Asking for a Friend - Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife

Ep.122 Breast Implant Illness, The No-Cut Face Lift and Holistic Wellness with Dr. Robert Whitfield

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 122

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I'm excited to welcome Robert Whitfield, MD, a world-renowned holistic plastic surgeon with a specialization in breast implant illness (BII). Since recording this episode, I have heard two other health and fitness influencers talk about their experiences with Dr. Whitfield and explant surgery. Both raved about his knowledge and thoroughness in the process and were very happy with their results and the care they received. 

Dr. Whitfield’s background, from his upbringing in Las Vegas to his extensive medical training in Indiana, sets the stage for our deep dive into the complexities of BII. He shares eye-opening insights into the prevalence of breast augmentation, the symptoms of BII, and his groundbreaking work in advanced breast explant procedures and innovative treatments. Together, we explore his commitment to patient safety and holistic health.

He is a sought-after provider for his Strategic Holistic Accelerated Recovery Program (SHARP). The protocols of SHARP help to reduce systemic inflammation and assist patients who are both preparing or recovering from surgical procedures. 

Throughout this episode, you’ll also learn essential health tips for preventing osteoporosis and managing BII. Dr. Whitfield highlights the importance of resistance training, vitamin D3/K2 supplementation, and mindful dietary practices. We discuss recent recalls on textured breast implants and the shift towards minimally invasive cosmetic procedures, such as the no-cut facelift. 

Tune in for a holistic approach to health, wellness, and aesthetics that could transform your life, providing valuable insights for anyone considering or living with breast implants.

You can find Robert Whitfield, MD at:
https://www.drrobertwhitfield.com/
https://www.instagram.com/dr.robertwhitfield/

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Michele Folan:

I believe my family and friends thought that it was a little crazy for me to leave my secure corporate job to pursue fitness and nutrition coaching, and I will say that I would likely not have done this even four years ago. But this podcast has opened my eyes to the multifaceted challenges of women's midlife health that even my 26 years in the health industry didn't teach me. I am much like you. Maybe you've been through menopause and now you're trying to figure out how you're going to ensure your longevity and mobility for the next 30 plus years. My mission wasn't to look like my 24 year old self again, but I wanted to have energy. I want to sleep well, feel comfortable in my clothes and not be a physical burden to my children when I'm older. I want to control what I can control. I wanted to find a program that met me where I was and one that would undo all that diet culture had thrown at me. And guess what? You can lose weight, that belly fat and feel amazing in your 50s and beyond. Are you ready to make a commitment to your future self? Shoot me an email or reach out on social media. We can chat about your goals and see if my program will suit your needs. Like many of my clients have already experienced Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, michelle Michelle Follin, and this is Asking for a Friend.

Michele Folan:

Breast augmentation surgery remains one of the most common cosmetic surgeries performed in the United States. In 2022, there were about 300,000 surgeries, which was a 4% increase over 2019. The procedure has relatively low risk of complications, the most common being breast pain, changes in nipple and breast sensation, scar tissue formation, rupture and deflation. However, some women experience a compilation of symptoms that has come to be known as breast implant illness or BII. More than 100 symptoms have been attributed to BII and studies are investigating potential reasons for the syndrome.

Michele Folan:

Dr Robert Whitfield is a world renowned holistic plastic surgeon certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. He specializes in breast implant illness and pioneering surgical techniques. His expertise in oncology and microsurgery distinguishes him as a leader in the advanced breast explant procedures and innovative treatments like the no-ut Facelift. Dr Whitfield has garnered acclaim for his dedication to breast health and cutting-edge techniques. Honored consistently on the Texas Super Doctors list and recognized as one of the best doctors in America, he is a trusted authority and sought-after resource to medical organizations, journals and media platforms, and he also has a podcast. Dr Robert Whitfield, welcome to Asking for a Friend.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Well, thank you for having me, and I really appreciate this opportunity to speak to you and your audience. I think this will be a very, very good show.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, so this was a topic that I've been wanting to cover because I know that the breadth of this syndrome or illness, it can be evasive in terms of diagnosis. But before we get into this, I was wondering if there's anything else you'd like to share, like where you grew up and where you went to school.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Yeah, so most folks don't grow up the way I did. I grew up in Las Vegas, nevada, so I was born and raised there. My dad was a nuclear weapons inspector and during the Cold War that's where people grew up. They either grew up in White Sands, new Mexico, or Las Vegas.

Michele Folan:

And how was that growing up in Las Vegas?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Well, it was a very different place in the 70s and 80s when I grew up and then I went through college and medical school in Nevada and then I trained for an extended period of time at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis. It's a big tertiary care center in the state where everything kind of funneled into the center of the state and we took care of cancer patients, burn patients, trauma patients, we did aesthetics, we did breast cancer reconstruction. So I had a really great training in general surgery and then in plastic surgery and then I did additional training in microsurgery, aesthetics and oncology reconstruction. And then I taught for seven years at a university and then I went to group private practice and now I'm in solo private practice.

Michele Folan:

All right. So where did this interest in breast implant illness come from?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So it was a cancer patient had found me and came for a consult regarding becoming flat. So they wanted a breast reconstruction removed. That had been done with implants, and I think it's becoming, and always has been, a technique that was probably underutilized. The more people are utilizing it now. It's being referred to as an aesthetic flat closure, and so I mean I've done thousands of breast reconstructions and now thousands of explants. So it started with a cancer patient who came to have an aesthetic plaque closure basically, and I did their case.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

And ultimately, when you're doing a reconstruction removal, if you want to think of it that way, you're trying to make sure a couple things are checked off. One, the patient doesn't have any recurrent cancer. So that's first and foremost. My sister recently passed away from breast cancer after a long period of surviving from that disease. And the second thing is you want to make sure that they don't have an infection, because anybody who has a medical device in place, doesn't matter what it is hip implant, knee implant, neural implants, cardiac implants they all can get infected. So you want to make sure that the patient has and is armed with all that information so you can take care of them properly at the end of the day.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So we did the patient's breast reconstruction removal with all the scar tissue and everything around it, sent it off to pathology. She had no evidence of recurrent cancer, but when her studies came back to look for any bacteria, fungus, mycobacterium she had an E coli infection, and so I would have been severely pissed off if someone had missed an E coli infection of my sister. So I had to go back through all of my information and notes and studies and see like what, how did I not find this? And she studies and see like what you know, how did I, you know, not find this? And um, she had no external signs of symptoms of an infection.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

She had no laboratory uh changes, her only finding, which a lot of patients who undergo chemotherapy and or radiation therapy or cancer treatments in general have a lot of fatigue due to bone to marrow suppression, which is pretty normal. And, uh, she did have fatigue but magically, when I treated her for an E coli infection, all of her fatigue went away. So I would say that this was the moment where I was like, well, I wonder how many of these are wandering around the face of the earth. So you mentioned how many implants are done in the United States. Well, there's 2.2 million breast implants placed worldwide annually, so times 10 years gives you a lot of implants.

Michele Folan:

Yeah.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Over 20 million and in my study that's going to be published shortly, of 700 consecutive PCR tested samples, about 30% have biofilm. So that's a bacterial contaminant, predominantly ketobacterium acnus, but other studies that staph epidermidis For your audience. All that means is there's bacteria stuck on the implant and that can interact with your tissues, specifically breast tissues that have things like oleic acid in them and create naughty metabolites that make you feel more fatigued. So it's a real problem and that began. What's now. That was whatever year was that 2016, I guess? Quite the odyssey and we've done several thousand explants.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Now we have a book about our process coming out, sharp, which helps people get prepared for surgery, recover from surgery more efficiently. We have a detox program set up for patients. It runs about a year long. If they need more, then they can engage longer. And then, of course, we do surgery. I have more surgeons now. Dr Chung has joined me to help offset what was a limitation in my ability to see patients, because I'm only one person and we have a. Really. I guess now I'm more curious about the next aspects of this. I feel like I have the genetics sorted out and many of the toxicity issues sorted out and the surgical issues. There are some individual nuances, but I have most of that sorted out. It's really what are the next steps to get people even further along in the healing journey?

Michele Folan:

Okay, so first of all, I'm very sorry about the loss of your sister.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

No thank you.

Michele Folan:

That had to be horrible to have to watch, and it can be very helpless, particularly when you are a doctor. I am curious, though, when BII became a known entity. I mean, I understand that it's not really an official medical diagnosis at this point.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

No, no, the thing is so. An ICD is International Classification of Disease, and so the problem with this if you went to your practitioner and said I have headache, I have fatigue, I have heart palpitations, I have GI problems with constipation and bloating, I have joint pain and muscle pain and I can't sleep, there's not going to be many GPs, practitioners who know what the heck is going on with you. You know they're going to be ah, that's perimenopausal or you've got a lot of kids, if you're younger or you work too much or whatever. There's going to be all these. You know. I don't know if it's an excuse, as much as it's.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

A chronic inflammation is how I characterize breast implant illness. I don't characterize it as quote unquote breast implant illness. I characterize it as chronic inflammation of which a medical device is playing a role. So when I think of it and kind of how I do reconstruction, like, I get posed a problem. If you have a really big problem, you have to break it down into a series of smaller problems in order to get a solution to that problem. So obviously, when I first started doing this, I would take out devices and scar tissue based on the example we mentioned previously, and that would help a certain number of patients. But this is a far bigger problem than just a medical device problem.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So for everybody listening, autoimmune diseases, chronic inflammation, those have all existed long before implants. Implants started in 1962 in Houston, texas in the United States. Chronic inflammation has been around a lot longer than that and autoimmune diseases have been around since the late 1800s when they were first kind of starting to be understood. So the world doesn't get to be a safer place day by day by day. It gets to be a worse place to live. The quality of the air, the quality of the fluid, the quality of the food, the products you use on your skin, ladies, are a problem. So if you're not putting your things that you put on your skin through the environmental working group, I would make that change today.

Michele Folan:

Okay, you have to explain what that is, because I don't know what the environmental working group is.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So one of the big issues that each person has is they only have a certain amount of genetic ability to detoxify substances that are placed on their skin, ingested or breathed into their system. So everybody's kind of heard of the MTHFR gene. At this point, almost everybody comes in my office. I got the MTHFR gene. I'm like yes, yes, yes, about 40% of the world has that gene. It's not a new thing. So that just means you don't methylate. Well, so that affects DNA repair mechanisms, detoxification in your body. So if you put something on your skin or you ingest a food that has, say, a glyphosate on it, which is a pesticide, the ability of your liver then to handle it reaches a certain point and once that limit is reached then you become more symptomatic because now your body no longer copes with the amount of substances that are creating inflammation. And we see this commonly in our breast implant patients that come to see me. They've over time sometimes it takes 10, 15, 20, 30 years for that to happen. Or there's a triggering event and I did a show recently about this with a mold and a lime expert. These kind of things where you get toxic mold exposures and or lime exposures and or environmental exposures from products. I had a patient have a organic wet wipe that had triclosan in it, which is an antibacterial, but they couldn't cope with that particular uh chemical interesting and it built up extremely high in their system. So the kind of things that have made me more curious now are like what are all these different substances that we get or come in contact with all the time that lead to problems? Now in women, hormone imbalance is like it's basically a given that somebody's going to come in and have a thyroid problem, sex hormone problems, regardless of age. So even my youngest clients will have quote unquote Hashimoto's disease, so hypothyroidism with antibodies. And so we look at that and like why are you having that already? That makes no sense. So some of it's diet related, and Isabella Wentz has written a bunch of books about correcting hypothyroidism from Hashimoto's disease with diet. So gut dysfunction, all these things that seem kind of perplexing when you go to the GP and say you know I got all these problems and they're like, yeah, you sound stressed out or you know here's an anxiolytic or here's something to you know, settle it down. But that's not really the answer to the question, so to speak. It's like what are the root causes of the chronic inflammation. So if we parse it all out, you have a certain amount of genetics that allows you to detoxify.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

When we look at toxicity burden, we use a urine tox report and looks for different chemicals, toxins from mold, heavy metals Heavy metals are in the shells of implants as they're constructed. Heavy metals are in the shells of implants as they're constructed. And then these environmental toxins can take a host of appearances and roles and things that we use every day. So anybody who drinks out of a plastic water bottle, that plastic water bottle has something called phthalates in them. Phthalates are plasticizers, so they make the water bottle firmer. The issue is with that. It really disrupts your endocrine system. So the point is thyroid dysfunction, sex hormone suppression, estrogen toxicity all these things get affected by these different inputs into the system of which you're trying to detox.

Michele Folan:

Well, so back to one thing that you touched on, the symptoms, because I read the symptoms for breast implant illness and it looks like perimenopause or menopause. I mean I can see why the medical community would overlook some of these other issues, because it looks like it's just a sex hormone or thyroid type of issue that many of us go through. I mean the list was long but I said I was like, oh my gosh, well, 40 of these could be based on perimenopause or menopause. So these tests that you're running, you're doing these tests because you're in the know, but how can a woman who is just going to see her GP get some of those tests to try to delineate if there is some toxicity from heavy metals or mold?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Yeah. So the issue is traditional testing, serum testing, blood value testing that we're all accustomed to, which hasn't changed since I've been in medical school many, many years ago now, doesn't really highlight these things. So for all intents and purposes, I've learned about this through integrative care, functional medicine care, holistic care, and these are coupled to a really an interest in functional genomics. So, like the genome project is the thing that changed and should have changed medicine for the better more quickly. It hasn't today because we have some, you know, issues with getting things done in our country.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

But if you look at the traditional medical model, you show up, you have a series of symptoms and they associate that with a disease state and they give you a therapy. That therapy could be a lifestyle change, diet modification, a prescription if it's an infection or X, whatever. That is a prescription if it's an infection or X, whatever that is. When I listen to somebody, I'm not really listening to come up with a diagnosis from that set of symptoms. I'm listening to hear how you detoxify and what your exposure is. Based on your history.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

You give me where you lived, what your work is, the kind of diet you follow, and then that will make more sense to me than if you start rattling off a bunch of signs and symptoms that are inflammatory, because, yeah, I know all that. That's not the issue. The issue to me is not I'm not trying to convince anybody they have something. All I'm trying to listen to is like how do you individually detoxify? Do you have estrogen toxicity? Do you have really bad periods? Do you have PCOS? Do you have endometriosis? Those things are all coupled to genetics, so I don't think about it in my traditional Western medical education because that's not gotten me to this point.

Michele Folan:

Have the breast implant manufacturers made any changes over the last 25 years to how they're manufacturing, what materials they're using? Now I know silicone came back in favor. Do you see? The other part of my question is do you see any difference in saline versus silicone?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So the filler doesn't matter.

Michele Folan:

Okay, filler doesn't matter, all right.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

No, as long as it's an unruptured device, filler is inconsequential. Okay, the textured surface is the problem. On devices that were made for specifically reconstructive cases. The texturing is too irritating. You can create a T-cell lymphoma, so I've had people have lymphomas. There's also these squamous cell carcinomas that are now associated with breast implants.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So, just like any medical device, none of these things are without their risks and I think most patients who come to see me they may have gotten implants when they were really young and I never. So all your listeners understand most of my background is cancer, so the youngest person I ever took care of was 24, with breast cancer, which is a very bad diagnosis to carry at a young age. So I did small numbers of implants but in my life I've had no trouble telling people no for surgery. So I never really cared about doing a bunch of cases for cosmetic results if I didn't feel like the expectation has to match the person's frame and many people have some body issues so if I couldn't help them realize what made sense for their frame, then I just tell them I'm not their surgeon, which is fine.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So when we talk about what are the problems with the implant, the implants have gotten better from a technical standpoint. Their shell integrity and things of that nature are better. The fillers really haven't changed much. The problem, you know, in conjunction with that, more irritating surfaces now you know our toxin exposures increases every year. You know the things we're exposed to. Couple to you know having that if you have a implant. I think that's the mixture where, to me, I see that everything has a balance and when you get out of balance you start to have all these symptoms and problems. And all the symptoms and problems, just like they're associated with mold and Lyme or perimenopause or X, can happen without implants. So when I have somebody show up and they want an explant and think all that's going to go away, I'm like no, it's not Just so you know.

Michele Folan:

So I guess my next question would be are there things that you may do first or try first before you would do an explant surgery?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So many people run my SHARP process and that's basically a holistic program where you can look at all the same testing as a patient who's going to have surgery. And then the thing with trying to detox when you have implants is you can only probably do a certain amount of detox because the more aggressively you treat yourself say, for instance, I had a client who loved to sauna so they would love to get in the sauna at 220 degrees Fahrenheit. So they basically started leaching chemicals out of their implant shell into their system and we saw it on their toxicity test. So they had all these heavy metals, they had lead, tin, cadmium All these different things would show up in their test and they felt really bad after a sauna session. Well, it's because you were heating up a device and actually affecting the shell characteristics and leaching chemicals out of it.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So I got in a bunch of trouble on the podcast I did with lauren bostick because she said I think I'm I'm, uh, melting my implants, and we used to joke about it in the office. She, she's like I think I'm just melting my implants, dr Whitfield, and I was like, yeah, you're just melting yourself, you keep roasting yourself in this thing, and so we said that on our show. The proper terminology for this is leaching. You're leaching chemicals out of the device into your system and your body's got to metabolize those things. It goes through your liver, it gets exc into your system and your body's got to metabolize those things. It goes through your liver, it gets extruded in your urine by your kidneys and that's how it works.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So the reason I don't do hair analysis or other things is I want an objective measurement. So if you came to me and said, hey, I have all these problems, so you look at your person's genetics and their toxicity burden, their gut health, their food sensitivities, their hormone balance and then some new metabolomics testing we have and you can paint a pretty broad picture of what's going on. And then you can set them up with a surgical plan. You can set them up with a detox plan. We run those accordingly for about a year, because you can't live on this earth for 55 years like I have and not have a series of exposures and think that I'm going to solve all that in a few hours in the operating room.

Michele Folan:

Okay, what are the physical considerations regarding explant surgery? How's it performed? Is the first part of my question. And then what about scarring and then loose or sagging skin? How do you manage that? And the expectations for your patient.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Oh, you said the quiet part out loud expectations. I was waiting for you to say that, because everybody who got augmentation got it for a reason. It's not something that I can go back and undo. I've had people tell me they were bullied as a middle schooler. I've had people tell me that they watched Baywatch as a child in Germany. I've had people tell me it's a Barbie doll thing. I mean the list of things I've been told regarding why this came to fruition for them is going to be a very personal thing and I can't undo that. I want to say trauma, but I can't undo the mindset. Somebody has to decide that they're going to make that change and that's going to create a whole new series of issues for them from a mindset standpoint.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So we have healthcare professionals that we recommend for that because I'm not a psychologist that we recommend for that because I'm not a psychologist. So from a physical expectation, what I try to do is, if we're going to remove devices and scar tissue and do all this work, if I can add volume back with a fat transfer, both myself and my colleague Dr Chung do that. If someone has a sagging breast or something that's really stretched out, then that's when you offer some type of skin lift or a mastopexy, and typically we'll make those recommendations based on what we see. Option two explant and then explant and take out all the scar tissue is one which I think makes sense when you think of it from infection and an oncologic viewpoint. So I've had people have after the fact breast cancer and lymphoma and you never know really who's going to have that, provided a very unique set of circumstances when someone has one side get really swollen all of a sudden and then you can check the fluid and see if that's a lymphoma. But in general you don't know these things until after the fact when the pathology is examined.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

And Tiffany Blackman's a patient of mine who credits me for saving her life because I found her breast cancer before it became an issue. So it was a deep-lying cancer which was going to be hard to find and obviously I've done a lot of surgery. So you don't spend any time patting yourself on the back because the next time you do something you may not be able to do that for somebody, but we identified that, took it out intact with a good margin. For her she's been evaluated for high risk and you know those things are important, right? We don't want to have anybody have a removal and have cancer left behind. We don't want to have somebody have a removal, have infection left behind.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

You know, had I not taken that tissue out properly on the very first case, I would have just left an E coli infection in somebody. Now they may have gotten better. They may have not gotten better, they may have kind of meandered around and still felt bad. But in those cases and about 30% of the cases of mine those have contaminants in them. The cancer cases are going to be pretty rare. But still, if you miss one of them, what if it was your sister or your mom? Right, that would be. I can't. I know I sleep really good at night. I know what I'm doing, so every time I get done I'm fine. I don't think eh got to worry about that, right?

Michele Folan:

You're obviously very thorough, because now you really know the implications of the miss right. So what is the most common symptom that you hear?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

The most common symptom is usually something related to fatigue. Okay, and fatigue for women. Women are extremely resilient in general. They tolerate more pain than males. They tolerate being more tired than males do because they're the primary caregivers for children, their families, in general, they work, they do all these things and so they just kind of push through all this stuff all the time and I feel like it has to get really bad before a woman shows up or starts really trying to figure this out, because I think in general once again extremely resilient group of patients of mine for sure so it gets, and that's why I get like the they come in, they're like Dr Woodfield I feel like I'm dying, like I used to like not really understand the gravity of that statement, but that is such a fatigued person that they no longer feel they can get up and push themselves, like they've been pushing themselves all this time to take care of their kids or their whole family or their you know parent who's ill or whatever.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Whatever the case is, it's a very profound statement when somebody tells me that. I don't take it like. It's not a flippant statement when they make it.

Michele Folan:

Well, and women I mean. From doing this podcast for two years, dr Whitfield, I can tell you that one of my messages to all women is you have to care for yourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and sometimes we let symptoms such as extreme fatigue go to the point where we just can't take it anymore, and that's just. That's kind of how we're wired, good or bad. I am thinking about the breast implant manufacturers. The breast implant manufacturers how have they responded to these trends in BII, or have they? I knew this was going to be a question that was going to strike a chord.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

I don't speak for industry, so that's. You know you'd have to interview an implant manufacturer. You know, I would say when they did their recall worldwide, they knew exactly what they were talking about. They had done the actuarial analysis and knew that they don't have to do anything. So if your audience understands that there's liability and these folks, they put all that on me, me and the patients.

Michele Folan:

Yeah.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

And they basically say figure it out.

Michele Folan:

Was this recall due to the textured implants? Was that yeah, okay, all right, and when did that happen?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Oh my gosh, Was that the summer of? What summer was that? Yeah God, I can't even remember. It wasn't when I was president, it was before that.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

It might have been summer of 19, I don't think it was summer of 20, I don't think it was covet, but it was a very predictable type of response okay basically they said you know, if you have somebody with extra devices in who wants them removed, we'll give you a saline, smooth product for free, and then you figure out how to cover the expenses for both you and the patient. So that everybody listening understands this the patient is not the customer. The surgeon is the customer.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, because they're the ones purchasing it.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Correct, correct Got it. So now all of the burden is placed on the surgeon to interact with their customer, because the surgeon is actually the implant manufacturer customer. So everybody understands what's going on. So they know that all they have to do is give me another product. They're going to write off their losses, right, because that's what a company is going to do, and then I'm going to figure it out with you, I'm going to determine next steps, right, because now it's my problem.

Michele Folan:

Right Got it.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

That's basically what they did.

Michele Folan:

Okay, I do have a question off the topic a bit. In reading in your bio I saw that you have innovative treatments like the No-Cut Facelift. Can you talk about that a little?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

bit when I say hate. I just don't like how it looks, because it looks unnatural, it looks ridiculous, so I don't do it, never really felt good about. Actually, I would prevent people. When they're like I want more filler, I'm like, no, you don't, not for me, because I just won't do it. Once again I don't really have to do anything I don't want to do. So I'll just tell you your lips will look stupid, your face will look stupid, it'll look inflated rather than natural.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Microneedling has been around for a long period of time for everybody listening. So microneedling is just. You could probably get it at a day spa where it's just a little pinprick and you might get a little welt and the whole point is to stimulate collagen synthesis because after we'll say 30, 35 years old, your collagen and elastin content in your skin, which is what gives you youthful skin, goes down. So we did a combination of radiofrequency, skin tightening and microneedling with or without a neck lift for faces for a long time, because I used to do all my facelifts under local, especially post-pandemic I mean you just basically had to do everything under local anesthesia, but I was doing that anyway and I had a series of patients who came to me for revision facelifts and if the first facelift didn't work, the last thing I was going to do is repeat what the other surgeon had done. So I just wouldn't do it. I would do this radio frequency skin tightening treatment or I would do the microneedling, or both, with or without a revision neck lift. That was all minimally invasive. And the minimally invasive neck lift we just named Zoom Lift because everybody was on Zoom during that time and it was featured in Elle magazine as the Zoom Lift and everything.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So the advances that then came to fruition were a micro-coring technique. So micro-needling the needles are solid, micro-coring the micro-needles are hollow. So just like if someone went and got a vitamin drip, you know an IV after the IV was done they would take the IV needle out and then apply pressure and as long as you didn't bruise from it within a day or two, you couldn't even see that. So microchorine's premise is you can remove skin without a scar because the microneedle is so small. So if you just think of what a facelift surgery is about, it's about excising skin. Most of the time it's about a square inch or so. It's not a lot of skin. So with microcoring we'll give you a number, we'll say about 26,000 microcores can equal about a square inch of skin. So you can do that on the face, the cheeks, the neck.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

The device I have is called Ellacor. The combination of techniques are using FaceTight, the ZoomLift, and then Ellacor is the microcoring technology, with or without your own stem cells, because we have a stem cell device here. I can take the fat out of someone's love handle or abdomen and convert it to your stem cells. It takes about an hour and a half and then we can aerosolize that, or I can inject it on top of what we're doing and then we just put you in our hyperbaric chamber, because there's nothing better than, right after getting something done like that, to get some more therapy with oxygen. And then we have red light therapy in the office and we have Nano-V for increasing protein folding and recovery. So there's lots of tech.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

That's changed how I approach things and I don't like scars that are visible. Everybody who gets a facelift is going to have a visible scar. Everybody who gets a tummy tuck is going to have a visible scar. Everybody who gets a tummy tuck is going to have a visible scar. So we have procedures that are smarter, if you want to think of it that way that leverage technology and our ability to contour and tighten skin and do these other things that are more. I mean, they're not in the future, they're here now.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, what's the recovery look like with Ellacor, because I've had microneedling done.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So we run our programs so that we know how you're detoxing. So that everybody understands this I don't do anything that's not aggressive. Everything I do is very aggressive. So with that, you have to know how someone is going to detox, and so we'll look at someone's genetics and toxicity burden and run the same program we would for surgery, because if you do something with Ellacor to somebody who you don't really understand that about, they can have prolonged redness.

Michele Folan:

Okay.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

But I just had somebody fly in recently from out of states, from New Mexico, had somebody fly in recently from out of states, from New Mexico, and before they left they were already, from a readiness standpoint, really, really on their way to diminishing and resolving that, which is what you want. I've done the same thing for my wife, so I've had to look at this daily over time, and then of course, her friends fly in and want to have it done, and then I have colleagues and media people who want to have it done because they don't want to have a facelift scar, etc. So there are these ways of natural appearing. Rejuvenation are more of my interest. I don't really have any interest in the unnatural. Too many of those wandering around the earth already.

Michele Folan:

Oh, I hear you. This is a personal question. What is one of your own pillars of self-care? What do you do for yourself?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So every day that I don't operate, I get up between 4.30 and 5.30 and I work out and then I come to I do hyperbaric. So right before we got on I was in my hyperbaric chamber to do I do hyperbaric. So right before we got on I was in my hyperbaric chamber. I have a red light. I have a nano V running right next to my head right now. That increases recovery through enhancement of protein folding. I do intermittent fasting. I eat mostly a high protein diet. I don't really take in a bunch of bad carbs. I use a lot of tracking of my sleep, so I'm really asleep. I look at a lot of metrics and track.

Michele Folan:

Well, I have to say that a lot of what you're doing is what I think we're all trying to encourage Getting good sleep, eat a lot of protein, try to get your workout in early in the day, early morning, sunshine all those things that we can control is a great first step.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Yeah, for your audience. People ask me what they can do right away. I get thousands of inquiries all the time about this, and so the things that you can do are all behavioral, and behavior modification is the hardest thing to change. So first thing you can do if you don't want to work out, just get up and go for a walk. Second thing you can do is think about improving your air quality, fluid quality and food quality. So everything says organic. That's actually not true.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

You have to be careful about that and always be critical about what you're putting into your body. A lot of people are coming out now and disputing things about seed oils. I can tell you, if I eat seed oil which I did recently out of town I get sick from eating seed oil. So I don't eat seed oils. I'm very careful now about what I eat and what I drink. I don't ever drink, my God. I can't even tell you the last time that I drank something that was a soda. I have no idea. To be honest, you have to be careful with if you're a coffee drinker. You can't drink coffee that has mold. You have to be extremely careful about coffee.

Michele Folan:

How do you know if your coffee has mold in it?

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So if they are mold-free, they'll indicate that and you have to look up brands like danger coffees mold free, kion coffees mold free I assume none of those come in a keurig cup.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

I knew you were gonna say that no, I mean you have to be like if you're gonna get on this, and I have people all the time. It's hard, it's not an easy thing to do. It pisses my wife off that I'm so difficult with some of these things, but the fact of the matter is I just turned 55, and I want to be around to watch my grandkids and I want to have my brain intact. One of the leading causes of problems with your brain is sleep apnea, and I have sleep apnea. Now I'm not a heavy person, I'm relatively fit, but I have a narrow airway so I have to wear a CPAP. So Alzheimer's is not something I'm interested in.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Having Anything wrong as it relates to brain health, I'm very interested in not participating in any of those disease processes. You know cardiovascular health number one, you know, killer still is that. So get yourself up, work out. You don't have to. You know, run 10 miles. I mean I don't run at all. I mean I'll row on a machine or I'll ride a stationary bike because there's low impact. So women should do resistance training to help fend off osteopenia and osteoporosis. Women should take vitamin D3K2 because many of the patients I see have really limited absorption, transport and uptake of vitamin D, and that's the number one thing I would say for women. And then just don't eat gluten, don't eat dairy. Pay attention to what you're cooking your food in.

Michele Folan:

All right, you gave me way more there than I was expecting, so thank you for all of that. I think it does support again what I said before. It supports a lot of the messages that a lot of my other guests have been speaking about for the last two years, and I think it's great hearing it from your perspective, because you're a surgeon. I would like you to tell the audience, dr Whitfield, where they can find you and also your podcast and also your podcast.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

So we are all over the place. But if you just type in breast implant illness expert, that'll reroute you to either my YouTube channel, one of my websites, Instagram, all these things that I have to have to make sure everybody's getting there from TikTok Sorry, I almost forgot TikTok and those things are meant to help you better understand the problem. It's not a simple problem. I think it gets. Unfortunately, in some aspects it's being minimized. But the content we've put together for you is to better explain what you may be experiencing or a friend or family member is experiencing, so that you can better understand it and then from that, make some behavioral changes moving forward, like we just discussed. And then, if someone ultimately needs surgery, obviously that's a bigger conversation.

Michele Folan:

Got it Dr.

Rob Whitfield, MD:

Robert Whitfield. Thank you so much for being on Asking for a Friend. Thank you for having me.

Michele Folan:

I am so grateful for the ratings and reviews from our listeners. Did you know that your reviews help other people find Asking for a Friend? If you like what you hear, won't you please leave a review on Spotify or Apple? Thank you from the bottom of my heart.