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. How are you? And great to be on with you again this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day, and we certainly are and happy to have you come on with us. Okay, my friend Frank, okay, sent me a cover of a magazine that just came out, National Geographic. Let me see if I can get it for you. It's on inflammation. Okay? I'm just going to show you a picture of it. You'll probably see it upside down. That's on my, see, see that? Inflammation. Anyway, that was an article written in the National Geographic. Anti-Inflammation, the Science of Inflammation and Ways to Treat It. Now, I didn't even look at it yet, okay, but for any of you who've been following me for years, I really like, I sort of text back to Frank. I said, Frank, you know I've been talking about this for 25 years. Inflammation and medicine is finally catching up. They're finally catching up and they, often times they make a mistake when they do this, but at least they're getting to the bottom of disease and a lot even in the medical circles, guys are acknowledging inflammation is a very serious condition.
Now, again, we got to do inflammation 101 because you have to understand when we talk inflammation. Inflammation, my son Tony Jr. He coined this, okay? He said, dad, it's inflammation without a fever. Okay, so what does that mean? Well take an example of a cold. You get a cold, okay? And you get the chills. You don't feel good. A little virus like a cold virus can make you pretty stinkin' sick. Your sinuses and everything. Any pain you get with a cold is inflammation. It's your body's ambulance system. It's on your side. It's rising up the temperature of your body in order to fight a virus or a bacteria. That's why you get a fever. That's why if you fall and scrape your knee, it becomes inflamed. That's the body's ambulance system, bringing more blood supply, bringing more enzymes, bringing more protein and all that to the area. It's the ambulance system. You want that. Obviously, you could never fight a virus or a bacteria without it. And that's one of the reasons, and this, I'm going back a long time when I say don't fight fever so much. You got to fever? It's a good thing. We're always trying to reduce fever because it's painful, but it's your body's ambulance system.
Anyway, okay, so what we're talking about and the National Geographic is talking about is inflammation without a fever. It's silent. People don't even know they have it. I've written, I think I'm looking at all the books that I've written. I'm trying to think of a book that I've written in the last 30 years that I didn't have a whole section on inflammation, but we at the Martin Clinic, we at The Doctor Is In podcast, we at The Doctor Is In radio show. For years we had this little statement, inflammation is not Houdini because to medicine today. Now they're really looking at inflammation and they see it as the root cause of disease. It's silent. You can measure it. We'll talk about that in a minute, but it's silent. People don't even know they have it, and inflammation can be very destructive. Again, if you have a fever, good for you, but it'll go away once it kill the virus or the bacteria. If you have an injury, inflammation, you need that. It's just more blood supply and the way the body's ambulance system works, but you want it to go away.
What we're talking about is chronic inflammation, but they don't talk about the root causes of it. Well, I haven't even read the article. I'm assuming they haven't because anything that I've written on inflammation or others have written on inflammation before I talked about it, they talk about inflammation like it is Houdini. It just comes, but there's root causes. I remember trying to think, it's got to be at least 30 years ago, I was traveling to France to do a conference on chronic fatigue syndrome. Well, the conference wasn't on chronic fatigue, it was on health, but I was presenting my thesis on chronic fatigue syndrome. They invited me to come. I flew to France and I sat beside a guy who was going to the conference too. He was a nutrition reporter. Well, he actually had a little newsletter in those days called the Nutrition Reporter. I mean this guy, Jacques Challem, C-H-A-L-L-E-M. You can Google him if you want. He wrote a book on inflammation after this, not while we were flying together and talking, he was fascinated by chronic fatigue syndrome. He knew very little about it, but really was picking my brain.
But this guy was a genius. I just don't know how many doctors, researchers, or whatever that guy would've interviewed over the years he interviewed me, not on the plane. We just had good conversation. But while I was in France, he interviewed me and recorded an interview on chronic fatigue syndrome, and I was talking back then about inflammation. He was fascinated. He actually wrote a book about this later, inflammation, the silent, I'm just reading. Let me read some of the titles here that come up on where am I on Amazon here? The anti-inflammatory diet, inflammation, the silent fire. I like that. Okay, meals that heal inflammation, taming chronic inflammation. The autoimmune solution, of course, a lot of it is on the silent fire. A silent fire. You see, Jack's been dead for a few years, but he actually wrote a book. I think they sold several million copies on inflammation. Jacques Challem. Anywho that's how long I've been talking about inflammation, guys, okay?
I'm not saying I was the first. I'm just telling you, I was the guy that talked about inflammation. Why? Because chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. I believe fibro is just a symptom of chronic fatigue syndrome. I think there are two sides of a coin. Inflammation was a characteristic of that chronic fatigue syndrome, and the biggest thing in inflammation, one of the things that silent inflammation will do is drain your energy. It will drain your energy. Okay? So if you have listened to me over the years, let me tell you the causes of inflammation, the causes, because inflammation's not Houdini. For you or anyone else to have an inflammatory response in the absence of a virus or bacteria. Then you got something going on, and I talk about five things, okay? The root causes, let me go over them with you, okay? Why would you have a silent inflammation in your body? And remember, inflammation left unchecked will destroy. It destroys blood vessels, it destroys tissue. It attacks the Teflon layer of your blood vessels can be very dangerous. And remember, it can be silent. It's one of the biggest causes of plaque in the arteries.
Okay, so what are the causes? What are the causes? Number one, insulin. Insulin resistance. When your cells are sick and tired of seeing insulin coming around because you're eating crappy carbs, sugars. Do you think this body of ours was ever meant to consume near 200 pounds of sugar a year? Guys, that's what we're at. A dump truck load of sugar. Terrible, terrible, very inflammatory to the human body. The body goes, what are you doing to me? That's why you see children with an inflammation response in their body, silent, destructive. We're seeing children today with plaque in their arteries, young children, and the geniuses in medicine they don't even look to the diet. Guys, I don't even want to be political. Let me just tell you the news of the data in the United States, they're trying to get food additives and dyes and Robert Kennedy, Jr, right? He's trying to change things in the food industry. And boy is he getting a lot of pushback. They don't want to change it. They don't want to take all these things out of food. I'm glad he's doing it.
Guys, our bodies were never meant to eat that crap. And you know me and high fructose corn syrup and manmade sugar. Man, so destructive. No wonder our bodies are on fire, a body on fire. We weren't meant to eat like that. Then we eat all those crappy carbs that are made with seed oils and that elevates the level of omega 6 in our bodies. It used to be close to, you go back 50 years or 80 years. We didn't have inflammation like we have today because of seed oils and thank you Crisco. Thank you Proctor and Gamble for changing the way we eat and we're eating all this margarine and these crappy hydrogenated oils that are meant for your car and not for your body, and they create an enormous amount of inflammation, so it elevates your insulin too. And then we got leaky gut. Is there ever a day going by that I don't talk about leaky gut in some way or some.
Guys, why do you think, okay, talk about inflammation.Why do you think we have today so much autoimmune disease? Auto, the body turning on itself, incredible, incredible amount of autoimmune disease today. From Sjogren's to thyroid, Hashimoto's or Graves' or rheumatoid arthritis or MS, you name it guys. The skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema, these are leaky gut. They're autoimmune. Okay but leaky gut just doesn't appear either. Well, we talked about the overuse of antibiotics. We talked about all the chemicals in our environment we're consuming. Every time I hear this thing, one and a half credit cards, a week of plastic, one and a half credit card worth a plastic a week, we accumulate on average in our society today. No wonder the body goes crazy. The body, you think your is made for plastic, and do you think for a minute that we're ever going to get rid of it? No, we're not going to get rid of it. But what we can do is help ourselves. We'll get into that in a minute.
So, major causes. Why are we on fire today? Why is the world on fire? Why are our bodies on fire? Inflammation through the roof, but it's not Houdini. Insulin resistance, crappy food, too much sugar, too much seed oil. Leaky gut, leaky gut, leaky brain, leaky skin, leaky joints, leaky everything. Why do we think we even see inflammation as affects the brain and inflammation again. I'm sure in this article they're going to talk about depression, mental health issues, and they're going to talk about the link to inflammation. I'm almost sure of it. I know, but why? Leaky gut, not enough friendly bacteria, not enough border guards. There's not enough border guards at the gut blood barrier and even the blood brain barrier. I was always fascinated by the blood brain barrier, always fascinated by it, that the body had a barrier there in the brain and it wouldn't let stuff get through until it does. Okay?
So inflammation, insulin resistance, too much sugar, too many crappy carbs, leaky gut, the overuse of antibiotics, all the crap that comes in and changes our microbiome. The border guards get destroyed and stuff gets into the bloodstream, crosses the blood brain barrier like heavy metals like yeast, gets into the blood and transports all these heavy metals and garbage and stuff like that, guys, okay, let me give you a few more causes of inflammation. Free radical damage, oxidation, and what Jack Challem was saying in his book on inflammation, he said, it's a double-edged sword. You have inflammation and you have free radical damage causing oxidation. Oxidation causes inflammation. Inflammation causes oxidation. It gets the body to rust out more quickly. We're all rusting out guys. Free radicals, you're not going to get rid of all your free radicals. It's one of the ways we age. Okay?
I was showing you the other day, I'm trying to think of what book it was. It got my picture on the back there, and I'm laughing. Oh, here it is. I kind of chuckle, guys, if you don't believe in free radical damage, if you don't believe that the body's aging, have a picture of me when I wrote this book on chronic fatigue syndrome that got me traveling all over the world and talking about, look at the guy here. Does that look like me? Who is that guy? Who is that guy? I'm kind of laughing, right? Because that's the way it is, okay? Happens to the best of us, okay? Not angry about that. Hey, I try and neutralize free radicals as much as I can. I've been taking the most powerful antioxidant ever created besides the one that your body makes because your body makes antioxidants. It's called glutathione, comes out of your liver, and we talked about that a lot.
But the best antioxidant in the world, 50 times more powerful than vitamin C, not coffee. Coffee's an antioxidant. Very powerful, more powerful than vitamin C. The other vitamin C is pine bark extract. I've been using that for over 30 years, guys. That's how good that product is. But I'm still aging. Okay? I'm still aging without Botox. I kind of get a chuckle, okay? Because you see these movie stars and whatever, their lips are so big, you wonder how they can talk because they got so much Botox in them and plastic surgery, my word, in order to stay young, sometimes they overdo it. Anyway, I don't want to get into that, but let's just all agree that there's a lot of free radical damage. It's the way our body ages, okay? It's the way our body ages and that can create inflammation and inflammation can create oxidation.
And then I added two more because this is me and this is my experience. This is my experience. I really believe this wholeheartedly. One of the biggest factors in inflammation is low levels of vitamin D, low levels of vitamin D, low levels of sunlight. That is one of the biggest factors in inflammation. People are very low in vitamin D. 90% of the population do not have optimized levels of vitamin D. And guys, do I talk about it every day? Yeah, the sun, sun, steak and steel and sleep. Yeah. Low levels of vitamin D and I'm going to add one more low levels of B12 because, okay, let me talk about ways to measure inflammation. You can actually do it. And one of the most reliable blood tests, I talk about this in my book, Sun Steak and Steel is the test that you should have done. Every time you get blood work get this test done, get your vitamin D levels done, and check your CRP, C-reactive protein.
Again, that is made, C-reactive protein is made in your liver. You can get a blood test to check it out and find out if you have any silent inflammation. You know what your CRP should be? Zero. Anything above zero is not normal. You have inflammation, okay? And doctors, God love them physicians because they don't keep up on reading. Okay? I hate to say it. If you've got a doctor that doesn't read, doesn't keep up like Jack Challem, I remember him because again, he was a lay person, but a very, very smart nutritional reporter. He knew more about nutrition than almost anybody I ever met in my lifetime. And even about natural health. He knew it all, but he was good. He interviewed tens of thousands of physicians, medical doctors, whatever, and just reviewed all the research that was coming around.
He told me personally, he said, I am so frustrated that they don't know anything. They're not keeping up. They know nothing about nutrition. They know nothing he said about inflammation. It's almost like they've never studied. What have I always said? Unfortunately, medical schools got hijacked by the pharmaceutical industry. They're not looking at root causes and they should. They don't look at leaky gut. Most doctors don't. I tell you that almost. I'm not saying every doctor, of course not, but here we are in 2025 and they still don't know. A lot of them don't even believe it. I just about pass out. It's so silly. Are you kidding me? Do you know how many research papers? And of course here we are, vitamin D, and they still, your vitamin D levels are high. They're toxic and they've never seen a case of it, but they, oh man, you're taking too much vitamin D.
Hey folks, just go out in the sun for 20 minutes and you're going to get 10,000 IUs. 10,000 IUs. I'm going to die. No, it's the best thing ever happened to you. I'd take every senior if I could, every senior, and I'd stick them in the sun, without sunscreen. 20 minutes. Give them 10,000 IUs and their inflammation markers will go down. It's one of the biggest causes of inflammation. People are scared, skinny of the sun. It's craziness. Imagine the dermatologist. Imagine Johnson and Johnson, they've invented a disease all coming from the sun. It's just the opposite. You're a human solar panel, and when you don't get enough of it, your body produces inflammation. I'm going to add one more, and that is B12. Why do I say it? Because another marker. Okay, so what is one of the tests you can do? CRP C-reactive protein. Here's another one. Homocysteine. Homocysteine. It's not fire as much as it's smoke, okay? It measures smoke in the body. Well, it doesn't really, but sort of. Okay? It's communication between cells and when you're low in B12, you've got a lot of smoke going on because your homocysteine will go out. That's why I add B12 to the equation. That's why I add B12.
So five things. You know what? We're going to do another session tomorrow. I want to talk about what you got to do. What do we do? What's the causes? Why do we see so much inflammation? Why is finally medicine sort of catching up to saying there's a silent epidemic of inflammation today? Why is our bodies on fire? I like it. They're finally waking up. They're finally admitting it. Okay, guys, you know what Friday is? Q and A. Send you questions in. We love your questions. Thank you for them, and 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!