Transcript Of Today's Podcast
Dr. Martin Jr.: Hello, I'm Dr. Martin Jr.
Dr. Martin Sr.: And I'm Dr. Martin Sr.
Dr. Martin Jr.: And this is The Doctor Is In podcast. This is episode 133. Today we want to talk about [00:00:30] something that we had talked about a few years ago on a presentation that we did. It's something that you and I had talked quite a bit about before that. The name of the presentation was titled, "The Road From Health to Disease".
Essentially, we've kind of found four specific or distinct stages that happen as a person goes from being healthy to being diseased. Of course, the premise that you and I use for a lot of things [00:01:00] is the idea that you don't go to bed healthy tonight and wake up with a disease tomorrow. You used the analogy of breast cancer, for example, to show that. So maybe you want to ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: Well you know, in breast cancer, for example, by the time they'll say ... Traditional medicine will say have a mammogram and do self-examination, and listen, I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that. What I am saying is by the time you detect something that you could actually feel, [00:01:30] ladies, in your breast tissue, that cancer ... You know, they get a biopsy done and they say, "Oh by the way, you got cancer." That cancer has been there for at least five years, probably 10.
Because if you look at a pen, and you just look at the tip of a ballpoint pen, I mean you know how small that is. For cancer to grow to that size in breast tissue or in prostate or whatever, takes five [00:02:00] years. For the tip of a ballpoint pen. You and I are big-time into prevention of disease. I think, folks, this podcast you will find fascinating as we talk about how you go from healthy ... So if you woke up, for example, and this week you felt fairly good. Next week, felt a little lump in your breast tissue, whatever, you go get a [00:02:30] biopsy and the doc calls you back. When a doctor calls you back, it's always bad news.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, especially in Canada. It's never ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: You know what I mean? Yeah, calling you back's never good. "Hey, we want to see you in the office." Then you know it's bad. Then they come to say, "Well, you got cancer." Well, you think, "Well, geez, a month ago I didn't have cancer." Yes, you did. Right? You had cancer a long time ago. You just didn't realize it because you weren't aware of the clues that your body was giving you.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Now that's one of my kind of pet peeves a little bit. [00:03:00] You kind of hit on it just a few minutes ago. Just the way that our system is set up. I understand. I'm not going to criticize the system that we're in in any way. We've got a lot of benefits to our system. But one of the frustrating things is that a lot of times people will go for these tests. The doctors or nurse will say, "Well, you'll hear from us if there's a problem." Most of the time, because there's no problem, you don't hear from them.
I kind of like the old-fashioned, "Hey, let's go through your results." They don't do that anymore in a sense. They don't go through and say, "Well these [00:03:30] kind of numbers are a little bit high, or these are a little ..." That's not how it works anymore. It's just like that's how it works. But anyways, that's just one of my pet peeves.
Now we should probably start off by saying that it's actually a really good thing that you don't go to bed tonight and wake up with a disease tomorrow. I mean, that'd be a disaster. Right? If you picked up a disease in a matter of going to bed at night time or in a matter of a day where you went from being completely healthy to disease within 24 hours, that'd be a bad thing. I mean, that'd be terrible.
Because [00:04:00] you don't go to bed healthy today and wake up diseased tomorrow ... Like, for example, a person ... And this is an analogy that we use also. A person can go to their doctor, go to their doctor, go to their doctor. Then all of a sudden the doctor says, "I had your blood tested. You're now a diabetic." Well, right before that diagnosis, like two weeks before that, they were still diabetic. Now the numbers might not have been such that they were technically diabetic, but the body was giving them a lot of clues that they were going to be diabetic pretty short ... Like [00:04:30] officially diagnosed as diabetes.
That's what we're talking about. You don't go to bed healthy, wake up diseased tomorrow. The body will give you clues all along that journey. So as you go from health to disease, the body will give you clues. Depending on the stage that you're in, your body will give you different clues. That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about ... This is just kind of something that we observed by going through [00:05:00] a lot of patient visits, a lot of stuff over the years. We've kind of broken this down into four steps from healthy to disease. That's what we'll talk about on today's episode.
One of the things that you mention as well, we talk a lot about prevention. We talk a lot about prevention. But let's be honest, for a lot of people, prevention is boring. You and I know this. We wrote a book on cancer, specifically are you built for cancer? The book did well, [00:05:30] but we always found that people are not really interested in talking about cancer ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: Unless they have it.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Until they get it. Right? Because we're kind of immune today. I showed a study a while ago in a newsletter that we did where pretty much everything causes cancer because there's so many factors. So the word cancer is used a lot today so we kind of tune it out when it comes to preventing. You know, "Do this to prevent cancer." A lot of us tune it out. That's normal. That word's used a ton. There's so much health information out there.
[00:06:00] But all of a sudden, if we get cancer or we're worried about cancer or some kind of symptoms we're getting, then our search history in Google is full of cancer searches. Then we're interested. Then we want to talk prevention.
So the stuff we're going to talk about today is kind of way before that, but we'll go through all the different steps along the way. So let's talk about that. Now obviously, the first step is health. You know, we wrote a blog about this a while ago, is what is the true definition of health? Because it's actually an interesting ... [00:06:30] It makes for an interesting discussion because depending on who you ask, you're going to get a whole bunch of different types of answers.
You think it's an easy thing to define health? What does it mean to be healthy? It's not an easy thing. For example, a lot of doctors will define health really as the absence of disease or symptoms. So if you don't have any symptoms or you don't have any disease, you're healthy. Even though, as you mentioned, things could take a long time to develop but it doesn't mean that the person's healthy. They may have biomarkers that are screaming that [00:07:00] there's a problem coming, but the blood testing or the symptoms they're getting just doesn't really mean anything. So they're healthy. So that's one of the problems with healthy.
Then you talk to, for example, talk to a fitness industry professional. They can't imagine somebody being healthy if they don't have abs.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Perfect body, right?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah. Then you and I know that that's ... how many people do you see that are in that industry that aren't healthy at all? They've got no energy, they're not sleeping, [00:07:30] I mean all those kind of things. So it's a difficult thing to define, "what does it mean to be healthy?" However, there's a few things that we think have to be included in the definition of health that you and I have kind of talked about, because we've kind of talked about this a little bit. If you were to define what a healthy person is, what is it?
Aside from the lack of symptoms, a healthy person has very good energy.
Dr. Martin Sr.: They should.
Dr. Martin Jr.: They should have, right? I mean, I always kind of give you as an example. You're [00:08:00] in your mid-60s and you have great energy
Dr. Martin Sr.: How did you know that?
Dr. Martin Jr.: Because I play sports with you. You have good energy. Energy's never been your thing. You sleep well.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I'm a big baby if I don't.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, but again, the more research that's being done on sleeping and the circadian rhythm, a healthy person has good energy, a healthy person sleeps, and they feel restful when they wake up. That's a sign of good sleep.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Have a good digestive track.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Have a good digestion [00:08:30] system. So we can go on talking about ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: But energy is a real key, isn't it? The first question ... When I go in, without even looking at their charts, when I see my patients, first thing that I ask them, "I'm 10 out of 10 energy." I point to them and say, "Okay, what are you? Give me a subjective number, where are you at?" It's amazing. I mean, there's a few people that come in because they're coming in strictly to see where they're at, but the [00:09:00] vast majority of the people that I see, even though they haven't been diagnosed with any kind of disease at all, for a lot of them the clue is, "You know what, Doc? I'm exhausted." Or, "I'm five out of 10." Or, "I'm two out of 10."
Dr. Martin Jr.: That brings us to kind of that first second step. So the first step is a person is healthy. The second step, or the second stage is what we call, "Well-being is threatened." This is where, as you mentioned, they start [00:09:30] to notice their energy's not what is used to be. They notice they're gaining weight or they're losing weight. Usually they'll be gaining weight, because their hormones are starting to tell them that something's going on. This is when they start to not sleep as well or their brain, not quite as sharp. This is really the subjective stage, meaning nothing will show up in any standardized blood testing yet, but the person doesn't feel well.
This is a frustrating stage for people because they go to their doctor, and [00:10:00] they can't find anything. They run all these tests and the numbers are good. So the doctor pats them on the back. Says, "Hey man, everything's good." Yet the person doesn't feel good. They feel tired, they're not sleeping well. So it's a frustrating stage, right?
Dr. Martin Sr.: And that's where ... I mean, when you look back at how you and I have developed the Martin Clinic in the sense that the biomarkers have come out. This is where we're ... Stage two really is where we like ... Look, we can get you at stage one even better, [00:10:30] where you're actually feeling really good, no symptoms and energy is good. But generally our biomarkers were made for this stage. Stage two, nothing shows up generally in the traditional testing.
Dr. Martin Jr.: It's kind of early on in the stage. You're not diseased, but you're heading down that path. That's kind of how we built our biomarker testing, to kind of look at things that we think are very important, that give us a [00:11:00] good heads up that something's off. What I like is this. If your energy's low, if you're not feeling well, like you're energy's not what it used to be, and yet your blood tests are normal, our biomarker system will pick something up. There's something off somewhere. I mean, that's the thing, but the stage two is kind of that stage that a lot of people are like, "I just don't feel like I used to feel. Something's off." That's kind of stage two.
Stage three is now [00:11:30] what we call, "Diagnosable symptoms". So what do we mean by that? A person is in stage three when all of a sudden, now they got a diagnosable symptom. For example, hey you've got high blood pressure. Your blood pressure's high. That's a diagnosable symptom. That's an indication that things are going in the wrong direction.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, your body's screaming at you.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah. This is kind of another analogy that you and I like to use. Stage one is like whatever you like to hear music wise, it's like humming perfectly. [00:12:00] I was going to say opera, but I don't like the opera myself, so it would not be something that would soothe me. But imagine stage one is just kind of like everything's going well. Stage two, the music's getting a little louder. Stage three is when it's screaming at you. Stage four, they stop playing. But we'll get to that. So stage three, that's what we mean by diagnosable symptoms.
So for example, high blood pressure. People in stage three have high blood pressure, or they could have hormone that's off. [00:12:30] A lot of people in stage three have hormonal issues. They go get tested and the hormones are off. Now what's interesting is that even though they get on the medication, it usually doesn't fix the problem because there's something else going on by this point. Because stage three is stage three, it's not stage two. There's something else going on there.
So like high blood pressure, this is when their blood sugars might be starting to get high, or they may have high insulin, or they may be starting to ... Think of all the things that can show up here. But that's what's going on in stage three. They have diagnosable symptoms. Usually [00:13:00] in somebody in stage three is when they start taking medications. This is when their doc says, "You know, you got high cholesterol ...", which again, don't get us started on high cholesterol. But you got high cholesterol or you got high blood pressure, you better get on this blood pressure medication. Or your thyroid's off, you better take this Synthroid.
Dr. Martin Sr.: You got acid reflux ...
Dr. Martin Jr.: Well, that's another one, exactly.
Dr. Martin Sr.: That's a big one. The body's screaming at you. We could spend a whole time doing one on acid reflux, because we see so much of that.
Dr. Martin Jr.: That's the thing, right? So let's use the example of high blood pressure [00:13:30] and why it's stage three, not stage two. Well, as a person goes from health and they start to not feel as well, they don't start with blood pressure. High blood pressure takes a while to develop, consistent. I mean, everybody's pressure might go up if they're under a stressful situation. But I'm saying like chronically, diagnosable, high blood pressure.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, if you have hypertension ...
Dr. Martin Jr.: Yeah, and that is ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: That didn't come overnight.
Dr. Martin Jr.: No, that's right. We've done this before, but if you were to reverse engineer high blood pressure, high blood pressure is symptom [00:14:00] of high circulating insulin.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Absolutely. It's part of the metabolic syndrome.
Dr. Martin Jr.: In 99% of the people, high blood pressure's an indication they've got high circulating insulin. So high blood pressure is a diagnosable symptom indicating something that's happened beforehand in stage two. That's the thing. So if you were to look at the stages from a biochemistry standpoint, is in stage two is when things like insulin starts to elevate. Cortisol starts to elevate.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Inflammation.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Inflammation starts [00:14:30] to get higher.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Free radical damage.
Dr. Martin Jr.: And those are all things that we check in our biomarker stuff, because it's like ooh, they're starting to get elevated.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Your leaky gut ...
Dr. Martin Jr.: Exactly, and if you leave those things going for a long time, then you end up with a diagnosable symptom. You leave your insulin high for a long time, you may get high blood pressure. Somebody else may get a different symptom altogether, but that's what ends up happening. So that's stage three.
Now somewhere between stage three and stage four is what we call the "Now or Never Zone". You go from not having a disease to [00:15:00] all of a sudden, you get something tested and they're like, "Man, you've got Type 2 Diabetes", or you have now heart disease, or you have ... You have a disease of some kind. That takes place after ... Again. It's a process that occurs.
The reason why the stages is important to understand is because how you approach a condition varies on the stage that they're in. Somebody who's in stage four, which is disease, has to be a lot more serious about how they approach things. Their eating, [00:15:30] they can't cheat the same way somebody can in stage two. There's certain things that you recommend or people recommend that they have to do. They're diseased.
Stage three, you can be a little bit ... It's not free, but you have less restrictions. Or you have less ... Stage two, it's ideal to catch things. People move in and out of stage one and two throughout their lives. Stage two is where you want to catch everything. Then it's easier. Just a few corrections, it's [00:16:00] not life-altering, necessarily. You can go in there, make a few changes, and that's kind of where you live in a sense. You like to live in stage two because you can pick things up so long before they start, and that's your strength.
When we talk a lot about prevention, we talk a lot of times with people in stage two. They're already starting to feel off a little bit. In a perfect world, everybody's in stage one, they're feeling good and they get checked out, and they want to stay that way. If there's anything deficient, they fix [00:16:30] it before it even turns into a stage two problem. But that's from a big picture point-of-view, how we look at the progression from health to disease.
Then we kind of slot people in on that scale. Where are they on that scale? They may have some things that are in stage three, but some things in stage two, because the body is ... They may have, for example, high blood pressure from high circulating insulin, but they're also starting to develop some other things as a result of [00:17:00] the domino effect from that.
Dr. Martin Sr.: The thing is, too, when you're ... I always say when you're at stage three, generally ... Sometimes I'll tell a patient in stage two, but generally it's stage three. Now your body's screaming at you. I tell them at that stage. I say, "Listen, you're on the Titanic. You're heading towards an iceberg. You better turn the ship around." Like you said, if you're in stage four, we [00:17:30] are very strict. I mean, if you want to reverse this thing, you gotta really ... There's no cheating, and you gotta follow exactly what we do. But if you're in stage three, it's a real warning to people. Like, you know what? You're heading for disaster, but you haven't hit that iceberg yet. Turn the ship around. This is where it's amazing, your body, what it can do if you give it the tools.
The reason we do the podcast, [00:18:00] the reason that we do the emails, the reason we do Facebook ... I always tell people, we have a vested interest in people. We try and educate people so that they can make choices. We educate so that they can understand, "Look, you don't have to be a rocket scientist. You don't have to be biochemist. We got that part figured out. But what we want you to do is understand where you're at, where your body's at." Now [00:18:30] you know.
What charges my batteries, especially ... And I get this every day. People that come in for their follow up visit, first follow up or maybe second follow up. You know what, I'm giving them a high-five because they realize where they were at and they went and they complied. They just said, "You know what, Doc? I bought it. I understood what you were telling me."
I had a guy this week, just to give you a little illustration. He came [00:19:00] in and I said, "Look, you are diabetic. You got sugar in your urine." "Oh, my doctor said I'm not." I said, "Look, you are and you have been for a long time. You have to get rid of the carbs in your life." "You mean I gotta stop drinking Pepsi?" I said, "Yeah, you gotta stop drinking Pepsi. You are an inch away from disaster in your body." Well, you know what? I didn't see him now for six weeks. [00:19:30] So then he comes back, so this is the second time. He said, "Doc, you scared the life out of me." I said, "I did? I meant to." He said, "But you know what? You changed my life."
Because he went home, he sat down and he realize that he was just fooling himself. Now he just took it seriously. He changed his diet. It was amazing. He couldn't believe just how much better he felt. [00:20:00] But you see, for us, he understood. He bought it. He understood like it [inaudible 00:20:07], folks. Listen, the reason we do what we do is because we're passionate because the responsibility for changing is you. It's not us. We coach, we tell you, we love the background stuff.
Dr. Martin Jr.: We're not going home with them.
Dr. Martin Sr.: We can't go home with them!
Dr. Martin Jr.: Now some people have asked if you can come home with them and just make sure that everything they're doing [00:20:30] is good.
Dr. Martin Sr.: But you know what, this is why we're here. Is there any clinic anywhere ... And I don't want to just toot our horn. But the reason we set up the Martin Clinic the way we do is that we want people to ... Well, first of all, communicate with us. I always tell my ... "Look, you got any questions, you get back. We have people, our staff are trained, we're trained. We want to be able to give you answers to your questions because we want you to invest. Your investment [00:21:00] is time, it's energy. You invest in your health and your body will give you the dividends of that investment.
Dr. Martin Jr.: Well, and the return on investment is there. If they invest in their health, the return on investment is usually immediate. Once you start to see a difference, it makes it that much easier to continue to do it. Listen, as you mentioned, the fuel that we get from people telling us how well they're doing and how good they feel, [00:21:30] that's our gasoline. That fuels us when we get that. So we get a lot of testimonials and we love it. We read them. We keep them all in a folder. We like to have that kind of stuff, and our staff likes to hear that stuff as well. They're always coming in and letting us know, "Oh, so and so, they went and saw their doctor. They're not diabetic anymore."
But anyways, I hope this episode helped kind of take a step back and kind of look at the progress that happens from healthy to disease. Then also understand, if you can understand [00:22:00] this that your body's going to give you clues all the way through. Very rarely does somebody say, "I had no idea something was wrong." That does happen, but if they were to sit back and look, they'd say, "You know, my energy had been dipping."
Dr. Martin Sr.: Yeah, "I was under a lot of stress." Just to give you an example, when we get patients come in and they fill out a questionnaire ... Because sometimes they go, "Doc, you asked me a lot of questions there." I said, "Well listen, you got inside information, but I'll tell you something. We're cause and [00:22:30] effect." We always use that example, right? If you got this, it's amazing that you can go back ...
Again, I'll give you an example of a lady I had in my office today. First time I'd seen her. She got breast cancer about five years ago. She was one that sort of took pretty good care of herself. She looked like somebody that meant business when it comes to taking care of herself. She said, "Doc, I was shocked when I got cancer."
I said, "Can I ask you a little [00:23:00] bit of history? Were you under a lot of stress maybe a year or two before that diagnosis?" "Oh yeah." you know what I mean? She said, "Oh man." Well you know what this lady did? She had lost her husband suddenly. Just almost died on the spot. Can you imagine? She was young, they had kids, and blah, blah, blah.
Dr. Martin Jr.: And stress kills.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Guess what? A few years later, breast cancer. You think that came out of nowhere?
Dr. Martin Jr.: You think of [00:23:30] the study that was done showing that high stress, the effect it has on your microbiome. So think of the first change in a lot of diseases is leaky gut. We talked about that in our book a long time ago. So think of a high stress, not even the effect it has on your hormonal system, the effect it has on your blood sugar levels, and the effect it has on insulin. Because cortisol raises blood sugar. So stress raises your blood sugar, so you got to secrete insulin to lower it and keep it normal. It raises insulin. Breast cancer is a highly incident [00:24:00] sensitive ...
Dr. Martin Sr.: And estrogen ...
Dr. Martin Jr.: And estrogen sensitive, which again, there's a relationship there with insulin.
Dr. Martin Sr.: The relationship is unreal.
Dr. Martin Jr.: That's exactly our point, that there's a cause and effect. Things just don't happen by accident in a lot of ways, when it comes to chronic health. So again, we trust that you got some good information from the episode. If you have any questions, you can email us at info@martinclinic.com. If you're not a newsletter subscriber, go to our website MartinCLinic.com and sign up for our newsletter as we go through a [00:24:30] lot of studies. We break them down and we kind of try to make them as practical as possible.
Also, you do a live Facebook every Thursday morning.
Dr. Martin Sr.: Thursday morning at 8:30.
Dr. Martin Jr.: A lot of people ask you a ton of questions. You'll answer whatever question they ask you then. So there's a lot of ways that you can get your questions answered. As I mentioned, if you're not a newsletter subscriber, that's a great way to interact with us. We've also got Live Chat on our website. Our staff's very good at watching that and they're on there. So there's lot of ways to get your questions answered.
So again, we want to thank you for listening [00:25:00] and have a great day.