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 an exciting show for you today.
I'm going to explain how you can avoid gaining 10 pounds in the next two weeks while dramatically
reducing your risk of depression and anxiety and a whole host of other conditions, including
the top two leading causes of death in America.
We're also going to talk about a case study of a stroke patient who came to me a few months
ago who made a dramatic recovery, who thought he was going to be permanently disabled and
is now feeling good as new with very little medical care, mostly with a number of safe,
effective natural solutions that he considered a miraculous recovery.
So what is this amazing thing you can do to avoid all of these horrible conditions that
people tend to be plagued with in the holiday season and the rest of the year, but especially
during the holiday season?
You've probably guessed it already.
Reduce your consumption of sugar.
Don't eat any sugar.
Well, what's the matter with this man?
It's the middle of December.
He knows we're all going to go out and gorge ourselves on cookies and fudge and brownies
and cakes and pies till the end of the year.
Why not hold this topic for January?
Because the whole point of this show is to arm you with ways to prevent disease, to not
wait until you need drugs and surgery, to impress upon you the importance of not binging
on sugar for a month.
For some people, skinny teenagers, for example, the effects might be relatively minor, but
if you're overweight, if you have diabetes already, high blood sugar, high cholesterol,
high risk of heart disease, dementia, any autoimmune condition, any chronic inflammatory condition,
then please take this seriously.
Right now, during the holiday season, when you're most tempted, make a project out of
it.
Consider that if you can avoid a bunch of crap you know you shouldn't be eating while
still being sociable at family and other holiday gatherings, then you'll be unstoppable for
the rest of the year.
Why is this so important?
Because excessive sugar consumption causes insulin resistance, which causes cravings
for more sugar.
It's an addiction.
It involves the same feedback mechanisms as heroin addiction or cocaine addiction.
In the brain, the same neurotransmitters and hormones get disrupted and make you crave
more of this stuff.
It becomes impossible to avoid unless you avoid it at the outset.
And it's a driver of depression.
Insulin resistance also causes leptin resistance.
Leptin, L-E-P-T-I-N, is another hormone in your brain that is essential to brain health.
Normal functioning of leptin corrects cognitive defects.
It heals nerves.
Eating sugar damages nerves and increases cognitive decline, increases dementia, which
is why dementia is now being called type 3 diabetes.
And even though skinny kids and teenagers can seemingly get away with eating any amount
of sugar with nothing more serious than maybe some acne, teenagers and children who are
not skinny have a whole different experience.
This is from the journal Pediatrics from 2012.
Teenagers who have metabolic syndrome, which is the combination of obesity and high blood
sugar, diabetes or pre-diabetes, in these people, sugar reduces prefrontal cortical
function.
Prefrontal cortical function.
Well, what does that mean?
Well, everyone knows or should know that the main reason teenagers make stupid choices
in life is because their brains aren't fully formed yet.
And the part of the brain that results in impulsive choices and delayed gratification
and having enough sense to anticipate bad consequences of bad choices is the prefrontal
cortex, the part of your brain that's right behind your forehead, which isn't really
fully formed till about age 25.
Well, guess what?
Sugar reduces the function of this part of the brain in adolescence.
It's like pouring gas on a fire.
This is from a paper in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience from 2021.
Sugar consumption in adolescence increases persistent hyperactivity and causes neurocognitive
defects in adulthood.
So not only does it help make things worse for children, things that a lot of teenagers
are already struggling with, it actually sets their brains up for increased risk of dementia
later in life by damaging nerves that are just very difficult and sometimes never get
properly repaired.
A study in the journal Injury Prevention found that Boston high school students who drank
more than five cans of soda per week, which is probably most of them, right?
Boston high school students who drank more than five cans of soda per week were likely
to be more likely to be found carrying a weapon and having had violent episodes with peers,
family members and dates.
It screws up your brain.
Sugar also screws up the microbiome in your gut.
So these essential bacteria in your gut that are so important for every aspect of your
health.
Sugar feeds the bad bacteria, which then suppresses the population of the good bacteria, which
are important to all aspects of health, among other things, promoting healthy nerve growth
in your brain, preventing many types of cancer and obviously preventing diabetes, heart disease
and a whole host of other diseases.
I attended a conference called the Integrative Medicine for Mental Health Conference a few
weeks ago and Dr. Robert Lustig, MD, his presentation was mostly about sugar and how sugar increases
the incidence of and worsens the severity of nearly every mental health disorder, anxiety,
depression, schizophrenia, ADD, ADHD, mild cognitive impairment, the precursor to Alzheimer's,
full on dementia and Parkinson's disease.
This was really fascinating.
He put up a slide showing the increase in US sugar consumption for the past century.
Then he put up a slide of US healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP.
He then lined the two graphs up.
They were identical.
They were the exact same curve, which is a sharp line going up, up and up.
The increase in sugar consumption for the past 100 years and the increase of healthcare
spending in America are on the exact same trajectory and have been for most of the last
century.
Is that a direct causative relationship?
Not necessarily, but it's a super strong correlation that's definitely worth paying attention to,
especially when you consider the fact that right here in the United States of America,
we spend more money on medical care, not healthcare, medical care than any other industrialized
nation.
We call it spending.
We call it expenditures on healthcare, but as you know, if you listen to this show, it's
mostly on medical care.
We spend more money than any other industrialized nation on medical care, and yet we have the
worst outcomes.
We have the least healthy people.
We have the fattest people as a percentage of population, the highest rates of diabetes
and heart disease and cancer of all the industrialized nations, and our massive consumption of sugar
and refined starches and carbohydrates is a huge part of the reason for that.
Well, if you're rich enough to afford it, there's a miracle cure that just came out
a few months ago.
You probably heard about it.
Ozempic.
Just take Ozempic and you won't be hungry anymore.
Even if you're not diabetic, it's all the rage in Hollywood.
All the stars are taking it.
Ozempic makes you feel full.
It stops the emptying of stomach, slows the emptying of food from your stomach, and it
was designed to treat diabetics, and it might be useful for some diabetics, but it also
has a lot of side effects.
Dr. Mira Shah, endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, said that by far the most common side
effects she sees in patients taking Ozempic and related drugs like Wigovia and Monjaro
are nausea, abdominal pain, constipation and diarrhea, and sometimes these effects get
better over time, but in a certain percentage of patients, they have to be taken off of
them because the side effects don't improve.
The stomach and brain are so connected that these intestinal issues can lead to stress
and anxiety and depression like we've been talking about, the gut-brain connection.
Chronic abdominal pain and unpredictable digestive symptoms such as diarrhea, constipation,
take a significant toll on your mood and energy levels, says Laurie Kiefer, psychologist and
director of psychobahavioral research in the division of gastroenterology at Mount Sinai,
and these symptoms can leave patients feeling isolated, overwhelmed, and embarrassed, anxious
about when and where the symptoms might occur, avoidance of social activities, especially
ones in which food is the focus and bathrooms might not be readily available.
Diarrhea is not a fun side effect from any drug, but even more serious side effects of
Ozempic are emerging including thyroid tumors, pancreatitis, changes in vision, hypoglycemia,
gallbladder issues, kidney failure, and cancer.
So the Dr. Shah at the Mayo Clinic, the most common severe complications she's seeing are
pancreatitis and gallbladder issues, either of which can lead to hospitalization.
There's already at least one lawsuit being filed against the manufacturer of it for failing
to warn patients about something called gastroparesis, which is basically a paralysis of the stomach,
which is just the most severe example of the way the drug is designed to work, to slow
gastric emptying, to keep food in your stomach longer so you feel less hungry.
Some patients who are taking this who are not diabetic, they're taking it just to lose
weight or stay skinny, are becoming, their appetites become so suppressed that they end
up mal, so malnourished, even when taking supplements to try to offset the effects of
that, they end up in the hospital with severe malnutrition.
Does anyone remember the FenFen scandal, this miracle weight loss drug that was out years
ago that ended up causing so much misery, it had to be taken off of the market?
Who knows if these drugs might end up being in a similar situation.
It's unclear how long these drugs, they're prescribed for weight loss, but you have to
keep taking them forever.
If you stop taking them, then the weight comes right back, the appetite suppression comes
right back.
You get hungry again, you eat more and gain weight.
So no one knows what the effects of these drugs is going to be.
But a lot of weight loss advocates warn that there are long term health risks.
So why take that risk?
Just eat healthier food.
And if you can't avoid all starchy sweets, at least avoid some of the worst of them.
So the worst sugar is fructose, especially high fructose corn syrup.
So think twice before you pick up that can of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce.
Its main ingredient after the cranberries is high fructose corn syrup.
High fructose corn syrup makes your liver worse at burning fat and therefore makes your
liver store more fat, which makes you fat and dramatically increases your risk of diabetes
and fatty liver disease.
Instead, make your own cranberry sauce with, you know, real cranberries.
It's fun to hear the fresh cranberries pop as you cook them.
Just throw a bag of cranberries in a pot with half a cup of water.
And most recipes call for a full cup of sugar, skip that.
I mean, even that would be better than the high fructose corn syrup from the can of Ocean
Spray.
But better still, why not go sugar free and use Allulose?
I've spoken about Allulose in previous episodes.
It's an excellent natural sweetener that doesn't have some of the bitter taste of stevia, if
you've heard of that.
Allulose, it's spelled A-L-L-U-L-O-S-E.
All you lose.
Think about all you'll lose, the weight and risks of the disease you'll lose if you use
Allulose instead of sugar.
You probably won't find Allulose at your local supermarket, but you can easily order it on
Amazon and often even receive it the same day.
And if a half a cup of Allulose isn't sweet enough in your cranberry sauce, then maybe
add a little bit of real maple syrup.
Or if you must, honey or even plain sugar would be better than the high fructose corn
syrup and Ocean Spray cranberry sauce.
In the meantime, one thing you can do to protect your brain from some of the damaging effects
of sugar is by taking a high quality fish oil.
I recommend a gram and a half of EPA and DHA.
Read the label.
Those are the two omega-3s that you can really only get in significant quantities from the
ocean from fish oil.
1500 milligrams combined EPA and DHA.
And if you're going to buy it from a store, the best brand that you can find in many stores
is Nordic Naturals.
So take some fish oil to help offset the inflammatory effects of other things you may be eating.
And another great thing to do is before you're heading out for any party or any gathering
where you're going to be tempted is get some of these Trader Joe's.
Has garlic and jalapeno stuffed olives that are delicious.
And it's a quick easy way just to open a jar, grab a fork and have two or three or four
of those.
It'll start to fill you up a little bit before you take off.
Or you know, for a little bit more calories, cut an avocado in half.
Just cut an avocado in half, take the pit out and fill the hole with olive oil and a
little lemon fat snack that will help fill you up and prevent cravings.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley and you're listening to safe, effective natural solutions to almost
any health challenge.
Email me if you have a question that you'd like answered on air or privately at drbinkleyatbinkleyhealingcenter.com.
So now let's talk about a great case to give you an idea of what's possible.
A few months ago I had a 60 year old man that came in and he had a stroke, went to the hospital,
was put on anticoagulants.
The usual came to me about a week later with a drooping of his face, slurred speech, significant
loss of function in his right arm and his right leg, mainly his foot.
He was having difficulty walking straight.
His left, his right foot wouldn't do, just seemed like it wouldn't do what it was supposed
to do no matter how hard he tried.
And he was really worried that he was going to be permanently disabled.
And he was still on some aspirin for blood thinning and he was on Plavix and antiplatelet
medication which is a good idea to take for a few weeks.
And he continued to take that for a few weeks after getting out of the hospital.
In addition to running the usual blood work that I run on most of my patients, I added
a cardiometabolic profile which has some just better indicators and better baseline tests
to have for measuring future improvement to see if we're going to be able to reduce his
risk of having another stroke again.
Obviously that's one of his main goals of coming in is to make sure that he heals from
the current stroke but also that he has much less risk of another stroke in the future.
In addition to these blood findings, he also had just some tremendous amount of tension
in his neck and upper back which in addition to the loss of circulation to the muscles
of his arm and the muscles of his legs and feet, just having this stiffness and impairment
on the nerves, the ability for his brain to communicate with those muscles was being dramatically
impaired just by physical issues from the type of work he'd done over the years and
this tremendous amount of stiffness we had.
So the upshot is within three weeks after beginning some supplements and some non-force
chiropractic care to get these muscles loosened up, to get his brain communicating with his
muscles better, his slurring of speech was gone, the droopingness of his face was gone
and the function of his right arm and his right leg were 70% better.
He was super excited and basically content to just continue with what we were doing,
taking the supplements and doing the work on the table, getting his muscles loosened
up, he was still getting progressive improvement every week and I told him actually there's
something else I think you really should consider and that was hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
So he was getting dramatic improvement very quickly but you never know for sure, there's
no way to predict how well brain tissue is going to heal after circulation has been cut
off, there's no way to tell for sure exactly how much brain tissue was damaged and hyperbaric
oxygen therapy does wonders in cases like this to perfuse the brain.
So there's a small amount of oxygen dissolved in your bloodstream all the time, it's only
about 2% in the bloodstream but it's a persistent amount and when you do hyperbaric oxygen therapy
it increases that circulating oxygen that's just directly in the bloodstream so it's not
dependent on red blood cells to get to damaged tissue in your brain or anywhere else but
it's actually in your plasma so it will still reach cells that have had impaired circulation
because it's just perfusing throughout your body by sitting in a room with an increased
pressure and amount of pure oxygen in it.
So he did this, he did several weeks worth of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and continued
his supplements, we continue working on the table getting his muscles and his nervous
system working as best as they were able and it's now been a few months later and he has
made a 100% recovery, he is as good as new, he actually feels better than before because
he's got much more flexibility and strength and tone in his muscles, much more clarity
and energy than he had before because many of the supplements that he's taking and so
yeah, a combination of things is often necessary, everyone's situation is different but this
is a 60 year old man that's made a complete recovery from a stroke that he thought was
possibly going to be debilitating for the rest of his life.
The focus of this show is mainly about metabolic issues using safe, effective natural solutions,
better food, exercise and supplements to reduce your risk of and reverse conditions like strokes,
heart disease, diabetes, hypothyroidism, you know, most of the things that most people
go to regular doctors and get drugs for.
So it is important to stress that a lot of times the physical problems that can go along
with some of those conditions can be an important factor.
So here's another great case study, I had a woman in her 30s, mid 30s who came into
me a couple of years ago who had been to the emergency room, I think it was four or five
times in as many months and she had rapid heart rate, shortness of breath and anxiety
because of that and she had had echocardiogram, EKG, chest x-ray, all of these tests were
normal, every test they could do on her heart and lung function were normal.
I said well they must have done some blood work and she said oh yeah that's right, there
was one blood test that was abnormal, I can't remember what it was, I said was it BNP, B
as in boy and as in Nancy, P as in Paul or it actually stands for B type natrietic peptide,
I've mentioned this on the show before, this is a measure of stress on your heart, she
says yeah that was it, it was off the charts and they couldn't figure out why.
I said well what did they tell you to do about it, they said there was nothing to do about
it, just reduce stress.
Well she wasn't feeling that stress until all this started happening, she was otherwise
happy, healthy, looked fantastic, fit, you know great job and so I explained to her that
this elevated BNP test shows that something is stressing her heart and I did a physical
exam on her and the muscles in her rib cage and these are not to, it's kind of a graphic
example, but the muscles that people eat when you eat ribs from a pig or a cow, these are
those muscles, that's the meat you're eating so we have intercostal muscles as well, the
intercostal muscles between the ribs and a human being are about a half inch thick and
about three quarters of an inch long between each rib and there's three layers of them
and they can go into spasm, they can cramp just like a shin splint or a cramp that you
might get in any other part of your body and no doctors ever check for this, it's just
most chiropractors don't even look for it, but I've seen it so many times now that if
somebody presents with shortness of breath and a heart condition that's unexplained by
anything else I'm definitely going to check that and usually there's two or three spots
that will be really tight, you just push on the ribs on the front and lift up on the ribs
from the back and there's a certain amount of flexibility when you push on them that
should be there and should be about the same when you push on each rib and I very frequently
find that two or three of them are just really restricted and that is enough to cause shortness
of breath, it's significant enough to cause chest pain and other related conditions.
So her entire rib cage just felt like it was made of steel, none of her ribs were moving
as much as they should and again she was in her 30s, she's not an old person with a bunch
of arthritis or what you might typically expect for someone who had that little mobility throughout
her rib cage.
So basically what was happening is she wasn't able to breathe because her ribs were all
stuck, it was like so much spasm in the muscles between her ribs was almost like it was fusing
her rib cage together, so when you inhale and when you exhale, 75% of your inhalation
and exhalation is your diaphragm moving up and down, pulling your diaphragm contracts
which pulls it down, which pulls air into your lungs and then your diaphragm relaxes
which allows it to go back up and you exhale the air out of your lungs, but 25% of inhalation
and exhalation is involved in the expansion and contraction of your rib cage.
Well if all of the muscles in your rib cage are in spasm, then your rib cage can't expand
and contract and you've taken out 25% of your capacity to breathe and this is exactly what
was happening for her.
So I did some very simple work on the table to just get those muscles to calm down and
relax.
Spasmed muscles are like scared children, you can't force the tension out, if she would
have gone to a deep tissue massage therapist it might have helped for a little bit but
it would have come right back because these are muscles that feel vulnerable, that feel
that it's not safe to completely relax.
Your brain is convinced they need to stay tight to protect you from some kind of perceived
threat and it's often perceived, it's not even a real threat, it's just that you just
get stuck that way.
So I did some work on the table to convince her brain that there was no damaged tissue
that needed to be guarded, healed or anything, her brain just needed to realize that it was
okay to calm and relax these muscles.
Well we did that three times and all of her shortness of breath and her rapid heart rate
and her anxiety and the headaches that went with that were completely gone and I told
her we should probably do it a few more times until you're up here, you know I'm glad she's
feeling better but there's still some restriction in those muscles.
So we did it three more times, retested her BNP, I forgot to mention the upper limit of
normal for BNP, that blood test that she said was off the charts, the upper limit of normal
for BNP is 100, the medical upper limit of normal, the healthy range is actually below
40, you should have it below 40 if you're otherwise fit and healthy.
So hers was 680 when she had gone to the hospital and after six sessions of working on her just
getting her ribs to relax and working on her neck a little bit, her BNP, we retested it
and it was 20 and you know that was a couple years ago, she's still feeling fine.
So oftentimes a little bit of work on the table can go a long way to help with a condition
that seems totally unrelated to anything physical like rapid heart rate and shortness of breath.
Remember the health of your body is far more important than any disease condition you've
been diagnosed with.
Do something this week to be healthier than you were last week.
Have a fabulous weekend, I look forward to seeing you right here on KDR FM 98.3 next
Friday at 4.
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 4 p.m. for Safe Effective Natural Solutions right here on 98.3 The
Word KDAR.