Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners.
Some of today’s topics include:
- Low levels of potassium
- Myocardial ischemia
- Nitric oxide levels in your blood
- Vitamin K2
- Testing for zinc
- Lichen sclerosus
- Oil of oregano
- Best sources of prebiotics
- Multivitamins
Tune in to hear Dr. Martin’s responses!
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 and Question and Answer Friday. Good to be with you this morning.
Okay, so Elsie's asking what are the recommendations for potassium? I'm not going to give you numbers because you can Google that, but let me do, Elsie, what happens. Low or high potassium, okay. Potassium is really important in the body. You don't think about it, but potassium is important because it's an electrolyte and the electrolytes that are most important, are really potassium and magnesium. And they need to be balanced in the body. Potassium, you can get low potassium because you're dehydrated, you're on medications, especially diuretics. They give you that for your blood pressure and for your heart or congestive heart failure. They want to make sure you don't get a lot of edema. You take the medication. The problem is a complaint with your potassium levels, okay? And even people that are dehydrated or sweat a lot or whatever, they can get low levels of potassium. And you can get high levels of potassium from chronic kidney disease and things like that.
So potassium is important. You don't think about it too much until you have trouble, but that can lead to some serious issues, including literally having a heart attack with potassium levels. Okay? So the idea is just be aware of it. Okay. People that have chronic kidney disease, this is something they have to be very, very careful with or dehydration. And you know me, I talk about that all the time, that 80% of the population are dehydrated. They don't realize it because they don't have a little light on top of their head telling them that they're dehydrated. They don't realize it. They don't drink enough water. And that messes you up big time.
Can you drink too much water? Yes you could. I mean, it's possible. You get people, for example died from that, but they're running a marathon for heaven sakes. And then they're drinking so much water, but it's like vitamin D, guys. The waiting rooms are not full in North America because people are just lined up there, "Oh, I got high vitamin D and it's making me sick." Ahhh, no, that's not happening. So I get it. But if you're not dehydrated, you got nothing to worry about potassium. And listen, when your potassium is low, usually you're going to get cramping. You get cramping in your legs or your feet, or even in your hands. Sometimes muscle twitching can do that. And it's always you're checking magnesium, potassium levels. If you're on medications, often happens. Chronic kidney disease often happens. So Elsie, thank you for the question.
And Velsa's asking about ischemia okay, cardiac. Well, what's ischemia mean? Well ischemia is when you don't have enough blood supply to an organ, and she's asking about the heart. You don't get enough blood supply in the heart, big issue. And this is really what the problem is in angina. Angina is you're not getting enough blood supply to the heart. And the heart muscle goes into a spasm. It's not getting enough blood supply. It's not getting enough oxygen. Remember, your red blood cells carry your oxygen. So any ischemia, whether to an organ or to a joint or whatever, you want to increase your blood supply. Obviously, how do you do... Well, somebody else said asking the question. So let me bring the two of them in here, okay. Where did I see that? Okay. Rokaya, I hope I pronounced that, Rokaya, right. “If arteries have blocked up with calcium causing hardening of the arteries, will K2 shift the buildup of calcium from the arteries?”
Very good question. And yes, yes, and yes. See, you got K1. Where's that found? Mostly the plant kingdom. When you ladies have your salad, "I got to have my salad." That's vitamin K1. It's all right. It's good for you. Vitamin K1 is like a blood thinner. Is that good? Yeah. Yeah. That's all right. You want to keep your blood? You don't want your blood to be thick as molasses. Okay, so vitamin K1. Vitamin K2, found only in the animal kingdom, butter and cheese. And cheese curds happen to be the highest source of vitamin K2. Vitamin K2, what it does is it takes calcium. So just follow this with me for a second here. Talk about perfect food. You're eating cheese. Okay, perfect food. Why? You're getting lots of calcium. You're getting lots of protein. You're getting lots of cholesterol and you're getting vitamin K2.
So you see how God put together food? When you have cheese or butter, you're getting calcium. You're getting a lot of things, vitamin A. You're getting protein. You want protein. Protein is king. You're getting fat, saturated fat. It's not bad for you. It's actually good for you because saturated fat carries all your vitamins. And you're getting cholesterol. And you need cholesterol. Your body's made up of cholesterol. So if you want to have low cholesterol, you just want to have a ticket to heaven faster. You want low cholesterol. Okay, you're going to die younger. Okay, you want to die younger? Well, don't eat cholesterol. Don't eat eggs, meat and cheese. You'll die young because you need cholesterol. People who have the lowest cholesterol levels die young. It's as simple as that. "I get my cholesterol down. My cholesterol went down." I say, "Well, okay, good. You're on your way to heaven quicker."
Okay. Anyways, all I'm saying is when you eat it in combination, you got everything there. So vitamin K2 that's in the cheese and butter is actually helping your arteries because it's taking the calcium that you eat. Cheese and butter have a lot of calcium. Dairy has a lot of calcium, but calcium staying in your bloodstream, you don't want that. So let's say you are a vegetarian and worse, a vegan. You're eating salad, lots of it, grains and cereals and soy products and whatever. Okay. There's some calcium in there, but it's not getting moved to your bones where you want it. It's staying in your bloodstream. You don't want that. That hardens your arteries. You have to eat the way God wanted you to eat. You can have plants. God's got two kingdoms of food, plants, fruits, and vegetables, and animal products. You can't avoid animal products because there's where your cholesterol is. There's where your vitamin K2 is. Now we add vitamin K2 to our vitamin D. We add it, but people don't have to take a supplement of K2. Ordinarily, if they're eating butter and cheese, you got it. Okay. You understand that?
Okay, so coming back to hardening of the arteries you want to eat right because if you are a carboholic, I always tell you this. Sugar within a nanosecond starts to destroy blood vessels. It's the first thing it aims at. Sugar is so toxic and the first thing that it destroys are your blood vessels. It takes away that slippery layer in your blood vessels. You're not as slippery in there. And that's what starts to create plaque. Plaque is calcium. Well it's partly calcium, okay. And if you want to get rid of it, vitamin K2. So ischemia, I bring it backwards. What causes a lack of blood supply? Well, one of them is your food. The second thing is a lack of nitric oxide. You know what nitric oxide is. It’s like nitroglycerin, explosion in the blood vessels, relaxes the blood vessels. The more your blood vessels relax, the more blood supply you get to your heart, to your limbs, to your brain. You have 60,000 miles of blood vessels and you want those things... That's why water is important too. It's a river of life. Your blood is the river of life. You want the river to flow. Your heart will force it to flow, but why make your heart work 10 times stronger than it needs to if all you have to do is drink more water and nitric oxide? And we talk about that.
Now, what elevates your nitric oxide guys? What elevates your nitric oxide specifically? I'm waiting. Vitamin B12, vitamin B12. Now, where do you find vitamin B12? I'm waiting. What's the answer? Where do you find B12? In plants? No, it's not in the plants. It's in red meat. How can red meat be bad for you? How, if it has a vitamin? Has a lot of other things, but if it has a vitamin that helps, B12. B12 does a lot of things, but one of the things that does, it elevates your nitric oxide. It opens up your blood vessels. Imagine you eat a steak and you're opening up your blood vessels. If you're a vegetarian, you don't get it. You don't get B12. There's not enough B12 in plants, not even for mice.
I know I overemphasize some of these things. I can't help myself because when you come to heart disease... Nevermind the other things, just heart disease, the biggest fallacy is cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol. That is the biggest fallacy. It is a lie. It's not true. Nobody talks about nitric oxide. Nobody talks about vitamin K2, vitamin B12. You need B12 to have a strong heart because it elevates your nitric oxide. So does Navitol, by the way. But anyway, I'm just telling you guys, I want you to eat your B12. Well, a lot of you have to supplement because you've got stomach issues. You got other problems. You might be on Metformin and you need B12 if you're on Metformin. But you see how nature, how God put things in? And he wants you to eat from the two kingdoms, from the plant kingdom and from the animal kingdom. Okay. And when you're on the Reset, it's only the animal kingdom.
Okay, let me just get back to questions here. Okay. Cecille, is there a test for zinc? Well look, you put liquid zinc on the tongue. If it tastes bad, you don't need it if you don't taste anything. Well look, I never rely on that. Look, you can take levels of your zinc in blood. You can do a blood test, but if you want to know if you're low in zinc, are you eating meat? "Oh, not much doc." "You don't eat a lot of steak or hamburger or roast beef or red meat?" Well, that's where you find zinc. So if you get colds a lot, if your immune system... Your immune system needs zinc. You don't hear me talking that much about zinc, right? I do, but not that much. I like it, but I want you to eat it. How do you know you're low? Well, you don't have a good immune system. If you have a good immune system, your zinc levels are good. I like zinc. Look, sometimes people are so low I give them zinc, but I usually don't give it alone. I don't give zinc alone. It's in my blood boost formula and there's a reason for that because I like a lot of other things with zinc, not just zinc. Now you can do it, but you've got to be careful. Don't take too much, not over 50 milligrams in a day of zinc. But eat your zinc, okay. And as far as that test goes Cecille, I don't rely on that, okay.
And Barb's asking a good question because remember this week, we talked about senescent cells? Remember those? Those are dysfunctional old cells. Okay. And we were talking about senescent cells, especially in the brain. If you don't sleep, you're not getting rid of these dysfunctional cells. They're debris really, and your body's not getting rid of them. And Barb is asking, "Is there a test for that?" Well, not really. It's more if you're not sleeping, you're probably not getting rid of them. Now, one thing that helps to get rid of senescent cells is probiotics. See, probiotics go everywhere. Bacteria have their own intelligence, their own DNA. You got a little bacteria, and don't over clean. You're killing all your good bacteria. Oh, I can't stand all these artificial hand sanitizers and sprays. And I feel like grabbing people and saying, "Will you quit using that stuff? You're killing all your microbiome. It's like taking antibiotics for heaven sake." Okay. So there's not really a test as far as I know for cellular senescent cells. But if you're not sleeping right, if you're stressed, your body makes senescent cells. It's part of aging, but are you getting rid of them? That's the key. Okay, so stay young, my friends. Stay young.
Sonya, I'm post-Reset. Well good for you, Sonya. And she's talking about lichen sclerosus, which is an auto-immune disorder. And I would tell you, Sonya, lichen sclerosus, like all other autoimmune disorders, is leaky gut. You got to fix that. Now the Reset helps that because it literally feeds the good bacteria, the microbiome. Your gut really liked that and it helped to repair. A lot of times with auto-immune it takes a year, really, of taking probiotics and eating very, very well. Stay away from sugar because I always talk, lichen sclerosus is leaky gut and leaky gut allows the candida fungus to spread through the body. Get rid of it, get rid of it. Might take you up to a year. So probiotics, you might want to do the candida formula, Sonya, and the diet. No more sugars, no crappy carbohydrates. Be very careful.
Okay. Bernice, "What's the difference between organic extra strength, oil of oregano and oil of oregano with carvacrol?” Which is one of the byproducts of oil of oregano. You can get better oil of oreganos than others. I love oil of oregano. As you know, they owe me money because I was the guy in Canada, at least, to put oil of oregano on the map. "Doc, why do you always talk about oil of oregano?" Because it works. It's good for you. It's nature's tremendous antibiotic, antiviral, anti-candida, antioxidant. It is wonderful. And you know what? I like the professional... I get a professional strength in the office oil of oregano. I find it's the best over the years, but all oil of oregano is good.
Okay. What foods are prebiotics? Well, prebiotics are things that feed the good bacteria, okay. So prebiotic, and I've written in even some of my books about prebiotics. They are sort of like fertilizer for your good bacteria, right? And a banana is a prebiotic. "Yeah, well I don't..." Broccoli is a prebiotic, it's got FOS, fructooligosaccharides. Those are prebiotics, okay. And you know what? Steak's got prebiotics. Cheese has prebiotics. Eggs have prebiotics. They feed good bacteria. Maple syrup has it. Okay, but bananas and maple syrup, you need to be... Don't live to feed your good bacteria. I always tell people that because even fibers to some extent will feed your bacteria, but don't overdo it because you think you're fixing one problem, but you're making yourself with another problem because now your insulin is going up. "Oh, I got to have my prebiotics." So your choice is a banana. Well, what did I talk about the other day? Well, you might as well have 49 M&Ms. What? Okay, but then you're causing another problem. Just eat steak, have bacon, have cheese, have eggs. Okay.
Sherry's asking about weather related headaches. Well look, it's not the weather. Okay, Sherry? It isn't the weather. It's you. If someone has weather related headaches or chocolate related headaches or migraine headaches or any other kind of a headache, I always go to the root cause. Okay. And here's what I found over the years, and not necessarily in this order. Numero uno, hormones. Why do women get headaches and men don't 90 to 10? The percentage is 90 to 10. You have to just use your brain that God gave you. Okay, guys? Hello, if women get headaches, 90% to 10% versus men, that's a statistic. That's the truth. Why? Okay, must be horror-mones, horror-mones. It's exactly what it is. And you know what? Sherry, if you got weather related headaches, the weather is just a contributor, but you've got messed up hormones. So I always look at that. I want to know your estrogen, your progesterone. I want to know your thyroid. What's it doing? Because when I aim at that, I aim at the cause of the headache you get at the cause of the headache.
Here's another one. A lot of times people get headaches and they don't realize it's a symptom of their body screaming at them and saying, "Hello, hello, your insulin is too high…” and it's creating inflammation and inflammation is happening to affect your brain and you are getting a headache. It's amazing how many people have been able to fix with the Reset chronic headaches. Now it could be a neck, you could have a neck problem that can cause headaches, but you'll always have to look, Sherry, at those things because it's really important to do that. Okay?
Charmaine's asking about, “Do you recommend a multivitamin?” You never hear me talking about a multi. Look, if you're really low and you're out of whack, a multivitamin's not going to get you back unless you're taking Dr. Martin's Blood Boost, okay? Why is that? Because it's a multivitamin on steroids. I put everything in there. I give it to my cancer patients. I give it to anemia. I give it to people that are exhausted, chronic fatigue syndrome, whatever blah-blah-blah, but don't take a multivitamin just for the sake of multivitamin. I'm not big on that. I'm more related, I want you to eat well first, but if you got leaky gut, you got this, you got that sometimes you need a boost. And that's why I get specific with certain formulas or whatever. Then I do it, but not so much a multi, because if you look at our Blood Boost, go online and look at martinclinic.com and then just look at our product and then look at Blood Boost. You ain't going to ever find that. It is so strong, but I'm not big, Charmaine, on that. Okay.
Rosa Linda, why would God give us an appendix if we don't need it? Rosa Linda, I love you. You know why? Because you're thinking, because out there, listen, okay. I'm going to tell you a little story when I was a little boy, grade seven. When you're in grade seven, how old are you, 12? The teacher asked us, "Put your hand up if you got your tonsils removed." I didn't put my hand up. I was mad at my father. Why? Because everybody in our class got their tonsils removed in the 1950s. Okay. By then it was the early 1960s. I was mad because they all got to go to the hospital and get ice cream. And my dad knew better. He said, "You need your tonsils. You're not getting your tonsils out."
At the first sign of a sore throat you had your tonsils removed in the 1950s and even into the sixties. Oh you know what? Because they taught that your tonsils, in medical school they used to teach this. Your tonsils are part of evolution. You don't need your tonsils. The same thing happened with your appendix. You don't need your appendix because your appendix is part of evolution. You just haven't got rid of it yet. Oh, my father was right. Your tonsils and your appendix are important for your immune system. Your tonsils are the gatekeepers. Do you know how much bacteria they stop and how many viruses they stop? It's like glue, Velcro in your throat so that when bugs come in, and they come in usually through your mouth or your sinuses or even your eyes like the COVID virus, you want tonsils to be there. And in your gut, you want your appendix. Now can you live without them? Yeah, but you don't want to take them out.
And you know what? Doctors got it now for the tonsils because they don't do them anymore like they used to. As a matter of fact, you almost have to have gangrene of your tonsils for them to take them out. But they had it wrong because they were saying, "Oh, that's evolution, tonsils and appendix." I go crazy when I hear that stuff. And now we know, "Oh, gee. Your tonsils, they're very important for your immune system." Hello? Hello? Yes, yes, yes, yes. You don't have any spare parts in your body, guys. You don't. You need that stuff. Okay.
And just really quickly guys, Marilyn, "Should I take Navitol?" Because she has low blood pressure, so Navitol, listen what it does. Because Navitol does what I talked to you about earlier in the program of what B12 does. Navitol does other things, it's an antioxidant. It elevates you glutathione, it's wonderful. It's our flagship product. It always has been and always will be. We love pine bark extract for a thousand reasons. But here's what Navitol does and this is what B12 does. It opens up your blood vessels.
Now, if your blood pressure is low, it doesn't lower your blood pressure even more because that's not what it does. But if you have high blood pressure, it helps. If you have low blood pressure, it helps. Why? It's helping your blood supply. Nitric oxide, is like an explosion. We didn't even know about nitric oxide til 1980. We didn't know how nitroglycerin worked. You took it, you had an angina attack. "I'm having an angina attack." "Yeah. Well take a nitro patch." Nitroglycerin, nitric oxide. Your body makes nitroglycerin. How do you like that? That's what you need. That's why you need to eat steak. This is why you need to have B12. Your body makes nitroglycerin to explode inside your blood vessels to increase your blood supply. And next week I promise to talk about nitric oxide, another important thing in nitric oxide. Okay, and your immune system. I'm going to talk about that next week, okay. But thank you for the questions. They're all great questions, but don't worry about taking Navitol, high blood pressure or low blood pressure because it's more for your blood vessels. And that helps in both high and low. Okay.
What is Dr. Martin's thought on sugar cane juice? Not much. I don't like it. It's sugar. And I know it comes from the cane. Does that make it better? No, not in this day and age where people are having 200 pounds of sugar a year each. Don't ever have sugar cane juice. I know it's added to products. Most of it, they lie through their teeth. They're still putting in high fructose corn syrup, but don't. No, you don't need that. Our problem is sugar. So I don't care if it's good, bad or ugly sugar. They're all ugly in my opinion. Okay. So thanks for that, Mary.
And Dawn is asking about chlorophyll. Well chlorophyll, yeah. The green chlorophyll is good. It's an antioxidant, whatever. Do you take it as a supplement? Eat from the plant kingdom. You're going to get chlorophyll. Okay.
And Rita's asking, "What about bunions and spurs?" What causes that? Flat feet, your metatarsal arch usually. Get an arch support. I mean, I don't talk that much about orthotics. You can get orthotics and some people really thrive with them. I'm a big guy on if you got flat feet, you need to do exercise, roll a ball, roll a tennis ball and really wear good shoes all the time, very, very good shoes. Stay away from anything where your feet are slipping. A lot of people like to wear flip-flops and all this and that. I tell them, "That's not good for your feet, if you have flat feet. If you got good arches, who cares. Right? Okay.
One more. And I think it was Lucy. I'm not sure who asked this question about dry eyes. It's a big problem today, dry eyes, much more than we used to see. And that is because of your computer. It's because of your smartphone. It's because we're on the internet and TV and all this blue light all the time compared to where we used to. So when you get dry eyes, usually you're not getting enough sunlight coming into the eyes. Remember you need sunlight in your eyes. So don't put sunglasses on for a bit. Let the sun come in. You get your melatonin, too, by that. And secondly, with dry eyes usually, it's low levels of DHA. It's low levels of omega-3. Eat more steak. But really with dry eyes, I give them very therapeutic doses, usually a high DHA oil and it usually clears that up. Okay.
So these were great questions. Thank you so much for them. We appreciate it. It's always a popular Question and Answer Friday. We thank you for that. We thank you for watching. We appreciate it at the Martin Clinic, the staff and myself and Tony Jr. We love your comments and we love your participation. We thank you for watching. We want you to join the Martin Clinic private Facebook group. I know thousands and thousands of you have. You can invite your friends and family. And ask questions. Don't be shy. A lot of times I don't have to answer anything. They've already been answered, because the group, you guys... Listen, can I tell you something? You know more about nutrition than 99% of the doctors I know, and I mean that. It's a shame for me to have to tell you that. And I don't want to get into it. Thanks for making the reset book, The Metabolic Reset book, the number one selling book in Canada. We appreciate that. And thank you, okay. And we want you to make it number one in the US too. Tell your friends about that book. It's a great book. Thank you. We love you guys. Talk to you soon.
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