Why are we seeing so many autoimmune disorders? The numbers in North America are especially frightening, and now there’s a study out of Europe that has concluded there's a clear correlation between obesity and autoimmune diseases.
Dr. Giuseppe Matarese, a professor of immunology at the University of Naples, Italy, is saying that extra fat causes an inflammatory response and the body views it as an invader. This silent inflammation is what’s causing autoimmune to flourish.
Join Dr. Martin as he looks at the reasons why so much autoimmune is happening and why we’re seeing numbers like never before!
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: Well, good morning everyone, and once again, welcome to another live this morning. Good to be with you and hopefully you had a great Easter weekend and we look forward to our little chat this morning. Okay, now this is a study out of Italy, okay? And because my wife is Italian, I like looking for Italian studies. Okay? No, this one came out very interesting. European Journal of Nutrition, okay? This was a study done on the link between obesity and autoimmune disease. And it was a very fascinating look into autoimmune. They mentioned a few of them here MS, psoriasis, type I diabetes, and they said, okay, here's the conclusion of the study. There is, and I'll, let me quote them. "There's a clear correlation between obesity and autoimmune." Okay? Autoimmune, there's a link, and I don't disagree with it.
Why are we seeing? Okay, so let's just unpack this a little bit here this morning because I think it's worth looking into. Why is there so much today? Autoimmune disorders, okay, the numbers are frightening, really. North America, like it's crazy. This study was done in Italy, but North America especially, we are seeing a huge uptake of autoimmune disease. MS, Parkinson's, Sjogren's, thyroid, which is either Hashimoto's or Graves. Look at the gut. Ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, IBD, these things on the skin, look at psoriasis and eczema. They're being multiplied. It's not like we never saw them before, but they are taking off on steroids in terms of numbers. And the question is why, okay, why? And this study done in Italy, the head of the study was, let me give you his name. Dr. Giuseppe Matarese, professor of immunology at the University of Naples, Italy.
And his conclusions is there's a direct correlation between obesity and autoimmune. Now, he says a couple of things in here that they looked at. One, when you are carrying extra weight, and I don't have it with me, but if I was to show you picture in your mind, you guys have seen it in the past, at least those who follow me, you've seen me show you either one pound of fat or five pounds of fat. I, I've got both of them. And five pounds of fat is about this thick. It's about a foot long and at least six inches wide, five pounds of fat. So when people tell you, I only lost five pounds, I want to grab them and shake them a little bit. You only lost five pounds, but you lost a lot, a foot long and six inches wide is five pounds a fat. Okay?
So, when you lose weight, you'll lose a little bit of muscle, but primarily you're losing fat, okay? So when you lose five pounds of fat, and that's usually around your organs, your body starts to burn that off. That is a very, very good thing. But now let's get back, get in your vision. Now, visualize this without looking at it. Five pounds of fat. You take out the fat and just look at it. What does fat do? Okay, what does it do? Because this is the link to autoimmune, okay? What does it do? What does that fat producing in your body? Well, it's sort of like an organ onto itself, like a sort of a self-governing organ. You don't see it like that, but really it has its own hormones, horror-mones, fat releases inflammation because your body, believe this or not, it's true. You have to believe it because it's true.
When your body looks at fat, like that five pounds of fat, you know what your body sees? A foreign invader. Okay? A foreign invader. So what does that do inside your body? Well, it releases inflammation because your body releases inflammation at the very sight of that five pounds. Your body says, oh, that is a foreign object. What is it doing inside the body? The body sees it as foreign, and therefore you develop a silent inflammatory response. You might not even know it unless you take a test, a C R P test, C reactive protein, you wouldn't even know it. You got no symptoms of it. It's often, often silent, but inflammation, again, if you kick me in the knee, I'm going to have inflammation immediately. The body's ambulance system rushes to the site and it releases cytokines and it releases proteins and it releases enzymes and it releases inflammatory precautions.
And then you rub it, you rub your knee because you just kick me and I rub it. And guess what? I'm bringing extra blood supply there. And that's alright, because it's the ambulance. And then it goes away. Well, what if it doesn't go away? Well, now inflammation, which was your friend, becomes your enemy because it's long lasting and that starts to destroy healthy tissue. Okay? So just understand that. And listen, then you get a double whammo, okay? Fat, especially around the organs releases inflammation. Two, fat releases estrogen, and it holds onto estrogen. You become estrogen dominant. Why is that not good for a man? Because it affects the prostate. The prostate swells. Women, you gain weight, you already have fat, and you create inflammation, and it accepts estrogen, loves estrogen, and estrogen, what does that do? Makes things grow. That's why obesity and even breast cancer, obesity really ups the anti on breast cancer. Well, it ups the anti in any cancer, but breast cancer, because your cells become much more estrogen receptive, okay?
So you have inflammation, it's no longer your friend. The body sees it as a foreign invader. And again, because of the release of cytokines, you get sort of a storm. And for some people, not everyone, but there's a huge connection. And this is what the study was saying, there's a huge connection to autoimmune. So what's happening is the body that sees this as a foreign invader turns on itself. Auto meaning self immune, and the immune system is wonky. Instead of fighting bacteria and viruses, it's fighting itself. And this doctor, the lead author on the study was saying there's a huge link. And guys, we've been talking about this for a long time, not necessarily the obesity but food. Okay? So let me bring in what the study didn't bring in it. It didn't get into it. It just said, well, obesity, there's a direct correlation between obesity and the increase in autoimmune today. I don't disagree at all, but what have I been saying for years and years and years? Okay? And we'll talk about the gut in a minute because what does the Martin Clinic always, always, always say? Autoimmune, leaky gut. Never seen an exception to it in my practice, ever. Autoimmune, leaky gut, and we'll connect this in a minute.
Now, when there is inflammation caused by this extra organ in the body, especially around the organs, around that fat, around the liver, the fat around the heart, the fat, even around the gut, okay? Again, your body sees as a foreign invader. But how did it get there? Ah-huh. Because they didn't talk about that. But I'm going to talk about that. How do you get that fat? It's food. It's not genetics, it's food. And it's not the fat you're eating, it's the carbs you're eating, the sugars you're eating. That's what causes that extra organ to grow. And for some people that can lead to autoimmune and that inflammatory response and what we call a cytokine storm. I like the way Tony Jr. explains the cytokine storm. It says the cells. It's like there's a fog. You ever been out on the foggy day and you can't see five feet in front of you cause of fog, especially at night, right? And he said, that's what happens with inflammation in the body. It's a fog of war because the cells are not communicating with each other properly. I like that illustration.
I love illustrations that one, I like that. The cells don't communicate properly if they don't communicate properly. Even the immune system can go wonky. Your T-cells are not communicating with each other. Your mast cells, M A S T, those are cells that release histamine. When you get allergies and you take an antihistamine, you're knocking histamine down. And I get this question all the time, all the time, all the time. I'm just going to take one little side rabbit trail just for half a sec. People throw out a word. "Oh, Dr. Martin, I have histamine intolerance." I said, nah, you don't. You have leaky gut, okay? You can't get histamine intolerance without leaky gut. Okay? So I'm going to bring this back a step. How do you get leaky? Okay, well, leaky gut is something you don't see, but you experience. You don't see it. Leaky gun is a microscopic event.
It's actually a submicroscopic event. And I use the illustration of the tight border. Nothing gets between your gut and your blood. You have a border there, and you've got border guards there and they don't allow any foreign objects, no yeast, no gunk, no junk gets into blood when you have a good border. But what if you don't have a good border? What if you took antibiotics, okay? Five days, years ago even, and well, now your border has becomes porous. You don't don't even know it, but you get canaries in the coal mine. They're people that start getting symptoms and they have no idea why. "Dr. Martin, why do I have psoriasis?" Leaky gut. "Why do I have eczema on my skin?" Leaky gut. "Why do I have an unexplained rash?" Leaky gut. Yeah, and guys, it can be leaky gut. It can be leaky lungs filled with mucus because your body's overreacting to fungus or yeast, sinuses. "Dr. Martin, postnasal drip." Yep, yep, yep. Leaky gut.
And yet, last week we talked about having a good stomach, even full of acid, could, leaky gut can start because your stomach acidity is not good enough and stuff gets through the stomach that has no business getting through there. Should have been mulched and liquified, and it gets into the small intestine and it hasn't been digested properly, and now your body sees it as a foreign object and you develop inflammation. So obesity, even five pounds of fat that's around your organs makes you more susceptible according to this study of autoimmune disease. Like the study's conclusion is, holy moly, they didn't talk about the solution. They just talked about how bad it is. And that guy's over in Italy, he should have come to the United States and Canada. If he thinks it's bad in Europe, come to North America, Canada, the United States, Mexico.
Terrible statistic. It's food. It's food. It's eating the wrong foods. This is why I love the reset. Talk to you about this million times. And by the way, my new book, Sun, Steak and Steel, okay, coming, okay, has the reset in it. So people that you know that were Dr. Martin, I want to get a copy of the book, the Reset. You're going to get a copy of it when the new book comes out, because I have a whole section in that book on the reset. And even for those who have The Metabolic Reset, the last book, you're going to like it. I updated it again. Why? One of the reasons, and I even put this in the book, is autoimmune. Because when you're eating eggs, meat, and cheese, your body loves that. It lowers inflammation because you're lowering insulin. Insulin resistance is a very inflammatory... Like if I could have talked to this doc, Dr. Malarese, okay? Or Matarese, I don't know if that's a T or an L, okay? I flunked writing.
This doctor, he looked at obesity, but he didn't talk about insulin at all. If he would've called me, I would've said, well, look, the reason that we have so much obesity is because we have insulin resistance. That's metabolic syndrome. And metabolic syndrome is at the root. Okay, because I always do this, guys, and I'll just show you in my head, okay? I'm going to show you something, okay? So I'm just going to take a blank sheet of paper and I'm going to show you this, okay? See the blank. Okay, but now I'm going to draw and I can't draw, but let me do this. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay? See the circle, whatever. And I put heart disease on one of them. Okay? I put cancer on the others. Those are the things that will kill you. Heart disease, cancer, chronic diseases that we're losing the war too, okay? Alzheimer's, okay. Diabetes, obviously, number four and number five on the hit parade autoimmune. Okay? Now in the circle, I'm going to write, I S or H C I. Okay? Now you can see this. It's upside down to you.
You see why I flunked art? Okay? Can't even draw a circle from it. Doesn't matter. So in that circle is high circulating insulin or insulin resistance, IR. Okay? Here's me how I think. Whenever you have insulin resistance or high circulating insulin. Too many carbs. Too much sugar, my name is Tony and I'm a carboholic. And that's how you get it. There's no other way of getting insulin. Look, we did talk about it. Yes, even statin drugs can give you some insulin resistance. But let's look at 95% of the population. How do they get insulin resistance? They insist on carbohydrates in their diet. And when they do the food pyramid, which has been wrong, which is still wrong, they got the food pyramid upside down because the whole basis of the food pyramid is you got to have grains Dr. Martin, grains. No, you don't. Why do you think we got so much obesity and so much autoimmune and so much of all of that stuff because we're eating grains and cereal?
"Well, Dr. Martin, how am I going to go to the bathroom without my grain?" Oh, you'll find a way. Ooh. But look what I'm doing. The circle, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, autoimmune, high circulating insulin, because high circulating insulin creates an inflammatory response. And when you have high circulating... You can be skinny as a rake, by the way. You know how your body protects yourself? It really is amazing. The body has a protective mechanism, and part of that protection is it stores fat, okay? It stores it. And some people have an enormous ability to store fat. Go to the mall. Okay? Go to the mall and sit down, have a coffee, and watch people. And then if you're my age or close to it, remind yourself what the world was like before 1980. Just go in your mind. What was the world like before 1980? Well, we sure didn't see what we're seeing today. And you see obesity, you see it in children, you see it in everyone. Belly fat. And you see people that are much bigger than they used to be. What is that? That's insulin, my friend. Insulin is a grow hormone. It makes things grow.
Now, you can be skinny and have high circulating insulin. You just don't know it because you can't see it. But inside your body, you are getting this fat around your organs. You don't see it. It's silent, but oh, ho, ho. It's as dangerous as being obese. And one of the building blocks for autoimmune is insulin resistance, leaky gut, no exceptions. And insulin. This guy mentioned obesity. No problem. I agree with him. But even skinny people can get autoimmune because they have inflammation too, and they have fat, but you can't see it. It's around their organs, it's around their gut. But they may have a little bit of a belly fat, and they're skinny as the rakes, but not healthy. And my friend, I'm going to tell you something. It's food. It's food. It's the thing you can change. It's the thing you can help yourself with. A lot of people don't get the memo.
I used to get in people's space in my office and say, Linda, listen, you're in trouble. I took all your biomarkers and your inflammation markers through the roof, and you got leaky gut and you got high A1C, and you got triglycerides that are too high in HDL, which is too low. You're in deep trouble, but you're on the Titanic. Go home and change your eating and hold on. Now, I didn't say that was going to be easy, but if you value your life, if you know someone with autoimmune, okay, get them to get on the reset for 30 days. It will lower all their markers of inflammation. Now, is it going to cure it? I didn't say that. Is it going to it better? You bet your boots it will, because that's the thing you can control, okay? That's the thing you can control, is what you put in your mouth every day, huh?
Okay, guys, we got a great week. We got a great week. We got a great week coming. Okay, because I read a few more studies on the weekend that I really found fascinating. Okay? I flagged them. We'll talk about, okay, now what is Friday? Question and answer Friday. Get your questions in. People ask questions, and I love that question. Question, questions. Okay. We appreciate that. Okay? Cause you can't have a show on Fridays of question and answers if I got no questions. But you guys are wonderful. You send me lots of questions, which we appreciate. Okay? If you're not a member of the private Facebook group, Martin Clinic, then you got to to be a member, join up. It's free. Do you get our emails? You don't want to sign up at martinclinic.com, sign up for our emails. We put a lot of information on those emails, okay? Okay, guys, we love you and we'll talk to you soon.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!