A study from the University of Florida is showing how terrible high-fructose corn syrup is for the brain. It starts to create amyloid plaque in the cerebral cortex of the brain, unlike any other sugar, because the body sees it as a foreign invader.
When your body sees something foreign, it attacks it. This is what causes inflammation, and it will start to damage blood vessels in the cerebral cortex. You’re essentially opening the door to Alzheimer’s when the blood-brain barrier is breached.
Join Dr. Martin as he begins a two part series on brain health. In today’s episode he does some teaching on how your brain works, and shares the foods you should be avoiding – no surprise here, but the first one is sugar!
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. Good to be with you folks this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day. We appreciate you guys so much. You have no idea how much we love you guys, our faithful followers. Thank you for listening in and to those who are listening to this on a podcast. Okay. So let me show you a diagram. I got this in 1974, okay? I found it to be so helpful, The Anatomical Chart Series, and I've had this and maybe you've seen it in the background on these Facebooks. I had this when I was in school, and I kept it, and I love it.
Okay. So I want to show you, now this is the brain, okay? It's backwards here if you look at it, but I want to show you because this new study came out on how Alzheimer's gets started. How does Alzheimer's start? And what the research is showing and I'm going to show you, this is a cross section of the brain here. And right in here is called your cerebral cortex. That's very deep in your brain, okay? And below it, I'm just going to point it out, is where we talk about all the time. See that H there, and you might not be able to see it so much. But again, for those on a podcast, what I'm showing is the brain. In the deep centers of the brain, according to these studies, is where Alzheimer's gets started very, very early with what they call amyloid plaque. So literally plaquing of the brain, hardening of some of the arteries and the circulatory system. But they say that it starts in real deep in here and, of course, eventually comes into this area, the hippocampus, which is the memory center of your brain, okay? That's the memory center of your brain.
So let me just put this down, and let's talk about that this morning. So the process starts years and years in advance of any symptoms. I think most doctors agree on that, that Alzheimer's does not occur overnight. It takes a long time, and we actually have a teaching on that. What you do in your 40s and 50s really has an effect on the brain. Okay? But according to this study, it starts deep in the brain with some amyloid plaques. And medicine, and we talked about this maybe last week. And actually, there was a new headline about it that I saw yesterday, and this was in the New York Times. You know what it says? "The FDA," it says, "has reached a new low." Now that wasn't me saying it. That was the New York Times.
Before FDA approval, it goes through a committee, and these are all researchers and doctors. And the committee, 10 out of 11 said, "No, it doesn't do anything." It's going to have side effects, major side effects without a lot of results, this new medication. So the committee, 10 out of 11, and the 11th wasn't sure either. But the 10 out of 11 said, "Eh, no, we don't want this medication on the market. It's not doing anything." But as the New York Times points out, they've reached a new low at the FDA. They actually approved this medication.
Do you know why? I'm going to tell you exactly why it happened. Because there's no medication. Every medication that's out for Alzheimer's has been a colossal failure, a colossal failure. And once again, once again, they're looking for love in all the wrong places, because what they're trying to do, and every medication that I've seen tries to deal with this amyloid plaque. The problem is by the time people actually get symptoms of Alzheimer's, it's way beyond the cerebral cortex, like deep inside the brain where the... It's now into the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. So they're aiming at the wrong thing.
Now, if you remember this, you're wonderful because I can't even remember when I did this one. But they're right in a sense that research is showing that this plaque formation is occurring years and years and years ahead of time before the memory center gets affected. So you might have no symptoms at all. But here's what we do know. I brought this out again. It might have been a year ago. I can't remember. And that doesn't mean that I don't have... You're saying, "Of course, you have early signs of dementia because you don't remember." Look, I don't remember what podcast it was, okay? It's a long time ago. That's all I know. But here's what the research showed. Out of the University of Florida, they said this... high-fructose corn syrup disrupts the brain signaling, and that actually alerts your immune system to trigger a destructive process called tumor necrosis factor.
So let's take the big talk out of it. When you consume high-fructose corn syrup, which is the sugar in everything... When it's added sugar... The food industry, as I describe in the book, The Reset, the food industry are liars, liars, pants on fires. Okay? Remember that. They hide sugar everywhere, and the sugar they use... And they give it all sorts of names because they can get away with it. They get away with it in their labeling. Years ago, we tried to get what they call true labeling because the food industry said... And they were very powerful, and they still are. They said to the government in Canada, United States, "Nah, we don't want to tell you what's in the food because our competition is going to steal our formulas." They don't want that.
But anyway, they lost the argument, but all they had to do, if they added sugar, they didn't have to tell you what kind of sugar is in it. "Oh, yeah. We added sugar." Okay? So you have true labeling in one way, because if you have added sugars in the food, you go to the grocery stores. If you're anything like me, I pick up something; I read the label on it. And I've shown you guys, you want to read a label. Look at how many sugars are added and how many carbs are in the food. Usually, I don't care about anything else. How many carbs are in there, and how much sugar did they add, okay?
And you might get a low-carb food or even a keto food, and you ought to read the label because even keto foods oftentimes have sugar added, and the sugar they use... And they can call it almost anything because they don't have to tell you the truth about what they're using. You'll see it a few times, but you rarely ever see, "Oh, we're using high-fructose corn syrup." They don't tell you that because they know it's a Frankenstein sugar. They know it is the Antichrist, I called it, of sugars. It's poison sugar. Why? Because it's made in a lab. It's not like they go out into the field and take sugar cane. That's not how they make high-fructose corn syrup. They make it in a lab and your body... I've talked to you about this. And one of the biggest reasons that we have so much liver problems, even in children, fatty liver, is high fructose, fructose that goes directly to the liver, just like alcohol, goes directly to the liver.
But what we're finding out even more so now is what that sugar does in the brain. So the University of Florida said that sugar, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup is terrible for the brain because it starts to create amyloid plaque in the cerebral cortex of the brain, unlike any other sugar, because the body sees it as a foreign invader. In the brain, you have what they call the tumor necrosis factor. It's the immune system. When it sees something foreign, it attacks it. The problem with that is it creates inflammation. And that inflammation starts to damage blood vessels within the cerebral cortex, and you start forming amyloid plaque.
So the new study that came out says this occurs early. Well, you can imagine. You can imagine what's happening. Look, all sugar is not good. This is horrendous, what it does to the memory center plus the cerebral cortex. Okay? And taking a med doesn't help. It's not working. Those meds are not working. So take care of your brain. If you want to go on our website, martinclinic.com, you can see Tony Jr. and I did a seminar, a webinar. You can download it. You can watch it. Don't ask me how, okay, because I'm not good at that. But you can actually click on it easily and watch it. Watch the teaching on the brain, how to age-proof your brain.
But it makes sense, doesn't it? The number-one thing you want to do is cut out sugar. Cut it out. If you want to be serious about your brain, cut out sugar, because if you're consuming sugar, it's probably high-fructose corn syrup, and then that gives you a double whammy. Lower your carbohydrates, total carbs. Why? Because what people have today is a condition called insulin resistance or high circulating insulin. Insulin has a job to do, and it will do its job. And a lagging indicator is your actual blood sugar, even your A1C, which is your average blood sugar. Don't wait for that, guys.
And as I brought to you last week, I think, the A1C and the new studies are showing anything above 4.8 on your A1C, I mean, that's unbelievable. You're on the Titanic. You need to change course. Who on God's earth wants to lose their brain? Who wants to outlive their brain? I don't, and I'm sure you don't. So what do we do? Cut out sugar. Assume that any sugar in bread, in ketchup, in you name it, when they add sugar, just assume that the liars put in high-fructose corn syrup. It's cheap. It's addictive. It takes a different route in your brain. It's like cocaine. It goes to that cerebral cortex, the feel-good center of your brain. Then you can get hooked. People are hooked on sugars and crappy carbohydrates.
And you know me, I want you to eliminate as much as you can all these vegetable oils because they're not vegetables, and they're really not an oil. They're synthetic oils made in a laboratory. Again, they make bad sugars in the lab, and they make these vegetable oils, so called seed oils, in a lab, in a vat. They're industrially made. They're not nature. And you get these PUFAs, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and you find them in anything in the middle aisles of your grocery store pretty well. Anything that lasts.
Can I give you an example? Put margarine on your counter and open it, or put it outside on a hot day, and put butter out there. You know what you'll see? Margarine lasts forever, and the bugs won't go near it. Put out some butter, and the bugs will be all over it. Bugs are smarter than we are. They won't touch margarine. "Oh, Dr. Martin, it's Becel." It looks like butter, but it ain't butter, and your body don't know what to do with it. And that's going to play with your brain. You know why? Because it's going to create inflammation in the body because your body says, "What is that? I don't know what that is. I must respond to it."
That's how your immune system works, guys. It sees something that's not natural, and it goes, "Hey, you, out of here." And you get in the brain the tumor necrotic factor being produced, and the problem with that is it starts to damage the brain. Craziness. So if you do nothing else, try and eliminate that as much as possible. So ladies, when you have your potato chips, not that men don't have that, it's not good for you. Think of your brain. Okay? Think of your brain.
So I want to do a couple of slides. Okay. What do we do then? Okay. So one negative: eliminate. Cut way back, okay? So I'm never telling you ever not to have a little piece of chocolate cake unless you're a diabetic. If you're disciplined enough, and good for you. You know how I teach that and appreciate it. If you're disciplined enough, never have it. But if it's your birthday and you want to have a little bit of ice cream, pat yourself on the back and say, "Hey." But you know what, guys? Some people are addicted. And when you're an addict... You never tell an alcoholic, "Oh, just have a little drink." "Nah, I'm off of that stuff, and I can't touch it." "Okay." A lot of the people are addicts, and The Reset was created for you for many reasons, but that's one of them, for addictions to carbohydrates. My name is Tony, and I'm a carboholic.
Okay. I've got help for you, because it's not a matter of, oh, you know what, let's eat keto. Nah, it's hammering down on the carbohydrates and the sugars. Just hammer them down and then replace, replace, replace. Okay? Look, I don't want you to leave the planet. I want you to succeed. I want you to win. I don't want to make it so you can't do this, but I've got to preach it, guys. I've got to tell you... I mean, think about it. In the United Kingdom, Alzheimer's is the number one killer over there. And you know what? They don't even talk about the stinking diet. It's number three here. And as I explained in The Reset book, they're all connected. Cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's, they're all forms of metabolic syndrome, which is caused by insulin, insulin resistance.
And here's another reason. I'm going to just show you again. I'll bring up my chart. Okay. So again, on the podcast, I'm just showing the brain. I'm showing the brain, okay? Now around your brain, you have what they call a blood-brain barrier. And your blood-brain barrier is like the barrier you have in your gut between your gut and your blood. Okay? The gut-blood barrier. That's very important. We talk about that when you have leaky gut. Leaky gut, leaky brain. But here's the connection because your microbiome, they communicate with each other, the gut and the brain. Remember, you've got three pounds of bacteria in your body. You get on this scale, minus three. I let you do that. Okay? Just minus three, because part of your weight is three pounds of bacteria.
And the problem with bacteria... It's not that you don't have bacteria. You've got bacteria for sure, but it's either good, bad, and ugly. But your body has a blood-brain barrier. And what we know today, that barrier doesn't allow garbage to go through the brain. It doesn't. The problem is, when you're a carboholic, here's what we know. Insulin, guys, has got a job to do. Remember, it's the traffic cop. "Hey, sugar, come here. Follow me. You're out of here." Okay, because you can't have sugar in your bloodstream. It can't stay there. So when you tell me, "Oh, Dr. Martin, I need a little bit of sugar," no you don't. Your body does everything it can to get rid of sugar. Sugar needs to be used as energy immediately or stored. Got it? Okay? And the traffic cop says, even in the brain, "Sugar, come here, you."
Now, the problem with the brain, it's headquarters. It's government. It runs your whole body. It needs a lot of energy. So when you eat, remember your brain is going to take 25% of your income. Think of taxes, okay? You go to the gas station and you fill up, right? And it's a dollar whatever it is a liter, or I saw this morning in California, gasoline is $5 a gallon or over $5 a gallon. I don't know. What is it in Florida? Three bucks now? I remember when it was, gee, a buck something. But in Canada, most of the price of gasoline is taxes. True or false? The government, right? California, taxes. That's why it's so high. And I don't want to argue about taxes, okay? All I'm saying is your brain's like that. You're eating, and it's going, "Hey, you. You owe me 25% of what you're eating."
But if you have a history of carbohydrates, if you have a history of sugar... "I've just got to have my dessert, Doc." "Well, okay, but..." "I insist on eating bread and cereals and noodles and pasta. I insist." "Well, okay, but I'm just telling you what's happening in your brain." Your blood-brain barrier, remember. Okay? So your brain says 25% belongs to me. Then after a while, your blood-brain barrier delays insulin from crossing over. So you know what happens? Your blood-brain barrier says to insulin... Now, it needs to come across to say, "Hey, you sugar, come here." Right? I mean, that's its job. It doesn't allow sugar to stay in the bloodstream. It says, "Come here, I'm going to park you. And brain, you wanted to use some of that? Okay, go ahead. But the rest, come here with me. You used it for energy. The rest, I want you with me."
The problem is when you are a carboholic, your blood-brain barrier don't let the cop in. "You don't have a warrant," your blood-brain barrier says. "You can't come in here." So what happens? That sugar saturates the brain, and the area it saturates is your hippocampus. And your hippocampus, it starts to destroy your memory center, the cells in your memory center of your brain. Sugar not only forms plaque, especially high-fructose corn syrup, but even carbohydrates turn to sugar rapidly. And when insulin can't get it out of there, it saturates your brain.
You see the importance of your diet? Remember, this is not me saying this. I didn't make this up. Alzheimer's... You don't hear it so much anymore. But when it first started to really take off... Let's see. Is it 20 years now? About, where we're hearing more and more and more and more about Alzheimer's, you know what they called it? Type 3 diabetes. Not type 2. Type 3, because they found that people that were diabetic were much more likely to have Alzheimer's. That is a fact, guys. But here's the memo. Don't wait till you're a diabetic. Diabetes is the last thing to happen, not the first thing. You need to take care of your brain. I need to take care of my brain.
I was online last night, and a lady was asking me last night, "Doc, can you explain to me, then I'll tell my granddaughter," who is being indoctrinated, by the way, "Don't you eat red meat. It's bad for you and bad for the planet." Imagine they're teaching this in schools today. Isn't that the craziest thing? "And grains are so good for you." No, they're not. They're going to be sugar in five seconds. It's destroying people. It's destroying their brain. And tomorrow we're going to talk about how to protect your brain, okay? Today was more negative. A little bit of teaching on how your brain works, but it was negative in the sense that I was telling you what not to eat.
Tomorrow, I'll tell you what to do. And we'll look at other things that they're talking about, how to prevent Alzheimer's. I'm going to show you what you can do. Do the best you can. Do the best you can. But you've got to, got to, got to get control of what goes in your mouth, guys. I'm telling you it's the key to metabolic syndrome. It's the key. And I will repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. I've got like a one-track mind almost. I can't help it, guys. I'm going to tell you about it because I look at all these studies and I go, "Yeah, they're right. I mean, amyloid plaque." So they're trying to find something to destroy amyloid plaque, but why amyloid plaque? Why? I'm a why guy. And how to fix it. Okay, we'll do that tomorrow.
Guys, if you're not a member of the Martin Clinic Facebook group, join in. We'd love to have you. Do you get our emails? Tony Jr. and I were talking about that yesterday. It's almost 100,000 people open our emails and read them. If you don't get that email, make sure you get it. And where do you get it? I think you've got to go to martinclinic.com. I think. Jeanette, Nicole, pipe in. Okay? I don't know. I just work here. The joys of being a senior citizen. You should see my grandchildren. They laugh at grandpa. Like, "Grandpa, are you kidding me?" "I'm sorry. Go slow. Oh, my word." And thank God I'm not in school anymore and especially during COVID when they had to go online. I would have had trouble with that. Okay. Anyway, you guys are great. Love you, guys. 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!