Breast Implant Illness: The PCR Test That Could Change Everything

All right, it's a little bit before 5am and we're headed to the surgery center to operate Today, about a 20, 20 or so minute drive. Go ahead and put an episode in on the drive. So last time I introduced the concept of west implant illness and first case really was 2016 as I described in the previous video. And then end of had ICU nurse come and basically end up going to the operating room, did removal of her entire capsule. Implants. Implants were intact but had a large amount of kind of stickiness to the surface. That always indicates to me there's some kind of contaminant or biofilm. Biofilm is itself determined by microscopic examination because it's colonization or groups of bacteria that grow on implants. It was described on teeth. That's what plaque is. It's my own foam. So when we sent her capsule off for culture and swabs off for culture, came back and said there was no bacteria, that was very frustrating to me because I knew there was something, you know, wrong with this other implants and led me to, to discuss PCR testing with a company out of Lubbock, Texas, MicroGenDX. And so since February of 2019, all of our samples from each side that we've done an explant from the operating room have went to MicroGen DX for analysis. And we're publishing a series of 600 soon. So the big advances are one, recognizing it as an issue for what it is. It's chronic inflammation, there's an implant involved. Two, adopting a new testing technique that will help clarify what is there. So PCR testing looks for DNA fragments. Ours looks for 150 different types of bacteria, fungi. Mold is fungi, Mycobacterium and to date the predominant bacteria or acute bacterium acnes, which is found in the shoulders, the chest, skin, the face, skin, neck. And it readily produces biofilm. There's lots of reports in the literature about that the second most common bacteria is Staphylococcus and just different types of staph. We'll talk about that later because I have a update on what staph is doing in the breast implant world. So we started doing all the PCR testing. Year over year, accumulating more of the tests, identifying biofilm, potential low grade infections, taking care of, you know, large numbers of patients. And the pandemic happens in 2020 obviously. And the people that I would refer out for functional medicine testing, nutritional assessments, any further help for toxicity, we couldn't do that because of the pandemic. People obviously couldn't See people in person. Many people decided to close and go online who were in integrative care, functional care, toxicity care. And so we brought all those aspects under one umbrella into our clinic. And now we do all of our own testing for functional medicine and have functional practitioners as part of my team. And that has been hugely beneficial. Adding more and more genetic testing, adding more thorough toxicity testing. Toxicity testing. Toxicity testing looks for environmental toxins, heavy metals, mycotoxins. Mycotoxins come from fungi or fungi is obviously mold. So we expanded. We're looking at stool testing, look at the gut microbiome. We are looking at food sensitivity testing. I think that's a really underappreciated problem, is food sensitivities. I, in particular, have a sensitivity to eggs and sunflower oil. Finally, we look at blood work, and we're looking at blood work traditionally to see if, of course, if someone', anemic, if their kidney function is appropriate. And then we're looking at hormone balance and some other factors, in particular hormone balance, to see if there's enough of the sex hormones to go ahead and feel good about the patient having enough hormonal support for recovery. So that process, that evolution of care, was intrinsic, you know, in my clinic. And it's, it's very strategic. We feel it's a very holistic way to help, we feel accelerates the recovery process and program. And so that's why I wrote a book about it called Sharp. So Sharp is coming out relatively soon. We're just waiting on some final touches to it. So the Sharp method is really my methodology for recovery. It can be applied to just about every type of surgery. Something that is a little bit different in our case is we use supplementation for an entire year. Most surgery requires you stop supplementation because they're afraid of too many antioxidants causing bleeding, bruising. If we're talking about my patients running my supplementation through my. My line. Dr. Rob Solutions, we don't pause their supplementation. We want them to get the nutrients they need so the inflammation support bundle is set up to be balanced. And I don't stop it for surgery. It's continued for the year of surgery. So those have been, you know, in summary. So really the first case around 2016, adjusting to PCR test late 18, early 19 post pandemic, really clarifying testing, using more and more testing for toxicity and genetics. Further, you know, leaning into what we're doing to help support patients. Developing, codifying the Sharp process. And as we continue, you know, we're going to Expand testing, because testing is the thing that you have to have something to benchmark what is happening. And if you don't benchmark the process, then you have nothing to go back and compare it again. And so we're always looking for improvement and it's not magical. For instance, everybody thinks it's going to be rainbows and unicorns when they wake up after surgery. Based on some of my patients. For instance, a patient of mine, Lauren Bostic, had a large amount of heavy metals in her system. We think because she was leaching heavy metals out of her implants by using a barrel, sonnets. To me, that was the explanation for her. And so when I took out her implant, which were similarly pretty slick surface, I was convinced they had biofilm. I resent her test twice to actually evaluate it through PCR testing, and they were negative both times. So she didn't have biofilm. She basically was leaching chemicals out of her implants. When we repeated her toxicity test to look for heavy metals, they were all gone. So that is one of the reasons that I instruct our patients, once they see us, just discontinue all forms of sauna or really overheating. And that way, because I don't know exactly who's going to suffer from leaching or who is suffering from leaching is maybe a better way to put it. So I try to get their preoperative work done. Also, we're adding something to improve the parasympathetic state, which is new programming. We want to start that as soon as possible as well. And with all these touches, we're trying to get people really, really prepared for surgery so that their recovery process is much, much smoother, much, much more efficient and in, In line with everything we've actually learned regarding every process. So as we look, you know, forward, what are we going to. What we're going to do is I have to find the most consistent testing to look at inflammation. Some inflammation is good in our body, but if we accumulate more and more inflammation, it becomes a chronic situation. And chronic inflammation is what leads to damage of our organs, like our brains, our heart and lungs, our kidneys, our liver, our systems, you know, our nervous system. So, so as we're looking into the future about what we're going to do in terms of testing, we are looking, instead of blood values, we're looking at the end of certain aspects of metabolism. So what is someone's level of palmitic acid? Or what is someone's level of spermidine, or what is someone's level of glutathione and these are all markers of how somebody's able to cope with inflammation and give them, if you will, an inflammation index score. And so there are many, many companies now really striving to provide these. And these are done through blood spot test. I've personally done all these tests myself. So they're all, they're. They're not a level test where it's 0 through 100 and they give you, you know, a level on that scale. It's more about a, is this working at a poor level, Is this working at a normal level? Is this really an optimal level? And seeing where we make adjustments, Once again, we're holistic. And when we're trying to do this, we use a very limited amount of medication only at the time of and around surgery to modulate the pain response, decrease inflammation and nausea. So we're very, very interested in, interested in that, both for my surgical patients and then really when you look at inflammat, the way I think of it is the more we can modulate and adjust it, the more control we have over longevity. So when we're looking long term, and I'm in many, many groups about longevity and discuss it routinely in small group sett longevity, how are we going to live longer? We have to protect organs from end organ damage. End organ damage in the brain is like Alzheimer's, so you better make sure you don't have sleep apnea. You got to get plenty of oxygen to your brain for your heart. We want to have a level of fitness so that we're not developing cardiac symptoms or lack of flow or oxygen to the heart. Lungs, lungs are very different. You can have different genetic mutations and that can contribute to problems. My father passed away during COVID because we each have the ACE mutation and it was always going to be a difficult ask for him. He passed away in the very first wave of COVID Liver and kidneys. Liver will regenerate if in fact you get it functioning properly. And the standard test doesn't really indicate how well the liver is functioning. Liver is our main organ of detoxification, so we really have to get it functioning as efficient as possible. Kidneys can't really do much to adjust or get kidney function back after it's been significantly older. So we have to do our best to protect kidney function. Central and peripheral nervous system functions always going to be a little bit of challenge, but it's certainly like many other things tied intimately to gut health. So we have to get all of these things protected so that we have and create longevity for ourselves. All right, until next time.