Dr. Robert Whitfield connects gut dysbiosis to breast implant illness, explaining how bacterial and parasitic overgrowth worsens symptoms and surgical risk. Iron-sequestering parasites can cause anemia and poor nutrient absorption. He recommends stopping probiotics, adding digestive enzymes, and testing with GI-MAP stool analysis before explant surgery.
Hey, good morning everybody. It's Dr. Whitfield, breast implant illness expert. And I just had something happen last week. I wanted to do a quick show about almost a little faq. I have a lot of patients who have breast implant illness who have trouble with their guts. And everybody's probably heard about the gut brain axis and how important your microbiome is. And there's all sorts of tests associated with looking at the microbiome, which are the, the bacteria in your gut. We all have those in healthy individuals are all kind of relatively similar. But in folks who have what's called dysbiosis or trouble with their gut, there's a abnormal growth in, we'll just say a category. Maybe it's bacterial, maybe it's fungal, maybe it's parasitic. So when I have somebody who is communicating with us that they're having gut trouble, what I try to figure out is they're a short term solution to the problem based on what they're telling me. So we'll give you a scenario where somebody who eats will say a quote unquote clean diet, doesn't eat processed foods, doesn't eat gluten or dairy. And so, you know, that may be a paleo type diet, a Mediterranean diet, more a protein based diet. It may be plant based, animal based, doesn't really matter. Why is that person who's trying super hard to eat as well as they can to support themselves as having trouble, are they taking probiotics, are they, what kind of water are they drinking? And in this example we'll use lemon water. Lemon water has been touted for a period of time to really help and eliminate, we'll say bad bacteria. So it's acidic and the more acid it'll affect certain bacteria like E. Coli, Bacteroides fragilis and fungus for that matter. Depending on how much much you do ingest lemon water and how much you have, over time you can create an imbalance. So stick with me here. The point is, if you take in too much acid and you decrease the bacteria and get the balance wrong, say you drop down your E. Coli and your Bacteroides fragilis and your fungus for that matter, and you raise up something like parasitic overgrowth in a woman, that can be really bad. So the next steps, it may not make sense, but I'll try to help you with it. So the woman who's still premenopausal, who has a cycle, who may experience problems with their cycle, they may have a lot of pain, they may have a lot of bleeding, they may have pcos, they may have endometriosis. That means they usually have a lot of elevated estrogen levels, in particular estrone. So that's one bucket. So they don't necessarily metabolize their estrogen in a way that helps them best. The other is if they're having these really bad periods and they've really lowered the bacterial and fungal component, which has allowed the parasite to parasite component in the microbiome to overgrow. Parasites can sequester iron. And so it's really hard to recover after a cycle for that person because they'll just kind of remain anemic. And we've had firsthand experience in our clinic, you know, with this. So anemia is difficult because you're obviously going to be more tired, and the more often this happens, the more anemic you become, to the point where when they check your ferritin level, you may need an iron transfusion, which I've had to do for clients in our practice, certainly before surgery, if you have somebody who's told you that they have problems with their cycle and there's prolonged bouts of bleeding, you have to check their hemoglobin, hematocrit, and you have to check their ferritin levels to make sure that this issue is sorted out just for their safety, obviously around the time of surgery. So in this scenario, I would tell the patient, like, okay, I want you to stop either acidifying or alkalizing your water. So just have filtered water. And then the other thing that can be happening, if someone's taking a probiotic, it can further complicate the situation, because probiotics can be very good, or in this situation, they can be not adding as much benefit as they would in a normal situation. I know that sounds probably a little odd, but I would just, at this juncture, if someone's experiencing those problems of bouts of anemia, problems with their GI tract, maybe constipation, diarrhea, bloating, swelling, I would just try to normalize that by filtered water and then just hold the probiotic. And then the other thing I think it's important is I have so many people trying to work so hard to eat as well as they can, and they're having higher protein diets, whether it be plant based, animal based, it's fine. But if you take in a lot of protein, sometimes it's really hard for your body to be able to break it all down. So typically what we do is recommend our clients with those meals use protein, additional digestive enzymes, the ones that I feel are the best are mastimes from bio optimizers. So those are the real time interventions you can do right now to help yourself to get your swelling, bloating, gut, bacteria imbalance, more in balance versus out of balance, and then do more to help you digest and get nutrients from your foods. And so when I get faced with these, obviously I want to run my heart program just to check in terms of their genetics, their toxicity profile, and certainly a GI map that looks at microbiome specifically, which is a stool test, accompanied with a food sensitivity test, and looking at hormones and everything. It paints a broad picture so you really can get more of a clear understanding of what is going on with that patient. Now if they really have extreme problems with their gut, indigestion, swelling, bloating, pain, what have you, it affects everything. Okay? You get your nutrition, you absorb nutrients in the gut. So if there's problems with a leaky gut, if there's problems like with the bacterial imbalances or digestive enzyme imbalances, you're gonna have to do more than one thing to help yourself. So whether it's with each meal, just taking enzymes, forgoing probiotics for now, stop alkalizing or acidifying your water, and then how are you going to get more nutrients in the short term? So my specific nutrient supplements are liposomal liquid formulations to avoid the problems with absorption in the gut. So my inflammation support bundle was geared to help that. That's how I get people started on the right track. And we all know that the gut plays a central role in your mood and your overall well being. And the gut itself has the most lymphatic tissue surrounding it in the body. The gut associated lymphatic tissue, galt, it plays a central role in your immune system. So we want to get that functioning better for you prior to surgery. I think it's paramount and it's not talked about enough. So I hope this helps and I look forward to talking to you all again soon.
