Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified non-force doctor of chiropractic
and practitioner of functional medicine.
I've got a great program for you today. We're going to be talking about,
this is breast cancer awareness month, October.
Everyone's wearing their pink ribbons, out raising money for breast cancer awareness.
I don't know about you. I think most people are probably already aware of breast cancer
and that breast cancer is one of the most prevalent forms of cancer.
Maybe it's just me. Might it not make more sense to have October be breast cancer prevention month?
I'm going to tell you about a couple of breast cancer patients that I've seen.
One who was told she had breast cancer that immediately needed surgery,
who was able to completely eliminate it without surgery or any other medical treatment.
And another who was a breast cancer survivor.
There are over 4 million breast cancer survivors in America,
and a lot of these women have lingering, persistent health challenges that no one is helping them with.
We're also going to talk about statin drugs, the most common cholesterol-lowering drugs
that 99.99% of doctors seem to think almost everyone should take.
Do you need a statin drug? What are the side effects?
Do they actually do what they're reported to do?
Do they actually reduce your risk of a heart attack or a stroke?
Does cholesterol cause heart disease?
These are some of the questions we're going to get to, so stay tuned.
Anyone with a family history of breast cancer, of a mother, a sister, an aunt who's had breast cancer
who wants to reduce their risk of getting breast cancer, can do that by getting tested,
by checking to see if their immune system is functioning at its peak,
by testing to see if their tumor markers, the same tumor markers oncologists use
after you've been diagnosed with breast cancer, you can't use these to diagnose cancer,
but you can identify with tests that things called CEA, CA15-3, CA27.29.
These are tumor markers that oncologists use to see if your cancer is coming back
after you've gone through treatment before it gets bad enough to show up on a scan again.
Well, they're not going to test those before you have cancer because they're not going to do
chemotherapy or radiation on you if those numbers are a little bit elevated,
but should you know about those numbers?
Sure, if those numbers are elevated and you have a family history of breast cancer,
then you can do something about those numbers.
You can take some supplements and improve your diet and exercise
and in the context of a comprehensive blood test functional medicine, blood test workup,
identify all the things that your immune system is challenged by
and support it with better food, exercise, and supplements.
And then retest, retest those numbers to make sure that they're going down.
If they're elevated, make sure they're heading in the right direction.
Make sure they're at a safe level.
There are never any guarantees, but the condition of your body is always more important
than the name of any disease you've been diagnosed with.
And doing functional testing, looking for early signs of stress on all of your organs and tissues,
especially your immune system, and doing the same tumor markers
that identify how well your body is keeping cancer in remission.
You can test those things right now, and if you do that and address them,
to keep those numbers under control and keep the stress off all your organs and tissues,
keep them into a healthy level like they were when you were in your teens and your twenties.
This is a viable means of reducing your risk of breast cancer and almost any other disease.
Here's something anyone can do to dramatically reduce their risk of getting breast cancer,
as well as prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, and a whole host of other cancers.
Get functional levels of vitamin D into your system.
The standard recommended daily allowances of vitamin D, 400, 600, sometimes 1,000 units a day,
are just barely enough to prevent rickets.
They don't do anything to boost your immune system.
And there is robust data. You can look this up on PubMed,
the National Institutes of Health website.
There is robust data showing that people who have the highest levels of vitamin D in their blood
have dramatically lower incidences of some of the top cancers that people get,
breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colorectal cancer among them, and several others.
So the blood level, you want to get your vitamin D blood level tested.
You want your blood level of vitamin D to be between 50 and 90 nanograms per milliliter, 50 to 90.
Normally, most doctors tell you if it's above 30, you're fine.
That's enough to prevent rickets.
It is not enough to keep your immune system strong or help you fight off or prevent cancer of any kind.
So to get that level in your bloodstream,
most people need to take 4 to 5,000 units of vitamin D a day.
The standard dose for adults or even children who weigh over 50 or 60 pounds
is 4 to 5,000 units a day if you want to be healthy and keep your immune system strong.
So let's take a look at a case just to give you an idea of what's possible.
I had a woman in her early 40s who came in to see me,
and she had just a couple of days ago developed a grape-sized mass in her breast.
Three days later, it had grown to the size of a jalapeno.
She went to her general practitioner.
He referred her to an oncologist, and because she was over 40,
standard recommendations are to remove it, to surgically remove it.
So she was told she needed to have that suddenly appearing, dramatically growing cyst.
It wasn't a tumor. It was a cyst.
The technical term is a fibroadenoma.
This is a very common cyst that occurs in many women's breasts.
And cancerous tumors don't grow that fast overnight, full stop.
So I explained to her that this is not an emergency,
and she does have time to consider some other options.
These things go up and down in size oftentimes with the passage of a woman's menstrual cycle.
They get bigger when you're going through your cycle and then get smaller in between.
So the point is we had some time. I explained that to her.
I put her on a high dose of iodine.
Iodine, one of the most important nutrients for breast tissue, is iodine.
And a high dose of fish oil and some other nutrients, high dose of vitamin D.
In three weeks, her jalapeno-sized tumor was gone.
Three weeks later, after a few supplements, her jalapeno-sized tumor,
it wasn't a tumor, it was a cyst, it was a fibroadenoma, disappeared completely.
This was several years ago. It has never come back.
So every situation is different.
Do not assume that if you have a jalapeno-sized tumor in your breast
that you can fix it with iodine, fish oil, and vitamin D, and a few other supplements.
See a doctor. But I just want to give you an idea of what's possible
and some things that most doctors don't consider.
Most doctors don't check to see if your immune system is getting all the nutrients
it needs to function at its peak.
When you do that, amazing things can happen.
I am Dr. Todd Binkley, sharing with you safe, effective, natural solutions
to almost any health challenge.
If you're ready to take the next step and find out what's possible for your situation,
email me at drbinkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
That's D-R-B-S-N-BOY-I-N-K-L-E-Y at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
Now, what if you've already had breast cancer?
There are over 4 million breast cancer survivors in America today.
Conventional oncology for most breast cancers works pretty good.
But there are lingering problems for a lot of those breast cancer survivors.
So here's another example of a breast cancer survivor who had some lingering issues
that she was concerned about.
A lot of people are worried about hormones.
So I had a 76-year-old woman who came in with osteoporosis,
high cholesterol, chronic cough, fatigue, leg cramps, nighttime tingling in her feet,
low libido, and painful intercourse ever since stopping the conventional
hormone replacement therapy that she was taking up until she was diagnosed with cancer.
So her cancer was ERPR positive.
That means that she had estrogen receptors and progesterone receptors identified on her cancer.
So that means taking estrogen or progesterone and or progesterone could increase,
very likely increase her likelihood of the cancer coming back.
So that's why they removed her from hormone replacement therapy.
But here's the thing.
Standard conventional hormone replacement therapy is not the only option for women
who have problems with their hormones.
Standard hormone replacement therapy practiced by most endocrinologists
uses blood tests only to identify whether or not you need more estrogen or progesterone
or any other hormone or one of its precursors.
And very, very commonly give you way too much estrogen, progesterone,
testosterone for men, et cetera, full stop.
So what did I do?
Instead, I did a salivary hormone test on her.
The equipment used to test salivary hormones is a hundred times more sensitive
than the equipment used to test for blood levels of various hormones.
And your blood levels of hormones are going up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down all day long.
And when you do a blood test, you're just getting a snapshot of what it was
that particular minute you had your blood draw.
So salivary hormone tests, the salivary glands have a very rich capillary bed,
the smallest blood vessels surrounding the salivary glands that produce saliva.
And because of that, anything that's in your bloodstream enters your saliva in very small concentrations.
So it requires very sensitive equipment to measure this.
But the importance of that is when you treat most hormone issues with anything transdermal,
for example, a lot of people, most people treat hormone related issues with some kind of transdermal therapy,
a cream, an oil that you rub on your skin, a suppository,
something that's passing from your skin or some other membrane into your bloodstream.
Blood tests do not accurately measure the levels of those things.
When you take, when you take a hormone and apply it to your skin,
it doesn't all directly enter immediately enter your bloodstream.
Some of it is bound up and interstitial fluid.
And the result of that is standard hormone replacement therapy often results in women being way overdosed
with estrogen and progesterone and men taking way too much testosterone.
And your body can become resistant to those things over time.
You reach a point of diminishing returns.
So obviously someone with estrogen sensitive and progesterone sensitive cancer,
the survivor of that type of cancer is not going to want to take conventional hormone replacement therapy.
But when I did this 70 year old woman's hormone test, her tests came back.
She had very low normal range estradiol.
That's the, there's three forms of estrogen, estrone, estradiol, estriol.
But estradiol is the one that most people, that is involved in standard,
that is used in standard hormone replacement therapy.
That is the concern when someone is ER positive, estrogen receptor positive cancer.
And her progesterone was also in the low normal range.
But guess what else? Her testosterone was undetectable.
It was below the detectable range on the lab.
And a precursor called DHEA.
DHEA, this is a precursor that your body uses to make both estrogen and testosterone was really, really low.
So I explained to her, her adrenal glands were also really, really stressed.
So I gave her some support for her adrenal glands.
And I explained to her that even though she has estrogen sensitive receptors on the cancer that she survived
and progesterone receptors on that cancer, that it's totally safe for her to take a precursor.
I didn't recommend that she take estrogen or progesterone. Of course not.
I did put her on a low dose of DHEA, which her body, your body, anybody's body will then convert into estrogen if you need more
or testosterone if you need more.
So guess what? Six months later, after some nutrient support to improve her adrenal glands,
her adrenals are now completely back to normal.
And her estrogen, estradiol, the most important estrogen that you would be concerned about for someone who had ER positive estrogen receptor
positive breast cancer, changed not at all.
It was one before and it was one after taking DHEA for a few months.
But guess what? Her DHEA level went up from 40 to 104.
That's still just a little bit low, but her testosterone went from undetectable to 34.
So more important than that, of course, is how she felt.
She had osteoporosis. I also gave her some calcium and some high doses of vitamin K2 and made sure she had adequate levels of vitamin D.
I gave her some nutrients for her high cholesterol.
She had a chronic cough, fatigue, leg cramps, nighttime tingling in her feet.
All of these things were better. You have to wait two years to get the DEXA scan back.
Two years later, her follow up bone scan for osteoporosis came back and it had gone from osteoporosis back to low bone density.
The replacement term for osteopenia. Her cholesterol had dramatically improved.
Her cough had improved mostly because I told her to put a HEPA filter in her bedroom to filter the air that she was breathing all night.
Her fatigue was gone. She had energy like she hadn't had in years.
The leg cramps and nighttime tingling in her feet that she had were gone.
And her libido and the pain that she had when having intimate relations with her husband had gone.
She felt younger than she had in years and she was not taking quote unquote hormone replacement therapy.
I didn't give her any hormones. I gave her a very low dose of a precursor hormone and most importantly tested it.
I told her we need to test this to make sure that it doesn't go up too high to make sure that you don't have any increased risk of recurrent breast cancer.
And that's exactly what we did and she felt amazing and was delighted and she's doing better than ever.
Time to talk about statins. Cholesterol lowering drugs.
Nearly every doctor seems to think that almost every American should take statin drugs to lower their cholesterol to prevent heart disease.
Do they actually prevent heart disease? Do they reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke?
Well, there's data to show that they do. If you're fat, if you're highly stressed, if you have diabetes, if you're severely diseased, have a host of comorbidities.
For many people there is data to show that taking a statin drug will reduce your risk of heart attacks and strokes.
That's one of the reasons that they're so commonly recommended.
Here's another reason. Lipitor, a torvastatin made by Pfizer, has for many years, along with Zocor, Simvastatin made by Merck,
been the top selling drugs in America with over 112 million prescriptions per year.
And I'm sure all the billions of dollars on marketing that those pharmaceutical companies spend to convince doctors that everyone should be on a statin has nothing to do with the fact
that they're the most popular drugs in America. Maybe that's a little cynical.
A lot of people, heart disease is the number one cause of death in America. And if there's a way to prevent some of those deaths, then here's a drug that purportedly will do it.
It makes sense. It's understandable that they're so popular. But here's the thing.
Cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease. I'll say that again. Cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease.
Inflammation causes heart disease. When we're talking about heart disease, what we're really talking about is the formation of plaques in your arteries that eventually become clogged
and choke off the circulation to your heart, causing a heart attack or a piece of that breaks off and migrates up to your brain and causes a stroke.
That plaque formation is caused by inflammation. Lots of people have high cholesterol, 250, 300, and never get a heart attack or stroke because they don't have the inflammation
that initiates the process of plaque formation. The inner lining of your blood vessels is kind of like pantyhose.
It's a thin membrane that's smooth, that keeps everything flowing through your blood vessels. But it can also become brittle.
It's the inflammatory debris in your body that causes the endothelium to become brittle and creates little micro tears in the inner lining of your blood vessels.
When you get a little micro tear, your body forms a little scab to heal the tear.
Guess what that scab is made out of? Fibrin, the same protein that creates scar tissue after any kind of injury in your body, cholesterol and calcium.
So yes, if you already have a lot of inflammation, which many, many people do, then you're going to have lots of little tears in your blood vessels
and your body's going to be creating scabs over, which are made of fibrin, cholesterol and calcium.
And therefore, if your cholesterol is higher, it will tend to cause those plaques to get thicker and thicker and break off little pieces and cause a heart attack or a stroke.
But it doesn't have to be that way. The assumption that everyone needs to be on a statin to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease
ignores the fact that there are many, many other ways to reduce inflammation with nutrients.
You can reduce your cholesterol with nutrients like niacin and bergamot dramatically.
And we'll talk about this more later. We're getting to, we're going to run out of time here pretty soon.
But there are many ways you can both reduce your cholesterol and reduce the inflammation that actually causes heart disease without any drugs.
Then, of course, there are the side effects. Statin drugs cause all kinds of side effects.
In a study of hundreds of people that was published in Pharmacotherapy Journal, 93% reported muscle pain, 88% fatigue and 85% weakness.
These drugs direct put a chemical clamp on your liver that blocks both the production of cholesterol.
60% of the cholesterol in your bloodstream that's measured on your cholesterol blood test is made by your liver.
And the statin drugs do nothing to affect the cholesterol you're getting from your diet.
They just put a chemical clamp on your liver to stop it making the cholesterol that your body needs.
Cholesterol is an essential nutrient to make cell membranes throughout your body, to make all of your sex hormones and a host of other essential functions.
Otherwise, why would your liver make it? So the enzyme pathway that is blocked by statin drugs like Lipitor, Atorvastatin, Zocor, Simvastatin also blocks coenzyme Q10.
CoQ10 is the most essential enzyme for repairing your heart. And it's also essential for building and maintaining muscle mass throughout your body and making the mitochondria, the energy producing parts of every cell in your body, work normally.
This is why when you take statin drugs, it causes muscle pain, fatigue and weakness. There are other options.
I got a call after last week's show from Roberta asking about insurance coverage. Unfortunately, most insurance does not pay for functional medicine.
Your car insurance doesn't pay for tune-ups and oil changes. It pays when you crash your car. Medical insurance, there is no such thing as health insurance.
There is no insurance that pays to increase your health. It's medical insurance. Medical insurance doesn't pay for healthy food or your gym membership.
It pays when you crash your body and need crisis care.
But when you consider the costs of deductibles, copays, lost time from work, the hassles of waiting for permission from some faceless gatekeeper to even get an appointment to see your doctor, you've paid outrageous premiums for full coverage, whatever that is, plus the misery and anxiety you may be suffering while waiting.
Compared to all that, the cost of coming to see me is far less than you might imagine. Everyone's situation is different. So to find out what's possible for you, email me.
I look forward to speaking with you right here next week, Friday at 4pm. Have a wonderful weekend.
You've been listening to Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley. If you have a health question you want discussed on the show, email your health questions to drbinkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved ones because our health matters. Join him next Friday at 4pm for Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions right here on 98.3 The Word, KDAR.