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. Once again, welcome to another live this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day. And we appreciate you guys coming on.
Okay, a couple of things I want to talk to you about this morning. Good morning. Good morning. Love you guys.
Thanks for coming on. Thanks for being the greatest audience. Thanks for getting us over 100,000 followers on Facebook. 100,000.
And millions of downloads on the Doctor is in podcast, all because of you. We appreciate it. I appreciate you guys. Where would I be without my audience?
Okay. I just want to talk to you about something that's coming up more. And then I don't know how much time we'll spend on it, but I just want to talk about it for a sec here. There's sort of a new index out, okay?
When it comes to your blood work. I like it. I really do. Okay.
And it's called your triglycerides. Now you guys know more about triglycerides than 99%. I'm just going to say it out loud. I think I'm right.
99% of physicians. Triglycerides mean nothing to them because they're so focused in on LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol. Okay. So triglycerides, you guys know how important that is.
Okay. Now there's a new index. Let me talk about the old one just for a sec. Because I have been teaching you, and rightly so.
When you look at your blood work, the index that I love is triglycerides to HDL ratio. Okay. Fat balls to your HDL cholesterol. And good is when they're equal.
Better is when your triglycerides are lower than your HDL cholesterol. That's when your body is functioning at a much higher level. It's clearing out those fat balls. And your triglyceride HDL ratio is a very important monitor for heart disease for your brain, for insulin resistance.
Okay. Now, this is new. And it's the ratio of your triglycerides and your fasting glucose levels. Okay.
Again, easy to do. Doctors don't do it generally, but they should. Okay. Taking your triglycerides and your fasting glucose.
Okay. Now, the more they look at this, that ratio, okay. Let me give you a little bit of, let me read what they're saying here about this new ratio. Okay.
Triglyceride glucose index is a great biomarker of insulin resistance. Okay. The calculation of your triglyceride glucose index, okay, so fasting glucose, is easy. And number two, inexpensive.
It's easy. It's inexpensive. Because it only requires the results of fasting blood triglycerides and your fasting glucose. And that's important.
You want to be fasting to get this index. Okay. I like fasting glucose levels. I like looking at fasting triglycerides.
Okay. Better to be fasting and do that. Okay. Now, let me give you what else they're saying about it.
Okay. I'll give you some numbers. Okay. If you're below, I'm just going to read to you the studies.
Okay. If you're below 8.5, so again, taking your triglycerides fasting and your fasting glucose, okay, your blood sugars, okay. And they're not talking to A1C there, although you guys know how much I love A1C. But anyways, let's just stick to this for a minute.
If you're below 8.5, you're considered a lower metabolic risk. Okay. 8.5 to 9 suggests early or emerging insulin resistance. Above 9.0 points to a higher risk of pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, heart problems, and the new one, kidney problems, chronic kidney disease.
Okay. So, if you have your own fasting glucose and fasting triglycerides from a recent lab test, I'm just reading here the study. Okay. You can calculate your score.
Okay. It's easy to do. Okay. The standard formula is, oh boy, it doesn't look that easy to calculate.
Okay. The standard formula is fasting triglycerides in MgDL. Okay. That's usually what they test you in.
Times fasting glucose in MgDL, I think it's times two. I better look at that. Okay. Let me look at it because I'm confused myself.
But at the end of the day, guys, here's the point I want to make, okay, because I'll get it for you exactly if you want to do it yourself. Okay. Because you can get HOMA, capital H, capital O, capital M, capital A, dash IM. Okay.
That's your fasting insulin. You can get that test done. Fasting insulin. You can get that test done.
It's more expensive. And doctors, unless they're suspicious of diabetes, I don't know why they don't do it more often, but they don't. So, the poor man's test, I've always told you this, this is a poor man's test of insulin resistance. Get your A1C done.
Doctors, they don't even blink at A1C unless it's really high. I talked to someone the other day. They were at 6.6. Man, that's titanic stuff.
They were never told that. Maybe a little high, but they weren't told, okay, you need to really drastically change your diet. But guys, I want you to get hooked on blood work. I want you to get hooked on it.
Because you and I live in a day and age where there's a lot of information out there. That's all right. I like that. But I want you to become your own physician first.
Okay. I'm not saying you get rid of your physicians. I'm just saying it's best that you be responsible for your own health. You know my analogy.
You're in an airplane and they're telling you before you take off, in the event of low oxygen, the mass from the ceiling over your head, over your seat, the oxygen mass will come down. And you know what they tell you to do? You see, I listen, Linda. I listen.
Here's what they tell you to do. You put yours on first. You want to help somebody else? No, no, no.
Put yours on first. And then you help someone else. So I love that illustration because that has to do with what we're doing here every day. I'm educating.
What do I see myself as? An educator. Okay. An educator.
I've always tried to do that in my office. Be an educator. The word doctor means teacher. Be a teacher.
See, most physicians, they don't teach you anything. They're so used to, trust me, you don't know anything about medicine. Don't ask me questions. Trust me.
Trust me. And that's the way it used to be. And my parents' generation, and even my generation, they bought that. Don't ask the doctor.
Okay. Don't get too inquisitive. What do you know about medicine? What do you know about your body?
What do you know about health? Okay. And I'm trying to get you guys, and I, like I always compliment my audience here, because you're very inquisitive. I want you to be.
I want you to be. And I want you to be able to interpret your own blood work. Okay. And this is a new test.
It's a new index. I like it. Because it's telling you, even with, I don't want to say more. Let me use the word.
It sort of solidifies what I've been saying for years. If someone asked me what I sort of specialize in, well, I'd have to tell them metabolic syndrome. I'd have to say it. If you would ask me in the 80s and 90s, I would have said chronic fatigue syndrome.
I do a lot of things, but probably I specialize in that. And now, if you ask me, I'd say metabolic syndrome. I think you would agree with that. And it's important because, and I didn't say this originally, 93% of the population have trouble with metabolic syndrome.
And you and I know that metabolic syndrome has to do with food, primarily. Right? Metabolic syndrome is a food problem, primarily. And when you eat the wrong things, it's making you much more susceptible to the big chronic disease epidemic that we have.
Now, there's environmental factors. There are stress factors. There's other factors in metabolic syndrome. I agree with that, but those are minuscule to the big issue, which is what you put in your mouth every day.
You think it's important? If 93% of the population are on the Titanic, on their way to heart disease, number one killer, chronic disease, cancer, number two, and close number two, Alzheimer's, number three on the hip worry, and diabetes. But diabetes, we put it number four, but it's really metabolic syndrome.
So when they say, well, diabetic, yeah, because 50% of the population are diabetic or pre. And like Dr. Kraft said, the father of diabetes, there's no such thing as pre. You're either on the Titanic or you're not.
When he said that back about 40 years ago, I took that to heart. I became a good student. And I watched the disaster unfold in my office. The disaster of metabolic syndrome unfold in my office.
Now, the good thing about metabolic syndrome is you can turn the ship around. And I teach you numbers. You look at, right? And that's why we put that in the book Sunsteak and Steal.
There's a whole chapter there on what blood work. You read it. You understand it. I know it looks like Greek.
It really does. When you look at blood work generally, I mean, it is so complicated. And when people look at it, when lay people look at blood work ordinarily at first, they are so overwhelmed, they don't know what they're looking at. And unless the doctor has flagged something, and even then, they don't understand it.
So my job, my job, is to break that down and make it simple. I love the kiss method, don't you? Keep it simple, stupid. That's moi.
Okay? Keep it simple. Break it down, bite size, so that you can understand and you look at your blood work. I'll give you an example of weeds, what I call weeds of blood work.
You get your lipid profile, cholesterol, total cholesterol, non-HDL, LDL, this and that, diet of God, you've got 50 things written there. And it's so stinking, confusing that you just want to, you know, scream. So I tell you, when you get your lipids, look at your triglycerides, your fat balls, okay?
And your HDL. You can dismiss the rest of it. What? You can dismiss the rest of it.
Look at your triglycerides and look at your HDL cholesterol. And you don't even want your LDL to be low, but let's not get into the weeds, because everything else in your lipid profile is weeds. It's literally meant to keep you confused.
And I hate to say it, Big Pharma, they pound lipids, pound it to your doctor, in medical school, out of medical school, to the pharmacist, to everybody and their dog.
They push and they push and they push. Well, look at your lipids and especially your LDL cholesterol, and then you want to get into more weeds, they get the APO and the A, the particle size, and keep you confused and keep you on statin medication. And then you want to get into and keep you on statin medication.
And the only food advice they give you is stay away from steak and butter and bacon and maybe even eggs. And when I hear that, I get an instant migraine. It's instant with me. My head wants to explode.
And I always ask my medical doctor friends, who told you that? Ask the question, if LDL cholesterol is low, does that prevent heart disease? And you know what the answer is? Nope.
Nope. It's been a colossal failure. Heart disease is worse than ever. It can't be true.
Now, I'm not trying to be popular here. I'm trying to tell you the truth. And look, you guys got to make your own decisions. I'm just giving you information.
So you take your blood work, okay? You take your blood work. You don't have to go into the weeds. You really don't.
You get the basics down and start to understand that. That food moves needles. When you eat right, you can prove it to yourself. Change your blood work.
It's science. Okay? It's science. Not Dr. Fauci's science. Because he said he was the science. I'm not saying that. I'm saying science.
Because if you got high A1C and you change your diet and your A1C comes down, that's science. You got high triglycerides and low HDL, which is a big, huge part of metabolic syndrome, that's science, guys, if you can move the needle down. You want to actually get your HDL cholesterol up. That's science.
Then there are the facts. So this new index, okay, the triglyceride glucose index, that's science. They're saying it right here in this article. It's a cheap way to have a look at insulin resistance.
So is A1C, guys. I base that by A1C on 50 years of looking at it. You know me and my sweet spots, right? What's the sweet spot?
Well, 5.4 and less. Okay? You're above it? Here's what it means.
If you're above 5.4, you and carbs don't get along. You got triglycerides that are high and your HDL is low, you and carbs don't get along. You don't. And we teach it all the time here, that sugar is so destructive to your body and anything that turns to sugar rapidly, right?
It's the speed at which food breaks down, okay, into sugar. A steak, insulin is on the sidelines, whistling. You eat an egg, best way to start your day, bacon and egg. No toast.
What happens? Your insulin goes, I don't have anything to do. I'm just going to sit here on the sidelines. I don't have much to do here.
And the less you use your insulin, the better off it is for you. And the more we study insulin and the more we study insulin resistance, i.e. looking at blood work, like A1C, triglyceride to HDL ratio, triglyceride to glucose ratios, they're adding this. Healthier you are in every measure of chronic disease.
Every one. The big one's heart, brain, Alzheimer's, cancer. Cancer is a metabolic disease. When you use the word metabolic, what does that mean?
Okay? Metabolism. What does that mean? What does that mean?
Let's break it down even more. How your body uses food. That's your metabolism. How your body uses energy.
Food turns to energy. This is why even the new studies on mental health, even mental health, gets turned upside down. Because it's looking now, the new research is looking at how the brain uses energy. How the brain's metabolism.
And people with mental health issues, they don't process those carbs, those crappy carbs properly. It's amazing. You can't know everything, but guys, we hammer this on a day in, day out basis. Because one thing you gotta do, you gotta eat.
You gotta eat. And we're so focused in on that, because it's almost everything when it comes to health. It's not everything, but it's almost everything. And it's certainly the thing that you and I can control.
We can control it. It's not easy. We don't live like my grandparents did a hundred years ago. You go to the grocery store.
I remember a good friend of mine, when we were young, okay, in high school, he said his parents came from Poland, which was communist at the time. And when they got to Canada, they thought when they went into a grocery store, that the government set it up to fool them. They couldn't believe, okay? Now you're talking in the 1950s here.
They couldn't believe our grocery stores. And they said, no, it's all propaganda. They can't have this much food. And they came out of Poland.
But guys, go to grocery stores here in North America, and it's overwhelming, guys. And we got shelf after shelf after shelf after shelf of shelf, not around the produce, in what I call the middle aisles of the grocery store, that almost all of it is full of crap. Not all of it, but almost all of it.
And everything in there is owned by what, eight to nine companies, conglomerates, and they want to keep you hooked. And they start in children with cereal. That Frosted Flakes are great. No, they're not. They're not great.
I loved Tony the Tiger when I was a kid, because my name is Tony. And a lot of my friends called me Tony the Tiger because of Frosted Flakes. But they're not great. Now Tony the Tiger is great.
Okay? I got called that at school, Tony the Tiger, because he's great. Right? My wife will tell you different.
Okay. I'll get you all those ratios on how to figure out, guys. I saw some math there, okay, how to figure out. It's a lot easier than I made it out.
So let me, I'll break it down for you. Okay. Because I had to look at it and go, oh, my word. How do you calculate the triglyceride fasting glucose thing?
My, oh boy, oh boy. Anyway. Oh, yeah. We got a great week, guys, coming.
Okay. We do, because we got lots of studies. You should see the new stuff on vitamin D. Every day I get something on vitamin D.
It's incredible. Okay. Got some vitamin D. What else do I got here?
I got some good studies here. Anyway, we'll talk about them. We'll get into it. Okay.
Friday is what? It's Q&A. So get ready for that by sending us in your questions, okay? Send in your questions to info at martinclinic.com.
Okay? Remember, this program is sponsored by the Martin Clinic. Okay? I wouldn't be able to do it without that.
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!