9 Things You Never Knew About Nipples

1. Your nipples can have orgasms. Seriously I couldn't make this up. You know how when your nipples are stimulated, it feels pretty amazing? Well, that's because when that happens, your brain releases oxytocin, which causes your vagina to contract, thereby leading to orgasms so seriously do not underestimate how great they are.

2. You have one of four different types of nipples. Are yours normal, flat, puffy, or inverted? There's never been a better time to pretend you are a nipple scientist and find out. Thank you, hand mirrors!

3. There is a weirdly good chance that one of your friends has an extra nipple. Six freaking percent. Makes you want to call up everyone you've ever met to ask them to take off their shirt, doesn't it?

4. Your nipples might not even be the most erogeneous zone of your boobs. Alyssa Dweck, M.D., the assistant clinical professor at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and co-author of V is for Vagina, told Cosmopolitan.com that she gets a lot of patients who say that their nipples are sensitive to the point of pain and they don't want them touched in sexual play.  Basically, it's different for everybody and everyone has a different erogenous zone. Yours might not even be nipple-related at all.

5. Yes, almost everyone has hair on theirs. Not only can there be hair on your areola but some women have a fair amount of hair there and women often try to remove that hair, which Dweck says can lead to painful chemical burns from aggressive hair removal because it's such a sensitive area. That said, if you're developing a lot of coarse hair around the breast quickly where there was none before, it could be a sign of hormonal imbalance and should be checked out.

6. Your nipples could change and if so, it could be a sign of breast cancer. Dweck says the one to watch out for is inflammatory breast cancer, which is much more aggressive than other types and usually causes a rapidly changing skin change where the skin gets firmer and thicker. It's very rare (accounting for only 1 to 5 percent of all breast cancers diagnosed in the U.S.) but you definitely don't want to ignore or miss it because it is so aggressive.

7. Your nipples might not even look alike. Nobody is 100 percent symmetrical so certainly one breast could be larger than the other and so can nipples. Unless one breast or one nipple suddenly becomes massively larger than the other, (in which case you should get it checked out), Dweck says you're aces.

8. There are little bumps around your areola and that's OK. And no they're not pimples or a lump necessarily. They're called areolar glands and as long as those little bumps come and go and don't just keep growing and growing, it's probably nothing to worry about it. If you notice they're consistently changing and don't go back to normal though, contact your doctor.

9. Nipples can change colors. Women tend to get darker nipples after pregnancy or even just when they're on birth control, which is completely normal but as always, if you're really worried about your changing nip color, the doctor is a phone call away.

By Lane Moore

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