From Breast Implant Illness to Wellness: Allie Janszen’s story of Explant with Dr. Robert Whitfield

Well, everyone, today we have a special guest. It's one of my patients, Allie Janzen. And she is going to share with us her story of how multiple things and we'll get into it. But I wanted to have her on. She's been very good about sharing on her social media platform about her experience and our program of which we're very proud of. And we try to make adjustments and make it better all the time. So welcome to the show, Ali.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here. It's been quite the journey, but I'm happy where I'm at, so thank you.

Well, let's. I guess we'll dig right into that. And you know, maybe you can explain for the audience your experience with. And some people have various reasons for getting implants and then obviously how you determine maybe that's contributing to, you know, health issues and. And how you arrived at that.

Yeah. So I guess the first part of that is why I got implants or when. And I originally got implants because it was something I always wanted. I always, as a younger girl, always wanted that more womanly look. So I decided I would wait until I got engaged to make sure my husband really loved me for me. And then so as soon as I got engaged, I went ahead and got implants because I wanted to fill out my wedding dress. And I loved my implants. I really got a lot of confidence from them. I felt like I always looked the way I should. But this was before babies. And so fast forward 10 years and I still had my implants and was pregnant with my fourth baby. And that baby turned into a emergency C section because she was a breech baby with her cord wrapped around her neck twice, which we did not realize. And so that turned into an emergency C section. And after giving birth to her via C section, I never felt good after that. And my body never went back to the way it was with my previous babies. When I had them vaginally, no problem. Getting back to my pre baby weight felt good in my body again, felt energetic. And so after that fourth baby, it was most likely a combination of, who knows, the breast implant illness, getting into that perimenopausal age, just the traumatic event of a big surgery, who knows? But at that point, nothing seemed to work for me. And getting my pre baby body back. And that when I went down a big hormone health rabbit hole and then going down that rabbit hole is how I ended up hearing the term breast implant illness, which I had never heard in my life before that. So it wasn't until 12 years post getting my implants that I started even looking into it or looking into getting my implants removed. So that is a really short story of how I came to explore explantation.

Oh, that's a lot to unpack. So let's go back when you originally did that because that's one of the. I hear a lot of stories, as you can imagine, about why folks get implants and then why the explant. I would say if you could go back to the time where you were considering that when you were, you know, discussing or thinking about options, was something like a fat transfer ever a consideration? Or were you so lean that when you're going to go ahead and get an augmentation, that really wasn't an option?

At that point I was very lean. I was a college athlete, so had always been tall lean. I'm sure I had some extra that I could have used for a fat transfer transfer. But to be honest, I had never even heard of that. That was not something that was ever an option for me. And in reality, I don't know that in my mindset of a 20, let's see, how old was I, a 24 year old, that I would have gone for that. My mindset always since I turned 18 was I want breast implants, I want breast implants. So yeah, that was just never even a consideration.

Yeah, I wanted to see if that had been even discussed because many times it depends on obviously who you're talking to, whether or not you'll have a discussion like that and then fast forward to really not experiencing problems than having your fourth child in that urgent situation, which is always we, we talk about things that are triggering events and obviously that is a triggering event. And you know, there are lots of things that have come out now regarding the science behind why somebody can have increased symptoms of, we'll say fatigue. But in this situation, you know, in conjunction to anything related to that, which we can unpack later, that kind of event in our experience, and I've seen it a lot with pregnancies, even pregnancies that have gone well and the delivery's not been an event like that that triggers but just the delivery process and subsequently it's gotta be a change in the hormones that leads to something going on that it's not clear to us. But I have seen it time and time again where people get really, really symptomatic. And for the folks listening, you said it was more you couldn't, you know, get back to the weight. Did you have like again Other symptoms that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So that's.

That.

I think that's part of it too, is that. So I was a labor and delivery nurse, so that's part of it, that I kind of understood the process of childbirth and all of this. And so I felt very confident in that. And then I also am a fat loss coach, so I am very knowledgeable about macros, about working out, about living a clean and healthy lifestyle. And so to me it was like, okay, I have this background in both of these things and I can't even help myself right now. Like I'm helping clients or I'm helping patients, but I can't even help myself. And I'm doing the same thing that I've always done to get back to where I needed to be. And I'm doing the same exact things. I'm teaching my clients and they're having these great results and it's just not happening for me. And then on top of that, so that was really the weight, weight loss portion, the inflammation, and then the second portion of that was the increase in more of those breast implant illness, hormonal symptoms. So the extreme fatigue, you know, not even being able to wake up in the morning, wanting to hit my snooze 10 times before I can roll out of bed, hitting that afternoon wall or falling asleep in, the kids dead, putting them to bed at night reading books, just overwhelming fatigue throughout the day. I really noticed a lot of joint pain, especially during my workouts. Just feeling like I couldn't do lunges anymore because they were killing my knees. And that was never, never something that happened to me in the past. Even my wrists, I could notice my wrists were getting achy, doing push ups or planks or anything like that. Never had that in the past. And then on top of that, I was actually diagnosed with Meniere's disease last year because I continued to have this feeling of fullness in my left ear with a vibrating noise. Anytime I would be in a bar or at a concert somewhere where it gets loud, my ear would. Or at church during the music, I could hear the vibrate. It would just vibrate and I would almost have to plug my ear and then I would get a feeling of fullness followed by vertigo. And I am really, really happy to say that I have not. And I was doing that once a week, maybe twice a week for about a year. And I have not had a single instance of that since having my implants removed. I think that is the biggest symptom that has. And my. I don't have fatigue anymore either. But that's the biggest game changer for me.

So the tinnitus or Meniere's or it's kind of inner ear problem coupled to other light sensitivity and sound sensitivity, like many of those things, you know, are, are very akin to neural inflammation. And we have a lot of people obviously have headache and you know, migraine and chronic migraine. And I get asked all the time, you know, can I resolve all this or will an expat, you know, resolve all this? And the short answer, we've seen improvement in virtually, you know, any of those that I just named. If not elimination, like you're experiencing. But in, in full disclosure, if somebody had chronic migraine before they ever got implants, then we're not going to solve that. Like, so that's, you know, like a pre existing, you know, issue or if someone says they had an autoimmune disorder and got implants, of course the autoimmune disorder they had before is like way. And I was always kind of like the person of the alley who if you showed up with an autoimmune disorder and you wanted it or needed a breast reconstruction for cancer or you wanted a breast augmentation, I would basically for the breast augmentation crew, tell you I'm not doing it. The breast cancer crew, you know, the folks who suffer from and need reconstruction, we would have different conversations because many times low BMI patient, there aren't other options. But if they were upper BMI patients with, or not upper, but with a higher bmi, we could go ahead and do something called a DIEP free flap reconstruction, which I did for better part of, you know, a couple decades. But those kind of inflammatory, you know, symptoms, once your inflammation drops down, then obviously things can, you know, reset if you will, and then your symptomology goes down. But then your, whether it's your immunity or your hormone balance or which affects obviously everything, everything how you sleep and you already do all the things about your diet and trying to rest. I spend a lot of time talking to people about trying to sleep and get enough sleep and talking about wearables and a wearable for everybody listening. So we use ultra human rings in the office and whoop straps because I'm very specific about and I want consistency of data. So those two for me right now are the ones that I, I feel good about and trying to get enough sleep so you can recover especially after surgery like Ally's had. And so that when you wake up those symptoms of like maybe brain fog or headache or in this instance where she was having, you know, inner ear problems, I feel like a lot of that stuff will get better incrementally over time. Can. Can you give everybody a sense of how long it took for those things to get better?

Yeah, my inner ear stuff, I mean, I was telling you that was a weekly occurrence for me, and I. That one was immediate. I haven't. It kind of was one of those that I didn't. I didn't expect to get better. Kind of like what you were just saying, like, if you came in with some sort of autoimmune or Meniere's, I feel like it's just so understudied and understood that even my ENT kind of was like, well, you can try these things. There's not much that we can do for you. We'll just do hearing tests to make sure you're not losing your hearing, because that's what can happen in Meniere's. And so that wasn't even on my radar of things to fix. Honestly, the biggest thing for me that I was wanting was just to get them out, because I just had read so much about breast implant illness and was like, I just need these out. These are no longer serving me. And I wanted to lose weight, really. That was my biggest thing. So the ear thing, when. When I noticed after about a month that I didn't have a single instance of that vertigo, ringing, fullness, I kind of was like, oh, my gosh, maybe that was related to my implants as well. And then I will tell you, I was going to ask Violet what my weigh in was pre surgery, because I'm just curious to see what my weight was. I think it was, yeah. But I know that I've lost. And you told me, which I will never forget this because I even looked at Violet and I was like, I love how candid he is, but that one stung a little bit because when I went in for my pre op, I'm telling you about my, like a man, I just really can't lose this weight. I feel like I'm so inflamed. And you, you go, yep, you're pretty puffy. And you go, you go, you're going to lose about 20 to 30 pounds in inflammation. And I have lost at least 25, maybe 30 pounds since then. And that's a three month period of time, whereas I haven't changed anything else. I've done the same workouts. Well, a little bit lighter, because I can't do, you know, some of the chest exercises yet. And I'm still eating the same clean whole food, nutrition, same macros with an emphasis on protein. And I haven't changed anything in my lifestyle. We were already a pretty clean household in terms of, you know, detergent cleaners, really limiting plastics in the house, all of that. So my husband and I look at each other every day, like, I mean, when's it gonna stop? Because it's great. Because right now I feel like, oh, my gosh, it's just happening. And this is what I've been wanting to happen for the last two and a half years since I've had my fourth baby, and it just never was. And so we keep saying it has to the implants and the inflammation and the havoc that it was wreaking not only on my body, but on my hormones and really affecting everything. So that has been about three months, about two months is when I started to see a noticeable change where other people started saying, oh, my gosh, you look a lot different.

Right. I think, you know, I have a lot of folks that come in who are clearly retaining a lot of food and everybody listening. When I. When I think of puffiness and the tissues, I will feel tissue. And I try to tell everybody when the tissue has a certain tone to it, when I feel it, it's from obviously years of examining people. And the swelling is different. Swelling that is super tense is like a water balloon, and you can't compress it. And then when something's completely devoid of water, it's easy to compress, and the more fluid accumulates in the tissues, you know, that tension is created, and that's what creates puffiness. And then we see it all the time. And in our patient population, we have a lot of people who have a lot of inflammation. And then concordant with that, we have a lot of people who have a lot of problems with their hormones. So people who have a lot of estrogen toxicity and they will have, with their cycle, just big changes in fluid retention. And in fact, I just saw somebody who came down and. And they're like, I know I had this appointment, but, you know, now I'm. It's that time in my cycle, and I feel puffy, and I'm like, yeah. And then, you know, we have all these devices in the. In the office. We have the flood presser from New Zealand. Very effective in moving that fluid out of the tissues, which I'm talking about, which are tents and into the lymphatic system so you can filter them out and you can visibly change someone. This is what's, you know, this is like the red carpet treatment before. You know, someone goes. You know, it's one of the events. You get this done, and you can adjust how someone looks in just one treatment. So that amount of fluid accumulation of the tissues, like you're experiencing, you know, I never know how much somebody is going to change. But for you, you know, a very fit person, traditionally, with. With no other, we'll say lifestyle, things that I have to address because you're already doing all that work, you're predictably gonna lose. Like I said, I'd say 10, always conservatively. But I've had people lose £30 in a month.

Wow.

And then they call.

Incredible.

They're. They don't know what's going on. They can't stop, you know, urinating and. And they're like, hey, is something wrong? That's just your body typically getting rid of inflammation. And that's when our livers and kidneys, you know, function in concert and efficiently with your lymphatic system. I mean, those are the best cases. So, you know, when we talk about doing a lot of macros that are protein, you know why? Because we're trying to create basically this gradient. So you want to drive the fluid out of the tissues into the bloodstream as much as possible. And that's just one of the many things that we're trying to do to help. So has that problem with the fatigue in the afternoon completely resolved?

Yep. Mean, I used to be like, okay, it's nap time for the littlest one. I'm like, okay, I can get my big kids to watch some tv. I can take a quick nap on the couch with them while the other. While my little one's sleeping. Nothing. Like, I haven't taken a nap since. And not that I. I mean, I used to love a good nap, but I just used to feel like I needed it to get through the day. And right now, I mean, usually this would be the time when I'd be crashing, and I haven't. Now I'm going to the gym around this time. That's just because my body's like, all right, let's get moving. We're ready. So that's totally changed. No more fatigue, no wakefulness in the middle of the night, waking up fine in the morning. Also, it's summer, so maybe I'm sleeping a little longer in the morning. But.

Well, for everybody listening, so, you know, Allie's talking about something that's very common, and after surgery, your body has to do a reset. And a lot of times we're Talking about how your mitochondria, which produce energy in your cells, are involved in this process. And hers is a very strong example of almost a mitochondrial reset. So everything starts working better and she keeps her protein content high. So her afternoon is actually a prime time now instead of a nap time so she can get things done. And then her circadian rhythm is going to be better because she's going to be up till she's ready to go to bed and then she's going to go to bed and wake up having had, you know, multiple cycles of sleep and gotten into deep sleep, which is important for about an hour and a half to two and a half hours. If you can do that, then everything is going to work more efficiently because your hormones get released properly. Everything's going to work. I had a patient of ours come in and she's pre op and she's like, oh my gosh, she knows what her HRV is. She's like, my HRV is in the teens. And I'm like, what are you doing? What's the sleep, you know, like? And she's like, well, I can't sleep. And she had been given a supplement and she was having a paradoxical reaction. And so there are a lot of ways to hack sleep. Obviously, you know, eating earlier, about three hours before bed, drinking earlier and meaning drinking fluids and stopping that a couple hours before bed and then limiting screen time before bed and cooling the room and dark and the right noise. And she had been given guidance on a specific supplement. However, for her it was waking her up like she was super mindful instead of like calming down. So things like L Theanine and Ashwagandha and sustained release melatonin and magnesium are all helpful, but you got to stay away from things that are going to wake you up.

For sure. Yeah. No, it's interesting you say that about the sleep because I just have a Garmin watch that I wear that tracks sleep and I, I look at my sleep scores now because it gives you a sleep score, tells you how long you're in deep sleep. And I am in deep sleep at night for around two hours every night now. And my sleep score is always in the 90s or up to 100. And that was never, never prior. It was like 60s. I could get up to the 60s, maybe low 70s in my sleep score with like an hour of deep sleep and now it's doubling.

So you have that. Does it do like a six month history or anything like that on an app? Can you look at it like that?

Yep. I Can if you like, log into your phone. When I just wear my watch, it just tells me a 24 hour time shot. But in the actual app that you can connect to your phone, it will give you a full history.

I think that's very important. What Ali is saying is super important. And I think I get a little reluctant to comment on things that I don't have data about. So when I have a lot of information, I will pass it on to everybody. And in terms of sleep data, it's incredibly important to sleep and not get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and do all these things that people are doing. So, like, you really, you have to sleep to recover. If you don't do that, if you can't do that, we really gotta start, you know, basically there. And you know, I will always and probably Allie will echo. This is. You gotta start with your diet. Like, you gotta eat better. The quality of the food going in has to be markedly better. Digestive problems and eating right before bed and eating the wrong things before bed that are, you know, either processed or ultra processed or lead to all sorts of problems.

Yeah. Or just, you know, the. It goes back to, you know, it's kind of like I feel like with the breast implant illness stuff, a lot of it for me is like, okay, is it the chicken or the egg where my hormones wrecked and it messed up, you know, my breast implants and then the implants made it worse. Or, you know, it's like this whole thing, but they all go together. Because like what you're saying with the sleep, you know, the implant illness really affected my hormones, which is gonna affect my sleep too. Because if I'm. Or like what you said with the eating, maybe I. With the eating, you're not. You're getting hypoglycemic at night, and so then your cortisol is spiking to help wake you up or bring that blood sugar back up, and that's waking you up. But what came first kind of thing. But it is amazing to me because, you know, I listened to plenty of these stories. I did my research big time before getting my implants removed. And it always sounded too good to be true. What a lot of the women that were coming on podcasts and talking about said. And I just kind of was like, I know I need these out no matter what. Whether I see improvements or not, I know I need them out. And then any improvements in my health is just going to be a bonus. But I know what the right thing is for me. Is to get them out. So I kind of went in with that mentality of not really expecting, like, this amazing recovery, if you will. And I think that I have been overwhelmingly surprised by the improvement in my quality of life, in my weight loss, in my overall energy levels, in my confidence. So it's just kind of one of those things where I'm like, it has to be the implants. There's no other. There's no other thing that. Because I almost kind of sometimes want to give, like, oh, well, it was probably this is probably this that helped heal me. But I'm like, there's nothing that I changed besides getting my implants out. So I just am very thankful to you and all of that.

I think for you. You highlight. You know, obviously, I get asked a lot, how much of a change, you know, trying to set an expectation. And you approached it correctly. You had a good mindset. You're like, I'm going to do this step, and whatever comes from this, great. Having done all of the work and understanding how important all those other factors are makes it a lot simpler for you than to step back and with that lens go, oh, that was really impactful. That really changed. So it's a little bit simpler, I think, for you, you know, as a, you know, provider of care and understanding of that. I mean, you did say something that. I'll tell you something anecdotally, Everybody who's using continuous glucose monitoring should understand this, too. So for everybody listening, I don't really ever tell anybody to do anything I haven't tried. So if I haven't used it, I will never tell you. Typically, hey, go use this. Go use that. Doesn't matter what it is. Air filters, water filters, food, you know, supplement, whatever. And I was using levels, and I woke up one day and I had this massive headache, and I had an alert on my. My phone, and my blood Sugar was below 50.

I knew you were gonna say that.

Yeah, like, what in the heck is going on? And so for everybody listening, I've had chronic problems with pain from surgery in my knees. I've had five knee surgeries. I've torn my Achilles. I have all sorts of things going on. So I would take Tylenol before I went to bed. So Tylenol can actually make you hypoglycemic. So just like, to your point, you're getting hypoglycemic, and that is a stimulation, because hypoglycemia and lack of oxygenation are why you wake up many times in the middle of the night. So if someone snores, please. If someone snores. Who's listening to this, get a sleep apnea test. Because the things that sleep apnea lead to all affect your brain health. So you don't want to have early onset Alzheimer's or contribute to Parkinson's or stroke or anything else where you could actually just do a simple sleep study or go online. The company I did mine with was called ResMed. They sent me a thing in the mail. I wore it. And then, of course, I had moderate sleep apnea. My wife was always whacking me to wake up and move and roll over and all this stuff. And there's a combination of factors that can lead to sleep apnea. And obviously, you know, I'm not an overweight person. It's just a narrowing of my airway at the back. So I have to wear a special, like, health guard, and I have to do the sleep apnea. But, you know, when you look at sleep scores, my sleep scores are much improved. And I want to have and be around for my children. So obviously, brain health is important to all of us. So I make a big deal about that now. But I also say, don't take Tylenol before bed. That's not interesting. Great idea. Depending on, you know, how you're eating, you know, because just like anything else, I would try to get all that kind of in earlier. And then, of course, when we give folks pain medicine, some of it is mixed with Tylenol, but it's not large dosages, you know, of Tylenol. So it was interesting that, that, that could happen. And certainly, man, I felt terrible when I woke up. Like, terrible headache. And I was like, wow, this is really not good. So I don't know. I'll never take Tylenol before I go to bed.

Yeah, good to know. Oh, that's an interesting one. I haven't heard of that yet, but now I will make sure I don't. And my husband doesn't do Tylenol before bed.

Well, they reached out to me, actually, and they. Because they were like, they get, you know, notified, too. And I was like, they're like, have you been taking Tylenol? I'm like, yeah, I take it, you know, at nighttime. And they're like, yeah, it can cause hypoglycemia that, you know, and I don't think it's a, you know, use it in hospitalized patients a lot. And they're constantly getting checked. Hypoglycemic. But I never, you know, sat there and just gave repetitive doses of Tylenol to people. So. And you never know what combination of factors, you know, in my diet at that point. You know, now I'm mostly like a low soul for non there, non gluten, you know, high protein, you know, diet person. And so it's much different now. I probably constantly ketotic. So really this is not as. Wouldn't even make as big of a difference now. Well, in terms of, you know, things you could pass on, what do you think are maybe some key things you could pass on to folks, to listenings and maybe help them, you know, in their process of, you know, understanding breast implant illness and maybe determining, you know, next steps for themselves.

Yeah, research, look it up, Figure out what your personal beliefs and thoughts are on it. You're gonna get people that think you're crazy, but you gotta do what's right for you and for your body. I feel like a lot of people that are going to get explantation have like met their limit. Like they are at a point where it's like I just want these out because I want to feel better. And if this is one part of making me feel better, then I will do it. So if that's you, then I think that's a great thing. But I think going in really having researched a lot and kind of understanding why this implant illness is happening, like for me personally it was confusing until I talked to you and my pre op where I was like, okay, well I did great for 10 years with my implants. I had no problems with them. It wasn't until year 10, after I had this C section surgery that I started feeling differently and wasn't able to lose any sort of weight despite changing nothing. And so when you told me, you know, it could be this traumatic event, it could be, you know, this one instance that causes almost this reaction, almost like an autoimmune reaction in your body where your body's like, okay, we're fighting because we've had this insult to your skin, your muscle, your fascia from surgery, major surgery. But then also we have this, that is your body is trying to fight off to this breast implant. So I was like, okay, well that makes sense. I, I'm going to go with that. And then I think just researching and knowing more and more about breast implants in general and what is in them and how they can affect you is going to help you make that decision, make sure your partner is on board. I think that, I mean you could probably talk to that more than me. My husband was so supportive and that Made a world of difference. He would have done anything to help me feel better, look better. And not that he wanted me to look better, but he knew that I was so concerned about just not feeling confident. And that's a big thing. And in me personally, in my relationship with him is my confidence. So having that supportive partner, I think was huge. You could probably talk to that even more.

I think it's not talked about enough. I mean, we obviously have understood that it's a big psychosocial issue for our clients. And then we've had interactions with extremely supportive partners and spouses like yours. And then we've had of course, the polar opposites, those super unfortunate instances. So you obviously, if like in your instance or if was. My health is always paramount. You are key to like everything we do from a family perspective and taken care of. You know, I couldn't imagine my family without my wife. Just like your husband, I'm sure couldn't imagine yours without you. So it's just there should be no other, you know, focus outside of health and well being and supporting, you know, how to do that in the best possible way. So you know, we're always trying to find ways to improve and make this process, which is a complicated one. We're trying to always improve it and make it better. We're going to add something that I think will help both short term and down the road. It's going to be a program to improve neuroplasticity. So I think what is happening in some of the cases, and it may be a contributing factor in yours, not the only thing. But once you have that event in your mind, it creates this loop that puts you into more of a inflammatory state. And it's sometimes in that cycle, even you, as strong as you are, and as much as, you know, you couldn't break that cycle, so that event put you in that cycle and then you, you couldn't get out of it. And you know.

Exactly.

We have many people that after surgery still have trouble and then can't reset, can't, you know, from a neurologic standpoint, because I, I can and you know, I've worked hard on the biologic parts of the program. Social parts and psychological parts are an evolution always because they're the hardest things, you know, for us to, to help with. Because when you go home, if you have a really supportive loved one, family member or spouse, well, that's huge. Some people don't, they're alone and then they have friends or family or some people don't have much support at all. So, you know, I have people come from all over the world now, so it's not the same for every person. And it has to be a collaborative effort whenever it can be because that's typically the case, you know, that we see that's going to like yours. Your turnaround's great and fast, but I always feel like, you know, this is not a sprint. You can't take the, you know, elevator in this instance most of the time. Yours is a, is a great situation where all things, once they turned around, they really obviously turned around collectively and you feel much, much better, which is great. I love to hear that. It's double edged sword. So I have patients, you know, that have your turnaround and then I have patients who don't and they wonder why they don't have alleys turn around. So it's okay.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I feel well. And that's kind of how I went in with the mindset being like, it might not work for me, but regardless, I know I need them out. So I think too you asked like in prep for an explanation. I think having that mindset, knowing that you're doing good in your body just to get them out is like the biggest thing. And then whatever happens along with that is, is the cherry on top. And that's kind of how I viewed it. But I will say too, I found somewhere in my hometown near Cincinnati, Ohio, that's where I, where I live, that had a Balancer Pro. So I was also able to kind of continue on with a lot of the modalities that the healing modalities that we used in your office. So I think that too, because I mean, like you said it before you could see, I forget what not machine, but what modality you use that you can literally see a difference after one treatment. But I would feel like that after the Balancer Pro every single time because that's for. It's a compression device used for inflammation and getting the lymph drainage going. And literally as soon as I was out of that Balancer Pro, I'm like, oh, I've got to, I got to go to the bathroom. I got to pee so bad. And it's like it was just. And I would go look in the mirror, I would take pictures and it'd be like before my breasts would be inflamed and you know, still holding some water retention. And then I'd take a picture after and they would shrink. I mean it was just amazing. So I think that part of it too really helped me a lot. In my recovery, I'm still doing that once a week right now just because I've. I've loved it. So I'm like, I don't know if I ever want to give that one up. But also, too, I'm sure a lot of women have that mindset going in, and not necessarily in vain. I mean, we all got implants for one mostly one reason, and it was to. To, you know, make ourselves look better, feel better. And so I think that's a big concern with a lot of women that I've talked to on social media. Just to have, you know, messaged me, asking me about my process is that, oh, if I get my implants out, I'll have nothing left. And I know you do the fat transfers. I personally didn't do a fat transfer. My mentality honestly, was, I want to be as small as possible now. Like, I just want everything gone. I want them all out. So this, I think I'm opposite of most women going in where I was like, make my boobs as small as possible. Like, get them out. I don't want it. But I had a friend who also did her explant the week after, and we got to see each other in your office, which was a fun surprise. And she said a lot about, wow, I have nothing left. And so it's nice to have that option of a fat transfer now for those women who feel that way.

Yeah, it is. You know, obviously for us, we're seeing lots of different patients in stages of life and experience, and there's no, you know, that's not a cookie cutter process. Everybody's going to be different, have different desires and expectations, and start at different points. So I think, you know, that's actually where we like to, you know, meet people, meet them on their terms. What is their situation and how can, you know, we help them? And I want to thank Allie for joining me and that she helps people through her social media following. So alijanzen on Instagram is a way to find her. And she helps women with hormone health and weight loss. And so thank you for joining me, Ali. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you so much. Thanks for all you do.