Dr. Martin looks at a 6-year study on the importance of B12 and homocysteine in relation to heart disease. The study is showing that inflammation and high homocysteine levels are more significant factors than cholesterol.
When you are low in vitamin B12 there are a whole host of symptoms you can encounter, and according to this study, high levels of homocysteine is one of them.
Join Dr. Martin in today’s episode to learn why homocysteine plays a role in heart disease.
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, and once again, welcome to another live this morning, a little bit different time for you. Appreciate your patience and appreciate your participation. I know this is bright and early, especially if you're on the west coast. It's always bright and early. This would be maybe not so bright and earlier. Okay, let's get going. A couple of things I want to bring up this morning. If you haven't got our email, get our email this morning because it is so wonderful teaching on homocysteine and heart disease. There's a study there and I think I'll wait til another time to really break that study down because I just sort of put it in the background and it really is an important study, okay? It's a six year study. And anyways, it's described in a fair amount of detail in our email this morning. So if you don't get our emails, go to martin clinic.com and sign up for our emails. You want to get that in your email box.
Now, maybe you're getting it or you haven't seen it and maybe it's in your spam or whatever. Look, what do I know? I know nothing. Okay? Anywho we're there to help. So if you're having trouble getting our emails, just reach out to our staff, okay? Martinclinic.com or on our private Facebook group. I know most of you have joined that. And we send out emails and in the emails we go into a fair amount of detail. Now, one of the thing we were looking at is heart disease. I talked about it yesterday. Number one killer. We haven't even made a dent in heart disease. Isn't that crazy?
After all the years, of course we were looking at cholesterol rather than the real cause of heart disease, okay? And cholesterol became, I love the way Tony Jr. calls it. I call it the cholesterol scam. Tony Jr. likes the cholesterol cult like it's a cult-like following and by and large, and guys, look, I don't mean to be negative, okay? Sometimes you bring the news and it's negative, okay? In a sense that I'm not optimistic that anything's going to change much. So my goal is teaching. I'm giving you another view of it, okay? I'm giving you the alternative to it. The alternative to cholesterol. And I'm sure if I had a hundred physicians in the room, 99 would disagree with me because their teaching is cholesterol is the cause, the major cause of heart disease.
And what the email was about this morning is B12 and a thing called homocysteine. That is a test that should be done. I like it. It's a test because homocysteine is a factor in heart disease, so is inflammation. You get a CRP test done, inflammation. You know how we always say it? It's not Houdini. Inflammation has to be caused by something. And the biggest cause of inflammation and the biggest cause of a high homocysteine. Homocysteine, by the way, inflammation is like a fire. And homocysteine is like smoke damage of the fire. So when they do your homocysteine levels, if they're elevated, you got smoke damage in the house, not in your house, but in your body's house. And I don't know if any of you ever have experienced this or you know people that have gone through smoke damage where there wasn't that much of fire damage, but there was huge amount of smoke damage. We've heard that right in the news. Lots of smoke damage and then months and months of people coming into the house and tearing things apart and rebuilding, regenerating the home because of smoke damage. That's what homocysteine is, okay?
And what we were explaining is with inflammation. Now again, let's just really quick, inflammation. We all know what that is. You ever had pain, you got pain anywhere. That's inflammation. You don't get pain without inflammation. If you kick me in the knee, that's normal. Your body's ambulance system comes and repairs. If you have a cold, you're going to have pain, headache, sinuses, sore throat. What is that? Inflammation. Your body's ambulance system. Your lymphocytes go up, you've got more white blood cells, you've got more protein, you've got more blood supply, and it ain't no fun. But it's there to repair, until inflammation is there to repair. I like that. Until it's left unattended, until it doesn't go away. When inflammation becomes chronic, and a lot of times it can be silent, meaning you don't even have any more pain. Number one place that it damages is blood vessels, okay? The endothelial level, the Teflon lining of your blood vessels, that's the first place that gets damaged with inflammation, when inflammation is chronic, when it stays, when it doesn't go away.
Number one cause by the way, the number one cause of silent inflammation, silent in a lot of times no symptoms is insulin resistance. That's why we talk about food all the time. Insulin is a food hormone and you really only need insulin when you're eating sugar and crappy carbohydrates. That creates an inflammatory response over a period of time, especially when your cells say, hey you, out. I'm tired of you. I hate you insulin, quit coming to my house. That's your cells talking. But insulin's got a job to do whether you like it or not. And if you eat carbohydrates, if you eat especially the crappy carbs, bread, pasta, rice, cereal, sugar, sweets, whatever, juices, milk without the fat in it, you're going to find out that your insulin, it's got to a job to do. It's got to take sugar out of the bloodstream. It will come knocking at the cell wall and say, open up. I don't care if you don't like me. Well, you know what happens inside your body? Your body responds to that action at the cellular level by creating an inflammation response.
So you can have an infection, you can have an injury. Those are on the other side, but one of them is silent mostly. And that is when people are carboholics. And one way to measure, okay, I want you guys to understand this. When I send you back your results of your blood work and I say you have insulin resistance, it's because, and I am, anything over 5.4. 5.4 is the marker on your A1C, anything over it, you know what happens? You have insulin resistance and that my friend is the start because that creates inflammation, that damages blood vessels and that damages cells and it damages your body. And those are one of the biggest reasons for heart disease. Now the other one is smoke damage and that is homocysteine. And when you have elevated levels of homocysteine, you also have another problem. Houston, you got a problem. You know what it is? It's low B12, you have high levels of homocysteine, okay? You have low B12. It's directly proportional.
This is why guys, okay? This is why it's so important to get your B12 levels checked. 90% of the population or more are low in B12. And unfortunately even here we are in 2023, and doctors don't talk about vitamin B12. They should. It's one vitamin that they do teach in medical school for about five minutes. It used to be very important. I remember in my dad's days, doctors. Remember doctors' bags? I don't see them anymore. Okay? You remember doctors' bags? They used to have B12 shots. You're tired. Let me give you a B12 shot. Okay? Rosie, my wife is a nurse. You know how many thousands of B12 shots she gave out? Thousands of them. But today, but the connection between homocysteine and B12 is really important. So send me your homocysteine if you have it. Good luck. Most doctors don't even test it, but at least get your B12 levels checked. And if you're not above 800, if that number is not above 800, you have low levels of B12 and you will most likely have high homocysteine. You got smoke damage occurring in your house, in your body's house.
You like that illustration? My head works on illustrations. Okay? Can't you tell? Don't feed the bears, my hat. You know what I'm saying? I'm an illustrator. I can't. It's the way I learn. So you've got fire damage. That's inflammation. How do you check that? CRP. I remember, this is back in the year, I think it was 2000. So 23 years ago, I did a whole radio show on C-reactive protein that seven years ahead of time at the time there was a study out. I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a study out that showed if your C reactive protein, which is what? An inflammation test, which is what? Fire damage. I'm getting excited. I like these illustrations, fire damage, you could tell according to this research study that by taking your C-reactive protein, CRP, if it was high and anything above zero for C-reactive protein is high. Okay? If it was high, you were much more likely to have a heart attack than with people who had no inflammation. And their CRP was completely normal. How do you like that my friend? How do you like that?
So what I'm saying to you, it's important to get these numbers checked. Homocysteine, if it's high, your B12 is low and B12 guys, look at today, look at the world we live in. The insanity of people who say that red meat is bad for you. I can't stand it. It's not true. It's insanity when they tell you that you shouldn't eat too much red meat. Where do you get B12? I'm waiting. Where do you get B12? In food, meat, not chicken even. Red meat. Red meat. And you guys know that. Sun, steak and steel. Why did I say that? And you can use ground beef too, okay? Without the bun, leave the bun alone and eat the meat and the red meat. Oh, and here we are. Heart disease is worse than ever, worse than ever because they're looking at cholesterol. Don't eat too much red meat. You know there's cholesterol in red meat and get the lean one. Okay, we'll allow you to have some chicken, but you can't have any steak. Are you kidding me? And of course you're going to go mortgage your house to get it.
The world is so upside down when it comes to health. It's almost like they want us to be sick. Oh, I told you this story before I got to tell you it again. A physician who was a patient of mine, okay? So was she smart? She was more than smart. You know why? She came to see me as a patient and she was really, really teachable. And I taught her nutrition 1 0 1, okay? But about a week or two later, I don't remember, one of her patients and one of my patients, she did blood work and they had a high B12. And I give this doctor credit because she called me at the office. She said, Dr. Martin, Susie, that wasn't her name, but let's say it is. Susie's got high B12, what do I do? And I started laughing and I said, what's the number? And I wasn't high at all. I said, doc, welcome to my world. That's low B12.
And I said, remember a couple of things. B12 is a water soluble vitamin, number one. You ain't getting sick on high B12 and number two, B12 it's actually lower than I like. Oh, she said. I said, listen, B12 is so important. Okay? Is so important. Get the memo. B12 will help your heart. B12. It's not just. People think of B12, well, energy, yes, it's good for energy for sure, because B12 helps you to have more oxygen. One of the things that happens when you're low in B12, one of the things could be different things, but this is one sign you're yawning all the time. Yawning your body is, it's a reflex. Your body is saying, would you, hey, you, stupid. Does your body talk to you like that, insult you? Hey, you dummy, would you get me some B12? But we don't listen because B12, well, I take B supplement, a B vitamin. Yeah, nah. Do you ever hear me talking about a B complex? What are you taking a B complex for? Eat steak.
But B12 is a very, very, very finicky vitamin and you need it and your body will give you clues even without blood work. Yawning, numbness and tingling, often low B12. Any kind of funny feeling in the mouth, a smooth tongue, even fluttering. Sometimes people think, well, maybe I got AFib and check it out. But I'm telling you, a lot of times it's low levels of B12. Okay? So it's really important to get that because a lot of people don't realize if you are cold, yeah, that could be your thyroid, but your thyroid, it's got a lot of strings attached. And you know what guys? Here's really important about your body. You're cold all the time. Your B12 is probably low. It's not optimized. And B12 needs to be optimized so that you don't have any smoke damage in your house.
Guys, I love it. I'm more excited about these illustrations. You know another one, in the bowel, you know what often is a sign of low B12 is? This is just my years of experience, and it rarely happened in men, mostly in women, constipation. Dr. Martin, I'm constipated. Well, either you're not drinking enough water, either you're not drinking enough coffee or your B12 is low. It had nothing to do with fiber. Fiber is, oh, I can't stand it. What a lie that is. Fiber, fiber, fiber brought to you by the cereal companies. They made fiber famous and they were lying to us. But a sign oftentimes in low B12, not enough water. The best fiber in the world is coffee and low levels of B12. There you go.
Okay guys, I got to fly. Little shortened version today. Oh, I just had fun. I've worked out. Okay, we love you guys so much. Okay? Tell your friends, spread the word. Get the other side, get the alternative on health. Tune in to the Doctor Is In podcast. Love you guys. 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!