Many people know about the benefits of omega-3 DHA for the brain and heart, but what about your lungs? A new study is showing that omega-3 DHA also helps with lung health.
Lung cancer is still the number one cancer in North America, despite so many getting the memo to quit smoking. Why is that? Dr. Martin blames it on aldehydes. When you smoke, aldehydes are produced, and they’re extremely bad for your lungs. Aldehydes still exist, but now they’re found in the bad vegetable oils so much of our food is cooked in.
Join Dr. Martin as he discusses this new study and shares how DHA helps your lungs!
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. How are you? Once again, welcome to another live this morning and we're happy to have you on with us as per usual, and we got a great program today and looking forward to it. Looking forward to sharing this information with my friends. Okay, omega-3 DHA and lungs. Okay, new study out. Omega-3 DHA really helps with lung health. Okay, so another reason that we love DHA. Okay, so what is the longest chain fatty acid that you can consume? It's DHA. Why do I love DHA? Because it's the most bioavailable of all omega-3s.
The longer the chain. So if you look at it structurally, the longer the chain of that fatty acid, the better your body absorbs it. So when you go and you go to grocery stores, you go to a pharmacy, you go to a health food store or whatever, and you look at omega-3, and by the way, I probably told you this story before. I used to do some teaching. It's kind of funny. I worked for a company as a consultant years ago. I'm talking a lot of years ago for postgraduate studies for physicians. And this company would set up a two day program, one or two days, mostly two day program, either in Toronto or Montreal. That's where I was involved. And they would invite doctors to come because they have to take so many credits for postgraduate studies. I know health professions demand this if you want to keep your license up.
So I used to work for this company and they would bring me in with other doctors to teach, you know what it was called Nutrition 1 0 1 and physicians, all they wanted was their credits. So guess what? They had to endure Nutrition 1 0 1. And I mean, I would start with the basics. I did this several times, but I would ask 'em, okay, how many of you physicians out there and there were cardiologists there. There were all sorts of doctors. How many of you physicians take omega-3? And I'm telling you guys, this is 15, 20 years ago. How many of you physicians put your hand up if you take omega-3? I'm telling you, there was very few that didn't take omega-3 as a supplement. They put their hands up. Yeah, well, if you did any kind of reading on omega-3, I'm talking 15, 20 years ago, doctors knew that omega was good for your heart even back then.
And then you know what I said? Put your hand up if you're taking omega-3. And I said, keep your hand up if you prescribe omega-3 to your patients. And then what happened was 95% of the physicians put their hands down, they were taking omega-3, but they weren't recommending it to their patients. I said, you bunch of hypocrites. Do you know how good omega-3 is for you? And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good for me and it's good for your patients too. Why wouldn't you recommend it? But you see, part of their training is they don't know anything about vitamins. They know a little bit about supplement, especially omega-3. And they read enough to know that it was good for them for their hearts. They didn't think about their brain, they weren't thinking about anything. They were just thinking about heart. And they knew fish. And what they didn't know is steak is full of omega-3.
Now let me continue on. So here they are. They're not prescribing it, but they're taking it. So omega-3 is well established for heart, it's well established for brain. Now we're going to get into even more specifics because the best out of all omega-3s is DHA. So when you go to a health food store, go to a pharmacy, go whatever, read the label, you've got EPA. Is it good? Yeah, sure. It's good for you. Absolutely. And then you have DHA. Read the label. And the higher the DHA, the better it is for you. Is EPA good for you? Absolutely good for you. But DHA guys study after study we showed you got to be two or three years ago, maybe even longer than that. What DHA does to tumors. It's incredible. Why isn't that in the mainstream media? Well, nobody has a patent on it. Okay? Nobody has a patent on it. You can't patent omega-3.
Now there's one patent out there for a very specific high EPA, what's it called? VASCEPA medication. It's actually not a med, but because it's patented, the process is patented. They got patents in North America. They started off, I think in Ireland and they came out with a medication. It's not a med, it really is just a pharmaceutical grade, omega-3. And it costs you about $400 a month. Like holy moly. You know what I like our high DHA much better. But this study is showing people think of DHA, they think of their brain. They think of their heart. Absolutely. They don't think of tumors, but they should. It should be a treatment. It's part of my protocol. You ever hear about somebody getting cancer, someone in your loved ones or whatever? You ask me, I'll tell you what the protocol I recommend, whether they're doing chemo, radiation, surgery, I mean that's medicine. Alternatively or in conjunction, I recommend no sugar, high vitamin D, high DHA. Absolutely build that immune system. Let your body be a fighting machine.
Okay, now back to this study. This study says high DHA and lung health. It helps with lungs. Asthma, okay, bronchitis, lung cancer. By the way, I did this on a podcast and I can't remember when I talked about what is the number one cancer today. What's the number one cancer today? It's lung cancer. Now, years ago, lung cancer, when people got the memo about smoking, lung cancer went down. Temporarily it went down. And really 90% of lung cancers should have been eliminated by people stopping smoking. One thing society got, you have to understand, I've watched it happen and many of you did too. Okay? I've watched it happen. When they started the War on Cancer, they started by telling people to stop smoking. It's funny because in the 1950s people actually thought forties, fifties, they actually thought that smoking was good for them. What kind of cigarette was your doctor smoking? Time Magazine. Nine out of 10 physicians chose Camel cigarettes. Can you believe that? But that's the way it was.
I told you the story of my father who came home 1962. I was 10 years old and put his cigarettes in the trash can right in front of the whole family. He said, I'm quitting smoking. We're all looking at each other. I was 10. My dad smoked. My mom smoked. My older brothers smoked. It was just part of our home. And most homes, smoking. My dad smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. And he comes home one day and he throws 'em in front of us. He had a ceremony. He said, you see these of cigarettes? And I watched them. I looked down as he threw 'em into the waste basket. I said, dad, whatcha doing? Whose cigarettes am I going to steal? I didn't like my dad's. He smoked Buckingham. They didn't have a filter. My mom's cigarettes had, they were Peter Jackson. Remember those black? I mean they looked nice, the carton they were in. I used to steal my mother's cigarettes and she'd buy them by the cartons. So I often took cigarettes out of her pack. Oh, honest to God.
But that's what we did when we were kids. I mean, it wasn't long after that that we realized. My dad told me, he said, dad, this stuff causes cancer. Well, I didn't know that. My dad didn't know that before. He said he read an article and that was the end of it. My mother never stopped smoking, but my dad did. So long story, you know how much I love telling stories. Long story to emphasize a point that people got the memo about smoking. The cancer societies, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the heart associations, cardiologists. They told people to stop smoking not only for cancer but for heart disease. They finally got the memo. That was a good thing. They did that right? And today, true or false, I mean if you can find a doctor that would recommend smoking like they used to in the 1940s and fifties, you won't find him. Well, if you do, he should be institutionalized, a physician that recommends smoking. Okay? It's not good for you. Everybody knows it. We got the memo.
Now, why is lung disease, why is it so bad still then? It went down. I'm telling you, in the 1980s, late seventies, eighties, lung cancer went down temporarily. What happened? Why today is still the number one cancer today? Here we are in 2023. It is lung cancer, lung disease. And some people say it's the environment. Nah, I tell you what it is, folks. I'll tell you what it is. It's the introduction specifically for lung disease, smoking. Okay? And I talked about this. I can't even remember what book I even mentioned this, okay? Might've been my metabolic reset. Okay? Now, when you smoke, I mean you get a lot of free radical damage, right? Oxidative damage very high in that. And when you smoke, one of the oxidation factors is something called aldehydes. Aldehydes. Very, very damaging to the lung. Smoking equals aldehydes and aldehydes damage your lungs big time. Okay?
What replaced that? Why is it today that we have that much cancer in lungs? And like I said, a lot of people, if they had to think about it, they would say, yep, it's the environment. And that may be partially true, but here's what we know. When we consume vegetable oils, seed oils, you know what the number one seed oil is in all of the world that people consume? Soybean. You know what one of the side effects of that is? When you consume that? Aldehydes, it's like smoking. You go to the middle aisles of your grocery store, you go to a fast food chain and they cook their fries and they cook their nuggets or whatever it is, and they cook it in that oil. They're not using the right oil. It's oil that belongs in your car, not inside your body. And I've been screaming this for so many years. We got our fats wrong because we were so psyched out on saturated fat and cholesterol. We got psyched out. Boy, I haven't used that term in a long time. We got psyched out and we got lied to. And the world went for it. Hook, line and sinker.
And we changed the fats. We went from butter to margarine. How do you make margarine? You might as well be consuming plastic. How do you make it? You make it with vegetable oils. You heat up that oil, you hydrogenate it, you add chemicals to it and it lasts forever. And then walk up and down the grocery store. I tell you today, you go to a restaurant and they're using oil. The vast majority are using the wrong oil. They're using the wrong oil. And then they reheat it. And they reheat it. And it's sad. But one of the side effects of that is aldehydes. You might as well smoke. And guys, be honest with me here. Where have you heard that? Who's talking about it? Very few. You might as well be smoking. So you see all these kids, you look at the generations, you see these kids who have been duped. They think you go through the oils in your grocery store and nine out of 10, you might as well take them. If you're going to buy them and go put 'em in your car. They don't belong in your body because they create lots of oxidation, which is free radical. And one of the byproducts of that is aldehydes.
And guess what? Very, very damaging to your lungs specifically. I mean, look, free radicals affect you everywhere, but especially the lungs, the aldehydes. And another reason to take DHA, because this study is showing that DHA will protect your lungs from the side effects of aldehydes. And today, guys, this is just a fact. Somewhere between 20 and 30 to one is the ratio of people today, the worst it should be. Omega six to omega-3 should be about three to one. It's 20-30 to one. Kids don't have a chance today. They don't know it, but they're consuming these omega 6s like it's going out of style. And they don't consume enough omega-3, they just don't. And we wonder why we have so much lung problems. We wonder why we have, I mean other than other factors like leaky gut and whatever. But we wonder why we have so much autism. We have so much young people, kids with brains that are not developed properly. It's food. Mostly.
It's hard guys to get the memo to the general population. It's hard because I read a study like this omega-3 and lung health and people will go, oh yeah, I like omega-3. And they don't realize that they need to stop taking all that omega six that is found in the seed oils, in the vegetable oils. They're not getting the memo about that. So there's another reason, guys. And by the way, what has the highest source of DHA fish? Yep, very high. Or steak? Higher. Yeah. DHA is only found in the animal kingdom. You guys, if you don't think, I don't have a method for my madness, understand this. If someone that you know avoids the animal kingdom, and there's lots that do, and if someone tells you that vegetables and fruit and wheat and those things are better than the animal kingdom.
We had someone I answered, someone said, Dr. Martin and I look, why do I invite people to join our private Facebook group? So you can ask questions and no question. Especially the new folks that come on there. This lady asked Dr. Martin, I thought dairy was bad for you. Nah, you thought wrong. You heard wrong. Don't ditch dairy. Switch it dairy's good butter cream. If you can get cow's milk right from the cow, drink that too. Cheese. Cheese, okay. But you need the animal kingdom and specifically meat, red meat for DHA. And I like fish too in a capsule. I'm not a big fish eater. I take DHA every day. I want my brain to work. I want my heart to work. I want to lower inflammation. I want my lungs to be protected. Interesting, isn't it? So even doctors got the memo about omega-3. They did not that they recommended some do to their patients. They're just not used to it. They're not used to it. And we got to change their habits if we can. Okay?
Now, think about this. It's happened in New Zealand and it's coming to Canada because they legislation is already there. They want to stop us from taking that supplement of omega-3. You're going to need a prescription for it. That's what Health Canada wants to do. I've been screaming, guys, they want to eliminate the health food store. I never thought I'd see the day, especially in Canada, because Canada already had the strongest regulations for supplements in the world. I remember being on a committee and Saudi Arabia was looking at Canadian legislation. They said, oh, you guys got the best legislation in the world to control supplements. If you have a supplement on the shelf, it has to have been approved by Health Canada. We want to do that in Saudi Arabia. They were asking me, and here we are today, they want to take it away from us. I can't get over that.
Guys, you need to scream if you know you're a member of Parliament, and if you don't, find out who it is federally and scream at them. They snuck in this legislation, are they going to change it? I don't know. It bothers me. Anyway. Okay, guys, you know what tomorrow is. Hey, it's question and answer Friday. Send you questions in. Okay, did you get your book Sun Steak and Steal? If you haven't, time to get it. Okay. Thank you for making it number one, by the way, bestselling health book. We appreciate that. Okay, keep it coming guys. Okay, love you and 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!