The Curious Introvert
A weekly podcast covering societal taboos & cultural blind spots. Join host Meredith Hackwith Edwards as she deep dives with curiosity & nuance into philosophy, society & culture with expert guests.
Episodes frequently feature philosophers, researchers, historians & journalists.
The Curious Introvert
Ep. 348: Are Your Breast Implants Making You Sick? (What they don’t tell you)
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Is the skepticism around breast implant illness driven by science or the cosmetic surgery industry? What protocols (for keeping & removing) are working for patients?
Robert Whitfield, MD is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a board-certified breast explant specialist who has performed over 2,000 explant procedures, published 15 peer reviewed publications & testified at the 2019 FDA hearing. He is a leading Breast Implant Illness expert who takes a functional approach to patient recovery.
In this episode, he says what your surgeon won’t, you’ll hear real symptoms from a listener, why removing them isn’t enough & implant alternatives.
If you liked this episode, you’ll also like episode 290: ALLERGIES OR AEROSOLS? THE IGNORED REASON YOU’RE TIRED & SICK
Guest:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-robert-whitfield-show/id1678143554
https://www.drrobertwhitfield.com/
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0:00 - Introduction
1:09 - BII Symptoms Explained
3:14 - BII vs. Perimenopause
6:20 - Why "Toxic" Lost Its Meaning
7:51 - A Listener's Symptom Story
8:20 - Textured Implants and Lymphoma
14:16 - The Case for Your Own Tissue
18:18 - The Total Tox Burden Test
22:24 - Can You Heal Without Explanting?
28:37 - Botox and Filler as Alternatives
29:59 - Foreign Body Reaction Explained
32:12 - Medical Gaslighting or Industry Pressure?
33:42 - Dr. Whitfield Responds to Makary
37:09 - When Medicine Dismisses Women
38:14 - How to Vet an Explant Surgeon
40:03 - Pre and Post-Op Protocol
49:29 - What Surgeons Should Be Telling You
52:10 - Still Sick After Explant?
53:52 - Mammograms and Rupture Risk
55:09 - Saunas and Implant Leaching
58:49 - How Urgent Is BII?
1:00:36 - Censored by the Algorithm
1:02:18 - Why Women Must Spread This Message
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If Frogger and Hunger Games had a baby, that would accurately represent the effort of staying healthy and happy in this moment. And for so many women who have had breast implants, there seems to be a growing suspicion that the thing that they got to make them feel good could be making them sick. But how do you know? And if you know, how do you get your doctor to believe you? My next guest is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a board certified breast explant specialist who has performed over 2,000 explant procedures, published 15 peer-reviewed publications, and testified at the 2019 FDA hearings. He's a leading breast implant illness expert who takes a functional approach to patient recovery. Today we're going to cover symptoms, skeptics, and advocating for yourself as we ask the question Could breast implants be making you sick? This is the Curious Introvert Podcast with me, Meredith. Around here we explore taboo questions and societal blind spots. Please help me welcome the man listening to patients when others talk at them, fighting for informed consent and unfiltered science, Dr. Robert Whitfield. Thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00I would love to start with what the symptoms of breast implant illness are.
SPEAKER_01Obviously, you know, something like fatigue is a really, really common complaint that I get from patients. And then one that struck me a little bit differently was in 2016 when I first started getting introduced to the topic of breast implants and breast implant illness as a something I should like raise awareness about. I was told about brain fog and I didn't really understand what brain fog was. And then I just asked patients, like, what are you experiencing that's you're describing as brain fog? And they're like, oh, I can't remember where I put my keys, or I I left the groceries in the car, went inside and just, you know, kind of left them out there. Couldn't remember, you know, specific events or names or or things like that of loved ones or children. And so short-term memory loss is is one of the ways to characterize brain fog. It's not the only way, but it's the way I think about it. And then definitely significant problems with joint pain and muscle pain. Short of that, probably the next most and frustrating thing that I would hear about would be rashes, like these migratory rashes that were not easily explained by the primary care provider or a dermatologist. And they seemed to, you know, kind of come and go without a specific treatment. And so those became like some of the most frequent things. But honestly, if you can come up with a symptom, I've I've heard about it and been asked about it. And, you know, some of them are just really complex and have nothing, you know, in terms of scientific research or or anecdotal reports behind. I I was at a birthday dinner on Saturday night talking to somebody and they said, you know, you sound like you do all this functional stuff. Can I ask you a question? And I said, Yeah, sure. I said, you know, I I have like this mold exposure and I don't feel well, and I'm 35 and I sleep like 15 hours a day or whatever the thing was. So I was like, yeah, that's not normal.
SPEAKER_00Well, what was interesting to me when I was reading about different symptoms, there seems to be lots of similarities with hormone disruption. And when women are most likely to get breast implants in midlife and also experience perimenopausal symptoms around that time as well. I I was curious, how do you distinguish perimenopausal symptoms from breast implant illness symptoms?
SPEAKER_01I don't try to. Yeah. I I think, you know, the way I think about the problem is everybody can have a chronic inflammatory process depending on your age, like you just brought up, people can come in in perimenopause or menopause or whatever stage. And chronic inflammation at the tissue level is still going to be happening. And so I think it's incumbent upon everybody to understand that, first of all, there's not a specific biomarker blood lab I can send you to and figure this out. In a research environment, there's something that you can test for called oxylipenthum. There's a paper written about that. And that's elevated in patients with symptoms of breastplate illness. So that's like a biomarker. That's a real, you know, biomarker you can do. So you have to be a little curious, right? So if someone comes in and they're quote unquote being told they're in perimenopause, but they're in their early 30s, that doesn't make a lot of sense. So some of it just doesn't like line up, right? It doesn't track if you have a really, really younger patient who's been told that, barring, you know, some extenuating circumstance. So, you know, I tend to like say, like, okay, let's think about this a little bit more logically. Have you done all the basic things? Like, is your sleep hygiene correct? Like, maybe have you had your cortisol levels checked, or have you done an oats test? Or have you done some things to look at your hormones? And then I would always fall back on something like a toxicity burden test because there are so many things that disrupt hormones. And the thyroid, the sex hormones, in particular thyroid, is very sensitive to just anything, it seems like. I had a golfer on my show, Ashley Kurtz. She grew up playing junior golf, high school golf, college golf, worked on a golf course. She has the highest amount of herbicides and pesticides, or ganophosphates, or PFAS, like the pherepotemicals I've ever seen in here.
SPEAKER_00Really?
SPEAKER_01I mean, shockingly high. So I did this golf toxicity stream with her, and I was just like, you know, what why do y'all have all this? And there's a lot of good reports now that if you live within a mile of a golf course, you're at 126% increased odds of developing Parkinson's disease. It doesn't take rocket science to figure out why that's happening, right? So the chemicals used on those golf courses, things like atrazine, chlorphalamil, chloropyrophenose, these things are toxic. And it, I mean, I hate the it's like a cliche term though.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I know. That's why that's why I'm like so interested to unpack this more with you because the term toxic is, I don't know, it's like the it's kind of boring now.
SPEAKER_01I don't I don't know what to use.
SPEAKER_00It's overused and it's become like like associated with tie-dye shirts and crystals. And so it's it's kind of hard to help people understand like the legitimate aspects of it. Actually, you know what? I had a listener send me her journal entry when she thought she was experiencing BII. And I thought this would be a good way to kind of explain symptoms. And I wanted to get your take on whether you feel like this is an extreme case or is this pretty par for the course of what you hear? She had natural breasts and then breast cancer and then a double mastectomy. About a year and a half after receiving the implants, after the mastectomy, she started to have these symptoms. She thought the symptoms were from a drug that she was taking, but after the implants were removed, she was still taking the drug, but her symptoms went away. So that's my preface. But she writes right thumb pain starts, then left thumb pain, both wrists, bones on the top of my feet, ankles, dizziness, lightheadedness, anxiety, brain fog, chest pain underneath left implant and up into the left armpit, itching in my right breast that cannot be calmed, skin rash on the center of chest, dozens of small bumps like moles in both armpit areas, sores that won't heal, lumps in the right breast above the implant, chronic inflammation, whole body feels swollen, under eye turning gray. I'm sick looking, intolerant to exercise, everything hurts and requires recovery, but I'm still walking thirsty all the time. Does that sound extreme to you, or is that pretty common for what you're hearing in your office?
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's pretty average, to be honest. I think the the larger problem is I'll go back to the Saturday night discussion because this was, you know, I rarely get out. I'll just say that to you. I work a lot and when I have downtime, I'm not out wandering the night in Austin, Texas. So I was invited to this birthday dinner, and it was a former patient of mine. And this couple sat next to me, and I told you they started asking me these questions. So they basically just ran off your list. And I said, Well, you know, have you had surgery before? It's not polite for me to ask if somebody's had an augmentation. I don't ever do that. Right. And I'm not sitting here staring at people in a restaurant. And so the person tells me, Oh, yeah, I have textured implants. I had them done in Turkey. Now, the the geographic location of the surgery means nothing. So this is a textured implant and it's an allergon-textured implant. So an allergon-textured implant is the most commonly associated implant with breast implant anaplastic large cell lymphoma. So that's a breast implant associated cancer. Now, why would that happen? It's a T cell-based lymphoma. So T cells are reactivated, you know, during chronic inflammation. Fine. So why would this become a cancer? Nobody knows. Okay. So for someone to respond, you're going to have this spectrum of response. We'll say the worst response is a T cell lymphoma. We'll say on the other end of the spectrum, there's no response. Say, okay, well, in the middle, there's going to be a big ass bell curve. And I don't see a lot of patients who ultimately have that cancer, which is great. I've had one patient in the first thousand have a lymphoma. And it's from the allergan textured implant. I will say this. And in my study that I published, uh, we published 694 consecutive explant specimens that were sampled and had PCR testing that showed that 29% had bacterial contamination. There was no difference in textured or smooth implants. So, okay, that's fine. So it's not really so much the bacterial contamination that's driving it. That's my point. But then it's like the patient's response at the tissue level. Like what's driving at the tissue level that response? And in the 60s, the first kidney transplant was done by uh plastic surgeon Joseph Maureen. He did it on identical twins. That's important because it didn't require any drugs. Because that person is genetically identical, there's no difference, right? Your body cannot distinguish between the two because they're exactly the same. So you transfer the kidney, and technically they execute the operation, they didn't need any drugs. So that started transplantation. And then the next step was to do a non-identical twin. And that required a level of immunosuppression. And then the final step, the step that took you into really organ transplantation, was a cadaver kidney. So taking it like from you to me. Now, because we're not identical and barring the cross match and the blood typing and all that, you would require medicine in the form of a steroid or azothioprin, those are the first two drugs used, to block the immune response. Now, I say this because I started taking care of patients with cancer, like the one you described in 2005 when I started practice. And the way I would help that patient before I knew what was going on is I knew that every patient who got an implant, whether it's a hip, knee, breast, dental, cardiac, neurologic implant, all those implants get infected because they're not your own tissue. I mean it's very common sense, logical stuff. Now, if someone reacts to the device for whatever reason, they can have all the things you just described. And one of the first cases I ever took care of was a patient who had had a breast cancer reconstruction elsewhere, had gotten referred to me because she kept having what was called red breast syndrome. She would just intermittently get red on her chest, and they would put her in the hospital and give her IV antibiotics. And sometimes it would just go away quickly, sometimes it would take longer. And she just got kind of frustrated and tired with that process. So she came to me and said, you know what? I kind of have some tightness, I kind of have some pain sometimes. Kind of like you said, there's this deep itch that's more of nerve pain. So that's a nerve-related phenomenon. And so she came to me and says, you know what, I'm over the whole implant thing. I would like to have a breast reconstruction. And I had started practice and I was trying to and wanted to perform a technique called the the deep inferior epigastric artery perforator flap. So I know that's a long aim. So it was something that was an advancement on the tram flap from the 80s, and it's your own tissue being used as a breast reconstruction. So what I was doing was using microsurgical technique to not disrupt the muscles or the nerves of the abdomen and just use the skin and fat, and then make autologous tissue transplant, hook it up to the blood vessels underneath the sternum. And those blood vessels are bigger, typically than the size of a coffee stir. So just kind of use that as a frame of reference. And so I said, well, here's what I would tell you, ma'am. I can do the operation I describe as the D flap reconstruction. I can remove all your scar tissue and the implant material. And if in fact that is playing any role in the redness or whatever's going on with pain, all that'll go away. Because there's mechanical symptoms caused by scarring along the chest wall. They restrict movement of the ribs every time you breathe in and out. And then anything that is tight from a like a band over the top of the chest, that would go away because you would just you would relieve that restriction. And then if you're having this kind of, she would get red and like have probably before mast cell activation syndrome was a thing, she would have this big histamine release. And I was like, well, if this is really from this, some sensitivity or reaction to it, it'll just go away. And sure enough, you know, I did her surgery and I did exactly what I said I would do. I'd remove all the implant material and scar tissue. And I did the reconstructive microsurgery component with a deploy. And all of her symptoms of chest wall restriction, pain, nerve symptoms, histamine release, redness of the chest, all that went away. Because now she has her own tissue. It's autologous, it's her own, like a genetically identical kidney transplant, like we discussed. Now, that's important because now in 2025, a paper was published on Denmark that shows that people who have that tightness, that firmness of the scarring called the capsule contracture, are experiencing more immune system activation. So instead of just a T cell response, there's also an enhanced B cell response and a plasma cell response. So for all the listeners, your immune system is incredibly, you know, I would say we know so little about it, but it is very impressive what can happen in the immune response. And so they looked at these specific scar capsules and tried to measure the RNA, which actually is what produces protein. So DNA shows you what's there. RNA shows you what's active, what it's doing. And so they showed they they had increased antibody production from the plasma cells. They had increased B cell activity and it increased T cell activity. So that's more like an organ rejection picture. That's why I brought that up. That's a long-winded way to explain that when you use your own tissue, nothing really can happen because it's your own tissue, barring any kind of technical issues. Anything else is considered foreign. Now, patients, depending on how they pick their parents, right? So you get your genes from your parents, and how you detox is from your parents, how you react to things is from your parents. Now you couple that to how you grew up, where you grew up, the food you ate, the fluid you drank, the things you applied to your skin, the air you breathe, that gives you a series of toxin exposures. Then that affects something that probably is underappreciated and definitely poorly understood, which is your gut health. Everything tied to your gut health dictates then how you react to everything else. And then all you need to do is get a mold exposure, a parasite exposure, bit by a tick, whatever, EBV. There can be all these things. And then that kind of gives you my person. My person doesn't necessarily detox well genetically. They've gotten a number of exposures over time because they're less resilient, they cannot, and they will not have the reserve to tolerate it. And so then that gives them more symptoms of chronic inflammation. Now that may be a long, drawn-out explanation, but I think it just distills it down very clearly so you understand who I'm talking about. Yeah. So some people say, will everybody get this problem? And the short answer is no, right? I said 83% of my patients have more genetic problems in their detox pathways. So of course, not everybody's going to be like that. But the patients I see have the most problems. That gives you the least amount of reserve. So it creates, if you want to think of it, less resiliency. You can't tolerate as much. And so everybody knows the analogy of the bucket's full, blah, blah, blah. So if you're sitting there running the tub for a bath and forget and wander off, and the tub, you know, floods the bathroom and screws your ceiling, right? That's your immune system. Right? Your immune system does not care. It is never going to turn the faucet off. It's going to flood the entire home and you can't do anything about it. Once you've reached that point, it's like the person I told you about at dinner. They're like, I'm 35 and I need to sleep, whatever she said, 10 to 15 hours a day. I'm like, that is not normal. All right. So she's like, I have mold. I'm like, yes. But really, you have mitochondrial dysfunction. And that's leading to a problem of fatigue. But if you also have a genetic problem with your antioxidant pathway, then as you build up oxidative stress from working out, try people try to like over-train through this for whatever reason. Yeah. And so that builds up more oxidative stress. And if you already can't handle oxidative stress, then that makes it worse. If you have a poor methylation pathway, which 36% of the population does, and almost I said 83% of my people do, then that makes it harder to recover.
SPEAKER_00And so that test that you mentioned earlier, what did you call it? Toxic load or tox detox panel?
SPEAKER_01What so we use the total tox burden test from vibrant wellness. So it looks at environmental toxins. So for everybody listening, environmental toxins are things like BPA and parabens and phthalates and something called glyphosate from basically Roundup. That's an herbicide. When you get those organophosphates used on golf courses, those things are going to be specific breakdown products of chemicals on a report. It's not going to say chlorphalamil. It's not going to be that. It's going to be a breakdown product of that. And those are things that they refer to as forever chemicals because they don't come out of people. Things like atrazine, they don't come out of people. Mycotoxins will be listed as like aflatoxins, okra toxin, femonicids. That's a whole like laundry list.
SPEAKER_00But you think that would be like a good test for people to get like so because I when I was preparing for this episode, I got a lot of messages about, hey, I'm I just had a double mastectomy and I'm trying to weigh my options. I'm so glad you're doing this. You know, I need to know what what I need to have an honest look at what my options are. So do you feel like that test would be a good for anyone who's thinking about having breast augmentation?
SPEAKER_01Now we're on the very outer edge of what I do. So to me, like I don't really listen to people to identify a diagnosis and I don't get blood work. Everybody who comes to me has normal blood work, basically. If they don't, they need to go see their general doctor, not me. So what we're looking for is genetically how you detox and then your talks burden through this test. And I feel like that test helps people more. So they have a benchmark, if you will. Like, okay, this is what it is right now. And then people get all worried about and concerned about, like, when I tell them, like, this probably came from a place you worked or a place you lived or whatever. Everybody gets super defensive. And like, probably the best thing for you to do is just be objective, right? I get this test, this is what I have. And then think back in time. Did I live in a crummy apartment when I was growing up or a basement, an apartment like when university, when you go to college or whatever? Like when you first move out. Yeah, stuff like that. Those places are horrendous, basically. Many of them are super old in terms of construction. And everybody's been to the hotel room that's been painted over for the rain leak. I mean, that's like everybody's seen that. Like we just consciously don't think much of it. But mold is an extremely bad actor, especially if you have a problem in your glucuronidation pathway. So that goes back to the 83%, and that's a specific mutation in GSST and GSTP1. Then there's also, like we already talked about methylation, everybody's heard of MTHFR. Oh my God, you know, everybody talks about it. Like 36% of the population does it's okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Nobody's gonna die. You need a methylated B supplement. That's fine. But vitamin D is like something that is, I think, really poorly understood. You're gonna have problems in conversion of your vitamin D to an active form and transport and all sorts of things. So like vitamin D3K2 is probably the best shortest answer to that. So I don't supplement people to like oversupplement something. And, you know, I'm supplementing folks based on our genetics that we've seen in our patients with this problem. So it's a very specific problem-based support system. So if you have chronic inflammatory symptoms, of which a lot of people do, there's ways to lower that. You know, improve your sleep hygiene. Really concentrate on things you put in your body and on your body. Those will help you the most. Those are like the solves you can store. Immediately when people say, like, I don't there's too much stuff. I don't know what to do. Like, well, you concentrate on your sleep first, because that's the thing you have the most control over, or you you you have to gain control over. And then what you put in your body and on your body is probably like the order of things to think about and just try to control what you can control.
SPEAKER_00So one of the questions that came in was can this be solved without removing my breast implants? And so this is where I'm going to check for my own understanding of what you're saying. It sounds like these symptoms are such a big umbrella. And unfortunately, so many people experience them that if you are having them, jumping to breast implant illness as a self-diagnosis is not necessarily the right move, but it would be the right move to talk with, say, like a functional doctor and help rule out some of these things before you get to, well, I gotta take my breast implants out.
SPEAKER_01So I have three functional practitioners that just do this part and they're very versed in what the patient's experience is. So it's not that it's not good to engage with somebody. The problem is I have this thing where these are the only folks that we take care of. So it's super simple for us to handle. If you're in a large practice and you're getting very diverse types of patients with inflammation, it becomes a little bit more challenging. If you start trying to detox one of these patients aggressively, you will make them sick. So I don't advocate like pushing people here and there. Many people try to copycat us around the country, which is great. Just you know if you mimic the system we run, then that will help you. The problem is, you know, your your question is the same one I got asked Saturday night. Well, do I have to have my implants taken out? And I said, here's what I would do. Like I set up this program to really not avoid that question, because that's a question that arrives to everybody in the right time. And then they make their own decision. I do not tell anybody what to do. Like I can explain to you what I know and what I've seen over a decade of taking care of patients for this problem and 30 years of surgery, but everybody arrives at that, you know, decision on their own in and in their own time. That that's has nothing to do with us. Now, I will say the more work you put in on yourself before you arrive at that decision, the less apt you are to be dissatisfied after you make that decision. Because I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist, and my team is neither. We just try to help facilitate and take care of patients. So the image problem is what you're getting at. Like, what am I going to look like after this? Right. So that's always the issue. And so the people who are able to do that work and put it in beforehand and arrive at their own decision depending on what they want to do and how they feel about it. I've had patients ask me to do nothing after X-Plant, just remove the implant. I've asked people to do a lift. That's probably the most common thing we do, is like a lift or uplift in Europe. In Europe, it's called the uplift. And then I have people want me to do, you know, what I try to do to help people reconcile this the most, which is a simultaneous fat transfer. Because the end game is always the end game. Like you got this for a certain reason, barring the cancer cases, and it's an appearance change. And so whether or not the appearance change was what you wanted, there's an appearance change. And a lot of people are unhappy, dissatisfied with the appearance change in the first place. Too big, too wide, too tall, whatever. And so the easiest thing for us to reconcile kind of goes in order. Like patients who could have just had a lift because they already had enough breast tissue, but were counseled to get an implant to avoid the scarring, I can just take that out and reshape the breast and it'll look better than what they started with. Right. Everything else gets a little bit harder, but the more breast tissue you have and the smaller the implant, the easier the case is. When it's a really, really small patient and they've done the opposite. Instead of putting in a small implant for a small patient, they've progressively got a bigger implant. Those are the hardest cases. Those patients have the most problems. That would be the group that has probably the most dissatisfaction if you looked everybody up across the board. And part of it was either they couldn't get a fat transfer because I decline them in certain patients who have higher toxic levels until we work with them and get it down. Or they've found somebody who said, nope, you're too small, you're too lean, you're too whatever. We concentrate on providing the service for patients with lower body fat. We do DEXA scans pre-op, we do their TOX test pre-op, we do their gut health, food sensitivities, hormone balance, try to get them prepared so that if we can do that for them, we try to help with them because I know it's important psychologically to be able to offer that as a service. And I've taken a ton of shit across the internet, across the platforms, across the whatever for this, you know, patients. You know, it's hard for them to kind of hear all the information because there's so many types of, I don't know if you want to say voices, but there's just the the amount of stuff that comes out, sometimes it makes no sense. For instance, there's somebody who's very prominent in this country who says overgrafting fat transfer patients is important so that when they lose volume, there's still volume there. Now, for all your listeners, you know what that sounds like to me? That sounds like somebody who has never taken care of a cancer patient in their entire career. So my whole career is spent taking care of cancer patients. And if you overgraft a cancer patient, they feel like they have cancer again because invariably they're going to get a cyst, a lump, fat necrosis, something. And that will lead them back to the same thing that happened to them the day they found they had a cancer because they found it, typically. And so my sister died of breast cancer. I've taken care of breast cancer patients since 1996. That to me is unethical. I would never say that to a patient. And I don't overgraft patients.
SPEAKER_00Well, hey there. Since you seem to be enjoying this episode so far, double check that you've hit the follow button on your podcast listening app and subscribe on YouTube. And to join my free private Facebook group, search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Okay, back to the show. I think most of my listeners they are maybe in the camp of really wanting to be as well informed as they can about all of their options. And so I love that you mentioned some of the alternatives. What you I didn't hear you mention that I've read about, and I'd love your feedback on are Botox lifts and hyaluronic acid fillers. Do you know anything about that as alternatives?
SPEAKER_01For the breast? Yeah, I so I don't put anything into a breast that's not autologous. So autologous is your fat. So hyaluronic acid will be a product that is temporary. And to get enough volume, uh it would be very hard. There's a new product called alloclay, which is cadaver fat. And once again, I have nothing against the product. I I don't care one way or the other. I don't put anything foreign in anymore. It just doesn't align with what we're doing. So everybody's looking for re-volumization. My stance is always that you start with your own, whether it's a stem cell, fat, whatever it is, that's always the top of the pyramid. Anyone who tells you anything else and says an exosome, a peptide, this, that, and the other, that's synthetic or cadaver, is never going to be better than your own. Yeah. At some level, your body will find that and try to rid itself of it. So it doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_00So is the problem with breast implants primarily that the body is recognizing it as a foreign body? And if the answer is yes, do we also see this problem in like chin implants and IUDs and tooth implants and joint replacements?
SPEAKER_01So they're all different biomaterials. Now you're having a biomaterial discussion. So you can't confuse biomaterials.
SPEAKER_00So it's not simply like it's foreign, therefore the body reacts in this certain way. It's the combination of factors.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can stratify it like that. Everything you put in a human that's not human will have a foreign body reaction. Now, if you just go down the tree, like some of those are going to be very different, right? So we'll say titanium is causing a different reaction. You know, we'll say a silicone elastomer breast implant is causing a different reaction. We'll say something that's got polypropylene coating it's causing a different reaction. And whatever the biomaterial surface of another product is, it's going to be different. There's defibrillators, right? There's neurologic implant devices, there's spinal cord implant devices, there's you said copper IUDs. Like, I've had tons of people tell me they had to have their copper IUD taken out. There's this thing called Esure that Obigen folks take out. So like it's not that you can't just generalize that every single thing is going to cause this type of reaction because you know, you don't put all those in the same place. Like we don't put a titanium implant behind the breast. We don't put a silicone chin implant behind the breast. But the there's differences, right? Like the space, the environment, whatever else is going on, plus like what I said about the patient, like how they detoxify things. And we'll say titanium is probably the least reactive, the most inert, if you will, because that's been around the longest. It's been studied aggressively. And although I don't disagree with that, because I used to do sarcoma reconstruction and help cover up their large knee prostheses or hip prosthes, all those things can get infected. Like everything can get infected. Like if you just start with that premise, then you're less, you know, I your eyes are more open.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's a really good point that we're talking about location differences, we're talking about material differences. Is the skepticism around breast implant illness primarily commercially driven? Because we're talking about cosmetic surgery, or is it more on the side of like medical gaslighting because we're talking about women as patients?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, the literature is very clear. And breast implant illness was brought up at the 2019 implant hearings where I testified. I it's not a new topic. So when I was the president elect of the research foundation, I said we would fund research as much as we could about this during the tenure I had, and we did. And then I think since that time, if you looked in the literature, there's 200 new scientific papers published just about breast implant illness.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And of which, you know, we published one. So whether or not what you said is accurate regarding industry, I have nothing to do with the industry. I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I'm asking because the head of the FDA, Marty McCarry, wrote that book about, you know, calling implants and the alarm towards them medical groupthink. And we know groupthink is definitely a thing and it definitely can drive people to do extreme actions. But I mean, that's why I'm kind of bringing that up. And and with that, I'm wondering how can people remain centered when they have all of these supercharged algorithms, you know, spinning around them? I think that can really contribute to a direction that a patient would take, whether it's accurate or not.
SPEAKER_01Oh, wow. You brought up Marty's book. All right. So Dr. McCary is a surgical oncologist from Johns Hopkins, who, to my knowledge, would never have done anything with an implant. So he wrote a book called Blind Spots, which you're referring to, and there's a chapter in it about breast implants. It goes through the quote unquote history from inception 1962 until 2006. His book, for whatever reason, he chose to stop talking about implants in 2006, which was the reindu introduction of silicon gel into the U.S. market. I don't know why he did that. And so I found it confusing. That was sent to me as soon as it came out. And there were excerpts from interviews I had done that he commented on. And then in lieu of him becoming the head of the FDA, I chose not to comment on anything because I already face enough censorship and problems for what I say. I didn't think it'd be a great idea to do that. So from an industry perspective, the kind of 2019 recall of texture was interesting because they didn't really want to do something additionally, I think, helpful for the surgeons and the patients. They, if the patients wanted to change out their product, they were going to offer the product, a smooth product, pressed implant, to the surgeon, but the surgeon wasn't coming to figure out how to pay for that with the patient. So then it left everybody in a bad spot, right? So patients who wanted it changed out didn't really have a lot of recourse. And then the surgeons had to figure out how to help the patients get taken care of. And I was like, well, that just sounds like the companies are going to write the devices off as a loss. And then the patients and the surgeons have to figure out how to get it done to take care of the patients. I thought I would have this huge influx of people with textured implants show up in 2019. Never happened. I think one, as we've already talked about, people are just scared. They don't want to have another surgery. That one initial one didn't go great. I've heard all sorts of crazy stories about, you know, their initial surgery and how problematic it was. Two, now they're scared about the texturing and cancer and taking care of their families and being there. And then how are they going to come up with the resources? You know, maybe they are the sole provider of their families because they're a single parent, or maybe they're just on their own and they they can't really afford to do this. I mean, there's all these questions that get, you know, raised, and to your point, I mean, industry's not going to help you. It then becomes, you know, falls back to the patient and the surgeons. And then my whole thing in this always was I'm like, rather than say, this is not a problem, this is in the patient's head, this is a made-up thing. I had this 2016 patient that had this silent infection that kind of made me curious like, how many times does somebody have an infection and I miss it? Because I missed one in 2016 on a breast cancer patient. And so I got put on this list of people who would do explants. All we really care about is educating patients so they can upfront make informed decisions. So there's a bunch of people who are going to go on and get implants, but they have no idea of this as a back-end consequence. So we wrote a book about that. And that's available. It's breast implants, ex-plant surgery, and breast implant illness, because that it should be explained up front.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's what I was thinking about. And that I think that's where my listeners are coming in with frustration because as you know, many of my listeners are women, and we experience a lot of resistance in medical offices. You know, oh, I have this pain. Uh, take ibuprofen. Don't we don't want to explore the source of the pain? Ah, now you're fine. You know, oh, you take vitamins, congratulations. You have expensive piss. Like there's just you really have to work at asking the right question to unlock the right care. And so the I think the this challenge becomes, you know, what questions do we ask? And how do we know we're not tripping up into another sales funnel if we want an X plant, you know, like, okay, I'm gonna have the breast implants removed, but so I I shop and find the best doctor. And now I'm in another, as as one listener said, if you go to a surgeon, they're gonna offer surgery.
SPEAKER_01Actually, I don't do that.
SPEAKER_00Well, most of them. That's what I'm saying. Well, we can go to Austin and see you. So I'm hoping to have a conversation that benefits everyone.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's why we created the functional program, because what you're what you're asking is why don't people explain the problem in the depths that you need the problem explained? Right. If you go to the doctor, do they understand that they have enough bandwidth to explain the problem? So if you go to a dorm with a skin problem, what are you going to get? You're gonna get a steroid, an antibiotic, or something that does both. That's basically what they can do. And to your point, if you go to a surgeon, most people, because they don't want to lose the patient, will say, Yeah, they can do it. Whatever the whatever it is. You know, if you ask for a facelift, a tummy tuck, a breast thug, X plant, liposection, they don't want to lose a patient, especially in this weird economy that we have right now, right? So, okay. So then it becomes like, how does the patient as a consumer discriminate against the nonsense? All right. So there's credentialing, that's a basic one, right? If you're going to talk about an X plant with somebody, you should make and make sure they don't still put implants in, because that seems counterintuitive. Now, if they're just doing both, then they've just added that as a revenue stream. And I'm not being critical of anybody. I would just have the patients be critical of that. So if you're from outside in trying to look at that, my patients tell me, like, I came to you, Dr. Rob, because you don't put implants in anymore. Because it doesn't make sense to me. Like, okay. So the other thing is, and we'll just stay on the you know, explant, you know, issue. So drains, right? So I haven't used drains in about five years. So let's just help with the drain myth. All right. So what is, and I'll I'll I get to ask you a question. What is the number one cosmetic procedure performed around the world every day? And it's not bother. I'm not talking about injectable, I'm talking about surgery.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I would have guessed it was breast augmentation, but so it's liposuction.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. Okay, so people don't even think liposuction is surgery, but in fact it is. And it is the most frequently performed thing around the world. Why? It was basically brought to the United States by French dermatologists. Okay. It is done under local, meaning you're awake. Right? It can be done in any office, anywhere in the world. Right? So it's lidocaine plus epinephrine, plus we'll say saline, right? They put it in, it numbs the area, they take fat out. Just basic stuff, right? Okay. So the the the thing then is like who's doing that and where are they doing it? If if you're if you're trying to find somebody who does surgery and does X-Plan surgery and will say, like, me doesn't use drain, like, what's the premise behind that? I bring up live dissuaces because liters of fluid, okay, we'll just say if everybody thinks of like the huge Coke bottle as a liter of fluid, so that's a liter of saline going in you to take fat out. And that may be, we'll say, in some patients, four or five liters of fluid. Now, nobody puts a drain tube in you when they do that. Why? Because your body's lymphatic system is the most efficient drainage system you have. It's not a drain tube that someone puts in from outside in. So when I was answering a question recently, I said, you know, the reason I don't put drains in patients is because for the first 72 hours, the patient is leaky. And that's from a cortisol burst that is is from surgery. So the the way we go about it is we prepare patients very aggressively pre-op and look at their genetics and tox tests and gut health, food sensitivities, hormonal balance along with their blood labs that they have them from the last three to six months, and then get them on the right sleep hygiene, nutrition, supplementation. That lowers their inflammation. When they come to the clinic in Austin, if they're coming to see me in person for surgery, you know, the day before we start what's called an ERAS. So most people really need to get comfortable with and understand what your question is, is like you need to know the questions to ask people, right? So one of the main questions is how do you prepare a patient who's gonna have surgery? Because if you're the person providing the surgical service to your point, they're always gonna say yes. Rarely they'll say no. So as the prospect, the client, you have to understand, okay, I need to understand the answers to the questions that Dr. Robb is gonna provide. So how does he prepare a patient? So mine's super aggressive, right? I wrote a book about it. And then the day before surgery, I see everybody and we start what's called an ERAS. So they take something for nerve pain, inflammation, and nausea the night before. Why? Because I don't want anybody needing extra narcotic or narcotic at all. Some people don't need any in my program. So then you come to have surgery and say you're having X plant surgery andor fat transfer, whatever. So I mark everybody. And then my anesthesia team that I work with does a pre-operative ultrasound guided nerve block. Why? Because programming to your brain starts from the moment surgery starts. So what we try to do is stop the signal to the brain before it starts. Right. So I started something the night before, right, to calm down the nervous system, right? We're trying to prevent, so that everybody understands the big cortisol surge. Because the number one maker of cortisol on this conversation in the world right now is me, Dr. Robb. I make cortisol. It's what I do for a living. So I want to shut that down. So sleep hygiene, proper nutrition, proper supplementation, proper preparation before surgery, you come here, ERAS the night before, marked pre-op, pre-op ultrasound guided nerve blocks. So they're you've done all these things to calm down what's going to be a a little bit of a cortisol surge, right? In my practice. In some practices, it's like a nuclear bomb went off. So what we're trying to do is make it as small as possible. So in this Operating room, we'll say I'm doing an X-Plan. Think of like a pie chart. As soon as I get a quadrant of the pie chart cleared on the inside, I'll numb it up with a long-acting local anesthetic called XPRO, which is just liposomal bipivicing. Once it sets up, it takes two to three hours to set up. It lasts for a week. So you've had an ERAS the night before. You've had an ultrasound guided nerve block before we ever start. And now I'm personally injecting where we're operating with a long-acting local anesthetic. So if we're just doing an X plant or X plant lift, at the time that that is done, the patients had an ERAS. The patients had an ultrasound guided nerve block before surgery. And the patients had me inject them with liposomal B pivotine. So my patients who are just having an X-Plant and I don't use drains, they don't wake up in problems with discomfort. In fact, many of them, if they need anything, it's just taking a little uh pain pill and they have their own. And then they, you know, the caregiver who's there with them, friend, spouse, partner, loved one, whatever, picks them up, takes them back to their hotel Airbnb if they're local, they're home, and they can walk around because I didn't operate on their legs. They can use their hands because I didn't operate on their arms. This T-Rex arm thing that's talked about is unusual to me. So everybody can have their arms out to 90 degrees that I operate on, even if I repair the chest muscle, which I do invariably all the time, just to control the cleavage area. So then they come to my office the next day. And so we talked about the cortisol surge. The way to reduce the cortisol surge is to increase the parasympathetic activity in somebody as quickly as possible. So if you want to drop cortisol, when you get up in the next morning to come to the office, you should go out and get sunlight because that helps reset your circadian rhythm and drop your cortisol. When you come to my office, we have this device from Germany called the human regenerator. Its whole goal in my practice is to reduce sympathetic activity and increase parasympathetic activity by resetting or helping with your electron transport. It uses cold plasma. So I like to call it the feel-good machine because everybody feels better after they do it. Then they do lymphatic massage. We have these devices from New Zealand. I bring it up because once again, your body is more effective at removing fluid. Go back to the liposuction discussion of dermatologists or plastic surgeons or anybody doing lipo. They put in liters of fluid. They do not put in drains, right? Because nobody wants to have drains. Nobody wants to be leaking on their clothes or I'm sorry, in their cars or their homes or whatever. That's all kind of like it's very like 90s. Like it's 2026. So we don't have a drain tube at anybody. So we have extra fluid, right? So people like it's talked about, they make extra fluid, like of course. So we have people on a higher protein diet, like we talked about. We have them on proper supplementation, working on their sleep hygiene, you know, getting up, getting their cortisol level down. So they're trying to get out of the leaky phase as quickly as possible. And then we put them in the lymphatic massage device. I don't know if anybody's had a plowesso treatment, but if you haven't, you should Google Plopresso to see if you have one near you and go get it. It is the most relaxing lymphatic massage you can get. And that's why we have three of them in the office. And you can get a facial and get a flopresso treatment as well. So the point being is like, okay, we've done all these things, plus we're doing these post-operative treatments in the office. So after you get out of that, you go do a hyperbaric oxygen treatment. So hyperbaric oxygen is great for the following reasons. Bacteria love a low oxygen environment, which is created essentially every time we operate. So if we improve oxygenation, we always decrease the opportunity for infection. If you improve oxygenation, you always improve the opportunity at the level of the tissues for wound healing. And then you combine that with proper nutrition and supplementation. Those are all the elements that make sense, right? And then finally, we have a six-foot-tall Jew red light to help with and lower inflammation and support your hormone balance. So I try not to make a huge, huge deal about people who don't provide all this, but I think we go to great lengths to make sure that we treat patients properly pre-operatively, intraoperatively, and post-operatively. And so that first week, when you're the leakiest, you have the most trouble, you're in my office multiple times a week doing all the things I just said. And that allows you, one, to recover, I think, more efficiently. You have the care you need. I have a super supportive staff, and I'm here Monday, Wednesday, Friday all the time when I'm not operating. And then think of the fact that we don't have a drain tube. Like drains can cause a lot of discomfort, but they don't prevent bleeding and they don't prevent what's called a seroma, which is fluid accumulation, because they can't. Now, your body being so smart, so adept, will help you heal if in fact you give it all the tools, right? If you sleep enough, if your nutrition's good enough, we fill those gaps with supplementation according to our genetic analysis of patients. And then we provide all these things like extra oxygen, red light, better lymphatic massage, the humid regenerator. We have the nanovie blowing by when you're getting a flow pressor. Like, if I thought there was something, oh, I don't have sound therapy yet. I've been working on this. I think sound therapy is like a very nice way to get you into parasympathetic state. I just in all my other things right now haven't added that. I think that's an underappreciated tool in healing. So if we think it's important, we're gonna work hard to get it for you. And I have literally the best team imaginable.
SPEAKER_00Well, what's interesting about this list is that it paints a picture for people who are needing a surgery of any kind to know, like, oh, these are this is like a good way to care for my body because there's just not a lot of of knowledge about risk and not a lot of knowledge about optimization of healing. And so I wanted to ask you for the surgeons who are doing implants and not communicating the risk, the relative risk for breast implant illness for their patients. Are they at all held accountable for that? Should they be held accountable?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the fallback would be they explain infection. And so that is basically always going to be their fallback. So anybody who gets a device can get an infection. So they're always gonna have the same kind of stance.
SPEAKER_00So they're not gonna use the the word breast implant illness.
SPEAKER_01They're just going to it's it's not part of the international classification of diseases. So there's not a, you know, I think most people would at this point, you know, you want them to acknowledge, hey, you know, this is a problem. And whether or not you make me the poster boy for it is fine. I don't really care. We published a big paper about it. So when people I had some troll come out uh who's a plastic surgeon say, well, when you you do a breast PCR, they're all going to be positive. You know, but this kind of like trolling and misinformation is the problem, right? Because my study is not about breast PCRs, it's about the scar tissue around the breast implants. So to your point, is like, if you have all these like, you know, people saying things, like who are you trusting? You know, I try to be as pragmatic about it as possible. I just explain basically why we don't use drains and how we do our protocols. You know, if if folks can't explain to you what they do, why they do it, what's their logic behind it, that's probably a good sign that it's not necessarily a good fit. Right? So the fit is does what they do make sense? And if it doesn't, then okay, well, you you have to decide what you're gonna do about it. Like informed consent to me is just having more and more knowledge so that you make the decision that you know fits and aligns with you the best. Like, I'm not gonna satisfy everybody's conditions. And, you know, I am, if anything, brutally honest. You do not want to come to me for a rosy explanation of anything. This is all gonna happen. I'm just gonna tell you exactly the facts and what I know. And there are always gonna be things I can learn we are curious about, but you're not gonna get everybody just to like break it down like we do because how could they?
SPEAKER_00That's really good insight. If someone has their breast implants removed but they're still experiencing symptoms, what's their next best step?
SPEAKER_01Get their operative report and see if they had a capsulectomy. There's this movement about not doing a capsulectomy because quote unquote symptoms can resolve. But if I just told you that basically one out of three has a bacterial infection, that doesn't make sense. And then if you take all the folks who have an implant, I have an implant on my desk, of course. If you take an implant, and uh, you know, I routinely get people who have had implants for 20 years. Just a little curious about any of you listening who drive a car that's 20 years old.
SPEAKER_00Now I thought you were supposed to replace implants every 10 years. Is that incorrect?
SPEAKER_01So the the logic behind that came from the rupture rate. It increases a half percent per year, and we'll say, after year eight, I started talking about cancer patients. I started talking about this to my cancer and cosmetic patients. I treat them all the same. I say, hey, it's not that you have to take them out at this time, but this is the reason why we'd start the conversation. And it's a little bit easier to surveil the patient who had a reconstruction. You probably will see them and be in contact with them more frequently compared to the cosmetic case, depending on your practice protocol. I've kept the same practice protocol my entire career. So I see people a week, a month, three, six, nine, and twelve. It hasn't changed for cancer cosmetic patients. Now it used to drive my nurses crazy because that's a lot of people, a lot of visits. But if you adhere to that on the patient side and the provider side, it's rare that you get out of alignment with what's going on.
SPEAKER_00Is it true that mammograms with implants can increase your chances of rupture?
SPEAKER_01Oh, there's never going to be a study that shows that. But it makes sense when you get old implants and you compress them, right? So like anything circa 1980, I wouldn't be squishing with a mammogram. So I I would be a little bit more pragmatic as you talk to me. Like, I would just do an ultrasound or an MRI. Like when people ask me what to do about it, I'm like, well, I've had enough stories, just like you asked. Like, of course, if you compress something that's already kind of older and not necessarily great tech wasn't used on it in the beginning, like, of course, that's a risk. And I I don't know how nobody knows how to like tell you the risk of that.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it is yeah, that's true. And we're again, this is kind of like where we're we are conditioned in a certain way and we are subject to whether we like to admit it or not, the the swirling information on the internet and the algorithms, and you know, your your social media knows how old you are, so it's like pushing certain messages. So it can become overwhelming because it's a lot of information. I also wanted to ask you about saunas because I heard you give some cautions around saunas and implants. What's the latest with that?
SPEAKER_01Oh my God, this is the Lauren Bostick episode. So Lauren Bostic's my patient, and she came to me and said, I think I'm melting my implants every time I get on my sauna. And she used to joke with me about it because she had a barrel sauna that got over to 200, got over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. And she would feel terrible after doing the sauna session. And I was like, Well, okay, let's do your testing. And so we, you know, we did the testing, and her total talks test that we did on her had the most heavy metals I'd ever seen in any human. So much so that I had to print it off and give it to her because I was so impressed by it. You know, in a in a day of like just digital, right? I was like, I gotta print this one because this is crazy. And so I gave it to her and she's like, holy smoke, you know, and I said, just don't. And I told every time I talk to somebody, and it's because of her experience, I say, you know, I just got to tap the brakes on sauna. If you go into sauna and after the sauna session, you feel worse or dizzy or like you have a viral illness, that's a Herzenheimer reaction. That's not a good thing. And so this it goes back to Saturday night. The patient was telling me every time they do the finished sauna session, they don't feel very well. I'm like, yeah, that's a problem, right? You're causing a, you know, if you already have less detox capability, you're basically dumping because everybody's, you know, the the general consensus of the sauna is good for detox. Right, right. But with a device with a shell, and so I got accused of an ethics violation for saying, oh yeah, you were melting your implant. So the the true scientific way to describe what was happening is called leaching. So when you leach chemicals out of something under extreme heat, you can get that. And so the classic example is you take the plastic water bottle and you put it in, you know, the car and the car heats up to whatever, 120 or 130, and or you just sit out in the sun and it heats up. And so the phthalates, which are part of the plastic, phthalates help make plastics firmer, will leach into the water and then you'll drink the water and you'll elevate your own personal phthalate level. Now, phthalates are bad because they disrupt, as you mentioned earlier, women's hormones, right? So that's not good. So for her, the concept is really she was leaching the chemicals out of the shell of the implant, which has got a number of things in it, including but not limited to, a bunch of heavy metals. And so it showed up on our talks test. You know, everybody got pissed at me. They reported me for an ethics violation. And I said, no, it's not an ethics violation. You know, you can say you're unhappy that I didn't say they're give you the right term of the problem, but I basically deliver it as a uh public service or what's more importantly, patient safety announcement, right? Because if you're in the business of taking care of patients, you should let the patients know when you find something that's concerning. And that's how I always feel. And I operate from that lens. So I don't ever have trouble sleeping at night. I feel like if I just put the information out, you do with it what you want. But like I don't care if you sauna. Like if you feel bad after you sauna, then don't do it. Like, don't ask me if you should have your implants out. Just you think about it. You know, it's it's it's not something that needs me my input, really. Like, I know everybody's trying to do better with wellness. I get it. Like, but just like just think about it. Like, and then don't come back at me on the internet and say, like, oh my God, you can't say that. Oh my goodness, that's crazy. Like, no, it's not.
SPEAKER_00It sounds pretty basic. If if someone suspects that they have breast implant illness, how how urgent of a situation is that? Should they get with the first available doctor, or do they have time to kind of shop around, ask questions, do some research?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I would say the concern I would have always is if they have a silicone device, is it ruptured? Because I don't like the wait around with that. I don't think that personally to me, it's bothersome. So if I had a cancer or cosmetic patient that I had taken care of and they have a ruptured implant, they call the office and say, hey, we have a rupture. Like, okay, well, let's have you come in, let's figure out the plan and let's try to get it resolved. And sooner is better than later to me. Short of that, if you understand the integrity of the device, then it's about like picking somebody who or programming that makes the most sense with what you're trying to do. I mean, I have a lot of people doing a lot of functional things. So I we try to meet them where they are and help them. Our program is, I think, very specific in terms of what we think is best in each like tier of what we offer. So we have a lot of we have a concierge program, we have a group program, we have a basic program. And then, of course, if you're having surgery with me, then you're gonna, you know, work with us uh regardless. So I think it just depends on what are they trying to do? Like if you're trying to pick, you know, something based on what's available, you can't probably find me anymore because they try to hide me. So you'd have to go directly to our information either on my website or YouTube or my podcast. And uh you're not typically gonna see me, you're not gonna see me in the algorithm because the algorithm is kind of taking me down for now.
SPEAKER_00When you say the algorithm is taking me down, can you unpack that more?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was censored for talking about breast and plant illness if that'll be.
SPEAKER_00Censored by who?
SPEAKER_01Uh first it was YouTube, which is owned by Google. And then Meta would let us speak about certain things. And then if we used a video describing a explant surgery, I would just get blocked.
SPEAKER_00So you mean your video would be taken down, or what is it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it'd be disapproved, is how they how they term it.
SPEAKER_00For um, what do they call that? Um, something violation community.
SPEAKER_01Health and advertising.
SPEAKER_00Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_01Personal health and advertising.
SPEAKER_00That's weird because there's so many others that like I follow lots of dentists and all kinds of functional doctors, dermatologists that seem to advertise their services.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but they're not advertising something that affects a pharma company's profit, are they? So you think that the pharma companies own all implants. Johnson Johnson owns mentor and Abby V owns Allerga. So if you want to get censored, just put that up for what I just said.
SPEAKER_00I'm up for the challenge. I appreciate you unpacking this. This is like we said in I said in the pre-chat, not something that was particularly on my radar. But when I polled my audience to ask if we should, you know, to do this interview, they were overwhelmingly interested. And so I think this is something that serves a lot of women and hopefully will be information that they can take with them and spread to each other. Because, you know, algorithms aside, the strongest way to get the word out is through a woman. So you tell a woman and she will tell everyone.
SPEAKER_01Our goal was always to put up content just to help educate patients. But they meaning algorithmically show you, as you mentioned, like what they think, what they want you to see. So we created a private community where anybody could come in and ask us any question. It's on my website, uh Dr. Rob Circle. So we wanted to do that outside of Facebook because there's a lot of censorship just within the meta platform. And I I don't want to be dependent on platforms for these, to be honest. So we have a podcast, it's very hard to censor a podcast. But if if someone doesn't know about the podcast, then how can they go find the podcast? So, you know, we have a podcast about all of this under my name, Dr. Robert Whitfield, and then we have a YouTube channel under Dr. Robert Whitfield. We had to change the titles because all the titles included the term breast, which was getting censored as sexualized content. And, you know, we have this private community now, and live streaming does not get blocked. So we do that and answer questions and we answer questions about toxicity. And I mentioned the golf toxicity. We we discuss some things about artificial turf toxicity because it affects children and the parents are interested in that. And so there are a lot of things up within your environment outside of what we're talking about with breast implants that contribute to toxin exposure. So the reason I bring it up is like it's not a small problem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Toxicity is the quote unquote uh elephant in the room, and where you're getting it mostly can be a function of where you grew up, what you ate, the air you breathe, and the fluid you drank, coupled to what you applied to your skin, especially women were like marketed to so aggressively with things with parabens and BPAs in them, and like that is extremely disturbing. It's gone on forever, it seems like, in in the marketing world. So that's why, you know, we're compelled with, you know, what's the message and trying to be like just honest and and what can help educate people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. I'll be sure to link the the website and the link to the podcast in the show notes. Is there anything final thoughts before we wrap up?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think what you said is important. Um, women have to share the message, and that's basically either through your show or listening to the things that you know others it's just waiting through the nonsense, to be honest. Like that's the most important thing. And I would just use uh you have to use your spidey sense, your gut, whatever you're gonna call it. Like if it doesn't make sense, if it can't be explained, then question it. It's fine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well said. Thank you so much, Dr. Rob.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening. Since you've made it this far, I'd like to invite you to be a part of my private Facebook group. And there I post content I don't share anywhere else. You can talk to me directly about past and future episodes, and I even do occasional giveaways. You can search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Dr. Whitfield mentioned the importance of air quality, so if you liked this episode with him, you'll also like the one with the founder of Jasper Air Filters about how air quality could be a hugely overlooked contributor to the reason you're tired and sick. That's episode 290. Stay tuned next week for a remastered favorite asking if hot car infant deaths are simply bad parenting. Until then, keep it curious.