Transcript Of Today's Episode
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Hello, I'm Dr. Martin, Jr.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: I'm Dr. Martin, Sr.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: This is The Doctor Is In Podcast. This is episode 137. Now, we [00:00:30] moved our recording studio outside today. We've been getting some fantastic weather and we figured we would take advantage of it ...
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Getting some Vitamin D.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Getting some Vitamin D. We actually had to move into the shade though because it's pretty hot out. If you hear any background noises, that's what that is. We're recording this outside. We left the studio and we brought the studio outside. Today, we want to talk about really the concept of inflammation, but specifically inflammation [00:01:00] in the brain. Now, I think a lot of people get inflammation and swelling confused, first of all. You think of an ankle injury and the ankle just balloons up, it swells up, it gets really thick, and you look at it and you're saying, "That has swelling or inflammation. It looks swollen." When we talk about brain inflammation, we're not talking about the type that makes your brain look swollen, or red, or warm to the touch [00:01:30] in that sense.
We're talking about the inflammation that occurs at the microscopic level. What happens and what's interesting is you have these ... What they found is when the brain cells get inflamed, they release little ... They call them SOS signals; little, tiny SOS signals. Those are what they term "inflammatory cytokines". There are these little SOS signals that the cells send [00:02:00] out saying that they're in trouble, they're inflamed. It's these cytokines that kind of elicit a response from the body. That's where a lot of the problem comes from. Now, if you've listened to us in the past, you know that inflammation doesn't just-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Spontaneously occur.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah, it's not Houdini. Inflammation isn't Houdini. It doesn't just show up automatically. What they're finding out is that brain inflammation, [00:02:30] no matter how it's caused, and we could talk about a few of the things that cause brain inflammation. Brain inflammation, no matter how it's caused, leads to a whole bunch of problems. Now, what's sad, one way or the other, I just saw this not long ago, one in six North Americans take some form of psychiatric medication; one in six. That's a lot of people.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: That's a lot of people.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: It's millions, and millions, and millions of people.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Obviously, they're taking these [00:03:00] medications to try to manage all of these different conditions. What we're saying is, one of the key aspects of brain inflammation, which there's not even any doubt anymore that that's what's causing a lot of these issues. You have to look at food, you have to look at things from a natural standpoint. What we want to talk about today are some of the ways to cool off your brain, for a lack of better term.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Dr. Martin, Jr.: If you have inflammation [00:03:30] in your brain, we'll talk about some of the ways to cool that brain inflammation. Before we get into that, I think we should ... Something that we always do, we always talk cause and effect. Again, inflammation is kind of that end product, but we probably should again for those of us that are just joining us and they haven't listened to our previous podcasts, I think we should talk about some of the ways that inflammation starts to show up in the brain. You and I are big into cause and effect and that's something that we talk about. You can go back [00:04:00] and listen to an episode that we did a while ago on brain inflammation specifically, but really quickly, we can kind of summarize some of the ways that inflammation may show up in the brain.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Well, listen, let me just say one more thing about that statistic that you brought out, that one out of six people in North America are on some kind of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication, right? If the cause is inflammation, well, what causes inflammation? [00:04:30] One, let's talk food. Well, what causes inflammation in food? High circulating insulin foods.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah, real refined carbohydrates.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah, refined carbohydrates. Go in the middle aisles of the grocery stores. Usually what the food industry does is they load up foods with sugars and highly processed vegetable oils. That's a big issue because we're-
Dr. Martin, Jr.: That's a massive issue.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: When you're looking at your ratios, you know, we always talk [00:05:00] about getting a good ratio of your fats.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Well, let's talk about that then, because that's a big, big thing in brain. I'm convinced of that. For those that are listening, you should have a, what they call a one-to-one ratio, of Omega-3's to Omega-6's. It was like that for a long period of time. What's happened with a lot of these processed foods, well pretty much all processed foods, are made with vegetable oils. Now, vegetable oils-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: It sounds good, [00:05:30] right? Oh, vegetable, that must be good.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Well, very smart marketing.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Call something a vegetable oil and it comes across as very healthy. But, these vegetable oils are made up of Omega-6's and what's happening is our consumption of Omega-6 fatty acids has increased drastically, while our consumption of Omega-3 fatty acids have decreased.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: What is it they say, 17, 20?
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Some are saying as high as 20. I've seen 27 [00:06:00] to 1.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: I've seen anywhere between 17 to 20 to 1. What that means is the average person is consuming, let's just say, 18 grams of Omega-6's for every one gram of Omega-3's. That creates a whole bunch of problems. I strongly believe that that is a major reason why we have such a drastic increase in autoimmune disorders. We're going to a podcast coming up on autoimmune disorders because we [00:06:30] get a lot of questions on that. That's a major cause of autoimmune disorders because what happens, if you think about it, well, Omega-6's, especially vegetable oils, are highly inflammatory and they irritate and destroy the gut lining. It increases the person's leaky gut or the amount of junk that flows from the gut into their blood stream.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Especially yeast.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: That causes an inflammatory process and it actually causes [00:07:00] the body to turn on itself, which creates these autoimmune disorders. But, when it comes to the brain, high consumptions of vegetable oils absolutely leads to brain inflammation. There's no question. That's a major cause of brain inflammation. Now, are Omega-6's responsible for the increase in the amount of people with depression and anxiety today? It definitely plays a part.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: For sure.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: It definitely plays a part, right? [00:07:30] You mentioned that. That's a massive reason why ...
Dr. Martin, Sr.: And then sugar, right?
Dr. Martin, Jr.: That's another one. Let's talk about sugar, then.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Sugar, of course, is so toxic. We talk about it all the time. Your body does everything in the universe, it throws everything at sugar to get it out of your bloodstream. If you're consuming, like most Canadians, 180, 200 pounds of sugar a year, which is just average. It's amazing, [00:08:00] but that's what the average North American is putting in their body is that much sugar. You body does everything, everything, everything to get rid of it. Everything. Well, that causes a huge spike in your insulin because insulin is really the leading hormone to get rid of your sugars in your bloodstream.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: You have ... I always found this interesting. You have three hormones whose job it is to raise your blood sugar, and then you have one hormone whose job is to lower blood sugar. [00:08:30] That's how powerful insulin is. One of its purposes is to-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: It's the Hercules of getting ... Right? It's Samson of getting your sugars out of your bloodstream.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Well, and it makes sense because, I mean, you have different mechanisms or different hormones to raise blood sugar. The purpose ... The reason why your body would want to raise your blood sugar levels is that if you needed energy quickly, to flight or flight, to get away quickly or you needed a quick burst of energy, you have to bring that blood glucose up [00:09:00] so that you can burn it off as energy. That's what happens, right? You take it ... You have three hormones and then you spend a lot of you days dealing with people that have elevated cortisol.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah, big time.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: The primary function of cortisol is to raise your blood sugar levels. It brings up your blood sugar because stress hormone and under stress your body thinks it has to take off quickly, so one of the jobs of cortisol is to raise your blood sugar. Cortisol is a cyclical [00:09:30] hormone in the sense that cortisol levels are naturally highest in the morning and lowest at night time. The reason is that as you're getting ready to wake up, your body starts to release some cortisol and as a result, it brings your blood sugar up because you're going to need energy and stuff like that. Of course, the problem that you see with people is that their cortisol levels are high all day. I mean, think of the effect it has on their energy when their blood sugar levels are constantly up and down, up and down, up and down because cortisol raises your blood sugar and then you've got insulin that has to come [00:10:00] in and sweep it out of there.
If they're sitting at a desk and they're stressed, they don't need energy so their blood sugar levels are elevated and you can think of the effect, right? As you were mentioning, insulin comes in and, basically, insulin is a, for a lack of using a better term, it's a partitioning in a sense. It tells glucose to go to different places. I mean, if you don't burn off glucose for energy, you have to store it.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: You have to store it. Yep.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Glucose has to be used or stored. That's [00:10:30] it. You can't do anything else with it. It's like, are you going to use that glucose right now? No, okay, you've got to put it in the storage. You have three places where you can store glucose. You can store it in your muscles, you can store it in your liver, or you make more fat cells and you store it in your fat cells. That's it. What people don't realize is when you've got high circulating insulin, that's highly inflammatory. Inflammation in the brain causes all these symptoms, but high insulin can cause that [00:11:00] high inflammation. For a lot of people, that's actually what's going on.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yep.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Combine that, and here's the thing, combine high, crappy-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Vegetable oils.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: With sugary stuff and that's like a brain killer.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yep.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: That is an absolute brain-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: We should write a book about that called The Brain Killer.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Well, that would be-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Really, when you think of it, when you think of ... Like, talk about disaster in food is the high, sugary [00:11:30] foods and the vegetable oils.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah, because it's like a double whammy for inflammation, right?
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Then, throw in somebody who smokes, for example, throw in somebody who has another ... Or, they don't exercise. You were telling me about a study just before we-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: That just came out this week.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: I found it fascinating.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah. It talked about the stronger your legs are, right? The stronger your legs are, the less inflammation you have in your brain.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: That's a funny-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: [00:12:00] That's a funny ... I didn't look at the study, you've seen the study ... You wonder if that holds true for ... Now, your legs are your biggest muscles, right?
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Well, more storage, you would think. We just talked about, like you said, glucose has got to go some place, right? Glucose is going into your liver, it's going into making fat cells, or it's going into your muscle. You know, your muscles are limited.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah, you can hypothesize that, somebody that has strong, muscular legs has more space for storage, which makes them [00:12:30] more sensitive to insulin. They don't need as much to get the same job done, which probably would have a definite effect on their inflammation level so it makes it for an interesting-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah, you know, we talk about this a lot. A lot of skinny people are not healthy.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: No.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: You know, like people that are ... If you're listening to us and, "Oh, I've been tiny all my life." Well, good for you, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy. That doesn't mean you don't have inflammation.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: No, because a lot of skinny people don't have any muscle mass either, right? Now, on the flip side, [00:13:00] a lot of people that are obese, there's a real problem that's so common today, which a combination of obesity and sarcopenia. They're obese, yet they have muscle wasting so they're not ... It's not like they've got a lot of muscle and then fat on top of it, necessarily. They just ... It's a real problem, right? The more muscle mass ... But, I found that was an interesting study. No matter how you get to inflammation in the brain, once that inflammation's there, you're much more likely ... [00:13:30] I mean research has shown this, you're more likely to suffer from stuff like anxiety, depression, a whole bunch of mental disorders because of this brain inflammation.
What's frustrating is that's not the starting point for a lot of treatment for the brain. If inflammation is causing a lot of these issues, you would think that an approach to lower brain inflammation or cool the inflammation off in the brain, would be a no-brainer.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: A no-brainer.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: You would think [00:14:00] it would be a no-brainer.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: A no-brainer. But, you know, in functional medicine, we think that way. But, in traditional medicine, we don't want to be negative, they do wonderful things. But, in traditional medicine, they're looking at treating the symptoms, "You've got anxiety, you've got depression, and we're going to work on that." But, okay, what caused it? They don't look at that, right?
Dr. Martin, Jr.: No, that's-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Oh, go get some ... Go sit down with a counsellor or whatever. They're not against sitting down with a psychologist [00:14:30] or whatever. I'm not against that either, but at the end of the day, physiologically and all the ... Physically to look structurally, what's going on? It's amazing, when you change a person's diet, when you get ... How often do I see people that literally have anxiety big time, or depression, I always say anxiety leads to depression. Depression usually doesn't come on its own. It's anxiety. It leads [00:15:00] to depression. They're a two-sided coin. You get anxiety, depression, and anxiety can overtake depression in a way because you're so anxious. At the end of the day, it's still the same condition. It's inflammation of the brain. You have to fix that. What do you do? It's amazing the results we get.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Clean up a person's diet, get dousing that fire.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah, let's talk about that. Dousing the fire. We talked about earlier, obviously, [00:15:30] if you struggle with mental health issues, you want to avoid sugar. It may give you a temporary feeling of euphoria, it may make you feel better in the moment, but it's making things a lot worse in the back end. There's no question.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Oh yeah. Well, I'll give you a case study. I had a lady come in the end of last week, and suffered with anxiety and depression for years, years and years and years. [00:16:00] I saw her, this, I think, is my second or third time that I saw her. Like I said, the biggest thing that I convinced her to do was to trust me on her diet. I did a couple of other things, I gave her probiotics because she had leaky gut, which they always have. Her biggest thing was this mental health. She was just ... Had disabled her with chronic anxiety and depression, a few other things, but mainly it was [00:16:30] that.
Of course, that exhausts you, you have no energy, and they're bad eaters. Why are they bad eaters? Well, when you don't feel good, guess what you reach for? Comfort food, sugars, she was a carboholic, sugarholic, big time. Well, she cleaned it up. She trusted me enough. I said, "You've got to give me one month of changing your diet. If you don't nothing else," like her B12 was low and there were other things too. It really, really, really made a difference in terms of [00:17:00] her. Here she is, okay, so she's come in last week, and she was feeling like one thousand percent better. A thousand percent better because she had lowered her inflammation markers in her body. As a matter of fact, you know what I like about thermography at the office is that we look for inflammation. You lay it up like a Christmas tree.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah, that's a nice visual representation.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: It is. It really is and it shows you that often silent, like you said, it's not like [00:17:30] you broke your ankle and you've got inflammation and it's swelled up like a tomato, right? This is ... You can see it. You can see she had all these inflammation markers. They're all gone. It's almost 100 percent gone. Guess what's happened? She feels like a thousand percent better.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Yeah. I imagine her mental health is a lot better.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: It's like unbelievable. She said, "It's like my personality changed." When you see the affects of good eating, taking the odd ... The supplements that you need for your brain.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: [00:18:00] Let's talk about that. You mentioned cleaning up your eating, which in a lot of ways is reducing sugar, reducing crappy carbs. Obviously, reducing Omega-6 consumption, vegetable oil consumption. On the flip side, increasing Omega-3 consumption. Now, if you got a mental health or brain inflammation, the type of Omega-3 that we like is DHA, right?
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Big time.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Now, DHA is a type of Omega- [00:18:30] 3 fatty acid, but what makes DHA awesome for the brain is that it's the preferred source of fuel for the brain. The brain requires DHA to function properly. Our diets are so deficient in DHA nowadays that you have to almost supplement, unless you're eating a lot of fish all the time.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Or red meat, grass fed beef, right?
Dr. Martin, Jr.: You know, you want to supplement that with a DHA. We've got a video on our website [00:19:00] talking about one of the problems with that, which is a lot of them don't have enough DHA in it, but we love DHA. It's tremendous for the brain. Then, for brain, specifically inflammation, we're also big fans of curcumin. Especially, when you combine curcumin and DHA. There's good research showing-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Your email, you showed that, right? Such a ... They're so good together.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: They are. Well, curcumin is a fat-soluble nutrient [00:19:30] so it absorbs better with fat and DHA is a fat, obviously, it's an Omega-3 fatty acid. It's almost as if they were made to go together. Research is showing they target better, people get better results when you combine the two of them. For brain inflammation, we're big fans of DHA and curcumin. Of course, the problem with curcumin is, it's terribly ... It doesn't absorb well. The bioavailability of curcumin is very low. [00:20:00] Thankfully, there's ways to get more of it now. We have a form of curcumin that is highly absorbable.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah, bioavailable.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: We add bioprene, which is a type of black pepper extract to help increase the absorption. There's all these ways that you can help increase the absorption, but that's one of the issues with curcumin. You cut out sugar, you lower your vegetable oil consumption-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Cut out your crappy carbohydrates, that's what you'll do.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: That's what you'll do. You're right, just by cutting out all those crappy carbohydrates, because [00:20:30] those crappy carbohydrates have vegetable oils in them.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: That's how they make them.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: Those processed stuff, right? Get rid of that stuff. Then, obviously, another often overlooked way to lower inflammation in the brain is resistant exercises, high intensity interval training are fantastic ways to lower brain inflammation. You've mentioned the correlation between strong legs and the effect that ... We talked about a study a while ago, strong muscles, strong brain. [00:21:00] There's a correlation there. Again, another way to lower inflammation in the brain is you want to be lifting weights, you want to be doing high intensity interval training. That's a good-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: High DHA.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: High DHA, curcumin. Now, let's kind of end this episode off because one of the things, when it comes to anxiety, I mean a lot of our people that reach out to us, they've got a lot of anxiety. That's a major problem. We created this [00:21:30] product, this formula called Cortisol Control. I'll tell you this, we've gotten so many emails over the last couple of years when the product came out of people telling us how much better their anxiety has gotten and how much better they feel. What we did is we now put a lot of these reviews on our website. We just started collecting them now. It's too bad in a sense because we have so many emails. If you go look at our Cortisol [00:22:00] Control and read the reviews of the people that are getting just amazing results.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: You're just scratching the surface.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: For anxiety. Again, you think about it, cortisol can cause anxiety in so many different ways, right? In so many different ways it can cause anxiety. We're just ... I was reading some of the reviews again on the weekend ... Well, you were here, we were doing some filming, and it just blows my mind. I just love reading-
Dr. Martin, Sr.: You get that feedback, right?
Dr. Martin, Jr.: I just ... It's nice to hear from all [00:22:30] these people that are just doing so much better. Again, if you're listening and you have ... You've got anxiety, then I would encourage you to look at the effect that cortisol has on anxiety and something like a Cortisol Control, which helps naturally lower cortisol levels. Anyways, we want to thank you for listening to this episode because we get a lot of questions on brain health.
Dr. Martin, Sr.: Yeah.
Dr. Martin, Jr.: It seems to be picking up, as well. It seems like more and more people are asking us about mental health issues. We're getting a lot of good results with people with mental health. [00:23:00] It's because we attack inflammation, and then we not only attack inflammation, we attack the cause of inflammation, which is why I think you get such good results in the clinic and we hear so many good results from people all across the world, really. If you have any questions, you can email us at info@martinclinic.com. You can also, we have live chat on our website, you can go on there. You can chat with our staff. They know their stuff. They're very knowledgeable and they ask us if they don't know, and stuff like that.
You can [00:23:30] also join you every Thursday morning for a Facebook Live. We get a lot of questions that way. It's a great way to ask you questions. And, if you're not a newsletter subscriber, then I would encourage you to go to our website and sign up for our newsletters. We talk about a lot of studies, we break down a lot of stuff, and we answer a lot of people's questions in the emails as well. Again, we want to thank you for listening and have a great day.