494. Cortisol And Brain Health

Transcript Of Today's Episode

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Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone. And once again, welcome to another program this morning. And I hope you're having a great day. We had such good feedback about those [00:00:30] M&M'S in one of our most popular shows. A lot of you people shared it with others yesterday. And I really appreciate that. People didn't realize how many M&M'S there were or the amount of sugar there is in food. Incredible. Isn't it? And this is why I've talked to you all these years about the new smoking is sugar. I talked to you a little [00:01:00] bit yesterday about the connection even with COVID and what sugar does. Sugar, first of all, does not allow you to absorb vitamin D properly. And secondly, it crystallizes a little area on your cells and allows COVID and other viruses to infect you. Okay. So isn't that incredible how your body works? It's incredible.

[00:01:30] This morning I want to talk to you a little bit. There was a study that came out. I have to comment on it. It's on cortisol, and here's the headline, okay? Cortisol gives your hippocampus a toxic bath, okay? Cortisol gives your hippocampus a toxic bath. And part of the article talked about [00:02:00] it can be so destructive that the brain may never fully recover. So guys, for all the intents and purposes of your brain, divide your brain into two, hypothalamus, hippocampus. Okay? All you have to do is remember those two, hypothalamus, hippocampus.

The hypothalamus controls [00:02:30] your endocrine system, so your hormones, your body temperature, your weight, your thirst, your emotions, your sleep cycles, your sex drive, your blood pressure. That all comes without you even thinking about it. It comes from the hypothalamus, and the hypothalamus [00:03:00] is connected to the pituitary. And the pituitary is connected to your thyroid. And remember that old song. This is connected to this, and it was more about bones, but this one is about how your brain operates.

And so this morning I want to talk to you about the two centers of brain, but I'm going to focus in more on the hypothalamus, even though this study talked about [00:03:30] cortisol that affects the memory center of your brain, the hippocampus. Now it should be easy for you to remember. Think of the word campus, and you think of school. You think of college, you think a university campus, right? So in your brain you have a hippocampus. That's where your memories are. They're stored in there. Your brain is unbelievable, but this [00:04:00] study is showing that cortisol has a major effect on. So what is cortisol? It's the fight or flight. It's the fight or flight long-term.

Adrenaline is you come up behind me and scare me. Adrenaline kicks in. You're going to punch me, or I'm going to punch you, or I'm going to run, right? The fight or flight. [00:04:30] A lot of people live within that, okay? Within that. And this morning I don't want to be preachy, but I'm going to just bring you a connection here, okay? I just want to give you a teaching, a connection. I was actually reading this morning in my Bible. I was reading the Epistle of John, so at the end of the Bible. And it's the third of Epistle of John. Okay. Anyway, John [00:05:00] is praying for a guy named Gaius, G-A-I-U-S. But he says this, "I pray that you will prosper in your health and your soul."

This morning I want to connect the two. There's a huge connection between your soul and your body, because your emotions, what you think has a major effect on hormones. [00:05:30] It's showing that even fear like cortisol over a long period of time. Well, we know what it does. It affects every area of your body. And I talked about this so many times. Look, I'm into repetition, okay? I'm going to repeat, repeat, repeat. I do it for myself even. That's how I learn. And I'm sorry, but I'm going to repeat this, [00:06:00] okay? Cortisol, the stress hormone.

So when you think of cortisol, just think of stress. Has a major impact on the body. We just talked about what it does to the memory center of the brain. As a matter of fact, if that stress is too chronic, this study is saying your brain may never recover, but this cortisol, the constant drip, drip, drip has a huge effect. [00:06:30] The emotion has a huge effect on the body. You see, I'm a history guy, meaning that I love history. No, I love world history. I do. I love history. I always loved history. It's the only thing in high school that I ... Everything else I didn't like except gym. I was bored in high school. Sorry. I majored [00:07:00] in recess, but I loved history. I always did. I love world history, but my dad taught me this. He said, "Listen, your patients have inside information. Get to the bottom of it. What caused it?"

And it's funny. Tony Jr And I talk about this all the time. We reverse engineer everything. So if someone has, for example, and I brought this out in October when I was talking [00:07:30] to you about breast cancer. Now, breast cancer, two hormones. It's the same in men for prostate cancer. Do you know that breast cancer and prostate cancer are identical cancers? They're brought to you by estrogen, even in men, and insulin, food. We talked about insulin yesterday. I hope you got the memo. You don't realize when you have those carbohydrates. Oh, Dr. [00:08:00] Martin, it's fruit. I know. And they're God's candies and don't have too many. That's all I'm saying. I'm not telling you never to have fruit. It's part of Dr. Martin's perfect smoothie except if you're on the reset. You can use berries. I got no problem with that. No bananas. No 39 M&M's. No bananas.

But you see, [00:08:30] the endocrine system, The hypothalamus is very, very sensitive to cortisol, the drip, drip, drip. And it's fascinating to me. It bugs me that medicine has really missed the boat on this area because they're not so much worried about the cause. They're looking more at the disorder itself. For example, [00:09:00] for someone that suffers from depression, they don't want to reverse engineer. Depression doesn't come out of nowhere. You're not just depressed for no reason or cancer. We talked about breast cancer. They don't look at that. Insulin or estrogen, they're growth hormones, but not only that. The Apostle John prayed for Gaius and said, " [00:09:30] I pray for the health of your body and your soul." He was speaking about the soul's so important because when you are uptight, and we showed this in October. We showed the connection between the constant drip, drip, drip of cortisol and breast cancer.

I'm telling you guys almost [00:10:00] without exception. With breast cancer, here's what I would find almost without exception. One, they had way too much estrogen. Two, they had way too much insulin. Three, they had too little vitamin D. And four, they had high levels of cortisol. And I would go into their history [00:10:30] and ask them, "Tell me about your past. Have you ever had a broken heart? Have you been under a lot of stress let's say a couple of years ago?" You know what I found? And this is years ago. I found that people who took care of their aging parents or one parent was dying and you happen to be ... It just affected you big time.

[00:11:00] I always tell people, "You only get two parents." Some people, "Oh, they were old." Well, jeepers, you only get two. My mom died. I'm actually older than my mother. I lived longer than she did. It was a very traumatic thing. I love my mom. Ask Rosie. I talk about her all the time. I adored my dad. I [00:11:30] mean that. I look like him. What you see. My wife says I married my father-in-law. I look like him. I'm a lot like him. I miss my dad. Now you guys get that. You understand that unless you don't have a heart, and maybe you had bad parents. I don't know. But everybody goes through things like that.

And when I used to reverse engineer the cancer, [00:12:00] there was almost no exception to the fact that they had high levels of cortisol. Of course, I used to measure it. When you have too much cortisol, we're finding out that it can be a big effect. And this is what this study was saying that the hippocampus might never recover. But it does more than that because what happens when you have that drip, drip, drip of cortisol, it can cause auto-immune. It can cause [00:12:30] auto-immune because when you're stressed over a period of time your adrenal glands are meant to have a part-time job. It's really up in the brain. These signals come from the brain, but don't matter.

When we talk about the adrenal glands, they're releasing cortisol, and they're two little Chestnut size organs on top of your kidneys. Adrenal. On [00:13:00] top of kidneys. They're so important, but it drives me mental. You can hardly get a physician to talk about it unless there's cancer of the adrenals, but they don't talk about cortisol and the importance of it and how destructive it is to your body over a period of time. We talked about what the hypothalamus does. That's all your [00:13:30] hormones, but the constant, constant drip of cortisol will affect that. And one of the primary things it does is it affects the brain we talked about, but it affects sleep. You're stressed. You're up in the middle of the night. You can't turn your brain off. Well, that has major impact on your body. You don't sleep. You don't get the glial cells, [00:14:00] the night shift.

I was talking to a group of registered nurses association. Was it last week or two weeks ago? And I was telling them they're nurses. They're usually under a lot of stress. We're thanking the first responders, aren't we? During this whole crisis we're thanking them. I don't [00:14:30] disagree with that. There's a lot of stress, but they can have a lot of stress at home too. And that's a double whammo. And then if they're working shift work, their circadian rhythm is all out of whack. And then they're under a lot of stress. And this has a lot of effect. This is what makes men and women so susceptible to cancer because what happens when your cortisol is like this, your T-cell ... [00:15:00] Do you know what your T-cells are? They're your Navy SEALs. They come out of your lymphatic system. They're looking for viruses. They're looking for bacteria. They're looking for cancer cells.

See, your body fights cancer every day, but if you don't sleep because you're stressed. Cortisol causes a lack of sleep in a lot of people, and then a lack of sleep causes your [00:15:30] cortisol to go up even more. Ooh, it's a double whammo. You see, that's why there's that connection between your body and what people call their soul, right? Your emotions. Your soul is the real you. It's your personality. It's how you think. And it has a big, big effect. The Bible says, "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses [00:16:00] his soul?" No, but seriously, guys, I want to put that connection together for you. You need to lower your cortisol. I'm going to show you what to do above that. But I just wanted to talk to you about that constant drip all the time.

And many of my listeners would put their hand up and say, "Yeah, that's me." And ladies, I just got to say it. You're worse. [00:16:30] When there's problems in the family or family dynamics are on a wack, who worries more about that? Men or women generally? I'm an old-fashioned guy, okay? I'm sorry. Today they want no more sexist, right? Like there's no more male. There's no more female. Yes, there is. Completely different. Women are complicated. [00:17:00] Men are not. Men are big babies. We got it easy compared to women. Men are not complicated. They're just not. Even hormonally they're not. Women are complicated. It's balance, balance, balance.

But you see, cortisol has a big effect. Cortisol when you're stressed, I've talked to you about this a thousand times. I'll repeat it again. When your cortisol is high, ladies, you [00:17:30] do not convert T4 to T3 properly. T3 is what makes your thyroid work. When your cortisol is high, it'll drive your insulin up because it fluctuates with your blood sugar. You see, cortisol is up, you're in the fight or flight. It wants to bring your sugars up, get your sugars up so you can have some energy to fight. The problem with that is [00:18:00] the more your insulin goes up, the more it's got to come down. What goes up must come down. You can't have high insulin all the time. So what happens you go up. Sugar's down. This was a condition that medicine denied for years. They did. I remember. I lived through it.

I remember doing a paper early 1970s on [00:18:30] a paper called hypoglycemia. And I remember it was like ... There was articles coming out saying, "That's not true. There's no such thing. There's hyperglycemia, which is high blood sugar." Of course, there was. There's been diabetes since the biblical times, but they never acknowledged until in the last 40 years. They've acknowledged a condition called [00:19:00] hypoglycemia. That's blood sugar becoming too low. How do you get that? Well, sometimes it's a precursor to diabetes. If you got hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia, it's a two-headed coin. You got to cut out your crappy carbs, but it's even more important when you're stressed. Because when you're stressed, your sugars go ... your sugars go down. Sugars go up, sugars go down. And again, [00:19:30] it's mostly in women, but not all. Men can get it too, but they don't get it near as much.

But hypoglycemia is, "I'm feeling faint. I better eat something." Or you crave sugars. Some of you were telling me yesterday just the fact that I showed those M&M's, you loved M&M's. Why do you think women love chocolate? I know women that'll do a swan dive [00:20:00] at Laura Secord. They want that chocolate. It's because their cortisol is too high. Generally, that's what it is. And so you see what it does. It fluctuates your blood sugar. It affects your immune system. It creates cortisol. It creates inflammation so does insulin. You see, that's why when I wrote that book, Serial Killers: Two Hormones That Want You [00:20:30] Dead, they want to kill you. Insulin wants you dead. If you use it too much, it will kill you. I've talked to you about that a million times.

The number one killer today is heart disease. Here's your killers today. Heart disease, cancer. Number two, but it's close. In some areas cancer's overtaken heart disease in terms of numbers. Number three on the hit [00:21:00] parade. Astounding. I still can't get over it. Every time I think about it, it shocks me. I shouldn't be shocked because it makes sense, but doesn't matter. The number three on the hit parade of all diseases that kill people is Alzheimer's. What is Alzheimer's? I got to write a book about that. Alzheimer's primarily ... [00:21:30] I mean, they named it type three diabetes. Alzheimer's, the hippocampus, the memory center of your brain is affected by your blood sugar. So there you go with insulin again. Too much insulin, high circulating insulin, whatever you want to call it.

I like insulin resistance or high circulating insulin. It's destructive to the memory center of the [00:22:00] brain. So number three on the hit parade. If you want to save your brain, you need to cut your stinking carbs out or down. That's why I want to reset the brain. People are like, "I didn't lose too much weight. I was on the reset and I didn't lose that much weight." It never happens to men, by the way. It's always women, but it was meant [00:22:30] to regenerate your everything. But your brain can be regenerated. But listen to this study, like I said this morning. It's not only insulin that affects that memory center of your brain. It's cortisol. So now the second death hormone, one is insulin.

And by the way, the fourth on the hit parade of death is diabetes, but really, [00:23:00] diabetes is number one because even though people don't know they're diabetic, the vast majority of people, 88%, are effectively. When you have metabolic syndrome, you have high circulating insulin. And if you have high circulating insulin, you really are a diabetic without being diagnosed. You see, because as I emphasize and emphasize and emphasize, [00:23:30] the last thing to happen is diabetes. It's not the first thing. It's the last thing. My pet peeves with medicine is that they wait until somebody is diabetic. They wait, "Oh, now you're a diabetic." And then they send you to a dietician. You go have a session with a dietician.

Now, I had some doctors when I was in [00:24:00] practice that would send them to me. They were smart because I knew how to fix it, not manage it. I knew how to put a diabetic into remission. When they understood that, they got the memo. So insulin's a death hormone. Got it? Insulin's a death hormone but so is cortisol. Left unchecked, the drip, [00:24:30] drip, drip, I call it, of cortisol secreting from the adrenal gland because you're stressed, you're worried, you have unresolved anger. See, I resolved my anger. I get it out with you guys. You know me, okay? My blood pressure goes up, but it's only temporary [00:25:00] because I get it off with you guys, okay? I get it off. I wear it on my sleeve, but it comes out, okay?

No, but seriously, this is what happens, unresolved issues and those things, that constant drip. Of course, what it does is it affects your blood pressure. Think of what it does. Cortisol is, "Ooh, you're uptight." Blood pressure goes up. Well, you know what? That's never good. It's good if [00:25:30] you're chasing me or I'm chasing you. You know about blood pressure. I don't have to tell you about that. I talk to you about what it does to your immune. It suppresses your T-cells cortisol. So we talked about cancer. We talked about your immune system. I've written many a book about chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia. One of the big effects on that was the effect on the immune system.

[00:26:00] Two ways. One, it decreased your T-cell activity. T-cells are Navy SEALs. They see a virus, they go get it. They see a bacteria, they go good. They see a cancer cell, they go and destroy unless they're not working properly. And then you get what they call your B cells. When cortisol is too high for a period of time, your B cells. Everything that comes into your body, we [00:26:30] call antigens, okay? It means they have their own license plate. When I coached hockey, I used to tell my players ... They get hit and they come on to the bench, and I said, "Did you get his license plate?" Meaning the number on the back of his shirt. You can take care of that later.

So every virus, every bacteria, even cancer cells, they have a little license plate on. And when [00:27:00] your immune system is working properly, your T cells do their job. And B cells, they say, "Oh, there's Joe Blow here. He's coming in here. And he's either a good guy or a bad guy. If he's a good guy, leave him alone." But if you've got high cortisol ... And there's other factors, but if you have high cortisol, a lot of times those antigens some of them are good, for example, grass, dairy, [00:27:30] for some people, perfume, scent. That never used to bother me before. Now it bothers me. What happened? A lot of times that has to do with ... I don't even want to go into leaky gut because that's a big factor. And the other one is that drip, drip, drip of cortisol. B cells, they don't recognize the antigen prop, "Hey, that's a good guy, grass. Grass shouldn't bother anybody or the environment, pollen [00:28:00] or whatever."

But you see what stress does. You know what? When I was reading that this morning, I said, "I just got to do that teaching again." Between your emotions and your immune system, your emotions and your brain and your hippocampus and your hypothalamus, I tell you, folks, that one of the biggest issues in health today is cortisol. And [00:28:30] just to tell you, and I think Tony Jr would confirm this. In our office at the clinic I don't know if cortisol formula is number one or number two on the hit parade in terms of what people ordered the most, Probiotics, cortisol. Novotel's up there too, but I think it's cortisol, or it's close. We live in a different world today. It's not that we never had [inaudible 00:28:59], [00:29:00] but today it seems worse, right?

I preached today, didn't I? Okay. I didn't even tell you what to do. We'll talk about that, okay? We'll tell you what to do, what you can do to help that in our next session. Okay. Hey, I don't know what's happening. I don't even know if I can see say this. So if you haven't got your book yet, it may be sold out. I haven't talked to Tony Jr. this morning yet, [00:29:30] okay? The tranche that they gave us may be sold out, but I can't say that for sure. Ask the girls, okay?

Secondly, remember Friday is question and answer Friday, so you're more than welcome to send in your questions. I'll be happy to go over them with you and answer them. And thirdly, get your friends. A lot of people signed up yesterday into our private Facebook group. I was [00:30:00] telling a lady the other day, "You got to join our private Facebook group." She says, "How do I do that?" I said, "I have no idea. Don't ask me. I'm not the brains of the operation here. I'm a dinosaur." You guys know that even if this works in the morning, that's a miracle, okay? I love you guys. I mean that. I love this audience. You guys are tremendous. Thank you for all the support and God bless you. Talk [00:30:30] 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.

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