Dr. Whitfield Reveals the Truth About Breast Implant Illness!

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson and I'm really looking forward to introducing you today to Dr. Rob Whitfield. He is an expert plastic surgeon who's helped thousands of women with explant surgery from breast implant illness. And he is the author of the book Strategic Holistic Accelerated Recovery Program, as well as the host of the podcast Breast Implant Illness. So I'm really so glad you're here to join us today, Rob, and share with us about your expertise in this area.

I'm excited to be here. Ever since we got together in Boston to have a chat about this, I've been looking forward to it. And so let's dig right in.

Absolutely. I mean, that's quite a lot of experience you've had of helping women through this process. And, and I have to think that when you get such an up close close look at the damage can be happening in a person's body. I mean, not just from potentially breast implants, but other toxins that we're exposed to. Is that what's motivated you to really now take this stance of helping people to not only recover from breast implant illness, but also improve their health and longevity long term?

Sure. First of all, you know, I certainly thank you for having me on and welcome, you know, listening and participating this with your audience. So my background is oncology. So I did a specific type of breast cancer reconstruction and then I did other forms of reconstruction for sarcoma and head and neck cancer. And so during that, you know, there are some fundamental principles in plastic surgery where you're trying to take tissue or different types of tissue in a composite, which we call a flap, and you leave that connected to blood vessels. So you, it acts like a transplant of your own tissue, which means it's autologous, which means your body won't reject it, provided from our standpoint, reestablishing blood flow or sensation, if it's going to have sensation. So you need to hook up an artery and a vein. And once again, if it's going to be a sensory reconstruction, you hook up a nerve as well. And so that was what I did for almost 19 years of my career. And microsurgery is what that would require. So you'd have to use a microscope in the operating room and spend many, many hours creating the tissue composite based on whatever defect or excision, you know, was left by the oncologic surgeon. So in breast cancer, when they would do a mastectomy in sarcoma, I mean, many times they would take out some A portion of someone's femur, their thigh bone, or their lower leg bone or their joint. And I'. In. And there would be these huge wounds and these prosthetics, and then.

So that's amazing that it's even possible to reconstruct, rebuild the human body in that way.

Right. So the point is, all of those reconstructions that we couldn't accomplish with your own tissue required support from an implant. So if it was a sarcoma and it was involving your knee joints, know, they would have to use a cadaver bone or a prosthetic. And so I've. The point is, I've dealt with this in a number of scenarios through cancer reconstruction. So whether it's with the neurosurgeons or the head neck surgeons, the, you know, I've taken care of people after cardiac surgery who got an infection in their breastbone. I mean, whatever, you name it, I've. I've had to help take care of it, which is fine. I knew from people that got referred to me with breast implant reconstruction problems that, you know, and not to simplify it, but if I took out the implant and all of the, you know, scar tissue or residual scar and started, you know, over, if you will, and use their own tissue, then there would be zero chance, provided I got everything functioning from a blood flow standpoint properly, that they would reject it. Because it's their own tissue, it's not possible to reject it. So before I knew kind of what this mystery illness of breast implant illness was, I was doing that for patients anyway who had injuries from. Or problems with their implants from radiation treatments or got an infection while they were getting chemotherapy or just were uncomfortable, had pain or capsular contracture or. There's a host of reasons. Some people just want to go flat. In 2016, I had a patient come to me in Austin and say, hey, you know, I'm just tired of having this reconstruction. I don't want anything done. Can you take it down? And I said. I said, sure. And this was my first patient who I took down the reconstruction. We sent off the specimens to make sure there's no cancer, make sure there's no bacteria. And she came back and had an E. Coli infection. So I believe it was her who put me on a Facebook group that I did explant surgery. And so all of a sudden, I just had people start calling my office asking for explant surgery. And, you know, fast forward now. We've done several thousand, and I haven't placed implants for a long period of Time, not because they don't have their, you know, quote unquote place. But I'm really about trying to help resolve this, you know, problem. And. And I like using someone's own tissue, so I like fat transfers. I don't do the flap surgeries anymore. A little. That's a little beyond me now. I'm a little. So those surgeries are long and my neck's old, so I just take care of my body now.

Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like it's. Yeah. Like you have to be doing, like, microscopic work, you know, sewing the body back together again. And. And at the same time, that experience, I'm sure, really helps with. With dealing with breast implant illness because. And this, as you've kind of alluded to, this is still even becoming more of an established diagnosis. A lot of women are, I think, going years without realizing that the breast implants could be causing health issues. Do you see that? Do you see women coming to you where they've been struggling with symptoms and finally figuring out that it could be caused by the implants?

Sure. And the way I explain breast implant illness, because it's not something that has a specific diagnosis code, you know, I consider it a chronic inflammatory process of which a breast implant is a component. And for all your listeners, we have several thousand instances of where someone has impaired genetic detoxification genetically, and then they have a large tox burden. So when you look at their urine toxicity profile, you'll see environmental toxins like phthalates, bifosates, triclosan, MEPs, BPAs, so parabens, things, things that you get out of feminine products or cosmet. Um, and then heavy metals can be seen on reports. I've had patients. One of my patients, very famous Lauren Bostic, the skinny confidential podcaster, she had used a barrel sauna that got up to around 212 or 220 degrees Fahrenheit. So she had leaching from her implants, not melting, but leaching from her implants. And that would give her a high, high number of heavy metals in her talks profile. And then, of course, you know, I've seen every bloody type of mycotoxin you can imagine. It's a really underappreciated problem. And although I don't have testing that we do for Lyme up front, we do have a lot of suspicious cases where people still have and suffer from, you know, those types of chronic inflammatory symptoms associated with mold and Lyme.

Absolutely. Yeah. I really find that too, that a lot of times people are, you know, I'm identifying dead mold toxicity even after they've seen many other practitioners and even related to the breast implants. Right. Like it's. Specifically, there's a connection between the implants and the likelihood of mold toxicity.

No, I think from what we look at and know about from functional genetics, if. If someone is one of our clients and they're coming to see me for breast implant issues, you know, several hypotheses exist about their genetics. One, they typically all have vitamin D metabolism issues, almost universally.

Interesting.

Invariably, they have either methylation problems or antioxidant problems or glutathione metabolism problems. So of those four things I mentioned, three of the four in whatever combination are usually present. And then, of course, you would imagine the worst of all those is all four are present. And then you add in a little estrogen toxicity, and that is the soup that makes you very sick.

And. And this is a really important point in that, like, by the time someone realizes they need to get the explant, they're really not feeling well. And now they're coming to you saying, okay, I. To get this explant done. And yet what I find is that it's really important for people to prepare for the surgery and then recover from the surgery, because it's not as simple as just taking out the explant, the implants. It's. We have to be. Then it sort of like initiates in the body this detoxification process. And I know this is something that you also talk about in your book and you offer support within your practice is how to help women, not just with the surgery, but the. The recovery from the whole toxicity situation.

Yeah, I think the. The reason we got more and more interested in is folks with mold or folks who just wouldn't recover. And it was. I. It was confusing to me. And then through just better understanding about genetics, like many times for the audience, there's something called a single nucleotide polymorphism or a snp. And MTHFR is, you know, now kind of a commonly discussed snp. We. We all assumed that that was part of it, but we also were assuming some things that weren't accurate.

And then when you look at all those combinations that we discussed earlier, they all have SNPs. There's. There's, you know, a number of them, obviously. And when you have those and take into consideration Abner, you know, abnormalities in estrogen metabolism, then it makes sense. And so when you have all that upfront information, the things that we try to. Or the levers we try to to modify as much as we can in the Sharp method is your air quality. You know, we, we discuss air filtration because mold spores are a big problem in our clients. So we want the highest air quality. So air filtration with like Jasper filters is good. Air filtration with IQ air is good. So it has to be a very high quality filter, not your HEPA filter in your house. Then you know, when we, everybody kind of understands filtered water. I don't think that's that complex. I just ask people not to drink out of plastic, you know, just use glass or obviously, you know, stainless, one of these, you know, that you're not getting other chemicals out of. And then food. Oh boy. I have people with a lot of absorptive problems. So we use liposomal formulations in my supplement line for glutathione, vitamin D3, K2, methylated bees and antioxidants and then try to get them on a seed oil free, gluten free, dairy free diet. Higher in protein. We use a plant based protein in my practice so that, you know, all of my clients can use it. It's not.

Going to be difficult for anybody to use it. And then the others, you know, hacks we try to do upfront in addition to working with them on detox is get their sleep better. Women have obviously, I think a lot more sleep disturbance because they have a lot less testosterone to buffer out cortisol and estrogen. And they don't get it as much. They don't get into deep sleep and stay there long enough, I would say. So, you know, quality and quantity is not enough in terms of deep sleep for them. So their ability to get growth hormone release while they're asleep to get good, if you want to think the lymphatic around the brain, that system to, you know, clean everything out and, and make it all good for the next day. Lots of, lots of work and starting that soon as I meet someone.

Is how we try to get.

I would say the sooner you can do that.

The you're going to get yourself in a better situation. So it's not going to be an abrupt, you know, change. These are all, you know, smaller changes we could make just by paying attention to what we're doing.

Yeah, it's absolutely. And it's sometimes it seems so simple. Right. And yet I love hearing you say like this is the foundation of where you begin. It's like, let's come back to how we detoxify. Right. Even. And especially someone who has those gene variations that you're Mentioning it's essential to come back to these basics because that's those, those toxins end up just causing traffic jams in these metabolic pathways, especially with someone who has the gene variation. So we have to, that's how I talk about it is like we have to clear up those traffic jams. And one of the best ways to clear the traffic jams is reduce your toxin exposure in your air and your water, in your food and, and then to like you're saying, start doing, you know, the daily things like sleep and you know, taking care of ourselves as well during the day. That helps our body to just have our natural detoxification processes working better. Right? I love that like you're like, hey, let's just get your natural detoxification pathways working before we even go into trying to push detoxification pathways.

And my clients, once they figure things out, I think many times they'll get really aggressive. Not on what we were just talking about, but other modalities like sauna. So sauna is not great for my patient population. IR saunas get warm and they penetrate deeply and then barrel saunas get extremely hot and necessarily they don't penetrate that deeply. But warming has its, in our patients leads to more Herxenheimer type situations than beneficial situations. So my preference is to just pause sauna or heat based treatment until about 90 days after explant and then resume it, but at a much more conservative manner. I, I just, Leaching happens when you increase temperature in.

I, I get all of these, these you know, cases that say, oh, you know, I don't feel good. If I get too hot, I don't feel good. If I go in the sauna, I don't feel good. If I do my, you know, infrared, I don't feel good. What the hell?

Well, don't do it, don't do it. Doesn't feel good. Let's listen to your body.

Yeah, it's not, it's nobody. I probably have, you know, probably the, the only, the series of people with heavy metal toxicities on tox tests that did barrel saunas. So I don't, you know, and I take a bunch of criticism, which is fine, I don't care. It's pretty obvious when you talk to them, it's a heat based reaction. So and when I explain them, you know, those people in particular, they have that kind of epiphany where in recovery they feel really good and then day over day afterwards they feel really good. And I just did a podcast with one of them, it'll be up Shortly. And you know, I don't ever tell anybody they're going to feel great.

Right after surgery. But this particular set of people who have this problem within explant, they do feel quite a bit different. And so I think that goes to just, there's all those reports about what 10 does to you and all those, you know, they're. It's not good to have heavy metals leached into your system. Your body's not set up at all.

I've done a lot of detoxes over the years and many of them made me feel a lot worse. Not only that, but I've had a lot of patients come in and tell me how after doing a detox they have a stomachache and headache and they can't sleep and they're feeling anxious and.

I'm like, I can't just recommend that.

My patients do a program that's going to make them feel worse. So I finally decided to design my own detox program. It's a 14 day detox program that's not like other detox programs out there in several ways. One is that I'm focused on helping you to get the toxins out in a safe and effective way using nutrients, antioxidants and supporting our natural detox detoxification pathways in the body. Also, I'm helping you to decrease your exposure to toxins by learning the ways that you've been exposed to toxins and.

How to change your day to day.

Lifestyle to decrease your toxins over time. And I'm helping you to look not just at chemical environmental toxins but also emotional and energetic toxic toxicity. And yes, it's possible to accomplish all of this in 14 days.

I have so many patients who have.

Done the 14 day detox and report back to me how much better they feel. And I think it's also because I help you to know what to eat. You are getting adequate food that tastes good plus protein shakes that I developed that are good for your body, that your body knows how to use these.

Nutrients and take them in and use.

Them to help you safely detoxify without feeling worse. Also I help you to balance your blood sugar levels, get better sleep and introduce things like meditation, biofeedback and other types of stress recovery into your day to day routine. So I just am so excited about it.

I want to make sure you know.

About this 14 day detox. I'm going to put the link, you can find it at drdani.com forward/detox-program but I'll also put the link below so you can find the 14 day detox program@drdani.com. i look forward to guiding you through this detox so that you can actually feel better on your way to better health.

Absolutely not. And yet I, this is, you know, I hear you kind of, you know, alluding to like, this is not the standard medical approach, you know, so most people, like, people just to know, like, if it's no wonder that you might be seeing, you know, going to your internist or other practitioners and they might not be at all aware that this is even something to pay attention to.

Now. It's a pretty complex mixture for patients. I don't, you know, I tell patients too, I'm like, don't, don't be upset at the GP for not understanding what's going on with you. You're not exactly a straightforward case, you know, so the standard conventional medical testing is not going to highlight this. The, the reason it makes sense to me is because I've listened to thousands of people describe the same, you know, series of sequences and, or experiences and then I understand really well the genetic predisposition. So then basically.

Getting that confirmation through testing for their, you know, genetics and then looking at their talks test, which I find very valuable, I feel like that's the, the kind of rubber meets the road in that setting. So that when and especially if someone's not feeling well, you know, after several months of detox work and we use cellcore for detox and I have a whole team that does that and I'll, I'll, you know, we'll pull up their test and maybe they had a bunch of mycotoxins or what have you. And I say, you need to repeat this test because, you know, is it getting better? I don't, you know, none of us know that you're saying you don't feel well. A lot of people don't feel well when they're doing detox work is, it's hard work. It's not easy getting, you know, drainage pathways open, your liver functioning better, you know, having, you know, daily, if not two a day, bowel movements, I mean, that's a lot of, of work. Some people chronically constipate. I don't even know that. So to get themselves into a situation where they can actually feel better requires a lot of effort, you know, on their part.

It does, it does. And I, I guide my patients with that too. So I know exactly what you mean. And it's, but it's so worth. And it, but it does take a team to say, okay, let's get your bowels moving. Let's get your system, you know, working, and let's get. Get you through this process to. And the tox. I agree with you. To be able to just see a toxin panel and actually see the toxins that are high, it's so validating, you know, to be able to see it. And then it also helps us as practitioners, because, of course, different toxins require different. Different methods, different processes. Right. Glutathione is going to work better for some things than others. And so I always say, you know, it's so worth it to do these panels, because then we know what we're aiming at, we know what we need to do to get it out. Instead of just a general detox, which may not take into account your genetics or the specific toxins we're dealing with.

Yeah. For patients that work with me now.

I've become pretty inflexible about what I'll do. So if you're gonna, you know, come to Austin and spend a week here and have, you know, an explant, you're gonna do these things. And they require your genetic testing, toxicity testing, your gut health, your food sensitivities and your hormones. And I. I think people get frustrated.

But it makes sense to me. I. I completely agree. That's essential, because otherwise you're not really doing them a service. You. You're giving them a partial, quick fix. It's not really a fix.

I think the misconception is that surgery is going to solve that problem. And I've done thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of cases. And I, Rob, am the greatest promoter of acute inflammation. Walking like. I operate on people for a living, so I create inflammation. So.

If you haven't adopted, you know, what we want to do as a process, you're really going to have a challenge when I get a hold of you in the operating room, because I'm not going to make that better. I'm going to give you now acute inflammation superimposed on chronic inflammation. And if we haven't started, you know, our process to help you get prepared for that, that is just yet another burden for you to deal with.

Yeah, inflammation. And it's. That's the thing is inflammation is a thing that I think probably more than anything, you know, especially when you combine that with toxins, bogs down these metabolic pathways. So it makes sense, like, because an inflammation a lot of times feels kind of like this ambiguous thing to people, you know, like, what does that mean, inflammation? But we see it, of course, as practitioners we can see it clearly in a patient's symptoms. We can see it in their lab work. We can see. See it in their, you know, in their metabolism. And it makes such a difference when we can get that inflammation to come down. So what you're saying is, hey, let's drop the chronic inflammation so that when we bring in some acute inflammation, we're not overflowing. We're not pushing everything over the top.

To the best of our ability. I mean, it's already a big burden, you know, one psychologically you have to get people prepared for big appearance change and then all the physical manifestations that go along with having surgery. People are traveling to see me. People come from Asia and Europe and obviously the continental United States and Hawaii and Alaska and all, you know, all the places, Puerto Rico and.

Well, because it's worth it to, to, to work with a surgeon who understands what's going on and how to do this in a safe and effective way.

Yeah, I feel like, you know, the surgical part we have, we have a great anesthesia group who really takes care of patients well. They do a lot of nerve blocks and really minimize, if not completely eliminate the need for anything long acting in terms of narcotics. Our patients really wake up having problems with nausea. That's not a thing. Fortunately, we do early recovery after surgery protocols on all the patients. So they all start specific things the night before with.

An anti nausea medicine, something to reduce inflammation, somebody calm the, the nervous system. And then, you know, we form nerve blocks in addition to the anesthesia nerve blocks in the operating room. So our goal was to get people at like 2 to 4 on Wake up in terms of, you know, discomfort. And then they have, if they need, you know, oral medicine, they have it obviously. And then the next day they come here to the office in Austin and we have a hyperbaric chamber, have red light. We have got a really great set of lymphatic massage devices from New Zealand called Flopresso. And they get people into really good parasympathetics. They. And although you can see kind of off to my side, a nanov. So there's a nanov next to every one of them. So we're doing many, many things to, you know, promote really early recovery. So tissue regeneration and reduced inflammation and improved, you know, oxidation the tissues and reducing swelling by the diet and supplements and lymphatic massage and then, you know, promoting really good hormones, hormone levels with red light therapy.

So all the things we can do. You know, in addition, we have this great relationship with a restaurant Here, that's gluten free, dairy free, and seed oil free. So although it's, you know, a chore to come here, it's not that bad. Austin's not that bad.

In the middle.

Sorry. It's a good place. So we're.

No, that's awesome. I think it's. I just am so grateful that you, you know, that you're offering this support for women who, in this situation and realizing, hey, I need to do something about this. Like, because when usually this comes up, it's like you hit a point where it's become clear that this is, like, needs to be dealt with. And, you know, at that point, then you don't want to have to be waiting longer or feeling worse. You want to be able to get through it. And that's so awesome that I'm so glad you have your book that that's, you know, also going to be such a great, you know, guide and manual for people who are going through this and recovering from it. I'm also. I wanted ask you one thing that I. Because I specialize in helping women who have abnormal Pap smears and risk of cervical cancer. And so I. One thing that I'm seeing is also a correlation. And I. Because I. I'm mostly seeing it from this side. So not all of my patients have breast implants or breast implant illness, but I am seeing some correlation where it seems to be that there's also this connection between HPV showing up right. When a woman's dealing also with breast implant illness. So I don't know if that's something that you've observed or just something now we could pay attention to and kind of notice if we see that correlating.

Yeah, I would say that anything that affects NK cells will affect that. And we know that many of our patients experience NK cell suppression. I did a podcast with a patient of mine, Taylor Dukes, and she had a brain tumor and just a completely undiagnosed tumor found on a pronovo scan. And she went to a holistic oncologist and of course they tested her levels. And she was on my show and we hadn't really.

Done a lot of prep for the show, and she kind of harked back to her console and. And I. I remember she's like, oh, you know, I had this brain saver and we had no idea. And I said, well, you probably had a really suppressed NK level. And she's like, yeah, how'd you know? I was like, well, people your age who get tumors, I mean, that's basically Part of the, the programming. So it's not that.

We have all the direct cause and effect. So everybody listening? You know, in full disclosure, I've seen a lot of things. I have a good working understanding of this. And as research comes out, they'll be more available. There's a new paper about Oxylipin 10 home, which comes from metabolism of like acid that increases fatigue in a, in a model. So I think more and more obviously we'll, we'll learn about this. And my suspicion is just, you know, full disclosure. I feel like we're seeing in case cell suppression and then some stem cell activation suppression that leads to a lot of these, you know, problems. So when you see a young person.

I always, when I see a young person, like, it's a combination of genetics, inflammation, K cell suppression leads you to a malignancy that you shouldn't otherwise see at that early age.

Yeah, that's interesting. And it, it makes me want to turn for a moment to, you know, how you've now really become specialized in, in longevity, helping people to optimize their health into the future. You know, tell us more about that. Is that, like, what, how do you, how has that become an extension of your work?

It's interesting. You know, the, the book Sharp is really a methodology you can use not just for surgical recovery. It's basically to lower inflammation. So think about.

You know, longevity as a way to.

Obviously we want to extend our organ life that way. That's how we extend life. Right. So if we, we certainly do things that affect our brain health. So having sleep apnea, very bad for brain health. So any of my patients who have really disturbed sleep, or any of your patients who have really disturbed sleep as measured on an ultra human ring or oring or whoop strap or apple watch or whatever, go get a sleep test. Because if you have sleep apnea, the number one thing you can do to protect your brain is to, to get a cpap. I have one, I have a narrow airway, and otherwise I don't have risk factors. I'm not overweight, I exercise, you know, all the things. So to, you know, from a lungs, you know, perspective, you know, certain things you can do not smoke, you know, try to be cognizant of your work environment. If you're, you know, in an industry where you're getting exposed a lot, then they should have proper gear for you, you know, from a chemical exposure standpoint or noxious stimuli standpoint, because people will have limited glutathionization pathways, will have more sensitivity to that.

You know, cardiac and.

We need cardiovascular and respiratory things will go hand in hand. But if you have, you know, APOE mutations, especially women, you're going to be more predisposed to problems with both inflammation then always, you know, I always think of more cardiac things.

When we're, you know, looking at liver or kidney disease. You know, liver is a huge, huge. Yep. And it detoxifies the majority of our.

Things that we breathe or things we ingest. And then the kidneys obviously do their job to filter it out. So I guess, you know, the way I look at it is whatever we can do to limit inflammation, knowing what we know about genetics and using our knowledge of toxins, tox, bird and coupled to air quality, you know, flu quality, flu quality, food quality. I'm sorry, those things to me, like, those are the hacks for longevity. So if longevity is chronic inflammation of your brain that leads to Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or a stroke, or you get, you know, cardiac problems and you have a heart attack, or you get congestive heart failure, or if you have liver dysfunction, or if you have kidney dysfunction, obviously respiratory dysfunction, all those things are really end organ damage caused by chronic inflammation. For the most part, we'll say. So longevity to me is basically reverse engineering treatment of inflammation. So whatever you can do. And it goes back to what we discussed earlier with how you sleep, how you eat, the fluids you take in, how many areas breathing.

So true. It's so true. And it's so worth it to pay attention to it whenever we figure that out, that it's, you know, that we need to make that adjustment. Because as you're mentioning, we can be preventing all the different causes of, of not only death, but also health issues later in life. And so if we can be, we can be proactive in preventing it, then that's, that's going to mean we have, you know, better quality of life to enjoy. Oh, my gosh. Well.

Wow.

How, how amazing and interesting. Thank you so much, Rob, for joining us. Dr. Robert Whitfield again, and his book called Sharp, which you can find on Amazon and all the places you can find books. And thank you so much for joining me. Is there anything else you wanted to share before we head off?

Yeah. For those patients who are interested in learning more about breast implant illness, we do have a podcast just devoted to breast implant illness and we do have a YouTube channel just devoted to breast implant illness. Basically all about education, facts, different, you know, shows that I've done with patients or I've, I've done about topics. So that's just my, my, you know, really free giveaway to everybody to help them get educated.

Love it. I'll definitely put links to those in the show notes. Everybody can find it easily and go learn more from your expertise. Thank you again so much for joining us today.

Thanks for having me on.

Oh my gosh. And thank you everyone for joining us here at How Humans Heal. Please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. I'll see you soon.

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