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 evening everyone. Unless you live on another planet, according to my wife at least, everybody has heard of Luke Perry. To be honest, I didn't know [00:00:30] who he was until he died of a stroke and I'm going to talk about how did Luke Perry get a stroke? Now listen, just so you don't come back at me, there's no guarantees in life. So you know what? I don't know exactly what happened, but I'm only going to tell you in general how people get a stroke, what makes them more susceptible to a stroke.
Dr.Martin: So let's talk about that [00:01:00] and hopefully you'll find it interesting. Now I'm just going to say this because I looked it up today. I didn't know anything about this guy except that he decided several years ago that he was no longer going to eat meat, especially red meat and apparently he was a guy in terrific shape from anything that I've ever heard. So I think you guys know me enough that I'm not big [00:01:30] on a plant and grain only diet. I'm not big on that. I believe that we have two kingdoms. You have the animal kingdom and you have the plant kingdom and you need both of them. You need the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom and I think that that's a contributing factor to stroke.
Dr.Martin: But let me explain that. So the number one thing that you need to watch for is [00:02:00] blood pressure. So blood pressure, you don't want to have high blood pressure. Now you can have low blood pressure and you don't feel necessarily feel good anyways but one thing I agree with in medicine is you don't want to have high blood pressure. So I'm always big on not the first number as much as the second number. Keep that second number [00:02:30] under 90. If it's 90 or above, you have hypertension and if you have high blood pressure, you have a problem with insulin. So if you have high blood pressure, you have a problem with insulin.
Dr.Martin: So it always comes back, doesn't it, to food. [00:03:00] It's amazing what happens to my patients when they lower their insulin. It's amazing how their blood pressure goes down. It's not salt, because I even heard it on the news today, "we got to keep our sodium down." Look folks, it ain't salt it's sugar. I think that'll be a chapter in my book. It ain't salt it's sugar. So sugar drives [00:03:30] insulin and insulin drives blood pressure and the number one factor in strokes is blood pressure. So you want to keep your blood pressure controlled.
Dr.Martin: Because I talked to a lady this morning on the phone, it was kind of an interesting conversation because the only thing that she wanted to talk about was her weight. She only wanted to talk about her weight. She had been doing everything right. She had been eating well, [00:04:00] very low carb and she's actually feeling much, much better. But the problem was she hasn't lost the weight that she wants to lose. I said, "Well, don't make weight your goal. Weight loss your goal, make your health your goal and when you're feeling better and your blood pressure goes down, and your triglycerides go down and all these things, that's what you should aim for." Look ladies, I [00:04:30] understand, "Hey, I want to lose weight," and you can get all uptight about that. But you've got different issues like hormones and all these things that can be a factor. So look, the biggest thing is when you eat low carb, especially low sugar, you will get your blood pressure down.
Dr.Martin: Second thing, it's not cholesterol, blaming cholesterol [00:05:00] is like blaming the police because they're at the crime scene. It's like blaming the fireman because they're out to put out a fire. Cholesterol is a delivery mechanism that you need within... It's FedEx trucks. It's Canada Post on the highways and byways of your blood vessels transporting your hormones, plus all of your cells, every cell in your body is made up of cholesterol. [00:05:30] 85% of your cholesterol comes out of your liver. You don't even get it from food. So cholesterol is not the cause of strokes. High cholesterol is not the cause of strokes. The cause of strokes is high blood pressure and high triglycerides.
Dr.Martin: Here's another factor, free radical damage. What is destructive to your [00:06:00] blood vessels? Free radicals, oxidative damage, when you don't have enough antioxidant protection. Listen, I don't know Luke Perry, was he ever a smoker? Had he been damaging his blood vessels with smoking? Because that can be a big factor and yeah, your body will regenerate. It's amazing you stop smoking and your blood vessels, but free radical damage and just all the chemicals, [00:06:30] and all the environmental factors, and all this, this is why I love our antioxidants. Especially the pine bark extract, Navitol. I just find it the best thing to prevent free radical damage within the blood vessels.
Dr.Martin: Here's another one, nitric oxide, low nitric oxide. So think of this. If you have angina, what do they give you? They give you nitrile, they give you nitroglycerin, they [00:07:00] give you an explosion. It opens up your blood vessels. So if you have angina, which is spastic, your heart muscle goes into a spasm and due to a lack of blood supply, well, what nitroglycerin does, it actually it's dynamite and your body has inside its blood vessels, a substance called nitric oxide. [00:07:30] If you don't have enough nitric oxide in your blood vessels, your blood vessels won't open up properly.
Dr.Martin: What is the number one factor in nitric oxide? What elevates your nitric oxide? B12. How do you get B12? Where do you get it? In red meat. So when you avoid red meat [00:08:00] like Luke Perry did, he didn't have enough B12. Now maybe he was supplementing. I don't know. I don't know that but don't fool yourself, if you are not eating red meat and chicken ain't red meat. You women that love chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken and salad. Chicken. "What do you like?" "I like chicken." Not me. I like red meat better. That's how you get B12. [00:08:30] Don't fool yourself and if you don't have enough B12, you don't have enough nitric oxide. If you don't have enough nitric oxide, your blood vessels will not open properly and that can be a contributing factor to a stroke.
Dr.Martin: Here's another one. Glycation end products, A-G-E's. What does that mean? [00:09:00] When you eat a lot of sugar and crappy carbohydrates, you literally coat your blood vessels with... It's like, how can I describe it? It's like caramel, it coats your blood vessels and makes you more susceptible to a stroke. So I talked about it earlier, hypertension, but even glycation end products come from having [00:09:30] high levels of sugars in your diet. Sugar, sugar, sugar, cut it down.
Dr.Martin: So another factor is big factor, especially guys and men, especially in men. Stress, cortisol. Now again, I don't know Luke Perry, I don't know what his life was like. Was he under a lot of stress? When women get [00:10:00] stress, generally it affects them differently than a man. If a woman gets stressed, she gets fatigued, she gets brain fog, she gets anxiety and other symptoms. Women will get belly fat from high levels of cortisol and they can't sleep. What a man, when he can't sleep, it creates an enormous amount of inflammation [00:10:30] in a man, even more than a woman. So high cortisol is a big factor in strokes and heart attacks in men especially. All other blood work was good. They had good blood pressure, everything was good.
Dr.Martin: You know how many hundreds of times over my 45 years of practice I've heard of men that just came out of their doctor's office less than a week and [00:11:00] had a complete physical and everything was good except they didn't measure stress and they had a massive stroke or heart attack. It can happen. Cortisol affects men and not that it doesn't affect you ladies, but usually you won't get a stroke from cortisol. Not that it's not possible, it's just it's unlikely, but in a man that's a different baby altogether.
Dr.Martin: [00:11:30] Now another factor is alcohol, so be careful. Alcohol damages those blood vessels and so don't overdo the alcohol when it comes and again, I don't know Luke Perry. I didn't know him and unfortunately a 52 year old man who went to the gym and had a personal trainer and all this and that had a massive stroke [00:12:00] and died. So I am just trying to give you some heads up, things that you can control.
Dr.Martin: You can't control everything in life. You really can't, but you can certainly control what you put in your mouth every day. Okay. So thanks for watching tonight and if you have any suggestions on these videos and what you want me to teach on, I'm happy to do it. So just send that along to our staff and I'll be happy to address [00:12:30] it. You guys have a great day.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In podcast with your hosts, Dr. Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening.