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.
The last two episodes we've been talking about dementia, especially Alzheimer's, the most
common form and there are so many things that are so important to do basically to take care
of your health and know your risk factors because there's no fix for Alzheimer's once
the damage is already done.
There are ways to reduce some of the effects and improve quality of life.
That's what the focus is going to be of today's show.
There are a lot of products that I've seen in my office with patients and for which there
is tremendous research to mitigate some of the damaging effects and unfortunately most
people wait until they've already got full blown signs of cognitive decline or dementia
before they go see anyone.
So that is going to be the focus of today's presentation.
But I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that the simplest things you can do to keep
your brain healthy are everything that you've already heard to keep your heart healthy.
Exercise, just go for a walk and drink three to four quarts of water a day.
Divide your body weight by two and drink that number of ounces of water every day.
Can do wonders for your brain.
The focus of functional medicine is using standard diagnostic testing to identify earlier
signs of stress on any organ and tissue of your body and then finding a solution that
involves eating better food, exercising and supplements.
So the focus of this talk today is going to be about some of those supplements.
Before I get into that, I really want to empathize with people who are confused because they
hear things in the media and from their doctors that say, you know, this supplement or that
supplement doesn't work for this or that.
And you know, the media loves to report on something that works one day and doesn't work
in one day.
Eggs are good for you.
The next day, eggs are bad for you.
One week coffee is good for you.
The next week coffee is bad for you.
Spoiler alert, eggs and coffee are both good for you and moderate doses.
But the frustrating thing is people go to their doctor and many physicians will tell
their patients that all supplements are useless.
Well, that's just sad.
I mean, and it's egregious because it's costing people their lives, honestly, in some cases,
and certainly quality of life in many, many, many cases.
So any doctor that tells you that supplements are useless or that you should not waste your
money on supplements or you shouldn't take this or that is basically admitting his or
her ignorance.
This is one of the most obvious signs of a doctor who bases all their clinical recommendations
solely on information bought and sold by big pharma.
The pharmaceutical industry has slightly less money than Exxon and Mobile and Elon Musk
and Jeff Bezos, but they still underwrite most medical research and much of the continuing
education that most physicians use to update their clinical recommendations.
So myopic physicians who choose to limit themselves to conventional medicine based entirely on
pharmaceuticals, wait for it, are heroes.
These are people that are going to save your life because most of the time, maybe not,
hopefully not most of the time, but oftentimes far too many times people wait until they
need medical intervention.
They need pharmaceuticals.
They need an immediate solution to a crisis.
So the purpose of this show is to educate you, to arm you, to facilitate a difference in
your life, facilitate better choices that you can make so that you don't end up needing
medical intervention.
But these people are heroes.
They save people's lives.
So I'm definitely not saying or perhaps better said, I want to make it clear that it's not
their fault.
They're busy treating people who show up in such a mess that they need medical care.
The egregious part, there's nothing wrong with you.
It's all in your head when what they should say is that I can't figure out what's wrong
with you.
And of course, they often love to say supplements don't work.
Don't waste your money.
Just take these drugs or wait until you need these drugs to save your life.
So again, it's not their fault.
Listeners prepare to perhaps be offended a little bit because most people wait until
they need crisis care.
Most people spend their entire lives saying to themselves, quote, I feel fine and then
wait till the ambulance shows up.
So listeners to this show are obviously much smarter, but context matters.
The world in which we live regarding all aspects of health care, most of which isn't health
care at all, but instead medical care to treat disease and a crisis.
This situation where drugs are constantly marketed to be the solution of all our problems
is not an accident.
Most people refuse to take responsibility for your own health.
If you want to be healthy, it's up to you.
Medicare is not going to make you healthy.
Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, nothing they offer is going to restore you
to optimum health.
They offer medical care to treat disease you already have.
If you want to prevent disease and reverse disease, it's up to you.
And dementia is a classic example of a condition that our conventional medical system and the
expectations we have about medical insurance and reimbursement, et cetera, is a catastrophic
failure.
Trying to treat and reverse the symptoms of cognitive decline and let alone full blown
dementia will never work.
I'm going to say that again, trying to treat with pharmaceuticals to reverse the symptoms
of cognitive decline and full blown dementia will never work.
Millions of dollars have been spent by pharmaceutical companies.
Scores of trials are currently in development right now to find drugs that reverse damage
to your brain.
They will never work.
This is the saddest thing that everyone needs to know about damage to the brain.
You don't feel damage to your brain until the damage is already done.
And that damage is mostly irreversible.
But on that bright note, there is hope.
So there are a host of nutrients.
As I've already mentioned, a product called Synthetic Synergy in the previous episode
and the importance of having adequate vitamin B12, which is very, very commonly deficient
and almost everybody as we get older and strongly contributes if it's deficient to cognitive
decline, heart disease, risk of stroke, and all of those things go together.
Anything you've ever heard to keep your heart healthy and strong will keep your brain healthier
and stronger.
So another nutrient, rock star nutrient to help both your heart and your brain is coenzyme
Q10.
Coenzyme Q10 is the rate limiting enzyme that your body produces to help replace muscle
tissue, muscle cells as they die, including the muscle cells of your heart.
And this is why it's so egregious that nearly every doctor in the world wants to put everybody
on statin drugs because statin drugs block the production of coenzyme Q10, which is essential
for your heart.
So see my, listen to my previous episodes to hear more about this or email me if you
have questions.
Here's a great study titled Serum Coenzyme Q10 levels as a predictor of dementia in a
Japanese general population.
This study was done at the department of cardiology at the national hospital organization in Tokyo
Medical Center published in atherosclerosis arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis clogging
of the arteries.
This is a very prestigious journal and Dr. Yamagishi and others reported their population
based study of approximately 6,000 Japanese subjects from 45 to 70 years at baseline who
were followed for five years.
And they showed that the people with the lowest levels of coenzyme Q10 had the highest incidence
of disabling dementia independent of various other risk factors.
More importantly, they reported that there was an association between the coenzyme Q10
and total cholesterol ratio.
So basically what they showed is that if you had high levels of coenzyme Q10 and low cholesterol,
you were at increased risk of dementia.
This is the opposite of what statin drugs that most doctors want to give everyone, which
lower your cholesterol, but even more importantly, drastically reduce your levels of coenzyme
Q10.
So it should be malpractice to prescribe a statin drug, Lipitor, Zocor, et cetera, any
cholesterol lowering drug without also giving people coenzyme Q10 to offset that effect.
I'm Dr. Todd Benkley, you're listening to Safe Effective Natural Solutions to Almost
Any Health Challenge.
This week we're talking for the third episode in a row about Alzheimer's and other forms
of dementia and how you can reduce it.
And this time we're focusing on various supplements that you can take that will reduce the effects.
When you've already found yourself in a situation where cognitive decline is present, there
are ways to improve your quality of life, enhance healing of your brain, replacing brain
cells with certain products.
I always stress to my patients when they're in the office that the products that I recommend,
the products that I stock in my office are not the only ones that work.
There are lots of great products out there.
The problem is there are so many more products out there that are not great.
So most of the products, unfortunately, in stores other than health food stores, there
are some good products in health food stores like Lassons, Whole Foods, etc.
Health food stores generally stock good products, but they often cost more than the good top
shelf products that you can get from doctors who practice functional medicine.
So the context is important.
You are as different on the inside as you are on the outside.
In conventional medical standards of care, our one size fits all decrees designed to
minimize the damage caused by the side effects of toxic pharmaceuticals.
Your doctor has probably never even attempted to diagnose with tests appropriate to your
condition.
Your actual level of health, conventional medicine, is the diagnosis and treatment of
disease, not the diagnosis and identification of how healthy you are.
And so think about that.
Most people go to their doctor and if they're not needing crisis care, they're going to
check to see if they're okay.
The goal of an annual physical is to get the celebrated, insert your own air quotes, clean
bill of health.
Clean bill of health.
What is that?
What is a clean bill of health?
Well, basically it just means you don't need medical care today.
So 99% of these proclamations are nonsense given by overworked physicians with goals
that are often completely at odds with the goals of their patients.
Is your goal when you get your annual physical to find out if you're healthy or just to find
out if you need medical care?
Well, if it's to find out if you're healthy, I'm sorry, but that's not even the goal of
an annual physical as practiced by most doctors.
But don't blame your doctor.
They're busy treating people who need medical care.
Instead, if you want to increase your longevity to, as I like to say, live long and live well,
nobody wants to live long if they're going to be miserable drooling in bed while someone
else changes their diapers in the last five, 10, 20 years of their life.
There are a lot worse things than sudden death.
The goal should be, I mean, I think for most of us, the goal is to burn bright like a candle
and then, you know, just pass in your sleep one night when your time comes.
So instead, find a doctor whose goals are aligned with yours, who will listen to you
and properly do the most important test of all, a good case history.
Are you getting adequate sleep?
Have you had a recent loss of a loved one in your life?
Have you moved?
Have you had a change in a relationship?
These are the most stressful things that can happen to anyone and they're important and
should govern any decisions about what kind of testing will help to identify what your
body needs to restore health and give you the best chance at living long and living
well.
So, yeah, I see this all the time.
People are so frustrated with the experience they're getting at the doctor that their insurance
pays for that they try to diagnose themselves.
Have you consulted Dr. Google?
Most doctors become livid if you reveal that you've, or announce even worse, that you've
looked something up on the internet and found that this could do this and this could do
that.
It can be dangerous to look things up on the internet and base health decisions on what
you find depending on your source of information.
So don't look up stuff on Reddit or blogs of people where patients, where there's no
doctor they're giving expert advice, where it's just patients talking about their experience.
Even those can actually be useful as a starting point, perhaps, but you need to follow it
up and find something that's actually based on evidence and experience by a trained physician.
When someone comes to me and tells me about things they've looked up on the internet,
I applaud them.
I applaud anyone who's motivated to take responsibility for their own health.
So more high quality information for enhancing health and reversing diseases published online
every day.
But the human body is complex.
You might find some amazing thing online that your regular doctor would never tell you about,
but you also might get information that's been effective on just a few people, but not
enough to justify risking your time and money.
So I would be honored to bridge that gap for you.
That is my purpose.
That is the purpose of my practice and the purpose of the show is to bridge that gap
between the frustration with conventional medicine and frankly the dangers of trying
to go it alone on your own.
So the practice of functional medicine, like the practice of conventional medicine, is
an art.
It's not a science.
We base clinical decisions on scientific evidence, on studies, but it's not physics.
It's not chemistry.
It's not something that's reproducible.
There are too many variables.
Human beings are different.
You're as different on the inside as you are on the outside.
So there are too many variables to predict outcomes with perfect precision like hard
science like chemistry and physics.
So clinical practitioners of every stripe use their skills and experience to identify
what's most likely to work for you with all the past traumas, self-inflicted or otherwise,
and most importantly, neglect.
I'm sorry, but it just has to be mentioned.
People don't take care of themselves.
People that end up in my office, the evidence is usually they just haven't taken good enough
care of themselves, but you don't have to do it alone.
I'm here to help you take better care of yourself.
There are other options.
Throughout the month of February, I talked about heart health and anything you've ever
heard to increase your heart health, the health of your cardiovascular system will increase
your brain health and reduce your risk and the damage to your brain cells because almost
all damage to the brain is a result of insufficient nutrients and insufficient oxygen.
The same process that causes hardening of the arteries throughout your body causes hardening
of the arteries in and to your brain.
One of the most common arteries they measure to determine your level of cardiovascular
disease is an ultrasound of your carotid arteries.
This is a good test for anyone to order if they want to know their level of damage at
this point.
It's a non-invasive, inexpensive test.
I can get it for about 150 bucks from Grossman Imaging, but you can ask your doctor to order
that as well.
The point is there are products that can reverse the effects of early damage to the linings
of your blood vessels.
The inner lining of your blood vessels is kind of like pantyhose.
It's a very thin, silky-like material that keeps everything flowing smoothly, but inflammation
causes little tiny tears in that, which must be healed with a scab, which is the genesis
of plaque formation.
It is formed plaque in your arteries, is formed by fibrin, the standard scar tissue that heals
any kind of tear in your skin or any part of your body.
Fibrin, it's a protein scar tissue, plus cholesterol and calcium.
So in the blood vessels, when you get these little micro tears from inflammation, fibrin
forms to bridge the gap to create a scab, and then cholesterol and calcium tend to stick
to that and unfortunately create plaques that get thicker and thicker and cause atherolose,
sclerosis, hardening of the arteries.
But if your cholesterol is high and you have no tears in your blood vessels, then the cholesterol
won't stick to those scabs and you won't get heart disease.
So this is the best demonstration of why cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease, it's just associated
with it.
So there's a great product called Natokinase.
The Japanese discovered an enzyme that is in a fermented soy product called Natokinase,
which is a systemic enzyme that actually breaks down that plaque, it actually breaks down
that fibrin, the main protein, the main component, especially in the beginning of those plaques
that build up.
And you can slowly scavenge your blood vessels and reduce that plaque formation by taking
Natokinase.
Functional levels of vitamin K2, which comes in many different forms, but the two most
important forms to know about are called MK7 and MK4, that's more detailed than you need
to know about.
If you want to, if you have questions about that, email me, if you come see me, I'll find
the best form for you.
There's research to support both forms, but adequate amounts of vitamin K are so important
for so many things, like vitamin D, they ask the, vitamin D keeps calcium in circulation,
vitamin K deposits calcium into your bones, but if you have the wrong kind of calcium,
then it will deposit it and more of it into the arteries as well.
So that's why you might've heard, oh my God, taking too much vitamin D can increase your
risk of heart disease.
This is ridiculous.
Vitamin D reduces your risk of heart disease.
But if you take adequate levels of vitamin D and take cheap crappy calcium carbonate
supplements, read your labels, 99% of the calcium supplements in stores are calcium
carbonate, ground up rocks and seashells.
Nobody should take that.
It is not nutritious.
You need to take other forms of calcium.
But vitamin D keeps calcium in circulation and vitamin K deposits it into tissues.
So the nice thing about that is if you're taking good calcium, having adequate levels
of vitamin K actually scavenges and helps remove plaque formation.
And if you combine it with olive leaf extract, which is a concentrated form of some of the
beneficial nutrients you've heard of a Mediterranean diet of consuming olive oil, a healthy fat,
it's always best to do that first.
I'm a fan of getting most of the nutrients you can, all the nutrients you can from food
when possible, and olive oil has this very specific classification of polyphenols that
help reduce both blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.
So there is robust data to show that you can actually reduce hardening of the arteries
and blood pressure if you take a combination of relatively high doses of vitamin K2 in
the MK4 or MK7 form along with olive leaf extract.
I've always said that cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease.
It's associated with it.
And unfortunately, a lot of people do have damage to the interlining of the blood vessels.
And it is important to reduce your cholesterol.
But you don't need to do it with statin drugs.
There's a whole host of products.
One of the best ones is Bergamot BPF from Orthomolecular Products.
I've routinely seen people reduce their total and bad LDL cholesterol levels by 30, 40 points,
sometimes even 50 points.
And there are several other products that can safely reduce your cholesterol levels
without the side effects of statin drugs.
And there are a whole host of products with polyphenols, plant-based nutrients, that can
heal this interlining of your blood vessels, that can give you energy, that can deal with
all of the issues that are associated with cardiovascular disease, and help you heal
both your nerves and your blood vessels to keep your brain and your heart healthy and
strong.
I would be honored to consult with you about this.
Proper testing is required.
An initial consultation is required.
But it's far less expensive than you might imagine to get a proper functional medicine
analysis of what you need or what someone needs, one of your loved ones.
I consult with people all over the country, in New Jersey, in Florida, in Colorado, in
Washington state, even Hawaii and Alaska.
So lab tests are available nationwide.
I can consult with people via telemedicine on the phone, FaceTime video if they want
it.
I'd be honored to help someone you love restore their health so that they can live long and
live well.
Thank you for tuning into my show each week.
Please tune in next Friday at 4 p.m.
Have a fantastic weekend.
Remember to do something this weekend to be healthier than you were last weekend.
I look forward to speaking with you right here on KDAR next Friday at 4 p.m.
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
Dr. Binkley at www.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.