Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners.
Some of today’s topics include:
- Healing of kidneys with Reset
- Non-HDL and HDL numbers on blood work
- Safe levels of sugar consumption
- Sweet wormwood & black currant oil for Sjogren's
- Xylitol to help reduce plaque
- Ubiquinol after bypass surgery
- Taurine as a supplement
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. How are you guys? Good to be back on with you this morning and we're looking forward to question and answer Friday. Okay, Lori is asking a question about kidneys. "Can a person heal their kidneys by doing the Reset, avoiding sugar, drinking lots of water? My cousin is 60 and just started needing dialysis." Well, look, unfortunately, Lori, your kidneys is not like your liver. The liver has a tremendous capacity to regenerate. Okay? Your kidneys, they can regenerate, but they don't have the same capacity as the liver to do it. So at 60 years old and they already need dialysis. Look, everything that you just said, I would have your cousin do. I would have them on very, very, very low sugar, no sugar really at all because sugar is very destructive to the kidneys, okay, to blood supply. And then of course, drinking water. Okay, water, H2O, flushing those kidneys out. Very important.
To what extent they can regenerate, that's a good question. And unfortunately, when they've already started dialysis, my experience is it's limited, but it's worth it because even if you can regenerate the kidneys to 10% better than they are, because usually with dialysis, kidneys go down pretty quick. They go downhill. Dialysis saves their lives, but ordinarily people are not on dialysis depending, but it's tough sledding, okay? So it's worth a try, and any kind of improvement in those kidneys would be certainly worthwhile. Thanks for the question, Lori.
Susan, "what is the difference between non-`HDL and HDL on blood work?" and Susan says, "I need to understand what makes the non-HDL." Susan, I love you. I don't know you, but I love you, but there's such a thing as CDS. You know what CDS is? Cholesterol Derangement Syndrome. Okay? I have to answer Susan, the way I always answer cholesterol, okay, because you're trying to make me care about cholesterol, I don't care. Okay? Now I'm joking in a way, okay? In a way, of course, I want to read your lipids. I did it for years. Always looked at blood work. And when I looked at lipids, here's what I was interested in. What are your triglycerides and what is your HDL? I looked at the other things, but it didn't mean anything to me. So non HDL, you know what that means to medicine? Non HDL is bad cholesterol. It's another reading for what they call bad cholesterol. I don't agree with that, but any physician and just about anybody, they still believe in bad cholesterol. I don't, I personally don't believe in bad cholesterol.
Cholesterol is not the bad guy, and the world has CDS, Cholesterol Derangement Syndrome, and unfortunately here we are today in 2024 and the world is still stupid. The world of medicine is still, can I say duped? And the reason I say it, Susan, is because if cholesterol was at the root of heart disease, we would've cured it by now. But in the United States last year, 700,000 people died of a heart attack. Are we winning the war on cholesterol? Nope. We're not. Are we winning the war on heart disease? No, because we're looking for love in all the wrong places. I don't blame cholesterol for heart disease unless it's too low. Okay? That's why I like to look at HDL, not non HDL, but HDL.
So Susan, you say you need to understand, well, you came to the wrong place to answer that. I just can't tell you something that I don't believe in at all, okay? I hear it every day. Well, cholesterol, we got to get that down. No, we got to get it up. Even your LDL, you want to get it up not down, and nevermind all the studies that are confirming that I'm right. Nevermind that. Let's just look at what's happening in the world and heart disease. We haven't even made a dent in it. The only time there was a little bit of a downward trend in heart disease. I've been around a long time. I've watched these statistics for 50 years, and heart disease has been going like this. Up, up, up, up, up, up, up. Cholesterol is going down, down, down, down, down. And the only time there was a little bit of a bend in heart disease deaths. Didn't last long, but the only time there was when people stopped smoking, and the whole cholesterol thing.
If you want to know history started by one man, a fellow by the name of Dr. Ancel Keys. I tell the story in Sun, Steak and Steel. I tell his story because President Eisenhower in 1955 had a heart attack playing golf. He was in a sand trap. Anytime I've gone into a sand trap that has really given me just about a heart attack, I don't know how to get out of them, but President Eisenhower had a heart attack, and this guy was a pathologist at the University of Minnesota, and he was the only guy that said it at the time. You know why President Eisenhower had a heart attack? Because he's got high cholesterol, and the world went for it. The world went for it. They put Dr. Ancel Keys in 1965, 10 years later, they put his face, he was on the cover of Time Magazine. Now nobody cares about Time Magazine anymore, but in the 1960s, it was the top news journal, right? The Time Magazine. He was on the cover of it, and he got the whole world to be worried about cholesterol, and that's why they didn't want you eating eggs. That's why they wanted you not to eat bacon and eggs and sausage and eggs. And I was like, John the Baptist, hello. Don't listen to Dr. Keys. He's wrong. He ain't right.
I went to school, I took 2000 hours of nutrition. Guess what they were teaching me in school? Lower cholesterol. I never believed it. I never believed it. Then in the 1980s, guess what they did? They started statin drugs. They got drugs to lower cholesterol, and if they would've had their way, they would put statin drugs in our drinking water. And they almost tried in the United Kingdom, they did. It was in parliament. Let's put statin drugs in our drinking water because that will lower cholesterol. Folks, if that doesn't sound crazy to you, I don't know. That just took my breath away and gave me a huge migraine. I remember it. And here we are in 2024. We haven't even made a dent in heart disease. It's worse than ever because they're looking for love in all the wrong places. Instead of looking at cholesterol, they should be looking at triglycerides. And the fact that people have low HDL cholesterol, and that comes from metabolic syndrome. High insulin, food, sugars will destroy your blood vessels.
Guys, it's not cholesterol. Cholesterol's on your side. Cholesterol blaming cholesterols because you blame the police. They're at the crime scene. That's not the police. They're not the bad guys nor the firemen. They're there. They're trying to put that inflammation out. Anyway, long story, Susan, you came to the wrong place if you want me to discuss bad cholesterol, I can't do it. My conscience, let me. I appreciate the question because every day, Susan, I'm going to get asked that question. I get asked every day. In my practice days, every day, probably 10 times a day. Doc, because I'd look at their blood work and they go, well, what about my cholesterol? Well, I said, it's not high enough. You better get it up. What? 50% of the population over the age of 65 are on a statin drug. If you're a diabetic, they put you on a statin drug to lower cholesterol. It's insanity. Thanks, Susan. You gave me a migraine. Not you, but just talking about it. I get excited guys. I really do. Don't get CDS, Cholesterol Derangement Syndrome. Okay, thanks guys.
Jim's asking a good question. "How much sugar can you have safely?" Well, it depends, Jim, if you're in the 93% of the population, okay? If you're in that 93%, how do you know if you're in the 93%? Well, let me just talk about metabolic syndrome, okay? If you're in this 93% that either has high blood pressure, elevated, but still normal blood sugar, high triglycerides, low HDL, okay? Belly fat. If you have one or more of these, you're in 93% meaning that you got trouble with food, you got trouble with insulin, and we call that insulin resistance, and that leads to metabolic syndrome. If you're in that 93%, no amount of sugar is good for you, not even a drop of it.
Now, does that mean you're never going to have it? Doesn't mean that, but you shouldn't have it. Okay? I've told you the story in the past, okay? Have I told you the cat story recently? Probably not. True story. Lady comes into the office, allergies big time, and I said, do you know what you're allergic to? Because she's coming for help. And she said, well, yeah, my cat. I said, well, get rid of your cat. She says, I can't, doc. I love my cat. I said, well, I can't help you. When you have metabolic syndrome, you got a food problem. It's carbs, crappy carbs and sugars. You got an allergy to them. Well, doc, I got an allergy, but I like them. Yeah, I know you like them, but they don't like you.
So Jim, I hate to give you an answer. I don't want to say, well, you can have five grams of sugar. You can have a teaspoon a day. The average person has what? 18, 19 teaspoons of sugar a day. The average. Anything under that is good. No, it's not good. We got a problem, Houston, a big problem in our society today. It's the elephant in the room, and nobody, well, there are people talking about it, but not enough people. They throw that smokescreen out. They'd rather talk about cholesterol, and they'd rather blame eggs and meat and cheese for heart disease than blaming the food pyramid that's upside down. We're carboholics in our society. Our bodies were never meant to consume the amount of sugar that we're consuming near a truckload today. It's insanity.
So it's like Susan, Jim, I don't want to answer the question with a number. It depends. You're great metabolically. I talked to a guy the other day at the gym, okay? And well, doc, I said, well, you're at the gym every day and you want to have some ice cream? Well, good for you. It ain't going to kill you. But I'm just telling you, I said, I dealt with real people with metabolic syndrome, and they're in deep trouble and they're on the Titanic. Learn to say, no. Get rid of your sweet tooth. Get rid of it. That's why one of the big reasons that I have a 30 day program called The Metabolic Reset. Anyway, Jim, love you, man. Thanks for the question. It got me going again, Susan and Jim. You got me going this morning. Very good. Very good. Very good.
Marilyn, "have you ever heard of sweet wormwood?" Yep. "And black currant seed oil?" Yep. "To help with Sjogren's?" Nope. Sjogren's is an autoimmune. Okay, and Marilyn, the number one thing when you have autoimmune is you got leaky gut. There's no doubt about that. I have never seen a case of it. They have leaky gut starts in the gut, and yeah, I mean, I'm not against black current seed oil. I like it. Wormwood, I like it, but I don't know. I never really had much experience with that treating Sjogren's the way I treated Sjogren's. I started with the gut, and I always said, if you got autoimmune, you got a major fungus in your body. The Trojan horse got in your blood and it came in through your gut and your microbiome. You had dysbiosis, you had more bad guys than good guys. That could have come from antibiotics. It could have come from non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. It could come from bad food and eating sugar all the time. That'll disrupt your microbiome. But it started with the gut. That's where autoimmune starts. Okay? And you got to clean up your diet big time. And I would put probiotics, that's the key. Oil of oregano, I like that better than black current oil. I do, but I'm not against what you said, Marilyn. I can't say with experience. I can only tell you what I did and what I know helped with Sjogren's big time.
Okay, and by the way, just to prove my point, why is there so much autoimmune today? Why leaky gut? Okay. I mean, autoimmune is up by, I don't know. I've read statistics. It's up 50 to 70% in the last 50 years. It's way up. Again. I sort of rest my case. Why aren't we getting better? We're getting worse. United States and Canada in the developed world are two of the top disease countries with all the money we spend on healthcare, but it's not healthcare. It's disease care. We wait till we get sick. And you talk to 99% of their doctors who take no nutrition in school, none. And they want to give you food advice and it always the same, moderation. And then you get gurus saying, well never eat meat. You want to live on vegetables and fruit. I don't agree with that at all. You weren't built for that. Anyway, I'm getting excited again. Thanks, Marilyn.
Mariana, "I have read that xylitol is effective in reducing plaque when used consistently. Any insight?" I've read that. I don't agree with it. Okay. I haven't seen, xylitol I know there, look, I've seen negative studies on xylitol. Okay. One thing that xylitol does in studies that have looked at it elevates your uric acid. So people with elevated uric acid. By the way, at the Martin Clinic, I used to really be interested in uric acid because even with people without, oh, uric acid, that's for people with gout? No, the vast majority of people with high levels of uric acid don't have any symptoms of gout at all, but it's a symptom of inflammation. And xylitol can elevate levels of uric acid. So I don't know. You can use some xylitol like it's in gum. It's used as a natural. It's not really. It's sugar alcohol. So I mean like a sort of semi-natural sweetener, but I'd be careful with it. That's me. Okay. I'm not that big on it, but a little bit I guess ain't going to kill you. Okay. I wouldn't take it like a supplement to get rid of atherosclerosis, Mariana. Okay. I wouldn't do that. That's me. Okay and I've seen some studies on xylitol being effective, but I'm not convinced. Let me just say that. Thanks for the question, Mariana. We appreciate it.
Mary, "my husband had bypass surgery." Okay, "two weeks ago. What would you recommend? Thinking of ubiquinol" Well, I'm going to tell you something. You better put him on ubiquinol. I'll tell you why, because I can just about bet your boots, your husband is on statin drugs to lower cholesterol. They don't do a bypass. I've had friends as cardiologists, and they said we got to give people, at least in Canada, they got to give them a cocktail of drugs leaving the hospital after a bypass. The College of Physicians and surgeons made them, even if the cholesterol was normal, you're on a statin drug and you're on a blood thinner and you're on a high blood pressure medication and you're on, it's a cocktail that they give. So you better put your hubby on coQ10 ubiquinol. Why? Because statin drugs destroy coQ10. It's one of the pathways that statin drugs destroy. And so yes, absolutely I'd have him on Navitol to elevate the nitric oxide. I'd have him on high DHA to lubricate those blood vessels, maybe even curcumin to lower inflammation around the heart and blood vessels. Okay, thank you for the question. I much appreciate it, Mary.
Marianne, "in general, is taurine okay to take, and can you share your knowledge of taurine?" Well, taurine is an amino acid. It's not an essential amino acid. I love taurine, by the way. I want you to eat it. Sun, steak, number two, steak. You eat steak, you get taurine. Taurine is found almost exclusively in the animal kingdom. So if you eat eggs, taurine. Meat, taurine. Cheese, taurine. Supplement, I never gave it as a supplement. Now, if you eat bone broth, you're going to get taurine in it. Okay? It's got taurine in there. I like taurine, but they're just some things I want you to eat, okay? Eat like zinc for example. People say, doc, you don't talk about zinc that much. Well, you should be eating it. If you have a steak, you're going to eat zinc. If you have an egg, you're going to eat zinc, cheese, zinc. It's in the animal kingdom.
That's why, guys, it comes back to when they tell you, well, you can live on fruits and vegetables. Yeah, you can live on them, but you shouldn't. Yeah, you can live on them. You're not going to die immediately, but your brain is going to shrink because your body was designed primarily for the animal kingdom. And I'm not saying you can't have plants. I'm not saying you can't have fruits and vegetables, but you can't live on them. Now, I know that goes against the grain, but when you look at the nutritional profile of foods, it's not even close, guys. It's not even close. You put up plants, fruits and vegetables, and then you put up the animal kingdom, eggs, meat, and cheese, fish, whatever, right? It's not close. The nutrition profile is not close. Now, you can have both, but you need eggs, meat and cheese. You need that animal kingdom for cholesterol, for vitamins, fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A, not found in the plant kingdom. You think vitamin A is not important. It's hugely important. And the only reason I don't talk about it that much is because I want you to eat it. You can eat vitamin A every time you have eggs, meat and cheese. Got the memo?
You are going to hear out there. The world out there is going to tell you the opposite of what I just told you. There's an agenda out there. They literally want us, the elites, they'll never stop eating steak, by the way, but they want us to stop it. They don't want us eating. Okay? And I'm sorry guys, it's not true. I'm sorry and there's people even on our program that they don't agree with me, but I try and make my point and I try and back it up. Okay? I try and back it up.
Okay, well, we're going to have a question and answer. Hold on, let me see how many left to go. Yeah, you know what? I'll answer the rest for Brendan and Jen and Suzanne and Francis and anonymous. Okay, and Lorna and Laurie. Yeah, all those people we're going to answer on Monday. And Monday is Labour Day. I'm on. Okay, so even Labour Day, we're having a show. Okay, Lord willing. We'll have a show on Labour Day. Okay. Did you have fun today? I did. Okay, guys, we love you. I know I say it every day, but I mean it. You guys are unreal. What an audience, guys. Love it, love it, love it. Thanks again for making this show so popular. You guys do that. By the end of the morning, this will be up to over 10,000 views on Facebook. Isn't that something? You guys do that and then you can listen to The Doctor Is In podcast on your favorite smart device. Okay? Thank you for making that podcast so successful. We appreciate it. Okay, guys, we love you. 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!