Join Dr. Martin in today's episode of The Doctor Is In Podcast.
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. We appreciate you guys coming on as usual. Okay, guys, let's go and we're going to talk a little bit about something. Oh, we never talk about insulin resistance. I want to talk about some surprising things this morning that are related to insulin. I touched on them before, but I just want to spend a session here. How do you know if you have insulin resistance? Some things are obvious, okay, if metabolic syndrome, okay, let's unpack this just for a sec. Metabolic syndrome is your body's having trouble with food, okay? That's what it is. Your body is having trouble with food. It can't process food properly. It's a very serious condition characterized by, if you Google metabolic syndrome, you're going to get five or six things you're going to look at, it'll say high blood pressure, higher than average blood sugar, not diabetes, but higher than average blood sugar, high levels of triglycerides, low levels of HDL, cholesterol, okay?
And belly fat. Those are characteristics. And listen, listen, Linda's and listen, Larry, 93%, I remember 2015 or I was doing my radio show and this study came out and it stalked me in my tracks. And that was that 88% of the population had at least one characteristic of metabolic syndrome. 88%. I mean, guys, was it 2015 or 2016? I can't remember exactly, but that blew me away. And it blew me away because I knew it was bad. I just didn't know it was that bad. Now, for a guy in private practice, you got to remember, I wrote a book in 2011, Tony Jr. And I wrote a book in 2011 called Serial Killers, two Hormones that want You Dead, insulin and Cortisol. And today, if you could focus in on those two hormones, insulin and cortisol, and get those two down, what a difference that makes in your health.
But again, if you come to insulin, insulin is a food hormone. Now, in the absence of food, if you're stressed all the time, you can actually create insulin resistance by stress alone. You're not meant to be stressed for a long period of time. Okay? So insulin resistance, 99% of the time it comes from food and you can get it from cortisol. That's stress hormone in the absence of food, I brought that up in 2011 because in my private practice I saw insulin resistance out the wazoo and I saw cortisol coming out people's ears, and we wrote a book about it. Two hormones at once, you dead. Now back to insulin resistance for a minute. Insulin primarily is a food hormone, okay? It's a food hormone. And so guys, I got away for, I don't know, 30 or 40 years, not talking calories. Remember, I had a weight loss clinic. I wasn't so interested in your calories. I was interested more in your insulin response to foods, okay? Some call that the glycemic index or whatever. I was more interested in the type of food and what happened to insulin because let's just talk weight loss for a second.
Calories in, calories out. That's called yo-yo dieting. It's subject to failure. It has a shelf life. And the reason is is because if you live on calories and calories in and calories out metabolically, that's not helping very much. Okay? It helps a little bit, but not a lot because it doesn't get rid of insulin resistance. You want to get rid of insulin resistant. You want your cells at the cellular level not to be resistant to insulin. And we'll get into why. And again, primarily insulin's a food hormone. So I worked on people's insulin. I worked on insulin resistance and fixing that because if you could fix that, you fixed metabolic syndrome. And remember, metabolic syndrome was characterized by high blood pressure. Guys, 50% of the population just about is on high blood pressure medication. And you take a pill. I understand that if a doctor sees that you have high blood pressure, he doesn't want you to have high blood pressure.
She doesn't want you to have high blood pressure. So their idea, and I understand it, is for you or someone with high blood pressure to take a medication and when they get blood pressure down, well, it's working, so let's stay on it. The problem is it's not fixing the underlying condition. Why do you have high blood pressure? Okay, why? I want to fix the why medicine. You have a high blood sugar, they want you on metformin or other mes because they want to fix the symptom of high blood sugar. I want to fix the cause of high blood sugar. I want to get at the cause, guys, get it. And you've got high blood pressure, you've got high blood sugars, or even just above its range. You know me, I'm a big guy on A1C, I want to see A1C. When I was in practice, I wanted to see A1C.
Now, I did a test, a very simple test in my office, and I thought it was the most accurate because it would tell you eons of time early if you were in trouble. You know what that was? Sugar in the urine. One thing, your body is so smart. Think of how smart your body is. When your sugars are up, your body is dedicated for your sugars to be under control. So if they go up, you know what happens? You are going to pee out sugar. That's how your body operates. You are so and wonderfully made. It's unreal how the body adapts and how the body reacts. And so I used to tell patients that would come into the office and we did several tests on their urine, but I would tell 'em, look, you got a trace of sugar in that urine, my friend. You got insulin resistance.
You and food have a bad relationship right now. You're eating the wrong foods. You know me in the Titanic. You're on the Titanic, you're in trouble. Listen, Linda, and listen, Larry. So again, I would go back to the cause. So belly fat, the cause, fatty liver, the cause we never saw fatty liver in the seventies. It's amazing to me. What's new? What's new? What's new doc? A lot of people ask me that, by the way. It's just an expression. What's new? Well, I'll tell you what's new. Insulin is through the roof. It's the biggest problem medically that we have in our society today. It's insulin, insulin, insulin. It's creating a cascade of problems, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer. Not cancer's complicated. But I'll tell you one thing, if you have metabolic syndrome and you're on that Titanic, you are in deep trouble. And for some the manifestation might be high blood pressure.
The manifestation might be heart disease, but for others, the manifestation might be cancer. And for others, the manifestation might be type three diabetes, which is Alzheimer's, which is dementia. We have an epidemic today of subclinical diabetes because again, if you have insulin resistance, you and carbs don't get along. You really effectively are a diabetic. Now, again, here's the reason that you're officially not a diabetic because your body is dedicated to not allowing your blood sugars to get too high. Your body's dedicated to it. Diabetes is the last thing that happens. But really for me, diabetes is one of the first things that happen. You're a diabetic without the diagnosis.
I don't want to be negative, but medicine is hijacked by the laboratories. In medical school, you're a diabetic when your sugars are over seven, okay? In the United States, you're a diabetic when your sugars are over a hundred, maybe 80, 90. Yeah. But guys, you're really a diabetic way before that and take it a step back again, what causes that? It's food. What type of food? Doc? Crappy carbs. Sugary carbs, carbs and fat, combined donuts, bagels, muffins, pasta, cereals, all these things. Guys, when you look at flour, for example, those are just sugar molecules holding hands. That's all it is. Guys. They break down rapidly. Oh, Dr. Martin, what about whole wheat? What if it's whole wheat pasta? I don't care. It's still going to break down rapidly and it's going to pack up your liver. And if you pack up your liver, one of the ways your body responds to a packed up liver is to send some of that fat out of the liver in the form of triglycerides. Your cholesterol's going to go down. Is that a good thing? Nah, it's not a good thing. You don't want your cholesterol to go down, especially your HDL that happens in the liver. And then I talk to you a few weeks ago about some hidden signs. Oh, by the way, back to A1C for a minute here. If you're A1C, okay, you can get some chem strips and you want to check your urine, see if you have any sugar in it.
It's a spillover. That's how the old fashioned doctors, by the way, how did they diagnose diabetes without being able to test your blood sugars? How did old fashioned doctors, how did they know if you were a diabetic? You know how they knew they'd smell your urine? They'd smell the urine and it had a sugary smell to it. That's how they knew. And remember, diabetes used to be rare, but that's how doctors a hundred years ago, that's how they found out if you were a diabetic or not. It was sugar in the urine. But guys, when it comes to actual blood tests, now you can do insulin fasting and all that. I like those tests. Doctors usually don't do them very often. So here's one that they should do a hundred percent, and I find it to be very accurate. For me, I found it to be extremely accurate, is your A1C.
A1C. You know how they measure A1C? Okay? You know how they measure it? Because sugar attaches itself to hemoglobin. It's glycation. Okay, guys, glycation, you have glycated hemoglobin, your red blood cells hemoglobin's in the middle of your red blood cells. Hemoglobin is a carrier for oxygen, sugar attaches to it, it hooks onto it, and you can measure it. It's a wonderful test. It's much more accurate than just taking your blood sugar because again, what I tell you about blood sugar, your body does everything, everything, everything, everything to keep it within its range. It's slightly up a little bit. Well, doctor, don't worry about it. They have numbers. They're hijacked by the lab. They have numbers that they've been trained in. And if you're not above that number, they're not too worried about it. But I'm a big guy into prevention. I want to prevent these things. I want to stop them before, okay? I'm big on that. So remember that. And A1C, anything above 5.4, you're in Dooo, you're on the Titanic. Now, let me give you a couple of hidden ones that people don't associate this with insulin, but to me, very telling what is that? I looked at three things that are surprising when I mention them to other people. They're surprising because they never looked at it that way. They don't see this because they're not taught that one of them is high iron.
And that's very common today. There's a condition called hemochromatosis, and it's so common today. It's unreal. And it was something that used to be rare. And if you asked a doctor today, generally, okay, because they're not trained in nutrition. If you ask a physician just generally, okay, and again, I know I sound negative all the time, but I can't help myself. When they see hemochromatosis or high iron levels, you know what they're thinking? You're eating too much red meat. That has nothing to do with it. Well, as a matter of fact, I would say it's the opposite of that. It's the opposite of that because the cause of hemochromatosis is in the liver. When the liver is gummed up, when the liver is full of fat, how do you get fat in your liver, my friend? How do you get fat in your liver? Sugar, crappy carbohydrates.
They'll pack up that liver and you can get hemochromatosis. You can get high iron levels because your liver is the place where it chelates iron. But what if your liver is all gummed up? What if it's all gummed up? So this is something that I used to try and teach my patients. It's insulin, it's carbohydrates. You're a carbo holic. You see high levels of iron, and I will show you a carbo holic and their livers is packed up. Secondly, I brought this to you last week. Do you know where you can get insulin resistance in your joints? In your joints? Your synovial fluid? That's the fluid in between your joints. Do you know that they can become insulin resistance? And this is why so many people, when they change their diet and they get off the carbohydrates, they find their joint pain. Jeepers. My joint pain is so much better than it used to be.
Yeah, because you had insulin resistance inside your joints. Where was that study? Let me see if I can get it out because I brought it to you quickly last here it is in the arthritis and rheumatology, they synovium in joints are sensitive to insulin. The membrane creates synovial fluid and it can't suppress inflammation when you have insulin resistance in the joints. Wow. Sort of a silent sign that your insulin resistance is way too high. Chronic joint pain. Now, I understand you can get osteoarthritis degenerative joints, but you got to start with cutting out the carbs. Here's another one that affects joints. Well, not always, but often high levels of uric acid fructose and the byproducts of fructose is uric acid, and you talk uric acid to almost anybody, and they'll go, oh, that's gout. But you can have gouty like where you really don't have gout because you might not get that excruciating.
You think you're having a baby paint, gout, gout pain, but you might have high levels of urea that's happening at the kidney level where your body can't filter out all that urea. And then I bring that back to the liver. It's part of the Creb cycle, and when your insulin is high and when you have insulin resistance, one of the silent signs of that is high levels of urea. I used to look for that in my office because I always sent patients away with a plan. Always. I'm giving you a plan. You didn't come to my office when I specialized in food without a plan. I'm sending you away. Most of them, especially in the last 15 years or so before I retired, we're given the reset. You are a mess metabolically. I would say, look, I'm watching you. We're going to do a follow-up in four to six weeks.
If you follow what I recommend, it's going to change your life, but you got to do it. I can't go home with you. I can pump your tires here in the office, and I want you to listen to my radio show and I'll pump tires there too. But I'm telling you now, I'm giving you a plan, and one of the toughest things in your life is changing the way you eat. I'm teaching you nutrition 1 0 1. We're not talking calories. We're talking fuel. I'm going to show you how to change fuels. I'm going to show you that your body will respond to rocket fuel, okay? Your body's going to respond to rocket fuel. You've been giving your body the wrong fuel for a lot of years. It wasn't even your fault. You were told that that was the thing to do, but my little sermon or sermonette was always based on changing fuels.
The foods that you're eating are highly inflammatory, okay? Highly inflammatory. And now I want you to go on an anti-inflammatory diet, and it's going to rock your world because you've been taught the wrong things. You were taught calories, you were taught moderation. You were taught your body needs carbohydrates, your brain needs carbs. You're going to die without carbs. Nah, you're not going to die without carbs. I'm going to get your body to change fuels, and it's going to be for some of you, it's a huge adjustment. Anything, guys that you accomplish in life that's worthwhile needs hard work. True or false? You need hard work. Not easy. Not easy to change a diet, not easy to change a habit. I used to have people come in and they said, you know what, doc? I only drink one soda a day. I said, well, that's 14 teaspoons of sugar, only one.
We're going to eliminate that. Well, how do I do that? You are never, ever, ever going to have orange juice again. What? You're not going to have orange juice again, okay? They'd look at me like I had two heads. I said, yeah, but look at all your symptoms. Look at the way you're feeling. Look what's happening to your body. Isn't a 30 day program worthwhile to change fuels and to change habits? Sure. It is. Okay. Okay. I went on a little diatribe this morning. I Okay, guys. Okay, we got a good week. We got some studies here that have come in and caught my attention. I want to talk about that and we'll do that this week. Friday is what? Question and answer Friday. So get your questions in, okay? We love answering your questions, and it's one of the most popular programs that we have. People like it, okay? Because of you guys, how could I have question and answer if I didn't have you? Okay. Okay, guys, we love you dearly. I'm going to 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!