226. What Causes Silent Inflammation?

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, maybe it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Good morning, everyone. Our teaching, this morning, we're going to talk about inflammation. First of all, how silent it usually is, so people don't even realize that they have it. [00:00:30] Let's talk about inflammation. Now, look, there's two types of inflammation, one is acute and the other one is chronic. We're going to spend our time this morning mainly on chronic inflammation, what that does. Acute inflammation, you guys understand that because if you ever have a trauma, you get kicked in the knee or you fall or you have, even an infection, right? You get a virus or [00:01:00] a bacteria, let's say you get a cold, that's acute inflammation. You know what that's like. You got four cardinal signs. Redness, swelling, pain, those are all what they call Cardinal signs, and it's hot, it's heat. That's acute inflammation. You understand that. Viruses, bacteria, [00:01:30] even if you get a parasite, maybe your gut becomes angry or you get a bad cold. You know how rotten you feel, right? You got an infection, you got a virus.

Dr. Martin Sr.: That is acute inflammation, but what I want to talk about is the more deadly cousin. That is chronic inflammation and doctors from almost every spectrum now don't even disagree with the statement I'm about to make. They say, [00:02:00] at the root of almost all diseases that you can think of, from cardiovascular to cancer, to diabetes, to Alzheimer's, those are the four biggest killers, by the way, to autoimmune diseases like MS and Crohn's and lupus and ulcerative colitis, they're all in agreement that these things [00:02:30] are caused by inflammation. Now, I love what my son has said, I'll never forget it because he said this to me one day, "Dad, inflammation is not Houdini." Inflammation isn't Houdini. It just doesn't appear. There's a reason for the inflammation and this is why, at the Martin Clinic, we go farther back. You have, let's say cancer. [00:03:00] You got cancer here. Go back. And while inflammation is there, invariably, inflammation will be there, but why is inflammation there? Because it's not Houdini.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Inflammation shows up and it destroys because when you have, and I'm going to show this to you this morning, when you have chronic inflammation, it destroys cells, it destroys your blood [00:03:30] vessel. I'm going to show that to you today, in a little teaching, but I'm also going to tell you why that happens. If you've listened to our podcasts and you've seen how we operate at the Martin Clinic, we've come back a step. What causes inflammation to appear? We put it in three broad categories.

Dr. Martin Sr.: One is high circulating insulin, that's food, [00:04:00] it's sugar. Secondly, leaky gut. Leaky gut is, we believe, at the root of almost every disorder that you can think of, leaky gut, leaky gut, leaky brain, leaky gut, leaky lungs, leaky gut, leaky skin, leaky gut causes major, major problems in the body. Then thirdly, we talk about oxidative [00:04:30] damage. That is, take an apple, cut it in half, what's it going to do? Take an apple, cut it in half. You want to see oxidation? Do that little experiment. Cut it in half, what happens? The apple turns brown soon as you expose it to the air, right? You cut it and it starts to brown. What is that? That's oxidation. That's how we're aging. [00:05:00] We oxidize, we rust out. Our bodies are rusting out and it's part of aging, come on. The problem with oxidative damage is if it's accelerated, I will talk about that today.

Dr. Martin Sr.: I want to talk about inflammation and what it does too. Let me just tell you what happens. There's two main ways [00:05:30] that, at the cell, your body, where the damage of inflammation occurs. One of them is at the cell wall and that happens mostly by what we call glycation. Glycation damages the cell wall and the other one, the mitochondria, where the batteries get affected, this is where you have inflammation [00:06:00] damaging. Glycation is inflammation too, but it's a little bit different because of where it hits and the inflammation caused by, we'll go through some of the causes in a minute, will mostly damage your battery packs within the cell.

Dr. Martin Sr.: One of the main things, if you're asking me, "How would I know if I have silent ... ?" Not acute, remember what I said, acute inflammation. [00:06:30] You're going to have redness, you're going to have pain, you're going to have swelling. You're going to have edema. You're going to have inflammation that shows up. But the silent one, sometimes, you get no symptoms at all, at all, at all, except one. The one is, because of what happens at the battery packs of your cells, the mitochondria. And what is that? [00:07:00] You're fatigued. You're tired all the time. This is a sign that your body has inflammation. Now, let's talk about this a bit.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Inflammation is at, if you get cancer, if you have Alzheimer's, if you have diabetes, if you have any kind of heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, which is hardening of the arteries, [00:07:30] damage to the blood vessels, there's a step that happens before that, autoimmune or whatever, and that is inflammation. Chronic inflammation. Nobody's told you, nobody tests for it. I shouldn't say nobody, but very few doctors, they're not looking at that. They're looking at the disease, but inflammation will start seven, eight, nine, 10 years [00:08:00] before you get the disease.

Dr. Martin Sr.: And then, of course, there's another step and that is the leaky gut, that is the oxidative damage and the high circulating insulin. If you're not eating right, two things happen in inflammation when you're not eating right. One, remember I showed you the outside of the wall, we call that glycation. Well, what happens is that glycation, A-G-E, it's complicated, but it's when you eat too much [00:08:30] sugar, your cells, the cell wall gets damaged. The cell wall gets damaged. See the cell wall? The cell wall gets damaged by glycation and glycation creates inflammation because your body senses that the wall of your cells are being damaged by a process called glycation and [00:09:00] your body immune system is overreacting to that to some extent and it's developing a response. Inflammation is a response. Acute, to infection or trauma, but chronic, to glycation. What is glycation? It's an oxidative damage to the cell wall. Why does that happen? Because you're eating [00:09:30] too much sugar. Got it?

Dr. Martin Sr.: Now, the other one happens inside the cell. It's called the mitochondria. Your mitochondria, don't you love medicine? Because they just use big words. Why didn't they call your mitochondria the battery packs in your cells? But they like to confuse you, right? Latin was invented to confuse the masses. Honest to God, that's what happened. [00:10:00] Latin, ooh, I hate Latin. But Latin was developed so that you would be ignorant because you understand batteries, but you might not understand mitochondria. That's all it is, it's the battery packs within your cells and those battery packs produce energy called ATP. Gasoline. You know what happens when you [00:10:30] have chronic inflammation? It hits your battery packs and the battery packs start leaking that gasoline. Yeah, the battery packs leak the gasoline. Instead of producing ATP, it leaks it out inside the cell. And then, your body sees that and then you react to that. You overreact to that. This is where inflammation starts to take off. You [00:11:00] don't even know it yet except that you're tired. You're tired. You're, "Ah, I'm draggy all the time."

Dr. Martin Sr.: Guys, you know, if you're dragging all the time, that's one of the classic signs that your battery packs within your body cells, you got trillions of cells, you got cells everywhere. You got eye cells, you got heart cells, you got bone cells, you got cells, [00:11:30] cells, cells. And inside those cells you have little mitochondria. You have a little battery pack. They start leaking out the fuel. Instead of producing fuel, they're leaking it inside the cell, it damages the cell and the cytoplasm, the fluid within the cell, I hate the big words but that's what it means. And then, you know what? It starts to destroy the cells, either on the outside or on the [00:12:00] inside of the cell. You got that? That's what starts disease. Originally, what starts the glycation is when you have high circulating insulin. Food, sugars, sugars is the new smoking. Guys, in the '70s, when we learned about cellular damage in school, you know what the number one reason for cellular damage, oxidative [00:12:30] and damage to the mitochondria, you know what it was? Smoking. Yeah, smoking. It destroyed your cells. And then you would get what we call a necrosis. The cells would die and they would prematurely age. Smoking did that because it was what we call a toxin, an environmental toxin. You got it?

Dr. Martin Sr.: All I'm saying is, is that if you look [00:13:00] at what happens when you get sick, I'm not talking about acute inflammation. Again, let me differentiate that. That's caused by viruses, it's caused by bacteria, it's caused by fungus, it's caused by parasites. That's acute inflammation. Or it's caused by trauma. You get a concussion, you hit your head, you got inflammation. That's why the brain, that's why they have so many symptoms [00:13:30] in the concussion, but that's what we call acute inflammation. Chronic inflammation comes from three things major. That is, again, that food, that sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, high vegetable oils, high amount of, you're living within, and this is where kids live mostly today. They live within the middle aisles of their grocery store. Packaged [00:14:00] goods, brand, packaged, right? Bread's not what it used to be. There's no more nutrition in bread, really, it's just a carb, but it's a simple starch and it turns to sugar in five seconds and that causes glycation and inflammation. One of them damages the outer cell and the other one damages the mitochondria within the cell. That is the threat [00:14:30] of our society today.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Guys, I say this to you every week and I'll say it to you again, clear and present danger is not the climate. I know the politicians want to talk about climate, it drives me insane, but right in front of them, something they're not willing to solve is the health crisis that we have. We're spending a fortune on disease. We're spending a [00:15:00] fortune on disease because we're waiting for the person to get sick. You all, you got diabetes. Okay, that's going to cost a fortune to treat that. They're not fixing it. They just want to manage it. You get cancer, that costs about $300,000. Yeah, one cancer patient, that's a minimum. One diabetic, a hundred thousand dollars every year to treat diabetes, on average. Those are the average costs. [00:15:30] Guys, there's not enough tea in China, if we continue on the the road that we're on, the health crisis that we're in, because in Canada, the USA, it's the same. One is more private in the, in the USA. In Canada, we have what we call universal healthcare, but it's not healthcare at all. It's disease care. We wait until somebody gets sick.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Nobody [00:16:00] talks to the masses about, let's prevent disease from coming. Let's prevent high circulating insulin. Let's prevent leaky gut. Let's prevent oxidative damage, the aging of the body, the rusting out of the body. You're not going to completely prevent it, but let's get ahead of the curve. Let's get testing for [00:16:30] chronic inflammation. It should be routine, where doctors are saying, you have inflammation going on in your body, it's chronic, it's going to lead to cancer or cardiovascular or diabetes or Alzheimer's or autoimmune.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Autoimmune, guys, MS, it doesn't just appear. Crohn's, it just doesn't appear. There's a process [00:17:00] that takes years and years and years for it to show up in the body, but we, at the Martin clinic, we're always talking about, let's educate the public. Let's educate them so that you, you, you take control of your own health. Guys, it's so important that you take control yourself of your own health. This is what I try and do. [00:17:30] Look guys, I live on the planet. Does that mean I never have carbs? No, of course it doesn't. But I try and live that lifestyle of lowering my inflammation, lowering that inflammation by watching what, look, guys, you can't control everything in life, you can't, but you can control what you put in [00:18:00] your mouth every day. It's called food. If you lower your high circulating insulin, it is going to be one of the most beneficial things you can do.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Every day in the office, I just want to tell you this, and many of you have come to see me over the years but even if you haven't, here's Dr. Martin in a little nutshell. I preach food [00:18:30] every time. I preach food. You're five years old, you got ADD or ADHD and you're bouncing off the walls or you're 95 years old, I talk to you about taking care of your body and the primary thing that will help you is, lower your carbs, lower them. If you do nothing else, guys, [00:19:00] read your labels and get your sugar down to almost nothing a day. Why? Because when you lower your sugars, especially, you are going to protect your cell wall. You're going to protect your battery packs, your mitochondria within the cell. Strictly, look, there's other [00:19:30] factors, but these are the things you can control. You want to have a nice cell wall, not damaged and you want to have your battery packs producing, the battery packs producing good energy? Food, food! Eggs, meat and cheese, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. Generally, that's what you eat. Lay off, as much [00:20:00] as you can, the breads, the pasta, the rice, the cereals, the sugars, the sweets, the pastries, whatever.

Dr. Martin Sr.: I'm not saying never have it. I'm not. It's your birthday, have a piece of cake for heaven's sake. I don't care. But generally, I try and teach lifestyle eating, lifestyle eating. Lower carbs, read your labels, understand food [00:20:30] and you will know, in a very short period of time, more than, I hate to say this, the dietitians more than, well, for sure, your family doctor. You will know more nutrition than them. Why? Because today, I hate to be negative, but the two biggest industries in the world today are, two biggest, the pharmaceutical, they don't want things to change. [00:21:00] Look, I'm not against drugs. You got me? I'm not. You need an antibiotic, you need an antibiotic. If you have to take an anti-inflammatory temporarily, do it. If you need insulin to save your life, do it. I'm talking about how those things ought to be temporary in your life, pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Martin Sr.: I had a guy in yesterday and [00:21:30] I said, "You're on a statin drug, you're on a cholesterol-lowering drug, do you know that?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Why?" He said, "My doctor said it's prevention." Prevention? Food is prevention, not drugs. Why would you take, because that's what they used to do with Aspirin. It's a prevention, right? Now, the FDA told the makers of Aspirin, Bayer and other companies that make Aspirin, they said, "Don't [00:22:00] you tell people anymore, you cannot advertise this anymore, you're not supposed to say that Aspirin is prevention anymore. It is dangerous." Hey, guys, I'm only telling you what the FDA said. And cholesterol, I asked the guy, "Your cholesterol is normal." "I know," he said, "but my doctor said I needed it as prevention." Well, what do you think is it, a candy? That can be a very dangerous drug with very big side [00:22:30] effects. I can get your triglycerides down, dangerous fats, in four weeks. Yeah, and I can get your HDL up, your good cholesterol, every, any doctor will tell you you need good cholesterol. Okay? You can change your habits in four stinking weeks. Why wouldn't you do it with food? "I don't want to change my lifestyle. I want to eat the way I eat." "Okay. [00:23:00] Then you're going to get sick." It's not if you get sick, it's when you get sick.

Dr. Martin Sr.: You're going to get sick. You've got to have a heart attack, you're going to have a stroke, you're going to get cancer, you're going to get Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is, it's not only diabetes of the brain, but that's the biggest factor, it's over 50%. You get diabetes, "Well, my mommy had Alzheimer's." [00:23:30] So? "My dad has Alzheimer's." So? That doesn't mean you're going to get Alzheimer's. No, it doesn't mean that at all because that's what the pharmaceutical industry wants you to do. That's what the food industry wants to teach you. "Oh, it's genetics. Nothing you can do about it." Or, "Take our pills, but don't change your diet." You think the food industry wants you to change your diet? The cereal companies even [00:24:00] put a heart on the box, because you're going to have a heart attack if you eat it. Didn't you know that? It's not to prevent heart disease. It's going to give you a heart attack if you insist on eating your Cheerios everyday or Frosted Flakes because they're great. No, they're not. They're great for heart disease. That's what they're great for.

Dr. Martin Sr.: You want cancer? Eat that sugary cereal. Read your labels. "Oh, doc, [00:24:30] it's brand. Great brands." So what? It's full of sugar. I get patients every day, "Doc, I got to have my oatmeal every day." "Why? Why do you have to have oatmeal everyday?" "I like it." I know, but it don't like you. And we live in a different world and oatmeal is sugar. Even if they don't add any sugar, it's carbs. It's simple carbs, it's going to be sugar in five seconds in your bloodstream [00:25:00] and it will cause damage to the cell wall, glycation, and damage inside the cell, to your mitochondria.

Dr. Martin Sr.: And isn't it amazing, isn't it amazing, thousands of times a year, thousands, not hundreds, thousands of times a year, people change their eating habits and within three to four weeks, it's unbelievable [00:25:30] how much they feel better. The first thing that happens is their energy, because their mitochondria, their battery packs are no longer being damaged and the ATP, instead of being produced to give you energy, is leaking outside into the cytoplasm of your cell, which is giving you fatigue and [00:26:00] it's damaging your cells at the cellular level of your blood vessels, of your heart, of cancer cells because, what happens, those cells get damaged. Cancer is a thing of your metabolic system, your cells, cancer happens at the cellular level, guys. You don't get cancer of [00:26:30] the liver or lung cancer or breast cancer or any other type of cancer without damage. You want to lower your inflammation? Have bacon and eggs in the morning, if you have to eat. If you don't have to eat, you know one way to lower inflammation, by the way? Intermittent fasting. It helps. It helps.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Let me just give you a couple of other things. I just made some [00:27:00] notes on inflammation this morning. Oh, another thing too, because people were asking me this and I get asked this every day. "What tests can you do for silent inflammation?" Not acute, the chron. "What tests?" Get your doctor to do? The CRP, C-reactive protein. C-reactive protein. That is a tremendous blood test, will tell you years [00:27:30] ahead of time if you're going to get a disease because it starts with inflammation. Well, it doesn't start with inflammation, but inflammation is always present, it's not Houdini. I just want to repeat that. You can do a simple blood test for C-reactive protein. Get that done. Another one that your doctor might want to do is a [fibrogenagen 00:00:27:53]. That's a test that you can get done.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Another one is homocysteine. Homocysteine. [00:28:00] I love Tony Jr. because he always gives me these illustrations, he teaches me this, homocysteine, he says, "Dad, it's like smoke going up a chimney. It's normal, it's part of your metabolism. It's when amino acids are breaking down, but if it goes up the the chimney, that smoke, it's not dangerous. What happens if there's a blockage in the chimney? The smoke comes down, now, you have elevated homocysteine. It's like smoke in the room, it's [00:28:30] smoked inside your body. It creates all sorts of problems but especially inflammation, very damaging that the cell wall. Those are tests, so CRP, C-reactive protein is a test that you could have done, fibrogenagen and homocysteine. There's a few more, but those are generally the ones that are ... C-reactive protein, all the doctor has to do is put a check mark. Let's find [00:29:00] out where your inflammation levels are in your blood.

Dr. Martin Sr.: I like thermography. Thermography shows silent inflammation, I use it in my office. It's a tremendous tool for inflammation and I like the other one, here's one that you can get done too, I should have said this earlier, is uric acid. Get your uric acid levels checked. If it's anywhere near elevated, you're creating [00:29:30] inflammation in the body because I know what you're thinking, uric acid, that's gout. Yeah, it can lead to gout, but if you have high blood pressure, you have inflammation and you usually have high uric acid. If you've got any kind of kidney stress, one of the factors will be uric acid. Uric acid is very hard on your kidneys. Uric acid is dangerous because of what it does to your blood vessels. [00:30:00] Nevermind what it can do to your joints, it's what it does to your blood vessels silently, uric acid, so get uric acid levels checked. If you go to our teaching on heart, how to protect your heart, we do that one all the time.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Oh, here's another one. Here's another one. This is very important biomarker in your body. Get your vitamin D levels [00:30:30] checked. Vitamin D, your D hydroxy-25, it's called. It drives me crazy because here in Ontario, I don't know about the rest of Canada, I don't know about the rest of Canada, but in Ontario, they don't pay to get your vitamin D levels, you have to pay for it yourself, but here's what we know. 80% of the population, [00:31:00] 80% of the population have low levels of vitamin D and it's a biomarker. Vitamin D is a biomarker, vitamin D testing is a biomarker for chronic silent inflammation that leads to cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes and Alzheimer's [00:31:30] and autoimmune and premature aging of the body. These are beautiful, beautiful tests. Vitamin D, homocysteine, fibrogenagen, CRP, C-reactive protein, uric acid, six, those are all tests. If you even just get one, you can find out. I'll tell you, if you're tired, you [00:32:00] got problems with inflammation. It's silent, but it's damaging the cell wall.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Lastly, what do you do? Eating an anti-inflammatory diet. What is an anti-inflammatory diet? Cut back on the carbs, especially sugar. That's number one. You want to lower your chronic inflammation? Lower your carbohydrates, [00:32:30] crappy carbs, and guys, you're going to hit three birds with one stone. Now, I'm not supposed say that anymore. It's an expression. You can hit three birds with one stone. If you cut back on your crappy carbohydrates, you're going to lower your insulin for sure. High circulating insulin, we talked about that, one of the major causes of inflammation.

Dr. Martin Sr.: [00:33:00] Number two, you are going to lower your gluten. Yeah, if you cut out the carbs, you're going to lower gluten and I always say gluten schmuten because it's not gluten as much as it's insulin but anyways, doesn't matter. You're going to hit it. When you cut your crappy carbs down, you're going to lower your insulin, you're going to lower your [00:33:30] gluten and then thirdly, you're going to lower those dangerous vegetable oils that create a high amount of inflammation because what it does, the vegetable oils, crackers, cookies, pizza, blah, blah, blah. Anything that was made with vegetable oils, what it does is it creates an imbalance between omega-6 and omega-3. Omega-6 [00:34:00] is not bad for you, but it's in relation to omega-3 and what we are at now, some are saying it's 18 to one, 20 to one, 30 to one, because we're eating, and guess what that does? It creates so much inflammation. So when you live in the middle aisles of your grocery store, you're consuming omega-6 out the wazoo. It's coming out your ears, omega-6. That creates an inflammation because it's always [00:34:30] in relationship to your omega-3. Where do you get omega-3? Where do you get the good omega-3? Fish, steak, grass-fed steak and eggs. You get omega-3 but we don't get enough omega-3 compared to omega-6, that creates a lot of inflammation so a three-prong plug of changing your diet, a three-prong plug.

Dr. Martin Sr.: You're going to lower your insulin, [00:35:00] lower your carbs. Just cut your carbs down almost to nothing. What's going to happen? You're going to lower your insulin, you're going to lower your vegetable oils, omega-6 and you are going to lower gluten. What will I do? It will lower your inflammation. Now, I like some supplements. I like high DHA [00:35:30] oil. I like curcumin, very anti-inflammatory. I like Navitol, very anti-inflammatory. Pine bark extract. I take those things. You know what? Vitamin D. Vitamin D is anti-inflammatory. Vitamin D, get out in the sun. Well, you know what? We haven't seen the sun, now. We live in Sudbury. I haven't seen the sun. I mean it. We've had a cloud over Sudbury now, it seems like a week now, [00:36:00] so good luck. You have to take vitamin D, take it as a supplement.

Dr. Martin Sr.: Hey, I love you guys. Hope you appreciate the teaching. Share this with others. We love you guys.

Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast with your hosts, Dr. Martin Jr. and Sr. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening.

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