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 doctor shares 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: Three hormones I'll talk about, glucagon and leptin and of course, insulin. We at the Martin Clinic are always, always, [00:00:30] always talking about insulin. Insulin is a food hormone and you only secrete insulin when you eat. But you have a couple of other hormones that go along with that. And I want to just sort of emphasize that this morning, so you just understand a little bit of ... what I call physiology of eating, meaning that what happens when you eat.
Dr. Martin: Now, a lot of it depends on what you eat. That's very important. What are you eating? So you [00:01:00] guys know that, but I'm going to emphasize it even a little bit more. So let's talk about two hormones that you don't hear a lot of. One of them is glucagon. What is glucagon? Well, glucagon is a hormone that gets rid of fat.
Dr. Martin: Ladies, this hormone's on your side, because everybody that comes into the office, I kind of laugh a little bit by what's your goal? Weight loss. If you're a woman, that's my goal. Weight loss. [00:01:30] Some women, they're this big around and they still want weight loss. I get it. I understand that. So weight loss, you can't lose weight unless you have glucagon working on your side. So glucagon is a weight loss hormone.
Dr. Martin: What is a fat-storing hormone? What's it called? Insulin. Insulin is a [00:02:00] fat-storing hormone, and you only secrete insulin when you eat. Got it? Now, I'll break this down. I'm going to make it a lot more simple. And the third one is leptin, L-E-P-T-I-N. Leptin. What is leptin? Leptin is a hormone that your cells secrete to tell you [00:02:30] that you are full, stop eating.
Dr. Martin: You don't need to eat anymore because your cells actually secrete a hormone called leptin. So three hormones. One is insulin. Insulin's job is to take sugar out of ... Primary. Take sugar out of the bloodstream. So when you eat, especially when you're eating crappy carbs and bread, pasta, rice, cereal, [00:03:00] sugars, sweets, pastries, even potatoes, you are secreting insulin, because insulin ... All those foods are going to be sugar in five seconds.
Dr. Martin: Nevermind the added sugar that goes into them. That's a big problem in our society today, and you guys know this, that we talk about this all the time. Your four things that you will or can die from cancer, [00:03:30] cardiovascular, Alzheimer's and dementia have everything to do with insulin. It's a food hormone. It's worse than smoking. Worse than smoking is insulin, high circulating insulin. So when you eat, you need insulin and if you are insulin sensitive ... There's two types of body types. Two types.
Dr. Martin: [00:04:00] One, you're either insulin sensitive or you're insulin resistance. Let me just break that down for you. If your body is insulin sensitive, you don't need a lot of insulin to take the sugar out of the bloodstream and store it, because you don't eat a lot of sugar. You never have. And you're not a big carb eater. You eat some carbs, but not a lot. Your carbs are mostly [00:04:30] made up of complex carbs like fruits and vegetables and maybe some legumes, but you're not a big junk eater.
Dr. Martin: So perhaps you're insulin sensitive. That means you don't need a lot of insulin. You don't need a lot of insulin. Let me use an illustration here. Your pancreas, it looks like a pen. It's actually about the same size. Located right near your, underneath [00:05:00] your stomach and you see it? Now what's inside this pen? Ink.
Dr. Martin: The more you write, the less ink you're going to have in this pen. You're going to have to replace it. I'm very fussy about pens, by the way. I like my pen. My staff knows at the office, don't give me some stinking pen for nothing. I want my pens. I'm a big baby when it comes to pens. But your pancreas looks like a pen [00:05:30] and it acts like a pen. Why is that?
Dr. Martin: The more crappy carbohydrates you eat, the more foods that are going to be sugar and ... "Oh, Dr. Martin, I eat whole wheat bread." Well, that's stupid because it's going to be sugar in five seconds. I don't care if it's whole wheat, 12 wheat, 17 grains and 99 grains. It's still going to be sugar and you need a lot of insulin. You got that? [00:06:00] So just like a pen, the more you use it, the more yourselves become resistant to it.
Dr. Martin: You're using it too much. So people that are insulin sensitive ... You need insulin every time you eat, you're going to have some insulin. But if you're insulin sensitive, you only need a little bit of insulin. If you're insulin resistant, which by the way, 88% [00:06:30] of the population. 88%. Let's say 90, round it up, only 10% of today's population is sensitive to insulin. 90%, just about. Latest statistics, 88% are challenged metabolically because they secrete [00:07:00] too much insulin and their cells go, "Hey, get out of here. I don't like you."
Dr. Martin: But insulin cannot stop working. It has to work because sugar, you guys know this, sugar is highly, highly, highly toxic. You can't leave sugar in your bloodstream for any amount of time. Your body will do everything it can to get rid of sugar in your bloodstream. "Oh, [00:07:30] Dr. Martin. Sugar is good for me."
Dr. Martin: No, it isn't. Think about that. Your body will do everything it can to get rid of it, get it out. It can't stay in the bloodstream. That is insulin's primary job and what insulin does, it takes sugar and it stores it as glycogen. Big words, but all they mean is stored [00:08:00] sugar. By the way, what is sugar mostly stored as? Fat. Fat don't make you fat, sugar makes you fat. And high levels of insulin make you fat.
Dr. Martin: You know what insulin's like, it's just like a pen and ink in the pen. Your pancreas, you think that's important? Very, very, very important. So insulin [00:08:30] is a storing hormone. As long as insulin is present, you cannot lose fat. Why is that? Tell me why you guys. I just gave you the word, because if insulin is present, glucagon ... Think of the word gone.
Dr. Martin: Glucagon. Glucagon. It's probably called glucagen, but glucagon, spelled O-N, glucagon, [00:09:00] glucagen. It can't be secreted unless insulin is not present. So your body will get rid of fat that's stored only when insulin's not present. So keep that in mind. I will break it down even a little farther.
Dr. Martin: One, what does insulin do? It take sugar primarily out of your bloodstream when you eat. [00:09:30] It is a storing hormone, so it stores it in your liver. Remember your liver is a suitcase. It'll store it in muscles. So the more you got muscles, the more muscles, the more you got storage room for sugar stored as fat. You put glycogen in muscles. And what's the third one? Fat cells. So that's why we see so [00:10:00] much fatty liver, because when the liver is full, your body will make fat cells.
Dr. Martin: And I'm going to talk about that in a minute too, because it's important ... There's a little differentiation for some people. And I want to explain that to you and I make it simple. That's why people that, "Oh doc, I got to eat all the time." Well, there's two things happening when you have to eat all the time. One, [00:10:30] you're not secreting glucagon. You're not secreting ... You're not. Why? Because you're eating all the time, insulin's always present, so you can't secrete glucagon. Therefore, you're not going to be able to lose weight. Because glucagon is the fat burning hormone.
Dr. Martin: It burns fat, it burns it off. But when it's not present, you can't do it. And it's never present [00:11:00] in the presence of insulin. So frequent eating, not a good thing. "Oh doc, it'll keep my metabolism going."
Dr. Martin: No it doesn't work that way. If you lived in the 1960s and the 1970s, the world was different. We eat 200 pounds of sugar a year, never. All the crappy carbohydrates. Anytime you have a slice of bread, I don't [00:11:30] care. It's bread. It's going to be sugar in an instant. You know when you see instant oatmeal, think of instant sugar when you eat bread, and when you eat oatmeal too. People that start their day with oatmeal, oh, don't do that. It's 40 grams of carbs.
Dr. Martin: "What's that mean, doc?" What's that mean on the box that it's 40 grams of ... "But there's no added sugars Dr. Martin." I don't [00:12:00] care. The 40 grams of carbs are going to be sugar in five seconds. Your pancreas is going to have to release a lot of insulin. It can't leave that carbohydrate, which is going to be sugar, it can't leave it in your bloodstream.
Dr. Martin: So you're going to use your pancreas, you're going to squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt of insulin. And insulin will not allow glucagon [00:12:30] to be secreted so you can't burn fat.
Dr. Martin: So insulin sensitive is when your body metabolically is doing real well, and because of that you don't need a lot of insulin. But if you're a part of the 90% that has high circulating insulin, whether you eat too frequently or it's what you eat [00:13:00] and it has nothing, by the way, to do with genetics.
Dr. Martin: They go, diabetes is a genetic ... It has nothing to do. Your dad was a diabetic. My dad was a diabetic. That doesn't make me a diabetic. Diabetes is food, it's food. So change your food and you're not diabetic anymore. It's just simple as that.
Dr. Martin: Even Type 1. I know it's autoimmune, but you better eat good, because diabetes [00:13:30] is a disease of food. It's insulin. It's a lack of glucagon. It is a lack of usually leptin. Let me explain leptin now. So leptin is a hormone that is secreted to tell you, "Hey, you're full. Stop eating." That's leptin.
Dr. Martin: So it's a voice calling in the wilderness. [00:14:00] "Stop eating. You don't need to eat, you're full." The problem with leptin is when your insulin is high, the food hormone, when you have high circulating insulin, you have high circulating leptin. And the problem, just like insulin, your cells eventually say, "I'm sick and tired of seeing you all the time." So you get insulin resistance. [00:14:30] Doesn't matter. Your body has to secrete insulin, but it doesn't have to secrete leptin. So what happens?
Dr. Martin: Insulin is high, leptin is high, and your cells stop responding. They don't even listen. "You're full, you're full, you're full." "Hey, I'm not listening." Your wife ever do that to you? I'm not listening. Well, they stopped responding to the feeling full hormone [00:15:00] so you're always hungry. Why? Because you have leptin resistance too. It goes along with insulin resistance.
Dr. Martin: Do you understand why I talk about that all the time? Why I talk about the food hormone all the time. Now, let me just share something else. What are the signs that you're insulin resistant? Well, we have a lot of them. Look at our videos. Listen to our podcast. [00:15:30] Look at all the information we have on the website. You know that we talk about insulin a lot of time. There's a lot of things that happen. But when you have insulin resistance, you will have leptin resistance too, and you're not secreting glucagon to get rid of fat.
Dr. Martin: You are going to have trouble losing weight. You're going to be tired all the time. Usually your body is constantly in a storage mode. It's storing, storing, storing, storing. [00:16:00] And you're always hungry. Even though you might have just eaten an hour ago, you're hungry again. It plays with your leptin.
Dr. Martin: So you've got that. So what is leptin? Leptin tells your cells, tells you, "Stop eating. You don't need it. I'm full." If you become leptin resistance, how does that happen? When you become insulin resistant or you have what we call high circulating insulin. "I drink Pepsi." [00:16:30] You're going to have high circulating insulin.
Dr. Martin: What else gives you high circulating insulin? We talked about carbs. We talked about especially crappy carbs. We talk about sugar. Read your labels, look at the sugar that's added. And another way you get them as vegetable oils.
Dr. Martin: Because when you look at crackers and you look at a lot of brands, when you look at noodles and you look at [00:17:00] chips and when you look at things like bagels and muffins, all those things have a lot of vegetable oils in them. Well, crappy vegetable oils, and most of it is canola oil and other seed oils, they sound healthy, but they're the last thing from healthy. Because one of the things they do, they cause leaky gut. But the other thing it does, it causes your insulin [00:17:30] to go way up.
Dr. Martin: And then thirdly, what if you have an allergy to gluten or you've heard of another hormone, and I've done a little bit of teaching on this, leptin. Leptin is what you get out of certain vegetables. And again, I don't want to go into too much detail with that.
Dr. Martin: So now, for some people, for some people, when your insulin is high, [00:18:00] fat cells respond and open up for sugar. For some people. Other people don't have the ability to store. If you look at somebody that's big, that's obese, they're storing glycogen, they are over storing it because the liver's full, they don't have enough muscle, and the body has to store that energy somewhere.
Dr. Martin: So what does [00:18:30] it do? It makes fat cells. And for some people, they have an enormous ability to make fat. Not everybody, but most people today. Come with me today. Come with me. I always use this in my office as an expression, but I think you'll understand what I say. Come to the mall with me and watch people today. People are big today. Go back into the 1950s and watch the old movies.
Dr. Martin: Everybody was tiny. They were all smoking, [00:19:00] that's why they died. But their diets were different, because they didn't realize in the 1950s that sugar ... Not that we didn't have ice cream in the 1950s, but today it's 200 pounds. Yes, the average Canadian, American is consuming 200 pounds of sugar a year or more. 60, 70, 80 teaspoons of sugar a day. They don't even count it up because they're [00:19:30] not thinking.
Dr. Martin: So come to the mall with me. What will you see? Lots of people, they're big and they got big bellies and those are not beer bellies. We used to call them beer bellies in the 70s because the odd man would have a beer belly, because he drank too much beer. By the way, it's sugar. What is beer? Sugar. Goes directly to your liver without passing go.
Dr. Martin: [00:20:00] Some people, they're skinny but they're not healthy. They're tiny, but they're not healthy. They can have insulin resistance too. Because what happens with them in high circulating insulin, it affects their triglycerides. They don't realize it, but their liver is full of fat. Yeah, they have the ability to store it, but what happens when the liver gets full? They send in their fat into the bloodstream [00:20:30] as what? Triglycerides. TG's.
Dr. Martin: So they're not healthy. They can have a heart attack or whatever too, and they can get cancer and all that. And they're not any healthier than the big people necessarily. So you can't look at size of people necessarily, because some people, they store fat and they get big. And that's never good because it can give you a lot of other things. But a lot of people are skinny and they got high [00:21:00] triglycerides or they've got high blood pressure. They're skinny, but they've got high blood pressure.
Dr. Martin: High blood pressure is food and it ain't salt. It's sugar. Don't blame salt for your blood pressure. Salt doesn't cause blood pressure. Sugar does. And so those people, maybe, they're skinny as a rake, but they got trouble with blood pressure. They're not [00:21:30] any healthier. Or they have trouble with their kidneys. You know the kidneys, there's two things that cause kidney disease primarily. Two things.
Dr. Martin: One, water. You're dehydrated. Your kidneys are Niagara Falls. And the vast majority of people don't drink enough water. "Oh, Dr. Martin. I drink coffee." Well, so do I, but that ain't water. "Oh, well I make it with water." I know. Doesn't matter. Doesn't [00:22:00] get filtered out the same way. Only water flushes your kidneys. That's one of the causes of kidney disease. But the second cause is sugar. Why do diabetics have so much trouble with their kidneys?
Dr. Martin: Circulation. The blood vessels to the kidneys. Yes. That's why when you go on a low carb diet, your kidneys [00:22:30] get better. Your kidneys get better. So this is why we talk about this all the time. We talk about it all the time. So if you want your glycogen to work better, if you want your leptin to work better, you have to, one, lower your carbohydrates.
Dr. Martin: As a matter of fact, I recommend [00:23:00] you do a reset. If you're out of whack, do a reset. Take the course with me in the new year. Coming to a theater near you in January. I am going to teach the reset. It's not complicated at all, but the benefits are legion. Unbelievable. What's happening to my patients in the clinic when I do it. So listen, cut the carbs [00:23:30] down.
Dr. Martin: If you do nothing else, cut the carbs. Don't cut your sugar. You want to see your body respond to something? Cut the sugars out. No more sugar. Do it for a month. Unbelievable. And don't cheat. Don't say, "Well, you know what?" No. No sugar. Nada. You know what nada means? It means none. Nada. I think it's Russian. None. Don't have any. Read your labels. Nothing.
Dr. Martin: It's amazing [00:24:00] what'll happen. Your body will love you, will love you. Your body will go hip-hip-hooray. Now at first it might be tough because you're a carbaholic, but your hand up and say, "My name is Tony and I'm a carbaholic." You got to admit who you are. I talk to people, "Oh, doc. Dr. Martin, I don't have any sugar in a day." "Oh, yeah? How many sugars do you put in your coffee?"
Dr. Martin: "Oh, but that's just my coffee. I only have four of them." [00:24:30] Four sugars or three or two. Well, I said, "That adds up." "And I only have the one Pepsi a day. And I drank milk." Well that's white Pepsi. How's that? Too much sugar. You've got to add all that up and you go, "Yeah, I guess I do eat a lot of sugar."
Dr. Martin: Usually when I get to people in the office, I tell them, "You're a carbaholic, put your hand up. Join the cast of millions." So what do you got to do? You've got to change your diet.
Dr. Martin: Now let's talk about [00:25:00] eating windows. This is where intermittent fasting comes in. Just understand. I want you to understand something, basic physiology when you eat. At eight o'clock this morning, did you eat before that? Did you have something to eat? Okay, well, you secreted insulin, you used your pancreas. You had to. Why?
Dr. Martin: Because you ate. You used insulin. Now, if you eat the right things, you didn't [00:25:30] use a lot of insulin, but you still need insulin because insulin is a food hormone. It's a food storing hormone. And it'll get that sugar out of your bloodstream no matter what. So if you eat at eight o'clock and let's say you had a ... Let's follow a bagel, because a lot of people eat bagels in the morning. Or you had bacon and eggs like I wanted you to, but with toast. What happens [00:26:00] to the toast? It's going to be sugar immediately.
Dr. Martin: You might as well of eaten sugar. It's the same thing. Don't fool yourself. I had two sugars with my bacon and eggs this morning. I didn't, but maybe you did because you said, "Oh, but doctor, I had rye toast. Isn't that good?" No, it's sugar.
Dr. Martin: It's sugar. And maybe you put a little [00:26:30] jam on it. Well, that sugar too. Then you secrete insulin. So at eight o'clock, let's say you ate at eight o'clock, at nine o'clock your insulin's still working. And what's happening? What's happening at nine o'clock? Insulin's taking sugar out of your bloodstream that you ate at eight o'clock and it's storing it in your liver, in your muscles, or it's actually making fat cells.
Dr. Martin: And [00:27:00] you're not secreting glucagon. You can't. Why? Well, you ate at eight o'clock, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, probably 11 o'clock if you ... I get a lot of people, "Well, I had breakfast and then ... We have a break at work, so I always have a snack." That's not good. "I have a coffee and a snack at my coffee break." Well now, you never stopped secreting insulin.
Dr. Martin: [00:27:30] You ate again at 10, you're never going to stop secreting insulin and then you're going to eat again at noon. Not a good thing. And then maybe for your coffee break in the afternoon, you're eating, you snack again. Well, you never let insulin stop all day long. That's what we call eating windows. So if you ate at eight o'clock at night, in the morning, and then go to, let's say, eight o'clock at night, now you [00:28:00] weren't eating every second of that time, but you were secreting insulin all that time.
Dr. Martin: You got it? You understand what I'm saying? Because insulin, after you finished eating, insulin is just starting to do its work. It's the mop up crew. You ate, you made a mess inside your body and it comes in and mops that up. It has to, has to store, has to get sugar out of the bloodstream.
Dr. Martin: So all day long, you haven't allowed [00:28:30] that glucagon to burn fat. It just didn't happen. It couldn't happen. It's impossible. Why? Because insulin was in your bloodstream for 12 hours. And plus, because maybe you stopped, you had a little snack before you went to bed at eight o'clock. Let's say you had a little bowl of chips or something. Well, you know what? Glucagon can't do its job. You got it? It can't.
Dr. Martin: [00:29:00] It'll eventually come out at night, maybe around two o'clock in the morning it comes out to burn some fat. But you eat again at eight o'clock. This is why. So eating windows shrink it, and you can shrink it by doing intermittent fasting. So a lot of people, they stop eating, let's say at six o'clock at night, they go past six in the morning.
Dr. Martin: Now, that's 12 hours and now you're secreting. No more insulin, [00:29:30] the fat storing hormone, and you're secreting a lot of glucagon. The fat getting rid of hormone. It's burning the fat. And if you can go past eight o'clock and 10 o'clock in the morning and not eat til noon, now you've gone 18 hours, probably about 16 hours of no insulin. No insulin, lots of glucagon.
Dr. Martin: What is glucagon? It is the hormone that burns [00:30:00] fat. And the third thing that happens when you do intermittent fasting and you cut your carbs and you cut your sugars down big time, is you reset the hormone called leptin. Here's what people tell me. "You know what doc? I changed my diet and I'm not even hungry anymore." See, Don Cherry's thumbs up. I'm giving you the thumbs up. That's what [00:30:30] happens. Now your body metabolically, now your body physiology-wise is working properly.
Dr. Martin: Do you understand what I'm saying? So I think you get the lesson. I think you understand why we talk about insulin so much. And remember, you only use insulin when you eat. And if you're eating steak [00:31:00] and you're eating bacon and you're eating eggs and you're eating cheese, you know how much insulin you need? An itsy bitsy, teeny weeny. Isn't that polka dot bikini? I remember that song.
Dr. Martin: Well, you're only using a little bit. You're only using a little bit of insulin because you're eating the right foods. So it's not just a matter of you not eating [00:31:30] in intermittent fasting. But it's the idea, if you eat the right things, your body will reset. It will load up your pancreas again with insulin. You won't be depleting it all the time and having to use a lot of it.
Dr. Martin: And this is what I show my patients. You come in with insulin resistance. Almost everybody does, by the way. Almost everybody. They don't come to see me because they're feeling good. [00:32:00] What does the Bible say? It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Jesus said that. Did you know that? That's in the Bible.
Dr. Martin: It's not the healthy that go to a doctor, but the sick. When they come and see me, usually they're not well. They're exhausted, they don't feel good and they've got all sorts of ... And I say, "Well, your insulin is high." I'm primarily a food guy. I know how to fix food.
Dr. Martin: There's wide talk about it all the time. My foundation in the clinic is hormones [00:32:30] and insulin's a hormone, and glucagon is a hormone and leptin is a hormone and estrogen is a hormone, and progesterone is a hormone. They're all hormones, guys. I'm a hormone doctor. People ask me what do I do? I fix hormones. And the primarily hormone that I want to fix is your insulin. You got it? Food. Yes. Guys, love you guys. Share this with your friends. Give [00:33:00] them that teaching, and we'll talk to you soon.
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.