Danica Patrick urges women to trust their ‘intuition’ after breast implant illness: ‘Get them removed’

The former Nascar driver says she began experiencing health issues three years after getting breast implants

Danica Patrick spoke out about her experience with breast implant illness and is urging women who may be suffering from similar health problems to get their implants removed.

The 40-year-old former Nascar driver opened up about the years of health problems caused by her breast implants during a recent interview with People, in which she revealed that she began noticing changes to her body three years after the surgery.

Patrick says she got her implants in November 2014 because she thought they would “make [her] feel more feminine and sexy” and first began noticing impacts to her health in 2017. She said she started experiencing symptoms such as fatigue, weight gain, dryness and hair loss.

At the time, she assumed that the changes to her health were the result of her hormones being “off”.

However, Patrick said the issues with her breast implants worsened a year later when her breasts became hard. She told the outlet that the change made her self-conscious so she found herself avoiding hugs and worried when she was physically intimate.

“For so many years I didn’t hug people tight because I didn’t feel like pushing these little balloons into them. Whenever I was with a guy, I could not stop thinking that they knew they were fake,” she admitted, adding that she went “down a pretty deep rabbit hole” and “had every test that could be done” as she tried to find the root of the problem.

In 2022, Patrick learned that breast implant illness could be causing her symptoms after she saw videos about the illness on social media.

Breast implant illness or BII is a “collection of symptoms that may be related to breast implants,” according to the Cleveland Clinic, which notes that the illness may be “related to autoimmune or inflammatory responses” and that common symptoms include fatigue, joint pain, brain fog and rash. The exact cause is unknown.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also adds that hair loss, weight changes, and anxiety/depression are common symptoms associated with BII, and that symptoms have been reported immediately after implantations to years later.

While the FDA acknowledges that “some women report improvement or resolution of symptoms following removal of the implants,” it also notes that “currently, BII is not recognised as a formal medical diagnosis, and there are no specific tests or recognised criteria to define or characterise it”.

“Research continues to be performed to better understand any potential association with breast implants,” the FDA states.

The FDA has received 2,497 medical device reports containing symptoms consistent with BII from November 2018 to October 2019, according to the agency, while data from January 2008 to October 2018 showed an additional 1,080 reports of similar symptoms.

The FDA has also identified a possible connection between breast implants and the development of breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that it clarifies is not breast cancer, but rather cancer of the immune system.

Patrick decided to undergo surgery to have her breast implants removed in March, at which point she said she saw an instant improvement in her symptoms. She is now urging other women who may be experiencing the same symptoms she did to “trust [their] intuition” and consider undergoing the procedure.

“Get them removed, and see how you feel,” she said.

As for how she feels since the surgery, Patrick said that, on a scale of one to 10, she is a “six right now,” but is also taking better care of herself than she ever has before.

“Chasing perfection is a dead-end street. Learning how to come home to yourself is a beautiful thing,” she added.

Patrick’s warning comes as she has kept fans and followers updated on her journey on Instagram, where she has spoken candidly about her health since the removal of her implants.

In a post from May, the former racecar driver shared a photo of herself in a bikini and revealed that she wishes she could have “told this 32 year old girl that boobs won’t make you more perfect or have it all or be more feminine”.

“These were my reasons and to me these narratives are the problem. Implants just feed into it. Culture feeds into it. Social media feeds into it. Filters feed into it. Unhealed trauma feeds into it,” she wrote, before condemning the lack of transparency around the dangers associated with implants and expressing her gratitude “to be feeling better so quickly”.