https://www.listennotes.com/e/b68a8693aea747efb564784a8d407807

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. My special guest today is Dr. Laura Miles. After her own health journey, Dr. Laura Miles explored functional medicine. This inspired her transition from board certified ophthalmologist to board certified anti agent and functional medicine practitioner over 18 years ago. Her practice is structured to help discover the underlying causal conditions and explore all treatment options using lifestyle changes, targeted supplements and medications when needed. By understanding the pathways of disease, target specific recommendations have the potential to heal, not just treat symptoms. Welcome to the show Dr. Miles. Well everybody, I have Dr. Laura Miles and I'll just give a brief background of how I found out about Dr. Miles. It was sent to me in feed on YouTube that she had done a TedX talk. She actually tells me it was done in 20 but ultimately got put out in 22 just to some issues about the topic. So she brought up so many amazing points in this and we're going to discuss her TEDx talk and her experience. So welcome to the show Dr. Miles.

Thank you. Thank you so much for reaching out to me. I'm looking forward to this.

I think it's awesome because many of the things that we've been working on in our clinic you were discussing several years ago and I love to your point that all the zebras get put into the literature as case reports or little bitty small snippets of cases and you and I discussed offline how difficult it is to publish if you're a solo practitioner or in private practice like I am. We published a paper of almost 700700 cases looking at just our experience with PCR testing of exploit assessments. So to point it is challenging. It took me quite a while to get that over the line and a lot of help to do it. And I worked with MicroGenDX as we discussed the company I've used since 2019 for PCR testing. But please like tell us your story of how this became such a passion project for you.

Well, so it started with a couple of different things. I had my own story. I'd had Breast Cancer Now, 15 years ago, had implants, didn't think anything of it. And then about seven years later, started having these weird rashes, wasn't feeling very good. My thyroid was doing some weird stuff. And you go the usual route. You go to the dermatologist, you know, you do your thyroid stuff. And, you know, since I was a physician, I did a lot of that myself, but I still went to the other physicians and they're like, we don't know what this is. And then we discovered that one of my implants had ruptured. And I was busy, so I thought, okay, I'm just going to replace that one. That's it. And then go on my way. So I did that and the rashes disappeared. I went, oh, well, I guess that was connected.

What was the interval between placement and rupture? Do you remember the timing of it?

About seven years.

About seven years under the 10 that we kind of dogmatically talk.

Okay, yeah. But in the research and the studies, they're starting to show a lot of the issues with implants will start around year seven. That's when the highest risk for the anaplasmic lymphoma and some of the other issues that go along with the implants. That seems to be kind of like a magic year of things. Seven to 10 years is their window. So then three months later, the other side that I had not replaced suddenly just bloomed up, but got a seroma, which means fluid around the breast, and they tapped it. So they removed the fluid. It was bloody fluid. And we were pretty sure it's like, oh, gosh, I have anaplastic lymphoma. Because bloody fluid usually means cancer and it wasn't. But I knew right then that I was really reacting to the implants. So I had a special procedure and had them completely removed. And at that point, they discovered silicone migration on both sides into the lymph nodes in my chest. And it was very interesting because I didn't realize I wasn't feeling great. I just thought, I'm busy. You just kind of don't think about it. I'm a little tired, but no big deal is because I work hard. And I went through a 12 hour surgery and I woke up the next day going, wow, I can't believe how good I feel now. That's not everyone's story. Yeah, I had the sgap. So yeah, it was a big, big surgery. So down in New Orleans.

So Bob Allen did it.

No, Delacroix.

Delacroix did it. Okay. So basically I was doing this procedure because I did micro for many, many years, doing deep labs and gap flaps. And my first experience with this was with cancer patients before I actually knew what was going on with the patient. So you would have came to me just like you went to Delacroix and said, hey, I'm having these symptoms. And both he and I would do the same thing. Like, well, if we take all of this material out and do your own tissue reconstruction, we're pretty comfortable that all of those symptoms are going to resolve. Because when you replace a foreign object with, like, tissue, genetically compatible material, and revascularize it, provided all of that is successful, which in his hands and mine were usually above 95% successful. In those situations, all things being equal, everything resolves.

Yeah, it really was remarkable. But so then, you know, you kind of like, well, okay, that was one and done. And then a few months later, I had a patient come in, and she hadn't had cancer, she just had implants. She had implants removed two and a half years before she came to me, and she was like, I'm convinced. I'm still having issues. So it's like, okay. So we did the usual workup, and my usual workups are really quite in depth anyway, and I just didn't find anything. So that's when I sat down and I created that little algorithm of what are all the potential areas you could have problem with an implant? Because I. I believed her. She was very, very intelligent. And she's like, I know it's my implant. She was having all these weird burning sensations. And I think I even mentioned this in the TED talk. And she was super fatigued, couldn't even get out of bed some days. And so I just started systematically going through checklists. And at the time, there was a lab test that we could do. It's no longer available, which is really a shame. But it showed if there was tin in the blood. And when I got a results back.

That'S what you showed. Talking.

There was 10 in the blood. And that test was a micro test, so they could actually detect minute amounts, but it was actually quite elevated. And I thought, well, wow, when I did all the research on heavy metals, there was tons of heavy metals in the implants, but I didn't see the tin. So I had to go back to the literature and go, where was tiny? Well, they use 10 to cure the implants. And so out of lack of anything else to try, I said I don't even know if we can chelate tin out, but we're going to try. And so I started her on a chelation protocol. It wasn't very strong because she was so reactive to everything. And within six weeks she was already 60% better. And within three months she was fine and up and out, no more burning. And it was impressive. So I was like, okay, so clearly some people continue to have those issues even after the implant's removed. I think majority of the people who are having symptoms and having issues, like you said, when they get them out, they feel instantly better. But there's a certain subset of people that don't. And those are the people that I've been working with for 18 years and not even really understanding what else was going on until I really put a framework with it of okay, let's go and look for all these different kind of capacity of things and then start individually treating those. And that's when we start seeing some people turn around. But it doesn't seem, it's not easy. It's not like one thing, especially if it's kicked up an autoimmune process or something like that, because those just don't go away just because you remove the implant.

I want everybody to listen to Dr. Miles and if you can go to her TEDx talk. And she's got this Pentagon that lists infection, heavy metals sensitivity, autoimmune and genetics in the Pentagon. And to her point, and what we focused on in my clinic and others have focused on, in particular Dr. Mathun Sina out of Indian University Medical center in Indianapolis where actually I trained many, many years ago, now has looked at the combination of biofilm, which is what we showed in our study, that 29% basically have on explant biofilm. Now when I was in training, PCR testing was not part of any clinical process we ever did. And so we would do swabs, which were the traditional method of acquiring a specimen. So you would take a swab or send a piece of tissue for quantitative culture. Now depending on where you worked and how you were taught, that would then go to hospital based lab and then they would run it. But if it didn't reach a threshold of 10 to the 6th, so 100,000 colony forming units per high power field under a microscope, that was not considered. Now I will say I think that's from the 50s, that's a desperately bad way to view an infection. So I haven't started the beating the drum about like we should revisit how we think about and characterize an infection, given that standard, because as well you know this as well as I do and you talk about it, everybody's going to react differently to that level. So using that as a standard across 335 or 350 million people in the United States makes zero sense. It's a bar too high. And in this patient population, who already to Dr. Miles Pentagon will go back and she mentioned genetics. So I've been doing genetic testing on all my clients, really since 2021. If you want to learn more about yourself, this is the way to do it. And now I won't take care of patients who don't follow my program because, number one, I know what it's going to show. Within a certain degree, you're going to have impairment in certain genes as it relates to your vitamin D metabolism, your methylation pathways, your antioxidant pathways, and your glutathione utilization. So for everybody listening, those are four very important things that your body uses to support immunity. And then all of my clients, obviously are genetically female, and estrogen metabolism is a huge issue in this patient population. So if you have or prone to estrogen toxicity and you have limitations in all the things I mentioned previously, genetically, as it pertains to immunity, you are the avatar for this problem.

And they're also the detoxification pathways, too. So they're responsible for getting those out. So you're exactly right. I don't think people understand how unique what you're doing is. And for example, most of the surgeons, when they remove an implant, they're not testing them. They go, oh, they look fine. And they just get rid of them. That's it. They don't test them. They don't even swab them.

Just like you went to Delacroix. I mean, he was trained to do reconstructive surgery, as I was. And it would have been heresy for me to ever take out a cancer patient's implant and capsule, not send it. So there's no chance I'll ever. Not in the capsule. My sister died of breast cancer this past year, in 2024, after a very long battle. And had the patient I mentioned in 2016 was a cancer patient. And I didn't finish the story. So I explained it to somebody in 2016 who just wanted to go flat, which is absolutely fine. It's every patient's prerogative to do whatever that aligns with them. She no longer wanted imprints. So I Said, that's fine. We did our workup. And honestly, in 2016, she needed to be monitored overnight. So I did it at hospital and explained at her, did what I normally would do back in 2016, which was swabs and send the capsule. So I did all that. And now for everybody listening, you send caps on a cancer patient and the scar, because that's the most likely place you're going to have cancer. Again, send the scar. Yeah. And then we sent swabs because I. That's. I was doing. I mean, that was standard of care to me.

How much protocol?

Yeah, well, that was not protocol.

That was exceptional protocol.

She had an E. Coli infection. And so for everybody listening, the E. Coli is found in the gut and found in the urinary. That's not supposed to be found around implants. And so going back, I was like, how did I miss this? I had taken care of thousands of patients over my career, which started in 04 with plastic surgery. And I was like, how on earth did I miss this? And I went back through all the labs and studies, and I was like, I don't know how I missed this. Her only symptom, she can complain to fatigue, which, I mean, honestly, in my training and people have gotten chemotherapy and radiation therapy, a bone marrow suppression. They. I mean, that was kind of universal, that they had problems with fatigue. So I didn't think anything about that. And then she came back with an E. Coli infection that I then treated, you know, with an oral antibiotic as it was sensitive. And within, you know, the next week or two after treatment, and she had an explant, of course, well, all of her fatigue went away. And so this was a patient who had been living with an implant infection that was undiagnosed because there were no physical signs and symptoms. And for everybody listening, I think this is like the sinequinone of this, if you want to say it that way. If everybody showed up, like, if Dr. Miles showed up with a red swollen breast reconstruction, everybody would know exactly what was wrong, and they would know what to do about it. But because the presentation is not such that there are physical manifestations or elevated laboratory cell counts, white blood cell counts, or sed rates, or something that just clues everybody into exactly what's going on. It's very much like the ostrich approach. Put your head in the sand and ignore it because it doesn't make any sense. That's how patients come to me and tell me, like, people just don't know what to do with them. They just kind of throw their hands up, and that's it. And so you know this. Well, yeah, this patient put me on this Facebook group, like I told you, and then I just had people start showing up. And because of that experience and my experience of cancer, reconstruction for, you know, now over. You know, I stopped in 2019. Like I told you. It was, like, unfathomable to me that I could miss somebody with an implant infection. So I then I was like, well, how many people actually have an underlying undiagnosed implant infection? And so, you know, basically, now I can tell you it's 29%. I did all that work and published that data now. So that's my feeling. And you're gonna play hell to get high. So I consider that to be the number. And then people are like, well, how do you get that? Is it at the time of implantation? Well, no, that's typically the ways to get a contaminant on a device, whether it's hip, knee, breast, dental, neurologic, cardiac, are only three ways, basically. So the device can be contaminated by the staff member giving it to the surgeon. That's one way. That's super low. Two, the surgeon can contaminate it on placement into the body. That's super low as well. Like, all sorts of precautions are taken for hip, knee, breast, dental, all these things. The third most and by far the most common way is always bloodborne. So somebody gets an infection, a urinary tract infection. They get translocation from the gut. They get a uri upper respiratory tract infection, Whatever route that bacteria can get into the bloodstream is how. Devices. Yes. So I'm glad you brought that up. So when I was. I'm old now, right? I mean, I'm gonna be 56 in August. So when I trained, we still had mechanical heart valves, and you could hear. Could listen to a chest and go, oh, you can hear it ting, ting, ting. And so if you didn't treat that patient with antibiotic therapy prior to a teeth cleaning, you know what they got? They got endocarditis.

Yes.

So in cardiac surgery, everybody knew that you had to treat the patient before a colonoscopy, a teeth cleaning with antibiotics. Like, this is not new. This is not revolutionary, what we're talking about. How many people do you think care for their breast cancer patients or their cosmetic augmentation patients that way? I always did because I was petrified that somebody would get an infection from a colonoscopy or a teeth bleed.

I was told my surgeon may had me do it too. But that's not the norm.

No.

Although say you just do it for two years and you don't have to do it anymore, which is total bullshit.

That's so stupid. Like your wrist goes down after two years. How's that magically happen?

Yeah, they're like, well, the capsule's so strong. I was like, no.

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Especially if the women. I mean, regardless if they have cancer or not, and they're just wanting to do an elective, I will actually advise my patients. I really don't recommend this. And I had somebody who literally just went ahead and did it, and six weeks later, she says, I'm hurting all over. Yeah, that was not her symptom with her autoimmune condition. And I was like, this is not going anywhere good. So just so you know, I really think it's probably the implants because it's very cause and effect on her. It's not always that easy. You know, it's not always that easy, so. And one of the things we're mentioning about how that created that oxidative problem, we. There was a study. It was in, like, the 1990s. It showed the minute you put the implant in, they could actually measure, like, heavy metal migration into the surrounding tissue and within, you know, just a matter of. Of time. It wasn't like five years down the road. It was almost immediate. So the silicone capsules, you know, oh, it's saline. Well, it still has a silicone capsule.

Right.

That stuff still goes through. It's not. I loved your analogy. It's like, it's not impervious to a nuclear war, so it still leeches out. So you can have problems not only with the bacteria you can have. There are people who are sensitive to metals, and that can be an issue, too. And there's just so many ways you can react. And you're right. There's not a test. There's not a test. I can't say, oh, this is exactly why you're having a problem. I can have my suspicions, and we can have cause and effect after, oh, hey, you move the implants, you're better. Hallelujah. But it's one of those things. Just tell me it's. Implants can't.

Well, yeah, and nobody wants to. As we talked offline a little bit, everybody listening, nobody wants to come to Austin and visit me to have an explant surgery. And I don't advise anybody to have an explant surgery. So whether it's Dr. Miles or any patient who ever calls and wants to see us, you're not going to get from me, come do this, because I know this is going to solve all your problems. That's not. I'm never going to say that because that is not a such a complicated issue. Right. So whether it's for cancer, which people just seek me out now because of my experience in the past, and they want some advice and then try to lay out exactly like we have in the discussion, like what I consider to be the points of emphasis. And then just to better make an informed decision, people, you know, ask me for advice, and that's absolutely fine. It's a big issue to go and have, you know, whether it's your procedure where you had an autologous reconstruction after cancer therapy, which I recommend for patients. I don't do anymore. A little bit older, a little too many micro cases for my neck at this point in life. So I've just toned it down to doing explant surgery. We do, you know, eight to 10 of those a week now. But those are really for cosmetic patients. Very few cancer patients want to go flat. And I can do that with a fat transfer and things like that. So the couple things that you said, like, it's not one thing. You mentioned that in your talk. And I tell patients the same, this is not a rainbows and unicorns type thing after surgery, so you're gonna wake up. And then, you know, I discourage my patients from posting things like, they immediately feel better and all these different things, because that's not reality for every single person, because it's more complex. The heavy mental question, I get that all the time. And I have a patient, Lauren Bostic, who had me on her podcast, and her inside joke with me was she said, I am melting my implants. I think I melted my implants because she had this barrel sauna at home, and her husband Michael said she would get in the sauna at 212 degrees for an hour at a time multiple times a week. And she goes, I think I melted my implants because when I got her tox test, she's the only person in the history of my thousands of patients with this who had literally every heavy metal listed on the tox test in the 95th percentile. And, Dr. Miles, I've only printed one tox test off in my entire career to give to a patient, and it was hers because I was like, I've never had one of these, and you need to look at this. And she had some other things that were off that she needed to address at her home. And on her podcast, we said, yeah, you're probably melting your implants. And that got me accused of an ethics violation on all sorts of things. Crazy stuff. So, really, like you said, the. The process is leaching. So basically, she was heating the device, and it was leaching the chemicals that were in the carrying process in the shell out into her system. And it was giving her probably acute Herxenheimer reactions every single time she did it. And whether it was 10. I could pull up her test results, but they were all abnormal. I mean, her levels were just crazy. And then I did her explant surgery, which I have to say, all things being equal, it was one of the more straightforward. Took everything out intact. I described the patients. I try to take everything out intact, like an undisturbed Easter egg or a Faberge egg. You're just trying not to crack things open, whether it's cancer or contamination from biofilm, whatever. I don't really Want to spread that like no surgeon should want to spread that into the patients breast pocket. And I took it out. It all went like per. You couldn't have had like a better operation for a patient. And she had more than enough tissue to reshape and lift and great. So she then felt great, right? Because like your patient who you change the 10 levels on, you take heavy metals out of someone's system, abruptly, it changes a lot. And then she's very capable to detox. And in her repeat tox test, like several months later, after no protocols, it's completely normal. So there was no intervention other than surgery. We didn't do chelation therapy, we didn't do anything for her. She actually spent the summer in Italy enjoying herself like he would like. So to your point, like those things can happen and no one knows. According to the studies that have been published, no one's ever looked at heating humans with those devices in place, right?

So I always have a concern of, you know, the breast cancer people who have radiation with the implants in. I was like, oh, that just doesn't sound like a good idea. And then, you know, your point about how the testing will miss certain things. The heavy metal testing is not good enough in the majority of cases with breast implants, because they are micro amounts, it doesn't mean you won't react to a micro amount. So hers was exceptional because her levels were high. I've never seen them that high. And in fact I had to really change. And if somebody's already had the implants out, I'll do the heavy metals testing. But I have a very low expectation I'll find anything. And if I do, it's usually not because of the implants, because the implants, they are microdose amounts. But that doesn't mean people won't react to them. So it's a lesson of patience and just trying to just check boxes type of thing.

That's what I try to encourage patients to understand. And it's. Unfortunately, it's misleading due to the presentation in different groups, right? They say, go have this done and everything will be fine. But if you read the comments about your talk, you'll see in the comments several people as you read them, who don't detoxify well and had no support afterwards. So to your point, there's still dealing with several things because they don't detoxify well, or maybe they still haven't made the habitual changes that you need to help yourself through not eating processed things or be more careful about what you Drink your fluids out of like ceramic or stainless versus plastic. Like I know I used to, you know, have single use plastic water bottles and not the thing about it, but I don't ever do that now for consumer phthalates. I don't even. I'm crazy now. Like I'm happy to use my phone to pay for something, but I don't want a receipt ever. Because receipt paper can also be an issue. Yeah, I mean if you start making the little changes, eventually over time they become more impactful. And so I think I try to just explain that to everybody. I start with like sleep. If you don't sleep well, I got no chance of helping you. So I try to make people really concentrate on that in the beginning to get them sleeping better, trying to eat better, trying to drink proper, not over hydrate, try to get enough obviously fluids in at the right time so they're not waking up in the nighttime to go to the bathroom. And I've become this real air quality person because I'm in Austin and Austin has a lot of trouble with mold and I'm very sensitive to mold. I really concentrate on people getting better filtration for their homes or their work because as well as I do, many times they get exposed in those two places because that's where they spend the most time.

It's all additive and I think working. And that was part of the. In my talk I even mentioned that you have to look at everything else and work on everything else. It's not just about the implants themselves, it's about the whole body and how it's affecting things.

I mean that's. To your point. I think we have 30 people on our team now for just me. And so I have my group that takes care of the patients post explant and well pre and post explant for detox. So depending on when someone enters the system and what they want to have done, we get everything done with our methodology and get them started, benchmark them to see to the best of our ability where they are, you know, genetically. What's their toxin exposure, what's their gut health? As you would expect, a lot of people with gut health trouble, a lot of food sensitivity issues, hormone imbalances. Try to get inflammation index score on a blood spot analysis currently because there's no great. I haven't found like a, or I haven't settled on a specific score or test for inflammation because highly sensitive CRP is not a good one for this patient population and neither is a sed rate. Yeah, we've looked at all that over time. So when people talk about it, I'm like, no, looked at, that doesn't work. So, yeah, it's not.

It's normal.

Yeah. So that's just how we benchmark everybody. And then I tell them, like to look at it in 90 day intervals, either with adjustments in their diet and, you know, before or after explant, they can look at their tox tests. Like when people come back to me and they're not doing well, I just go back to their genetics and their tox tests. I'm like, okay, well, if there is an abnormal level, like a glyphosate level or I have had a bunch of people with really high atrazine levels who lived on golf courses. And atrazine is extremely neurotoxic. So they may have nerve pain, they just may take longer to heal. They just still have fatigue, all sorts of problems. And when someone comes in failing traditional therapies for whatever reason, and they're our patient, whether it's, we had somebody come in with shingles and the derm, couldn't treat them, they were doing the right things, you know, giving them the appropriate therapies, and they just weren't working. So they finally came back to us and I looked at their tox tests and they had this huge, you know, glyphosate load. And I was like, well, yeah, this is a neurotoxin and it's going to inhibit DNA repair. So that it's probably going to take supplementing your methylation pathway and trying to do some level of detox to get this out of your system in order for your body to actually heal itself. Because if you get things in enough balance, your body will heal itself. Right.

This can be hard to pull out.

I was trying to think. I had another question for you regarding. Do people seek you out now to try to help them through either before or after explant surgery?

So, yes. Now, what's interesting, a lot of people will come in with implants not even thinking the implants could be the problem. And I'm not a implant hater. I don't start with saying, oh, this is your implants. I've never started there. I start with all the things you've listed. Do they have food sensitivities? What their gut doing, how are they processing things? Are they metabolically okay, you know, do they have insulin resistance? We start there. And then if they're not getting better, and then we've looked at the mold and the heavy metals and all that stuff, Then we might go, oh, okay, it may be the implants. So I have that subset of people. I have people who I think it's my implants, basically, they come and say, prove me wrong. And so because. And I don't blame them. You spend a lot of good money for that. You like how they look and you know, nobody wants to go, oh, here, get them out. So I'm not a knee jerk person of going, oh, get them out quickly. So I have a process just like you do, because all of that has to be addressed regardless. And then they decide after they've been doing it for several months, it's like, okay, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and get them out or not. And then I have people who had them removed years ago. They feel like their illness was related to the implants, but they're not improving. And so they'll come in and saying, you know, I really think I had breast implant illness. But they don't have the implants. So technically it's not still breast implant illness. It's more like a continued process of things. And then we try to put them back together and figure out, okay, why are they not improving? What is going on? And I have numerous people in that category. It's kind of like putting the pieces of the puzzle together after the puzzle was already taken apart.

Are you finding that second group now? Since there's this kind of. I don't think it's controversial, but there is this controversy over doing capsulectomy. Are you finding people who've now just had implant removal without capsulectomy and a growing number of people who remain symptomatic? Because I already showed that would be a problem.

Yes, and you're right, that is a controversy. And it's an active controversy. It's like, oh, well, my surgeon says that's not necessary. Well, maybe if you're having zero symptoms. Okay, but the people are having symptoms. You know, the studies are showing that capsule, just like you said, it's not impervious. I mean, it is leached things. And if there's any chance there's something in that capsule, it needs to come out. And I do think that out of this subset, and I haven't done a study to actually prove this, this would be interesting to go back and try to kind of tease this out. But the women who have had the implants removed with the capsule intact, I do think they seem to be slower. It seems to be harder to kind of get them where they need to be. And that's not the case. In every single person. And I've had people who've had the capsule removed and they're still having issues. So I think it can go both ways. But I really advise, especially if I'm working with somebody on the front end, that if they're having problems of anything, and this is interesting because people will go, well, I have lupus, you know, but I'm not having a problem. Well, but you have an autoimmune condition. So if you have an autoimmune condition, then that's kind of a problem and you need to go ahead and go the extra step and make sure that capsule is removed to put yourself in the absolute best possible light so that way you can move forward. And otherwise you're always going to be second guessing and wondering what would be happening if I hadn't removed that capsule.

Yeah. So everybody listening. The controversy kind of lies in is it a necessity to take all the capsular material out? And so in my experience, which is very large now, I've had a number of breast cancers that I've found obviously secondarily on path, and I have one lymphoma. And then we've published a series of 700 specimens that show 29% have bacterial contaminant. So I would have missed all of those had I not sent anything had I just taken out a device. So I would have missed six breast cancers of lymphoma. And 700 or whatever that is, I've done several thousand explants. So 29% of those would have remained with a bacterial contaminant and or infection, depending on how we're going to qualify that in the patient, because every patient's going to react differently to that, and that's why you get the variability. And I have to say, there was a paper published that said in 37 patients, when they took out the implant, 37, mind you, they showed no changes in symptomology. So whether you had a capsulectomy or didn't have a capsulectomy in 37 patients, 37, everybody listening. So just for everybody listening, when you talk about 37 people, you shouldn't actually publish that paper. That should not be accepted as anything in the scientific literature other than a very, very. It's not even a pilot study. I consider anything under 50 to be very concerning. And think of it, 2.2 million implants are placed annually worldwide. You can't draw a conclusion off of 37 patients. Statistical Error in that is incredibly high because the sample, the number of patients being looked at is very small. And that is the thing that baffles me when I hear people talk about it and say that with certainty, that's, oh my gosh, we don't have to take out the capsule, Dr. Whitfield. That so and so said it. I'm like, are you quoting this paper that had 37 patients in it? You know, I actually felt uncomfortable publishing my paper with under a thousand patients in it. And it has a thousand samples, so it has 700 in it, which I feel very comfortable. Was the largest series in the world to date regarding this patient population. People had published, honestly, Dr. Miles, they had published a paper that said the biofilm rate was 48%. And I knew that was wrong because I knew my audit going on in my, you know, patient population. So I had to publish a paper to at least clarify that because that is embarrassing. If one out of two patients essentially had an infection, you shouldn't be doing an implant. So what I published to like just let the world know it's only 29%. And that's forensic data. I can't tell you up front obviously, but that is, I stand by that. That's third party data. Through MicroGen DX. It's. I submitted the specimens, they did the analysis for everybody listening and their names are on the paper. I did not write the statistical analysis for that paper. That was done by microgendx who has no dog in the fight. They are simply a laboratory analysis company that helped analyze the specimen. So that I have no problem putting that out there. But I think when you put a sample out that says 37 patients had no effects, that makes no sense to me. Why, why are you even doing that?

Well, that didn't sound very high. 29% is significant. I mean, if you put it into like, okay, if you have cancer and it's like, okay, you're going to do this treatment and you have 29% cure rate, that's something you're going to do. So 29 is, is an attention grabber of okay, why wouldn't you, why wouldn't you proceed? You're already there, do it the right way, move on.

Yeah, if it was your loved one, just like my sister passed away with cancer, one person is too many. So you can't sit on any loft peak and talk to me like you know what you're talking about. If you say that 48% is acceptable, because I know that's not correct and I know the real number, which is now, you know, published and it's 29%, even that to your Point that is a very high number. That means basically a third of the cases done are going to have a problem. How that problem then manifests itself as a function of how they behave, you know, how they sleep, how they eat, how they drink, the quality of their air. And then if you didn't pick your parents, right, you got a lot of problems.

I think one of the things that's important for people to realize, too, is that there's not a test your doctor can do to tell you you have that bacterial infection in that capsule. Because that's like the next question. It's like, well, why didn't it show up in my blood? Well, it's not going to, because it's not a systemic thing that you can actually measure. Maybe we're missing it because of our guidelines of, okay, if it's less than this, it's not really an infection. There's a whole bunch of theories behind that. So. But there's not a single test at all that will reveal, hey, you're having a problem with a bacteria in your implant or in your capsule. So it just has to be.

I give this talk and I say, the most important thing you have to do for a patient in this situation is listen to what they're telling you. Because if you listen, they'll tell you exactly what is wrong. You have to keep and keep asking them questions, and sometimes it won't be obvious to them. But if you do this long enough with enough clients, you will understand the patterns of poor detoxification and the exposures, and then it will make a bit more sense to the practitioners. Because I don't envy any practitioner sitting across from a patient trying to understand this problem. It's not easy to understand. I mean, there are a host of things that give people chronic inflammation. And I always say the same thing. Breast implant illness is simply chronic inflammation of which a breast implant is playing a role. It's not necessarily the only component of that problem, but it is playing a role. Well, this has been awesome. I was going to ask you. You have so many great comments on your YouTube talk. I was going to ask your permission to go in there and just answer some of them with what we now know. Because some of the questions now make a little bit more sense with the current scientific evidence that's been published in the past couple of years. Not just my paper, but Dr. Cena's paper is the paper that makes to me the connection of the cause and effect of the interaction between the breast tissue and the bacterial contamination. If they have it and why we should be testing samples because you will not know that if you don't ever test a sample.

Yeah, no, I would welcome that.

That'd be awesome. Well, thanks for hopping on the show today. I really appreciate having you and tell everybody where they can find you so that more people can learn and get help from you.

Well, I'm Laura Miles and I have a website Laura Miles MD Like Medical Doctor I'm in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and if you have any problems, any questions, come see me.

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 Doctorrobs Solutions myshopify.com thank you for listening and we'll be back with another episode soon. Remember, you're not alone in this journey and together we can overcome breast implant illness. Take care.