Transcript Of Today's Episode
Dr. Martin Jr: You're listening to The Doctor Is In podcast from Martin Clinic dot 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 Jr: Hello, I'm Doctor Martin Junior.
Dr.Martin Sr: I'm Doctor Martin Senior.
Dr.Martin Jr: And this is The Doctor Is In podcast, [00:00:30] and this is episode 188. And today we're going to talk about something that we feel is probably one of the biggest health concerns that we see today, and it's affecting millions of people. Doesn't matter where you live in this world. Especially in the industrialized world and the first world issues, and that has to do with high cortisol. And we're going to talk specifically how having high cortisol affects [00:01:00] men and women differently. There are some things that they're going to share, and we'll talk about that. However, there are some things that are drastically different in terms of how high cortisol affects men and women. So that's what we want to talk about today.
Dr.Martin Jr: But first, one of the things that always comes up whenever we start talking about adrenals is somebody will always bring up a systematic review that was done [00:01:30] a few years ago that basically says that adrenal fatigue doesn't exist, it's a myth. And people will always being that up because hey, a systemic review said adrenal fatigue is a myth. And we would agree based on the definition that they have for adrenal fatigue. Because what they're saying is due to chronic stress, the adrenals are overworked and, like anything else that's overworked, eventually they get tired and they [00:02:00] get fatigued. And as a result of this fatigue of the adrenal glands, your body stops or makes very little cortisol.
Dr.Martin Jr: So the definition of adrenal fatigue is somebody who has low cortisol, so they'll say that that doesn't exist, and we would agree with that to a certain extent because that's the exact opposite of what we actually see in real life. That's not what happens in real life. [00:02:30] The average person who runs into problems with their adrenal glands aren't suffering from low cortisol, it's the actual opposite that's happening. They have high cortisol levels. And so we would agree with that. And again, we don't care. People will bring it up and they'll say "Well, what do you think?" And our first reaction is well, we don't care. Why would we care? We see what we see all the time, and I don't need a piece [00:03:00] of paper to tell me that millions of people are suffering from symptoms. They're just labeling it wrong. They're just labeling the whole thing incorrectly. So that's that.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, it's mislabeled, but there's no doubt that there is a condition. And like you said, it's so prevalent in our society today of ... Not people running around with low cortisol when people are running around, literally, with extreme levels of cortisol [00:03:30] over a prolonged period of time, that is very unhealthy for a person. And we're going to explain that in this podcast, because how many years have we been talking about this type of condition? As long as I've been in practice.
Dr.Martin Jr: Let's just start by breaking down exactly what's going on inside the body, and then we'll go into how it affects men and women differently, and then if we have time at the end we can talk a little bit about [00:04:00] how to overcome some of these issues that we're going to talk about today.
Dr.Martin Jr: Everything starts with stress, right? Everything, when it comes to the adrenal glands, starts with stress. What happens? Let's just say that you and I ... Let's just say I'm walking home. And it's dark outside, and I notice that there is a clown in a window. I see a clown in a window, I pass the window, [00:04:30] then the clown's not there and all of a sudden I hear somebody walking behind me. That would be a stressful ...
Dr.Martin Sr: It sounds like a horror movie [crosstalk 00:04:39]
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, clowns are terrifying. So that would be a stressful situation, right?
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah.
Dr.Martin Jr: What happens at that point physiologically is my body is preparing for something that it calls fight or flight, right? That's what it's going to call for. It's the concept of violence [00:05:00] or silence, right? My body's getting ready. What happens then is my brain basically tells me adrenals to get going, and it does a few things. It produces adrenaline, adrenaline is like a fast acting fuel.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, that's the short fuse.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, that gets your body absolutely prepared to fight or flight. And then at the same time you're releasing cortisol, which is a little bit slower of a burn. And one of the things that cortisol [00:05:30] does that most people are surprised at is cortisol raises your blood sugar levels. It actually is one of the hormones that will bring up your blood sugar levels, and it makes sense because-
Dr.Martin Sr: Well, you want energy.
Dr.Martin Jr: Exactly.
Dr.Martin Sr: Short term.
Dr.Martin Jr: Your body thinks it needs energy, so your body decides hey, let's get some blood glucose going so we can burn it off as energy. And that's great when there's a clown chasing you, but if you're sitting in an office and you're stressed and your cortisol is constantly bringing up your blood sugars, [00:06:00] that's not a good thing right? And the funny thing is this. If you go look at how stress is defined, there's what they call absolute stress, and then they call relative stress. So you have a general heading of stress. Underneath that, all stress breaks into what they call absolute stress or relative stress.
Dr.Martin Jr: Absolute stress is just basically anybody who would be exposed to that would interpret it as stress. For example, [00:06:30] a tsunami. Everybody that's in the area of a tsunami, that would they call absolute stress. Everybody in that situation would interpret that as stress.
Dr.Martin Sr: You know, I had a patient in this morning that was telling me she was in Chile when an earthquake hit at 8.8 on the Richter scale. They thought they were going to die. So can you imagine her cortisol? She was telling me that story [crosstalk 00:06:54]
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, adrenaline, everything, right? Everything would be up and running.
Dr.Martin Sr: Oh, man. And she said ... You know what? It was just interesting because I [00:07:00] was testing her cortisol this morning, and I'm saying she's never really recovered from that. It's given her anxiety since then. But anyway, we [crosstalk 00:07:09]
Dr.Martin Jr: That's what we're going to talk about. So that's absolute stress. But then there's something called relative stress, and relative basically is exactly what it means, that some people exposed to that would interpret thy as stress. Not everybody. For example, traffic. Traffic is a relative stress. Some people can sit in traffic and [00:07:30] they're whistling and nothing bothers them, and other people, they've got their hands at ten and two and they're gripping the steering wheel tight and they're angry, right?
Dr.Martin Sr: Me.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, so and ... Yeah. And we live in Sudbury, so you can imagine. So that's the thing. But it doesn't end there, because under both of those you have what they call acute chronic. You can have acute stress, chronic stress. Basically at the end of the day, some people will interpret stress differently than others, and then other times we'll all interpret stress [00:08:00] the same way. But why does that matter, why am I bringing that up? Because stress comes in the form of many things, and it affects everybody differently. You and I, for example, could be in the presence of mold. And if my body is a perfect storm of allowing me to be ... And that comes back to mum's story, right? You both lived in the same house.
Dr.Martin Sr: And it didn't bother me at all.
Dr.Martin Jr: It didn't bother you, but you both lived in the same house that had a mold issue in the basement where the hot tub was [00:08:30] and that devastated mom's health, and it didn't affect you at all. That is considered a relative stressor. A chronic relative stressor, because you were in there the same length of time she was and it almost literally killed her. It literally killed her. So that's why these things, when it comes to stress, is very hard to pinpoint, because you could have a husband and wife that comes into the clinic exposed to the same thing and the wife feels terrible or the husband feels [00:09:00] terrible and the other one's like "I feel fine."
Dr.Martin Jr: Which then brings up the other issue is like "I don't believe him." Right? It's tough to gain sympathy after a while when you're not feeling well and you've both been exposed to the same thing and the other person doesn't feel it. That's why this is difficult. When we talk about stress, it could be anything. You've done this so many times. Like you said, it could be a past history of a bad accident, tough divorce ...
Dr.Martin Sr: Financial.
Dr.Martin Jr: Bankruptcy, [00:09:30] financial.
Dr.Martin Sr: Sickness.
Dr.Martin Jr: Those things there-
Dr.Martin Sr: A child being sick.
Dr.Martin Jr: And that leaves a fingerprint on the body. For some people that leaves more than a fingerprint on the body. That sets off a biochemical, physiological, hormonal response for the next 20 years in their body, and it's under the surface.
Dr.Martin Sr: And this is where, again, traditional medicine often is so ... They can't think outside the box. [00:10:00] So if it's under the surface, unless it comes up and literally it bites them in terms of blood work and the normal things they test, they can't see it. So they dismiss it. "You're not sick, you're depressed." Or "You don't have ... " Well first of all, they rarely ever test any cortisol. But even if you did, you've got to put it all into the picture because otherwise you miss [00:10:30] it. And this is why I like what we call functional medicine, in a sense that we're into functional medicine, meaning that we're looking for the root cause.
Dr.Martin Sr: This is why we always, I like your term, reverse engineer it. If you have a problem, let's go backwards. Let's find out what started it. When was the last time you felt well? When was the last ... Do you know what I mean? By asking enough questions. And then you [00:11:00] look at blood work, and then you look at ... You know what I mean? It's best to get a real good history, then you can sort of slot in stuff like the adrenals.
Dr.Martin Jr: And that's why ... We did a video on this and we also talked about this in our leaky gut webinar that we did not too long ago. The three seeds of disease, how if you were to reverse engineer a lot of these diseases, at the start of them would be ... Everybody says inflammation, but if you go further back than inflammation [00:11:30] it would be free radical damage, leaky gut syndrome and high circulating insulin. And then we have often [inaudible 00:11:36] cortisol, which is an accelerant and it makes everything worse. Because if you have a bad gut or you have a ton of free radical damage or you have high circulating insulin, you throw chronic high cortisol into the mix, it's devastating. It absolutely will devastate, right?
Dr.Martin Sr: The great accelerator.
Dr.Martin Jr: So if we go back to ... Let's go back again. Stress is a relative [00:12:00] term for a lot of people. You can have 30 people in the same office and one person goes off on stress leave because their body ... Everybody's different. But again, I think that that is the perfect storm. I mean, you remember the movie The Perfect Storm. I kind of ruined the movie for Erika, my wife, because like I said, all they know is they got on the boat and they didn't come back, everything else was just made up. We don't know what ... They had all these deep conversations in the movie and I'm like well, that's fiction, it's just around the ... But at the end of the [00:12:30] day, it was three systems that collided that created this perfect storm.
Dr.Martin Sr: 60 foot waves or something, right?
Dr.Martin Jr: And that's how people are. Some people, they have the perfect conditions in their body so that when this comes along, all of a sudden it just takes off on the person, right? So you have something that's called the HPH access. And basically it's very simple, this is what it is. When you come into contact with stress, a part of your brain called the hypothalamus basically starts the process. The hypothalamus [00:13:00] will tell the pituitary gland, which is the middle man, to get your adrenals going. So you have the hypothalamus tells the pituitary, which then turns around and tells the adrenals "All right, start producing some stuff." Right? "Start producing some adrenaline, start producing some cortisol."
Dr.Martin Jr: And normally what happens is as you make cortisol, then cortisol is a feedback loop, so it tells the hypothalamus "Okay, enough," It yells at it, "Stop, we've got enough." [00:13:30] Right? So let's just say you're really worried about an exam. Your hypothalamus gets your pituitary going and your pituitary gets the adrenals, the adrenals make cortisol and then cortisol comes along and says to the brain "All right, enough, we've got enough. We don't need anymore." And that's a normal feedback loop, that's what happens. When you're healthy, that's exactly what's going on. The problem is-
Dr.Martin Sr: Your body is made for stress, so let's not ... Right? I mean, you're fearfully, wonderfully [00:14:00] made. Your body is-
Dr.Martin Jr: Well cortisol and adrenaline, it saves your life.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah.
Dr.Martin Jr: You need them. You need that burst of energy. Adrenaline is like, do you remember those Fast and the Furious movies? I've watched all of like, 15 of them, I can't remember how many there are. And they're always racing at the last second it looks like he's going to lose and he pushes the nitrous button, right? And it just ejects him, it just flies. And everybody wants that in their car, they push a button and it just gives them extra horsepower. But that's adrenaline. Adrenaline is that shot of that, exactly. [00:14:30] Your body needs it, it will literally save your life. There's a lot of videos on the internet where they call it, like, dad strength. Something's about to go bad and they show a video of a dad lifting something that he normally would never-
Dr.Martin Sr: Or a mom.
Dr.Martin Jr: Or a mom, exactly, lifting something.
Dr.Martin Sr: I saw something the other day, a woman lifted a car because it was on her son.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah. So that's the whole combination of everything from miracle strength to mom strength to adrenaline, it's just, that's what happens. It's like she's Hulking out on that. But [00:15:00] at the end of the day that's normal, you need that. You have a normal feedback mechanism to keep all that in check, but what happens when stress is chronic? When stress is no longer a periodic thing, when stress is chronic, what happens is cortisol does a whole bunch of things as well besides just raising your glucose levels. Cortisol does a lot of other things. And again, on the surface they're very good for you. But [00:15:30] if cortisol is always going, cortisol creates a ton of inflammation. And it does so two ways.
Dr.Martin Jr: Two ways. One, cortisol directly influences cytokines, which are chemical messengers that kick off inflammation. More cortisol, more cytokines, more inflammation. However, cortisol actually, and this is something else most people don't realize, normal amounts of cortisol is actually very anti-inflammatory. [00:16:00] Because cortisol, when cortisol is present in a normal amount, it is modulating your immune cells. But when it's too much, the cells stop listening to it, and then the immune system could go crazy, inflammation goes crazy. And again, we have a presentation that by the time this is out should be on our website on all this. It's a video, and it will explain all this stuff. And if this sounds like you at all, then you definitely [00:16:30] going to go watch that video.
Dr.Martin Jr: But anyways, what happens is when you have chronic stress and your adrenals are constantly producing cortisol, then you end up with a lot of inflammation. And this is what happens then. Inflammation basically stops cortisol from being able to stop your brain from telling your adrenals to make more cortisol. So that feedback loop that normally happens [00:17:00] ...
Dr.Martin Sr: Gets disrupted.
Dr.Martin Jr: It gets disrupted. So now you're in this circle of making cortisol that you can't stop, because the normal mechanism in place, the normal safeguards in place, aren't working anymore because inflammation has clouded that whole process. We've said this before ...
Dr.Martin Sr: It's like a fog.
Dr.Martin Jr: It is. Because the cells communicate to each other via signals. And we just ... Imagine standing you and I on the opposite end of [00:17:30] a road, and we're communicating no problem through thick fog where I can't see in front of my face and we're trying to do hand signs to each other. That's essentially the same thing that's happening to the cells in your body. They no longer can communicate properly. Inflammation disrupts chemical communications, and that's what's happening. You know in the movies, and this is a good way of thinking about it, it's always funny because whenever something bad is happening in a movie where there's terrorists or there's somebody doing a heist job, [00:18:00] you always say "Take out your phone and make a call." But it's always convenient, because these guys always have cellphone jammers with them. Apparently you can buy them everywhere, because they all have them right? Everybody has a cellphone jammer.
Dr.Martin Jr: Inflammation is like turning on a cellphone jammer, that's what's happening. So now, you can't stop making cortisol. So once you start making too much cortisol, you can't stop making cortisol. Your mechanism to shut that down is over. So when what happens? Then you have tons [00:18:30] of inflammation, tons of inflammation. And, as you and I have said before, all the top killers all reverse engineer back to inflammation. So high cortisol can cause, really directly cause, all of the top killers from heart disease, cancers, dementia. All of these things can trace their roots back to high cortisol. And then you can go further back than that, but that tells you how important [00:19:00] it is to have your cortisol controlled. That's how important that is.
Dr.Martin Jr: So that's the mechanism there that's taking place. But when a man or a woman starts to have high cortisol, you start to see different symptoms. Some of the symptoms will be the same because we know high cortisol kills the gut, it actually reduces something called secretory IGA, kills it, so your gut gets killed. We know it thins your blood brain barrier [00:19:30] so your brain gets killed. So men and women, it can affect their brains, it can affect their gut, we know that, it can affect their immune system. People that have high cortisol get sick more often. We know that.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. Their immune system is sidetracked, right?
Dr.Martin Jr: And something else I don't think most people realize. If you and I are exposed to a cold virus, people think, and it makes sense, that the cold virus causes you to cough. [00:20:00] But that's not true. Coughing is a side effect of your body trying to fight off the virus so your body initiates the coughing, not the other way around. I mean, it's six of one, half dozen the other, but it does make a difference. So coughing, for example, is the side effect of the inflammatory reaction or the immune system reaction to that virus. The more coughing, the more your body reacts to that virus.
Dr.Martin Jr: Do you know [00:20:30] what determines the level of reaction that somebody has to a virus? Cortisol. Because cortisol messes up the immune system and the body will overreact. They've done the study. They've done these studies exactly where they've taken people and they've actually exposed them to a common cold virus at a ward, a hospital ward, and then observed people. And the level of symptoms were directly proportional to their cortisol. [00:21:00] So the higher the cortisol, the more symptoms they had. Other people would have the virus but they got no symptoms, because they-
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. They got exposed, but-
Dr.Martin Jr: Everybody got exposed. So that's how important cortisol is. People that are high cortisol are always sick. They're coming into the same contact with everything else, but because their gut is a mess and their immune system's a mess and they have high cortisol, guess what happens? They get a lot of symptoms. People that have chronically high ... They always either have sicknesses [00:21:30] or allergies.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. And unexplained, they can come out of nowhere.
Dr.Martin Jr: They're allergic to everything, because their body reacts to everything because they've got high cortisol. It's crazy. But that's what happens. Men and women can both get that, you can have that in men or women. But where it differs is ... This is what happens in women. In order to make cortisol, they steal progesterone. And when you steal progesterone, you end up with lower progesterone and you end up with an estrogen dominance because you have more estrogen [00:22:00] than progesterone. The ratio has changed too much, and then guess what happens from there? When a woman has estrogen dominance, they get every estrogen symptom, then they get every thyroid symptom, then they get every ovary symptom, it's just a circle from there. They become a hormonal mess because they have high circulating cortisol.
Dr.Martin Jr: And we've talked about this on our programs before, especially in our video presentations. We've talked [00:22:30] about this a lot. But cortisol, we call it the great accelerant because it will accelerate hormonal issues quickly.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, quickly, yeah.
Dr.Martin Jr: Now, for men it's different. Men, they don't run into that issue. However, cortisol, rather than stealing progesterone in men, it steals testosterone.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. The manly hormone goes down.
Dr.Martin Jr: When you have high circulating cortisol, you have low testosterone. And guess what? A man that has low testosterone is tired [00:23:00] all the time, specifically at night time, you're fatigued. After supper they just want to lie on the couch, they're tired.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. And when your testosterone goes down, your nitric oxide goes down.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, so talk about that, because that's fascinating [crosstalk 00:23:12] you were telling me about this before.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. Just because when you get low testosterone, why men react differently, not that they can't get anxiety, of course they can. And anxiety, by the way, is high levels of cortisol, right? It's just a period of fight or flight that doesn't [00:23:30] get turned off. Anxiety can then lead into depression, they're usually two sides of the same coin, anxiety and depression. And by the way, anxiety has taken over depression in terms of mental health issues today in North America, isn't that crazy? First time in recorded medical history that anxiety is more prevalent than depression. It all has to do with cortisol.
Dr.Martin Sr: But what I was saying is that when the testosterone goes down, and man, [00:24:00] one of the things that they find which is always interesting is that what it does is it takes your nitric oxide and lowers your nitric oxide. Well, why is that significant? Because nitric oxide, NO, okay? Means no, no sex. No muscle strength, no brainpower. You see, for men, men need ... And you and I talk about this a lot. If they want they can go back to episode, I can't remember what it is, 150 something.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, in the 50's [00:24:30] about testosterone.
Dr.Martin Sr: 150 something we talked about ... Probably about 25 or so podcasts ago, we talked about testosterone health. But one of the factors is nitric oxide. Now, what is nitric oxide? Nitric oxide is a substance within your blood vessels that ... Your body has nitric oxide, think of nitroglycerine. Why do they give you nitro patches? Why did they give you nitroglycerine as a medication? [00:25:00] Because it gets rid of angina, because it opens up your blood vessels. So your body has nitroglycerine, it has nitric oxide, is what it's called. And nitric oxide, when it goes down, if you have ... Men, why it's so dangerous for your heart, is because your blood vessels are not going to open properly because your nitric oxide goes down.
Dr.Martin Sr: Now, it does more than that. Nitric oxide's important for your [00:25:30] immune system and several other things, but think of what happens to the brain. If you're not getting as much circulation in a man, think of what stress does. The high secretion of cortisol over a period of time takes a man's nitric oxide, his heart isn't as strong, his brain isn't functioning near as well, and this can have an effect on your memory and brain fog and ... And then without the proper blood supply, think about what it does. We talked about sexual, what about [00:26:00] ED? That's a big, big issue today in society. And we talked about how insulin can affect that, because insulin can affect your circular. But nitric oxide is affected, which is when you have low levels of testosterone.
Dr.Martin Sr: So your libido's down, and for a man, you said fatigue and sexually fatigued, because you have no ... Nitric oxide opens up the little blood vessels to [00:26:30] the male organ, and ... You know? [crosstalk 00:26:32]
Dr.Martin Jr: Well, plus testosterone also ... One of the effects of low testosterone that you see in men is it actually hurts their confidence, so that affects them emotionally, physically ... Everything. So it affects their confidence.
Dr.Martin Sr: You know, we saw, I was saying to you off-air here just a few minutes ago, and I had just come back from my 45th reunion. So think about it. I graduated fairly young, so [00:27:00] some of the guys, one of my colleagues there was 76, the other one one guy was 74, and some guys are so frail, it's unbelievable. But they have ... What the lack of testosterone does, think about, like only blood supply ... Muscle. They're frail. And you see it [crosstalk 00:27:24]
Dr.Martin Jr: Well, and they feel weaker, right?
Dr.Martin Sr: They feel [crosstalk 00:27:25]
Dr.Martin Jr: Because low testosterone makes you feel weaker.
Dr.Martin Sr: And your heart's a muscle!
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, [00:27:30] your heart's a muscle.
Dr.Martin Sr: Your heart's a muscle, you and I talk about that all the time, that's why we're so much against [inaudible 00:27:35] because of what they do to the muscles.
Dr.Martin Jr: Unfortunately, the whole testosterone steroid connection, right? So people think ... That's what they think of. They think testosterone, they think of massive muscles, but that isn't just testosterone that they're doing. But at the end of the day, it's hard to build muscle when you have low testosterone. [00:28:00] It's hard to have stamina, it's hard to have energy, it's hard to think properly, it's hard to ... Even, they've done studies, low testosterone men have a hard time making a decision even. They're less confident in their decisions, so it's amazing how much we are ... Well, we are regulated by our hormones. Men, we're regulated by insulin, cortisol and testosterone, for the most part. Listen, there's a lot more in there and that's a really over simplification.
Dr.Martin Jr: But a lot of men's health issues can be traced back to three [00:28:30] things. They have high insulin, they have low testosterone and they have high cortisol. That is the triad for men right there. A majority of men's health issues can be fixed by correcting those three things. Now, again, men can have digestive issues, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying the average man who's tired ...
Dr.Martin Sr: And we look at hormones. [crosstalk 00:28:52]
Dr.Martin Jr: Those are three things.
Dr.Martin Sr: [inaudible 00:28:53] is that we really look at that, and we simplify it. But you're absolutely ...
Dr.Martin Jr: And women, women it's cortisol, [00:29:00] it's estrogen, progesterone, it's thyroid, big time thyroid.
Dr.Martin Sr: See how the thyroid is affected so much by how cortisol is [inaudible 00:29:09]
Dr.Martin Jr: Well you and I did a presentation on thyroid distress syndrome, which is the name we give to a person who has thyroid symptoms but normal blood testing, which is very, very, very common. So we use the term thyroid distress syndrome. In our opinion, for a lot of women, the cause [00:29:30] of thyroid distress syndrome is cortisol, for a lot of women. That's the number one cause of thyroid distress syndrome. The thyroid is under stress because the cortisol is too high, the adrenals are messed up. But they're not messed up that they're fatigued and not making cortisol, they're just making way too much of it.
Dr.Martin Sr: Way too much of it.
Dr.Martin Jr: And as you mentioned, we're not even talking about the affect that it has on insomnia, we're not even talking about the effect that it has on anxiety, depression.
Dr.Martin Sr: But you can see how it gets into vicious [00:30:00] cycle. Like even, we've talked about this many a time, about sleep and when you're exhausted and you're not sleeping. If you don't sleep, your cortisol goes up. Your cortisol goes up, you don't sleep. And then you add hot flashes in women and whatever, and even then it could be caused by cortisol that's robbing progesterone, it's robbing progesterone. I always say, women, you've got estrogen, don't worry about estrogen. You'd better have the big equalizer, [00:30:30] is progesterone in women.
Dr.Martin Jr: And then you'd better also not be robbing progesterone all the time, which is why a lot of women who go on bio-identicals, progesterone, they don't get the full benefits until they control their cortisol.
Dr.Martin Sr: Exactly.
Dr.Martin Jr: They do not get the same effects. It doesn't matter. That is the linchpin, that's the tipping point, that's the key to everything for a lot of people. If they can control their cortisol, it's amazing [00:31:00] how everything else falls into place better. They get better results fixing their thyroid when they control their cortisol, even their gut, their brain, everything. That's how important this is.
Dr.Martin Sr: I've got my hand up.
Dr.Martin Jr: Okay, go ahead, you can ask a question.
Dr.Martin Sr: I just want to bring out a point to show you how long I've been thinking about this. And what did we know about the science in those days like we know today? But think about chronic fatigue, which is like an epidemic. [00:31:30] Chronic fatigue syndrome, which was named ...
Dr.Martin Jr: Well you know a lot about this because is really what changed everything that we do.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yep, really did. It really did. When you think of it, the pivot point at the Martin Clinic was your mother. And I'm a guy, I want to know the bottom line. I always look for cause and effect. Anyway. But when you think about with CFS, like when they said chronic fatigue, and that's one [00:32:00] of the latest names. Before that they had ME and they had all sorts [crosstalk 00:32:04]
Dr.Martin Jr: Isn't there another one called hippy flu?
Dr.Martin Sr: Hippy flu, the ... The yuppie flu, the yuppie flu. They called it the yuppie flu because it was generally upscale white women, you know, generally, that got it. But think of what it was, right? It's exactly what we're talking about.
Dr.Martin Jr: And it's the perfect storm. Their body is the perfect storm.
Dr.Martin Sr: Stress.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yes. Yes.
Dr.Martin Sr: Your mother was mold [crosstalk 00:32:30] [00:32:30] that really got [crosstalk 00:32:32]
Dr.Martin Jr: It was. And mold is a chronic, chronic stressor.
Dr.Martin Sr: Big time.
Dr.Martin Jr: And it's a disproportionate reaction to that chronic stressor, because the body is primed for that.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, and your mom had this primed.
Dr.Martin Jr: And that's why you become a ... One of the early diagnoses she had was hypersensitive pneumonitis, which is she was allergic to everything. It makes sense. When you have high cortisol you're allergic to ...
Dr.Martin Sr: You become hypersensitive.
Dr.Martin Jr: Well, [00:33:00] it's interesting. Because it does decrease secretory IGA, which is the antibodies you secrete in your mucous glands, you make, I think, about 2000 grams of it a day. It's the first line of defence.
Dr.Martin Sr: It's in your nasal passages, your throat, it's the mucous. It also lines your gut. You make a ton of it in your gut because things get through the stomach, you have antibodies in your lining to kill things off. Imagine you don't have that anymore, or you have a lot less of it. [00:33:30] You become allergic to everything, because everything's getting through that shouldn't get through. So high cortisol, you become allergic to everything. Look at CFS and fibromyalgia. Think of the symptoms they have. Extreme fatigue. They can't sleep, they wake up non-restful.
Dr.Martin Sr: Brain fog.
Dr.Martin Jr: Brain fog. That's cortisol.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah.
Dr.Martin Jr: Allergies to everything, that's cortisol. Again, and this is not-
Dr.Martin Sr: Poor immune system.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, of course. And this is not an oversimplification, [00:34:00] this is exactly what's going on.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, for sure.
Dr.Martin Jr: That's what's going on in all [crosstalk 00:34:04]
Dr.Martin Sr: And I was the first guy to say it, too.
Dr.Martin Jr: Yeah, I remember in one of your books, looking at a chart that you had drawn up about the adrenals. And, yeah. That was the first I've ever seen it. Even if I do research now, very few people have put it all together. But I'm telling you, this is what's going on for a lot of people. And it's going on for people that can't sleep that are anxious, that have fatigue, this is the underlying thing [00:34:30] that's going on for a lot of people. So this is a big topic.
Dr.Martin Sr: It's a big topic.
Dr.Martin Jr: This is a crucial topic for your health. This is a big one. And I thought about this the other day, I heard this about something else, but it's funny. Health is like oxygen. If you have oxygen you're never thinking about it, until you take oxygen out of the room and then that's all you think about. That's health for a lot of people. Fatigue is the same way, energy is the same way. Energy is like oxygen. [00:35:00] When oxygen's around, you never think about it.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. Like me. I don't think about it [crosstalk 00:35:03]
Dr.Martin Jr: But I'll tell you, when energy starts to go away, that's all you think about. All of a sudden it's like, where did my energy go?
Dr.Martin Jr: That's what happens, right?
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. And it's never normal.
Dr.Martin Jr: Never normal. There's always something going on that's a check engine light, like we've said before, the body's telling you something's going on.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, for sure.
Dr.Martin Jr: All right. So we shared a ton of information. Again, by the time this episode comes out on our website, we should have a link to watch our recorded webinar, [00:35:30] because we're doing a webinar tomorrow night but we're going to record it, we'll have it available on our website. And the information ... The webinar will be more of what we talked about today with how to fix it, and crucial stuff for your health. So again we thank you for listening, and have a great day.
Dr.Martin Sr: Thanks for listening to The Doctor Is In podcast from Martin Clinic dot com. If you have any questions, you can reach us at info at Martin Clinic dot com. If you're not a newsletter [00:36:00] 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.