Transcript Of Today's Episode
Dr. Martin Jr: You're listening to the Doctor Is In Podcast from MartinClinic.com. Although we share a lot of practical and, in our opinion, awesome information, what you hear on this podcast is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes, so enjoy.
Dr. Martin Sr: Well, hello, I'm Dr. Martin, Sr, flying solo [00:00:30] today on the Doctor Is In Podcast. We are doing today, or at least I am doing episode 185. I'm doing this all alone today. Tony Jr. is really busy and got stuff from the clinic. He said, "Dad, you got to learn how to do this stuff by yourself," so bear with me. I hope everything is being recorded. I hope everything sounds good. It sounds good to me, [00:01:00] but I'm an old dinosaur, so bear with me.
Dr. Martin Sr: Here's the headline today for episode 185, and that is Surprise, Surprise, Heart Attack Deaths Are on the Rise for the First Time in 50 Years, surprise, surprise. I really go into a rant when I hear about stuff like this, that the fact that, imagine here [00:01:30] we are in 2019, we spend billions and billions of dollars trying to fight, still the number one killer in society in North America is heart disease. It's followed closely by cancer, number three on the hit parade is diabetes and one that's coming up, coming to a theatre near you is Alzheimer's and dementia. Those are your four major killers [00:02:00] in society today. Heart attacks, heart disease, and stroke is number one.
Dr. Martin Sr: You would think it would get better. We spend a lot of money. We spend billions and billions of dollars in Canada and billions and billions of dollars in the United States trying to get people to avoid heart disease, heart attacks, but they're on the rise. Of course, at the Martin Clinic, we have been talking about [00:02:30] this for many, many years. The problem is we're looking for love in all the wrong places. It'll only get worse, guys. It's only gonna get worse until we actually tackle the root cause of heart disease.
Dr. Martin Sr: Let me say it, let me make it clear, and you can quote me: cholesterol ain't the problem. Cholesterol [00:03:00] ain't, I'm using bad English, but I do it with emphasis. Cholesterol ain't the problem. If cholesterol was the problem, we would have heart disease licked because with all the drugs, cholesterol-lowering medication, statin drugs that are on the market; wow, You would think heart disease ... here would be the headline if cholesterol was the problem: Heart Disease Has [00:03:30] Been Eradicated. Why? Because of the benefits of cholesterol-lowering medication, statin drugs. The truth be known is that statin drugs (Crestor, Zocor, Lipitor, anything with an "or" at the end is pretty well a statin drug) and statin drugs give you zero benefits in terms of decreasing your [00:04:00] risk of heart disease. Again, because we're looking for love in all the wrong places. Cholesterol ain't the problem.
Dr. Martin Sr: The problem with heart disease is insulin. It's insulin. It's the food hormone, and we're going to go over this again. I know we all, I'm sure people are tired of hearing about it, but I always say to my patients, I say, "You guys know [00:04:30] more when you spend 40 minutes with me, you'll know more about nutrition than 99.9% of the doctors that you know." That's just a fact. Unfortunately, in medicine today, food is not even on the radar in terms of what they teach in medical school.
Dr. Martin Sr: I hate to be negative, but the pharmaceutical industry really has hijacked medicine in the sense [00:05:00] that ... Listen, I love medicine for what medicine should be, and that is emergency medicine. If you have a heart attack, you don't want to come and see the Martin Clinic, you want to go to your local hospital and see an emergency medicine specialist because they are the best. That's what medicine is good at. You have a raging infection, you need an antibiotic; [00:05:30] you're having a heart attack, you better get blood clotting, anti-clotting drugs into your system intravenously and whatever as fast as you can; you get hit by a truck, you need emergency medicine. You don't need me. What we talk about is not getting that heart attack, not getting that stroke, not getting cancer, not getting [00:06:00] diabetes, not getting Alzheimer's or dementia because that's what we do. Functional medicine is taking nutrition and making it your medicine.
Dr. Martin Sr: Let me repeat. Heart disease is not a disease of cholesterol. Heart disease, heart attacks are primarily caused by the food that we eat. The proof [00:06:30] of the pudding is, here we are today, more people die of heart attacks than ever before. Surprise, surprise, that's the headline today. Cholesterol is not the problem. Insulin, which creates inflammation in the body, so a lot of doctors will say inflammation is at the root of heart disease. To some extent, they're true, that's true, but inflammation, like Tony Jr. often [00:07:00] says, is not Houdini, it just doesn't come out of nowhere. Inflammation comes when your insulin is elevated.
Dr. Martin Sr: Listen, guys, insulin is a food hormone. You need insulin when you eat. If you don't eat, you don't need insulin. Well, of course, we need to eat, but insulin and insulin resistance comes when you [00:07:30] are a carboholic. I always use the illustration of when I was a little kid, Canadians consumed 25 pounds of sugar a year on average. My four kids were born, Tony Jr, born in 1973, and all four kids were born in the 70s. They were consuming the average Canadian at the time. If you are American friends listening to us, listen, you're no better. You're worse. [00:08:00] You consume more sugar than Canadians do, but not much more, just a little bit more. I read something the other day that the average American is consuming somewhere around 40 to 50 gallon of soda a year. Anyway, Canadians were consuming 25 pounds in the fifties, they were up to 50 pounds in the 70s thanks to the cereal companies, and today we are at [00:08:30] somewhere near 200 pounds.Each Canadian on average is consuming 200 pounds of sugar.
Dr. Martin Sr: I can hear people say, "Well, Dr. Martin, I don't have a lot of sugar. I don't eat a lot of sugar." Oh, yeah? Then, read your label. You had a bagel this morning? You had a muffin? Did you go to Tim Horton's and get a muffin? Eight teaspoons of sugar in the average muffin. It's just people don't see the sugar, and they say, "Well, Doc, I had a carrot [00:09:00] muffin, must be good." Uh, no, lots of sugar. Unless you make your muffins at home, bagels, muffins, noodles, sugar, sweets and pastries; people, we live on that stuff today. What that does is it increases the insulin in the ... Your cells were never made to see that much insulin come at them, so what did they do? They resisted.
Dr. Martin Sr: Insulin has a [00:09:30] job to do. If you're having any kind of carbohydrate sugar, it has to take sugar out of the bloodstream. You cannot have sugar stay in the bloodstream. Sugar is very toxic. It destroys your blood vessels very, very rapidly. Insulin's job is to take sugar and get it out of your bloodstream. The more insulin you use, the more your cells become insulin resistant. When you have a piece of meat, you have eggs, meat, and cheese; [00:10:00] you hardly need any insulin. You need a little bit, but you don't need very much.
Dr. Martin Sr: I use the illustration of a traffic cop. When you have a doughnut, the traffic cop is in. It's like they're sitting outside of Costco on Christmas Eve. I mean the traffic is going crazy and the traffic cop is busy, busy, busy because there's lots. It's got to take that sugar, [00:10:30] it's got to send it to your liver, to your muscles. If you don't have room, if the suitcase, your liver gets full of glycogen, which is sugar, stored sugar; it will make more and more and more and more and more fat cells around the liver. You can be skinny and have a lot of fat cells in your liver, and that causes your body to have an inflammation response.
Dr. Martin Sr: [00:11:00] What does that do? Well, the inflammation will attack your blood vessels, and it will attack your ... one of the things that it loves to attack is your heart and your blood vessels causing inflammation, causes stickiness, free radical damage and oxidative damage within the blood vessels. Now, you have plaque that is building up. [00:11:30] It can be very silent. You might not have any symptoms, although the most common symptom of insulin resistance, one of the most common things, look out for this, is if you have elevated blood pressure and two, if you have acid reflux.
Dr. Martin Sr: Now, I believe last week we talked about this when we talked about proton pump inhibitors, the story came out that we're using them for way too long. We talked [00:12:00] about one of the big things is acid reflux, but why do you have acid reflux? The number one reason that people get acid reflux, it's the body saying, "Hello? Hello, there? Wake up. You're eating too many carbohydrates. Stop eating so many carbs. You're onto too much sugar." That acid reflux is a sign that [00:12:30] you have way too much insulin resistance. Your body is resisting it. Again, your body has an unlimited ability to secrete more and more and more insulin because insulin, your body will not allow your bloodstream to contain sugar. It'll do everything it can.
Dr. Martin Sr: One of the things that I do in the office is I look for [00:13:00] an overboard of sugar in that when the body becomes overwhelmed with sugar, it'll always spill it into your urine. If you have any sugar in the urine, even a little bit, just a dot of it; you know your body is suffering from insulin resistance. You're a carboholic, put your hand up and say, "My name is Tony and I'm a carbolic." If you don't turn that around, the problem with [00:13:30] insulin and inflammation, which is caused by insulin, is that eventually will damage your blood vessels, make them very sticky, and you are heading for disaster in heart attacks and stroke.
Dr. Martin Sr: It's food, guys. It ain't cholesterol because your body can't live without cholesterol. Your [00:14:00] body, this whole thing about ... I still get it every day. I get it every day in the office. "Dr. Martin, what about my cholesterol?" Well, what about it? "Doc, why do you talk like that? All other doctors talk about getting your cholesterol down." Look, I'm not trying to get your cholesterol down because I'm going to tell you what's dangerous in your bloodstream and that is not your cholesterol, but your triglycerides. What are triglycerides? [00:14:30] Three=tri, glycerides=sugars; three sugar molecules. They actually are fat. Sugar turns to fat. Remember, it's not fat that makes you fat. It's sugar that makes you fat. Triglycerides, three sugars go through your bloodstream as unhealthy fat, triglycerides. If your triglycerides are high, you're much more susceptible to a heart attack [00:15:00] because those are the true blood fats. They are made in your liver when you're eating too many carbohydrates, too much sugar. Triglycerides go into your bloodstream and that is dangerous. How do you make triglycerides? Sugars. Yep, sugars, carbohydrates, crappy carbohydrates.
Dr. Martin Sr: Now, here's another one. HDL, very [00:15:30] important that your triglycerides be low, low triglycerides, low TG. When you get your blood work from your doctor, look at it yourself. Okay? If you're not sure, go to my little teaching that I have on TG and HDL. It's on Facebook. I think it's, you can actually get it on our website. Go to that teaching that I do on triglycerides and HDL. Both of them, guys, both of them are food. They're food. [00:16:00] Triglycerides are sugars and carbohydrates. Get them down, and then increase your good cholesterol. HDL, high-density lipoprotein is what? It's good cholesterol. You can't live without cholesterol.
Dr. Martin Sr: Cholesterol, by the way, is a precursor. Okay? Listen, God doesn't trust you enough to eat enough cholesterol. [00:16:30] You need cholesterol. If someone calls you fat head, take it as a compliment. You need cholesterol. Cholesterol is the good guy. It ain't the Boogieman. It's not the cause of heart disease. You need good cholesterol because it's the FedEx trucks on the highway that is taking those triglycerides and stinking getting them out of your body. You need cholesterol. Eat more eggs, eat more cheese, [00:17:00] eat more meat, yes. Why? Because it will elevate your HDL, it'll elevate your good cholesterol. When you're eating those things, and you cut back on your sugars, you're lowering your triglycerides. Guys, it's not rocket science. It's food. Food is very, very, very, very, very important for heart disease. [00:17:30] This is why we're looking for love in all the wrong places.
Dr. Martin Sr: We're putting the emphasis on medication and there's only one medication, it's statin drugs. Statin drugs, what they do is they lower your LDL, but LDL is like a made up number. It don't matter. It doesn't matter, LDL because there's a medication [00:18:00] for it. That's all the pharmaceutical industry wants to talk about. They want to talk about your LDL. Oh, you got bad LDL. Who cares for heaven's sakes because, you see, you need the good cholesterol. As long as your good cholesterol is good, you're going to be good.
Dr. Martin Sr: How do you get your good cholesterol up? You get it up by eating more eggs, meat, and cheese. You see, cholesterol, it's [00:18:30] only found in the animal kingdom. It's not in the plant kingdom. When vegans and vegetarians ... listen, God blessed them, but they're wrong because plants don't contain any cholesterol. Cholesterol is only found in eggs, meat, and cheese, and your body can't live without good cholesterol. It can't. Why? Because it's a precursor. It's one of the most abundant sterols [00:19:00] in the human body. It's a major component of your body. Your cells are made up of cholesterol. Your brain is made up of cholesterol. You need cholesterol. It's the FedEx trucks on the highways that are taking away your bad fats, which are your triglycerides.
Dr. Martin Sr: Cholesterol is a precursor to bile salts. You can't even digest properly. This is why when I put people on low carb diets, "Oh, Doc, guess what happened? [00:19:30] My acid reflux went away, and I'm digesting much better. I don't feel bloated all the time." Bile salts, guys, they help to kill bacteria and bad guys in your upper GI, the H. pylori and those kind of bacterias that are in a epidemic today, C difficile and all this and that. You need bile. Your bile salts are made up of cholesterol. You need them.
Dr. Martin Sr: [00:20:00] It's a precursor to your hormones, your sex hormones, ladies, your estrogen, and your progesterone, and, men, your testosterone. Cholesterol is a precursor to those steroid hormones. You need them, ladies. You want to have healthy skin, you want to have healthy hair, you want to have healthy nails? You need cholesterol because cholesterol is a precursor [00:20:30] to the steroid hormones, your sex hormones.Another thing that cholesterol is, it's a precursor to vitamin D.
Dr. Martin Sr: Now, you know us at the Martin Clinic. It was kind of funny, I think was last week on my Facebook. I talked about, I said, "Okay, if Dr. Martin was telling you what two vitamins do you need, what two vitamins, number one, did that I think are the most essential vitamins [00:21:00] in your body and the two that I talk about all the time?" I had hundreds on with me, and the ones that answered, I think I got 50, 60 answers. I just scrolled.
Dr. Martin Sr: I'm always scared to scroll when I'm doing my Facebook because I'm always scared I'm gonna cut myself off or whatever. You just have to understand. I'm 67 years old, I didn't grow up with computers, I like to write things, I'm old fashioned, I can [00:21:30] barely use my smartphone, and my son says, "Dad, you got to do these Facebooks." I'm often upside down or sideways, and I don't know why, what I did wrong, what button that I touch, and I never know anything.
Dr. Martin Sr: As a matter of fact, flying solo here today, you have to understand how that raised my cortisol because just getting nervous about doing solo because Tony Jr. sets it up. When we go and do the podcast, he knows everything about [00:22:00] computers, he's a computer genius, and he can ... like the more technology there is involved, the better he's at it. He knows this stuff, but he's got very little patience with his dad. Okay? Because he said, "Dad, you should know that. You've done this before. You can do this solo." I know I said, "Do I go to push anything, do I have to push a button?" because I might, I'm going to blow it. Anyways, hopefully, [00:22:30] this has been recorded. I'm not sure. Okay? I don't know.
Dr. Martin Sr: Listen, guys, I was saying, "What two vitamins would be, what did Dr. Martin talk about every, every, every show, every show, Facebook, podcasts, whatever?" All the answers came back, and they all got it right. It was B12 and Vitamin D. B 12 and vitamin D. The reason is, listen, guys, [00:23:00] cholesterol is a precursor to your absorption, and your manufacturing of vitamin D. You need cholesterol to take the sun and convert that vitamin D so that your body can use it. We all know, well, if you don't, you should know the benefits of the sun and what it does for you. It's so good for you. It is not, that's another boogieman, but I don't want to go there today.
Dr. Martin Sr: All I want to say is [00:23:30] that without cholesterol ... Where is cholesterol found? It is found in the animal kingdom. It's not in your plants. Plants are wonderful. "Dr. Martin, I love fruits and vegetables." Well, good for you. I like eggs, meat, and cheese and some fruits and vegetables. Okay? All I'm saying is that you need cholesterol to be high in order to have a healthy heart because one of the things that's important in your heart is, [00:24:00] well, for men, testosterone. Imagine cholesterol is a precursor to the manufacturing of the steroid hormone, which is testosterone in men. Women, ladies, you need good levels of estrogen, the womanly hormone, otherwise, you will not have a healthy heart, and you will not have a healthy heart if you don't have good levels of vitamin D.
Dr. Martin Sr: The vitamin D that you get hopefully [00:24:30] from the sun, like, hey, the sun's out today, and I'm going to take advantage of it. We live in Northern Ontario. I don't know about climate change. I'm not sold because all I know is we had the worst stinking winter. I'm telling you, winter never ended here in Northern Ontario. Vitamin D, you know the importance of it. This is why I have my patients on vitamin D. I highly recommend it, I talk about it all the time, I've been talking about it for over 40 years. By the way, last [00:25:00] week, last Saturday, by the way, May the 11th was 45 years in practice for this old doc. I love practicing because I love education. I love to teach my patients.
Dr. Martin Sr: You need cholesterol. Get your triglycerides down. How do you do that? Lower your carbohydrates. How do you get your HDL, your good cholesterol up? You want it up, you want it high, you want a two and a half times higher than your triglycerides. [00:25:30] Two and a half times is what I recommend, so look at your numbers when you get your tests by your doctor. Find out what your triglycerides are and what your HDL is. It's very important. Get your HDL up by eating more animal fat, eggs, meat and cheese.
Dr. Martin Sr: Couple of things, by the way, in Canada, 7.5 million Canadians have hypertension. Hypertension is a precursor to a [00:26:00] heart attack, and it ain't cholesterol and it ain't salt either. It's not salt, it's sugar. They blame salt for what sugar does. If you get your insulin down, get your insulin down, you're going to get your blood pressure down. Blood pressure is ... one of the major causes of blood pressure is insulin resistance. [00:26:30] This is why we're so big on getting insulin down, and it's essential that you do that.
Dr. Martin Sr: Now, just in closing, let me say this: remember, good nutrition for heart disease is cutting back on your carbohydrates, the deadly sugar, and increasing your good cholesterol. Surprise, surprise, heart attack deaths are on the rise [00:27:00] for the first time in 50 years. Because emergency medicine is so much better. It is. They can keep you alive, and I have nothing but admiration for emergency medicine. Like I said, you're having a heart attack, you got to see a good emergency doctor immediately cause they are fantastic of what they're doing. That's really what medicine should be about is it's good at fixing an [00:27:30] infection or whatever on an acute basis. Guys, the thing that you can control, the thing that you can control is what the food that you put in your mouth every day.
Dr. Martin Sr: The other thing that I could have talked about, but we run out of time here today is what cortisol does. It's a big factor in heart disease because it creates the perfect storm for attacking your heart, but I just wanted to, we'll maybe touch that on another time, but I want just [00:28:00] to remind you that we sure appreciate all your feedback. If you have any topics that you want us to touch and few future podcasts or even for my Facebook live that I do on Thursday mornings at 8:30, you can send that along at MartinClinic.com.
Dr. Martin Sr: Thanks for listening to the Doctor Is In Podcast from MartinClinic.com. If you have any questions, [00:28:30] you can reach us at info@MartinClinic.com. If you're not a newsletter subscriber, you can head to our website and sign up for free. We also have a private Facebook group that you can join. It's a community of awesome people. Finally, I do a Facebook live every Thursday morning at 8:30. Join us again next week for a new episode.