Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stump Mom Never Told You?
Speaker 1: From housetop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. All Right, Molly, you and
Speaker 1: I are talking about breasting plants today and sometimes and
Speaker 1: sometimes we like to start off our podcast with a
Speaker 1: little personal anecdote about the subject you're talking about. But
Speaker 1: you know what, Molly, I'm gonna spare you any breast
Speaker 1: related personal stories of mine because I'm not in the
Speaker 1: mood for an awkward silence this morning. So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna dive, right, And I think it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that when it comes to, uh, you know, the bus line,
Speaker 1: the conversation with our mom's probably extends to maybe getting training,
Speaker 1: bra talking about sizes, you know, maybe consolation if they
Speaker 1: aren't growing too fast or too fast, whatever case. Maybe
Speaker 1: just kind of general stuff. Although breast implants are becoming
Speaker 1: a more common graduation present, that's true, So you might
Speaker 1: have the kind of mom who does discuss with you
Speaker 1: breast implants. But my mom didn't back in the day,
Speaker 1: I don't think yet. It was wasn't really an option
Speaker 1: on the table, so the operating table, nice pun, Molly.
Speaker 1: But today breast implants are the most common cosmetic procedure,
Speaker 1: followed up by rhinoplasty a k A. Nose jobs and liposuption.
Speaker 1: And speaking of breast and plants, well, I think this
Speaker 1: would be a good time for you to tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about Japanese prostitute. Right. That's not actually
Speaker 1: as awkward to transition as it might sound at first,
Speaker 1: because the whole story of breast implants started with Japanese
Speaker 1: prostitutes in the nineties. Uh. These women would inject substances
Speaker 1: like paraffin or sponge into their breast to increase the
Speaker 1: size of their bust line because they're trying to appeal
Speaker 1: to all the g I s who were overseas during
Speaker 1: World War Two. So we owe all of these um
Speaker 1: boob jobs for lack of a better word, to Japanese prostitutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so fast forwarding them to nineteen sixty two, we have
Speaker 1: a little lady named Timmy Jean Lindsay who became the
Speaker 1: first woman to undergo breast augmentation surgery using silicone breast implants.
Speaker 1: And from there the whole industry has evolved. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is kind of hard to talk about because people have
Speaker 1: mixed feelings about this surgery. You know, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of people who think that you should just embrace the
Speaker 1: way you are and be happy with that. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of people who will say, you know, the best
Speaker 1: augmentation surgery was the best thing that ever happened to them.
Speaker 1: They have tons of confidence, they feel better about themselves.
Speaker 1: It's very you know, people will find diseas as they
Speaker 1: try and link this too. They'll try and find self
Speaker 1: esteem as shoes they can link into. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what we wanted to talk about to day with
Speaker 1: a very scary question our breasts implants linked with suicide?
Speaker 1: And this sounds sounds pretty doom and gloom. Uh sounds
Speaker 1: and you can't get any worse, I think with side
Speaker 1: effects than suicide. Yeah, so the reason why we're asking
Speaker 1: this question is, Uh, there was a study published in
Speaker 1: the August two thousand seven issue of the Annals of
Speaker 1: Plastic Surgery that found a pretty strong link between women
Speaker 1: who get breast i plants and then later commit suicide.
Speaker 1: Write what they did in this experiment. They followed about
Speaker 1: thirty five hundred Swedish women who had had breast enhancement
Speaker 1: procedures between nineteen sixty five and n and you know,
Speaker 1: they ignored women who needed reconstructive surgeries. But we're choosing
Speaker 1: to augment their breast for purely cosmetic reasons. They were
Speaker 1: just dissatisfied with their bus size. And so out of
Speaker 1: that thirty d well three thousand, five d seven women
Speaker 1: to be exact, twenty four committed suicide down the road.
Speaker 1: And this was the study tracked them from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five to nine, and uh, that suicide rate is three
Speaker 1: times higher then among the general population, sort of startling
Speaker 1: three times that's pretty that's pretty huge. That's pretty huge.
Speaker 1: But the reason it's important that they followed them for
Speaker 1: so long is they wouldn't commit suicide until ten years
Speaker 1: after they had the surgery, exactly. It wasn't like they
Speaker 1: were going getting their breasts augmented, coming home, recovering, and
Speaker 1: then killing themselves. It was much more nuanced than that.
Speaker 1: Right ten to nineteen years after the surgery, the suicide
Speaker 1: rate was about four point five times greater than women
Speaker 1: in the general population, and then twenty years or more
Speaker 1: it becomes six times higher. So it's basically, as time
Speaker 1: goes on, these women are committing suicide. Why would that
Speaker 1: be Well, Molly, I think that you have to take
Speaker 1: into account other factors in these women's lives. I don't
Speaker 1: think you know, it's this whole issue of correlation is
Speaker 1: not causation. It's not saying that, you know, maybe the
Speaker 1: silicone in these breasts implants was leaking to their brains
Speaker 1: causing to commit suicide or anything like that. Um. For instance,
Speaker 1: fourteen women in the study died from drug or alcohol abuse,
Speaker 1: which indicates there might have been some more deep seated
Speaker 1: problems going on, right, And that rate, it's only fourteen women,
Speaker 1: but within that control group, that's three times higher than
Speaker 1: the average of the general population. So just these very
Speaker 1: small numbers represent huge leaps above what the general populations
Speaker 1: got going on. Yeah, and you might be thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is one study isolated to Sweden. I mean, are
Speaker 1: we just blowing this way out of proportion. Well, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just one study. There are actually five other studies
Speaker 1: in addition to the one that we were talking about,
Speaker 1: that consistently found this link between breasts implants and a
Speaker 1: higher suicide rate. Suicide rate between two and three times
Speaker 1: higher than than the general population. And within all of
Speaker 1: these these researchers found that the women with breasts implants
Speaker 1: more often had problems with alcohol and drugs, and were
Speaker 1: more likely to be divorced, which are all factors that
Speaker 1: can contribute to suicide, right And interestingly to me, compared
Speaker 1: to one who get other cosmetic procedures, you know, such
Speaker 1: as the nose job, women who receive breast implants are
Speaker 1: almost twice as likely to have been admitted to a
Speaker 1: psychiatric hospital at some point. But like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: plenty of women who get breasts implants will report that
Speaker 1: they feel a lot better about themselves, they have a
Speaker 1: more positive self image, So certainly we can't conclude that
Speaker 1: breast implants are some totally evil, evil things that women
Speaker 1: are doing to themselves, right. So what studies like these
Speaker 1: have demonstrated to doctors and people in the field is
Speaker 1: that perhaps we need better screening before women can have
Speaker 1: these procedures, because even if they hadn't gotten the procedure,
Speaker 1: they may have still committed suicide. And I think what
Speaker 1: they're trying to look into is what uh body image
Speaker 1: issues did these women have? What self esteem issues? Might
Speaker 1: they have had that would have led them to commit suicide, right, Molly.
Speaker 1: I think it's important when we're talking about these psychological
Speaker 1: issues surrounding plastic surgery, we can't project the mental health
Speaker 1: issues of individuals to the entire population of breast implant patients. UM,
Speaker 1: we do have to point out that statistically, around fifteen
Speaker 1: pc of people who do get elective plastic surgeries suffered
Speaker 1: from something called body dysmor fit disorder, which causes you
Speaker 1: to obsess over specific body parts and have an have
Speaker 1: an unhealthy perception of your body. Right, and so I
Speaker 1: can you know, you just think you're uglier disfasure, which
Speaker 1: might be what leads you to get the cosmetic surgery,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to fix that sort of you know,
Speaker 1: thing in your brain that's telling you, you know, that
Speaker 1: things aren't right, which maybe why there's that tenure gap
Speaker 1: that we were talking about when we were you know,
Speaker 1: emphasizing the fact that was ten years later and maybe
Speaker 1: that these surgeries made women feel better for a short time,
Speaker 1: but they still couldn't overcome that negative self image. Right.
Speaker 1: It was just sort of like a temporary band aid
Speaker 1: that you know that wasn't gonna last, and I think
Speaker 1: it's important to bring up as well a study on
Speaker 1: breast implant psychology that was conducted by a professor of
Speaker 1: surgery at the University of California that sort of debunked
Speaker 1: this idea of breast implant patients having some kind of
Speaker 1: pathological psychological disorder. The researcher found that as a whole,
Speaker 1: breast implant patients don't have a lower body image than
Speaker 1: the general population. They just have maybe more dissatisfaction with
Speaker 1: with their bus lines, just are really hung They might
Speaker 1: like their legs, they might think they have a really
Speaker 1: cute face, but they just, you know, they just feel
Speaker 1: too small. Right. So we're not saying everyone who gets
Speaker 1: this surgery is depressed and it's going to commit suicide.
Speaker 1: That's not what we're endorsing today. But what the Swedish
Speaker 1: study that we were talking about earlier has led people
Speaker 1: to think is that there just needs to be better
Speaker 1: screening before women are dergo plastic surgery. Right. I think
Speaker 1: most of the the most important outcome of all these studies,
Speaker 1: like you said, is um recognizing this need for pre
Speaker 1: surgery psychological screens and also following these women after surgery.
Speaker 1: I mean if you have a patient who is continually
Speaker 1: coming in for more and more procedures, there might be
Speaker 1: a pretty big red flag that something else is going on,
Speaker 1: that this person is actually endangering themselves. So on that
Speaker 1: sobering note, if you do want to learn more about
Speaker 1: breast implants, we have a wonderful article how breast implants work.
Speaker 1: It is very detailed as many pictures. We were going
Speaker 1: to discuss how breast implants a prens body, but you've
Speaker 1: got to see these pictures. I'm a visual learner. They helped.
Speaker 1: They might not be safe for work, but all the same,
Speaker 1: they're on our site. And the article our breast implants
Speaker 1: linked to suicide, written by Jacob Silverman, is also at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. But morely, before we go,
Speaker 1: I think we need to read some really happy your
Speaker 1: email to to sort of balance out this sort of
Speaker 1: sobering a more depressing podcast episode. Yeah, we've got some
Speaker 1: happy listener mail to share with you today. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: need to offer our congratulations to our listener Shane, who
Speaker 1: is getting married this month, and he wrote in after
Speaker 1: listening to our podcast on diamonds and he wanted to
Speaker 1: tell us a very sweet story about how he designed
Speaker 1: a one of a kind engagement ring for his soon
Speaker 1: to be wife. Right, so, Shane listened to our Diamonds
Speaker 1: really a Girl's best Friend, and before he was going
Speaker 1: to pop the question, he knew he needed a ring,
Speaker 1: but he didn't think that diamonds were a girl's best friend.
Speaker 1: He thought they were very impersonal, boring. You know. He
Speaker 1: was on track with what we were talking about on
Speaker 1: that podcast. So what he did, he wanted something more personal,
Speaker 1: and he and his fiance like hiking, so they had
Speaker 1: gone to uh moab Utah to climb together, and then
Speaker 1: without her knowing, he climbed back up the hill and
Speaker 1: got a rock from the tower they had climbed, and
Speaker 1: he took it to a jeweler. Yeah, I'm picking it
Speaker 1: up in there. I'll pick it up from here. Um.
Speaker 1: So he took the rock to a jeweler, and at
Speaker 1: first Shane was upset because he wanted to get a
Speaker 1: piece of calcite out of the rock, but the jewelers
Speaker 1: said that calcite was too soft, and then uh the
Speaker 1: rock also could stain some sandstone, which was also too
Speaker 1: soft to make a ring out of it. So the
Speaker 1: jeweler said that he would grind the rock down and
Speaker 1: see if there was anything hard inside of it, and
Speaker 1: lo and behold there was a layer of natural onyx
Speaker 1: that was usable for a ring. And so he got
Speaker 1: the onyx, set it in white gold, and then repelled
Speaker 1: out of the rafters of the dance club that his
Speaker 1: fiance DJs at and proposed to her. It's it's a
Speaker 1: really cool story, and she said, yes I would after
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, And he sent us a photo of
Speaker 1: the ring, and Shane, if you're listening, hit us gorgeous.
Speaker 1: So congratulations to Shane. Shane is living proof that more
Speaker 1: than diamonds can be a girl's best friend. Nice one, Molly,
Speaker 1: So if you have any questions, comments, or colorful anecdotes
Speaker 1: you would like to send our way, feel free to
Speaker 1: email me and Molly at mom stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for moral thiss and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff works dot com brought to you
Speaker 1: by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, Are
Speaker 1: you