1890. Q&A with Dr. Martin

Dr. Martin answers questions sent in by our listeners in today's 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 morning, everyone. Once again, welcome to another live this morning and hope you're having a wonderful start to your day. And we appreciate you guys coming on. Okay, let's get going.

We got lots of questions. Marion is asking about a herb called What do I know about it? Well, it's supposed to break up kidney stone. And look, I've had some experience with it.

I mean, patient wise that people have tried it with some mixed results. I don't think it's a cure all for kidney stones. Okay, let me give you a little bit of background on kidney stones. You got two types.

You got oxalates, oxalates, which make up about 75% of kidney stones. And then you have uric acid stones. And because chanca piedra is like an alkaline substance, it would probably be better for the uric acid stone because they're acidic. Okay.

Now, again, I have limited results of people over the years coming back some positive, some negative. So like I said, I don't think it's a be all and end all. You want to avoid kidney stones. One of the biggest factors in kidney stones over the years I've found dehydration, you're drinking but you're not drinking enough water, water like you folks in Niagara Falls know what I'm talking about.

Right? Because that water is going over the falls 24 hours a day. That's your kidneys guy. You've got to flush out.

Now, one of the biggest things in uric acid stones is fructose, especially when you're drinking fructose can create elevate uric acid levels and create uric acid stones 25%. The other ones are oxalates, spinach, almonds, a lot of people they eat the wrong foods. Now it's not the only reason for stones, but it is a reason.

Okay, so you want to try this supplement. If you're getting recurring stones, and you want to try Chanka, I don't even know if that's how you pronounce it. Chanka Piedra. I've read a little bit of research on it.

In the past. I haven't even heard about it for a while, to be honest with you. And I had patients try it when they were patients in my office. And of course, I got feedback and I had a radio show for years.

And there were a few times people called in asking me about it. I got no problem with it. If you want to try it. I just don't know how successful it really is because there's not a lot of studies on it.

Okay, so anyway, I got no issue with you want to try it, try it. Melissa snoring. And she's saying she doesn't have sleep apnea. She's been checked out.

I'm not saying that snoring and sleep apnea are the same thing. Okay. But they can be coming from fatty tongue. Because when you get sleep apnea, almost invariably, you got insulin resistance.

And you can have trouble with insulin resistance and not be diabetic. But you're on the road to diabetes. Insulin resistance is you're getting on the Titanic. You're on the voyage.

You might not have hit the iceberg yet. But your insulin is bothering you. Insulin is a growth hormone that makes the tongue swell. So even in snoring, not always, but even in snoring, losing weight, doing the reset, people have been helped by that.

Now, a lot of times you get snoring because you've got sinuses used. And your sinuses are blocked up. You want to drain that. You might have a fungus sitting inside the sinuses and breathing through your mouth and not your nose.

I bet people, they tried this apparently. They taped their mouth shut. I don't know if I can do that. But I'm not a mouth breather.

I'm a nose breather. Anyway, try those things. That was Melissa Beverly. If I drink eight ounces of electrolytes in water, cannot qualify as the same drink as water.

Yes. If you're putting electrolytes in the drink. Now, don't take any ones that got any sugar in it or whatever. I like electrolytes.

When you put Himalayan salt or whatever in your water, you're getting electrolytes. You're getting about 84 different minerals in there. It's mineralized water. And let me just do this on fasting again.

Because people, they get into the weeds when it comes with fasting. I can't take any supplements in the morning with my coffee because I'm fasting. I don't buy that. You're still fasting.

As a matter of fact, I almost called a book I wrote years ago, Fasting Without Fasting. Okay. Fasting Without Fasting. And here's what I meant by it.

Okay. The biggest thing that you're aiming for, or it should be in fasting, is having a no insulin response. So when you don't eat, you don't need insulin. But if you eat the right things, you don't need a lot of insulin.

Okay. So I understand about intermittent fasting. I like it. I really do.

I like the fact that we eat in windows. So if you stop eating at six o'clock at night, and you don't eat till six o'clock the next morning, which is for most people pretty easy to do, well, you've got 12 hours. And what they call intermittent fasting is when you really get into 14 hours. So if you don't eat till eight o'clock in the morning, now you're at 14.

If you can wait till you're 10 o'clock in the morning, you're at 60. Right? You don't eat till noon. You're at 18 hours fasting.

Okay. Now, out of that, you have to understand that insulin, you eat at six. Well, your insulin, you're secreting, and it's going to work for another couple of hours. And another reason people like the fasting at night, and I'm a big guy proponent on not eating at night.

Okay. Because for a couple of reasons, you got to let your body rest and digest even before you go to bed. Okay. So that once you're going to bed and you're going to sleep, your digestion is already done.

You've broken down all your food. And that's been done while you're awake. A lot of people, the problem is they eat later and they're still in the active stage of digestion. And the body's manufacturing plant is going full tilt and you're trying to get to sleep.

And I really think not eating at night is one of the best benefits of your body. You want to get into the rest and digest. Okay. And insulin, remember I'm big on insulin.

And if you can do intermittent fasting, insulin is put on the sidelines. I love that. It's good for you. Okay.

It's good for you. Okay. But you're not breaking your fast if you have electrolytes. Okay.

You're just not. And like I said, I get people like, don't get into the weeds so much. Get the big picture. Anyway, Sarah's asking a question.

Am I familiar with ME-CFS? ME used to be called chronic fatigue syndrome until they called it what, myalgia encephalitis? I don't know what they named it. Sarah, I wrote this book years ago.

It came from my thesis from which I did my PhD in nutrition. You know what it was on? Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Let me show you a picture of me.

That's how old this book is. Okay. Yeah. And in that book, I talked about something that no one else, I believe at the time, was talking about.

And that was people who had ME, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, had adrenal gland exhaustion. One of the main factors was cortisol, the stress hormone. Because at the time, the world out there was saying, oh, it's the yuppie flu. No, it's not.

It's the yuppie flu. No, it wasn't. It's Epstein-Barr. No, it wasn't.

It was a virus. No, it wasn't. I mean, it might have been a bug, but 50% of people that were diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome had no indication of the Epstein-Barr virus. So it couldn't have been that.

But what they had in common is they were the canaries in the coal mine. And there was an epidemic of it. And we're going back a long time now. We're going back 30, oh yeah, a lot over 30 years ago.

And there was an epidemic. You know, I said this years ago, the tale of two books. Okay. I want you to listen to this.

I wrote about energy because chronic fatigue is a lack of energy. Fibromyalgia, I believed at the time, and I still do, by the way. I never separated fibro from chronic fatigue syndrome. It's a two-headed coin.

They come from the same thing, usually in women, not always, but usually in women. Okay. I did history. I'm a history buff, especially with patients.

My dad taught me that. Listen, because people will give you inside information. Listen, Linda, listen. I listened to my patients.

I was a history guy. What was your childhood like? Were you on antibiotics as children? Almost invariably, they were.

Created a cascade of problems under stress. Okay. The curse, I put this, the curse of the modern woman. Okay.

Running on all cylinders, overrunning, over stress, the adrenals, releasing cortisol. So when I first wrote that book, and in 2011, about, I don't know, 15 years later or whatever, I wrote another book on the 100th anniversary of the Martin Clinic, serial killers, two hormones that want you dead. Insulin, food, cortisol, stress.

Insulin and cortisol is a bad combination. Now, everyone has insulin and everyone has cortisol. You need insulin to live. One of the greatest discoveries in medicine is insulin, injecting insulin.

Right? It's a great discovery. You need insulin, but it'll want you dead if you overuse it. It's like cortisol.

You need cortisol. Cortisol is part of your circadian rhythm. It wakes you up in the morning. It gets you going.

It gets your blood pressure off. And if someone's coming behind you at night and you're in a parking lot, you're going to your car and you hear these footsteps in behind you and the hairs on the back of your head go up, that's cortisol. Now, again, it can save your life. It's part of the fight or flight.

But what happens if it doesn't get turned off? Oh, it drains the living life out of you. And I wrote about it. You know, 15 years ago, I wrote about that because in my practice, I was seeing a lot more insulin resistance.

And I wrote a book about it. And then I wrote another book about it, The Metabolic Reset. And then I wrote another book about it, Sun, Steak, and Steel, and Sleep. And even in our book, Combining the Body and the Soul, Rebuild Your Temple, I write about it there again.

Your body wasn't meant to be pumping out insulin all the time and pumping out cortisol all the time. And cortisol pours gasoline on the fire of inflammation inside the body. It's very destructive over a period of time. So to answer your question, yes, I know a lot about ME and fibro big time.

I had people, I'm not kidding you, come from all over and some from even Europe to see me in my practice because I sort of specialized in chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. And I have a protocol for it. That's how I discovered, by the way, pine bark extract. But when it comes to CFS, fibro, you have to change your diet.

You have to lower your cortisol and regenerate those adrenals. And they can be regenerated. Food, you have to emphasize sleep because they're exhausted, but they never get into that recuperative sleep. So there's a lot of things, absolutely, Sarah, on ME and CFS and fibro, chronic fatigue syndrome.

Yeah, the brain swells. They shown that in the brain with chronic fatigue syndrome. And I write about that in this book. There were four spots very similar to MS, blood flow to the brain.

That's why pine bark, because it elevates your nitric oxide. Usually these patients were low in vitamin D, usually big time. They were low in B12. They had leaky gut and very high levels of cortisol.

Then the cortisol got drained. Funny, you should ask. Sarah, do I know about it? Yeah, I can give you two days' work.

Damn, my friend has told at 74 that she does not empty her bladder fully. She has to use a catheter. That's no fun. Three times a day for the rest of her life.

She is basically healthy. Is there anything she can do? Well, look, I mean, it sure sounds like that bladder has descended big time. It happens.

There may be other people, even on the scroll this morning, that had some experience with that and found certain things. I liked elevating their progesterone. I usually put them on the menopausal formula. I dimmed out their estrogen, see how that does.

Does it work? Sometimes, not always. Not always. Okay, Deb, please ask Dr.

Martin. Well, you're asking. His thoughts on creatine. Well, I like creatine.

You're hearing a lot about it. If you want to get creatine, you need to eat steak because you got creatine and steak. Stun, steak and steel. Okay?

So if you want to take creatine as a supplement, I got no problem with it if you do. Okay? There are certain supplements that I would rather you eat, make them part of your diet. Do you ever hear me talking about B vitamins?

Now, I separate B12 from the other B vitamins. You guys know that. B12 is a different puppy altogether than the other B vitamins. So if you're taking a multivitamin and it's got B12 in it and you're swallowing it, you're not getting B12.

You're getting the other B vitamins. It will turn your urine yellow. Okay? You don't hear me talking about that.

You know why? I want you to eat your B's. And of course, B12, you get in steak. B12, you get in hamburger, a little bit less than pork.

B12 is found in red meat. Now, sometimes you have to supplement with B12 because you're not absorbing it, even if you're eating it. And therefore, you take a sublingual B12. Doctors used to give B12 shots and they were big on it.

Okay? Why am I talking about B vitamins and creatine? Because I sort of look at it the same way. Because creatine, you can eat it.

B vitamins, eat them. Why do you have to take a supplement when you can eat it? When you eat eggs, meat, and cheese, I guarantee you, you're getting a lot of B vitamins. Like I said, I separate B12.

You want to take creatine? Okay. I would rather you eat creatine. When you eat steak, you get the five C's.

Creatine, carnosine, carnitine, and coQ10. It's all in steak. Why do you think I love steak so much? Yes, it's in liver too.

Somebody's going to say it. What about liver, Dr. Martin? Yeah, liver.

How about hamburger? Yeah, that's the poor man's steak. Right? Have a smash burger.

My grandson's telling me this. Grandpa, what do you think of smash burgers? I don't know. What are they?

Well, they're great. You just eat the burger, no bun. Well, I like it. I love it.

It's a great idea. It's full of fat. It's full of B vitamins. It's full of B12.

I love it. Smash burgers. Sounds good to me. Okay.

That was Deb. And what ingredients should be in this product? Only creatine. I can't think of any other reason to put creatine with anything else.

Deb? Yeah. Tina, I was looking at BMI calculations today. Throw it out.

Body mass index. Throw it out. Why are you looking at that, Tina? You're just going to get discouraged.

BMI, I should be about 130 pounds according to my BMI. Like it's craziness. I told people, would you throw away that stinking BMI? I had a weight loss clinic in my office with a scale that was worth thousands of dollars.

We didn't talk about BMI. I hated it. You can't reach it. Like body mass index.

I hate it. Now, I like knowing your visceral fat. How much of that you got? Okay.

Want your body fat percentage? Okay. But guys, I don't want you to live on scales. Okay.

Don't do that. See, look at Tina says, I would not have considered myself overweight, but apparently I am about 30 pounds over my normal BMI. It gives me a migraine. How silly that is.

Tina. Run for us run when someone tries to tell you about your BMI. I hate it. Metabolic.

It does not indicate metabolic syndrome at all. Get your A1C. Get me your triglycerides. Get me your HDL cholesterol.

I'll tell you everything you want to know about metabolic syndrome. Blood work, not your BMI. Helen's asking about quercetin for bone health. Well, look, I mean, quercetin is not the first thing that I would think of for bone health.

It's not the first thing that comes in my mind, but I love curcetin. I really do. Okay. And quercetin I love is very antihistamine.

I combine quercetin with Navitol. One of the best antihistamine formulas you'll get is curcetin and Navitol. Pine bark. Put the two together.

I love that for allergy. Okay. And by the way, what is curcetin? It's a flavonoid.

It gives the color to your fruits and vegetables. Okay. Quercetin. Good for your lungs.

Good for uric acid. Okay. It's anti-inflammatory. So in that sense for bone health, I guess, and uric acid, I guess.

Okay. For people who have gout. But it's not the first thing that comes to my mind when it comes to quercetin. I think more lungs.

I think more sinuses. I think, you know, more as an antihistamine. Okay, Helen, but I got no problem with curcetin. I love it.

Anna, I've read that vitamin K2 should be taken separately from vitamin D. Is that true? No. I don't know where you read that, Anna.

Okay. There's a lot of stuff online. I'm glad you came back and asked me. Because in nature, vitamin D in food, there is vitamin D in food, by the way.

That's why the Inuit are the Eskimo. I'm not woke, guys. Okay. So, you know, why can't I call them Eskimos?

What's wrong with that term? I don't understand it. Anyway, the Inuit. Okay.

They get vitamin D, not from the sun. They get vitamin D from food. Cod liver oil. They eat a lot of that.

They eat a lot of blubber. They eat a lot of vitamin D. But when you look at vitamin D and vitamin K2 in nature, take an egg. It's got vitamin D and K2.

God gave you that. Vitamin D makes calcium. Vitamin K2 takes the calcium and puts it in your bones where it belongs. If anyone tells you don't take vitamin D with K2, why?

I don't get it. I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense to me. You eat an egg, you get vitamin D, K2.

You eat cheese, you get vitamin D, K2. You get calcium and K2 with it. Right? Dairy, meat, egg.

There's vitamin D in there. Okay. Now, the problem with vitamin D in food is you better eat it every stinkin' day. Because the best way to get vitamin D is from the sun.

Okay? Because your body is made for that. You are a human solar panel and you need the sun. And it's the best way to get vitamin D.

But number two, not the only way, but it's the best way. The problem is, you know, well over 80% of the population, more than that, they don't get enough sun. They're scared skinny of the sun. It's a sunny day out there and I see people, I go, well, is it going to rain?

They got their umbrella out. They're walking, they got an umbrella. I get a migraine. Why do you have an umbrella and the sun is out?

They're scared of it. Boy, when the world does a number on people, boy, does it ever do a number on people. You know, the sun. Well, yeah, but Dr.

Martin, you can get skin cancer. Yeah, you know the people that get the deadly skin cancer? I hate to break it to you. You know melanoma?

It's people that work indoors. It's people that don't see the sun. It's not for burning in the sun. Now, I don't recommend anybody burning in the sun.

I don't. But the sun, you need it. That was Anna. Nancy.

Nancy had an echocardiogram and they want me to go on blood pressure medication. Well, I can't tell you not to do it, Nancy. Your numbers, they said at the time of your echocardiogram, your blood pressure went up to 180 over 87. Now, this is me, but a little asterisk beside it because I'm not giving you medical advice.

Individually, I can't do it. You're not my patient. I can't do it. I wouldn't do it.

Okay. But you're getting a procedure done and your blood pressure goes up. And by the way, your bottom number wasn't over 90. So for me, I don't consider that high blood pressure.

To put you on a medication, again, it wouldn't be my first choice for you, but I don't know everything, Nancy. Okay. And it might've been temporary. You might've had white coat syndrome.

Or boy, a lot of people. People come into my office. I never wore a white coat. And their blood pressure got high.

And I said, well, are you scared of me? Is it my voice? Okay. But any doctor should know, you take blood pressure in the office, and maybe not the best place to do it.

Because a lot of people get white coat syndrome. They're just scared skinny of their doctors. They're going to get bad news or whatever. And the blood pressure goes up.

Yeah. And my blood pressure goes up when I hear silly things. You guys know that. Okay.

No, no, Nancy. I don't know what to tell you. I like to me that number wasn't even high. If your bottom number goes over 90, then I think hypertension.

Okay. Might've been dehydrated. Okay. I think we're going to get done again.

Andrea, we are getting done today. Holy smoke. Her fasting insulin is good. Her glucose fasting is good.

Homocysteine is good. A1C a little bit up. Taking in the AM after a 12 hour fast. Find it difficult to get A1C.

Okay. But Andrea, everything else is very good. Okay. A1C, look, it's a lagging indicator.

What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, it takes an average over three months. Okay.

And that day, you were at 5.8. Okay. Up from 5.6. It can happen, but it's an average.

Okay. And Andrea, everything else is good. You're eating good. I like that.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Keep trucking. I like your other numbers. What were your, if you had any other work done, what was your triglycerides?

I really loved looking at that ratio of triglycerides and HDL. Man, that tells me a lot. So what was that? Okay.

What was that? If you have it, most recent, send it to info at martinclinic.com and I will answer you as an individual. There, I got it done. Okay, guys, we love you guys.

Thanks so much for joining us this morning on the Doctor is in Live Facebook and Podcast. Love you guys. Talk to you soon.

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