She Thought Her Implants Were Safe Until They Weren’t, with Dr. Laura Miles & Robert Whitfield MD

Tell us your story of how this became such a passion project for you.

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. I don't think people understand how unique what you're doing is.

If you want to learn more about yourself, this is the way to do it.

Foreign.

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 cause of 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 talking, 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. So we, we published a paper of almost 700700 cases looking at just our experience with PCR testing of exploit specimens. So to to your 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 how 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. When feeling very good, my thyroid was doing some weird stuff. And, you know, you go the usual route. You go to the dermatologist, you, you know, you do your thyroid stuff. And, you know, since I was a physician, I did a lot of that myself. But I 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. Didn't think.

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

Seven years.

About seven years under the 10 that we kind of, you know, 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 the, 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, you know, 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 side 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 know, you just kind of don't think about it. I'm a little tired. But no big deals because I work hard. And I went through, you know, 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 structure. I. I had, yeah, I had the S gap. So, yeah, it was a big, big surgery. Yeah. So down in New Orleans.

So Bob Allen did it.

No, Delacroix.

Delacroix did it. Okay, so that's, I mean, basically I was doing this procedure because I did micro for many, many years, doing deep flaps 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 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.

It really was remarkable. But so then, you know, you kind of like, well, okay, that, that was one and done. And then a few months later, I had a patient come in and she'd had her. 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 talk.

There was 10 in the blood and you know, the, and that test was a micro test so as they could actually detect minute amounts, but it was actually quite elevated. And I thought, well, wow, you know, when I did all the research on heavy metals, you know, 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 tin? Well, they used 10 to cure the implants. And so out of you Know, lack of anything else to try. I said, I don't even know if we can chelate 10 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 implants 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, you know, 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, and then start individually treating those. And that's when we start seeing some people turn around. But it's never just, it doesn't seem, it's not easy. It's not like one thing, you know, 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.

Yeah. 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 genet in the Pentagon. And to her point, and what we focused on in my clinic and others have focused on, in particular Dr. Muthoon Sina out of Indiana 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 labor 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 an infection. Now I will say I think that is, that's from the 50s, that's a desperately bad way to view an infection. So I, 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, it makes zero sense.

I agree.

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, as many as I can get. In the beginning, I made it a. 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 your immunity, you are the avatar for this problem.

And they're also the detoxification pathways, too. So, you know, they're, 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, 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, they don't test them. They don't even swab them.

You know, just like you went to Delacroix. I mean, he was trained to do reconstructive surgery as why I was. And it would have been heresy for me to ever take out a cancer patient's implant and capsule and not send it. So there's no chance I'll ever not send a capsule. My sister died of breast cancer this past year, in 2024, after a very long battle. And had, you know, the, 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. 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. You know, 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.

That was protocol. Yeah, well, that was not protocol. That was exceptional protocol.

She had an E. Coli infection.

Oh.

And so for everybody listening, 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? You know, I had taken care of thousands of patients over, you know.

My.

Career, which started in 04 with, you know, plastic surgery. And I was like, how on earth did I miss this? And I went back through all the labs and, you know, studies, and I was like, I don't know how I missed this. Her only symptom, she can't complain to fatigue, which, I mean, honestly, in. 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 oral antibiotic as it was sensitive, and, you know, within, you know, the next week or two after treatment, and she had an explant, of course, well, you know, 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 sine qu. Non 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, it, ignore it, because it doesn't make any sense. That's how, you know, 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. It was like, gosh, 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. I did all that work and published that data now. So that's my feeling. And you're gonna play hell to get number. So that is. 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 going to 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 very sick.

In cardiac surgery, everybody knew that you had to treat the patient before 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 clean.

I was told my surgeon may had me do it too, but that's the. 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.

That's so stupid.

I did like your.

Your risk goes down after two years. How's that magically happen?

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

Well, the other thing. I'm glad you found a capsule. So this is great too. I mean, from the 80s, the terrible implants with the leaky shells, right? So we have dal corning implants that used to leak and because the shell was too porous. So those things would cause so much reactivity. You'd basically have this boulder in someone's chest. It would cause so much calcific response. And that's probably in part why some of those patients didn't have as much symptomology, because it would form such a difficult barrier to interact with the tissues. But now Dr. Methun Sina, that scientist I told you about, showed that the actual bacterial contamination, especially staph epidermidis, can interact with the oleic acid. So the fatty acid in the breast tissue. So just think of that. Now, the SCAR capsule is not impervious, everyone. It is not a shield against a nuclear attack. Let's just. It's. It's porous. So the, the bacteria can now interact with the fatty acid. And that oxidative reaction, an oxidation, is bad. That oxidative reaction creates oxylipin 10 home. Now, that molecule itself has been linked to all sorts of immune disturbances by macrophage polarization. That's a lot of fancy terms. For now, you have a cause and effect problem. And his study showed that predominantly they had staph epi. In my study of a much larger sample size, it's staph EPI and kidibacterium acnes, which used to be called propion bacteria. It doesn't matter. They both produce biofilm readily. And so that interaction with the breast tissue is more than enough to satisfy my curiosity about, yes, this can cause arthralgias and, you know, pain and fatigue. And so you have no idea because no one ever knew what the hell oxylipin Tin home was until January of 2024, when it was published. So now there should be a whole series of. And he's writing grants to try to figure out, like, what are the other ramifications of this molecule? And everybody comes to me, Dr. Miles, and wants to know, can I test for this problem? Well, I introduced the scientists to a lab company, and that's the most I can do because I'm not a lab company. So if they can get a biomarker, at least for those patients with, we'll say staph EPI and enough amount, if you can get measured, then you could have some solace knowing that, hey, this is a real problem right now. Forensically, I can tell you that if I find biofilm on somebody's explant specimen, I'm like, it's done and dusted. For me, that's more than enough evidence that this was contributing to an immune system problem. So I don't have to. I have everybody run a program much like your Pentagon, that looks at environmental toxins, heavy metals, phthalates, glyphosates, looks for mycotoxins. I have tons of people with mold issues, as you would imagine, tons of sensitivities and triggers in their diet. We talked a little bit about genetics already. Now, autoimmune things have existed long before implants around. So I. I think you know, you as well as I know that since the late 1800s, there's been autoimmune problems. That's not going away. So I always. I always just tell you honestly, like, if someone came to me as a cancer patient with an autoimmune diagnosis already, there was no chance that you could get an implant from me for that, you know, individual. I would do a deep flap or scap flap like you had, because I knew better. I was like, oh, this is already bad. I don't want to do that.

Especially if the women. I mean, regardless if they have cancer or not, and they're just wanting to do an elective, I. I will actually advise my patients. I really don't recommend this. And. 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. Her. That was not her symptom with her autoimmune condition. And I was like, this is. This is not going anywhere good. So, you know, just so you know, I really think it's probably the implants because it's very cause and effect on her, and it's not always that easy. You Know, it's not always that easy. So. And one of the things we were 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 there were the. 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. The silicone capsules, you know, it's saline. Well, it still has a silicon capsule. Right. That stuff still goes through. It's not. I loved your analogy. It's like, it's not, you know, 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. 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, you know. Right. And we can have cause and effect after, oh, hey, you move the implants, you're better. Oh, hallelujah. You know, but that's. It's. It's, you know, it's one of those things everyone's just tell me it's implants. I can't.

Well, yeah, and nobody wants to. As we. 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 whoever calls and wants to see us, you're. 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, you know, such a complicated issue. Right. So whether it's for cancer, which I've done, you know, people just seek me out now because of my experience in the past, and they want some advice. And then, you know, I'll try to lay out exactly like we have in the discussion, like what I consider to be, you know, the. The points of emphasis. And then just to better make an informed decision, people, you know, ask me, you know, for advice, and that's. 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, little too many micro cases for my neck at this point in life. So I've, I've just toned it down to doing explant surgery. We do 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, 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 know, you're going to 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, 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 she, her husband Michael said, you know, she would get in the sauna at 212 degrees for like an hour at a time multiple times a week. And. And she goes, I think I melted my implants because when I got her talks 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 I, Dr. Miles, I've only printed one tox test off in my entire career to give to a patient. 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 I, you know, on her podcast, we, you know, we said, yeah, you're probably melting your implants. And that got me accused of an ethics violation on all sorts of crazy stuff. So really like the, the process is leaching. So basically she was heating device and it was leaching the chemicals that were in the. In the curing process, in the. 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 get 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 to 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 patient's breast pocket. And I took it out. It all went like, you couldn't have had 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 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, you know, enjoying herself like you would like. So, to your point, like, those things can happen and no one knows. You know, 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, 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, but 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, you know, they, if somebody's already, they had the implants out, you can, you know, I can, I'll do that, 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 micro dose amounts, but that doesn't mean people won't react to them. So it's kind of an interesting. You just, it's a lesson of, of patience and just trying to just check boxes type of thing.

So that's what I try to encourage patients to understand.

That's all, 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 el 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, you know, to your point, we, I think we have 30 people on our team now, or 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, you know, enters the system and what they want to have done, we get, you know, 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. I try to get an 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, nah, looked at, that doesn't work.

So, yeah, it's not, it's normal.

Yeah, 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 you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, comes in failing traditional therapies for whatever reason and they're our patient, you know, 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 test and they had this huge you know, glyphosate load. And I was like, well, yeah, this is a neurotoxin. And it, well, it's going to inhibit DNA repair. So it's probably going to take, you know, supplementing your methylation pathway and trying to do some level of, you know, 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.

True.

All right.

That's hard to pull out for sure.

I was trying to think, I had another question for you regarding, you know, how you 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, and I don't, I don't start, I'm not a implant hater. I don't start with saying, oh, this is your implants. I, I, 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, you know, processing things? Are, 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, you know, 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 go, oh, I think it's my implants. You know, basically they come and say, prove me wrong. And so because, and I don't blame him. You spend a lot of good money for that. You like how they look and you know, nobody wants to go, oh, here, get him out. So I'm not a knee jerk work 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, you know, 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've 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, 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, you know, 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 contro. Are doing capsulectomy. Are you finding people who've now just had implant removal without capsulectomy in a growing number of people who remain symptomatic? Because I already showed that would be a problem.

Yes. So, and you're right, that is a controversy. And, and I, it's an active controversy. It's like, oh, well, my surgeon says that's not necessary. Well, you know, maybe in. 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, 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 the subset, and I haven't done a study to, to actually prove this, this would be interesting to go back and try to, you know, kind of tease this out. But the women who have had, 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. Now 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 that if they're having problems of anything, you know, and, 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, that's kind of a problem. And you need to go ahead and go the extra step and make sure that capsule removed to put yourself in the absolute best possible light so that way you could move forward. And otherwise you're always going to be second guessing and wondering what would be happening if I still. 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, you know, 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, you know, 700 or whatever that is. You know, I've done several thousand explants. 29 of those would have remained with a bacterial contaminant and. Or infection, depending on how we're, you know, going to qualify that in the patient, because every patient's going to react differently to that, you know, and that's why you get the variability. And, you know, I, I have to say there was a paper published that said, said in 37 patients when they took out the implant. 37, mind you, they showed no changes in symptomology. So whether you had, you know, 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. 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. It's not even a pilot study. I consider anything under 50 to be very concerning. And that's, you know, think of it. 2.2 million implants are placed annually worldwide. You can't draw a conclusion off of 37 patients. That is not a scientific. The. How should I say it? The statistical error in that is incredibly high because the sample, the number of patients being looked at at is very small. And that is the thing that baffles me when I hear people talk about it and say that with such certainty. Certainty. That's. Oh, my gosh, we don't have to take out, you know, the capsule. Dr. Whitfield, that, 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 700 samples in it. I'm sorry, a thousand samples. So it has 700 in it. Which feel very comfortable. It's the largest series in the world to date regarding this patient population. You know, 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 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 plant. So you know, that's. I, I published 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, you know, and I stand by that. That's third party data. Through MicroGenDX. 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, it says 37 patients had no effects. That makes no sense to me. Why are you even doing that?

That agree and 29% it. Assum. 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, 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, this like my sister passed away with cancer. One person is, is too many. It just is. So there's you, you can't sit on any lofty, you know, peak and talk to me like you know what you're talking about. If you say that, you know, 48% is acceptable. Because I know that's not correct. And I know. So the real number which is now 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, 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, our guidelines of, okay, if it's less than this, it's not really an infection. There's a whole bunch of the 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, in your implant or in your capsule. So it just has to be.

I gave, I give this talk and I say the, 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 role. Well, this has been awesome. Oh, 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 like the paper that makes to me like the connection of the cause and effect of the interaction between the breast tissue and 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 you can. I have a website, lauramilesmd.com like medical doctor. I'm in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and if you have any problems, any questions, come see me.