“Laughter is merry medicine,” was written over 4000 years ago by King Solomon in the Book of Proverbs. Dr. Martin discusses a new study about the good laughter does for our health, and shares how he learned to laugh at himself a long time ago.
The study is showing a boost in the immune system, and a chemical change in the brain to combat the cumulative effects of stress – all because of laughter!
Dr. Martin also shares an interesting study on inflammation. It’s looking at grip strength as an indicator of inflammation. If someone is weak in their hands, there’s a good chance inflammation is happening in their body.
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, everyone. Once again, hope you're having a great start to your week. To my American friends and audience, but yesterday was July 4th so happy Independence Day. I'm going to talk about two studies that came out that I saw on the weekend. And there probably no one else... I don't know, would even mentioned these, because they're a little bit different than people wouldn't maybe flag them or at least doctors wouldn't. Now I got to tell you first just before I read to you the results of the study. Laughter is merry medicine. Now where's that found? It's in the Bible. Laughter's merry medicine. So Solomon what? 4,000 years ago wrote that laughter is merry medicine. It's found in Proverbs chapter 17, I believe. Yeah. Verse 22. And you know what, isn't that true? For some of you. Not... And I mean it, you guys are unbelievable. You put up with my shenanigans on a daily basis, but a few of you have said they don't like my humor. Okay, I'm sorry.
Laughter is merry medicine. It's not that I don't take life seriously. Of course, I do. I was sort of... joshing and this morning with Ginette because she sent me an email and this guy was all uptight about me because I wasn't giving him enough information. And I said, "Look everybody's going to be thrilled." We got over 2 million views just on Facebook. Nevermind our podcast. So you're not going to please everyone. I understand that. Then for the most part, I think people obviously enjoy a podcast and enjoy my personality and methods. I'm sure I rub some people the wrong way. And I don't mean to. But you know what I learned a long time ago in my life personally, is to laugh at myself. When you get married, 40 years ago ago for me, you better learn to laugh.
I'm sure my wife had to learn to laugh because, "Oh, look at the guy I married." But when you learn to laugh at yourself, don't take yourself so seriously. Look, everyone has a different fingerprint and everyone has a different personality. I get that. But I don't know if it's because we had such a big family, but boy, you had to develop... You know my expression that I came out with maybe a few weeks ago, God give me a tender heart and a thick hide. I want to have a tender heart towards people and a thick hide. So I can take criticism and laugh at myself. Because if you don't laugh at yourself, other people are going to. My grandchildren, "Grandpa, you're a dinosaur." I like hearing that. I laugh at myself. I am a dinosaur. I understand that. But anyway, so now we've established that laughter is merry medicine, according to the Bible.
But listen to this. This is a new study. Laughter is merry medicine. You know why? Two things that they're showing. Two things that laughter does. One, it increases your immune system. You know why? Like vitamin D it supercharges your T-cells. Now remember your T-cells are your navy seals. They're your natural killer cell. They see a virus, they see a bacteria, they see a cancer cell. And the Navy seals are the first ones up. They're the first ones out. And they are kamikaze pilots and they go right after and destroy bacteria viruses and that. Listen, when you laugh... I got one of my grandsons. I says, "Are you happy?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Well, then tell your face." It's just his personality. And he's a beautiful young guy. And I just say, well, "Yeah, but tell your face, tell your face, laugh and learn to laugh at yourself." I know I'm weird. I laugh at myself. Isn't that exciting? Think about this for a minute. That when you laugh and I think I might have to give it a vitamin, a vitamin category at the Martin Clinic, vitamin L laugh, it increases your immune system. It that not interesting how your body operates? Laughter is merry medicine written 4,000 years ago.
Number two, this is the second thing according to the study, obviously it affects chemical changes in your brain that buffer... Okay, I'm just going to read this study that buffer our bodies against the cumulative affects of stress. Stress elevates your cortisol, cortisol pours gasoline. It pours gasoline on inflammation. Now remember, let's go back a little bit so that you follow what I'm going to say here. High circulating insulin, leaky gut, meaning your microbiome and free radical damage are the three seeds of disease. If you follow a graph... So you got those three things and follow a graph. High circulating insulin are insulin resistance, food. Leaky, gut, and oxidative damage, free radical damage, AGE glycation. They're all part of that third category. They are the seeds of disease. Then step two, it creates inflammation. So, when you read that inflammation is at the root of all disease. Well just about, but you have to come a step backwards. So you guys know that three seeds of disease creates inflammation inside the body. And I'm going to talk about this in a minute. So remind me not to forget.
Inflammation destroys the first thing. What is inflammation destroying in your body? What does it do? It destroys circulation, microcirculation, and your little endothelial levels of your blood vessels. That's what inflammation starts to destroy, but it destroys more than that. It's very destructive. You don't see it. It's inside your body. You don't see it. I'm not talking about pain. Although that could be a factor, but inflammation is often silent. You think of inflammation after an injury or you got pain and yeah, but this is the silent one that's circulating through your body and is damaging blood vessels and that. It ain’t cholesterol, it's inflammation. But again, you got to come back. But what pours gasoline on inflammation is cortisol stress. And what laughter does, according to this study, not only increases your T-cell activity, your Navy seals, which you want to do, but it also mitigates. It helps to decrease the effects of cortisol. Meaning inflammation on specifically the brain, the brain. Isn't that interesting? Doesn't that want to make you laugh? Laughter is merry medicine. Now I want to get to the second thing I was going to talk to you about today because they're connected. Because we're talking about physiology. How your body operates and we're finding out that you have another potential vitamin. Vitamin L, laughter. Not great? I like that.
Now, this is another study. This came out in the Experimental Gerontology. You know what gerontology is? The study of old people. Now I flagged it for this. According to the Experimental Gerontology Magazine that they can measure... This is fascinating to me. One way you can measure inflammation... Now, guys fill in the blank for me here, because remember I'm always trying to teach you. I want to teach you so that you think. So what is one of the ways in a blood test that you can measure inflammation?. What is it? You guys know this. What's the test that I like? And Ned you're the first one up, CRP, C-reactive protein. Yes, it can tell you.... That test by the way, what should the number be? What is Dr. Martin looking for? I'm not looking for normal. I'm looking for better than normal. When it comes to CRP inflammation, I want it under one. One is still normal, but you have inflammation. Two is still normal, but you have inflammation. Three is starting to get high, but now you have a lot of inflammation. Because inflammation is very silent. So CRP. Yes.
Now listen to this. This study in the Experimental Gerontology, I think you will find it interesting. One way to measure... To see if you have inflammation silent is to check your hand grip strength. Think about this for a minute. When your hand grip strength isn't very good. Especially as you get older, you have a silent inflammation going on in your body according to Experimental Gerontology. They found it to be every bit as accurate as the CRP test, C-reactive protein. You can hardly get a doctor to do C-reactive protein. They just don't like doing it. But isn't that something guys? I bring this back to vitamin E. So we learned about vitamin L this morning. I want to bring you to the true vitamin E, and that is exercise.
What lowers inflammation generally in the body is you getting strong. You getting strong. Now there was a study... This is a few years ago. I'd have to go look it up I can hardly remember it exactly where it came from. But they showed if you put a person on the floor and you can tell a lot about where they're at physically and what their future's going to be like, if they can't get themselves off the floor without help. Now I'll tell you. It's not as easy as you think. Anybody that's my age will understand that. Not easy to get yourself off the floor without a chair or whatever, just get yourself up. So that was a measurement. But they weren't measuring inflammation. This hand grip, just your hand grip. You'll have trouble opening a jar. You got inflammation in your body. According to this study, it's interesting. Isn't it?
And the other day I had brought to you, 50% of the population over the age of 75 are two times more likely to develop dementia. And of course I will talk to you till I'm blue in the face about metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is insulin. It's food. It's not anything else, it's food. So when you see someone with dementia, the research is overwhelming. It's like a type 3 diabetes. And now they're not talking about that anymore. They were, you go back 10, 15 years ago that's what they called it. Dementia, Alzheimer's, type 3 diabetes. They don't want to talk about that anymore. And I hate be negative, but medicine is looking for love in all the wrong places. It's looking for a med, and they've been colossal failures in dementia. It's not medication you're missing. Medication has been a colossal failure. I talked to you a few weeks back about the FDA approving a drug for Alzheimer's when they had no business approving it. Everybody on their committee said, "No," except one person.
They said, "No, it doesn't work. Why are you approving it?" And the FDA approved it because medicine is screaming for a medication. They don't want to do the hard work of telling people, stop eating crappy ultra processed sugars and carbohydrates. The food industry is massive from Kraft to Kellogg's, to Unilever and Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. They own the world in terms of food and they don't want you to stop eating their cereals, but it's at the root of that. It's at the root of it. Food is something you can control. You can't control everything in life. You can't control your genetics. If you got bad genetics, you can't control that, but you can override it. I can't help that I look like my father. And by the way, today, 16 years ago, my father passed away. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about my papa, my dad. When I look in the mirror, I see his face. Well, he didn't call me Tony Jr. for nothing. And then I called my son, Tony Jr. Jr. Tony the third.
No, but seriously guys, it ain't rocket science. The things that you can control. You can't control everything in life. You can't control the bus if you cross the street and it happens they hit... I mean, come on you can't control all of that. You can't control somebody else's driving. You can only control what you can control. This is why I preach, and I preach, and I preach on self discipline, and you're never going to get strong, vitamin E without doing vitamin E. It's not going to happen by osmosis guys. "Ah, I'm going to read a book on exercise." You better implement it. I'm dead serious about this guys. I tell you, you need sun, steak, and steel. And I don't care how old you are. I don't care.
It's amazing how your body has an ability to regenerate, to strengthen itself. But it's not going to happen by talking about it. Whenever I look at anybody's blood work, if they got any issue, I tell them, "Well, start with The Reset. 30 days, reset that body. Take away the inflammation." Because you're going to take away the insulin. You're going to help to heal leaky gut. You're going to reduce your free radical damage. All in 30 days. You're going to empty your liver. Your pancreas is going on a holiday, and your horror-mones are going to get better. But you start with food and then implement vitamin E, exercise and do the right exercise, in my opinion. Get anything… remember any movement is going to be good for you. Any movement. You like biking? Good for you. You like walking? Good for you. You like swimming? Somebody asked me about that the other day. Hey, good for you. I love it. But you want to be strong.
Aerobics, I'm not against it, but it's overrated. I don't want you spending an hour on your treadmill when you don't need to do that, you need to get strong. Do 15, 20 minutes it's going to be not easy necessarily to start, do steel man. Do some resistant exercises, 15 to 20 minutes, three to four times a week. And you're doing what I know is the best exercise for you. Now, like I said, I liked the rebounder. I liked all that, but don't just do that. That's good for you. Tremendous for your lymphatics and drainage. I liked that. I saw my next door neighbor doing the mini trampoline or the rebounder outside yesterday. And I said, "Well, good for you, man. That's so good for you.” It is. But there's nothing that's going to beat those weights, resistance. You can get bands so good for you. Get strong man, get strong. Because it affects your brain. It affects your heart. It affects inflammation. I mean, think of that grip strength, just grip strength is a real indicator of whether you have inflammation in your body and inflammation is deadly. It's deadly. Left to its own, it's not good. It destroys.
Okay, so the two takeaway today, laugh, laugh vitamin L. Are we going to make it official guys? Do we make it official? Maybe I think we should, hey. Vitamin L laughter. And remember, learn to laugh at yourself. You're unique, you're not weird. I don't see that weird anymore. I don't call you weird. You're just unique, but unique with the laughter a little bit. You know how I am, how I operate. So guys listen, laughter is merry medicine and just checking your strength of your grip will tell you. Imagine it's like CRP, C-reactive protein. It will tell you whether you have inflammation or not. So when you see someone that's frail and they're having trouble lifting themselves out of a chair, they have a condition going on. They might have more than one of course. But the bottom line is they got inflammation in the body. It's a great indicator.
Now, I got some great stuff coming this week again, and I'm looking forward to those. Now little housekeeping. Again, to my American audience a day late, but of course we weren't doing podcasts on July 4th, but July 5th we'll do right? We tell you, we loved you and happy Independence Day to you guys. In Canada we had July 1st and I was on, which is Canada Day. We celebrate these two great countries that we live in. Yeah, we're thankful. Sometimes we complain, but let's face it these are wonderful countries compared to a lot of other places in the world, we're pretty thankful. Or at least we should be.
Secondly, in the private Facebook group, please get your friends, get your family, enjoy the private Facebook group. We love it. Lot of good posts up there and the communication between our members is tremendous. Thank you for that. The Reset, the book. Thank you again. But you know, I don't apologize for pushing the book. Because I'm telling you that reset is unbelievable. How good it is for you. It's the way to start. And I know many of you started July 1st doing The Reset again or for the first time. When you're doing the reset, please let us know on the private Facebook group, we're going to pump your tires up. You have questions. If you get discouraged, get on the group, we'll pump your tires up and push you to the finish line. That's what we're here for. We're here to help. We love you guys, and we 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!