843. Q&A with Dr. Martin

THE DOCTOR IS IN Podcast


Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners.

Some of today’s topics include:

  • Keto & kidney stones
  • Aloe vera
  • Enteric coated capsules
  • Thinning hair in women
  • Constipation
  • High testosterone in women
  • Polymorphous light eruptions (PMLE)
  • Abdominal cramping
  • Trigger finger

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 here this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day. Here we go. Angela. "My friend was told by her doctor not to eat keto as she will get kidney stones. She did do keto. And a short time later, she got a kidney stone, and is now nervous. Any suggestion, Doc Wallow? Here's my suggestion. It's fake news, okay? Look, if someone is susceptible to kidney stones, kidney stones are two things. They're either oxalates, and you get oxalates from vegetables, okay? Oxalates come from the plant kingdom. Or their uric acid stones. That's gouty stones. Uric acid comes from fructose. It's a byproduct of fructose. And I'll tell you, when you get kidney stones, you have trouble with insulin, okay? Insulin. And when you have trouble with insulin, it's because you have insulin resistance and that affects your kidneys and you won't filter out your uric acid or the oxalates that form.

Okay. So that's for 99% of the population. Some people make kidney stones more than other people. Look, me and keto, we don't get along that much because keto to me, what keto means is very low carb. Do I like that? Yes. The problem with keto is it's not looking at the quality of food. It's looking at the quantity of carbohydrates. You're getting carbs down, but that's not me. As you lower your carbs. Okay, but you need to replace that. I'm big on high density, high nutrient based foods. I want people to change fuels. Keto is, you people are burning ketones because they lower their carbohydrates so much. Am I saying that's bad? No, but what is bad about it is there's so much keto junk out there. And a lot of it is soy. A lot of that kind of stuff. I don't like that stuff. That's not good nutrition. You need to replace, okay?

And you will hear this, Angela. You're going to hear this. Get ready because it never going to stop coming at you. When doctors who take three hours on average of nutrition in medical school, start pontificating, they don't like the reset. Most doctors would say, "Why are you doing that? You're taking way too much protein. And protein is hard on your kidneys." No, it's not. Protein isn't hard on your kidneys. Sugar is hard on your kidneys. Sugar is hard on your kidneys. If you don't believe me, ask a diabetic. Sugar is hard on the kidney. Fructose is hard on the kidneys. Now you want to have some berries or whatever. Look good for you, but don't live on that stuff. Your kidneys do not like sugar. Your kidneys love steak. They do. It's microcirculation and filtration. And Angela, I'm telling you, and you're going to hear it and hear it and hear it. They don't like keto. They don't like the metabolic reset. They don't like any of that stuff.

Look, again, I'm not a big guy on keto either, but for different reasons than physicians. When physicians don't understand something, they talk against it. You talk to 99% of physicians and, "Vitamin D. Be careful. You're going to get toxic. Be careful. Don't get in the sun. Be careful." It's all bad advice. I don't know what else to tell you. And your friend, I don't know, I'm not going to try and convince her if she doesn't want to be convinced. There's a lot of people if the doctor made them scared and that's "What do you want me to do?" I would tell her don't live on carbs because that's how you get kidney stones. Don't live on sugar, that's how you get kidney stones. And don't overeat vegetables because they're oxalates. You're not a rabbit, okay? You have to admit. I'm consistent. Right? I'm consistent. Okay.

Margie, what are your thoughts on Aloe? I love aloe. I love aloe vera. I love aloe vera juice. If you got acid reflux, it can be very soothing. When you think of aloe, think of soothing. You've got a sunburn? Aloe, right? Soothing. It's good, right? I like aloe. Yeah, I got no problem with it. I like it on the skin, okay? That's my thoughts on it.

Dyd would like to know where the enteric coating on pills go after you take them. That's a good question, Dyd. Well, the body dissolves them. The enteric coating only helps to get past the stomach, okay? Because we want to deliver the supplement past the acidity in your stomach, okay? Especially the probiotic. We want that to get past. Now., It doesn't mean probiotics would never get passed, but we want all of it. When we say 50 billion in a capsule, that's enterically coated, we want it all to get past the stomach and then it will dissolve right away in the small intestine. So Dyd, where does the enteric coating? It's a veggie cap and it dissolves. It dissolves. It's just meant to get past the stomach and then it dissolves in the small intestine. Okay. Good questions though. All the questions are good.

Kathy. "Dr. Martin has talked about hair thinning because of sluggish thyroid." In women, not in men, okay? Ladies, this is for you. She's ordered the thyroid formula. Very smart. It's wonderful. It's the best formula on the market. There's none like it. Go look at it. Compare it to anything else. You're not going to find it. It's therapeutic. I put together stuff that I had to get results. I had to be able to change symptoms with a product. If it didn't... And this is why you rarely ever see me give you something without something else. I used to talk about synergistic, meaning they work together. Most formulas that I put together are synergistic. They work together to enhance each other. So when someone says, "Hey doc, do you like ashwagandha?" I sure do. But not on its own. I don't like it.

The only one I really like on its own is vitamin D. But even then I put K2 in it. Oh yeah, I guess that's synergistic. Okay. Now what she's asking, I didn't even get to it. Wondered if she can reverse it. Well, I can tell you something, okay? In practice for 46 years, yes, a lot of times, okay? Because when your thyroid starts working properly, it's hitting on all cylinders. A lot of good things happen, okay? A lot of good things happen. Now make sure, Kathy, I'm going to tell you one thing about your hair. Protein is king. Protein is king, because if you take a hair strand and you analyze it, 99% of every little strand in your hair is protein. So you better eat it too along with the thyroid supplementing. Did you did the hair supplement too? We get a lot of good results with that. Kathy, thanks for the question, okay? Listen, I'm very sensitive to hair. Not mine. [inaudible 00:10:29] men. No, okay? Women's hair. Because that's their glory. A woman, their hair, very important, isn't it? Absolutely. So I'm with you, Kathy.

Carol. Taking Dukoral or Dulcolax. I think that's one of them. So what that is an anti constipation myth, okay? What do I think of it? Well, look, you do it for potential digestive issues for travel. Is it safe? Well, I don't recommend it. Look, if you got a headache and nothing's touching it and you want to take an Advil or a Tylenol, hey, what do you want me to say to you? Of course, go ahead. Don't live on it. That's all. Get to the bottomline. Why do you like that? Now, I would say to you, Carol, if the only time you get digestive issues, constipation, is when you travel, you get on an airplane or you're sitting in a car for several hours and you get constipated and it bothers you, I just got to pontificate for a minute.

Remember I was a question guy in the office because I had the questionnaire filled out. "Do you suffer from constipation?" Okay? It would be checked off. So I said, "Oh, you suffer from constipation?" "Yes." "Were you in a lot of pain or a lot of discomfort or a lot of bloating? What was it?" "Oh, no. I just don't go to the bathroom as many times as I think I should." "Oh, okay." well, I said, "That's not constipation." Constipation is not the amount of times you go to the bathroom. It is when everything is stuck. And usually I'm a big guy on peristalsis. Peristalsis is you got little hairs, little villi that move the feces along, okay? Out, out, out, out, out, out, okay? That's what peristalsis is.

Here's what I usually find with people that were truly constipated, okay? With major discomfort. Two main things. One, they were dehydrated. They didn't know it. They didn't have enough water for their gut. They had leaky gut. They had a lack of friendly bacteria. Do you know that probiotics are better for bowel movements than anything else other than one? Did I say two? I meant three. And then third where peristalsis slows down is when your thyroid slows down. Sluggish thyroid.

I always wanted to get to the bottomline, because Dulcolax or whatever you call it. I can't even remember that name. I know what it is. What did she call it? Sorry, Carol. Dukoral. It's a med. It's not natural. It forces the issue. And you got to be careful with that because you could permanently damage the lining of your gut. So if you do it once in a while, I can live with that. But people that live on stuff like that, that ain't good for you. It ain't fixing the problem at all, at all, at all. So, Carol, I hope I'm answering your question. I know sometimes I get off on little tangents.

Marcy wants to know about nail heads that have a rainbow type of shape on the cuticle. Well, Marcy, I spent... I can't remember if it was Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever day it was. I talked about the signs, obvious signs that your thyroid wasn't working properly. One of them was hair. The other one was skin. And the third one was nails. Look at your nail. Men? Eh. Who cares, right? But women, you know your nails. Are they like they always were? Are they brittle? Do they have severe ridges? Blah, blah, blah. What's the bottomline? Well, rainbow, I think you're looking at colors there. Look, you always have to look, one, first thing you look at is thyroid. So what do you do about that? Well, first of all, do you have any other symptoms? Are you tired? Is your hair thinning out? Are your eyebrows thinning now? Is your skin drying up? Maybe you suffer from constipation and your thyroid is enough to snuff. Look at that.

Look, sometimes with the nails, I look at digestive tract. You're not absorbing. You don't have enough stomach acidity. A lot of times I used to put patients with bad nails on digestive enzymes because what I found was that they didn't have enough acidity in the stomach and they didn't have enough enzymes, pancreatic enzymes to break down food properly and they were getting a deficiency in zinc. Sometimes in vitamin A and even magnesium deficiencies and that. Because even though they were eating, they weren't absorbing. You are what you eat and you are what you absorb too. So the nails can be an indicator of that, okay? It can be. Doesn't necessarily have to be the thyroid. Good question, Marcy. Thank you for it.

Harmony. Oh, I love that name. Harmony wants to know "Doc, can you talk about high testosterone in women?" Sure. Happy to do it. But here's the problem. When a woman has high testosterone, it's not coming from testosterone because that's not their primary hormone. So when women get high testosterone, hairs on their chinny-chin-chin... See, I got a lot of hair here. Ladies, when you start growing a beard and you got to shave the hair on your chinny-chin-chin, yes, your testosterone levels have gone up. Why is that? Because you have lost the balance between estrogen and progesterone. And in medicine, we call that estrogen dominance. They get acne for some women, hair on the chinny-chin-chin, hair where you don't want it, right? Sometimes thinning of the hair here and hair growing a little mustache or under the chinny-chin-chin. True or false?

So what do you do about it? I got to show you something. Let me just see if I can get it real quickly, okay? Now, if you're listening to this on a podcast, you're not getting the vision. This was taken quite a while ago. When I used to look for estrogen, I actually could see it on a scan. Now I'm going to show you, okay? Now you can see estrogen. See what estrogen looks like. Now, again, I'm just describing these black spots on a scan, okay? This lady here looks like she has leopard spots. She had so much estrogen on her body, okay? You're a woman. You need estrogen, but you don't want too much estrogen because when you have too much estrogen, one of the things that can happen is your testosterone can go up. But remember, estrogen is a growth hormone. You don't want to be estrogen dominant, okay?

So I used to spend my life... And I'll show you another one. See this lady here, okay? And again, for the folks that are on the podcast, I apologize you can't see this. Close your eyes and envision what I'm showing you, okay? See this lady here. Now you guys can see this. You're going to see, look around her breast tissue. Look at the amount the dark here. See the spot, the dark, dark estrogen. That is very dangerous. Very dangerous because you can't get breast cancer without estrogen. It's always "Oh, Dr. Martin my doctor said my cells weren't estrogen receptive." Of course they are. You're a woman. Your body looks for estrogen. You're a woman. It's your dominating hormone.

Estrogen's good for you until it dominates. Then it ain't good for you. It's very dangerous. So I spent my years in practice. See the dark. Can you see it? I hope you do. Now, I'm going to show you same lady. Look at all the dark taken away. Before and after. See that. Before, look at the dark. Look at the after. What do you see there? The estrogen has been taken away. You know how I did that? Hormonal formula. I dimmed her out. I hammered that estrogen down. So back to your question, okay. Back to your question, Harmony. When a women has too much testosterone, the cause is always an imbalance between estrogen which makes you a woman and progesterone that gives you babies, okay?

See, men, eh, we don't have that. Now when a man has too much estrogen, a lot of men when they hit 50 have more estrogen than their wives. And their reason is because their primary hormone is out of whack. They don't have enough testosterone. And when a man doesn't have enough testosterone, estrogen takes over and they become, I know I'm going to get in trouble, a girly man. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say that. They have more estrogen than their wives. Their testosterone is down. There's big problem in men today. Huge problem. So when I talk about testosterone in men, higher the better. Testosterone in women? The lower, the better. You want a little bit. You want a little bit. Do you know that, men? We need a little bit of progesterone even. Hard to believe. We're not having babies. But we need a little of it, a teensy bit even to make testosterone. Okay. I don't want to get into the weeds, but I wanted to show you that today. Okay, let's get back to these questions. Harmony, thanks again.

Diana's talking about what she call polymorphous light eruptions. Big word to say. She gets an itchy rash after being in the sun. Couple of things to consider. One, you might have an allergy to the sun and that can come from medications. If you were in my office, you would've filled out a questionnaire. I would've figured you out in probably no time. People that don't do well in the sun, of course, could be autoimmune. You have to be careful that you don't have lupus or something like that that you become hypersensitive to the sun. The other one is when you are a carboholic...

Diane, I don't know you so I'm only giving you what I saw in practice. When people eat too much sugar and too much crappy carbohydrates, omega-6 from vegetable oils, a lot of times they don't do well in the sun. So I would try and fix that. But again, Diane, I mean, I'm just giving you ideas why that could be there. You could have leaky gut too. And leaky gut can do a lot of things, especially with the skin. Leaky gut, leaky skin. So you're microbiome. Where you on antibiotics? Are you surrounded by chemicals or blah, blah, blah that can change your microbiome? Very good question. Thank you for it, Diane.

Joanne. What do I think about searing cooking steak at high temperatures? Yeah, I like it. Joanne, you got to understand me, okay? To me, cooking steak at high temperatures is good for you. I don't buy the nonsense about charred. Look, you know what to be a lot worse for you is eating raw meat, okay? You're not meant to eat raw meat. You're meant to cook it, okay? And yeah, some people they really... You know. I don't know. It's the way you like it. I want you to eat vitamin S. And if you put it at a high temperature, so what? I love mine rare, okay? That's the way I like it, okay? I love my meat rare. I like to put it at a high temperature for a short period of time. And then I put butter on it and then you die. It tastes so good. Okay? That's me. Everything that's done on meat is always observational. Meaning that "Can you tell me, sir, what you ate last month?" "Well, first of all, could you ask me what I ate last night because I can hardly remember?"

Then they do studies and then they make conclusions off of studies like that. They do a food guy, "Oh, do you eat your meat charred?" But they don't ask you, "Do you smoke? Do you drink? How much alcohol do you drink?" Blah, blah, blah. "Do you exercise? Do you do that?" They don't ask those questions. They're looking for love, in my opinion, in the wrong places so what they do is they set up a study to fail. So, "Oh, no wonder you got cancer. You take your steak and you char it." No, you got cancer because you were a smoker, not because you had your bacon with nitrates in it. There's never been linear studies, never, that shows eating meat any way you like it equals cancer. Nonsense. It's always observational. People that have an agenda and they set up their studies so that steak fails. "You're eating red meat. No wonder you're so sick. You eat hamburger? No wonder." Well it's not the ground beef that's making you sick. It's the bun.

Am I controversial? Joanne, frying/baking trans fats. Where's the trans fats in frying/baking? Where are they? There's no trans fats in baking. It's got the same oleic acid that olive oil does. Do you like olive oil? I like olive oil. I do. I like baking better. It taste better. Same [inaudible 00:28:13]. It speak news, guys. I'm sorry. You can't make me buy it. I'm not buying it. I know I'm different. I know I'm weird. I use the word weird on myself. Okay. I don't use it on you guys because I guess you're not supposed to say weird anymore. I'm weird.

Betty. "Been on estrogen for 20 years." Betty, I'm going to tell you something right now, Betty. You better be on our hormonal formula to knock that estrogen down. You're taking synthetic estrogen. You know where it comes from? Horses' urine. I always used to tell women, "If you eat hay, then take estrogen." Because that's what it's made of, horses' urine. You're not a horse. A horse is at least 10 times bigger than you are. I'm very skeptical with estrogen. I never liked it. I always said we have too much of it. I could prove it to people, Betty. When I used to do my thermal imaging, I could show them, I could show a woman her estrogen in a nanosecond on a scan. And a lot of women had way too much in the wrong places. So Betty, you just make sure you are dimming that out if you want to stay on it. I don't recommend that, but I'd be very, very careful. Very careful.

Okay. Shelly. "I have severe abdominal cramping. Can a sluggish thyroid cause this?" No. Ordinarily, I would say not severe abdominal cramping. I would tell you you probably have a condition. One of two things usually, okay? And again, without knowing you, Shelly, without knowing you, without examining you, I'm giving you some things to think about. One, when you have severe abdominal cramping, you either have what we call SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth, which we renamed at the clinic SIFO, small intestine fungal overgrow. It's yeast, baby. It's yeast.

Or you have developed like 60% of the population, incredible diverticulosis, which is the inner lining of your gut goes into your outer lining and forms poaches and stuff gets caught in there. Feces and garbage and yeast. It can become an infection. So you got to be careful. And all I'm saying is, you got to get that checked out because usually severe abdominal doesn't come from a sluggish thyroid. When you're sluggish and you get bloated and maybe you don't feel quite as good in your gut the way you should, yeah, that can be your thyroid. But usually severe? No. Something's going on. Okay? Shelly, good.

Linda. "Heel spur and osteoporosis on my left shoulder. What can I do with 24/7 pain?" Well, no fun having a heel spur. I would take out a tennis ball start rolling, man. You know why you get a heel spur? Because you've lost your metatarsal arch. And I'll tell you one thing that I would really highly recommend. Get on our inflammation formula. And before you do that, go to our website, martinclinic.com, and read the reviews. Read the reviews on that product. The inflammation formula. People that had plantar fasciitis, heel spurs, fallen metatarsal arches, even frozen shoulder, incredible results. Go read it. Go read it.

Jerry. "How can I help my wife's swollen ankle?" Well, if it's only one ankle and it's pooling there, you might put a brace on it, okay? A little sleeve. An ankle sleeve, Jeremy. The other way to do it, if it's both ankles and they're pooling, usually that's circulation. Now that can happen in one, two, you know that? I'm a big, big guy on compression socks. I love compression socks. And especially as we get older, micro circulation, compression socks help, okay? And that's one way, Jerry, you can do.

Dan. "What causes psoriatic arthritis? What to do?" Well, I'll tell you what causes it. It's leaky gut. Leaky gut, leaky skin, leaky joints. Psoriatic arthritis is leaky gut. It becomes autoimmune. And then you get a fungus. You get an overgrowth of yeast. Now don't feed it. For psoriatic arthritis, you need to be on probiotics and you need to do the metabolic reset. Get off all sugars, get off all carbohydrates for 30 days. And it makes a huge difference, but you have to fix the gut. The gut is what gave you autoimmune in the first place, okay?

Geneen. "Would low B12 affect sciatic nerves in the legs?' It's possible. Usually sciatic is an impingement in the spine. It can be low levels of B12. I've seen that. You can get some neuralgia. A lot of diabetics have trouble with peripheral neuralgia. And they're often low in B12 because they take up medication. One of the things they take is Metformin. So first of all, Geneen, are you on any meds? Any me at all will take away your B12. So I would start taking B12. Now you could have an impingement in your spine, even in the piriformis muscle that's causing sciatica. So get it diagnosed properly. Good question,

Deb. "What about atrial fib and or heart is strong cause unknown?" Well, Deb, I look at other stuff when you have atrial fib, it comes out of nowhere, I usually look at, one, you're low in magnesium, okay? But if you're not, okay. But make sure you eliminate that. You could be low in magnesium. The biggest one I find even higher than magnesium, you're low in CoQ10. What's CoQ10? CoQ10, your body makes. It's very, very important for your mitochondria in your muscles. Do you know that in your heart you've got 5,000 mitochondria in every muscle? Your heart's a muscle. It's a pump, right? Boo. Boo. Boo. When you don't have enough CoQ10... And guess how you get CoQ10? You have to eat steak. High protein, red meat. Elevate your CoQ10. You might look at, Deb, taking some CoQ10. If you do, take Ubiquinol, not, ubiquinone. Ubiquinone, you're wasting your money. Ubiquinol. You want to try that, okay? But you do get CoQ10 and your body makes it more when you eat vitamin S, steak. Okay?

Rita. What do I think of broadband laser treatment for wrinkles, spider veins, rosacea? Well, I don't know. "Does it work?" Try it I guess. I don't know, Rita. I got some skepticism in me. When I look at skin, I don't think skin. Okay, Rita? See my skin. When I look at that, I don't think skin. I think this is an organ. So I think inside out. So when you do laser or peels or whatever you're doing, Botox, that's for the outside, but I'm an inside out guy. When you eat good, and even vitamin D, the VitDerma, that helps to regenerate your skin. And I want you to have healthy skin.

Now, if you find laser, temporarily or whatever, makes you more beautiful, Rita, hey, who am I to say don't do it? I won't say that. But again, you have to understand my philosophy. I'm a big guy on nutrition and I want you to eat right to have healthy skin. I want your microbiome, your bacteria, both on your skin and inside your gut that communicate with each other, healthy gut, healthy skin, okay? So I'm bigger on that, Rita, but I'm not against what you just asked.

Two more guys. Evelyn. "I developed trigger finger 17 months after the reset." Well, it wasn't the reset. Trigger finger, you get a calcified tendon to your finger called trigger finger. What calcifies your tendon? Sugar. It causes what we call glycation, which calcifies tendons. I had orthopedic surgeons tell me that oftentimes they look at joints and they see joints that got... It's not because they got an old football injury or whatever. That's not what they were looking at. They saw tears and scar tissue or whatever. It was when they looked at the bones and the tendons, they were like nine years old in a 40 year old man or a female, and they never thought of this but I used to tell them "That's of the amount of sugar they're eating. They got what we call glycation." I said, "Google it. Read about it." It comes from sugar, not protein. The reset didn't do that to you. It didn't. It don't give you a trigger finger. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of people that found out they really got a lot better, trigger finger, after they did the reset. Just the opposite.

And 17 months after the reset, Evelyn, and you might not be eating sugar, but that might be former damage from glycation because that's what trigger finger is. It's glycation. The tendon lose their suppleness. Crazy.

One more. Margaret. "I got drop foot." Okay. And that can be because of a spinal injury, right? Or whatever. "What do I do?" Well, the best exercise, get your legs strong. As much as you can, get your upper legs. You might not ever be able to recover from that drop foot. I'm not saying... Sometimes people recover from it, but get your core very strong. Get your leg muscles very strong. Do resistant exercises. Legs, legs, legs. Get your core strong too. It'll help big time. You have to compensate, okay?

Oh, we got through it guys. We got through it. Question and Answer Friday. Thank you very much, guys. You guys are so good. Okay, we're looking forward to seeing you next week. We love you dearly. 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!

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