Change Your Brain Every Day - Breast Implant Illness with Danica Patrick

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

The Hidden Epidemic of Breast Implant Illness with Danica Patrick When professional race car driver and podcast host Danica Patrick heard Dr. Daniel Amen say this, she gave him a high-five and responded, "Thank you for saying that. Not many doctors do." Danica lived with breast implants for 7 years before choosing to have them removed. She had been dealing with health issues, including low thyroid function, leaky gut, and severe heavy metal toxicity, which she thinks may have been linked to the implants. Her healthcare providers treated her thyroid and gut issues, but the biggest change in her health came after breast implant removal. "I found immediate relief," she says.

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Hi, Danica. Hi, Dr. Raymond, how are you? So nice to see you. So nice to see you. Excited to see your brain? I don't know how excited I am for you to truly see me, but I am.

I love this stuff. I'm just, you know, knowledge is power. And no matter what it looks like, I know that it only gets better from here. So let's see what damage I've done. Well, and that's what I tell people, no matter what we see is good news. You raced professionally, how long? Professionally, I raced for 27 years, but I guess I was, I started getting paid when I was 19. But let's skip that.

I started racing indie cars when I was 23. And I retired at 36 or 7. Wow. That's a long. Yeah, so good 15 years at the professional level where I was going 200. miles an hour. In recent years, there's been some health stuff. Originally, when I went to my OB and had blood work done, that's where I started. And my thyroid was low. I thought, oh, this will be so easy. Just give me this magic pill

and everything will be fine. And it was merely scratching the surface. What ended up coming through was severe heavy metal toxicity, especially mercury. And a array of different things, dysbiosis, leaky gut and other things. And health is just so interesting because it's such a jigsaw puzzle and one thing leads to the next and it's everything is connected, maybe not necessarily directly, but indirectly. And so it's such a balancing act. And so I know that it's about getting to what the root is, right? I'm sure you live this, right? Root cause and that's why you work on the brain so much because there's so much work to be done there. But finding a pathway to solving the other things and one of the big things that I eliminated from the equation because nothing I was

doing was working. Like I would try whether it would be thyroid medicine or gut protocols or just every anything from peptides to fasting to NAD loading doses of NAD anything that I tried. It was like how do you feel and I'm like I feel the same I look the same and then I eliminated breast implants from the equation. I had them for seven and a half years and I found immediate relief with that. But then healing's not linear. And so it feels like you make a lot, you're feeling really good and then you kind of regress and then you feel better than where you were before at your best and then you go away back again. And then it just seems like a bit of a yo-yo process. And so I'm working pretty hard on, you know, healing my body from being hard on it with my job,

exposure to heavy metals, whether it's through the implants or through the job that I had, because I have more than mercury, I have lead and cesium and barium and thallium, and there's like five metals that are above the threshold. And I don't mean above the threshold in the green, I mean in the red. The breast implant issue doesn't get enough attention. Because I think if it got more attention, there would be fewer of them placed. Because body image is such an issue for young women. Like 93% of young girls don't like their bodies.

And with social media, it's only gotten worse. But breast implant illness is a real thing. Oh, high five. Thank you for saying that. Not very many doctors do. No. And there's actually a spec study done on people who have breast plants. implants showing lower blood flow to their brain. So there's a level of toxicity. I'm friends with

Yolanda Hadid who wrote a book called Believe Me. And she writes about lime and mold and heavy metals. But the one thing that really made the biggest difference was getting her breast implants out. Speck tells you three things. Good activity, too little or too much. And then, And our job, my job, is to balance. So if it's low in activity, you want to stimulate it. If it's high in activity, we want to calm it down. The image on the left is our resident example of a really healthy brain. Not that many people in the world, but have a really healthy brain.

Just make a list of 10 of your friends. And it becomes crystal clear. So the top left image, we're looking underneath the brain. The top is the front part of the brain. The bottom is the back. The bottom right image. we're looking down from the top and then one side, then the other side. That's that head injury. This is the cerebellum back here. These are the terrible looms. The little booty of the, the, the booty of the brain.

The booty of the brain. The booty of the brain. The images on the right, blue is average activity. Red is the top 15%. This is really active. White is the top 8%. And it should be here in the same. That's why it's not my brain and it's not white enough. Here's your brain. For what you have been through, you have a stunningly beautiful brain. Man, it's so... That's mine on the left? That's me? This is you.

It looks like the one that you just showed me, kind of. It does. So, super healthy. Okay. So, you have a beautiful brain. When you leave here, I want you to go, despite the fact that I had a couple of concussions. Because I live mostly a healthy life, and I've really been working hard to get, to feel better. Your brain looks really good.

Now, it can be better. How would you know, based on looking at my brain, if I have damage from a concussion? So you can see right here, that's a concussion. A dent? It's like a... Is it an imbalance, perhaps? And then you can see here, if we go back... to our healthy guy.

Mm-hmm. See how full that is? Okay, okay. And we go here. Okay. It's sort of like it got pinched. Okay, yeah. And your temporal lobes, they're these guys here.

They sit in a cavity. It's called the middle cranial fossa, the temporal fossa, right here, and it's surrounded by bone. And sharp bones. bones. And so at some point when you hit the wall, even with a helmet on, right? Because what do the helmets do? Absorb some of the energy, but still inside your brain does this, because your brain is not anchored inside it floats in water. So going 200 miles an hour and then stop.

Your brain is doing this. So you have a biology. So that's your brain and your body that you you've been working really hard to heal. You have a psychology, your mind, want to train it to help you rather than hurt you. There's a social circle, which is your relationships. And there's a spiritual circle, which is, so what does all this mean? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose?

And I think understanding anybody, you have to understand them in these four circles. And getting them well, getting them, so for you, it's, helping you be optimal, right? It's all four circles. So what are the biological things you can do? What are the psychological things?

So we call it killing ants. That's where EMDR is to reprocess developmental traumas. And I think anybody that's had a big, successful career, it's a lot of little traumas along the way with it. In 1986, I wrote this cool book called The Sabotage Factor. All the ways we mess our stuff. we mess ourselves up from getting what we want. And I created an exercise called the one page miracle.

On one piece of paper, write down what you want. Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. What do you want? And so I did that. And then I've taught all of my patients since then. I want you to do the one page miracle. Because I believe, even though I have worked really hard for a very long time, I'm thinking about

four circles all the time so I don't get burned out and in 40 years I haven't been burned out because it's like balance right so if work is hard and my relationships are okay or my health is okay but I'm always working on all the four circles all the time from a bright mind standpoint what are the things to do so blood flow there's some supplements we can talk about hyper I'd be a huge fan of that for you. I have one at home. I literally have it in my bedroom.

I would use it. How many times have you been in it? I only used it after surgery for like a week. And then I used it the week before my marathon. I guess I don't know the value of sporadic use because it's a soft chamber. So it's just the- I'm a huge fan.

Okay, so any is good. I would go in 40 times. See, that's what I mean. And that's overwhelming because I leave literally every week at some point for a... Yeah, so do it once or twice a week. And that's good? And that's awesome. Okay.

All right, great. And just go target 40. Okay. I have it in my bedroom. Because your brain is awesome. Yeah. But it could be more awesome. Okay.

Great. For toxins, you know, you have your own relationship with alcohol and caffeine. You're not drinking so much. I'm like, you need to stop. And how much caffeine do you drink? I probably drink, I'll just call it two cups a day. Do the other things? things right. If you could make one of them, green tea, that would even be better.

Okay. Because green tea has caffeine. What about macha? Does that substitute? Macha could be better still. Macha is even better than green tea? Great. No, green tea's the best because of the thiaming. Oh, yeah, yeah. Questions? What would you recommend the highest for for brain health overall? Like if there was sort of like a master tablet, like if there was the Ten Commandments, but maybe there was five or three or one, like what is the most healing? These are the 11. So I think of bright minds, blood flow.

How are we going to get you even better blood flow? So exercise, which are already doing. Hyperbaric oxygen, I'm a huge fan of that. Foods that increase blood flow, like feats, cayenne pepper. I mean, if you go, okay, three things, brain envy, you've got to care about it. You have a beautiful brain and it can be power. So I want you every day, this is good for my brain or bad for it. It's good for my brain.

This is going to get me a better brain or not a better brain? Right? I mean, like, I'm totally banged. I want a better brain.