Dr. Martin teaches about senescent cells and inflammation in today’s podcast. Senescent cells are dysfunctional old cells that accumulate in the body. Having too many can be dangerous as they’ll cause inflammation, especially in the arteries around the heart and brain.
Inflammation is silent, and we don’t realize it’s happening. Dr. Martin talks about C-reactive protein (CRP) testing that will detect inflammation. If your body isn’t getting rid of enough senescent cells, your inflammation will be elevated.
Tune in to today’s podcast to learn what you can do to help eliminate these cells, and protect from aging your brain and heart!
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 morning, everyone. And once again, welcome to another live this morning, start of a new week and start of some great studies here that have come out in the last little bit. And we're going to pontificate on a few of them. I talked about this, I don't know, a couple of months ago, I think, senescent cells, it's spelled S-E-N-E-S-C-E-N-T, senescent cells. What are they? Well, they're old cells. They're dysfunctional. They accumulate, especially in the heart and brain.
And senescent cells, the problem with senescent cells, they're old cells, they're dysfunctional, they're really debris, and they're part of the aging process. So you're never going to get rid of all your senescent cells. But you don't want lots of them. You don't want lots of them, because that's what starts a couple of things, one of them is premature aging of the body. Senescent cells, okay? Heart and brain. This is where they're mostly found. You'll find them in tissue too. But generally, they're found in the heart and brain. And of course, that can be very dangerous, because you're aging the brain and you're aging the heart.
They're called senescence cells. They accumulate, and instead of being cleared away and your body bringing you new cells, which should happen... Again, some of it is part of the aging process and we'll go over some of the reasons you get senescent cells, but let me tell you the damage that they do. Okay? So senescent cells, obviously they age you. Secondly, they create toxins in the body, and those toxins, they produce inflammatory molecules. So in their presence, the body knows that they're foreign to some extent, and the body's reaction to them is that they produce inflammation.
Now, you and I have talked about this a million times, inflammation. Okay. So what is inflammation? Well, inflammation is the body's reaction either to a virus, bacteria, an injury or senescent cells. Your body sees it, and they go, "Hey, why aren't we clearing these guys out?" So the body produces an inflammatory marker. One way to measure it, and I'll go over this with you, is what we call C-reactive protein. And C-reactive protein, CRP, is an inflammatory marker that is produced in the liver. So your C-reactive protein produced in your liver, it's only produced in your liver when the body senses inflammation, either in your arteries or in your tissue. Okay?
So for example, someone that has rheumatoid arthritis, for example, will have a high CRP, C-reactive protein. And it's not unusual because they have inflammation and the body makes C-reactive protein. This is a test absolutely that you should get, because it will tell you too, C-reactive protein will tell you years ahead of time, if there's inflammation in the arteries around your heart, inflammation around the little arteries in your brain. When your body is not getting rid of senescent cells, it's one of the reactions of your body. And this is really important.
So if you decrease senescent cells, and we'll go over that, how can we decrease senescence cells, you are going to lower inflammation. This is one of the reasons, and I've shown this to many, many patients, is one of the reasons that lowering inflammation... Because inflammation left in your arteries, damages those arteries. The first thing that inflammation does is it takes away, or at least it hurts or damages the Teflon layer of your arteries, the little endothelial... Those things should be slippery so that blood doesn't get caught in there. You don't want blood to be too sticky because you're going to clot and that's what can start forming plaques and things like that, dangerous strokes in the brain, in the carotid arteries.
The arteries lose their slipperiness in the presence of inflammation. And inflammation is not Houdini. Remember that, inflammation just doesn't start. One of the things is, it starts when you're not clearing these old dysfunctional cells called senescent cells. Okay? So if you are able to decrease your senescent cells, we'll go over that, you're going to lower your inflammation and you will lower your CRP, C-reactive protein. Folks, if you can, you should always... You know me, I like about four or five tests. I don't care if you get a hundred tests done, get it done. But I like to look at four or five, maybe six or seven.
One of the things I like to look at is CRP, C-reactive protein. It should be under one. It should be under one. Now, they won't flag it as being abnormal if it's between one and three, they won't even flag it. I think some of the testing won't even flag it till it's up to six, but that's very dangerous. You want it to be under one, because if it's above one, you are now at risk of either a heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer's, because inflammation is present. It's silent, you don't know it. It's not like you have pain. You might have some fatigue, but you don't necessarily have any pain whatsoever, but your body is not able to get rid of, this is one of the things that happens, senescent cells. So when you decrease your senescent cells, you're decreasing inflammation, you're decreasing aging. It's an anti-aging thing. So remember, these are old dysfunctional cells.
Now, let me talk about something that I talked about the other day, because there was a study, it's a brand new study that came out. It's an observational study, but people are reporting, since March of 2020, so a year ago, over a year ago now, since this whole thing with the virus, people are not sleeping. Apparently, according to the study, one out of 10 people are reporting good sleep. Now, there's a multitude of reasons for that. One of them is we’re stressed to the hilt and cortisol left unchecked will not allow you to sleep. And if you don't sleep, your cortisol goes up. It's a vicious cycle. Cortisol is your stress hormone. People are not sleeping.
If you don't sleep, we talked about this, there's something, especially in the brain, I'll talk to you about the heart in a second, but let me talk about your brain, if you don't get a good night's sleep, there's something, there's a process in your brain that is called glial cells. So when you sleep at night, the night shift comes in, they're called glial cells. And your brain, which we discovered only recently, has its own drainage system. It's called the glymphatics, not the lymphatics, but the glymphatics. And the glymphatics, they work at night while you're sleeping. You sleep, your brain is being cleaned out through the glial cells. They come in, they clean out the debris.
And you're always going to have debris in your body. Why is that? Well, because if you eat, your brain is like a manufacturing plant, if it's producing energy, there's always the by-product of that, debris. Manufacturing plants have to have a way of getting rid of the debris, and your brain, you're so unbelievably made, that we discovered, and it wasn't long ago that we discovered that your brain has its own method of detoxifying, and that happens when you're sleeping. You see how dangerous it is not to sleep. And not only because if you don't sleep, your cortisol goes up. And if your cortisol goes up, you don't sleep. What a cycle. But what I'm saying is that you're not even detoxifying the brain. It's one of the factors in Alzheimer's and dementia, the glial cells are not able to do their job. They're not able to detoxify. And one of the things they can't take away are senescent cells, these old dysfunctional cells that your body should get rid of. And so your brain ages faster. Debris is in the brain, the brain ages faster.
But not only that, we talked about what senescent cells do. The body reacts to these senescent cells, even in your brain, if they're not being cleared away, you create inflammation in the brain. What does that do? That affects the blood supply, because even the brain has blood supply, you know that. And in that brain, you're not clearing the senescent cells, you create inflammation. Inflammation starts to damage the blood vessels, especially those little endothelial cells. You know what they do? They are not slippery. They stick. Their blood starts to clot up and you start damaging blood vessels. One night of sleep, it can start some inflammation markers started even in the brain. Crazy, isn't it?
Well, the same thing, guys, happens in your heart. The heart gets affected. The heart gets affected and the little blood vessels around your heart. If you don't sleep, you don't clear some of the debris. Here's another thing that really increases your senescence cells, sugar. This is why I always talk about sugar, guys. People ask me all the time, "Doc, isn't a little bit of sugar in moderation good for you?" No, it's not. You don't need any sugar. You really don't need sugars or multiple... You know what multiple sugars are? Carbs, crappy carbohydrates, because they're going to be sugar in five seconds. What do they do? What does sugar do? Sugar damages blood vessels rapidly, rapidly. This is really important.
Yesterday I saw a comment online and you know what, I probably overreacted. This lady had started the reset and she just read about it and she saw all the testimonies and felt that, "Why not do it?" And I would say, why not? Why wouldn't you do it? Even if you're healthy, why wouldn't you do it? How do you know how healthy you are? Do you see inflammation? It's silent. You don't know if you have that. Most people don't have no clue whether they have even damage to their blood vessels. They don't know that. Oftentimes it's silent. They don't see it. They certainly don't know if they have cancer cells that are proliferating. So I always recommend, it's a good thing to do at least once a year, do the reset.
Anyway, she decided to do it, then was having lunch with her daughter. And her daughter, very smart girl, a chiropractor, very, very smart, and she had a master's degree in nutrition. She said to her daughter, "Hey, you shouldn't be doing the Reset, it's not good for you." Well, I just beg to disagree. And I understand that. Listen, I get it. There's so much against animal products and living on eggs, meat, and cheese. And those are all bad for you. And they're going to give you cholesterol, and they're no good. They're going to clog up your arteries. That's the farthest thing from the truth. But that's still the teaching. That's still the teaching to dieticians, to people that are getting degrees. They taught me that. When I got my PhD, they were teaching me, I mean, the gurus that were teaching me, and the studies, most of it, live on plants, very little animal product, if any, they're bad, they're acidic. I mean, I heard it all, guys. I heard it all.
But I knew better. I lived in a home, my dad, I've often told you the story about my dad being a diabetic, and my dad, "Nah, no, no, no. I eat meat. I eat eggs and I eat cheese." This is my dad in the 1960s. "I'm a diabetic," he said. "I can't have sugar and I don't eat carbohydrates." "Okay, Dad." I didn't even understand what he was talking about in the 1960s, but I saw him live it. So when I'm studying nutrition, in my head, I said, "You're wrong. You're not right."
And then there was Dr. Atkins out there. You guys remember Dr. Atkins. And he was teaching and I agreed with him. In the '70s he said, "No, I can lower your triglycerides and I can elevate your good cholesterol. Cholesterol is not killing you. It's not cholesterol." I went in that direction. I saw it in my home and I went in that direction. And I study and I study and I fight for the truth. I believe it to be 100% true. I respect people that don't believe in me, I do, I respect them. We have a difference of opinion. But a few people online yesterday said, "Well, listen to your daughter." They were on our website or at least in our private Facebook group, and they just said, "Oh, listen to your daughter."
And I said, this is what I wrote on the Facebook yesterday, I said, "It's surprising to me, if you're listening to our podcast, I'm trying to bring you up evidence. Now you guys go do with that what you think is right, and what you think is wrong. God gave you a brain, use it. I want you to question me. I got no problem with that." But I said, "How can you dismiss tens of thousands of people that I can lower their C-reactive protein, I can empty their liver, I can get rid of insulin resistance, gets rid of insulin resistance in 30 days, and then you say, it's not good for you? How can you say that? If I can lower your triglycerides and elevate your HDL, how can you say it's not good for you?"
So one of the things you want to do to get rid of senescent cells and inflammation, you want to change your diet. You want to change your diet, because your diet, just sugar alone. And I was reading an article today that 50% of the sugar that we consume, 50% of it in North America comes from drinking. I'm telling you, folks, I was in the corner store at the gas station there, just picking up some water the other day. And I saw people, man, the sodas, the sports drinks, the energy drinks, the juices. And in my head, I'm shaking my head because I don't want to preach in a corner store at the gas station, I wouldn't do that. But I observe. And when I read that article this morning, that said 50% of the sugars that we consume are by drinking sugars, I said, "You know what? I think you're right. I think you're right." And this creates an enormous amount of senescence cells.
You're going to get a lot of debris and lots of oxidized cells that are damaged cells. And you know what? One way of not getting rid of these cells is not sleeping and the other way is having a bad diet. And it's always two things. It's sugar and crappy carbohydrates. Because crappy carbohydrates have two basic things, one of them is, carbs are just sugars. Okay? So just remember that, sugar is sugar and carbs are sugars too. And then secondly, they're made usually, crappy carbohydrates, from a lot of breads to pretzels, to cookies, to crackers, or the middle aisles of your grocery store, and even fast foods that are made in bad oil, you get a double combination of terribleness when you have crappy carbs made with crappy oils, going to elevate your insulin. And just those oils, which elevates your omega-6, these are vegetable, they're far from vegetables, they are bad oils. And most things that are preserved in the middle aisles of your grocery store are made with bad oils.
The problem when you go to a fast food place and you get french fries or whatever, even the chicken, they are cooked in bad oil, or peanut oil, that's a bad oil to cook with. Okay? And especially when it's reheated, it's terrible oil. It's inflammatory. So that's what senescent cells, when you're aging, not sleeping, not exercising, so bad diet, not sleeping, and number three, our lack of vitamin E. You see, what vitamin E does, the true vitamin E, which is exercise. And you guys know me, I'm telling you, you do not have to over-exercise. You know my motto, sun, steak and steel. Sun, get the sun every day, I'll talk to you about sun and vitamin D. Eat steak every day, I'm going to tell you it's good for you, you could live on it. If your body needs sugar, it'll take a piece of steak and turn it into sugar. Did you know that? You don't need to eat sugar, just eat steak. And if your body needs sugar, your body will transform part of that steak into sugar. Did you know that? Yeah.
So sun steak and steel, exercise. And I've shown you, and I've got lots of experience plus study, after study, after study, 15, 20 minutes, three to four times a week, and do resistant exercise. Now, if you go walking, good for you, and that's vitamin E, it is, but it's not the best vitamin E. If you were a jogger, good for you, but it's not the best exercise. The best exercise that you build muscle, I was showing you one of the things that I like is those bands, tensor bands, and you resist and get your muscles strong. The stronger your muscles are, the more bins you have to store glycogen. This helps your body and it lowers your insulin, guys, vitamin E, and it lowers the amount of those old dysfunctional cells, those senescent cells. So sleep, diet, exercise. Sleep, diet, and exercise will help big time in lowering the amount of senescent cells, those old cells that hang around, that are not good for you, because your body sees them as foreign and the body produces an inflammation process and these things start to damage your blood vessels. And it's incredible, isn't it? It's incredible.
Okay. So that's your little teaching for this morning. One of the things you can do, by the way, I like antioxidants, you know what's a powerful antioxidant? Coffee. Don't put no sugar in it. You can put cream, don't put milk in it. Coffee is a powerful antioxidant, that's why it's vitamin C, it's the true vitamin C. I'll argue with anybody, if you drink coffee, you don't need the other vitamin C, you really don't. You have all the flavonoids you need. And you know me too, I love pine bark extract, it's one of the most powerful antioxidants that you can ever get, and it helps your body to get rid of senescent cells, it's very anti-aging, very anti-aging. But so is coffee.
Again, someone came on our site, and listen, that's all right, I mean it, it's all right, but I told that person, because they said, "Oh, coffee is no good for you. Coffee affects your adrenal glands, it damages your adrenal glands." That's not true. You can put it up there if you want, but you got to understand I'm going to respond, I'm going to respond. Now, a lot of people, of course, did respond right on the site. They said, "Well, that's not true." And I'm telling you it ain't true. It's not true. Coffee is a flavonoid. Coffee has quercetin. Coffee has a multitude of flavonoids, so does tea a little bit. You know my motto, why drink tea when you can drink coffee? Okay, look, I mean it, coffee is a more powerful antioxidant than tea is. Tea's all right. That's for the United Kingdom, tea. You know I love to tease, okay?
We got some good things coming this week, and we appreciate your faithfulness of watching this program and listening. Share this with your friends. And tell your friends and family too, they can sign up to get automatically on their smartphone, they can get The Doctor Is In podcast. Now, all of these teachings are going to be turned into podcasts at The Doctor Is In, and you just have to... I don't know how you do it. Go to our website. You can do it. But if you have a smartphone, you can do it right from your smartphone. If you download any podcasts at all, type up, The Doctor Is In podcast and flag it, get it right to your smartphone. We have over a couple of million downloads there, and we appreciate that. We appreciate your faithfulness to this program. Okay?
So if you're not a member of the Martin Clinic private Facebook group, join. If you haven't got a copy of our book, The Metabolic Reset, and I stand behind that book, I'm telling you, I did not write that book on a whim, that book was written after putting thousands of people, especially diabetics, on a program of eggs, meat, and cheese. And I'm telling you, guys, I'll put that eating program up against anyone else's, I would, for results. And I'm ready to be challenged on it. And that's all right. I don't mind the challenge. I used to tell people, I'm not a researcher, but here's what I got, I got clinical evidence and before and after blood tests and all this and that. Hey, go for it. Love you guys. Will 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!