong, sculpted bodies. At 47, Panday, a mother of two, is in terrific shape, and her top tip is exercise (duh) but with care. If you do it wrong, your workout could actually make things worse.

And as with all agerelated issues wrinkles, slowing metabolism, aches and pains anxiety about your lady lumps too can be redirected into fuelling positive changes, like getting more exercise or eating better. There might be an upside to this downhill slope after all.