Transcript Of Today's Episode
Announcer: You're listening to The Doctor Is In podcast, brought to you by martinclinic.com. During the episode, the doctors share a lot of information. As awesome as the info may be, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.
Dr.Martin Sr: Hi, this is Dr. Martin Sr. flying solo once again on The Doctor Is In podcast and this is Episode 199. [00:00:30] Incredible, just the amount of feedback we get and we're really encouraged to continue with these podcasts just because people ... I get response every day just from patients and folks that are listening. And aren't you tired of us yet? I often get tired of listening to myself, but of course I'm preaching all day long, right? In the office. And the word doctor means teacher. So I [00:01:00] take that seriously. I want my patients and I want people that are listening to us today just to be informed. I think it's such a wonderful venue in this day and age that people can get information, they can make decisions and people pump my tires up. You know, patients come in. I had several, even in this morning, that were just talking about how much better they feel and how they've implemented certain things and especially the diet and changing, getting [00:01:30] their insulin down and just the wonderful results of that.
Dr.Martin Sr: And you know, it's always an encouragement to us at the Martin clinic. So we say Bravo to our patients. And good for you. I want to talk today about vitamin D. Now listen, anyone that's ever listened to me talk over the years knows what my two favourite vitamins are. And not that I don't like all the vitamins, I certainly do. But [00:02:00] the two vitamins that we're so deficient in today are both vitamin D and B12. And there are several reasons. We've done podcasts on B12 and we've done podcasts on vitamin D. But this study I just read this week and I thought I would go back and just give you some more good reasons to make sure you're getting enough vitamin D. This new study showed that there was a real link between low levels of [00:02:30] vitamin D, and I don't think I'm stating this lightly, in the increase, absolute increase, in the amount of people with Parkinson's disease.
Dr.Martin Sr: So we've known all along that vitamin D, there seems to be a huge link between vitamin D and MS, but now there seems to be a link between vitamin D and low levels of vitamin D and Parkinson's. [00:03:00] So when I read that study, again, it doesn't surprise me, but I'm always trying to get my patients ... Look, a lot of people come in and they don't really even want to take vitamins and they don't want to take supplements and a lot of people hear, you know, you have to get everything in your diet. And I wished that was true. I really do because I'm always a food first doctor. So if you come to my clinic, you are going to [00:03:30] get a 100% lecture on lowering your carbohydrates and lowering your sugars. I sound like a broken record, but it's every day, every day, every day, every day for years.
Dr.Martin Sr: Lower your carbohydrates, lower your sugars, and the reason is because I want you to lower your insulin. So you're going to get that a speech 100% because I'm going to teach you, and I don't care if you're 5 years old or 95, you're going [00:04:00] to get the lecture. Nobody leaves the clinic without me, nobody, leaves the clinic without me giving them nutrition 101. That's what I call it. The problem in the world is not fat. The problem in the world is not cholesterol. The problem in the world is not ... It is carbs and it's sugar. Sugar is the new smoking. So that's what you get at the Martin clinic, and we've been consistent about that for many, many, many years. But I'll often tell [00:04:30] patients that the two things that you're more likely to be deficient in, in this day and age, is vitamin B12 and vitamin D. So I don't care who you are, unless you're in the sun and all my Florida neighbours and whatever.
Dr.Martin Sr: I love my Florida friends and your people that live in the sunshine and you drive me crazy because you're the people that are this scaredy cats [00:05:00] when it comes to the sun because you bought the lie, right? You bought the lie that the sun is dangerous. Oh, you know, brought to you by Johnson and Johnson. They want to sell their sunscreens and we've talked about this in the past and the people that get skin cancer by in large are people that work indoors. It's not people that work outdoors. And the melanoma, the deadly skin cancer comes generally in people that work indoors [00:05:30] and that have a low levels of vitamin D. So I'll come back to that in a minute, but I just want to just say that generally, two deficiencies I see more than anything else in the office and I mean that, are low levels of both vitamin D and low levels of B12.
Dr.Martin Sr: So let's talk a little bit about vitamin D today because of this study, new study on Parkinson's shows that low levels [00:06:00] of vitamin D seem to be a contributing factor in the proliferation of Parkinson's disease. We see it a lot more in our society today. So let's talk about vitamin D and what is it? It really isn't a vitamin as much as it is a hormone. It's not a typical vitamin because it can be synthesized by the sun. Okay? So vitamin D, like any other vitamin, you have [00:06:30] to get it in your food, but vitamin D is different. You don't have to get it from your food. You can actually get it from the sun. Okay? So the sun is a beautiful thing. We've had a beautiful summer here in Northern Ontario and the sun has been out. I mean it, like it's almost like if we could have drawn up what we wanted for our summer, at least what I wanted for the summer, the sun [00:07:00] has been out every day.
Dr.Martin Sr: Every day. It looked like we were going to get a bad summer right till the middle of June and then boom, that weather changed. And here in Northern Ontario, at least where we are in Sudbury, Ontario, my word, it's been absolutely beautiful. I just can't get over it. I don't think I've ever experienced, you know, I'm 67 years old and I've never experienced it. I lived in Northern Ontario all [00:07:30] my life just about, and you know what? We've never seen a summer like it. Now, I don't know if that's climate change or whatever. And maybe we're going to grow Palm trees here in Sudbury. I don't know. I always tell people I'll believe in climate change when, by the way the climate is always subject to change. But I'll believe it when we have Palm trees here in a Sudbury. Okay? Like you have in Florida. Anyway, so vitamin D [00:08:00] is mostly a hormone and it's different.
Dr.Martin Sr: And this is why I always tell people, listen, you know, because people go Doc, I can get too much vitamin D, my doctor says be careful with vitamin D because it's a fat soluble vitamin. Like it's almost like they sit in their office and wait for someone to come in that they can lecture [00:08:30] them on vitamin D. Like, are you kidding me? When's the last time somebody went to the emergency room because they were taking too much vitamin D? It drives me crazy. Vitamin D is a very safe vitamin. Your body knows how much it needs and you're not going to get too much vitamin D. Okay? So look, the vitamin D council did studies on how much vitamin D you [00:09:00] would have to take to be toxic and that is, you would have to get 50,000 international units a day.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yes. An adult would have to get 50,000 international units a day for six months every day, seven days a week to be toxic in vitamin D. For Heaven's sakes, who on planet Earth has ever taken that much vitamin D? I've never heard of it. Now, I've seen people take 50,000 [00:09:30] international units of vitamin D a day for seven days when they had bacterial pneumonia. And I know that in small studies, because there's no money in studies of vitamin D, so you're not seeing big universities or whatever doing studies, or rarely, I mean, it's not a drug. So vitamin D can't be patented. Go sit in the sun, get 20 minutes of sunlight, let your arms and legs [00:10:00] be exposed and you're going to get 10,000 international units of vitamin D and don't put sunscreen on. Leave the sunscreen aside. Now, don't go burn in the sun.
Dr.Martin Sr: Nobody's telling you to burn in the sun, but the sun is good for you. And if you like, come next month, believe me, coming to a theatre near you, right? Like here, I live at, like I said, I live in the North and the days are getting a little shorter. I notice that as I get up at the same time every day, I wake up early [00:10:30] in the morning and now it's dark again. Okay? We had a few months where it was, I got up at 5:30 in the morning and it was sunny out. It was nice, like the light was out, but now it's dark again. Okay? And that's just the way it is. Okay? So come within a few weeks, I'll start taking my vitamin D again. Okay? And I get some patients taking vitamin D all year round because their levels are so low and they can't get out [00:11:00] in the sun.
Dr.Martin Sr: They work indoors or whatever and they just don't get enough sunshine. So I get them to take vitamin D. But for me personally, I don't need vitamin D to take as a supplement because I get out in the sun a lot in the summertime. Okay? For me. So don't worry about being toxic with vitamin D. Okay? Just don't. I've seen so little of it over the years in practice. [00:11:30] Again, I know it's a fat soluble vitamin. I know what fat solubility means, that you can accumulate it. But vitamin D, it's a little different because it's not really a vitamin, it's a hormone and your body knows what to do with it. So let's just talk about the benefits of vitamin D. And I'm going to bring you to seven things today. Obviously, we talked about Parkinson's just for a second, but I'll bring you some other things.
Dr.Martin Sr: [00:12:00] Now, typically, a child probably in grade five would know this, that you need vitamin D for calcium. You need it for your bones, okay? And unfortunately, if you talk to the vast majority of doctors, I'm talking about medical doctors, the vast majority, not all of them, but a lot of them still, they're stuck. And that is in the 1950s, they knew that [00:12:30] there was a shortage of vitamin D and they knew that you can't absorb calcium properly. And they used to actually give Cod liver oil and that because it had good sources of vitamin D. And so they gave it for rickets, which is bowing of the legs. They give it today, even in the third world with osteomalacia, which is softening of the bone, you don't see that very much in North America, but it's still, [00:13:00] you know, rare.
Dr.Martin Sr: But in the third world, you see osteomalacia, you see rickets. And of course one of the epidemics that's going on in society today is osteoporosis, especially in women, in postmenopausal women, mostly in postmenopausal women and doctors are ... They got no problem telling you to take a very small amount of vitamin D because they know that even if they give you a calcium supplement, now I don't like calcium as a supplement, [00:13:30] I think you should take calcium only when you ... You can take calcium in your diet. You don't have to take calcium as a supplement because it doesn't get to your bones where it belongs. It stays in the bloodstream.
Dr.Martin Sr: But even doctors know that you need vitamin D to have the proper calcium absorption. Vitamin D helps with absorption of calcium in the small intestine. And it promotes reabsorption of calcium when you're trying to pee it out [00:14:00] out of your kidneys, your renal tubes, then vitamin D is essential to keep the calcium and put it back into your bones where it belongs. So vitamin D is a very, very important vitamin. Everybody knows that you need vitamin D for your bones, but it doesn't stop there. If it was only for your bones, it would be really important for sure, for sure. But now we know that vitamin D is very, very important for a lot of [00:14:30] things and certainly not just for calcium absorption.
Dr.Martin Sr: And by the way, just to, by the way, you need to take vitamin K2 to absorb calcium, to put calcium into your bones. Your body needs vitamin K2. And vitamin K2 is the source of vitamin K2, not K1. So people get this upside down. Oh doc, can I take K2 as a vitamin [00:15:00] because I'm on a blood thinner or whatever and my doctor says I can't? Well, they're mixing up K1 and K2. K1 is found in the plant kingdom and that can thin your blood to some extent. And I've never seen it but I guess it could happen. But vitamin K2 is found in the animal kingdom, it's found in butter and it's found in eggs and it's found mostly in cheese. And vitamin K2 is important for [00:15:30] calcium to be taken out of the bloodstream and put in the bones where it belongs.
Dr.Martin Sr: So that's why our vitamin D supplement, we put in MK4, which is another topic altogether, and vitamin K2. Okay? So very, very important to take vitamin D and then I'll talk to you at the end here how much I recommend. Secondly, it [00:16:00] increases the absorption of magnesium and phosphorus. Again, so if you look at bone and magnesium we know is very, very, very important. Magnesium is important for anything you can think of just about. Not only bones, but we know that magnesium is important for your brain. Magnesium is important to decrease your risk of diabetes. And magnesium is essential for your body. But do you know that you need [00:16:30] vitamin D to absorb your magnesium properly? So if you're just taking magnesium, and a lot of people do, and I'm not against that, I love magnesium, but a lot of times people don't realize that to absorb that magnesium properly, you need good levels of vitamin D. So vitamin D is an essential, essential vitamin.
Dr.Martin Sr: Now, it also promotes the cycle of the cell. Now, why is that important? Well, it can promote [00:17:00] what they call cell apoptosis. Okay? What is that? What is cell apoptosis? Well, cell death. Okay? It promotes the destruction of cancer cells. Ladies, especially for you, it kills cancer cells, especially breast cancer cells. Yes, vitamin D. And when you stay out of the sun, you're much [00:17:30] more susceptible to cancers. Name the cancer. But especially ladies, breast cancer, breast cancer, vitamin D is essential to promote the destruction of cancer cells. So when you start getting ... We fight cancer every day and those cells are destructive and they start destroying other good cells in your body [00:18:00] and they start proliferating in the body. You need vitamin D. Vitamin D is so important for the immune system. It helps your immune system. I always tell my patients, look, you need vitamin D. It's the vitamin that promotes the battery packs within your T-cells.
Dr.Martin Sr: T-cells are the little kamikaze pilots of your immune system. They are your Navy seals. [00:18:30] They're scared of nothing. Your little T-cells come out of your lymphatic system and they come out to destroy cancer cells and to destroy very dangerous bacteria and dangerous viruses and they are charged up, those T- cells. The battery packs within the little antenna for your T-cells have a direct link to vitamin D, so when they see the sun, they'll go to [00:19:00] the surface of the skin to get their batteries charged. You know how you have to charge up your cell phone? You know, you charge it at night. Well, this vitamin D charges your T-cell activity within the body and T-cells go after cancer cells to destroy them. And don't you think that's important? Here's an another thing it does. It decreases your inflammatory cytokines. Okay, [00:19:30] so what does that do?
Dr.Martin Sr: Well, cytokines are inflammatory hormones that cause autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis. They're a big factor. Crones, MS, ulcerative colitis. Do you know that vitamin D actually lowers the inflammation response in your body? That's autoimmune, when your body [00:20:00] over reacts to itself to the cytokines. And cytokines decrease by increasing your levels of vitamin D. So go sit in the sun for Heaven's sakes. And if you can't, you need to take vitamin D as a supplement. And if you've got any kind of inflammation and you have any kind of autoimmune disease, vitamin D is essential for that. Now, not only [00:20:30] are they autoimmune, but when you think of, you know, we talk about this all the time, that inflammation is not Houdini. Inflammation comes when you have high circulating insulin, you have lots of free radical damage and leaky gut, which is at the root of all autoimmune disease.
Dr.Martin Sr: And we believe it's, you know, we really have a big ... We think that candida yeast, fungus, fungal infection, low grade fungal infection is that [00:21:00] it creates enormous amount of inflammation. And vitamin D helps. Do you know ... I just want to give you ... Do you know that vitamin D ... Think of the sun, what it does. If you take mold and expose it to sunlight, it will destroy mold, right? So if you had mold in your house on a sunny day, you could actually take the roof off and let the sun come in and go right into your bathroom, wherever you have mold, or into your [00:21:30] basement, right? Because mold, where does it proliferate? In moisture. And vitamin D actually kills mold and the sun actually kills mold. That's a well established fact. Well, think of what yeast is. Think of what fungus is. It's the first cousin of mold and that's why yeast loves the lungs.
Dr.Martin Sr: And that's why yeast loves your ... Ladies, you know all about the moisture in your vagina [00:22:00] and your reproductive organs. Women are so much more susceptible to bladder infections and whatever because of your anatomy. You know, men don't get bladder infections very often. It's very rare for men, but women it's very common. Why is that? Well, you know, your anatomy. And there's moisture there and you can't get, you don't get the sun to go to, you can't, you know, expose that to the sun. Well, vitamin [00:22:30] D is the sun in a capsule, so vitamin D is a very important vitamin to decrease inflammation caused by leaky gut and leaky gut and rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's and leaky gut psoriasis, Eczema, put the sun on it, put the sun on it. Take levels of vitamin D, good levels of vitamin D, if you can't get sunlight.
Dr.Martin Sr: Here's another one that's very, very perhaps surprising, [00:23:00] is it increases your muscle strength. Yes. Vitamin D is not just for bones, it's for muscles. One of the biggest problems, I always say this, if I could get into every senior home, if I could get into every senior home in North America, I could help hundreds of thousands of seniors with just two vitamins. I would take with me B12 and I would take with me vitamin D and I'd put them on [00:23:30] very good doses of both because you know what happens in seniors? They get very weak. Their muscles get weak, they get frail. It's amazing to me that they just, they go downhill and no wonder they get fractured hips. They fall and that usually is the end of them. You know, they get that fractured hip, they fall and they're so frail and you know what?
Dr.Martin Sr: They're frail. One of the biggest reasons that they're frail, they're not eating enough protein, I know that, but they don't [00:24:00] have enough vitamin D. Seniors, they bought the lie. My generation has bought the lie, stay out of the sun. They're putting on sunscreen. And seniors, they just never get enough sunlight. I try and you know, if I could drag them out and get them to sit in the sun for 20 minutes to half an hour and take good levels of vitamin D in a supplement, my word, what the difference that would make. And then of course, and we [00:24:30] talked about this before about B12 and I don't want to go into that in this podcast, the importance of those two vitamins, healthy pregnancy. I always tell my perspective moms, listen, you want a healthy baby, you want to have a good pregnancy. Yeah, yeah, you got to take your prenatal and all that.
Dr.Martin Sr: I understand all that. But if you want to have a healthy baby, you need to be on probiotics. High DHA, baby's brain [00:25:00] will develop with DHA and vitamin D. Again, vitamin D, it's so important for you mommy and baby, baby. You want them to have a good immune system. You want them to decrease any risk of candida and yeast and leaky gut and the probiotics in that. But this is very important. Vitamin D is very important. Skin cancer. Yes. Can you imagine? You want to decrease your [00:25:30] rates of skin cancer? Well, you need vitamin D. You need vitamin D. People with the best D hydroxy rates, in terms of their blood work, D hydroxy is the vitamin D test. It'll tell you what your, D Hydroxy 25 it's called, what your vitamin D levels are in your blood. It's amazing that doctors rarely even want to do D hydroxy.
Dr.Martin Sr: It drives [00:26:00] me crazy. It's an easy test to do. But in our province, I live in the province of Ontario and they, I don't know how many years ago the government said, we're no longer paying for vitamin D testing. Okay? Because we want to save money. Oh, you wanted to see someone go into a crazy screaming fit, was Dr. Martin Sr when [00:26:30] the government of Ontario said they would no longer pay for, you know, routinely pay for vitamin D testing because unless you think the patient has osteoporosis, what are you taking vitamin D levels for? So now patients have to pay out of their own pocket to get their levels of vitamin D, but the vast majority of people that get their levels done, we'll find out that they're [00:27:00] not optimally, their vitamin D levels is not optimal what so ever.
Dr.Martin Sr: They actually are very low in levels of vitamin D. And you need good levels of vitamin D for all the reasons that I talked to you about today. Okay? So let me just close now with telling you generally vitamin D levels. Okay? Now, you know that this podcast [00:27:30] is for information purposes only. Okay? So don't ... Every individual is different. So I highly recommend that you find out how much you should take. I want to tell you how much vitamin D I take. During the summer, I don't take vitamin D generally, if the weather is good. But I start in September, so I'll start, you know, within a couple of weeks, I'll start taking vitamin D and I take a minimum of 4,000 [00:28:00] to 8,000 I use a day, 4,000 to 8,000. Now, the vitamin D council, which is the people that do research, I love the vitamin D council, they do research on vitamin D and they are recommending that generally, generally people should take, adults should take, between 4 and 8,000 international units of vitamin D. Even children can take, [00:28:30] it depends on their size.
Dr.Martin Sr: Okay? Because one of the things I didn't talk to you about was people that are obese have very, very generally very, very low low levels of vitamin D. And so if you're bigger, you need more. So vitamin D, 4 to 8,000. Often times in the winter, I'll be at 8,000, I usually in the dark months, in January, February, March. [00:29:00] Listen, it is the flu shot. I would put up vitamin D and probiotics and oil of oregano.
Dr.Martin Sr: I'll put that up against any flu shot when it comes to building your immune system. So between 4, 8,000 international units of vitamin D in that area there, it's safe for if you feel a cold coming on or you feel something, you know, you're feeling run down. Well, then take more vitamin D [00:29:30] just for a shorter, you know, a short period of time just to get your levels up. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you have any autoimmune disease, if you have cancer and whatever, vitamin D is part of my protocol that I use for these particular patients. Okay? So listen, thank you very much for listening. And if you have any questions, certainly go to our website and you can send us questions there [00:30:00] or even any topics that you'd like us to cover on future podcasts. Have a great day.
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