In today’s podcast, Dr. Martin discusses the role of the hormone leptin, and what it means to become leptin resistant.
He explains when fat cells produce too much leptin, our brains become resistant. When this happens, triglycerides aren’t being broken down properly in our blood, and this poses a major danger to our hearts!
He also explains how cortisol messes up your hormones and how C-reactive protein (CRP) can reveal your likelihood of having a heart attack.
Tune into today’s episode to learn about this, and how ‘The Metabolic Reset’ can reset your cortisol, CRP, and leptin levels… in just 30 days!
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 and welcome to another live. Unusual time for a Monday. So here we go. Let's talk about leptin. There's a couple of studies that I wanted to talk to you about. One of them is leptin, what is leptin? It's a hormone. It actually comes out of your fat cells. So your fat cells send a signal to your brain, called leptin. Your fat cells produce leptin. They send it to the brain. It’ll tell your brain that you're not hungry. Leptin, very important. It's not only important to send a signal to your brain that you're not hungry. But secondly, it's really important. What leptin does is it helps the body break down triglycerides. So those three fat balls that are in your bloodstream, actually one of the processes that they get broken down and the body gets rid of them is through leptin.
So two important things that leptin does. One, it tells you to stop eating, "Hey, you're not hungry, stop eating." Two, it helps to break down triglycerides. Now guys, you know me, the most dangerous thing for your heart, also for your brain, but mainly the heart. Most dangerous thing is not cholesterol, it's triglycerides. Triglycerides come from carbs. Triglycerides come from food. The hormone that helps to break them down is called leptin. So you got it? Mainly two things, sends a signal to your brain, says, "Stop eating, you're not hungry." And secondly, it breaks down triglycerides. So it's very, very important that you want your leptin to be working. Now, how does a person get messed up metabolically?
You see, I've said this many, many a time, but people that have a real struggle with wheat, it's not calories in and calories out and move more. It isn't, it isn't. And unfortunately, because society, when they see a bigger person, they say, "Well, that person is eating too much and not moving enough." But what's frustrating for someone that just has such an enormous battle with weight is it's hormonal, it's horror-mones. Now remember, leptin is a hormone. Comes out of the fat cell, it sends a signal to the brain, and secondly, it helps to break down dangerous triglycerides in your bloodstream.
How does leptin get messed up? It's like a vicious cycle, because the more fat cells you have, you would think, "Well, now you're going to have more leptin." No, because what happens? The more fat cells that a person has, there's too much leptin. And then the brains says, "Hey, hello. I'm not listening anymore. I refuse to listen to you, leptin, because you're constantly sending a signal to me. And I'm tired of them." We call that leptin resistance, leptin resistance.
So you can imagine, here's a person struggling with weight. They have more fat cells. The more fat cells they have, the more that signal that says I'm full doesn't work. It's not working. So guess what? These people crave. They crave foods. It's a hormonal thing. I mean, nevermind that there's other factors too. There's other factors too. Oftentimes thyroid with insulin comes. The problem with the thyroid with too much estrogen comes. The problem with the thyroid, when your estrogen is too high, you're not converting T4 to T3. As far as your thyroid, your thyroid needs T3 to work properly. So it might not even show up on routine blood tests, but guess what? You're dragging. You don't feel good. And of course your fibroid is your gas pedal. It's your metabolism. The metabolism slows down. So those are many, many factors.
And I always tell people, "Listen," I used to say this in my office all the time, "You're messed up hormonally. You're not going to win the weight loss battle until you fix your hormones." You add cortisol to the mix, messes up hormone. You don't sleep properly, messes up hormones. Because if you don't sleep properly, your cortisol goes up. If your cortisol goes up, you don't sleep properly. It's one of the biggest factors in sleep problems.
And I'll bring to you another sleep study that came out most recently that I flagged and I wanted to discuss it with you. Now, leptin resistance. Let's talk about that for a minute. So what is leptin resistance? It is when the brain quits receiving the message that you're full, that's called leptin resistance. The more fat we have, the more resistance that you get with leptin. The more you eat, the more fat cells you get. The more fat cells you get, the more resistance to the voice. Now here's another thing. Fat cells, okay, they release leptin. Here's another thing they release. They release CRP. C-reactive protein, C-reactive protein. You know what that is? C-reactive protein is an inflammation marker. So the more you have leptin resistance, the vicious cycle, the more hungry you are. The more hungry you are, the more you eat, especially you will go for the quick fixes.
One thing they've shown about leptin over the years is, when you get leptin resistance, you're getting cravings for the quick fix, the crappy carbohydrates and sugars. You see Laura Secord and you want to do a Swan diet. Do you know how many people are like that? They almost have the can't help its, and it's very difficult for them. So let me explain why the reset again is so good for this. So just follow me with this for a minute. You see, the reset is not keto, it's not calories. We don't count. There's no counting at all. The only thing that you might count is how many hours that you might implement some intermittent fasting. So you might count hours, but you're certainly not to count calories. You're not to count fat grams, protein grams, the reset's not for that. It's a 30-day to reset even your leptin. How does that happen? How does that happen, doc?
Well, again, it's this. So if you're listening to a podcast, you can't see my hands. But as you decrease your carbohydrates and sugars to nothing, you decrease this to nothing, but it's not like you're not eating. You are replacing them. You're replacing all your carbs, all of your sugars with rocket fuel, eggs, meat, and cheese. How does that help leptin? Well, a couple of ways. One, it lowers the resistance to leptin because your cells at the mitochondria level are burning a much better fuel. So now the cells are not as resistant to leptin. Your body is going to burn fat. The more fat you burn, look, I don't want you to lose muscle, I don't believe in that. You want to starve to death? You'll go into what we call ketoacidosis, which is not ketosis by the way, it's ketoacidosis. It's when you have no fuel, your body turns on itself. That's ketoacidosis.
But this is the best way for your body to thrive. Because not only are you fixing insulin resistance, because that's the goal. The number one goal of the reset is to fix insulin resistance, which fixes this, that, and the other thing. The biggest thing, when you lower insulin, you're lowering inflammation. When you're lowering inflammation, you're lowering C-reactive protein.
The benefits of that cardiovascular, look, there used to be studies, and there still is. There are studies that have shown that C-reactive protein is one of the most telling signs of whether you're ever going to have a heart attack or not. If it's three or under, I like it to be zero. I like it to be below zero, not the weather, but C-reactive protein. I actually like it below zero. You can go below zero with C-reactive protein. If it's one you're all right, one and under, you're good. Two, you got a moderate risk of heart disease according to research and then three and above, you see, they always linked the C-reactive protein mostly with heart, but I link it to cancer. I link it to Alzheimer's. I link it to diabetes. I link it to autoimmune, because it is a very good marker for inflammation, but inflammation, not a Houdini. Remember, it doesn't come out of nowhere. You get inflammation primarily when insulin is elevated.
And guys, that's food, insulin's food. If you don't eat, you don't need insulin. If you don't eat, you don't need insulin. But you fast without fasting on the reset. You don't have to fast to get the benefits of fasting. You just need to eat the right foods. I almost called our book, by the way, The Metabolic Reset. I almost called it fasting without fasting. It came in second place when it came to the title of that book. That we settled for, Metabolic Reset, The Diet Your Doctor won't Share with you. And you guys had some input into that title and we appreciate it.
But you see the significance of leptin hormonally? And so when you see someone that's obese, and by the way I don't have to tell you, I mean, it's one of the main, main, main, main factors that very few people are talking about in COVID is the destructiveness of obesity. And then you get this virus. And then I talked to you even before that studies came out of the United Kingdom that shows if you're obese the vaccine, is it going to actually even work for you? Okay? Is it actually even going to work because the flu shot, and they find out why the flu shot is ineffective to the extent that it's about 40% effective. That means in 60% of the people it doesn't work and they could never figure that out. They didn't until 2018. And then they realized in the United Kingdom and it didn't get any press. And it bothers me when you see a such a significant statement given by I think the NIH. NIH, yeah. Over in United Kingdom, the National Institute of Health in the United Kingdom.
You said, "Well, no wonder, it's not working." The flu shot, in 2018 they figured out doesn't work on people with all these fat cells. Well, that's not all that doesn't work. Leptin doesn't work. What a vicious cycle. You're hungry all the time. You eat, you crave. And when you crave, like I said, you usually make the wrong choice. It's not like you're craving steak and then you have three steaks. For most people that's not what happens. They need a quick fix. That has to do with insulin resistance and leptin resistance. And so here they are, now leptin doesn't even work at all. So you're, we used to laugh at, you have Chinese food and you're hungry an hour after, you know? You remember that statement? Is it true or not? I'm not sure. But all I know is, is that these people are hungry all the time. And this is why on the reset it's a 30-day program to get leptin right, to get insulin right, to get your CRP right.
We talked about that in the book, how important it is for your C-reactive protein, the inflammation markers go down. Okay, so let's just spend the next few minutes. What can you do? Well, obviously the reason, if you got trouble or you're hungry all the time, you're craving all the time, especially sweets. Now listen, for some people they might have candida. And that's why we talk about leaky gut as being a big, big factor too. But let's leave that alone for a minute and settle in, okay, what do you do.
Guys, I can't emphasize enough the importance of the diet, the reset, the reset, and don't rely on the scale. Because for some of you, look, it's hard, but that doesn't mean you're not burning fat cells. If I showed you, I wish I had it with, five pounds, just five. Well that seems like a lot, but even one pound of fat is about this big, guys. Like I'm talking about six inches, six inches this way and six inches this way.
And do you know that when you get to five pounds of fat, it's so massive guys, the weight of it is it's five pounds. But the size of it, when you take those five pounds, it is almost 10 to 12 inches long and about six inches thick. You're losing that. And what that does is it resets the leptin. The leptin's going to start working again. And I know I go on the private Facebook group and I love you guys. But so often, and I get it, I understand it. Believe you me, I've seen enough patients in my lifetime to understand this. I get it. But so many go in, and I thank you for all the ones that are in there. You know, I was thinking today, there are people who are very constructive and there are people that are more destructive. But it seems that we got a lot of constructive people on our private Facebook group.
But when I go in there I see people, because they do the reset and they're discouraged, because they have relied on the scale and they lose sight of, this is a metabolic reset. It is to change your metabolism. It's a metabolic reset. I'm telling you guys, and I know it's ours and I don't want to just pump our tires, but I got to pump up to tell you how it works, guys. It works. You're fixing hormones, you're fixing hormones. It's really important to do that. You are lowering C-reactive protein. And even in medicine they will agree that C-reactive protein is a major factor in heart disease. Even in medicine they agree with that. I mean, the doctors that do any reading at all know the importance of C-reactive protein.
You know, it's unfortunate, because usually it's only endocrinologists or people that are dealing with autoimmune disease, rheumatologists and whatever, and they're doing the CRP, but they didn't realize, I mean, that test originally was meant for cardiovascular disease. Because if you have inflammation, it's messing up your arteries. It's taking away from that Teflon layer of your arteries. It's creating plaque, it's causing atherosclerosis.
So guys, I really wanted to just give you a little bit of teaching on leptin, how important it is to get it down, get that leptin so you don't have leptin resistance, so that your body knows when you're full. Stop eating, it's a voice, leptin's a voice, "Hello, you're not hungry, don't eat." And understand the importance of those fat cells. You need fat cells, it's not like fat cells are bad for you. You need them, but you just don't want them to overtake the body, which really is destructive for a lot of things.
So that's the teaching for today, guys. And I thank you for joining us, for we had a really good crowd. And the nice thing about this is you can share this and it will be a podcast. So we really appreciate it. We thank you very much. We love you guys. I will 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.