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Healing from Breast Implant Illness and Symptoms of BII

hormone health Jun 05, 2022

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What in the world is #bii?!


Breast implant illness occurs in many women who have or have had breast implants and symptoms can range from mild to debilitating with symptoms all over the chart from fatigue to fibromyalgia like symptoms to allergies, depression and beyond!

While most plastic surgeons will not accept BII as a real diagnosis (most doctors cannot acknowledge it's a real thing without accepting liability for it!), I encourage you to scroll through the hashtag #bii on Instagram and see the stories of thousands and thousands of women who have lived through it 💔 THOUSANDS of women have watched their health decline after getting breast implants and not enough people are talking about it. 

 

Implants can't be that bad! .....Right? 

While I’ve never personally had implants, I always thought implants were just made of saline! Not so bad right? Unfortunately that’s far from true.

Many implants include ingredients like aluminum, mercury, copper, titanium, arsenic and tin!! 🤢

I didn’t know any of this until a few years ago when @manifestationbabe on Instagram shared her explant journey and her intense symptoms and I was in SHOCK. I had never realized that implants could make women so ill. 

Remember too: Any foreign object in the body can also stress the immune system and slowly create more and more “mysterious” symptoms. 

 


We are of course never judging anyone here for their personal medical choices. There is zero judgment if you have implants. Unfortunately though, most women do not know there are real risks to implants and then have no resources if / when mysterious symptoms begin. If you feel you were not told the real risks of implants, you are not alone and that's why I believe talking about this is essential - so all women can make informed decisions about their health and body.


 

Common Symptoms of Breast Implant Illness:

  • chronic fatigue
  • joint pain
  • muscular aches and pains
  • skin rashes
  • brain fog
  • memory issues
  • trouble breathing
  • gastrointestinal issues
  • trouble sleeping or staying asleep
  • headaches
  • hair loss
  • anxiety and depression

 

Symptoms of BII can occur anytime after breast implant surgery. It can be rapid onset or develop slowly over years. Often symptoms resemble autoimmune and connective tissue disorders. 

Removing implants often resolves many if not all onset symptom. Unfortunately, all cases are bio-individual and not all explant surgeries fully reverse the damage. Many women have to seek out NDs like myself or functional medicine doctors to address the chronic inflammation and high heavy metals that may still be present.

 


 

Breastcancer.org states, "Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the major plastic surgery societies, and other health authorities have been devoting more attention to BII than they did in the past. In May 2019, the FDA released a statement noting that the agency’s officials are “taking steps to better characterize [BII] and its risk factors, and are considering ways to help to ensure women have all of the information they need to make informed decisions about whether to obtain breast implants or to remove existing breast implants in an effort to reverse systemic symptoms.” In October 2019, the agency published a draft of recommendations to implant manufacturers for new labeling for breast implants. The agency advised manufacturers to include information about the risk of systemic symptoms in a boxed warning and in a patient decision checklist that would be included in patient information booklets".

 

Have you heard of BII? Or have you known someone struggling with it?

I got to interview on my podcast the lovely Dr. Stacy of @_vibe_wellness to talk about breast implant illness and her story living with #bii and then having them removed.

 


 

On the CYCLICAL Podcast: Healing After Breast Implant Illness

This episode is a MUST listen to if you or someone you know has breast implants. Stacy is a naturopath and also had breast implants in for over 10 years. It wasn't until she began to struggle with mysterious symptoms that she learned about #bii and began to dig deeper. 

While she did feel better after her explant surgery, more work needed to be done to get her back to vital health and in this episode, she shares all about that journey and more!

Want to hear more?? Be sure to tune into the CYCLICAL podcast!

Episode "Healing from Breast Implant Illness with Stacy Barczak Baker" 

You can find the CYCLICAL Podcast on iTunes, Spotify or anywhere you enjoy podcasts

  


 

Learn how to work with me here

 You don't have to feel in the dark about your symptoms anymore and if your doctor is saying "NO" when you request hormone testing, please know there are options! If you're ready to get to the root of what's going on, check out my Work With Me page to learn how to begin this journey of support, nourishment and hormone balance. 

 

If your hormones feel off, they probably are! So don't brush it off and assume everything is "normal" when you feel anything but. xx

 

Dr. Cassandra 

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