Karamo Brown Reveals His Painful Botched Plastic Surgery

“Queer Eye” alum Karamo Brown is opening up to People magazine about “suffering for years” after a botched plastic surgery.

Brown shared that during the COVID-19 pandemic he had gained about 70 lbs. and decided to undergo a buccal fat removal procedure in 2021.

Looking back, Karamo said, "I was a big boy, and everyone online liked to tell me how much of a big boy I was. So, I was like, 'Okay, maybe if I slim out my face, I'll be cute.' It turned into a year and a half of pain."

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, the procedure involves "surgically removing fat pads in the lower cheek.”

The surgery, however, ended up causing scar tissue to build up in his cheeks, which blocked his saliva from draining. As the saliva built up, the scar tissue would also harden.

The 45-year-old added, "For years, people have been like, 'Karamo's had plastic surgery. He has so much filler in his face.’ I was like, 'You know what? I can't say anything because you can't get into fights with the trolls.' But I was suffering for years in pain and no one knew."

He went on to explain, "There'd be times you'd see me smile, and it was tight," he says. "My cheeks would be big because they were full of saliva, full of scar tissue. I was in the worst pain.”

Hosting his now-canceled daytime talk show “Karamo” only exacerbated the issue.

Brown said of thhe show, which launched in 2022, "I would shoot six episodes a day, and there'd be times when I was filming my show that my mouth would get so dry and it would be so swollen.”

The reality star ended up dropping the 70 lbs. to make the botched procedure less noticeable.

"The scar tissue and the saliva were still there, but because I was skinnier, it looked kind of normal," he explained. "I stopped eating because it helped the feeling of not having so much scar tissue."

He confessed, "I felt embarrassed that I did this to myself. I would never do it now, but I couldn't live with the chronic pain anymore. I couldn't live with my mouth swelling up and not being able to talk."

Karamo recently underwent a surgery with Dr. Carl Truesdale to remove the scar tissue and fix his salivary glands.