When doctors check if someone has diabetes, they’re relying on high blood sugar levels to make the diagnosis. Oftentimes, when people have their blood tested, their blood sugar is already back within normal range.
Dr. Martin says a paradigm shift in medicine needs to happen where doctors are looking at insulin resistance instead of blood sugar. When our bodies are constantly secreting insulin to remove sugar from our bloodstream, we become insulin resistant. When this happens, more and more insulin is needed to do the same job.
In today’s episode, Dr. Martin looks at insulin resistance and how it really is a head to toe problem. If you do nothing else for your health, fix insulin resistance!
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. Hope you're having a wonderful start to your day. We're going to talk about the brain today. Okay? And we've been doing a little bit of that. Now, I want to bring out a new study this morning. It's on Alzheimer's, and we talked to you yesterday, and I think Monday too, we were talking about insulin. If you do nothing else, fix insulin resistance because insulin, as we you've been trying to prove to you, and when I wrote my book, The Reset, insulin has many tentacles, like an octopus, from heart to brain.
By the way, always been, even in medicine, they've agreed that heart and brain go together in a lot of ways. Heart disease and brain, because of strokes, right? So they've often connected that. But if you look at the tentacles of insulin, they go from your brain to your toes. When I say that, you see because for a lot of people, and I explain this again, is they think only of blood sugar, not of insulin resistance. So as long as their blood sugar is within normal limits, they don't attribute different problems to insulin. It's only when one becomes a diabetic that they start to expand their horizon.
For example, when someone is a diabetic, officially, medicine would agree with everything I'm just going to say right now. When someone is a diabetic, they are much more susceptible to blindness. Every doctor in the universe would agree with that. When one has been diagnosed with diabetes, they are big time more susceptible to kidney disease. This is why dialysis is part of the fabric of medicine today, because so many people are diabetic and their kidneys don't work properly. And every physician, every physician would agree that diabetes makes you much more susceptible to, when I say right from your brain to your toes, I mean it. Gangrene, see people that get gangrene and lose their limbs, it's terrible. Or they have diabetic neuropathy, that is extremely common. Brain to the toes. And again, there's no argument about that.
What needs to happen? You guys understand this, but what needs to happen in medicine, they need a paradigm shift from blood sugar to insulin resistance because the problem with blood sugar is once it goes up, repeat, repeat, repeat, your body does everything it can to keep your blood sugar within normal limits. Unbelievable. You can eat 20 donuts, and a half an hour later, unless you are a severe diabetic, your blood sugar's going to come back within normal range. But you have no idea what you just did to your body by eating 20 donuts, or drinking a soda, or having a slice of bread even that turns to sugar rapidly. It creates a cascade of problems and people don't think of it because your blood sugar comes back to within normal range.
The problem with spiking your blood sugar frequently, people that insist on living on carbohydrates and sugars, the problem with that is you're creating insulin resistance. And well before the official diagnosis of diabetes comes, you get major, major physiological changes in the body. This is why study after study has said that 88% of the population, 88% of the population in North America have some form of metabolic syndrome, meaning they are unwell metabolically, and it has to do with food. It has to do with insulin, not blood sugar.
Again, blood sugar is the last thing that will change. So if someone is already a diabetic, quote, they're in deep doo-doo. Diabetes ends poorly. And the reason it ends poorly is because medicine, God love them, still wants to manage diabetes. Diabetes is not a blood sugar problem. Diabetes starts with an insulin resistance problem. Diabetes is this, it's an allergy to carbs.
And really, can I say this? When they come out with a statistic reinforced, like this 88%, I didn't just take it out of the air. Study after study is showing, I say it's worse than 88%, but let's be conservative and say 88%, have some form of metabolic syndrome. That is an allergy guys, because the only thing that causes metabolic syndrome is crappy carbs, bread, pasta, rice, cereals, sugar, sweets. "Dr. Martin, cereals?" Yes, cereals. You want a serial killer? I actually wrote a book about it. Serial Killer: Two Hormones That Want You Dead. Do you remember that book? Insulin and cortisol. Anyway, it's an allergy to carbs.
So when you have liver problems, fatty liver, that's creating a cascade of bad triglycerides and low HDL and inflammation. You see, what happens in your brain to your toes, circulation. Can I throw another one out there? Gout. It's not purines. It's not. Gout is a form of metabolic disorder. That's why it's so common today. Look, guys, I'm a simple person. If something was rare at one time, gout's been around since biblical time, because they used to call it the king's disease or the rich man's disease and they always blamed it on meat. Medicine, you read a textbook, Google, go to Dr. Google and Google uric acid. You're going to see the word purines. Meat, gravy, those are purine producing foods. I disagree. Gout is a form of metabolic syndrome.
Everybody makes uric acid. It's a byproduct of fructose. The problem is when you have insulin resistance, your kidneys can no longer flush out that uric acid. Remember what uric acid is. Uric acid is normal. Everybody makes uric acid. You make it. I make it. What if you don't get rid of all of it? It can wind up in your joints, crystals. And it wasn't that the king was eating too much meat. The king was drinking too much wine and beer. And gout, in the last 20 years, incredible. Guys, when I was still in practice, people would come in like they're crippled up. I would say, "Man, you've got gout." "Nah, it's not that." I'd say, "Yeah, that's what it is. You've got gouty arthritis. You've got inflammation from uric acid."
But uric acid is not Houdini. It just doesn't pop up. Everybody makes uric acid. Why can't you clear it? Kidneys. What happens to the kidneys? There's nothing that will affect the kidneys like insulin resistance. Ask a diabetic. And we talked about the inflammation factor, from your brain, guys, to your toes. We talked yesterday about Alzheimer's. Why did they originally, and you still hear it once in a while, why is it they still call it, some, type three diabetes? It's food. It's not genetics.
"My dad had Alzheimer's." Okay. My dad had diabetes, that doesn't make me a diabetic. It gives me maybe a weakness, but it doesn't make me a diabetic because diabetes is not genetics, it's food. And some people, you've got to understand this, some people are more susceptible to higher blood sugars. But if you understand what I'm saying about metabolic syndrome, is that you can get different strokes for different folks. So someone's form of diabetes, even though they won't call it that, because again, the actual diabetes diagnosis is based on blood sugar, where it shouldn't be, it should be based on insulin resistance. And they only want to manage diabetes, because to some extent, medicine has been hijacked guys, by the labs, testing, testing. Am I against testing? Of course, I'm not against testing. The old fashioned physician, they had instincts.
A lady was telling me the other day that she went to her doctor, the doctor never even looked at her. He was on the computer. Okay. Listening, and I don't know, was he on Google? I don't know. Was he checking his stock portfolio? I don't know. "We'll order some tests." Okay. I'm not against testing. It's a tool in the toolbox, but docs got to use their instincts, their training, understand, get in. I always used to tell patients, "When you go to your doctor, bring a pen and a notepad. Have all your questions ready and don't leave until they answer your questions." My daughter's a nurse and when she works in the walk-in clinic, she says a lot of doctors, they only give you one question. "I answered the one question, you don't get two." Come on, guys. That ain't medicine. But what I'm trying to explain here, okay? I don't want to get off topic too much, is from your head to your toes, insulin resistance has many, many tentacles.
I talked yesterday about men and ED. ED is what? It's insulin resistance. That's what it is. It's the cause. It's not a lack of the blue pill. Most non-injury arthritides, most non-injury ones is insulin resistance, sarcopenia, wasting, muscle wasting, insulin resistance. That's why you can be skinny as a rake and be very unwell. That's why I talk about it. Gout, insulin resistance, heart, triglycerides, low cholesterol, insulin resistance. It happens in the liver first. What's in the liver is not Las Vegas. It'll go up to your brain too. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happens in your liver don't stay there. Got it? It doesn't stay there because your liver is going to affect your heart and your brain.
And I explained to you yesterday, the relationship of how your brain will take the food that you eat, your brain will take the food that you eat. It's the federal government. It will tax, first 25%, doesn't matter what you eat. You eat nothing but crap and your brain goes, "Okay, I get 25% of that." You eat sugar and your brain goes, "Okay, if you insist on eating that, I'm taking it, 25% off the top. I'm headquarters. I get to choose what I take, and I take 25%. You choose what you eat, and I take the first 25%." That's how your brain operates.
Don't you think that food is very important for the brain? And this is why I tell people, and I've been saying this for so long, it makes your head spin. Where in the world did we get so stupid on fat? Brought to you by Kellogg's, brought to you by the cereal companies. "Don't eat bacon and eggs. Bacon, it's going to clog up your arteries." Medicine thinks they're in the plumbing business. What do I mean by that? Because all they can think of is clogged arteries. That's what the problem is. And when they see fat, okay? They see a steak, and even today, dieticians are like that. They're trained like that. They see a steak and they go, "If you do eat it, we don't recommend it, but if you do eat it, please make sure it's lean." Every dietician that I know, God love them, every physician I know should be sent up to the North Pole. No, not Sudbury or Timmins, past that, not Kapuskasing, go past, go up to where the Inuit live and watch them eat.
The only reason that the Inuit gets sick, we introduced McDonald's to them. Okay? Fast foods. You want to destroy people? Give them fast foods. I mean, books were written. It was part of my nutrition course. They ate nothing but fat and they were the healthiest people. No Inuit, okay? And I don't mean to be jokey, but I've got to joke a little bit. No Inuit ran after a seal and had a heart attack. Did you know that? They die when the polar bears eat them. They died of old age. "What? They live in the North Pole." Yeah, I know, but they were very healthy. Books have been written, studies have been done. Unreal, unreal.
And any native population, okay? And I say this to my First Nations. I've done a lot of work with First Nations. Lots of work. They kind of like me. I tease them. I do, I tease them. I say, "Well, I'm a white man. Okay? See this face? White." And they agree, okay? "We're trying to kill you." "What?" "Yeah. We took your land and we're trying to kill you with our food." And I always tell the First Nations, "Don't eat white man's food. Go back and live the way you used to in terms of food. What you can hunt, eat." "Why?" "Well, you don't do well with carbs." By the way, nobody does. Nobody does.
But whether Inuit, First Nations, Indians, East Indians, Egyptians, Middle East, do you know that they can hardly have any carbs? They get 50, 60% already of diabetes in their country. Do you know that Egypt, 50%. They have a genetic weakness. I have a genetic weakness. So what do I got to do? Me and carbs don't get along. My name is Tony and I'm a carboholic and I don't get away with it. I just don't. Like I said, neither do you. You don't get away with it. "Dr. Martin, I'm not a diabetic." Yeah, effectively, you are. You've got metabolic syndrome. Are you 88%? Do you have high triglycerides? Do you have low HDL? Well, you're a diabetic. "Nah." Yeah. Well, you don't have high blood sugar, but you have insulin resistance. Your liver's all messed up. Your memory. "Yeah, but my dad had Alzheimer's and he wasn't a diabetic." But he had insulin resistance. Dementia is not a problem of genetics, weakness maybe, but not the cause.
We all have weaknesses, right? We all do. But what you can control is what you put in your mouth every day. It's as simple as that. And this is why I'm so big on fat. I love protein, you know that. Protein's king, but there's not a better combination in the world when you put protein and fat together. Eggs, protein and fat. True? Yeah, it's in nature. Somebody said, "Well, I can't eat too many eggs." Why? It's perfect food. Look at a piece of meat. Now, there's qualities, grass fed. Grass fed beef, listen to what I'm going to say, has more DHA than fish. Is fish good? Well, it's right at the top of the food chain. You like fish? Good for you because it's, I love fish too, in a capsule. I wish I liked fish more, but I have it every day.
If you saw the studies on DHA, the king of the castle when it comes to fat. The best fat in the world is DHA. Number two, EPA, number three, CLA. That's dairy fat. You want to go on the hit parade for fats? Those are the top three. Numero uno, DHA. Number two, EPA. Read your labels, guys. Read your labels. DHA. You want a healthy brain? Look, guys, I need a memory, okay? And I know that if I don't watch my carbs, I'm going to destroy my gray matter up there. Lord willing, I want to continue doing this program and I have to have a memory. And as I get older, I'm much you more conscious of my memory, and that's why I feed it fat. Your brain is fat, mostly. You better eat it.
Guys, that's what you need to eat. Perfect foods. They're perfect. Nothing else matches an egg, a piece of meat. Yeah, you ladies like chicken. Well, steak's better. Okay? Steak, okay? Numero uno, bacon, chicken with the fat on it, don't get lean chicken. Eat the fat on the chicken. Pretend you're Inuit. They don't eat chicken, but don't avoid fat. It's meant to be eaten. Okay, I get excited, don't I? I'm sorry. Nah, that's me. Okay? My poor patients. I know many of you saw me over the years. My staff used to tell me, "The waiting room can hear you." I'm sorry. I've got a built in microphone here and I get excited. When I get excited, my voice goes up. I can't help myself.
I remember a lady, I came into the office one day, okay? Never met her before, a new patient, whatever, came in, she said, "Doc," I remember she said, "You're in my space." "What? It's my office?" She said, "You're in my space and you're too loud." I said, "You're in the wrong place. It's who I am." And I wouldn't pipe down. I said, "You better get used to me. You waited almost six months to see me. Don't blow it." That poor little lady. I intimidate her. I said, "Well, I don't have a volume control on this thing, okay? It's always on high." I don't know, is it because we had 11 children in our family? My siblings, we had to scream over top of one another. If you think I'm loud, you should hear my sisters. Wow.
Anyway, okay guys, from your brain to your toes. Look at the underlying cause. It's one of the reasons, and this is early in January here when we're talking about this, it's one reason I want you as a resolution to make a resolution to do the reset. Never too late. Don't think it's too late. It's not. Start. Okay? Start.
Okay, now to tomorrow, afternoon session. We did a vote. I asked on Monday. Okay? I asked on Monday, what time you wanted, in the evening or in the afternoon? We got back and it was 10 to one in terms of voting, 4:00 PM. Okay? So we're going to do 4:00 PM tomorrow. Okay? Friday morning, question and answer. You've got questions? Don't be shy. Happy to answer your questions. Okay? I'm not shy. Don't be shy. Don't be shy with me. Okay? If it's a question that is unique to you, ask it. I might not spend a lot of time on it, but I will answer your questions. Okay? And our staff is fabulous for collecting them. Okay? Nic and Ginette and Brandi. Okay? Ask your questions. You're not a member of the Martin private Facebook group? Why not? Do you listen to our podcast? Why not? Do you get our emails? We do a lot of teaching on the emails. You don't? Why not? Sign up. MartinClinic.com. Okay, 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!