Dr. Martin discusses the rising prevalence of anxiety, which has now overtaken depression as the number one mental health issue.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin:Â Well, good morning everyone, and once again, welcome to another live here. A little different this morning and I'm on the road. I'm speaking at a conference actually here for a week. So all week we're going to do a little bit different time, so we're a little bit early, so all week. Okay guys, I'm just going to tell you this all week. I'm scheduled now to come on at 8:00 AM Eastern. Okay? Are we still daylight saving 8:00 AM daylight saving time. Okay, so just for the week, I got my schedule. I'm speaking at a conference here and in the mornings and it just doesn't work out any other time. I've got to do it at eight o'clock. I want to do this morning and we'll do a little bit of a shortened version here this week, okay? But what I want to talk to you about is this.
I've read this anxiety, okay, so this came out in the last few days. Anxiety has overtaken depression in terms of the number one condition in mental health. So anxiety has taken over depression in terms of the number one issue in mental health. We've talked about that in the past, the amount of anxiety that we see, but listen to this, this is according to this article that I read, it's 800 anxiety is 800 times more prevalent than cancer, than any cancer. And so would we not call that an epidemic? I mean, really when you think that there's that much anxiety in the world, and I just want to talk about that because it's so true. Anxiety really changed my practice in a lot of ways because two things, and I actually wrote a book about it, two hormones that want you dead, okay? Cortisol, and we all know what cortisol is.
Cortisol is that that kind of hormone that's released from the adrenal glands, okay? So anxiety comes from cortisol. Now, the fight or flight cortisol, okay, you've got two things happening with your autonomic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. You've got rest and digest or you've got fight or flight. What's happened in the world is that we've gone from mostly resting and digesting to fight or flight, and that's taken over the world. I remember Tony Jr and I talking about this. This was probably, I'm going to say 2005 or whatever, and I noticed it in my practice that because I was testing cortisol, and the reason I tested cortisol so consistently goes way back before that because what I was specializing in for years and years and years was chronic fatigue syndrome. What I found in my practice with chronic fatigue syndrome, consistent, mostly women, wasn't always women, but it was mostly women.
So right away I'm thinking hormones, okay? Or as I love to say to my women horror hormones. So I was really cognizant of hormonal imbalances and when I tested for chronic fatigue syndrome and people that would come into my office and patients because I would look and see what was happening to their adrenal glands, I wrote a book about that chronic fatigue syndrome, the Modern Woman's Curse. That was one of my first books that I ever published. I think we sold over 50,000 copies of that book in the late eighties because it was happening in the world and people didn't know what the issue was. So I was suggesting way back then that it was adrenal gland exhaustion. So why? Well, the adrenals, again are made. You've got two little glands. Add renals. They're little chestnut sized glands on top of your kidneys, and what they're meant for is the fight or flight, and that can save your life.
Somebody's chasing you, you're going to turn around and fight, or you're going to kick and run, scream and run the fight or flight. The problem with cortisol is when cortisol doesn't get turned off. So way back, late eighties, chronic fatigue syndrome, the modern woman's curse was adrenal gland exhaustion. That's what I postulated and that's what I wrote about. And literally thousands and thousands and thousands of women over the years, I would test their hormones when nobody else was, was looking at cortisol. Because listen, you just have to understand the training of a physician. The only time they think of the adrenal glands is if you've got Addison's disease or Cushing's. And they used to tell these patients before they came and see me, I was never the first doctor that they would come and see. I mean, rarely it was because, doc, I'm so exhausted, I'm so exhausted, but they can't find anything wrong.
They test my thyroid, they do all the blood work, and generally everything was coming back within normal limits. And I said, well, did they test your cortisol? Did they test your adrenals? What? No, they didn't even mention it. But you see guys that's really, really an issue is cortisol. Like I was saying in about 2005 or whatever, Tony Jr and I were talking about this, and we like dad, it's like an epidemic. And guys, if you think it was bad back then, you should see it today. They're saying that almost 40 million Americans suffer with anxiety on a daily basis. The numbers are crazy. 40 million is the population of Canada. So there's tens of millions of people that suffer with anxiety. Now, the Bible says this about anxiety. It's always interesting in Proverbs that anxiety leads to depression. Proverbs 12 and 25, anxiety is the first step in depression.
And that's interesting because in medicine, again, if it's not Addison's, Cushing's disease, they dismiss the adrenal glands. I used to call the adrenals, the Rodney danger field of your body. And the reason is because they get no respect. Nobody even thinks about these things generally unless they think you have a disease. And yet we all know that anxiety is real. And what happens, and let me just get into a little bit of some of the low hanging fruit when it comes to the adrenals, okay? This is again compounded, but think about this for a minute. If you don't sleep, your cortisol goes up. If your cortisol goes up, you don't sleep. So the low hanging fruit in adrenal gland exhaustion or with high levels of cortisol over a period of time, which can lead to anxiety, is the lack of sleep. It's the chicken or the egg.
What comes first? And so this is really, really important when you look at it, one of the low hanging fruits is a lack of sleep, and that affects the body. We all know what happens in the brain when we don't sleep. The self-cleaning oven doesn't work. It is so amazing that your brain has a self-cleaning oven. I love that, don't you? But it doesn't work if you don't sleep. So cortisol is lack of sleep is a big issue, and anxiety results from that, or you get anxiety and you can't sleep. Like I said, the chicken or the egg poor diet has a big effect on the adrenals. I discovered this. You got to go back into the late eighties, early nineties when part of my protocol for people that were suffering with anxiety plus all the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, I used to put them on a low sugar diet or no sugar. It was always amazing what happened to people when they got off the sugars. Of course, in the most recent years, in the last 10 years or so of my practice, I set up the reset, the metabolic reset, and that was eggs, meat, and cheese for everyone for 30 days. And it was amazing what would happen. But even before that, and I wrote about this in my book in chronic fatigue syndrome is diet has a big effect on cortisol.
Insulin, okay, insulin. When you eat carbohydrates, you need insulin. Too many carbs, your insulin goes up, insulin goes up, your cortisol goes up. It's part of the package. And that's why I wrote that book, two hormones that once you dead insulin and cortisol, they often go together. You have to address that issue. And so this was a key. So diet, I cleaned up their diet. It really had a major effect not only on lowering insulin, but it had a major effect on lowering cortisol and helping and regenerating the body. Now, the other thing is nutrients, because I was a guy that would look for deficiencies. My office was horror hormones, checking all of them from the thyroid to the adrenals to the ovaries and ladies, and combining those and the pancreas, insulin, and guys, this was key, key, key, key. And then I would look for deficiencies.
Whenever I saw anxiety, whenever I saw a case of anxiety, I was always looking for deficiencies. And here is some of the common ones. Now, I bet you, you guys are already guessing. What were some of the common deficiencies? I bet you my audience, you guys know these things, but I'm going to just go over them anyways. One, numer Uno, vitamin B 12 deficient almost consistently, and maybe their blood tests for B 12 was within normal limits, but normal limits really. First of all, guys, B 12 blood testing is about a hundred years old. Okay? It's time we give it a birthday party and put it to bed. No, I still love B 12 testing. I do. What I mean is the results for B 12 testing the results, they're so skewed because when they talked a hundred years ago about averages, they got an average.
So you get 200 to 600, and if it's anything over 400 or whatever, they consider that high or 500 guys, you need to be up around 800 to 1200 for your B 12 to be optimized. And when you have anxiety, B 12 is a big factor. We all know it's a big factor in depression. B 12 is a big factor. And so we saw consistently low levels of B 12, consistently low levels of vitamin D. These were key. And to look at these things, low levels of magnesium, and unfortunately, and even today, I've discussed this with physicians today, if you order a magnesium test, okay, it's a blood test. The problem is you have very little magnesium in your blood at the best of diet. Magnesium is in your tissue, and they don't measure that. And we found that a real deficiency of magnesium. Remember, magnesium is the mineral that helps you to relax.
Whenever you think of magnesium, relax, it relaxes your muscles, it relaxes your nerves, it relaxes your blood vessels. It relaxes your brain. It relaxes the body. It relaxes your bowel. It's one of the reasons that I like magnesium citrate because it is good for the bowel. Now, for some people, it gives them a little bit of a loose stool, and then I flipped them over to magnesium mag glycinate. But listen, guys, magnesium I saw, okay, so here's what I saw. Deficiencies in vitamin B 12, vitamin D, vitamin D in your brain, derma, it's so important. And unfortunately, vitamin D in this day and age, even today, here we are in 2023 and vitamin D is still getting no respect. There's a war on vitamin D. It's crazy. It's so efficient every day, guys, and I'm not kidding you. Seven days a week, I get a new study on the significance of vitamin D.
Your brain does not operate properly. Your adrenals do not operate properly without vitamin D. So it's an essential vitamin and deficiency is so common. And today, again, when you look at numbers, most people, 80, 90% are in the low numbers of vitamin D. They're very deficient, but nobody tells 'em you can hardly get a B 12 test done. It's sad. Okay? Now, the other deficiency was omega three oftentimes, oftentimes with omega three, okay, deficient. So our protocol was to aim directly at this deficiency food. First, if you were to build a protocol, food, start with food, start with the other one, sleep. Do everything you can to get that body to get into the five stages of sleep. Very difficult, one of the biggest problems in our society today, but guys, they're connected. All of these things are connected. Then the other thing we looked at, and I was one of the first guys to start the connection between the gut and the brain.
I've been talking about that for so many years, guys, the gut and the brain, what did I see in patients that suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and then now patients that suffer from anxiety, leaky gut, almost invariably. So we looked at those deficiencies, and of course there's issues. I mean, when you look at psychological issues, relationship issues, family issues, and there's always those things, but it's the combination guys of these things. Some of the major symptoms associated with anxiety and adrenal glass are obviously insomnia, brain fog, hair loss, belly fat, exhaustion, cravings for sugar and salt cravings. Any who, when I read that article on the weekend, I said, I just got to talk about it because it's so common now, guys, this is going to be a shortened version today. And remember, just keep this in mind for the rest of the week. We are going to do these programs at eight o'clock. I just got my schedule for speaking here, and this lines up perfectly for eight o'clock and not our usual time at eight 30. Guys, we love you guys. You know that, right? I thank you for your patience. I thank you for coming on this morning. I hope I didn't wake you up. Okay? And sorry for the lack of heads up. If I had my schedule on Friday, I would've told you earlier. Okay guys, we love you. We'll talk to you soon.
Announcer:Â 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!