Dr. Martin talks about money in today’s episode. In the United States, it costs $1 billion dollars a day to manage diabetes. That’s a $365 billion annual strain on the US economy. In Canada, that number would be 10 times less because of our smaller population.
Diabetes is the number one cause of blindness, the number one cause of heart disease, and likely the number one cause of cancer, amputations, and kidney disease. Unfortunately, medicine sees no incentive in providing a cure because of how much of a cash cow the management of diabetes is.
Join Dr. Martin as he discusses the cost of diabetes and why prevention needs to take priority over management of the disease.
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, and once again, welcome to another live this morning, and good to have you with us. Let's talk money this morning, okay? How much do you think... this is American figures, okay? How much do you think diabetes costs the American economy a year? Do you have any idea? This just came out. I flagged it yesterday, brand new from 2020. What did diabetes cost? You ready? A billion dollars a day. Diabetes cost the American economy to treat it. Lost productivity. All the hospital costs. The number one cause of blindness, the number one cause of heart disease, probably one of the number one causes of cancer, amputations, kidney disease.
What's springing up all over America and Canada? Dialysis. I wish I would've invested in dialysis machines. How would you like to be the makers of that? $365 billion is what diabetes costs the American. And remember, Canada, we're just 10 times smaller than the United States, so just do the math, just do the math. And then let me bring this out to you. Then we sort of mentioned at the top of the program yesterday that the American nutritional establishment, Tufts University, Tony Jr. posted that on our private Facebook group yesterday. It makes you want to scream. They rated the best foods. At the bottom of the list, worst of the worst was ground beef, eggs, and butter, at the bottom of the list. Cheese, bottom of the list. You know one at the top? Cereals. One of them was Lucky Charms. You want to be unlucky? Eat Lucky Charms.
If diabetes in the United States alone is costing 365 billion, with a B, think of how crazy that is. And here we are, Tufts University is telling people, they're talking about the American nutritional establishment, "Well, here's what you eat." You know what the best cereal to eat is? None of them. You know what the best oatmeal to eat is? None. You know what the best toast is to eat? None. You know what the best jam is to eat, guys? None. But they have these breakfast cereals all at the top of their list. It's diabetes in a box.
Now I brought this to you probably two years ago, and I haven't looked up. Follow the money, guys, follow the money. Merck, okay? Have you heard of that pharmaceutical company? Well, Merck’s makes a designer drug. I call it a designer drug because they make Metformin. Metformin is one of the top selling drugs in North America. Now in 2018, in 2018 because of the sales of metformin, the CEO of Mercks, he got a bonus. He got high fives from everybody around him at Mercks, and then they give him a big fat bonus. You know how much it was for? Just his bonus, not his salary. You know what his bonus was for because of the sales of metformin? $38 million bonus. Guys, we're in the wrong business. He got $38 million as a bonus. Here's your bonus. You know, I guess percentage of sales of metformin, designer drugs.
Now, for the new folks that are joining us every day, again, we appreciate you. You have no idea. But I want to tell you, to the new folks, I have been consistent. I went to school. I graduated in 1974. I kept going to school after that. But no, do you know that I watched diabetes in my home, see, because my father found out in 1968 that he was a diabetic. It changed our home. It changed my dad's life. And I watched him go back to the way it used to be.
Do you know that in 1921 is when they discovered insulin? 1921. Do you know that before that date, do you know how they treated diabetes? Not that there was a lot of diabetes, but there was diabetes, okay? There was diabetes. Do you know how they treated it? Low carb. But then 1921, they found a drug. They found insulin. It saved millions of people's lives, so don't come after me for talking about a drug. It's like an antibiotic. Come on, guys. If you got a raging infection, you better take an antibiotic. If you're a diabetic and type 1, especially, you need insulin. It'll save your life. I'm not against that. But before 1921, if you were a diabetic, they told you, "Look, you and carbs don't get along, so stop eating them." Then it was all lost.
But I'm going to tell you in my own home, I watched my father, who was a smart man, eat steak every night. I said, "Dad, aren't you tired of it?" He said, "Well, I'm a diabetic. Your grandfather was a diabetic. You can't eat carbs." That was 1968. What? I didn't even know what he... Yeah, come on. I was 16 or whatever I was, but I watched that. And then, seriously, I get to school and they teach me something different. They teach me, "Well, you're diabetic, you need to have some carbs because your blood sugar's going to go down if you take drugs." But you see, since the 1920s, guys, I'm not kidding you, the treatment for diabetes is medication, not food. And diabetes is an allergy. It is. It's an allergy to carbs.
You see, human beings, okay, we have minimums that we need to eat. There's a scale. Everybody needs a certain amount of protein, certain amount of fat, certain amount of minerals, certain amount of vitamins. Yeah. Yeah, we have RDAs, right? Minimums, minimums. Do you know that human beings have no minimum for carbohydrates? I'm just telling you that. It's nutrition 101. I mean, they forget that, but I'm not suggesting you do it. I'm just telling you the truth, okay? You never have to eat another carb in your life, ever. Your body doesn't need it to survive.
Now, I'm not saying to do that. I'm just telling you that there's tribes around the world, including in our Northern Hemisphere, up here in Canada, the Inuit, they eat very little carbs, almost zero. And in 1958, a Canadian, who actually got stuck up in the Arctic, Stefansson, wrote a book. I read it. Not in 1958. I read it as part of my nutrition PhD, okay? I didn't read it in 1958. I was only six years old.
But you know what he said? He observed, because he got caught up in the Arctic. They were coming to get him out, and I guess all the ice built up and they couldn't get him in 1958, so he lived with the, in those days they called them, Eskimos, and he wrote a book about it. You know, he was a researcher. He was a doctor. He said, "I never seen people as healthy as this. Normal blood pressure, normal blood sugar, normal everything." It was unreal. He said, "How can they do that? I am accustomed to eating carbohydrates. They don't eat any. They just live on fat. They consume blubber and fish and seal, and they don't even eat the muscle from the seal. They give that to their dogs. They eat the organs. They eat the fat." He said, "They got blubber coming out their ears." He couldn't believe how healthy they were.
I tell my First Nation friends, "Would you get back to living off the land? Quit eating our food. The white man, we're trying to kill you." Even the Inuit don't get sick until they eat fast foods. It's true. Would you get back to eating the way we're supposed to? Not Lucky Charms, not Cheerio. Cheerios was right at the top of the list of the healthiest cereal. Oh, I get a headache just thinking about it. There's a heart on the Cheerios box, because if you eat it, insist on eating it, you will have a heart attack. It's big business, guys. It's big business to keep us sick.
Diabetes. I'm not saying they even have bad motives. I'm telling you, maybe at the top, maybe the shareholders, maybe that... People that work in the medical field, they don't have bad motives. They got in it to help people, but then they get lied to. Diabetes, 365 billion. $1 billion a day. That's that industry. And if you ever see Ken Frazier, I don't even know if he's still the CEO there at Mercks.
You see, medicine and diabetes, here it is. Here it is. The average medical doctor, I'm just going to give you an estimation, would take what, four or five hours, if that, of nutrition? They leave that to other people. So here you have a disease that is caused by food. The solution is food, but when you're not trained in food, you think of balance. "Oh, everything in moderation. Eat less and move more. Eat less and move more. Count calories." You want to count calories? You'll be a diabetic. It is what you put in your mouth every day. What is it? Is it a protein? Is it fat or is it carbohydrate?
And if you eat a donut, you get no protein. You get bad fat, industrialized fat. You get Rat Chow. That's how they fatten up rats so they can do experiments on them. They call it Rat Chow, a donut. You go to Tim Hortons and you get a muffin and you think, "Oh, it's a carrot muffin. Must be good." Nah, it's got eight teaspoons of sugar in it.
So, here we are. We're in a society today, hook, line, and sinker. Let's manage diabetes, the number one cause of blindness, the number one cause of amputations, the number one cause of kidney disease, the number one cause of heart disease. And you know, in my book, The Reset, I said, "It's the number one cause of cancer too." And people go, "Well, listen, guys. 88% of the population..."
Okay, let me break this down for you. Type 1 diabetes, okay? Now remember there's type 1, type 2, and they got type 3 too. We'll talk about that. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease, okay, type 1 diabetes, and that's on the big time rise today. Now, type 1, the pancreas is damaged. It's damaged. It doesn't secrete enough insulin. Therefore, you need medication. Okay, got it? But I just want to stay on type 1 for a minute. I remember after I graduated, one of my courses I took in my postgraduate work was a course given by Dr. Richard Bernstein, okay? Was a long time ago, 40 years ago, there was a course that I took on diabetes, but he was talking about type 1 autoimmune, and Dr. Bernstein did studies on low carb eating and type 1 diabetes. The results were astounding. The A1C and everything they tested back then? Incredible.
It was like Dr. Atkins, who was a cardiologist. You all heard about Dr. Atkins, the Atkins diet. He was a cardiologist. He wasn't a dummy. He talked about not type 1, but type 2 diabetes, but he said, "Listen, it's carbs." And people in those days, their head was exploding because he was talking about eating fat, fat, fat, and already in the '70s, people were eating fat-free because they thought that was healthy. Even today, if you look at that Tufts University study, fat is at the bottom of the list. It's so bad. Could they still believe the cholesterol nonsense? I can't get over how our world, it doesn't even think. Think. Put your thinking cap on. So, that's type 1. Like I said, that's sort of been lost. Nobody teaches them, hardly.
A lot of people have asked me, because I treated a lot of type 1 diabetes nutritionally. I said, "Well look, look, you got trouble. You and carbs don't get along." So, I'm not telling you not to take your meds or nothing. I don't do that to people. I just said, "You need to live on vitamin S. Steak, live on it. Live on eggs, live on cheese. You're going to feel a lot better. You're not going to get those fluctuations," because one of the biggest things in type 1 is they get a lot of hypoglycemia. It's hard to regulate that insulin.
Now type 2, it's 100%, no exception, it's carbohydrates. Nobody gets type 2 diabetes without being a carboholic. "Oh, my dad was a diabetic." Yeah, well, so is mine, but you don't get it without being a carboholic. It's just the way it is. And people, "Ah, it seems too simple, doc." I said, "Look it..." For you new folks, I'll say it fast, the cat story, okay? But I say it fast because anybody that's... follows us for a long time. I tell this cat story too often, but I don't care. I like it. No, but listen, a true story. Lady comes into the office. She had allergies. I asked her, "Okay, what are you allergic to?" She said, "My cat." I said, "Well, get rid of it." Well, she said, "I can't. I love it." I said, "Well, I can't help you." You're a diabetic? You have an allergy to carbs. Get rid of them. "You mean forever?" "Yeah, forever." Don't have them. You'll get used to it. No toast. Pretend. "Oh doc, I can't eat my eggs without toast." Sure you can. I didn't say it was going to be easy. I'm just telling you, "That's what you got to do."
Now again, let me get to this. Type 1, the pancreas is not working. It's autoimmune and you're not producing enough insulin. Type 2 is you're producing too much insulin. Listen, about 50% of North Americans are diabetic or pre, but listen to what I'm saying now. I'm going to bring it a step further. 88%, I always use that figure [inaudible 00:19:55] says what's happening in North America? 88% have insulin resistance. It's a disorder that's leading to diabetes. It's a disorder. Your cells resist insulin, the bad neighbor. Insulin resistance causes heart disease. It causes cancer. It causes Alzheimer's, type 3 diabetes, Alzheimer's, and it's the cause of diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, or high circulating insulin. 88% of the population have trouble with that. And you know what? We're not talking about it.
And I bring you back to the top of the program. Why are we not talking about it? Why are companies like Mercks, who make designer drugs to manage diabetes, why? Here we are. The elephant in the room. Even with COVID, it was the elephant in the room, insulin resistance, 88%. No wonder we got so sick. And guys, I always say this, we ain't seen nothing yet, because we're looking for love in all the wrong places. We're looking at the wrong thing. It's not managing. We need to fix it.
And I want to pump your tires. I'm here to pump you up. You take care of yourself. The biggest benefit you'll make to society is taking care of yourself, and then influence other people as much as you can. You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it. But you can certainly lead by example, and that's what this program is all about. It's all about that. It's why my desire was always to teach. I used to do it patient-on-patient, doctor with patient, and teach them one on one. I used to do it. I did it for years and years and years. I never allowed a patient to leave my office without a plan. I always had a plan for them and it always started with nutrition, always. I would teach them nutrition 101. I don't care what the problem was.
But here we are today. Follow the money. You don't think they don't influence? Man, wow, diabetes is costing us a billion dollars a day. Guys, see, when I look down the path of the future, when it comes to our health, guys, I tell you, I am scared for our society. People don't realize what they're doing to themselves. And don't rely on the media. Don't rely on it. Even doctors, they're not trained. I love when doctors jump on board and they want to know more about nutrition.
Here they are, they get no nutrition almost in medical school. I mean, almost zilch, and then they come out to treat all these nutrition-related disorders, from cardio to cancer, to Alzheimer's, and they can't help themselves. They're writing prescriptions because that's all they know. It's crazy, isn't it? 88% of the population, 88, are upside down, and most people don't know it, because again, until they get the official diagnosis, "Eh, I'm all right." Nah, you're not alright.
You know what tomorrow is? Question and Answer Friday. So get your questions in, okay? It's not too late. I'm going to try and answer all of your questions. Are you a member of the private Facebook group? Why not? Do you listen to the podcast, The Doctor Is In? Why not? Share it with your friends. Tell them how they can sign up to download it on their smartphone, okay? Do you get our emails? You can sign up, MartinClinic.com. Okay. I love you guys. 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!