Transcript Of Today's Episode
Dr. Martin Jr.: Hello. I'm Dr. Martin, Jr.
Dr. Martin Sr.: I'm Dr. Martin, Sr.
Dr. Martin Jr.: And this is The Doctor Is In Podcast, and this is Episode 151. Today we want to talk about heart disease. [00:00:30] Really, the topic came up because we've been getting a lot of emails over the last couple of weeks. I mean, a few weeks ago, that crazy ... I don't even want to say the word study because it was so poorly done on low carb and longevity. The study came out and there were so many problems in that study. A lot of people have written some great things about why that study was no good.
But the short answer of it is it's pretty much impossible to remember what you ate three years ago, specifically how much you ate three years ago. So to base any results [00:01:00] off of that is just insane. But anyways, a ton of news came out of it. A lot of people asked questions. Now that's been kind of put to rest, really, because that study was shown to be exactly what it was, which was not very good. However, since then, two things kind of have come out.
Dr. Martin Sr.: They've been doubling down.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, big time doubling down, right?
One was that crazy presentation that a guy gave, that Harvard doctor talking about how coconut oil is poison.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, pure poison.
Dr. Martin Jr.: [00:01:30] It's not just poison. It's pure poison. It's not really bad for you. It's really, really bad for you.
Dr. Martin Sr.: So you can imagine all the Polynesians or whatever-
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, dropping dead all day. Epidemic.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Pure poison. It's just insanity. How they get away with that is-
Dr. Martin Jr.: Pure poison. Well, first of all, typically at a speech in the middle of Germany, that would get no press. But it's almost like they wanted that to get out. Because typically, these presentations go on all over the place. [00:02:00] There are medical presentations and medical research conferences all the time. But this one, I mean it was out right away. It's like they wanted to release this.
Anyways, it made no sense, and of course ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: That was a Harvard professor.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, which again, it just makes no sense. But it's pure poison according to this guy. It's just pure poison. It's bad for you. Of course, that's idiotic. Research would disagree with him wholeheartedly. So that came out and [00:02:30] we got some emails about that because we like coconut oil. We like the effect that coconut oil has on your brain and all that kind of stuff.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Great medium chain fatty acid.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, so we like it. So people emailed us, "Hey what do you think?" Sometimes people email us just because they know it's going to get us roused up over it.
Dr. Martin Sr.: I think they want to stir us up.
Dr. Martin Jr.: They do. They like to see what happens after.
Dr. Martin Sr.: They say right after we give the answer, they go, "We knew you were going to say that!"
Dr. Martin Jr.: It's so funny. It's pure poison. I laughed when I read that thing. I was like, yeah, pure poison. Not poison.
So that came [00:03:00] out and then we've gotten some emails from people. Actually it's funny, one of our staff members saw this last week and messaged me and asked about this. Well, it wasn't even a study. It was an interview done by a cardiologist from a website called Plant-Based News, which already tells you that ... You know, it'd be like a website called Meat-Based News coming out and saying that being a vegan or vegetarian is bad for you. Well, you have to look, again, at the source. There's a little bit of a bias that's going [00:03:30] on there, right?
So a Plant-Based News website, because that's literally what it's called, absolutely is going to have a hard time with anything meat related and saturated fats, and especially because a big part of the ketogenic diet for a lot of people is a high meat diet. So of course, this cardiologist comes on and says that nobody ... So throw out all the research that's done. Ketogenic diets have been used therapeutically since the 1800s. But throw that all away, it's all garbage. Because nobody [00:04:00] should be doing a ketogenic diet. Nobody. it's no good for your heart, according to this cardiologist.
Now again, it's stupid.
Dr. Martin Sr.: It's crazy. I had a patient, just to fill in a little bit, to show you that even medicine uses the ketogenic diet. Because I had a young ... I guess she's about maybe 12. Seizure after seizure, she went to Sick Kids in Toronto, and guess what they put her on? A ketogenic diet. Now the seizures [00:04:30] have almost completely seized.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, because it's so good for the brain.
Dr. Martin Sr.: So, of course, we've been preaching that low, low carb diet for a long time.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Ketogenic diet is a tool. For some people, they can live low carb their whole life no problem. For other people, they don't need to go ketogenic. You can go low carb, but you don't have to be ketogenic.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, you don't have to be burning fat [inaudible 00:04:53].
Dr. Martin Jr.: But there's definitely nothing wrong with being on a ketogenic for your whole life if you wanted to. It's so funny [00:05:00] to think that this cardiologist ... And of course, people jump on the internet and they'll look for something that agrees with them. So they'll shoot past 15 things that disagree with them, find one thing that does and say, "See? Here's the proof." Right?
It's like, this cardiologist, there's so much research coming out on the effect of low carb diet has on your heart, on diabetes, that you think this guy would say, "Yeah, it's good for you." He's saying, "Nobody [00:05:30] should be doing it." Again, he loses all credibility. He literally loses all credibility.
Dr. Martin Sr.: You know, if he came out and said, "Until I'm 1000% sure, I'm going to be cautious."
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, that's a typical medical response.
Dr. Martin Sr.: "Do it under care of a medical practitioner." You'd give him some slack, right? You'd cut him some slack.
Dr. Martin Jr.: That's the standard thing. If a nutrient comes out and it's just an amazing study, you always hear that disclaimer at the end, "Well, [00:06:00] more research is needed." More research. But yes, I agree. Then of course one other one that we're talking about as well that came out was that study showing that Vitamin D, pseudo garbage. Again, let's discount the thousands-
Dr. Martin Sr.: The pseudo vitamin and pseudo benefits, right?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah that's right. Let's discount the thousands of studies. Now listen, here's my problem with that kind of a study, and we've talked about this before and I've [00:06:30] given this analogy before. But I'm going to share with you again because it's very important to understand this.
Let's just say that some guy is what they call a "hard gainer", which is a skinnier guy that has a hard time putting on muscle. Some guys, it doesn't matter, they can't weight. They can't put on muscle. They call those guys hard gainers. So imagine I design a study where I want to look at the effect that a program has on gaining muscle, specifically biceps, for somebody who can't [00:07:00] put on muscle.
So I put this study together and I say here's what you're going to do for this study. You're going to drive to the gym three days a week. You're going to go in there, you're going to change. You're going to put your gym shoes on, your gym shorts and your shirt, headband if you want for the sweat. Put your earphones in. You're going to walk over to the dumbbell rack. You're going to take a five pound dumbbell. You're going to curl it once, you're going to put it down and go home. You're going to do that three days a week for six weeks.At the end of the [00:07:30] six weeks, we're going to measure-
Dr. Martin Sr.: Your muscles.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Muscle growth. Then the guy comes back after six weeks. You measure his biceps and he didn't grow, of course ... In six weeks, he did literally ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: Nothing changed.
Dr. Martin Jr.: ... 20 reps total. You say, "Ah, see? Weight-lifting does nothing for bicep growth! Weight-lifting is pseudo exercise for a pseudo benefit." That's what they did. Half the studies that come out on any nutrients are so weak [00:08:00] in what they give somebody. You might as well give him a kiss every time instead and blame it on Vitamin D. It makes no sense whatsoever.
You give somebody who has a deficiency 1000 International Units, you may as well not even do the study in the first place. You are doing the study for the purpose of showing that Vitamin D doesn't work. Now that specific headline had to do with fractures. It had to do with fractures. They're saying Vitamin D [00:08:30] doesn't do anything to help fractures.
First of all, the med analysis, all of them with not enough Vitamin D, first of all. So throw them out anyways. But let's, for argument's sake, look at nobody in their right mind would say that if you took Vitamin D, you're not going to get a fracture. Bone health is ... You need Vitamin D. It's crucial for bones. But there are a lot of other factors. Muscles surrounding those bones, sarcopenia, what's their protein intake?
Dr. Martin Sr.: Leaky gut.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Leaky gut, are they on any drugs? Are they taking antacids? Do they got [00:09:00] heartburn? All these things. There's so many factors. So they do this thing and they look at studies. They see there's no effect, pseudo science, pseudo vitamin.
Dr. Martin Sr.: And they just did one recently. I think we talked about it on Omega-3 and same thing, right?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, it's always the same thing.
Dr. Martin Sr.: They never use high DHA. They never use enough Omega-3. And yeah, you go to Costco and take an Omega-3, one capsule a day. What's that going to do for you?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, nothing.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Therapeutically.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Therapeutically nothing. [00:09:30] Will you get some benefit? Yeah, probably. But not therapeutically. Not if you're looking to help an actual issue that's going on. That's what so frustrating. I look at enough research every day, and I tell you across the board, when a vitamin is shown not to be effective, it's because they took an amount that they should never have researched in the first place. I could've saved them millions of dollars and told them, "You're going to see no benefit of that."
Every time when we've looked a this ... They did a study, for example, on brain. Specifically, they did a study on [00:10:00] memory and recollection, and also like speed of decisions and everything. They looked at what they deemed high D3 intake, which was 4,000 IUS, versus normal, which is 1,000. They saw benefits only in the 4,000 IU group. Now I would speculate that if they went up to 8,000, they'd see even more benefits, but again, here's even a small study showing that the dosage matters. You can't just give Vitamin D, and it's going to be a miracle for everybody. You have to get the right amount and you have to be able to affect their [00:10:30] blood D3 levels as well.
But anyways, that's the thing. So it's been a frustrating couple weeks of news.
Dr. Martin Sr.: And you know what? The thing is we knew it was coming. You know that if something gets popular, like Vitamin D is popular and ketosis is popular. These things, there's going to be a big, big blow back. Because the food industry ... Look, we've talked about this before. No, we're not conspiracy people. But here's the reality of it. [00:11:00] In medicine, we love medicine. If you need a doctor, you need a doctor. We're not talking about that, but just generally, medicine's been influenced by what? The pharmaceutical industry and the food industry.
They're two huge things and they fund all the research. You don't think that when we talk about Vitamin D ... They don't make any money on Vitamin D. There's no money in Vitamin D. There's no money in the sun. There's no money in taking a supplement of Vitamin D. There's no money in it because they can't [00:11:30] patent it. So what happens? They're going to blow back.
So whenever, "Oh you know what, don't look at that" ... They'll put a cardiologist out there saying, "I wouldn't have anybody take ketotic diet." Yet, we see it clinically every day, every day [crosstalk 00:11:48].
Dr. Martin Jr.: A lot of cardiologists who do like low carb or ketogenic diets for somebody who's in bad shape would be absolutely furious watching that interview. So what we want to do for the last little bit [00:12:00] here is actually talk about what the research says about the purpose of a ketogenic diet when it comes to heart disease, and why, for a lot of people that are worried about their heart, a low carb and maybe even a ketogenic diet is by far the best approach for them.
So let's talk about that. The funny thing is, there's been a few studies that have come out in the last two weeks that got no press whatsoever because again, a lot of research is boring. But let's talk [00:12:30] about these two studies. Let's talk about what they say ... And they are specifically about insulin, which people who do a ketogenic diet do so for lowering circulating insulin. So let's talk about them.
So first of all, one study came out showing that somebody with diabetes or raised blood sugar ... So they got high blood sugar, it greatly increased the risk of cardiovascular disease because it specifically caused damage to the endothelium. Now, [00:13:00] for those that are listening, the endothelium is just the inner lining, an inner layer on the lining of your blood vessels. So your blood vessels, which I mean if you were to put them end to end, I don't know how many miles of blood vessels we have in our body. I can't even remember how many. It's a lot.
Inside those blood vessels, you have a layer, and that layer is an endothelium. Your blood vessels are only as healthy as that endothelium layer is.
Dr. Martin Sr.: That's a wall. It's just a little lining.
Dr. Martin Jr.: If that [00:13:30] layer is messed up, your blood vessels are messed up. And if it's messed up, you're more likely to have a stroke, you're more likely to have high blood pressure. You're more likely to have heart attack. That's a fact. Endothelial dysfunction is a major cause of heart disease.
What they're finding is ... They always wondered how you got endothelial damage. How does the inner layer of a blood vessel ... Think about how deep that is in your body. How do these big arteries in that, how [00:14:00] do the blood vessels ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: How does the hose get damaged?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, how does the inside of the hose get damaged is exactly it.
Dr. Martin Sr.: We know.
Dr. Martin Jr.: That's the thing, we know that. So this is what they're finding now. This is something that we've been saying for a long time because it only made sense, but now research is showing this as well. So this study said, "Listen, somebody who has high blood sugar levels, they have what they call increased oxidative stress." Now oxidative stress. What does that mean? Well, I love your analogy of ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: [00:14:30] Cut an apple in half.
Dr. Martin Jr.: That's right.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Cut an apple in half, see how long ... It happens instantly, really, within a minute. If you cut an apple in half, I've done this at so many seminars I can do it in my sleep. But you cut an apple in half and within a few seconds it starts turning brown. But if you cut an apple in half again, another apple, cut it in half and then put a few drops of lemon juice on one side of it, the one without the lemon [00:15:00] juice will age right before you. It'll rust out, it will start to turning brown. The one with the lemon juice will take much longer. Why? Because lemon juice is Vitamin C, it's an antioxidant, it coats the [crosstalk 00:15:13].
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, so free radical damage damages the apple. Well, the same thing happens inside of our blood vessels. Now, if everything's healthy, you have enough antioxidants in your body to counter the effect of those free radicals, and it kind of neutralizes itself. It's a wash. But when things start to change, [00:15:30] all of a sudden, these free radicals start to damage everything. The endothelial are particularly susceptible to damage from free radicals.
So oxidative stress gets in there, and it starts. But the funny thing is is that the next step they're finding is this. Now, for a long time, everybody said, "Hey, inflammation is the root of all disease." That's a partial truth. The thing is, you and I say this. Inflammation [00:16:00] is not Houdini. It doesn't magically just show up on its own. It doesn't just spontaneously go for no reason. Something has to cause that inflammation.
So what they're finding when it comes to your blood vessels, which increases your risk of heart disease is you start off with oxidative stress that triggers an inflammatory reaction inside that layer, that endothelial layer. Then that leads to cell damage, which then obviously leads to damage of [00:16:30] the endothelials. So again, you can reverse engineer that back all the way to blood sugar issues, or high circulating insulin. A person that is insulin resistant fights their blood sugar all day. All day!
Dr. Martin Sr.: So tightly regulated, right?
Dr. Martin Jr.: So again, low insulin is so much better for the health of your blood vessels. It's not even funny how much better it is for your blood vessels. So here's the thing, low carb diets [00:17:00] are ... If you're metabolically damaged, first of all, low carb diets are a great, great way to keep your insulin low and control your blood sugars. There's no question. If you have normal metabolic functions, there are a lot of ways you can control your blood sugar. You don't have to necessarily go low, low carb.
Dr. Martin Sr.: And think about this for a minute, just to reverse engineer like you said. What used to ... And I mean, it's not because it's been eradicated, [00:17:30] but what used to cause ... And they never knew this! They didn't know it in the 1950s. They didn't know it in the 1940s. But what caused that oxidative damage, one of the greatest things that caused damage to the endothelium, lowered your nitric oxide, which opened your blood vessels, those little ... Because that's where you find nitric oxide, right at the endothelial, was smoking.
Dr. Martin Jr.: That's right.
Dr. Martin Sr.: The new smoking is insulin. It's sugar. [00:18:00] Right?
Dr. Martin Jr.: So it damages your endothelial. No question. Then another study came out again and it talked about how insulin resistance ... So again, if you're not familiar with insulin resistance, it basically means that you need more insulin to do the same job. Your cells are resistant to insulin. They don't react the same way. So in order to bring your blood sugar levels down into a normal range, you have to make so much more insulin.
The problem is that insulin has ... Listen, insulin's a vital hormone, [00:18:30] but too much of it or too much of anything, especially insulin, is not good. So when you are insulin-resistant, you have high-circulating insulin, you have too much insulin flowing in your blood, when that happens, they find this. It creates a deadly triad for your heart, which leads to cardiovascular disease.
This is what they found in people that have insulin resistance. They have high triglycerides. Again, we've talked about this before in previous episodes. High triglycerides is an indication that your glycogen storage is full.
Dr. Martin Sr.: [00:19:00] Your liver is full of it.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Everything is full, and now it's circulating in your blood.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Dangerous.
Dr. Martin Jr.: That's because of carbs. I mean, go back and listen to a previous podcast we did on it. We go through that. But insulin resistance causes high triglycerides. Also decreased HDL, which is the good cholesterol. Then it actually causes an elevated small density LDL, because listen, all LDL is not created equal. Some of it is no big deal. [00:19:30] But some of those proteins are big trouble. So it creates this deadly triad. Again, if you want to correct those things, you have to correct the insulin resistance. The way you do that, is depending how far along you are, is by a low carbohydrate or a ketogenic diet, which is why a lot of cardiologists in this world love a ketogenic diet, because they see the reverse effect it has on a lot of ...
However, one doctor, cardiologist in an interview, [00:20:00] says it's no good for you. So you can either believe all the other cardiologists and all the research, or somebody who has an ideological bent towards hating the ketogenic diet, saying it's no good. It gets a lot of media because again, people see what they want to see. They find something that agrees with them, then they forward the article because ... This is what happens, right?
Let's just say that you're listening to this podcast, and you're saying, "You know what? I've got to turn my health around. I'm going to go a low carb diet." Well, [00:20:30] there are going to be people that you know, family, friends, that are going to be mad about that for whatever reason. They don't like the fact that you're making such a big change. You could be sure, as soon as this comes out, they forward that article.
How many people had this article forwarded to them because they decided they were going to do a low carb diet to feel better, and it made somebody else mad?
Dr. Martin Sr.: There's always people that think they have the gift of discouragement, right?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yes. So they forward this article. So this is what happened here. They get the [00:21:00] article forwarded to them, and of course they read it. They're like, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this."
Dr. Martin Sr.: All that fat's going to kill me.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Then they get nervous. So then they forward it to us, and they say, "Hey Dr. Martin, what do you think?" We always write back and say, "Well listen, this is why it's wrong." At the end of the day, they have to make their own decision but what we could tell you is that the research completely contradicts that. You've seen it so often clinically, it's completely the opposite. But that's what happens. People try to discourage somebody else from doing [00:21:30] what they're doing because, for whatever reason, they don't want them to be successful. They don't want them to do that.
I can't understand why that is, but that's what happens. So somebody always forwards these articles to them to discourage them from doing what they're doing, even though that person is losing weight or they're feeling better, or they're sleeping better. Then they get this article from somebody and they're like, "Ooh, I'm nervous now."
So anyways, that's why we don't [00:22:00] mind answering those questions.
Dr. Martin Sr.: We'll take them on. We'll take those subjects on. Because again, we go back. Folks, listen, I know you guys know us. But we're going back to clinic. We go back to real people that we see every day. I prove it to people from what they're not mentioning in there is another one that you can have checked is homocystine. It's a hormone that goes up. Ordinarily, it elevates your risk. What is that again? It's the endothelial. [00:22:30] You know what really lowers homocystine is Vitamin B-12. Well where do you get Vitamin B-12? In red meat! You're eating saturated fat and you're homocystine levels go up. Your nitric oxide levels go up. It's actually a measurement of the flexibility of the endothelial. When I was in school, they didn't even know ... I never even heard of nitric oxide.
Dr. Martin Jr.: You know, it's funny because whenever [00:23:00] I read an article from either a researcher or a doctor and I hear certain buzzwords, I kind of like ... For example, every era has something that they're famous for. You and I were just talking off the air about the old shag carpeting. We were talking about how that's kind of like leaky gut in a lot of ways. But that old 70s shag carpet's everywhere.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, we had them in the house.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, every decade is kind of known for certain things. In the research world and in the nutrition world, the same thing. There were buzz words that were used. [00:23:30] Low fat was the 90s and the early 2000s. Low fat. Doesn't matter the sugar content as long as the fat's low.
When I hear somebody in an interview say these words here, "artery-clogging saturated fat", I know that they literally stopped reading studies about six years ago. They just stopped reading them. They're done.
Dr. Martin Sr.: They made up their mind and that's the end of it.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Done. Even though now, every med analysis shows that that's [00:24:00] not true at all. Doesn't matter. When they go in there, they say the words "artery-clogging saturated fat", they've dated themselves. It's like if I started wearing bell-bottom pants right now, I would date myself. They dated themselves. You know, it's like the person who has too much hair. Like me, I'm 45 years old. If I grew long hair, it'd be like, "Man, give it up." Give it up!
Dr. Martin Sr.: You're stuck in the 80s.
Dr. Martin Jr.: I'm stuck in the 80s, right? Heavy metal, [00:24:30] stuck in the 80s. It's time to give it up. Cut the hair. I'm not meant to have that.
Dr. Martin Sr.: You mean the mullet?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, well I love the ... Who doesn't love a good mullet? But they date themselves. They've dated themselves. I know exactly when they stopped reading, and they're stuck on these words. That's what it is.
Anyways, like we said, it's been a interesting couple weeks in nutrition. But we just want to encourage you if you're listening. Don't let that stuff distract you from what's actually going on. So many people have [00:25:00] felt better by eating lower carbs, especially if they're diabetic or they're at risk for heart disease. They feel better, then continue to do it. You're not going to die quicker like that one crazy study said. It's not bad for you like the cardiologist from Plant-Based News is saying. It actually can help lower oxidative stress, it can lower inflammation, it can protect your endothelial walls. So there's so many benefits to it.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Get your triglycerides down in four weeks. You can get your triglycerides down, that's how fast.
Dr. Martin Jr.: And you can clean your liver fat out fast [00:25:30] as well, right?
Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, very quickly.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Very quickly as well. So anyway, we've covered a lot of different things, and this was kind of more of a rant episode than anything else, but we want to thank you for listening. If you have any questions, you can email us at info@martinclinic.com. You can go to our website. If you're not a newsletter subscriber, we actually go through a lot of these things and we debunk them in our newsletters, or in our private Facebook group. We'll go live in there, we'll talk about it. So you can join our private Facebook group as well. Just go to our website, you can join from there.
Every Thursday morning, you do a Facebook live and you talk about these things as well. [00:26:00] It's a great way for if you have any questions, they can ask you about those on Thursday mornings. So there's a lot of ways to get a hold of us. We want to thank you for listening and have a great day.