Continuing with his headlines series, Dr. Martin looks at a study saying that exercise is like “miracle grow” for your brain. It was found to be 1.5 times more effective than medication alone in treating mental health conditions.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone. Once again, welcome to another live this morning. Hope you're having a wonderful start to your day, and we always appreciate you guys coming on and having fun with us. Okay, all week we've been going over headlines and today will be no different. I want to bring you a couple of headlines that I have come across my path and I want to talk about them this morning. Now, one of them is exercise. Vitamin E, guys. We talked about being strong, muscle, really important, but listen to this, okay? This is a study on vitamin E, which is exercise. Remember, they have vitamins. We have our own list of vitamins.
Someone was asking me about coffee again the other day, and they just can't seem to understand that I'm serious about coffee and how good it is for you. Someone wrote in, "well, Dr. Martin, it really doesn't have vitamin C in it." Yeah, but it has a thousand phytonutrients and it's far superior to vitamin C. I'm not saying vitamin C is no good. I'm just telling you that the real vitamin C coffee is much better for you and much more enjoyable, isn't it? Yeah, guys, that's why we have so much fun. You can drink coffee, okay? I feel sorry for those amongst our group that don't like coffee. I feel sorry for you. Okay? I mean it. Exercise. Listen to this vitamin E, okay, hot off the presses again. Exercise is 1.5 times more effective than medicines in treating mental health conditions, and here's why.
The headline is this, Vitamin E Exercise, It's Miracle Grow in Your Brain. Vitamin E exercise is like miracle grow. When you put miracle grow, is that what it's called? Miracle grow in your garden or whatever to make your plants and it sort of naturally fertilizes them, right? You know what I'm talking about? Well, this headline said that that's what exercise does for your brain. It's like miracle growth, okay? I like that. And again, another win for exercise, and guys, any little bit you do is going to be beneficial. But what they did, and this was a study done. When you exercise, it increases brain derived neurotrophic factor. Brain derived neurotrophic factor. Exercise regenerates that. It increases that, that helps you regenerate the brain. It's miracle grow for the brain.
Now, here's the problem, okay? And this is by the way, talking about giving placebo to depressive patients. And both groups, what they did is they gave placebo medication like SSRIs, antidepressants to increase their serotonin, that feel good hormone. They gave one group the real medication for depression, SSRIs, and they gave the second group a placebo. And then the only thing they made that second group do is do exercise. And they found out head to head with antidepressants and the other group not getting antidepressants. They thought they were, but they made them exercise, they made them walk. It wasn't vigorous, just exercise. And they found that group 1.5 times was more efficient in terms of treating symptoms of depression than SSRIs were.
Now, I'm going to tell you something folks. You're not going hear that too much. Again, this is why I'm so passionate about bringing you these stories because generally you won't find them. They're not mainstream. Some of them hit mainstream, but most don't. And the reason is is because they don't want to change anything. This is such a model in psychiatry, you're almost impossible to change thinking it's almost impossible. And I've showed you guys studies in the past or I brought to you studies in the past that shows when you aim at the gut in depression because you make more serotonin in your gut than you do even in the brain. So when your microbiome, when you focus in on getting rid of leaky gut, when you focus in on balancing your microbiome in your gut, that has a major effect on depression. Studies have been done.
And listen, this is one of the things that I found difficult in a practical sense, in a practical sense, is getting depressive patients to comply. They're depressed. The last thing they want to do is exercise. But what I used to do, my protocol with them is if you're on medications and you start stabilizing, okay? Because a lot of them, most of them were on medications. If they weren't on medications, I would give them a protocol and I'll give it to you in a minute. But if they were on meds already, they came to see me and I said, look, when you are well, better you need to focus in on. And then I would really hammer this home. I said, look, you came to me as a patient and now I'm asking you to trust me and I'm going to give you a plan. It's going to be written down so that you can review it. And I need you to trust me on this. Okay? There's medicine over here, and now I'm going to give you an alternative, okay?
And I'm not dismissing medicine. I'm not dismissing it. All I'm saying to you, okay, to the patient, this was generalized. All I'm saying to you is what you're doing right now on antidepressants is a band aid. It's not getting to the root of the problem. And guys, again, I always bring you back to the summer of 2022 when really mental health was turned upside down in terms of research. Nothing changed too much but mental health was turned upside down in depression, in Alzheimer's, in bipolar turned upside down. Everything that mainstream medicine has done in those three conditions was turned upside down by research showing that SSRIs and serotonin receptive medication uptake meds was looking for love in the wrong places.
One, two, bipolar, okay, same thing, looking for love at the wrong places and Alzheimer's. All the medication, everything was derived to work on plaque in the brain. And they said, well, research concluded it doesn't do a thing. It's not helpful. Why? Because you're looking for love in all the wrong places. They were off mark. But again, that doesn't get filtered down to the average practitioner, the average psychiatrist or whatever. They just don't get those memos. And so things continue as they are. But they showed in the summer of 2022 that in bipolar, for example, that insulin and insulin resistance was a major contributor to bipolar. Blood sugar, major contributor to bipolar. Alzheimer's, type three diabetes, blood sugar. If that's the case, folks, don't you think that food is huge and exercise is huge? They are. They're huge in mental health.
Schizophrenia, huge factors in nutrition, in blood sugar, in vitamins, deficient for years. I used to see this deficiency, vitamin B12, the neurological vitamin. The more I study B12, the more I'm convinced, and I was always convinced, but I'm more and more and more doubling down guys on the effectiveness of B12. And the problem is most people are deficient in B12. It's a finicky vitamin at the best of times it's a large structure vitamin. And most people they just don't know. And today medicine, they have dismissed B12. It's hard to even get a doctor to test B12, nevermind recommend it. And the ranges. Somebody showed me their B12 yesterday and it was 200 and something wasn't even flagged. I said 200 in the two hundreds, the three hundreds, that's for mice, not for you. Your brain can't work properly without B12. Your neurological synapses. What we talked about, brain-derived neurotropic factor, it can't work without B12.
So I never had a patient, and I mean it over the years where I tested their B12, that anybody with depressive tendencies and depression, B12 is cognitive. And here we are today, people are vilifying red meat. The only place in the world that you can get B12 in its form that you need to absorb. 80, 90% of the population have some kind of digestive because they're not eating meat. They don't have enough acidity in their stomach. Without enough acidity in the stomach, you don't have enough intrinsic factor in the stomach to mix with B12. And they're deficient. Deficient. So depressive patients, they have blood sugar problems, they have insulin resistance. Almost invariably I saw that. If I could only convince them to take care of their diet, it wasn't easy.
When you're depressed, what do you want? Comfort foods quick fixes. Food becomes a drug. It's a quick fix. Give me a carb. Give something simple. I've always used the illustration and fuel of a wood stove, okay? Pretend you're a wood stove for a minute. You don't look like a wood stove, but just pretend. When you have a piece of bread that acts like paper in a wood stove, what? Well, you can light the fire, the paper, it'll burn in seconds. That's what carbs do in your brain, carbs in your brain. It's just a quick fix. It's just like this. And when you're depressed, guess what you want? This is why I said to you, will a patient become compliant? That is so difficult.
And guys, I hear it every day. I hear all the feedback every day. Even people that have gone on the reset and all their life, they've been a carboholic. It's hard. I get it. And they don't feel good. They've changed fuels. And when you go from burning carbs all your life to burning fat and protein, real good fuel, major change takes place. It's not easy. Okay? For some, it's easier than others, but if they're depressed, I just know this for a fact, they're looking for a quick fix. Easy carbs are easy. Make a bowl of cereal. Carbs are easy, have toast. Carbs are easy, and sure enough, they'll give you a surge, but it's temporary. What goes up, it'll bring your blood sugar up rapidly, that'll give you a fix. But at the same time, what goes up must come down and that blood sugar comes down. It's a yo-yo type of diet. Now, I'm not talking about for weight loss. I'm just talking about what it does in your brain. And that's why I get people to try and think of food differently. Look at fuel. Look at high octane. Your brain is actually swimming in a sea of glucose.
Have you ever swam in the ocean? Yeah. Have you? Well, you don't drink that water. You're surrounded by water, but you can't drink it. That's what happens in a depressive brain. Their brain is flooded with the wrong fuel and it suppresses the brain's activity and its neurological wellbeing. It depresses it. And guys, this is why I talk to you every day on this program about changing fuels. It's such a foundational factor, B12, because people just don't get enough of it. And again, I saw it every day in my practice. And without B12, you don't have enough nitric oxide. Without B12, your brain neurologically will not fire on all cylinders. It just can't. B12 is, it's for everything in your body, but especially brain. The other one is vitamin D, vitamin D and depression. Brain and vitamin D, viderma the sun.
And when you can't get the sun, okay, here we are. Do you believe in climate change? I do. I live in Sudbury. Yesterday it was 30 degrees. Today the high is going to be something like 15. Okay, what does that tell me? I live in Northern Ontario. That's what it tells me. And I've been alive on this planet for a long time. And if you're in Northern Ontario, Canada, anywhere in Canada, you are going to get four seasons. That's climate change, isn't it? Summer, then fall, then winter. Someone was telling me last night, I just chuckled, came from Brazil, landed in Sudbury in January, and it was a minus 30 Celsius. Like, okay. I said, well, that's climate change. Oh, I go crazy over that stuff.
Guys, your brain, your gut, probiotic. I tell you, I can't even think there might've been exceptions to this, but I always looked at depression, bipolar, anxiety, and schizophrenia. Any mental health condition, I would take it and go holistic. I would try and unpack and see deficiencies. One insulin resistance almost without exception. In all the years that I looked at it, they had trouble metabolizing carbs. When you see people that suffer from the conditions I just talked about, and let's put Alzheimer's in there, or let's talk about pre-Alzheimer's, pre dementia before it happens, put that in the mental health category here. These people generally eat the wrong foods. They're swimming in the ocean of fuel, but it's the wrong fuel for them. It's the wrong fuel for their brain. And they're like canaries in the coal mine.
And even this week, we talked about autism. I put that in the category too. They got the wrong fuel for their brain. I would use the illustration with them. I'd like, listen, drive out to your airport and watch the trucks that fill up those jets. They're not using 87 octane, the one you put in your car. They don't use that. They use jet fuel. It's a much higher octane fuel. I said, guys, that's how your brain works properly. Look, your brain will work, but it's not going to hit its optimized level with the wrong fuel. And think of what's changed in the last 50 years. Why do we see so much depression? And I know the world has changed, and I know there's social factors. I know the family factors. Listen, I know all that. But guys, we are effectively carboholics. Our society are carboholics. We eat 200 to 300 times more sugar than we did a hundred years ago. And crappy carbohydrates. It's unreal.
And then of course, what did we do? What did us genius the human beings do? What did we do? Because we were so focused in on eliminating fat. What a huge lie this was. We focused in not only on being carboholics, but we focused in on the wrong oil because we don't want cholesterol. We don't want fat. And so let's get a polyunsaturated fat. So what did they do? Go to your grocery store and you'll see aisles of them. Canola oil and soy oil, grape seed oil and oil. These, guys, those belong in the jets. Never, ever, ever meant for human consumption that oil is the wrong oil. We have the wrong fuel and we have the wrong oil.
And when you, almost everything in the middle aisles of the grocery stores, you see those oils up there, and they actually advertise low in fat. And they're inexpensive compared to olive oil and butter. They're inexpensive. People buy them. They cook with them and everything in the middle aisles of the grocery stores, packaged goods from crackers to pizza or whatever, they're all made with that stuff. The wrong oil, the wrong fuel. And then you throw in B12, you throw in a lack of vitamin D. People are scared, skinny of the sun. And then you throw in low magnesium. There's no more magnesium in the soil. People are low on magnesium. Your brain needs magnesium. But it was amazing when I could get patients to comply. To comply, I said, your weakness is your brain. Accept that, okay, it's your weakness and you really have diabetes of the brain without anybody else telling you that. But I'm telling you that you change fuels, get off of those processed foods.
And by the way, it's one of the reasons I don't like keto. Like keto foods read the labels, and a lot of them are processed. A lot of them use the bad oil. I don't like that. Eggs, meat and cheese, eggs, meat and cheese, eggs, meat and cheese. You have all your vitamins. You have all your amino acids, you have every building block in those three foods for your brain to thrive. It's the best, best fuel for your brain. And so the protocol was that change fuels. Get off the crap. You're going to have to be disciplined because when you get down, you got to prepare before you get down. And hundreds of patients over the years, were able to win that battle with discipline and understanding how their body operated. They bought it and they took care of themselves. And it was like night and day.
And sometimes I run into them even today, and I get a high five from them, or they send me a note or whatever. Dr. Martin, thank you. Well, I said you did it, man. I didn't do it for you. I gave you a plan and I sent you home. You had to implement it. The high fives go to you, not to me. Okay. You know what tomorrow is? What is it? Question and answer Friday. Yeah. Looking forward to it. Send in your questions today for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be too late. Okay, guys, we love you dearly. 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!