A short YouTube interview in which Robert Whitfield MD discusses whether breast implants can worsen autoimmune disorders. In this excerpt he explains that autoimmune conditions predate implants but that adding a foreign body can increase inflammation; he states he would generally not consider patients with pre-existing inflammatory autoimmune disorders as candidates for breast implants.
Before you go, if someone's listening and they have an autoimmune, Because a lot of people have an autoimmune disorder, how many of them do you think that the breast implant is contributing to this?
So when you look back, autoimmune disorders have been around for over 100 years, easy. So obviously they beget implants. The problem is that environment. If it's already preconditioned for inflammation and you add another product to it, a foreign body to it, you're just going to make the propensity to them, then go on to have higher amounts of inflammation increase. So when I have those discussions with people, like, if you showed up and you already had problems with inflammation from autoimmune disorder, I'd be like, to me, you're not a candidate to have an implant. That was just my personal.
So you're saying if you have the autoimmune disorder before you got the implant, it's probably not to do with the implant, but the implant could make it worse.
You're here saying you wouldn't be a candidate to get an implant if you had that disorder going in. Got it. Okay, got it. Yeah, you're both right. For me, you weren't a candidate. And to your point, yes, you would then set yourself. You're setting yourself up for a potential problem because you already know that you have an autoimmune problem. So you have more inflammatory cells circulating already, right? So, you know, there's no reason to poke the bear. Like, if it's already a bad situation, adding an implant that could potentially make that a lot worse. Can you imagine if that person has a really poor diet, high in gluten, high in dairy, a bunch of seed oils or whatever, they're just going to increase their inflammation dramatically.
