Tuesday Night Live

Hello everybody, we're going to go live here shortly. I'm just getting everything added.

All the platforms are coming on so you can join.

So we're on Substack, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

And something else. Uh, and of course we're live streaming on my platform, just waiting for it to go live. We're going to do a couple checks, make sure everything's fine. I have to make sure our live chat is working. This is the first of a 3-part series.

Okay, good.

So, uh, whatever platform you're watching on, go ahead and chime in, make sure you can hear me really well, make sure I sound good. Thank you, Sabrina. So can everybody hear me on TikTok? Thumbs up. Facebook, YouTube. Oh, somebody gave me a thumbs up.

All right, good.

Perfect. Substack.

I'm new to Substack, but I like posting there. I've, uh, gotten some good responses so far, and we don't have enough followers on our subreddit thread to, to get that audio live yet, but we're working on that. So we're gonna go live at 7. We're gonna do a 10-minute talk, and then because I've been censored on all the platforms you're watching me on except for a few, we're gonna have a live Q&A afterwards. Now, if anybody, um, has to hop off or there's an issue, if you type the word guide in the comments, my team will respond and give you a downloadable guide from my book, The Sharp Method.

So I founded and authored the book The Sharp Method. I have to send a really quick message. Let's see if there's anybody live in the chat.

So my chat is open in Dr.

Rob's circle, so chime in.

We will be going there. There's no fee to join.

You can join, um, without any trouble for live Q&A afterwards. And then I have special membership, uh, benefits. If you're in the Circle, you get priority access to my podcast a week before it comes out, and you could ask me, uh, independently, uh, questions, uh, in there. And we put up our replays in there as well. So if you're in Dr. Rob's circle, just chime in. I can't see who's live in the chat right now.

So. Oh.

I almost gotta start here.

We got a few minutes left.

I want people to be able to hop on. You guys can hit me with a couple questions if you got a couple before we start.

Good evening, Jasmine.

Any questions before we start?

What?

You cannot join my live. I don't know why people are asking to join my presentation. Yeah, no one will be joining the live with me tonight. When I have a guest, it'll be a co-host. Um, we're gonna have one coming up. All right, so we have a good talk tonight. I'm excited. We're gonna do 3 streams this week. Tonight, uh, tomorrow we're going to go 2 PM Central, and on Thursday night we're going to go back to our normal time, 7 PM, uh, Central. And then I have a special guest, uh, for the 26th. Be good. All right, what else is going on here?

Okay, okay.

So if you want to get into the live Q&A afterwards, I just need you to go to drrobscircle.com and sign up.

It's free.

And, um, at that point, um, we'll be able to go and you can ask me whatever you want, uh, in our live chat afterwards. If, uh, no one wants to join, then we'll just end the stream and won't do anything else inside. Um, but if someone, uh, wants to go in and ask questions, that's what I set this up for. Anne wants to know what kind of doctor I am. I'm a plastic surgeon.

I un-augment patients. I do natural breast augmentation with fat. And, um, today I did simultaneous fat transfer, un-augmentation, skin tightening. And then I did another body contouring procedure, and this—

I'm supposed to be off this week, so it's a little bit quieter. Y'all, I hope you brought your questions. It's going to be good. Remember, after the stream is over, just go to drrobcircle.com, or if you want a free downloadable guide from my book, The Sharp Method, comment the word guide. And we'll get that to you.

I'm proud of y'all.

This is spring break around the country, and in Austin where I'm in, we got South by Southwest. It's been extremely busy. Hi, Delissa. Yes, it is on the Circle app. Yes, ma'am, I am live streaming.

I'm looking at it right now.

You have to go to the Go Live section in the app.

I'm looking at myself live streaming right now.

Another minute and a half, then we'll go live and start to talk. Hi Esther. Hi Haley. Hi Kim. We have a lot of people joining, that's great. So we're almost ready to start. I have a 10-minute talk. If for some reason you just get disconnected or you got to go, comment the word guide and then we'll send you a free downloadable guide. From the book, The Sharp Method. And also we've updated our website, drrobertwhitfield.com. We have all sorts of new information. We have all of my scientific publications. We have access to courses and books. We have all of our information about explants. BII, BIALCL. I probably have the best BIALCL page in the world at this point. We put a lot of effort into it, so check that out. So, all right, I'm excited.

All right, let's, let's roll, everybody.

Let's go. Um, all right, tonight's stream: Your Body's Warning Lights: Decoding Hidden Stress Signals. And we are live on Substack, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, um, Dr. Rob's Circle. And of course, if you want to join the circle, you can join it either after the stream is over for live Q&A or during the stream. Of course, remember always to comment the word guide if you want the free PDF from the book The Sharp Method. And then we want you to be able to have uncensored Q&A afterwards and live Q&A with me in the circle. So please feel free to join that, drrobscircle.com, D-R-R-O-B-S-C-I-R-C-L-E dot com. All right. All right. Welcome, everybody. I'm Dr. Robert Whitfield MD, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Austin, Texas. I'm really glad you're here tonight. And we want to start with a question. So how many of you feel like something in your body is just a little bit off? Are you tired? Do you have difficulty sleeping? Do you have brain fog that makes it hard for you to focus at work? Or do you have trouble remembering things like where you put your keys? Maybe you're dealing with stubborn weight that won't budge no matter what you do, or skin issues. And skin issues can be rashes, acne, kind of this, um, uh, dermatologic kind of eczema thing that goes on and seems to get better, then maybe just comes back out of nowhere. You've been to your doctor and they've told you it's just stress or that it's a normal part of aging, or— and this one really gets to me— they've told you it's all in your head. Now, I've had many patients come to me over the last decade telling me this, but I know all of you kind of listen to the voice inside, and you know that's not normal. Something has definitely changed. If that sounds familiar, I want you to know two things. First, you're in the right place. It's very safe to discuss that with us. And second, you're not imagining it. Your body is talking to you. Those feelings you're having, those are your body's warning lights. And tonight we're going to learn how to decode them. So for the last decade, we've been working And if you want to think of in reverse, because obviously I did surgery for this problem, for cancer patients, cosmetic patients. And then finally, we were able to put and apply more testing to it, better understanding through a number of things we'll discuss now. So think of your body like a high-performance vehicle. It has a sophisticated dashboard of warning lights designed to alert you to problems long before they become catastrophic, right? You start feeling tired or groggy or, uh, less alert, or, um, the rashes like we talked about, or gut trouble, or maybe like it's just difficult to get up and down because it hurts. But there's a thing— what if you didn't know what those lights actually meant? What if the check engine light came on and instead of taking it to the mechanic, like we should do, you just put a Band-Aid over it or just kept driving. Now, I always joke about nobody drives with the, you know, red light on when you're about to run out of gas because nobody wants to run out of gas, be embarrassed, and go, you know, have to call somebody to come get them gas or walk to a gas station. But people will skip meals, they won't sleep right, they won't exercise, they won't find ways to cope with stress. I know it sounds crazy, but we're talking about a car and It makes— to me, it makes a lot more sense. But we tend to ignore these signals. We push through fatigue with another cup of coffee or an energy drink or yerba mate or something. We blame bloating on the meal we just ate. We accept brain fog as part of getting older or being busy or having children. Or, um, a lack of rest. And for many of the women I work with in my practice, these signals can be even more confusing. I see women every week who have breast implants and feel unwell but are told their implants are perfectly fine. I see women who have had their implants removed by other surgeons but still aren't back to feeling like themselves months or even years later. We'll talk about that. There's more and more explants going on around the country, particular ways that I don't agree with. The confusion is real, the frustration is real, and the symptoms are absolutely real. If you've ever felt like you had to justify your symptoms to a doctor or even to yourself, drop a comment below right now. I definitely see you and understand that, uh, you're not alone in this. This is very common in my practice. All right, who's got a comment? Kay said she explanted 6 months ago and tomorrow morning getting capsules removed.

Ah.

I'm sorry, that's Kelly T. So that's one of the things I don't agree with because capsules, I believe, should be taken out all the time. If anybody follows me, you should, or if you don't know this, I published the largest series in the world of explant specimens that have been tested by PCR. So if you go to drrobertwhitfieldmd.com, there's a scientific research section now on the site, and I'd really like everybody's, you know, thoughts about it. Uh, we put up our publications, including, uh, the one about PCR testing for explant specimens, as well as the safety paper I wrote about fat transfers and other publications I've had. I've been on, uh, I believe over 45, uh, podcasts, and I've done 160 of my own shows. We have a couple million subscribers on YouTube and over 3,000 videos on YouTube. So and I've written a couple books. We've definitely tried to provide as much information, and maybe that's been part of the problem. I definitely, I feel like this shouldn't be as difficult to understand now, and I think a lot of providers are still having trouble and they're a little confused. Does anybody have another question before we move on? Or another comment? Uh, Aletha Marie says the symptoms are absolutely real. Yes, ma'am, they are.

And do I have any other— hold on, I have another message.

Everybody wants to co-host with me. You can't co-host with me, you guys. All right, any other messages? No. Okay, so we'll get back to the talk. Here's what I want you to understand: these persistent nagging symptoms are not random. They are not a collection of unrelated problems. More often than not, they are downstream effects of a single core issue, which is chronic inflammation. Remember, if you've watched me or heard me discuss this, I discuss this as breast implant illness is a chronic inflammatory process of which a medical device In this case, a breast implant is playing a component. It's not the only thing, but it's playing a role. Now let's talk about the inflammation for a moment because it gets a bad reputation that's not entirely fair. So we do need inflammation. Acute inflammation is what happens, and it's actually a good thing when our body is injured. That stimulates the healing response to injury or infection. So if you cut your finger, it gets red and swollen, your immune system responds, ultimately it heals because the tissues are repaired, the bacteria is eliminated from the wound, and your body heals it. So the problem starts when that army, you know, that protects you, our immune system, can't control it or stands down. So think of like the inflammatory signal stays on and now you're just a hamster in the wheel. And so month over month, you just have more and more low-grade chronic inflammation. So it's just kind of sitting there in the background. And this is where my research comes in. Like I discussed already, my team has published the largest PCR-tested capsule series in the world. We found that 29% of the capsules that form around the patients— now that's the scar tissue of the patient. It's not the implant shell. Big distinction. Those have bacterial contamination, two types: Staph epidermidis, Acutibacterium acnes. And so they readily produce biofilm. So think of it like this, that bacterial contamination interacts with your breast tissue and causes an oxidative reaction. It creates a molecule called oxylipentinone, which has been shown in other research by Dr. Mathun-Sina and his colleagues to increase symptoms in a downstream way. We won't go in the specifics of that. It's outside of the scope of this. But when your body is stuck in this constant state of alert, it diverts resources away from everything else. So that's why your energy production can slow down. So you get more fatigue. You can have trouble thinking and remembering. Your cognition's affected, you know, brain fog. Your digestive system can be thrown off. I've had patients tell me they couldn't even drink water. Hormonal shifts definitely happen. That affects your metabolism, your mood, can lead to weight gain, and your skin can be affected like we already discussed. You can have problems with total body acne, you could have dermatitis, eczema, just these kind of random rashes that pop up. And these aren't, you know, separate problems. They are symptoms of the underlying issue. They are all connected to that one flashing light on the dashboard of the car. Remember, it's inflammation. So what is the solution to this? I want to guide you through this process. And so I wrote the book The Sharp Method about it because it highlights what I've learned and applied to our patient population that's been really successful for them. So how do we start to address this? We start by doing the one thing most people skip. We acknowledge that this is happening. We stop, you know, trying to Band-Aid it. Your body's actually given us the clues, and if I listen and other providers listen carefully enough, you'll understand the clues. The first step is let's accept that they're there and let's start trying to figure them out. Do you feel more tired after certain foods? Do you have brain fog that gets worse on a particular at a particular time of the day? Do you have difficulty with sleep? Are your joints aching in the morning or after exercise? Can you even exercise anymore? And these aren't complaints. These are actually, you know, things that we listen to. They're data points. And the most powerful thing you can do right now tonight is start thinking about it, maybe journaling about it. Try to collect your own data, things that are helpful, like I have a Whoop strap on. People have Oura Rings. This is an Ultrahuman Ring. People have different watches that collect data. So, try to start understanding what is happening. We want to be, you know, honest with you about what I know. And then, I always like to call out things, especially like sleep hygiene. So, think of How we get off to sleep and using like the 3-2-1 rule is very simple. Stop eating about 3 hours before bed, stop drinking fluids, especially alcohol, because that really disrupts sleep, but people use to unwind. So no food after 3 hours before bed, no fluids after 2 hours before bed, and get off screens about an hour before bed. You know, to truly understand what's happening in your body, we need to definitely look at, inspect as many points and biomarkers of inflammation as we can. I've looked at things like C-reactive protein, highly sensitive C-reactive protein, sed rates, interleukin-6, all these things, and they have not been that helpful in our patients. So what we've gone to and, and want to highlight is how we look at things. We look at genomics. So I like the fact that we can look at genetics. It's very simple now and see if someone methylates well, see if their vitamin D metabolism is appropriate, look at their glucuronidation pathways, and look at their antioxidant pathways. It's a starting point to create a real strategy for a patient understanding their own health and moving from feeling confused and unheard to feeling, you know, more empowered because they understand what's going on. And then I definitely feel like that is the, the first step. And then we can talk more and more and more, but honestly, I think downloading the guide, because I've already given a fair amount of information tonight, is probably a step that makes sense. So, you can go to either my website, drrobertwhitfieldmd.com or drrobcircle.com/join. You'll be able to get the free guide. You can comment guide wherever you're watching, and then you'll be able to download the guide. We put it together basically as a prelude to the book. Now, the book is very simple to understand and read. I did not make it difficult to understand or to get through. I feel like, honestly, to me, You've got to start by trying to understand. Like, I was at an event and, um, over the weekend for South by, and they were asking me questions. And like, I think the biggest problem that the providers have is they're very, uh, they're probably overworked and don't understand this particular problem that well because it's not that easy. I've seen several thousand patients with this problem, both from cancer and cosmetic surgery point of view, and it's a little bit easier for me. I just listen and understand it. Plus, I've been fascinated and curious about genetics since I was in college, which is a long time ago, if anybody knows how old I am. Um, so that being said, I think we should concentrate more on those things and get a better understanding. You know, having implants for cancer or cosmetic purposes is a challenge. It obviously creates inflammation in the body, and how we cope with that is, is probably the biggest take-home message. Everybody's going to be different, and we just want to help everybody, you know, improve their resiliency have more of a reserve to cope with it. And I think just discovering more about that will help each and every one of you. So once again, I've put together 3 different, you know, low entry point courses and we have this free downloadable guide. So there's really no excuse or barrier to better understand this. So the guide is obviously free. You can download that by commenting guide, going to the website, going to Dr. Rob's Circle, joining. And, and then I have put together 3 little simple courses. One's about BII, one's about the SHARP method, and one's about fat transfer. And then we have 2 books. I put together a book about the SHARP method and published it 2 years ago. And then last year we published a book just about BII. So, that's a lot of information that you could really go through, and I've done, I think, some really fascinating podcasts. The people have invited me on have been great. In particular, probably everybody knows my patient Lauren Boston. She hosts the Skinny Confidential with her husband Michael, and they're in Austin. So, I did a podcast with her a couple years ago after I did her explant and lift surgery. She had the most heavy metals of anybody in the history of my practice, and all I did was her explant surgery, no detox for her, and then repeated her tox test, and it definitely showed that just that surgery alone helped her. And she was already a very healthy person, but that just allowed her to fully embrace her own health and move forward. So she's— if you follow her, she's went on to have another child. She's doing extremely well. And has been just a great support for us. So, you can see her show. I've interviewed Danica Patrick on my show and I've been on her show. I have a whole series of my patients that have been interviewed on my podcast starting with Taylor Dukes, Alexi Panos, Casey Dixon, Kathy Dixon, Brooke, Tiffany, um, gosh, I'm gonna forget somebody, get in trouble. Jackie, uh, Allie, uh, Regina. Putting the pressure on myself. Uh, and if you're in the circle, you get to see the latest one, but I can't tell anybody about it because you have to be in the circle. You get priority access to that. And I have Sabrina in the chat on the Circle, so I know the chat's working. So, I'm going to give you all the opportunity. I know many of you have commented "guide," so we'll get all that to you. The, the rest of you, I'd like to go into the Circle, and we can carry out a Q&A. You can ask me anything. I'll stay on and, and talk to everybody. Um, but I'm going to end this stream out here, and I have, uh, Sabrina inside the circle, so I definitely want to give her her due. And, um, I thank y'all for joining me. It's been fun. So think of like the inflammatory signal stays on. So my Substack just started posting. So, all right, we're going to turn these off now and go into the circle. All right, uh, share as a reel.

Okay.

I'm coming, Sabrina. I'm just turning off all these. All right, all right. Okay, all right.