Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners.
Some of today’s topics include:
- CLA in dairy
- Food sensitivities
- Astragalus root vs Navitol
- Chronic fatigue syndrome
- NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine)
- Lap swimming for strength training
- Seborrheic dermatitis
- Adrenal glands
- Reducing homocysteine
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: Well, good morning everyone. Great to start the day with you guys as usual. Hope you've had your vitamin C. Here we go. Let's start with Mary. Mary, "Does Dr. Martin think diluting 35% cream with water for family members who drink milk be a better choice than drinking 1% skim, 2%?" Absolutely. Don't ditch the dairy. I was trying to do a teaching on CLA, conjugated linoleic acid. Say that fast three times. Conjugated linoleic acid. Why it's so good for you? It's a fatty acid that's very good for you found in dairy, specifically dairy. Don't ditch your dairy, switch your dairy. That's what I want people to do. I want them to switch dairy. I don't want you drinking milk unless you have a cow in the backyard. I want you to drink cream. Look, the best things you can drink are water and coffee. To my teetotaler friends, you can have some tea too. Okay? Cream, that is what I want you to feed the kids is Dr. Martin's Perfect Smoothie. It is the best thing for them. They need an enormous amount of fat and protein and make Dr. Martin's Perfect Smoothie with no carbohydrates. The best thing for them. You can put a few berries in there. I tell you, it is a super sonic drink. But as you get older, of course you want to use bone broth as a meal replacement, Dr. Martin's Perfect Smoothie.
On The Reset, you can do Dr. Martin's Perfect Smoothie. Don't put berries in it on The Reset. There's a reason for that, but it is a good way to substitute. If you want to give them dairy and they're drinking milk, I'm not big on that because they denatured milk. Switch your dairy. Don't ditch your dairy. Okay. It's really important. Switch it. That's why I'm so big on cheese because cheese got vitamin K2 and it is good for you. It is. Cheese is wonderful. The hard cheeses of course are better. The hard cheese is full of bacteria. Good bacteria for you. It is a wonderful vitamin K2. It's got healthy fat and protein. That's why I want you to switch your dairy and not ditch your dairy. Thanks for the question.
Someone's asking here at the bottom. I remember I wrote that. Okay, Annette. "Why is it when a person eats and feels like cheese gets stuck?" Well, listen, your body is so intelligent, so fearfully and wonderfully made. For some people, actually their throat constricts when they're eating something they have an allergy to. Your body goes... Okay? Now, most often it's not cheese, but you got to figure that out. If you're having trouble digesting cheese, and sometimes the body reacts right in the mouth or in the throat where it constricts. It's screaming at you. I can't digest that properly. Don't eat that stuff. You got to listen to that. I always tell moms, be doctor mom. You know more than anybody else. You know more than doctors. You know more than anyone. Watch your child. Figure out what their sensitivities are. You got digestive trouble.
I always tell people, do an experiment. Eliminate. The elimination diet. I get rid of this... Oh geez, you know, I feel better. Well, there's your clue. There's your clue. Look, it's rare. Most people can have dairy if they only eat cheese. What they realize generally... Again, generally is what they are allergic to is the milk sugar, lactose. What are they saying now? 70% of the population is lactose intolerant. In cheese, you have a wee bit of lactose, but not much. You usually find that in milk and yogurts and stuff like that. You got to sorta play doctor. Don't be deceived. Sometimes people, "Yeah. But I liked that." I know, you liked it, but it doesn't like you. You got to figure that out, guys. You know what I always hated? This is me. Okay. I hated it. "Oh, I'm drinking lactose-free milk." Oh, I hate that stuff because you're not getting rid of the problem. Even though it's lactose, it's the milk. It's fat-free. You need fat in milk. Go milk the cow, you'll see how much fat there is. Not that I ever did.
Lexi, "What do you think of astragalus?" Astragalus. What is that? It's found in your legume kingdom. Lexi is asking what do I think of it for kidney disease. Well, to be honest, it's a root. I have no personal experience on using that, as far as getting clinical results. A lot of times you'll ask me stuff, and in the clinic usually I did a lot of stuff and eliminated stuff and found, you know what? I found something better. Here, because I saw the questions ahead of time. Now I'm going to show you one of my first books that I ever wrote. On a podcast, you won't see this, The Truth About Pycnogenol. I wrote this book a long time ago. I'm kind of laughing at it. 1996 was this one. This was a huge, huge seller. They actually printed it in French.
I'm showing you, “le pin de vie”. We call it the pine of life. In Europe, they're called pine bark extract, Pycnogenol. In Canada, it's Navitol. That is a trademark name. It's pine bark extract. When someone talks to me about, "Doc, what do you think of astragalus as a supplement?" Well, can I tell you about something better? That's me, guys. Look, I'm biased. Why am I biased? Well, it's because that's what I know. Before this book, I wrote a book on chronic fatigue syndrome. I found that with the huge discovery in the late '80s on chronic fatigue syndrome, which was like an epidemic in those days. They didn't even know what they cause from, adrenal fatigue and whatever. I'll see if I have a copy of that book. Again, I'm showing a book to those listening later on the podcast. I'm showing a book I wrote a long, long time ago on chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia.
I had it published in French for Quebec mostly. One thing that I had discovered, that people that had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia suffered from adrenal exhaustion. I think we have a question about the adrenals today. I was the first guy, as far as I know, that came out with that because here's what was happening in the area. Women were dropping like flies. In the late '80s, they called it the yuppie flu and you name it. They had all sorts of names for it. Then they said along chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, which I believe fibro by the way is a symptom of chronic fatigue syndrome. I discovered through seeing hundreds and hundreds of patients who had it, they had something in common.
The thing they had in common was they had gone through enormous amount of stress and were exhausted. It was like their battery packs inside their bodies cells weren't giving off ATP anymore. They were, but they were exhausted. These people were living on fumes. They were tired of being tired. Do you know how many times I heard that? They come into the office and the first thing they would say, "Doc, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." Okay. A lot of it, I remember, you guys might've heard me tell this story in the past. I remember because I wrote a book on it and I remember this one time it was a national show in the public radio in the United States. They invited me on. I had a publicist at the time. I was doing radio and TV shows all over the place, all over the place because I wrote a book about chronic fatigue and people wanted to talk about it. I didn't know this was going to be a debate, but it happened to end up to be a debate. I was just invited to be on the national public radio in the United States.
They had a physician on with me. I think I was on first. I talked about chronic fatigue, what I found out about the adrenal glands, and what I found out about the diet and this and that. I was giving my side and then I realized that, oh, they had another guest on and he was a physician. You know what he said, it's mass hysteria. I was taken aback. Mass hysteria. I said, oh, okay. He said, it's women. You know, today they would lynch him. No, but seriously, he was so insensitive. He said it is emotional. It is not physical. It's all in between their ears. It's women who are unhappy with themselves. Guys, you know me enough that it took everything for me not to start screaming on the radio. I realize I was on a radio interview nationally in the United States, millions of people listening. I had to breathe, take deep breaths, not get excited, let him finish.
And boy, did I ever go after him after that? You know what I called him, personal. You know what I said? "I don't know this guy you have on with me today, but can I give you a name for him?" The host said, "Yeah. Go, go." "Dr. Dinosaur, nice to meet you. You're a dinosaur. You should be extinct." I said, "You know, this is the problem. You've dismissed hundreds of thousands, if not in the United States at that time, millions of women who are suffering from a condition medically diagnosed though poorly at the time." I said, "I'm bringing information out and you dismissed all of it as mass hysteria." I tell you guys, I was livid but I couldn't show it. By the way, it was on radio. If they'd seen my face. But I remember discussing that. It was crazy at the time. But I found out that it was adrenal exhaustion and I was right. It was mass levels of cortisol over a period of time. Cortisol is like that inside, and for different reasons.
I was the guy that brought it out in the '80s and early '90s that women that had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia were 50% more likely to get breast cancer. I was showing the connection between stress and what it does. And you know, now it's well-established. Cortisol pours gasoline on the fire and creates. Now we know this much more than we did back then is how it creates inflammation in the body and it just pours gasoline on the inflammation that takes off and exhausts the body. I had a plan to get a woman well again. I say women because it was 95% or higher women. It was a women's disorder because of horror-mones. Remember, cortisol is a horror-mone. It's not meant to be secreted for a long period of time. Anyway, I came up with that. Long story short is it's where I discovered pine bark extract. I found it to be extremely helpful, and so did thousands and thousands. It wasn't easy to find, but when I got it, I remember my wife who suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome.
Gave her some pine bark extract. She was my laboratory guinea pig. Within a few days, she said, "You better not run out of that stuff. You hear me?" Well, I said, "It's not easy to get." I traveled around the world after that. After writing that book, I traveled around the world to tell people about pine bark extract, I did. I was probably on about 300 radio shows and TV shows in North America, including Canada AM. Remember that show? Talking about pine bark extract and what it does, how helpful it was. Telling the story of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. I've got a long history with that. Again, bringing it back to guys, when you talk about flavonoids and polyphenols and this kind of thing that are found in fruits and vegetables and legumes and roots and whatever, I'm not against such stuff at all. But when I put it up against pine bark extract, it comes in second. That has been my experience with that. Then you got to understand now, hundreds of thousands of people would give testimony to that. It's to me, one of the greatest supplements ever is pine bark extract.
Someone was asking, let me get to it because they're asking a couple of more questions. Pine needles, who asked that? Gilan. Well, yeah, I like pine needle. If you know my history, my grandfather, 1911 started the Martin Clinic, 1911. What do you think they used? You should see the potions and what they used in teas and extracts and roots. They made up teas. They made up saps. When I say they is because my grandfather worked with his brother, my great uncle, Paul. Timmins, 1911. Pine needles, yeah, good. Pine bark, better. Good question though. Certainly, I like natural stuff obviously.
Dave is asking about NAC, the supplement cysteine. It's an amino acid. They're taking it off the market, Dave. I don't like that. The fact that the FDA, and I think they see it more as something they want to put under prescription. Again, I need to confirm this, but apparently Amazon is taking it off. You can't even order it. I like NAC. I always liked it for allergies and I used to have formulas with it. I got no problem with that. I like it. I don't think it should be outlawed. I really don't, but I don't run the show, Dave. Okay. It does a lot of things. I like it.
Susanna, "I know Dr. Martin is against plastic." Yes and no. Okay. Susanna, what I am saying is that good luck trying to get rid of plastic. It takes 400 years for it to... Well, I don't even know how they know that, but that's what the rest are meaning. It takes 400 years for plastic to dissolve itself. Susanna, yeah, I don't like it, but I don't think you're going to get away from it. I've done podcasts on plastic and what it does. It's in the environment, it's in the air, it's in the water. You're not going to escape unless you plan on leaving the planet.
If you get to another planet, probably not plastic up there. But on planet earth, and they find it on Mount Everest to the top of the world, and they find it in the placenta. Do I like it? No, because it mimics estrogen. Let me answer your question. Susanna. When you have oh, dentures with plastic. Well, you know what, like I said, this is why I love hormonal formula DIM because it dims it out. This is another reason I like flaxseed because it has lignans. It has a hundred times more lignans than anything else in nature. What flaxseeds do is they block extra estrogen from plastics and chemicals. There's a hundred thousand different chemical. I call it the DuPont factor. I mean, there's wonderful things that they do, but these are estrogen mimickers, Susanna, and you're absolutely right. Dim it out. This is why I like the supplement. I recommend it. I take it because I want to dim out my estrogen. Estrogen is a growth hormone. "Oh, doc, my estrogen is going down." Don't worry about that, as much as balance it out because you might still be estrogen dominant even though your estrogen is going down because you have more estrogen than progesterone. Good questions.
Carina, "What do you think about resveratrol?" You know what? I get my tongue twisted on some of these things. Resveratrol, I think if I said that right. Well, that's the compound that you find in grapes. I think even cherries would have it. They're compounds, they're polyphenols again. She's asking, would it be a substitute for sugar? Well, you know what? I never heard of that being a substitute for sugar because I'm thinking more of the compound. I don't think it's sweet. Although, maybe they've made one out of that. I haven't heard that, Carina, so I don't know how to answer that. Maybe someone can answer that for me. I never heard of it being for a sweetener. It's what wine does. You know, the French paradox, French men drink a lot of wine and they seem to have a lot less heart disease. I don't think it's the wine, guys. I think it's the fat that they eat. Over in France, they eat a lot of butter and a lot of duck liver fat.
Barbara's asking a question, "What's a good age to start drinking coffee?" Well, I don't know. I think I've told you the story. I was fairly young, probably 13 or 14 when I started drinking coffee. I mean, there's caffeine in there. Do you want to give kids caffeine? Most kids don't like coffee. You know, even young people, it's amazing to me. I've had a couple of granddaughters and grandsons that have been baristas at Starbucks for example. All these drinks, the amount of sugar they put in there is terrible. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, Barb. I liked it. But you know, when I first started drinking coffee, I had to put four sugars in it. What good was that? I just liked the smell of it more than anything else. That percolated coffee that my mother used to make and my grandma. I love the smell of it. I said, if I love the smell, it must be good. Well, then I needed to put cream and four sugars in it. Now I drink it completely black and don't come near me with sugar and don't even put cream in my coffee. I like it straight up. You know what I always tell Rosie? Life is too short to have a bad coffee. For me, it's always taste. Isn't it? People are different. We're all different. I like my vitamin C straight up.
Dawn is asking, what do I think about lap swimming strength training. I think it's great. You got a pool? You get in there and do your exercise from that. Absolutely. Absolutely good for you. Excellent question. You know me on exercise. Vitamin E. What do I like the most? Get strong, ladies. Get strong. You want to walk? Good move. Any movement is good, but here's the best. The best, I'll preach it to you. I've come to these conclusions by experience and hundreds of thousands of patients. The best thing for you, all exercise is good. All of it. Any motion, walking, moving, cycling, swimming, whatever. But the best is resistance training. Sun, steak, and steel. Steel, weights, or bands. Get strong. Get strong, guys. Ladies, get strong. Strong muscle, strong bones. Strong muscle, smart brain. Strong muscle, less insulin resistance. Those are the three biggest things you will get. I mean, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, anti everything. But strong muscle, strong bones. Strong muscle, better brain, better memory, better cognitive.
Strong muscle is the greatest thing you can do as far as vitamin E. You got to get strong. Sun, steak, and steel. It lowers your insulin. You know me in insulin, you know me in insulin. One of the biggest factors in heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes. I see my little arrows going when I talk about insulin. Lower your insulin, lower your insulin resistance. One of the ways do it is for you to get strong. Ladies, you don't have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. Whenever I say names like that, my grandchildren look at me. Like, "Grandpa, who are you talking about?" The other day, my two youngest grandsons. We're talking about something. They're 10 and 12. I'm saying to my grandson he has beautiful hair. Beautiful hair. You know, what I don't have. I said, "Brock, you've got beautiful hair like Elvis." Like he combed it back like coming out of the pool. That's what it was. He combed it back like that. I said, "You remind me of Elvis." He said, "Who? Who's that?" I just got to remember that not everybody knows who Arnold Schwarzenegger is. Not everybody knows. The young people don't know who Elvis. My grandson, "Who's Elvis?" I said, "You mean, you don't know who Elvis is?" For heaven sakes. Okay. Let me keep going. I want to try and finish this if I can.
“Does cooking foods lose their nutritional value?” That's overrated guys. Look, how can you lose nutritional value from cooking a steak? Steaks’ got B12, if you cook it, you lose B12? No. You cook vegetables, you lose your nutritional value? No, you don't. Is it 100%? Well, how can you eat a steak without cooking it? How can you have roast beef? Unless you cook it, right? How are you going to have an egg? Unless you cook it. I guess you can have raw eggs. Some people drink that. I'm sorry. I don't drink that. Okay. I'm not Rocky Balboa. Now again, would the young people know who Rocky is? I'm ancient, aint I? I'm sorry, guys.
Rita is asking about seborrheic dermatitis. Well, I'm going to tell you, you know me and skin. Whenever you see something on your skin, have another arrow. You see it on your skin. What's visible, it's an organ. Your skin is an organ. When you see something on your skin, point back to the gut. Seborrheic dermatitis in my opinion is a fungal infection because you got a yeast growing in your body. You have a candida. You have fungus, and it goes on your skin. You better start inside out, Rita, to treat it. The number one thing is probiotics. I'd be using digestive enzymes too, breaking down all the foods properly.
Let me just see here. You know what, Bret, I think I talked about this already. Cortisol Control, Navitol. What else can highly affect the adrenals? Well, the number one thing, Bret, to affect the adrenals is you got to change your diet. The worst thing you can do for adrenal glands to up the levels of cortisol is when you are eating wrong. You look at the world today and the stress there is. I mean, one thing we've learned about COVID, holy moly, the underbelly of society has really been affected by the enormous amount of stress. I don't want to go into that discussion too much, but just to say, is that one of the things that you need to do to strengthen your body is get off sugars. There's nothing that will tank you, your adrenals, your hypothalamus, which is the center of your universe in the brain, the hypothalamus, which controls your hormones. There's nothing that affects that worse than a crappy diet full of sugar and crappy carbohydrates, Bret. Supplements, I talked about Navitol. I talked about Cortisol Formula. I love those things. You guys know me on that, but I tell you something, you are not going to fix anything on a bad diet. You can't out supplement a bad diet. That's me. I'm a food guy first. I think I answered everything there.
Elsie, "What about fingers? What makes skin come off?" Well, usually fungal. When you look at skin, anything, dry skin, whatever. Have an arrow pointing back, Elsie, to the gut.
Sandra, "An article said B12 plays a role in reducing the amino acid called homocysteine. Is that true?" Yep. Homocysteine is an amino acid that is part of breakdown. Your body is a manufacturing plant. One of the ways your body breaks down protein is to produce what they call homocysteine. It's an amino acid. It's a breakdown. That's all right. It's just part of the way your body works. The problem is, is if you have too much of that homocysteine, it is a sign that you have a lot of inflammation in your body. It's destructive. B12, which you get in steak, and she's saying, "How do you know when we have too much B12?" Well, look, if you're over 1,400 in your blood work, I like between 800 and 1,200 vitamin B12. That has been my experience. You want to optimize B12. If you get up around the 1,400, don't take it anymore. Just eat steak. Don't take a supplement after that. You don't need it. Okay. But B12 is very important in getting rid of homocysteine. You're absolutely right, Sandra.
Who else? There was one more question. Oh yeah, Shelly. "Can too much vitamin D cause bowel issues?" No, not really. The biggest thing is if you got too much vitamin D, you might get nauseous. You might start to vomit if you have way, way too much of it. So more nausea. Okay. But again, and I finish with this. This is so rare because you know me, I have to talk in generalities. 90% of the population, which we talked about yesterday are deficient in vitamin D. But if you get too much D, like I said, the waiting rooms and the hospitals are now full of people. I know what's wrong with you. You got too much vitamin D. Vitamin D is a hormone. Vitamin D is something your body needs. You're a human solar panel. Okay. Can that happen? Yes. Is it rare? Yes. Guys, you are wonderful today. Thank you. Thanks for your patience. We love you guys so dearly. I mean, I enjoy doing this because I know you're on with me. Otherwise, I don't want to talk to myself. Okay. Hey, love you guys and we'll 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!