Women are sounding the alarm over the dangerous ‘butt shots’ that rapper Cardi B once favored and which some say left them with a rotting bottom.
Injectable biopolymers, a natural alternative to plastic, aim to give patients a rounder, firmer backside without the stresses of surgery.
And celebrities like Cardi B, Love & Hip Hop Atlanta star K. Michelle and Blac Chyna have all received them at some point.
The types of fillers used to create the fake BBL look are FDA approved, but only for the face, and using them on the buttocks puts people at risk of side effects that injectable developers never anticipate. tested.
Now a growing number of women are having the plastic-like substance removed after serious side effects, including rotting tissue.
Helen Arias thought she was getting vitamin injections to plump her legs. Years later, she discovered that it was biopolymers that were causing her skin to die. Photo courtesy of Ms. Arias
Ms. Arias had to have biopolymers surgically removed from her legs. She was able to visit a celebrated surgeon from Miami for free. Photo courtesy of Ms. Arias
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Helen Arias, 44, was inundated with advertisements for a new type of vitamin injection that claimed to increase fullness in the thighs and buttocks.
The mother-of-two had always been on the thin side and thought the injections would make her bum look fuller.
She visited a clinic in Florida that advertised the injections, but while she thought she was being given vitamins, she was actually being injected with biopolymers.
Ms Arias said: ‘I thought it would give me confidence so I got three shots in each leg.
‘Everything went well and I started exercising and noticed my legs were getting bigger.’
But a year after receiving the injections, she noticed discoloration where they were administered.
She kept an eye on the spots for years but did not visit a doctor for them, even though they gradually worsened.
Ms Arias said: ‘It caused my leg to turn black. It was necrosis – it looked like rotting flesh and there were bumps all over it.
‘I had been looking for answers for years and then a clinic I went to told me I had biopolymers in me – not vitamins.’
Her pain was unbearable. A light bump on the coffee table would bring her to tears. She could not play with her children and even had to tell them not to touch her because of the painful discomfort.
The operation to remove biopolymers from Ms Arias’ legs left her with a huge scar. Photo provided by Ms. Arias
Ms. Arias said she met with Miami-based plastic surgeon Dr. Narayanan Nair, who had not injected the biopolymers years ago. The doctor agreed to remove the small polymer beads accumulating in her lower half for free.
Ms. Arias said that Dr. Nair saved her life.
She said: ‘I had the operation last year and it removed virtually all the biopolymers from my leg.
‘Now that I’ve got it out of my body, I feel better. The discoloration has disappeared and I am starting to get my life back on track.’
Meanwhile, Rosangela Dubraska, 48, from Utah, visited a clinic in Venezuela in 2008 to knowingly receive injections of biopolymers. She was looking for a confidence boost after the changes her body had undergone during her second pregnancy.
She said: ‘The girls at my gym had done biopolymer injections and looked great. So I did it.’
Everything went well for about 10 years. She was happy with her results and she stayed healthy.
But around 2018, her skin started to change color, from red to purple. Her hands swelled, she developed a headache and shooting pain in her pelvis and leg, and she could not sit for long periods of time due to pain in her back.
Mrs Dubraska said: ‘It got so bad I started having insomnia and the only thing that cured the pain was morphine. I asked the doctors for help, but they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.’
Rosangela Dubraska underwent the injections to brighten her butt after her second pregnancy in 2008 and was happy with her results for about 10 years. Then she noticed discoloration around her backside and started experiencing severe pain. Photo courtesy of Ms. Dubraska
Ms Dubraska, pictured here, has had the biopolymers surgically removed and is now completely pain free. Photo courtesy of Ms. Dubraska
Ms Dubraska also visited Dr Nair to help her extreme pain.
Just as he did with Ms. Arias, Dr. Nair performed an MRI and discovered that multiple small balls were embedded in her buttock tissue, causing damage there.
She said, “Dr. Nair confirmed that the biopolymers had spread throughout my body and were causing my pain.”
Dr. Nair performed surgery in February 2024 to remove the small beads of biopolymers, and since then her pain and discoloration have disappeared.
The effects of biopolymers can extend beyond the original injection site and migrate due to sitting, exercise and gravity, which can cause the material to spread to the hips, legs, thighs and lower back.
The lymphatic system can also transport biopolymers to other parts of the body, which can lead to inflammation and the formation of lumps in other parts of the body.
This can cause widespread tissue damage, nerve damage, breathing problems and organ failure.
For example, Ms Rosangela had pain and inflammation in her hands and lower back.
The severe reactions suffered by both women were caused by an insufficient supply of oxygen-rich blood to the tissues in their buttocks and legs, causing tissue death.
When injected into tissues, biopolymers can compress blood vessels, reducing blood flow to the affected area. Insufficient blood supply deprives tissues of oxygen and nutrients, leading to necrosis.
Necrosis can lead to severe inflammation in other parts of the body as the immune system becomes overwhelmed fighting infections. In most cases, this can lead to fever and sepsis, a fatal condition in which the immune system launches a full-scale attack on the body itself while fighting off a bacterial infection.
Sepsis can cause organ failure, memory problems, delirium, muscle weakness, tissue death, skin infections and, in one in five people, death.
Cardi b said: ‘In August I had surgery and removed 95% of my biopolymers… if you don’t know what it is, it’s a bull’s-eye. It was a very crazy process,” she said in an Instagram live video this month. Photo courtesy of her Instagram profile
Rapper Cardi B first spoke out in 2022 about the biopolymers she injected into her buttocks in 2014, but later admitted she had removed about 95 percent of them.
She used her experience to tell a cautionary tale to her fans looking to perk up their butts.
She said: ‘It was a very crazy process. All I’m going to say is that when you’re young, when you’re 19, 20, 21, and sometimes you’re too skinny, and you say, “(Oh my God,) I don’t have enough fat to put in my butt ,” so you (resort) to butt shots, don’t do that!’
In 2018, she revealed that she had received illegal silicone injections (not biopolymer) in her buttocks in a basement in Queens, New York at a discounted price of $800.
The actual number of people opting for filler is unclear, but is likely lower than the approximately 821,000 augmentation procedures with implants and fat grafting performed in 2022.
Cardi B said, “It was the craziest pain ever. I felt like I was going to faint. I felt a little dizzy. And it leaks for about five days.”