If you are scheduled for explant surgery, there is a lot you can do to prepare. If you’re a year or more away from surgery, you can be much more prepared than if you are just a month or weeks away. But even if you only have a month or weeks, and you start right now, you can significantly improve your experience by just making some changes in the time you have before explant.
When it comes to healing from any surgical procedure there are three things you should be most aware of when it comes to how your body is functioning, and how you will heal post-surgery:
- How well is your body able to control inflammation
- How well can your body deliver the nutrients necessary for healing, to the cells?
- How well can your body produce the energy required for controlling inflammation and delivering nutrition to the cells?
Even though, prior to explant, it’s most likely you’re experiencing a higher amount of inflammation and possibly an impaired ability to deliver nutrients and produce energy, it is possible to work on these things prior to surgery to optimize your surgical experience, making recovery from surgery and healing from Breast Implant Illness a much easier process.
PLAN AHEAD: BEST OUTCOMES DEPEND ON HOW WELL YOUR BODY WILL HEAL
Fast forward in your mind, to the week after explant. You won’t be able to raise your arms over your head to move your hair out of your face very well, but you don’t have any hair ties to keep it back. Don’t you wish you would have gotten some before now? It’s kind of like that. Only we’re talking more along the lines of things you can do to prevent unnecessary pain, swelling, bloating and other types of discomfort that comes along with healing from major surgery. Things that aren’t resolved by sending someone out to get you some hair ties, or placing an order on Amazon after the fact.
If I were betting on it, I’d bet most women don’t do much prep work to their bodies, prior to explant surgery. And they’re not to blame for not knowing they should. But, some of them will have a tougher time in the weeks following their surgeries than those who were aware of some things they could do to make post-surgery and recovery less miserable.
And for some of us, healing was joyful and relatively pain free.
Trust me, as I mentioned above, it’s simply worth it to prepare your body for surgery.
WHAT’S THE #1 WAY TO MAKE THIS MORE DIFFICULT THAN IT NEEDS TO BE?
Do Nothing.
Yes, that’s it. If you’re here, right now, skimming for the 3 Rules, please slow down, and take the necessary few minutes to read through this article.
I want you going into surgery with a complete understanding of what process your body will be going through, and how to absolutely optimize all of it for a faster, nearly pain-free recovery that will put you miles ahead of where you started when it comes time to detox post surgery.
I hope you want that, as well.
Below I’ll break down the three most important rules when it comes to healing and long term wellness. Failure to follow these rules will guarantee at least somewhat of a struggle which can be felt in the form of pain and other longer lasting symptoms post surgery. Without these rules, healing is not possible, nor is it good health in general.
Your body knows these rules, and will attempt to follow them, precisely. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we, as humans are constantly doing things that interfere with them. Not on purpose, of course. But this is why it’s so important that you know what your body is trying to do — so you can provide the support necessary for success.
RULE #1 CONTROL INFLAMMATION
Inflammation is a natural response inside of the body.
- Acute inflammation refers to an immediate response launched by the body, that which will target and address whatever has caused the inflammation, and will go away as soon as whatever is causing the inflammation has been managed. An example of acute inflammation would be the process following an injury or surgery, or the common cold or flu. Acute inflammation is short term.
- Chronic inflammation refers to a fight the body is maintaining over a long period of time, against a problem it sees as a consistent presence. An example of chronic inflammation would be the process following an infection that is not properly managed by the body such as Lyme Disease, or a viral reactivation like Epstein Barr Virus, a tapeworm, or even something like long COVID would be considered chronic inflammation.
- Inflammation is denoted by the presence symptoms and high inflammation lab markers, and indicates the body’s desire to continue to resolve a problem. Chronic inflammation is also present following placement of medical devices the body sees as foreign, such as breast implants, IUDs, hip and knee replacements, hernia/bladder mesh, or any other object that does not belong inside of the body.
The inflammation response is initially due to the injury/surgery, and followed by response to the object itself and then followed by continuing response to longterm exposure to the toxins those devices leach into the body.
Chronic inflammation is a whole cascading effect that prevents normal healing and balance inside the body.
The first thing to do to start to control inflammation in your body begins with eliminating things that are inflammatory. Yes, it’s that simple.
- Inflammation can be caused or exacerbated by the basics in life like the wrong foods, sleep deprivation, a sedentary lifestyle, stress and malnutrition.
- Toxins in your environment, such as chemicals in your water, food and air. as well as pathogenic bacteria, viruses, parasites, and mold also contribute to inflammation.
- All of these things must be addressed in order to properly decrease inflammation.
Let us not forget that while inflammation is a protective response, it can be harmful, longterm. You want it there to do a job, but when that job is done, it needs to go away so your body can continue on with the normal maintenance of homeostasis (balance).
Inflammation can interfere with the body’s ability to make, absorb, deliver, and properly utilize the nutrients necessary to heal the cells, tissues and organs. It can disrupt the body’s ability to make and properly metabolize hormones and neurotransmitters.
When the body has too many things standing in the way (injury, longterm infections, large toxic burden), a bottle neck is created, preventing the other necessary functions from occurring.
Again, this is a cascading effect that can go on to create longterm symptoms and if not addressed, will eventually turn into a diseased body.
Your body’s ability to control inflammation is paramount when it comes to healing and long term wellness. Chronic, long term inflammation is extremely damaging.
If you have trouble controlling inflammation, there are some things you can do to help put out the fires and start to maintain balance.
I’ll get to those in Part 2 of this series.
For now, on to Rule #2.
Rule #2 MAINTAIN BODY’S ABILITY TO DELIVER NUTRIENTS TO ORGANS, TISSUES, CELLS
This rule is simple and straight forward. Fighting chronic inflammation requires an excessive amount of nutrients. If the ability to deliver nutrients to the cells is already impaired, then it is safe to assume that in a state of chronic inflammation, nutrients are depleted. The presence of breast implants generally implicates long term inflammation.
Inflammation and nutrient depletion lead to a state of extreme metabolic dysfunction, methylation impairment and toxic overload. Detoxification pathways that may have already been impaired are further prevented from eliminating all of the garbage the body is trying to get rid of, leading to a pile up. Toxins are being stored in cells, tissues, organs and fat. Weight loss starts to become impossible. Not many realize that once you’re resistant to weight loss, you’ve already descended into a dangerous toxic territory and that your body is actually protecting you from the toxins stored inside of fat cells. When fat burns off, those toxins recirculate. In chronic toxicity, weight gain and inability to lose weight becomes a protective defense mechanism your body utilizes to keep you from recirculating those toxins.
In a delicate state such as Breast Implant Illness before explant, it’s almost like working in a minefield. You have to work around the explosives, and at this point the explosives are not just the breast implants. You have the implants themselves along with every chemical, metal and pathogen originally present or drawn into the crime scene due to the presence of said toxins. It’s a delicate circle of madness in there.
Again, the good news is that the human body is always working toward homeostasis (balance), even when it is full of inflammation and toxins. THIS is where we work, pre-surgery.
Getting the body what it needs and providing the best environment with which to work, without setting off the ticking time bomb.
The best we can do is clean up the environment (the body) and provide the building blocks (nutrients) necessary for the body to repair itself. So, we want to drastically reduce (as much as is possible) inflammation (remove garbage) and offer what’s needed to repair (nutrients).
Now, all the body needs is the energy to do the work.
As with the ability to control inflammation, there are ways to help the body deliver the necessary nutrients to the cells, tissues and organs. I’ll get to those in Part 2 of this series.
For now, on to Rule #3.
RULE #3 MAINTAIN THE ENERGY TO CONTROL INFLAMMATION + DELIVER NUTRIENTS
This is one of those things where all of the rules are required to be followed in order to be effective. Your body must be able to control inflammation—> so that it can deliver and utilize the nutrients necessary for repair and long term healing—> but, your body must also be able to produce enough energy to carry out both of those functions.
Energy production happens inside the cell and luckily, every cell has hundreds of thousands of little batteries called mitochondria. Unfortunately, inflammation and malnutrition can damage, destroy and even prevent the production of mitochondria. This significantly decreases energy production.
In order to maintain optimal energy, your body must be constantly producing mitochondria and taking care of them so they don’t die or malfunction.
It’s usually pretty obvious when mitochondria are not operating on full power, or if you simply don’t have enough —> you just don’t feel good.
To establish how important your mitochondria are in everyday life, I’ll use the example of how far you’ve come on your journey to learn how to heal from Breast Implant Illness:
Your mitochondria decide if you will make that full commitment
If you’ve read every word of this article and plan to read the next, that’s a sign your mitochondria are still pushing you to what you need to do — they’re supplying you with the energy to get the information.
- Do you remember everything you’ve read?
- Do you feel like you’ve learned something?
- Did you have to read anything more than once?
- Could you repeat it to a friend or family member?
These are all signs of how well your mitochondria are working for you right now.
To be clear — your mitochondria are 100% in charge of how things are going right now.
They decide how well you control inflammation, and … They decide whether nutrients are delivered to cells, tissues and organs
Their influence on literally everything happening in your body, including how you feel each and every second of the day, and how you will recover from surgery cannot be overstated. You want to take care of them.
It might seem like you need the energy production to be optimal in order to start cooling inflammation and being able to deliver the nutrients, and how is that even possible if energy production is down?
Well, you’re still alive, aren’t you? That’s a good sign that your body is trying to do all three of those right now.
You are still producing energy You are still delivering nutrients to cells, tissues + organs, and You are obviously still producing the energy to do it at the level you are doing it
The goal here is to improve the efficiency of all of this, which is where my next article will pick up.
Hopefully you haven’t been sabotaged by your mitochondria and you’ve made it this far!
If for some reason you haven’t read this entire article (most will not) about preparing for surgery —> go do that now!
Next Up in Preparing For Explant Surgery | Setting Yourself Up For The Best Possible Outcome | Part 2
How to keep inflammation under control … How to maintain the ability to deliver nutrients to organs, tissues and cells both pre + post surgery, and… How to maintain energy production to control inflammation and deliver nutrients to organs, tissues and cells
IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ME PRE OR POST SURGERY
If you’re getting ready to explant and would like some one to one guidance on how to prepare for surgery, I’d like to offer you a free consultation to see if I can help. Click the link below to schedule your free consult today.
