Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners.
Some of today’s topics include:
- Lung infection & probiotics
- Thyroid Support Formula
- Wet macular degeneration
- Fibromyalgia & immuno-compromised conditions
- Upper limit for vitamin D
- Salt & blood pressure
- Serotonin roll-on for anxiety
- Coffee beans
- Eating liver
- Urinary problems & swollen prostate
- Petechiae red spots
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? And guess what it is today. Question and answer Friday. Fun, fun, fun. Okay, let's get to our questions guys, and Ashley asked this question, okay? Now Ashley's father's is not listening to her and she's hoping he'll listen to me. I like that. Now, the only way, Ashley, that he might listen to me, I'm hoping that he's watching right now, and Ashley says, "my dad has a lung infection. So the doctor gave him antibiotics and specified not to take probiotics or any dairy products while he's on this medication. This makes me very angry," and me too, "and wanted to know if you can tell my dad what you think about this." He doesn't listen to Ashley, but maybe he'll listen to me.
And Nick, if you're listening, look, I've been saying this for it seems like a thousand years, but as long as I've been using probiotics, which is over 40 years, guys, okay? And recommending probiotics over 40 years. When you take an antibiotic, you need to take probiotics because if you don't, within five days, you're going to wipe out all your good bacteria. You need to replace it even while you're on these antibiotics. And I know there's different gurus out there that tell you to wait to take your probiotics, but I'm going to tell you why I'm right and they're wrong. And there are studies out there, and I mentioned this would've been years ago. I really haven't talked about these studies. One of them showed if you're on chemotherapy, you know how hard that would be on anybody chemo, right? Mustard gas, it's a poison to shrink tumors, okay? Chemotherapy. They show that if a patient was taking a probiotic with chemotherapy, that it would actually diminish the side effects of the chemotherapy.
And studies have been done with the same thing with antibiotics. You are going to get, number one, less side effects, and two, you're replacing the friendly bacteria that is getting wiped out by friendly fire with the antibiotics. I highly recommend when you're taking antibiotic to take a probiotic with it, it helps. It actually helps the medication work better. And look, if you've got a lung infection and it's bacterial, you need an antibiotic. I got no problem with that, Nick. Okay? But you should be listening to your daughter. She only cares about you, and you should be listening to her, okay? And I'm telling you, it really does make a big difference. Okay?
Now, Sherry. "Is it okay to take the thyroid support supplement even if the doctor has told you your thyroid is fine? Can you take it as a preventative?" Yes, you can. Look the thyroid support. Look, it was really made to balance the thyroid, whether you're TSH. Look, I'm a big guy on, and I mentioned this in my book, Sun, Steak and Steel, that chapter on the eight critical blood tests that I like to look at. One of them is TSH, because I developed a little formula in the office over the years when I looked at TSH and I had a little sweet spot. If the TSH wasn't in that sweet spot, then I knew the thyroid wasn't working properly. The thyroid support is a tremendous support for your thyroid because, okay, and actually you can watch videos on this. We've made videos on our thyroid formula because our thyroid formula isn't just aiming at your thyroid, okay? It's aiming at the hypothalamus. It's aiming at the pituitary. It's aiming where your T4 to T3 is converted the most, and that is in your liver. That formula is made not only for your thyroid, but remember what I always say about your thyroid. It's a puppet. It's got a lot of strings attached.
And by the way, someone asked me this question the other day on the thyroid, and I'll bring it out now. Thyroid is out of whack. The doctor says your numbers are fine, okay? And you've done everything to get your thyroid going, and it seems to be slow as molasses, okay? One thing that is often hidden, it's one of the strings that is attached to your thyroid and that is your adrenal glands. I remember, because of course I tested these things in the office, I was looking for cortisol. I said, you know why your thyroid slowed to a crawl because of your stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol is a very, very important factor. Stress hormone is an important factor when it comes to your thyroid. You've got to look at the whole picture. That is why the thyroid formula and the way it was created based on all that clinical experience. So yes, you can take the thyroid. I got thousands of women, their thyroid is functioning properly and they're taking the thyroid formula.
A lot of people, again, on the thyroid, if you ask most people, there's things that they know. If you said iodine, they would say thyroid, right? You ask any doctor, they don't know much about natural, like even minerals or whatever, but if you mentioned thyroid, they probably would know that iodine is important, right? But people don't realize it's not just iodine for your thyroid, okay? I always said this, and I've been saying it for a century, it seems your thyroid, yes, iodine. You know people that they use an iodine supplement. I got no problem with it, but you're not getting the whole picture for your thyroid. You need selenium with iodine. My formula has iodine in it, but it also has selenium. That's key, key, key to proper thyroid function, okay? Selenium is sort of the forgotten mineral. People don't think about it. And by the way, when you want to eat selenium, how do you eat selenium? It's only found in the animal kingdom, eggs, meat, and cheese. Okay? But it is very important for the thyroid. Thank you very much, Sherry for that question.
Cecilia, "my 94 year old mother has wet macular degeneration." Okay. "Is it safe for her to take DHA and Navitol?" Absolutely essential. Remember the eyes? What is it? What causes macular degeneration? Okay? It's not just aging. What happens? It's blood supply and macular degeneration needs to increase nitric oxide in the eye. Blood vessels opening and Navitol is famous for that. And your capillaries, your arteries of little wee ones behind your eye, they need lubrication. That's why DHA is so good. Your eyeball is actually made up of DHA. A lot of your eye is made up of cholesterol and DHA. Why do you want to lower cholesterol? Ooh, okay. Yes, absolutely safe. And listen, you're going to see on a label, okay? These are Health Canada rules. Consult with your doctor if you are on a blood thinner or whatever, I want to scream, okay? I want to scream because there's nobody going to the emergency rooms. Oh, I know why you're here. You're on a blood thinner and you're taking omega-3 with it. Oh, but the rules are the rules, okay? You'll see it on the label, and I'm not supposed to talk about it. Okay, thank you for the question, Cecilia.
Lorna, "is fibromyalgia an immunocompromised condition? I have fibromyalgia and need to know what Dr. Martin says about my continuing to take probiotics." Okay, that's a good question, Lorna, because again, you get gurus out there. You get people, they say some things that give me a headache. Well, you're immunocompromised, your probiotics help your immune system. Why do you want to help your immune system if you're immunocompromised? Meaning that you don't want to jack up your immune system. This is so basic. I can't get over when I hear stupidity like that. Okay? I can't get over it because your immune system is much more complex than that.
First of all, fibromyalgia, guaranteed is leaky gut. Where did fibro start? I wrote about this eons ago. Fibromyalgia is a symptom, in my opinion, of an autoimmune disorder called chronic fatigue syndrome. They've renamed it now, called ME, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. It's a big name, okay? encephalomyelitis, I think they call it. I can't remember. Okay? CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibro part of that family, it's autoimmune. Any autoimmune starts in the gut, leaky gut, problems. Leaky muscles, leaky lungs, leaky sinuses, leaky brain, leaky skin, leaky, you name it, but it's autoimmune. It might've started, I found with CFS, I wrote a book about this a hundred years ago. My theory was what I talked about yesterday. Leaky gut was caused by the vast majority of time by antibiotics, greatest discovery of the 20th century, and the curse of the 21st. And one of the curses is fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome. And then you add up adrenal gland exhaustion where the adrenals on top of kidneys add adrenals. They get stressed. Too much stress over a period of time, and now you've got fibro, you got CFS.
So, back to your question, Lorna, the number one thing you want to take for fibro is probiotics. It's helping to repair the leak. I would be on bone broth because of the L glutamine, and it knits that lining between your gut and your blood so that no more toxins get in. You know what I found with fibro, they were so full of yeast, it was coming out of their ears. I used to test for all that. Okay? So all I'm saying is, yeah, immunocompromised. I know they say, and then they go, well, don't use anything that's going to increase your immune system. They don't know what they're talking about. They don't know what they're talking about because they're not thinking leaky gut, and they should, but they don't. Okay? Thanks for the question. It's a very, very good question. I appreciate it. Okay. It allowed me to pontificate.
Okay, now I got to because I get excited. Okay, Theresa, "is there any upper limit for vitamin D? I was thinking of five to 10,000 IUs. I've read that for healing purposes that is the suggested amount for seasonal effective disorder. What does Dr. Martin think of this?" Yeah, look, you have to understand that when you're not my patient, I can't tell you specifically what amount of vitamin D to take. I can tell you what I take every day, okay? That's what I can do. And the measurement for vitamin D, by the way, it was done for mice and not for human beings. They made a big mistake years ago on vitamin D. They made the numbers wrong, and people have been walking around on planet Earth with low levels of vitamin D ever since.
And of course, medicine doesn't recognize, other than vitamin D is good for your bones, they don't recognize how good it is for everything else from your brain to your toes, including seasonal disorder where depression sets in. But immune system can't work without vitamin D. And I take 10,000 IUs a day, and when I get a cold or when I feel a bug coming on, I recommend the hammer of 50,000 IUs a day for three days. A colleague of mine, Dr. Rona, he did a small study with people who were on ventilators with pneumonia and one of the hospitals in Toronto allowed him to give those patients 50,000 IUs a day for seven days. And man, oh man, the difference between those people on a ventilator and the ones that didn't get the vitamin D, it was like night and day.
So all I'm saying is it's unfortunate people don't realize that there's no, and I can say no one that died from taking vitamin D, no one. And as a matter of fact, there are thousands of people that die every day because they don't have enough vitamin D. They're scared skinny of the sun. It's the boogeyman, they're scared skinny of the supplement vitamin D. You got too much vitamin D, and here's the studies that have been done on toxicity of vitamin D, and you know what toxicity means? Possibly forming a kidney stone. Here's the studies that they did. Six months every day, seven days a week for six months, people were given 50,000 IUs of vitamin D a day for six months, and some of those people formed a kidney stone after that.
Now, had they been taking the vitamin D like I recommended with vitamin K2, they would've never even got a kidney stone. But the safety of vitamin D is well established, but you can't change people's minds, okay? Especially my generation and my parents' generation. My word, they bought the lie of the sun is no good for you. Even though I feel so good when I get in the sun, I know it's going to cause cancer. See why you get migraines every day. When I hear stupidity like that vitamin D, okay, and boy, am I ever glad you asked that question. That was from Theresa. Thank you, Theresa. You got me going.
Here's another one that's going to get me going, and it comes from Brenda and I saw this study, Brenda, okay? From the Journal of American Medical Association, it says, "cutting out a teaspoon of salt a day, lowered the top blood pressure number." It says not to have more than 1500 milliliters a day of salt. Do you see me getting a headache? It's not salt, it's sugar. And I know they always want to blame salt. God love cardiologists, okay? God love them, but have they ever got anything right? Salt, cut back on salt and heart disease is the worst. It's worse than it's ever been. Cut back on butter. Eat more cereal. Don't eat bacon. Did they ever get anything right? You got to lower your cholesterol. I mean, if they were coaching, they'd have got fired a long time ago for being wrong all the time. Okay?
So they do a study and look, the only time salt will bother you and can elevate your blood pressure. Okay, let me just say this. The only time salt has anything to do with blood pressure is when it's in the absence of drinking water. So you take a lot of salt and you're dehydrated. Yeah, that can elevate your blood pressure, absolutely. But the biggest thing on your kidneys is insulin. Sugar. It causes salt retention, which will elevate your blood pressure. Okay, man oh man, there's some good questions today that got me going and got me excited, and that rarely ever happens that I raised my voice. True or false? Brenda, look, I read the study, Brenda, but no, it's going to send people into a salt-free diet again. It never worked. I remember even in the seventies, even in the sixties, let's just cut back on salt. Talk about making food taste terrible. Salt is good for you. Now don't use table salt. Use real salt. It's good for you. What do I recommend? Put a pinch of salt in your water and drink enough water. You need two liters of water a day. That's 64 ounces for my American friends. You got it? If you don't drink enough water, salt will elevate your blood pressure. Drink water.
Okay, Francis, "what does Dr. Martin think of serotonin roll on for anxiety?" Well, you're probably talking about Francis, I think essential oils. I think one of the things that mimics serotonin, if I'm not mistaken, I'm not a specialist in essential oils. My favorite essential oil, as you guys know, is oil of oregano. Is there anything better than that oil? Nope. No, there's not. Years and years and years and years and years of clinical experience with oil of oregano, okay. Now a serotonin like roll on, I don't know, probably, I can't remember now, 10, 15 years ago, but there was a whole craze of essential oils. I mean, everybody was using essential oils and every company was saying, mine is better than the other ones. And people were essential oils. They were putting it on their pillow at night, putting it in the air. Air fresheners. They were essential oils.
Do I like them? No, it's not that I don't like them, but I never found that people that put lavender on their wrist or behind their ear or whatever places to put it, and so that will elevate your serotonin. I haven't seen any studies that it actually does that. I'm not against it. I'm not against it. If you find that works for you and it helps you to sleep, hey, I'm on your side. There's no real side effect to it, so I'm not against it, but I just found clinically it wasn't the panacea, it wasn't the cure people were looking for as far as insomnia or to decrease your stress with serotonin, you'll get better results with probiotics because most of the serotonin is produced in your gut, not in your brain. That feel good hormone is produced mostly in your gut. Okay? But anyway, good question. They're all good questions. I love 'em.
Grace, "with vitamin C, coffee is the concentration of the vitamin existing in a coffee stronger in a French press or as opposed to a traditional style drip coffee or Keurig pod?" Well look the key. Okay, good question. Grace, this is a very good question. The key is in the bean, okay? Not so much how you make that coffee, okay? And I know there's purists out there. Look, we're going to have good news on our coffee, okay? I'm hoping to announce it next week. I mean it, okay? But yeah, I mean, look, if you can get a fully organic coffee, it's going to have more phytonutrients. Remember, coffee has a thousand phytonutrients, even decaf if it's decaffeinated properly, which is a Swiss water process, okay? So it's not chemically stripped.
Look, coffee's, coffee, and there are beans that are better than others. No doubt about that, but it's the bean, okay? It's not the caffeine, it's the bean. And I'm just going to say it in case there's someone listening for the first time. The real vitamin C, the real one is not ascorbic acid. The real one is coffee. Coffee has more phytonutrients, more of everything than ascorbic acid. So people said, oh, Dr. Martin, I got to have my orange juice for my vitamin C. I said, no, have a coffee and you're going to get a lot more of all the phytonutrients in coffee and decides no one on earth should drink orange juice. Okay?
Okay, let me just see here. We're coming back to some more questions. Grace, thank you for the question. Ralph. "How many times can I have liver in a week?" Seven days? No. How can you have too much liver? It's like steak. You can have steak every day, vitamin S, it's essential. I don't like liver. I don't like the taste of it, but you can have it every day. How can you get too much liver? What would happen? It's just good for you. Okay? It's just good for you. Have a steak a day. It keeps the doctor away. It's not an apple that'll keep a doctor away. It's a steak that keeps the doctor away. Okay, Ralph, thanks for the question.
Bill. "Could Dr. Martin talk about urinary problems that come with a swollen prostate?" Well, no fun under the sun. Okay? And a lot of men, a lot of men have a lot of problems with their prostate. So if you have a swollen prostate, join the cast of millions that do. Millions of men have a swollen prostate. Do everything you can. And I think Bill is a little frustrated the way he, because it sounds like he's doing everything he can. Okay? Because you know me, you look at growth hormone. When men do the reset, a lot of times their prostate, they can't get over their prostate, how much better is it. Because they're lowering insulin. The other hormone is estrogen. Too much of a woman. That's how your prostate grows with insulin and estrogen. Okay?
Look, if you've done everything okay, that'll keep you away, Bill. Okay? It'll keep you away from cancer of the prostate, okay? Because that's an issue. There's more cancer in the prostate today. One out of four men after the age of 50 get prostate cancer, and the biggest culprit in that is estrogen. Lower it Bill, keep it down. I like zinc. I don't know if you've tried it. My prostate formula, if we can ever get it back, was my favorite. What did I have in there? Eight different nutrients that really helped the prostate. A lot of people loved it. Just waiting for it to come back. Okay, Bill, I understand your frustrations.
Okay, and Andrea, the last one, here it is. "What are those little red spots on the skin caused by?" Okay, petechiae. Those little red spots are called petechiae. I remember that when I was in school because some names I never forgot like petechiae, little red spots. They're usually caused by blood vessels that have broken. Okay? Little B capillaries under the skin are broken and you get petechiae. Okay? Those little red spots. A lot of people I found, okay, this is when I was in my days of practice when I used to see it, I often saw a lot of that with diabetes because their blood vessels are under attack. Even if their blood sugar is under control with medication, diabetics often have petechiae. The other one was people on blood thinners. So people that had a heart attack or a history of heart disease and the doctor puts 'em on blood thinners, even a blood thinner like aspirin. People take aspirin. They get petechiae. A lot of them do because, and that's one of the things I talked about I think yesterday is aspirin. Yeah, I know it can be very effective if you're having a heart attack or stroke, but there's a lot of secondary side effects to that. Okay?
Okay, you like my T-shirt? Eggs, meat and cheese. Eggs, meat and cheese. Okay. I mean when I say that, 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!