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. Hope you're having a great start to your day. We appreciate you guys coming on when you can come on live, of course, and we love that. We appreciate you guys. Beta. Okay, so let's get to a few studies. Okay. Where were we yesterday? We talked about sugar belly or used to be called a beer belly. Florida Atlantic University set out this study. And you know what guys is something I've seen a switch in and that is with alcohol. So you got to understand that through the last 40 years or so, they're talking about alcohol in moderation, especially a glass of wine or whatever. You heard that, right? That was actually good for you. And a drink a day sort of thing would keep the doctor away. Well, there's really been a lot of pushback on that in the last, let's say, couple of years, okay?
Where there's a lot of studies coming out and going, "Nah, no, alcohol, not really. " Okay? Not really what they thought for heart. They talked about the French over in France because they drink a lot of wine. It protects their heart and yet they eat a lot of fat. No, fat protects their heart, not the alcohol. And so Florida Atlantic University, here's the headline on the study, alcohol losing its shine. Long-term health from even moderate drinking is not good. So anyway, I'll leave it there. You guys take that for what it's worth. I don't talk about it that much. I'll tell you something on the reset. When they were in my office for 30 days, I'd said no alcohol. And a lot of it was women. I got to have my glass of wine at night. Okay? It helps me to relax and all that.
I said, "Well, for 30 days, I don't want that. I want your body to be able to do a complete detox so you're not having no alcohol for 30 days. Do you think you can do it? " Again, not always easy, right? But anyway, so that's from the Florida Atlantic University. Okay. Let me see here. What else have we got? Okay. We have one here. This is really interesting. I always talk about the tale of my books because you really see the history of my practice in a way in the books that I've written over the years. And I've written many of them, of course, with Tony Jr., Including our latest one, Rebuild Your Temple. The book before that was Sun, Steak, and Steel. And that book, it really had to do with the follow-up on the book before that, the metabolic reset. So big, big, big problems with insulin mostly.
Okay? So if you look at my practice, I almost specialize ... I don't like to use that word, but I mean, just about every person that came into our office was suffering from chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. Now, I actually wrote my thesis in clinical nutrition on chronic fatigue syndrome. That was my thesis and we published it. I was asked, "Why don't you publish this into a book, your thesis," which I did on chronic fatigue. So I think, as far as I know, I was the first guy to talk about adrenal exhaustion. That what was happening with chronic fatigue. And it had to do with the adrenals. There had been a paradigm shift in society, especially in women. Look, cortisol has been around as long as you and I have been around. You got two glands on top of your kidneys called ad renals on top of kidneys that secrete cortisol.
And cortisol is your stress hormone, and that's all right. It's on your side. It can save your life. You just don't want it going off all the time. Okay? You don't want it to go off all the time. And what I was finding, go back because that thing was published, I don't know, 30 years, 35 years ago on chronic fatigue syndrome. And I was talking about cortisol. And people, I mean it guys, the layperson knew nothing about that, but it was surprising that doctors knew very little because for cortisol, adrenal medicine looks at disease. Okay? It's disease. Chronic fatigue syndrome wasn't in any books. I mean, there was doctors studying it and they called it the yuppie flu. They called it the Epstein-Barr virus. They had different names for it. ME come out of the United Kingdom. And oh boy, I can't even pronounce it.
I'd have to go look it up again. I don't remember what ME was, but it had to do with the brain and inflammation. But what they missed out on, and physicians miss out on it because I mean, if you don't have a disease like Cushing's or Addison's, those are diseases of the adrenal glands or cancer of the adrenal glands. They don't even look at it. They don't even think of it. It's not part of their DNA. It's not part of their equation. So when I came out with this, I remember, and I probably told some of you in the past this story, when I published my book, I had a publisher, I had a publicist that got me on, oh, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds of radio shows to promote the book, TV shows to promote the book. And I did a lot of traveling to promote that book.
But I remember one time I was on public radio in the United States. So it was a pretty big venue. I didn't know it was going to be like this when they invited me, but they invited ... I can't remember the guy's name. He was a physician and the host gave me a pretty good time to introduce my book. And I talked about what I was seeing in my practice, and it was mostly women. And I wrote my thesis on it. And the thesis was generally on adrenal exhaustion and even more importantly, what to do about it, what to do about it. And this physician, when it was his turn, he just talked about it's all in their head. This was made up. This is a made up disorder. Okay? Now, respectfully, I listened to his part of the diatribe, but it was a phone in show.
And oh man, did he ever get it? I didn't have to say one word. Like I said, it was sort of like a pandemic. This was really affecting hundreds of thousands of people and they didn't know what it was. And here I was offering a probable cause. They were very interested in this. This doctor didn't want to hear it at all. He said, "It's in between their ears. It's hysteria." Or did he get it? One call after another. I mean, what could he say? These people had testimonies of how they were exhausted. They never used to be like that and they had fibromyalgia symptoms. In those day didn't have fibromyalgia. What is that? Well, I talked about it. So I've been talking about cortisol for a long time. And in my office, I used to measure it. But even then, I mean, not that I ... Like you know me, I like blood tests, I like biomarker testing.
I was big into biomarker testing. I used to say, "I don't guess, I test." That was my motto in my office. I don't guess I test. But a big part of that was I needed history. I needed history. And so I was a history taker. I wanted your history. I wanted my patient's history because that gave me a lot of clues as to what was going on and the compounding effect of adrenal exhaustion, which affected almost every part of their body, not only their brain. I want to talk to you about what it does for the brain, because this is a new study out in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience. Okay? Brand new study, confirming what Dr. Martin said in the '80s and '90s. Okay? Listen to what it's saying. And you don't have to have chronic fatigue syndrome, but if you have chronic secretion of cortisol, high levels of cortisol that don't get shut off, it's not good.
So here's what the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience brand new study, hot off the presses, cortisol, okay? Stress shrinks the hippocampus, hypocampus, whatever you want to call the campus in your brain. Okay? Guys, for the sake of simplicity, you know me, keep it simple, stupid. Okay? The kiss. Okay? I have a granddaughter, her name is Cassidy, and I call her Kissiti. Okay? And anyway, keep it simple, stupid. Kiss. So the stress hormone affects the hippocampus in your brain. That's your memory center. Again, for simplicity, think of two areas in your brain. You have your endocrine center, okay? Hypothalamus. Okay? Your hypothalamus, your hypocampus, that's an easy one. Campus, your memory center. And we talk about that all the time. We're trying to protect our memories. We're trying to prevent Alzheimer's and dementia, right? I mean, that's a big thing.
So listen, stress strengths, that part of your brain. And it does it in three ways, according to this new research in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience. I found it fascinating. And I'm sure my dear friend, Dr. MacKewan, in West Tennessee, the University of West Tennessee, she'll find this fascinating. Maybe she's read it already, but it affects the brain. Cortisol affects the memory center of your brain. I can tell you it also has an effect on the hypothalamus, but we won't talk about that right now. We're going to talk about the memory center of the brain. Okay? Constant stress. Cortisol fills your bloodstream. Cortisol fills your bloodstream. It's the fight or flight. It'll save your life. If someone's sneaking up behind you in a dark alley, you hear footsteps, cortisol, adrenaline will get going and the hairs on the back of your head are going to stand right up and you are either going to run or you're going to fight. Okay? That's what that means. You got it?
Okay, so cortisol in that constant secretion, which I talked about, go back 30, 35 years. And this is what I was finding in chronic fatigue syndrome. It was a common denominator. Cortisol, constant. The drip, drip, drip, drip of cortisol. Okay? Has terrible effects on the brain. Okay? So here's what it does. Okay? Constant cortisol, not just temporary the way it should be. It pours in and it constricts blood vessels. Well, we know that can't be good for the brain. It's not good for your memory center. We know that one of the forms of dementia is called small vessel dementia. It's a constriction of blood vessels and that ain't good. Okay. Guys, what do you want in your brain? More blood flow. You need more blood flow. That's why they're always concerned about the carotid artery. You want more blood flow to the brain. And what destroys blood flow in a way because it destroys your blood vessels? Sugar.
But cortisol, guys, what it does, it constricts your blood vessels. Decrease oxygen to the brain. Number one. Two, it decreases your neurogenesis. What is neurogenesis? Well, neurobrain cells. Genesis? Start over. Regeneration, right? Neurogenesis. And guys, we know this from your glymphatic system. Okay? Remember, your body has a lymphatic system, but your brain has its own, and we call it the glymphatic system. Your brain has its own self-cleaning oven. Guys, if you don't believe in God, if you think that happened by chance, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, think about that. Your brain, it's got its own self-cleaning of it. I love that. That happens when you're sleeping, only when you're sleeping in the brain. But cortisol makes sense. Think about it. When your cortisol is high, you don't sleep. When you don't sleep, your cortisol is high. But talk about a vicious circle.
Cortisol, okay. It affects blood supply. Well, think about it, because I always said that cortisol is that diversion. Okay? Cortisol will affect your digestion. Why would it affect your digestion? Okay. Well, think butterflies. Your stress. You got to get up in front of public. Okay? One of the biggest fears in the world, by the way, is public speaking. I never had that, but a lot of people do. It terrifies them to get up in front of people. And what do you get? You get the butterflies. What is that? Well, I mean, between your cranial nerve, your tent cranial nerve, between your brain and your gut, there's a connection. And cortisol's part of it. Okay? It's part of it. And that's all right. If it's temporary, hey, who cares? Well, what if it's constant? What if it's constant? And this is what I talked about in the book on chronic fatigue syndrome.
What if it's constant? Women ... I used the example in the book. Okay? Go back a long time ago. I talked about my mom, 11 kids in our family. Okay? I had 10 siblings. I get a migraine thinking about it. And we were all loud like me. Wow. How did my mother ever get through it? I never appreciated my mom. Really, when you're a kid, I should have appreciated her more, but I'll tell you, when I got older, my mom, I revered her. I mean, I said, "Mother, how did you do it? " And I've been a woman's doctor for a long time. What do I mean by that? Well, I made it a big priority in my life and in my practice to help women because usually there was too many doctors like the doctor I talked to you about was on the public radio with a debate with me and he was a idiot.
Women, it's all between your ears. It's hysteria, he said. And I just shook my head and I said, "No wonder. No wonder they don't know how to deal with horrormones. They don't know how to deal with anything." You could slap a doctor with cortisol and they wouldn't even know what it is. They don't study it. And it's so important. Okay? So what does cortisol do? It's a diversion. Think of the stomach. My stomach ain't working so well. I'm nauseated. I'm nervous. I got a nervous stomach. Well, that's cortisol, guys. That's cortisol. It's a diversion. It takes blood away from things because it wants to pour it into your muscles so that you fight or flight. And stress can come in many different ways, but it actually diverts blood supply to the gut. Thinking of digestion when you're in a war. That's why a lot of people, they have so much trouble with nausea.
They have trouble. A lot of it's digestion. They've got digestive issues and they're stressed. They're a stressful. And unfortunately, if you get to a psychiatrist, they're going to put you on an anti-anxiety medication or an SSRI and they put a bandaid on it. That doesn't fix your cortisol, not even one ounce. That doesn't fix that stress hormone. Okay. So back to the brain. Okay? Back to the brain. It constricts blood vessels. You don't get as much blood supply. And by the way, okay, just on the point Numero Uno, when I discovered pine bark extract, it was right at this time and it was part of the book. And then I wrote other books about the BARC with the bite. Okay. I actually wrote a book, the BARC with the bite, because it crosses the blood brain barrier. It brings extra blood supply. So Pinebark, Navitol, brings extra blood supply because it crosses the blood brain barrier and it elevates the nitric oxide, opens up blood vessels.
And we didn't even know in those days why, but we found it effective with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia was also a natural anti-inflammatory and natural antioxidant. And really the history of it comes out of my clinic and it started with my wife. She threatened my life if I ran out of that stuff. She finally said, "Hey, the brain fog is lifting." We had patients describe this brain fog as having cotton stuffed up in their brain. It was a common, common symptom. It was one of the four major symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, not only low energy, I mean exhausted. You know how many times I heard that in my office? "Doc, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." And Pine Bark across the blood brain barrier. I wrote all about it and I talked about it. It was part of my thesis. Anyway, so one, blood supply, two, neurogenesis. And when you have high cortisol, your brain's like you get a lot of debris, guys. Your brain needs to regenerate all the time. It's a manufacturing plant. It takes energy.
Whenever you have lots of energy used, you have debris. And when you have high cortisol, while your brain isn't able to regenerate. And this is what this study is showing. And that can be through the decrease in the glymphatic system. It stops making new neurons in the brain. Neurogenesis goes down. Remember, cortisol can do that. And thirdly, it creates an inflammatory response in the brain. So inflammation goes up. Okay? Now, we always say this at the Heart of Clinic, I was part of our talking points all the time. Inflammation is not Houdini. There's always a cause to it. Oxidation, glycation, okay? Too much cortisol. It pours gasoline on the fire of inflammation. Well, inflammation, right? Your body responds to inflammation. So even in the brain, you get sort of an autoimmune response to that inflammation. And they call them the microglia cells.
And they go rogue. And what happens to those microglial? Micro means little, little, little. And glial, well, you guys know what that is. You're glymphatic. Well, you have cells and they go rogue and they start to destroy normal cells instead of the bad guys, instead of the junk, instead of the debris. It's sort of autoimmune in the brain. When you have high levels of cortisol. Man, oh man, it was amazing reading this research. I said, "Makes sense." Right? Makes sense. And they were saying that it affects the hippocampus by 15% decrease in the memory and the cognitive. Makes sense. And it's a factor. This study is saying it's a huge factor in depression. Anxiety leads to depression. It's two sides of a coin. Anxiety, depression, and energy. Think of it in the brain. So they're saying increase in depression, increase in Alzheimer's, and increase in aging of the brain.
Isn't that an interesting study, guys? Isn't it incredible when you think about it? Stress shrinks the hippocampus. Okay? So get the cortisol under control. Okay? And actually in this study, they talked about this. Amazing to me that they talked about rotifolia, which we have in our cortisol formula. We have a lot of things in there that work, okay? Magnesium and ashwagandha and different things that we know work over a period of time. And then I always liked the Pine Bark. You guys know that about this. Anyway, isn't that interesting? Did you find that interesting this morning? I certainly did. I flagged this study and I said, we got a whole session on this.
Okay, guys, we love you dearly and sincerely. Tomorrow is what? Q&A. Send your questions in. Info@martinclinic.com. Send your questions in. We'll deal with them on Q&A Friday. Next week, just because we going into Christmas, just a little announcement here. We hopefully will be on 22nd, 23rd and 24th in the morning. Okay? Of course, we'll skip Christmas day, but would be back according to me on the 26th, which would be Boxing Day and we'll do Q&A there. Okay? If there's any change in that, I'll let you know, but that's what I'm planning. Okay? Okay, guys. Oh, my word. We love you guys. Okay. 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!