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, and once again, welcome to another live this morning. We're glad you could make it. We want to make sure that we don't waste your time on this program, okay? We try and be as relevant as we can. The number one health podcast in Canada, and we want to make it the number one health podcast in the USA too. We really are. So we have millions of downloads on the doctors in podcast, and I think we're almost at 90,000 followers on Facebook. Guys. I talk about observation, right? So my dad taught me that. Now, remember, the Martin Clinic has been around since 1911. My grandfather, he was a sharp cookie, I'll tell you, not that I ever knew him. I was six months old when my grandfather died, but he established the Martin Clinic, was a sharp guy, and I know he was sharp because I heard even when I started practice, how many patients came in and talked about how great my grandfather was and how good he was. And then of course, I practiced even with my father for several years, and it's generational and Tony Jr practiced with me, and we just kept the tradition going.
Now, the reason I say that is because my father taught me to listen, and he used to say, listen, son, patients have inside information. So listen to your patients. Let them ask questions. Listen, they'll give you clues, okay? Then my dad said, look, observe, watch people. So when people came into my office in my space, I was watching them. I looked at them. I remember a lady telling me, you're in my space, Dr. Martin. I said, no, no, no. See this room? That's my space. This is my space. Okay? I can be overbearing sometimes because I got a loud voice, as you guys know. Plus, I never see myself intimidating. But I guess when I get in your grill, when I look closely, might've been intimidating for some people, but I was looking for clues. I was looking at their hair, I was looking at their skin, I was looking at their eyes. I often said, stick your tongue out. I want to look at it. I was looking at their eyebrows, general observations.
And the reason I say it, because somebody was asking me yesterday, because I talk about cortisol all the time. What is cortisol? Cortisol, right? That's the inside. It's like a vibration. I used to tell people, and I've been observing people with high cortisol for a long period of time, stress, the stress hormone. That's meant to have a part-time job, not a full-time job. Cortisol comes out of your adrenals, your adrenal secrete cortisol, normal, but you don't always want that to be turned on. Okay? We've talked about that it seems like a million times, but I just want to talk to you because a lady asked me yesterday, how do you know if someone has high cortisol? Well, the best way to know really is to, I like the old urine test for cortisol, but guys, you don't need a test because someone was on yesterday or maybe the day before. I love the comments. Okay, get a cortisol test done. I'm not against that, okay? But you don't need a cortisol test necessarily. Take a quiz.
What have I've always said when it comes to hormones? Really, really, really important. Symptoms trump testing. I'm not saying don't test. I wasn't guessing in the office. I tested in the office, but I want to tell you that you can pretty well tell. Go by symptoms. I used to have a questionnaire in my office. You could not see me unless you filled out the questionnaire. I wouldn't see you. There was no exceptions to it. You filled out a questionnaire and some of the questions were repetitive. Dr. Martin, you already asked me that. I'm asking you again, and I had a whole section on cortisol because it's really important, but I just want to tell you what I usually saw, and I got very, very, very good at observing. At observing, and I used to see in cortisol when it was prolonged because of the hormonal mess it made, because cortisol is like pouring gasoline on a fire. It messes up almost everything and when your cortisol is high, okay, so oh, you're uptight, and we talk about this, if a lion is chasing you, cortisol is going to go high, right? The fight or flight, it's very much involved in that.
So if a lion is chasing you, okay, you need that cortisol. It could save your life, but if it doesn't turn off is the key. You want it to turn off because your body doesn't know the difference between a lion chasing you and you are stressed over a relationship. You know how many times in my office over the years that I saw people that were going through a divorce, a separation, a loss of a loved one, so often in women, their mother died or their dad died, and a few years later, they were in my office and I said, well, cortisol just suppresses your immune system. When you're being chased by a lion, your body's not thinking, well, I need to fight an infection here. No no. All of the effort of your body is put in to running away or fighting. Hopefully, you're not going to fight a lion. Do you know what I mean by that? So, what happens your body is distracted, your immune system not going to work properly, and how many times after some kind of very stressful event caring for a parent.
One of the biggest problems that's going to come down the road here today, and we're already seeing it, is post dementia stress. What? Well, one of my parents, one of my loved ones has dementia, and you're part of the care team. It drains the life out of you and now you're susceptible. Now you are at higher risk for all these chronic diseases, especially cancer, because cortisol is meant to have a part-time job. You need it. It's part of your circadian rhythm in the morning, helps you to wake up, get your blood pressure up, it wakes you up, but you better be trending downward at night, so your body doesn't know the difference. You're chased by a lion. You've got relationships, you've got family dynamics, and they're stressing you out, financial, stressing you out, that kind of thing. Environmental stress, you're surrounded by environmental stress. So back to observation. I went on a rabbit trail, which I often do, but I'm coming back.
So when I was in the office, I see patients coming in and I could tell almost without exception, wow, they are under a lot of stress and they might not even know it, but I could see it. Why? Because when you are stressed, one of the things that happens, especially in women when you are stressed, your thyroid, right here, your thyroid, that little butterfly like organ slows to a crawl. You're stressed, the thyroid slows down. Why? Cortisol, okay, cortisol robs the process of you converting T4 to T3. Your body needs a T3, your thyroid needs T3 to work properly. Well, cortisol messes that up. Cortisol robs, listen to what I'm going to say. Cortisol, robs progesterone. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to tell you why in a minute, but especially ladies. Ladies, cortisol robs progesterone. What does that do? Well, you think of progesterone as pro gestation. Pro babies. That's true. You need progesterone.
I'll tell you, it's one of the biggest problems today in women trying to have a baby. Stress really robs progesterone, and that makes a woman much more susceptible to losing their baby. Big reason, progesterone, but cortisol is at the root of it. Cortisol, that stress hormone that never gets turned off robs progesterone. If you rob progesterone, you are allowing estrogen to take off. Estrogen. Pro-woman estrogen. Guess what? Estrogen does. It makes things grow. A woman, it makes things grow. In a man estrogen makes things grow. Men often have way more estrogen than their wives at 50 years old. Why is that? They got estrogen coming out their ears, and they got problems with their prostate. They got belly fat. I used to observe it all the time. I say, you got way too much estrogen, and if you got a lot of estrogen, sir, you don't have a lot of testosterone. You need testosterone.
Women need estrogen. Of course they do, but they need a balance between estrogen and progesterone. Got to be level, a level playing field between those two hormones. Otherwise, guess what? You just look at food and you gain weight. I could tell a woman in five seconds they had too much estrogen. Nevermind that it slows the thyroid to a crawl. Your thyroid is your gas pedal. Your thyroid is your metabolism. It's a big part of it. Your thyroid is your furnace, and there's an imbalance. You got way too much estrogen, not enough progesterone. Your thyroid slows to a crawl. Estrogen is a growth hormone. Now you're putting weight on. You get too much estrogen because when you're stressed, you know what happens? You're eating usually the wrong foods. You're being chased by a lion. You ain't worried about whether you're eating steak. The lion's worried about eating steak. He wants you, okay?
But you're nibbling on junk food because think of what cortisol does. Cortisol, okay? Think of that for a minute. Your blood sugar is going up because you're uptight. What goes up must come down. So it goes up, down, up, down. What happens is you're secreting a lot of insulin to get that sugar down. You get a yo-yo effect. You are starving and you choose a quick fix, and you're now living on sugar and crappy foods. Guys, I used to see it all the time. Their hair was thinning. The eyebrows were thinning, thyroid, packing fat around the hips, metabolic mess, a hormonal mess, and that's where we started the term horror-mones. I remember a few times just saying, you got horror-mones. You can ask my staff, Nic, and those that used to work with me in the office, tears had come down their eyes, okay? I had to hand them Kleenex here and they'd be, Dr. Martin, you're the first doctor that ever told me it wasn't between my ears. I said, it's not between your ears. It's horror-mones. You got horror-mones.
Your skin, dry, not glowing. Everything gets affected by that. And I used to observe it even before I ever did a test. I used to know it. I had the answer. I said, it ain't going to surprise me when we find out you are estrogen dominant. You don't have enough progesterone. Your cortisol's through the roof. Your thyroid is slowed to a crawl and you fell through the cracks with your physicians. Hey, I rarely, okay, I'm not saying never. I rarely was ever the first doctor that these people came to. Rarely, okay? I was often the last resort, and that's where the tears come, and I was very sympathetic, and I said, here we go. I am now going to give you a plan, okay? I'm going to give you a plan.
And then another thing that happens with cortisol, okay? Just to give you another factor. You know what? It not only messes up your metabolism and messes up your hormones big time, but hormones have a big effect guys on your mood, big effect on mood. And these people that were running them, I depressed of, I don't feel good, and I am short tempered, and I'm so frustrated. And I said, yeah, again, hormonal. Cortisol at the root of it. I'll tell you guys, when we wrote the book, Serial Killers: Two Hormones That Want You Dead, we meant it. Insulin, food, cortisol, horror-mones, usually was very much involved with the ovaries, with even testosterone in men and estrogen being driven up. Do you know guys? Okay, talking to men for a minute, you think of estrogen and you go, that's women. Yeah, and it's true. Okay, but testosterone, do you know what it relies on? A little bit is progesterone, what? Yeah, progesterone. Men, we have a little bit of that. You don't want a lot of it, but I'm telling you, it's amazing. Okay?
And the results would come in the office, okay? The results would come in the office. When you looked at the person in front of you that came into the office, the results would come when you looked at them holistically. You have to understand hormones. And 99% of physicians, they don't understand hormones. Oh, your TSH is within normal limits. Your thyroid is normal. No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not working properly. It's slowed to a crawl. Yeah, but your blood working normal. That's why I am saying, guys, it's very, very important. Take your symptoms seriously. Okay? Take your symptoms seriously. We put a course out there. We used to talk about it all the time. The metabolic storm when the body was just upside down, not working properly, not enough for someone to say they were sick, but their body was in a metabolic storm.
Okay, I just wanted to bring that one out. A conversation that I had yesterday about cortisol, okay? How I observed what I was watching for in my office. Here's one. Do we have time for a few here? Yeah. Okay. Let's do one. At least in India. Now, I have some Indian, okay? East Indian, India, part of my family. So I'm always very interested in India. I've got four grandchildren that are of mixed. My daughter married East Indian. My son-in-law, Sam, Dr. Ooman. Smart. Oh, I love him. Okay? 1-800-Sam, I call him, okay, great doctor, great physician, but they got Indian descent. Okay? If I'd have known grandchildren, that much fun, I'd have had those first. Anyway, beautiful kids. But I'm always interested what's going on over in India there, okay? And you know what? There's two epidemics in India. There's two epidemics, at least in India when it comes to their health. One of them is diabetes. Diabetes is out of control in India and some other mid east countries, there's genetics involved for sure, but a lot of it is their diet. They're very carb oriented.
And then secondly, another epidemic is a deficiency in B12. B12, because you can't get B12 if you're not eating red meat. You need red meat, okay? For B12. B12 is really only found in the animal kingdom and very specifically in red meat, okay? So when you have liver, you get B12. When you have steak, you get B12. It's in pork a little bit less, but you better be eating meat. That's why I always tell my vegetarian friends and vegan friends, I'm sorry, but you're wrong, okay? I'm sorry, but you're wrong. And if you insist on being a vegetarian or a vegan, okay, but you understand you need to supplement the rest of your life with B12, your brain ain't going to function properly without B12. B12 is so important for almost every aspect of your body. Epidemics, hot off the presses. Diabetes we've known about for a while, but B12, a severe deficiency in India in B12.
Guys, it's the same in North America. Most people do not have enough B12, they don't have optimized levels of B12. We talked about vitamin D yesterday. People are so deficient they don't know it because nobody tests them. But even B12, they don't even look at that anymore. You know, the old, like my grandfather and all that, B12 was everything. Today, doctors B12, you almost got to pull their teeth without anesthetic to get them to even look at B12. What's that mean? They used to know this stuff. It was a big part of the, when doctors carry around their doctor's bag, you don't see that anymore, do you? Right? Remember the doctor's bag? Well, they used to have B12 in it. They'd give you a B12 shot. Oh, you're tired. Here's some B12. They don't do that anymore. They should. Anyway.
Guys, you know what tomorrow is? It's Q and A, Q and A. We look forward to it. We always love you and it's not too late. Get your questions in. You got to question. Don't put it here, guys. Don't put it in front of me today. I can't see it. And ask your question. Send it by email info@martinclinic.com, info@martinclinic.com. Then it gets on the program. And guys, we love your questions. We love your questions, okay, Q and A tomorrow. Okay, guys, we love you dearly and sincerely, and we don't say it enough. The best audience in the world is you guys. 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!