The actress had difficulty running and experienced joint pain after getting breast implants.
Genevieve Padalecki is opening up how she believes her breast implants affected her health. The 42-year-old actress, who's married to Gilmore Girls alum Jared Padalecki, appeared on Kimberly Van Der Beek and Peggy Rometo's Bathroom Chronicles podcast and discussed what prompted her to get, and then remove, breast implants.
Padalecki, who is mom to Odette, 6, Austin, 9, and Thomas, 11, noted that, after she turned 40, she "had this shift" in her body.
"On one hand, you don't care what anyone thinks, but you're like, 'I miss what I used to look like a bit.' I wanted to just build upon my appearance and just feel good, and I got consults to get breast implants," she explained, adding that she had "many, many consults" before eventually deciding, "I want to look good for me. I want to experience what that feels like and what that looks like."
That's a decision she made despite one doctor warning against it, and did so "aware of the pros and the cons."
"I went back and forth, and then finally decided I wanted to do it," she said. "... I got breast implants done a year and a half ago and I felt great. I felt very sexy. They were the exact same size as my breast used to be before breastfeeding, so it didn't feel that different."
About six to eight months later, however, Padalecki "noticed some changes in my body that didn't feel quite right."
"I'm a big runner. I love to run. I love exercising. It's something that I've done my whole life to cope and deal with stress," she said. "... I noticed that when I would get on the treadmill or I'd go outside and I would jog, I couldn't do it for more than two or three miles before my body would just be like, 'No, we're done.' That was super weird to me. But I was also like well, 'Maybe I'm tired today. I have three kids, my husband works like crazy hours.' I'm not even thinking it correlates."
That went on for "quite a while" until eventually Padalecki realized, "I can't run. This is weird." At that point, other symptoms started developing too.
"I started getting some weird pains in my joints and I would wake up with joint pain where I would like flex my fingers and they would hurt," she said. "... I could power through these symptoms, but it was enough where when I went to my checkup with my doctor."
During that visit, Padalecki's did a breast exam and noticed that her lymph nodes were "really inflamed."
"I didn't feel sick, but my body was just starting to feel really inflamed and it just didn't feel right," she said, noting that it was then that she decided to get her implants removed.
"It's one of those things that's a bit controversial -- I'm not a doctor and I know that there's not yet enough research done on breast implant illness -- but I wanted to get back to running, which I something that's really important to me and I didn't want to get to a place where it got worse," she explained. "So I spoke with a couple of doctors and I ended up just taking them out."
In a "pretty profound" turn of events, two weeks later Padalecki ran six miles, something she hadn't done "in at least a year."
"I have zero joint pain, and my brain fog [was] at a minimum. So, is it related? I feel very different. I feel like I'm in my body. My body is not inflamed. I feel normal. I feel like I can move the way I used to be able to move," she said. "So for me, it was the right decision."
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