Breast Implant Illness

Four things before I begin my explant story

• Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence – just because BII hasn’t been medically proven yet, doesn’t mean your experience isn’t real.

• If you’re thinking about, DO IT; you wont regret your decision. Make sure you see a surgeon who will perform a FULL EN BLOC/ Capsulectomy (the entire implant and capsule surrounding the implant)

• Some women may experience BII symptoms earlier than others as everybody has a different genetic make-up and some can better tolerate implants than others.

• Don’t try to detox with implants, be patient and wait for your explant. You’ll just cause the toxins to further breakdown within the body.

• Detoxing can begin from reducing your toxic load within the body; think heavily sprayed food (glyphosate), chlorine-filled drinking water, plastic-leakage from drink bottles and containers etc, aluminum in cooking and deodorant, heavy metals of all sorts from cosmetics and processed and packaged foods.

Breast Implant Illness the journey…

At a young 21-years of age, I was certain that I had done enough research for me to book my breast augmentation. I read that it was a relatively quick procedure (it was only day surgery), so couldn’t be too serious. Having small boobs was something I was always insecure about and entering the fitness industry didn’t help. The aesthetics game played a big part of it all and beauty standards were kept quite high. As I started to build muscle, I desired to look more ‘feminine’ in accordance to societal standards of beauty. And apparently that meant having larger breasts. So, I worked, I saved and I booked my surgery interstate for 06/02/2015 – almost 7 years ago today.

I literally almost forgot that I had them; they were there, they made me feel good, more feminine; you know the drill. About 6 months post augmentation, I started to notice what I think was my first symptom of BII; I was constantly fatigued and started to experience vertigo (dizziness). This made my life very difficult because I worked, as a Personal Trainer in a gym and that required A LOT of energy and stamina. The vertigo progressed and I often found it difficult to complete daily tasks, let alone go to work and run classes and personal training sessions – it was horrible. A few weeks later, I was admitted to the ER only for them to tell me that nothing was wrong, gave me anti-vertigo meds and I was on my way. My integrative GP had put it down to severe vitamin deficiencies and gave me high-dose vitamins to mend my deficiencies and I felt relief for a little while.

In June 2016, following a traumatic event, I began to experience debilitating anxiety, sweats, heart palpitations, fatigue, gut issues and food intolerances. I remember having a panic attack at work whilst I was watching over my client; I was embarrassed, and I was re-admitted to the ER. Anyone who has experienced a panic attack knows how surreal it feels. I mean, it felt like cardiac arrest (what I believe it would feel like anyway) and at that moment, I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive or not. Sounds super extreme, but I had no control of my body and how I felt at that time. It was horrible.

The ER staff completed all of their vital checks and once again, I was sent off with anxiety disorder without any explanation. Little did I know, but my anxiety worsened for months to come, despite the fact I decided to work with a multitude of health professionals to push me in the right direction. It became something that I would just learn to manage through anxiety-lowering techniques that I had learnt such as deep breathing, meditation, walking etc. I decided to begin following a gluten-free, dairy-free, very ‘clean’ diet to address my digestive issues, although only temporarily helped my gut problems.

In January 2017, I begin to experience my first symptoms of autoimmune disease Hashimoto’s. I was tired, cold, had dry skin and hair, thinning eyebrows, weight gain – all of the typical symptoms of Hypothyroidism. My skin began to break out into severe acne; mostly on my chin and jawline (and sometimes between my eyebrows) and I was so ashamed of it. It made me feel dirty but acne is not a measure of how clean your skin in, it was a sign of deeper within. As I tried to drop weight and no matter how low I dropped my calories, I’d continue to gain more weight, despite the fact that I’d never struggled with weight issues in the past, ever. It was almost like an inflamed, fluid-like weight gain (it was super strange). I felt heavy and achy all the time, no matter how much I moved or how healthy I decided to eat. I decided to see my integrative GP again and he ran extensive testing of my thyroid, bloods, liver and antibodies and of course, it came back as suspected; low thyroid and auto antibodies for Hashimoto’s disease. I knew I had a family history of thyroid issues and autoimmune disease so I guess you could say that I was predisposed to a degree. However, I was 23 at the time and questioned how this could be possible given my healthy lifestyle and dietary habits at the time.

It’s funny, because back then my Doctor actually said to me, “I don’t think those implants would be doing you any good”, yet I brushed it off like it was nothing. In fact, I didn’t even think twice that this foreign object could be doing me such harm; I was told they’re safe by my surgeon, so they must be safe.

My GP used to work with women who removed their implants YEARS ago and explained that they’d be scraping silicone off their chest wall upon explanation – it was actually quite disturbing. He told me this when I had decided to explant however because he didn’t want to scare me.

Over the years, my autoimmune disease worsened, I tried my absolute hardest to manage it through my diet (AIP protocol) and nutritional supplements (Iodine, Zinc, Selenium, Vitamin D, magnesium). I worked in conjunction with a naturopath who ran further testing, looked at my blood under a microscope, tested for nutrients, cortisol, candida, liver function etc. I found that I kept treating the symptoms but I knew there was a deeper cause and I was determined to find it. No only was I experiencing these debilitating health issues, but I had physical symptoms too; my body ached, felt weak, tired, I had joint pain, neck pain, shoulder pain and lower back pain. No one understood how I felt and I struggled to explain it and I felt like I was suffering a phantom illness. Like it was all in my head. No one understood why I would chose to stay home from events or struggle to even have a social life on weekends. Why I NEEDED 8-10 hours of sleep otherwise I wouldn’t be able to function. Why I needed coffee to start the day because my brain hadn’t ‘woken up’ yet. I even had a running joke with a client of mine that my Dementia was playing up again, how I would forget simple tasks and needed to put EVERYTHING in a calendar and a written diary to remember simple tasks and appointments. I’d walk into a room and forget why I had just entered the room. I just always knew that deep down, something wasn’t quite right.

I’d often think to myself, why is this happening to me when I live the lifestyle that I live, as healthy that I live and as much as I move daily; it just never made sense? But what I did know, that I was determined to find out what was going on. No matter if it took my entire degree for that matter; I wasn’t going to stop until I received an answer.

How I found out about Breast Implant Illness..

This past year (2019) had been tremendously difficult for me. In many ways that sometimes, have been hard to articulate. I struggled the most with my health, my autoimmune disease, my unknown symptoms that I’ve had for the last few years without any answers. It wasn’t until a day in February that I was flicking through Instagram (as you do) and I came across a blogger called Karissa Pukas. She has recently explanted her breast implants due to a banner of symptoms called Breast Implant Illness. I remember my jaw literally dropping and tears began to flow as I watched and read and related to all that she was going through. I watched her YouTube video of BII and HIGHLY recommend watching it if you haven’t already. That day, I was actually thankful for receiving an answer to everything I had been questioning for the last few years. I felt cheated; cheated by the medical professionals that I had trusted when undergoing this decision. Cheated that I hadn’t been informed of the side effects of implants on the body. I thought to myself, how could I not be warned of this prior to undergoing such a surgery?

The more I looked into it, the more I realized that there was a Facebook group called “Breast Implant Illness and Healing by Nicole” connecting now 105,000 women through BII and allowing them to share their stories. Women would post about their explant stories, their symptoms, their cases of autoimmune disease and how much their symptoms improved post-explant. Their fingers would go white in the cold, just like mine (a condition called Raynaud’s phenomenon), they would suffer food intolerances, infertility, chronic Lyme, EBV virus, memory loss and brain fog. These women were dealing with other autoimmune diseases like Scleroderma, Sjogren’s, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, and Fibromyalgia. Some had been diagnosed with a cancer called BIA-ALCL Lymphoma—Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma.

I continued to read, story after story. These women who were so ill, suffering daily were getting better post-explant. They tagged photos with the caption, “The Heal is Real”, proving how their life had changed following their explant; how their faces had gained colour again and their eyes turned white again. These success stories were enough for me to decide to explant, despite the fact that I was fearful of accepting how I looked, whether I’d be losing my femininity, whether the surgeon was able to get the entire scar tissue out, whether I could still wear clothing that I loved. I accepted my body as curvaceous and feminine and I was fearful of losing that. But little did I know I was about to gain more than I was going to lose. I was willing to take the risk.

It’s tremendously difficult for us BII sufferers because it is not a medically diagnosable disease/disorder YET. It’s a set of symptoms (common symptoms), which are found to present following breast augmentation, and the onset is hard to prove. Some women experience symptoms immediately upon augmentation, yet others don’t experience symptoms for years and years. This makes the diagnostic criteria rather difficult. Also, there isn’t a direct laboratory testing that proves that you have BII either, however; you can check for many other markers like your autoantibodies for whatever disease your presenting with, liver markers, blood cells markers etc. The Breast Implant Illness website has a lot more information regarding the topic so I urge any sufferers to have a read on there.

As I said above, just because these diagnostic criteria ISNT diagnosable by the medical world and you might be looking at like you’re crazy, this does not and should never dismiss how you’re truly feeling. Your experience like any others is real. For example, smoking was once seen as ‘safe’, ‘cool’ or ‘good for you’, now obviously, we know better.

And I’m not here to shame anyone with breast implants; I mean, I had them for just short of 5 years myself and I did love them. I’m not here to remove a choice. I’m here to share my story and to promote informed consent. To promote the dangers of breast implants and to tell you the things that I was not told prior to my augmentation. The only risk I was told by my surgeon was the risk of capsular contracture (hardening of the implants because your body is creating a biofilm around the foreign object to protect itself) and infection. That was it. Regardless of the reason as to why we chose to implant, we deserve to be informed on the negative side effects of having implants and there are a myriad of articles out there speaking of Silicone and Autoimmune Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants not to mention the risk of a rare type of lymphoma called BIA ALCL cancer.

“An extensive review of the literature published in 1998 confirms the data showing that silicone triggers the immune system” — Dear, Lord. They’ve known this since 1998?!

“Siliconosis is a hyperactive immune response induced by silicone exposure, which leads to chronic inflammation…” — I am going to need to get them out. NOW.

I made an appointment with a surgeon. In fact, I made an appointment with a couple of surgeons I began my consult process. Out of the 4 surgeons I saw, both in the public and private health care system in Australia, only one believed in BII and said, he can’t confirm that it’ll heal everything but I have an 85% chance of feeling better. That he’s seen a dramatic increase in patients feeling better post-explant. That was enough for me. I waited a few months to see if my symptoms would improve, they didn’t. So I rang in a panic and pleaded for a booking by the end of 2019. Luckily enough, he managed to fit me in on the 12^th of December 2019. I knew that day I would lose what was a part of me, but gain my life back.

My body could no longer handle this foreign object inside of me and was fighting back. Our bodies often reject foreign objects whether it’s (including knee or shoulder replacement, IUD birth control, mesh repair, surgical screws, chin/butt implant, injected facial silicone, etc) in yourself, somebody you know does, so listen carefully so you can help them.

Then watch The Bleeding Edge documentary on Netflix to see more about what implanted objects do to the human body

With Silicone breast implants, the body cannot swallow up the implant, it is too large, so it builds a wall of bio-film around the implant called a capsule (remember capsular contracture risk? That’s how fast the body builds its wall aka bio-film to protect itself again the foreign object). It all makes sense to me; the penny dropped. It’s really important for your surgeon to remove your entire capsule called an en bloc or capsulectomy because if the capsule is left in the body, it can leach whatever was broken down (i.e. silicone and heavy metals (into the body).

Putting a silicone implant within a warm-temperature human body is a hazard, and quite a serious hazard. The implant quite literally begins to dissolve; I’m an example of this because my implants were once white and now they’re yellow upon explanting. Saline or Silicone are toxic, no matter what they tell you as the shell of the Saline implant is silicone anyway and depredates in the body. I was told that textured implants are ‘better’ for capsular contracture because they lessened the chance of it, however the body just works twice as hard to protect itself from the foreign object. So, the true reason is because it’s harder for the body to break down, therefore causing the immune system MORE stress and whole-body inflammation. Oh and implants still breakdown regardless, they’re not lifetime devices.

As the silicone shell dissolves over time, pieces of silicone gets carried and distributed around the body, filling up the lymphatic system and clogging up the liver – helloooo fluid retention and lymphatic issues. They are toxic, they disrupt your hormones, and they’re carcinogenic, increase your risk of cancer and are inflammatory. The toxicity, autoimmunity and inflammation affect our immune system greatly; hence why the cancer associated with breast implants is that of the IMMUNE system because of the immune system burden.

No one is protected from the damage that implants can have on the body, sometimes its not a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “when”. Some have genetic susceptibility (more info on Breast Implant Illness.com) but genes associated with autoimmunity such as HLA B27, HLA DR52 and HLA DR53, may experience BII symptoms earlier than others. Also, those with MTHFR (hello, that’s me!!!) gene polymorphism, whom have a difficult time detoxifying and methylating b vitamins, may have symptoms show up sooner!

Either way, it’s important to be INFORMED and make a decision based on INFORMED CONSENT. My explant is now booked so keep a watch closely for my next blog on “My explant, healing and detoxing journey”.

Here are a list of known ingredients of silicone implants and symptoms of BII

Some of my summarized symptoms (not in order)

• Vertigo
• Autoimmune Hashimoto’s and Graves disease
• Malaise/ flu-like symptoms
• Fatigue
• Fluid retention issues – swollen face, arms, abdominal area
• Facial tingling
• Cystic Acne
• Night sweats
• Frequent urination
• Breathing issues
• Hair thinning
• Heart palpitations
• Anxiety
• Mood disturbances
• Anxiety
• Ear ringing
• Brain FOG and memory issues
• Trouble keeping conversation
• Menstrual irregularity
• Food intolerances (gluten, dairy and MSG – would cause joint pain and brain fog)
• Constant Inflammation / feeling of heaviness
• Weakness/ Muscle fatigue
• Inability to recover from workouts – cant hack intensity
• Viral issues
• Weight gain (12+kg’s)
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Fatigue
• Numbness under breasts + sharp pains in breasts
• Numbness in toes
• Strange nerve sensations and Raynard syndrome in fingers
• Neck, back and shoulder pain issues.

Some info about where BII is at currently and the origins of Silicone breast implants:

The FDA has since acknowledged that BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS is real.

My implants; textured silicon breast implants have since been banned in several countries due to the incidence of BIA ALCL cancer of the immune system associated with these breast implants

France and Canada have banned textured breast implants due to risk of BIA ALCL

Some History of Breast Implants

• Breast Augmentation began in the late 1890’s where Doctor’s would literally inject liquid paraffin directly into the breast, which was not very successful, as participant’s body would reject the injection. Patients would experience hardening of the tissues; painful lumps in the breast which ended with deformation.

• In 1962, Thomas Cronin and Frank Jareau invented the first silicon breast implant and decided to get in contact with Dow Corning corporations to develop to get them on the market. In the same year, timmi gene Lindsay becomes the first woman to receive breast implants implanted in her. The device was made of a silastic shell filled with silicone and was proven to have many complications including infection, inflammation and capsular contracture (where the body trys to fight off the foreign material by encapsulating it from the rest of the body and hardens.

• 1976 the medical Device Amendment was introduced, where the FDA began to regulate new devices brought to the market, placing them into 3 categories required to assure that the devices were safe and effective.

• 1977 the first lawsuit against breast implants came to surface by a woman who thought her ruptured implants were a cause of her health issues and won a 170,000 settlement from Dow Corning and the case was said to receive little publicity.

• In 1982 FDA placed breast implants in the most rigorous class category 3 due to multiple adverse effects.

• Manufactures needed to prove their safety however lawsuit after lawsuit began to occur all for similar systemic autoimmune issues in some way with silicone.

• 1990’s implants began to be more regulated although most of the safety was kept behind closed doors, howver when a popular TV show came face to face with Connie Chung, they revealed the dangers of silicone breast implants of all these stories of women who have serious health issues such as autoimmune disorders.

• National Institute of Health became involved releasing a report pointing the lack of research dedicated to diseases affecting women and the use of medical devices designed for women that were allegedly produced without adequate testing

• 1992 David Kessler, FDA Commissioner, imposed a temporary ban on breast implants due to their unknown due to their unknown safety. Saline implants were not banned at this time and with the surge of popularity and the procedure increasing now by two hundred and seventy thousand from 1992 to 1997

• Asians had to opt for saline implants instead, which are attached to the belief that they are safer compared to silicone implants due to the belief that if ruptured only saline fluid will be released into the body. However the outer shell of saline implants are silicone, thus same complications

• 1994 no scientific evidence linking silicone breast implants to autoimmune disorders

• 1995 Oprah Winfrey invited Dow Corning to confront him and discuss the current controversy over breast implants now at this time Dow Corning corporation had resulted in more than 12,000 law suits against the company

• 24 years since that episode and nothing has changed except a whole new generation of women who are suffering and were lied to on the risk

• 2006 FDA brought back silicone implants thanks to Allergan and Mentor with requirements to conduct studies for ten years with focus group studies of patients, laboratory studies and describe device failure with each implant being trapped after 14 years of safety issues and concerns, the ban had been lifted.

• March 25/26th of 2019 FDA approved a hearing to discuss the long-term effects of breast implants, they acknowledge BII as real, naming a chemical soup and gel bleed

• France and Canada banned textured implants linking them to Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma – a rare cancer that attacks the immune systems.

• Awaiting response.

• I’m not here to remove a choice, I’m here to share my story and for informed consent.

• Where is the informed consent? Cap contracture and infection?

• We all have different reactions to Breast implants, this might not happen to everyone

FDA forum: http://chng.it/LdTH2ZvCsN