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. Once again, how are you? Welcome to another Facebook Live of the Doctors in podcast. Happy to have you on with us. For those who can join us live, we always appreciate it. Okay, guys, I got lots of headlines this morning, health headline Wednesday. And again, I just picked these out, lots of stuff behind the scenes and I flag certain either studies or articles or things that I find interesting hopefully that you will too. Drugs that come back to haunt your brain. This was an article that I read on drugs that come back to haunt your brain. And what they meant by that is down the road, they give you cognitive and memory problems. Five of them are mentioned, five classifications of medications that you need to be careful about. And the first one, and it actually surprised the author of this article, that PPIs affect memory.
Now, what is A-P-P-I-A proton pump inhibitor, like the purple pill, Nexium, anything that reduces acid for acid reflux, these pills, okay? We know for example, that they have a huge effect on osteoporosis down the road, but this article is saying they affect the memory. And how many millions of people are on these medications, these PPIs? No one wants to live with acid reflux. But remember again, I just got to say it. You never get acid reflux from having too much acid in your stomach. It's because you don't have enough. And now those proton pumps feel obligated to send more acid. And one of the biggest keys, and I tell this to you guys all the time, and I'll tell it to anyone that listens, one of the biggest reasons that we see so much acid reflux is because people are eating the wrong food. Your stomach was designed to eat meat, and when you don't and you don't eat enough of it, and you eat too many carbs, the pH in your stomach will change.
It will go up. It will become more alkaline. How does your body compensate for that? Tries to make more acid in the stomach. Food has a big, big effect on the acidity in your stomach. You got more acidity or you should have more acidity in your stomach than a lion has. Now, I've never followed a lion around to find out what they eat, but what I read is they live on meat, okay? They live on meat, and yet it's not as acidic as your stomach facility. Surprising, isn't it guys? Anyone that tells you you should be a vegetarian or a vegan run forest run, they don't know what they're talking about. They're not right, they're wrong. It's a religion, not science. Okay? Your body was designed to eat meat. Absolutely. Okay? Now, what they're finding is when you're on PPIs over a period of time, it affects cognitive, it affects memory and it ain't good.
And I'll tell you why I think that happens because out of the five classifications of medications that are mentioned here, this is the only one that doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier. It doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier, your PPIs acid reflux medication. But here's what they do. When you have stomach acidity coming up the esophagus where it doesn't belong, you take a PPI to suppress that. Okay? Toms are Rolaids. Those are over the counter. You can get the purple pill, I think over the counter too, Nile. Anyway, guys, you do not absorb your nutrients because it suppresses the acidity in your stomach. You don't break protein down near as well, and plus your vitamins and your minerals. Thus down the road, your brain is missing vital nutrients. It has a cascade effect. Therefore, look, guys, I'm telling you, I've shown tens of thousands of people over the years, if you come to the basic premise that if you are getting acid reflux, the world's solution is to put a on it, not to fix the problem.
I want you to fix the problem, get your acidity back to where it should be in your stomach, where you want to be very acidic in your body. Is your stomach nowhere else? Okay? You don't want to be acidic anywhere else in your body. You just want your stomach to be acidic. And one of the reasons for bile and a gallbladder is to, once your food has been micro sized in your stomach comes into your small intestine. While bile does two things, bile emulsifies the fat so that you can absorb fat. You need fat, fat ahead, you need fat, but you won't even break your fat down properly. If you're on a PPI. Bile does two things. It emulsifies fat and it alkalizes your food because it's very acidic coming out of the stomach. It should be. And then when it hits your small intestine for absorption, your liver makes bile to alkalize it.
Sodium bicarbonate, baking soda, my friend, you're fearfully and wonderfully made, unbelievable how your body operates. Okay? So one of the classifications of medications that affects your brain down the road is PPIs. That's why I try and get people off of them. For some people, they need to take digestive enzymes every day. I used to call 'em American Express. Don't leave home without 'em. Your digestive enzyme help you to break your food down, help with the acidity in your stomach. Okay? Got it. Okay. Number two, Benadryl. Well, this one didn't surprise me that much because it crosses the blood-brain barrier. You know these anti-allergy medications, they cross the blood-brain barrier studies showing that it blocks the neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. It can affect your memory long-term use of Benadryl and medications like it because it crosses the blood brain barrier, okay? PPIs don't, but Benadryl and its associates do.
Third one, opiates, morphine. People take painkillers in that classification and they got a lot of pain, and I don't blame them, but they're showing long-term cognitive and memory issues, crosses the blood-brain barrier. You got a barrier there to protect you. But if you get medications that cross, it can be big problems. Benzos, you know what benzos are? They're sleep pills. Sedation. You guys know this. I've been telling you this for a lot of years. If you use a sleeping pill, you think you're sleeping, but you're not. You're sedated. It's a different thing altogether. And guys, don't think for one minute, I'm not sympathetic to people that don't sleep properly, and that happens to be over 70% of the population. They just don't get a good night's sleep, and I feel sorry for them. But the answer is not to take benzos. Those are things that cross the blood-brain barrier and sedate the brain.
You're not sleeping, you're knocked out, okay? I always use the illustration. Go for an operation. There's going to sedate you when you get up from the operation, go, oh, did I ever have a great sleep? My word? Would you do that to me again? No, that's not what happens. You felt like you got hit by a truck. And guys, here's what I've shown to you. Study after study has shown this. When you use sleeping pills, sleeping aids even, you can get over the counter like Ambien or whatever they call these medications. They're benzos. So what happens is that your brain when you're sleeping, has a self-cleaning oven, right? You guys know this because I talk to you about it all the time. Your brain has a self-cleaning oven. It's an energy center. There's a lot of waste in the brain. Waste byproducts because the more energy you have, think of a manufacturing plant.
Well, you're always going to have waste. Your body knows how to get rid of it, but you got to be sleeping. And when you sedate the brain, your self-cleaning oven doesn't work. So now those toxins that are meant to get out by your glymphatic system, they don't leave. And research is finally catching up to what I've been saying for a long time, that these medications make you more susceptible to dementia later on. So guys, like I said, I'm very sympathetic. I am. I want you to sleep, okay? I wrote a book, sun Steak, steel and Sleep. It's so important, okay? I get it. I had patients come in over the years, hundreds if not thousands, that were on sleeping pills. I said, well, doc, I can't sleep without them. You're not sleeping, you're sedated. It's different. You're not getting into the five stages of sleep.
You're just not, okay. And the last one, antidepressants. Oh, SSRIs cross the blood brain barrier. They're serotonin receptive. They uptake your serotonin in the brain. By the way, you got more serotonin in your gut than you have in your brain, but Prozac, I am picking on that because I was reading an article 90 studies on the failures of Prozac. I remember in the 1990s, Prozac was the new kid on the block. It's going to fix all depression and anxiety. It is a miracle drum. It was on the front page of Newsweek. I remember it like it was yesterday, A miracle drug, Prozac. And I was, guys, I'm going to tell you, I was so skeptical. I said, well, just be careful what you wish for because I bet you there's going to be a boatload of problems with that medication. And by the way, this SSRI comes with an enormous amount of side effects, including later on memory issues.
Well, you can't just keep sending stuff across the blood brain barrier and not expect to have some side effect to that 25%. I read this, it can't be 25% of women in the United States according to this article, are on some form of SSRIs. What, 25%? It can't be teenagers. Let me read this to you. Teenagers, 40% of teens in the US of eight, it can't be, but that's what they're saying are on a pharmaceutical, and most of it are SS R and anti-anxiety medication. And are we getting the bang for the buck? There's more depression today than there ever was. There's more anxiety today than there ever was. Anywhoo, I don't want to get too negative this morning. That was the article five medications, four of them that crossed the blood-brain barrier that cause memory and cognitive issues later in life, and the PPIs for acid reflux.
And I told you the mechanism of how that would affect your memory. Okay? That was the first one. Recent study, 500 milligrams of magnesium daily, okay? This is just a study decreases age related brain shrinkage. Now guys, you know how much I love magnesium, okay? I do. I've been talking about magnesium for 50 years. We don't have enough of it. If it ain't in the soil, it ain't in our food. There's not a lot of magnesium in our food. Okay? That's my argument for supplementation of magnesium. And when I think of magnesium, I use the word relax. I used to tell that to my kids, okay? They were crossing a line and I'd say, relax.
Tone it down. Oh, I use this voice with great effectiveness. Relax. But magnesium relaxes blood vessels, which is a good thing. That's why it's so good for your adrenals, right? Relax. Magnesium is so good for sleep. We were talking about problems with sleeping. Magnesium is so good for sleep. And you know what? I love magnesium citrate. I love magnesium by glycinate. I love magnesium sulfate that you get when you do a magnesium salts, Epson salts. Take a nice hot Epson salt bath. It's magnesium salts. Anyway, recent study shows 500 milligrams of magnesium daily decreases age related brain shrinkage. Good news, good news. Not surprising, but good news. Okay? This is an article, trust in Experts. Diminishing was the headline, doing surveys. People don't trust the experts they used to. I think a lot of that is social media. I think a lot of it is guys like me doing podcasts, bringing information to the lay person.
I don't do podcasts for doctors. I do it for people that are interested in their health. Okay? Bringing information. Then you decide, okay, you decide information is gold man, because it provides choices for you. And I admit, I'm biased. Okay? I'm biased. I have a certain way of thinking. You guys know that. I'm very opinionated. You guys know that. But I'm passionate about it because I want to educate. I remember telling patients, this is years ago, saying, because they say, Dr. Martin, don't you ever retire, okay? They used to threaten my life if I retired from practice. Okay, don't do it. I took that as a badge of honor because it wasn't like they were saying, I get lost, doc.
Get lost. No, they were asking me not to retire because they love coming into the office, and I love them too. But I always told them when they would listen, what I want to do is educate. I want to spend my latter years more in education rather than one-on-one with patients. Okay? I did that for almost 50 years. I loved it. I loved people. I'm a people guy, but I wanted to educate. And I said, I'd like to get, I started with radio and even when I was still in practice and podcasting, and I love that. And teaching with the Natural Medicine Academy. Even Doc McEwen invites me to the University of Tennessee. But I love that. I love education, I love teaching, and it's a passion of mine. But here we are. We live in a world, now world. And I think this is a good thing that when people just say something, I give you an example because I remember a couple of years ago, I brought this to you in a podcast, okay?
I don't know if you remember this, but this one, it just drove me mental. It was Tufts, T-U-F-T-S, Tufts University. They said, okay, research shows that Honey Nut Cheerios was better for you than steak and eggs. Do you remember the migraine I got? Do you remember my brain exploding? I said, what kind of an expert is that? Where they said, honey Nut Cheerios, you want to be a nut? Well then believe that study unbelievable. I said, you are kidding me. They didn't actually say that, but they did. Well, no wonder people question so-called experts. Are you kidding me? Honey Nut Cheerios is better for you than steak and eggs brought to you by. Who are they sponsored by? Big food. Today, people are more skeptical. I love that. I love that, that people are questioning the experts. I can tell you my generation and even more my parents' generation, what doctors said was the gospel truth, okay?
They'd get on medication at a young age and Oh, my doctor said I need to stay on the medication or I'm going to die. And my parents' generation, not my father, he questioned everybody. But I mean, my parents' generation get out of the sun. Okay? The sun will give you cancer, okay? Cholesterol causes heart disease. Oh, it does? Okay, don't question it. The doctor said it. True or false, am I right or wrong? I'm right. When I say that, oh, my doctor said, and you get people, they've been on the same medication for 50 years, no questions asked. But today, people don't trust the experts like they used to. Okay? They don't, because they have all sorts of alternative news. They can look at things. I don't say the experts are always wrong. They're not, but they're wrong on a lot of things. I really liked this article. It reminded me of that Tufts. It took me weeks to get over when I read that study. I said, they're not saying that. Yep, they are. Honey Nut Cheerios are better than steak and eggs. My word, what planet do we live on? Holy moly. For someone actually to say it, a university. And then you look at the funding for the study and you go, oh, okay, I got it. I got it. I wonder if anybody bought that.
Well, I know a lot of people have stopped eating red meat. Hopefully they're not replacing it with Honey Nut Cheerios. Oh, okay, guys, I got excited again. Okay, you got a couple of days to send your questions in info@martinclinic.com, okay? For Friday, question and answer Friday, maybe Monday. We got so many questions coming in, but I want to touch 'em all. Okay? And I only hit a few studies this morning, okay? But it was fun. At least I had fun. Okay, guys, thank you for joining us regularly. Tell your friends you can share this. Okay? So we got 315 people live right now by noon will have been shared generally almost to around 10,000 people Now, that's you guys, okay? And the more you share, the more Facebook shares it. It's called algorithm. I don't know anything about that. This is what I've been told, okay? Okay, guys. We love you dearly. 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!