Brandi Glanville is finally revealing the cause of her yearslong struggle with what she has described as a face parasite.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 53, told TMZ in an interview published on Wednesday, February 18, that her breast implants, which she got 20 years ago, ruptured, causing silicone to infect her body, including her face.
“I definitely had a parasite. I was shocked because, I mean, honestly, my implants, I’ve had for 20 years almost,” she told a TMZ photographer outside her doctor’s office in Beverly Hills. “They looked fine, they felt fine, the mammogram said they were fine. It wasn’t until I had a sonogram … there is such a thing as breast implant illness. You really should change your breast implants out at 10 years. I just didn’t do it. I’m like, ‘[If] it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’ I learned a really, really hard lesson.”
According to the reality star, her facial disfigurement issues stemmed from her lymph nodes being affected by the breast implant rupture.
“[My breasts] completely ruptured, and I had silicone all over my lymph nodes, and that’s what caused the infection in my face, and [it] couldn’t get out because my lymph nodes were all clogged,” she said.
Glanville said that one of her doctors “took my breast implants out just recently,” and she is already feeling better.
“I feel great. He’s like, ‘Rest.’ I’m like, ‘I can’t rest. I’ve been home for three years,’” she shared.
The experience has been a wake-up call for Glanville, who shares sons Mason, 22, and Jake, 18, with ex-husband Eddie Cibrian.
“I’m not saying don’t do it,” she shared with people who might want to get breast implants. “Everyone, just do it and make sure you stay on top of it. … Keep on checking on it. Even if it looks good and feels good, check ’em.”
Glanville returned to the red carpet in January, debuting a new look after getting to the bottom of her facial disfigurement woes.
In December 2025, she told TMZ that after years of health issues, she’d finally received a diagnosis but did not divulge it at the time.
Glanville has previously said she believes her issues began after filming The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip in Morocco in early 2023. By that summer, she told Entertainment Tonight, she began experiencing issues with her face.
“We had food sitting out for hours on end and some of it was meat. In Morocco,” she told ET in December 2024. “Six months after I got back from Morocco, I started having this speaking thing and the swelling-up thing, it started in July, and we’re still here trying to figure it out.”
Glanville told the outlet that she had spent over $70,000 trying to resolve her health issues.
“Honestly, I have so many doctors and I’ve had so many tests … I did lab work for $10,000,” she said. “I ran every test under the sun. … They’re like, ‘It could be a parasite.’ That’s, you know, new.”
By August 2025, Glanville appeared to be on the road to recovery. At the time, she told Us Weekly exclusively that she was receiving treatment from an infectious disease specialist, Dr. Michael Scoma, for an infection caused by the parasite.
“I always joke my life is like The Last of Us. I’m just turning into one of those black mold people,” Glanville told Us. “That’s how I felt. I have lumps on my face and they’re moving around.”
She added, “Dr. Michael Scoma said he wouldn’t know if there was a parasite or not, because he didn’t treat me early on. But if there was, it would have been gone by now. A lot of this infection, in this deep tissue — the staph infection, and there’s other problems happening — it mimics a parasite. It has this fluid that jumps around your face because it’s spreading.”
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