Does Breast Implant Illness Really Exist?

Hey, it's Dr. Robert Whitfield, private practice plastic surgeon in Austin, Texas. I hope you're making it a great day. We're going to have another episode today where we're going to discuss breast implant illness on my Breast Implant illness podcast. And today we're going to discuss is breast implant illness a recognized medical condition? Well, if you've been following along, you know that it's been hard to characterize breast implant illness. In 20, 19, 20, when I was president of the Education Research foundation for the Aesthetic Society, we funded studies looking at psychological aspects of breast implant illness, looking at basic science aspects of it, and then finally a randomized prospective trial about surgery identification of heavy metals, biofilm. So we've been adding and trying to characterize breast implant illness and in full disclosure, I think of it as just inflammation. And the amount of inflammation has become so significant that you can no longer manage it system wide in your body. And breast implants play a role, but it's not the only factor. It's become more common that patients present with the symptoms of anxiety, depression, brain fog, which is, you know, can be memory loss or difficulty expressing themselves. There can be dry eyes, dry mouth, shortness of breath, tightness of the chest, heart palpitations, muscle and joint pains, nerve pain, problems with chronic infection, sinusitis, UTIs, bacterial vaginosis, extreme fatigue, and list goes on and on and on. Makes it very complicated from a provider standpoint to recognize the pattern of this because it's not well understood. And people ask me, well, you know, why isn't this a diagnosis? Well, for something to be categorized as a medical diagnosis, it has to be implemented in the international classification of Diseases. It's called commonly ICD and it's in its 10th version at this point and it is not part of that classification system. So therefore it's not a recognized medical diagnosis. And I know groups are working towards that end. That will take some time. There needs to be proper research done around it to better characterize it for the providers and the clients. But as we discuss it, and I, you know, spent six years working on it, it's very, you know, obvious to us and the recognition of the pattern of inflammation, it's, it's just trying to help the patients, you know, recognize it's a real, you know, issue and further clarify it for them. Based on my experience with over 1100 explants in the last six years of what that looks like for them individually, helping, you know, maybe their doctors or their surgeons, because obviously I can't take care of Each and every patient. But we've built processes and programs around our program to further help, you know, patients and practices and surgeons provide, you know, higher quality and hopefully the best care they can for their clients. What are we going to do with this entity of breast implant illness and the allopathic physicians, you know, the MDs, DOs, and then the physicians who've holistic routes, like naturopathic Doctors or it's MDOs, others who have just deviated into holistic or integrative medicine. I still find that even those practitioners have difficulty recognizing this. I recently spoke at a conference, the anti Aging conference in Las Vegas to. It was a well attended conference, but there was a small group of people at that time at the meeting for me to speak to. And there's a lot of questions asked of me at that conference. You know, do I see a lot of people with heavy metal toxicity? And I don't. I do testing for that. I do see a lot of patients with environmental toxicity. And anybody who's listened to my show or spoke with me about this knows that I've. I've put a great deal into everybody's personal genetics. And your personal genetics will dictate a lot of how you manage your inflammation, whether it's from your diet, your environment. Environment meaning, you know, where you live, where you work, your home, your workplace. That there's lots of factors that contribute to inflammation. For instance, I have a large number of clients who are realtors. And realtors are constantly being exposed to environmental toxins. They go into homes that are being renovated, they participate in renovations. I have a realtor who specifically sells homes on waterfronts and as you can imagine, they exposed to a high number of mycotoxins, which are what comes from mold. So think of mold like black mold is a spill, Aspergillus and it produces ochratoxin, aflatoxin. So you can get, you know, brain fog, anxiety, weight gain, gut problems from toxic mold exposure when your body can't actually detox you from that exposure. And constant exposure over time will obviously make that more complicated. So what makes us different in our program versus other programs is I've learned over six years, is that you have to evaluate, you know, personal genetics, toxicity levels, food sensitivities, hormone imbalances, someone's got, you know, constipation or diarrhea, you know, we want to look at that and there'll be a DNA test, you know, for that as well, to really evaluate all these systems and processes to see what we can do to really limit inflammation and so the implant part, and I can characterize this by whether it's a hip, knee or breast, they all can drive inflammation. I've. I've seen this all throughout my career working with and helping other surgeons care for patients with implant problems. Whether it's a neurosurgeon, cardiac surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, I. I've helped take care of all of these. And whether it's, you know, chronic inflammation or infection or inflammation, however we're describing that, patients can have a lot of these, you know, symptoms. When I hone it down to breast implants, you know, breast implants are typically put in for cancer reconstruction and cosmetic purposes. And are there specific things that I see over time that I can really hone down and lock in on and standardize the diagnosis of bii? And I think for me, it all goes back to pattern recognition. Having done several thousand consults and heard the stories over and over again and seen all these results of tests and understand functionality aspects of their genetics and their immune pathways and how they work, it makes it much, much easier for me to see someone or to hear the story or listen to them on a discovery session. However, they may, you know, reach out to us and clarify pretty accurately, even without all the results, yet that they're experiencing symptoms from this. Now, many of these folks, in full disclosure, come to me having extensive medical workups. They've been worked up for autoimmune disorders, they've been worked up for fibromyalgia, they've been worked up for Ms. It's been pretty exhausting in many instances for these patients. Nobody gives them an answer. And so that lack of standardization or understanding of the problem, coupled with a limited amount of research, but a growing amount of research, you know, has a great deal of, you know, frustration built into, you know, when I, you know, first hear someone, they're pretty anxious and upset. Normally that they've heard over and over again. There's nothing wrong with them. And whether it's traditional or functional, medicine hasn't been able to solve this for them. You know, and how. How am I going to help as a plastic surgeon? And it's taken, you know, the pandemic actually caused us to bring a lot of things in house and start doing them ourselves. And that actually progressed, you know, my understanding of breast implant illness and then really when it's drilled down is just how many things contribute to inflammation, which makes this, you know, collection of symptoms. What we're seeing is and. And discussing this breast implant illness and, you know, all I will tell you is the implant is just one factor. If you don't address these other issues, you can still have symptoms. I think that's been the most important aspect and differentiator in our practices. Looking at everybody from a genetic standpoint and their toxicities, inflammation markers, hormones, making sure they're balanced, food sensitivities, the, the DNA testing for eliminations in your stool, making sure all these things are evaluated and treated properly so that you know, you're not just having surgery and expecting everything to get better. Because I, I honestly that happens in cases where there's, you know, extreme problems with biofilm, where there's an infection like I've mentioned in many of my shows in the past. But then you really have to put it in the work and understand from a practitioner and practice standpoint how best to help that patient. And we need to obviously continue to push and advance what we know about breast implant illness. And there's great work being done at the basic science level, there's clinical research being done and we're in the process of going through all of my patients from 2016 until September of 22 on an IRB approved study to evaluate their results and different ways that we've adapted our identification of biofilm. So I think the future is bright in terms of what we're learning and certainly our understanding is growing. I feel very comfortable now identifying both symptoms and understanding processes around those symptoms and clarifying, you know, with an individual plan that typically includes, but is not only relying on surgery to affect the change that's really needed. So these, these clients and, and the families of these clients and spouses of these clients and, and friends of these clients can really see that their, this person is going to be able to change, get back to, you know, hopefully just their, not just their daily life, but their, their, their best life feel better than they have for many, many years in some instances. So we need to do more and more research on this and raise awareness and ultimately there, there's a likely high likelihood it will become a medical diagnosis. I don't know, you know, how that's going to be shaped, but I feel that's on the horizon. So thank you for listening to my podcast today. You certainly can follow this new show, share it. We certainly want to help as many as we can who are suffering from these symptoms and we look forward to the next time.