Dr. Robert Whitfield describes breast implant illness as a condition that mimics dozens of other diseases. Patients report brain fog, memory loss, joint pain, chronic infections, and gastrointestinal problems across multiple organ systems. The symptom diversity makes doctors misdiagnose it as autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, or psychiatric conditions instead.
What is breast implant illness and how might one know whether or not they have it?
Sure. I mean, we got exposed to it in 2016 with a cancer patient. Uh, so most of what people experience, and I don't envy the practitioners trying to figure this out when they sit across the table, is people will say they have neurologic symptoms like central nervous system, like brain fog, which, you know, for everybody, this can be short-term memory loss. We forgot where you put your keys or you left the groceries in the car or something like that. Um, you can have lightheadedness, ringing in the ears. You can have visual changes, light sensitivity. It can also be sound sensitive, you know, all sorts of ENT-type issues where you have problems with dry eyes, uh, maybe a catch in the throat or difficulty swallowing. And many patients will go on to have extremity symptoms, muscle pain, joint pain. They'll have GI symptoms. I know you've done a lot of shows and are interested in gut health. They have problems with a lot of absorptive problems, so they'll have constipation and diarrhea, bloating, and all the things associated with leaky gut. They'll have reproductive tract symptoms. They may have recurrent, recurrent, uh, untreatable, intractable vaginosis. They can have UTIs that just recur and recur.
