Robert Whitfield MD explains breast implant illness as chronic inflammation where the implant is one contributing factor, not the only cause. Patients report brain fog, memory issues, sensory sensitivity, joint pain, digestive problems like bloating and constipation, and recurrent infections.
You've been called America's breast implant illness expert. What is breast implant illness and how might one know whether or not they have it? 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, for everybody, this can be short term memory loss, you forgot where you put your keys, or you left the groceries in the car or something like that. 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 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 an implant, the medical device is a component of. It's not mutually exclusive causing it, it's a component of it.
