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to Stump Mom Never Told You? From

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housetop works dot Com.

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Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen

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and I'm Molly. All Right, Molly, you

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and I are talking about breasting plants

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today and sometimes and

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sometimes we like to start off our podcast

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with a little personal anecdote about

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the subject you're talking about. But you know what, Molly,

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I'm gonna spare you any breast related

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personal stories of mine because

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I'm not in the mood for an awkward silence this

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morning. So I'm just gonna

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dive, right, And I think it's safe to say that when

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it comes to, uh, you know, the

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bus line, the conversation

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with our mom's probably extends to maybe getting

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training, bra talking about sizes,

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you know, maybe consolation if they aren't

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growing too fast or too fast, whatever

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case. Maybe just kind of general

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stuff. Although breast

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implants are becoming a more

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common graduation present, that's

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true, So you might have the kind of mom who does discuss

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with you breast implants. But my mom didn't

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back in the day, I don't think yet. It was wasn't

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really an option on the table, so

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the operating table, nice

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pun, Molly. But today

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breast implants are the most common

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cosmetic procedure, followed up by rhinoplasty

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a k A. Nose jobs and liposuption.

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And speaking of breast

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and plants, well, I think this would be a good time for you to tell

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us a little bit about Japanese

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prostitute. Right. That's not

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actually as awkward to transition

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as it might sound at first, because the whole

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story of breast implants started with

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Japanese prostitutes in the nineties.

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Uh. These women would inject substances

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like paraffin or sponge into their

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breast to increase the size of their bust

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line because they're trying to appeal

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to all the g I s who were overseas

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during World War Two. So we

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owe all of these um

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boob jobs for lack of a better word, to Japanese

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prostitutes. Yeah, so fast forwarding

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them to nineteen sixty two, we have

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a little lady named Timmy Jean Lindsay

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who became the first woman to undergo breast

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augmentation surgery using silicone

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breast implants. And from there

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the whole industry has evolved.

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Yeah, this is kind of hard to talk about because people have

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mixed feelings about this surgery. You know, there are plenty

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of people who think that you should just embrace the way you

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are and be happy with that.

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There are plenty of people who will say, you know, the

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best augmentation surgery was the best thing that

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ever happened to them. They have tons of confidence,

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they feel better about themselves. It's

2:51

very you know, people

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will find diseas as they try and link this too.

2:56

They'll try and find self esteem as shoes they can

2:58

link into. And that's kind of what we wanted to talk about to day

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with a very scary question our

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breasts implants linked with suicide?

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And this sounds sounds pretty doom and

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gloom. Uh sounds and you can't

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get any worse, I think with side

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effects than suicide. Yeah, so

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the reason why we're asking this question is,

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Uh, there was a study

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published in the August two

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thousand seven issue of the

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Annals of Plastic Surgery that found

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a pretty strong link between women

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who get breast i plants and

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then later commit suicide.

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Write what they did in this experiment. They followed

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about thirty five hundred Swedish women

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who had had breast enhancement procedures

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between nineteen sixty five and n and

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you know, they ignored women who needed reconstructive

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surgeries. But we're choosing to

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augment their breast for purely cosmetic reasons.

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They were just dissatisfied with their bus size. And

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so out of that thirty d

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well three thousand, five d seven

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women to be exact, twenty

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four committed suicide down the road.

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And this was the study tracked them from

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nineteen sixty five to nine, and

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uh, that suicide rate is three

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times higher then among

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the general population, sort of startling

4:16

three times that's pretty that's pretty huge. That's pretty

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huge. But the reason it's important that they followed them for

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so long is they wouldn't commit suicide until

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ten years after they had the surgery, exactly.

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It wasn't like they were going getting their breasts

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augmented, coming home, recovering, and then killing

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themselves. It was much more nuanced

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than that. Right ten to nineteen

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years after the surgery, the suicide rate was

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about four point five times greater than women

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in the general population, and then twenty

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years or more it becomes six times higher.

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So it's basically, as time goes on, these

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women are committing suicide. Why

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would that be Well, Molly, I think

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that you have to take into account

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other factors in these women's lives.

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I don't think you know, it's this whole issue of

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correlation is not causation. It's

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not saying that, you know, maybe the silicone

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in these breasts implants was leaking to their

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brains causing to commit suicide or anything like

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that. Um. For instance,

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fourteen women in the study died from

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drug or alcohol abuse, which indicates

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there might have been some more deep

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seated problems going on, right, And

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that rate, it's only fourteen women,

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but within that control group, that's

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three times higher than the average of the general

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population. So just these very small numbers

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represent huge leaps

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above what the general populations got going on.

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Yeah, and you might be thinking, Okay, this

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is one study isolated to

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Sweden. I mean, are we just

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blowing this way out of proportion. Well,

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it wasn't just one study. There are actually five

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other studies in addition to the one that we

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were talking about, that consistently

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found this link between breasts implants

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and a higher suicide rate. Suicide

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rate between two and three times higher

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than than the general population. And

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within all of these these researchers

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found that the women with breasts

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implants more often had problems with alcohol

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and drugs, and were more likely to be divorced,

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which are all factors that can contribute

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to suicide, right And

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interestingly to me, compared to one

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who get other cosmetic procedures, you know,

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such as the nose job, women who receive

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breast implants are almost twice as likely to have

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been admitted to a psychiatric hospital at some

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point. But like you mentioned earlier, plenty

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of women who get breasts implants will report

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that they feel a lot better about themselves,

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they have a more positive self image, So

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certainly we can't conclude that breast implants

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are some totally

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evil, evil things that women are doing to

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themselves, right. So what studies

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like these have demonstrated to

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doctors and people in the field is that

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perhaps we need better screening

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before women can have these

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procedures, because even if they

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hadn't gotten the procedure, they

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may have still committed suicide. And I think

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what they're trying to look into is what uh

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body image issues did these women have? What

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self esteem issues? Might they have had that would

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have led them to commit suicide, right,

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Molly. I think it's important when we're talking about

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these psychological issues surrounding plastic

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surgery, we can't project

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the mental health issues of

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individuals to the entire population

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of breast implant

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patients. UM, we do have

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to point out that statistically,

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around fifteen pc of people who do

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get elective plastic surgeries suffered from something

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called body dysmor fit disorder,

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which causes you to obsess over

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specific body parts and have an have

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an unhealthy perception of

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your body. Right, and so I can you

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know, you just think you're uglier disfasure, which might be

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what leads you to get the cosmetic surgery,

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but it's not going to fix that sort

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of you know, thing in your brain that's telling

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you, you know, that things aren't right, which maybe

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why there's that tenure

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gap that we were talking about when we were you

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know, emphasizing the fact that was ten years later

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and maybe that these surgeries made

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women feel better for a short time, but they still

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couldn't overcome that negative self image. Right.

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It was just sort of like a temporary band aid that

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you know that wasn't gonna last, and I think it's

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important to bring up as well a

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study on breast implant psychology that

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was conducted by a professor of surgery at

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the University of California that sort

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of debunked this idea of

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breast implant patients having some kind

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of pathological psychological

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disorder. The researcher found that as

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a whole, breast implant

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patients don't have a lower body

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image than the general population. They

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just have maybe more dissatisfaction

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with with their bus lines, just are really

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hung They might like their legs, they might think they have a really

8:44

cute face, but they just, you know, they just

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feel too small. Right. So we're not saying everyone

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who gets this surgery is depressed and it's going to commit

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suicide. That's not what we're endorsing today.

8:53

But what the Swedish study that we were talking

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about earlier has led people to think is that there just

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needs to be better screening before women

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are dergo plastic surgery. Right. I think most

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of the the most important outcome

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of all these studies, like you said, is

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um recognizing this need

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for pre surgery psychological

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screens and also following these women

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after surgery. I mean if you have a patient

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who is continually coming in for more and

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more procedures, there might be a

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pretty big red flag that something else is

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going on, that this person is actually endangering

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themselves. So on

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that sobering note, if you do want to learn more

9:30

about breast implants, we have a wonderful

9:33

article how breast implants work. It

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is very detailed as many pictures.

9:38

We were going to discuss how breast implants

9:40

a prens body, but you've got to see these pictures. I'm

9:42

a visual learner. They helped. They might not be

9:44

safe for work, but all the same, they're on our site. And

9:47

the article our breast implants linked to suicide,

9:50

written by Jacob Silverman, is also at how stuff

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works dot com. But morely, before

9:54

we go, I think we

9:56

need to read some really

9:58

happy your email to to

10:01

sort of balance out this sort of sobering

10:03

a more depressing podcast episode.

10:09

Yeah, we've got some happy listener mail to

10:11

share with you today. Yeah, we need to offer our

10:13

congratulations to our listener

10:16

Shane, who is getting

10:18

married this month, and he wrote in after

10:21

listening to our podcast on diamonds

10:23

and he wanted to tell us a

10:27

very sweet story about how he designed

10:30

a one of a kind engagement ring for

10:32

his soon to be wife. Right, so, Shane

10:35

listened to our Diamonds really a Girl's best

10:37

Friend, and before he was going to pop the question,

10:39

he knew he needed a ring, but he didn't think

10:41

that diamonds were a girl's best friend. He thought they were very

10:43

impersonal, boring. You

10:46

know. He was on track with what we were talking about

10:48

on that podcast. So what he did,

10:50

he wanted something more personal, and he and

10:52

his fiance like hiking, so

10:55

they had gone to uh moab Utah

10:57

to climb together, and then without

11:00

her knowing, he climbed back up the hill

11:02

and got a rock from the tower they had climbed,

11:04

and he took it to a jeweler. Yeah,

11:07

I'm picking it up in there. I'll pick it up from here. Um.

11:10

So he took the rock to a jeweler, and

11:12

at first Shane was upset because he

11:14

wanted to get a piece of calcite

11:16

out of the rock, but the jewelers

11:19

said that calcite was too soft, and then

11:21

uh the rock also could stain some sandstone,

11:24

which was also too soft to make a ring

11:26

out of it. So the jeweler said that he would grind the

11:28

rock down and see if there was anything hard inside

11:31

of it, and lo and behold

11:35

there was a layer of natural onyx

11:37

that was usable for a ring. And

11:39

so he got the onyx, set

11:41

it in white gold, and then repelled

11:44

out of the rafters of the dance

11:46

club that his fiance DJs

11:48

at and proposed to her. It's

11:51

it's a really cool story, and she

11:53

said, yes I would after all

11:55

that. Yeah, And he sent us a photo of the ring, and

11:57

Shane, if you're listening, hit us gorgeous.

12:00

So congratulations to Shane. Shane

12:02

is living proof that more than diamonds

12:04

can be a girl's best friend. Nice one, Molly,

12:07

So if you have any questions,

12:09

comments, or colorful anecdotes

12:11

you would like to send our way, feel free

12:13

to email me and Molly at mom stuff at

12:16

how stuff works dot com

12:21

for moral thiss and thousands of other topics.

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