Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners.
Some of today’s topics include:
- Caffeine tablets vs. coffee
- ADHD & low thyroid
- Meniere's disease
- Female libido
- High A1C after Reset
- Wisdom teeth & jaw issues
- Cancer spread & surgery
- Breast tissue & estrogen
- Protecting the hippocampus
- Age spots & lupus
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: Good morning, everyone. How are you? Once again, welcome to another question and answer Friday. Hope you're having a great start to your day. Okay, here's Alice. I'm just wondering if caffeine tablets have the same positive effects as coffee, instead of drinking a cup or if they should be avoided. Alice, I take it you don't like coffee or coffee doesn't agree with you. To answer your question, Alice, no, I don't take caffeine tablets. Why would you do that? Look, it's not the caffeine in coffee that's good for you. It is the polyphenols. It is the 1,000 phytonutrients that are in coffee that are good for you. You don't want to take caffeine tablets. Some people don't like coffee. Like I said, they drink tea.
Tea is an antioxidant too, but it doesn't have all the benefits of coffee. Now, some people think I'm prejudiced, but I have been consistent, consistent, consistent for a long time. Years ago, and some of you would remember this, coffee and sometimes even today was vilified. Coffee, it's acidic. It's not good for you. It's bad. Nah, coffee's good. It really replaced at the Martin Clinic the other vitamin C ascorbic acid because there's no comparison. You've heard me talk about vitamin C, the other one, ascorbic acid. I find it effective if you do it intravenously. That's the massive doses you need of ascorbic acid to be effective. Why not drink coffee? You'll get all the benefits of vitamin C.
The other question on coffee, because... Hold on, just let me get it. Jimmy, what are your thoughts on the group of folks that say coffee raises your triglycerides? Well, Jimmy, that gives me a migraine headache. That is nonsense. Don't be duped by that. Coffee doesn't raise your triglycerides. As a matter of fact, coffee will help to lower your triglycerides and I'm going to tell you why, because coffee is so good for your liver. Study after study after study says the more they study it, it's not as good as vitamin D, I'm big on vitamin D as you know, but coffee vitamin C is excellent in helping to lower the fat in your liver. It helps to clean your liver. It's actually like a detox of your liver. Who knew? Who knew?
Well, I knew. By the way, Jimmy, coffee acts like Metformin when it comes to insulin, the drug. It helps to lower your blood sugar. I've been saying that for 35 years. Have a coffee with your meal. Now, don't ruin your coffee. Okay, guys? Don't put sugar in it. Don't put honey in it, honey. Okay, okay, if you have to put a little bit of honey, but don't do it. I mean, I started out drinking coffee, my grandmother used to make the percolated coffee. And my mother too. I mean, as a kid, I wanted to start drinking coffee just by the smell of percolated coffee. Mommy said no, but grandma never says no. I got my grandmother to give me coffee and I had about four sugars in it. I'm talking when I'm about 10 or 12 years old.
For 25 years, I've been drinking my coffee black. I used to put a little half a cream. And then I said, eh, they used to get it wrong all the time. When I go through it drive-thru or whatever, half a cream, they'd put a full cream. I said half a cream. I said you know what? I'm going to start drinking coffee black, and then I get used to it. I remember patients used to bring me coffee at the office like a peace offering. They'd bring me a coffee. I knew their intentions were real good, but I said, "What's in it?" Oh, a regular. I won't drink it. Black is the only way. Don't even put a teaspoon of sugar near the cup of coffee. I won't have it. It's habits, guys. It's habits. And again, coffee is good for you. It's the real vitamin C. You want to go out and buy vitamin C? Go for it. But I would rather you drink a coffee.
Cheryl, can Dr. Martin talk about ADHD, which I used to see lots in my office, versus low thyroid? Can low thyroid function mimic ADHD? ADHD is characterized by someone that can't focus, someone that is fidgety, someone that is bouncing around all the time. When you get ADHD in kids, which I saw hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them over the years, I feel sorry for the teacher. The good thing about kids is kids are very smart. I used to remind them, I said, "Are you happy? You're always in trouble. You're always in trouble." I said, "Can I help you with that? You won't be in trouble anymore and settle your brain."
I could help these kids. I would change their diet. I'd make them understand, first of all, you get near sugar and sugar for you, sugar isn't good for anyone. But I used to explain to these kids, "Sugar will send you on a rocket ship in your brain." I said, "You got to fix that." I said, "Only you can do it. Like mommy and daddy will help, but you got to make those decisions. In the morning, Frosted Flakes aren't great. Learn to eat protein, eggs, meat, and cheese. You like eggs?" "Oh yeah, I like eggs." "Well, live on them, live on them, because that will help settle your brain. Your brain's looking for the right fuel and you're giving it the wrong fuel. Your brain, it's the way you are. You're the canary in the coal mine. Your brain is sensitive to its fuel. You better give it the right one.
And if you don't, you're going to be out of control. You won't focus. You'll fidget. You'll be all over the place. Your mind will be all over the place." That's ADHD. Now, is it related to a low thyroid? Well, it certainly could be related to a thyroid that's not in balance. Now, remember, again, when I do any teaching on the thyroid, you know how I use the expression, your thyroid is like a puppet. It's got a lot of strings attached to it, from the hypothalamus up in the brain, to the pituitary, to the adrenals, to the ovaries in women, that really mixes up a woman. Yes, to some extent it would be an imbalance. But when you look at the symptoms, it wouldn't be so much low thyroid as it would be an imbalance in the higher end as far as ADHD goes.
But it's a good question. It's a very good question. I haven't thought about it so much in that way, Cheryl, but I know the thyroid is involved in so many things. So many things. The thyroid is such a finicky organ. It's so often misunderstood and misdiagnosed because the lab tests are not conclusive. The lab tests can throw you off. And if a doctor is relying only on lab tests, they're going to get duped very often when it comes to the thyroid gland. You can ask my staff. I used to teach them when we were doing thyroid testing, what is more important than the testing? Symptoms. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck. If the thyroids out of whack, it may not show up in the blood. It may not. We used to do an iodine sensitivity test, which was I think much better, but even then. And that's why I used to come into the office in the examination room and I would use my eyeballs. Observe. Look at their eyebrows. Look at their hair. Look at their skin. Look at their nails. That would give me big clues. Big clues. Good question. I probably didn't answer it, but I meant to.
Carol, is Meniere's disease curable? Yes, I've seen a cured. Meniere's is a middle ear type of thing characterized by sometimes dizziness, tinnitus, imbalance. I actually did a paper on Meniere's. I'm talking about 1974. I actually won an award for it, because I wrote about Meniere's. Look, I mean, you got to look at a lot of things with Meniere's. Okay? Here's what I found over the years, low levels of B12, low levels of vitamin D, insulin resistance. Those were pretty common. Low levels of vitamin D, low levels of B12, and insulin resistance with Meniere's. Almost invariably I saw that. That was my observations. I would try and correct those deficiencies. A lot of times even in Meniere's, there was relationship to the cervical spine, the neck. Could be an impingement there to the middle ear. That has to be checked out. But I used to get good results with Meniere's. Good question, Carol. Thank you. The man that has this is 60 and loves his sweets and beer. Yeah, insulin resistance. Tell him to get rid of that.
Jojo, is there a superfood or do you have tips or tricks to increase the female libido after hormonal and thyroid balance? Well, listen, you know me and hormones, it's complicated. Men don't have hormones, but women do. If a man's got low libido, his testosterone is in the tank. If a woman has low libido, there's usually a major fluctuation going on in hormones. You know my illustration of horrormones. You're flying a plane or you're in the plane and it hits turbulence. It's not smooth sailing anymore. You hit turbulence. You're going from side to side and it's no fun. Usually caused, usually, by low levels of progesterone compared to estrogen. The ovaries get out of whack. What happens then? It messes up the thyroid. You can't convert T4 to T3 when you have estrogen dominance. And then you put stress on top of it and it robs your progesterone.
Cortisol robs progesterone. Now you've got a double whammo, and now you're really into turbulence. One of them can be libido in a woman. Okay? It's a fluctuation. It's an imbalance. Women need balance. When a woman is doing really well, their hormones are balanced. It's like a tightrope, and I used to have a picture of that in my office. I had a picture of a person on a tightrope. I said, "There's your hormone. See that? You're walking across Niagara Falls." You remember that? The Wallenda Brothers or whatever they were called, and what's his name went up and... I still remember it like it was yesterday. Walked across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. I was more nervous than he was, because I'm scared of heights.
All I could think of, I've been to Niagara falls, Rosalinda. I've been to Niagara Falls. Always fascinated with Niagara Falls. I love it. But when I think of the guy walking across on a tight rope, I'm thinking of women and their hormones and their horrormones. Woo! Woo! Jojo, getting back to your question, is there any superfood? Yep. Because listen, one thing you can do, one thing you can do that's in total control, in total control, is what you put in your mouth every day, is your food that you eat. I'm telling you something, if you have hormonal imbalance from your thyroid to your adrenals, to your estrogen, you have better start by doing the metabolic reset. There's a reason it helps with horror-mones, because insulin is a big, big, big factor.
The more we study insulin, the more we realize how important it is to balance that out so that you don't have insulin resistance and its connection to the hormones. Yes. Start with that. Now, I'm a big guy on thyroid balance. You know that. I've created products for that, because I had to get results. Often time I want that thyroid balanced out. I want the estrogen dimmed out. Sometimes they would use a menopausal formula that I created to elevate the progesterone. One dims down the estrogen. The other one elevates the progesterone. Cortisol, that's always a factor. I'm telling you, one of the biggest factors is cortisol, the stress hormone. It's a vicious cycle. You're stressed. Your cortisol goes up.
It messes up your estrogen-progesterone balance. It messes up the thyroid, and you're messed up thyroid and messed up estrogen balance, it stresses you out, so now you're even secreting more cortisol. That's why I named it horrormones. Women who have gone through that, especially women who have gone through that, know exactly what I'm talking about. They're giving me high fives. It's not between the ears. It's horrormones. Why do you think I was so popular in practice? It was 90-10 in my office, close to it. 90% women and 10% men. It's not that men didn't like me. It's women that would scratch eyeballs out to get to me because they heard that I helped with horrormones.
Okay, okay, very good questions, Jojo. Suzanne is saying, "I did the reset. Ate mostly EMC or probably eating mostly EMC now, but my A1C is still high. What can I do to help to lower it?" Don't stop. If your A1C, Suzanne, is still high... Now, remember, the reset is wonderful for A1C. For most people, it's on a downward trend. That's the average of your sugars over a three month period. Because what happens, A1C is glycated hemoglobin and what that means is sugar attaches itself to red blood cells, the hemoglobin and the red blood cells. You can measure it. The hemoglobin can't get rid of the sugar, so you can measure it. But remember this, Suzanne, if your A1C is still high, it means you and carbs don't get along.
You're frenemies. Don't fool yourself. You and carbs don't get along. Don't eat a lot of carbs and stay on track. Don't be discouraged by numbers. Don't get discouraged by that. Everybody's different to some extent, Suzanne. Some people, it's immediate results and right away. Read the testimonies on the reset. It's incredible. But listen, I don't live on numbers. I like to see numbers, I do, but I'm looking at the long game, not the short game. I'm looking to play long ball. This is a process. And for some, the process...If you are messed up metabolically. 88% of the population is messed up metabolically. But if you are really messed up, then don't get discouraged. There's a process.
A1C is part of it. Triglycerides are the other part, the HDL. I'm looking on all those things. Yep, it's really important for me to look at numbers. I'm not against numbers at all. I'm not against lab work, but I'm not married to it. Do you know what I mean by that? I'm not married to the lab. A holistic doctor, a functional doctor is looking at the whole picture. If you're eating the right way, Suzanne, good for you. Believe me, the benefits will be there. Probably your body has already responded with lots of benefits. Maybe you just haven't thought about it, or you're only looking at A1C. But I'm not dismissing your A1C, not even for a second. But I'm telling you, one thing for sure, one thing for sure, you and carbs don't get along.
Now, most people are like that. They just don't know it. But you and carbs don't get along. You know what, Suzanne? See this face? I don't get along with carbs either. Do I like carbs? I married an Italian. Okay? I remember the Bible verse, "Man shall not live by bread alone." I got to remind myself. Suzanne, thanks for the question.
Risa, I have heard removal of wisdom teeth can be unnecessary and lead to jaw issues. I'm wondering what your advice is. Well, Risa, look, it's really not my area so much of expertise, but there are certain studies, I've read them over the years, that tell you if your wisdom teeth ain't bothering you, leave them alone. Now, listen, I don't want to give dental advice. I'm not a dentist, but I think they're a little bit trigger happy when it comes to removing wisdom teeth. Is it really necessary? I'm not that convinced, okay? I'm not that convinced, but that's an individual thing with you and a dentist. But generally, I talk to dentists, dental friends that I've had over the years, and some of them were traditional, "Oh, wisdom teeth got to come out. Take them out. They're going to bother your jaw," blah, blah, blah. And then I've known others that said, "Nah, I leave them alone. If they're not bothering people, just leave them alone. We'll monitor it." Thanks for the question.
Carla, why does cancer spread so quickly once a person is open up for surgery? Why does that happen? Well, cancer hates oxygen. To some extent, you're giving it life. Now, look, you used to hear that a lot more than you do today as much, right? Like once you opened up. I remember, I'm talking 40 years ago, 50 years ago, cancer, you have surgery and it spreads like wildfire after, right? The process was oxygen, right? You're adding oxygen to fire and it spreads rapidly. Leave it alone. Well, look, today you see a surgery... I'm not against surgery. Okay? If you have something growing in the body and they can go in and take it out, I'm not against that. I'm not against that. But Carla, that's the reason behind it. Now, let me just remind everyone, because we're on the topic of cancer, here's what you can do and I'll remind you of that, lower growth hormones.
Don't feed the bears. Don't give cancer sugar bullets. Don't get cancer sugar. Cancer hates steak. Lower insulin, because it's a growth hormone, and lower estrogen, because it's a growth hormone, and lower cortisol, because it's pouring gasoline on the fire of cancer. Those are hot tips for cancer. The other one is make sure your vitamin D levels are high. Optimize vitamin D with cancer. Optimize vitamin D for everything, but cancer showing. You'll never hear it because there's no money in vitamin D. There's no money in Viderma. There's no money in the sun, and there's no money in supplements of vitamin D. There's no money in it. Nobody gets rich on vitamin D. Big pharma, they can't patent it, so they don't want to talk about it, vitamin D.
But they should because the research on it is overwhelming. If you have low levels of vitamin D, you're in deep do-do for everything and especially cancer. Thanks, Carla. Here's one, what causes dense breast tissue? Is it too much estrogen? Is it a concern for breast cancer? Well, look, dense tissue, some women, that's just the way they're built. They got dense breast tissue. But here's a couple of things, I just wrote an article for a magazine. Here's what I said for breast cancer. Breast cancer, estrogen. Every breast cell is receptive to estrogen. Don't kid yourself. Estrogen makes things grow, grow, grow. Lower your estrogen. Dim it out. Another thing, there's a document, oxalates give you dense breast tissue. Silly.
Your spinach. You're not a rabbit. Didn't say you couldn't have any, but it's not the superfood that you think it is. I don't know how many times I've said that. You have too much estrogen, lower it. Lower your insulin. Lower your estrogen, ladies. What are my thoughts, Rita, on kosher meats, and Frida, on kosher salts? Well, that's interesting. First time in a long time on question and answer I'm getting asked about kosher. Well, I like kosher salt. It's full of minerals. I like kosher meat. It's meat. Eggs, meat, and cheese. I got no problem with that at all. Louise, how do we protect the hippocampus? The hippocampus, your memory center, well, there's a lot of things you want to do.
One of the best things you can do, high DHA. Your brain's made up of DHA. Someone calls you fat head, take it as a compliment. The more fat you have in your brain, the better your brain operates. Don't go low fat. Go high fat, quality fat, animal fat. DHA is only found in the animal kingdom. I'm sorry. It's not in the plants. You got a precursor in the plants of omega-3. But to convert it to DHA and EPA, good luck with that. It's not going to happen. Your brain is made up of DHA. Why wouldn't you want to replace that? You want a good memory? DHA, DHA, and then lower your insulin. Why do you think they called Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes? Because diabetics, they're 60, 70% more likely to get dementia.
Sugar and the brain don't get along. They don't get along. Your brain will take sugar if you insist on eating it, but they don't get along. Your brain doesn't thrive with sugar. Sugar saturates the hippocampus. It kills memory center. High DHA your diet. Lower your stress. Stress sends inflammation on steroids, which can damage your blood vessels in your brain, small vessels. Louise, thanks for the question. Susan, I better get going here. I've been talking too much. Should sunflower lecithin be avoided? Well, look, I like lecithin. It's a phospholipid. I like it. Eat it. I'm not big on taking a supplement of it. Eggs, meat, cheese. Why do you got to have sunflower seeds? You're not a squirrel or a chipmunk.
Anyway, okay, thanks, Susan, for your question. I want you to eat your lecithin. I want you to eat it. I have a derivative of it in my Enhance for brain, the short-term memory product that we formulated, a new tropic, they call it. New meaning brain tropic. Nancy, I've heard Dr. Martin talk about nuts. He would prefer us not to eat them. Well, I didn't really say that. Okay? Let me reiterate what I mean. I have recently read that two Brazil nuts will help us with thyroid. Yeah. What I'm really against nuts and seed... I like flaxseed, by the way. You know that. I'm a big guy on flaxseed, because the lignans and blocking estrogen. I'm big on blocking estrogen.
But what I tell women is don't marry nuts and seeds if you want to lose weight, because that's how chipmunks and squirrels, they survived the winter by living on those things. They put them away so they can get fat in the winter. Don't snack on them. That's when you're usually eating nuts and seeds. True or false. You're not eating nuts and seeds at a meal. You're usually eating them, tell me if I'm wrong, in between meals. I go to people, "Why are you doing that? Why are you snacking in the first place?" Now, every once in a while you want to have some Brazil nuts or whatever. Hey, I will not make a federal case out of it. But generally, eh, why are you eating those things?
I always ask people why. Well, I hear they're good for me. Well, yeah, but meats better for you than a nut. Eggs are better than nuts. And like I said, I like flaxseeds. If you're going to have seeds, have flaxseeds. Put them in Dr. Martin's Perfect Smoothie. There you go. Francis, is cottage cheese a good source of potassium? Yeah, pretty good. If you eat right, you don't have to take extra potassium. You can take a good Himalayan salt, you get some potassium. Avocados have got good potassium. Cottage cheese, yep. Eggs, meat, and cheese have good potassium. They really do. Add salt, a good Himalaya or kosher salt. That'll give you a potassium. Francis, thanks for the question.
Okay, a couple of more. Regina, is green plantains considered a high carb food? Well, not a high carb food, but carbs nonetheless. What do I think about them? I don't particularly like the taste of them myself. You know me. If I don't like the taste of something, like I usually don't talk about it. It doesn't mean it's no good for you. Green plantains wouldn't be a high carb. It wouldn't be a high carb, but carb nonetheless mostly. Regina, yeah, definitely not on the recent. Deed, my daughter, 33 years old, is getting age spots and she has lupus. Well, there's a connection there. Lupus is autoimmune. Lupus, you're not getting in the sun usually, right? You got an allergy to the sun.
The leaky gut starts the lupus, I'm convinced of that, any autoimmune. But with age spots, it's inside out. Work on the inside. Get your sugars down. Get your insulin down. Get the glycation down and your skin will benefit from that. Get your gut fixed, your skin will benefit from that. Work skin inside out. I'm always big on that. Now, I love Rivera. You know that. I used Rivera every day on the outside of my skin, but the big thing is working inside of okay. Deed, thanks for the question. Okay, guys, great question and answer Friday. See you next week. We love you, guys. Talk to you soon.
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!