Breast Implant Illness: The Diagnosis No One Will Give You

hi everyone so we are heading into one of the last modules this month all about mold illness but today we have a very special topic which is in relation to mold but it is something that a lot of people are talking about but not necessarily always aware that there is a connection with mold toxicity and this topic is breast implant illness so I felt compelled to talk about this because I think that there is a lot of information that is circulating out there when it comes to how breast implants can affect you on a systemic level but also can they actually be associated with causing mold toxicity within the body so today when we talk about breast implant illness we're not necessarily just gonna be talking about mold toxicity but really just uncovering the big picture as to how these different implants can affect us and what does that look like long term but also to understand that not necessarily everyone is being affected in the same way the few women that I've worked with that have had issues with their implants they all looked very very different they didn't necessarily come in with the same symptoms some of them came in with a lot of symptoms some some of them came in with a few symptoms some of them came in and had no idea that that was part of the puzzle so the one disclaimer I do want to make is I this is not about judgment on women that have breast implants I think that if that makes you feel good awesome but I think that there is just some implants that are a bit newer that are texturized because they are intended to go into the body and anchor on to tissue so they don't move around and it's not necessarily always about the implant sometimes it is about the coding of the implant or the adhesives on the implant so we're going to talk a lot more about this so you guys understand the bigger picture because if you are a woman who is struggling with your health right now or you know of someone who's been struggling with their health and they have not necessarily been getting very far with doctors they have not gotten answers you know this is something to explore and it's not saying that every woman that has implants has you know implant illness it's more so just being able to check off that box to know that those implants are not necessarily causing a problem so right now I am on a webinar I'm also on Instagram lives for those of you on Instagram live definitely DM your email if you're looking to get the full replay of the entire webinar because this will cut me off in an hour specifically on Instagram for those of you that are here with me on the webinar definitely feel free to put questions in as we go I won't be able to see all of them because I'm gonna have a PowerPoint going but definitely put those questions in I'm going to be happy to answer them throughout the middle and towards the end of the webinar as well so for those of you that are on Instagram definitely put your comments and questions in the comment area and we will definitely be able to dig deeper on those okay guys so as we get in I just want to give you a bit of a background on myself and just kind of what this is all about so we're primarily gonna be talking about breast implants tonight we're not necessarily just talking about breast implant illness and the systemic issues that come with it but we're also going to be talking about you know the types of implants the coatings on the implants the toxins and the implants and how they can affect you differently across the board so we're really gonna walk away with a bird's-eye view of what it looks like but also what we can do about it so just a bit about our practice and myself is for those of you that are listening like who is this person I am dr. Nicole I run a practice called integrative Wellness Group I have been running this practice with myself and my husband for almost 10 years it's kind of crazy to say that but you know one of the reasons why we do these web and one of the reasons why I'm talking about this topic of breast implant illness is just because we have always questioned what is out there we've always questioned what we've been taught we kept asking better questions as more and more complex that complex cases came through our doors and you know for a long time breast implants were not even being acknowledged as part of the puzzle for someone's health decline and this has become a little bit more of a topic recently but it's been something that we've always considered with our patients primarily because we have to consider the overall health of the immune system in the lymphatic system and when you think about where we have a ton of lymph nodes is in our armpits and breast area so sometimes it's not even necessarily about the implant sometimes it's the scar tissue that develops around the implant that starts to cause problems in the lymph nodes which then creates an issue with how well your body can detox and those lymph nodes in your armpits are connected from the base of your neck all the way down into the armpit so really at the end of the day why this is important is that if these lymph nodes and this chain becomes compromised or congested this can actually affect how well your brain functions so guys this is not just about what's happening in the chest this is about the connection this is about the integration of the systems which is really the foundation of what I do as a practitioner is I look at the whole picture I look at the whole person and I look at how it's all connected and this is why I work with so many different types of conditions is because it's not necessarily about the condition sometimes it's not even necessarily about the symptoms it's about how it all connects together and it's about leveraging better testing to understand the bigger picture because again not every female with implants that comes to me has an issue with their implants but there are those select few that it's really a make-or-break for their current health situation so as physicians you know for those of you that are physicians listening we have to ask better questions we also have to be able to piece the puzzle together to understand how everything is interacting with each other so for myself I am not necessarily a woman who had implants and got really sick and then finally figured out that my implants were part of my health puzzle if anything I was kind of the opposite of how I got into this in the first place primarily I thought I was in great health I thought that I was doing amazing things for myself I worked out I ate healthy - what I knew and I remember feeling kind of guilty that I didn't have that story especially when I was in school all of my colleagues were you know oh I was super sick and this doctor helped me functional medicine saved my life or chiropractic saved my life and I didn't have that story I was kind of like I'm just interested in this and I really just want to help people and I want to do it in a you know holistic manner so what I found is over time is that my story was actually more relatable to the general public because so many of us are walking around with symptoms that have become our normal that we've settled for we've kind of settled for feeling mediocre we've settled for you know not very good energy we've settled for mediocre sleep we've settled for occasional headaches we've settled for oh I you know I get bloated or stomachaches if I eat too much or I eat the wrong thing so in reality it's all of these things are just our body's saying hey don't do this number one or hey there's something going on but we've all grown up in the mindset don't fix it until it's broke and fortunately I never got to the point that I was fully broke but I remember doing my testing proactively thinking that I was gonna come back perfect and it didn't it actually came back really terrible and I realized I had a boatload of infections I had tons of parasite issues in my gut primarily because I was a pescetarian for ten years what that means is I ate a lot of fish not necessarily knowing that not all fish and sushi was created equal so in the interim of eating all this fish and canned tuna and thinking I was healthy I also gave myself mercury toxicity so so overall when I stopped back and I marinated on this information what I realized is that I had symptoms but my symptoms were a very gradual onset that I just accepted as being me being my normal and I actually learned how to navigate around my symptoms oh don't eat too much bread oh you know don't drink caffeine past this time oh don't work out too close to your menstrual cycle because you might faint yes that used to happen to me as well so overall the reason I tell you this is that it's not about just settling for oh I'm getting old or oh I was thyroid issue because it runs in my family there's always a reason for why you feel the way you do there is always a reason for your symptoms there's always a reason for your diagnosis and most importantly there is always a solution but that solution requires better testing and being proactive in your health so I know that we are ten past seven for those of you especially with families and kids there is a lot of things happening around you I'm sure there are people demanding you know books being read dinner you know quality time whatever the case may be but I want to give you guys the opportunity to kind of just allow the family to give you this time shut down your email browser you know shut down your Facebook page so that you can spend the next twenty to twenty-five minutes with me because what we're going to be talking about tonight is not your run-of-the-mill information you're finding on Google this is things that I see in my clinical practice that are relevant they are extremely important for you to be empowered to know oh my gosh that might be part of my puzzle that nobody has acknowledged at this point so first and foremost I want you to know if you have implants if you had implant and you have not been feeling well and nobody has even acknowledged that this might be part of your puzzle it's not your fault it is not your fault because it's impossible for you to know that these implants could have been harmful because sometimes you would have even done it in the first place unfortunately a lot of these things that we're doing outside of plastic surgery we're finding out later down the line who that was bad hey all these uh people walking around with the silver fillings in their mouths and they're like oh we actually figured out that was bad so let's take them out and replace them with white so this is not just about surgery this is happening you know this has been happening for years upon years in so many different fields so it's not your fault that you got them it's not your fault that potentially you feel like crap and it's not your fault that you don't know where to turn and you don't know who can help you so it's all about you know empowering yourself having this information and understanding the bigger picture but one of the foundational things that I want to have you understand before we fully dive into the breast implant topic is more so that when it comes you know healthcare my personal of hand is that when we segregated out medicine we've segregated it out to the specialist the experts and you know we have almost picked apart the body to think that it is all working independently from each other and we are assuming that you know implants will not affect our lymph nodes and that those lymph nodes will not affect our immune system which will then not affect our brain and we're totally segregating these things out and we're ignoring basic physiology we're ignoring that the lymphatic system is such a huge component of our immune health and that our immune health really just dictates everything so overall we need to acknowledge that the body is an integration of systems and that physiology is real that we can't keep just ignoring the fact that you know nothing is necessarily interacting with each other we also need to face that our lifestyle choices play a very significant role on our health you know we're getting told that nutrition means nothing oh you have inflammatory conditions well it doesn't matter what you eat when we sit back does any of that actually make sense and I think that that's one of the most amazing things that I'm seeing in my practice right now is that people are really stepping up and saying this doesn't make sense this doesn't make sense that this doesn't affect this it doesn't make sense that you're telling me it doesn't matter what I eat even though when I eat healthier I feel better people are definitely asking better questions and I think that this is a huge huge part of the evolution of where health care is going and we obviously all hope that health care is moving in a direction that insurance is gonna finally cover the integrative and functional care because it is so necessary we need more time with our patients as physicians we need to ask better questions we need to be able to do better testing so one of the big things about you know this whole concept of breast implant illness is that it doesn't look the same across the board we have patients that are dealing with a myriad of different symptoms one patient that came through my doors was dealing with chronic fatigue fibromyalgia so tons of pain everywhere depression and the inability to lose weight so one of the things that came up as we were using one of our technologies in our office is that there was a lot of congestion in the lymphatic system specifically the lymph nodes that were in the neck the armpit and also around the mammary glands which is pretty much all in the breast tissue so one of the specific toxins that was being revealed that was affecting the lymphatic system was actually acetone and benzene's so honestly it wasn't until quite recently that I realized that acetone and benzene's came from implants so by the time I saw this patient I was aware of this information so we did not have the discussion at this point in the consultation but I said if you don't mind me asking do you have breast implants and she said yes I do I've had them for many many years and I was like have you had them changed or replaced at any point and she said no I've had them for 15 years and I've never had them replaced so one of the things that we did was we did some additional testing one of the tests that we do is called autonomic response testing so one of the specific things that she tested for to help improve her health was something called scar release so really at the end of the day when we piece the puzzle together what happened was we referred her to go back to her surgeon to evaluate if there was a buildup of scar tissue around the implant because the type of implant that she had was had a very specific coating on it and that specific coating was actually intended to create eight scar tissue and the reason being it was to help to anchor the implant so it did not move around or twist so the big thing is is that the scar tissue if it becomes overly abundant this creates a lot of problems in the muscles in the mammary glands in the nipple as well as in the lymph nodes and if the lymph nodes start to become bound due to the scar tissue you're gonna have a lot of issues with how well your body can detox and you're also gonna have a lot of issues with how well your brain can detox because for those of you that are just jumping on now again the lymph nodes from the base of the neck go all the way down into the armpit area it's a chain so your lymphatic system of the armpit memory plays a very very big role in your neurological system as well so this patient specifically ended up having having an encapsulation which required some surgical remover Mulla removal of scar tissue in addition to some of the work that we did with her to get her lymphatic system back to being healthy again so when it comes to what does breast implant illness even look like there is a lot of symptoms this is just some of the main ones that I on I see regularly but it's not limited to this list so brain fog memory loss gut issues yeast infections hives tinea versicolor which is this fungal skin infection rashes eczema scar tissue mental confusion joint pain hair loss dry eyes chronic fatigue flu-like symptoms and in addition autoimmune conditions sometimes you can have the development of an autoimmune condition lupus being the most common when you are dealing with breast implant illness as well so all there is different issues with different types of implants so there are silicone implants there are saline implants and then there are something called the gummy bear implants so there might be more implants than this this is just what I am aware of but I'm sure you know people in like Hollywood send in the big bucks like who knows what you know other types of plastic surgeons are usually using but um silicone definitely has had a lot of controversy over the years I was actually looking at the history of implants and it was completely mind-blowing the things that these implants used to be made from like I'm talking different types of petroleum carcinogens like chemicals that you would never in a million years one in your body but as they you know further evolved I think that they said they're on their fifth generation of implants because they've had to evolve them that much because there's been so many complications in the past and another side note I had no idea that they were creating implants since the 50s like that's crazy to me but anyway I live under a rock um so the silicone implants were one of the earliest on but the silicone filling had a lot of issues if it ever erupted and started to pour into the body so if it started to pour into the bloodstream that created a massive massive massive cascade of inflammatory issues autoimmune reactions and just overall toxicity so the silicone implants definitely still to this day have a lot of issues and especially if they become erupted and they start to leak into the body and don't get me wrong a silicone leak can cause a deformity if it's happening very fast if it's like a very intense break in the shell but many women have a very slow leak that you wouldn't actually notice visually but you can obviously have a boatload of issues from a joint inflammatory mental fog perspective so one of the more common implants that's being used more regularly as the saline implants and that's because you know saline is assault water essentially so if the saline pours into the body it's found to be you know obviously not as not as triggering to the immune system so the Saline is thought to be a better option but the interesting thing which we're going to get into in the next few slides is that you would hope that it's really just saline in the implant but they've actually found that there is a myriad of different types of chemicals that also live within the saline solution let alone the silicone solution so the most controversial at this time is what they called the gummy bear implants so these are the most natural and the most new type of implants because these are teardrop so they look very very natural and they are also a very different type of texture which the texture is is very um what am i trying to say it like it's very it's not just necessarily viscous it's very firm so it's found to be very unlikely for it to break and then leach the materials into the blood but the thing about it is that if it does erupt or or become compromised or the shell breaks because the substance is so thick it is very unlikely that you will actually know that it's leaking so you can easily have an issue going on for a very long time that creates a cascade of different immune reactions before you ever catch it but the bigger problem here is that this specific type of implant is one of the known implants to have a very specific type of coating on it so think about it this is a teardrop shaped implant so if you dip the implant in a coating the goal is is that when it goes into the body that it is going to create a reaction to adhere the implant to the muscle so they want to adhere it to the muscle because if a teardrop shape implant moves or rotates it's actually going to look like a deformity so they did it with the intention of let's make sure that this implant kurz into the body so that it doesn't move around and make this person look funny but unfortunately now I think it's been about 12 years that the gummy bear implants have been out there and obviously being implanted into women they have now revealed an association with a very very rare type of lymphoma lymphoma is cancer of the lymph nodes so guys this is not necessarily just about the gummy bear implants this is about understanding Anatomy this is about understanding that if you're putting a foreign substance I don't care if it's silicone or saline or gummy bear you're putting it into an area where there is a boatload of lymph nodes so you could either have the lymph nodes compromised because you're having a leak from the materials of the implant you could have it because of the coding of the implant you can also have it because of scar tissue build up around the implant so it's very very important for you to be aware of this so that you do not develop a very serious issue with your lymph nodes and obviously worst case scenario being a lymphoma so I had a patient that I worked with who again didn't necessarily immediately reveal that she had implants but one of the things that came up was in her consultation which she was dealing with debilitating migraines her migraines were an adult-onset though it's not like she was getting them since she was really young she started developing the migraines in her 20s and then she also was yo going with a positive AAA on her blood work on a na by the way is an autoimmune marker for some type of connective tissue disorder but the problem is is that if your AMA comes up positive through you know your primary care doctor they're gonna refer you over to a Rheumatologist and then the rheumatologist sometimes will run the same marker and then it comes up negative so guys this does not mean that you don't have an autoimmune problem it just means your yo-yoing with your autoimmune problem because this is the nature of the body the body is very resilient it is always going to try to get back to normal so it is not necessarily just gonna keep you in this chronic inflammatory State which by the way an immune reaction is an inflammatory reaction so your body especially in the early stages is gonna try to stabilize and then it's gonna get stressed again and then it's gonna stabilize and then it's gonna get stressed again so you're a na can yo-yo so when you go to your that rheumatologist and they say oh you're a na is negative you don't have any problems that's not true it's not true at all it's just what you want to hear so you're just gonna be like okay problem solved I don't need to look any further so the point is is that this patient was dealing with migraines um for those of you that deal with migraines I highly recommend listening to our most recent podcasts because most migraines that I found over the course of the past 10 years most migraines are cardiovascular they are a circulatory problem with the brain sometimes there is problems with the blood getting in sometimes it's problems with the blood draining out so you can have different manifestations or different types of migraines depending on which it is but the point is is that going back to what I've said already about implants the implants can either leach chemicals into the lymph nodes of the armpit and the mammary glands or it can create a lot of scar tissue in the same areas so if you start to impede the you start to impede the lymphatic system in that area you can easily start to compromise the blood flow in and out of the head so for this specific person it was two parts she had a lot of toxicity in the lymph nodes which was causing issues with the blood flow in and out of her head which was part of the migraine issue but the secondary piece to this is that she ended up having the implants that had the coating on them the gummy bear implants so the coating was causing a massive amount of toxins that was getting into her bloodstream so the immune system was actually trying to clean up the toxins in the bloodstream but unfortunately as it was doing that it actually started to cause an autoimmune reaction on the blood vessels because the blood flows through the blood vessels so if your immune system is overactive in the blood that is one of the things that can start to compromise the blood vessels which then creates elevations and blood pressure sometimes even drops in blood pressure but this specific woman was having an elevation in blood pressure in the arteries of her brain so the thing about it is that her migraines the connective tissue disorder and the implants were all very very very interconnected so it's important to understand that this person could have easily been treated for lupus giving her an immunosuppressant then treated with you know some type of medication for her migraines and then totally would have had the implant situation completely overlooked and her lymphatic system overlooked at the end of the day they were all connected and they all needed to be addressed together to obviously get results so the other thing too is that there is a lot of misconceptions when it comes to implants so number one is that implants it's impossible to cause complications that implants do not cause systemic issues also the implants are not with mold toxicity and then the other one is there's no association with certain types of cancers so as we dig into this I'm gonna really just uncover more of the information that I see that is very clinically relevant from especially women that I work with that have implants so number one is that when it comes to the implants again it can be scar tissue related due to either the way the implant was put in or it could be related to the materials or the coating or the shell on the implant as well all of those things can be associated with the tight the amount of scar tissue that can develop in addition to that there can be different types of cysts that develop especially cysts that develop in the lymphatic chains or if you get swelling of the different lymph nodes or even hardening of the lymph nodes so you can easily have issues that develop in the lymphatic system associated with the implants and then on top of that you can also have hematomas hematomas are more so in relation to like blood pockets essentially and these blood pockets are not as common but they can definitely develop depending on how the surgery was done and also if your body is having a negative reaction to the materials in the implants as well so the other really interesting thing too is that as women you know we get our mammograms or we get thermogram zits whatever you choose to evaluate our breast health and you know with all of the talk about breast cancers it is definitely a fear that we have and you know we do these self examinations and we feel different things and we freaked ourselves out and we get really nervous or different things get picked up on the imaging that we do and you know we kind of live in this in this fear state of developing some type of you know cancer within the breasts but what's very interesting about this is that when you're looking at imaging if it is a mammogram or even a thermogram there can definitely be confusion with you know is this a problem is this cancerous or is this some type of growth or is there an abundance of different types of deposits that shouldn't be in the tissue and those deposits can come from minerals which I'll explain in a moment those deposits can come from different types of heavy metals and different types of toxicities but the very fascinating thing that I've learned over time is that most of the mineral deposits that we see in the body are actually a defense mechanism of the immune system I will give you an example women that I shouldn't say women but people that have thyroid nodules so a thyroid nodule is something that is looked at is oh this is step one before you potentially get thyroid cancer what's very interesting about it is that your thyroid is an extreme close proximity to your tonsils and the lymph nodes of your neck first of all your tonsils are a garbage can to be really honest with you your tonsils are there to keep any bad bacteria that gets into your mouth into your sinuses um and it keeps it out of your body if your tonsils are there to gobble up the crap and keep it from getting into your lymph nodes and your bloodstream so a lot of us get our tonsils removed so if you have a bunch of say fillings in your teeth and maybe you have constant bleeding gums or maybe you have had root canals or you've had teeth pulled and you've had infections or maybe a chronic sinusitis you can easily have a boatload of things getting into the neck area that shouldn't be there in the first place that could be bacterial it could be toxins it could be heavy metals etc so what happens is you start to get these things affecting the thyroid that shouldn't be there so your immune system is extra namely smart so it sends in a fleet of calcium in order to encapsulate the problem so maybe it's encapsulating bacteria maybe it's encapsulating some type of toxin that is harmful to your thyroid so the point of me telling you this is that thyroid nodules are telling us that your thyroid is being exposed to something that's harmful and your body your immune system is sending calcium to encapsulate it to protect you this happens in all different tissues of the body so when we're talking about the breast calcium is very common how many women get told they have dense breasts or they have calcifications in their breasts you have calcifications in your breast because you have toxins in the surrounding lymph or your toxins in your memory glands and your immune system is using calcium to encapsulate that to protect you so this is extremely important to understand because sometimes we're getting a diagnosis of oh you have you know lumps in your brows you have dense brass you have fibrocystic breasts and we're thinking we're a ticking time bomb for cancer but really at the end of the day we have things that are in the tissue that are not being diagnosed properly that we need to get out of the tissue and obviously if we're dealing with an implant that is leaking or we're dealing with an implant that has a coating on it that is toxic that can further be the catalyst to more and more mineral deposits into the breast tissue so the big thing about the systemic issues with implants is that your implants can cause some major issues with bacteria and can also cause major issues with fungus or mold growth and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in the next slide but in addition the other thing that we want to touch on is this very rare cancer that is now being associated with specific types of implants with that special coating and this is called BIA ALCL so it's a very specific type of t-cell lymphoma t-cells are a part of your immune system but it is specifically associated with breast implant illness so again this is not my opinion this is proven research and the reason why I am aware of this research is because a patient of ours called our office really kind of freaking out and the reason was because her surgeon her breast surgeon called her and said I just want to let you know that the implants that we did 10 years ago have now been proven to cause this very specific type of lymphoma so you need to make a decision if you're going to explant or not and the the group of people that got these implants were actually part of a study so it's very unfortunate that at the end of the study they're just like oops sorry our bad this is now we know this is now harmful so if you specifically have the gummy bear teardrop-shaped implants this is the specific lymphoma connected to those implants so you do need to get yourself evaluated to obviously make sure that they are not causing any problems so I want to come back to this one really quickly because I want to go through the specifics on the mold toxicity so this is really interesting and I'm just gonna read it on but because for those of you especially on the Instagram but the labels on saline solution to fill the saline implants are recommended to be stored at 77 degrees Fahrenheit so the body is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit so the point is is that when you're taking an implant that's supposed to be stored at a lower temperature then you're putting it into a significantly warmer environment especially people that are living in warmer climates this becomes a breeding ground for microbes to grow and it's not necessarily just about fungus but it's also about bacteria as well so it's really really important to understand that it's not just about the type of the implant it's also about the fact that some of these materials are just not intended to be in a warm environment so the other thing too is that you know when we're talking about some of these implants having faulty valves the valves allow some of the like body fluid and the implant fluid to interact with each other and that interaction can definitely be another brewing ground for these microorganisms especially the mycotoxins which mycotoxins are toxins associated with mold so again this is not necessarily just about mold this is also in relation to bacteria and guys for those of you that are like maybe not wrapping your head around this if you think about the nature of our armpits we sweat and we sweat for a reason we sweat to detox so when you have an implant in the chest it is going to affect the lymph nodes again of the armpit into the chest so we are then putting a variety of different toxins into that tissue and then most of us are using antiperspirant aka a solution that causes us to not sweat so then we are trapping you know normal bacteria into the tissue in addition to the body potentially trying to rid out the different toxins or microbes that are coming from the implants so we're really creating a perfect storm of you know having these potential maker organisms and then blocking sweat glands and allowing them to fully get out as well so I'm gonna go back really quick in relation to the specific type of lymphoma so there is a lot of research on this and for those of you that are listening that are freaking out right now don't freak out obviously you know it's not saying that it's a definitive that you have this development but there is obviously a risk so being able to know this and know what your best options are because it's not necessarily just explant and call it a day you also need to now evaluate the integrity of the surrounding tissue is though they're already a you know a boatload of bacteria or mold that is in the lymph nodes is it in the mammary glands is it in any of the other surrounding tissue you know is there scar tissue that needs to be dealt with these are all things to be considered so it's not again just about get the implants out you might need to do something further to make sure that the integrity of the entire area is being addressed in the proper way and also - one of the really interesting research studies that I came across on was very insightful it was talking about this specific lymphoma in correlation to the breast implants and what I found so interesting is it was talking all about the different types of chemicals and compounds in the implants and the nature of the immuno reactivity of the coding bla bla bla bla so it was pretty much like validating that these could be a problem and I find this so interesting because this is the case for so much research is that you get to the conclusion and the conclusion is but we have pretty much found that the implants are not correlated to the lymphoma and then the best part is is that at the very very bottom of the research article was um what was it stated as it was like ho conflicts of interest and the conflict of interest was the one the main people on the board of the pharmaceutical company that makes the implants was the person who wrote the paper so guys you you have to understand that research is driven by wits driven with intention it is driven to either validate what somebody wants to validate or not and a lot of the dollars behind research are funded by the companies that are trying to prove that it's valuable so I hate that that's the case but that's the reality of it and we know that there is a ton of money in drugs and there's a ton of money in plastic surgery and there's a ton of money and breast implants so unfortunately this was one of the quotes that I pulled and it's actually kind of comical but the specific company that makes the gummy bear implants called Allergan is that they're pretty much saying that the likelihood of a woman getting this lymphoma is the likelihood of someone getting struck by lightning so there's 400 people a year they get struck by lightning so interesting so overall one of the other big things about these implants is is what's in them so when you really dig into what the heck is actually in these implants it's things that you're like why how like what is the reasoning behind this there's caffeine in implants there's flame retardants like in case your boobs set on fire you know like that's a necessity um pesticides the one interesting thing that I found was a very specific type of hydrocarbon called anthraquinone so anthraquinone is something that I find regularly that comes up as a toxicity and many many many of my patients so anthraquinone is now not only found in these implants but it's also one of the primary ingredients and a lot of our facial lotion that are geared towards balancing complexion or ridding blemishes or even off freckles so anthraquinone is something that you really really really need to be cautious with because it is highly toxic and it is also known as a carcinogen so for those of you using different types of about or blemish reducing lotions definitely keep an eye to see if anthraquinone is one of the primary ingredients in there so here's the laundry list of all of the other toxins that are found in breast implants so you probably don't even know what half of these are but I will tell you that all of these have their own issues a lot of them are neurotoxins okay they are toxic to your neurological system some of these are also carcinogenic meaning that they can cause cancer over time and some of these are just going to make you just generally feel like crap because they're going to amp up your inflammatory pathways they're going to create brain fog joint pain the inability to lose weight you know which I find so interesting because most of the time we're getting implants you know for for vanity reasons we want to look a certain way we want to feel good in our own skin and that's fine there's nothing wrong with that but then you know you develop this array of inflammatory issues which stem from the implants so it's really important to understand that you know are you going to lose your health too you know have these implants because in some women it can become very very problematic over time so I think she's actually on here but I have a patient who wanted to share she's definitely been someone who has been on quite a journey when it comes to dealing with implants that were negatively impacting her body and she shared some photos with me as well as her story that I know she's written some blogs about but you know this is a person that really started to slowly feel like crap and had no idea that the implants could be playing a role and you know she took it into her own hands in order to really understand what the heck was going on with her and you know we've primarily just tried to assist her in the process of getting the bad things out of the body that built up over the time period that she had them but I think that the most fascinating thing about her process was just by explaining alone she reduced her inflammation dramatically and she also was able to control skin reactions and random inflammatory reactions that she was having with you know her face her joints and other parts of her body but you know when she came in she pretty much was like so here's all these symptoms of breast implant illness and I have every single one so nightly very happy that we've been able to kind of be the icing on the cake for her but she really has you know started the process on her own and made the decisions that she needed to excellent you know obviously change her diet and start her detoxification process and we just gave her a bit of support going through that process because there were things that were affecting her that she was obviously not able to realize without necessarily having some better testing so overall when it comes to the way that this looks is it doesn't look the same across the board it can easily be you know autoimmune conditions it can be hair loss it can be thyroid it could be joint pain it could be you know overall inflammation that looks like weight it could be so many different things and you know really the last but not least here is that again it's not always just explant and call it a day you might need to actually address your lymphatic system you might need to reduce the scar tissue you might need to figure out if there are certain toxins that have burrowed themselves into specific tissues you might need to support your liver um you know every everyone's detox pathways work differently and I think that this is a really important part to understand is that when you know when I work with some people that have mole toxicity from an environmental issue so you can have two people that are living in a moldy apartment and then both of them move out of the moldy apartment one of them bounces that and goes back to having no symptoms and then the other person doesn't bounce back and that really just has to do with how well their detoxification pathways work which really comes back to genetics so you know you ever hear of that person who drinks a cup of coffee and they're like wired for three days and then there's the other person who drinks a pot of coffee a day and they have zero problems like they can like literally go to bed so that has to do with how your liver metabolizes and detoxifies so some people have a really strong liver and it kind of like chops up caffeine and spits it out at chops of alcohol and spits it out and then you have other people that you know have a sip of wine and they're drunk so it's an everybody's body is extremely different and if you assess those pathways you can actually recover from the breast implant illness at a rapid rate once you know what you need to actually support and the other big one too is if you have had a slow leap from you know a rupture in the implant and it was leeching a variety of different toxins into the system you might have neurological stress and the thing you have to understand about this is that if you get rid of the inflammation and you get rid of the toxicity yes you can 100% senior neurological system balance out and be completely normal but some people if your neurological system is stressed long enough you create you reroute so the easiest way I can explain this is that if you have the Grand Canyon and you look at the rivers and the wind and how it flows through the Grand Canyon and then you dump a bunch of boulders into the Grand Canyon everything is gonna have to reroute its gonna have to figure out new ways for the wind and the water to flow so the same thing happens when your neurological system is extremely stressed so if your neurological system is stressed then your brain is gonna create new pathways to learn how to work around the stress but sometimes those new pathways create things like a VD it causes things like OCD it causes anxiety it causes sleep disturbances so when you clear out you know the toxicity or the stress in the neurological system sometimes you still need to actually figure out how to balance out the issues with the neurological system so it's very very important to know that sometimes it's not just about the X slanting sometimes you need additional support in addition so overall for those of you listening that either have implants or not so it's important for you to know that you don't know what you don't know you might suspect that your implants are making you sick but you probably didn't realize to the capacity that it can and how it can affect your neurological system how it can affect your lymphatic system how can maybe even cause migraines so there are many many factors to take into consideration here that can be playing a very very specific role so it's really important for us to not just settle for symptoms being our new normal or blaming it on bad genes or blaming it on aging we need to consider you know are there things in our bodies that are making us sick are there things that we're putting in our body is like toxic food or personal prod or whatever the case may be that are also making us sick you know we we tend to go to this place of thinking oh I'm just getting old so that's kind of the end of the story and that's why I feel the way I do I just need a power through but you might actually have other things that can be part of the puzzle that if you resolve you can actually not have to settle for those new symptoms being your normal so the other big thing too is that not if anything looks like a textbook so I know that there's not even really you know when I was in school nobody was teaching us about breast implant Elmas nobody was sitting there talking about that so you know there is no textbook for breast implant illness number one number two is that when it comes to the symptoms there could be so many different symptoms across the board for someone that is having a systemic whole-body reaction to an implant or the toxins of an implant so overall there's no textbook solution for you yes maybe it's like remove the implant but what about your lymph what about your blood what about your brain what about all those other things we need to make sure that we're not just kind of overlooking the whole physiology of the body so when it comes to this like concept functional integrative medicine some of you are like I don't even know the difference between the two or I don't even I don't even know why they would be different so when it comes to this whole conversation that we just had about breast implant illness so the reason why I know about this is because I had to constantly learn grow and evolve based off of what came through my doors there were obviously people that hit plateaus in their healing process not just with other practitioners but even in my practice early on because I didn't know what I didn't know and I kept learning growing and asking better questions and doing better testing so functional medicine you know was where I started and that was all about better testing and better testing is so so important so you can get better information and actually be able to tell your patient what is the root cause but what I found is that I got to a place that functional medicine had limitations with the tools so the tools were all about diet and supplements and like we just established is that what if the lymphatic system is compromised what if the liver is compromised what if the neurological system is compromised so I kept evolving our practice so that I had more tools to actually help my patients get better because it's great to have the diagnosis it's great to know the root cause but what about actually starting to feel better and it's not necessarily always about Diamond supplements because maybe you've already done that maybe you already tried that and it didn't work or you hit a plateau so it's about looking at the big picture and knowing how we can best support the patient so always a big question is you know how does this all work you know does this go through insurance and I do really think that healthcare is moving in a better direction I think that the more that we step up and say hey I want more out of my health care I want answers I want solutions I don't want you to sit here and tell me that you know my gut issues have nothing to do with what I'm eating that doesn't make sense I think that's more and more people are saying this doesn't make sense you know we're eating pure crap we're eating things like Twinkies that you can blowtorch that literally don't disintegrate like how are you gonna sit here and say that this doesn't negatively impact my health so I think the more that we speak up and the more that we actually you know we we vote with our dollars the more we buy organic the more that we seek out these alternative therapies you know insurance is gonna have to step up and and start to acknowledge you know where healthcare needs to go as of now we choose to serve you because unfortunately most of the people that come through our doors have been there done that they got the the five minutes with their practitioner they got no answers and they got no solutions so we're the people to provide you with the time provide you with the better testing and provide you with the answers and of course the solutions so I throw this quote in here because I find it so funny by the way instagramers this is going to cut me off if you want the full webinar don't forget to direct message your email address and I will make sure to get you the full webinar on because we're going to be finishing off in about 10 minutes or so thanks you thanks for being with me guys um so I always put this quote in here because I laugh so hard when I it's been my experience but it's also been many of my patients experience is that they you know they get into a social setting and you know you're like super excited about your new thing that you're doing and you're just a call you know I got answers and I'm gonna get better and you know I like I'm not mean gluten right now because I've heard it's like you know it's that for me because of my testing and you know they get this pushback of like oh I can't believe you're spending money on that or oh what a scam or oh yeah well guten doesn't mean anything hookans that's not even a real thing and I always laugh with this because everybody values something different you know there are many people that value their health and they're gonna spend a boatload of money on health care they're gonna spend a boatload of money on buying organic food they're gonna spend money on their gym membership like that's what they're gonna do because that's what they value but it's okay to judge those people but it's weird if I was to judge somebody for having a hundred and fifty thousand dollar car and be like well that's a stupid way to spend your money or you walk into a person's house that's like crazy techy and they have you know technology in every room and Bluetooth and all this and be like yeah what a stupid way to spend your money what a scam I'm like are you guys laugh because I have no idea why that's the dynamic of why it's okay to judge someone for valuing their health but it would be weird to judge someone for spending their money on like tech or things or clothes so really the point is that if you've got your health tell everyone to shut their mouths and don't let anybody tell you can't invest in it because it's your body it's your values it's your family and if you take care of yourself you can show up better for your job for your husband for your wife for your family you can be the best version of you which you deserve as much as people tell us we don't deserve that we do we also deserve to have answers about what's going on with our health we deserve to have solutions we've settled for this I don't know what's wrong with you oh there's no cure oh there's you know there's no protocol for that oh it doesn't matter what you eat oh just take this pill like that's literally what we've settled for and we need to demand more we need to demand more because we deserve more so one of the ways that we evaluate or not one of the ways many of the ways we evaluate all these things we talked about so talking about evaluating the lymph nodes talked about and talked about evaluating the mammary glands evaluating the blood flow evaluating the toxins we have a lot of customized ways that we do this and we do this through a couple of in-house technologies that we use and these technologies evaluate everything from your DNA to environmental allergies food allergies heavy metals minerals we do very very comprehensive blood testing that reveals autoimmune conditions mold toxicity different types of inflammatory marker styrene markers literally you name it we look at so many different components that allow us to piece the puzzle together but the coolest part about what we do is we do not guess we test and we don't guess on our recommendations for you so we don't give you a cookie cutter protocol for supplements we don't give you a cookie cutter detox protocol we actually you a protocol that your body says is good based off of your testing so when we do this style of testing we actually figure out what is going to help your body heal the fastest what are the supplements that are best for you we actually test 2500 supplements and that person will come up with maybe five six seven max ten supplements and a 2500 so that's how specific we are getting and we're doing this with dietary recommendations we're doing this with detox therapies and a variety of other types of therapies so it's extremely extremely customized to the person we also do this really unique onboarding process because first of all I was really really tired of running a bunch of really expensive labs that didn't always give me answers and I was really tired of having my patients spend you know all this money and then not necessarily have funds to get better you know for you to spend a couple thousand dollars on just knowing what's wrong and then being like okay well now I just gotta like deal with it because I don't have any more money we'll have to get better that was one of the main reasons why we customize our onboarding process to you know leverage better technology and do a lot of the testing in-house so you know the biggest thing too is that always you know when it comes to healthcare and it comes to some of these unique approaches there's a price but depending on what your struggles are and depending on you know you not getting answers from a variety of other avenues like you being able to get answers and obviously get solutions is priceless so when it comes to the whole process of how it works and all of those tests that I just mentioned everything from how we customize your protocols and all of your heavy-metal testing blood testing mineral testing food allergy testing all of that falls under the onboarding price of 1425 so for those of you new to this world that can sound like astronomical amount totally get it but I will tell you is that most of the time when you go to functional integrative practices they are getting you for a consultation and then you have to do a bunch of outside labs which run anywhere between two even up to three thousand dollars so this is definitely condensing down that investment so that you can get the best testing at a fraction of the amount so overall we always want to make sure that you know if you do want to embark on this process that we are a fit for you as you are a fit for us so we always ask for you to hop on a strategy call with one of our client care members so that they can kind of walk you through the process understand more about your struggles and really make sure that it's a good fit so the link there will actually shoot you over to our strategy call link and you can obviously access that through our website as well it's all over the website and you can hop on a call really five days out of the week also for those of you listening that are from a distance we actually do we can do all of our testing from a distance and primarily because you have DNA in your hair so by simply sending us a hair sample we can actually run all of our testing from a distance so a lot of people that we work with from a distance they ought to come and get different courses of care through our facility and we offer something called immersion week for people to come and do that which is pretty great so I'm gonna take a peek to see if there was any questions I was just kind of looking in there before and I didn't see any so um I'm gonna be finishing up if there are any questions that come up over the next few minutes definitely shoot them through so I'd be happy to answer them but I really hope that this information was of value I really hope that this information didn't overwhelm you or you know scare you that's definitely not the intention the intention is for you to really understand that if you're feeling terrible and nobody has been able to give you answers that maybe the implants are playing a role maybe they're not but it's really really important for people to understand the bigger picture and really you know we live in a world right now that breast cancer is an epidemic and we live in fear of it and we think that we are doomed based off of genetics and I actually didn't even go through this and I want to end with this because this is this is how mind-blowing this is is that when we are talking about these implants and we were talking about this very specific lymphoma so a good friend of mine who is a nurse she was actually asked to go to a conference that a surgeon was putting on and what the surgeon actually revealed was this same lymphoma was not just associated with breast implants but it was also associated with the spacers that are put in to women post mastectomy okay guys so like let's wrap her head around of this is that we get you that at testing and the genetic testing reveals that we have the braket gene and then we get told well the weight the way you could be proactive in this is get a double mastectomy to reduce your risk of developing breast cancer so then you get the double mastectomy then you obviously want to get reconstructive surgery so you don't look odd so you get spacers put in these spacers are made of materials that are now linked to this same type of t-cell lymphoma then potentially you get implants put in and then those implants depending on the type especially the gummybear type are also associated with lymphoma like how screwed up is this so it's just really really important to work with physicians that are looking at the bigger picture and to get your own customized testing to really know what's going on in your body because your body is different from somebody else's body who is struggling with you know array of symptoms your symptoms might look similar but you can easily have two completely different root causes so it's really this is all about education once you know what's going on in your body that's when this truly becomes a breakthrough experience so I thank you guys for being here with me I definitely recommend checking out our website if you want more information about who we are what we do what it's all about also if you are looking for more information about a variety of conditions we actually have an archive of webinars I've been doing these since December every single week so we have topics about autoimmunity mold gut neurological pediatric conditions you name it and in addition to that we also have podcasts we've been doing podcasts for years so we have a variety of different topics in relation to the podcast as well so so definitely dive in to our website you know read through listen watch etc but I thank you guys for being here and I will be seeing you next month when we actually embark on our next topic of heavy metal toxicity as well as chemical toxicity so this is something being very very overlooked especially the chemical toxicity when it comes to our health and we're going to be exploring more about you know these different chemicals that we're being exposed to on a day to day basis from things that we are doing drinking breathing eating etc and we're gonna dive in a lot more how that can affect our health and what we can obviously do about it so I hope you share this with others and I hope you've got a lot of value out of it and I thank you for being here and I will see you guys next month