It’s estimated that 600 million people worldwide suffer from depression. According to the CDC, from August 2020 to February 2021, anxiety or depression has increased 41.5%. Dr. Martin thinks that number is even higher!
When Dr. Martin refers to brainwashing, he’s literally talking about washing your brain. Getting rid of the debris from the energy it uses. It’s like a self-cleaning oven, but it only works when you’re sleeping.
If you’re suffering from depression or anxiety, you’re likely secreting high levels of cortisol. When this happens, you’re not sleeping properly, and your brain isn’t getting washed. This can become a major issue and Dr. Martin explains why in this episode.
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 afternoon, everyone. How is you? How are you doing? Guys in the last two years, what have we had an enormous increase in? Well, lots of things have changed the last two years, but I'm going to tell you what really has changed. We have an onslaught of anxiety and depression. According to the CDC during August 2020 to February 2021, anxiety or depression has increased 41.5%. I think that number's a lot higher than that.
Now, here's what I'm going to make a prediction as we go forward. Okay. As we go forward, you have heard me say this before, but I call it the coming tsunami of mental health disorders. The coming tsunami. We're already seeing it in a lot of ways and doctors will... Everybody admits that one of the problems during this whole shutdown and the world has got turned upside down has been anxiety and depression. It's serious stuff.
That's a big problem. Let me give you some statistics. 600 million people worldwide suffer from depression, 600 million, but that's not where it just stays there. The problem with depression, anxiety, if not fixed, one of the biggest side effects physiologically what happens inside your body. The Bible says it in chapter 12 of Proverbs, "Anxiety leads to depression. Anxiety leads to depression."
Okay? What happens? If you are secreting high levels of cortisol, cortisol comes out of your adrenal glands, cortisol is meant to have a part-time job. Cortisol, everybody makes cortisol, because your adrenal glands... It's part of your, what we call your circadian rhythm. You wake up in the morning, your cortisol is higher. As the day progresses, you don't need it as much, because cortisol elevates your blood pressure. Cortisol elevates your blood sugar. Cortisol gets you going. But the problem is if you stay in that state, you know what I'm saying? You're in that state. What happens physiologically? You develop anxiety. You develop depression often.
It's not the only cause, but it's a major cause. One of the byproducts of that, one of the byproducts of that is when that anxiety, depression, you know what? It's insomnia. You develop a sleep disorder. Now, what am I saying? When I say there is a coming tsunami? The coming tsunami is the amount of people, because of all this anxiety and depression and a lack of sleep. A lack of sleep. The coming tsunami is Alzheimer's.
We have a really established, I believe and I think you believe this too, is that food has an enormous effect on the brain that they didn't call Alzheimer's Type 3 Diabetes for nothing. Now, we know that. Now, one of the things, if you want to recapture your memory, you want to avoid dementia and Alzheimer's just being part of that disease, you need to clean up your diet. You need to clean up your diet. For another day and I'm sure we'll talk about it often, is we'll talk about the diet in the brain and sugar in the brain and insulin resistance and what it does. It kills your brain, especially in your hippocampus. Those brain memory cells.
We know that, well is done, but here's another factor. Cortisol does the same thing. Cortisol, the drip, drip, drip of cortisol. When it shouldn't be, leads to insomnia and the brain needs to sleep. Now, when I say that, the brain doesn't sleep by the way. Well it does and it doesn't. Okay. I'm titling this little podcast today, Brainwashing, and I've explained this to you many a time, that while you sleep, your brain gets washed. The debris. It takes a lot of energy to run your little brain. It takes a lot of energy.
25% of everything you eat goes first to the brain. Sounds like toxins to me. Goes first to the brain and the rest of the body fights for the other 75%, but 25% off the top goes to the brain. The side effect of energy is debris. It's like a manufacturing plant. If they make a lot of stuff, there's a lot of waste. It's a byproduct. You need to sleep so that your brain has its own washing system. It's like a self cleaning oven. The self cleaning brain gets cleaned when you are asleep. By the way, let me just say this, not when on a sleeping pill.
You know how many times I've heard this in my office? "Yeah, but I can't sleep without a sleeping pill." I said, "Well, Susie, you're not really sleeping with a sleeping pill. You're sedated. You're like going for an operation and they sedate you. Have you ever been operated on?" "Oh, I just feel so fantastic. I slept like that in my life. I feel so good after an operation." No, not so much, because you got sedated. Your brain was put to forcible sleep. It is really not good for you. It isn't. Okay.
When you sleep, your brain cleans itself. It has its own lymphatic system. We've talked about that. The lymphatics. You know what? When I was in school, never heard of it. Now I heard of lymphatics of course. You know, you got lymph node under your armpits and you got lymph nodes in your throat area. You know what lymph nodes are. You have them around your groin and things like that.
That's the sewage system of your body. But your brain has its own sewage system. When they discovered that, I mean, that was like a national holiday for me. I was so excited. I said, "Man, oh man, what a God we have. He gave us a sewage system in the brain and stuff that don't work if you're not sleeping." You have to make sleep a priority.
Now, let me give you a little bit more. You don't sleep, your cortisol goes up. Your cortisol goes up, you don't sleep. No fun under the sun is the I feel for this 70%. Yes. That's what they're saying. 70% of the population have trouble sleeping. Can I tell you something? I used to tell this to my patients all time. If you can't sleep at night, would you please shut yourself down during the day and get a power nap?
Because every study in the world shows that if you get a 15-20 minute power nap in the day, you turn on your lymphatic system, even then even for a short period of time. A lot of patients used to give me, did I call it double talk? Well, here's what they would say. "Doc, I'm don't sleep in the afternoon. because I can't sleep at night if I sleep in the afternoon." I said, "Okay, are you sleeping when you don't sleep in the afternoon?" "No." Well I said, "Sleep in the afternoon. You're not sleeping anyway. You might as well have a little shut eye during the day until you fix your nighttime problem." The significance, the coming tsunami is Alzheimer's and dementia. Dementia and Alzheimer's coming to a theater near you, because the cortisol is a brain killer.
One of its big side effects is the fact that it creates insomnia. It's one of the biggest factors in insomnia. Now, I'm going to read you a study. "Much higher risk of insomnia," this is from Harvard Health Publishing. "80% of psychiatric patients have a sleep disorder." See the connection? 80% of the psychiatric patients in the United States have some form of sleep disorder. Insomnia almost invariably, according to Harvard, is related to stress, anxiety and depression. Depressive patients, bipolar patients, anxiety patients, ADD and ADHD patients often have trouble sleeping.
Now, is it the chicken or the egg? What came first? But it shows you whenever I had a bipolar patient, whenever I had someone depressed, whenever and I see so much anxiety today and people, "Well, Doc I don't think I'm that anxious." I used to measure cortisol. Yes you are. Cortisol is through the roof and that's going to make you unwell as ain't good for your brain either. Make, sleep a priority.
Now look, I understand, okay. Believe you me, in 47 years of practice, just about, sleep was a big, big, big, big issue in my clinic. I could have had a sleep clinic. I could have had a diabetic clinic, because I could have just treated diabetes and I would've had enough work believe you me for 10 Martin Clinics. Sleep, huge. I was really good at getting to the bottom line with these folks and helping them out in that way. Okay.
If we were commenting on the private Facebook group, people would say, "Well just take melatonin or have this kind of tea or whatever and Hey man, if it works for you, well goody goody gun drops. Remember that when I was a kid? You young people think this Dr. Martin man, what century was he born in? Like goody goody gum drops. No, but listen guys, it's really, really important to work on sleep.
Now let me give you some stuff that I used to... First of all, numero uno, get your cortisol done. Numero duo, what do you want to do? Change your diets. One of the things about the reset, a lot of people have noticed that, when they get their insulin down, they find they sleep better. They get into a better sleep. Get your cortisol down, get your sleep down. Get your insulin down. Get your sugars down. Very, very, very important.
Now what else is important? Well, this has been proven guys. Okay. Keep your bedroom cool. Keep your bedroom cool. Keep your bedroom dark. Okay. Now, let me just say one. People ask me, "What is melatonin though? Like that's a supplement, right?" Nah, it's not a... Look, you can take it as a supplement. I'm not the biggest fan of melatonin as a supplement by the way, because it seems to have a shelf life, meaning that it might work at the start for certain people, but then after a while it doesn't work anymore.
Melatonin is something your body, your penal gland, your third eye produces. It produces melatonin. "Oh, your body produces it?" Yes. Your body produces it in two weeks. How does it produce it? How does it come out of the pineal gland? When you see the sun. Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy. Vi derma, during the day.
Even if you live in [inaudible 00:16:09] where Santa Claus lives, if it's sunny out, yeah, you don't get vitamin D because it's 40 below. But you get melatonin from your eyeballs, your eyeballs to the third eye, your Penial gland and you storm melatonin. Helps you to sleep. Then when it is pitch black, pitch black, no lights. Can I say something controversial? There's two masks that you should wear. Okay? You guys know their censored. Two masks [inaudible 00:16:57]. What are they? I'm waiting? It's a rapid test. What two masks do I like you to wear?
Vitamin A, Derek, you got it. Wendy, you got it. Wear your invisible mask. That's vitamin A. When you take vitamin A, when you get vitamin S, you got the best thing for your immune system. That is a mask, the invisible mask there's mask like it. One. The second one is the dark. Cover your eyes. If you can't make your room pitch black. Do you know that I wear a mask to when I go to sleep? I do. I put a mask on over my eyes.
No light, because I want to make melatonin. Vitderma during the day gives you melatonin and darkness, pitch black darkness at night. Cool, dark room. Not for some people, but a little fan on, little bit of noise. What they call white noise. I don't need it, but some people like that. Get off the blue light. Turn your smartphone off. Turn your iPad off. For people have trouble sleeping, turn the TV off and read a book.
Have you read The Reset? We'll read it again. I'll put you to sleep in it. Okay, cool, dark, no blue light. That messes up your melatonin. Get your cortisol down. Try and be systematic. I just found over the years. I used to have patients, "I got to wait till the 11 o'clock news." Now. I know that sounds old. Okay. "You get the 11 o'clock news, I'm going to bed." Are you sleeping? "No." Well try 10 o'clock and forget the news and trying to be systematic about it. It's a good idea.
Increase your melatonin, your serotonin, your feel good hormone. Okay, because you want to turn on that glial system, the self cleaning oven, the brain washers, your brain needs to be washed at night and it don't happen if you're not sleeping. Got to do everything you can to sleep.
I'll give you another little story to let me close with this. I had a lady come in to the office and I remember this, because you know, we had a good laugh about it. She said, "Doc, I have trouble sleeping." Her cortisol was pretty good and this was good and I tested everything and I said, "Boy, how come you got, [inaudible 00:20:14]? Well she said, "Could it be my pets?" I said, "What?" "Well, they want to sleep with me." I said, "Well stop. I know you love your pets." She said, "Well they want to sleep with me." I said, "I don't care. They're not married to you. Why do they have to sleep with you?"
Anyway, we had a good laugh about it, but you know what? It fixed it when she put her foot down. It's just a funny story that I remember. Okay. Now guys, tomorrow is question and answer Friday. Are you ready? Did you send me in your questions? We sure appreciate it. It's always one of our best programs of the week. People like that question and answer and I like doing it. Rapid fires and sometimes I get off into some tangents. It gives me a morning workout on Fridays. I like it. Okay. We'll talk to you soon guys, because we love you and I mean it.
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!