After being told by my doctor that no way could the implants be associated with the symptoms I’d been experiencing, but also being told that there were no actual (detectable) problems, I really felt like I was on my own.
I was never the type to look to a doctor for answers, but after the hives incident, I panicked. Now that the hives were gone, and my doctor confirmed the implants couldn’t be the culprit, my focus was going to be on prevention. I almost didn’t care about anything else. I’d convinced myself the hair loss was still a postpartum thing since at the time of the hives incident, my youngest baby was still only 5 months old. Hair shedding is normal postpartum.
So back I went, to Google University, for my Masters in Holistic Quackery.
It didn’t take long to find the wackos in mainstream medicine. They were wandering astray of the consensus. They were saying some interesting things.
So, after reading enough traditional medical articles, all of which said the same un-helpful things, not to mention WebMD, back in the day, where you could legit diagnose yourself with cancer after a five minute read on any symptom, I finally started to follow the lead of those who were saying radically different things. What could it hurt?
I was finally on the path to health.
I was always more inclined to stay fit and ‘eat healthy,’ but this was different. Now that I knew that my diet and lifestyle affected how I was feeling (attributing most of it to diet at that time), I decided it was time to make some changes.
Enter: Radical Lifestyle Changes
At first, it was just eliminating sugar, even fruit. Then it became a mission to try to go gluten free – man was that a challenge in 2009. And after that I began the long but gradual change from conventional, processed food, to whole organic food and eventually to grass fed, pasture raised being of the utmost importance. This change was difficult and expensive, and finally just about complete over a period of about ten years. While it’s much easier to find healthy food in the grocery store, it is still quite expensive.
Interestingly, over that ten year period of time, I was able to suppress some symptoms as they came about, but that was just it – more always came, and the ones I may have been able get rid of also always returned. And eventually there was nothing I could do to get rid of any symptoms.
I tried every diet you can think of, every type of skin care, adjusting my sleep and different types of workouts. I was miserable.
Enter: Health + Beauty Influencers Who Were Just Like Me: Experiencing Symptoms, With Breast Implants That Were Also Not a Problem…
I can’t tell you what a relief it was to find women who were close to my age, in the health/fitness and beauty industry, who had already been going through what I was going through. From what I could see, they were ahead of me in their journeys and I just knew they would be able to offer some excellent guidance. I’d come across an great podcast all about addressing the types of symptoms I had been experiencing. Things like brain fog, fatigue, premature aging, and of course the hair loss that had become chronic by this time. I knew this influencer had breast implants and she’d been able to resolve all of her health problems, proving the symptoms were definitely not related to the implants! Oh my gosh, this news couldn’t have been better!
Even though I had intended on explanting, eventually, now I knew I didn’t need to be in a rush about it. It wasn’t an emergency!
And after I found her, I was in the algorithm, seeing all of the influencers with breast implants who were yelling through the bullhorn about health and fitness and beauty. Some of them were talking about implants and botox and fillers, right along side of eating organic, doing cleanses and detoxes.
And then, that first influencer … she had more problems … It still wasn’t her implants, tho.. she insisted.
Intuitively, something felt off.
How could they not be putting two and two together?
Breast implants = not a problem.
But we’re doing all of this holistic, functional health and detox work to deal with symptoms…?
I’m confused.
At the end of the day, why weren’t they questioning the implants and the other toxic beauty products?
I couldn’t keep my head in the sand anymore. In fact, by this time, not only was I sure my implants were a problem, I was sure theirs were too! This was about seven years ago, four years before my explant. Subconsciously, I feel like I always knew those toxic bags were a problem, but being a logically driven personality, I guess I needed to find proof. Well, there it was, being documented right there on Instagram. Influencers, in denial about their implants.
The Moral of the Story
Be careful where you get your beauty, fitness and especially health information from. It was a long road for me to finally get to the conclusion that breast implants were a problem. The inner battle was obviously that we don’t want them to be a problem! Of course, nobody wants that. But it is what it is. The why, is much more complex than can be expressed in this blog post, but trust me when I say – they are a problem, no matter what the Influencers say.
If you have a story to share, please email me [andi@evolution-of-health.com], I would love to hear it.
If you want to know if you have Breast Implant Illness and you’re considering working with a Practitioner, I invite you to schedule your free Breast Implant Illness Analysis to find out if working with me is right for you. I work with women both pre and post explant.
