EP 101: Breast Implant Illness and Building Awareness with Expert Christina Dennis

Christina Dennis is the leading expert in breast plant illness having helped thousands of women rediscover their beauty and heal through her Size Happy movement. Christina went through breast implant illness and experiencing symptoms ranging from joint pain to extreme fatigue. Like many women, Christina was told implants were safe and was shocked to discover implant illness and the almost instant relief she felt after her explant procedure. Christina and Size Happy are dedicated to educating women on the danger of implants, what to do if they start having symptoms, and rediscovering beauty without implants.

Tune in to listen to an intriguing episode about breast implant illness, why we need to tune into our bodies, and the Size Happy movement.


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Transcript

 Mimi:
Welcome to the Lyme 360 podcast, for all things related to Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses. I'm Mimi Maclean, mom of five, founder of Lyme 360 and a fellow Lyme warrior. Tune in each week to hear from doctors, health practitioners and experts to learn about their treatments, struggles and triumphs, to help you on your healing journey. I'm here to heal with you.

Mimi:
Welcome back to the Lyme 360 podcast. This is your host, Mimi Maclean and today, we have on Christina Dennis and we are talking about breast implant illness. She is the founder of Size Happy, a movement focused on helping women on their journey to self-love heal from and rebel against the unattainable standards that society inflicts on them. And instead, embrace their own unique beauty.

Mimi:
After suffering from breast implant illness, Christina went through explant surgery and experienced nearly complete healing from the multitude of symptoms and side effects of having breast implants. She is now recognized as an expert in the breast implant illness community, helping others reclaim their health and happiness through education on her blog at sizehappy.net.

Mimi:
Through her Facebook group, Breast Implant Illness Rejuvenation and Education With Christina. Originally a certified personal trainer, Christina has experienced training and coaching thousands of women who struggle with their self-image and confidence. Health and fitness remain a core passion of hers and she can be found in the gym on most mornings.

Mimi:
Thank you for joining in today. Please go to lyme360.com to sign up for our newsletter so you'll be notified of our next podcast and our weekly newsletter as well. Also, if you would like to help support our podcast, I have a shop page there with all the items that I use and suggest that a little bit of the profit goes to helping fund our podcast.

Mimi:
Christina, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to talk to you, because breast implant illness, which you've had experience with and now have a business about it, and help women is kind of like an unspoken aspect or something that could lead to Lyme. As you know, this is a Lyme community and when you don't start getting better from a typical Lyme treatment, you start having to peel back, like what could be the reason why and whatnot.

Mimi:
One of those reasons is, I think, breast implants. People don't usually think that that could be a reason, so it's not really ever brought up. I'm excited to have you on today to dissect that and why that is and your experience and what you're doing about it to help other women out. So, thank you so much for coming on.

Christina:
Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be talking about this topic with your audience. I've lived through it and now it is my passion. It's what wakes me up every day and helping other women kind of put the pieces together with why they're not feeling good. You nailed it on the head.

Christina:
It's like, oftentimes, when I see women say, "I'm having all these symptoms." One of the first questions, I can't help it, is to ask them, "Do you have breast implants?" Because you're right, this is all very new. Especially back when I got my breast implants in 2006, I was told they were safe.

Christina:
So, women are still carrying that belief that they're safe. So, when they go to the doctors and they're going in there for fatigue and joint pain and hair loss and they're hormonal and they have anxiety, their doctors don't think to ask them, "Well, do you have breast implants or do you have anything implanted in your body?" Women don't think, too.

Christina:
It never crossed my mind that it could be my breast implants until I discovered breast implant illness. So, that's a really great aspect of, if you are diagnosed with Lyme and some things aren't working, then if you do have breast implants, it could possibly be your breast implants that are just bogging down your immune system and hindering things.

Mimi:
Now, what is causing the body to reject it? Because you would think, okay, they're made out of saline or whatever. Is it the plastic or is it the saline? Because I was looking online, there's times where they become moldy. Is it the mold in that? How does that happen?

Christina:
Yeah, so we are all told that saline breast implants are safer and it is just not true, we're finding that out. What it is, actually, is regardless of if you have saline breast implants or the silicone gel-filled breast implants, they all have the same shell. The shell contains up to 40 chemicals, things like for formaldehyde, acetone, zinc, talcum powder, paint thinner. I'm happy to send the list.

Mimi:
Everything that's bad for you.

Christina:
Right. Everything that's bad for you. Also, anywhere from six to a dozen heavy metals.

Mimi:
Wow.

Christina:
So, everybody who has breast implants, whether it's saline or silicone, is getting exposed to that silicone shell that has those chemicals and neurotoxins and carcinogens on that shell, along with the heavy metals. Of course, over time, I always see it as we are slowly poisoning our body.

Christina:
Again, I got the silicone gel-filled breast implants and I just thought it was silicone. But then, come to find out, just through women giving their breast implants to labs, what is in my breast implant. They were able to find out all of these different chemicals and toxins and heavy metals that are actually made up of the shell of all breast implants.

Christina:
You did mention about mold, oftentimes, the saline breast implants, because of a faulty valve, it will harbor things like mold and bacteria and fungus inside of your breast implant. Then, if you have a faulty valve, chances are that the saline and the mold or bacteria or fungus that's inside of that breast implant is also leaching out into your system as well. So, there's two aspects to that, that is a myth that saline breast implants aren't actually any safer than the silicone gel-filled ones, so I'm glad you touched upon that.

Mimi:
Yeah, because if you look, if you Google that, I mean, those pictures are definitely like, "Oh my god." I think I would freak if that came out of me. It'd be like, "That was in my body?" Because it's just beyond disgusting. But okay, so there's no safer encasement, or whatever you want to call it, out there?

Christina:
No.

Mimi:
They're all made from this toxic?

Christina:
Yeah. They're all bad.

Mimi:
They're all bad. Then, so when you put it in, how long does it typically take for somebody to start seeing? Is it immediate? Is it two years? What do people normally start seeing negative symptoms from it?

Christina:
Just to bring this up first, I have my group, my group has over 8,000 members right now. So, I'm always seeing a common theme in my group. Again, every body is different, so every body is going to respond to these breast implants a lot differently. Especially if you have the MTHFR gene mutation or if your immune system is just already weakened and then you get the breast implants. You'll probably see a, I don't want to say failing, but for lack of a better word, a failing of your health a lot sooner than a very healthy body.

Christina:
I've seen some women who have said, "I just got my implants six months ago and I'm already experiencing rashes, my hair's falling out and I have a lot of anxiety." They just found out about breast implant illness and they're like, "I'm really scared now, I don't know what to do." But, the common year is anywhere from five to seven years after breast implants. That's what we're seeing with the trends. That was actually my case as well. I had my breast implants for almost 12 years and the first five years were great for me, but then the last six to seven years, I was a mess.

Mimi:
How did you figure out that's what was causing it?

Christina:
Well, I was going in and out of doctors, and everything was just checking out normal. My thyroid was normal, my hormones were normal, just everything was normal. But, I literally felt like I was dying. I was in my early thirties and I would wake up every morning and I felt like I was in my seventies or eighties. Just because my hip joint hurt, I was always so tired. I had a lot of brain fog, just memory issues. I was just always inside of doctors, because I was like, "I just don't feel good. I don't know what's wrong with me." We just kept looking into things and nothing checked out. The only thing that I did find out that I had was something called the Epstein-Bar Virus, which I guess-

Mimi:
Which everybody has. If you've had mono, you have it.

Christina:
Yeah, like 80% of the population has. Again, I was in and out of the doctors, but then, in 2017, and this was four years into me not feeling good. But, in 2017, I discovered breast implant illness. It was on the news downstairs on my local news station and there was just a handful of women on the news. They were talking about how they had all of these symptoms and I was like. So, what piqued my interest was like, "Oh my god, I have all those symptoms too." Then, they talked about this thing called breast implant illness.

Mimi:
You're like, "I have that too"?

Christina:
Yeah, and then they talked about how they removed their breast implants. They had an explant surgery and all of their symptoms either completely went away or vastly improved. Then, of course, me, trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with my body, I researched breast implant illness. I learned what the breast implants are made out of, I learned what they do to our body.

Christina:
I was like, "Okay, this has to be what's wrong with me." Because for the last four years, I'm going in and out of doctors, I'm trying different protocols. I'm cleaning up my household cleaning products and my hygiene products. I'm trying to remove all these toxins from out here, thinking maybe something's triggering me feeling bad. But the whole time, it was what was inside of me that was making me feel this way. It took me about a year to explant, and after I explanted, literally that day, my hip joint pain just completely went away.

Mimi:
That fast?

Christina:
That fast. I have not had any hip joint pain since the day of explant and it's been about three-and-a-half years now. My hair is growing back again, it's not falling out every time that I shower. No anxiety, no depression. I had blurry vision, my vision's a lot better. I had swollen lymph nodes and those are gone.

Mimi:
How long did the rest of those symptoms take to clear up? Days or weeks, months?

Christina:
My fatigue and brain fog, I feel like went away pretty quick.

Mimi:
Amazing.

Christina:
It just lifted. John was like, "She looked so much healthier right after her surgery." You would think I would look so run down and all that after my surgery. But, he's like, "Her color was there and her face was dewy and she just had life behind her eyes again." Sorry, still a bit emotional obviously. It's just, I didn't change anything in my lifestyle, I just explanted. I removed my breast implants and that's what it took.

Mimi:
I get it, because I had a tooth extracted one time. I went to a biological dentist and he goes, "Ooh, your teeth are." I had a root canal, he's like, "It is so infected. You need to pull it." I remember him saying, "When you're out, when you're done, you're and be in rough shape tonight. You're not able to move and you're going to be in a lot of pain."

Mimi:
I literally skipped out of that dentist office. He's like, "Oh my god, I've never seen anybody." I'm like, "I'm so not in pain anymore, because I just feel so much better by having that rotten tooth out of my head." It was instant, nothing hurt. I've had so much energy. I think it was just kind of the same thing, but smaller scale.

Christina:
Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Mimi:
It's also another story, I have my Lyme doctor. It was funny, because she does this test and she can figure out exactly why your mitochondria is not working. Your mitochondria is super important, right?

Christina:
Oh yeah.

Mimi:
That's the energy and the ATP in your body. From what I gather, I'm not a scientist or doctor, but that's what she told me. She was saying, "You have something plastic in your body. That's why your mitochondria is not working." She's like, "Do you have breast implants?" I was like, "No." She's like, "Because whatever's in your body is equivalent to having breast implants and this is usually when your mitochondria is not working, it's because of breast implants." I was like, "That is so strange."

Mimi:
We come to figure out that, when I had my tooth pulled, I put a plastic tooth in, because I didn't want to deal with a bridge, because I didn't want to deal with surgery until I got completely better. She's like, "That plastic from that tooth is doing the same thing as breast implants." Yeah, so it was crazy. She's like, "Any kind of plastic like that in your body or any kind of metal or anything like that, your body just might not be able to take."

Mimi:
So, tell us a little bit about your community now. Your business, your course, what you offer to help other women. Because I do definitely think people who have Lyme or chronic Lyme, and if you do have breast implants and you have not addressed that and you're not getting better, that might be the next stone to turnover.

Christina:
Yeah. Size Happy is my brand and the funny thing is, I actually came up with Size Happy when I was helping women with binge and emotional eating. Because I was like, "They just want to be happy. Size happy." But, after my explant and women saw my brand, it took on a whole new meaning of being size happy. I love that and I'm really passionate, obviously, about that. But, my Facebook community, it's called Breast Implant Illness Rejuvenation and Education with Christina.

Christina:
It's really a place to go to get support, to find answers, to help you prepare safely for an explant, to help you recover safely from an explant. Of course, I talk a lot about body image and adjusting to your new breasts, because for me, it was a really easy decision, but for a lot of women, it's not. They're not ready to remove a part of them that helps them feel better and improves their confidence and makes them happy and everything like that. So, it is definitely an emotional adjustment and mental adjustment as well. But, it's just a really safe space to come and just find answers.

Christina:
Me personally, it's not my approach to tell you need to explant or this or that, it's me presenting the information to you and you doing what you want with it. Because I truly do believe it's your body, it's your choice, it's your health and you just go from there. Then, with Size Happy, I'm all about helping women to improve their confidence and their happiness. Not have it be attached to their jean size, their breast size, their body size. Because I am a child of the 90s and 2000s, watched a lot of MTV. Got a lot of subliminal programming done that told me I needed to look a certain part if I wanted to be happier, feel prettier and all of that.

Christina:
I've gone through the gamut. I've had eating disorders and weighed everything. Weighed my food, weighed myself. I was a slave to numbers and sizes for many years. Of course, going through all this, just found that those things really don't matter, especially when your health is in jeopardy. It's your health that is most important. Well over vanity and looking good and all of that. Again, you can go to my Facebook group, I'm also really active on Instagram, @iamsizehappy. But, it's just a place that'll empower you to feel good and really put your health and your happiness before anything in life.

Mimi:
No, it's definitely true. I mean, do you find most of the women who, explant? Is that what you're calling it?

Christina:
Yeah, explant.

Mimi:
Are they typically already have symptoms and feeling sick or are they doing it as a precaution because they hear that it's bad?

Christina:
Yeah, I would say 95% are doing it because they are sick. They're not feeling well, they're not getting answers, they've done all the things. Their doctors have told them, "Your labs look normal." Or, "It's all in your head." Or this or that. There is a very small percentage of women who want to just be proactive. They're like, "Knowing what I know now, I really don't want to take the risk of any of this happening to me. So, I'm just going to go ahead and explant." But, most of the women, especially my group, are already just not feeling really well and are willing to go through an explant surgery to get some relief.

Mimi:
Right. I mean, because I think you and I, when you're in such a bad place health wise, you do anything at that point to feel better. That, like you're saying, I know it's hard, vanity wise, but at the same time, you're like, "Oh, if that's going to make me feel better, then that's what I got to do." Out of the 95%, how many of them actually begin to feel better after their surgery?

Christina:
I would say 75%.

Mimi:
Okay.

Christina:
There is that very small group of women, like I said, especially if you have the MTHFR gene mutation or you have autoimmune issues, or you're on a lot of medication or you have a high-stress life, those are some things that interfere with healing and getting better. But, it can take years. There are women in my group who still, years later, aren't feeling better. They still have a lot of issues.

Christina:
A lot of them, their fatigue went away and maybe their joint pain went away, but they still do have a handful of symptoms that still haven't resolved. But, the vast majority of women, within the first, I'd say month. They're like, "I explanted a month ago and I just feel so much better. I can breathe a lot deeper now. My energy's through the roof, I haven't experienced any anxiety." There are a lot of positive stories coming out after women explant.

Mimi:
Is there anything you recommend for afterwards, as far as supplements? Especially, if you think about it, if you've had this leaking saline, moldy water in your body, I mean, you wouldn't expect to feel better right away. You would think there's just got to be some kind of detoxing work to get that out of you.

Christina:
Yeah. I mean obviously, I'm not a doctor or anything, but what I would suggest for anybody who's had a saline breast implant and there's mold in inside of that breast implant, is to work with somebody who can test you for mold. Also treat you for mold, whatever that may look like. If you've had a ruptured silicone breast implant, there is a supplement called a inositol. I believe it's a B vitamin derivative and it does help convert silicone into silica, so that your body can easily extract it.

Christina:
Then, I also have my program, it's called the BII Bridge. I, of course, created that program because, back when I was recovering from breast implant illness, there wasn't anything out there that I could actually follow and go through to help me just cleanse my body after my explant. Because you're right, we are exposed to those toxins and those heavy metals and explanting is step one, I always say. It's not the cure. You are going to need to really clean up your body afterwards.

Christina:
So, there is that, and there's a protocol in there for detoxing. It's nothing harsh, it's very gentle, but it's very effective. It's a whole three months after your explant to just help open up your detox pathways. Because you really want to make sure you do that first, instead of just jumping in there and working on maybe a liver detox, but you haven't done anything for the colon yet, so you're backed up. It's like a whole thing that I can get into.

Christina:
I have a entire video on my YouTube channel about how to detox after explanting, but you want to make sure that you do it right, of course. But, I would definitely send anybody that way, to the BII Bridge program, because I'm just with you every step of the way. I've gone through it and a lot of other women have and there's the testimonials and everything like that. But, you're right. You really do need to cleanse your body and help your body after you do explant and remove those breast implants.

Mimi:
Now, where would they find the program?

Christina:
It's biibridgeprogram.com.

Mimi:
Okay, perfect. So Christie, is there anything else we haven't touched on yet that you think would be informative for anybody from the Lyme community?

Christina:
Yeah. I mean, I just want to go over some symptoms. If anybody out there is experiencing any of these symptoms, they can maybe be like, "Okay, well I've tried everything else and it could be this." Some of the common symptoms, and there is a long list, but I'm going to keep it down to the most common cluster of symptoms, is fatigue. If you just feel like you could sleep all day, yet you get a good night's sleep, if you have that chronic fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, joint pain, hair loss, inflammation.

Christina:
A lot of women, they show the pictures before, when they had the breast implants and just how puffy and swollen they look. Then, after they explant, within a month, their face is a lot slimmer and their whole body just loses all of this inflammation. Of course, anxiety and depression, a lot of us just go through that, I think, because we're just so scared about our health and we can't find the answers. So, it just contributes to that.

Christina:
Heart palpitations, swollen lymph nodes and gasping for air, those are the common symptoms. If you are experiencing any of those and you can't figure out why, or your doctor's testing you for things, but everything's coming out normal and you do have breast implants, definitely just look into breast implant illness. What these breast implants are made out of and what they do to the body. Because the moment that we get them implanted inside of us, it sends off an immune and an inflammatory response in our body. Because our body doesn't recognize it.

Christina:
It's like, "Intruder, invader, foreign object. I don't recognize this." So, our beautiful, intelligent, smart body goes to protect us. It creates this red capsule around the implant to help protect the rest of your entire body. I'll just keep this brief, but if you do decide to explant, you do want to get the capsule out with your breast implant. It's very, very important.

Mimi:
It's literally the capsule. What is it, cells? What is it?

Christina:
Is like scar tissue. Your body literally makes it to protect the rest of your body from the breast implants. If you look under explant surgery, the #explantsurgery or explant, you'll see images of the breast implants on a table after an explant surgery. There'll be this red capsule around the breast implant and it's called the capsule.

Christina:
We call it the capsule. But, your body literally created that to protect you from those chemicals and those heavy metals reaching out any further or faster inside of your body. So, when you do or if you do get your explant, you want that capsule out also, because that capsule could and most likely does contain some of those chemicals and heavy metals that were leaching out from the breast implants. So, it's really, really important to get that out also.

Christina:
There have been quite a few women who got an explant and their plastic surgeon didn't get all the capsule out and they still remained sick. So, they had to go in and have another surgery just to get the capsule out and then they started to feel better after their explant. It's really important that you do this. All of this information is inside the group. It's easy to read, easy to go through, step-by-step. I don't want to throw too much out there.

Mimi:
Because it's important too, because I feel the same thing with Lyme, when you have this much inflammation in your body, it's not good. Because in the long term, it can cause cancer and other illnesses. Your body can't stay in that state forever, because then it just starts breaking down and causing other issues. It's super important. One thing I learned, though, about breast implants, which I did not know, is they only last for like, 10 years. I thought they were permanent, you could just keep them in, but, right? Is it 10 years?

Christina:
Most surgeons should say that you should get them exchanged every eight to 10 years. Luckily, my surgeon did tell me that. There are some women, though, who got them done in the 80s and 90s who are told, "They're lifetime devices, you never need to remove them." Those women now are, gosh, in their sixties and fifties and they're in my group. They're like, "I've had my implants for 30 years and my surgeon and told me they were safe and they were lifetime devices and I'm really sick." Stuff like that. But yeah, they do need to get exchanged every decade.

Mimi:
Because otherwise, they decompose. I mean, they'll start-

Christina:
They break down. I've seen implants that are only maybe five-to-seven years old and they're mush. They're literally disintegrated mush, ruptured implants. You know, it's just like, honestly, I don't know how these things ever got approved. It's like somebody's like, "I'm going to take the most toxic things in the world, put them into one thing and implant them inside of a woman's body forever."

Mimi:
Yeah, because they're FDA approved, right?

Christina:
Yeah.

Mimi:
How would you FDA approve something with that many chemicals and that many-

Christina:
The studies.

Mimi:
I guess it's the same way that the mercury got FDA approved, right?

Christina:
Right.

Mimi:
The mercury cavities or fluoride for the dentist office. That stuff is the worst. That's why we're having all these Alzheimer's issues. You [inaudible 00:24:23] how all these things get crazy. Okay. It's a lot to dig in.

Christina:
Yeah. It can be, for sure.

Mimi:
Oh, but at least there's a solution. As you said, just getting your head around it. My whole life, I've just gotten used to having small boobs. I think you just, whatever. When I was little, I had a bad accident and I've had so many issues, health wise, that I'm like, the least amount of time I ever can spend, to do anything I [inaudible 00:24:53] I'm like, "It's just not worth it."

Christina:
Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Mimi:
But thank you so much, Christina, this is amazing. I really appreciate your time and your knowledge. I know for a fact you will be helping somebody out who's listening, who probably never thought to even think about this as part of their healing journey, right?

Christina:
Yeah.

Mimi:
But thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Christina:
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Mimi:
Each week, I will bring you different voices from the wellness community, so that they can share how they help their clients heal. You will come away with tips and strategies to help you get your life back. Thank you so much for coming on and I am so happy you are here. Subscribe now and tune in next week if you want to learn how I detox and you want to check out my Detox for Lyme checklist, go to lyme360.com/detoxchecklist. You can also join our community at Lyme 360 Warriors on Facebook. Let's heal together. Thank you.