If you’re a teenage boy or grown man with gynecomastia, you’ve probably been looking high and low to find the best treatment for your condition. It’s embarassing, sometimes painful, and downright problematic. It also tends to look unattractive on human males, so it’s natural for you to seek out treatments.

First let’s look at what gynecomastia really is. It’s a known medical condition which usually affects teenage boys going through puberty. It can also affect elderly men because they also experience large hormonal imbalances as they advance in age.

Gynecomastia will cause the boy’s or man’s chest area to swell, making it appear as if he has breasts. This condition is often referred to as “man boobs” or “puffy nipples”. Usually an area about an inch and a half wide, right under the man’s nipples will become swollen and tender. Sometimes the nipple will excrete milk too.

Now there is no commonly used gynecomastia treatment, because the condition tends to go away on it’s own. With 90% of the cases in teenage boys for instance, gynecomastia will disappear on it’s own within one to three years without any special treatment or medications.

Many men and boys don’t want to wait years for the problem to go away though, instead they want a treatment for the condition that will work quickly. In these cases, the most common way of treating gynecomastia is to have plastic surgery done. The surgeon will perform a simple proceedure which involves removing the extra fat and glands between the muscles and nipple on the man’s chest.

Other forms of gynecomastia treatment might be recommended though, if the condition is caused by other factors. Sometimes for instance, gynecomastia can be caused by alcohol, illegal street drugs, and some prescription drugs.

If the problem is caused by alcohol or illegal drugs such as marijuana, then the best course of treatment would be to stop using those things. If gynecomastia is caused by prescription drugs instead though, then the treatment would likely involve your doctor either taking you off of the drugs which are causing the condition, or changing to a different type of drug which doesn’t have that side effect.

There is another type of gynecomastia however, and this one tends to be much more common – particularly in men who are past puberty but not yet near elderly ages. This is technically false gynecomastia, and it produces the man boobs or puffy nipples as regular gynecomastia does, yet you won’t usually experience tenderness or milk production.

False gynecomastia is caused by simply gaining weight. Your body has additional stores of fat on it, and it’s keeping some of that extra fat on your chest. The best treatment for this type of gynecomastia of course, is to lose weight.

Technically just losing weight won’t always solve the problem either. Since the false gynecomastia is caused by fat deposits on your chest, the true treatment must include losing actual fat from your body too. You can easily lose “weight” in the form of water loss for instance, but that won’t burn any actual excess fat from your body and thus it’s not a viable treatment for the actual gynecomastia problems.