500. All About Stress And Anxiety

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 afternoon, everyone, and once again, welcome to another live, and this is an afternoon session, always a little bit different. [00:00:30] So you know what I'm doing right now? I'm writing another book. We just got the other one out, and I'm writing another one. Okay. I'm just telling you that. I'm working on it right now. And I get these ideas I kind of like to write. That's how I studied, by the way, I write. I learned to study by writing everything out, and then [00:01:00] I would trim it down and then trim it down and trim it down, and that's how I study and get bullet points and this kind of thing, and I sort of like writing. Well, I'm writing another book, and in my mind, anyways, I might change my mind, but I think I'm going to call it Coffee Time with Dr. Martin.

So a little bit of giving tips and some of the things that I always talk about [00:01:30] in terms of health, but also talking about your soul and blending them together in sort of a devotional. My goal is to write 365 of them, so for every day of the year. That's my goal. Will it change? It's possible. I could change my mind, but right now I'm writing and I wrote one this morning that I want to just share with you and it's on anxiety. [00:02:00] So let me just read to you. I didn't completely finish it, but here's where I was coming from. It says, "A peaceful heart. A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body. A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body." That's actually in the Bible in Proverbs 14 in verse 30. "A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body."

Now, you [00:02:30] and I know that there's a huge connection, huge connection between being anxious, worrying, upset, and what that does to a person physically. I remember back in the seventies in school, and even in the eighties they'd sort of mock [00:03:00] stress. We didn't talk about it too much, and it certainly wasn't a huge part of medicine. Psychiatry was already well-established, but it was sort of out there. And then all other medical conditions were separate from that, but now they know there's a psychosomatic... Actually, that was the term, I think, back in the 1980s. [00:03:30] The psychosomatic involvement, your thinking affecting your organs. Your worrying affecting the organs.

I said it probably earlier this week, as we look at the hypothalamus, we talked about that area in the brain that controls all of your hormones. So what we know today about that [00:04:00] hypothalamus and what gets out of it, and we've talked this week about seed oils and vegetable oils and bad oils, have really changed our chemistry in our brain. Now, who would have thought that cotton seed oil, that's where it started, cotton seed oil, hydrogenated oil would have such a profound impact on the body, and the biggest thing that it does, [00:04:30] it creates inflammation because of its high levels of Omega six. It changes the chemistry in the brain.

We talked about that, how even your feel-good hormone, oxytocin, you don't secrete much of it. And then we talked about what it does in the gut. And then we talked about insulin, food, food, food, insulin, crappy carbs, and what it does to you. But today [00:05:00] I wanted to talk to you a little bit about another aspect, and again, my practice, Tony Jr. and I used to talk about this quite a bit. It was unbelievable, and I don't know if it was mainly because I was testing it, but the fact that we could look at cortisol, the stress hormone, and actually look at, and how it affected everything from the conversion of your T4 to T3 for your thyroid, how it [00:05:30] created inflammation, how it changed the microbiome in the gut, and then you would get all these diverse symptoms.

But I was sort of doing just some thinking, and when I was writing this little devotional/health tip this morning, I was thinking "Well, in my experience, what I see in someone that had what we call true anxiety [00:06:00] where the cortisol was through the roof, and they had symptoms of nausea and fatigue and brain fog and cravings for sugar or salt, hypoglycemia, all these symptoms, very unwell, insomnia." And it's not a matter of just, "Oh, yeah. Let me change my mind here." No, because it actually becomes the condition. [00:06:30] Anxiety is it condition.

I've given to a thousands of times, if you'd come up behind me and scare me, okay. And once I realized that you're not really a threat, I don't have to run or punch you, well then I'll get over it, but I was doing a little bit of a deeper dive and just to my own experience, this is my experience. Okay? So I want to tell [00:07:00] you what I've seen in my practice. I was talking to somebody the other day and just generally what I do, he was very unfamiliar with me, and I said, "Well, my expertise is clinical nutrition," but I was trying to explain to this person that clinical nutrition is very holistic because nutrition affects everything.

And I [00:07:30] was trying to tell him I was more of a woman's doctor because it was probably 80 to 20, or I don't know, 70 to 30. I think it was around 80 to 20. I always laugh at the guys that come into our office. I heard this every day. "Why are you here?" "My wife." "What's wrong?" "Nothing." That's a man! Women are so much more honest. Women are so much more concerned, generally. [00:08:00] I'm a man. I can talk about it. I don't think I'm offending anyone, but it's true. I used to hear this all the time.

And so even anxiety, and men, believe me, when men suffer from true anxiety where their cortisol is through the roof, the problem with men is it usually attacks their heart. Case history [00:08:30] after case history after case history that I have read of men having a heart attack and their lipid profile is 100% normal, I mean, low triglycerides, good HDL, nothing. Even their blood pressure was good, and then they have a heart attack.

Well, you see, stress, anxiety can affect every organ in your body. Women, [00:09:00] where you get affected more is in what I was mentioning in the last few days, and that is the hypothalamus. It's your horror moments, ladies. Men, eh, we don't get so much of the horror moments. I laughed with a patient a long time ago, but they weren't telling me about men get andro-pause. I said, "No, we don't." If a man never got andro-pause, he'd [00:09:30] go out and shoot himself. We're big babies. If we ever had a hot flash in the middle of the night, a man wouldn't know what to do with them. And this is where just going to bring it a little bit of stuff. Like I said, let me read the verse to you again. "A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body."

Whenever a patient would come into the office, I was very, very big on questionnaire. The first time [00:10:00] you ever saw me, you spent a lot of time filling out a questionnaire. I didn't allow people to come in without filling that out. I wanted history and the questionnaire was really, really focused on going back even to how you were born, C-section or not. I talked about that because I was very much interested in the microbiome. I was very much [00:10:30] interested in the symptoms that a person had and very much interested in their history, and here's what I've observed over the years, just for me.

It's sort of a triad. In the background of anxiety, with few exceptions, let me just put it that way, because there's a connection. There's a connection, and maybe this'll be helpful to you. Maybe you know this already, but there's [00:11:00] a connection. And by the way, anxiety usually is the first step towards depression, clinical depression. Anxiety is the first step towards clinical depression, and a lot of people say anxiety and depression are just a coin, both sides. One is depression, the other's anxiety. They both have the same origins.

[00:11:30] So I'm aiming, ladies, more at you today. But I mean, there are obviously some exceptions, and men can go through this, too, but their anxiety, usually when they have anxiety, they won't necessarily get panic attacks. They can, but they don't always get them. It's more women affecting hormones. And then we talked about all those symptoms, possible symptoms. And then we looked at all the deficiencies. [00:12:00] Yesterday, we looked at deficiencies, things that generally I saw they were deficient in, and maybe I'll review that a little wee bit just for a second, but I just wrote down three things, and I just did a little devotional on it, just to get people thinking more than anything else, but generally there's three things that I found in the background before anxiety is full-blown. [00:12:30] Okay?

See if you can identify with these things because like I said, it was like aN epidemic. I hate to use the word epidemic, but it really was, and Junior and I were discussing the other day, what is it that in terms of products and what was prescribed, probiotics maybe number one, but cortisol, the cortisol formula, hello? Unbelievable [00:13:00] how it impacts our society today. Our society just generally, we've never had so much communication, and yet I've never seen so many people anxious or depressed. We've never had so much in terms of monetary and all that, but doesn't make us any happier. Does it?

"A peaceful heart leads to a healthy [00:13:30] body." I think that's what I'm going to call the book. I get to name it. Coffee time with Dr. Martin in the morning, come and join me, and a peaceful heart leads to a healthy body. How do you like that for a title? Okay, let's talk about three things. One is fear. Fear! Fear of the future. I'll tell ya, and I've been saying it and saying it so many times. [00:14:00] This whole thing, this whole virus thing has shown us that there's nothing that we can say for sure. Right?

It just turned the world upside down. How would you like to be, I don't know, in the restaurant business today? How would you like to own retail buildings? Part of what my father invested in, [00:14:30] we built a lot of homes. Now, we didn't build them. Don't put a hammer in my hand. You don't want that, but we built a lot of homes and we built malls and a company that my dad and I, we're involved in, and I wouldn't want to be in the retail business. I wouldn't want to be in the restaurant business. I used to be in the restaurant business. I owned two restaurants in my lifetime. I kind of laugh and tell people, [00:15:00] did you ever read my book, Why Not to Get Into the Restaurant Business? I never really published it, but my brother-in-law and I, we laugh about that. We tell people, "Why do you want to get into the restaurant business?"

But fear, guys, fear. Number one, fear. Fear of the future, the unknown, finances, family, worry. You're looking forward, and you worry. You're fearful. [00:15:30] not easy. I've seen it happen thousands of times. You'd ask, "Yeah, I fell asleep, Doc, but I couldn't stay asleep. All of a sudden my brain's working." A lot of times in there, it's the fear factor. Wasn't that a TV show at one time, the Fear Factor? So one at the top of the pyramid is fear.

The other one, going backwards. See? Fear is looking forward, scared of what's going to happen tomorrow. [00:16:00] What's going to happen tomorrow? What's going to happen down the road? do I have enough money? Where am I going to live? I was kind of chuckling with my daughter yesterday, and I said, "Look, if I ever get like that, you have permission to put me away, okay?" And we were just joking, and a lot of people, they're worried. If you're older and where am I going to go? What if I lose my memory? Those are a lot of things, fearful.

[00:16:30] Secondly, the past. See, a lot of people, they have trouble going this way. They're looking forward and it's fearful, but a lot of people live their lives, and I've seen it happen, in the rear view mirror. They're going backwards. They're looking at their past, and it could be unresolved conflicts, family dynamics, [00:17:00] unforgiveness. You don't really think about it. Metabolically, that plays. You see, because cortisol, that hormone, it's a fear hormone, for sure, but it's a stress hormone, and sometimes you're stressed. A lot of people are stressed because they're going backwards in their life. They're looking in the rear view mirror. What do they see?

"You know what? My dad was a jerk. [00:17:30] My ex was a jerk." Look, all of it is real, and nobody for one second wants to minimize any of that, but I'm just telling you, it does to your health people don't realize that a lot of times, unresolved issues [00:18:00] will really lead to a broken body. Again, like I said, I'm a survey guy, and when I did my thesis on chronic fatigue syndrome, [inaudible 00:18:14] a long time ago. One of the things in the history was 90 something percent had a long history of antibiotics.

So, that was one thing, and we understood that, what that does, and it destroys the microbiome, and they get leaky gut. [00:18:30] And it's almost like an autoimmune disease developing, but you know what? Even autoimmune diseases like MS, like ulcerative colitis and like a lot of that is unresolved. Unresolved, unforgiveness. Not easy. I'm not telling you it's easy. I'm just telling you what it does. You might even sense it, but I'll tell you, here's something that I've seen, too, just an observation. [00:19:00] Anger, and some of it justifiably so, but now, especially when we're wearing masks, and we're not communicating like you and I are supposed to communicate, it's very difficult.

You go out today. you go to the grocery store or whatever, you go to Walmart, you go to whatever, and people, we can't even see. You're up to here. All I can see is your eyes. It's not meant to be, and people [00:19:30] are angry about it. Human beings are communicators. We're supposed to communicate with one another, and sometimes it's just a big smile, a big smile, or a hug. Ooh, I long for the days of hugging again! I'm a hugger! My patients come in the office, and I give them a big bear hug. I remember one lady said to me, two [00:20:00] things she said to me., She was so taken back that I came in the office, it's my office, by the way, and I'd hug her. I gave her a hug. I didn't know her from Adam, but that's me. Welcome to my world.

She said, "Two things. I didn't appreciate it." She actually wrote me an email. "The fact that you hugged me, and the fact that you talk too loud." [00:20:30] I said, "Well, I got a built-in microphone in my throat." I'm not kidding you! But we're meant to communicate, you know what I'm finding? I think I'm right. People are angry. They got an edge to them, and there's very little outlet. There's very little outlet for that frustration, and it's searing at the top. You see, a peaceful heart leads to [00:21:00] a healthy body.

And then thirdly, guilt, part of that triad. A lot of people live in guilt. "I wish I had been a better mom. I wish I was a better this. I wish this was better and that was better." Yeah. That can stir up emotions, and that can lead to a very unhealthy body. You see, I'm a holistic type of doctor. Even yesterday, I was texting with someone [00:21:30] and they said, "Well, how long do I have to stay on cortisol?" I said, "Well, until I preach at your funeral." He was a friend, so he understood. He's a good friend.

I think it was about 15 years ago, I'm not exaggerating, he asked me, he said, "Tony, would you preach at my funeral?" I said, "Well, I'll be honored." So every time he calls, I said, "Aren't you dead yet? I got this beautiful message [00:22:00] for your funeral and you're not dead yet!" So anyways, he was asking me yesterday about, "How long do I got to take cortisol?" He has trouble sleeping. I said, "Well, 'til I preach at your funeral!" You better have a sense of humor on me because I'm just that type of guy. It's one of the ways I deal with anxiety, I guess, laughter.

Here's another verse in the Bible. "Laughter is merry medicine." It is. And you know what's the best? [00:22:30] Laugh at yourself. I find people very serious, and I can be serious, too, but you know what? Better learn to laugh. Have a good laugh. Okay, I just thought I'd bring that up today because it really has a lot to do if you look and you do a deep dive in people that are unwell, I'll tell you, there's an emotional aspect to people that [00:23:00] medicine and God bless, and all the great things they're doing, but a lot of times, people fall through the cracks, and I've said it and I'll say it again, the tsunami that's coming, young people. Young people weren't made for this type of world. I don't know if any of us are.

So the three things, fear, that's looking forward to tomorrow. They're fearful of that, and that can stir [00:23:30] up lots of problems. And past, looking back, unforgiveness, check your own heart, guys. Sometimes you can get these things resolved. And guilt, I always say, "You know what? I don't want to fret too much about things I can't control." Every once in a while, believe it or not, some people tell me they don't like me. [00:24:00] Can you believe that? How can you not like me? But I can't control that. So I have sort of a filter in my brain. What can I do? As much as it depends on me, I want to live at peace with people. I really do. I want to be a peacemaker, but sometimes it doesn't depend on me. Some people just don't like me. They don't like the way I deliver and whatever. Well, I can't control that. [00:24:30] I'm not going to get too uptight about it.

So, you know what? Thanks so much for coming on in the afternoon, and give us feedback about this time. Last week you told us you really liked it. A lot of people like it. Some people said, "Don't worry. If I can't get there, I'll listen to the podcast at another time." That's fine, and there's no issue doing that. We're very, very thankful for you coming on. Tomorrow, [00:25:00] by the way, not too late, you want to send in your questions for question and answer Friday, do that. We're happy to have you. I'll try and answer as many questions as I can. Okay. Talk to you soon, guys. 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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