Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / Breast Implant Illness, Inflammation & Cosmetic Surgery Risks | Robert Whitfield, MD

Transcript

Breast Implant Illness, Inflammation & Cosmetic Surgery Risks | Robert Whitfield, MD · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

0:00
Let me ask you something.
0:01
If you were made a choice in one season of life,
0:03
it just doesn't align with who you are now,
0:06
whether it's a tattoo, a diet, or a cosmetic enhancement.
0:10
Sometimes the very things we once believed would improve us
0:13
end up pulling us further from our health.
0:15
Welcome back to everyday ancestral,
0:18
the podcast where ancient wisdom meets modern living.
0:21
Today's guest is Dr. Robert Whitfield,
0:24
a board certified plastic surgeon
0:26
who's leading a much needed conversation
0:28
around breast and plant illness, body autonomy,
0:31
and the healing power of subtraction.
0:33
This episode is about listening to your body
0:35
even when the outside world says you're fine.
0:39
It's about rewriting the modern beauty narrative
0:41
and choosing ancestral alignment over artificial enhancement.
0:45
Because sometimes healing isn't about doing more,
0:48
it's about undoing what no longer belongs.
0:51
You're a friend, but I've never actually gotten the interview
0:54
so this is a real treat.
0:56
Thanks for having me on, Jess.
0:57
Appreciate it.
0:58
Yeah, well, this is actually a surprisingly huge topic lately.
1:04
Would you agree that it seems almost out of the woodworks
1:07
everyone is like, get these out of me
1:10
when we're discussing breast and plant?
1:13
Well, I feel a lot of people are making a lot of changes, right?
1:18
This has been coming about and there's a lot of momentum now
1:22
to be healthy.
1:24
And there's a lot of emphasis on doing that
1:28
in a more natural or holistic way,
1:31
how would you feel about that?
1:32
And like you said, actually, many people make decisions
1:36
early in life that don't now align with them later in life.
1:39
And many people are trying to set strong examples
1:43
for their family.
1:44
Many of the families have, as I do, a daughter
1:50
and they're trying to be the, obviously, the best role battles
1:55
they can.
1:56
I often get asked, as you would imagine,
1:59
if my daughter wanted implants,
2:00
what would I do about that or how would I approach that?
2:04
And so for everybody listening,
2:06
is I don't ever ask a patient to explain.
2:12
That's not something that I do.
2:15
I simply explain the findings of what we know
2:20
and how I can help because once somebody's made a decision
2:24
to have an augmentation,
2:27
it's very hard to undo that thought process.
2:30
They've went through a lot to figure that out
2:33
and equally when they're thinking about undoing that,
2:36
that's not my job.
2:37
My job is not to undo that.
2:41
That's a big decision to come sit in front of me
2:43
in Austin, Texas and have that conversation
2:45
or to have it virtually with me.
2:47
So I just try to give everybody space to be very respectful
2:50
and help them make the best informed decision possible.
2:53
And I think when you go back in time,
2:56
a lot of people, like we talked about previously,
2:59
before we got on, was like a fat transfer,
3:01
which is an autologous, your own tissue
3:05
to use as a reconstructive tool or an augmentation tool.
3:08
And we did that through cancer reconstruction
3:10
for many decades of my career.
3:13
And we do it more and more now to undo some of these
3:18
augmentations.
3:19
We perform more of a holistic body makeover.
3:21
So I take out old implants and I do a lift or ad fat
3:24
or both along with some body contouring and skin tightening
3:30
and I'm always in the business james of solving problems.
3:35
How are they present themselves?
3:38
Well, let me just then go right into this question
3:41
around breast implants.
3:43
Is there any healthy breast implant?
3:45
Is there any type of healthy breast implant?
3:49
So your body's going to react to the device, no matter what.
3:52
So they keep trying to improve, I think the designs,
3:57
there's a newer implant out by a company called Motiva.
4:01
And I recently removed a set of those
4:03
because the patient no longer felt an alignment with those
4:07
and had them very long, but they wound them out.
4:11
And so when I took them out and took out the scar tissue
4:16
as well and sent it off to have it reviewed,
4:20
you know, there's inflammation.
4:21
The body creates inflammation around a device.
4:24
Now some of the things, and if it's okay,
4:27
I'll go and dive a little deep to explain like
4:30
what we know now is very different than what we used to do.
4:34
So when we put our own tissue
4:39
in another place on our body
4:41
and give it an opportunity to heal like fat,
4:45
it can because it's genetically identical,
4:47
that should make sense.
4:49
And for a long period of time,
4:51
when I did breast cancer reconstruction,
4:54
I would take the tissue from the lower abdomen,
4:58
but I would leave it connected to the blood vessels
5:00
that run in the six pack muscle, rectus abdominis.
5:03
And then I would hook those up to the blood vessels
5:05
underneath the sternum that the cardiac surgeon uses
5:08
to re-vascularize your heart,
5:10
the internal memory artery.
5:12
And so if that was done properly, it would heal.
5:17
The blood flow would be reestablished
5:19
and it would work James because that's your own tissue.
5:24
Okay, so that's genetically identical tissue.
5:27
It has its own same immune system complement
5:31
based on your genetics.
5:34
The first kidney transplant ever performed
5:36
was by Dr. Murray who's a plastic surgeon in the 60s
5:41
and he did it between genetically identical twins
5:44
for that reason.
5:46
Now you don't need any immunosuppression,
5:48
means you don't need a medication
5:49
to block the immune response
5:51
if in fact it's genetically identical.
5:54
So he did that, kidney survived without any medication,
5:57
the patient passed away later,
5:59
not from the kidney transplant.
6:02
Now every step you take away from genetically identical twins,
6:07
so non-identical twin,
6:10
needs something to block that immune system response
6:14
to that organ, if that makes sense.
6:16
And then we move, yeah,
6:18
and then we move into what we all know kind of now
6:21
about organ transplantation where they take an organ
6:25
from somebody else who's passed away
6:28
and they can transplant it into another
6:30
and give them medication and that will survive.
6:33
There's a whole process, of course,
6:35
of blood type matching and something called cross matching.
6:39
So what they're finding, James, is very fascinating.
6:43
A paper was published out of Denmark,
6:46
this past this summer.
6:49
And it showed that at the scar tissue level,
6:52
the people who have firmer, maybe harder scarring
6:56
around the implant are showing an organ rejection response.
7:01
So they're building up a T cell response,
7:04
a B cell response and something called a plasma cell response
7:06
which makes antibodies.
7:08
The point being is it's a more elaborate response
7:12
that's affecting you from an immune system's sample.
7:16
So it all makes sense though.
7:18
If I said, if I take your own genetically identical tissue
7:21
and put it somewhere, say up here and reconstruct the breast,
7:24
where I put fat up here and it heals, it makes it fuller,
7:28
that's fine, it's your own genetics.
7:32
Everything away from that needs some medication
7:35
to help block that response.
7:38
And if we don't, we get kind of like that organ rejection picture.
7:42
And that's what they're finding with these
7:45
in certain situations, which I think is fascinating,
7:50
James, because with the advent of all these molecular techniques,
7:54
I think we now are kind of getting to,
7:57
we hear root cause, understandings, and things like that.
8:00
But these are the real reasons why things happen.
8:02
So I still have a bit, this bit of nerd in me about genetics
8:06
where I think it's just where everything,
8:10
wherever meets the root, right?
8:12
You can only detox so well and you meet people
8:15
who get sick a lot, maybe they don't methylate well.
8:18
But in these folks where you're seeing
8:20
more this organ rejection picture,
8:22
it's probably a combination of factors.
8:24
They probably just don't, obviously detox very well.
8:28
And then over time, their body is working hard
8:31
and rejecting this as well.
8:33
So it creates this further, if you will, burden on their immune system.
8:37
But even the fact that you are aware and are thinking about
8:42
how someone eliminates their elimination pathways,
8:45
that's not common for surgeons and plastic surgeons
8:48
to be thinking or even having their orbit, right?
8:52
I mean, I don't, my understanding is that they don't necessarily
8:55
look at things holistically the way you are.
8:57
That's unique to how you are looking at this.
8:59
Yeah, I've remained very curious and I've tried to always,
9:04
I like listening to patients to hear how they
9:09
respond to an illness or an infection
9:11
because that gives you clues about how they detox.
9:13
And I find, like I said, genetics have been something
9:17
I was fascinated by in college and has remained that way.
9:21
So we have genetics as part of our, you know, workup,
9:25
we look at personal genetics that, with an emphasis
9:28
on detox pathways, we look at gut health and food sensitivities.
9:32
And we look at something that's, I think,
9:35
becoming more and more apparent, obviously, with where we are
9:40
in terms of our understanding of health and wellness
9:42
is a total toxicity burden test, which is a urine test.
9:46
We use one from vibrant wellness and it looks at things
9:48
like mold toxins, it looks at heavy metals,
9:51
it looks at environmental toxins.
9:53
And I'm sure you've discussed things like herbicides
9:57
and pesticides on the show before, things like glyphosate.
10:01
The folks who grew up around agricultural areas
10:05
are definitely gonna be exposed to higher levels
10:07
of glyphosate, I mean, that would make sense.
10:09
And we see this all the time through their tests.
10:13
So I, you know, we're gonna be a compilation
10:19
of experiences, James, like where do we grow up?
10:22
What food did we eat, what air do we breathe,
10:24
what fluid did we drink?
10:26
And that's gonna give you this picture
10:29
and then your genetics allow you to detox all those things
10:32
till you can't.
10:34
And then you may not feel well.
10:36
You may present with all these weird symptoms,
10:37
people don't understand.
10:38
And you may have, as we know, and James said,
10:41
I've talked about before, a parasitic problem,
10:44
or Lyme disease, or mold, or something else,
10:47
a viral problem, who knows?
10:48
You've probably heard, you know, having kids, of course,
10:51
that a lot of kids these days,
10:52
there's cutting that's very popular.
10:56
There's higher rates of suicide.
10:59
There's a lot of things that seem to be coming
11:03
with current modern society.
11:05
And I know they existed previously,
11:06
but they seem enhanced.
11:08
They seem like they're more prevalent.
11:10
And obviously, I don't know if that's because we're talking
11:12
about them more, or because they literally are more prevalent.
11:18
I struggle with understanding why anyone would want
11:21
to do something physical to their body,
11:25
like cut themselves or hurt themselves.
11:27
Mostly just because I see things,
11:29
I really do see life is so short,
11:32
and I'm just so grateful for even the next day's breath,
11:35
kind of thing, right?
11:36
But to me, the opposite of that is someone
11:39
that wants to enhance their body.
11:42
That I understand the socialization of it,
11:46
but I struggle with that idea that you're putting a foreign object
11:51
or consciously putting a foreign object in your body.
11:54
And this obviously is not just reserved to breast implants,
11:57
because you're now hearing people wanting to do this
11:59
with cyber-genics, right?
12:01
I mean, to me, this is a growing societal thing.
12:06
It's not, while we are on this,
12:09
it seems like we're on a bench right now
12:10
where people are being more aware of natural remedies
12:15
or wanting to remove things that are synthetic from their body,
12:18
it's still, we're still walking that line
12:21
of like how cyber, I don't even know what to say,
12:26
but like how kind of robotic or cyber do we enhance our bodies
12:31
and versus how ancestral do we keep them?
12:34
I find myself going back the other direction,
12:36
so I don't, and I have a place devices for, I think,
12:41
around a little over five years now, I do worry about that.
12:44
Now, I purchased it a little bit differently
12:46
because I did cancer reconstruction
12:48
for the majority of my career, like, you know,
12:50
and for someone to be able to walk or chew
12:55
or in the instance of breast reconstruction,
12:58
have a reconstruction, those are,
13:02
from oncology perspectives and reconstructive perspectives,
13:07
very specific, you know, discussions that you have to have.
13:12
You know, I used to make a jaw bone out of someone's lower leg bone,
13:16
the fibula, so they could eat again or have a jaw again,
13:24
or, you know, recreate a tongue.
13:25
Like, there's a lot of things that are done,
13:28
you know, from an oncologic standpoint
13:31
that are complex and require
13:35
implants of different varieties,
13:36
some are prosthetic implants, some are, could advocate implants,
13:40
there's all sorts of things.
13:41
And, and it's a gray area.
13:44
The reasons are not black or white.
13:45
There's a gray area of what matters to someone.
13:48
Obviously, if you're having kids
13:49
or you're in a replacement, it matters.
13:51
But I guess that's ultimately kind of my question is,
13:55
is there a line, like, is it always a gray area
13:58
or is there a clear, like, you know what?
14:01
Let's not go down this path
14:03
because we are diverging too far from our humanity when we do.
14:08
That's what we talked about at the beginning, right?
14:09
So, and the number one thing that I get
14:14
in terms of feedback from patients is,
14:17
I wasn't explaining this, whatever this is,
14:20
like, I didn't know these were not meant to be lifetime devices.
14:23
I didn't know these would need more surgery.
14:26
I didn't know that you could get an infection
14:28
or I didn't know that you could have these
14:30
inflammatory symptoms.
14:32
Like, there's a lot of this lack of explanation.
14:38
And that I've always found James,
14:43
that's frustrating to me.
14:45
I used to have to spend a lot of time
14:48
like we were just kind of talking around,
14:51
discussing options with patients
14:52
who were undergoing cancer regustration.
14:54
These things would take, you know,
14:56
sometimes hours and multiple appointments
14:58
to just go through like, what can we actually do here
15:01
and how do we need to do it and what are the steps?
15:03
So, it may be more of the answers,
15:09
how do you explain it properly?
15:10
So, each person can make their own individualized decision
15:14
because that's their freedom of choice
15:16
is to make that decision.
15:18
And I would, from my perspective,
15:22
try to help providers, whether they're like me
15:27
or others providing services similar,
15:30
really have a very specific and careful discussion
15:34
in this sense of the patient
15:35
so that they can make it really,
15:39
to the best of their ability and form decision
15:41
because you don't want a young person, especially.
15:43
Like, I find this to be very frustrated.
15:46
And I, James, I never spoke to a lot of young people
15:48
because in cancer situations,
15:50
you're really not dealing with super young patients.
15:52
Sure.
15:54
So, as it relates to breast reconstruction,
15:57
the youngest person ever took care of was 24.
16:00
I remember vividly to this day
16:02
and they did not have an implant-based reconstruction.
16:04
They actually didn't, they had such a aggressive form of cancer.
16:07
They didn't have anything.
16:08
They just went and had surgery and in a treatment
16:11
and then actually were wrong.
16:12
I did the reconstruction with their own tissue.
16:15
That being said, like, that's a very different discussion
16:19
to have, right?
16:21
The gravity of that discussion is a life or death discussion.
16:25
So, the thing with a device is,
16:28
it's not in that same vein,
16:33
but you have to have that same very detailed,
16:37
very thoughtful type, well thought out discussion
16:40
with the patients so they can better make decision.
16:43
It's not meant to be a transactional decision.
16:48
That's the kind of maybe more the core problem.
16:52
Like, you need to make sure you're explaining this
16:54
because hypni-brest dental implants, cardiac implants,
16:58
neurologic implants, they all carry risks.
17:00
Every single one of them does.
17:01
They can all get infected.
17:03
They can all need to be taken out.
17:05
If you name a surgical discipline,
17:08
I've helped that surgeon take care of their infected device.
17:11
They've called me at one time or another in their career.
17:13
Neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons,
17:16
OEGins, cardiac people, whoever, you name, it does matter.
17:21
Because in the end game, they'll call us
17:23
as plastic surgeons and say, hey,
17:26
we took care of James.
17:27
James now has an infected prosthetic somewhere
17:31
wherever it is.
17:33
Can you help us?
17:34
Because it's really important for James to be able,
17:37
we did this super-service leg, right?
17:40
Well, it flew to your leg or something.
17:42
Can you help us, Dr. Wirtfield?
17:44
And so yeah, I'd be like, yeah, I want to help James.
17:46
I don't know who the hell James is,
17:47
but I'm going to go help save his leg.
17:49
That's what we used to do.
17:50
We cowboy up and go do that.
17:52
That's what we did.
17:54
Knowing that all those things, if turnfected,
17:57
that's very hard for you as the patient to take care of.
18:00
And I knew that I couldn't resolve all of that,
18:03
but I would do my best to always help in those situations.
18:06
Because everything that's prosthetic, like James is saying,
18:09
outside of your own tissue, it has this risk.
18:13
Everything has these risks.
18:14
And because they're foreign bodies,
18:16
they can get bacterial contamination,
18:18
or they can get frankly infected and need to be removed.
18:22
Well, what was the catalyst for your change?
18:25
Because you said that you've gone the opposite direction,
18:28
but clearly when you went down this path
18:30
of becoming a surgeon and specifically a plastic surgeon,
18:33
it's like you want to have held different beliefs
18:36
than what you hold now, correct?
18:39
So yeah, plastic was always about solving problems.
18:42
And oncology problems posed the biggest problems to be solved.
18:46
And I always solved that with reconstructive surgery,
18:49
specifically different types of designing tissue flap surgeries
18:53
and doing microsurgery, connecting blood vessels.
18:56
And it was always just fascinating to me to do that
19:00
and be able to be faced with that problem
19:03
and go and solve it in the operating room for the patient.
19:06
That gave me the most juice and being involved
19:09
with those teams that took care of those patients,
19:12
it gave me the most satisfaction of helping our patients.
19:18
And those were always the best times to me, always.
19:23
But that was always done particularly
19:25
with in those settings, the patients own tissue predominantly.
19:30
I was not the putting in a prosthetic.
19:34
Because of my experience and expertise in microsurgery,
19:38
I was called upon to do these bigger, longer cases.
19:40
To just think of it like a case that may be started
19:44
by a group or groups of surgeons
19:47
at one period of time in the morning,
19:49
I would come and finish in the afternoon or the evening.
19:52
So just by virtue of what I did,
19:56
I never was somebody who could do a high volume of placement
20:00
of like a breast implant, not as a cosmetic
20:02
or breast reconstruction technique, just because of what
20:05
my other day job, if you will.
20:07
I was getting asked to do all these other things
20:09
to help out in these other teams.
20:11
And I just was always very aware of any device
20:18
I gave a high degree of respect to.
20:20
And if somebody called me and said,
20:21
hey, my patient James, he fell
20:25
and his total knee reconstruction got exposed.
20:30
That's an emergency.
20:32
Then a matter of what day of the week it is,
20:34
then matter of what time it is.
20:36
If James Berry's knee reconstruction is now exposed
20:42
that I was part of taking care of,
20:44
now it's my problem to take care of.
20:46
It's like getting the 911 call
20:48
at the police or with a fire
20:50
and you've got to go respond and get it taken care of
20:53
because the more you delay,
20:55
the more problems can happen without knee reconstruction,
20:57
so to speak.
20:58
So you're not necessarily experiencing any conflict
21:03
when you're dealing with like removals
21:05
of what breast implants,
21:06
because you didn't actually spend a lot of time implanting.
21:09
What you're, when you talk about,
21:11
I'm now kind of looking at things differently.
21:15
You're really talking about like maybe
21:17
the holistic perspective of the body.
21:19
Like you're not just looking at it
21:21
from the surgical standpoint.
21:22
You're looking at it from like a holistic health perspective.
21:27
Yeah, I do.
21:28
I feel like it's still, you know, the problems differ.
21:32
I'm not solving a cancer problem anymore
21:35
because that's, that's a different time in my career.
21:37
Now I'm solving a problem of like,
21:39
okay, we have this device.
21:42
We feel it's affected the body this way.
21:44
And so how can we get the body back in alignment?
21:47
You know, one, only one facet is removal
21:51
of the scar tissue in the device.
21:52
That's just one component of this.
21:54
There's many, many people as you know, James,
21:55
experienced a lot of problems with health
21:58
and wellness issues who have obviously no devices.
22:01
They have a lot of chronic inflammation.
22:03
And like we mentioned, it may be from where they grew up.
22:06
Maybe they have a bad organic phosphate exposure level,
22:10
you know, a life state level.
22:11
Maybe they have grown up in a place that flooded a lot
22:16
in the Midwest like where I used to live
22:18
and they got exposed to black mold.
22:20
Or maybe they traveled, you know,
22:22
and went off property, south of the border
22:24
and got a parasitic problem.
22:27
That's, you know, travelers diarrhea
22:30
is still a major problem around the world.
22:32
That's not like we shouldn't just ignore that
22:35
when we would go somewhere and get sick, you know.
22:39
I think all these things, you know,
22:42
when I listen to them, I'm like, man,
22:45
they just tell you what's wrong all the time
22:47
if you just listen to everybody.
22:49
And none of it is, you know, necessarily that complex.
22:53
I think we have wonderful ways to look at it.
22:57
You know, now versus, you know, in my alopathic training,
23:01
like looking at genetics.
23:02
I think it's awesome that we can just do a saliva test
23:04
and get, you know, within a very short period of time,
23:07
everything kicked back.
23:08
I mean, I'm 56, the genome project has happened
23:13
after I finished medical school.
23:17
When I was in medical school, the world's literature
23:19
still had to be served up on what you probably don't even
23:22
probably think of anymore, which was a disk.
23:26
It wasn't on the internet.
23:27
So I used to go to a library and still read books
23:33
and look at card catalogs and load up something
23:36
that was called a CD ROM into a computer
23:40
to look at the literature.
23:42
I mean, that's not that long ago.
23:44
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of advancement.
23:46
But speaking about like the medical playbook in a sense,
23:50
if you could rewrite it on beauty and body autonomy,
23:54
what would you want the next generation of women to know?
23:59
Oh, yeah, I feel like the strongest thing
24:03
you can do is give folks more information
24:05
about how their body works,
24:08
how they genetically cope with, you know,
24:12
whether it's detox or certain issues, like, you know,
24:17
and we'll use, for example, the GLP ones,
24:19
which, you know, now have changed so much
24:22
and offer a whole new set of challenges for me
24:26
because people take them inscriminately
24:27
that you can get them off the internet,
24:29
they can abuse them basically and burn their fat.
24:34
What do people think that's great?
24:37
James, that's not a great thing
24:39
because if you burn up your facial fat, what do you think happens?
24:43
You age prematurely, facially.
24:46
So you're asking me about basically underlying body image issues,
24:50
that makes it as worse.
24:53
So if you have somebody with a propensity
24:55
of body dysmorphic disorder and or disordered eating
25:00
or whatever the issues are,
25:03
and many of those will link to certain genetic
25:06
single nucleotide polymorphisms,
25:08
but you're just making something worse
25:11
by giving somebody something that they don't then,
25:15
or you are not controlling carefully enough,
25:17
like you can go online right now
25:19
and order semi-glutide compounded.
25:22
Still, by one of those, I'm not gonna say whom,
25:25
so I don't get you or I sued on the show
25:29
and get it sent to you and you can dose it yourself.
25:31
That is absolutely bad shit crazy.
25:35
To give somebody a syringe,
25:38
to load up a drug that tells their brain,
25:42
they don't need to eat.
25:43
Isn't that sound problematic?
25:45
The biggest problem of it is it's no different
25:48
than what you identified earlier,
25:49
which is people are getting these things done to their body
25:53
and they didn't have a 360 perspective of outcome.
25:58
They didn't actually get as informed
26:01
about the procedure or about the device the way that they should
26:05
and I think the same thing is happening with the GLP ones.
26:08
It's like no one's thinking about,
26:09
well, how does it know which fat to focus on?
26:12
It doesn't.
26:13
It doesn't, right?
26:15
And no one's talking about what happens if you abuse it,
26:18
what if you get too much?
26:19
What happens to your stomach muscles?
26:21
What happens to these things?
26:22
Like what happens to someone who always feels nauseous
26:26
because their brain is saying not to eat?
26:29
What happens to your energy levels,
26:31
to your passions, to your creativity?
26:33
You know, there's so many things that are not explored.
26:38
And it's a purely transactional thing.
26:41
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting way
26:44
and an accurate way to discuss it.
26:46
It's transactional, it's not human.
26:51
It's not necessarily about your humanity,
26:53
it's transactional, no different than the grocery store
26:55
with your food to your health, right?
26:56
It's transactional, it's not about your health.
26:59
No, no, I have people all the time,
27:01
some of they just ordered stuff and got it
27:02
and I was like, well, who spoke to you?
27:05
Oh, you know, the person, I'm like, what did they tell you?
27:11
And they can't, you know, recount the conversation, of course.
27:14
And I'm like, and so you're self-administering this drug, right?
27:18
And they're like, yeah.
27:20
I'm like, oh, how much do you take?
27:22
So this happened to me last week.
27:25
And they showed me how much they're supposed to take
27:27
and then the patient disclosed and she said, sometimes I take more.
27:30
Oh, yeah.
27:32
And I'm like, really?
27:33
And I just, I said, well, if this was a heart medication,
27:39
would you just take more of it?
27:42
And of course the answer's no.
27:44
But because this is something that's supposed to, you know,
27:46
quote unquote, target fat.
27:50
And it's, okay, it's, it's okay to do more.
27:55
And then the patient said the other thing out loud,
27:57
giant switches, there is no third party testing
28:00
of those compounded drugs.
28:02
So you don't know the actual strength of those drugs, right?
28:06
So you can get a drug that's weaker or worse,
28:09
you can get a drug that's stronger.
28:12
Which happens all the time on the streets, right,
28:14
with drugs all the time.
28:16
That's where you get overdoses.
28:17
Cause people, when people say, oh, I just took this.
28:20
So it couldn't have been, you know, from this,
28:23
and I burned all my facial fat, you know what I say.
28:27
Like I say, you have no idea what you took.
28:30
You took a compounded drug.
28:33
So to connect to the theme of this podcast, you know,
28:38
like I really, I want to explore recognizing
28:42
that we're just two individuals just philosophizing here.
28:45
Okay, we can't, there's no way for us to encapsulate
28:48
whatever, why or what everyone is thinking
28:51
about these things.
28:52
But what do you, what, what do you think has happened?
28:58
Like why have we gotten so far away from
29:03
that kind of innate ancestral perspective of like trusting
29:09
your body, loving yourself as you were created?
29:12
Like, and obviously we're not talking,
29:14
I'm not talking about the situations we spoke about earlier
29:17
where you had cancer or your recurrence.
29:18
I'm just talking about those people that choose to go down
29:22
a path that removes them from their ancestral
29:28
or birthright, you know, their birth state.
29:31
I thought about this and you know, I had it,
29:37
I had to explain to me a certain way
29:39
and maybe this will resonate, you know,
29:44
you and I are both, we have families and we're raising kids.
29:49
And conceptually I think it comes from raising them
29:54
to know that they're enough.
29:58
And if that concept sticks with them
30:00
and they understand that and really what it means
30:03
is they're enough, I think there'll be a lot less
30:07
of what we're discussing, but with the amount of pressure
30:11
that everybody is put on through their devices
30:15
and just in general, I feel like that's a big component
30:21
you know, I feel like that's a big component
30:25
of just feeling like they're enough
30:29
or feeling like you're enough.
30:31
And then you will be in touch with your ancestral self
30:35
to your point.
30:39
Most people don't feel that way, they have a tough time.
30:42
Yeah.
30:43
How, you're making me curious about,
30:47
so you have the person who got the breast implants, okay?
30:52
So they clearly had whatever perspective they had
30:55
of why they needed to do that.
30:57
Now you're seeing them where they're like,
30:59
hey, I'm listening to my body,
31:02
this doesn't feel right anymore, I want to remove it.
31:06
Are you finding in your kind of support of them
31:09
after they've been removed that there is a gap between,
31:13
are they now that they're removed?
31:15
Are they completely grounded in confident and loving
31:21
of their body or is there a gap?
31:22
Is the persona that originally needed
31:25
or wanted the change, did that person come back
31:29
and do they end up then meeting more therapy around it?
31:32
Yeah, I always feel, and that's a great point.
31:36
We have a whole series of stories on our YouTube channel
31:39
that's just about our patients and their stories.
31:43
And it's fascinating to listen to all the reasons
31:48
and the most grounded folks are basically
31:55
what changes this around.
31:56
The people have worked on their own self.
31:59
Like they've done the work
32:03
and they're a piece with everything.
32:05
The folks that have it or need more
32:09
is what James described and there's a gap, right?
32:11
They don't feel comfortable with themselves.
32:15
Well, because they masked it, right?
32:16
They masked that feeling originally,
32:18
but now that they're removing the mask,
32:21
those feelings still gotta be there, right?
32:24
Sure, so there's a lot of things though.
32:27
There are a host of things that have been exposed
32:31
through interviews on our show
32:32
and some of them have to do with bullying as a young person
32:38
societal norms, media, pressure from work
32:47
to look a certain way, like all these things
32:49
that are just to your point, I think
32:58
it goes back to that concept like you're enough.
33:02
Yeah, because it's real, the pressures are real.
33:04
Like I'm not trying to say that's not
33:06
that the person needs to get over it.
33:09
Yeah, very real.
33:10
They're very real.
33:11
I mean, those pressures and I guess the question I have
33:15
is like, well, how do we support
33:17
than our society, those people that don't feel like they're not.
33:21
Like for example, let's talk for a moment
33:26
to the person who does have plant, you know, breast and plants
33:29
and who isn't feeling just yet that they feel off.
33:35
Or they do feel off, but everyone around them
33:39
is telling them that they're fine.
33:41
It's the same concept where either you're kind of check,
33:43
you're not in your body or you're in your body,
33:46
but everyone around you is telling you
33:49
to not listen to your own instincts.
33:53
I feel like that is, you know, the harder, you know,
34:01
not persons are reached because they understand
34:04
that there's potentially a problem,
34:05
but like you're pointing out they don't want to get to that point
34:09
where they want to address it.
34:11
And how do you get to that point?
34:14
And I would tell you James, like there's a lot of traffic
34:18
in between those two points.
34:19
So people have their families and their work
34:23
and then they have what is the larger elephant in the room
34:28
is these images and whether it's a belief system
34:34
they have about their parents or whatever it is
34:37
that's really, really holding them back.
34:41
It's a tough, tough problem.
34:44
The patients who have done the best
34:51
kind of getting to that point of fully embracing
34:56
understanding that have done a lot of inner work, self work,
34:59
whatever we're going to say about that.
35:01
And then the other part that people have that do really well
35:05
is a very supportive group around them,
35:09
whether it's friends or family or spouses.
35:13
If you don't have that support and you're just isolated,
35:16
it's much more complicated in terms of maybe
35:21
not the quote unquote recovery from surgery,
35:26
but the recovery from everything else,
35:28
like just dealing and coping with all the other things
35:31
is we're going to need a certain level of emotional support
35:35
that's probably not going to come from within
35:37
because they just don't can't muster that.
35:41
They need that support from you or we have a great team
35:45
of folks who we've taken care of
35:48
and continue to support each other in a virtual way
35:52
and in my office have a ton of patients,
35:55
former patients who've had the surgery themselves
35:58
so they can help support too in a way I can't.
36:02
But that's a huge deal, it's support.
36:07
Yeah, and I like how you're mentioning like being aware
36:10
of who's your community, who you surround it by.
36:14
And I even think about how are they reflecting you back?
36:18
Like are you, are they reflecting you back
36:20
as less than like you're not enough
36:23
or are they reflecting your back as you are everything
36:26
you need to be and more?
36:28
And maybe not it is question we all should be asking ourselves
36:31
is like is this person that's in my life
36:33
or are they toxic or are they like building me?
36:35
Are they supporting me?
36:37
Right, because we have folks who are very, very worried
36:40
about that decision, they may have arrived at it
36:42
but then the sports system, particularly a spouse,
36:46
is not aligned or and I've had people have, you know,
36:54
relationship failures because of that decision
36:58
and then I try to support them in the best way we know how
37:00
and say well that to James's point
37:03
sounds like it wasn't the right relationship.
37:07
If that person's not supportive view without a device,
37:11
is that really the right person?
37:15
Doesn't sound like it is.
37:16
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
37:19
What do you think from your experience
37:22
and I'm just curious if you don't have an answer,
37:24
it's all good, I'm just curious if you,
37:27
because you're on a very specific side of the,
37:30
like you are in the operating room, you know,
37:33
you are seeing people at their worst
37:36
and in many ways at their best, right?
37:38
You're seeing the things that most people don't see,
37:42
the dirty laundry, if you will.
37:46
Their body's literally on the inside, right?
37:48
So have you learned or are there any kind of like,
37:55
top three things that you think someone should ask themselves
37:58
before they go down this path?
38:00
If they are thinking of augmenting their body in any way
38:03
and it's not caused from an illness or a disease
38:06
or something, but where it's self-induced, self-inflicted,
38:10
like is there like three questions
38:14
that they should ask themselves prior to going down that path
38:18
that might help them be in touch with, you know,
38:21
their bodies and their essence?
38:26
Yeah, maybe along the lines of what we're discussing,
38:28
are they enough?
38:29
Like, you know, it's one thing to like be fit,
38:35
be physically fit, like, okay, fine.
38:38
When we're younger, we're probably a little bit more interested
38:41
in our appearance than we should be, right?
38:43
That's probably a little bit out of balance
38:45
with reality sometimes.
38:47
Maybe we are trying to fit a certain thing
38:53
we've developed over time in our psyche, like an appearance.
38:58
I think that's probably certainly something that we see
39:01
a lot in our younger, you know, people,
39:08
like just trying to fit in, like, how do I fit in?
39:12
And I would always caution folks, like, that's
39:16
along the lines of what James and I were discussing
39:18
when somebody has a relationship failure because of this,
39:21
like, that really wasn't and isn't necessarily gonna help you,
39:27
right?
39:28
That's not gonna help you fit into what you're looking for,
39:34
like, what are you looking for?
39:36
What are you trying to get by doing that?
39:40
Like, is maybe the one first question,
39:43
like, who is this for?
39:45
Like, and if it's for someone other than yourself,
39:47
is that a red flag?
39:49
Correct, yeah.
39:50
So those things, like, you know,
39:52
I've heard this over and over again,
39:53
and, you know, it is, it's a very personal, obviously,
39:58
decision.
39:58
I always try to approach it the same way.
40:00
Like, I have to give people all the information, right?
40:02
To the best of my ability.
40:03
Like, if someone came to me and said,
40:05
I wanna breast augmentation, you know, first of all of us,
40:08
obviously, we don't do that in move.
40:10
But if somebody just wants to come and get my advice
40:12
about like, what I know, I explain it.
40:15
You know, I published a big paper last year,
40:16
29% of these things can get bacterial determination
40:19
over the course of the time you have them.
40:22
You know, that's a real number.
40:23
You can't like, make that up, all right?
40:27
We all know they can get infected.
40:28
That's problem.
40:30
You're gonna need more surgery.
40:31
That's a give it.
40:32
Like, you just need to know those things.
40:34
Yeah.
40:35
And if you don't know those things,
40:38
you're not getting all the information
40:41
in the way you should to make a decision.
40:44
Now, if you get all that information and you're like,
40:47
okay, fine.
40:49
I still wanna do that.
40:50
I feel like that aligns with me personally right now.
40:54
So James Point is like, that shouldn't be, you know,
40:57
you should not be doing that for someone else.
41:00
That's a decision, you know, for that person,
41:05
once they have all the information,
41:07
that's kind of how I think about it.
41:10
And I don't know that I have a, you know,
41:16
you know, there's other things that James doesn't mention.
41:21
If you have somebody who clearly has body image issues,
41:24
you know, I'm very fine with telling people
41:27
and always have in my career
41:29
with cosmetic things saying no.
41:31
What do you mean, can you explain that?
41:32
Yeah.
41:33
So someone, you know, 10, 15 years ago came in
41:36
and said, I want an augmentation
41:37
and they were, you know, we'll say five feet,
41:40
a hundred pounds and one to be a triple D.
41:44
I would have told them, no,
41:47
because that doesn't fit your frame, right?
41:51
So you have to have some basic, you know,
41:54
guardrails put up for people
41:56
because people might see something
42:00
and they don't quite understand
42:04
like what that will have in terms of ramifications
42:07
on their long term, you know, say chest wall,
42:12
you know, if someone's too big,
42:14
it's going to eventually go out, out, out
42:18
because of the pressure of the device.
42:21
And so there's some things, James, that, you know,
42:24
they don't sound right, right?
42:26
You put a huge implant on a tiny frame
42:29
and the implant comes around the corner
42:31
before the person does.
42:32
That's not really, is that really okay?
42:36
I mean, it never was in my head.
42:38
I mean, just, I had a certain set of like guardrails
42:44
that I just wouldn't go against.
42:45
You know, it is interesting though,
42:46
because in many ways the GLP1 discussion,
42:50
in a sense, it almost sounds like that's your barometer
42:52
of like if you don't see guardrails,
42:56
if the practitioner does not seem
42:58
to be exhibiting guardrails,
43:00
if the place that you're trying to purchase something
43:02
from does not seem to have guardrails,
43:04
particularly when that thing you're trying to purchase
43:06
is something that's going inside your body.
43:10
Then maybe that is a red flag.
43:12
I mean, from markets that allow any product to be sold
43:16
to obviously like these GLP1s or anything similar to that,
43:23
that's just coming from some black market
43:25
or some market that has,
43:28
it's just a visible that you could just buy
43:30
and it doesn't, and no one's asking any of these questions.
43:33
Anything that modifies behavior
43:36
should have a great deal of scrutiny.
43:41
Because in the history of taking care of patients,
43:46
my argument was that won't work
43:50
because you can't modify the behavior.
43:53
Well, that argument's gone now.
43:55
You can go to your GP and he can tell you about diet
44:00
and exercise, but now he has a tool.
44:03
And he has a tool that works
44:05
because it modifies your behavior, James,
44:08
unlike anything in the history of medicine.
44:12
You have a shot that will modify your behavior.
44:17
That is the most powerful tool ever brought to medicine.
44:21
Powerful and like you said earlier,
44:23
and be scary because if it's unregulated,
44:26
if it's not a monitor, if there's no guardrails,
44:29
should you be able to go online and order that tool
44:32
to be administered by yourself,
44:34
the most powerful tool ever created in medicine seems a bit odd.
44:39
If you can share with your knowledge
44:42
of just hold us to health
44:44
and what you're trying to support people in seeing,
44:48
you're really taking a very specific niche surgery
44:53
but you're trying to expand and say,
44:55
no, we have to still look at the body as a whole
44:57
and how it's going to respond to this.
44:59
Always, yeah.
45:00
So are there things that you would recommend
45:04
that people think about before they go down
45:07
that surgical tunnel?
45:12
So meeting like, should they actually be thinking about,
45:15
hey, how do I detoxify them?
45:17
Is there a test that they should be potentially taking?
45:19
Should they be looking at what they're eating?
45:22
What would be like three things you think
45:25
that have nothing to do with surgery
45:27
that someone should be thinking about
45:29
priority even going down the path of any type of surgery?
45:33
Yeah, we reverse engineer that and wrote a book
45:35
about the sharp method, which is how we work patients up.
45:38
So, allopathically, I was taught to do, like,
45:40
blood work and chest x-ray and EKG
45:43
to make sure that someone like James could have surgery
45:46
and it'd be safe.
45:48
And now, I'm more concerned
45:50
not about those specifics
45:52
because they should have all those
45:54
and those should be fine to begin with as a baseline.
45:58
What we're more concerned with now is
46:02
how does James detoxify genetically?
46:04
And what are his toxicity levels?
46:07
What is his gut doing?
46:10
How are his sensitivities
46:13
to maybe environmental toxins or foods affecting him
46:17
and try to get those in alignment
46:19
before you ever do anything else?
46:21
So, a lot of people around the world
46:23
have run my program now remotely
46:26
basically to lower inflammation
46:29
because that's basically what we're talking about.
46:31
If you think of why people suffer
46:34
and develop disease states,
46:37
they're inflammation of organs, right?
46:40
You inflammation of your brain or your liver
46:42
or your gut, your heart.
46:45
That will get you.
46:48
So, if we work diligently,
46:50
like, you know,
46:52
James discusses in terms of
46:54
thinking more incessarily
46:56
and being more in tune with that eating properly,
47:00
you know, being careful with what you put in your body
47:02
and on your body
47:04
is a big difference.
47:06
So, we focus on that a lot.
47:08
Air quality, fluid quality,
47:10
and we talk about food.
47:12
And then the things that, you know,
47:14
people apply their skin,
47:16
those products are not going to have
47:18
dangerous chemicals in them.
47:20
And when you do that,
47:24
you'll be taking a lot of steps
47:28
to lower inflammation.
47:30
And I feel that's more important.
47:32
And then if someone doesn't,
47:34
you know, you don't need to go have surgery to do that.
47:38
That's just a way of
47:40
not just like surviving,
47:42
but we hope that you'll thrive
47:44
in that situation
47:46
and do better and better
47:48
from a health perspective.
47:50
Yeah, that's great.
47:52
I really appreciate this conversation
47:54
because I do think it's important
47:56
that, you know, we can,
47:58
particularly in this podcast,
48:00
we can sit and talk about, you know,
48:02
the best parts of our past,
48:04
the ancestral pieces that we want to bring forward.
48:06
But we still have to look at
48:08
how are we moving forward?
48:10
What are these things that we're doing?
48:12
So we want to hear from our
48:14
current Scrubs,
48:16
our current webinars,
48:18
be present
48:20
with the current procedures and habits
48:22
to understand how far back
48:24
we should go to pull from
48:26
ancestral practices in terms
48:28
of what we need currently.
48:30
So I guess all I'm saying is that
48:32
I think we need an accurate
48:34
perspective of our present
48:36
to really identify what we need
48:38
from the past.
48:40
That they really do go hand in hand.
48:41
modern phenomena, right? Which is any surgery that where you're putting something in the body,
48:51
whether it's, doesn't that or why? Just putting something foreign in the body that is a very modern
48:58
process, right? I mean, like 80 years old, how many years are we talking since the first
49:03
to play us for place in the 60s? Okay. Yeah. Wow. I asked this question, everyone, as we close,
49:12
and I'd love to hear your answer. If you could wave a magic wand and bring back an ancestral
49:19
practice, what would it be? Oh my gosh, an ancestral practice. I always feel like something that
49:35
has to do with like mountain or clean air. So before there were cars or before there was pollution,
49:41
the air was so much better. And that would be what I would bring back the best quality air.
49:53
Robert, can people who just have questions who don't live in this state, who might not even
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utilize your, you as a surgeon, can they reach out to you and still use you as a consultant,
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their resources that they can get from you? Yeah, everybody can visit Dr. Robert Woodfield.com,
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drrubbertwoodfield.com. And we have a series of podcasts or YouTube just videos about everything
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we've been discussing. And then if someone wants to work with our group or me as a consultant,
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we have a discovery called as complimentary and my team will help sort out the best way for
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you to do that. And you know, we take care of people all over the world, certainly all over
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North America and the United States. So we look forward to helping out what we can.
50:45
Yeah, that's great. And I know so many people within the last five years that are getting
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their breast implants removed. Of course, our talk has encompassed a lot more than just
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a suppressed implants. But I, the few that I've talked to that have, they just are so happy,
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they're so happy. And so I'm, I'm grateful to this modern medicine that it allows people to
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have this journey of, okay, this is what I want, but now this is the new thing that I want.
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And to allow them to have the dignity of their decision, however someone else may judge,
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it doesn't matter, but just the dignity of their journey with that process. And for that journey to
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culminate with them feeling better in their body, to me, that's really powerful.
51:40
Thank you, though, Robert. Thanks for joining me. It's great to have a little bit of time with you.
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I don't see you enough. And I wish you well. And thank you all for joining us today on every
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day ancestral. Let's remember sometimes things are gray. It's not black or white. And I appreciate
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this discussion, recognizing this is not an easy path for anyone. But I hope that the theme of
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today's discussion in terms of like, you know, you are, you are worth, you are, you have worth,
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you are worth something. I think that that what Robert highlighted around that that just
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maintaining your agency and just knowing that you are enough resonates with everyone. So thank
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you for joining us. Stay curious, my friends. And please leave a comment if you enjoyed this
52:26
episode. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me on every day ancestral.
52:33
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You could find the
52:38
show notes links and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K dot com.
52:48
And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious,
52:55
live well, and keep it ancestral.