The CATASTROPHIC Symptoms of Breast Implant Illness with Dr. Robert Whitfield

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, I took out her implants, checked them on the back table, and they were just covered in biofilm. So for everybody listening, biofilm makes it so your body can't attack it and kill it, and it switches on your immune system. And the longer these folks go, they get adrenal fatigue, they get chronic inflammatory symptoms, they get gut dysfunction, they get brain fog, they get arrhythmias, they get shortness of breath. Like every system becomes effective.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality.

And a whole lot more.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Welcome to a very special episode of the Ben Greenfield Live show, recorded at elevation of the beautiful Sundance resorts outside of Salt Lake City. While sipping, at least in my case, mezcal, it appears my guest also mezcal here, cheers for the audience. And it can get dangerous drinking at altitudes. This podcast could go south pretty fast. Now, you have not heard of my guest before, at least not on my show. I'm gonna have him explain to you a little bit more about what he does. His name is Dr. Robert Whitfield, and here's the deal. All the show notes for today's show you can find at BenGreenfieldLife.com implants@BenGreenfieldLife.com implants, which may give you a little bit of a clue as far as the topic of today's show, because Rob has been a plastic surgeon for over 25 years, board certified for over 16 years, specializes in something called breast cancer implant removal surgery. This is not a topic that I've addressed on the show before. So, Robert, this is going to be super interesting. I'm really actually honored to get the word out about this. You want to read Rob's full bio, his history, extensive history as a surgeon. I'll link to it again@BenGreenfieldLife.com implants. But probably we should cut to the most important thing first here, Robert. And you were telling me just as we were eating dinner in the conference room right before we stepped out here, that there are three rules. I think you said there are three rules of a good surgeon. All right, do tell.

Eat when you can, sleep when you can, and don't fuck with the pancreas.

Eat when you slam. Eat when you can. Get that. Sleep when you can. And I get to eat when you can, by the way, because I grew up with two brothers. That's right. Sleep when you can. And don't fuck with the pancreas. Is that the last one? The last one baffles me.

Traditional surgery training, pancreas is a very unforgiving organ. You have to be very respectful of it when you operate on it. And my traditional training in surgery was by people who operate on it, were very skilled at it. So first of all, thank you for having me on the show. I followed you for a long period of time. Now I'm very interested in biohacking. We're here at the G50, obviously, and I love your type of audience. So the people who follow you are very engaged in their own personal mission on health. And those are the easier patients for me to care for. So I really appreciate that in your audience.

Yeah, well, I'm honored to have you on. And by the way, you did mention Da Vinci 50 for those who don't know what that is. It's a private collective of people who are kind of on the frontiers of health. Age reversal, longevity, Physicians, scientists, researchers, acts like me, etc, and we all gather in a. In a location a few times a year to kind of ferment in each other's wisdom and in some cases, foolishness. So anyways, I actually, when. When you and I first started talking, maybe like six months ago, Robert, I really didn't realize that breasts, how do you say it? Breast implant illness. Yeah, breast implant illness was even that big of a deal, like I suspected, maybe, you know, some women were getting microplastics in their system or something like that. But from what I understand, it goes way beyond that.

Right, so for your audience, about 2.2 million implants are placed worldwide annually.

It's a lot of boobs.

In our country alone, 360,000 annually. So in 2016, I had a patient come to me after a very long period of time of having a breast reconstruction. And by way of history, I'm an oncologic reconstructed plastic surgeon. So I did head neck cancer reconstruction, sarcoma reconstruction, and of course breast cancer reconstruction. The most prevalent cancer we would see. And so this patient came to me and wanted their breast reconstruction removed. They wanted to go flat. You have that from a time, you know, a few times a year in patients. Everything otherwise was normal on the patient. Our main complaint was fatigue, kind of like chronic fatigue. And many patients who have chemotherapy have and suffer from bone marrow suppression, and so they have chronic fatigue.

Right.

So her other indices, laboratory analysis in basic allopathic labs were all normal. Blood work was all normal. Scans were all normal. I did her case. She only asked one thing. That I make sure and take out all the material, the capture material for the audience. That's the scar that forms around a breast implant or hip implant or knee implant.

Your body's response to that is scar, to make scar. And so, of course, I would always take these out as part of the oncologic process when I remove these tissues, implants, and we send them off to look for bacteria, fungi. We send off the material to look for recurrent cancer, of course.

And when you're. Or when you were doing implants like this, were these primarily people who had gotten the implants for aesthetic reasons or people who had gotten them post chemo or post breast removal?

Yeah, in my career, it's for breast cancer.

Okay.

Predominantly, it was breast cancer reconstruction. So much like this patient, she sought me out for my expertise in breast cancer reconstruction.

Okay. Okay, gotcha.

So what did you find so interestingly on her? It's most important that there's no evidence of recurrent cancer. Right. Predominantly. My sister passed away in January after a long bout with cancer. But the most important thing, anytime, taking care of a breast cancer survivors make sure they don't have recurrent disease, as we heard from Dr. Azra today.

But she had an E. Coli infection, which it's hard to fathom how someone can wander around year over year with an E. Coli infection. This was locked onto the implant, and we'll just call it a biofilm. So biofilm for the audience is a collection of, in this instance, we'll say bacteria that get stuck on the surface of the device and form a colony.

This would be the same type of biofilm that you'll find in, like, people's guts who have mold, fungal overgrowth, et cetera. Correct.

And this is the big idea with this problem. Right. So I was like, man, I missed this. If somebody had missed this on my sister, I'd be incredibly pissed off. So I went back for all of my notes and everything and the scans, and I was like, how do I miss this? And the short answer is, we just didn't know. Sophisticated as we are, we did not know about this. And she put me on a social media platform, and I just had patients start coming out of the woodwork wanting their implants taken out. So my office is getting calls, and they're like, why are these people calling to get the breast implants removed? So now it's a mixture of patients. It's because you.

By the way, you think that women would want to retain those implants for esthetic purposes.

Right.

But what you're implying is that there's something going on that makes that. That, that overrides their desire for the esthetic appearance of breasts. Because there's. There's some underlying issue that those breasts cause.

And at this point, this. I did not understand the problem. I had never heard of this.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, now I'm. I'm thrust into this situation where patients are coming in complaining of brain fog and fatigue and chronic inflammatory disease type symptoms, and I'm like, huh, I don't know.

But it's not because they still have cancer.

No. Now, these are a mixture of patients. These are cosmetic patients.

Okay, so cosmetic patients now as well. Not. Yeah.

And I'm like, I'm. I'm like you.

I'm.

What the hell is going on here? And so because this patient had infection, you know your collection of experiences, and as a physician, you have a collection of experiences to draw on. And I thought, well, if this person has come to the conclusion that they don't want their reconstruction or their cosmetically priced implants, that's their decision.

And it's not my position to dissuade them. It's just to inform them about the surgical risks, benefits, and they make their own decision. That's. That's part of being involved in patient care and making informed decisions. So I started doing these, and so I redo them, you know, here and there a few months, Then it became a few a week. And this kind of grew.

What was your practice, by the way?

In Austin, Texas.

Okay.

So in 2018, I had a nurse travel, and she came from New Orleans. Her sister lived in Austin. And I took out her implants, checked them on the back table, and they were just covered in biofilm at that point.

So when you take out the implants, you can set them on the table and literally see what's on them.

Yeah. So this one in particular was really slimy.

How do you take them out? Are you just like making an incision and pulling them out?

So there's different ways to take them out. We can use their previous incision under the fold. We can use a vertical type incision, almost like a lift incision. And those are the predominant ways we do it. In this instance, I took em out through the fold as they were put in, and you try to take it out intact so that you're not disrupting any of the materials. You're not spreading anything if it has an infection or if it has a lymphoma or cancer in it. So I took these out, I opened them on the back table. I'm like, these things are all gooey. They're not ruptured. They're just covered in this goo.

That's not normal.

No, no. So I went out and told her husband, like, she's going to get better. I think these were just infected.

Yeah.

And I just need to wait for the results. And so traditional techniques, as we've talked about at this conference we're at today, are limited in medicine. So some of them have practiced since you and I combined a bit of life. They're the same. You know, take a Q tip, essentially swab an area that's got, you know, worrisome for bacteria or fungi or whatever, and then send it off to the lab and they incubate it.

Just like the strep throat test I used to get.

And this has been around forever. So this came back normal, like nothing. And I was like, no, the one.

From the implants that you took out that had the goo on them came back norm.

And I was like, there's no way this is possible. So I got frustrated and I said, okay, we're going to start looking at PCR testing. So for the audience during the pandemic, that antigen testing and PCR testing, PCR testing looks for DNA fragments of different, you know, pathogens, bacteria, fungi, mycobacteria. So I got in touch with a lab, MicroGenDX, and now they've done all of my samples consecutively since February of 2019. We have a series that's being published of over 900 consecutive samples where about a third of them have a biofill in this instance of bacteria. And the bacteria is cutie bacterium acnes. It's found in extremely high concentrations.

You say that again. How's it called?

Cutie bacterium acnes. It's what you find in acne.

Sounds sweet, innocent, cutie.

But it readily produces biofilm. And so for everybody listening, biofilm makes it so your body can't attack it in and kill it.

Right? It's like a shield, like a gooey shield.

And it's perfectly suited for this, right? You have a foreign body, you have something that readily produces biofilm. It attaches and it switches on your immune system, right? And it can't shut off. And the longer these folks go, as you. As you would imagine, they get adrenal fatigue, they get chronic inflammatory symptoms, they get gut dysfunction, they get brain fog, they get, you know, arrhythmias, they get shortness of breath. Like, every system becomes affected.

Is that because the bacteria is able to spread Outside the implant. And the biofilm grows elsewhere beyond the implant.

So that's not known yet. But there is a current study that was done. It upregulates something called tinhome. So when staff is around an implant, that biofilm upregulates tendon. It increases the symptomology of breast implant illness. So in my patient population, the predominant organism, the bacteria is not staph. It's this cutie bacterium.

Now, my.

Everybody listening? My patient population is not in Austin predominantly. I have patients come from all over the United States and all over the world. So I just operated before I came here on somebody from Singapore. So I think mine's a more representative analysis of a more, you know, continental United States, if you will look, versus a localized.

Yeah.

Clinic. So I feel like that. And if you look in the literature, there's lots of examples of cutibacterium acnes readily producing biofilm. You can find it on shoulder implants, because that's an area where I was.

Going to ask you. There's an issue with implants that go beyond just breasts.

Yes, yes, yes. With this bacteria especially.

Okay. All right. So you're finding all this out. You send it off to your. Your microgen. What's it called? Microgen DX Laboratory.

Yeah.

What do you do next?

So the thing that we've gone to doing is, first of all, we're super holistic in how we approach taking care of the patient. We'll go back a little bit. So after we started running these analyses, now we kind of see the real information. So instead of seeing one positive result or two a month, now we're seeing like two or three a week because the analysis is so much more sensitive and specific to look for the bacteria. So now we're like, oh, this is a lot bigger problem than we thought initially. So now I feel like about a third of the devices. I just can't tell you the timeframe, whether it's 5 years, 10 years out, 15 years out, have biofilm.

When you say devices, you mean implant plants.

Yes. So when we're looking at them, you know, that's why I said in 2.2 million place worldwide annually, if you just run it up 10 years, and then a third of those will potentially have a biofilm issue.

Have you ever had a chance to look at an implant that's pretty new, like less than five years old, to see if how quickly the biofilm actually develops post implant?

I have a smaller number of that sample size. And because it's so small, it doesn't hold up when you analyze it.

Have you ever talked to somebody whose symptoms set in like almost immediately after they get the implant?

Yeah, yeah. And there's some people, as you imagine, they are very sensitive. And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier today. I do a lot of genetic analysis to look at people and for me to work with you now, it's really, you have to run the program. We have set up the sharp process because we're looking at your genetics using envision labs. Because we talked about earlier, I really want to have everybody have as individualized program for them based on their genetics.

We talked about just to the audience earlier at the conference, you were discussing pharmacogenetics. So you're actually able to do a genetic test on somebody, figure out how they actually metabolize certain pharmaceuticals and choose their drug dosing protocol accordingly.

It's pretty cool. Exceptionally important in this patient population who have high amounts of chronic inflammation because imagine I operate on you and you have chronic inflammation. If we don't do work to help address that on the front end through the program. So we look at your genetics, we do a tox test to look at your environmental tox burden. Phthalates, MEPs, BPAs, bifidates, we look at heavy metals, we look at mycotoxins. We're really trying to prepare you and look at everything including gut microbiome, dysbiosis, food sensitivities, hormone balance so that we get a broad enough picture so that we can get as proactive as possible up front. So we use really nutrient dense supplementation and liposomal formulation.

So this is all part of the implant removal process?

Yes, this part of my process. So that's why people come and take part in our process. There's a lot of upfront work and because of the pandemic, we just started doing everything in house with our functional team.

Got it. Now you use the acronym SHARP when you're describing your protocol. What's that sample?

So Sharp is Strategic Holistic Accelerated Recovery Program. So it starts with your genetic testing, your toxicity testing, your gut health testing.

And that's the strategic part?

Yeah, your food testing and your hormone balance. And then we really tried to avoid antibiotics, we really tried to get nutritional support started as soon as possible. Gluten free, dairy free, seed oil free diets, higher in good proteins and healthy fats. And then in terms of, you know.

That'S the holistic part. Yeah.

And we want all of this starting pre so that we're accelerating the recovery process by starting it proactively. And then once you get to Austin, you're going to spend a week with us in Austin. You're going to have your pre op appointment with us the day before surgery. You go through the surgical process where we really limit the amount of narcotics. You had Dr. Chestnut on. I know you talked about doing opioid free. Now this is not a twilight case. This is under general anesthesia. This is a lot more intrusive. So my team is extremely careful about not using long acting narcotics. So short acting always. We do a eras, which is enhanced recovery after surgery. Use gabapentin the night before celebrex, really good cox2 anti inflammatory and then Zofran to help. Really we want to reduce as much nausea, inflammation. And Zofran is for nerve. Yeah, nerve stimulation because obviously I'm going to ramp it up during surgery. And then in surgery, our anesthesia team is providing peripheral nerve blocks. So we're trying to really address, before we ever do anything, blocking pain for.

People who haven't had a nerve block before. Can you quickly.

Sure.

Give me the overview of what that is.

Yeah.

So we've had it and it seems pretty effective.

Yes. If you just think of the spinal column or our vertebra, the ribs pop out, come around from back to front. There's nerves out of each level below the rib vein, artery, nerve. And they can under ultrasound, go back, block that area so you get wraparound coverage. And then on the sides they'll block a little area near the serratus anterior and latissimus bully on the front. That helps give more coverage here. And then we're actually doing the surgery. Our exposure is really good. And I use a lighted retractor so I can see the pocket like you're looking in a cave with a headlight. And then I will inject directly the tissues where I've been operating. So we get really good dense anesthesia before folks wake up because we want everybody in a kind of a 2, 3 zone when you wake up out of 10, we, we feel like that's where the sweet spot is. And if you wake up that way you're going to go home, you know, you're going to. Or go back to your hotel or Airbnb. And the recovery is so much better because you're not, you're not groggy, you're not lethargic, you're not, you're able to eat right. So we give everybody this. Everybody's been to Austin, knows about the well. The wells is seed, seed oil free, gluten free, dairy Free restaurant. We have a partnership.

Good to know. I'll be in Austin in a couple weeks.

So we, we have everybody, we have a program with them for our patients because I want our patients to do a low inflammatory diet.

Yeah.

And I think most people really want to eat this way. They just don't know how or haven't experienced it.

I'm guessing you didn't learn a lot of that holistic stuff in medical school. So I'm curious how you came to even like be aware of any of that or start to implement that with your patients.

Yeah, so it's interesting. I've always been curious about genetics ever since college. And the genome project started really in 95, didn't get confused, completed for a very long period of time because the computers weren't, you know, strong enough, quick enough. And when I got into solo private practice, I shared space with a functional medicine provider, super talented, was really giving with his time and his team helped me with nutritional support, taught me about moles. And then I did additional know, kind of online programming for toxicity training. And then when, you know, the pandemic happened, we could no longer refer out to it because they couldn't see anybody. So then when we resumed, we just brought it all in house and started doing it with our functional team. So I have functional practitioners now.

So you call this an explant. Right. When you, when you do everything you just described to remove the implant, how many women have a desire after that to still get implants or still engage in some kind of aesthetic or cosmetic procedure?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I feel like it's a really big decision and obviously I don't decide for them to have an explant. They've come to that conclusion. I provide information to make an informed decision. I think the next step and what we're trying to always improve upon are our fat transfer results. So if many patients were offered in the first place, a transfer of fat from one place on the body to the breast, kind of like they do.

But very common in cosmetic surgery.

Yes. Yeah, that would have been acceptable if they only chose to have like a cup size improvement. The discussion becomes, Ben, when somebody wants more than a cup size, two cup sizes, two and a half cup sizes, it's a lot of fat, you can't do it. So then you're, you're in the implant territory or you have somebody early in life, low bmi, not enough fat, obviously they're going to go down the pathway of the implant. So when we're looking at My patients now average age is going to be like 45. They've had kids, they've had implants for a long period of time. We accumulate more body fat in the love handle area, the abdomens, the inner outer thighs, so we can do a rejuvenative type procedure, take that fat, do the explant with a lift and fat transfer as we see fit in those patients who are in line with that and their testing lines up with and supports doing.

Right. That makes sense. And I just one impression that I'm getting here, especially when you mentioned young people who want to go up a few cup sizes. Guys, if you're listening in, make sure you compliment your significant other on their boobs. I'm glad after talking to you so far that my wife never got implants. And you know, I think it's. It's a very good idea to make sure that a woman feels comfortable with her body. And we live in a society that I think doesn't do us any service when it comes to girls being potentially embarrassed or self conscious about that part of their body.

Absolutely. Mindset has been affected from the time they were little.

Yeah.

And when you talk to them and hear their stories, they're very disheartening.

Yeah.

Because of that, you need to be a super supportive significant other or spouse or friend or however that looks because those, those women need that support. And we have partnered with Amanda Sabbath Brown, who wrote the book Busting Free. And she's had each other. Yeah. And she's a psychologist. She's wonderful.

Is that what the book Busting Free is about? Is that plants?

Yes. It's a. She's really a unique individual. So we align with her and our patients reach out and can spend time with her. And we have folks on our detox team, so we run a very aggressive detox program with Cellcore. So once you get your testing and everything's crafted in terms of the surgical plan and the supplement plan, then there's a detox plan.

So they're all pre or post surgery.

The detox we'll do probably phase one, depending on logistics.

Yeah.

Because some people need several months to get everything lined up to come spend time with us. But it's super important to get started right away with, I would say, just like you understand and your audience does when you don't know how unhealthy you are and how nutrient deficient you are. Once you get started and you start making progress and lowering your inflammation, it makes a big difference in how you feel and interact and your energy Levels even before the surgery. So I think as soon as we can start that process, we want to.

Yeah. Do you use stem cells at all for any part of this?

So I have the American cell device and I've done fat transfers.

Like the American cell device.

Yeah. So you can take that out and spin it and in about an hour and 40 minutes have your stem cells, your mesenchymal, like take some of the.

Own fat, put it in a fuse.

Yeah.

Spin is all autologous, their own fat. And you can get their stem cells right there to use to. Well, like accelerate healing for the protocol from the explant.

Yeah. So you can give them to them IV or if you're doing a local fat transfer. Sometimes I do fat transfers later on, six, eight months out, awake, under local, in the office. You can do it then as well.

Okay.

How much does. I don't even know how much an implant costs. So what's the price of an explant compared to say what somebody might pay for an implant? Yeah.

So the implant costs themselves will vary, you know, around probably 5 to 10, depending on who's doing that next. Plants far more complicated process. We're starting around 20 and those will go up depending on what we're doing in terms of programming, lifting fat transfers. We also offer skin tightening. So anybody 35 plus their skin's not getting tighter, as you know, it's getting looser.

Yeah.

You take fat from it, you, you affect the, the tonicity of it. So I provide radio frequency skin tightening. That's very safe and effective. It's been used for decades now. We offer that to all the, the women who have kids, especially the lower abdomen can be lax. So we want to do as much as we can at one time to help help offset both what they're worried about in terms of image, but not create new things that are going to be problematic in other areas.

If you get an explant, does that mean that your breast size returns to what it would have been before you got your implant, or is it smaller or larger than that?

Yeah, I think it's a two parter. So in the low BMI patient who's still low bmi, they're still going to be at a deficit. And then the patient who kind of will say more has, you know, moderate weight gain over time, much easier process. They typically started with a little bit more tissue. So it's always best if you have more tissue to begin with for me, because then I can reshape it and then I can add volume back to it. And that's the best situation for the patient.

This is possibly a dumb question, but just thinking about like the mammary glands and this whole idea of implants, explants. Does any of this play into a woman's capability to breastfeed?

No, no, they can still breastfeed. It's, it's say when I'm taking them out. Most of the implants in the United states placed since 1996 are behind the muscle.

Okay.

So they're really. You're not dealing with the breast so much.

Right.

So then it becomes how, how affected is the muscle? And many people promote muscle repair. And I think you're an athlete, so if you tore a muscle and it was unrepaired, like the bicep, what would happen?

Atrophy.

Yeah. Just curls up.

Yeah.

So a muscle to function for the audience needs to be connected origin insertion. And so when you release part of its insertion, it changes forever.

Right.

And muscles just don't get.

You're doing like a full bicep tear where you literally see it curl up. Yeah, that's a friendly event.

Yeah. You, you can't just weigh the eldest acid down. Yeah, yeah. You just can't pull muscles down. So it's, it's like a broken window shade. It's there and it'll be fine over time as it heals and restores. What we'd call a resting lane. Because people I've had say, for instance, somebody's in a military environment and they have implants because that happens and they need to get them removed for one reason or another and they pass their physical training test, then they come see me, they want to have an explant, then they have a whole year to recover, basically. And in particular, they'll get almost right back to their bench and their pull up and push up and whatever testing parameters there are. And so it's possible, it's totally within the realm to get almost back to the same physical type mission. It's just the pace at which you do it. We try to govern that so you don't potentially tear your pack because it's going to be weaker after surgery.

Yeah, yeah. Do you do or is any of this covered by insurance?

So we don't have anything related to insurance reimbursement for this at this point. I think groups are looking into how to help get parts of this covered. I stopped doing insurance work for cancer related problems in 2019, so we haven't submitted and don't participate in any plans.

Now, is there a safe way to do an implant, do you think?

I think the way I look at it, I get asked all the time.

Like, not just the fat transfer with that. Right.

But people try to pigeonhole me and they're like, oh, Dr. Whitfield, if your daughter wanted implants, what would you do? Like, yeah, okay, this is what I would do. I know my daughter's genetics. I also know her toxicity testing. I would say if you're a provider and your. Your client comes in and says you want this, those are things that I know that are pretty specific. And if you have limitations in detox and you start with a poor tox test, that's not a good situation.

If you're just a poor genetic detoxifier.

In general, yeah, that's a problem.

Yeah. So those would be like glutathione pathways, for example.

Yeah. You can have really stripped down capability as, you know, and be suboptimal in vitamin D synthesis.

Yeah.

Methylation in glutathionization, in antioxidant pathways. You have those.

You're setting yourself up not for just a difficult life of detoxification in general in a very, very complicated world. But then you're going to add a device and you just.

You can't just take N acetylcysteine and, you know, transdermal glutathione and all the things.

Only if you live in the bubble.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is uncommon. Yeah. So the genetic test that you use, which one is it?

So we use Envision Labs. And I think.

I always want to do and provide what I think will be the best situation for you. So who has the most genes available that are going to provide the most valuable information, plus give us the pharmacogenetic data that.

That's the one that tells you how you process drugs. Yeah.

I mean, that is like, next level.

You don't see that a lot on genetic tests.

No, no. I've been waiting and waiting and using different vendors and, you know, to me, like, it's all in your code. Like, and the more we learn about it, the more efficient we can become about helping you, you know, both before and. And during and after surgery. Because that's, you know, that's why people are coming. They want to recover well quickly, efficiently, and feel as good as possible so they can live their best versions of themselves.

Yeah. So back to the question about what you would do if your daughter wanted to implant. You said you'd look at toxicology. Yeah. Anything else?

Yeah. So I know her genetics are toxic tests, but my daughter, for everybody listening is a Leo and she's not going to listen to me.

Okay.

So I would provide her the information so she can make her best informed decision.

Yeah, it's a love and logic style of parenting. That's how we raised our kids. Not a lot of yeses or no's. Just educate them about their consequences or inconsequences of a decision that they make, then let them make the decision. So as far as the actual biofilm piece, it sounds to me like you're saying that you haven't seen a whole lot of evidence that it spreads throughout the body, but that the body responds systemically to the bacteria and the biofilm that's localized to the implants.

Yeah, I think it boils down to our limitations in testing. We worked with a startup after the pandemic who looked at chronic inflammatory testing through urine thromboxin A2 metabolites specifically. And it was good but not great. So if you had taken in your diet turmeric or other anti inflammatories or antioxidants, it would affect the test. So we had some people who had no knowledge of those types of things in their diet and we have the test up front and then we would change their diet. You can see their inflammatory marker go down. So we know we can do that systemically. We don't know what the biofilm is doing because it doesn't really pop up. If you check lpa, if you check crp, if you check sed rate, you're not really going to get the indication of what's going on. And it's frustrating. But all of us have biofilm. I mean, the breast in particular is concerning for me because of nipple complex connection to the ductal system. It's uniquely situated to have connection to the outside world. And you can have more. There are different types of biofit.

Yeah, yeah. Do you ever do gut testing such as, let's say like a Genova diagnostics evaluation or a fungal evaluation and find any patterns of more fungal overgrowth in implant patients? I asked that, but probably see where I'm going here. Just because you tend to see so much biofilm with fungal overgrowth. If there's some correlation between implants and fungal overgrowth.

We do GI maps on virtually everybody and there's no correlation between that and fungal overgrowth. I've only had six have fungus out of 900 so far.

Yeah, yeah.

Or actually over a thousand.

Let's say somebody can't get all the fancy testing and everything and a woman is listening in and Suspects based on the fact that she has implants, that she might have this. You briefly ran through the symptoms earlier in the show, but can you run down what they'd actually look for? Let's say they can't do blood testing and everything. What are they going to feel that might give them a clue that they could have breast implant illness?

Right. So I think from head to toe, I do the symptom inventory like this. I would do sound sensitivity, light sensitivity, headache. You can have sinus symptoms, pressure pain in the sinus area, and you can may have what's termed sinusitis, but it's not able to be treated by an antibiotic.

Right.

People will. Will kind of refract.

Or reflexively treat you with that. And it won't go away because this is not a bacterial phenomenon, it's inflammation. They'll have dry eyes, very characteristic problem. And then as you go down the systems, they'll have difficulty with swallowing and they feel like something's catching, almost like an eosinophilic esophagitis, like a swelling almost. You can have even pain in the esophagus, like chest pains and chest pressure, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, lots of kind of very concerning and cardiovascular symptoms, respiratory symptoms, like I said, shortness of breath, pain, pressure. Things that are obviously when you hear those, those are very disconcerting symptoms, especially in folks who have kids and they're taking care of their families and their spouses and running the household. When you'll go down, think of like extremities. You can have neurologic symptoms. You can have shooting pains, you can have neuropathic pain, heat, pins and needles. You can have vibratory pain. Your whole body can kind of vibrate. Those can be in the arms and legs, muscle cramping, muscle pain, weight pain, migratory joint pain, and then the GI and the gu. So the GI tract can have all sorts of anomalies. Right. You can have just things like not just nausea, not just diarrhea and constipation, but crampy pain, swelling, bloating, bowel pain, all the things. Plus intractable urinary tract infections.

That's crazy. All for an implant. Geez. Now, kind of a fringe question, I realized that would apply to a smaller subset of the population. But, you know, I know some guys have gotten cast implants. A lot of bodybuilders will get implants for a specific vanity part. You ever treat anybody who's gotten something besides a breast implant? You mentioned the shoulder implants, for example.

Yeah, I've taken calf implants out of several women because they were experiencing what they perceived as symptoms from that. Now, I would say those are different biofilm, they're different implants. And we did not have biofilm on the small sample. But any implants will cause a response and then it's, you know, biofilm or not, your body's still responding to it because it's foreign.

Yeah, yeah. Could you make the implant theoretically out of a different kind of material? Like could someone invent some kind of a matrices that's resistant to bacteria, resistant to biofilm?

Yeah, because it's foreign. I don't know if that's, you know, something that they, they've tried to do different things to the surface to help with that. Nothing, you know, yet that's made sense. And in the kind of the knee worlds and the hip worlds, I mean, those guys have huge implants and you're going to lose function if they have to take it out. So it's very, you know, when you are around those folks, they're super focused on no joint infections ever.

Yeah. So you can't make a breast implant out of like ceramic and titanium. No, I mean, you could, but you'd have kind of like a Viking number in that case. Comes with the hat with the spikes on it. How about the idea? I just have to ask you this because I'm curious if you know anything about this related to breast health. I hear more and more these days, especially from the holistic crowd, that bra choice could be an issue. Like tight bra, you know, breast blood flow from, from, you know, tight fitting bras, et cetera. Do you ever come across anything like that?

Yeah, I think it's a good shot because we do see a lot of restriction of lymphatic flow. And for the audience, your lymphatic drainage is crucial in recovery. So my office, we have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, we have a lymphatic masseuse, we have lymphatic massage devices, we have red light therapy. So we're trying to decrease inflammation, upregulate your hormones that are going to help you with recovery, but really promotes lymphatic massage. And your, your lymphatic system above any other drainage system that exists, is the most efficient. So if you can really leverage that. And the tightness of the bra, to me is not a blood flow issue. It's a lymphatic restrictor because it takes barely any pressure to restrict the lymphatic.

Right. It also takes barely any pressure to massage the lymphatic Correct.

You have to know how to do that.

I'll try and hide it down and put in the show notes. By the way, at the BenGreenfieldLife.com implants, there's a guy named Perry Nichols, and he has a big six lymphatic drainage, where you go collarbones to back of the neck, down to chest to stomach to groin, the back of the knees, and you're kind of rubbing and padding each of those sections and finishing with some rebounding or trampolining.

Right.

Get the lymph fluid going. But what's. You said you have a lymph massage device. Yes.

So we have two in our office. We have the Balancer Pro Germany, and we have Flopresso, which is out of New Zealand. Each of these is very good at reducing the swelling that accumulates after surgery. So the balancer works both on upper and lower body, like a pair of trousers for the lower and then a jacket for the top. And then Flopresso, you lay down on the actual table and you need an assistant to actually put you in the leg portion. And then there's a abdomen portion and an arm portion.

Oh, so you're like pulling on a suit. This isn't like a wand or something like that? Correct.

These are. Yeah, these are suits in the office. And they run time. The run times particularly will say between 30 and 45 minutes. And our pressures are always low. Like everybody listening. Lymphatic drainage, we'll say just low and slow. Like, keep it low pressure. So things like Normatec, too high a pressure, those.

The gradated recovery boost, where you've got.

To really understand you're going to cause more problems with higher pressures. The lymphatic system really responds to low pressure and gentle massage. So 45 minutes at a pressure setting of 45. And then for full oppresso, it has a heating component which is really good, especially on the abdomen. It helps you get into more of a parasympathetic state.

How much does a device like that cost? Like, could people have them in their homes?

Yes. Those are between something cool.

Biohacking device, awesome, like I said.

And I. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've.

So if everybody listening, my regimen is I work out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you know, between 5:30 and 6:30. And I operate Tuesday, Thursday between 6am to 6pm so on off days, I go after I go to the gym, I go get my hyperbaric chamber. I get a lymphatic massage. Red light. I get to work.

See how you're Anyway, what do your workouts look like? So, Wednesday, Friday routines?

Yeah, I do an hour. I'm mostly in 60, 60 to 75% in zone three, a little zone two. I don't do much. Zone four, and I'm more functional mobility rather than any heavy weights or heavy cardio. I do the machine that kills me is the first climber with the hate. But, yeah.

It'S my little nemesis.

Yeah. Yeah. What about the weekends? Are you doing anything on the weekends?

You know, I try to really spend time with my family on the weekends. And my son's getting ready to move to Europe. He's going to coach and play soccer there. And my daughter going to be a junior in high school. So I'm really trying to be as available as.

Were you a soccer player?

I played basketball. Soccer was not a thing. I'm almost 55, so that was not a thing. But our country has now become a soccer country.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for people listening who are interested in learning more about the. The Sharp. I get that, right? The shape or Sharp. Sharp. Yeah, Sharp. Nailed it. Asking me about that. Despite the Mezcal. The Sharp program, the name of your clinic, just fill folks in on where they go and what to ask for if they heard this and they have a loved one they are concerned about or they themselves are interested in this explant procedure. Right.

To learn more information about breast implant illness, we have breast implant illness experts dot com. You can follow us on Instagram at Breast implant illness Expert. And then I have a podcast just devoted to breast implant illness.

Oh, really?

So you can go to that show. We also have our supplements on DrRobsSolutions.com but you can link to it from my site. We also have the Sharp program linking from our site. And then you can get the genetic testing from our site through Envision Labs.

On your podcast, are you, like, interviewing patients or surgeons or how does that work?

So I've done patient interviews, and then I've actually had a couple of interviews with some very interesting guests because I. Obviously, for me, as you heard me talk about today, I'm very passionate about both air quality, fluid intake, and food quality. So I've had the owners of the restaurant, the well and Austin on my show. I've had to go to, by the way. Yeah, we'll get you. We'll take you. And then we just recently interviewed the founder of Echo, the water company.

Oh, yeah, the hydrogen water bottle. Yeah, I was talking about that earlier.

Yeah. And so, you know, for me, I'm very passionate about if you just make these changes, which you obviously know and talk about to your audience, you'll see incremental improvement. And it's not all going to change overnight. You have to start and and when you begin, you will make proper yeah, yeah. Dr.

Rob Whitfield, everybody. Clink Blank. You somehow finished your drink before me, even though you didn't want to talking. Now you pull that off. BenGreenfieldLife.com implant leave your questions, your comments, your feedback. I read them all. Dr. Rob can take a look if there's anything that that blows my mind that I pass on to him. In the meantime, thanks for listening. Have an amazing week and share this episode with anyone who you think might benefit from it, particularly those in your life who have an implant and are showing some of the signs and symptoms that Rob talked about. So until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield and Dr. Rob Whitfield signing up from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week.

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