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 doctor 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 Jr: First of all, why does dysbiosis occur? Why do you end up with more bad bacteria than good bacteria? So what are the causes of that? And it's [00:00:30] amazing. So we're just going to go through some of the causes of why this becomes a problem and why it's so extremely common today, and is one of the most common conditions that we see in our clinic.
Dr.Martin Jr: Well, first of all, it's antibiotics. You talk about this a fair amount.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, and antibiotics are the greatest discovery of the 20th century. Think about what medicine ... The advance in medicine took a giant step when antibiotics were discovered in the 1920s and used, [00:01:00] especially when you think of it, they were used to save millions and millions of people's lives, especially in World War II and ever since. So antibiotics are the greatest discovery, no doubt, of the 20th century. But I also call it the curse of the 21st. And the reason is because antibiotics do not differentiate what bacteria they kill. They kill good and they kill bad. The problem with it, especially in one five-day [00:01:30] antibiotic treatment, so you've got an ear infection and the doctor says, "Take these antibiotics for seven days and finish them up. Okay?" One five-day treatment will kill all your friendly bacteria. They'll kill a bad guy, they'll kill your infection, but they'll also kill every good bacteria that you have and that you need. So antibiotics are a great thing, but they are probably the number one cause [00:02:00] of a lot of leaky gut.
Dr.Martin Jr: It's interesting that antibiotics ... New studies are actually showing they actually leave behind out also a little bit of a toxin. That it can just stick around in the system for a long time. And another common cause of bad bacteria overtaking the good bacteria are common anti-inflammatories. A lot of the stuff that you take from over the counter prescription actually kill a lot of the good bacteria and that allows the bad bacteria [00:02:30] to overgrow. And think how common these things are.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah. From your Tylenol to your Advil to your aspirin. People take aspirin every day to prevent heart disease. They got joint pain or back pain or whatever, and they're always ... People will eat these things like candies and when you got pain, I understand that. I don't like pain either, but you just need to understand that they also, just like an antibiotic, will kill your friendly bacteria and people don't realize [00:03:00] the significance of that.
Dr.Martin Jr: Another common one that most people don't realize is the idea of plastics. And we live in a plastic world. In fact, a couple of studies came out earlier this year that really highlighted how much of a problem that plastic has become. In fact, it is so widespread, and this is from an article that was highlighting a few studies, that the fibers are even found in the household dust and the air we breathe. So basically, [00:03:30] we are breathing in plastic all the time. They find plastic in the fish, in the food. It's everywhere. So plastic, we live in a plastic world, and that has led to a lot of dysbiosis.
Dr.Martin Jr: Another common problem that is so common today are vegetable oils. And vegetable oils, we could do a whole presentation on how bad vegetable oils are for your health. They fool people with these things because they [00:04:00] sound healthy. A vegetable oil sounds healthy, but they're high in a bad type of fat that just ... It oxidizes, it's no good for you, but the bottom line is, is that a lot of these vegetable oils, which are found in pretty much every processed food.
Dr.Martin Sr: Well, every packaged food, it's got vegetable oil.
Dr.Martin Jr: It's hard to go to a grocery store and find a food.
Dr.Martin Sr: And it's very toxic oil because it's highly industrialized. I mean, I literally could run your car on industrial oils, vegetable oils.
Dr.Martin Jr: Well, and that's the thing. If [00:04:30] you go on YouTube and you just look up and watch a video on how it's made, I mean there's absolutely nothing good about it, but it's so common. But the bottom line is, the studies have found that ... This is one highlight from one study that they found that the corn oil or linoleic acid, which is common in a lot of these vegetable oils, by itself results in dysregulation of intestinal integrity leading to increased gut permeability. So basically, what they're saying is [00:05:00] vegetable oils lead to leaky gut.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yep.
Dr.Martin Jr: That's basically what they're saying. So, think of all the processed foods, all the packaged foods, all the stuff that-
Dr.Martin Sr: Any middle aisles of your grocery stores got loaded with it.
Dr.Martin Jr: Oh, yeah, just vegetable oils.
Dr.Martin Sr: From crackers to ketchup to ... You name it.
Dr.Martin Jr: So between plastics and antibiotics and this is the reason why most people do have issues with leaky gut at some point. Also, this is another common people do not understand, because your gut is so involved with your brain and it produces serotonin [00:05:30] and it's so influenced by your emotions, people do not understand the effect that stress has on your gut health.
Dr.Martin Jr: Here's an interesting study that was done actually not too long ago showing that stress might just be as unhealthy as junk food to the digestive system, which is incredible to think about. They know that stress alters and changes the microbiome in your gut. It's incredible.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, cortisol is a diversion tactic. Think of what cortisol, your stress hormone [00:06:00] does, right? It gets you ready for the fight or flight, and it diverts circulation. It diverts blood supply into your muscles rather than keeping it in your gut because it was meant to be temporary, if I scared you, and stress, you've got organs that actually know how to deal with stress, but you don't want to have it for a prolonged period of time because it does exactly what that study shows here.
Dr.Martin Jr: Well, and you have two kind of nervous systems. [00:06:30] You have that sympathetic and parasympathetic. So you have what they call a rest and digest, or fight or flight. And when you're stressed, your body's in that fight or flight, which means it's not in that rest and digest. So, just think of the damage that that does to the digestive system.
Dr.Martin Jr: But research is showing that stress is very hard on your gut. It actually causes digestive microorganisms to behave similar. So they're just no good for you. And this is also another very common ...
Dr.Martin Jr: Well, and first, by the way, [00:07:00] before we move on to this. So you could see here that they looked at how they act on a high fat diet. Now, this is very misleading because if you actually look at this study, it's not like they were eating olive oil and good fats, in a sense. There is a lot of processed vegetable oils. So it has the same effect as a lot of these bad vegetable oils do. So let's talk about sweetness really quickly because we get a lot of questions about sweeteners.
Dr.Martin Sr: Yeah, we didn't really know, right? Because at one time we ... I mean because you understand that we've been around a long time, I've been [00:07:30] in practice for 43 years, and sweeteners have been ... Like aspartame and others have been out for a long time. I always knew that that stuff wasn't good for us. I mean, come on, it's a chemical, it wasn't natural, but what exactly did it do? And now the jury is in, right? And now we know what sweeteners do. Their biggest effect is what they do to the microbiome and what they do to your friendly bacteria. They act [00:08:00] like an antibiotic, they act like an [inaudible 00:08:03]. They act on your body as a killer of your friendly bacteria.
Dr.Martin Jr: mentioned, the effect that it has on your microbiome. And what they found is that a lot of these non-caloric artificial sweeteners, which they call them in research, so they don't have any calories, they don't raise your blood sugar levels, which is [00:08:30] they they thought was a really good thing. And for some of these sweeteners, there's no problem, but a lot of them do in fact cause problems because as you can see there, by functionally altering the gut microbiome.
Dr.Martin Jr: So think about that for a second. Sweeteners can affect your microbiome, which can lead to dysbiosis, which will lead to a whole bunch of problems, which we'll talk about in a few minutes. This is another big one that's really been coming out lately, which are emulsifiers [00:09:00] now.
Dr.Martin Jr: Now, emulsifiers are those things that basically allow oil and water to mix and stay together. So they're found in a lot of foods, foods that normally should not be able to stay together, are able to stay together because of these emulsifiers. Basically, what they're finding out is a lot of these common emulsifiers that we consume almost every day basically result in microbiota encroachment into the mucus, alters the composition [00:09:30] of the microbiome and it leads to chronic inflammation.
Dr.Martin Jr: So a lot of these emulsifiers are giving us a lot of inflammation in the gut that you may not even be aware of. And that's going to lead to a lot of problems. And here's another big one as well that most people don't realize. We drink it a lot, we swim in it, chlorine is very hard on your microbiome. It kills it, it allows the bad bacteria to take over.
Dr.Martin Jr: So let's just recap really quickly [00:10:00] before we move on. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories plastics, vegetable oils, stress, sweeteners, emulsifiers, chlorine are just some of the more common ones. We can spend almost all day going through all the reasons why you end up with more bad bacteria than good. But those are the more common ones that basically ... And this is something that you say all the time, everything you do in a day essentially kills your good bacteria.
Announcer: [00:10:30] You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In podcast with your hosts, Dr. Martin Jr. and Sr. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening.