Episode 119: The Truth About Breast Implant Illness and Holistic Recovery with Dr. Tania Ash and Andi Lew

Foreign Dr. Rob Whitfield, the board certified plastic surgeon specializing in explant surgery Breast implant illness is a topic that is not often talked enough about, especially in medical community, but is something that affects many women. In this podcast I'll be discussing the latest research, treatment options and personal stories of women who have undergone explant surgery in an effort to heal breast implant illness. In this podcast, we'll explore the symptoms of breast implant illness and delve into the latest surgical techniques for explantation and the recovery process. Whether you are currently experiencing breast implant illness or are considering explant surgery, this podcast is a valuable resource for anyone looking to take control of their health and wellness. So let's dive in. Welcome to the show everyone. Today I have andy Liu and Dr. Tanya. Andy Liu is a TV host, leading wellness expert and certified wellness and explant Coach, author of 10 books including Treasured Chest, Exposing Explants and Empowering you. Dr. Tanya Ash has over three decades of medical expertise including the past 21 years in functional medicine specializing in CFS and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. She is a Melbourne University Med School graduate and holds two postgrad fellowships both as a GP and in functional medicine with afib. Dr. Heal thyself. Tanya self diagnosed with EDS Ehlers Danner Syndrome, MCAS and Dysautonomia Triad and has researched extensively on how to self regulate this trifecta of her life. Tanya had silicone implants for nine years before making swift decision to do an en bloc in 2017 after learning about BII. Creating awareness, diagnosing healing from BII MCAs is her life mission and commitment. Her focus is to thread together systemic symptoms, drill down causes and optimize the body terrain to health. Thank you both for joining me today. All right everyone, I'm gonna have a special guest from Australia and one from Los via Australia. We're going to have andy Liu and Dr. Tanya Ash share their experience with breast implant illness and explant surgery. So welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. Dr. Robert it's such a pleasure to be talking with you because you're one of the few surgeons that really understand breast implant illness well.

Thank you. I think we have a great team at our clinic in Austin, Texas and we've tried to put forth quite a bit of effort to understand it and just listen to patients and learn from them.

That's the way to go. And I would like to say that I'm quite grateful that, you know, even though I do have an Australian accent, I'm living in Los Angeles Grateful to have the opportunity to live here on an extraordinary talent visa. But more grateful that my diagnosing doctor who's joining us today, Dr. Tanya Ash is joining us from Australia, and she pretty much saved my life.

Hi, Dr. Ash. How are you?

I'll take all the credit, I guess.

I have a question for Dr. Ash. You know, are taking care of Andy and maybe Andy kind of share what led you to see Dr. Ash and then maybe from there, because not every primary or every provider, and I'll preface it this way for my audience, I don't envy any doctor sitting across from a patient trying to understand this problem because it's not intuitive. And I always have the same response to patients when they get frustrated. It's like, okay, like, I've done thousands of operations on patients for breast cancer explant surgery. And if I didn't have the experience I have, it wouldn't be easy for me to understand the patients very well and be able to then explain the problem in a way that the patient can understand it.

Right. And the key phrase to this is that you don't envy any doctor. I mean, this is a really difficult field to work in because it's one of the most misunderstood illnesses. Breast implant illness isn't even official, an official diagnosis, which is a problem in itself. And I had breast implant illness, but I believe does need a new word to describe it, because from a mechanistic point of view or an allopathic model, we're designed to, like, look and label at something being the problem is only that. But wellness is about holism and addressing that the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone, etc. And really, it's an entire systemic response. So it does need a new name, because then we can understand it further. But we can also probably have more successful suits against the product manufacturer or the original implanting surgeon, if need be. I mean, there are new types of breast cancers, as you know, that are coming out. Squamous cell carcinoma, anaplastic large cell lymphoma. And the professor who was the surgeon that did my explant is constantly researching and finding new cancers all the time. So, I mean, this is why I guess you, Dr. Tan, kind of just were quite quiet and humble when I said, you know, you pretty much saved my life. Because it's not one of those things that, you know, you're proud of or happy of. It's just, I mean, it's what you do. And you watch somebody like myself and millions of others who sort of are suffering in Silence in these underground support online groups if you like, not being heard. And. And I guess to answer your question, Dr. Robert, Dr. Tanya and I have been working. I'm a certified wellness coach, food, lifestyle and wellness coach, owned a chiropractic wellness practice for about 12, 13 years in Australia. And we saw a lot of patients that needed work from an integrative medical doctor. And that was Dr. Tanya Ash as well. So her and I met through co managing patients and clients if you like. And one day she saw me online, you know, we're friends on Facebook, et cetera. And Dr. Tan said, could I consult you? And I said, yeah, sure. And turned out that I had breast implant illness. Now, when she did suggest this and we went through the labs, the biomarkers and things like that, I was one of those that did not want to believe it or listen. And she gently encouraged me. And about a year later, I had a defining point where I was with my psychologist. I had been diagnosed with PTSD probably about seven years ago, eight years ago. And there was about two years later where I was having a moment with my psychologist and she said, listen to you talking with positive psychology. It's no longer clinical psychology. And I thought to myself, wow, I really am. And then I went home and thought, then why do I still feel like I'm dying or I want to die? And that's when I started listening to what Dr. Tanya Ash was saying and looked at what breast implant illness was.

Well, Dr. Ash, that's quite a lead up to you. No pressure, but how did you get to the point where you understood the problem so well?

Well, one of the things I do with all of my patients is get them to fill out very comprehensive questionnaires ahead of the first consultation. And that, you know, they say in medicine you glean 80% of a diagnosis from the history. So if you take the right history, you it literally does give you the diagnosis. And one of my questionnaires is mast cell activation syndrome symptoms, as well as a whole range of, you know, just general systemic symptoms. And there are just so many red flags on Andy's questionnaires that made me put the MCAS diagnosis potentially in my head. And when I always question what's provoking the mast cells in an individual, it's usually a stacking effect of a whole team of environmental and stress factors. But I remember getting off the zoom call with Andy in that initial consultation and breast implant illness literally dropping into my head after the call. And it's, you know, it's on my radar because I've been through it myself and explanted and had an en bloc, so I don't forget it with my patients now. And yeah, so the alarm bells went off with Andy and I, you know, reached out to her at the time gently because it's a shock to patients, particularly when they've invested so much in the initial surgery and it's part of their self confidence.

So you had the personal experience, which obviously you get it. You would get it in a different way obviously than I could. I had so many years of experience just with cancer patients and dealing with different implant based problems from radiation therapy and capture contracture and multiple surgeries. It wasn't a big stretch for me to explant somebody and do a microvascular reconstruction if they were having symptoms and know that those symptoms were going to go away because it was their own tissue that was being transplanted. And if I executed all the steps right and revascularized the tissue and it all healed, then it would be fine. And so those were my instances before I was ever doing this in, you know, strictly a cosmetic situation. But you brought up muscle activation syndrome, which has gained a lot of traction over the last, you know, several years. And I now have patients presenting with that as a principal diagnosis, if you will, that they're writing down. That is more a diagnosis of exclusion because I can't even get an expert to come on my show and explain exactly what parameters define that and what biomarkers should be looked at. Nobody can kind of get into alignment or agreement, which is always frustrating to me. So maybe give us your rundown of masto activation syndrome, because as anybody knows, when they listen to me, I just say breast implant illness to me is a chronic inflammatory process of which a medical device is part of, because that's how I compartmentalize it in my head to make sense and then explain it back to patients so I can help them better understand what they're experiencing versus like somebody telling them they're in menopause at 30 or they're in, you know, some other strange state of disrepair.

There's so many layers to the human body. I, I really see BII as MCAs now. And in the last couple of years I've done a 360 degree pivot on how I view our mast cells having suffered genetically with MCAS all of my life. I was the child that caught everything, go out and got sicker quicker than everyone else with the slowest recovery times. And it was epiphany to me when I finally Worked out that I had MCAs around 2020 and started researching heavily into what I could do to self regulate and get control of it. So initially I saw our mast cells as the villains and I had this pivot two years ago where I was like, oh my goodness, they are fierce protectors. There are first responders of the immune system. You know, there when there's a foreign body or a pathogen or a toxin in a particular location of the body and they, they get there first. They amazingly carry about 200 different mediators which they release to rally the immune. Two of these important mediators which are part of an MCAS diagnosis are blood histamine and tryptase levels. And amazingly these two mark everything has a purpose in the human body. And histamine and tryptase in particular rally the fibroblasts to come to the area to lay down collagen or connective tissue. And in the case of breastplants, breast implants, that's to create the capsule and wall it off and protect the body as much as it can, creating a suit of armor, so to speak. So unfortunately there's the byproduct of when our mast cells degranulate and release all these, the inflammatory orchestra into the bloodstream as well as adrenaline, noradrenaline, which can give you anxiety and depression. Panic attack with an MCAS flare, you can have a whole host of systemic symptoms from those inflammatory markers. That's the unfortunate side effect. But you know, the body is trying to protect itself essentially and Dr. Robert.

Oh, sorry, I was going to add to that.

Go ahead.

Well, if you look at the way the body is designed to heal and function, and I've been writing about this for decades, it's through expulsion. So that's why when we, you know, get a cough or a cold or you know, even a virus, we're raising the body's temperature to kill off the virus once it reaches a certain boiling point. And then we expel through the pores of the skin isn't which is another orifice or you know that any kind of orifice, whether it's the nose, the mouth, like if we've got some sort of vomiting going on because we've had rotten food or all these signs and symptoms are usually being described to us with that allopathic model as this is bad. Right. But it's actually an immune response or a wellness response as opposed to a sickness response. And so now if we view that, I guess same if we look at the way the body is like walling it off as Dr. Tanya is describing it, it's wanting to expel, but the implant has nowhere to go. And so that's why I believe the contracture is happening or the cytokine storm is happening. And so that new data now that Professor Diva has put out, I think about a year and a half ago, to say that implants are indeed the inflammatory driver creating a cytokine storm is important to acknowledge because with this new data it means that we don't have to have a rupture or look for a traditional hole to show that, you know, we've got breast implant illness can literally just be because we've got this foreign body within the body that makes it not biocompatible.

Yeah, I don't think, you know, I feel like there should be a dispute about that. That just sounds ignorant. Like if you think putting something in somebody doesn't cause a reaction, you just sound ignorant. So I try not to sound ignorant any more often than I do. So anybody who places a device takes a risk of placing a device and causing a reaction, the worst of which is an infection, you lose the device. The device is reconstructing someone's knee, then you're losing their limbs. So I used to do sarcoma reconstructions for a living. They're very complicated and they're limb saving procedures. Just like I would do a jaw reconstruction and try to salvage someone's jaw so they could eat. So there are some things that are not going away. And it could be a hip implant, a knee implant, all these to a degree are going to, you know, activate. Seemingly this one activates more whether it's from placement in that environment. Obviously there's a lot going on in breast tissue. There's a lot of work been done on Oxylipin 10 home by Muthun Sina. And there certainly are a lot of things that we don't understand about what's happening. And I would love to like know more of a precision type approach to it, certainly with the genome project and understanding as much as we can about whether it's a SNP or some change on the HLA type that causes or leads to this is something I'd really like to understand better because I always say you can't pick your parents and you can't outrun a bad diet. So if we understand those things a little bit better, I'm trying to make sure that in the end game, when it's all said and done, I would like everybody who's getting a device to be counseled more precisely about their Genetic or predisposition if you will to develop a problem from a pathway. Maybe they don't detoxify properly, maybe they have a kit mutation, maybe they have something else that leads to like Dr. Tanya is describing. Like she's had this her whole life. I'd be hard pressed to believe somewhere in her genetic code there's not something that tells us that this is going to happen in her instance. Because I can tell you in my patients I know their genetics because I have more of those than anybody who walks on two feet on this planet of patients I've explanted and it's very clear the trends in their problems in detoxification. But I don't have the HLA or those types of things on all these patients.

Yeah, I can certainly speak from for myself having done my genome I do have the kit mutation for connective tissue disorders and they intrinsically are associated with defective antigen presentation which means some sort of foreign body toxin, pathogen, surgical implant, the antigen presenting cells of which mast cells one example can't effectively present to our T cells to mount an immune response and produce antibodies equally. The double whammy effect is I do have impaired T detox liver detoxification genes. So it's really no great surprise. I've had in CAST my entire life.

So you're always a setup to have that problem. And I just had somebody in my office before I got on this call who had implants placed and they had a pre existing autoimmune condition which just is dumb. Like that's absolutely going to be a problem. It's not even a question of if it'll happen, it's just when is it going to happen.

I think you make a very valid point there. And I've always been quoted as saying that breast implants are a ticking time bomb. So whether somebody has a genetic predisposition to something or it's just a matter of time because the body is incredibly adaptive at toxic stressors environmentally or whether those foreign bodies may be injectables or whatever it is that's going on, it's still going to create MCAs at some point. And I think Dr. Tan, were you saying it's like one in four that people have MCAs or something like that? What are the stats? Some of us don't even really, we're not.

Yeah, we're still not even sure of the stats at this point in time. It's very underdiagnosed and very underreported. But I can say that a few studies that I've Looked at recently show that implants are associated with an 8 times increased risk of autoimmunity, which is very significant and needs to be communicated to patients upfront preoperatively as a significant risk.

Right, right. Yeah, that's. I mean, most of the things that I have are because of my work in cancer reconstruction. Like you're faced with a problem, these people are having very difficult, life changing events thrown at them. And then I would be the last person they would see on a Friday afternoon before they would have surgery the following week. And I'm supposed to explain to them all the things that I do from a reconstructive standpoint. And they're supposed to synthesize that information to make an informed decision about what's best for them long term. It's challenging.

Oh my goodness. I don't envy that position or that day at work. And so how do you navigate that, Dr. Robert? When it comes to. I often question, you know, we don't hesitate giving $5 for breast cancer research for a pink ribbon, let's say. But a lot of the community talk about that same device is actually causing potentially a new breast cancer. So we're funding the companies that are creating a new cancer, let's say. And you know, are there opportunities for us to be able to heal in a way where we do embrace our flat and we aren't swapping one cancer for another?

Yeah, sure. So my background is microvascular reconstruction. I was never somebody who did a lot of implant place. I was too busy doing autologous reconstructions with deep flaps and all the other things I did. Usually I was helping the surgeons as a sarcoma, they would do a prosthetic reconstruction of someone's tibia or their knee joint so they could preserve their limb and not amputate their limb. And if it was a jaw reconstruction from a head and neck cancer, then I was taking the fibula and shaping it to become a bone and hooking up the blood vessels so they could have a jaw again. So my whole career is rooted in taking care of people and I just got really good at taking care of implant problems because I became the guy that they would call when they had that problem. Because everybody has a skill set, right? I've been professional at surgery after nine years of training and I have a very large tool bag versus some people. So if all you have for a breast reconstruction is an implant, because where you work or how you were trained, that's all you really can access, that's what you're going to Talk about. So in the United States, which is a vast country, it's. It's not surprising that once you get out of a urban area, your options diminish rapidly in terms of what you're going to get talked to about reconstruction. So I always took about an hour and a half, talked to somebody about breast cancer reconstruction. Now, I did very few implant based reconstructions because I did all this other work that was super time consuming. So I'd operate eight to ten hours a day on cancer patients. And those weren't implant cases. Those were autologous reconstructive cases. So then would see people who had failed an implant based reconstruction because it got infected or because of radiation therapy or for capture contracture or for an impending extrusion. And then I would take care of those problems and they'd become my patients or if they had an implant, my problem to correct and care for. And so I just got very adept at taking care of capture contracture and other problems that translated into getting people in the community I worked in to send to me any kind of cosmetic problem. So if Andy had developed a capture contracture that they didn't know how to take care of or didn't want to, Andy would find her way to me because she would get on the machine and figure out that I took care of that problem. So in the cosmetic world, then, as Andy knows, it becomes a very different situation because they're not talking about what we can do to resolve it with their own tissue because that would be a fat transfer. And when people are younger and want to have enhancement surgery, typically they're lower bmi, lower body fat patients. And that is not something that when we're 18, 19, 20, 25, whatever we're patient about and may not find the right provider, you may not find someone like me who can talk to them about all those things. And the best thing I say that, you know, my number one redeeming quality is I always had no problem telling people no.

Okay, yeah, amazing. Oh, my gosh. And I mean, let's just talk about, if we can, how the system is set up, that there are literally, and you know, ever since I wrote this book, Treasured Chest, it started with me going on the Today show, telling my story two weeks after surgery. And Dr. Tan came on the Today show with me. And my inbox was just flooded with women joining the dots, realizing that they had breast implant illness, expressing that they felt medically gaslit. Because there are a number of people that practice in this industry that sweep this conversation under the Rug or upsell, kind of the secondary surgeries. Would you like fries with that, a lift or a fat transfer? So these millions of women across the world can't afford to be seen. And I, you know, I think it was two years that I was waiting to save up for the surgery and then to be triaged because there was no rupture detected. But indeed there was. And six surgeons and an MRI said I was fine. Medicine isn't a perfect science, but indeed women are intuitive. And the surgeon woke me up from anesthetic and said, you know, you were right, the hole was exactly where you were pinpointing it to be. So I'm just concerned every day and I lose sleep over women that are still coming to me day in, day out saying, help. You know, what do we do about that? I mean, first of all, in Australia we need a TGA black box warning the way the FDA has one. We don't have one of those in Australia.

Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Well, a couple things I don't know that certainly in our system and I've only worked in here in the United States system and then I've worked in the UK system in the nhs, very different systems. Obviously this is going to always typically be put back in the patients and the plastic surgeons to figure out whether it was from ALCL or what have you. So if it's a cancer situation with alcl, the guidance has been to put that off onto the surgeons to figure out which ultimate becomes the issue. Like surveil them and swap it out was the guidance they gave us, which just is a cop out basically. So they're not interested in solving that problem for patients, they're interested in it not being their problem.

Yeah.

Wow.

Dr. Tan, I would love for you to talk to us about how the healing just doesn't stop after the explant or complete capsulectomy. You had an on block surgery, but like the detoxification that's required and also yourself after surgery. Explain. This is still so new. So we really don't know what can linger for the rest of our lives.

Potentially detoxification is super important. But I don't just see detox as the post surgical explant issue. In this day and age, we are literally under assault from our environments and we all should be actively working on our detox daily. Number one is decrease the toxic load to reduce detox overwhelm in the body and that includes electromagnetic radiation. You know, most of us have got wi fi at home and at work you can look at hard wiring now, which is much easier than it used to be. There are plugs that can set up our homes and offices now at the very least, if you're going to have WI fi, switch it off at night. It interferes with our deep REM sleep, which is our restorative repair time overnight. It interferes with hormone production. The immune system detoxification. So a super important intervention that people can do before at bedtime, alkalize the body. So eating, cleaning up your food chain, eating organic biodynamic produce, go to your local farmers markets. Eating raw food, fruit and veg is supercharged. It will actually help your energy level and it alkalizes the body. Another simple alkaline trick is a teaspoon of bicarb once or twice a day in water. It's very, actually a very powerful alkalizer. To help the body to heal. We need to support our liver and kidneys. They're important detox organs. Apart from basic nutrients, some key herbs are St. Mary's thistle for the liver and schisandra for the kidneys. There's some good supplements out there over the counter that will support them. Our skin is our greatest, biggest organ in the body and we can upregulate its detox through sweating such as infrared sauna or sitting in a detox bath like bentonite clay. Our lymphatics help us to drain the body, you know, collect the toxins, deliver them to the liver and kidneys. So dry body brushing, facia tools, rebounding on a mini trampoline or vibroplate and manual palpation of which there's plenty of YouTube videos. And it's an easy couple of minute trick you can do in the morning. Binders are super important. Gut binders have been around a long time which basically sit in the gut and have a charge to attract heavy metals and toxins and pull them out through the stool. And then things like bentonite clay Z a lot activated charcoal. The last couple of years we've had the advent of nanozeolite, which doesn't, which crosses through the gut and can travel everywhere in the body across the blood brain barrier. And that will bind heavy metals and toxins such as mobile toxins and helping them through our detox pathways. Glutathione is also really important. It's our master detoxifier and master antioxidant in the body. Some people genetically don't produce it very well or if they're nutritionally deficient, that will impact production too. So we can either do an oral liposomal or nanoform but it can also be given intravenously. So yeah, that's it in a nutshell. You know, start detoxing every day to protect yourself.

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Oh my gosh. I learned that with my clients almost every time you think they're eating healthily and they're not. But I just wanted to reiterate what you're saying so important, because I think Dr. Tan was talking about after they've explanted to potentially go into a sauna. But then on that note, some people with mcas can't handle extreme heat or cold conditions. So yeah, it's always important to remember there's no one size fits all approach or formula when it comes to health. That's not how health is practiced. And even more so why it's so important to work with your health practitioner of choice to make sure that you know you're getting the proper care and not just taking bits and pieces from different podcasts and things that you've heard. And so as a wellness coach, that's why I'm leading you to where you need to be. And disclaimer here, this isn't intended to heal, treat or cure anyone. I just wanted to know that we're informing you in different areas that you can Work with that health practitioner. So I want to talk a little bit about EMFs, because this is my theory and I talk about it in the book and this is what my experience was. But when the 5G radiation ramped up, if you like, when that started happening and in Australia, I was in Melbourne. It was the most locked down city in the world. And the virus started becoming more contagious from 6pm onwards with curfews. And that's when the next morning we heard a lot of construction. And then 5G was, boom. There it was. And from these moments on when they were playing around with the levels, I had implants at the time and it was excruciating, the tinnitus and the brain fog that I was experiencing and that really ramped up. I'd had some, you know, tinnitus before, potentially from, you know, whether it was bruxism or PTSD or whatever. But as soon as that radiation ramped up, it was like, I mean, listen to me, I'm like lost for words. That's rare. As I recall it, as soon as I had the explant. Dr. Robert it was incredible how that tinnitus went down by like 50% and it's still not there in the same way that it was. My theory is, and I'd love more research around this, that the heavy metals are interacting with the radiation. So I'm just wondering, you know, what others are experiencing. And also the SIBO gut that you talk about, it's incredible because the natural detoxification pathways do start to shut down, which is why you're feeling like you are dying, because you literally are dying. As you know, the liver, the gallbladder, the kidneys, the digestive system are not working in the way that they're designed because they're literally banked up and all of those things. And so I experienced sibo and I'm still having difficulty with that, although it is getting better and better, even though it's two years on. But there are a lot of different things that we need to still have more research on and for others to come forward and share their experiences so that we can better help the community.

Well, the T3G and then the 5G, I mean, there's not long term data on 5G at all because it's too new, relatively speaking, to have long term data. So when I see or hear somebody, and we do discuss basically what you're describing as neural inflammation, there's a whole host of reasons to have neural inflammation. The most common ones I see personally are from Mycotoxin exposures. And so I see more frequently that based on. And then most of my patients are flying in from other parts of the country. But universally, when we do their toxicity burden tests, many if not the majority of them have higher, almost uniformly in the 95th percentile and above mycotoxin burdens. Now when you talk to them and they say, you know, if you get in the car with your friend or your partner or whatever, is the stereo always talking too loud and you have to turn it down? That's a very big tell. That's pretty standard. If they have that neural inflammation, then the standard ones with like you, you were talking about, you may have somebody with not just tenderness, but headache, light sensitivity, all those things. I, I've become, I'm not numb to it. I just assume now the person in front of me has got problems with neural inflammation as part of their immunity dysregulation. Overall, I, I just feel like that's so common now. I, my, like, I'm not looking for it anymore. I just consider it as part of the constellation of the problems. And I want to figure out to the best of our ability, you know, with the data I can acquire, like what's causing what. And to be honest, I mean, I don't have a good feel for the EMF component. And like you said, the research, it would take a long time to get that researched and figured out. And there's a lot of work to be done in general, general. But trying to do things that will help, even if they're subjective, if they help the patient, I'm happy to have them try things that will support them. They come in and really heighten awareness and sympathetic overdrive most of the time. So that doesn't help that problem. Plus we got a whole society that lives on energy drinks and crap now, which doesn't help that problem.

Right.

And I mean the nervous system's the master controller, so of course that's going to have an impact on the immune system because it's the conductor of the orchestra. On that note, I actually found that what kept me stable while I was waiting to have the surgery was chiropractic care. Really interesting to note that taking pressure off the nervous system and allowing freer communication from the brain to the rest of the body and removing that distorted signal really kept me stable. And I think that's important for others who are like waiting to either save up the money or, you know, just. There aren't enough explant surgeons like yourself that are able to do the Complete capsulectomy. There's still a lot of surgeons that are talking about that. There's no evidence to suggest whether it's better or worse to take out the capsule, the surrounding scar tissue with it. And I often question why is that? Because we're not going to be able to have a successful suit because obviously that needs to be sent off to third party labs to be tested. So why are they discouraging the tissue to come out? What do you think?

Yeah, I've heard it discussed and it doesn't make a ton of sense. Last year we published a paper that showed that 29% that are tested third party via PCR are contaminated. So if I didn't do that ever one, I would never know that. But if I never removed any capsule, I would potentially be harming a large number of patients. Because in Dr. Ash and you Andy, each of you would react differently to having that in your body. And I don't know how you're going to react. But a paper by Bethune Sina was published last year that showed the interaction between the contaminants, the oleic acid which oxidizes, creates oxylip and tenhome which is a big driver of fatigue and these symptoms that we, we see so commonly in patients. So I don't know why folks want to do that. When I gave my FDA testimony in 2019, I tested how, testified publicly behind a woman who had had capsule left on her ribs and she developed alcl and that was going to end up killing her. So that was a horrendous story to have right before I came up. But I sleep very good at night because I do the same operation for every person. And to the best of my ability, you know, I'm trying to get everything out all the time. The only thing that can can hinder me is the thinness of a capsule. That's really it.

You do the best job you can tan. What do you think about that?

I think it's super important to try and remove as much as you can. Again, it's coming back to reducing the toxic load any residual foreign bodies. We do know that silicon does leech or bleed from the implants and there are published studies on serum silicon levels being elevated in patients with implants with and without BII symptoms. You know, and this is, this is where detox is so important. But you know, circling back to what you're saying just before, it's a really is a stacking effect with the mast cells. So you know, if you've got patients who are Waiting to save up the money to explant. You know, they can at least be addressing all these other impacts on mast cells such as stress and trauma. Yes, we, in this day and age, our sympathetic nervous system gets hardwired into fight, flight and freeze. So having a daily parasympathetic practice actually starts a new neural rewiring process. That's our important nervous system response for breast repair, recovery in the body. And so a daily practice is things like yoga, meditation, qigong, tai chi, walk in nature, you know, something simple you can introduce every day, even if it's a five minute practice, even of gratitude and prayer. Looking detox the toxic load, stop putting the toxins back in. Clean up your personal care and household cleaning product. Get clean and green and make sure it's not green washed. You know, read the labels. You can start looking into pathogens in the body, you know, viral, parasitic, bacterial parasites. An issue that are very missed in in medicine. Originally in medicine, we used to deworm patients regularly as we do our pets, and that has dropped by the wayside. And you have pits at home. It's very likely that you're going to be carrying parasites. So doing parasite cleansing.

Can I ask you why that's so avoided now? Because I go back to my medical training, had a lot of time spent on bacteria, very little on parasites and very little on fungi. Like I knew. Yeah, it's not a huge thing. And I feel like my friends in the UK or in Australia where you'd have more tropical disease potentially. Like I feel like sometimes it's obvious that it's a parasite problem and by travel history, like I went to Africa and I got sick. Sick, no shit. Okay, you went to the jungle in Costa Rica and you got sick because you went on an ayahuasca retreat or whatever the scenario is. And somehow traveler's diarrhea is not worried about anymore. But they all come back and they don't feel well and they're acting crazy and sounds like a parasitic infection to me.

Maybe I'm crazy, but Dr. Robert, it's not just. I think I was traditionally taught that parasites are a part of third world medicine, but it is absolutely happening in the western world. And I think part of the problem is, number one, we're not looking for it. And number two, they're hard to pick up even on the testing that we have because they borrow into tissues and organs and hive from the immune system and cover themselves in biofilm to evade an immune response. Yeah.

So interesting to talk about the mycotoxins that he was bringing up because they are more. They're radioactive and even more so now with the radiation. So I think these two things, because you talk about the stacking effect, it's the perfect storm. We've got the parasites, we've got the mycotoxins. We've got all of this environmental toxicity, personal hygiene toxicity. And then eventually this becomes a huge issue where, boom, you know, it's a ticking time bomb. And then the implants. I mean, even the FDA have announced that silicone is not inert. So if we can heal a lot just through parasitic cleanses and checking your environment for mold. Yeah.

Well, I had this. I have a good silicone story, Okay? I have a very nice woman who came to the office this a few weeks ago, and she's in her 70s, and she's got symptoms of my joint pain and some fatigue. And her integrative doctor said, you know, you've had those breast implants since 1982.

Wow.

And she came to me and she told me this story, and I felt, you know, I did her exam, and first of all, anything, when I do an explanation, I consider everything to be ruptured 100%. I never, ever care what your MRI says. I don't care what your doctor says. I don't care what your ultrasound or mammogram. So I told her. I was like, look, I've only taken out, I guess, one set of Dow Corning implants from the 70s that were intact ever in my entire career. That's almost 30 years. Yeah, I took her to the operating room actually yesterday and did her case. And she was at that era. She had silicone gel implants from Dow Corning above the muscle, because that was the standard time frame. And of course, they were ruptured, so they were not leaking outside the capsule. But I want everybody listening to this to listen extremely careful to what I say next. The capsule is not impervious. It is not a nuclear bomb shelter. Your tissues will interact with the device within your scar capsule. Because think of something that's woven versus something that's solid. It's not not solid. So I open everything. I make a video for every patient after I get done so they can see exactly what everything looks like in real time. So I. I open this thing up, and of course it's ruptured. Both layers are ruptured. Because a shell has two layers. It looks like a railroad track on ultrasound. So both layers are ruptured and completely devoid on one side. Just. Just a bag of jelly, of which I Took out perfectly intact, by the way. And then on the other side, it has a. Outer shell intact, but the inner is obviously ruptured. You can feel it. You can move it. You can. You can almost see it on the video. It's a little bit hard. But I don't want anybody to think they're protected from the device because their body makes a scar capsule. That is false.

Amen. Yeah.

And I think that's why, you know, in the published studies, we're seeing elevated silicone levels on serum testing. You know, it's clearly leaching through.

Yeah. And now we've got the new Phillips, which I found in the radiology place in Far North Queensland in Australia. There's not many of these machines, but they can. They're a great device in being able to discover silicon uptake in the lymphatic system in a 4D scan, which is super important when it comes to testing. But. But I mean, we always need testing and evidence and everything. At the end of the day, X, Y and Z, genetic predisposition or any of your health challenges are 100% going to get better when you explant because your body's just dealing with less. So I would like to also point out that we haven't spoken about the emotional journey and trauma that a woman goes through too much, because we talk about cost, we talk about finding the right surgeon, talk about the right timing for it and all that sort of thing, and needing evidence. But we really have a bunch of women who are not only worried about aesthetic. And this is the first time in Dr. History where we go to a doctor first for aesthetics, second for health. Every other time you're going to a doctor first for health. So I find it really fascinating that we're used to this model of care where we're going to, how do I look first and how am I going to look second? And so I say to a lot of my people, because they ask me, you know, you look great, and did you have this and did you have that? And I'm like, no, I had nothing. And I was really quite sad that, you know, all these surgeons told me I was going to look saggy because I'm 50 and, you know, and what's wrong with SAG ladies? And what's wrong with scars? And, you know, your story is who you are. And I just want to. If any woman's feeling anxious or sad during this entire educative piece of podcast, please know that what is behind your chest is your heart. And that's what makes you the most beautiful. And your scars, just like the Japanese kintsugi approach, is that they're a part of your story, which is also beautiful. In kintsugi, they highlight the cracks and flaws with gold, not clear glue when they're putting back the porcelain, because that's the beauty. But, you know, if you want to go a layer further. I found that with the chiropractic care, I changed posture, which changed the way my chest and ribcage sat. And then when it was time, I did a lot of pectoral rehab too, even though I had sub muscular implants. You can change the way you look with posture as well, but for the most part, it's time to just get well because that changes collagen tissue, all the things. And I was so grateful that. Dr. Tan, you said don't get any secondary surgery, wait for that fluff up period.

Yeah.

I will tell you that I think the biggest problem I face as a surgeon is I'm not a psychiatrist and I'm not a psychologist. And so we are actually working to add a mental health professional to our program because there's a lot of work that's not being done, unfortunately. That's the right way to say it. And my team and myself and other people to carry out that work, that has to be done by the person in conjunction with somebody who knows how to do that best, which is not me, but I like to have.

Why can't you be our everything? This is the way we need to change the way we look at things. And in every relationship, I mean, women are looking at their partners to be their everything.

Right.

This is the fault we're making. And so how you do anything is how you do everything. And it's important to go. You don't go to your doctor to be all the things you need. A team.

Yes. So we're trying to. So my. Because my background's in cancer, I'm taking the multidisciplinary approach to my program. So adding someone to help with mental health, which is something we wanted to add and we had a issue in the past, but we are on the track to add that this, you know, in this quarter or the next. And so that will help our patients more and more and more. Because if you can't deal with the trauma or the stress or the partner issues or all the things, then it's. It's never going to be after the fact any better. It's just going to be difficult.

And I think it was sad that I had to wait two years. And Dr. Tan kept saying to me, not long to go now, Bella, because nobody would triage me. And I was like, I just want to die. And my son would say to me, no, you don't, mom. You're just waiting for your surgery. But in that time, I was able to do the deep work to get ready to shed. Not every woman gets the chance to do that work. So that I want to really encourage to address the root cause of why you implanted in the first place. And a lot of women who do read my book say, wow, you triggered some stuff. There was some sexual trauma, right?

Yeah, we recently had a patient of ours talk about that. It's really the number of stories that have been shared just like you are alluding to. They're super powerful and important and in the end game that's ultimately got to be reconciled because I can't do that. I mean, I'll take the best care of you that I can always. And my team is great. I have a phenomenal group of over 30 employees now and they're in it to help everybody recover as efficiently and safely as possible.

Fantastic. Dr. Robert, it sounds like you're setting a new benchmark for explant care. You know, I can certainly speak for myself of my explant story and why I implanted in the first place is that I caught Epstein Barr virus when I was 13. Very, very, very ill with it. Didn't know I had it at the time. And my breast development essentially arrested from that point onwards. My whole hormone axis just became depleted. And there was a part of me for. For many, many years that just didn't feel enough because of that as a woman. And you know, after I. And I made a really swift decision to explant when I did in 2017, after having them in for nine years, when I realized it does. You know, there were so many alarm bells for me when I learned about BII at that time, which I didn't know about pre implanting. And yes, I had the sag, but they did bounce back over time. You know, I really supported my collagen production and. And I'm pretty much back to what they were. And yes, we have our scars which are part of our battle wounds and resilience in life. And I just found, you know, as I've become older, it's just like I am enough, you know, I don't need the aesthetics to bolster my self confidence. You know, with age you find that innate wisdom that gives you the resilience and strength. So yeah, it's been a full circle for me as well as Andy.

Oh, thank you for sharing such an honest, vulnerable story. And, and I think between the three of us, I just want to say thank you so much for encouraging this, that your team reached out and you reached out personally, Dr. Robert Whitfield, because, you know, we all are so committed to this and only good things can happen from here. And I hope that we continue to work together in the future. I was also involved in the Biohack Yourself documentary film as an expert talking about this subject. And I'm on television shows. I know. Dr. Robert, you're on all kinds of podcasts all day, every day. As well as being a surgeon, you don't need to be an educator. I know most doctors just want to practice surgery. And now here I am even training Dr. Tania to do media because we are educators. Doctors are teachers. That comes from the Latin word to teach. So let's keep educating everyone and loving harder.

Well, I appreciate especially Dr. Ash waking up very early in Australia to join us today and Andy's on the west coast. I really appreciate having you both on. I thought it was important for Andy to share her story and to really hear a provider with Dr. Ash's experience because I find that as more providers grow with a knowledge base, it becomes easier for the patients to discuss their problems and then find their way to me. If I can help them, I'm always happy to. So where can everybody find Andy first and then Dr. Ashley Ash and then we'll wrap it up.

Yeah, you can slide into my DMs. I'll always reply. It's Andyandi Lew on Instagram or andylou.com on my website. You'll find all my books there, including Treasured Chest for me.

I practice through mergehealth.com in Australia. I'm Tanya Ash on Facebook and Tanya Ash T A N I A ASH11 on insta.

All right, awesome. Thank you both for joining me.

Thank you time. Wishing all the best.

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you found the information and stories shared on this podcast helpful and informative. Remember, taking control of your health and wellness is key to recovery from breast implant illness. If you're looking for additional resources and support, be sure to visit our online store, Dr. Rob's Solutions at@drrobsolutions.myshopify.com you'll find a wide range of wellness products and supplements to support your journey to recovery. From specially formulated detox supplements to personalized skincare products, we have everything you need to aid your recovery. Visit Dr. Rob's Solutions today at drrobssolutions.myshopify.com thank you for listening and we'll be back with another episode soon. Remember, you're not alone, alone in this journey. And together we can overcome breast implant illness. Take care.