Is Breast Implant Illness Wrecking Your Health? Kasey Dixon Shares all with Dr. Robert Whitfield

Everyone, welcome to the show. Today we have Kasey Dixon, one of our clients. And Casey has been phenomenal at sharing her story on her platform on Instagram. And I brought her on because she's came back and visited a few times. And we've had some funny time in the office discussing some of her toxicity results, which we can talk about later. But she's going to share her story about what led to her getting an augmentation. And then subsequently down the road, we'll talk about her explant journey. Welcome.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for coming on. So tell us. It was offline. We were just talking about a patient who told me that Barbie led her to get implants. And I was a little shocked by that, but okay. And you said culturally, obviously we're influenced a great deal. Was that part of the reason you got an augmentation?

I think I was surrounded by it by parents, step parents that had had augmentation. So it wasn't odd in my house to think about having a breast augmentation. And for me, I just did it for volume. It's not like I wanted big breasts. I just wanted a little something. And I was in my 20s and so that's when I decided to get an augmentation. Not even thinking about would this affect my health at all. That was never a conversation. Also, the conversation was never had that I needed to replace them every 10, 15 years, whatever the recommendation was at the time. So I kind of went into it thinking not a big deal at all.

So from the people you are around, from an adult perspective, many of the women had augmentations already and it was just like pretty standard spine. And then so like we were talking about offline, about people getting impressions, body image very young and or not maturing through puberty and then saying, hey, I'm going to have this done. I always tell everybody, like I do not decide to explant anybody. Everybody who shows up to my office in Austin has made their decision. I'm just simply explaining, you know, what are the, you know, options, trying to give the best information regarding the procedures. And then obviously people decide what they can do, what they want to have done. And certainly I've said like once a 17 or 18 or 19 year old mind decides they're going to have breast augmentation, nobody's going to really convince them that that's a bad idea.

Yeah. And that was my case. There was no pushback from anybody. It was just, yeah, like you said, just normalized in my surrounding.

And did they Ever mention things like fat transfer? Like when you went to the plastic surgeons, did they talk about other options regarding augmentation?

No, there were no other options on the table, I should say. And I don't even know if, like my surgeon at the time, if she was even doing fat transfers, because this was 20 years ago and you're probably.

Very lean at that point from a body fat perspective, which is always the case when we have these discussions with patients. I think the youngest cancer patient I had was 24, which is obviously really difficult with breast cancer. And I remember they were so worried about her, they just wanted us to do her surgical care. And then she went to other treatments, chemotherapy, radiation therapy. And oddly enough, years later, when I was a plastic surgery resident in the same city, I did her breast reconstruction years later, not with an implant, but with another procedure. And very different conversations by that time. You know, she's many years older, but has experienced so many more things that nobod should have to experience when they're 24. That changes obviously, how we, how our perspective is very quickly when we have something like that going on. And at that point she had a. Had had a child, she was married. It was like a totally different person than the, the 24 year old I had met.

Yeah. And that's when I made my decision. Post kids, my mom had cancer, same thing. I was trying to be as healthy as I could, and I knew that they needed to come out.

And your initial augmentation, as we talked about before, was done in 2005. Saline under the muscle, and then you switched to a silicone augmentation, 2010. And what was the reasoning behind that?

So I was having an issue with my implant coming out of the pocket on my right hand side. And I had finished college, moved to California, and was in San Diego seeing a different surgeon. And he said that I can fix that. And then he wanted to swap out the implant at the time, and it didn't really fix it, but.

So, yeah, what Casey's referring to was a pretty common occurrence in reconstructive cases that we have because. So there's two decades of my work is just devoted to taking care of cancer patients and all the problems that come with taking care of breast reconstruction in cancer patients. So they get chemotherapy, so they don't heal as well. They may get radiation therapy, they may develop an infection while they're on chemotherapy. I mean, it just runs the gamut. So they have a lot more problems and then you get a lot more experience with malposition or what you're describing is it's shifting outward or downward. And there are certain techniques and many times you can, aesthetically, if you think of it like a picture, you can get it to stay still, but nobody stays still, so.

Right.

Yeah. Through movement, working out, activities of daily living, it's always going to be changing. And that's usually in your case, like, they may have got it fixed in the operating room, but it never gets strong enough to withstand just Casey's daily activities, basically. And if she's fit and active and doing more, I mean, it's easy for us to, if you will, design a pocket, but getting it to stay that way is sometimes a lot easier said than done. So that failed and you had the same problem again. Now you just had a silicon device?

Yes, I just lived with it, didn't really think much of it, honestly. And then I had my kids, and at this point I already knew I wanted to get them out, however pregnant I was breastfeeding, didn't have a problem with breastfeeding. I know that's kind of a myth, but I did not have any issues. And so I knew once I was done having kids, then I would go down the path of finding a surgeon and getting an explant.

So you had already decided for sure?

I had already decided, but it was just where I was at at the time of my life. I just kind of had to wait. I had some BII symptoms, but they weren't so debilitating where I felt like I could wait and I knew that I would eventually do it.

And so when you had the symptoms, maybe for the audience. Share like initial symptoms that you experienced so that everybody listening can understand. Like, they can creep up on you, I think, a little bit quickly. And they get assigned to you're tired because your mom or your little ones are stressing you out or you're not sleeping. And to be fair, obviously all those things will play a role in how each of us feels. But moms in particular, I feel like this is a very common thing. I get told, like, they start feeling fatigue or they start feeling unwell, and it's immediately signed to, you know, childbearing.

Right. And I feel like that is what I did in my brain. I was like, oh, this is postpartum. My hormones are tanked, I'm fatigued, I have brain fog. But then I started getting a lot of nerve problems up my neck and my back and everything I could do, like, it would not go away. I was getting in the ice, I was doing cold plunge, I was doing all the things. And I just felt like nothing was improving. And I had already talked to you around this time and I knew that we were doing surgery, but it was, you know, eight months out. And so it was just getting to the point of having my explant. And I knew that I would feel better, which I have. But I also think a lot of the BII symptoms I didn't even realize I had until I came to you and I had a conversation with you.

Yeah, I think it's challenging. So we should inventory them. I know I've done this on a lot of shows, I've guessed it on and shows that we've had, but there are so many symptoms and I never know which one's going to resonate with someone. So we can categorize some of them. And neurologic symptoms. You mentioned brain fog. So this is one of the first things that was said to me and I did not understand it. And so I think I don't give myself too much credit because that's just a stupid thing to do in my position. But I will always say that I'm very curious and want to know, like, what do you mean when you say brain fog?

I have that same question.

Yeah. So basically the patient said to me, I can't remember stuff. I can't remember my kids names. I can't remember, I left the groceries in the car. I can't find my keys. So for everybody listening, I just call that short term memory loss. Because as a, a surgeon and a physician, okay, I understand that that's short term memory loss. So. But brain fog, I said, what the hell is brain fog? And now, you know, I experience brain fog from time to time when I work too much or my kids drive me nuts and I can't remember stuff. So my kids are old now, they're 19 and 16. That goes by very quickly. But that gives you brain fog. Having teenagers and then other symptoms that are neurologic are like headache and you probably had neck pain a lot. And you're describing nerve pain in the.

Neck going up my head. That would then cause headaches. And I'm of my scalp. I am not a headache person either. Like, I don't. I never got headaches before. So that was kind of a red flag for me. Like, what is going on?

And that can be very concerning because people start thinking they have a stroke, they think they have a brain tumor. All the things, you know, that went.

Through my head, all of it.

I mean, that's what scares the crap out of people.

Yeah. And it started after my second baby, after my last child. And so I was thinking, oh, I have postpartum anxiety. I was just thinking it was all of this other stuff, but it was a physical manifestation of what was happening inside my body, my toxicity and my implants. And I have not had scalp pain and nerve pain since my implants are out.

So for everybody listening, so we think the, the way we understand the gut brain axis and we'll say immune system activation. So implants are definitely stimulating because they're foreign body. Hip, knee, breast, dental, they all can cause and do contribute to immune system activation. There is nothing that you can put into a human that's not going to cause some sort of reaction when it's not their own tissue. That's just the way the body works. It's being surveilled all the time. And then when you're immune system kicks up, sometimes it stays. It's like leaving the faucet on and flooding the house because you left the faucet on. So if you can't turn it off, which we know from research that's coming out now, that there are certain interactions between the breast tissue and if there's biofilm that contributes to it. So I think more and more evidence is showing up to both validate, you know, your experience and my patients experience where they have these symptoms. Instead of it being written off as being postpartum or having anxiety and, or depression and being offered an ssri, being offered something then because you can't sleep and your cortisol levels are high, being offered Valium or whatever the sleeping drug is, because nobody really wants to be drugged up. But I feel like all my patients either get offered steroids, an antidepressant or a sleeping pill or all the above.

Yes, I was offered. Was I offered anti anxiety medication for my doctor to solve it. And that's when I was like, no, not for me. Not to say that people don't need that, but it was not for me. And so that's why I started doing cold therapy. I started doing all these other things because I just wanted to figure out what was going on with me.

And did you do sauna or just cold?

I did sauna and then I had my consultation with you and you told me not to sauna. So once I had my consultation with you, which was almost a year ago, I didn't sauna for till a few weeks ago. I just started again. So almost nine months a year.

So it's interesting. So I've had different clients now. One using a Finish sauna in Austria. And Lauren Bostic, using her barrel sauna here in Austin, really cooked themselves. And so that everybody understands that thing can get up to 2:12,220 degrees Fahrenheit, and nobody understands what's happening at that temperature to an implant.

Right.

Doesn't really matter what anybody says. And so I have both the toxicity tests on those patients, and they both have a lot of heavy metals coming out of them. Now, you can interpret that a lot of ways, but based on my experience, especially with Lauren's test doing her explant, those people feel remarkably better. Very quickly and in full disclosure, like when people post, like, they, oh, everything's, you know, magical, because that just sets up some weird expectations. But in those patients, same thing for the lady from Austria. Same exact thing, man. That in the recovery room, she's like, I feel a lot better. I'm like, okay. And then she stayed here about three weeks in Austin anyway, and she was always like, man, I feel so much better, Dr. Whitfield. And I was like, okay. I always try to take that with a grain of salt because things can change, obviously. But when you go back and look at them from similarity standpoint, like, what's the common denominator? They had a lot of heavy metals, and then when you explant them and you're able to get everything out intact, oh, boy. Things change dramatically for them. And then, I mean, when you repeat the test and there are no heavy metals there, what conclusions can you draw other than that was a big contribution? So when we go back and tell Casey and other clients and prospects, like, don't sauna, because I don't know what it's going to do. And I do that for IR and barrel, because I don't know what going to 170 or going to 220 is going to do to anybody. I have no idea.

Right. I mean, when you told me it made complete sense and my husband Luke was like, agreed, yes. Let's just stay out of it because we have a finished sauna. So it's 200 plus degrees.

Oh, yes. Those invariably can cook you. And because Casey is super diligent about all of her testing with us, so I have to go back and look at her original one.

Yeah. I was actually looking at my genetic report again this morning because I was curious about my detox pathways, just genetically. And they're poor, so I feel like it makes more sense of why it's just taking longer and harder for me to detox.

It is, for sure. So Casey's Commenting. And her heavy metals on her report were not as high as the other two patients I mentioned. So. And that's the other thing. Like, you know, I took a lot of stick. I know you know this from, from saying that on Lauren's show. And I considered it just a, a patient safety issue. If you don't know what it's going to do, then you at least say, hey, this is potentially a concern. If you're not doing well and you are trying to detox, this may not be the best method of that for you. Because if the, the shell of an implant is degrading, meaning it's breaking down over time because it's aging, which of course, they all are aging, who knows how quickly that is going to leach chemicals out into your system. I don't know that. And nobody actually does know that. I'm probably the only person who walks on two feet that has even those points. If you will, to go back and reference and go, oh, wow. Yeah, I have seen that. So when you know, if there's one, there's more. It's just, I mean, come on, the earth is not flat.

Yeah, well, I don't think people are studying women with implants going into saunas either. So it's not like you can point to.

Right. Know that information ever. Yeah, nobody could tell you that. So that's why it was always, like, nonsensical. When I got. Basically plastic surgeons were taking aim at me for saying what I said, and I was like, well, there's no evidence. Well, of course there's no evidence.

Exactly. Yes.

Yeah, re evidence. Did you think that was part of the study to go cook somebody and see what happens? Well, no, that's just stupid. You have to have some common sense, although that's rapidly escaping in the world. So we have our consultation, we go over everything, and then I know it took a period of time for you to get here, and I, I tell everybody the same thing. Like, if I have somebody who wants to, you know, come here just a, a week or two after seeing me, that's going to be pretty challenging because we have a, a very strong testing program to look at. And Casey brought up genetics. So for everybody listening, you know, functional genomics is the big change. From the time I went to medical school and graduated, ooh, 1996, till now, there's this thing called the genome project. And that really has set the stage for what, hopefully the next several generations doctors of all varieties can learn from and help patients with. So Kasey has limited functional genomics in her immune system pathways. So vitamin D pathways, methylation pathways, use of glutathione, and then antioxidant pathways. Those are the main ones we look at. And then, of course, we look at hormone metabolism and things that affect mood and sleep. And so many of our patients are severely behind in terms of the ability to detox. And when Casey is talking about she's taking longer to recover, she's like many of my clients, really trying to do her best to recover as quickly as possible and is doing all the things. And she recently had a tox test that's a little bit worse, but I told her that's better. That means her liver is actually working better to remove things from her system. So as the lists grow from what your body can now remove, you're actually doing better. So how are you at this point in terms of. How are you feeling now?

I will say, and I've talked to Chelsea a lot about this, who is my. What would you call her? Detox.

She is our detox team member that is my client as well. And has had an explant.

Yes, she has. So she's so well versed in all of this and has guided me through all of the detox. I'm taking the cell core detox, and I'm on the last month. I have, like, maybe two weeks left, so I'm almost done with the detox. And I know typically people are very fatigued and don't feel as well when they're on the detox. But overall, my point was I have felt well, I have had pretty good energy. There's kind of been dips depending on what I'm doing. I'm able to now get in the sauna. So there's other things that I've now implemented with the specific supplementation program, along with, like, liver packs, all these things that she's helped guide me throughout this. So I feel like I. I was expecting to not feel as good. So I am grateful that I'm feeling pretty good in general and have good energy.

Yeah, I think, you know, Casey highlights something super important. Our detox team is headed by Chelsea, and she's one of my patients. So she's went through the entire program, and she's a very skilled practitioner with cellcore, which is who we use to help facilitate detox in our patients. So our patients get a testing protocol, a detox plan development supplements are associated with that, depending on the results of the detox plan. And then we have a structured supplementation program that's just for nutrient supplementation. After. Well, before and after surgery, really. And I don't adjust supplementation for surgery where some people will ask you to stop taking everything for two weeks, three weeks prior to surgery. We formulated ours that are basically in liquid, just for absorption purposes. There are liquid liposomal formulations, and they're balanced out not to give you too many B vitamins or too much C. So I just continue those because I want people to get the nutrients that they've possibly or most likely not been getting for a long period of time, as well as ramp up, you know, their protein in their diet. So that is a. A process that certainly when our book comes out about sharp, that process, it is a process that can be used both for before and after surgery, and it could be used for treatment of inflammation over time. Because I think, as you look at it, we all get exposed to a lot of things. And I mean, now that your liver is working better, you actually have more things on your test than you had before. And so, you know, what does that mean? Is. Does that mean Casey's doing worse? Actually, no, she's actually doing better. Her liver function is improving. Because your liver's the dominant organ that detoxifies your system. So the things you breathe, the foods you eat, the water you drink, or the fluids you take in all ultimately get filtered to the liver and then, you know, out through the kidneys, so to speak. So I imagine two weeks after you get complete, you know, and you're done with cell core, it's not going to be a day over day, but it's more. I always think of, like, week over week, month over month, as you keep, you know, working through these things, it's going to get better, but it's going to be because of your genetics, something you have to pay attention to and refer back to. If you're. You're having moments where you're not feeling well or you'll notice this in your children, too.

Yeah, we've talked about that. I think there's a few really important things there that you noted. I think for future patients or the people that want to do this, that it does take time in general, give yourself time. Not only we're talking about detox right now, but physically, how I looked after. I was mentally prepared for it. It's what I wanted to do. It was my decision. But I think really allowing your body time to heal is so important from a detox, from an internal standpoint, from a physical standpoint, I think that's something that is not talked about enough, is the physical piece of it, because most people are coming to you because it was cosmetic and they wanted to look a certain way, and now they're reversing that, and then it's harder to even get to a baseline of feeling and looking a certain way. And I know we had a conversation about this. That's why I did the fat transfer. I really didn't want to, but you said to me, your low bmi, like, I just want you to look normal. So I want to do this fat transfer. I would recommend. Yeah. You doing the fat transfer?

Yeah, for Casey and a lot of my patients who have. Obviously, many people get implants because they don't have a lot of tissue. And we discussed that. You know, when you're younger and you do this, everybody's leaner. And then over time, you know, life will. Will allow you to get a little heavier. And then patients who've had children, obviously there's changes, hormonal changes, perimenopause, menopause, all the things that can actually, you know, happen. And I try to do fat transfers and optimize patients so that giving a little bit of volume back can certainly offset some of the issues from a physical standpoint. But I think Casey's, you know, she's. She's talking more of a mindset issue that I think is probably not considered because people will tell me, oh, yeah, I'm ready, but you're really not ready because nobody actually can remember what they look like beforehand.

Yeah, I had no idea.

It's like trauma when you go to that extreme again. And now it's. You're going and reverting, and there's all sorts of guilt and shame and bullying, and all these things crop up in people. And we're going to have a new program where people can participate in a community where they get a little bit, I would say, more type of mindset support and help, because obviously, you know, we have a lot of components to our care, but that one can always be made better. And maybe, you know, I. I'm glad you. You mentioned it, but it's the, you know, elephant in the room, so to speak. When you go in there and you're trying to help everybody in terms of, like, okay, this is definitely not going to be better in terms of appearance. Like, as soon as I do something, it's 100 miles an hour to zero unless I do a saline deflation on somebody. So if you have a silicone device, I mean, I can't do that.

Right.

So there's no, like, period of accommodation prior to Surgery, it's just almost, you know, the. Like, you said the opposite. Like, you go and get this done and you wake up. Big change here. Reverse not good.

Yeah. But I will say over time, it's improved. And I feel good, I feel confident, I feel normal. I'm learning how to dress myself. Like, those things happen over time. So allowing that space for you to heal, essentially externally too. But I think going into it, not to say, like, it's your job to do that for women, too. You have done a really good job holistically already. And you did have the conversation with me about the way that I look and why we would do a fat transfer. And so that was super important for me to feel confident and comfortable just going into it because I knew that I wouldn't look the same.

Right. I think anytime we can. All the years I took care of cancer patients, it was supremely important to be able to help them optimize a result. Because it is a very difficult situation to go from any breast size, cup size, to a reconstructive surgery with an implant or a tissue expander or a tissue augmentation with a flap, or it doesn't matter what I did, it doesn't look the same. And then, you know, we used fat transfers, lipo filling, as it's referred to in Europe, as a way to augment those results. So if we are taking and basically in some instances removing what is two cup sizes of volume, easy. A lot of times that's like doing a mastectomy.

Yeah. I mean, I would say my case, like it was a c. You know, I'm pretty flat. So it is something to think about beforehand is really getting your mindset. Right. However, I will say, like, my priority, and I've said this a lot and a lot to my following, was my health. So that was first and foremost, I wanted them out. And then if I could do something to help how I felt and looked, that. I mean, that was a lot of work internally to prepare myself for this.

Now you're talking. So, like, the work never ends. And, you know, you have a very supportive structure around you, too, which I find hugely important. People who have a difficult time who are on their own or limited support, really, this can get into a dark situation very quickly for them. So we know that, and we. We have those conversations now pretty quickly. And I'm always trying to determine, like, who's going to be around, who's going to help, who's the sounding board for this, because if it's a spouse, I already know you know, spouses like yours and others are super supportive. I have a lot less to worry about.

Right. Yeah. Having a supportive partner, even after has been more important than really before because it was my decision and I was going to do it. But to have the support after because of what you're going through or what you look like or that mental game is really been very helpful.

That's, you know, what I'm referring to, because that is the thing. Then when people get in their headspace, that can be game over for them. Because once you get in a mental loop, I would dare say, and we've talked to, and I interviewed someone recently about this, you can trigger almost the same symptomology by being in a negative mindset. And so once you, once you conjure that back up everything you tried to escape in terms of feeling fatigued, pain, nerve symptoms, et cetera, you can trigger all that stuff to come back. It's, it's almost like, you know, getting EDMR therapy or, or something like that. Because your brain can do some as, as we all know, some interesting things to you. Well, I think since you're almost to completion of cell core, and certainly I don't think, you know, the work is, is done for you based on what we talked about with your test results, I think that's going to be ongoing for you and maybe we'll talk about it now. So everybody asked me, do I have one test that will, you know, tell them that they have breast implant illness and we'll use this as a teaser. I've been in conversations with one of the scientists who recently published a paper about something called Oxylife and Tinho, fancy name, and if everybody will remember the name of that, that is something we're going to talk to companies about looking at and getting test results for. So we have a call coming up with some companies. I don't need anybody bombarding this company, so I'm not going to mention them by name. But we are, rest assured, working to try to figure out better ways to both establish, you know, levels of inflammation, because the standard things we use like SED rate, CRP for everyday evaluations don't really measure up in this situation. So it's really hard. If Kasey came in to me five years ago and said, you know, I feel like crap and I don't know what's going on. And she was just on her routine, you know, follow up and wanted to have us do an exam for her to make sure everything was fine with her, her implants. We would have not had the forethought to suggest anything based on, you know, that time period. You know, fast forward now it's 2024. I've done several thousand of these. We have a very, in my head, a very well established rate what kind of bacteria can really affect an implant. And someone like Casey and other patients of mine, that's Cutibacterium acnes and other studies at Staph epidermidis. I feel like our study represents more the United States because I have patients come from all over the United States. So I'm not one community type surgeon. I have samples from all over the United States, and it's pretty consistent. It's 30% of the time we have a contaminant. It's Cutibacterium acnes. Cutobacteria acnes readily produces biofilm. Biofilm causes this negative interaction, which can lead to more symptomology, and we'll say fatigue as a symptom. So we are trying to constantly push and figure out new ways to look at what was affecting Casey, meeting my clients. So that is something I look forward to adding to our program so that we can expand it.

Yeah, that'd be great.

All right, Kasey, thanks for joining me. Do you want to tell everybody where they can follow you? Because I'm sure they'll be interested in following you.

Yeah, sure. It's SBK. SBK. So B as in boyliving.com or on Instagram. I have a website. I talk all about health and wellness and lifestyle stuff and been sharing the explant journey and the feedback that I have received and the amount of women that have either had one or want to get one is pretty amazing. I wasn't sure if I was gonna share this, and then I decided to. And it is insane. The amount of people that are interested.

Yeah, I think it goes to, like, what you share, how you share it, and you're very candid about it. So I think people appreciate, you know, anything authentic. I. I think you do it in a very authentic way, and that's why you have such good engagement. So I fought doing that forever because I don't, you know, I didn't want to be on my phone doing things and, you know, get it, I get it. So if you always used to tell people, if you don't want to know the truth, don't ask me any questions, that would be the best way to interact with me, because I'm not going to shy away from or hide from you what I know or what we can help you with. So everybody give Casey a follow. And obviously for us, you can subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on Instagram and our podcast. So thanks for coming on, Casey. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate it.