Dr. Robert Whitfield MD explains his view that breast implant illness is part of a broader chronic inflammatory state that can cause fluid retention and weight gain, especially in the truncal/gut area. He describes the transition from acute to chronic inflammation, how chronic swelling and lymphatic involvement can produce water weight, and reports that lowering inflammation — including explant surgery in some patients — can resolve this fluid-related weight. He cites clinical anecdotes and mentions pre- and post-op testing and protocols used in his practice.
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Does breast implant illness lead to weight gain? Commonly, I see patients who felt either a gradual increase in their weight or there's been some event that has tipped them into a state where they've just rapidly put on weight. And so as we try to examine this once again, the way I consider breast implant illness, I consider it as a, a constellation obviously of symptoms that are akin to chronic inflammation. So the implant is one component of this, but it's chronic inflammation. So how did you get from acute inflammation to chronic inflammation? So every time I operate, I cause acute inflammation. I make an incision, I separate tissues, I do the work, and once it's complete, the healing process begins. And we'll say that goes on from an acute inflammatory standpoint for the first week, ish. And then slowly over time, that abates. So when you have acute inflammation, whether from surgery like I'm doing all the time now, or if you just stepped off your porch incorrectly and twisted your ankle and sprained it, effector cells that are responsible for creating acute inflammation, which is swelling, there may be redness and then pain. That's basically your body reacting to the injury. And as that, that process plays out, your body heals, that signal is turned off. So what we feel is happening in chronic inflammation as it relates to breast implant illness is ultimately, there's so much inflammation in each system of the body, those signals are at a point where they don't, they don't turn off anymore. And that is part of why you get so many just issues with breast implant illness. And it's extremely confusing as a provider to listen to all the different problems. But once you have chronic inflammation throughout the body, each system is affected. Neurologic systems, cardiovascular, respiratory, your musculoskeletal system, your GI tract, your, your cardiac, your, your heart, your nervous system. So how does that then lead the weight gain? So a stress response to injury is always swelling. So now instead of having acute swelling, because these signals are never turned off, we get chronic swelling. And a lot of times I see it in the gut. So look, think of below the breast area, top of abdomen, down to mid thigh, that truncal area. I see a lot of people gain a lot of weight, and they may have been very petite their entire life and then have had breast implants before after having children, and just slowly, gradually, over time put on weight and, or like I said before, there's been some life event or an exposure, and then that precipitated a large amount of weight gain. So say, for instance, I've had a couple famous people on the shows and I've spoke to different people about their situations and then taking care of their pre op program with us, which includes our testing for genetics, hormones, food sensitivity, gut microbiome health and toxicity testing, testing and then place them on our protocols for lowering inflammation through supplementation and then for doing detox with cellcore. So as they're lowering inflammation, they're doing better, but can't quite lose the way. And these are people who've tried everything, including, you know, taking medicines sometimes including Ozempic. And prior to surgery, I have people get off Ozempic. I've helped patients afterwards that our clients manage their weight who need to, to lose more. But let's just say if we feel like the chronic inflammatory process is responsible for a lot of this weight gain, which is really fluid. So think about the gut. We have leaky gut, malabsorption constraint, constipation, inability to eliminate our toxins, and we swell more and more and more. There's a large amount of lymphatic tissue associated around the gut. And so you get more and more swelling, you retain more and more fluid, you put on more and more weight. It's just water weight. So for instance, I've done explants on people and you can follow them sometimes and listen to their explanations. The Skinny Confidential with Lauren Bostick will explain how she, in her story, she'll go over how she lost so much weight after her explant and she, like many of my other patients, was reducing their inflammation. They were trying to do everything right. And then the explant was the, the missing piece of the puzzle, if you will, that helped them resolve that and their body could reset, it could go from a chronic inflammatory state and then start to heal. So that weight gain, that fluid weight can just get resolved as, as you decrease the drivers of inflammation, identify the biggest ones, including implants, and remove them from the system. So yes, breast implant illness can be responsible for weight gain, if you follow that way of thinking about it.
