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 everyone. I'm Doctor Martin Senior and guess what? Flying [00:00:30] solo today. So, good to have you on with us and I hope everything is being recorded. If you're listening to this, it's because I succeeded. I'm always worried I'm a dinosaur and anything with... when I've got to touch buttons, it's always dangerous. So anyways, good to have you on with us today. I think you'll enjoy our little podcast [00:01:00] that we're going to do today on... I'm going to talk about inflammation today and what you can do about it. Why it's so significant, and we talk about it all the time now.
Dr. Martin Sr: We've said this before and just bears repeating, that many doctors, like the ones that think outside the box like the Martin Clinic, will tell you that inflammation is at the root of almost every disease you can [00:01:30] think of. Especially your big killers like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's and autoimmune. Doctors would tell you that at the root of these diseases is inflammation. And we agree with that. I've got no problem, I agree that inflammation is a big factor, but as Tony Junior often says, inflammation is not Houdini. [00:02:00] It just doesn't come out of nowhere, there's a reason that you have inflammation. So I just want to go over that today so that, we'll give you a basic understanding of what we mean by inflammation.
Dr. Martin Sr: So I think everybody understands that if you kick me in the knee, my body is going to respond to that, it's an automatic response, it's the body's ambulance system. If you have an injury [00:02:30] or an infection, you want the ambulance, you know, extra blood supply bringing in your T-cells, the Navy Seals of your immune system, extra protein, extra enzymes. They bring them to the party to help the injury or infection. And so, inflammation of course is very normal. The problem is, is when inflammation sticks around for a long time. So let me give you an example of inflammation [00:03:00] again.
Dr. Martin Sr: Let's say you get virus, a little virus like the common cold. The cold virus. Like I mean you can't even see it, really, on an electron microscope, it's so small, and yet you know what kind of devastation, especially men, we're such big babies. My wife always tells me if I ever had a period I would have gone and shot myself. You know, men are big babies compared to women, and that's a fact. You know a man gets a cold and the whole world has [00:03:30] to stop, right? But you know what it's like to have a cold or a sinus infection or whatever. You just feel terrible. How can a little wee virus make you feel so bad?
Dr. Martin Sr: Well the ambulance system is on high alert. It brings in extra blood supply and inflammation, and you got extra enzymes, you got extra T-cells, you got all these things that are coming to help to create a fever. [00:04:00] And you feel like you got hit by a truck. That's as a result of the body's natural immune system. And so inflammation can be very good for you. Think about it. It helps to help you fight an infection. It helps if you scrape your knee, it helps. So all inflammation isn't negative. It's only when the inflammation sticks around for a long time.
Dr. Martin Sr: So let [00:04:30] me give you a little bit of physiology as to what exactly happens. So, most of the response of a scraped knee or an infection, your body sends out messengers called cytokines that tell your liver to release these inflammatory mediators like c-reactive protein, and serum amyloid A, big words. Medicine loves [00:05:00] big words, that's to confuse you, but to initiate repair, and no problem. The damaged tissue is repaired pretty quickly and your body goes back to normal. However, if these messengers stay in the blood for a long period of time due to low grade chronic infection, for example.
Dr. Martin Sr: Number one, one of the things that we see the most in the clinic is a condition called leaky gut. Well leaky gut, when you have garbage going [00:05:30] into your blood, it's all microscopic, you don't see it. But, you know, if you have candida albicans, the yeast, because you've got leaky gut due to your change in your microbiome. The border guards are not protecting your lining, the very, very thin one cell lining that protects your bowel from your blood. What happens is that some of that garbage that should have gone into the toilet, [00:06:00] leaks across, which is not supposed to be so permeable, into your bloodstream and you get a yeast or candida, which is one of the major things, and you know traditional medicine... I hate to be negative... but they never even think of this.
Dr. Martin Sr: I mean you almost got to get like, you know I still get it every day in the office. "Oh, my doctor said that there's no chance on earth that you could ever get fungus that goes in your blood. [00:06:30] That would kill you." You know it's almost like they don't read. Doctors used to say that in the 1970s. They never wanted to admit there was such a thing as candida albicans. I remember when I graduated, like you just couldn't get people to even admit that there could be such a thing. "Oh no, that can't happen. That's ... it would never get into your blood. I mean, yeah, [00:07:00] women can get a yeast infection, but it wouldn't go anywhere else." And now they know that that's absolutely stupidity, because yeast is... You know, and many doctors like myself believe that it's at the root, you know what we think about leaky gut?
Dr. Martin Sr: We think yeast and fungus, candida albicans, you know, it's the cousin of mold. It gets into your bloodstream, it can get into your brain. Leaky gut, leaky joints, leaky gut, leaky brain, [00:07:30] leaky gut, leaky skin. I never seen a skin condition yet that wasn't based on a leaky gut, and leaky gut can lead to depression. I mean because people think the leaky gut and they think, well digestive issues, but it doesn't always. A lot of times leaky gut, they don't don't even have nay kind of digestive issues. They might not even have IBS, so they might have a little bit of bloating but even anything else. It's coming out on the [00:08:00] skin. Or it's coming out in the joints. Or it's coming out in the brain. Or it's coming out...
Dr. Martin Sr: And so the way your body reacts to that, is it sets up an inflammatory response, because again, the ambulance knows that there's an infection. The problem is, especially with yeast or whatever, that inflammation never gets turned off. The problem with inflammation is [00:08:30] that if it doesn't get turned off, it can really create havoc within your bloodstream. So, chronic low grade infection like yeast especially. The second one that can cause inflammation is high circulating insulin. You know how we talk about that all the time. Due to the enormous amount of sugar that we consume, the average Canadian, is well into their 200 pounds of [00:09:00] sugar a year. It's almost incredible. Bring a dump truck, and the office I'm in here, 200 pounds would fill half the office that I'm in right now.
Dr. Martin Sr: But that's what we're consuming as North Americans. We're carboholics. We're sugarholics. And that creates an enormous amount of insulin, and that much insulin creates insulin resistance, which creates an inflammatory response. I'll tell you another thing, obesity. [00:09:30] Now that can go back to high circulating insulin. But when you have fat cells, those fat cells, your body sees it almost like a foreigner. So it reacts with an inflammatory response. Here's another one. If you have sticky blood. I talked about this when I flew solo maybe a month ago, or I don't even remember how long ago it was, podcast. But if you have sticky blood due to dehydration, [00:10:00] due to high levels of ferritin. Okay so what is ferritin? Iron.
Dr. Martin Sr: Iron. And your blood is very thick and very sticky, and you don't even realize it. Well that creates inflammation in the body. The body responds to that sticky blood. So one of the biggest things that people don't do in our day and age, they don't drink water. "But Dr. Martin I would have to go pee all the time if I drank water." Well go for a pee. It's good for you. [00:10:30] Get rid of all those toxins. Because otherwise when the toxins stay in your body, again, you create inflammation. High levels of Omega-6. High levels of Omega-6. The crappy vegetable oils. Your potato chips, your cookies, your crackers, anything that lasts in your shelf.
Dr. Martin Sr: If it lasts in your shelf, for any period of time, if you don't have to put it in your refrigerator, [00:11:00] it's usually made with vegetable... they call them vegetable oils. They're the farthest thing from vegetables, believe you me. You can run your car on that type of oil. Like it is so highly industrialized, it's literally manufactured oil and when the food industry in the 1950s came out with Crisco vegetable oil, they found out that they could preserve almost anything with those oils, [00:11:30] and we consume, as North Americans especially, we consume about 18, 19, 20, some people even say 30 times more Omega-6. Omega-6 on its own is not bad.
Dr. Martin Sr: The problem is it's the ratio to Omega-6 to Omega-3. And when that ratio is out of whack, like it's 20 or 30 to 1, because kids today they live on crap dinner. And they [00:12:00] eat crappy vegetable oils and they got all these Omega-6s and not enough Omega-3s, because they don't eat fish or they don't eat grass fed beef, which has more Omega-3 by the way than even fish does. I tell people I eat fish every day in a capsule, because I personally don't like fish. I wish I did. You know I went over to China years ago to give seminars, [00:12:30] I enjoyed going to China, except I didn't know what to eat because I was asking for Canadian Chinese food and there is none.
Dr. Martin Sr: Everything they brought over to me, it was a fish looking at me with the eyeballs still in it. Like I can't eat that stuff, I'm sorry. I'm a big baby. So anyway, like they didn't have chicken balls and chicken fried rice, which I really like, over in China. Okay? [00:13:00] So I wish I liked fish but I don't, so I take fish every day but I take it in a capsule, okay, because that's just me. And then secondly, I eat a lot of grass fed beef. So I get a lot of Omega-3. I mean I can slip slide out of rooms I take so much oil, but I get that from my meat. I love coconut oil and olive oil, those are two of my favourite oils. And then you know what's another favourite oil of mine? [00:13:30] Butter.
Dr. Martin Sr: Butter. And by the way if you're wondering what episode we're on today, I think I even forgot that. But that's me. Guys, you got to understand when I'm alone, Tony Junior remembers all these things. We're on episode 189. 189. So, the biggest thing is when you eat sugar, your body releases insulin, which in high amounts effects the linings of your arteries called your endothelium. Okay? [00:14:00] So it ain't cholesterol, remember what... you know I don't want to get into that... cholesterol's not the boogieman. Inflammation is, but inflammation is not Houdini.
Dr. Martin Sr: It's high circulating insulin and the other things I talked to you about, leaky gut and so on. So, a couple of things that I want you to be reminded of, okay, here are some of the tests that you should get to check your inflammation markers. Okay? Get your inflammation [00:14:30] markers tested. Okay? So ask your doctor, if you don't ask, they often won't do it. Here's the things that I would tell you to get checked. Okay? One is your c-reactive protein. It's called CRP. So write that down. This is a test that everybody should have when you're getting blood work done, ordinarily they won't do your CRP unless you ask for it.
Dr. Martin Sr: So ask your doctor, [00:15:00] I want to get my c-reactive protein done. Why do you want to get that done? Because it's an inflammation marker. Inflammation is often silent. It's not like you got a big swollen knee because you twisted your knee trying to be a raptor. Okay? You're just fooling around and you twisted your knee. Yeah, your knee can become inflamed. But most inflammation you wouldn't even know you have it. It's inside your body and as a colleague once said to me, the only [00:15:30] sign usually that you have silent inflammation, is when... the only check engine light that will come on with inflammation is fatigue.
Dr. Martin Sr: So when you're tired, a lot of times one of the contributing factors to that is that you have inflammation in your body and it's not going away. It might be reacting to the high sugar diet. It might be reacting to the fact that you've got extra weight on. It might [00:16:00] be reacting to the high yeast, to candida. It might be reacting to sticky blood, the fact that you have very sticky blood. You might not even know it. And one of the factors is dehydration, your body might be reacting to dehydration. Listen, have you ever been dehydrated? Have you ever gone out in the sun and worked real hard and you got dehydrated? And it just exhausted you, literally, like you could almost pass out from dehydration?
Dr. Martin Sr: You [00:16:30] have no idea how many people actually can get a heart attack or whatever, but what does dehydration do? I mean obviously it messes up your electrolytes. Your sodium potassium pump, and this is very important for your muscles and stuff. But one of the things that drains you the most from dehydration is inflammation. Your body creates this inflammation and due to dehydration. And [00:17:00] so that creates sticky blood, and you might have too much iron. Too much ferritin in your bloodstream, and that's due often times to a liver that's got a fatty liver. Fatty liver comes... it always goes back to food, you see. Fatty liver's not fat, it is sugar.
Dr. Martin Sr: Sugar... fat don't make you fat, and fat don't give you sticky blood. Sugar gives you sticky blood, [00:17:30] because it attacks your liver and you create fatty liver from over storage of your glycogen which is stored sugars. So anyways, and then maybe you're having too many of those Omega-6s and crappy... so your body reacts to that. Find out if that's happening by getting your c-reactive protein tested. Here's another one that you can get tested. Check your homocysteine levels. Okay? Homocysteine. That [00:18:00] is an amino acid, you can get a blood test to check it, and if your homocysteine levels are high, you've got inflammation in the body.
Dr. Martin Sr: Another one to get checked is your interleukin-6. Interleukin-6. That's a test that your doctor can do and that you can get done, not routinely necessarily, but they can check it off. Get your serum ferritin levels checked. Okay? For that thick blood and dehydration. [00:18:30] Check it. Fibrinogen is another test that you can have done. And here's a very important test that you should look at getting tested, and a lot of times doctors will do this one, and that is uric acid. The problem with uric acid is, uric acid is... doctors only think of uric acid as generally gout. So if they suspect that you have gouty arthritis, they will want to check your uric acid levels. [00:19:00] But uric acid can be very silent. Some people will get gout, some people will just get generalized pain and achiness from high levels of uric acid.
Dr. Martin Sr: And even another factor in uric acid is, elevated blood pressure. It can elevate your blood pressure. It puts a lot of... uric acid... you see, uric acid by the way, is made, it's a by product of the Krebs cycle. [00:19:30] It's part of your metabolism, and when you have insulin resistance, and your cells don't respond to insulin the way they should, then you create uric acid and your body is supposed to get rid of the uric acid by converting it to urea and then you're supposed to pee it out. But a lot of people just don't pee it out. They make a lot of uric acid that can cause kidney stress, can cause high [00:20:00] blood pressure, it can certainly cause gout. That's for sure.
Dr. Martin Sr: It is the cause of gout. But if you reverse engineer gout, you're looking at insulin. It's sugar, folks. It's sugar. And that is why when I tell people I want them to go on... how do you keep... so let's talk now, okay so you got what test? Okay? Number one, CRP. Homocysteine. Try and get them to do all of these tests. Interleukin-6. Serum ferritin, [00:20:30] your fibrinogen, and uric acid. So those six tests, ask your doctor to do those tests, because this is prevention, guys. Inflammation is a huge factor in heart disease and cancer and Alzheimer's, and aging, and autoimmune, these are things that should be tested routinely.
Dr. Martin Sr: Now, how [00:21:00] do I keep my inflammation low? Okay? So let me spend a few minutes here talking about how do I keep my inflammation down. Well obviously you cut out the sugars and even fructose. Did you hear what I said? God's candies, fruit. I love fruit. But don't you love fruit if you have inflammation, because even fructose, good, bad, and ugly sugar. Okay? [00:21:30] Look, crappy sugar will elevate your insulin. Much more than fruit will. Okay? Because fruit is surrounded by fibre and you're break that down much slower, therefore you need less insulin than if you ate a chocolate bar, or a granola bar. Talk about overrated stuff. Granola bars, they're full of sugar.
Dr. Martin Sr: They're full of crap and lay off the cereals too. So cut out the sugars [00:22:00] and even temporarily, I tell you, if you have a lot of pain and inflammation and achiness and fatigue, I get people on my four week reset and I get them to cut their fructose down. Even the fruit. "No, oh doc I want to have some bananas." Stop. You're not a monkey. I don't want you to have any bananas for a month or so. Okay? No, cut out the fruit. Maybe you can have a little bit of berries, [00:22:30] but I am trying to get that inflammation down. So cut out the sugars, cut out the crappy carbs and the vegetable oils. Any processed food, stay away from them because that will create an enormous amount of inflammation.
Dr. Martin Sr: Drink more water. Okay? High DHA Omega-3. Now remember, not all Omega-3s are created equal. The best Omega-3 is, in terms of [00:23:00] a supplement, if you want to eat Omega-3 you need to eat fish or grass fed beef. There's more Omega-3 in grass fed beef than there is in fish, that's why I love meat. I love red meat, and don't drink the Kool-Aid, they tell you that stuff is no good for you. Like I'm telling you, it's an agenda. When they tell you not to eat red meat, folks, I'm a food scientist [00:23:30] and I tell you there's nothing in that that's more nutrient dense than a piece of steak. Okay? Like maybe liver. I wish I liked liver, I don't like it. You're thinking I'm a fussy eater, right?
Dr. Martin Sr: Well, yeah, maybe I am a little bit fussy. I wish I liked fish and I wish I liked liver. I won't even let my wife make liver. I don't like the smell of it. But I know it's good for you. Okay? And I had one of my patients ask me [00:24:00] the other day that, "Oh liver, well isn't that where all your toxins are?" No, your liver is one of the most nutrition... well I'm not telling you to eat your own liver of course, but beef liver or calf liver or whatever... that stuff is so good for you, you have no idea because of the amount of heem iron that's in it.
Dr. Martin Sr: Now check your iron levels, make sure... but they're two different things altogether by the way, when you check your ferritin. So cut out the crappy carbs. Remember, what is inflammatory [00:24:30] in food? Vegetable oils and crappy carbohydrates and your sugar. Drink more water. High DHA oil. I like the DHA because someone calls you fathead take it as a compliment, because your brain is made up of DHA and you need it. Curcumin. Curcumin, I love curcumin. Okay? Turmeric. Well curcumin is a derivative. It is an extract. [00:25:00] The one that you can absorb of turmeric. So the Indian spice, but the extract of it is much more effective, so curcumin. I take curcumin every day because I want to lower my inflammation.
Dr. Martin Sr: Curcumin has study after study after study, over three thousand studies of what it does in... you now, it's amazing that this... I tell you, you could put curcumin up against almost any medication that you could think [00:25:30] of and curcumin will beat it. It's amazing how the pharmaceutical industry has so duped the population and how they have medicine eating out of their hands. That here you have a spice, an extract of spice called curcumin, that is anti-cancer, anti-cardial, anti-autoimmune, it suppresses viruses, [00:26:00] it is fantastic to prevent Alzheimer's and anything for your brain because curcumin is a tremendous thing. Especially when you combine it with Omega-3 high DHA oil.
Dr. Martin Sr: I'm telling you guys, it is tremendous orally. But do you know that even with my cancer patients, I tell them look, you want to be taking high levels of vitamin D, high levels of curcumin, because curcumin is so good. Take [00:26:30] Navitol, Navitol. Limit your alcohol. Remember, if you've got inflammation and you're... ladies, I'm talking to you... because you like your wine at night. You know I get it. You've had a big day, and you just like to have that glass, but remember now, remember... wine, look I know it has antioxidants and that, but you got to be careful because alcohol creates a lot of inflammation. [00:27:00] So be careful. When you're trying to lower inflammation markers, you got to cut back on the alcohol.
Dr. Martin Sr: The other one is vitamin E, the true vitamin E, exercise. Okay? I always call vitamin E exercise because it's the true vitamin E, not that I don't like vitamin E. I get vitamin E every day. You know how I get it? I get it in my peanut butter. Yeah, [00:27:30] I love peanut butter. Okay? Peanut butter's got a lot of vitamin E. So, I had somebody tell me the other day, "Oh doc it's got to be almond butter." Eh, I know you like almonds, I like peanuts. Okay? Hey, it's got no carbs in it. Okay? So I take the natural peanut butter and that gives you vitamin E, but exercise, even if you go for a walk it lowers your inflammation.
Dr. Martin Sr: [00:28:00] And I know a lot of people have so much pain that they can't do too much exercise, but you know, it's amazing just some movement. And you know how at the Martin Clinic how much we talk about getting to the gym if you can, or even in your home. But get weight bearing, especially you ladies, get that weight bearing, It's very, very, very... weights are very, very anti-inflammatory, They really are. Okay, so boy we've gone [00:28:30] on for 30 minutes already. Man, time flies, even when I'm alone here. I just get on these rants. Okay, so thank you very much for listening.
Dr. Martin Sr: You know that on Thursday mornings, if you don't know it, I do a Facebook live so I invite you to come on and watch live, and if you can't then you can get it later on, and watch our Facebook live shows. I [00:29:00] get a lot of good feedback on that. I really appreciate the feedback that we get. So if you have any topics that you would like us to cover, I'd be happy to do that. Till the next time, folks. Love you guys.
Dr. Martin Sr: Thanks for listening to The Doctors Is In Podcast from martinclinic.com. If you have any questions, you can reach us at info@martinclinic.com. If you're not a newsletter subscriber, you can head to our website and sign [00:29:30] 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.