Breast Implant Illness – how your boobs could be killing you

Fiona Boulton - 18 May 2022

Breast Implant Illness – how your boobs could be killing you

Adapted below is a viral social media post I shared back in 2018 about breast implant illness. It is such a powerful post that I feel it’s important to share here and also include support resources if you or someone you love have breast implants or are considering getting them.

What I’m about to share is deeply personal to me. It’s my account about how breast implants nearly killed me.

For a lot of women this will be very triggering. This is my story, and my experience. Whatever I say about me is exactly that, it makes no implication or reference to you.

Please take from this whatever helps and leave the rest.

Sharing what happened was (and continues to be) one of the hardest things I have done. It brings up so much for me, but every time I do, I receive more and more messages from women I’ve helped. Women who have implants and experienced the same things as me, and those who prior to reading my story were considering getting them, but thankfully were moved to make a more loving and empowering decision for themselves and chose not to implant.

With that being said, here goes!

Urghhhhh okay… I’ve been feeling pretty scared about sharing this. But, I know that by sharing my story I will be able to help save the lives of countless other women – so it’s time I listened to my own advice and focused on other people and how this will help them, rather than how I’m kinda pooing myself about sharing this at the moment!

So, there’s something most people never knew about me. It’s something I’ve always been incredibly private about. I never talked about it and most of my closest friends didn’t even know… Heck, I’ve had former partners not even know! When I was 20 I got breast implants. There. Phew, I said it!

“So what”, you’re probably thinking… “Why would you share that publicly?”
Because, as with all women with breast implants, I’m a sufferer of Breast Implant Illness. And in December 2017 I explanted (removed) those toxic t*ts.

The thing that we’re not told about implants is that they cause 3 major health issues:
1. Immune system overload
2. Toxicity exposure from silicone + heavy metals + other toxins
3. Caner risk – yeahhhh, they don’t tell us that do they! There’s a cancer you can ONLY get from having implants!!!

Immune System Overload
Because implants are something foreign in your body, and your body has a powerful immune system designed to push out anything foreign, the body grows a capsule (fleshy sack) to isolate the foreign object. Every woman with breast implants grows this – you can’t not, because it’s how your body protects you.

The side effects of having something foreign in your body is a constant (yes, I mean CONSTANT) drain on your immune system which causes ongoing inflammation and this leads to other inflammatory disorders, to the point where many women with breast implants develop auto-immune disorders. This is so common in fact that it’s included in the post marketing information contained within the FDA approval documentation for breast implants.

This isn’t new information to the manufactures of implants either, sadly I have read a warning from one manufacturer that states the risks of breast implants as including the development of auto-immune disorders. BUT most ladies getting implants aren’t told this, I certainty wasn’t.

I was diagnosed with my first auto-immune disorder in 2007 and more followed after that.

Toxicity Exposure
Silicone and silicone shell saline implants expose the body to a nasty array of heavy metals and chemicals. Even if you have saline implants, there’s a silicone shell around them. The silicone in implants isn’t 100% silicone, the implants I had also had about 40 other toxins and heavy metals.

So think about this, your body is nice and warm and has constant contact with all these toxins, so they leach into your body (think year 8 science and osmosis… implants are a liquid, not a solid!). I have tested for high levels of heavy metals over the last 13 years and am actively working now at slowly removing these (it’s important to detox these slowly to not cause further damage to the body).

Breast Implant Illness Symptoms
Over the years my breast implant illness symptoms were:

Medically diagnosed heavy metal toxicity (twice) – turns out silicone implants aren’t just made of silicone! Mine were filled with over 40 different heavy metals and toxicants
Eczema – it was beyond painful, what the photo doesn’t show is the micro blisters that covered the area that constantly oozed pus
Inflammatory disorders
Medically diagnosed low level chronic inflammation – this makes sense (now!) because the body always fights to push out foreign objects, anyone with implants will have inflammatory issues because the immune system is constantly fighting to push the implants out of their body. It’s not physically possible to not have that reaction
Autoimmune issues, coeliac disease and rheumatoid arthritis
Distended gut and severe bloating – I looked like I was six months pregnant, no matter what I ate or didn’t eat or how much exercise I did
Anxiety – medically diagnosed
Depression – medically diagnosed
Ongoing parasite infections – my research has shown me that as the silicone from the implants breaks down in the body and produces a bio film, it causes a fungal overload making the gut susceptible to parasite infections. From 2011 until 2017 I suffered from ongoing parasite infections, I would get the problem treated and it would continually recur. This stopped after I did a final treatment after explanting, now I’m parasite free
Medically diagnosed stage three adrenal fatigue
Adult acne
Hormonal imbalances
Chronic thirst – I would wake every morning extremely thirsty and unable to quench my thirst no matter how much pure, clean water I drank
Headaches every morning – which I now know was from the toxic load my body was under from the implants. As soon as I explanted the headaches stopped
Inability to tolerate alcohol
Mood swings
Irritability
Medically diagnosed inability to produce serotonin and dopamine – these are your feel good, happy hormones! And I had none. Hence the depression and anxiety. This was from the parasites and the impact they had on my gut
Chronic low energy
Inability to exercise – for the year before I explanted I couldn’t physically exercise. I love to keep fit and be active, but my body felt like it just couldn’t get the energy from my cells into my limbs to move. When I did push myself I would be so tired I’d have to sleep immediately afterwards and would be wiped out for days. Now I no longer have that problem and chronic back pain is finally going away!!
Memory loss
Medically diagnosed IBS
Medically diagnosed PCOS
Inability to string sentences together and forgetting words
Chronic low iron levels – turns out this is common when you have heavy metal toxicity because the metals prevent the absorption of iron into the body
Severe period pain – it was so bad that I would have to take a day off work, I would be physically ill, curled up in a ball in the bathroom in so much pain
Medically diagnosed endometriosis
Arthritis precursors
Night sweats
Cold extremities, even in the middle of summer
Hair loss – I lost nearly half my hair over the years. Since explanting my hair dresser has been shocked, when I last saw her she noted all the new hair growth and said “wow, it’s like this is the hair of a completely different person! It’s so much thicker and healthier than I’ve ever seen it”

Those are just some of the health impacts I suffered from. Other BII sufferers have even worse symptoms than me.

Breast Implants Can Kill You

The worst of all this – there are women who literally DIE from these devices when they get Anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (ALCL). This is classified as a “rare” cancer. Pfffft, not so rare if you have breast implants!!! In Australia, women with breast implants have an incredibly high chance of having this cancer, it’s from 1 in 10,000 to as high as 1 in 1,000!!!! 1 in 1,000 – imagine if that was any other cancer, the news would be all over it. Why is this being kept so quiet??? Women with breast implants need to know this.

Many women receive implants after they’ve already had a battle with breast cancer – from one form onto another. How horrific.

Recovery from Breast Implant Illness

Is it possible to recover from breast implant illness?

YES! Absolutely! I am walking testament of this, not only have I recovered but I live an incredibly vibrant and energetic life! So are many of my gorgeous girlfriends in the breast implant illness community.

Breast Implant Illness Support
Along my breast implant illness journey I was lucky enough to connect with an amazing community of amazing, supportive women. A tribe of babes that had my back at every turn!

A couple of us got together and created a free guide, Truth About Breast Implants. It details:

our stories, why we chose to get implants;
explains what breast implant illness is;
breast implant illness symptoms to look out for;
breast implant ingredients;
breast implant illness testing;
BIA-ALCL the breast implant cancer;
deciding to explant, step-by-step;
confirmation of surgery;
cost of explant;
common myths and FAQ;
what can I do after I remove my implants and still have boobs?;
other ladies’ stories; and
in the news.

If you or someone you love have implants or are considering getting them, this guide might just save your life. Download your free copy today. Boobs aren’t worth dying for, education is the best inoculation we can ever receive.

You can also join the free Facebook support group, Breast Implant Illness (Perth Angels) Support Group: click here.

Follow up: since I first shared this post I receive the same common questions about breast implant illness, to save you asking the same, here they are laid out for you in black and white.

Q: did you see a cosmetic surgeon or a board-certified plastic surgeon to get your implants?

A: my surgeon was a highly respected, board-certified plastic surgeon. See my love, if you read the info I’ve shared you’ll see that it doesn’t matter who did the surgery, it’s about the impact of implants on the physiology.

Q: what can I do, if I can’t get breast implants because they’ll make me sick, what can I do instead?

A: while this is a short answer, for women considering breast implant surgery this can be a tricky one to implement. The solution my gorgeous friend is self-love. You see, if we truly love ourselves, we would never do something that would harm our beautiful bodies. The fact you’re even thinking about getting implants show you don’t 100% love and accept yourself just as you are. The journey to self-love is an ongoing one, and I promise you it is sooooo worth it. The best thing I ever did was get rid of those horrible implants, what would’ve been better was if I’d never had them to begin with.

My path to recovery from breast implant illness has been a journey of self-love. Choosing to love myself just as I am. Accepting myself. Acknowledging that I am enough and I am worthy of love just how I am.

There’s no quick fix for this one, there are a lot of tools you can use to tap into deeper levels of self-love. I highly recommend doing some self-discovery into what’s really going on for you and why you feel you want implants.

Of course, my Joy Academy is an empowering program that helps you live your best life, every single day, which includes choosing love over fear and unapologetically being authentically you (without the fake!). It’s not for everyone, if you do feel called, check it out to see if it’s what you’re looking for right now.

About the Author

Fiona Boulton a multi-passionate entrepreneur on a mission to live her best life, every single day, and help you do the same! She has been helping women to create and live a phenomenal life that they absolutely love since 2013.

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