Did you know that the average toddler laughs 40 times a day, whereas the average 40 year old laughs only 3 times a day? This is from an article in Psychology Today that Dr. Martin has quoted before.
From the recent Probiota Conference in Barcelona, a study with clinical significant results caught Dr. Martin’s eye. The study looked at probiotics and depression and discovered there’s a big connection between the gut and the brain. Those taking broad spectrum probiotics versus the placebo showed big changes in their mental health.
Join Dr. Martin as he teaches on probiotics and shares the 7 biomarkers he looks at when dealing with depression.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
Announcer: You're listening to The Doctor Is In Podcast, brought to you by MartinClinic.com. During the episode, the doctors share a lot of information. As awesome as the info may be, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.
Dr. Martin: Well, good morning, everyone. Once again, welcome to another live this morning. Hope you're having a great, great, great, great start to your day. Okay. Now, there was a conference recently in Barcelona. It was called the Probiota Conference. Out of that came some interesting, uh, research, and it was all about probiotics and the research. And the newest research on probiotics was presented at this conference in Barcelona. But one of the studies that I really, really caught my eye, clinical significant results in mood change with no side effects, and that was with probiotics and depression. Okay? Probiotics and depression. Now, I'm venturing to guess that if we sat a hundred psychiatrists, a hundred psychologists, a hundred medical doctors other than psychiatrists down, and you gave them a survey on depression, I would venture to say out of that group, we got 300 people, and they took a survey. I would venture to say if there would be one or two, I would be shocked if they had, in their toolkit to treat depression, they would even think of probiotics. I'm basing that on an opinion, just they wouldn't even think of it. The gut, and the brain?
And yet, research is coming down the pipeline. The summer of 2022 was not a good summer for, uh, pharmaceuticals and mental health. It, it just wasn't because research actually proved that Alzheimer's was not amyloid plaques. Mental health issues such as depression, the SSRIs were way off the mark. It was a faulty premise. And we talked about, uh, the new studies on bipolar. Now, is that going to translate into any changes? I'm not optimistic. You've got a well-oiled machine, and it's hard to change a leper's spots to get them thinking in another direction. So at this conference, they showed that there's a big connection between the gut and the brain, and with simply using a broad spectrum probiotic. It wasn't a huge study, but it was a, it was a significant study with placebo. The people that were depressed given probiotics versus a group of depressed patients given placebo, the probiotic patients scored enormously well and, and big changes in their depression just using probiotic. Okay? Again, am I optimistic? No. In changing the big picture, no, I'm not. Okay?
I'm not really out to change the world, guys. I'm not. I thank God for the platform that I have, and we do get to a lot of people in terms of our podcast and, you know, Facebook reach and, you know, it's tremendous. But let's face it, are we making a dent? No. So what I do in, in terms of my goal is to educate my audience, give them options, let them think, and depression, and I've always said this, by the way, because you gotta go back a, a long ways and to see how medicine, they separated mental health from overall health. You know, your brain, it was different. Your moods, you know, had nothing to do with your metabolism. And they never looked at the body holistically. They separated psychiatry. And to be honest, nobody has held them to account. Not much has changed in the last 50 years. If you get a diagnosis of depression... well here, here's what we're going to do, you're going to be put on medication. And I'm not saying you should never take medication. I'm not saying that, but I believe medicine has done that because psychiatry in itself has really never had to respond to any real type of public pressure.
You know, in medicine, I was talking about this yesterday, antibiotics, for example, they're overused. But I remember clearly in Canada, in Ontario, specifically, the College of Physicians and Surgeons send out an edict. This is is 10, 15 years ago, telling their doctors, stop overusing antibiotics. Okay? And we still got a big problem, but at least they acknowledge we got a big problem. But in psychiatry, you know, again, with that, looking at a conglomerate of studies, they said, well, SSRIs, they're not working. They're looking for love in the wrong places in August of 2022. But nothing's happened. What did I tell you? In Canada last year, 30 million prescriptions of, uh, SSRIs, the United States, over 300 million prescriptions in one year of SSRIs. They didn't get the memo. And then you have studies and I'm that are showing that if you take a probiotic, it's a very effective treatment for depression. What? Yeah, but again, I digress. I I I, I'm not optimistic about getting a change in, uh, psychiatry, at least for them to consider using probiotics.
You know, depression is a huge, huge problem today. We live in a world, I mean, we have so much advancements in medical and science all together. I mean, the human ingenuity is incredible, isn't it? But here we are in, uh, 2023 and we got more depression than we ever had. I, I might have brought you this quote. I don't know if I did or not. The average toddler, okay, listen to this. Okay? This is from Psychology Today. The average toddler laughs 40 times a day. The average 40 year old laughs three times a day, right? I mean, we live in a crazy world, in a sense. You know, I feel sorry for young people. Everything's coming at 'em. And, you know, it's, there's so much information, but so little peace in our lives. Okay?
Now, let me give you Martin Clinic depression 1 0 1, okay? Martin Clinic, depression 1 0 1, because my experience in practice, I was, um, a tester. Okay? Ask anyone that came to our clinic. I tested biomarkers. We, we actually called it that biomarker testing. Okay? Every patient got all of the biomarkers tested. And what I found in people who suffered from clinical depression, here's what I found. Now, this is not the first time you're going to hear this, but I think it's worth the repetition here. Here's what I found. Okay? I had a protocol based on biomarkers. Okay? What do I mean by that? What were biomarkers? Okay, so in depression, here's what I found. Over 90% had these biomarkers, okay?
One low B12, okay? So a depressed patient. What I saw in their biomarkers was low vitamin B12, almost without exception. Okay? Now that could be because they weren't absorbing it. That could be because they weren't eating red meat. That could be because they have low stomach acidity. And, uh, B12 is a finicky vitamin at the best of times, it's a structurally large vitamin. If you look at it, it's a huge vitamin, okay? In terms of its structure. And almost every medication, with few exceptions, decrease the absorption of B12. So people that are on meds for anything, Metformin being the worst. I was, you know, a diabetes medication. So common they had trouble, low B12.
Now you guys know what I'm gonna say next, that I'm gonna stick to another vitamin. They were low in vitamin D, again, with very few exceptions. Low B12, low vitamin D. And again, why would they be low in vitamin D? Well, to me, it's like a vicious cycle, right? You're depressed. And when you're depressed, you don't want to eat properly. And most people won't get outside, get some vitamin E exercise. They're depressed, their mind is playing tricks on them. Their moods are outta whack. And usually nobody's told them. So they don't realize that one of the greatest therapeutic things they could do for themselves would to be get outside and get some vitderma, get some vitamin D. And if not, I mean, everybody and their dog, even in medicine, understands one thing. There's seasonal depression. It's a medical thing, right? Your dark months. You know, I'm always sort of upset with Floridians because they live in paradise and they're scared of this stinking sun. And, uh, for those who are living in the, uh, northern hemisphere of the world, geez, December, January, February, well, good luck with getting any vitamin D from the sun. And so they're low in vitamin D.
I remember telling a few patients, look, your vitamin D is low. Uh, so? They didn't understand the connection between vitamin D. They understood, oh, vitamin D, my bones, I don't have osteoporosis. Uh, no that's not all vitamin D does, you know? Vitamin D is essential for your brain. Vitamin D is essential for neurotransmitters, vitamin D, B12, vitamin D. Two things that were common, common, common, common. And I'm a simple guy. If you have a deficiency, if a biomarker shows up and it's consistent in depression, well, hello there.
Three, I can't think of I, I've ever seen an exception to this. Leaky gut. They all had leaky gut. There's the connection, probiotics, the brain and dysbiosis. We talked about that so many times. You know, some people think of weaknesses, okay? Like, everybody that's listening to me today has a weakness. We all do. We're not perfect, right? I always tell you my story, my story especially is diabetes, because I not only look like my father, I've got those pre-diabetes genes. It's a weakness. I understand that. But some people, they have a weakness when it comes to their brain, okay? Their neurotransmitters, there's, they, you know, they, they've gotta be on the straight and narrow. Like, like I said, with me, always with diabetes, look, I know I got a weakness in that area. So you better believe, you know, bet your boots that I am very disciplined. I have to be, I love food. I love food. You have no idea.
I don't know if it was, cuz we had 11 kids in our family. I love food and I, but I gotta discipline myself all the time because I know my weaknesses. Does it get easier? Yeah, cuz I, I, I, you know, habits are wonderful things if they're good habits, and I just, you know, I, I just don't add sugar to anything. I don't, you know, I look at cake and I go nah, not for me, maybe for someone else, but it's not for me. Muffins, I love muffins. I'd live on muffins, but nah, you know, <laugh>, I don't do that. I don't do that. I know bacon is better for me in the morning than a piece of toast. Okay? And so that's all I'm saying. We all have weaknesses and some are in that area of mental health. Okay?
So leaky gut, low B12, low vitamin D. Okay? Often low magnesium, low magnesium. And they, nobody ever told them things like this. And magnesium is, uh, you know, I, I used to see it especially in anxiety, but also in depression. You know, the bible's very clear. The anxiety leads to depression. There's always cortisol involved. There's always prolonged cortisol. That was another biomarker. I used to test that in my office every day I would test cortisol. And cortisol is, and in depression, they were as high as a kite in cortisol. It wasn't normal. And that affects the body in so many ways. And it affects your brain because you're in the fight or flight mode. You could unpack a depressive patient and you could, even after the testing, I talked to them and say, well, you know, there's deep seated issues here. What are you stressed over? And a lot of times, you know, there was bitterness or resentment, or look, I knew there was other factors that could cause high cortisol. And high cortisol will throw your body off and it'll throw gasoline because I used to test inflammation. And guess what? Cortisol pores gasoline on the inflammation markers. C R P, C reactive protein. Almost invariably cortisol was high, inflammation was high in a depressive patient.
Now I saved the best for last. Okay? The seventh biomarker, it has to do with food. So you all know what it is. It's called insulin and insulin resistance or high circulating insulin. Again, I can't think, and maybe there was one or two over the years where I saw an exception to this, but nah, the depressive patients had high circulating insulin. Now, if you're depressed, like I said, about going out into the sun and you're not exercising, you're depressed. And when you're depressed, you're a junk eater. When you're depressed, the last thing on your mind is having to prepare or think about eating good food, food that doesn't make your insulin go crazy. And you become usually a carboholic. A sugarholic. And a lot of that goes way back to their childhood. Living on sugar, living on those seed oils, living on the middle aisles of the grocery store from cookies to you name it.
Somebody asked me the other day about ketchup, and I said, what about it? And they said, well, there's a, you know, it's tomatoes. It's tomatoes with high fructose corn syrup. I said, you know what, you know, uh, about, uh, three ounces, this would be about three ounces of ketchup. You know, they put in a little container, if you ever been to a restaurant or whatever, they put, instead of taking the ketchup out or whatever, you go to a fast food or they give you a little, a little sleeve of ketchup. You know what, there's more sugar in there, high fructose corn syrup, than there is in a glazed donut. What? Yeah, well, kids, you know, they live on that stuff. And that's another thing I gave up. I haven't had ketchup, I don't know, in 50 years or more. And I mean it, I I understand nutrition. I said, I can't, I I can't have that. Well, neither can you and neither can your kids or grandchildren when you really think about it, it's crazy. But all I'm saying is they're surrounded by that. I feel sorry for people today. We're surrounded by these things. Nothing's natural anymore it seems.
But okay, let's get back to depression. Insulin resistance. Guys, when you look at a brain, okay, you know me, I like to make it simple. There's the memory center of the brain, your hippocampus, and there's your hormonal center of your brain, which is your hypothalamus. Okay? Keep it simple. Two memory hormones. Okay? Now the brain though has so many battery packs. What are those called? What are your battery packs called? You know, high school? Someone give it to me and then I'll keep going. <laugh>. Okay, let's wait. Okay, just give you a little test. Somebody, real Rosa, I'm stopping there cuz I know you all know it. Mitochondria in your brain. Listen, there's more mitochondria in your brain... battery packs. Why? I always told you this, the brain is the federal government, they get taxes first. No matter what you eat, 25% goes to the brain. Why? Because the brain needs a lot of energy to work. The problem with the mitochondria is they produce a lot of energy. Those they need a lot of energy, but we feed the brain the wrong food. Your brain, mitochondria are looking for eggs, meat, and cheese. And we're giving it sugar and seed oils. That's what we're feeding our mitochondria in the brain. No wonder there's so much depression. So, no wonder those neurotransmitters in your brain, they'll operate, but they're not gonna operate well.
And those little neurotransmitters in the brain get affected by food. Big time. What kind of energy are you giving the brain? And so for me, in the protocol, okay? Let me finish with this. My protocol was fix all those biomarkers. And guess what? Always started with food. Always. You gotta start in the kitchen with depression. Not gonna be easy because when you're depressed, you don't feel like even thinking about eating properly. But if a doctor sits you down and says, look, this is your medicine. You have to follow the protocol even when you don't feel like it. Follow the protocol every day. Do what I tell you to do. Pretend I went home with you and I'm that little voice on your shoulder saying hello. If you want to get better, you got to eat right. Make the right choices. Supplement with probiotics. You need B12, get out in the sun or take vitamin D every day. Your brain is depending on it. Inflammation will come down because of your food choices. And I often gave them high DHA.
Anyways, guys, I thought I would do that today. Just bring you that study out of the conference in Barcelona. I flagged it. I said, man, that's interesting. Not surprising, but interesting. Okay, guys. Okay, <laugh>, what is Friday? Question and answer. So be ready. Okay? Be ready. And we, we'll, um, we're gonna have a, uh, great rest of the week. So we love you guys. We'll talk to you soon.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!