Your body has to work hard to heal from surgery, whether you've had a breast augmentation, breast lift, or a tummy tuck. This is why you will likely find yourself feeling fatigued in the days following your surgery.
You can expect to feel better and stronger each day, although you may need pain medicine for a week or two. You may get tired easily or have less energy than usual. This may last for several weeks after surgery.
Patients with breast implant illness often complain of feeling overly fatigued all day and not having the energy they used to have before getting implants. Patients with this symptom often complain of “brain fog” or light, consistent confusion.
Surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy all may cause fatigue. Many medicines used to treat breast cancer affect both healthy cells and cancer cells. You may feel fatigue as your body works to repair or replace damaged healthy cells.
Breast implant illness describes a wide range of symptoms from fatigue to chronic joint and muscle pain that a small number of women experience after getting breast implants. More than 365,000 women received breast implants in 2021, a 44% increase from the year before.
Softening of Implants
After the surgery, your breast implants will feel high set and hard. These are not the results of the procedure. The softening process or fluffing lasts anywhere between eight to 24 weeks. Any longer than this will require medical intervention.
Three months: You should feel a lot better now, though some people may experience intermittent fatigue. Six months: By now, post-surgical fatigue should be resolved entirely. Talk to your healthcare provider if you are still dealing with low energy.
It is quite common to feel fatigued after surgery, regardless of whether it was a minor or major procedure. This is because your body expends a lot of energy afterward trying to heal. There is an immune response that kicks in, which can be physically draining as well.
The surgery itself causes tissue injury. After surgery, your body undergoes repair and recovery, which drives a higher baseline metabolic rate and draws on your nutrient stores. So it isn't surprising such intense activity at a cellular level results in feeling tired after surgery.
Additionally, some patients receiving breast implants have reported a variety of systemic symptoms such as joint pain, muscle aches, confusion, chronic fatigue, autoimmune diseases, and others. Individual patient risk for developing these symptoms has not been well established.
An Improved Quality of Life
New research released this year shows that satisfactory breast augmentation results can lead to significant improvements in the patient's quality of life. This means a woman can experience a marked boost in her own confidence levels, self-esteem, and self-worth.
Risks associated with breast implants
The following complications occur in at least 1 percent of breast implant patients at any time. Some of these complications will require medical treatment or further surgery to correct them: asymmetry regarding shape, size, or level of the breasts. pain in the nipple or breast area.
It's normal to have some discomfort after undergoing breast augmentation surgery. But which day is the most painful? Research suggests that the first 24 hours post-surgery may be the most challenging for women, but there are ways to make the process as seamless as possible.
Complete Rest: 2 Days
You don't require strict bed rest after breast augmentation. In fact, it's important for you to get up and walk around to help blood circulation and expand your lungs.
If the swelling persists severely and your breasts feel very warm or have the feeling of engorgement, it's important to contact your surgeon immediately as these are common signs of bleeding and infection.
People can often remain in bed for days or even weeks after surgery. This can lead to a lack of energy and fatigue. It is vital that you begin moving quickly and trying to exercise. Basic movements and exercise help rebuild muscle strength and improve your blood circulation.
Here's a list of 7 main causes of fatigue after surgery: surgical stress, blood loss, medications, pain after surgery, energy of healing, dietary changes, and sleep disturbance. Undergoing even a minor procedure puts a big stress on your body.
You might be surprised by how much faster you heal when you allow yourself to get extra sleep when you most need it. The same is true when recovering from an injury or surgery.
Tiredness, exhaustion, or severe and prolonged fatigue are common after surgery – even minor surgery. This is, in part, due to the effects of anesthesia, which often wear off more slowly in older people.
Uncomplicated major surgery is followed by a pronounced increased feeling of fatigue extending throughout the first month in about one-third of patients.
Your body will take up to a week to completely eliminate the medicines from your system but most people will not notice much effect after about 24 hours. For this reason, we ask you to refrain from making important decisions or from driving a car for 24 hours after your surgery.
If you're worried about your breast implants not dropping after 6 months, don't panic. There are various factors playing into this process as mentioned above, such as the tightness of your pectoral muscles and the size and material of your implant. Your implants will continue to shift after the 6-month mark.
If your breast implants are taking longer than expected to settle into place, don't panic. There are several reasons why this process may take longer. Smaller, lighter implants, for example, may take longer than heavier implants to drop and fluff, as heavier implants have extra help from gravity to do the trick.
Studies have shown that somewhere between 5% and 10% of dental implants fail. On the other hand, that means that there is between a 90% and 95% success rate, which are very good odds in terms of dental and medical procedures.