259: Reversing Breast Implant Illness
with Sarah Phillipe
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Our guest today is Sarah Phillipe who is talking about a little known infrequently discussed form of toxicity. That is breast implant toxicity otherwise known as breast implant illness. Sarah is here to share her story, explain what breast implant illness is, what problems implants cause, and what symptoms one would experience. She’ll also offer hope in effectively detoxing and restoring your health. If you or someone you know is struggling with breast implant illness, Sarah will show you how to reverse it, take back your health, and live vibrantly.
Before we jump in, I’d like to tell you a bit more about Sarah Phillipe. Sarah has a passion for health that has taken her along a path from RN to fitness enthusiast to becoming a certified functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and true cellular detox practitioner focusing on breast implant illness. Sarah’s own struggle with breast implant illness has ignited a passion within her for helping women restore their health after explant through nutrition, lifestyle, detox, and guiding them through the sea of misinformation in hopes of finding their path to vibrant health. She focuses on healing the body naturally at the cellular level with real foods, lifestyle changes, detoxing, and addressing the downstream conditions caused by breast implants.
Practitioners, please be sure to check out HCF’s Live It to Lead It seminar in Nashville where we’ll have a lineup of top health experts who will explore the latest research and most effective strategies in the field cellular healing. Please go to hcfevents.com for more information. To the rest of our CHTV audience, we have some exciting news. We have opened up one day of this conference to the public. Please go to events.drpompa.com if you’d like to attend and hear amazing speakers who will leave you feeling inspired and ready to take action. Hope to see you there. Alright, so let’s get started and welcome Dr. Pompa and Sarah Phillipe to the show. This is Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Pompa:
Welcome to TV—Cellular Healing TV; welcome to TV. It is TV. We also have audio, so I can’t just say TV. Listen, I said this before we even got on here. I said this show is long overdue. Why do I say that? Because we’ve been getting more and more emails about toxic breast implants.
I had one this morning ironically enough; basically, a woman spilling out her story that she found out that this is what was making her sick. We know it drives autoimmune, unexplainable illnesses. Yet, so few people are talking about it. I can’t tell me how many people get their life back by getting rid of their breast implants. I want to talk about—I want to start with your story because you’re an RN. Really, this is your pain to purpose right now because you had breast implants removed and it affected your life in my mind because you’ve been through it.
I am so excited to hear all of this. We have so many questions. These are the questions I get: what are my options? What do we do? Is there specific doctors that we look for? Why are these things toxic? What’s happening? Is there testing I can do? All these questions you’re going to get answered on the show; can’t wait. By the way, you’re actually—you’re a true cellular detox practitioner. You use that as part of your process post removal, correct?
Sarah Phillipe:
I do, absolutely. Every single client of mine does this detox.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s awesome. You do the right detox which is very important. It’s like when we tell people once they get their fillings out, if they don’t do the right detox afterwards, they’re going to either get more sick or stay sick, one or the other. Even if they feel better right after, six to nine months down the road after the source is gone, the body just starts letting go of toxins; it knows the source is gone. Same thing happens with breast implants. You can’t just get your breast implants out; you have to do true cellular detox afterwards to really reclaim your life. Okay, let’s start. Sarah, start with your story. Obviously, from registered nurse to this, it took a story.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I’m just really thrilled to be able to share this information today with you and your audience and hopefully spread this message. My story started with of course I was a registered nurse. I worked night shift for probably five years. About four and a half years in, I decided I was—I started to become really into fitness. That became a really big passion of mine.
It started off slowly with intense workouts like P90X and that kind of stuff. Then it morphed into more like bodybuilding focused, so really intense workouts, really serious cyclical type of dieting to get the right physique that I wanted. It wasn’t about competing for me; it was just I wanted to be in the best shape of my life at 30 years old. That seemed so old at the time.
With that came along my desire for breast implants to just enhance my body even more. It had always been an area of insecurity for me, an area that I struggled with. I think that started early in childhood just from certain things that I heard growing up about the female body and saw growing up about the female body.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh yeah, it takes one boy to make a—or girl—making a comment. Then it’s like there it goes; it’s insecurity created. You’re human.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yep, absolutely. I really pushed for it. My husband wasn’t super thrilled about that idea, but he eventually just wanted me to be happy. I went through with it; got my breast implants. I never had a single health issue in the world. I wouldn’t have called my lifestyle or diet healthy, but as far as symptoms go, I didn’t have a single symptom.
In my mind, I thought I was [00:06:47]. Within six months of having my breast implants placed, I started developing vague symptoms. I thought it was night shift. Initially, it was fatigue; it was irritability; it was low sex drive; it was hair loss; it was weight gain; it was just general inflammation.
Dr. Pompa:
It was general inflammation caused by toxicity driving hormone resistance. Obviously, your thyroid was affected I’m sure.
Sarah Phillipe:
Exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, estrogen affected. I talk about that on this show constantly. Toxins drive hormone resistance and every symptom you just said.
Sarah Phillipe:
They do. That’s where I started. I thought, oh my thyroids totally whacky right now. I went and saw a doctor. They didn’t take me seriously, wouldn’t run the right lab work. I knew what I needed because I was a nurse and I just did my research and went in asking for the right testing, but they didn’t want to order it for me.
I ended up going to a couple different doctors, finally found someone that would order the work for me. I had Hashimoto’s, but they wouldn’t treat me. I finally found someone who treated me but treated me with the Band-Aid of thyroid hormones. That wasn’t enough for me. The way I started thinking was more along the lines of I really want to figure out why this is happening rather than just throwing the Band-Aid on it because there’s a reason that we develop dysfunction in the body. I just didn’t feel like that was the right approach.
I really progressed from there. My symptoms ended up getting so much worse. I developed really awful IBS type symptoms, diagnosed with SIBO. I developed really awful insomnia, night sweats, heart palpitations, anxiety, depression, inability to go out in public because I would almost have a panic attack if it was too nosy, or if I walked by someone that had perfume on, I almost—I would just cringe because the chemical smell is so overly stimulating to me. I just couldn’t deal with that kind of thing.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, chemical sensitivity runs in the wake of neurotoxic illness. It happened to me. I couldn’t stand air fresheners, perfumes I could smell. If someone took their shoes off on an airplane, I could smell it. God forbid they had perfume and sat next to me. I’d have a headache and be bonked out for hours upon end. Yeah, go ahead.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, as my symptoms progressed, they continued to be quite vague. Then I ended up getting diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease. Which the provider that I was under the care of at that time thought, you probably had this for 10 plus years. Now it’s an issue and it was never an issue before.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s right.
Sarah Phillipe:
At that time, there was not really any information about breast implants being a problem. I did my research. I looked and looked. I scoured the internet, couldn’t find anything about breast implants, but I suspected it. Intuitively, I suspected that might be the issue. It took a long time for me to get to the point of really willing to acknowledge that.
During my quest for the answer I guess you could say, I ended up going through a practitioner at training program called FDN, just Functional Diagnostic Nutrition just so that I could figure out what was wrong with me. I wanted to use myself, like practice on myself, try to figure out what’s the underlying cause here. Did a lot of functional lab work, which is when I ended up discovering SIBO, and then hormone imbalances, HP axis dysfunction.
Dr. Pompa:
Just so people know what that is, it means her—the control tower in the head: the pituitary, and her adrenals, and thyroid, everything. That whole system was malfunctioning most of your hormones. Go ahead.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, just a whole slew of other issues that I thought I just need to work on my gut. That’s the answer because all health and illness begins in the gut. Which is true, but I didn’t remove the root cause first.
Dr. Pompa:
I hope everybody heard that because right now the gut is in vogue, but what we find is that you’ll never fix your gut if there’s something toxic upstream. An example I love to give is you’re downstream in a river putting in new fish and microorganisms. All of a sudden, bad algae starts growing. You kill that. Your fish are dying. You put new fish in and new good bacteria and they die again. Only to find 20 miles upstream, they’re dumping mercury into the river. You’re never going to fix what’s happening downstream without dealing with what’s upstream. To your point well taken in breast implants, in this case, was the big deal.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, and I was going through that practitioner training program. At the time, my mentor in the program had suggested to me, “Maybe you should look into getting your breast implants removed. That might be what’s preventing you from healing.” Because I was only able to make so much progress and got to the point of stagnation. I thought, yeah, I know. I know this is probably a big issue. I really took it to heart, but it just wasn’t the right timing in my mind. I wasn’t ready to receive that.
Fast forward, I end up trying to get pregnant, trying to conceive. This became a huge sour subject for me because we had been trying for a couple of years and were not able to get pregnant. I had a suspicion that I had endometriosis that I did not have before implants.
Dr. Pompa:
[Phone Rings] Sorry, I forget.
Sarah Phillipe:
That’s fine. It seems like every kind of inkling or suspicion that I had I was right about; I just didn’t always trust my gut. Of course, I did a lot of different testing. No one could ever figure out if I did have endometriosis or not. They said, “Well, in order to know for sure, you’re going to have to go under exploratory surgery to find out.” I wasn’t willing to do that at that time. After years of trying to get pregnant, just the more—it just started to weigh on me so much more that I’m probably not able to get pregnant because of all these toxins that are in my breast implants contributing to hormone dysregulation and probably creating these lesions outside of my uterus of endometrial tissue.
By the time I got real—a true diagnosis, it was Stage IV. A lot of the things are reversible that you deal with breast implants, but some things aren’t. That was the case with me where I had to actually go and have excision surgery at that point. I lost not only a fallopian tube which affects my fertility, but I also lost part of my bowel. Huge, major surgery, but I’m grateful. In my heart and in my gut, I knew that I wasn’t going to get pregnant with these implants in, and I wasn’t going to get pregnant with this endometriosis affecting me, so I had to have both of those surgeries.
That’s when I made that decision to get the breast implants out after a lot of prayer, a lot of talking with my husband, talking with my family. I just made that decision, and within a month, I had them out. It was like once I finally came to that point where I was ready to acknowledge that and do something about it, I just did it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and we’ll talk about that procedure as women are watching this thinking maybe I should do this. Let’s back up a little bit and say okay, obviously, you’ve done a lot of research here. What have you found to be the problems with breast implants? Why is it driving these autoimmune conditions, and all the inflammation, and all the hormone problems? What have you found?
Sarah Phillipe:
First of all, it’s a foreign body inside you; it’s a foreign object. Your body knows that as you mentioned before. Your body knows it’s not supposed to be there. Your body innately just tries to protect you by creating scar tissue around them to wall them off so that you’re protected from that foreign invader. In that sense, I think that they’re a huge factor for contributing to immune dysregulation.
Then secondly, they’re a huge source of toxins. There’s 40 plus toxic chemicals and heavy metals in silicone implants which are the implants that I had. They don’t have to be ruptured to be creating a problem and leaking, bleeding into you.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that’s a big misconception. It was one of the questions I had for you because people think it’s only—doctors tell people, well, it’s only if it’s leaking it’s a problem. That’s not true.
Sarah Phillipe:
No, it’s not true. You won’t find a lot of studies about breast implant illness because it is fairly—a fairly new understanding. There are some studies showing that you get gel bleeding into the body from silicone implants from the point of implantation. These aren’t really well studied inside the body at body temperature which is 98.6. Sitting at room temperature, 70 degrees or 68 degrees, they’re not necessarily going to leak or leach toxins. Put at body temperature, maybe a different story.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s like plastic. Plastic leaches when you add a little bit of temperature. Now all of a sudden, chemicals like phthalates and other chemicals that are in plastic start coming out of the plastic which are hormone disruptors. It’s not until you add a warmer temperature that occurs. Yeah, point taken. Go ahead.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, in silicone implants, for instance, you have things like methylethylketone which is a neurotoxin. You have cyclohexane, another neurotoxin. You have acetone. You have ethyl acetate. You have toluene which is a carcinogen and a neurotoxin. You have xylene and ethoxide. You have all of these chemicals and solvents. You even have metal cleaning acid. What is that doing in breast implants?
Plus, you have other heavy metals like aluminum and platinum. Interestingly enough, I couldn’t wear my wedding ring while I had my implants in. It’s platinum. It kept reacting to it over and over. I had to get to a point where I couldn’t wear it anymore. I got my breast implants out and now I can wear it just fine. Clearly, these things are affecting our bodies. Clearly, they’re creating a huge level of toxicity in addition to all of the other things we are exposed to in today’s modern society.
Dr. Pompa:
Go ahead.
Sarah Phillipe:
Silicone, it’s not just about the silicone implants. The saline also pose a huge problem. The saline are made with the same shell that the silicone implants are made from, so there is silicone in saline implants. They also have the potential to have a faulty valve. There’s a valve that’s used to fill saline implants when they’re placed. Sometimes that valve is faulty from the get-go; sometimes it may become faulty if you have some kind of incident that pushes that valve the wrong direction like a car accident or just some kind of trauma to that chest well. Once that valve is faulty or just opened up the wrong direction, then you have the ability for that saline solution to come in and out of that implant. With that can come microbes or even mold.
Dr. Pompa:
I’ve had cases that end up with moldy saline implants. Moldy implants, people think, how in the world? They got very sick. Let’s be clear; they don’t have to leak for it to drive autoimmunity to your point. Yeah, go ahead.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, the mold is a huge issue. Even with silicone implants it can be a huge issue, but with saline especially because of the fact that we are exposed to different types of molds regardless of whether they’re toxic molds or nontoxic mold. When you’re breathing those mold spores in and you have a faulty valve, those mold spores can get inside your implants and grow there. All it takes is a moist environment.
You can have mold inside your implants, you can have bacteria, and fungi, and viruses that get in there. Then what do you have when you have all those things? You have biofilm. That creates a huge problem as well because that’s—in a way, your pathogens that are in there are invading the immune system because they’re protected by that biofilm.
The toxicity is a huge problem. It’s just there’s so many downstream effects that are correlated with that toxicity that’s coming from the breast implants. It affects your gut bacteria. It affects your neurotransmitter balance. It affects your hormone balance. It affects your immune system.
The possibilities are endless and so the kinds of symptoms you might experience are endless which is why it’s been more like one of those illnesses that is like the great mimicker like Lyme or mold illness where it’s not easy to get a diagnosis. Really, what is a breast implant illness diagnosis anyway? It’s just something we call it. The real solution is to get them out first of all.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and I’m going to point something out again. Many people are being diagnosed with Lyme, or I could go down the list, candida, or this type of infection, or another. Again, you have to look upstream to what lowered the immune system and allowed the Lyme to become a problem. Parasites, same thing.
You always have to look upstream and realize there’s another problem. You can go killing the parasites. You can try killing the Lyme. There is whether someone’s living in a moldy house, has toxic breast implants, silver fillings, hidden infections, cavitations, these are the things that lower the immune system, and will end up driving the problem, and keep somebody from getting well; that’s the thing.
Obviously, women are watching this or have friends with breast implants. They’re going to say, well, so and so is not sick. So and so has had them for 10 years and is not sick. What would your response to that be?
Sarah Phillipe:
It’s just different for everyone. The timing, the onset of symptoms, it just depends on so many different factors. Chronic illness, so many practitioners have likened chronic illness or even autoimmunity to a three-legged stool. I know you have as well. I think that’s a factor here, too.
You have genetics that play a factor whether it be genetic predisposition to autoimmunity, whether it be mutations is your MTHFR, or COMT genes, or HLA gene mutations that make you more susceptible to chronic inflammatory response type conditions. Then you have altered microbiome to where your gut flora aren’t healthy; your gut’s not health. You have pathogenic organisms that may be able to thrive because the terrain isn’t healthy.
Then you add into that things like breast implants. Breast implants for some people may be what you call the straw that broke the camel’s back; they may not be. They’re one stressor. They’re one factor to this type of chronic illness. I think for people who get sick right away, it could be the surgery that was the straw that broke the camel’s back; it could be the implants.
For people who don’t get sick right away, who it takes maybe decades for them to become sick, typically, they’re just the beginning. As they’re exposed to more and more stressors, more—whether it be mental-emotional, or physiological, or chemical. Things like that that just add up and fill your bucket. At some point, that bucket is going to overflow
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, those are the analogies I give. I want to be clear too with people that it’s toxic for everybody. It’s a matter of how filled your bucket is with other exposure as you pointed out. I liked to call it the perfect storm. Like you said, it’s like you’re already getting exposure from silver fillings and maybe a cavitation. Maybe you’re getting some mold; you’re living in a moldy house. You add one more thing, and it’s the breast implants, boom, you’re sick.
However, let’s do the other thing. You get the breast implants. You really don’t have other stressors, but now you create two more 10 years from the—down the road. Now, you get sick. Be clear, these are toxic to everybody. It’s a matter of if your body is dealing with it at that moment or not. Caution because these things leach toxins at body temperature.
Again, more studies obviously need to be done to convince people, but how many stories do we have to hear of people getting sick? Again, it’s like, well, mine are okay. Mine aren’t leaking. As you just heard, that’s a problem.
Okay, let’s talk about it. Let’s say, okay, here we are now. A woman says, okay, gosh, well, how do I know? Is there anything I can do to check if mine are okay? Again, that’s going down are they leaking concept. How do I know if mine are causing me a problem? I don’t know; my answer to that is—but what’s your answer to that?
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, I get asked that question a lot. Being someone who’s been in those women’s shoes, I had a hard time coming to that decision because I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to go through that whole explant process to then be sick still if it wasn’t the case. For me, it just took getting to a point of trusting my intuition, trusting my gut, and realizing that it doesn’t matter; these are toxic regardless. I would be devastated if I were to actually have gotten pregnant and created all kinds of health conditions for an unborn child or my husband being that I could have prevented that. It was more about the toxicity for me.
Long story short, I’ll just say—when people ask me that question, I just say, when did your symptoms develop? Was it after you got breast implants? If it was, get them out. If it wasn’t after breast implants, it was before, you’re not going to be able to heal your body unless you start removing all of these contributing factors, all of the possible sources of toxicity, all of the stressors. When you’re able to remove all those sources, then your body can get back to returning to a state of homeostasis.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, Sarah, you’re saying all the right things. I always tell people, look, whether your breast implants are the thing that made you sick or not, or whatever it is, the moldy home, it still has to be dealt with. Once you’re neurotoxic, you have to go upstream and remove all of them because once you become sensitive to one, you become sensitive to all of them. You won’t get well still living in a moldy home. You won’t get will if you have a cavitation. You won’t get well if you have breast implants in it.
You know what, if I take a client on myself, I have to be really clear that I expect them to be able to—we’re going to be eliminating all of these things. If someone’s not willing to go there, it’s—and oftentimes, you don’t know. They don’t express that they have breast implants. It’s hidden from doctors. They don’t want to put that down.
Sarah Phillipe:
I think that every intake form should ask that question: do you have breast implants? Because that’s such a huge part of why people are sick. A lot of practitioners don’t even know to ask that question, but now that we’re starting to become more aware and more knowledgeable about this topic, I think it should be on every intake form because it’s something that absolutely had to be addressed if it’s a factor.
As far as testing goes, there really aren’t any tests right now that will tell you, yes or no, you have breast implant illness. People always want to know what they can do to test their level of toxicity. There aren’t really great tests out there. Blood tests are only going to show you an acute exposure like what your blood is carrying through the body right at that moment because it’s not a storage fluid; it’s a transportation fluid.
Hair tissue mineral analysis, well, that relies on your body’s ability to release these metals, so that’s not a reliable way to test. I don’t really recommend provoking metals when you still have the source inside of you just to see what you have. We know; we have the information here in black and white of what is in these implants. Once you know that’s super toxic and could be creating—
Dr. Pompa:
I feel like people aren’t—I feel like women aren’t being given informed consent. They don’t know. More studies obviously need to be done in the sense that obviously, they’re leaching. Obviously, these toxins are coming out, but we have to do a study just to show what we already know. That way now doctors are—then they can say, okay, now you have to tell patients this.
That, of course, becomes like cigarettes. You hear it enough times and you check the box. Meanwhile, you just checked off that you know that these things leech and cause health problems. You don’t care because you’d rather look a certain way, etc. That’s a problem.
Let’s talk about the explant surgery. Can you go to any doctor? Do doctors that put them in, are they the right ones to take them out? Are there special people that do this? Are there concerns? Are there things we should do, not do? Let’s talk about that.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, this is definitely an area that is really important. I talk to a lot of women every day. Of course, funds are always an issue for a lot of people. Some people just need to find someone that they can afford. For me, I feel like don’t even—just wait. Save your money. Wait until you can afford to go to the right person because it does take a very skilled surgeon who’s not only skilled but confident in his ability or her ability to—
Dr. Pompa:
On your website, do you have some of those practitioners?
Sarah Phillipe:
I have a list in my Facebook group. It’s a private group, but they’re—yeah, I can give a list to everyone.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, give how do they reach you at that. How they get on that group and do that.
Sarah Phillipe:
My Facebook group is just Reversing Breast Implant Illness with Sarah Phillipe. I have a lot of different files in there with information. That’s one of them is a list of providers. There’s a list of recommended surgeons. These are surgeons that we’ve known for a long time now, years and years, have done hundred if not thousands of explants.
The proper technique is en bloc which means that you’re removing the implant and the capsule together at the same time. You are not cutting open the capsule, and pulling the implant out, and leaving that capsule in there because the capsule contains—it may be ruptured, too; the implant may be ruptured. You don’t want to expose yourself to all those toxins just freely floating around your body. Even if it’s intact, that capsule contains a lot of toxins, a lot of microbes, potentially even cancerous cells that could then go floating around through your lymphatics. There is now breast implant-associated ALCL that has become an issue lately.
It’s just really important that they’re removed en bloc to prevent that exposure and that you have a complete capsulectomy. That means that every little suck of capsule is removed. Some surgeons will tell you that’s dangerous, that they’re not comfortable doing that because you could puncture their lung. Then there are some surgeons who are very skilled and very competent at doing that. They do it very safely.
For me, it wasn’t a matter of the money. I just thought, I have to get my implants removed by someone who I trust can do this right the first time so that I don’t have to go back and have someone else explore and find more capsule. I ended up going to Costa Rica for my explant surgery because at the time I thought, this is the best surgeon. I’m a big believer in going to whoever can provide you the best option for what you need.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, absolutely. We’ll make sure we put your Facebook to access that here in the show notes. Ashley will make sure that happens because I think that’s really important. It’s like going to the right practitioner who does detox right. It’s oh, I’m going to say this, or do this, or do it on my own. In the end, I’m worse and more sick. You wasted more time and money. This is life or death.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, and the really unfortunate thing that I’ve been hearing a lot of from women is that they thought they got an en bloc with a capsulectomy and they didn’t. Whether they’re being lied to, or deceived, or maybe they just didn’t understand what they were getting when they signed up for that surgery, I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is when they’ve gone back in with another surgeon for an exploratory surgery, they’ve found more capsule that got left behind. They stay sick until that capsule comes out.
Dr. Pompa:
God, this is a disaster. Oh my gosh; it reminds me so much of what we deal with in the mouth. It’s so critical to do it correctly; wow. Okay, let’s talk now—we already said how important it is, the cellular detox is after the fact. Let’s talk emotionally though because you had said in the beginning—this is a touchy subject. You can go with it as far as you want to go with it.
Here you are; you got them because you said you had insecurities. You were upfront with that. Okay, now, I think it would be worse coming off because now you’re used to yourself this way and now you’re not. Are there other options? We’ll go other options in a minute. What about the psychology of this post? How did you deal with that? What can you do about it?
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, I think the psychology of it, the mental-emotional aspect is—it just varies from person to person. For me, I was okay with it. By that point, I had been thinking about this for a long time. I was mentally prepared. I did go to a surgeon who was able to do a lot of great reconstruction for me which is really important. Finding someone who’s skilled at making your breasts look like breasts again after they’ve been stretched out for however many years is a skill in itself.
Dr. Pompa:
Are you really happy with that outcome?
Sarah Phillipe:
I’m happy, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, because women have to hear that. I’m asking that because women want to hear that because that’s going to be a concern. That’s going to keep them in this sick situation longer if they think that they can’t achieve that. You achieved it.
Sarah Phillipe:
Right, and you have to get to a point where you’re willing to accept that and love yourself no matter what, love your body no matter what. You were designed perfectly. Our insecurities are what drove us to enhance ourselves, or modify ourselves, or change ourselves. Just getting to a point where you’re able to really truly love and accept who you are, who you were born to be. That includes the physical aspect as well.
As far as spouses go because that’s a huge concern for people, people are very worried about how their spouse is going to see them with these scars and the deflation that comes along with it. Sometimes people’s spouses are the ones that pushed them into it. That can be a huge factor for some women to come to terms with. For me personally, I know my husband and I went through a lot together as—through my chronic illness like yours. By that point, he was just so resentful that we ever got those in. He was just like, I don’t even—they do nothing for me anymore. He was very supportive and just happy to get his wife back because I was a different person than who he married for years.
Dr. Pompa:
Believe me, when you lose your life and things get prioritized differently, all of a sudden, it’s like—it becomes a small issue. Husbands, I think most of you’d realize if your wife loses her health, you weren’t even attracted to that about her anyway. It’s such a small thing if anything. Yeah, priorities have become really changed; that’s for sure.
Okay, are there any options? I have heard people doing fat relocation. Is that part of the reconstruction? I hear even fat with stem cells is part of an option. Talk a little bit about that.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, that is a really great option. Fat grafting, fat transfer, there’s even a relatively new technique where they use a flap of fat from underneath your breast or from the side of your armpit where they basically cut and turn it around and make it into a breast which is really amazing because the fat grafting doesn’t always take because it needs an immediate blood supply to survive. When you suck it out of the different part of your body, it loses that blood supply. It may not get another blood supply fast enough for it to survive, so sometimes you lose that fat graft.
I personally did have a fat graft when I had my explant surgery. Being a thin person, he had to take fat from a lot of different parts of my body. It was worth it to me because even though I didn’t retain a lot of it, that initial—seeing myself initially without my breast implants wasn’t so horrifying. It wasn’t a shock. It was like, okay, that’s not so bad. I can deal with that. Then gradually over time, I was able to adjust as they got smaller and smaller.
These days, I think the technique is even better. There are some surgeons who are very skilled in fat transfer. They aren’t always the surgeons that are skilled at explant. I would think it might be even a better idea to for someone to get the explant and if they truly in six months to a year are unhappy with their results to go back for a fat transfer or that flap technique at that time because that’s when you’re going to get the best results.
Dr. Pompa:
I think they’re doing some of the fat transfers with stem cells which obviously help a lot with what’s retained.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, that and hyperbaric oxygen treatments really help with that. After my explant and fat transfer, I did eight hyperbaric treatments: four in a row, then a break, and four in a row. That really did help. Yeah, some people keep their fat transfer and some people don’t. I wasn’t one of those people.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, well, the good news is you’re still pleased.
Sarah Phillipe:
I’m still happy, yeah. I have my life back, to be honest. I think that’s where a lot of women get to. They get to that point where they’ve been so sick for so long, and they’ve suffered for so long, and everyone around them, all their relationships with people have suffered because of that, because of how they feel. Maybe they’re out of work. Maybe they haven’t worked in years because they’re unable to. Just getting your life back is more important than how you look.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. It sounds trite, but what would you say to the woman watching this that’s not fully sick yet? Maybe she has fatigue, brain fog, and a little anxiety that she’s—can still live life, but not sick enough to be like, okay, I’m not ready to adjust my body here. What would you say to that woman maybe considering this, has breast implants but not fully sick yet?
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, I would say—I guess I would ask if you had known the risk factors before you got them placed, would you have still chosen to do that? Given the fact that they’re likely a ticking time bomb, how much are you willing to go through just to have that outward appearance and that specific look you wanted when you got them? Because as you lose your health, you start to realize that it’s way more important than what you look like. A lot of people including myself just don’t understand how important the health is until it’s gone.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m one of those people.
Sarah Phillipe:
We take it for granted.
Dr. Pompa:
Yep, I’m one of those people. I can never go back there. I would never go back there. If you were loping my arms off to get well, I’d been like—and I knew that was going to help, lop them off. That’s something I was born with; breast implants isn’t. It is, it’s so true. You’d just do anything to have your life back.
You know what; I think you have a lesson in your story though. Because part of what you should say to those women, and I’ll say it to them now is Sarah didn’t come out with all her body parts. Meaning that she waited too late. Don’t wait too late. Sarah lost part of her intestines. There was parts of your body that you didn’t have to lose if you’d have moved fast enough. Learn the lesson: don’t wait too long.
Sarah Phillipe:
Yeah, it was a big lesson. Now, I’m happy that I get to as you say, turn that pain into purpose.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I read your—when I read your story, I was touched by that because, yeah, that’s me as well. Now, you’re serving on this end of it with the opportunity to change lives. I promise you this show will change many lives. Women are watching this show. They’re going to get their breast plants—breast implants removed. It’s going to save their life. That’s a guarantee.
That’s what’s so cool. If you get these out, your life is going to be drastically different. You changed lives today. You changed a life today. Again, from pain to purpose. People are watching this. No doubt they’re going to get their life back. Thank you for being here, Sarah; what a story.
Sarah Phillipe:
Of course, thank you for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Practitioners, don’t forget to check out our HCF seminar in Nashville where we’ll have a lineup of top health experts who will explore the latest research and most effective strategies in the field of cellular healing. Please go to hcfevents.com for more information. To the rest of our CHTV audience, please check out events.drpompa.com if you’d like to buy a one-day ticket for our special day of public attendance. We hope to see you there.
We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at cellularhealing.tv. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, or sharing the show with anyone who may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
