Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners.
Some of today’s topics include:
- Bunions
- Probiotics in raw milk
- Sand feeling in the eyes
- Exercises to lose weight
- Alcohol’s effect on blood sugars
- Potassium sources
- Sparkling water on the Reset
- Tingling in the fingertips
- Krill oil vs high DHA
Tune in to hear Dr. Martin’s responses!
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: Good morning. Hope you're having a great day, start to your day. Question and Answer Friday. Always look forward to answering your questions as much as I can. Judy is asking, "Is Bio-Oil good for you?" Well, I have to look it up and, yeah... Look, sometimes you gonna ask me questions, guys, and if I haven't had any real clinical experience with it... The ingredients, yeah, seem to be good. Again and look, you have to understand, I'm going to give you an opinion based on what I know. If I don't know something, you know what I mean? If I haven't had clinical experience with it. There's a thousand oils you can use on your skin.
I'll tell you what I do and what I recommend to my patients. I like pine bark extract. To me, our ReVera, I love it. I use it every day. I use it even as a natural sunscreen. When I talk about sunscreen, you better protect yourself inside out, first of all, okay? Because your skin is an organ that you see, but you better start inside out with skin, and there's a lot of factors with skin. Leaky gut, we've talked about that. Hydration. A lot of people are dehydrated and they don't know it because they're thinking, "Oh, I'm not thirsty," but their skin is and I've seen that thousands of times. People that walk around dehydrated, they don't drink water. "Ah, I drank a little bit. I don't need it. I'm not thirsty," yeah, but your skin is telling you a different story. So I like ReVera. I really do. That's me. If you want to compare it, I don't know. That's clinically what I've done over the years. So pine bark extract and our formula. I like that, so, and I got no problem, you want to try something else, Judy, go for it.
Now, Theresa is asking about bunions. Well, ordinarily, bunions, two things, and women get bunions more than men do. Think about that for a minute. Why is that? Usually, very poor fitting shoes and flat feet. Fallen, metatarsal arches are usually the cause of bunions. And women, a lot of times, maybe less today, but if you go back 30, 40 years ago, women would wear shoes that they had no business wearing. High heels, and all day long. Do you think those things are good for you? Good for your arches or whatever? No, they're not. A lot of times they wear... Even kids, not good fitting shoes, flat feet, bunions. Some people have just poor feet right from the get-go and, to me, shoes are really, really important. So bunions can be very disabling. So that's what causes them.
Are probiotics found in raw milk, and if so, how much? Yes, they are. How much? I don't know. I never measured, Kevin. I haven't measured that. Well, look, I mean, I'll give you an example because raw milk or, if you want to ferment yogurt, well, this was measured. I think it was Activia, the yogurt, measured against a broad spectrum 50 billion probiotic. You'd have to have 16,000 of those four-ounce containers of Activia to get the probiotics that are found in one capsule, 16,000 of them. So am I dismissing raw milk? I think you guys ought to know me enough. I love dairy. Now, I don't like milk in a grocery store that has been stripped away of its nature and it's white Pepsi because they take the fat out of it... but I love dairy. Even dairy probiotics. I like them. I just like soil-based probiotics better. Why is that? Well, they last much longer and they are much more broad spectrum. That's why. But do I like dairy and dairy probiotics? Absolutely, I like them. How much? Well, it depends. It depends. I hope I'm answering your question, Kevin. Primarily, I want to say, are they good? They're good. Any probiotic is good. Absolutely, I like it.
Joan, a sand feeling in my eyes happens at night. You've got dry eyes. Either watery eyes or dry eyes. Your body is overcompensating and dry eyes will give you like a sand feeling in your eyes. Get on high DHA and Navitol, and a lot of times it's happening more today than ever before. Why? Look what I'm doing right now. I'm in front of a screen. How many people today are working on computers? How many hours a day before that light? It's hard on your eyes. I find high DHA to be the best for the eyes.
Now, a couple have asked this question so let me do it. I have a question about cataracts. This is Nancy. I heard it's a calcium deposit. Well, listen, cataracts, it's really down to... I mean, there's a couple of things, but cataracts, there's calcium deposit, but it's not the calcium that the problem is; it's the circulation. So in behind the eye, you have what we call microcirculation. You look at all those blood vessels. If you look at what a doctor is looking at when they look in your eye, they see those blood vessels. For me, it's like Toronto, the 407. Oh, there's the 403. There's the Don Valley parking lot. I mean, that's the way I sort of, because I guess I was in school in Toronto, I used to look at those highways behind the eye. But circulation, that's why diabetics have so much trouble with their eyes.
A lot of people haven't been diagnosed with diabetes because their blood sugar is a lagging indicator; meaning that sometimes the last thing to happen is blood sugar. But that doesn't mean you're not a diabetic or pre-diabetic. Diabetes, a lot of times, people are walking around, they're diabetics. They have no idea. They have high circulating insulin and their circulation around their eyes is being affected by it from glaucoma to cataracts to all sorts of things and they don't realize that they're damaging their blood vessels. "Oh, my doctor didn't tell me I'm a diabetic." Well, effectively you are. Effectively, you are.
Suzie's asking, "How much exercise I should do to lose weight?" I think I'm going to do a whole teaching on that, but you can't out-exercise, Susie, a bad diet. You can't. Do I like vitamin E, exercise? Absolutely. It's good for everything except weight loss. I used to tell my patients, because a lot of... Again, I'm not picking on you ladies, but I am, it's because I love you so I'm just telling you the truth. A lot of women, they spend an hour on the treadmill hoping to lose weight and they got horrormones. I said, "Well, you better fix your horrormones because the treadmill ain't going to fix your horrormones." If you're a carboholic, I don't care how much exercise you do. It's good for you. Good for your brain. Good for your heart. Good for your blood vessels. Good for everything. Vitamin E, I love vitamin E, and you're looking at a guy that's exercised most of his life.
Like I said, my dad, 1968, started jogging. Nobody was jogging in 1968. The only people that ran is because the police were chasing them. But my dad started jogging. He found out he was a diabetic, and I love my dad so much, I said, "Get me up in the morning. I'm going with you," and then I got a habit. Takes three weeks to form a habit. I've never stopped exercising since. You know me with vitamin E, here it is again, in a nutshell. After all these years of studying and personal experience and looking at thousands and thousands of patients of exercise, I boiled it down to any exercise you do will be good. Any.
You want to walk? Walk. I walk. I love walking. But the best exercise is 15 to 20 minutes, three to four days a week, weightlifting. Weightlifting. You can use your own weight in a pushup. Resistant exercises. You can use bands. You can use weights. Heart, brain, leg, you name it, that is the best exercise. Elevates your growth hormone. That's the best. Everything else you do is wonderful too, but this is more wonderful. So this is what I teach. It's shown to be the most effective out of all the research. So do you have to get on a treadmill? Not really. I mean, I'm not saying don't do any of it. I'm just telling you what I know.
Okay, let me get back on this computer here. Ennis or Enfys, it's spelled E-N-F-Y-S, I hope that's spelt right, "If one has calcium deposits in the breast, can K2 fix it?" Well, it will help it. Calcium belongs in your bones. If it's in your breast tissue, it's usually because you got too much estrogen. So vitamin K2, yes. I like vitamin K2. I want you to eat your vitamin K2. How do you eat vitamin K2? Eat butter and eat cheese. Cheese curds being the best. Is it helpful? 100%. You want to get your estrogen down, dim it out, hormonal formula. Knock that estrogen down. Do I recommend that? Absolutely. Two growth hormones, estrogen and insulin, knock them down. You need to do that.
Fran's asking, "Why does urine smell with asparagus?" Ah, I think it's something to do with sulfur. Don't worry about it. It's not detoxing. It's sulfur.
Diane, "I take two DHA supplements, but I see double letters." When you're reading, you mean? Okay. I sometimes, Diane, like I'm a little bit slow so if you're still getting what, like blurry vision, well, then double up. Take more DHA. I would add Navitol for eyeballs.
"How do we get skin tags?" Kim. Well, skin tags is a sign that your insulin's too high. It's an indicator. It's like your dash in your car, when the light comes on, on your dash and says check your oil or whatever? Well, skin tags is an indicator that your insulin's too high. You have insulin resistance. Oh, jeepers, I mean my blood sugar... I don't care about your blood sugars. That's the last thing change for most people. Skin tags is a sign of insulin resistance. You got high circulating insulin. Change your diet.
Gary, "What kind of effect does beer and alcohol have on blood sugars?" Well, not good. Not good. Look, alcohol and high fructose corn syrup are very similar. They go to the liver, and they do damage there. Alcohol, over a period of time, affects your blood vessels and this and that. Look, on the Reset, I don't want any alcohol. I want to go 30 day... Again, you're doing a complete detox. You're doing a complete emptying of your liver. Your pancreas is going on a holiday so all of those things, I don't want any alcohol. Am I telling you, you can never have alcohol again? No, I'm not telling you that. There was a study out and maybe I'll post it because I saw it the other day. I flagged it. It doesn't matter how much alcohol you take. There's always some damaging effect to alcohol. But I'm not telling you never to have it. I'm not telling you to leave the planet. I always give a plan to succeed, not a plan to fail. If I tell people, "Look, you can never have another drink." Now, if you're an alcoholic, you should never have another drink. I don't mind telling you that. If you're an addict, a drug addict, well, you should never have another drug. Common sense, right?
But if you want to have a beer or whatever after the Reset, you want to have a glass of wine… Just understand, when people used to come in to our clinic and we put them on a program to lose weight, even before the Reset, we were always low carb, but we tell them, "Okay, you're on this program and you're paying us money, no alcohol," because they come back in the office, "Oh, the scale didn't move this week." "Have you been...?" "Yeah, but doc, I got to have a little bit of wine at night." "No, we said no wine. Nada." "Oh, it's low carb wine." I don't care. But we did that because they were paying us money to lose weight so we were pretty strict. The Reset is very strict. It's temporary. It will help you to change your lifestyle. It will help you to realize that you and carbs don't get along.
There's a lot of psychology in the Reset, and the psychology is this: You find out what you really like on the Reset. You find out that, jeepers, you know what? I eat a lot more carbohydrates than I thought I did. You know how many people have told me that and how many people have told me, "Jeepers, I was hungry all the time." I said, "No wonder you were using the wrong fuel.” You were eating paper and twigs. You don't heat your house if you had a wood stove; and you're at your log cabin and you want to heat that log cabin? Oh, I'll just get newspaper after newspaper after newspaper. But that's what people do. They feed themselves crap and they wonder why they're always hungry. Carbs burn rapidly. You need logs on the fire. That is eggs, meat, and cheese.
By the way, somebody asked, let me get it because I was looking at these questions. Dana, "If you only eat eggs, meat, and cheese, how do you get potassium?" Look, Dana, I'm teasing you, okay? You get potassium in eggs, meat, and cheese. You got more potassium in eggs, meat, and cheese than you have in a banana. Ladies, your avocados. I never see a man eating an avocado. Ladies, have made avocados famous and eat them. Look, they're good for you. Don't get me wrong. Bananas. No. You might as well eat... what is it? 49 M&M's if you're going to have a banana, and I love bananas. I've got long arms because I love bananas, but bananas don't love me. "Dr. Martin, I need my potassium." Well, eat eggs, meat, and cheese. You got lots of potassium in eggs, meat, and cheese. You got everything in eggs, meat, and cheese.
Now, as your body adjusts, for some people that adjustment is major and their bodies adjust and they sometimes get cramping in their legs and their feet or whatever. Their body is adjusting. Your kidneys are making a huge adjustment, for some people, because you were a carboholic. But the body regulates itself because you have all your nutrients. Now, do I want you to add more salt? Yep. Salt's not the problem, guys. Sugar's the problem. So don't worry about potassium. Now look, if you're making an adjustment, you're getting a lot of cramping and sometimes I'll get you to take a potassium supplement in the meantime. You want to have an avocado after you're on the Reset? Avocados are good, guys. Not bananas. Avocados. I just don't like them. I don't like the taste of them, for me. I just got to be honest with you, guys, right?
Okay, Darcy: "What about pure vanilla extract?" Yeah, you can use it. Like, I mean, they're not going to hurt you. Do we allow it on the Reset... Look, if you find a recipe, want to make a low carb, no carb, whatever, and you can take a little bit of vanilla extract; look, I'm not going to call the police on you. The reset police. Nah. Vanilla extract. Ladies, you know more about that than I do.
Nativity, you asked, "Has anybody ever experienced sleep paralysis?" I'm sure there is. Put that out, Nativity, onto... if you haven't done it already, I'm not going to answer it because I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. I know a lot about sleep, but sleep paralysis, I don't know. Ask on the Facebook group if there's others like you. Nativity, I love you, even though you're weird. I don't know... I'm teasing, okay, you know that. I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of things that can affect your sleep and maybe some things are happening, but I don't know.
"What is the cause of swollen ankles?" Terry, well, there can be a lot of causes. Swollen ankles can be everything from dehydration, kidney stress, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure. It could be a lot of reason. Poor circulation in the legs. So there's a lot of causes. You got to figure out which one. A lot of times, it's dehydration… Yeah, "But, doc, I drink water." Drink more. Drink more.
What are the pros and cons of IGF found in meat? That's insulin growth. Ah, I don't know. Vince, look, here's me. Meat is what you should be eating. So if you go online, you're going to see a lot of stuff and I've said this a thousand times, but I don't mind saying it again. Meat can elevate your insulin. No. Does it do a little bit? Of course, you need insulin. Every time you eat, you need some insulin. But if you compare insulin needed when you have a carb to a piece of meat of any kind, there's no comparison. There's no comparison. That is why when you go on the Reset, you are literally sending insulin on a holiday.
Now, again, there's a lot of stuff online and I don't mind, I mean it, I want you... Don't take my word for it. I want you to be like the Bereans. You know what Bereans were? They didn't take the Apostle Paul's word for it when he talked about Jesus. They went and searched the scriptures, it says. I want you to search, guys, but I'm very, very opinionated based on experience, and I'm very adamant that what I am teaching you is 100% true. I think you guys know me enough to know when I don't know something or know a lot about something, you're going to get a little bit of an opinion, but I'm not too uptight about that. But I'm going to tell you something, eggs, meat, and cheese, and I mean it. I doubled down on it. I'm not moving off that because I know what it does and I know what it does inside your body and I know all the nutrients that your body needs and I'm telling you, you got everything you need.
Now, am I against the plant kingdom? Nope. Nope. Nope. I'm not against it. Don't say I'm against it. I'm not, but you cannot compare. You can't compare the animal kingdom foods to plant kingdoms, because if you do that, there's no comparison when it comes to nutrients. There just isn't. Are plants good? Yes. Are animal products good? Yes, and even better. That's just the end of the day. When it comes to the proteins, plant proteins, animal protein. What's best? Animal protein. Vitamins, including B12, including vitamin D in food, fat-soluble vitamins, animal kingdom wins every time. That might not be popular, especially in this day and age when kids go to school, they're not being educated, they're being indoctrinated. I'm telling you. It drives me batty.
Okay, Fran, "What can be done for aging skin?" Well, look, the best thing you can do for aging skin is put muscle on Fran, put muscle on. Build muscle. That's why I love resistant exercises. They're very good. I mean, make sure you're drinking enough water and as far as skin putting stuff, you got to work inside out. You always have to do it. But try the weights more than anything else. Try the weights. Get strong. It's amazing what happens? Is there any fool-proof? Nah.
Okay, Stafford, "Why do teenagers smell?" Jeepers creepers, they're starting puberty. Things change on their body. My mother used to do this. My mom would do this. On the way out to school, she was the sniffer. We'd be parading out to go to school and my mom would be there at the door sniffing us. "Hey, you, go change that shirt. You wore that yesterday. It smells." I'm not kidding you. My mother was the sergeant major at the door in the morning, smelling. It's true, because kids, they rarely will smell until they start getting to puberty and then teenagers hits puberty. Under the armpits and you know what. It's a good question. I laugh because I'm always going back to my childhood. I love my mother. Oh boy, my mother. I'm glad my mother's not alive today. I mean it in a lot of ways. Boy, oh, boy. When she sees the craziness in this world, when she had something to say, you heard it.
"Why are herbs not allowed for pregnant women? Tylenol." Well, Stafford, look, I mean, look, doctors, they don't want anything generally for pregnancy, because anything can affect the pregnancy. By the way, I'm not so much against that. I don't want people taking stuff they don't know what they're taking. When you're pregnant, you got you and that baby to care for. I'm very big on a few things, like I'm really big on probiotics during pregnancy, vitamin D during pregnancy, and high DHA during pregnancy. Obviously, your prenatal vitamins and that, they want that. Herbs, be careful. I mean, I'm just telling you, I agree with a lot of that. You're not taking a thousand things when you're pregnant.
Nina, "Is it possible to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol by diet even though my doctor says genetics and the fact..." You want to reduce your blood pressure, Nina, but you don't want to reduce your cholesterol. Why do you want to reduce your cholesterol? You want to reduce your triglycerides and elevate your cholesterol. Elevate it. Why do you want to reduce it?
So the doctor is saying genetic? Well, I got bad genetics, honestly. You want to see a guy's got bad genetics, me. Diabetes right across my forehead. Lot of cancer in my family. Bad genetics. But you can override your genetics with good food. Start with food. You don't want to lower your cholesterol. You want to elevate your cholesterol because you got lied to. You got lied to. Started with the cereal companies and the pharmaceuticals, the two big conglomerates, and they're powerful. They hijacked medicine and they made cholesterol a boogeyman when it's not. You can't live without cholesterol. Your brain's made up of cholesterol. You make cholesterol in your liver. God don't trust you enough, Nina. You can't make enough cholesterol from your food so he takes care of 85% of it. You got to pitch in the other 15, and when you don't, you got lots of problems in your body, I'm telling you. That's why I love eggs, meat, and cheese. Because you know why? Because they're full of cholesterol. It's what your body needs.
I'm pretty adamant about stuff like that. I don't bend on that, because that's science, guys. You want to know what science says? That's science. It's the way... your cells are made up of cholesterol. Your eyeballs are made up of cholesterol. How can cholesterol be bad for you? It's a transporter of your hormones. Your liver makes 85% of it.
Steve, "Why is sparkling water not allowed on the Reset? Why only Perrier?" Who said that? Did I say that? I don't want no flavoured waters and these ones that are flavored with... You can have a little bit of. You want to use a little bit of Perrier or whatever. Look, I don't care, but it doesn't count for your two liters of water. When I have a Perrier, I call it my Christian beer. My grandchildren think that's funny. No, but I like Perrier. But on the Reset, look, that's not water. Two liters of water. Not sparkling water. Not carbonated water. Not going to kill you, but I don't want it. Did I say... I mean it. Did I say Perrier on that? Carbonated water has a more acidic pH. I want you to drink real water.
Now, Leslie, "Tingling in the fingertips all the time." Well, it could be carpal tunnel. I think it's your neck. I used to say carpal tunnel is insulin resistance causing inflammation and carpal tunnel is, number one, insulin; and number two, your neck. Not your wrist, but your neck.
Anyway, okay, Lucy, what does Dr. Martin think of krill oil? Well, look, to me it got a lot of ink about, I don't know, 5, 10 years ago? You know what? Krill oil is nothing compared to high DHA oil. Nothing. I used to prove it to patients when I would put them on therapeutic doses of high DHA oil for their brain, for concussions, for their eyeballs, for cognitive. No comparison. Krill oil, it's alright. I'm not saying it's no good. No, don't have the high DHA, guys. It don't have it and you need the DHA, I'm telling you. That's why I'm so big on eating steak.
Okay, I hope I didn't miss any. Love you, guys. The Martin Clinic Facebook Group, join it. Share this with your friends. Share the Facebook with them. Get them to join the private group. The other thing is the Reset. Thank you very much for the book. It's tremendous. We appreciate it. I'll talk to you next week about the teaching I'm going to do on if you want to get a nutritional diploma. For you, guys, a lot of you signed up and I'll have a little bit more information about next week. Okay, love you guys. Talk to you soon.
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