576. Bonnie and Clyde: The 2 Brain Robbers

THE DOCTOR IS IN Podcast


Bonnie and Clyde were the famous bank robbing couple during the Great Depression. You probably already know their story, but they were quite dangerous – believed to have murdered at least 9 police officers, and 4 civilians during their 3 year reign of terror.

Dr. Martin uses their story to illustrate two dangerous conditions that will rob you of your brain health – high blood pressure and high blood sugar. They are the precursor signs of metabolic syndrome!

Dr. Martin talks about what you need to do to get rid of Bonnie and Clyde, and in turn protect your brain against the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Listen to today’s episode to find out what!

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. Hope you're having a great day. Welcome to another live, a little bit different of course, in the p.m., in the afternoon. Okay, we put out an email several months ago on Bonnie and Clyde. Now I don't know, I'm asking you the question. You've maybe seen this movie, maybe you haven't. It's called the Highwaymen, Kevin Costner, Woody Harrelson. I really enjoyed the movie because it was all about Bonnie and Clyde. It's on Netflix, so I don't know if you guys have seen it or not, but I enjoyed it, the story of Bonnie and Clyde. 

They always make them look... and they were. I mean if you read any history of them they had robbed something like 15 banks, and the movie portrays it too, they were like heroes with the folks, you know? Back in those days they were heroes, I guess maybe because they were robbing banks, but they became notorious. They were famous. People were thrilled if they ever got a glimpse of Bonnie and Clyde, except that they were very, very dangerous people. You know that 14 policemen were killed by Bonnie and Clyde, so that it wasn't that it was always a feel good story. They had quite the legend, but they killed 14 policemen. The movie was very good. Again, why am I talking about this? Because I want to talk to you about your brain robbers. Today we're going to talk about your brain robbers. Like Bonnie and Clyde, they were bank robbers, famous for it, but I want to talk to you today about brain robbers, what will rob your brain? 

Actually the number one... I don't know if it would be number one anymore because of all this virus. The number one thing if you took any kind of survey before, the number one fear that people had was that they would get Alzheimer's or dementia, they would get it... They're thinking the last thing I want is Alzheimer's and dementia, and by the way who the heck wants that, right? But it's a huge fear, and maybe a little bit less on the hit parade with this COVID, although I think that most people are not terrified of COVID. It's been around too long now, a year. Will we ever get back to normal? I don't know, but I don't want to go down there. I want to talk about your brain, how you can protect your brain. Let's talk about two... I mean there's more than two. I'm going to talk about more than two, but let's talk about the Bonnie and Clyde that will go after your brain. If you have these problems early in life you are much, much, much more susceptible to Alzheimer's and dementia. 

What are the two brain robbers, like Bonnie and Clyde? Number one, blood pressure, blood pressure. It's estimated that 50-60% of the population after the age of 40... It happens way before then, but generally after the age of 40, 50 or 60% of the population have trouble with high blood pressure. It is very common. As a matter of fact, it's almost unusual... I remember a couple of years ago I was having my insurance renewed, okay? I think it was my son who was putting a big insurance policy on his father. You know how the nurse comes or whatever and they want to check your blood pressure and they do certain tests, blood sugar I'm sure and things like that. Anyways, took my blood pressure and said, "Oh, man, you've got really, really good blood pressure." I'm very thankful for that. She asked me if I was on any medications at the time. I think I was 65 at the time. I said, "No. I'm not on any meds thankfully." Listen, I'm not against medication. I'm very thankful that I don't need any medication right now. My meds is food. 

But she was telling me as a nurse... She said, "The biggest thing in the insurance industry is if you have high blood pressure," because if you have high blood pressure to the insurance industry you are much more susceptible to having a heart attack or a stroke, especially a stroke with high blood pressure, so it makes sense, right? For the insurance industry it's all about risks, so that's how they operate. They operate on risk, what is your risk? Anyways, so one is high blood pressure. Over 50% of the population over the age of 40 are on high blood pressure medication or have high blood pressure and maybe are not on medication, so that's an interesting thing. 

The second robber that we want to talk about, and we'll combine these two... The second robber of your brain is even slightly elevated blood sugar. So blood pressure... And, guys, the way I look at blood pressure, the second number, your second number... Anything 90 or above in my opinion is high blood pressure, anything 90 and above. Now they go even 140/90 or whatever. No, you don't have to be that high to have high blood pressure. I believe anything, on that second number especially, over 90 and you're in trouble as far as blood pressure. Then secondly, blood sugar.

Now a lot of people think they have normal blood sugar, but I am very strict about blood sugar because... And we've mentioned this in the past, but I just want to say it again. My son loves this word. Blood sugar is a lagging indicator. Okay, what's that mean? I know what he means by it, but I want to make sure you know what it means, okay? Blood sugar... And I've said this a thousand times, but hey, there's somebody new on today at least, right, that we know of, and this gets to about 7,000-8,000 people in a day on average, so there's always new people coming on and watching the program. We love them and we really encourage them, so sure there's a fair amount of repetition, but repetition is good. That's how I learn, repetition, repetition. 

But blood sugar... Remember, don't wait for your blood sugar to go high before you treat yourself as a diabetic. One way to test is the percentage. They call it A1C. Sugar attaches to hemoglobin and it'll stay on that red blood cell. When you get an A1C test do you know what that is? They're testing sugar that attaches to a red blood cell, that attaches to hemoglobin, and it never lets go. Did you know that? That's how they test it. Whatever every percentage that you have of sugars attaching to hemoglobin... Hemoglobin is the Velcro of your red blood cell. Every time you breathe, you take a deep breath, your blood goes through your lungs and oxygen sticks to hemoglobin, so that's how they measure your oxygen levels. They measure your hemoglobin, because that is the Velcro.

But you know what else attaches to your red blood cell? Sugar. Sugar attaches to hemoglobin. They can measure that, and they call it A1C. I want A1C, that percentage over three months... I want A1C to be below 5.5. I want your fasting blood sugar, fasting blood sugar to be around 5.0, not 5.2, not 5.3. That's considered normal, but remember blood sugar is a lagging indicator. Why is that? Because your body will do everything it can not to allow sugar in your blood. I would like you be going over to a mall and parking in a disabled place. You got to have a sign on your dash saying I can park there, and the cops is insulin, the traffic cop. The traffic cop will not allow sugar to stay in your bloodstream.

I talked to you the other day about eating 20 donuts and a half an hour after you've eaten 20 donuts... Don't ever eat 20 donuts. Don't do it, but I'm just telling you how your body works. After let's say about a half an hour after you've had about 20 donuts your blood sugar will go up to about 40. It'll almost kill you. But then your blood sugar will come back to within normal limits, within a range or so. You know why? Because insulin will not allow sugar to stay in your bloodstream.

So let's get back to Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde... Two things that will tell you if you are at risk for Alzheimer's is high blood pressure and slightly elevated blood sugars. Now let me put this together. Bonnie and Clyde were a team. You know what a team is? A team is high blood sugar, even slightly elevated, and even slightly elevated blood pressure, and they're both caused by the same thing. How do you get high blood pressure? It's not salt. Now it could possibly be salt. If you're dehydrated, you don't drink water and you consume a lot of salt, at that time that can elevate your blood pressure. But salt is not the bad guy. Sugar is the bad guy. Salt is not what causes high blood pressure unless you're dehydrated. What causes high blood pressure is high circulating insulin when you are a carboholic. It's a carboholic, Bonnie and Clyde, blood sugar, blood pressure.

Guys, I used to tell my patients don't take your blood pressure every five minutes or you're going to have high blood pressure just from taking your blood pressure every five minutes. You're stressing yourself out. Don't do that. I can't handle that. Then I get people that were taking their blood sugar every meal, usually because they were taking insulin or Metformin or whatever, and they were always trying to look at their blood sugar. I used to tell them why don't you get on the right diet and you won't need to take your blood sugar. I'm not saying never take it, I'm just saying you won't have to take it every five stinking minutes or every time you eat, because you will find that you will regulate your blood sugar when you don't eat carbs. It's as simple as that. No sugar, no carbs, and your blood pressure will come down and your blood sugar will come down.

Ah-hah. Ah-hah. I'm telling you, you want to get rid of Bonnie and Clyde, you don't want those brain robbers, you have to lower your insulin. Lower your insulin. Yes, I've done it enough time, but let me very quickly... Brain is headquarters. Whatever you eat, it doesn't matter... It's like the government, it'll take 25%. The government in Canada takes 50%, but you know what I'm saying. It's taxes. Your brain is headquarters, so it doesn't matter... If you eat a chocolate bar it says I get 25% of that. Your brain makes up what? 2% of your body weight? Someone calls you fathead, you might have a little bit bigger a brain. But if you eat sugar and you consume sugar... And kids are eating 200 pounds of sugar a year. It's crazy, especially high fructose corn syrup. We talked about this the other day so I won't get... But if you haven't listened to that podcast about high fructose corn syrup and what it does in the brain, it's crazy.

Now let's get back to Bonnie and Clyde and insulin. Insulin, you really only use it when you're eating carbs, because carbs are going to rapidly become sugars in your brain and everywhere else. They become sugars rapidly. So if you have... "Oh, Dr. Martin, it's whole wheat." I don't care if it's 12 grain or 27 grains, it's still going to be sugar rapidly. Carbs are just glucose chains. They are going to become sugar rapidly, so don't fool yourself. Don't be deceived. We talked about that yesterday. Don't be deceived. The worst deception is self-deception. Don't fool yourself. If you want to protect your brain you need to get your blood sugars down, you need to get your blood pressure down, and the main cause of all of this is insulin.

So let's talk about the brain first. When you eat it takes 25% of anything you eat. The rest... it says to the body you get 75%, I get 25%. Okay, so it's the government, okay? If you feed it good, good. But your brain, if you give it sugar, first of all it takes a route like cocaine does directly to certain centers of your brain that's not good, but we won't even spend our time there. When you are a carboholic you develop what we call insulin resistance, meaning... Remember my little illustrations? Insulin resistance is when you're the bad neighbour. Insulin has a job to do, so whether you like it or not it will come and do its work, and that's like a neighbour that's always at your house. Like what are you doing here? You just came here yesterday and you're here again today. You're back. You're, "I'm back." That's a bad neighbour, right? 

What happens is that your cells at the cellular level say, “You know what? I'm sick of you,” but insulin has a job to do, guys. So when you have insulin resistance it doesn't matter, insulin has a job to do. It will do its job even if it has to secrete 10 times more insulin than it used to for the same food. When you're young or whatever, at first you think you get away with things, right? You get away with, oh, I can have cookies every day and I can have ice cream every day. I can have a Pepsi every day. It don't even bother me. You have no idea what you're doing to your body in the long run, and your body will... I'm telling you, you don't get away with it forever. Believe you me, you're doing damage.

One of the things that happens is that your cells develop insulin resistance, and guess what happens? If you have insulin resistance at the brain level, now your blood-brain barrier will not allow insulin to go into the brain like it used to. Wherever there's sugar, it has to get it out. You, come here, I got to store you. You are not allowed to stay in the bloodstream because sugar is so toxic. The first thing that it destroys is your circulation, because it affects the little Teflon layers of your blood vessels. This is why. When there's a diagnosis of dementia, of Alzheimer's, one of the things that they look for on the MRI is what they call small vessel disorder, small vessel disorder. They can see the damage on the MRI imaging of the little small blood vessels, the capillaries and the small, little, wee blood vessels. Sugar destroys it. Then you know what happens? Insulin can't even come in and get it anymore. The blood-brain barrier doesn't allow it. 

This is so damaging to the brain, especially what center of the brain? Remember for the sake of your brain you only have to memorize two centers. One is your hypothalamus. That is your hormones. It sends a signal to the pituitary gland and then off to your thyroid, your ovaries, men your testes, and adrenal glands, and blah, blah, blah. Okay? The other center in your brain, and the one that Bonnie and Clyde love to destroy, is your memory center. What is that called? Your hippocampus. Campus, school, college, memory. Sugar destroys the memory center. It also is not good for the hypothalamus and hormones. Somebody asked me yesterday does the reset help hormones? You better believe it helps hormones. Why? Because even in the brain level your hypothalamus will appreciate the fact that you've laid off the sugars.

You cannot get higher blood sugars without insulin resistance, and you will not get high blood pressure because my dad had high blood pressure. That has nothing to do with your blood pressure. Your dad had high blood pressure, your mother had high blood pressure, you can override those genetics with a good diet guys, okay? So remember that. A good diet will override your bad genetics. Some of us got bad genetics. I got bad genetics, I do. Bonnie and Clyde, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, both caused by insulin, insulin resistance. You know me, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, connect them all. They're all part of what we call metabolic syndrome.

Okay, what else will rob your brain? In the remaining few moments here, what else will rob your brain? I'm not going to spend a lot of time on these, but just to give you a few little points, you know what robs your brain, your memory center of your brain? Sleep, a lack of sleep, because as I've explained to you when you sleep the night shift comes in. What we found, and this is amazing... I never get over how unbelievable your human body is. The Bible has something good to say about it. You know what it says? You're fearfully and wonderfully made, and it's true. You just need a microscope, if you don't believe it. I spend a lot of time looking at blood work and microscope and, my word, I'll tell you, what a body. 

Okay. So when you sleep the night shift comes in. They're called your glial cells, G-L-I-A-L, glial cells. Glial cells, they're part of the glymphatic system, not the lymphatic system, because your brain has its own drainage system, it's called the glymphatic, and glial cells are the guys that work at night. They repair the brain. But what happens if you don't sleep? They don't work. They can't come in. They only come in when you're sleeping, and this is the big problem today. As a matter of fact, I got this statistic... Where is it here? This is since last March, guys, so we're a year now. We're just over a year into the virus. 

I think I'm going to do a whole series on unintended consequences, because medicine... God love them, but I feel like slapping them sometimes. They’re throwing the young generation under the bus, more scared for themselves... And I've never seen it. I'm a grandparent, okay? Parents, yeah, you got kids. Wonderful. I have four kids. I got 11 grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. Let me tell you something. It's my grandchild... I used to have to discipline my kids. Grandchildren? Are you kidding? We don't know how to say no to grandchildren. I go crazy over grandchildren. My grandchildren, oh, and here we are. Here we are a year later and young people have been thrown under the bus. No sports, no this, no that. I've got a granddaughter graduating this year from high school, no prom, no this, no that, and I've never seen a selfish generation of politicians and medical officers of health who have been more concerned about people my age than about kids. I didn't want to get too excited, I just did. It bothers me.

But here's the statistic. I told you a long story to tell you this. Do you know that since last March only 10% of the population... Listen to what I'm going to say. Only 10% of the population is saying that they're sleeping well. 90% of the population is saying they don't sleep well. One of the biggest reasons that we don't sleep well is stress, and we're stressed because we need each other. I'm a people guy. I love to hug people. I miss people. I want to be with people. You're meant to be with people. I can't stand that they've let people die alone. I can't stand it. It's terrible science. They should have been able to protect the vulnerable without closing the stinking world down. 

I had to blow off some steam. I can't stand when young people are not taken into consideration, when suicide rates and mental health and everything... Anyway, I'm going to do a whole series on it. I can't stand it. Sleep is a big robber of your brain, because if you don't repair your brain, if your brain doesn't get rid of all of its garbage at night when the night shift, your glial cells, come in. That is damaging to your brain, and guess what area of the brain is affected the most? The hippocampus, your memory center of your brain. 

Here's another one. You want to protect your brain? Eat cholesterol. I was arguing... I really wasn't arguing... Here's what the email said. I know, Doc, that you really only emphasize triglycerides and good cholesterol, HDL, but my doctor... and here I go. I'm going to have an Excedrin headache again, because you're going to want me to start discussing LDL, total cholesterol, non-LDL. Guys, I won't do it. I won't. I won't go there. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You just want to make sure of two things, your triglycerides are down and your HDL is up. Not only for your heart, guys, but for your brain. Your brain is made up of fat. Your brain is made up of fat. It needs the animal fat. I don't care how many avocados you eat. Good for you. You like avocados? Good for you. I don't like them. I just don't like the taste of them. But is avocado good? Yeah. But it's not cholesterol. Olive oil is good, but it's not bacon. Bacon is better for your brain. Yeah. That's science, guys. I know, I know, I get too excited. 

Okay, not enough cholesterol, guys, that's not a robber. It becomes a robber if you don't eat enough. You want to regenerate your brain, you better be getting your cholesterol, and cholesterol is only found in the animal kingdom, eggs, meat and cheese. Eggs, meat and cheese, okay?

Tomorrow, question and answer Friday, and you can even ask me about cholesterol if you want. I know I'm tough, but I don't care. I don't mind repeating, okay, I really don't, and I like to tease people, I do. I think it's because we were 11 in our home and we used to tease the living stuffing... You don't want to get around my sisters. They teased the living stuffing out of me. You got to have a thick skin when you got a big family. Anyway, so tomorrow is Question and Answer. 

Remember the number one selling book... If you don't have this book, The Metabolic Reset... Guys, number one selling book in Canada. You got to get it, and we appreciate it. Keep it number one. Keep it up there. We appreciate it. We appreciate it, The Metabolic Reset, the diet your doctor won't share with you. I guarantee it. You won't get this from your doctor. Guys, good talking to you today. We love you guys. We appreciate you coming on. For all the new folks out there, make sure you join our Martin Clinic Facebook private group. Invite your family and friends. What a beautiful community that is. We really appreciate it. Talk to you soon. 

Announcer:  You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!

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