Hey everybody and welcome to Ask Cristen, I will get started with your questions right
after she leaves. Whhaa? She leaves. I--Do I really? Oh. No! [Laughing].
Caroline Ervin the co-host of Stuff Mom Never Told You the podcast welcome! [Cheering sounds].
We're going to talk about man boobs. Huh. Last week amid all of the infighting in the
comments that was going on in response to 'What's the matter with boobs?', there were
some man boob requests. Gibbs7e29 said, 'You should do a video on man boobs.' And then
we have Ahmed Farah, 'Since you already mentioned man boobs which is quite a well discussed
subject, I myself am on the other end of the spectrum. Guys with basically no chest muscles.
I know it's my fault because I don't exercise as much as I should but as a teenager it made
me feel less masculine and bad about my body.' Caroline first of all let's talk about the
man boob issue. Gynecomastia. That's the clinical term for larger male breasts. And they're
really not unusual, it's nothing to be ashamed of but it is understandable that a lot of
guys particularly young guys who are maybe just hitting puberty would be a little embarrassed
about it. Man boob or 'moob'-shaming has very much been on the rise. The article 'Banish
Your Man Boobs' is the second most popular health story on Menshealth.com. The thing
is if you have actual gynecomastia going to the gym isn't really going to do much. Clinical
gynecomastia is actually an issue with hormones rather than something that you're not doing
at the gymnasium. This is why it's so common during puberty. Testosterone and estrogen,
yeah that's right guys it's in your bodies too, start to rise and sometimes the estrogen
just directs more activity. It's not that you're eating too many cheetohs. If you are
eating too many cheetohs it might have something to do with weed that you're smoking. Marijuana
has been linked to gynecomastia as well as steroids, antibiotics, cancer and AIDs medication.
That's why doctors say that if you are having severe swelling and especially if there are
additional symptoms going along with it like tenderness in the area that you might actually
want to go see your doctor and make sure that there isn't something else going on that is
triggering the gynecomastia. But when it comes to just fat boobs, that's actually something
else, it's called pseudo-gynecomastia. And those are the kinds of things where lifestyle
changes would probably have a big difference where you look at your diet, look at your
exercise. Pay attention to how much soy you're consuming. Especially for vegetarian and vegan
diets, someone who is consuming like a lot of tofu and a lot of soy products, that is
actually going to send your estrogen up, this is also a concern for women's bodies as well,
we don't want too much estrogen raging throughout our bodies because it's linked to breast cancer.
Every chest is different. Every chest is different because on the reverse of that we have Ahmed's
question of what about someone who has no chest definition whatsoever. This hyper-masculinized,
hyper-muscular image of the ripped Ryan Gosling with the crazy six-pack and pecks and rrrrrr,
is an image that is being like being pedaled to boys all the time in the same way that
women often talk about being bombarded with images of 'perfect' femininity. Nobody's perfect
and especially if we're using the definition of perfect that is Ryan Gosling or that is
a Victoria's Secret model, nobody is that except those people and they are paid to look
that way. What's the matter with man boobs? People think, oh this is abnormal for me,
I'm a guy, I'm supposed to have a completely flat chest. The 'matter' with having man boobs
is that you might be consider [gasp] feminine. If you're having problems with them you can
go to a doctor, you can check out your diet, you can do some exercise, but also just accept
that genetics happen and hormones happen. Stop boob shaming. All around. Like we say
in the podcast, be kind to yourself. Well Caroline thanks so much for coming on. Thanks
for having me. And now we want to hear from you out there, what do you guys think about
man boobs? Is it something that you struggle with, do you feel shamed by your body? Is
it something that you've overcome and can maybe help other people figure out how to
deal with? And ladies too, is this something that you consider as well in a dating partner
whether or not he has [gasp] man boobs? So leave your best breast comments below. Everyone
have a happy holidays! I'll see you later. Bye. Hey everybody. One last piece of advice,
you should totally go check out Animals with low self esteem after you're done watching
this video because I'm making my voice over debut as a very cute, very glum South African
penguin so I'm sure there's a link floating around my head here somewhere so click on
it, go check it out it's a lot of fun.