Dr. Robert Whitfield outlines his HART program for breast implant illness, which combines genetic and toxicity testing with targeted supplements and dietary changes before explant surgery. He's performed over 1,100 explants in six years and stresses that surgery alone isn't enough; treatment requires coordinated care before, during, and after.
Questions this video answers
Austin, Texas
Six years, going on the seventh year.
Over 1,100 explants.
Chapters
Thanks for joining me again. This is Dr. Robert Whitfield in Austin, Texas, and this is my Breast Implant Illness podcast. Today we're going to talk about what is the treatment for breast implant illness. So this is always complicated in terms of, you know, what is breast implant illness and what can we offer where traditional allopathic medicine has done probably lots of blood testing, maybe a GI workup, a rheumatoid workup, and have a lot of answers for these patients. And so we developed an entire program around this called my holistic Accelerated recovery Program for patients both in Austin and out of state and out of the country for that matter. So patients can participate in the heart program, which is founded in genetic testing, toxicity testing, food sensitivities, stool testing, and an evaluation of your hormones, liver and kidney function, as well as thyroid function. So that encompasses how I evaluate a patient with symptoms of breast implant illness. And according to the results of those tests, we can make inroads. Say, for instance, it comes back that many of your immune system pathways have lower than normal enzymatic activity. So whether it's vitamin D, the methylation pathway for our B vitamins, the antioxidant pathways, or our glucuronidation pathway, we can actually start working on those by alterations in both your diet and lifestyle, as well as supplementation. So I base my initial plan on thoroughly evaluating those genetic tests, toxicity tests, food sensitivity, stool tests and blood panels, as well as other inflammatory biomarkers to get a sense of where you are in the beginning and you on the right path so that as we look at surgical intervention, we have you set up for success. I've done this for six years, going on our seventh year now, and it's been quite a process to determine which things can help advance recovery. And we're always looking for more and more ways to, you know, decrease downtime, improve our efficiency and recovery. So we'll alter diets, increase protein in the diet even before surgery. So that really putting you in the best sense of what we call nitrogen balance. But that will help you go from the, you know, stress responsive surgery into a healing phase. And that will help you. And that's just, you know, the physical component of this. There's lots of emotion around explanting and image. And so many of our patients will express that to me after we've had a discovery session or consultation. And that's why over 1100 explants have taught me to make sure that are there instances where it's going to be critical to really, you know, do Our best to help explain, identify what could really be a potential stressor for them in recovery. The appearance change. So I do a lot of simultaneous fat transfers for that reason and that helps offset the change. I'll help reshape the cleavage area and the upper portions of the chest and breast area because that's where a lot of the volume sits when you're looking at implant from the patient's view down. And this further helps them in coping with an understanding, you know, the things that we can do. And then of course, we will refer folks who need, you know, more help from an emotional standpoint. Even within my group, I have two team members who've had explants and suffered from breast implant illness. So they provide a great deal of emotional support for our clients. But still, it requires careful consideration and evaluation of the patient's situation to recommend the explant surgery in conjunction with my program around recovery that starts pre op and includes our process interoperatively and then of course, our post op process. So for me, in summary, I just don't recommend explant surgery. I feel like that will leave patients not completely treated on their healing journey journey. So we look at once again our heart program, which is really evaluation of genetics. It looks at all of your blood work, including your liver and kidney function, your blood counts, your inflammatory markers, your thyroid and your other hormone functions, including estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. We look at food sensitivities and stool testing to really try to evaluate how we can decrease inflammation in the gut. We also look at other biomarkers for inflammation. And then we look at toxicity, both environmental toxins, heavy metals, and then of course, mycotoxins. So mycotoxins play a big role. I see a lot of this in my patients with bii. And I think it's really important to use a comprehensive approach to evaluate the client and encourage them that, you know, we appreciate and understand what they're going through. And we've designed this program to really help them before, during and after surgery in their explant journey.
