A new study is showing that having high blood pressure between the ages of 35 and 44 is linked to smaller brain sizes later on in life. The findings mean you’re more susceptible to getting Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other autoimmune disorders.
Today’s episode is all about blood pressure. Dr. Martin teaches about the systolic and diastolic numbers that make up your blood pressure. He also shares the ranges for normal blood pressure, prehypertension, and for hypertension.
Blood supply is really important and Dr. Martin shares what you can do to ensure your brain stays healthy!
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. Once again, welcome to another Live. Hope you're having a great start to your day. Good to have you on with us, as usual. We're going to talk, this morning, about blood pressure. I did a seminar last night, really enjoyed it, actually traveled. Man, it's been a long time traveling to do a seminar last night on Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and we went into the First Nation. Now, I am going to murder this. Okay? Because how do you say it? I don't know... Kebaowek. They'll straighten me out if I said it wrong. I went to Kebaowek, Quebec to do a seminar last night. Really enjoyed the folks there, and in that First Nations, and you just cross the border. If you go down North Bay and then head over to Témiscaming, and you just cross over the Ottawa River, you're in Quebec, and then we traveled up into the First Nations there. Beautiful. What a beautiful place, really enjoyed that. We talked about breast cancer awareness. Anyway, we really enjoyed that. So, Kebaowek, I don't know how to say it. Madeleine will straighten me out, I'm sure.
Okay, let's talk this morning about blood pressure. The reason I want to talk about it is because of this study that came out. I'm always bringing you the news behind the news, and this study says high blood pressure between the ages of 35 and 44 is linked to smaller brain sizes later on in life. High blood pressure... And this is this study, okay? High blood pressure between the ages of 35 and 44 is linked, they said, to smaller brain sizes as you get older. Shrinks your brain, high blood pressure. We're going to explain that. How can that be? Okay? Blood supply is really important, folks, really important. Let's just go over a few things. I want to tell you, when they say high blood pressure, here's what they mean.
So when you measure your blood pressure, you have systolic and diastolic. Systolic is the pressure when your heart beats. Now remember, blood's got to go around 60,000 miles of blood vessels you have in your body, one and a half times around the equator. Now that's incredible, guys. You don't even think about it. If you don't have high blood pressure or you don't have anything going on with your heart, you don't even think about that, unless you skip a beat or whatever, and then your heart sort of gets your attention. But imagine, over 100,000 times a day, your heart goes, boop. It's a pump. It's a pump, and your heart pumps, that's systolic. The diastolic is the pressure measured. When your heart pumps, you measure that pressure, that systolic, in between the pumps, the beats, is diastolic. Okay? Systolic, diastolic.
Now here is what the American Heart Association says, and the CDC, actually, the Center for Disease Control. Here's what they say. 120 systolic over 80 diastolic is what they call normal blood pressure within 120, and in between, your diastolic 80. Now what they call prehypertension... Hypertension is high blood pressure. Pre-hypertension is between that 120 in the top systolic number, 120 to 139. 139. If you measure your blood pressure, you can go to the pharmacy and measure it, in most places, right? Walmart and different places, you can measure your blood pressure. If it's 120 to 139, they call that prehypertension, not normal, but it's prehypertension. And then hypertension is considered to be 140 over 90.
Now let me just give you my take on it. I'm always more interested, what's happening in your pressure in between beats of your heart. So when your heart's pumping, that's your top number. In between that, it's measuring the pressure in between. That is your diastolic. That's the one that I really like to watch more than the top number, not that the top number doesn't mean anything. It does, but it's not near as concerning as your bottom number. If your bottom number is 90 or over, that's hypertension. That's hypertension. You got high blood pressure. If it's below 90, I don't worry about it too much, for me. If it's 140, for example, over 88 or 85 or whatever, man, you know what? Things are pretty good in there. You're not going to get what high blood pressure can do to you. Okay? Heart attack, stroke, heart failure, kidney disease, circulatory problems, men with erectile dysfunction. All those things have to do with blood supply, and if your blood pressure is high over a period of time, especially in that younger group there, over a period of time, it shrinks your brain.
Obviously, what's happening, think about blood pressure, if your blood vessels... We'll talk about this. What you can do, think about it. If you got high blood pressure, there's something going on. High blood pressure is a symptom. It's a symptom. It's not the cause. It's a symptom. High blood pressure is dangerous. We all agree with that. In the old days, they used to tell you, "Well, just quit smoking," because what smoking did, it caused a lot of free radical damage. Oxidative damage destroyed your blood vessels over a period of time, weakened them, and your blood pressure would go up. Alcohol, too much alcohol does the same thing. I mean, the Canadian, American Heart Association, they all agreed on that. They never talk about food, but talk about cigarettes. That's true. I mean, what doctor in the world would tell you to smoke today? They used to. I still can't get over that.
I tell my grandchildren, "I'm not kidding you. When I was a young lad, doctors thought smoking was good for you." "What? Grandpa, are you crazy?" "No, I'm telling you, there used to be commercials. 9 out of 10 doctors choose Camel cigarettes." They were all in the magazines. Life magazine. You remember that? Life magazine, Time magazine. I think Time is still out there. Right? I remember, my dad and mom, they loved Life magazine, and they had commercials in there, advertisements, for cigarettes. Doctors choose Camel. Jeepers creepers. I remember when my dad came home. It's 1962. I was 10-years-old. I remember it like yesterday. My dad says, “I quit smoking." What? My dad smoked. My mom smoked. My older brothers were smokers. What? “You quit smoking... Why would you do that, Dad? Whose cigarettes am I going to steal?"
I never got in a habit of smoking. My oldest brother cured me. He'd made me inhale a cigar when I was about 10 or 11-years-old. He said, "Try this." It was a cigar. I got so sick, so I never really was a smoker. My brother was smart. He smoked all his life, but he didn't want me smoking. So smoking, yeah, it affects your blood pressure. Let's just get that over here, because today, people that still smoke, I can't help you. It always bothers me that they're more interested... I see people coming out of the grocery store. They got their mask on. They can't wait to get outside. They're scared of COVID, and then they come outside and have a cigarette. Like I said, man, what's more dangerous? Jeepers creepers. Anywho...
So, high blood pressure. What's the cause of it? What causes high blood pressure? That's the most important question, and we know that high blood pressure, over a period of time, this study talks about it, is going to shrink your brain. Now you don't want that. If you do an autopsy on Alzheimer's, the brain is shriveled up like a prune. You want your brain to be full of fat. So, what are the major causes of high blood pressure? Number one, on the hit parade... High blood pressure is a symptom of insulin resistance. It's part of metabolic syndrome. It's at the top. Remember what metabolic syndrome is? Characterized by what? High blood pressure, even prehypertension. You don't have to be over 90 in the diastolic. Remember, I'm more on the bottom number.
Again, don't dismiss the top number. Don't do that. I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just telling you, if you really want to know if you got high blood pressure or not, focus in on that second number, that diastolic, over 90. If it's under 90, don't worry about it. But again, let's get to the cause, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome. 88% of the population is not well, metabolically, and that's characterized by high blood pressure. Now you don't have to have high blood pressure to have metabolic syndrome. But, what are they saying? A hundred million Americans have high blood pressure? It's obviously a big factor, but you got to get to the root cause if you want to fix it.
Look, medicine is into controlling your blood pressure. Medicine is into medications to control your blood pressure. Am I against that? No, of course not. I'm not against that. I'm not against meds. You don't want to stroke out. But, you're not fixing the problem. You're managing the problem. What causes the resistance inside of those blood vessels that makes your pressure go up? Think about it. It has to force that blood through blood vessels. Numero uno, insulin resistance, because insulin resistance creates inflammation. Inflammation starts to do damage to blood vessels. It starts with little capillaries. Think of the river of life, your blood, and the circulatory system. Well, you've got little wee creeks and tributaries, that are called capillaries. Very, very important for your eyes, for your kidney function, capillaries. Man, that's one of the biggest problems they get when it comes to erectile dysfunction. It's circulation. There's resistance inside those 60,000 miles of blood vessels. There's plaque, not always, but plaque starts, but it doesn't start for no reason. It's always a reason.
One of the big reasons is insulin. It's food. It's not fat. Fat doesn't clog up your arteries, guys. If you find cholesterol in your blood vessels, hello? Hello? Of course you've got cholesterol in your blood vessels. They're the trucks. Go on the major highways. What do you see? How are all the goods transported? Trucks, mostly, trains, but mostly by trucks, right? That's what cholesterol is, trucks. They're delivering your hormones. The HDL, your good cholesterol, and all cholesterol is good, but the one specific HDL, high density lipoprotein, is cholesterol that hitches their wagon to bad triglycerides. Over, and over, and over again, I will teach you, teach you, teach you, drum it into you, I want to see your triglycerides, because that's important. If your triglycerides are high, almost invariably, you will have low levels of trucks on the highways. Some of them are carrying your hormones. The other ones are looking to hitch their wagon to bad fats, triglycerides, three fat balls in your bloodstream.
When triglycerides are high, they clog up your blood vessels. They cause resistance, inflammation. Inflammation damaged the blood vessels. It starts to destroy the endothelial, your slippery surface of your blood vessel. You want the blood vessels to be slippery. Well, put oil in there. Think of what oil does. When you put good fat into your blood vessels, it makes your Teflon layer of your blood vessels slippery. That's what you want. You want to take so much oil, you're sliding around. Inside your body, oil, oil, oil, fat, good fat. When you eat steak and bacon, eggs, cheese, you're becoming oily inside your blood vessels, and you're taking away the number one cause of high blood pressure, not the only cause, but it's the number one cause. It's insulin. It's food. Your body is screaming, "Hello, you there, wake up!” If you got high blood pressure, wake up! Change your diet! Numero uno, food.
Now let me tell you another one. You'll understand this, vitamin W. I can't get over how people just don't like water. It bothers me. They like everything else, but not water. "Water, Dr. Martin." Yeah, but your body is made up... It's your body. You're like planet earth. 75% of planet Earth is made up of water. You’re planet Earth, your body, 75%, you need water. And when you got 60,000 miles of blood vessels, you want to take pressure off your heart, then drink water, and only water is water. Only water is water. Tea is not water. Coffee is not water. Juice isn't water. Fruits isn't water. "Oh, Dr. Martin, I have watermelon." "I know, watermelon, I didn't say you couldn't have any. I'm just telling you, that's not what you hydrate with." And sparkling water doesn't do it, either. I love Perrier. I call it my Christian beer. I like it, but it's not for hydration. It's not that. That's just a little treat, carbonated water. Okay?
All I'm saying is, you need water. Water helps take pressure off your blood vessels. Water helps to take pressure off your heart. Please, it's a habit. You know me. I will not allow myself to have a coffee in the morning. It's such a habit. I hardly think of it, but I do think of it. I just hardly think of it. Oh, I can't wait to get at that coffee. Oh, I'm telling you. Vitamin C, it's so good for you. Coffee is good for you. I told someone at the seminar last night, they had tea there, and coffee, but they had tea. I said, "Why drink tea when you can have coffee? I don't understand that." Anywho, water. Vast majority of people are dehydrated. What insulin does, okay, number one, we talked about it. It creates resistance. One of the things, too, insulin in blood supply that I didn't even talk to you about is what it does to your kidneys. It's one of the organs that gets hammered by sugar right away, our kidneys. You insist on eating sugar, and that puts a major strain on the blood vessels to the kidneys. Plus, there's other things that happen.
The other one on the kidneys is dehydration. Your blood vessels go into vasoconstriction. They have a hard time relaxing. They're dehydrated. Your body is screaming at you, "Get me water!" Don't wait until you're thirsty, guys. Get into a habit, two liters, two liters, 64 ounces for my American friends. This is clinical experience, 46 years, hundreds of thousands of patients, and I'm telling you, because I used to measure dehydration, and people were shocked. "What do you mean I'm dehydrated? I'm not thirsty." I said, "Don't wait for that. Your blood is thick as molasses." I've measured the viscosity of blood. I saw it every day. You're going to have a heart attack and a stroke. You're putting enormous pressure on your kidneys. "I don't feel it, doc." I know. It's silent, until it's not. I just can't tell you how important water is.
Cut out your sugars. It's amazing what happens to your blood pressure. You take an enormous strain off your blood vessels. Two, drink water. You know who the worst are? Are men, for water-drinking. "I don't like the taste of it." Ooh, big baby. Anyway, I like to tease men. They're so stubborn. Here's another one. Here's another one. One, get your sugars down. Get your insulin down. It will lower your triglycerides. You'll up your HDL. You'll have more trucks on the highways picking up those bad fats that are made from sugars. You'll have less pressure at your kidney level for vasoconstriction. Your blood vessels will thank you. Change your diet, and start drinking water, two liters a day. If you sweat easily and you work out, which I'm recommending, you might need more than that.
Now, number three, elevate your nitric oxide, explosions. You know what opens up your blood vessels? A substance that your body makes. It's called nitric oxide. Honestly, I'm telling you something. We didn't even know it existed in the 1970s. Nitric oxide, the guy that discovered it, won a Nobel Prize in medicine in the 1980s. I remember reading about it. What? Yeah, well the same thing that makes nitroglycerin work, they give you nitroglycerin, an explosion, dynamite. For people with angina, they still do it today. Either buy a patch or put a nitro losange, or whatever, and let it dissolve in your mouth, and you're getting chest pain, and it decreases it because they give you nitroglycerin, but then we found out that your body makes it.
You know what kills your nitric oxide more than anything else, is when you don't eat red meat, because red meat has B12. Plants don't, for my lovers of the plant kingdom. I'm not saying they're no good for you. All I'm saying is, there's no B12 in it. It's essential for nitric oxide levels of your blood vessels to open them up, so that they relax. You need nitric oxide. As you get older, less nitric oxide. This is one of the biggest benefits of eating red meat. Every day, it seems... People came up to me last night at the seminar, afterwards. We had a short question and answer, but they'd come up to me because they can't get it. They've been so indoctrinated. I get it. I understand where they're coming from. They're coming to me, "Doc, are you sure? Are you sure about red meat? Because my doctor, my dietician, my friends, everybody is telling me, 'Cut out red meat.'" I get a headache.
I get a headache. I say, "Well, can I make a case?" "Okay." "If B12... which is essential for almost everything, one of them primarily is nitric oxide. It helps your blood vessels to relax. It will lower your blood pressure, never mind what it does for your neurological system and your brain,” B12, what it does for your immune system, but I said, "Let's just talk what it does for blood pressure, and it's only found in red meat. B12 is not found in chicken. It's not found in the plant kingdom." I said, "If God put B12 in red meat and only red meat, you think he made a mistake, and then said, 'Oh, sorry, you shouldn't be eating red meat.'" Guys, think about that for a minute.
Tomorrow, I think, I'm going to bring you another study. Oh, wait til you hear it. Wait til you hear another study hot off the presses, tomorrow, on red meat. Guys, if you insist on not eating red meat, I feel sorry for you. You must substitute that B12, because your nitric oxide is going to be low. You're not going to make any explosions inside your blood vessels to open them up, so that they relax, and your blood pressure goes down. Nitric oxide. Of course, vitamin E helps that, too, exercise. Move. Eat red meat and move. Sun, steak, steel, sleep. You don't have to do cardio, by the way. You can do some cardio if you want, but the best exercise is resistant exercise, even for your blood vessels. It will elevate your nitric oxide more than cardio will do. You know me, I love walking. Move, move, move. It's good for you, but do the weights. Do the weights. Okay, so, did you get the memo? Blood pressure, it's very important. It's part of metabolic syndrome. Major causes: Sugar, crappy carbs, dehydration, nitric oxide, vitamin E are the nitric oxide, too. Okay?
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Friday is Question and Answer, so get your questions in. Everybody loves Question and Answer, and I do, too, because it allows me to rant. I rant on Fridays. I rant every day, but Friday, I really rant, because I like those questions, and I want to reinforce teaching. I reinforce it. I heard a talk show guy saying yesterday, it was part of his statement, he said, "We're right, and they're wrong." We're right. Then they're wrong. Okay. Guys, we love you very much, and I mean that. Okay? We really do. Thank you, and appreciate you guys beyond what I can express to you. Thanks, again. We love you. 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!