Two recent articles about the liver have piqued Dr. Martin’s interest, and in particular one about fatty liver in American teenagers. The cross-sectional study is showing that 74% of teens have some form of fatty liver.
Having a fatty liver can be very dangerous for your heart, and in today’s episode, Dr. Martin explains how the liver and the heart are connected.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin: Oh, good morning, everyone. Once again, welcome to another week, start of another week. Hope you're having a great start to your day. You're ready to go. We're going to do a little bit of searching this morning. Interesting, two articles came out, I saw them on the weekend, probably came out at the end of the week, last week, maybe Friday. But I read them on Saturday and I want to put these two things together. Let's talk about two organs that people rarely ever think of. What is your largest organ? Now, you guys know this, and I'm not testing you, although I could. What's your largest organ? Your skin.
Now, what's your largest internal organ that you can’t see? In terms of space, it would be your gut, but in terms of size, it would be your liver. Now, look, I brought out... So, those, again, I always have to do this, because people, these live are made into podcasts. And I got to explain that. So, if you're listening to this on a podcast, I've got my old atlas out that I went through school with a long time ago, but I love it. I kept it. I enjoy it. I still like looking at pictures.
A lot of my learning was done on pictures. I could remember stuff once I saw it or continue to see it. So, the liver, for a lot of people, what does that mean? When people think of liver, they think of something they eat, liver. And it's very good for you. But your body's liver is a really important organ. So, here we go. I'm just going to point it out. See that guy right there? There's your liver. Pretty ugly, isn't it? Your liver doesn't win a prize on good looks, but you can't live without your liver.
Then I'm going to show you another organ that's right underneath your stomach. So, it's found right here, right underneath your stomach, you know where your stomach is, go right underneath it, you're going to see your pancreas. See your pancreas there? Okay. So, there's your liver, there's your pancreas. Two studies that came out, very interesting. I want to tie these things together.
Now, here is the one that was fascinating about the liver. There're actually two studies in one, they were talking about American teenagers. And it's not a pretty picture guys. It's not a pretty picture. The article didn't even go into a lot of detail. It just talked about something that's like a scourge in our society amongst young people and that is fatty liver. Now, fatty liver, in this study, 74% of American teenagers, based on this sort of cross-sectional study, have some form of fatty liver. Now, that's a scary, scary thought. Some form of fatty liver.
So, you have fat in your liver. Why, doc, are you talking about that? Because it's very, very dangerous for your heart. These kids don't realize, what happens in the liver don't stay in the liver. It's not Las Vegas. We've taught you this before, but this is even more dramatic when we think of these numbers. Imagine, teenagers. And according to this study, 74% have some form of fatty liver. What does that mean in the future for these kids? I'm going to show you another organ that is really important, I just got to get it in my atlas here, because I'm showing you the digestive system. But the digestive system, one of the most important organs is your liver. But I'm going to show you a picture of the heart.
So, see that big, see that heart right there? Now, I'm going tie these two things together. I'm going to tie them together. The liver and the heart. When you get fatty liver, I looked at blood work this morning and I could tell by certain numbers that this person had fatty liver, didn't say it on the report, because they're not looking for this. Fatty liver, doctors, look, it's not that they don't understand it, but they don't know the connection. That's what I'm going to drive home here.
Your liver is directly connected to your heart. What? It is. Because when the liver, in brackets, you know the way I think, the liver in brackets is the Costco parking lot. What gets parked there? Sugar gets parked in the liver and it's converted to fat. Got it? And that's all right, a little bit. You got stored fat in your liver. As long as there's not much, you've got nothing to worry about, honey. But when that parking lot gets full, when the parking lot gets full, when the traffic cop directs traffic into the liver, if people... And this is what they're showing with teenagers, they're insisting on eating or drinking, worse is drinking sugar. When you insist on eating and especially drinking sugar, your liver is in doo-doo, it's in trouble.
Again, one little step back so that you stay with me. The worst sugar is Frankenstein sugar, created by man, high-fructose corn syrup, that takes up beeline to your liver, rapidly. You think kids think about that when they eat ice cream and drink soda like a Coke or a Pepsi with 14 teaspoons of sugar in it, orange juice with 14, at least, teaspoons of sugar in it, or apple juice or these lattes? I always wonder what young people are doing at Starbucks or even Tim Hortons or whatever.
Look, I was young when I loved coffee. I love coffee, because my mother wouldn't let me drink it, but my grandma, you know what grandmothers are like. They never say no. And I liked the smell of coffee when I was a kid, when my mom made it, I wanted to drink it because it smelled so good. But the only way I could drink it, when I was a kid, I'm talking about 12 years old or whatever, because my grandma let me drink it. She wouldn't let me drink anything. Because I could talk my grandmother into anything.
But she'd make that percolated coffee and she was French. So, she called me [French 00:10:10] Ton, like little Tony, because my dad was Ton. "[French 00:10:15] Ton, you want coffee?" "Yeah." And the only way I could stomach it when I was a little guy, I had to put a lot of sugar in. It's the only way I could drink it. But you see these kids, when I go into Starbucks or whatever, and I almost, "What are you guys doing here? You don't like coffee." "Well, we like it in a latte with lots of sugar in it." Okay. That's why you drink coffee. Now, that's not the real vitamin C when you're adding sugar to it. Anyways, it's all the sugar these kids are consuming. We're up to 200 pounds of sugar a year on average. Isn't that incredible?
What are we thinking? These things are coming home to roost. But what this study didn't say, it only said almost 75% of teenagers in the United States have some form of fatty liver. What they don't realize what that means. What happens in the liver will not stay in the liver. Because if you insist on eating sugar or drinking sugar, your body has to do something with it, then it stores it. When the parking lot is full, when the parking lot is full, your liver, 75% of teenagers, imagine.
What even this article didn't say, what disaster that brings to a distal organ called your heart, a distal organ. It's not that far away from your liver, but they are directly connected. Why is that? I want you to think along with me, most of you probably already know this, but it's amazing to me. It's amazing to me that the world of medicine is fixated on cholesterol. They're looking for love in all the wrong places, because they're not making the connection that needs to be made.
When you have fat in your liver, your body converts it to triglycerides, fat balls. And folks, there's nothing worse for your heart than triglycerides, when you have high TGs, triglycerides. It's why, guys, I get so fixated on your blood work. Look, I know every day, every day, every day, every day, every day I get people that want to talk to me about their cholesterol and I'm not interested. I'm not. "Doc, my total cholesterol." "Ooh," I have to hold myself back. So, it's not your fault, but it don't mean nothing. Triglycerides means something, because it's directly proportional to the amount of fat in the liver, listen, which is directly proportional to the amount of sugar you consume. Got it?
Sugar cannot stay in the bloodstream, you know that, I know that, it can't stay in the bloodstream. If sugar is so toxic, then it destroys your blood vessels. Your body does everything in the world to get sugar out of your bloodstream. But it has to put sugar someplace, because insulin's job, it's a traffic cop. It has a job to do. It will not allow your blood vessels to have sugar in there. Other than, like I said, I've talked to you about this before, you've got four, five liters of blood, in between that. And in your four, five liters of blood, your blood sugar is so tightly regulated it's unbelievable how your body focuses in on controlling your blood sugar.
You don't want be out of the range, but your insulin's got a job to do. It must, it must store sugar. Its favorite spot would be your liver. You have muscles. When I see skinny people and then I see obese people, skinny, skinny, skinny as a rake and obese. The two extremes are not good. The two extremes are not good. You can be skinny as a rake and very unhealthy. You can have fatty liver. Your body just storing fat there, but you can't see it. And then you have obesity, the liver is full. So, the body has to produce more fat even. And it surrounds the liver and the other organs with visceral fat. Because, for some people, they have an unlimited ability, your insulin has an unlimited ability to make fat cells.
You see somebody that's bigger, they got a liver problem. You see someone that's skinny, they might have a liver problem full of fat, you just can't see it. But I can see it. If the skinny people will send me their blood work, I can zero right in on what's happening. Because all I need to see is your triglycerides and your HDL. That ratio to me is one of the most important blood tests that you can get done, because it tells you the connection between your liver and your heart.
Guys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most physicians do not know this. The reason they don't know it is because medicine to some extent has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical companies. Instead of looking at food, because this is a food problem. When these studies say 75% or 74%, let's round it off, 75% of teenagers have some form of fatty liver. Guys, we're in deep trouble in this country. When we talk about Americans, Canadians, we're good neighbors. Our habits are very, very similar.
This is a disaster in the making. Because when you get fatty liver, your body's response to it is to elevate your triglycerides. It makes fat balls in your bloodstream and you need cholesterol to be high, not low. You want your cholesterol, your HDL, high-density lipoprotein. You want trucks with hitches. That's what cholesterol is, guys. It's more than that. But what HDL is, are trucks with hitches on the highways and byways of your blood vessels. You know what they're doing? They're hitching their wagon to those bad fats, which are called what? Triglycerides.
And folks, listen, listen, Lindas out there, you don't get bad cholesterol from eating eggs or meats or cheese. You just don't. You get bad triglycerides from sugar, honey. That's how you get it. And that's why I always tell people, when you do the reset, you're emptying your liver. The fat in your liver, it's not worth it, because what you're helping, I know a lot of people, they don't think about it. They don't think about it. Because we're focused in on weight loss. And listen, I know that. Okay? But listen, listen, when you empty your liver by cutting out your sugars, your crappy carbs, you're helping your heart. That's the connection.
So, when I read a study like this, folks, we got big fish to fry in this society of ours. We're so upside down. It's unbelievable. When it comes to nutrition, we're upside down. Here we are in 2022 and you think we'd know better. You think we'd know better. But the disaster coming down the pipe for these kids is what's going to happen to their heart disease. It's already the number one killer in our society today. And between there and cancer, because we don't think the way we should think, we're not into prevention, we're into detection.
Listen, if you're not even looking at the right numbers, medicine has the wrong premise. You can't get to the right answer if you have the wrong premise to start with. I've been screaming this for 50 years. That organ, your liver, it plays a big, big, big factor to heart disease. The first thing that usually goes wrong, away from your liver, let's say you're not even looking at blood work. Usually, the first thing that goes wrong is not always, but often is high blood pressure. Yep. When you get high blood pressure, it ain't salt, it's not salt. I'm sorry. It's not. It's sugar. It's not salt. It's sugar.
I know, it's hard to change a leper's spots, isn't it? It's hard to change people's thinking. They make boogeymans under the wrong things. Well, there's the boogeyman, cholesterol, "Doc, how many eggs can I eat in a week? One? Doc, should I eat the yolk?" Ooh. I'm very patient with my patients. No, I am. Okay? But when I get that, "How many eggs can I eat? My doctor said." Oh, oh, why don't you go to your plumber instead, make an appointment with your plumber and say, "Can I talk to you about how many eggs I can eat?" I'm being facetious. But I mean it. Call your plumber and say, "Dr. Martin said I could call you, how many eggs can I have in a week?" They'll go, "I don't know." Well, that's a better answer than what you're going to hear from most doctors, "You better limit them. [inaudible 00:25:31] eggs, cholesterol and... Cholesterol, it's going to clog up your arteries. It's going to clog them up." No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't.
The more eggs you eat, the more trucks with a hitch that are going through your bloodstream looking to hitch their wagon to triglycerides. Now, guys, that's biochemistry 101. It's just the way your body operates. But I'm telling you, I watched it happen before my eyeballs, I'd given you all the history of it. It started with one serial killer, his name was Ancel Keys, he was actually a pathologist. He started the whole rigamarole. He lied and people died. That's why I call him a serial killer. He lied and people died. And it didn't matter how many people tried to change his mind, he went to his death, Ancel Keys. I don't even know if he believed it, but he sure still preached it.
Cholesterol is the boogeyman. Hook, line and sinker, medicine bought it. The food industry loved it. The cereal companies were giving each other high fives. And the rest is history. What do we see today? Is heart disease better? Nope, it's not. Is it better? Nope. It's not. It's worse. It's worse. Because the solution, listen, this is really important part of it, because the solution is food and it goes against the religion of the pharmaceutical companies and medical dogma.
Guys, if you're honest with yourselves, if you do any kind of reading at all, you'll admit what I'm saying is true, because the whole world went for it. You ask 99.9% of the doctors out there and the lay people, do a survey on the streets. What is bad for your heart? They won't even say smoking anymore. Well, they might and they should. But people got the memo on smoking. I'm talking to a friend the other day and they still smoke. I don't have to tell you that that's not good for you, right? "No, no, doc, I know. I know. I know." I don't have to tell you that. But what I got to tell you is that 99% of all heart attacks come originally from the liver, not from your heart, doesn't come from your heart. It originated in the liver and the higher your cholesterol is, the better it is.
I'm not talking about total cholesterol or whatever. I don't care. You can't make me care. I want to know what your HDL is. Guys, I'm not even going to get to the... I was going to talk about your pancreas. Maybe we'll do that tomorrow. Isn't that an incredible study, guys, when you think of it, where our teenage population is? It doesn't bode well for our future, for these kids. I feel sorry for them. They've been duped. They've been duped. I don't like getting duped. I'm sorry. I'm going to tell it like it is.
Did you have fun today? Okay, guys. Hey, we've got a great week coming up. We really do. Okay? So, you know what the idea of this too is? It's for you. So I'm aiming at you and then you guys aim at other people. You know what? It's just information that has to get out there in my opinion. Spread the news and you can share it on Facebook or you can get people to join our private Facebook group, which you're doing, tens of thousands of people. We have The Doctor Is In Podcast. They can download to their smart device. And they can watch it there. Isn't that good? So, lots of ways. Lots of ways to be active. Okay, guys, we love you. And 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!