Dr. Martin shares two interesting studies on non-alcoholic fatty liver. The first says that 4 decades of research has left big pharma without a medication for it. The second says that a specific blend of probiotics can help reverse liver damage.
If you’ve followed Dr. Martin, you know how much he loves probiotics. He’s absolutely thrilled to hear that probiotics can help repair a damaged liver!
Listen to today’s episode to learn why this news is so important!
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: Good morning, everyone. Hope you're having a great start to your day. Now, look, I got my chart out this morning again, my atlas. I want to talk to you about ... I'm going to give you two headlines. I don't know, this has got to be the GI week, right, because Monday we talked about the liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver. We're going back to that today. Two studies, and I want to give you the headlines, okay? I'll give you the headlines first and I'm going to get into some detail and I'm going to do a little bit of teaching this morning. I'm going to show you some interesting things when it comes to your liver. And this morning specifically, we're going to look at the gut-liver connection, and I'm going to explain that to you and why it's important, okay?
Let me give you the headlines. Here's the headlines. One, "Four decades of research has left big pharma with no meds for non-alcoholic fatty liver." That's the first headline, four decades of research and they don't have a medication, and I'm going to tell you why they don't. "Four decades of research has left big pharma with no meds for non-alcoholic fatty liver," so that's one.
Listen to this second headline. Is it blow your socks off day? Ah, maybe for some of you. For me, I really, really like this. Not surprising to me, but here's the second headline. Listen to this, okay? Second headline, come out on the same day, two different ... one I got it from gov.org or something like that on the research. And here's the second one, "A specific blend of probiotics can help reverse liver damage in non-alcoholic fatty liver." Wow. Four decades of research, big pharma's come up with nothing for fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver. And the second one is, "A specific blend of probiotics can help reverse liver damage." Wow.
You know how much I love probiotics, right? You'll be ... interesting to know that the specific blend that they studied had seven different strains of bacteria. I'm not going to get into that too much, but they use seven strains with great success, and it don't surprise me, because I am a big guy on broad-spectrum probiotics. The more strains, the better. And certain strains do different things. You and I are different. We all have our different strengths and different weaknesses, and a community comes together and uses its different gifts, and that's what probiotics are like.
You can have acidophilus, which I love. I love acidophilus, but it's only one stream, and what they found in this research is that it took seven strains. Now, I agree with them, broad spectrum. Broad spectrum means 10 strains, okay? I've been using probiotics for over 40 years and I'm big on it, but the headline is, "It helps to reverse the damage of non-alcoholic fatty liver." Right?
So, let's do a little bit of physiology, okay? We talked about this the other day. 74% of teenagers, according to a recent study, have some form of fatty liver. So, here I am. I'm bringing out the chart that I use, an old atlas that got me through school. I'm a visual guy. I got to see things, and when I see things ... I remember working on cadavers in the morgue. It could be pretty gruesome, I guess, but it's very visual. You never forget. You look at a liver and say, "Boy, that's ugly, a liver." I couldn't get over how ugly a liver is, right? I don't know if that had any effect on me not liking liver to eat, even though it's good for you.
As you can see here, okay, and I always have to say this because this is going to be turned into a podcast, and for those folks on the podcast, I'm pointing to a liver on an old atlas that I love to use. Okay? Here's the liver. Okay? Here's the liver, and they're showing cirrhosis of the liver here, but what happens in fatty liver? You don't get cirrhosis. Well, you do, if it's advanced, okay? You get cirrhosis of the liver just like you get a fibrosis in the liver, the liver loses its ability to filter.
Now, let me explain. What you see here, you're seeing the liver, and then right underneath it, see the stomach here, okay? Yesterday we talked about the beta cells and the pancreas. Remember, this is the size of a ballpoint pen. Remember yesterday we did this? Your pancreas literally is the size of a ballpoint pen. I've seen it, okay, and I need visual things.
Now, here's what I want to teach this morning, how probiotics help deliver. "How can they help deliver, doc?" Okay, good question. Now, you can see here, the start of the small intestine. Now, the small intestine ain't that small. It's wide, and in the small intestine, very important, once the food comes out of the stomach, this is a furnace. The higher your acid is, the better you break down food. That's one of the biggest problems in digestion, it starts in the upper GI, what we call the stomach, even up higher, but the stomach is where you want your body to be very acidic. It will just mulch down. It's a furnace to break your food down.
Now, once food is mulched down, microsized, goes into your small intestine to be absorbed. So, the old saying is, "You are what you eat"? Well, really, you are what you absorb. And when I talk about malabsorption, a lot of times malabsorption and a lot of autoimmune and a lot of food intolerances start in the upper GI. Not enough enzymes in the stomach, not enough acidity in the stomach, the food doesn't get broken down properly, and it gets into your small intestine and your body sees it as a foreign invader. That's a whole other story. I'm not going to get into that, but let me get into what I get into today.
Right here, okay, as you start down the small intestine, your food is being absorbed. What you don't see on this chart is a microscopic little thin, I mean, a single-cell thin, layer. It's a layer between your gut and your blood, okay, a layer between your gut and your blood. Because how is your food going to be delivered? In the river of life, your blood, okay? You can't live without blood. Why? Because it delivers all your oxygen. But not only that, it delivers your nutrition, it delivers your water, down the river of life, okay?
So, you have a little, I mean a teensy-weensy, layer between your gut and your blood, the gut-blood barrier. What is leaky gut? Leaky gut is when that barrier is compromised. When that barrier is compromised and the border guards are not there, it's trouble. Okay? Like the Toronto Airport is today, apparently. You know why? They don't have enough people working there. They don't have enough border guards. If you want to go to the United States or you come in from the United States to come through the Canadian border, or going the other way to go to the United States, read all about it. Toronto's a mess. Toronto Airport's a mess, okay? Same thing that happens in leaky gut. The border guards aren't there. Not enough of them, so what happens? Now you have bacteria, viruses, toxins, undigested poop, microsized, ew, can get into your bloodstream. Heavy metals, toxins, gets into your bloodstream. The border guards aren't there.
What is the first destination of your blood? Okay, what's the first destination? The liver. Your blood has to go through the liver first. You know, your blood, as soon as it gets your nutrition or whatever, it goes to the liver, numero uno. Why is that? Well, there's a lot of things that happen in the liver, 600 and more. One of the biggest things that happens in your liver is the detoxification process, okay?
You know what happens when you have leaky gut? You're putting a lot of pressure on your liver to take out those toxins, okay, to take out those toxins, to detoxify you. When you have fatty liver, you got fat accumulating. One thing fat does, you might not know this, but I've taught this in the past, one of the things fat does, when you got fat around your organs, it attracts toxins. Fat loves toxins. Now, I'm not talking fat that you're eating. I'm talking fat around your organs, especially your liver. So, toxins accumulate. That's a big issue. It's a big issue.
So imagine, 75% of teenagers have some form of that fatty liver. What's happening in their body? They don't see it, they don't feel it, but they're in trouble, and medicine don't like to talk about it. You know why big pharma don't like to talk about it? Because they don't have a med for it. It has nothing to do with medication. You can't get fatty liver unless you're a carboholic or a sugarholic. And there's nothing that'll damage your liver faster than the sugar that has been manufactured by man. That's high fructose corn syrup. It's the worst sugar in the universe. It is sugar on steroids. It's Frankenstein of all sugars, and it's in everything, and it's couched and it's given different names, but it's bad news for your liver because it's fructose. Fructose goes to the liver immediately, just about. It has a little bit of damaging effect, okay?
And listen to this. We talked about teenagers, but according to this research, four decades of research has left big pharma with no meds for non-alcoholic fatty liver, headline. But you know what was in that article? One-quarter, 25% of the entire population in North America, has fatty liver, according to this study, 25%. 75% of teenagers. 25%, one out of four, has fatty liver.
The good news is, the good news, this is tremendous news, guys, one of the ways to help reverse fatty liver ... Now, you and I talk about this all the time. There's two ways now. There really was only one way. And I told you ... Have I told you lately about your liver? You have to empty it. You want it to work? Empty it. Get the fat out of it. You get the fat out of it. When you don't eat sugar and crappy carbohydrates, your body will empty that fat. Okay? One.
Two, the good news, it's not a medication, but it's a supplement. By taking a supplement, hot off the press, a probiotic, you can help reverse fatty liver. Okay? Now, what's the reasoning? I'll tell you how that works. Remember, your liver, first stop for your blood. The next stop, liver, it's the first one in the subway stops, okay? Take the subway, first stop, liver. Your blood's going to go to your liver first, after it's picked up its nutrition and blah, blah, blah, right? To the liver, off we go.
And if you know that, you want to reseal the gut-blood barrier. Reseal it. Put the border guards there so that no toxins, no garbage, goes to the liver. If your gut is working, if you have the border guards there, and they don't let any toxins inside that bloodstream, and they say, "Out, out, out, out, out. You can't come in," well, that helps to detoxify your liver. And if you detoxify your liver by eliminating fat, and please, you guys know more than, oh, everybody, fat don't make you fat. Fat does not make fatty liver. Sugar does, honey, sugar does. And when you insist on eating bread, and it turns to sugar rapidly, okay, bread, pasta, rice, cereal, sugar, sweets, pastries, juice, milk, grocery store milk, flavored yogurt, all that stuff is crap. It's sugar in nanoseconds, sweets, pastries, bagels.
"But Dr. Martin, it's a carrot muffin." Ooh, I don't care. You're having a cake, a piece of cake, with eight teaspoons of sugar in it from Tim Hortons. Just drink their coffee. Leave the other stuff alone, okay? Somebody asked me the other day, "Why would anybody go to McDonald's?" I said, "Well, I like their coffee." You don't have to eat anything else there. I just like coffee, okay? Oh, you guys didn't know that? You didn't hear that? Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Oh, and what coffee does for your liver? That's another one we'll do, okay? You wouldn't believe what vitamin C, the real vitamin C, does for your liver. It detoxes the liver.
So, this is really important. What a study. Here we are. For four decades, the big pharmaceutical companies, they can't find anything. Well, because if they would've called me ... Why didn't they call me? Why didn't they call me? I would've saved them a lot of money, because you're not going to fix the liver with a drug. I'm sorry. It's not going to work. You have to understand some basic physiology. You can't find a drug to reverse fatty liver, because it's a food problem. It's a food problem. There's no money in that. But if you seal up the gut-blood barrier, you're now taking an enormous stress off the liver.
An organ, by the way, which can really regenerate is a liver, unless it's so full of cirrhosis, it's so hardened, it don't work good no more. And can I say another thing? You know what cancers are really, really, really increased? You have to understand, I'm going back, you go back with me 50 years, okay, liver cancer, it was so rare, it was unreal. You never heard of ... Ah, it happened, but it didn't happen much. Pancreatic cancer was an old man's cancer. I'm telling you, I've got a textbook over there on cancer in the '70s. It was all to do with smoking, most of them. You won't read anything there about liver cancer, but you do read about pancreatic cancer.
I'm going to tell you what it says. You know what it says about pancreatic cancer in the 1970s? "It's an old man's cancer, rarely ever found in women." It's an old man's cancer. So, if there was a multiple choice question on an exam in the '70s, pancreatic cancer, and let's say you had four answers there, you know one of them is all of the above. So, you have three, you know? Is it smoking, pancreatic cancer? Nope. Okay. Genetics? Nope. Third answer, an old man's cancer? Yes. That would be the answer. You would get it right. I hated multiple choice. Ew.
Guys, you know what? Today, pancreatic cancer, it's like an epidemic. We talked about those beta cells yesterday. It's an insulin. It's a food problem. That's why there's so much pancreatic cancer today. You ran out of ink in your ballpoint pen. I know that sounds simplistic, but that's the way I remember stuff.
And you know, what's really on the rise today? The liver cancer, big time. And like pancreatic cancer, very, very, very much related to the diet. And even today, which is a tragedy, is in medical school, they don't teach food. Because if you ask 90% of doctors, eh, maybe 95, "What's bad for you?" "Red meat, cholesterol, lower your eggs. Don't eat cheese. That'll make you fat. That'll clog up your arteries. I am concerned about your cholesterol. What are you eating that for?" Because they take about 10 minutes of nutrition in medical school.
You know my expression? Go talk to your plumber. You're going to get better advice, as far as nutrition. I know I'm being facetious, but I can't help myself. To me, it's a joke that here we are in 2022, and one of the biggest scourges in our society is liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver. I think I saw it on the private Facebook group yesterday. One of our folks there in our community went to their doctor and their doctor said, "Well, everybody has fatty liver. Don't worry about it." And I instantly got a migraine when I heard that, or when I read that. I think it was yesterday. I got a migraine again. How silly is that? Everybody's got fatty liver, well, that's true, just about. "But don't worry about it." Why wouldn't you worry about it? Of course you should worry about your liver. You can't live without your liver.
If your liver gets gummed up with fat, you're not detoxing. Never mind what happens between the liver and your heart. How serious is that? When your triglycerides are going through the roof ... You know how many times a day when you send me your blood work and I say, "Your triglycerides and your HDL, your trucks on the highways and byways of your blood vessels, well, they're upside down. Your HDL should be high and your triglycerides should be low. What are you aiming for low cholesterol for? Why do you want low cholesterol?" And I sit and wait for the answer. "Well ..." Guys, it ain't true. Cholesterol, well, if you have low cholesterol, it'll kill you.
Now, in the article, here's what it said. I want to read to you some things that they ... I jotted them down so I could share with you this morning. Okay? Now, listen to this. In this same article, "Four decades of research has left big pharma with no meds for non-alcoholic fatty liver," and then we find out that a specific blend of probiotics ... By the way, a little advertising. I have every one of those seven strains in our probiotics. I was ahead of them a long time ago on the benefits of probiotics and the specific blend. Now, 25% of the population have fatty liver, adults. Almost 75% of teenagers in North America have fatty liver, some form of it. May not be advanced yet, but they're in trouble. They're on the broad road that leads to destruction. The end is bad. Not going to end well. I don't even want to talk to you about fatty liver and diabetes. That'll be another teaching.
But listen to this. If you are obese, according to this study, "if you are obese, you have a 90% chance that you have fatty liver going on," 90%. You already have fatty liver, and what they're saying is it's the fat around your organs. If you're obese, 90%, but even skinny people, because they can't look inside. They don't see, because they don't have an ability to make fat cells.
Insulin, remember its job. It has to store fat, and when there's no place in your muscles, in your liver, there's no more place in the Costco parking lot, your liver, it'll start making fat cells. So, even a skinny person, they can't see it, but they have the most dangerous fat that they can't see, and it's visceral fat. Fat is being accumulated around their organs and they can't see it. They're skinny as rakes, but that don't make them healthy. And this is why I want to look at people's blood work, because I want to see your triglycerides. I want to see your HDL. I want to see your A1C, because skinny people are not necessarily healthy people. Okay?
Now, here's what they're saying, "Possible signs that you have fatty liver." They got six of them. "Abdominal belly fat," okay, so you get a skinny person, but they got a belly, right? They're skinny, but they have a belly. Now ladies, listen, a lot of women have bellies, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they have fatty liver. A lot of times cortisol can do that. It won't do it to a man, but it'll do it to a woman. Horror-mones, horror-mones, for women, okay? More complicated. Abdominal belly fat, one.
"Increase in triglycerides." I talked to you about that. How does liver try and empty itself? By making triglycerides, TG, three fat balls, triglycerides. Glycerides are fat balls, three fat balls in a bundle. Three is bad news, okay? Look, your body makes triglycerides, but when they're elevated, and it's always a comparison, guys, it's a comparison between your triglycerides and your cholesterol, HDL, okay? Don't send me your blood work. A few people did it, okay? And I tease them if I can, right? "You sent me your triglycerides without your HDL. That don't tell me anything, honey. You got to send them both. It's the ratio." You better have higher HDL than your triglycerides, or you're in trouble. You've got the start of fatty liver.
"Hypertension." What? Blood pressure. What? What's that got to do with the liver? What did I talk about? See, it's sugar, honey. It's not salt, it's sugar. Okay?
"Pain in the right side of the abdomen," where your liver is. It's on your right side. It's a large organ. People get pain on the right side. Now, it could be other things too, but that's what they're talking about here. I'm only giving you the message that they wrote.
"Persistent fatigue." Now, why would you get fatigue with the liver? Well, when you're not detoxifying properly, remember that liver, first stop, Cucamonga. I remember that with Bugs Bunny cartoons, the train stopping at Cucamonga. I used to laugh as a kid when I heard that. First stop for your blood is the liver. If you have toxins and your liver's not detoxing the way it should, you could get a real fatigue. Now again, you got to do a workup. I mean, that's up to doctors to look for this kind of stuff.
And another one, they said this is the sixth one they had, was "binge eating." Binge eating, okay? That could be a sign that you have fatty liver. There's reasons for that.
So guys, good news. We've found a medication that's not a medication to help your liver, even in fibrosis or cirrhosis, non-alcoholic. We found a big tool to help, probiotics. The gut-liver connection, the gut-liver connection, the importance of probiotics. Guys, that should be major headlines, especially when you consider how many people suffer with fatty liver. That would be a headline, wouldn't it, in health news? Yeah. Good luck in the mainstream media. Good luck finding that one. If you do, would you send it to me? I'd like to see if someone's going to report on this.
Okay, guys, having fun? Okay. Now, Friday's Question and Answer, so do you have any questions for me? Okay, send them in. Not too late. And isn't that private Facebook group wonderful? Well, join in if you're not, and get your friends, if they're not. Get your family, if they're not. Get them to join up. And guys, tell people about The Doctor Is In podcast, okay? You're the messenger. We appreciate you, and we appreciate you very much. We love you. 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!