Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners. Topics include:
- Drinking kefir
- Eye drops during checkup
- Redness around the eyes
- High LDL & fatty liver
- Fasting types
- Cortisol Formula taking before bedtime
- Cancer & starchy foods
- High ferritin levels
- MAST Cell Activation Syndrome
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 coming on with us. Okay, let's get going with our questions. Okay, Q and A. Judee, with two E's. At least that's the way it was spelled to me. How are you Judee, nice to have you on. We appreciate you. "What do you think about drinking kafir?" Look, here's me, okay, here's me. I'm really focused in on two things that you should be drinking. Maybe three, one water, two coffee, okay? And guys, you know that I've been talking about that a long time and I mean it. That's how good water and coffee is for you. Try and focus in on that. Now, if you find a good kafir, no sugar added. It's a fermented drink, okay? I'm not going to be too negative. All I'm saying is a lot of people drink things they shouldn't be drinking. Okay? Like orange juice.
And the third thing I was going to mention are Dr. Martin's perfect smoothie. You can put some kefir in that. Again, I got no problem. Fermented foods, fermented drink. Just watch the sugar content. That's what I would tell you. Okay? So I'm not against it. I like other things better. I like water better. I like coffee better. And when you came into my office of people that saw me, I was very big. Those two things for 30 days, eliminate everything else and to drink because a lot of people get too much sugar when they're drinking. They don't realize it. They thought that orange juice, for example, apple juice or oh doc, I'm taking cranberry juice for my bladder. Like lay off that stuff, okay? Lay off that stuff. You don't need it. Okay? Okay, Judee, thanks for that question. We appreciate it.
Brenda, "what do you say about the eye drops for the eye for the doctor to check the back of your eyes? You're in an annual checkup." Well, like he's trying to freeze temporarily the eye so they can have a good look at it. And I got no problem with that. I mean, look, I'm all for prevention and looking into the eye and if a doctor is going to do that, I got no problem with it. If he has to put drops in temporarily, I mean if you were putting drops in every day might be a different story. But the annual checkup, Brenda, I got no problem with it. Okay, and remember now getting back to eyes. I'm very big on circulation. It's all circulation in the eye. So when the doctor's looking to see if you have glaucoma or retinopathy or cataracts or anything like that, the biggest thing that causes that is damage to your capillaries and arteries, little weed blood vessels in the back of your eyes. And you know what? There's nothing more destructive for your blood vessels than sugar. So I got no problem with that, Brenda.
Marie, "will high LDL affect the liver to make it fatty liver?" No, it won't, Marie. Okay, it doesn't. LDL is low density lipoprotein. It's a cholesterol. You need it. Well, if you want low LDL, just take a statin drug. I always ask the question, why do you want low LDL? Why do you want low cholesterol? The whole premise to me is false. The whole premise, and of course I talk about it every week, almost every day I talk about that, right? So what am I saying? I like LDL. So that has nothing to do with fatty liver. You get fatty liver when you are a carboholic and a sugarholic. That's how you get fatty liver. You don't get it from cholesterol, you don't get it from eating cholesterol. You get cholesterol in the animal kingdom in eggs, meat and cheese and that don't give you fatty liver at all. 85% of your cholesterol your body makes. You got nothing to do with that. And your body is so smart, you're so fearfully and wonderfully made. You can't live without cholesterol.
There isn't a doctor in the world that won't agree with that statement. You can't live without cholesterol. They're just trying to focus in on lowering what they call bad cholesterol, which is LDL. Well, under no circumstances in my opinion, is LDL cholesterol bad. It's not bad. You need it. Your immune system needs it. It's a transporter. Your testosterone needs it. Your estrogen needs it, your progesterone needs it, your cortisol needs it, you need it. It's a transporter. It's like saying today, let's get rid of all the transport trucks on the highways and byways of our country. Let's just get rid of all the trucks. No more delivery trucks. Not so good. We rely on that and we rely on it much more than we used to. Okay? It always amazes me when I travel. I was sort of counting in my head the other day as I was traveling from my hometown to Toronto. How many transport trucks there are on the highways? How can we eliminate that? Well, that's LDL cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. You need those things. They're not the boogeyman.
So Marie, when you get fatty liver, the markers of fatty liver are partially high triglycerides and actual low HDL cholesterol, it's the opposite of what you think, but that's all right. You are in, Marie, you are in with everybody else in the world just about. There's a small school, it's getting bigger. There's a small school of cardiologists and heart specialists. They look at the evidence and they go, you know what? We've been looking for love in all the wrong places for a long time, and they're finally admitting it. Now I'm not holding my breath. I'm not waiting because if you wait, the pharmaceutical industry is huge. It's powerful and it sponsors every medical school in North America. It's sponsors Health Canada. It sponsors the FDA. So don't hold your breath for the powers to be to change. Don't hold your breath. You change, you make decisions. You decide. Start with you. I try and get individuals to understand how their body works and to have a little radar for lies. There's a lot of lies out there in nutrition. There's a lot of lies in medicine, and I just don't accept what people say. I don't do that. I don't accept what people say.
There's a verse in the Bible that says people of Berea were more noble than those in Thessalonica. You know why? Because they searched the Scriptures to make sure what the apostle Paul was saying was true and they were commended for that. I want you guys to search, to study, and I know my audience. I put 'em up against anybody's audience. I've been around a long time, guys and my audience, they question everything. There's nothing wrong with that. I want you to question. I want you to question me. That's why we have Q and A Fridays and often Q and A Mondays and a lot of my podcasts are based on questions that you ask. I want that. I invite that. I told you many a times, I went into school studying nutrition and I was told that fat was bad even way back then. It was just starting the cholesterol hoax, but I didn't buy it. I never bought that steak was bad for you. I didn't buy it. I never bought for one minute that eggs were bad for you. I never bought it.
To me, it didn't make any sense that an egg, which is full of nutrients, which is nature's perfect food. Well steak is better. I never bought it. I was told it. Well, look at the fat in an egg. Look at the cholesterol in an egg. Yeah, it's good for you. That was me. Okay? And you must understand I was taught differently. I got the old medical training and nutrition. Now, there was a few guys even back then that were thinking outside the box, but not many. Diabetes. You know what we were told in the 1970s? Moderation. My dad taught me elimination. My dad taught me that before I went to school, post-secondary. Okay? My dad taught me. My dad was smart. Eliminate not moderation. Diabetes is sugar diabetes. It's not genetics. No, they're genetic factors. Makes someone more susceptible. Go to Egypt, go to India, in the Middle East. They're more susceptible to diabetes. That doesn't mean they're going to get it, it's diet. Okay, thanks for the question. We appreciate it. That was Marie. Thanks Marie. It got me going. Marie, I like questions that get me going.
Okay, Arlene, "Dr. Martin, redness around my eye." Well, it could be a lot of things. Okay, Arlene, redness around your eye can be an infection. It can be aging, can be a sign of aging. Can be a lot of times what I used to see, rosacea around the eye and allergies can cause redness. Arlene is in good, good health, has no other issues. She's 77 and she's not on any medications. Well, Arlene, you are a superstar at 77. Good for you. Okay? And I wouldn't worry too much about redness around your eye. Make sure you're taking, I think you already are. You have five main supplements. You're in good health and good for you. A little bit of redness around the eye, maybe a little bit of rosacea, but I am not too concerned about it. If you're taking probiotic and if you're taking high DHA, like your eyes, high DHA, Navitol, there's nothing better. I've had so much experience with that, so much clinical experience of that and your eyes and your eye health and yeah. Okay, so look for those things, Arlene, possibly that.
Lyette, "what does Dr. M," that must be me, think of fasting. I like the question Lyette. Okay, I like the question because there's a lot of talk about fasting. Now, fasting been around a long time. It's a biblical thing too, right? So I like it. Okay? I like fasting. I do, let me put it in priorities, okay? I like eating in windows. So that would be sort of intermittent fasting. So if you looked at, my favorite fasting is probably intermittent fasting, and what is that? So let's say you start your day at eight o'clock in the morning eating and you stopped eating at eight o'clock at night, okay? Not just eating a hundred times, just let's say you had a little bit to eat and you had supper, okay, but you stopped eating at eight o'clock at night. So you're in a 12 hour period and then you get 12 hours. You don't start again the next day, okay?
Now what officially is categorized is not 12 hours, but 14 hours into what they call intermittent fasting. So better to stop at six o'clock at night, and I like that better because of all of other things of not eating at night. It's much better for you so that you get into the rest and digest. So look, intermittent fasting, shorten your windows of eating and longer without eating. That's intermittent fasting. I like that very much in favor of it and it's good for you. Then there's fasting, fasting which is 24 hour fast. Some people only eat once a day. Some people go days without eating. I'm all right. A diabetic not going to usually get away with that. A diabetic, usually once they train their body will get away more with intermittent fasting and lowering all their carbs and cutting out their sugars. They usually can get trained to do intermittent, but fasting, they got to be careful. And, you know, I used to tell my patients this, okay? Again, it's me. I want to give you a plan to succeed, not to fail.
Look, if I send you home with a plan, a food plan, I want you to succeed at not fail at it. I don't want to make it so difficult. Like when I put people on the reset, I didn't even talk so much about fasting or intermittent fasting, not right away. I mean down the road maybe I did to add it in, but what I did is I want you to succeed. So look, I'm sending you home. Stick to the animal kingdom for 30 days. You'll thank me later I used to tell 'em, okay, but I want you to succeed. So I didn't make it too complicated and I didn't add anything in there. You know what I mean? Like of intermittent fasting or fasting. And by the way, I almost named my book Sun, Steak and Steel, okay, Fasting Without Fasting, okay? Because fasting gives your body a complete rest. It helps big time. It helps with autophagy, meaning your self-cleaning oven of your body. It allows your body to get rid of debris including your liver, but so does when you eat the right foods.
When you eat nutrient dense foods, eggs, meat, dairy, butter and cheese, cream. When you eat that, your body is burning a fuel that is very high octane and that takes a lot of pressure off the body, not trying to secrete too much insulin, and that's why I called it Fasting without Fasting, and I'd rather you start with that, but then you can implement fasting, like intermittent fasting, okay? You can implement it into your regime. A lot of you do that. I know a lot of my audience right now are into intermittent fasting. Good for you. There are some studies out there, by the way, just on cancer. I've seen them. When you get the diagnosis of cancer, I always talk about, I'd rather you prevent cancer, then wait for a diagnosis. But hey, if you get a diagnosis of cancer, there's research showing that you do a 72 hour fast right out of the gate. The biggest thing with that is you're not fueling cancer cells, especially when you cut out sugar. Okay? Anyway, thank you for the question, Lyette. I appreciate it.
Okay, Crystal is talking about cortisol, our cortisol formula. "Why does this product say to avoid taking before bedtime?" Crystal, I just got a migraine, it's Health Canada regulations, okay? They see certain products and they go, this can make you drowsy. Okay, then don't take before bedtime. Oh, look, cortisol formula, I mean, it's not sedation. Health Canada goes, oh, possibly there's sedaters in there. There's no evidence of that at all, and it doesn't matter how much we show them, how much research has been shown on the individual products in cortisol formula. You're never going to get a better formula than that, in my opinion. And somebody asked me the other day, how do I take cortisol? I said, well, it depends if you are stressed during the day, take cortisol during the day. Cortisol formula. If you have trouble sleeping at night, one of the lowest hanging fruit of sleep is to lower your cortisol.
Cortisol should be high in the morning and low at night, and 90% of the population got that reversed. Their cortisol is low in the morning and high at night and high during the day rather than following the circadian rhythm. And we showed a study the other day on cortisol and melatonin. Now you guys know this. I'm not big on melatonin as far as a supplement is concerned. Why? Because your body makes it. And melatonin, when you have cortisol, the study showing when your cortisol is too high, your melatonin is too low, and your natural sleep hormone, melatonin in the pineal gland and other areas of your body is not secreted enough to calm you down. Melatonin, sunshine, just the sun out helps you to produce melatonin, your eyeballs, the windows into the pineal gland, your melatonin goes up. And then you get a dark, dark room at night.
That's why I like a mask, not a mask that people are still wearing. I see people, they work with a mask on. You're not a surgeon. Why are you working with a mask on? People walking in the street with a mask on? I get a migraine. It's silliness. Why are you doing that? I screamed against masks even during the virus. What good is it? You're not covering your eyes. Wear the invisible mask, vitamin A, and besides that, okay, wear a night mask, dark, dark, dark, cover your eyes at night. Dark, dark, dark room. Why? You're going to secrete even more melatonin to help you sleep. Okay? That's the right mask to wear and wear the invisible one for your immune system. Vitamin A is the invisible mask that covers your eyes, that covers your nose and covers your mouth. You touch your eyes, you got a mask on your nose and mouth. What good is that? Ooh, I get a migraine.
Okay, that's why Crystal, it's all about if you notice our label in the United States, because the FDA has different rules, they are not telling you the same rules as Health Canada. Okay? Different. Oh, anyway, I'm sorry. I lose it. Laurie, my stepdad started chemo today. Okay? I don't trust Google when they say he needs to be eating starchy foods like crackers and pretzels and toast. I agree with you, Laurie. Google don't know what they're talking about. You're feeding cancer with those carbohydrates. Pretzels? Seriously? Crackers? Seriously? Crackers is just sugar molecules holding hands. You want to avoid all sugar. You can have a few berries. Okay? "I have sent him your videos on cancer, but he still eats sugar and carbs." Well, you can bring a horse to water, Laurie. You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it.
Look, that's what I always tell people. Look, you can't dictate for other people. You know me. Do it yourself. Be a good role model. I don't teach people that don't listen, okay? In my office, I can tell within five minutes people buying it or not. I gave them all their results. I gave them my time. I was very professional, but some people were just not buying it when it came to food. They weren't buying it. Well, when they weren't buying it. I said, well, I love you, but you're not listening Linda or Larry and I wouldn't get uptight about it too much. I said, well, you don't listen. What can I tell you? And I could tell my staff, they go, well, why didn't you try and convince them more? I said, they couldn't be convinced and they weren't buying it. They lived on moderation in their mind.
You know what? Moderation isn't even a right thing because I found people that always pushed moderation. They were carboholics. They weren't even moderate. They loved their carbs and they were convinced that carbs were essential and carbs you couldn't live without, your brain couldn't live without carbs. And they were convinced, and they loved that, and they wanted to defend it until the cows came home. And what could I tell them? I couldn't convince them. I couldn't convince them that cholesterol containing foods were better than carbohydrates. I couldn't convince them that fiber was overrated. I couldn't convince them. They didn't want to be convinced. I said, well, I respect you. I respect your opinion. You come to me, you're going to get my opinion based on years and years of clinical results, but you ain't buying. Okay? And Laurie, he ain't buying.
Okay, Lynn, "my blood tests, we showed high ferritin 170. Is this because I'm taking 1000 milligrams of vitamin C?" Absolutely not. Had nothing to do with that. High ferritin is a marker. Okay? Now, a lot of women are low ferritin. When you get high ferritin, it's a marker of inflammation. Whenever I see ferritin, I like that ferritin test, by the way. I really do. For me, it was an important test, okay? If you read my book, Sun Steak and Steel, I talk about ferritin there because today we're seeing a lot more high ferritin, sometimes to the extent that you're getting hemochromatosis, which is a very high iron overload. But why? Why are we seeing it? Well, high ferritin is often a marker of fatty liver, too much sugar and too much insulin. Insulin resistance. Ferritin can be a marker of inflammation. High ferritin can be a marker of high insulin, very common fatty liver, all of the above. I mean, a doctor is not going to just rely on ferritin. They're going to look at everything else because even ferritin can be a marker of cancer. But not just that. Okay? So thank you for the question, Lynn. It has nothing to do with you and vitamin C, okay? As a matter of fact, the real vitamin C is coffee, which is actually very good for you and even for ferritin. Okay?
Angela, I have MAST cell activation syndrome. Okay, so what that is, okay, your MAST cells are allergy cells. MAST cells, release histamine. That's their job. And a lot of people in allergies, they take antihistamines. What's that do? That turns off your MAST cells. Okay? So Angela, if you have MAST cell activation syndrome, you got an autoimmune disorder, you're allergic to yourself. Have you ever gone through the grocery store and scanned products? Well in your gut when food is coming in, the scan, okay, this is good for you. You scan and you're getting things that bother you, that shouldn't bother you, your scanner's not working properly, and you're releasing a lot of histamine. So it's sort of an autoimmune thing.
I've never seen MAST cell activation syndrome or histamine, high histamine. I've never seen a case of it. When I saw it in my office, you had leaky gut a hundred percent of time. It's a leaky gut thing. It's a dysbiosis thing. You have leaky gut and you got dysbiosis, meaning that your microbiome has been affected. Because those little bacteria in your gut have a huge, huge impact on your MAST cells. MAST cells. So you're hyper sensitive, Angela, okay? This takes time. Probiotics, broad spectrum, bone broth to regenerate the gut, fix the zipper between the gut and the blood barrier, okay? Make sure you're doing that. Eliminate anything you think is part of your triggers, but you got to start inside out and it takes time. I would do the reset completely avoid carbohydrates and sugars because that can really, really affect the microbiome. Okay? Really important to do that. Angela, thanks for the questions.
I think we're done. I think we got 'em all. Okay, I think we got 'em all. So guys, we got a great week coming up. Lots of studies. We appreciate you guys following us. Give us a five star review. Show us your love on The Doctor Is In podcast. That really helps the algorithms of that. And even on Facebook here, when you like this program and you share it, wow. Does it ever help the algorithms? That's the way Facebook operates. Okay, we love you guys. 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!