Dr. Martin has always encouraged listeners to get strong, and especially when you’re older. As we age, we are more susceptible to sarcopenia which is the wasting of muscle.
According to a new study, you have a 2.4 times greater risk of dementia if sarcopenia is present. Muscle and brain have a big connection and this is even more true with older adults.
Dr. Martin also looks at a second study about the link between fructose and Alzheimer's in today’s episode!
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. Hope you're having a great start to your day. Okay, let's talk about two new studies that came out on the brain. I found them interesting. Okay? And it's not necessarily new because I think I've talked to you about this in the past, but they're just studies sort of confirming what we've been talking about. And one of them is the, here, let me read you the study. Muscle and brain, okay? Muscles and brain are closely associated and especially in older adults, okay? Listen to what they said on this setting. With sarcopenia, okay? Which is muscle wasting. There is a 2.4 greater risk of dementia. So that's really, really important. Okay? So muscle and brain have a big connection.
I mean, think about that. How often have you ever thought about that? Not often. And the world doesn't see it. And as people get older especially, and muscle loss is part of their DNA to some extent because as people get older, they just, oh, I'm older. Of course I'm not strong. But the idea here, and research is bearing this out, is that its muscle is one of the most important factors in your metabolism, okay? The more storage space you have, think of your muscles as storage space, the more bins that you have to store. It makes a huge difference when it comes to your metabolism. And I've talked to you about that in terms of the more muscle you have, the better you metabolize any kind of sugar. Because when you don't have muscle, your liver takes the brunt of that. Your liver gets full of fat because you don't have storage space in your muscle.
This study is just confirming that. As people get older and they develop sarcopenia, and by the way, let me just say it. Most people that get osteoporosis, most people that get osteoporosis, one, they don't have muscle. The most important thing for osteoporosis is not calcium. It's muscle. So muscle is so metabolic, it's so important for your metabolism storage bins because what we've talked about day after day after day is insulin. And at the root of every disease, every disease that's going this way, that's in an upward trajectory. Heart, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes has all to do with insulin. It's the biggest factor. And one of the biggest factors in insulin is called insulin resistance. And one of the best antidotes to that is muscle, building muscle.
So walking is good. Am I against it? No, I'm not against walking. I love walking. That's good for you. But it will never replace muscle strengthening resistant exercises. And far too many people think cardio rather than muscle. You know what I mean? They think cardio. And that goes back to, I remember there was guys like, yeah, Dr. Cooper who wrote books in the seventies, and I remember these guys were gurus in my day and talking about the importance of cardio for the heart and all that. Look, I never disliked cardio. I think cardio is good, but me with good, better, best, the best form of exercise is muscle. If we can only get seniors to understand that, and some of them are, they can't move around much and they've got bad hips and bad knees, but they can still get stronger. They can still get stronger. I don't care if you're 80 years old, you can get stronger.
And one of the biggest factors, they've shown this in terms of longevity, is whether you can get off the floor or not. Lay down on the floor and just see if you can get off the floor on your own. That ain't easy. And can you get out of a chair? It takes muscle to get out of the chairs. And you see older people have a hard time getting out of a chair. But all I'm saying is in this study, it's confirming the importance of muscle. It's saying that with sarcopenia, there's almost two and a half times greater risk of dementia. Okay? By the way, when it comes to muscle and it comes to eating, okay? So you want to get strong. I can't emphasize it enough, especially I show you my arms here. I'm on a podcast, okay? So you're visualizing this. You know me, I like to show you. I tell my grandchildren, you see these pipes here, okay? These guns, they're illegal. You can't bring them across the border.
Of course I'm teasing, but the best muscle for your brain, and we did a podcast on this years ago, I don't know if I did it, I might've did it with Tony Jr. and the podcast was, do a leg day for your brain. Think of your brain and think of your legs, your leg muscles, because those are your biggest muscles in your body, more storage space there than anywhere else. And you see people around, they got skinny legs, and that's all right, except that you want to have strong legs for brain. And this is study just confirming what other studies. Now what is muscle again? It's storage, it's metabolism. It's where glycogen can be stored instead of being stored in your liver and instead of your body having to make more and more and more and more fat cells, okay? Because again, you can be skinny fat. You can have all that visceral fat around your liver. You can have visceral fat around your heart and visceral fat around your pancreas and visceral fat around your kidneys, and you wouldn't even know it because I'm skinny. That doesn't mean you're healthy, my friend.
Okay, so the importance of getting strong, again, confirmed by another study here. And by the way, here's something important that went along with the study. Higher muscle protein synthesis. Okay? How's the other way to build muscle? It's called protein synthesis and the best protein, okay, you know what I'm going to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. Rinse and repeat. Okay? The best protein is animal protein, okay? The best protein is animal protein. It beats vegetable protein by 50% in terms of absorption and synthesis. So people that tell you, you should be a vegetarian, it's better for you. They don't know what they're talking about. When it comes to synthesis, meaning the breakdown and the absorption of protein to build muscle, you cannot build muscle without protein. And again, you are meant to eat from the animal kingdom. And when I say eggs, meat and cheese, I mean it. I mean it, okay? 50% better absorption, better synthesis of animal protein versus vegetable protein. If you're eating vegetable protein and you're living on it, you're making a big boo boo.
So that's the first study. Two new studies, first one that came out about the brain and muscle, okay? I wanted to keep you up to date. The more muscle, the better. Your chances of not getting dementia at least two and a half times, and this was a study over, people over 65 years old. Start as soon as possible and you don't have to spend a fortune of going to a gym. You're involved in a gym, good for you, good for you. But you need resistant exercises to get strong so you can get these elastic bands. I should have brought, I got them right here, and you can get strong doing that. Resisting exercises. Think of protecting. Guys, one of the biggest fears in the world, the fears in the world. If you do a survey, especially as people get older, what is your biggest fear? I'm going to lose my memory. Dementia, Alzheimer's, cognitive. That is the biggest fear for us, senior citizens and rightly so. Who wants that? No one.
So isn't that an interesting study? Here's the headline. Muscle and Brain Health Closely Linked in Older Adults Over 65 Years Old, but it goes beyond that. Start young, get strong Now. Have you guys got your books to give out for a Christmas presents yet? Sun, Steak and Steel? Come on. What a great gift. Okay, now here's another one, and this has to do with the brain too. This I found fascinating. Okay, here it is. Fructose levels, okay, fructose levels and Alzheimer's. Okay? Fructose levels and Alzheimer's. Now, listen to this study out of the journal Nature, which is a very prestigious journal by the way, and it said this, fructose levels are increased by five times in areas of the brain in patients with Alzheimer's. Fructose levels, not just sugar. This is fructose, not just sugar. Sugar. You know me in sugar, but this is fructose, very specific, and it says when they get an Alzheimer's patient and they analyze the brain, they have five times more fructose in their brain, especially in the hippocampus.
Then the general population out of the journal Nature, okay? Now, I don't want to get into the weeds too much, but I just want to get you thinking for a minute. You guys, more than any other audience, I'm sure when it comes to podcasts, any other audience know this better than anyone else? Fructose, specifically, high fructose corn syrup is the antichrist of sugars, okay? Now, I'm not against fructose, by the way. Okay, so let me differentiate that. You guys know this, but I'm going to say it again. I'm not against fructose, so when I was a kid, an apple a day kept the doctor away, but today it's a steak a day will keep the doctor away, okay?
Why do I say that? Because you can eat fruit and eat it, never drink it. You got that? You can eat fruit, don't live on it. They're God's candies and we live in a different world, remember that okay? Because this is significant. We live in a different world. We're not living in the 1950s. Where an apple a day kept the doctor away. We are living in a time where the biggest factor, and I mentioned it before, 93% of the population is upside down when it comes to their metabolism. What do I mean by that? 93% of the population have a condition called the metabolic syndrome. I wrote books about it, and even in my new book, I talk about it again, and metabolic syndrome is at the root of heart, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and autoimmune, with leaky gut in autoimmune, okay?
So what's fructose got to do with that? Well, it is got a lot to do with it because what happened in 1980. What happened to the world? Use your eyeballs. Go out into the world, go to a mall, observe. God gave you two eyeballs. Use them. Watch people. Look at the size of people. What happened? What happened? I had cookies and ice cream too as a kid. If my mother wouldn't give it to me, my grandmother would. Grandparents, we don't say no to that, right? No. All I'm saying is, guys, think about this for a minute. All you have to do is use your noggin, okay? Use your noggin, use your eyeballs and observe how the world has changed. It's so interesting that it's almost like medicine is into a stupor. It's almost like they're into a coma and they don't want to observe. Houston, we got a problem. Look at the size of people, what happened? They changed the sugar.
Man thinks they're so smart that they figured out a sugar in a lab. It was subsidized by the government and these food companies, what they did is let's take corn and turn it into a syrup and it'll be a high fructose corn syrup. And then they said, oh, man, this is great. It's fructose. And everybody thought, well, that's fruit. That's good for you. Even today, people will tell you fruits and vegetables are better for you than eggs, than meat and cheese. They'll tell you that. It's a religion, my friend. Anyway, back to the story. You know what they're finding in brains today with people that have Alzheimer's? They got five times more fructose than people that don't have Alzheimer's. It's accumulating. Hello? In the brain. Guys, when I tell you about Vegas, before it gets to your brain. It starts in the liver. Yep. What happens in the liver doesn't stay in the liver. Fructose, okay?
I mean, I studied this in the 1970s. Fructose goes right to your liver. It's like alcohol. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's nutrition 1 0 1. You learn that on the first day of nutrition. Remember, fructose goes right to your liver. Now in the 1970s, who cares? Liver, who cares if it goes to your liver. Now, we know what alcohol does to the liver. That's not good, but we don't think fructose does that to your liver, except it does. Except it does. And what happens in the liver doesn't stay in the liver. It goes to the brain. Nevermind your heart, your brain and fructose, okay? What does it do inside the brain? Well, I remember listening to, is it a podcast I listened to? It's got to be 5, 6, 7 years ago. There was a fellow by the name of Dr. Johnson, and he did a lot of research on fructose, and I liked it because he was thinking way outside the box, and this guy was no dummy. I think he had two or three PhDs. He was a smart cookie, but he was saying that fructose is used by animals for hibernation.
Look, if you live in Northern Ontario, okay, I got my hand up. By the way, we didn't get the memo on climate change. Okay? I'm sorry. It's going to be winter in Northern Ontario. It's just the way it is okay. We're going to get winter every year. We don't get the memo. If things are heating up, we didn't get that memo. Anyway that's another issue, okay? But what he was saying, Dr. Johnson was saying, listen, animals like bears, they use fructose. Did you know that a bear getting ready for winter will eat up to 30,000 blueberries a day? Like what? 30,000? But you see, they do it to get ready for hibernation. They pack on the fat for the winter, right?
But what it does, what fructose does, according to Dr. Johnson, I really, really liked his research. He's saying, think about that. What does fructose do to your body? It slows the energy down. It's like you're getting ready to hibernate, and he said in the brain, fructose will slow the brain's mitochondria, the battery packs up there. Energy, it goes downwards. Fructose is meant for hibernation. It's to slow you down, not to speed you up, although you give it to kids and their brains go crazy, okay? But it really is a malfunction of the mitochondria in the brain. Boy, we're studying that today. It's incredible. Brain energy, okay? Brain energy, and what happens in a patient with Alzheimer's? There's way too much fructose. Why do you think today? Do you know that Alzheimer's is the number one killer in the United Kingdom and number three in Canada and the United States in North America? My word, I can tell you something. I know it was always around, but I didn't even study hardly at all, Alzheimer's.
We didn't even study it, hardly at all. That's an old man's, I mean, you're got to be 110 to lose your brain, but not anymore. It is a major problem in our society and fructose, according to this study in the journal of at least it's published in the Journal of Nature, there's five times more of that stinking fructose in the brain, especially in the hippocampus area of the brain than there should be. Five times more in Alzheimer's patients. Guys, these are significant findings, and the low hanging fruit of all of this is, you know what guys? Cut back up. You can have a fruit. You want to have an orange, eat an orange, I don't care. Not on the reset, but you want to have an apple. Go for it. Bananas, man, not so much. Okay, "Dr. I got to have my banana because otherwise I'm not going to have any potassium." Well, why don't you just have some bacon? Because you've got more potassium and bacon than you have in a banana. You mean your doctor didn't tell you that?
No, but guys, you can have a fruit, okay? I like fruit. I like berries. I even allow you to have some berries in Dr. Martin's perfect smoothie. Okay? You can have a few berries in there. Enjoy. I've got no problem with that, but just understand the low hanging fruit is to get rid of fructose in your life, and I mean high fructose corn syrup, it's in every thing in the middle aisles of your grocery store. Whenever sugar is added, they add high fructose corn syrup, avoid like the plague, from crackers to ketchup, to whatever's in the middle aisle. They can't even make a loaf of bread anymore without adding some sugar to it. They can't even make soup without adding high fructose corn syrup to it. It's addictive and people don't even know they're an addict on fructose, and it's accumulating in the liver and then off to the brain and off to the heart. It's a dangerous, dangerous antichrist of sugars, high fructose corn syrup.
I've been saying this guys for 40 years, the 1980s, I actually got called on the carpet because I was going against the grain called on the carpet because I was mentioning even in radio programs that high fructose corn syrup was dangerous. Gatorade and all this stuff, and they were coming out with Gatorade. Yeah, you've got electrolytes, Dr. Martin. I said, that's a bunch of crap. It's crap. You're using high fructose corn syrup. I got called on the carpet, but I was right about it, and I said, I won't repent. No, it's not a normal sugar. It was made in a lab to fatten people up. If you don't believe me, look around. Have a look and just see how big people are today. High fructose corn syrup. There's nothing that will build visceral fat, dangerous fat, like high fructose corn syrup. I can't stand this stuff. Terrible.
Okay, guys, how did you like those two studies? Okay, we got a great week coming up, okay? So stay tuned. Tell your friends, tell everybody. Be a little evangelist, okay? Tell 'em and get your book, Sun Steak and Steel and buy copies, okay, for your friends. They'll love it as a gift. Okay, guys, we love you dearly. We'll 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!