Calcium is a very important mineral for your body, and it's not just for bones. Dr. Martin says it’s better to get calcium through your food and not by supplementing, as it doesn't get to its intended destination this way.
Dr. Martin looked at a study on bioavailability, which is a fancy word for how much nutrients our body can absorb. If you ate a bowl of spinach, which has 115 milligrams of calcium, only 5% of that is getting absorbed. Whereas if you take a single piece of cheese, to get the same bioavailability, you’d need to consume 16 cups of spinach!
Join Dr. Martin as he teaches on bioavailability in today’s episode, to help you better understand the nutritional needs of your body.
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, and it's always good to be with you. Okay, now, before I get into a couple of studies, that I want to talk to you about. One of them is on coffee. You ever heard of it? The true vitamin C. New study just came out. We'll talk about that in a minute, but the other day, okay, I was doing a zoom webinar for a group in San Francisco. I left my heart... Now you guys got to be my age to even remember that song. Okay? I Left My Heart in San Francisco. Anyway, we had a great session, whatever, but one guy just sort of challenged my, and I just had to think about it afterward. He said, I don't like guys that have simple answers. Here's what he actually said. I don't like guys that have simple answers to complex questions.
Well, one thing I admit is health is very complex, okay? There's a lot there. The human body, when you look at the detail, how your body works, how it operates. Every cell in your body and the DNA and the telomeres, and your self-cleaning oven of the brain, the glial cells and all, and I thought about what he said. How can you give simplistic answers to complex questions? Well, I said, look, I've been around a long time. Now, I understand that when I give an answer to something, I'm not maybe being as complete as I want to be. And I was talking about metabolic syndrome, which I talk about it seems like on a daily basis today. And what have I been telling you about metabolic syndrome? That it is at the root of every chronic disease that we have from heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, autoimmune, those five categories.
So I'm not talking about infection. I'm not talking about car accidents, you get killed. But what I'm saying is, okay, at the end of the day, here's what I'm saying, is that metabolic syndrome is at the root of chronic diseases. And 93%, used to be 88, which was shocking. It's worse. The world's not getting better guys. In terms of health, it's getting worse. With all the advancements in science, and there have been many, we're getting worse. We're not healthier, we're worse. There's more cancer, there's more heart disease, there's more Alzheimer's, more diabetes. There is more obesity. There is more autoimmune than ever before. And what I do with that is I ask a question... why?
Okay, now, I read something the other day, I like it, on discernment. Okay, discernment. I like this. It's the ability to penetrate beneath the surface of life and see things as they really are. Okay? So do you like that? I like that. Okay. What is discernment? Well, it's obviously a part of wisdom, right? And it says this, okay, I like it. I just like it. When I read it, I memorized it because I liked the definition of it. Discernment is the ability to penetrate beneath the surface of life and see things as they really are. And when I read that, I was thinking about the criticism and it was legitimate of my talk. It was a legitimate criticism. But I thought about it afterwards and I said, well, yeah, it's simplistic. It's simplistic, but my job is to go beneath the surface of health, our so-called health and see things as they really are. Okay? And I think you would agree with me that on a daily basis, I try and bring you behind the scenes of what is really happening in our world of so-called healthcare. And I've said it to you and I've said it to you and I've said it to you. We don't have a healthcare system. We have a disease care system. Our system, generally, gets started when somebody is sick. Right?
I mean, even a physician interpreting blood work, the way they've been trained is... If you have high blood pressure, for example, okay, that's not blood work, but it's a biomarker, it's a vital sign. Your blood pressure's up. Let's bring it down. Here's a pill. Okay? "But doc, why do I have high blood pressure? Why?" Isn't that a better question? And so what I feel my mission is, is to bring you behind the scenes. And if someone has high blood pressure or high triglycerides, which medicine barely even looks at, I don't even look at it. You know how many times? Well, you guys, you give me feedback all the time. I mean, I was always, I'm not going to say shocked because it was hard to shock me, but I used to tell my patients, when you're getting blood work done, ask your doctor, okay, if your triglycerides are high, ask them, why is that happening?
Or I have a low HDL. They don't even look at it. So you have low HDL. You want low cholesterol, don't you? Nah. Because when we bring you behind the scenes, I tell you the truth about cholesterol. I tell you the truth about it. I tell you the truth about nutrition because you got to go behind the scenes because I've been talking about what the world out there is telling you to do, and I'm sorry, it's bad advice. It goes against the grain of nutritional science. I was reading, let me just see if I can find it. Bioavailability. You know what that is? You can eat food, right? But what's the bioavailability? Okay, so let's talk about calcium, because I always tell you guys, eat your calcium, okay? Eat it. Think about this for a minute. Calcium is very important for your body, by the way. It's not just for bones. Calcium is a very, very, very important mineral. You need it, but you don't need it as a supplement because if you take it as a supplement, it doesn't get to its intended destination. It will get stalled in the blood. You don't want calcium in your blood. You don't want to calcify your blood vessels, do you? Of course you don't. But we've been taught, I'm bringing you behind the scenes here on the bioavailability of calcium, okay?
Now, if you take a bowl of spinach, okay, this is just something that came out. If you take a bowl of spinach. In spinach, 115 milligrams of calcium, okay? Not very much. 115 milligrams of calcium, only 5% of that, okay? Six milligrams is getting absorbed. What? Okay, now, spinach, okay? Popeye didn't get his forearms. Remember Popeye? He didn't get those muscles from eating spinach. He said he did, but he didn't. Popeye was lying. I don't know if he did it intentionally or not, okay? What was his girlfriend's name? I forget. Popeye. Popeye, the sailor man, right? He always had a pipe and big, big forearms. And he said the secret was spinach. No. Okay. Olive! How could I forget that? Olive oil, guys, that's why I need you around me, okay? I would looking at her face, and I was laughing in my head because I said, what was her name again? Olive oil. How can you forget that? So the bioavailability of calcium in spinach is 5%, okay?
In one slice of cheese, one slice of cheese, okay? The amount of calcium you get in cheese. One slice of cheese. You'd have to have the bioavailability of calcium in cheese. You would have to consume 16 cups of spinach. You see why I bring you behind the scenes? Because really what you will hear in, I'm going to say 95%, but it's probably closer to 99% of all the gurus, of all the nutritionists, of all the dieticians, of all of them, I'm sorry, all of them, just about. Will tell you that if you look at a cup of spinach and you take out a slice of cheese, they'll put this way up on the hit parade compared to the slice of cheese. The spinach is way up there because it's got calcium, and its got fiber, and it's going to feed your good bacteria. Okay?
So this study said you would have to have 16 cups of spinach in order to get the same amount of calcium that your body absorbs. Okay? Remember, it's not the amount, it's the bioavailability and hello, spinach has vitamin K1. Is that bad for you? Nope. It's not bad for you. But cheese, it shows you nature. Cheese has vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is only found in the animal kingdom. Now, you guys already know this. This is all repetition, but the point being, when it comes to calcium, you're not going to get a lot of calcium in spinach because your body can't absorb it. That's what bioavailability means. Plus the way cheese, the way butter the way eggs, the way meat is milk not in the grocery store. I like dairy. It's got calcium, K2. You think that's by accident? And we've had two generations at least, okay?
My parents' generation, my generation, and probably a generation underneath me, not probably for sure who believed that if you were to look at food. And well just look at the food pyramid, grains at the bottom, cereals at the foundation, and fruits and vegetables and meat is up at the top end of the pyramid, meaning be very careful with it. Even eggs are up there in butter. And that's, that's saturated fat, that's cholesterol. You see what I mean by discernment? The ability to go beneath the surface to find out what's really going on. I know a lot of smart people, the natural medicine doctors, and I mean, listen, this is postgraduate. You've had to have had at least 4,000 hours of postgraduate study in natural medicine, but I bet you there's not two of them that I can think of that would put cheese over spinach.
Even the smartest people in the world don't necessarily have discernment. I'm sorry, guys. They'd offended that guy. I wouldn't say San Francisco. He offended him. He said, you're too simplistic. I said, I know, but the world has changed. And he brought out, okay, he brought out something to me, okay? Like using an example, you say carbs are bad and all this and that. Well, he said, what about the Japanese whose staple is rice? No, it's not. I said, you see, I said Japanese. I've studied it. The Japanese, they only get obese and sick when they eat McDonald's. Their staple isn't rice. They eat rice for sure, but they eat a lot more meat than North Americans do. They eat a lot more fish. That's a huge staple there. I hear all the time about the Mediterranean diet as if it's all fruits and vegetables. No, it's not. Do you know that Italians or whatever, they eat an enormous amount of meat. The healthy ones, they eat eggs. They eat cheese.
Look, there's two things, okay? And that's what I mean. Even the Japanese, okay? One thing is they're not eating french fries at McDonald's that are very high carbohydrate, going to turn to sugar in five seconds, and they're cooked in the wrong oil. The Japanese don't do that by and large. But soon as we introduce, I've told you that about the Inuit. As soon as you introduce our diet of North America, we're famous for it. We do two bad things, well, more than two. But here's what we do. We cook in the wrong oil. You remember olive oil? I like olive oil. Okay? I like Popeye and olive oil. But if we would cook in the right oils, why don't they use olive oil? I'll tell you why they don't use it because it's too expensive. They found Canada's gift, canola oil and peanut oil, and they think those are good oils. They're not good oils to cook with. They're meant for your car, not for your body. I bring you behind the scenes. Discernment, okay?
You look at cultures like the Japanese and the Chinese, the Asian, they eat an enormous amount of meat. People don't realize that. Eggs, yeah. And Danine, okay, Danine says, what about coconut oil? Absolutely. Coconut oil is saturated fat. You know what I tell you? You see, I bring you behind the scenes of even fat, and people get the idea. They think saturated fat, okay? You look at a steak and you see all the fat around it, and they think, well, that turns to cholesterol in your body. No, it doesn't. It turns to oil, the good oil, it lubricates your body. It lubricates your blood vessels, and plus you get your fat soluble vitamins, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, k2 found in nature. So what do you think you're supposed to eat? And again, guys, here we are in 2023, and I got to sort of scream it from the rooftops. Why? Because people have been duped. They've been duped. They look at things like meat, and they go, how can that really be good for you? Right? Compared to vegetables, for example. It's 24 hours a day of propaganda. And like I said, even my guru friends, "Dr. Martin, you're too simplistic." I take that as a compliment. I'm simplistic. Okay?
Let me give you an example too, okay? Just thinking, I want you to come with me on a little journey of thinking, okay? Cancer. Cancer, okay, here's the world's idea of it. It is so complicated. It is genetics. It's DNA. It's RNA, it's this, it's that, and they get into the weeds. So people, the only thing they really know about cancer is, I hope I never get it. It's the C word. And there's no way of telling until it's visible. So we don't talk about prevention of cancer generally. I mean, the only thing that medicine ever did right, what the world did right was when they told people with cancer to stop smoking. Guys, that was a fork in the road. That was wisdom. That was great. It really has saved millions of people's lives. But then it stops there because medicine can't get their head around nutrition. They don't study it. They don't study it. Imagine a doctor, smart. They're educated beyond belief. They're not stupid people. They're smart. So they get into medical school and nobody teaches 'em an ounce of nutrition, not an ounce. So it's the same old, same old.
And I brought you the history of that. Nutrition was hijacked all studies of nutrition. I had to go through it even to get my PhD. I went through traditional teaching. Vegetables, good, meat, cholesterol. I had to go through it. I had to pass. I mean, what good it would be. My dad used to tell me, shut up and get your degree. Well, dad, they're not. It's wrong what they're teaching me, shut up and get your degree. Back to cancer. So if anyone suggests to the media, to the establishment in medicine and the media and the big pharma and the big food, they're all together. They all sing from the same song sheet. Cancer is not a metabolic disease. Cancer is a genetic disease. It is so complicated. You can't understand it, so don't try. There's no link to food. Oh, there might be a little bit linked to the environment, but there's no link to food. You want to give me a headache? You want to give me a true migraine? Talk to me about no link to food with cancer.
And when they talk about heart disease, there's a link to food alright, salt, butter, meat, bad. Eggs have a few, not many, bad. Fruits and vegetables and cereal. Good. No, but guys, like I said, when I saw that definition of discernment, I said, well, people don't have to agree with me. But I think I'm right. And again, I go back to my years of experience, it's just what I used to see all the time in my office all the time. Okay? Anywho, I never did get to that study on coffee, did I? Well, we'll probably have to do that. Some people just keep telling me that, "Doc, you only look for positive studies on coffee." You're right. They're all positive. And if they're not, I don't even read 'em. Okay, guys, we got a great week coming up. Okay? We really do. We'll hit on some topics. I just sort of had to pause today and give you a little bit of a philosophy, a little bit of philosophy where I'm coming from, okay.
Guys, taking a deep breath because I'm breathing now. We love you dearly. One little thing before we leave, okay, but a lot of people have asked me this question, especially in the last couple of weeks. Unless it's a new product, okay? I've, I've got a couple of products that I'm rejigging and there's a reason for it, and I'll explain it to you when they're available. But the products that are online, if they're not new, because we come up with three new products and we like them. Ubiquinol and a new magnesium. I think I explained that the other day for people that can't take the citrate and ubiquinol because of your battery packs, your mitochondria and quercetin, okay? I've always used quercetin. I could never seem to be able to get my own that I liked enough. But we got a quercetin and it's really good. Okay? Allergies, inflammation. Oh, new study up. Maybe I'll bring that to you because a new study came out on quercetin and I got to show it to you, and maybe I'll take the time and show it to you after which I like. Okay.
But the other products, guys, I know even somebody asked me about the fish oil the other day. Look, it's the same. It's just Health Canada. They have label regulations that they change and they just made us change it. Not that we had to change the formula of our high DHA, it's just that they wanted it labeled differently. They come up with stuff, and if you want to stay onside with Health Canada, you gotta do it. So a couple of them, the Menopause Formula, for example. The Thyroid Formula, we had to relabel them. Same amount. Okay? Because somebody was asking about selenium. Well, you have to put some in non medicinal ingredients and some, it's just the way health, I don't know how they get to that, but that's what they do. And you want to sell product in Canada, you better listen or you're going to be offside with them.
So I'm just telling you folks, okay, I'll let you know if I'm changing the formula, but there's some confusion because they're just label changes. That's all it is. The product hasn't changed. Okay. The ones that are out there, they haven't changed. The new ones, of course, they're new. Okay, I thought I just explain that today. Okay. And don't be shy, okay? Ask your questions, guys. We're here. Okay? I'm just going to say this. Can you think of a company that you know that responds like we do? Look at our staff, we respond, and we're there for you. So don't be shy. Ask your questions. You can ask me anything you want. You won't hurt my feelings, okay? I got a very thick skin. I do. Okay, guys. Love you dearly!
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!