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 am Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine.
The focus of this show is to arm you with information you can use to prevent disease.
And if you have early signs of disease, reverse it.
And heart disease is obviously one of the most important things that you want to identify
early so you can prevent it.
Because it's the number one cause of death in America.
We've been talking about heart disease prevention this entire month.
This is the last Friday in February.
And I'm happy to talk about this again any time you like.
This is the last week.
I'm going to focus on it.
What I've said before is three things you can do to prevent and reduce your risk of
heart disease.
Keep the pipes clear.
Keep the pressure low.
And keep the pump strong.
So you keep the pipes clear by reducing plaque formation.
And most doctors try to convince people that the way you do that is by taking statin drugs
to reduce your cholesterol.
And if you listen to the previous episodes, then you'll know that that's actually not
true.
Inflammation causes the damage to your blood vessels that causes plaque formation.
And that's what fails to keep the pipes clear.
So keep the pipes clear.
Keep the pressure low.
Keep the pump strong.
Keep the pressure low by relaxing.
Anything you do to relax will keep the pressure low.
You keep the pump strong by doing exercise.
So the best exercise, what's the best exercise I should do?
Well, the best exercise you should do is the one that you enjoy.
Do something to move your body that you actually enjoy doing.
Because then you'll actually do it.
The most important exercise is the one that requires the least amount of effort that you'll
actually do.
That you don't have to pay any money for or buy any special equipment for.
Go for a walk.
If you have access to a swimming pool, go for a swim.
Swimming is wonderful.
Swimming and walking are probably the two easiest things for anyone to do.
Because if you have a pool and a swimsuit, you don't need any special equipment.
But of course the ultimate exercise is just walking.
Walk outside.
Go for a walk someplace that you like.
There's a tremendous overlap between the two things.
Keep the pressure low and keep the pump strong.
You keep the pressure low and keep the pump strong by exercising.
But there are some other things you can do to keep the pressure low.
Like meditation.
And I know some people's eyes glass over when you say meditation.
What am I supposed to do?
Just sit here and think about this and that.
The whole point of meditation is to think about nothing.
That can be really difficult.
But there's some really great forms of meditation if you're interested in that.
One of my favorites is called Japa Meditation.
I first heard about this from Wayne Dyer back in the 80s.
You can go on YouTube and look up Japa Meditation, Wayne Dyer.
It's nothing to do with any belief or any religious system.
It's just a means of calming your mind.
And it's a lot of people who try to meditate.
So there's lots of apps that you can get on your phone that are fine, that are really
great for some people, to help calm your mind.
The point of meditation is to calm your mind, to reduce stress, to reduce your heart rate,
to reduce your blood pressure.
That's what we're going for.
But if you want to look up Japa Meditation, if you've had trouble trying to sit and calm
your mind and find yourself constantly distracted by the thoughts that just appear out of nowhere
and find it difficult to get them to stop, then making sound with your voice through
this particular type of Japa Meditation.
Check that out.
Just look it up on YouTube.
You can find it there.
If you can't find it, email me and I will send you a link.
There are lots of other ways you can reduce your stress, which will reduce the pipe, the
pressure in the pipes, anything that relaxes you.
Here's some other things.
Clear clutter.
If your life is filled with clutter, that's just one more nagging thing that causes stress
and can actually increase your blood pressure even more significantly.
And this is not a popular recommendation, but I got to mention it because it's important.
And it's the most important thing for some people.
Resolve festering emotions.
Resolve unresolved disagreements or upsets with friends and family members.
If all else fails and you cannot contact these people or have any interaction with them,
then choose to forgive them.
This is not for them.
Forgiving someone who has done whatever they may have done that still has you upset is
not a gift for them, especially obviously if you don't speak to them, they're not even
going to know anything about it.
It's been said before, staying angry at another person is kind of like drinking poison and
pretending you're poisoning them.
This is a gift from you to yourself.
You are the main beneficiary.
If it helps the other person in whatever situation, that's great.
And maybe it will help rekindle a beautiful relationship.
So much the better.
Either way, it's win or win-win.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
You're listening to Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge.
This is our final week in a series of means of reducing your risk of heart disease, the
number one cause of death in America and around the world.
So to protect your health, to prevent heart disease, you want to do the three things.
Keep the pipes clear, keep the pressure low, keep the pump strong.
One of the most controversial recurring arguments, well, actually it's most people, most medical
researchers have always said, well, if you want to keep the pressure low, you have to
reduce salt consumption.
But that's kind of hard to do.
There are so many delicious foods, healthy foods, fermented foods like pickles and sauerkraut
and kimchi and cheese.
So many foods that are actually really good for you that are high in salt.
And researchers have done the research and shown that it's only about 10 or 15% of your
total sodium consumption.
The average person is the sodium that you, when you're grabbing a salt shaker and salting
your own food.
Most people, especially in America, we eat so much processed food, 85% of the salt we
get is from, you know, eating fast food, eating processed food.
So if you're cooking your own healthy food, this is an interesting thing.
A lot of people won't believe this until they try it.
So here's a good thing to check out.
Do you know someone?
Have you seen someone who has a plate of food served to them and immediately grabs a salt
shaker before they even taste the food?
Obviously, that's a bad sign.
Salt makes a lot of things taste better.
But if you, it's like anything else, if you overdo it, then you just numb yourself to
it and you know, lots of things have salt in them already.
Everybody, cheese is made from salt, so many other things.
So yes, it's important, especially if you have high blood pressure, robust data exists.
Everybody hears this from almost every conventional doctor that if you have high blood pressure,
you need to reduce your sodium consumption.
But here's a really interesting study.
It's published in the medical literature.
The headline is reduce salt or increase potassium.
And it's a review of several studies that show which works better, reducing your salt
consumption or increasing your potassium consumption.
And of course, it's mostly talking about salt substitutes, which replace sodium with potassium,
which tastes terrible.
So they do mention in the study that you can also tip the balance.
That's the thing that was most exciting for me to see that this was actually in the medical
literature.
What really matters, this is what most doctors never tell you.
Yes, consuming too much salt, too much sodium will increase your blood pressure and your
risk of heart disease.
But what really matters is not the total amount of salt you consume, but the ratio of salt
versus potassium.
And guess what?
There's potassium in every fruit and vegetable.
So if you eat, don't just don't put salt on your food.
I mean, eat food that's well prepared so you don't feel like you need to add more salt.
If you feel like you need to add more salt at the table when you're eating it, then it's
just probably poorly prepared food.
There are so many other spices you can use to make your food taste good, like garlic
and shallots and chili peppers and a whole host of other things.
Email me about that.
The point is all fruits and vegetables have potassium in them.
Most people know that bananas and avocados and just Google high potassium sources.
There's lots of healthy foods that have high levels of potassium.
And the point is, if you consume enough potassium from real food, then it doesn't matter how
much sodium you eat from all those delicious things that are also healthy to eat that have
a lot of salt in them, like pickles and sauerkraut and fermented foods and cheese.
Cheese has a lot of salt in it.
But if you use it mindfully, as a condiment, not as your main source of food, and if you
cook most of your own food at home, instead of eating out and eating fast food especially
or even eating out in restaurants, I eat out in restaurants for lunch and I know that the
chefs in those restaurants overuse salt.
They do it all the time.
That's how they make their food.
Salt tastes great.
Everyone loves salt.
So if you eat out in restaurants all the time, you're probably going to be eating too much
salt.
So I eat out in restaurants for lunch, but I compensate by eating at home and making
my own food with fresh vegetables and eating a lot of spinach and kale and broccoli and
tomatoes and mushrooms and other fresh vegetables.
I'm Dr. Todd Benkley.
We're talking about safe, effective, natural solutions this month to prevent heart disease.
So the three steps are keep the pipes clear, keep the pressure low, and keep the pump strong.
The focus of today's presentation is to keep the pump strong, which is basically to exercise.
So a lot of people have heard about if you haven't, it's still a good idea to get a pedometer.
But there are so many ways to do that.
It came out back in, here's a study from the, recently came out in the medical research.
It started in actually, I didn't, I never, I'm actually surprised by this.
1965 in Tokyo, Japan, a company released a step counter calling it a 10,000 steps meter.
So there's been robust research released ever since then that if you get 10,000 steps a
day, then you will go a long way towards reducing your risk of heart disease.
But is, where's the evidence?
Do you really need to do 10,000 steps?
Well there is evidence that 10,000 steps are beneficial and have profound effects.
But there's a lot of other research that shows, for example, that just 2,500 steps or about
a mile are enough to begin reducing your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
For every extra 500 steps or one lap around a standard track, you lower that risk by another
7%.
Roughly 4,000 steps helps reduce the risk for early death from any cause.
At 6,000 steps, you may lower your risk for type 2 diabetes, particularly if you're an
older woman.
So these are reviews of several studies and these are all referenced.
This is a summary.
So it goes on at 500 more.
6,500 steps can lower your blood pressure.
The evidence shows that you can lower your blood pressure.
If you pass 8,000 steps, you lower your risk for obesity, sleep apnea, and depression.
At 9,800 steps, you may reduce your risk of developing dementia by 50%.
So now what happens if you make it to the heavily marketed, everyone's heard about it,
10,000 steps?
Well, at 10,500 steps, your risk of dying by cardiovascular disease is 77% lower than
if you only take 2,500 steps.
So let's repeat that again.
Just close enough, 10,000 steps.
Basically, this research has showed that any amount of steps that you make is a really
good idea.
To get a pedometer, you can get a pedometer for a good one for 20, 25 bucks on Amazon.
A lot of people have Fitbits or Apple watches that track all this stuff for you.
Your phone sometimes can do it for you.
Even if it's an approximation, that's okay.
The point is just to get a rough estimation of how many steps you're taking per day.
And this I'm reviewing, if you just tuned in, I'm reviewing a really interesting review
of the literature with a whole bunch of references for the benefits of 2,500, 5,000, 4,000, 6,000,
8,000, 10,000 steps.
But it ultimately comes back to around 10,000 steps.
It finishes with at 11,000 steps, you've lowered your risk for hypertension, diabetes, depression,
obesity, and sleep apnea by 20 to 25, by 25 to 50% more than someone who takes 6,000
steps.
At 11,500 steps, the risk for early death may be 67% lower than if you took 4,000 steps.
So the average American takes about 4,000 steps a day, 4,400.
So consider taking more.
Get a device that measures how many steps you take a day, because then you'll know,
then you'll have a goal, then you'll have a reason to go out, take the dog for a walk,
or even just go for a walk around the block.
Exercise should be something that's easy to incorporate into your daily routine on a regular
basis.
Here's another fascinating study that just came out published this month, February 2024,
in comparing the effects of Tai Chi versus aerobic exercise on blood pressure in patients
with pre-hypertension.
So patients that had a little bit of high blood pressure, they had half the patients
do standard aerobic exercise and had the other half of the patients do Tai Chi.
So Tai Chi, if most people have seen it, if you've never done it yourself, you've probably
seen it in the movies, you kind of sort of stand around with your feet wide, with an
instructor showing you how to do some very specific slow movements, there is wisdom and
a form of exercise that has been around for hundreds of years.
It's very relaxing.
Tai Chi is fantastic.
So many people want to jump around and fix all of their problems in an hour by doing
aerobic exercise.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Aerobic exercise is wonderful.
But we're talking about preventing heart disease.
If you want to prevent heart disease, keep the pump strong.
So aerobic exercise will keep the pump strong.
Absolutely.
Run.
Do a marathon.
That will keep the pump strong.
And if you have anxiety and depression, doing vigorous aerobic exercise, depending on your
age, if you tolerate that well, fantastic.
I don't want to shortchange that.
But if your goal, if you're older, a little bit older, and you want to know how to reduce
your risk of high blood pressure, then Tai Chi, going to a class, they're available
everywhere.
You probably have access.
But a lot of people already have a free Tai Chi class available at wherever they're living
or at the Y.
If you're not aware of a free Tai Chi class, there's probably one available.
Google it or email me.
I'll send you a link.
But Tai Chi is basically just a series of very specific movements that have been developed
and been used by millions of people, especially in Asia, for, I don't know, I think hundreds,
don't quote me, but I think hundreds of years, a long time.
A lot of people have been doing these exercises for a long time.
And they look a little weird if you've never done them before, but they have tremendous
effects on lowering your blood pressure, on keeping the pressure low.
And because you're actually moving your body, they will also have the effect of keeping
the pump strong.
So you can keep the pressure low and keep the pump strong by doing Tai Chi.
And there's robust medical research to show that it works.
Lastly, one of the most important things you can do to both keep the pressure low and keep
the pump strong is to consume adequate amounts of protein.
And I'm going to describe some really great research that's come out in the major medical
literature about how most people do not, over a certain age especially, do not get enough
protein in their diet.
And you may think, lately people are, in the popular press, it's all, most people think,
oh yeah, I got to eat a lot of protein.
You go to restaurants, you go to the supermarket, protein content is advertised.
You'd think we'd all be eating enough protein.
But still, very recent research is showing that people are not, people over 50, especially
people over 60, and mostly people over 70, are not eating enough protein.
But even that's not necessarily true because those studies are, these studies are based
on research that's flawed, frankly.
How do you know?
The only way you know if you have enough protein is to test your serum protein levels.
Get a blood test.
Your serum protein levels, most people, your serum protein levels should be 7 point something.
If it's 6 point anything, it's probably too low.
If you're a woman and you're younger and of lower weight, the ranges do vary.
So the normal ranges for blood tests are not the same for everybody.
They vary a little bit depending on your age and your weight and your gender.
But most people should have a serum level of 7 point 0 to 8 point 0, 7 point something,
to have enough protein to heal and repair all of your cells.
So research in the Journal of Nutrition, Health and Aging reveals that most people in the
United States do not consume enough protein.
And insufficient protein is a marker of poor diet and overall health, which inevitably
leads to loss of muscle mass, increased risk of falls and fractures.
There is so much I could say and would love to say about this subject, but we're out of
time.
Email me your questions.
Have a fantastic weekend.
The motto of my business is live long, live well.
Have a fantastic 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 4 p.m. for Safe, Effective Natural Solutions right here on
98.3 The Word, KDAR.