March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and Dr. Martin thinks it’s important to talk about it. Colorectal cancer is an extremely dangerous cancer and it’s affecting young people like nobody's business.
Early detection is used to detect colorectal cancer, but if you’re under 50 in Canada, they’re not yet doing colonoscopies on you. Those that are diagnosed are almost always told they’re not getting enough fiber in their diet, when this isn’t the case.
Join Dr. Martin in today’s episode as he discusses what’s really happening with the sharp increase in cases of colon cancer.
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 welcome to another live this morning. How are you? I don't know if you knew this or not. I haven't heard too much about it actually, but that doesn't mean that it's... I might just be missing it. March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Did you know that? Well, let's talk about that today. I think it's an important topic. And here's what we know about colorectal cancer. If you were to take a big bullet point, this is probably the biggest point. Colorectal cancer is an extremely dangerous cancer, yes. But the big bullet is it is doubling in numbers every few years. One of the biggest takeaways that I want you to take away this morning is that colorectal cancer is affecting young people like nobody's business.
What's shocking researchers is that colorectal cancer at one time, it was more of an old man's disorder. Almost like pancreatic cancer used to be, you got pancreatic or stomach cancer, you were old and you were a man. Generally. Not always, of course. But what they're saying is colorectal cancer is the same way. It is now doubling down on young people. And then it's almost like the discussion ends. It's almost like a discussion ends because they're not talking about any solutions. Here's what colorectal cancer, what they talk about. Early detection. Now, am I against early detection? No. But if it's doubling every few years in the amount of cases that they're seeing in North America, and it's happening more to young people. Hello? Why is that? Why don't they ask the why? No, let's do early detection. Colonoscopies. If you're under 50, at least in Canada, unless you have some kind of real history or digestive issue, they're not doing colonoscopies.
Now there's other screening tests. You can do a stool screening test or whatever. But young people are generally not thinking about that. Isn't it better that we talk about prevention of that cancer? And I want to tell you why, in my opinion. Why it is triple or quadruple since the 1970s, colorectal cancer. Why it is so prevalent? Why, why, why, why, why? And guys, that's me. I ask that question always. You give me a statistic that's changing, I'm wonder, "Okay, why?" I'm going to tell you why, in my opinion. I'm going to tell you why in my opinion. Let me eliminate something that medicine has got in their head. Ah, you know not all doctors. But let me just say something. If you read about any colorectal cancer, a lot of my guru friends and a lot of doctors, they say this, "You've got a lack of fiber in your diet." Fiber, fiber, fiber, fiber. "You're not getting enough fiber."
No. I beg to disagree with that. Because do you know what? People today are getting a lot more fiber than they used to. You know why? Because they're eating cereals. People today are eating a lot more vegetables than they used to eat. They're getting fiber. And you know, my little expression, fiber's overrated, guys. It's overrated. The reason, numero uno reason that there is so much colorectal cancer is the creation of a sugar called high fructose corn syrup. I'm convinced of it. Because we've seen the graph go like this. When it comes to cancer. Straight up. Colorectal cancer. I'm telling you, number one reason. There's other reasons, and we'll get into that. But the number one reason is the creation of an artificial sugar, a sugar that's created in the laboratory, that feeds the bears. Now let me unpack that a little bit for you.
Here is what I call the perfect storm of colorectal cancer, in my opinion. The perfect storm. Susie or Johnny, they start their life out with antibiotics. Throat infection, ear infection, you name it type of infection. Take antibiotics and they wipe out their friendly bacteria. They wipe it out. Nobody ever told them, mommy doesn't know, daddy doesn't know. And generally 99% of medicine does not take that into account. You wipe out the friendly bacteria in your gut. Remember, when you get on a scale, you got Dr. Martin's permission for this. When you get on a scale, take three pounds off. Minus three. Think about that. You got three pounds of bacteria in your body. So you jump on a scale, go minus three.
But the key to your bacteria, the key to it is you got good guys, bad guys. You're always going to have bad guys. I'm getting ahead of us. Antibiotics, the greatest discovery of the 20th century, saved millions of people's lives, is now killing people slowly. Why? Because they out friendly bacteria. They wipe them out. Five days, they're gone. Your good guys are gone. If you have a bladder infection or you got an ear... Most dear infections. Parents, grand parents, when a little guy or little girl's got an ear infection, let me give you a memo. It's viral. "I got something in my lungs and I'm coughing up a storm. I better go see my doctor." And you know the doctor, they know better but they do it anyway. They write up a prescription for an antibiotic. And in a few days you start feeling better and you go, "Gee, that antibiotic..." It was viral. Almost invariably. Look, don't come after me because Dr. Martin's against antibiotic. I'm not. I'm against the overuse of antibiotics, and if you take an antibiotic and you got a virus, it wasn't the antibiotic.
And so what that does, an antibiotic, especially in kids, whoop, wipes out the bacteria. Now that is a foundational thing, especially in the gut. You know me and I talk about autoimmune disorders and they start in the gut. Any autoimmune that you can think of starts in the gut, and this is why we see so much of it today, is because of the overuse of antibiotics, and the under use of good bacteria, which are probiotics. Guys, let me say something. One of the greatest discoveries, or ought to be, is the discovery of the effect of probiotics on your body. How good they are. And listen, see this face, I've been talking about that for almost 50 years. I remember talking to farmers and they were way ahead of humans. Well, they're human. But I mean with animals. What were they put in their feed? Probiotics. Bacteria.
Get dirty, man. Anyway, so the antibiotic, what they do, they wipe out your friendly bacteria. You don't replace that. You're not going to drop dead like that, but you're going to start a process in your body. And that process starts. And again, a little teaching. Not enough good guys, too much bad guys, not enough good guys. What happens? You have an invasion. Yeast, fungus, Candida. It invades the body. It invades the gut and that third army rarely does anybody talk about it. In autoimmune it invades the bloodstream and your body overreacts to it. And the immune system goes crazy, and you got autoimmune from psoriasis, eczema to MS, Parkinson's in the brain. Neurological. I think it's one of the big reasons there's so much ALS today. Lungs, sinuses, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis.
You name the autoimmune. Sjogren's. Now back to basics. You got an invasion of an army, yeast, and now you're going to get a perfect storm. How do you get that? You're feeding it. Kids, especially. Feeding it. The amount of sugar they're eating, the Frankenstein of sugars. High fructose corn syrup. It's in everything. From ketchup to pretzels. It's everything. They couch it. They hide it. They give it different names, the food industry. Ooh, I could grab them by the throat. They're getting away with blue murder. And now you're feeding it, yeast. You're feeding it, the fungus. It's incredible. And then you add chemicals. And let me give you another one because a lot of people, they think, "Oh, doc, I don't eat sugar." Yeah, but are you taking artificial sugars? People used to ask me in the '70s, I'm not kidding you, with Aspartame. You know the other one's Sucralose or whatever.
They used to ask me all the time. I said, "Well, I know it's not good. I know it's not good." When man makes something it's usually not that good. When God makes it, it's good. When man makes it, meh. And guess what they know about artificial sweeteners today? You know what do we know? It wasn't good. It changes the microbiome. It does. It disrupts it. So here you have another fact. So even people that go, "Well, I don't eat sugar, but I got to have all this artificial..." Be careful what you wish more. Anyway, so now we have a perfect storm developing for colorectal cancer. One thing about yeast, you really can't see it. Even if you get a colonoscopy, you can have an invading army and it's almost like they're hiding behind all the trees. Because if you do a colonoscopy, they don't see yeast. It's sub microscopic. Sub microscopic. They can't see it. They're not looking for that. They're looking for cancer. They're looking for polyps.
And if you get a pull up and they snip it off, and I'm not saying I'm against that. They snip it off and they do a pathology on it, then it comes back and it's negative. Or even if they thought it was cancerous. I'm not saying that's not good. I'm just saying they're not seeing what causes the cancer in the colorectal area. It is a fungal infection. It's not a lack of fibers. Fiber, I'm going to tell you something will do nothing for Candida. It won't. You better not feed it. So here's the perfect storm. In my opinion, starts with antibiotics. You have a disruption of the microbiome. You have an overgrowth of yeast, and you're feeding the bears. And when I say you, I'm talking about the world out there. Because colorectal cancer is taking off to the moon, it's so bad. Now there's other factors, and I want to talk about those right now. That to me is why we're seeing so much colorectal cancer.
Now here's part of the perfect storm. We talk about antibiotics, we talked about sugar, feeding a couple of other factors in the gut. Very, very important for the bowel. It ain't fiber that you need for the bowel. And you know me, I'm getting excited. It's water. And kids today don't drink enough water. There's nothing that will scrub the bowel. Not fiber. Water. And only water is water. You need water in the bowel to clean the bowel. And kids today, they don't drink enough water. They feed the cancer because they're drinking soda or juice. "Oh, Dr. Martin, I got Tropicana. Tropicana. Orange juice." That's a cancer feeder. That'll feed your cancer. You might as well drink a Pepsi. What's the difference? What? Yeah, what's the difference? I think orange juice got more sugar in it. But you think Tropicana's got fiber in it. Didn't you hear? Yeah, I heard. But I'm not convinced and I'm not impressed.
So you have dehydration. Nothing scrubbing that bowel, helping the body rid itself of Candida. They're feeding it and they're not washing it. Now water alone will not get rid of Candida, but it helps, because your body is fearfully and wonderfully me. Here's another fact. Almost a hundred percent folks that get colorectal cancer have low levels of vitamin D. Yep. They have low levels of vitamin D. You know what cancer hates? The sight of vitaderma. And for us poor folks that live in Northern Ontario, there's supplement vitamin D. Anyway, I was thinking about this yesterday. We've gone two years and we've been through a lot. All of us. I feel sorry for kids, especially. If they would've only handed out vitamin D. And nobody's talking about the immune system. Anyways, I don't want to go on that rabbit trail. I just get frustrated.
It's inexpensive. It's too simple. I feel like taking public health officials, and I don't want to say the word choking them because you might think I'm violent. I'm not. See me. I'm a big Teddy bear. I got a big bark, but I don't bite. No, but you know what I mean, guys. I get so frustrated. If they would just get vitamin D levels, get your immune system. It's amazing. People don't realize this. You fight cancer every day. But the perfect storm of colorectal cancer, and this is headlines behind the headlines, is almost invariably they are low in the vitamin D area. And if you don't have good levels of vitamin D you can't fight cancer. You can't. Your body needs it. So now we're having that perfect storm, aren't we? Let me give you one more factor. Antibiotics, right? Fungal, the invasion of the Candida, feeding it with the worst high fructose corn syrup. Artificial sweeteners, blah, blah, blah. Well, that doesn't feed Candida but it kills your friendly bacteria. It destroys it. Now low vitamin D. Almost invariably, and it's usually a big part of the perfect storm.
The thing that I'll mention last, and that is stress. Stress cortisol. You guys know more about cortisol than the rest of the universe. And I mean it. You guys know about cortisol. You know about stress because I talk about it all the time. I used to test it in my office. We'd see it like it was epidemic. Can you imagine after these last two years? And somebody said it the other day. I read an article, the doctor was saying, "Wait till we see the amount of cancers coming. Wait." But I'll tell you what part of the perfect storm is stress. See stress. And a lot of people are stressed. Cortisol. What does it do?
We're going to spend some more time on that this week. I'm going to go into even a deeper dive because of a new study that came up. But let me just say this, cortisol is a diversion. Cortisol is pouring gasoline on the fire. You have a cancer developing because of the factors that I talked about earlier, and then you add stress to it. And this is what I always said about women with breast cancer, almost a hundred percent of the time I could point back because of my history taking with that patient. And they would come in and, "Oh, doctor, I got breast cancer. What can I do?" But I wanted to show them how important cortisol control is. Because I say, "Let's go the last four or five years. Anything specific happened?" "Doc, you know my mother got sick." Or, "My dad. I had to care for them." Or, "I had a marriage problem." Or, "I had family dynamics. My child was sick." Or whatever.
And mommy didn't happen right at that moment, but a couple of years later, sometimes. Five years later or whatever, breast cancer. There isn't a doctor in the world that even talked to them about their history and being careful about that. Anyway. But I'm seeing this in colorectal cancer. You get that perfect storm because cortisol, what it does, like I said, it pours gasoline on the fire of cancer. It pours gasoline on it. Because when you're stressed, your immune system doesn't work properly. It suppresses the immune system. It suppresses the digestive system. Because if you are running away from a bad guy on a dark night, your immune system says, "I don't care about my immune system. I care about surviving. I'm going to turn around and punch that guy in the nose or kick him. Or I'm going to keep running at a hundred miles an hour to get away from him." That's how your body operates. It's the fight or flight.
And that's all right if someone's chasing you. But it's not all right if it keeps going and going and going. Now we'll talk about that this week, about the connection. And then you don't sleep. When you don't sleep or you're not getting into the four stages of sleep, recuperative sleep, and your glymphatics are draining all your garbage, and your lymphatics... Very important in your bowel too. It disrupts all that. And then you're deep trouble. You're in deep trouble. That's my little dissertation on Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Now I think it's important to ask the question why. Don't you? I know you do. I want people thinking. God gave you a brain, use it. I think the problem in medicine, especially today, is they don't ask the question why.
I'm big on it. I'm very big on it. So what do we do? What do we do? Well, you get your vitamin D levels up. You know for cancer. I like around 250. In the United States for cancer, I like your vitamin D levels to be about 100. 80 to 100 for cancer. Got to have optimized vitamin D levels. You need to be on probiotics. I don't care. You and your dog. Everybody needs them. We live in a world today. It's just the way it is. I'm big on that. We need to drink water. And by the way, if you get an infection, and you need an antibiotic, look, you need an antibiotic. But you make sure you double up your probiotics. Double them up. Big time important, guys. Reduce stress. Reduce stress.
Did you have fun today? I certainly did. Enjoyed every bit of that. It's not fiber you need, it's eggs, meat and shaves. And I'm doubling down on that. How important that is. Kids don't eat enough of that. Young people don't, old people don't. That's the reasons we see so much colorectal cancer. I mean it. You guys agree. Okay. Now Friday's Question and Answer Friday. So send in your questions. I've been looking at lots of blood work. I got no problem. You want me to send the blood work, I look at it. Don't get me to pontificate for two hours on it. I won't. I'll tell you what I like to see. You show me your triglycerides, you show me your HDL. You show me your A1C if you got it. Show me your B12 if you got it. Vitamin D. Those are the things I'll look at. I'll look at your thyroid.
I've got numbers that I like to look at. TSH, even though I think it's so overrated. But doesn't matter. I can't see there's stuff that I look for in that. So I'm happy to look at it for you. Okay, so have you read The Reset yet? The book? Still available, you know. Makes a great gift. I'm serious. People, if you give them something, give them something to read so they can look at it themselves. You know how many people started The Reset because you told them to do it, and you gave them information on it? I mean it. It's all by word of mouth, guys. Go and make disciples of all nations. I love you guys and 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!