Robert Whitfield MD discusses breast implant illness, a chronic inflammatory condition linked to implants. Patients report brain fog, tinnitus, dry eyes, joint pain, digestive problems, and recurrent infections. He frames BII as multifactorial, with the implant as one contributing factor.
Been called America's breast implant illness expert, which is. That's quite a title. And breast implant illness is super, super important. A lot of people are talking about it, but I suppose not enough. And so I'm excited to do a deep dive with you, but let's start high level. What is breast implant illness and how might one know whether or not they have it?
Sure. I mean, we got exposed to it in 2016 with a cancer patient. So most of what people experience, and I don't envy the practitioners trying to figure this out when they sit across the table, is people will say they have neurologic symptoms like central nervous system, like brain fog, which, you know, everybody. This can be short term memory loss, we forgot where you put your keys, or you left the groceries in the car or something like that. You can have lightheadedness, ringing in the ears. You can have visual changes, light sensitivity, can also be sound sensitive, you know, all or all sorts of ENT type issues where you have problems with dry eyes, maybe a catch in the throat or difficulty swallowing. And many patients will go on to have extremity symptoms. Muscle pain, joint pain. They'll have GI symptoms. I know you've done a lot of shows and are interested in gut health. They have problems with a lot of absorptive problems. So they'll have constipation and diarrhea, bloating and all the things associated with leaky gut. They'll have reproductive tract symptoms. They may have recurrent, recurrent, untreatable, intractable vaginosis. They can have UTIs that just recur and recur and recur. And so I would have people come with these symptoms and not, not really understand and appreciate everything going on. But as we talk about breast implant illness today, as I sit in front of you, it's chronic inflammation of which a implant, the medical device is a component of. It's not mutually exclusive causing it. It's a component of it. So in 2016, I took care of a cancer patient who just wanted to go flat. And for everybody listening, I appreciate you having me on to explain this to your audience. There's options in breast reconstruction.
