Oils in Bath Products May Enlarge Boys’ Breasts… Temporarily

A couple of years ago, a story was released where 3 younger boys (ages 4, 7 and 10 at the time) all mysteriously grew female-like breasts, with the correlating factor of all three being that they each used products which contained natural oils (namely lavender and in one case tea tree oil). After months and months of research, doctors were not able to find any other reason why these three boys seemingly had the breasts of a young girl at the start of puberty other than the hygiene products they were using.

The Link

So what was the doctors’ reasoning? The natural oils in these products were blocking the male hormone androgen, thus allowing the female hormone estrogen to have somewhat of a free reign over their male bodies.

As shocking as it is to hear of young men growing female body parts, this particular condition called gynecomastia is apparently not so uncommon. There are also several different types of gynecomastia which occur, the most common (congenital or hereditary gynecomastia) affecting up to 60% of boys aged 9 to 14 years of age ¹. Most gynecomastia cases resolve themselves over time, with very few needing any sort of medical intervention.

About Natural Oils

Though some evidence does suggest that natural oils can act as the hormone “estrogen”, to solely blame trace amounts of natural oils in a product for the growth of breasts in young men is suspect at best and not by any means conclusive. The study does not mention any other factors which may have attributed to the breast growth, nor even any other foods that we eat every day that have estrogen-like qualities, such as soy, hope, sunflower seeds, hops, ginseng and alfalfa sprouts.

For the article to suggest that natural oils are a danger to us is somewhat ludicrous considering what chemical cocktails they prescribe to their patients on a daily basis. While I do agree that everything should be taken with a pinch of caution, natural oils are not what you should be spending your days worrying about. Gynecomastia is not by any means life threatening under most circumstances and the few adults who have not grown out of it typically choose to simply live with it.

So before you choose to change from your natural products to store shelf products that have potentially fatal long term side effects, look at what other environmental factors could be causing the problem and work on eliminating those one at a time (soy truly is a leading cause for gynecomastia) before choosing unsafe products or opting for any sort of medical intervention.

References

• 1. Bembo, SA (June 2004). "Gynecomastia: Its features, and when and how to treat it". Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine 71 (6): 511–517

photo by Ion de la Rocha