You may think losing one night of sleep isn’t a big deal, but a new study is suggesting otherwise. Just one night of bad sleep decreases the activity of your T cells which in turn affects your immune system. This leaves you more susceptible to catching a virus.
Sleep is very important and 70-80% of the population never get into the four stages of sleep. They’re not getting the sleep they need and Dr. Martin says a lack of sleep has become an epidemic!
Join Dr. Martin to learn the 3 areas our bodies are most affected when we’re sleep deprived.
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 this morning. Hope you're having a great day. Couple of stories. I wanna talk about this. One's on sleep. So I'm just gonna spend a few minutes on it, but I'm writing a new book right now, sun stake and steal. Of course, I'm using another S sleep. <laugh> not gonna be in the original title, but I'm going down on some esters. And I'm talking about sun steak and steel and salt will be in the book. Sleep is gonna be in the book, but this new study on sleep saw it yesterday or the day before. And it's interesting because it's even on just one night of bad sleep. One night, one night of bad sleep affects your immune system decreases the activity of T cells. Now T cells, as a reminder, are your Navy seals of your immune system.
They're supercharged by vitamin D, vitderma. They're supercharged. They have battery packs. They have antennas for vitamin D, but what slows them down is sugar. I've talked to you about that in the past. It'll put a T-cell to sleep. It's like you're in the hot sun and you need to see us. So when you eat sugar, you put your immune system to sleep. And this study is showing that when you don't sleep, even in one night, your T cells are not near as effective. This is a study gun. It's gotta be 25, 30 years ago, at least that long ago, because I used to talk about it on my radio show all the time. If you lost the night's sleep, let's say you're traveling. And this is where they were showing it. You were something like 60, 70% more susceptible to getting a cold within a few days. Well, it wasn't because you got exposed to a virus, you're always exposed to a virus. It was because your immune system went dumb, missing a night of sleep.
And this one is saying one bad night of sleep affects your immune system. Damages your brain three things, okay. That this study has said affects your immune system. Okay? We know that two damages, the brain I'll tell you why they didn't say why, but I'm gonna tell you, why have you got a self cleaning oven in at home? You do. Okay. Well, you know how that works? <laugh> it cleans itself right now. You might have to push a button, but when you go to sleep at night, your brain cleans itself of debris. Why would there be a lot of debris in the brain? Well, because the brain is like a manufacturing plant, whatever you eat, it needs to produce energy. And you know, if you produce energy there's debris, but your brain has its own self cleaning oven it, but it only works when you sleep.
So do you think sleep is important? Absolutely. And you know, thinking about sleep, it's 70, 80% to the population never get in into the four stages of sleep. They just don't go into. And guys, this is, I hate to use the word an epidemic, but it really is an epidemic. A lack of sleep. Now, I, I just wanted to read to you and then we'll, we'll talk about this for a minute. Okay? This is a headline from another study. This will be in my new book, the link between a lack of sleep and cancer headline, the link between a lack of sleep and cancer. And again, for the reasons that I'm giving you, your immune system goes down, your immune system is there for your body protection, not only against viruses, bacteria, but also cancer, your immune system. Well, it's decreased if you don't sleep, but listen to this headline, the link between a lack of sleep and cancer, and this comes from the world health organization.
The world health organization says any form of nighttime shift work is carcinogenic. What world health organization, let me repeat any form of nighttime shift work is carcinogenic. Now a lot of people work night shift, but you see your body was meant to follow a circadian rhythm type of thing. Okay? Follow the sun. <laugh> sun comes up, you're up. Sun goes down, you're settling down, right? That's the way it's supposed to be the way your body is built. When you come out of that and listen, people that work at shift work. I mean, hospital cleaning stuff, people that work all sorts of jobs, truck drivers work at night. I mean, they work during the day too, but they drive. But what the world health organization is saying, they're almost saying like, if you work shift work, it's like you're smoking without smoking it's car. Cogenic. I didn't say that the world health organization set up and we got 70, 80% of the population that don't sleep.
They don't sleep properly. Now there's reasons for it. One of the biggest things that I talk about all the time is stress people today. Guys, I wrote about this in the eighties headline in the 1980s, we live in a different world because what I was seeing back then was chronic fatigue syndrome. Women, rarely in a man, 90 something percent women, 95, just above and me. And the way my brain operates, if something is new, something is picking up steam. The question I always ask is why, why is that happening? But even in the eighties, it almost seemed like the world was speeding up for women who, first of all, unfortunately, but I see this as a blanket statement, women often are misunderstood. Medicine is the worst at it. Medicine is a man's world. It's not a woman's world. Even today, where I believe, at least in Canada, they are graduating much more women doctors than men.
You would think there would be a huge paradigm shift in the thinking in medicine because women doctors, eh, but that's not happening. They're so ingrained not to take hormones or what I call hormones into account. You can hardly talk to a physician and I hate to be negative, but this is a fact you can hardly talk to a physician about cortisol. They look at you like you got two heads. Yeah. But everybody's stressed. So they don't look at it. But it's a big thing because cortisol, the uptight hormone, cortisol that hormone robs the body of progesterone in women, it can create an estrogen dominance and an estrogen dominance can create the thyroid to go into a tizzy. Someone yesterday on our private Facebook group was going, I, I don't understand. I'm confused when it comes to the thyroid and you know what, sometimes I get it, you know?
Well, doc, you know, what's normal numbers. Well, I'm not big into numbers. I sort of got a secret sauce that I have been doing for years with the TSH. I've learned to read it properly. Yeah. You know, if you wanna send me your T four S and T3 S I don't dismiss those things. I don't, but I gotta sort a secret sauce that I looked at for years. And it's not a hundred percent, but it's about 99 point something. And I know when the thyroid is off, it's not functioning at a high level, but if you don't understand all the strings that are attached to that, people just, ah, you know what? I'm a thyroid doctor. Well, good for you. Hope you understand. There's a lot of strings attached to that. Thyroid gland and low energy and wheat gain or weight loss, mostly weight gain in women.
And you know, you, you don't rely on the lab. The lab is hijacked medicine. It did. The lab is wonderful, but you better not just rely on lab results symptoms. And here's a pile of women, millions and millions of women that are walking around. They've got no energy. Their hair is thining up. Their eyebrows are thining up. Their nails are brittle, their skin. Isn't what it should be. And women know their bodies. Women know their hair. Women know what they're feeling, but medicine draws a blank. Why? Because they rely on a blood test. And the normal ranges are from here to eternity and women fall through the cracks. Why do you think I was so busy? <laugh> I venture to say my practice was 80% women. You know, I'd have to ask Ginette, Nicole and Brandy. And, uh, I think I was pretty bright when I say that.
And you know what? A lot of times I heard in the office on a daily basis, why didn't my doctor tell me this? Why didn't my doctor check my cortisol? Well, you'd almost have to take a physician. Even a woman physician, bring them to a dentist and drill their teeth without anesthetic to get them to do certain tests. They just don't do it because they take the regular test. And if they don't see anything flagged, they need, you know, they just, and I guess th rides, all right. Then thousands of times I heard that and getting back to one of the things that is so important is sleep. If your cortisol is high, okay. Now, remember what is cortisol? That's cortisol. Somebody sent me something the other day on, uh, I saw it on the Facebook group. You know, they sort of blacked out and they were asking a question.
And I, I, you know, I was thinking outside the box for this, but they're already gone to make sure they didn't have a stroke or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When it is both, when it's weird and a doctor is scratching their head as to why, you know, funny things happen, why did that happen? To me? I usually look at something that they don't think of. And that is cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone, and that's right. I come behind you and scare you. I scare you with my loud voice. Okay. You're gonna secrete some cortisol, but that's alright. It's gonna be temporary. As soon as I lower my voice, I won't scare you anymore. Cortisol. It's normal until it's not, it's not normal to go on and on. And on your cortisol is high. It should be like this. At the end of the day, sinking like the Titanic sinking as the sun is sitting, your cortisol is going down because it follows a circadian rhythm.
When it's in good shape, your body is starting to shut yourself down. But if you cortisol is high, you won't sleep. You won't get into the reco of REM sleep. And when you don't sleep, your cortisol gets higher. Yikes. This, my friend was one of my biggest discoveries in chronic fatigue syndrome. It was one of my biggest discoveries, the adrenal gland, and nobody was talking about it. Oh, it's the yuppy flu. And you, you wouldn't believe the Epstein bar virus. Well, it couldn't be because the Epstein bar virus was only present in about 50% of the diagnoses of chronic fatigue syndrome. It may have been a factor, but it wasn't a cause this was adrenal exhaustion. My friend and you know, chronic fatigue syndrome was fatigue, fibromyalgia, which is, to me, I've always said this. And I wrote about it in several books that chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia were the same disorder. They come from the same thing. It was a two headed coin.
Myalgia, everybody scratches their head. What is that? Why, why, why, why did we never see it before? Why wasn't it in my medical books in the 1970s and then became like an epidemic. Rheumatologist became extremely popular because of fibromyalgia. And I think, well, that's cortisol at the end of the day. I mean, here's what else I found leaky gut. Yeah. Sluggish. Wow. Thyroid way outta whack, but not blood wise, not blood test wise, but the good. They were looking for love in all the wrong places in the lap. So this sleep study. Imagine what I'm saying here. The world health organization is saying that if someone is working night shift, it's a carcinogenic woo cancer rate. And by the way, 50% increase, this is back. I mean, in the early nineties that this came out a 50% increase in cancer rates, amongst women that were diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, 50% increase. I mean, cancer's crazy already.
It went from one outta 20 breast cancer. When I graduated in the seventies to one outta six or one outta seven today, Ooh, it makes me angry because we're not winning the war on cancer. We're losing the war on cancer. It's been a colossal failure colossal because we've been focused in on the world has been focused in, on treatment of cancer and it better be pharmaceutical. Somebody's gotta make big money in it. And nobody talks about prevention. I mean the only prevention they ever talked about and I was in agreement with this is stop smoking. Okay. I get, yeah, it's good. Good idea. But nobody ever told you to stop sugar. They tell you to get outta the sun when they should have been telling you to get into the sun for cancer. Ooh, I know I'm working up a sweat. I get upset, but you can understand for me, who is seeing thousands of patients a year and especially women, their horror hormones were so outta whack. And a lot of it was cortisol. Cortisol is an accelerator. It pours gasoline on inflammation. And that affects the brain too. That affects your sleep too. And again, hate to be ni, but if you're taking a sleeping pill, you're sedating yourself. It's the same thing. If somebody punches you in the head and knocks you, well, at least I'm knocked out. I'm sleeping. Yeah. But well, number one, you're never repairing that brain. Never. When you are sedated, you're lymphatic your self cleaning oven doesn't work if you're sedated.
And so, I mean, think how significant that is a study on one night's lack of sleep one night. Holy moly. I mean, I don't think there's any of us, any of us that ever gone where you haven't had a bad night. <laugh> okay. You know, if you getting up early for a flight or you're troubled or whatever, come on, it happens to all of us, but damage is done. Now, the nice thing is okay, and the study don't even talk about this, but here's a fact you can repair your body is fearfully and wonderfully made. I don't know how many times I gotta tell you that, that even if you're on the Titanic, even if you've been on a bad road and you've never slept properly, your body is unreal. Give it the tool to regenerate. It's unbelievable.
The things that I used to see too, in a lack of sleep, it wasn't melatonin per se. Okay. Because people think, well, if I take melatonin, people think of sleep. It's amazing. You know how marketing works, right? I mean, you know, let's face it. We're all influenced by marketing. Because even if you talk to someone that knows very little about health, they know what melatonin is almost invariably. If you did a survey in their mind, it's a supplement or a medication to sleep. But I always remind people, melatonin, your body makes it. I'm not so big on supplement of melatonin. I really am not, never have been. And you know, when people used to come to the office while I'm using melatonin, okay, how's that working for you? Well, it used to work for me. Uh, I know because folks, look, if it works for you, good, I've got no problem with that. But there's a problem. The way your body makes melatonin is when it sees the sun, your body makes it, but it makes it under certain conditions. When it sees the sun. When your eyeballs see the sun, okay, let your eyeballs get tan. <laugh> okay. Now don't look directly in the sun, but take your sunglasses off 10 to 15 minutes in the morning. It's sunny. You're making melatonin. Yeah. Yeah. You're making melatonin. And then at night, turn off your devices, pitched block room. Your body makes melatonin on its own the sun.
That's why you have a day at the beach. Our day in the sun, ordinarily, you're gonna sleep better. Why you're making melatonin and then dark, dark, dark, wear a mask. If you got it, don't wear a mask around your mouth. Wear a mask at night around your eyeballs. <laugh> no light. Why? Because you're gonna make more melatonin. That's just the fact. So I'm not so big on supplementing with melatonin. Like I said, I never have been. And I've always nod because in, in my practice, you know, like with chronic fatigue, like go back 30 years more, you think I'm not sympathetic to people that don't sleep, but I'm an packer. I wanna get to the root. I wanna dig.
Well, I don't need so much sleep. Well, there's some people that need less, but you know me in my sweet spots, right? I got sweet spots for everything. Okay. From drinking water to exercise, to whatever I love sweet spots. And those are my sweet spots based on experience. Sleeping seven to eight hours a night, seven to eight hours. It's the sweet spot of sleep. There's a lot of studies to confirm it, but it was my own practice. But you better get to the bottom line of it. Cortisol messes up horrors in women, in men too cortisol can affect the man's testosterone. I'm not into this gender thing. I'm sorry. You're a man. Or you're a woman and men need testosterone. Your body's made for it. Ladies never worry about testosterone. Some women ask me, what's my testosterone levels. I don't care. You can't meet me care.
I care about how much estrogen and progesterone you're making. That's what I care about. And they better be balanced or you're gonna be on a wacko and a man needs testosterone. But cortisol will Rob a man of his testosterone and men walk around and they got estrogen dominance. And the only way that can happen is when testosterone is sinking. And a lot of times when I get to the bottom line of it, they're stressed. They're not sleeping stress today. Like we live in a world folks. It seems like planet earth, correct me. If I'm wrong is spinning faster than ever, right? We're more aware of everything in a way. It's good. We have social media, we have 24 hour news cycles and news channels. And we have information, information, information, but you pay a price for that. You pay a price for that. Interesting, right? I mean, this should dominate headlines, but it doesn't. Doesn't get the ink. It deserves one night of sleep disrupt your immune system, disrupts your self cleaning of it in your brain. It disrupts it. And the world health organization on the heels of this article is coming out with the world. Health organization says any form of nighttime ship work is carcinogenic. Well, holy moly. Holy moly.
Now guys, do you know what tomorrow is? Question and answer Friday. Is that fun? Yeah. It's usually lots of fun. And we invite you to invite your friends, invite your family. You guys are out there sharing the message. We appreciate that. You know, I know that you don't have to tell me, but I know I am controversial and people oftentimes don't hear the other side of things. They're so indoctrinated by the mainstream media and whatever that they never hear these things from the mainstream. So we appreciate it. When you guys share this, you know, you can't make people do anything you can't, but you can certainly introduce them to some information and they can make up their own minds. God gave people gray matter between their ears and they ought to be able to use it. So tell 'em about the doctors in podcast and get 'em to join our live Facebook on a daily basis and share it. Okay. Enough advertising. <laugh> okay guys, we love you dearly. 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!