Sometimes industry-funded medical studies are so biased and their outrageous conclusions are so bad that they’re good, at least in a Monty Python kind of way. “The Influence of Personality on Health Complaints and Quality of Life in Women With Breast Implants,” published in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal on September 8, 2022, is a stellar example. Spoiler alert: According to the good doctors carrying out the research, these whining females complaining about their breast implants are likely to be neurotic hypochondriacs. Well, I’m paraphrasing a little—they didn’t exactly word it that way, but that’s what they meant.
The abstract for the study begins by declaring, “A causal relation between systemic symptoms and breast implants is not established.” This statement is, to use a euphemism, somewhat economical with the truth, or to translate into the vernacular, bullshit. It ignores various peer-reviewed studies to the contrary. Even the FDA accepts that implants can cause a whole litany of health problems throughout the body. The FDA is not an institution known for its speedy reactions in notifying the public about dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and medical products. Yet its website now has a page with the following warning about the risks of breast implants listing some of their side-effects. The third bullet point in the FDA list specifically refers to those apparently non-existent systemic symptoms of breast implant illness:
- Additional surgeries
- Breast implant associated-anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), a cancer of the immune system
- Systemic symptoms, commonly referred to as Breast Implant Illness (BII)
- Capsular contracture (scar tissue that squeezes the implant)
- Breast pain
- Rupture (tears or holes in the shell) of saline and silicone gel-filled implants
- Deflation (with visible change to breast size) of saline-filled implants
- Silent (without symptoms) rupture of silicone gel-filled implants
- Infection
Wow! That list is enough to make anyone with breast implants feel depressed and neurotic!
The FDA adds that breast implants are not lifetime devices and that the longer you have them, the greater the chance of developing complications, some of which will require more surgery. The FDA is taking the risks of breast implants so seriously that manufacturers of the devices now have mandatory labelling requirements including a patient decision checklist about their risks with the warning information formatted in a box to make it more noticeable.
Breast implant illness is very real. Yet when doctors recommended that I should have prophylactic mastectomy surgery because of my breast cancer history and BRCA2 gene profile, they never mentioned any of the risks of reconstruction. I refused mastectomies, even though many friends thought I was nuts to do so, especially since I got a second diagnosis of breast cancer a few years later. Again, I turned down mastectomies and went for a lumpectomy instead. I’m happy with that decision, but who knows? Maybe my gravestone will read, “Here lies CJ because she refused to lop off her boobs.”
In October 2021, the FDA strengthened breast implant safety requirements, so I would hope that means doctors will now take the time to let women know about the risks of breast implants so that they can make informed decisions about whether or not to go ahead with having these toxic devices inserted into their bodies. Many women are now choosing to go flat after mastectomies rather than having to deal with the hassle, expense and most importantly, potential health risks of reconstruction.
Nicole Daruda is a pioneer in the field of breast implant illness and a strong advocate of going flat rather than having implants inserted. She is the founder of the website healingbreastimplantillness.com and the Facebook support group, Breast Implant Illness and Healing, which at the time of writing has more than 170,000 members. That’s a lot of neurotic women all in one place, right?!! And, of course, I’m one of them, because I joined the group!
All of this fuss about breast implant problems is very vexing for plastic surgeons. They make a lot of money from the implant business, so you can understand why they would want to produce a study that can blame breast implant illness on hypochondria.
The participants were 201 women with cosmetic breast implants who attended the plastic surgery outpatient clinic of Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands between October 2020 and October 2021. They had to fill out questionnaires to evaluate how neurotic they were. Only women who had chosen to have breast augmentation surgery for cosmetic reasons were eligible. Surprise, surprise, this fine example of research concludes: “High levels of neuroticism are seen in cosmetic surgery patients and are negatively correlated with subjective health and patient-reported outcomes in women with breast implants. Therefore, neuroticism may be a factor in the development of BII [Breast Implant Illness].”
I wonder if the organizers of the study cherry-picked their most annoying patients to participate. The researchers also chose a perfect period to do the evaluations. At that time, many people were feeling considerably more emotionally fragile than normal because of the Covid-19 pandemic and all the mandates and restrictions that were instituted in Holland. A considerable amount of data is now coming out about the negative psychological effect of the worldwide lockdowns. Were women in Holland at that time without breast implants as “neurotic” as those 201 patients with breast implants? Alas, no control group of women without breast implants was included in the study, so we’ll never know. Back in the Stone Age, control groups were seen as necessary for most medical research, but these days, why bother?
Many of the symptoms of breast implant illness, including brain fog, depression, body pain and immune dysfunction, completely disappear when the implants are removed. That was the experience of several of my friends after explant surgery. Therefore, I have some ideas for further research. Can removing implants be a cure for neuroticism? Are people without breast implants less neurotic than those who have them? Are women who choose to do elective cosmetic surgery more neurotic than women who have never done any cosmetic surgery? The mind boggles at the possibility of more pointless studies that this Dutch research could spawn.
The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, defined female hypochondria as an actual neurosis. He considered that penis envy was often the root cause of women’s psychological and physical issues. Thus, if he were still alive today, the esteemed doctor might say that the reason for women reporting breast implant illness symptoms and being neurotic hypochondriacs is penis envy. It must be true, because men don’t have penis envy since they already have one, and as a result, they don’t suffer from breast implant illness. Case proven!
CJ’s comic self-help memoir, My Wild Ride: How to Thrive After Breast Cancer and Infidelity, was published in October 2022, breast cancer awareness month.