Michelle Visage says her breast implants made her sick

Brut America

She was told she was crazy to think her breast implants were making her sick.  Michelle Visage got real about struggling with Breast Implant Illness in an interview with Brut...

Transcript

00:00These women are pleading for their life because they're in so much pain.

00:02Some of them have died because of having breast implants.

00:05And these guys don't give a s**t.

00:21When I decided to get breast implants, I was 21.

00:25And for me, I grew up, you know, in a world where having breasts made the woman.

00:32And it's very sad that that still kind of exists.

00:35It's just a male-dominated toxic environment that's in society

00:40that women have to look a certain way to be considered sexy.

00:55By the time I was 22, I was having heart palpitations and things weren't really right.

01:08And by the time I was 23, I'd already been sent to a cardiologist to get an echocardiogram.

01:12And I'm telling you, the constant brain fog, my hair falling out in clumps.

01:18I'd wake up, I'd go to work, I'd come home and take a nap.

01:21It's not 20 minutes, my nap was three to four hours.

01:24And I'd wake up still exhausted.

01:26I couldn't function.

01:27I wasn't lazy.

01:28It's not like I was sitting around, you know, eating bonbons.

01:31When I went off the pill, my thyroid disease was then exposed.

01:34I found out that I had an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's.

01:37The doctor told me when I found out that I had an autoimmune condition

01:40and I wasn't getting pregnant,

01:41he told me to shut up and stop asking questions till he's done speaking.

01:45I immediately abruptly stood up, told him to go f**k himself and left,

01:50took my paperwork and found a better doctor.

01:52This is the last time you're going to see me with these.

01:56I know they're a national treasure.

01:57But I believe for the past 20 years, these breast implants have been making me sick.

02:22We were always told that they were FDA approved and there's no data on it

02:29causing any problems or sickness or cancer.

02:31I was kind of cast aside and said, well, yeah, no, that's not real.

02:35They just go, go home, smoke a joint, have a glass of wine, have sex,

02:39make love to your husband.

02:42I'm not kidding.

02:44I was told by one very highly regarded functional medicine doctor

02:50to pholate my husband because the enzymes in semen were incredible for my thyroid.

03:16Breast implant illness is controversial

03:19because there's a lot of doctors who are science-based versus anecdotal.

03:24And they will say, it's not real.

03:25It's made up.

03:26It's like the hottest trend, like avocado on toast,

03:28which is so fricking demeaning that a woman actually has said that.

03:33Women aren't heard.

03:35Nobody hears what we have to say because we're stupid.

03:37We're hysterical.

03:39We are the inferior gender.

03:41And that's where the problem lies in our medical world in the United States in particular.

03:49I love plastic surgery, but it doesn't work right for everybody.

04:08And then I found the Facebook group, Breast Implant Illness Healing with Nicole.

04:12When I joined the group, it was like 60,000 or 50,000 members.

04:14And now it's at 144,000 members,

04:17all experiencing the same thing, some worse, some lesser,

04:21some finding the group when they were about to be implanted

04:24and stopping them from getting implanted.

04:26So it is such a sisterhood, not only in that Facebook group,

04:31but within the breast implant illness community on a whole.

04:40The whole goal of this is what I found out that we need,

04:45which is a mandate from the FDA,

04:48that every surgeon has to have full disclosure with their patient

04:52because I am not anti-plastic surgery.

04:54I am pro-transparency.

04:56They should sit down, have full disclosure with their patient,

04:58their potential patient and say,

05:00OK, this probably won't happen, but I want you to know that it could happen.

05:05There's a lot of women that might not do it.

05:07And there's a lot of women that still will.

05:09But at least you're in charge of your own health.

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