Join Dr. Martin in today's episode of The Doctor Is In Podcast.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone, and once again, welcome to another Live this morning and nice to have you on with us. I am on live. Here we go. Let me just get to this email here. I want to talk about this because this is a study. Let me just get it out here. It's on gut health and anxiety. Do you know that your gut is directly related to anxiety? Well, we all know that by the vagus nerve, right? You get butterflies, you're nervous, you're anxious, you feel it in your stomach. But a lot of people get major digestive issues because of anxiety. It's the chicken or the egg, what comes first? But I just was going through an article on anxiety and there's a lot of symptoms that people don't realize are very much connected to that. One of them is fatigue. And think about it, cortisol, which is your stress hormone, everybody has cortisol. It's to what extent it's being secreted. So cortisol, think about it, okay? Inside, and some people are so sensitive to cortisol, they actually feel like almost like a vibration.
I used to get patients that came in with chronic fatigue syndrome, which is fatigue by the way, almost invariably, when you get people that are sick and tired of being tired, boy did I ever hear a lot of that in my office, doc, I'm sick and tired of being tired. And you'd measure their cortisol and it was right through the roof. Very high cortisol, very low energy. Because think about it, cortisol is meant to be used temporarily, not overused, and when it's overused, you get exhausted. My thesis that I did in clinical nutrition was on chronic fatigue syndrome, the modern woman's curse. I actually published it into a book and became a big seller way back when. Chronic fatigue syndrome, the modern woman's curse. And even in the province of Quebec, we had it published there in French and there was a huge seller syndrome in French, and we sold tens of thousands of copies of that in the French language.
It was very popular. But what I talked about back then, even back then was cortisol. And it was amazing to me that in medicine, and even today, cortisol is something that most doctors, well, first of all, they don't test most and they don't think of it. And the reason is is because unless you've got Cushings or Addisons, they don't think about the adrenal glands. Those little chestnut like glands on top of your kidneys, they don't think about that stuff and so they don't measure it. But it's a big thing. So like I said, way back when, even in chronic fatigue syndrome, I talked about the modern woman being put under enormous amount of stress. And I tell a story in that book, I mean, this is a long time ago. I tell the story of my mom who had 11 kids, that gives me a migraine, but the world is different, and I tried to make a case about that in my thesis that the world is different.
Why are we seeing so much chronic fatigue syndrome? I mean, guys, you're talking about the late eighties here and the early nineties. Why do we see so much chronic fatigue syndrome? The world had changed a hundred thousand new chemicals since World War ii, so that'll stress the body. Women now in the workforce, I mean we don't even think about it anymore because we're in 2025, but back in the late eighties and nineties, like women, they got kids and yet they're in the workforce and that's stressful. Women, they should get a medal. Men we're not near as stressed. Who worries more when a child is sick? Mommy or daddy? Mommy built in. I made that point. Go back 30 something 35 years ago or whatever, and I talked all about that and I talked about, I'll give you some of the symptoms that I talked about even back then that have to do with cortisol.
Now again, remember, cortisol can save your life. What? Well, for sure it's part of the fight or flight. If someone scares you, cortisol gets you ready for the fight or flight. It's important to have cortisol. You don't want a body without cortisol. You just don't want to be secreting it all the time. Okay, so here's what I talked about. Go way back. Here are some of the symptoms of high cortisol, okay? Decreased immune system. Well, obviously your body when it's under stress is not thinking about fighting a virus or a bacteria or a parasite. Your body is in the fight or flight for you to survive. It's not looking at a bug invading you, so your immune system is suppressed. That's why you don't want cortisol being secreted all the time. One of the major things is immunity. Your immune system goes down. You're frequently and back in those days, I published this that women were, when I say women, of course men go through that too, but not like women because cortisol what it does, and I just got to bring this up before I give you more symptoms, cortisol robs progesterone and it creates an estrogen dominance in women because it robs progesterone.
And we always talk about the balance between estrogen and progesterone. Well, if your cortisol is high, it robs progesterone, estrogen goes up, your thyroid slows to a crawl, and what happens? You gain weight. You haven't even changed your eating, although you might under stress, a person is more likely to want a quick fix. Here's why. Cortisol think of it, okay, inside the body, well, it elevates your blood sugar. Yeah, well, what goes up must come down. And so a lot of people, what they suffer from is hypoglycemia, low blood sugar. Why? Because their blood sugar goes up and then it comes down. And when it goes up and then it comes down, you're reaching for a snack, you're reaching for a quick fix, you're reaching for sugar usually, and it's the worst thing you can do because now you're into a vicious cycle. You're hungry all the time, really has a major effect on leptin and gremlin. Leptin tells you you're full, but it gets messed up with cortisol. Cortisol will elevate your insulin resistance without even eating. Cortisol will affect your sleep.
You got high cortisol, you don't sleep. You don't sleep. Your cortisol goes up. Belly fat, especially in women belly fat. When men get belly fat, they got a sugar belly. When a woman gets belly fat, they often have high cortisol, high blood pressure. A lot of times if you can lower their cortisol, their blood pressure comes down and taking a blood pressure medication, I never tell patients not to, but a lot of times they don't get to the root issue. What's going on? Why is your blood pressure elevated? If they don't measure cortisol, they just slap you on a pill without getting to find out. And remember where your adrenals are. Guys, add renal on top of kidneys. Kidneys have a lot to do with blood pressure. Okay, so hypertension, fatigue, depression, major effect on that.
Acid reflux. Well think about it. The same things that gives you butterflies on the inside that's going to affect your stomach. A lot of people, I used to see this all the time, had acid reflux. They had leaky gut digestive issues, and one of the biggest factors was stress, arthritis, even inflammation. Because what happens when you are in the fight or flight, the body releases cytokines, inflammatory factors into the body and cytokines and over a period of time that can give you pain. We saw it a lot in fibromyalgia. And I always said this, guys, if you follow me for any length of time, I always said fibromyalgia, which is sort of an autoimmune disorder, but so is chronic fatigue syndrome. It's the body turning on itself and fibro, look at the pain they get unexplained muscle pain, usually very, very tender. And rheumatologists used to do that.
I don't even know if they do it anymore, where they used to look at these trigger points in fibromyalgia and then they'd give you the diagnosis. I used to tell people, well, they're going to say fibromyalgia when they can't find anything else. If they can't find rheumatoid arthritis or any other kind of autoimmune, they'll slap you with a fibro. And what do they do? Well, meds kill the pain. And I never liked it. It was never getting to the root of the problem. Okay, so here's some things that happen when you don't lower your cortisol when it goes on for a long period of time. One of the things that happened, and this has to do a lot with sleep too, you never get into that recuperative sleep. If you don't get into the deep sleep, your self-cleaning oven doesn't work properly. Autophagy the body's mechanism of cleaning itself and getting rid of dead cells and waste and the brain cannot get into autophagy.
It cannot get into the self-cleaning. You know how I always said that your brain has a self-cleaning oven. It's beautiful, but it only works when you're sleeping and it doesn't work. By the way, when you're sedating. I think I was the very first guy to ever say that, doc, I can't sleep without a sleeping pill. I said, you're not sleeping, you're sedated. It's a much different physiology happening there. Your brain is not detoxing. The self-cleaning oven won't work with an artificial sleep sedation. It changes the biochemistry in the brain and you don't get the autophagy. The body's ability to detox yourself.
One of the big things, and this is aside from eating, aside from eating, cortisol will elevate your insulin resistance. Cortisol will elevate your insulin resistance without eating bad, without food, your insulin resistance, your cells become more resistant to insulin. And then of course, like I said earlier, you're usually choosing the wrong foods. And one of the things I used to do with chronic fatigue is lower their carbohydrates. Big time, even before I was doing the reset. Your body, it'll crave sugar, but give it fat because your body will appreciate it. It'll call for sugar, but give it fat, give it eggs, give it meat, give it cheese, give it that healthy fat. You want to use some oils like avocado and olive oil or bacon fat,
Okay, oleic acid, the same fat that's found in olive oil. But way back when I used to tell patients, look, you need a lot more oil. You need a lot more fat than you do carbohydrates, doc, I like carbs. Yeah, I know, but you and carbs ain't going to get along because what happens is you're going to get a quick fix and then you're going to crash. You're going to crash. You got low energy. Now you're going to have even lower energy. Now, sometimes I had to get these people eating more frequently until they got balanced out. I got them eating a little bit more frequently, but that's all right, with more fat until their hormones started to level out. See though, major effects. And one of the things, and this is a study that was done a fair long time ago, I remember this, but it says stress in a home.
Okay? So cortisol stress in a home in children, 25 to 52% increase in physical inactivity, obesity and diabetes. Well, think about it. Stress. They're stressed and their energy levels are going down in anything in mental health. I always said the problem in mental health, we know what to do with mental health in a lot of ways. There's so much research coming out now on the ketotic diet in mental health, how good it is for you. Very low carb, high fat diet. I brought this to you earlier this week on the connection between your brain and ketosis. Like when is ketosis, your body's burning a better fuel. It's better for your brain. Your brain appreciates it. The problem is when you get someone like a kid, for example, that's got a DD or a DHD, and they're bouncing off the walls and their sugar is fluctuating up, down, up, down, up, down, they don't know enough to comply.
Do you know what I mean? I used to with kids and we got tremendous results, mommy and daddy and the child. And I'd say, this is for you guys. And I'd start with mommy and daddy. You see the most important meal for this kid is their breakfast and it's got to be high protein and fat, not carbs. They'll want cereal. Give them bacon, they'll want toast. Give them bacon and eggs or sausage and eggs or a Dr. Martin's perfect smoothie. Start their day with that heavy cream fat. Their brain will thank you. Okay? And then I get that little one, okay? I remember talking even to five-year-olds or six years old. I said, you like sugar, don't you? Yeah, yeah. I like sugar. I like ice cream. I like cookies. I like all that stuff. I said, it don't like you and that's why you're always in trouble and that's why you're wound up. I said, food is everything for you. And I said, you like pizza? Yeah, I said, eat the toppings, eat the cheese, eat the pepperoni, leave the bread, leave the crust.
And look, it always has to do with whether they're going to comply or not. I mean, I couldn't go home with them in depression when the cortisol was through the roof. The worst thing you can do is eat sugar. You are going to reach for it, but you got to discipline yourself not to do it and choose something better. It was always whether they would comply or not. And that's what they're finding even with the ketotic diet and depression, will they do it? They're depressed. The last thing they're thinking about is being disciplined. This is why guys, I always talk to people. I had the three Ds, desire, determination, and discipline. I said, you got to have those three Ds in your life. And when bad times come and they will, you're prepared. You're so disciplined in the way you eat. You're so disciplined in knowing that sugar's not good for you. That when the bad times come. I used to preach that all the time. I said, you got to form habits that are cemented inside of you.
And when you're under stress and cortisol is going through the roof, you're not going to reach. But with little ones, I used to tell parents, look, their most important meal is you better start them on the right track in the morning. Not with Pop-Tarts. I know, but it's easy. I know it's easy. But this little one is a canary in the coal mine and their brains are not operating in the same wavelength as others. And you got to take that into account anyway. High cortisol, chronic fatigue, pain, lack of sleep, depression, pain and inflammation of course. And just things like blood pressure. And it's amazing when you get your cortisol down and under control, one of the lowest hanging fruits is doing everything you can to get a good night's sleep. Boy, that makes up for a lot of issues, is doing everything you can to sleep. And of course we all know, right? You're worried. Do you sleep well? No, usually not. But you do everything. Like I said, I'm big on sleep, sun, steak, steel and sleep.
Anywho, okay, I kind of surprised you guys with this morning session. I meant to post it yesterday and I got, I'm a senior. I pull out my senior card, I forgot. And my staff, I feel sorry for them. They got to work with me. Okay guys, we love you dearly, sincerely, and we appreciate you guys coming on. And you know what tomorrow is? It's q and a. Okay? Q and a. Always, always fun. Q and a info@martinclinic.com. Send your questions in. Is it too late? No, I don't think so. I don't know. I got to ask my stuff. I don't think so. Send your questions in. We love to answer them. 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!