795_Dr. Robert Whitfield
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[00:00:00] JJ Virgin: Hey, I am JJ Virgin, PhD Dropout. Sorry, mom. Turn four time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, fitness Hall of Famer and globally recognized leader in health. I’m driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health. Into actionable strategies that help you thrive.

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[00:01:20] JJ Virgin: I have been wanting to do this subject for quite a while, but I wanted to wait until I could have Dr. Rob Whitfield with me. We are gonna be talking today about breast implant illness, but also. Implant illness in general, because you may have heard of breast implant illness. We’ll talk about how common it is and isn’t what could be set you up for to be at risk for it, but also beyond that, maybe this is just a, a personal thing.

[00:01:48] JJ Virgin: I also wanted to know about knees and hips since my old sports injuries, um, caused me to have to have a knee hip replacement. So we are gonna be talking about. Um, detoxification, explan surgery, what puts you at risk, what you can do, um, instead of explants before explants, or to confirm that this could actually be the issue.

[00:02:12] JJ Virgin: I’ve got Dr. Rob Whitfield with me. He’s a world renowned holistic plastic surgeon, certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, an author leading expert in breast implant illness. And, uh, that all came to be, and we’ll talk about how he got interested in this ’cause again, most surgeons are. Putting breast implants in.

[00:02:29] JJ Virgin: They’re not taking them out, but especially specializations in oncology and microsurgery really put ’em at the forefront of all of this, of advanced breast and explan procedures and had him really start to question things like when he started to see, um, what he thought were infections around breast implants but weren’t showing up in the labs.

[00:02:51] JJ Virgin: Figure out a way to go deeper and find new lab testing to verify what he was seeing. He’s got a practice in Austin, Texas. He is where I’ve done some really cool, uh, innovative facial, uh, non-surgical facelifts techniques, which, um, I’m going back for more ’cause I’m a chicken about going under the knife.

[00:03:13] JJ Virgin: So anything I can do that doesn’t cause that I don’t have to go under the knife. I’m all in. And, uh, he has built this. This concept, which I’m hoping will just kind of take off nationwide, maybe worldwide. ’cause he has been doing this worldwide called strategic holistic accelerated recovery program. Or he calls it sharp.

[00:03:31] JJ Virgin: And what it is, is a protocol that optimizes recovery and promotes comprehensive healing and something you can start before you go in for surgery. In fact, this is something you can do if you are thinking you might have, um. Issues with breast implant illness or any kind of a, a joint replacement illness.

[00:03:53] JJ Virgin: This is something you can do ahead of time if you’re looking at potentially having to have something removed, switched out, et cetera. He uses advanced testing and different types of care strategies, and he’s got this amazing center in Austin, Texas with like all sorts of the latest, greatest techniques and.

[00:04:11] JJ Virgin: Tools in there to help you recover faster. He’s got the popular podcast, breast Ex Explan Surgery and Recovery, and he has got a huge YouTube channel over 2 million subscribers to that. So we will put all of that along with the PDF for his bookSharp@jjvirgin.com slash explan recovery and I’ll be right back with Dr.

[00:04:33] JJ Virgin: Rob Whitfield.

[00:04:40] JJ Virgin: Dr. Rob Whitfield, welcome to Well Beyond 40.

[00:04:44] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:04:45] JJ Virgin: Long time overdue and um, a subject that is getting more and more and more attention. I think one of the reasons is you are out there bravely courageously talking about this, and that is breast implant illness, and then how to.

[00:05:00] JJ Virgin: Explan safely. And you know the obvious question, since most plastic surgeons are known for putting breast implants in and now you’re getting known for taking them out, what got you interested in this? What kind of alerted you that there might be a problem?

[00:05:17] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Well, first of all, thank you for having me and I appreciate this opportunity to share this with your audience.

[00:05:21] Dr. Robert Whitfield: First of all, I try to define breast and but illness as a chronic inflammatory process of which. A medical device, in this case, a breast implant is playing a role. It’s not the only thing going on, as we all know, or a collection of experiences. Some of those are inherited that we’ve got from our parents.

[00:05:37] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Environmental, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the fluids we take into our body, the things we apply to our skin, those all affect. You know, how we deal with and, and handle inflammation. So in 2016, after a very long period of time just doing reconstructive microsurgery for cancer, patients with jaw cancer and breast cancer and sarcomas, and, you know, people who unfortunately and, and terrible accidents and, and needed reconstructive surgery, if I had a breast cancer patient seek me out to go flat.

[00:06:07] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And although that wasn’t, um. Quote unquote, that common in my, in my training, it’s become more and more a, a movement of going flat, which is absolutely the patient’s, uh, right. And I respected, you know, her decision to have her reconstruction removed and, and go flat. And I did it in a setting, um, because of a medical dis uh, condition in a hospital.

[00:06:28] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And each time I would, um, take out an implant if I was removing it. And that was gonna be it for the device. We would take all the scar tissue out. And send that scar tissue and any other scarring to look for, uh, residual cancer, of course, in a cancer case. And then two, look for any, uh, contamination, any bacter, uh, bacteria, fungus, mycobacterium, something like that that could cause the pa, cause the patient any kinda ongoing, uh, problem for an infection or inflammation.

[00:06:57] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And so I just did that in every case. That’s how I was taught in terms of my oncology, uh, training and that patient. Um. When the pathology came back, she had no evidence of, of residual cancer, which is first and foremost the the important thing. And then secondly, when her microbiology, which looks at bacteria and fungus and microbiology, uh, exams came back, she had a e coli infection.

[00:07:21] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And so you can, you know, you know, my sister’s history, my sister recently passed away of, of breast cancer after a very, very long period of time dealing with it. And someone missed a infection on my sister who had a breast reconstruction with an implant. I would’ve been pretty frustrated by that. But, um, I did, as I do all the patients physical exams and consultations and, and, uh, we review all their laboratory analysis and, and any diagnostic studies.

[00:07:46] Dr. Robert Whitfield: She didn’t have any, any indicator that she had the infection. And, um, I went back through everything. ’cause I was like, whoa, how did I miss this? This is not good. So she did have fatigue and many patients, as you know, JJ, who go through chemotherapy or other adjunct therapies, get bone marrow suppression.

[00:08:06] Dr. Robert Whitfield: They have a lot of, uh, fatigue. The, the scoring system for that is, is well known. That’s very, very routine. But. She had e coli infection, and when she got that explan done, and then I treated her for e coli infection with antibiotic therapy, all of her fatigue went away.

[00:08:24] JJ Virgin: Mm.

[00:08:24] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So this lady, unfortunately, had been living with a infection for a period of time, unbeknownst to any of the, the providers.

[00:08:31] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And so everybody then, you know, will Insta, you know, send me a message on Instagram, DM me, like, why did that happen? How was that missed? And so. For everybody listening so that we’re all on the same page. Infections as it relates to a device. Hip, knee, breast, dental implant usually occur one of three ways, and we’ll, we’ll talk about each of them.

[00:08:52] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So a implant is given to a surgeon. In the operator. The staff who gives the implant to the surgeon can contaminate the implant. How, how common is

[00:09:02] JJ Virgin: that?

[00:09:02] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Super low. Like Okay, far, far, far less than 1% of the time. The surgeon can contaminate it after getting it by, touching it inappropriately to the skin or somehow he having a break in technique.

[00:09:16] JJ Virgin: Okay. And so I would assume that’s super low as well.

[00:09:18] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Those first two things are super low. All less than, far less than 1% of the time.

[00:09:23] JJ Virgin: And we’re talking any implant now?

[00:09:25] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah. Hip, knee, breast, dental, all, all the precautions taken on the front end are to avoid that, like the immediate infection of a device.

[00:09:34] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So then. The third most common way, and the way this was, uh, like hammered home to me as a med student ages ago, I’m getting old. That is, they’re like, uh, Rob, you need to come listen to Mr. Smith’s chest. He has a mechanical heart valve. And this is what I did med school and people had had mechanical heart valves in and they were taking Coumadin, which is a blood thinner because to have a, you know, mechanical heart value, you have to have this.

[00:09:59] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And you’d listen and you’d hear, go ping. Ping, ping make this metallic noises before they started using pig valves. And uh, you’re like, oh, okay. And then they would teach you about something called endocarditis, and they would say, Rob, you know, if you don’t give this patient a dose of IV antibiotics before a colonoscopy, or they don’t get a prescription before teeth cleaning, or if they get a urinary tract infection, or they would get a pneumonia if you don’t treat them aggressively.

[00:10:27] Dr. Robert Whitfield: They can get an infection of their mechanical heart valve and developmental carditis, which they call it vegetations. It’s bacterial overgrowth on the valve and it’ll embolize cause strokes. All your organs basically. And, and obviously that’s talk about morbidity. Uh, of a, of a problem. So anyway, I always think of those examples ’cause I’m old enough to know those examples.

[00:10:50] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And if we get a urinary tract infection or a lung infection or a skin infection, all of that bacteria from that can get into our bloodstream and that can attach to any device, a cardiac device. A neurologic device, you know, a, a neuro stem for problem with your back, a breast implant, a hip implant, an e implant.

[00:11:11] Dr. Robert Whitfield: These all have devastating consequences to those who perform those procedures, whether it’s an orthopedic neurosurgery. Um, I was ca you know, I always asked to help with those if somebody got an infection in a device. ’cause in reconstructive cases for oncology. That’ll cause a great amount of disability if you lose your knee prosthesis after they did a cancer surgery or if you lose a hip, um, uh, conversely with anything neurologic, you know, if they’re putting in deep brain stimulators or anything like that.

[00:11:40] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So that’s how those things develop where a function of exposures over time. So for everybody listening, when I do cancer cases or cosmetic cases, my patients always had a little standing prescription at the office. If they went and got a teeth cleaned. Because of the mouth. It’s the beginning of the GI Tracted.

[00:11:57] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Right.

[00:11:57] JJ Virgin: But isn’t that because, you know, you know, I’ve got knee, I’m bionic with my knees and hips. Mm-hmm. But, um, we had to have, when I went and got teeth, my teeth cleaned. Initially I had to take antibiotics and then you only have to do that for six months. That doesn’t sound right based on what you’re telling me.

[00:12:16] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah. It can happen anytime. I mean, overall, you know, if you have a, a device in place, there’s nothing at six months. After that device that says you can’t get a problem. Right. So those things, you know, this is where I, I think we have to be a little bit more careful about how we talk about devices, because devices are inherently, they have a risk profile.

[00:12:39] Dr. Robert Whitfield: They’re not your genetic material. That’s why when we take out old implants now, and I put in, you know, fat, I, I try to do that. In lieu of an exchange with a device, because if I exchange with your own genetic material, your own fat, then it has the ability to heal. And if it’s healed and you know, throughout the process of your life, you can maintain, we’ll just say a, a modicum of health.

[00:13:01] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Then that’s gonna stick with you and it’s not gonna need an antibiotic therapy later on or anything like that, typically. Um, but any device like hip, knee, breast, dental, like all these folks I, I have on my show about biologic dentistry.

[00:13:14] JJ Virgin: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:14] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Um, they just describe all these really horrendous things they find on these, um, uh, dental implants.

[00:13:20] Dr. Robert Whitfield: They remove.

[00:13:21] JJ Virgin: Yeah. Well, but Dr. Sand Mulan found a cavitation of mine ’cause, uh, from a root canal gone right. Or yeah, wisdom tooth pulling out, gone bad.

[00:13:32] Dr. Robert Whitfield: You know, I just think we have to be, you know, careful about it. I, I don’t overemphasize antibiotic therapy, but if you have a device and, and there’s a reason you got the device, uh, you gotta be cognizant of that.

[00:13:41] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Um, many of the, to your point, hips and, and knees, it’s, I don’t know that they’re more resilient than the others, but seemingly, um. And I’ve taken care of, of folks who’ve had unfortunately had to have a knee removed and a cement spacer and basically have to peg, leg it around for six weeks of IV antibiotics and they get a new knee implant placed.

[00:14:04] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So it’s more about, you know, can you use the precautionary principle in this case? I mean, obviously in those, I’m a little. More, as you know, conservative about those types of things. I don’t overemphasize antibiotics in my practice, but I’m, I’m careful and selective about, you know, use of those.

[00:14:23] JJ Virgin: Yeah. Wow.

[00:14:25] JJ Virgin: Okay. So this first case, what led you to kind of go deeper into all of this then? Yeah,

[00:14:32] Dr. Robert Whitfield: so that gal, after I did it and found out she had e coline infection, we, we couldn’t figure out like why that happened. Uh. In terms of her history and then how we didn’t identify it. And then I believe she just put me on a Facebook group that said I did X explan surgery.

[00:14:51] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Then I had people start coming to me and calling, you know, the office where I worked at that point. And they’d say, Hey, her, Dr. Whitfield does X explan surgery, can, you know, have a consult? And so the staff were a little taken back. They’re like, I know he did this for a cancer patient, but. This was a cosmetic patient who called the next time and, and so on and so forth, and it was 2018.

[00:15:16] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I was taking care of a nurse. Her sister lived in Austin and I did her explan surgery. At that point, I was using drains. I had done the explan, taken out the scar tissue, went on the back table and looked at it, and the thing was really kind of, we call it slimy, like it just seemed like it was infected.

[00:15:35] Dr. Robert Whitfield: The in implant itself seemed to be intact. You can have gel bleed, which is kind of the silicone leaking through the shell, and that’s a different. Kind of, uh, characteristic feel. This was like a gross kind of slimy, infected feel. And I went out and told her husband, I’m like, you know what? I think she just has an infection.

[00:15:53] Dr. Robert Whitfield: We will wait and, and get the cultures back. And so for everybody listening, standard cultures in this country have been done with basically like a Q-tip swab that you put a little container and you send to the lab. The technician at the lab would take the Q-tip swab, wipe it on what’s called an agar plate, little plate full of uh, uh, uh, a medium to incubate it, put it in the incubator, it grows.

[00:16:17] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Then if something grows, you can get an antibiotic resistance, uh, profile to it, and then you can treat. That’s, it’s been done since the fifties, basically. And it, JJ came back to me and said, no growth, nothing there. And I was like, that’s bullshit. There’s no way.

[00:16:36] JJ Virgin: Well, thank God you questioned

[00:16:38] Dr. Robert Whitfield: this. There’s just no way.

[00:16:40] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I was just like, okay, we have to do better than this. And that was 2018. And, uh, for those listening, textured implants are associated with a cancer called breast implant. Uh, associate Anaplastic large cell lymphoma and some of the preliminary work, uh, looking at PCR analysis of exploit specimens on those patients was done at MicroGen dx, which is a lab in Lubbock, Texas.

[00:17:02] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So I got connected with the lab and I said, Hey, I want to have an agreement in place so I can send samples there and get them looked at. And they gave me, um. Uh, a profile that they would run from me. It looks at 150 types of bacteria, fungi, and mycobacterium. So although nothing’s perfect, that’s a more comprehensive way to look at it.

[00:17:27] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And so from February 14th, 2019 to date, that’s all we do is run PCR testing and all these. And last September we published a series of 700 consecutive expert specimens, the scar tissue, not the implant surface, and it showed that 29% have. Bacterial contamination. And so what does that really mean? In our series, it was cutie bacteria ane in other series that’s been staph epidermis, which in, in my series was number two.

[00:17:57] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Doesn’t really matter. Both of those readily produce biofilm. And if everybody listening biofilm is like it’s plaque on your teeth, think of that. That’s what biofilm is. It builds up on there and that’s bacterial, uh, growth in almost like a little village of bacteria, but that bacteria can interact with your breast tissue.

[00:18:15] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Specifically the fatty acid in the breast tissue called oleic acid. And that’s what starts the problem with your immune system ultimately downstream. It affects our macrophages, which are a part of our immune system, and that’s what can stimulate more symptoms in patients that I take care of. Joint pain, fatigue, all sorts of of problems.

[00:18:38] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And. So when I take those out and I send those off and I get those results back, jj, it gives those patients peace of mind that that was really the impetus for what they were experiencing. Now, in other cases, our program, you know, we develop the short method basically to help answer the rest of those questions.

[00:18:58] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So we look at someone’s genetics. So your detox capability. Things like your vitamin D pathway, your antioxidant pathway, how you methylate, how you, uh, metabolize and use glutathione to help with chemicals you’re exposed to. Fundamentally. Fundamentally, we, we all have these pathways. Some of them work better than others, of course, and in my client, uh, population, about 83% have SNPs or problems in each of those pathways.

[00:19:28] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Whereas if you just looked at the individual incidents. It’s basically the same as the global population, but cumulatively, if I told you 83% of the people I take care of have that problem, you’d be like, oh my gosh, that makes sense. ’cause they just don’t detox. Well,

[00:19:47] JJ Virgin: so, so it sounds like if someone was considering getting breast implants and they couldn’t use their own fat, that.

[00:19:56] JJ Virgin: It would be wise to check this ahead of time. And if you are in that 83 or 84% am I hearing right that this you would wouldn’t be a candidate?

[00:20:05] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I think it would give you pause and just like anything, you’re an end of one. And I think what is important now is the more we understand and use, uh, they’re not cliche, like precision medicine or, or being more intentional about what we’re doing is important.

[00:20:22] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I, I don’t feel like. Implants are ever going away. I would, I would not say that.

[00:20:27] JJ Virgin: And do you think that like, um, there is a percentage of the population that can be fine with them? Yeah. Yeah,

[00:20:35] Dr. Robert Whitfield: absolutely.

[00:20:35] JJ Virgin: Yeah. Yeah. Because I know you’ve gotten a lot of flack and Oh, yeah. I also know that from talking to you, you never said, oh, no one can have these.

[00:20:43] JJ Virgin: You just said they’re creating problems in some people, so you finally validated, which this situation that women knew was happening, you know?

[00:20:52] Dr. Robert Whitfield: But I think the women have been very intuitive. They know when something’s not right. And I, I give credit to the patients for not listening to folks telling them that there’s nothing wrong.

[00:21:03] JJ Virgin: Yeah. Well we’ve been told that in so many different ways in our lives for so long. You know, I think they’re all, we’re all,

[00:21:08] Dr. Robert Whitfield: you know, that’s case we’re all being loud

[00:21:10] JJ Virgin: now in everything.

[00:21:12] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah. So, and that’s a hugely important topic, and we want to at least write an open letter to address the genetic problem, because in our audit, it’s obvious to us.

[00:21:23] JJ Virgin: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:23] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So we wanna start the conversation about genetics, because you can’t stick your head in the sand and say, this doesn’t. Exists, it’s not a problem. And then the other thing that is interesting now on the influencer circuit is toxicity, right? Everybody talks about toxicity.

[00:21:38] JJ Virgin: Yeah, let’s do a juice cleanse and fix it.

[00:21:40] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Right? And you know, I’m just like really

[00:21:43] JJ Virgin: like, oh no.

[00:21:44] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah. I’m like, I, you know how I am. I want to test things and I wanna have a metric so that, you know. Yeah, my patients know where they start so that we can refer back to it. So we look at a toxicity test and the things we find in terms of, we’ll just say biotoxins, like mycotoxins come from fungus, environmental toxins, which are are big now.

[00:22:05] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Like we hear about all the things in food and herbicides and pesticides. Those are getting a lot of attention now. And then of course, I get asked about heavy metals all the time. Are the implants causing, you know, heavy metal toxicity? And the short answer is we don’t see that. And then people are like, oh, you just don’t know.

[00:22:23] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I’m like, well

[00:22:24] JJ Virgin: that one’s pretty easy to see though, of all the tests that you can look at. Yeah. Heavy metals are one of the ones, unless your body’s holding onto ’em, but you can do things to provoke it.

[00:22:34] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Well, yeah, and you, you went on Lauren Bostic show and Lauren Bostic is the all time record holder in my practice of heavy metals in a test.

[00:22:41] JJ Virgin: Wow. That’s not something you wanna win.

[00:22:43] Dr. Robert Whitfield: No, but she’s, she’s the, the gold medalist, if you will. Although my son

[00:22:48] JJ Virgin: was also a gold medalist, um, on it. Yeah. I was like, uh oh.

[00:22:52] Dr. Robert Whitfield: You know, well, right. Those things. But like having 10 or any of those things in you at high levels causes cognitive issues, uh, mitochondrial problem, all sorts of things.

[00:23:03] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Like 10 can literally make you crazy if you have too much of it in your system. And she, people ask me. You know, like Lauren, as soon as I did her surgery after surgery, she wanted to do like Instagram posts and all these things, and I thought she was a little bit, you know, comfortable on medication, so to speak.

[00:23:21] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And uh, every day after she was kind of getting more energetic and feeling better. So it had been really affecting her is the point. Yeah. And when we repeated her tox test, all of the heavy metals were out. And she had done no therapy, uh, no chelation therapy, no additional, uh, binder therapy or anything that would affect those levels other than surgery.

[00:23:45] JJ Virgin: If someone, first of all, are there you, are there different breast implants? Like are some breast implants more susceptible to this than others?

[00:23:55] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah, that’s a great question. I, I, you know, I would say that when you looked at our, uh, study, there was no difference on the, um, incident, uh, bacterial contamination on surface.

[00:24:09] Dr. Robert Whitfield: You would think intuitively it would be higher on texturing, but I think it goes back to technical considerations on placement. So then it becomes a secondary question of what is more stimulating and obviously the texture to more stimulating, ’cause they could lead to a lymphoma. So the interaction in the immune system, and that’s still, there’s tons of being, uh, tons of work being done on that.

[00:24:33] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And, um, the, the issues that come from that to me, I see them in the operating room. You can see really dense scar tissue, very difficult to remove.

[00:24:45] JJ Virgin: Hmm.

[00:24:46] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And then when those patients are seeing, uh, day over day in the office after surgery. ’cause we do, as you know, in my office, we have lymphatic massage and we have hyperbaric therapy.

[00:24:55] Dr. Robert Whitfield: You

[00:24:56] JJ Virgin: have the best playground ever. Having, having done some facial things over at your office, it’s like I could just move in there very happily between the, and we added some things Hispanic.

[00:25:07] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah, and we added something called the human regenerator, which is, uses cold plasma technology. So it’s like a huge bed you lay on and it, it, it re it, uh, I’m sorry, increases electron transport.

[00:25:20] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So anyway, those folks who have those textures and they get ’em out, and then day over day in the office, they’re the ones who are more energetic. Um, those, uh, those to me. They’re the most stimulating to your immune system. The smooth, um, I don’t think is much. And then anything that comes forward, and I’m not gonna speak about a specific vendor, I mean, it’s still a foreign object.

[00:25:48] Dr. Robert Whitfield: No matter how you slice it, when you put it in, your body’s gonna react to it. And then everybody, as we already described, is gonna be behave a bit differently.

[00:25:55] JJ Virgin: Everyone’s gonna what, what?

[00:25:56] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Behave a bit differently.

[00:25:58] JJ Virgin: And someone suspecting, like, I’d love to hear just. What the most common symptoms are of breast implant illness or a joint, uh, you know, you know, a foreign object illness.

[00:26:11] JJ Virgin: If someone suspects this, is there a way to evaluate it without, before going in? And, you know, taking out a knee replacement or a breast implant or whatever,

[00:26:25] Dr. Robert Whitfield: well, we’ll take those individually like so. I was, uh, fortunate enough to work with orthopedic oncology groups, uh, at, at my initial post after a training, and they were hyper aggressive.

[00:26:38] Dr. Robert Whitfield: If they felt that your knee, for instance, in your case was infected, they would go to great lengths to ensure that it wasn’t like they would numb it and they would aspirate it. If that was questionable, they would take it to the operating room and either do it under sedation or be made more aggressive like they had to confirm or deny that that was, you know, that.

[00:27:01] Dr. Robert Whitfield: The issue for a knee, it’s obviously a little bit different in a breast implant because a breast implant can be damaged by a needle trying to aspirate around it. So if you did an ultrasound or had a diagnostic study that showed fluid around an implant, you automatically assume it’s either infected or in a textured case, you’d have to prove that that’s not a can Sir.

[00:27:22] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Mm. So it’s different in that setting. If you look at a knee on ultrasound or you examine it and they’re just swollen, then you gotta prove it’s not an infection. You know, if, if you just banged your knee and it got swollen, you’re like, ah, it’s fine. But if that’s chronic and tender or warm and you don’t feel well, those are all the prodromal signs of an infection.

[00:27:46] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And that’s very, you know, in a, uh, in a routine hip or knee. Very problematic in a cancer patient who had that done worse. ’cause they’re typically even either on immunosuppressives or having received immunosuppressive therapy. So it may be even like, yeah, you’re not seeing exactly what’s going on and it’s markedly worse.

[00:28:08] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So all of those things I and I, I always say the same thing to our patients. I’m like, if you had a big red, swollen breast, everybody would know exactly what’s going on and there wouldn’t be all this. Rigmarole, the, your hand ringing, you know, it just would be taken care of. I used to get called JJ on a Friday.

[00:28:25] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Hey Susie Smith has redness of her breast reconstruction and we’re admit error to the hospital. So you have 24 hours in that case for that to resolve. Or basically you have to take that patient to the operating room ’cause they’re in the midst of getting chemotherapy or whatever and take it out. ’cause they’re gonna get sick.

[00:28:46] Dr. Robert Whitfield: So you, you just have a limited window, but it’s obvious in those cases, right? They’re immunosuppressed versus a breast implant illness patient who’s not. They’re completely immunocompetent. But they may have these, I don’t feel well.

[00:29:02] JJ Virgin: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:02] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I mean, I have brain fog, I have fatigue, I have muscle and joint pain.

[00:29:07] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I have,

[00:29:07] JJ Virgin: I mean, all the things that could be perimenopause. Yeah. It could, you know, that’s the challenge. It’s super

[00:29:11] Dr. Robert Whitfield: confusing. Like I don’t, I don’t envy anybody sitting across from a patient trying to explain this. It’s not that simple.

[00:29:17] JJ Virgin: And it’s not like you could do like some. Toxic burden test and look at,

[00:29:23] Dr. Robert Whitfield: right?

[00:29:24] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I think this is the point where I should say, like the person who’s done the best work on this is Dr. Une Sena. He’s at any university medical center, and he published a paper about Oxy lipin, which is that molecule that’s formed by the interaction between biofilm and the oleic acid in the press now. If that became a biomarker, you could measure in a blood spot analysis or in the bloodstream that would be good for those people suffering from that specific interaction between staph epi, which is the bacteria mm-hmm.

[00:29:55] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And the oleic acid, because to date, that’s the only association he’s been able to find. And that’s got different, um, oxy lipin molecules. But, so that’s the first like real biomarker. So, but that represents only a, a fraction of the people. But that could help, you know, identify in those cases, you know, or a provider could say, Hey, let’s just try this.

[00:30:20] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Let’s see if this is potentially the problem that would help them, because you can’t be the primary doctor trying to figure this out. And you’re like, I don’t know, uh, I’ll send you to the GI doctor, or I’ll send you to the rheumatologist. I’ll send you to the endocrinologist. ’cause you’re, you got Hashimoto’s.

[00:30:36] Dr. Robert Whitfield: What? Whatever though.

[00:30:38] JJ Virgin: Yeah, I’m just playing like I’m listening to this going, okay, so here’s a woman. She’s got breast implants, she’s got low grade fatigue, she’s got, you know, some, some low grade inflammation. She’s not recovering well from workouts, some brain fag fog, but she’s also going through perimenopause.

[00:30:54] JJ Virgin: Now she’s like, which is it? And you know, are there things she can start doing to see if it’s breast implant illness or is the only real way for her to figure that out is to go in and explan?

[00:31:07] Dr. Robert Whitfield: No, I think the first step is, is why we created. Uh, show up and publish the book. Basically, I know by virtue of patients who take a year or two to get to me that if you run the program before you can lower inflammation, just like you know how to lower inflammation, there’s a bunch of ways to do it, and if your genetics are not favorable.

[00:31:27] Dr. Robert Whitfield: The way we devise the supplementation to lower inflammation prior to surgery, you can do and try, and that’ll upgrade your methylation pathway or ability to methylate your ability to handle vitamin D, your ability to, uh, bind with chemicals. So glutathione as, as we talk about, is a master antioxidant and it’s really difficult in those patients who have limited ability to handle their exposures and, um.

[00:31:55] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I guess if you wanna think of it, here’s a good way for everybody to do this. We’ll, we’ll do what I do in the office. If you can get some liposomal glutathione and it doesn’t have to be mine. Pick your vendor and you take, it needs to be unflavored, jj. ’cause if it’s flavored, it will dis, it will, it will distinguish.

[00:32:16] Dr. Robert Whitfield: It will not distinguish it well enough. So if you have a lot of chemical exposures mm-hmm. Or mold. It will feel like you’re, you’re, uh, chewing up on like some salt, but if you don’t have that problem, it’ll be quote unquote normal. It may be a citrus flavor or like a plain flavor.

[00:32:35] JJ Virgin: So if you do regular old, like liposomal glutathione that hasn’t been flavored and it tastes horrible to you, that shows that you have a problem.

[00:32:44] Dr. Robert Whitfield: You have too many chemicals in your system. And that, to me, just tips off. Like I always think of like. I’m in Texas. I get a lot of people from the Gulf Coast. I get a lot of people from the left coast. Not so much from the right, but I do, and I worry about mold in all of them. Those folks who can’t handle mold are sensitive to odors.

[00:33:07] JJ Virgin: Yeah.

[00:33:07] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Chemicals, fragrances, all those things. And then when you give ’em glutathione, it tastes rancid. It’s universal. Typical. Yeah. Because you have so much genetic capability and then once you exceed it, you get symptomatic. So when they put that in their mouth, they’re just detoxing their body wants that, wants to bind it and get rid of it.

[00:33:29] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And you know, as well as I do, they have to bind it. Eliminate it to get rid of it. And then they have problems. Like we all have all these folks with problems with GI constipation and it’s just, it’s like rampant in society.

[00:33:44] JJ Virgin: But that’s interesting. I’ve never heard that before. I knew about, you know, like all the sensitivities.

[00:33:50] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah. It, it was something that we started because. I had a big mold exposure and I used all sorts. I did all sorts of things honestly, to get rid of it. Uh, the biggest thing was we moved, that made it easier. And now, you know, you know, my wife, we, we essentially like went to an Airbnb this past weekend and I, I took an air filterer with me.

[00:34:12] Dr. Robert Whitfield: That’s what, that’s just what I do now. Yeah. So you gotta control your environment. Like,

[00:34:17] JJ Virgin: yeah,

[00:34:17] Dr. Robert Whitfield: my office, there’s air filter and I take glutathione every day. And if you don’t, you know, if you think I’m crazy, that’s fine.

[00:34:24] JJ Virgin: You’re, you’re selling me on the glutathione. Literally, because we just, I was speaking at an event in Asheville, North Carolina and this hotel I always think I’m not very full old of, oh my goodness.

[00:34:36] JJ Virgin: It was, I was like, my eyes. Felt like they were getting stabbed. I could. I was exhausted. I’m like, I Oh, oh boy. Yeah, it was brutal, brutal, brutal. I came home and immediately like basically walked into the sauna and sat down. Right. I was taking binders. I was like, I was like, this is terrible.

[00:34:54] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Well, your body can only do so much,

[00:34:56] JJ Virgin: so it sounds like you know.

[00:34:59] JJ Virgin: Listening to this, I can’t really think of a time, especially if you have any kind of implants, breast implants on down when you wouldn’t wanna be looking at this. I’m glad you’re giving away the PDF of the book. Why when you wouldn’t wanna be going through this? Because you need to give that support to your body because it can’t, it sounds like.

[00:35:16] JJ Virgin: It would be very easy to overload it. It’s already got, right, it’s already got a little issue or weakness in there, one or two or three, depending on how many implants you have in there. And the last thing you wanna do is make it more susceptible. Is it when you have these implants now with like breast implants or whichever implants, should you be taking antibiotics every time you’re getting dental work now?

[00:35:39] JJ Virgin: Is that a thing or not a thing? I think

[00:35:41] Dr. Robert Whitfield: if we use the precautionary principle, based on what I see. I would be more inclined to do that, like a dose. And when we do say a fat transfer in the office under local. Or what’s considered to be, you know, a, a simple procedure like that? Um, I still give a dose of IV antibiotics.

[00:35:59] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I don’t keep anybody on oral therapy. So if you’re gonna get a colonoscopy and they have an IV in place, you can say, Hey, you know, I’m judging a virgin. I’ve had a knee. Replacement. I’d like to get a, a dose so that I’m covered for this procedure in case you need to do a biopsy and expose me, you know, potentially to bacteremia, which is what we’re trying to avoid.

[00:36:15] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Mm-hmm. Same with teeth cleaning. Now that would typically be an oral because you’re not gonna have an IV in place for a a, a teeth clean. I think you just gotta be more and more cognizant of it and. I think, you know, I try to get everybody to understand it. Like all these exposures are happening all the time, and so I’m not trying to be like, uh, uh, overly uh, oppressive about it, but like we can all do better with like the water we drink, you know, go through water outta stainless and ceramic.

[00:36:49] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Glass and not plastic of course. And then don’t reheat stuff in plastic.

[00:36:54] JJ Virgin: Yeah, definitely don’t re

[00:36:55] Dr. Robert Whitfield: eat things that are not ultra processed. And um, you know, we just try to encourage people to make better choices. I had a poor lady come to me, five kids, husband’s in the military, deployed a bunch. Each kid has a problem with attention deficit disorder, and, and I said, what do y’all eat?

[00:37:14] Dr. Robert Whitfield: She’s like, well, we. We eat a lot of, uh, not great stuff, and the kids like candy and you know, uh,

[00:37:21] JJ Virgin: of course kids like candy,

[00:37:23] Dr. Robert Whitfield: but they said Monster likes and C four and Red Bull and all this stuff. And I’m like, and how old are the kids? Oh, the youngest is seven. And I’m like, you can’t give them that. And I said, here’s what you can do.

[00:37:34] Dr. Robert Whitfield: You can’t be my patient, but if you make these decisions now and change, you can be my patient. So instead of Skittles, you can have some human chocolate because they, they at least have a reasonable set of ingredients and instead of like C four Red Bull Monster, you can have some Zea, which is not great, but it’s a better choice.

[00:37:51] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And instead of like Takis, you can have Ste or Masa chips or some, you just have to make. Better choices.

[00:37:57] JJ Virgin: I will do a shout out that I was just at this in, in the Asheville conference. Um, our buddy Dr. Elisa song just did, was showing the gut microbiome. Mm-hmm. You know, walking through this with our, our kids health and literally went through and shows, switched the talking chips for the ate chips, switch this.

[00:38:16] JJ Virgin: And I was like, so it’s so useful.

[00:38:19] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah. And it totally helped her family and she just didn’t know because nobody had

[00:38:24] JJ Virgin: Right. Helped her because she’s looking to advertising and Yeah.

[00:38:27] Dr. Robert Whitfield: But those are big, huge things and, and you know, she’s much more energetic now and her kids are doing better and no kid needs or should have caffeine at, at seven.

[00:38:38] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Can

[00:38:38] JJ Virgin: you imagine I, I think back like. You know, ’cause we didn’t have Starbucks. I think Starbucks has just

[00:38:44] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah,

[00:38:44] JJ Virgin: yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and, and they were having these coffee milkshakes and it’s like, who had, none of us had that stuff when we were kids. The first time I had a cup of coffee was when I went to London in my teens and, you know, I was jet lagged and I, I was like, that was it.

[00:39:00] JJ Virgin: The light bulb came on and I was. I’ve been on coffee ever since, but, and we’re lucky we have

[00:39:04] Dr. Robert Whitfield: the well here in Austin, which is a gluten-free, dairy-free cito for your restaurant. I

[00:39:09] JJ Virgin: love that restaurant so much. So what I’m hearing. Is really what we wanna do is support our detox pathways as much as possible.

[00:39:19] JJ Virgin: Eliminate anything that could be, you know, toxic to our body as much as possible. I always like to say, you know, our body is a history book, so we gotta like just not, not create more of a toxic burden. Get rid of as much toxic burden as possible. See if your symptoms resolve as you’re waiting for an explant.

[00:39:35] JJ Virgin: If that’s not something you can do right away, perhaps they will. Or you know, then you can go and do that. But either way, you’d want to do these things pre-plant.

[00:39:45] Dr. Robert Whitfield: I think working back from all of our experience of thousands of patients, we find that to be the most impactful thing. Like running the program helps the most people, not everybody you know is gonna be able to take the time and come see us in Austin.

[00:39:58] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And I, I think of it like if we can invert the pyramid, so to speak and help. The broader group of patients by helping them with the program. We also have a group, uh, program to help run if they need detoxification help because anybody can participate. Right? You can just listen to the show that JJ and I are doing now.

[00:40:14] Dr. Robert Whitfield: You can get the book, you can listen to the podcast, you can get supplementation and do testing if you’d like, and if you’re, you know, of the mindset that you’re gonna make that decision to exploit, that’s absolutely fine. I don’t tell anybody to exploit JJ ever. They come having made that decision, I don’t decide that for them.

[00:40:30] JJ Virgin: Well, and I like the way that you present it. ’cause I think I, early on, I never aired the interview. Someone came on and told me that a hundred percent of women that had breast implants had breast implant illness and I, no. And I like pulled the plug right there I go. That is the most, there’s never, nothing’s ever a hundred percent.

[00:40:46] JJ Virgin: You know? That’s ridiculous. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly is. Absolutely

[00:40:48] Dr. Robert Whitfield: stupid.

[00:40:49] JJ Virgin: Yeah. So it’s like, alright, that’s ridiculous. I am never gonna be in the business of. Of, you know, fear-mongering anybody? No, I just think we should have the information so we can make informed decisions, which is what I love that you’re doing.

[00:41:01] JJ Virgin: You have a, an amazing YouTube channel and a podcast. Let’s talk about where everybody can get more information. We’re gonna put your book, um, and we’ll put all of this as well@jjvirgin.com slash. X explan recovery, but let’s, what are the different ways that they can learn more from you?

[00:41:19] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Yeah. I think the best way, the easiest way for educational purposes is go to YouTube and type in Dr.

[00:41:24] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Rubber Whitfield. That’ll bring up our show that talks about explan, breast implant illness, fat transfers, and then the podcast, uh, similarly, it talks about explan and breast implant illness and recovery. So those are the two main educational ways. And then the book Sharp is available on all the platforms.

[00:41:41] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And our new book about breast and implant illness is coming out this year and it’ll be available as well. And you know, I really appreciate you having me on. I try to share, I don’t want anybody to be scared about the process. It’s scary enough to engage and think about, but this will help patients meet them, you know where they are.

[00:41:59] Dr. Robert Whitfield: And if we ever have the opportunity to talk to them in person, we look forward to. That.

[00:42:03] JJ Virgin: Excellent. Well, I can tell you that having done some procedures with you and probably more to come, um, it has been just a great experience and I especially love the, the post-surgical recovery experiences that you have set up because.

[00:42:20] JJ Virgin: The healing process is so much easier with all of the fun things you have at the office, so I appreciate all of that too. It’s really cool to see someone who takes such an integrated, innovative approach to all of this. So I appreciate you so much.

[00:42:36] Dr. Robert Whitfield: Thank you. Having me on to.

[00:42:39] JJ Virgin: I wanted to give you a couple takeaways and one that really stood out for me in this episode.

[00:42:44] JJ Virgin: I was like, what? I’ve never heard this before. Um, I’ve known in the past that when I’m sensitive to smells and chemicals, that I’ve gotta take a look at what’s going on with my toxic burden. But I had never heard that if you. Taste glutathione and you hate the way it tastes, that it tastes terrible, that you have an issue.

[00:43:03] JJ Virgin: And I am the person who cannot stand glutathione. Like, you know, I need to have it flavored like strawberry ice cream or something before I’ll test taste it. So clearly I wrote that down as we were talking of get myself on some of Dr. Rob’s liposomal glutathione. Again, we’ll put all of his information in the show notes at jj virgin.com/explan recovery.

[00:43:25] JJ Virgin: But I would. Um, it reminds me of the old zinc challenge we used to do to see if you were zinc deficient. And if zinc tasted like water, that means you were zinc deficient. This is kind of the opposite of that. If you don’t have enough glutathione, if you are not a great detoxifier, then glutathione will taste, uh, icky.

[00:43:43] JJ Virgin: So give that one a go with some liposomal glutathione, ’cause this is really, really important. And so that would be my top takeaway. And I’d also say that if you are. Looking, if you are someone who has any kind of an implant, whether it’s a breast implant, knee, knee replacement, hip replacement, there’s, you know, dental stuff, consider going through, grab the, the Sharp book.

[00:44:07] JJ Virgin: We’ve put the link in in the show notes for that as well, and start to look at what you can do to test your. Toxic burden your gut health and start to um, support some better detoxification. That was something I just did shout out to Vibrant Wellness Labs for that, and it’s something that I’m working on now.

[00:44:25] JJ Virgin: I’m adding the glutathione in there as well. So hope that serves, and thank you again for tuning in. And if you know someone who could use this show, make sure to share it after you’ve subscribed. Thank you.

[00:44:44] JJ Virgin: Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I’d love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here’s. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review and third text at 2 8 1 3 5 6 5 2 6 2 7.

[00:45:12] JJ Virgin: That’s 8 1 3 5 6 5 2 6 2 7. When you do, I’ll reply using my brand new virtual jj. It’s my on demand virtual self built from my book. Talks and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You’ll make my day and I can’t wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

[00:45:39] JJ Virgin: Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 Podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information. That’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

[00:45:56] JJ Virgin: If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes, the use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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