Did you know that 70% of the population has some form of sleep disorder? That statistic probably isn’t as surprising nowadays as it was 30 years ago.
Dr. Martin reviews a recent study by the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine showing a connection between leaky gut and sleep apnea and hypertension.
Join Dr. Martin to learn how fixing your gut will help lower high blood pressure and help you to sleep again!
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. Hope you're having a great start to your day, to your week. And we got some interesting topics this week. This study came out. I think you'll find it interesting. It came out of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. I didn't know there was such a journal until I read this study, the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. Now, it should not be surprising that there's actually a journal on sleep. Some things are unbelievable, they're astounding almost. And it's just, because we don't talk about it so much except here, of course, but I always talk about sleep... big part of your health. I'm going to show you a study that came out of this journal that says exactly that.
Now, here's the statistic that is astounding. 70% of the population have some form of sleep disorder. They don't sleep well. You can get a night here and there that you don't sleep well, that happens, but that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about people that consistently have trouble with sleeping. 70% of the population consistently have trouble sleeping. Now listen to what the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine says, 22% of men, and this is crazy, and 17% of women in North America, don't only have sleep disorders, because that's 70% of the population, but 22% of men and 17% of women have sleep apnea. Now that's another disorder altogether, isn't it? Sleep apnea is very dangerous because it's hypoxia, it's a lack of oxygen going up to the brain. More than almost a quarter of all men in North America, according to this journal, have sleep apnea. They actually have low oxygen levels going to their brain, and almost 20% of women.
And again guys, I want you to put your thinking caps on, why? I'm a why guy. I'm telling you, you look at my medical books in the 1970s, nobody talked about sleep apnea. Why didn't, you know me, I laugh at myself because I wonder why, why didn't I invest? If I was a profit and I could see forward, wouldn't have we invested, or I would've invested in sleep apnea machines? I told you I was traveling on Friday and you know what they asked me at the airport, "Do you have a sleep apnea machine in your carryon?" What? No, but see they're so used to asking the question. Do you have a sleep apnea machine in there? I said, "No, I don't have that." I'm trying to think of what was on my carry-on that they were thinking might be a sleep apnea machine. I think I realized it was my water pick for my teeth, I think. It's so common they're asking about it at the airport, you got a sleep apnea machine? Wow. What? Guys no. What's happened? What in the world has happened that we have this sleep disruption?
And it was interesting reading through some of the articles in this journal, I'm going to focus in on one of them this morning, but like all the problems that occur with sleep apnea. Now, let me read you this study and then we'll unpack it. Here's the study. I told you the statistics. “In sleep apnea, new study under the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that sleep apnea causes leaky gut.” What? Sleep apnea, according to the Journal of Sleep Medicine, sleep apnea causes... it's one of the causes of leaky gut. And no wonder I flagged the study, think about that. What? Sleep apnea is one of the causes of leaky gut. And here's what the study says. Here's what happens.
You get a sleep apnea, a lack of oxygen to the brain, that's what the sleep apnea machine does, it just pours oxygen to the brain. But with sleep apnea, a lack of oxygen, hypoxia, disrupts your microbiome, and here's how it happens. Here's what they said in the article. It's very interesting. When you have sleep apnea, you have low levels of oxygen, not no oxygen, but lower levels, because that's what sleep apnea is. When that happens, you have certain bacteria, okay? Remember always the war that's going on inside your body. It's invisible. You have a war going on all the time. It's invisible, you don't see it, but it's very, very important that you see behind the scenes. This is why I try and talk to you a lot about leaky gut. It's one of the foundational, one of the three things that we talk about at Martin Clinic that is the seeds of disease, all disease, anything you can think of comes out of these three. One of the common ones is leaky gut.
So the journal is saying in studies that when you have low levels of oxygen, bad bacteria, certain bad bacteria flourish, they love the idea of no oxygen. Your good bacteria need oxygen. So now you get a medical term, it's called dysbiosis. You know what that is? Dysbiosis says you have more bad guys than good guys. And we know that that can happen with antibiotics. It can happen with a bad diet, sugar and crappy seed oils. And it can happen with a disruption of even non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. People, people that live on Tylenol and Advil and pain killers and anti-inflammatories, they got pain. So they take that, but it disrupts their microbiome. You got more bad guys than good guys. It means you lose.
As a matter of fact, I think I'll bring this out in another study, because there was another study on the weekend that I flagged, I actually posted it on our private Facebook group on antibiotics and colon cancer. Did you see that? We'll unpack that maybe today even. Okay, so let me just put this into perspective. You get sleep apnea, you have low levels of oxygen. Okay? Low levels of oxygen. You have a flourishing of bad bacteria and a diminishing of good bacteria because your good bacteria needs oxygen, when there's less, the bad bacteria thrive. So now you have a medical condition called dysbiosis. Okay, so here's the study. Sleep apnea causes leaky gut.
And again, what is leaky gut? Very important to understand this. Leaky gut is not digestive issues per se. Okay, because a lot of people have leaky gut, and we're going to talk about this. They don't have any digestive symptoms. It has nothing to do with, “Oh doc, my gut is good. I go to the bathroom every day and I don't have any bloating or whatever,” but that doesn't mean you don't have leaky gut. Leaky gut occurs... You have a junction in your gut, okay? I'm showing you here your gut. And this is so microscopic, and you can just try and use your imagination. It's your epithelial cells. It's a border between your gut and your blood. You have a border there. Okay, and that border is made up of cells, but the border guards guarding your gut and your blood are made up of bacteria.
When you get dysbiosis, when you get an interruption of your microbiome, you see your body is smart. When you eat the only thing that you'd get into your blood, because you need to get your nutrients in your bloodstream to feed yourself, to feed all your cells from your brain, to your toes, you need nutrition, and your nutrition is micro-sized to the point that it can go through the junction of your epithelial cells. That's how micro-sized your food needs to be. And the problem is, when you have not enough border guards, you get junk going into your bloodstream. And this is what they were saying with the study. Sleep apnea causes leaky gut, leaky gut is when there's not enough friendly bacteria that help to protect your blood from garbage coming in. See, what your body doesn't need should go into the toilet. Think about that.
But what happens in leaky gut, you get garbage in, garbage's supposed to be out, garbage gets into your bloodstream. Your bloodstream is supposed to be pristine, no pollution in the river. You've got 60,000 miles of blood vessels, and your blood carries your oxygen, it carries your nutrients, but there's not supposed to be any garbage in there. Garbage belongs outside the blood and into the toilet. How do these bacteria and bad guys get into your blood? Undigested protein, only when you have leaky gut. And one of the ways you can get leaky gut is sleep apnea. Okay? The study... Can you imagine? Here we are in 2021 and medicine is finally waking up, finally waking up to leaky gut. It means something to them, because I didn't finish the study here. I got to unpack this even more. What they're saying is, you get sleep apnea, it gives you leaky gut, and leaky gut, according to the study in this sleep medicine journal gives you hypertension, high blood pressure. What?
That was what they were talking about. One of the things they talked about, of course, I've shown you over the years, there isn't an autoimmune disease, MS, Parkinson's, colitis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's, Sjogren's, fibroid, autoimmune, Graves' or Hashimoto's, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis. These are all autoimmune diseases, and every one of them comes from leaky gut. I want to impact sleep apnea one more step, because you've heard me say this and I want to say it this morning again. Sleep apnea does not come out of nowhere, it doesn't come out nowhere. Sleep apnea comes from high circulating insulin. It's the cause. See, because they didn't talk about the cause of sleep apnea, they just told us in this study how prevalent sleep apnea was, but they didn't talk about the cause of it. Maybe they're not even thinking about what causes sleep apnea, but we know what causes sleep apnea. It's food. It's insulin.
You've heard me say this, this is exclusive to the Martin Clinic. What do I call sleep apnea? Let's see if anybody is thinking with me here. What's the other name that I call sleep apnea? Let me just see here if anyone will scroll, I'll give you a second or two to answer. What is Dr. Martin's other name? You got it, Brenda. You got it. Fatty tongue. So do you Charlotte. Okay, you guys are unbelievable. You're so smart. Rosa, all of you. You guys are the best audience in the world. I was saying that the other day to someone, I said you wouldn't believe my audience, how smart they are. These people they're smart. Fatty tongue, fatty tongue. Fatty tongue is one of the steps in sleep apnea, but you don't get a fatty tongue because you talk a lot, you get a fatty tongue when you eat crappy carbohydrate, sugar. Fatty tongue, fatty tongue equals sleep apnea.
And that's why The Reset, again, I bring it back. Guys, even in medicine, they're starting to catch on, sleep apnea causes leaky gut. It's one of the causes of leaky gut. It causes dysbiosis, and that causes leaky gut. Your gut doesn't have the border guards that it needs to keep your blood pristine. And then you get inflammation, that's what they're saying. You get bugs and stuff getting into your blood that shouldn't have got in there in the first place, and your body reacts to it, causes inflammation. And inflammation causes hypertension. Now listen, inflammation. You know what we say all the time, it's not Houdini. And even in this journal, they're saying, yeah, inflammation only comes because the person has leaky gut, and leaky gut comes, not in every case, of course, but in a lot of cases comes from sleep apnea. Wow.
So here's a person with high blood pressure. And I always did this in the clinic by the way, in my clinic days when someone had high blood pressure, I didn't just say, well, you got high blood pressure and deal with it. I always would tell them why you have high blood pressure. And I always brought it back to insulin. That hormone, that lovely hormone insulin. You can't live without it, but boy, oh boy, if you secrete too much insulin over a period of time, you can get sleep apnea. One of the branches of high circulating insulin. It comes back to food, doesn't it? It's your food. Isn't it the foundation guys? It's the foundation. So think about this. Wow. What a study.
They talk about leaky gut. And if they don't teach this in medical schools today, they'll never get it. You talk about important... leaky gut, one of the seeds of all diseases. So, it's incredible, guys, when you think about it, it's incredible. And let me just talk about that other study that came out. I have it right here on antibiotics. This came out on Friday, I believe, because I posted it for you on the weekend. Antibiotics. Okay... and again, the greatest discovery of the 20th century, antibiotics, well established, there would be no disagreement with this, that antibiotics kill your friendly bacteria and cause leaky gut. I don't think there's anybody that would argue that even for five seconds. Okay, and again, are we telling people not to take their antibiotics? Of course, not. You need an antibiotic. It can save your life.
I've always said it, but I've warned people for 50 years, I've been warning people about the double edged sword of antibiotics. One of them, well established, is that bacteria are intelligent. Imagine. They communicate with each other and bacteria, they develop a resistance to antibiotics, true or false? Of course, it's true. You go to the hospital, where's the most dangerous place in the world to go? I'm not telling you not to go. This is just the fact guys. The most dangerous place in the world to go is not Afghanistan, it's your local hospital. They have superbugs there. Why is that? It's the overuse of antibiotics. Medicine, they know it a hundred percent, because bacteria become superbugs when they become resistant to antibiotics. There's bacteria, very, very common in the hospital called C, as in the letter C, Difficile. I like it because it's easy to remember. It's C. difficile.
You know how you get C. difficile? Is when you go to the hospital, it's a hospital born bacteria. It's a superbug. And there's many variations now of C. difficile. And what the study is saying, because it goes back to your friendly bacteria, is when you take an antibiotic in five days you've destroyed your complete microbiome. Gonzo. You better replenish that. And don't worry about putting bad guys back in. You just make sure you get enough good guys, because that's what that war is all about. The invisible war of your good and bad bacteria. And by the way, study just showed it again, something that I've been saying, don't take antibiotics unless you have to, longterm. A lot of women especially are put on antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, and they had no pain. It's just because when they did a urinalysis, oh, you've got a urinary tract infection. Okay. Is it killing you? Is it burning? But don't take an antibiotic, take a probiotic. Don't take an antibiotic, because you're just killing your friendly bacteria now, now it's going to come back with a vengeance.
Secondly, and this is the new studies on antibiotics guys, you take them as long as you need them and then stop, because you know how they always said it for years and years and years and years and years, it gives me a headache. When I used to think about it, because I said, well, it's not right, you're creating super resistance. They always said, and the pharmacist, well, you take this til it's finished. Brought to you by the pharmaceutical company that made it. Finish the dose. No. What happens? You're developing resistance. You're wiping out all your good bacteria. You're creating superbugs. You take an antibiotic as long as you've got symptoms, after that stop, stop. And so many women over the years, I saw it with recurring urinary tract infections, I said, would you stop taking the antibiotic? You might need it for a day or two, get rid of the burning and I don't want that to travel up to your kidneys either, but you know what I'm saying? I've been so consistent about it.
Now they're saying, yeah, you know what? You're right. You're right. It's hard to change the narrative. It's been so ingrained in our society, it's hard to change it. But here we are looking at this, and let me finish with this, because what they're showing is you disrupt your friendly bacteria. Antibiotics, especially when you've overused them, you know what? Now you become very susceptible to colon cancer. I posted that for you the other day, I posted that study for you the other day on our private Facebook group. Hey guys, I didn't say it, medicine said it. Like I said, antibiotics are wonderful, but they're a double edged sword. So isn't that interesting guys, the whole thing about sleep apnea? And I unpacked it even a little bit more for you today, and the gut and high blood pressure. What?
Well, okay, so we got a great week coming up. We got some great studies that I think you'll find fascinating. And we'll go back to Friday, Question and Answer Friday. I think I'm going to do... I'll let you know a little bit later in the week, I'm going to do an afternoon session on Thursday rather than Thursday morning. I'm going to let you know that, okay? And the other thing is, it's November 1st, are you ready for Christmas? Well, you get your books, get The Reset, it's the greatest gift you can get them. Okay? And new folks on with us, if you're not a member of our private Facebook group, please join up and you can bring your family and friends in with you. And for those of your friends and family that can't watch us live, you can share this on Facebook with them, or you can get them to download the podcast, The Doctor Is In Podcast. Wow, that's a popular podcast. And again, it's all because of you guys. It's all because of you guys, and we appreciate it. Okay. So we'll talk to you soon. We love you dearly.
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!