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, non-force chiropractor and practitioner of functional medicine.
What is that?
Functional medicine basically means using the same diagnostic tests, mostly blood tests,
that other doctors use, but instead of trying to diagnose a disease condition that requires
pharmaceuticals or surgery or some other invasive medical procedure, identifying functional
medicine means using standard blood tests and other diagnostic tests to identify the
absence or presence of normal function.
Normal function, like when you're in your 20s.
So when you're in your 20s or younger, teens, everything is working perfectly.
Your blood work looks a certain way.
There are ranges that have been established that identify where normal function looks
like, what your normal function looks like when you test your blood, when everything
in your body is working perfectly.
So most doctors ignore that.
Most doctors only look for really bad, already advanced, diagnosable disease conditions because
everything is insurance-based.
Insurance is based on paying for a doctor to treat a disease you already have.
No, there's no such thing as health insurance.
It's medical insurance.
What is called health insurance is medical insurance.
It doesn't pay to keep you, there's no insurance company that will pay you anything to do any
process or procedure that will make you healthier.
There's no health insurance that will pay for your gym membership or to buy a new water
filter to drink clean water or buy organic food or it will help subsidize you growing
your own healthy food or exercising.
All of the things that keep you healthy, you have to pay for that yourself.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Think about car insurance.
That's the analogy I always use.
Car insurance doesn't pay for you to keep your car healthy.
Car insurance doesn't pay for you to change the oil in your car or put new belts or tires
on your car or do any kind of routine maintenance on your car or do anything else that will
make your car live long and live well, last longer.
Car insurance pays when you crash your car.
Very similarly, medical insurance, it's not health insurance, they call it health insurance.
Health insurance, air quotes, health insurance, medical insurance pays when you crash your
body, when you need medical care, when you end up in the hospital, when you need drugs,
when you need surgery, when you need antibiotics and you have an infection.
And that's a great thing.
Everybody should have health insurance.
The basis of insurance is we all pay a little bit into a pot to pool resources so that when
a few need special attention, they'll be covered.
That's how insurance works.
So there's never going to be any insurance that's going to pay for you to take better
care of yourself.
I'm sorry.
There could be.
There could be, but then even talking about that gets into politics and I try to avoid
that because no one, you know, it's contentious.
But I'll say it quickly.
Now, there are countries in the world where there is one insurance company and therefore
that one insurance company that covers everybody in that country has a potential return on
investment by investing in their health.
They still usually don't do it.
Australia did it.
There's a plan.
There's a I've never been able to find I heard about this or read about it.
And I can't find the paper.
I wish I could.
But I know I read somewhere that the federal government in Australia did a pilot project
where they gave everyone basically some of the things that I recommend that most functional
medicine practitioners recommend a multivitamin with absorbable minerals, more or less four
to five thousand units of vitamin D and a gram and a half of fish oil every day.
Something like that.
I know I read this and I've never been able to find it.
But anyway, they did that and it worked so well, they stopped doing it and made it part
of their program.
So it is possible for a single payer health care system to invest in your health and get
a return on investment.
But that's never going to happen in the United States of a because we have multiple insurance
companies and if they invest in your health, then you're going to get healthier and go
get cheaper insurance from one of their competitors.
There's no way anybody can get any any business can get a return on investment from investing
in your health.
So that is why health and quote air quotes health insurance.
It's not health insurance.
It's medical insurance.
That's why it doesn't cover anything to do with improving your health.
It only pays when you are in a crisis, when you already have diabetes, when you already
have hypothyroidism, when you already have a herniated disc or any other any other condition
that requires medical attention.
So on most of these episodes, I try to focus on a specific condition like heart disease,
high cholesterol, high blood pressure, the things that can cause heart disease or dementia.
We've covered those in some past episodes.
But every week there is literature that comes out in the medical literature, new studies
that come out from around the world and in prestigious.
A lot of it is in America, but some of the best research for natural, more natural oriented
healing is from Europe and other places around the world.
And this research is published in peer reviewed medical journals.
Otherwise it's pointless to look at.
And the good stuff, the stuff that is published in peer reviewed medical journals is published
online and among other places Medscape, Medscape and a couple of other online places push these
new studies out to doctors everywhere.
This is where most doctors get their information these days.
It's where I get it.
I spend 20, 30 hours a week reading this stuff, skimming through it and identifying the stuff
that's interesting.
I ignore a lot of it because it's not interesting.
So among other things, some recent studies came out about niacin.
So niacin is vitamin B3 and approximately 100 years ago, there was a widespread deficiency.
That was how niacin was discovered basically is there was a disease called pellagra and
it was at its peak in the southern United States of America about a hundred years ago,
over 120,000 people died between 1900 and 1920 due to a deficiency that had yet to be
discovered which was a deficiency in vitamin B3 niacin.
So how ironic is it that there was a major new study from the Cleveland Clinic that said,
oh my God, niacin can increase your risk of heart disease.
It was published on NBC News.
The headline is high levels of niacin linked to heart disease.
New research suggests.
No it doesn't.
If you actually read the research upon which this ridiculous headline is based, it suggests
nothing of the sort.
In fact, it says that this is really frustrating to me because it's from the Cleveland Clinic.
The Cleveland Clinic is an excellent, normally almost always an excellent resource of health
information but this study was published from Stanley Hazen's group at the Cleveland Clinic
but it didn't study niacin.
It studied, and it's a little technical, but there's no way around it.
The study involves a measurement of plasma metabolites that correlate with major adverse
cardiovascular events.
So you can be forgiven for having your head spin at that series of words that's really
confusing and the study itself just doesn't hold up.
If you review it, what they studied was, it's interesting.
So metabolites are important.
There are tests that I use, often urine tests.
There are important tests that measure metabolites of processes in the body to identify unusual
things that don't show up on other tests.
So it's a useful test but this test, the test that was used in this study, didn't measure
the consumption of niacin.
It measured a metabolite of niacin which is associated with niacin consumption but not
directly.
So it proved nothing basically and it's ridiculous on its face.
B vitamins are in food.
They're in meat.
They're in meat organs, they're in grains and they're essential.
Everyone knows that the word vitamin means vital amine and vitamins were discovered in
the early 20th century because people were dying from diseases that they discovered that
if you just fed them some food, in the case of B vitamins, liver, they suddenly survived.
And so everyone now knows that vitamins are essential.
So any study, if you ever hear or read about any study that says any vitamin is dangerous,
you should really, well, the best thing to do would be to email or text me.
But even if you don't have time for that, just ignore it.
There's so many ridiculous studies published about so-called dangers of vitamins.
And a hundred thousand people die every year from the toxic side effects of medications.
Medications are dangerous.
They're also essential for some people.
Vitamins are parts of food that our lives depend on to suggest that any vitamin is toxic
is ridiculous.
It's insane.
So whenever you look up the basic data, the foundational data that once you get past the
headline and look up the study that people are referencing to produce these ridiculous
headlines that say any vitamin is dangerous, the conclusion is always the same.
It was a poorly done study.
It didn't measure what it said it was measuring.
It didn't use appropriate doses.
It didn't use the correct forms of that vitamin.
And that's why it's so important if you want to live long and live well to seek out the
counsel of a functional medicine practitioner, someone whose interest is in not pushing drugs,
but instead restoring normal, healthy function of all of your organs and systems.
I'm Dr. Todd Benkley.
You're listening to Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge.
And today I'm doing a review of some of the latest things that have come out in the medical
literature we talked about.
Niacin.
Let's move on to another study which is headlined.
Abdominal fat deposits are related to lower cognitive functioning and brain volumes in
middle-aged males at high Alzheimer's risk.
So basically it means that if you have a belly, if you have a big gut sticking over your belt,
it's going to increase your risk of Alzheimer's.
Why is that?
And I know it's really frustrating because it just seems unfair.
Just you know, people want to get on with their lives and their bellies expand as they
get older.
But the research is in.
Belly fat is different than fat in your thighs or your arms or your calves or any other part
of your body.
Belly fat is really bad.
Fat belly fat is the worst.
It doesn't mean you need to be, you know, have six pack abs or be skinny or any of that
nonsense that people get so obsessed about.
But belly fat is different fat than the fat in other parts of your body.
And especially in men, this study has proven that accumulations of that fat increase your
risk.
I don't know if dramatically is appropriate, but significantly, I think, is the word they
use.
Increases your fat in the pancreas and other organs and is directly associated with lower
cognition and lower brain volume.
And that's just not good.
It's unfortunate.
But there's ways to test your risk for these things.
So you know, if you're curious about your risk of this, if you have, especially if you
have a family member that had dementia and you want to know your risk, there's ways to
test for this, including among other things, the APOE gene.
I've talked about this before a few episodes ago.
If you have questions about it, send me a text or an email.
Dr. Binkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
Text me at 805-218-3939.
I love answering people's questions.
So here's another headline, intermittent fasting.
There was this ridiculous research or not research headlines that came out in, I don't
know, some media, some media that said intermittent intermittent fasting is dangerous.
What is intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting means not eating for most of the day, restricting your basically
not eating three meals a day, instead eating two meals a day.
But not even that intermittent fasting basically means most days, not even not necessarily
every day, but most days eating breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner.
Most people do lunch and dinner.
Most people skip breakfast, eat lunch, eat dinner, go to sleep, skip breakfast.
Not good.
That's not a good, it's not a good idea.
No one needs.
So our culture, and it's wonderful, especially if you have children, if you have a family,
people come home at the end of the day, you want to have a nice meal together.
I'm not sure how many families even do that anymore.
Most people are staring at their screens while they're eating dinner.
But the big picture problem is you don't need food to sleep.
It's way it's for almost everyone.
It's much better to do it like the Europeans and eat your biggest meal of the day at lunch.
Eat a big lunch and eat something when you wake up in the morning that includes fat and
protein, not starch and sugar.
Also eat a protein and fat rich breakfast and a huge lunch and skip dinner.
That's what I do.
I never eat dinner.
I occasionally go out to dinner.
It's the whole, it's a whole cultural thing.
It's lovely to have fantastic meals at dinner, but anything that you eat at dinner, you can
eat for lunch as well.
They legalized that several years ago.
You can eat anything you want at lunch or even breakfast.
You can eat leftovers for breakfast, things that you had for dinner the night before.
It's really important just to remember that or know that you want to consume food when
your body needs it, when you're actually healing and repairing yourselves.
It takes a while.
It takes a few hours for whatever you eat, whatever you chew and swallow.
Remember to chew your food.
There's no teeth in your stomach.
It's really important to chew your food.
Chew your food until it's like the consistency of baby food.
Otherwise you're not going to get the nutrients from that food.
Chew your food, swallow it.
It goes into your stomach.
It takes a few hours for it to work its way through your intestines and eventually end
up in your bloodstream.
So you are not what you eat.
You are what your bloodstream, what ends up in your bloodstream.
You are, your body is made of what actually your body is capable of absorbing, of absorbing
into your bloodstream through your intestines.
So if you eat starch and sugar, that's absorbed really, really quickly.
If you eat vegetables and meat, it takes a little longer to break those things down and
absorb them.
And that's what you want.
You want foods that take time to slowly break down and absorb into your system, which is
why it makes no sense to have our biggest meal of the day in the evening right before
you're going to go to bed.
Or if you're going to have dinner and have your biggest meal in the evening, please do
it at five or six o'clock sometime.
The goal should be to try to have your last meal at least four or preferably five hours
before you lie down, before you go to bed.
Because then it's going to work its way, that food is going to work its way through your
digestive system.
Those nutrients are going to start to be broken down and absorbed and used to heal and repair
the damage that's caused by normal life.
Every day we walk around and cause damage to ourselves that require repair.
Our bodies require routine maintenance every single day.
And the routine maintenance requires a steady supply of nutrients.
I like to think of, and I encourage you to think of your bloodstream as a river of life.
So your bloodstream is a river of life supplying nutrients to every cell in your body for healing
and repair projects that are ongoing, that are waiting.
Imagine a river with a construction crew on both sides, both banks of the river.
They're sitting there, they've got all their equipment, they're ready to fix the cells
of your pancreas or your spleen or your liver or your heart or your joints, your bones,
your brain, whatever part needs healing and repair that day.
They're sitting there waiting on the banks of the river and your bloodstream is either
full of nutrients that they need to make that project happen or not.
Most of the time it's not.
People eat calorie rich food that fills them up, makes them feel full so they stop eating
and that crap food, bread, rice, pasta, sandwiches, junk food, prepared meals, has no nutrients
in it, no vegetables, no meat, no good protein, no healthy fats like avocados and nuts and
oils from seeds, et cetera.
And so they just think they're good.
You feel good, you ate, you feel fine.
But eventually you don't feel fine because you haven't provided the river of life, your
bloodstream with the nutrients it needs to give those construction crews on both sides
of the river bank the nutrients necessary to heal and repair your tissues.
This is how disease happens.
This is how your body breaks down.
No one tells you that.
Have you ever heard anyone tell you that before?
Disease is not random.
It doesn't just suddenly show up.
There are rare, very rare genetic conditions, but they're not even worth thinking about.
If you have one, doesn't matter.
There's nothing you can do about it.
And they're also really, really, really rare.
Most disease, most of the diseases that people end up going to doctors for, end up in the
hospital for are the result of neglect, of bad behavior and neglect, of eating too much
grains, starch and sugar, too much bread, too much sugary crackers and cakes, cookies,
bagels, donuts, french fries, too much sugary drinks, beer, fruit juices.
There's no good fruit juice.
Nobody should drink orange juice or any other fruit juice.
Eat the fruit.
If you want it, if you want the nutrients and fruit, there's lots of nutrients and certain
fruits.
Eat the fruit.
Most fruits, many fruits, most of the fruits that people love the most are way too sweet.
So I just, I recommend that most people don't eat most fruit like grapes, oranges, melons,
pineapple.
There's wonderful, amazing enzymes in pineapple, but the fruit itself is too sweet.
The only fruit that I think justifies the sugar content is our berries, berries, blueberries,
elderberries, blackberries, any kind of berries.
They're also pretty sweet, but how many of them are you going to eat?
They're expensive.
Nobody, it's very rare for anybody to eat too many blueberries, raspberries, blackberries,
elderberries, any kind of berries because they have some sugar in them like all other
fruits, but they also are full of nutrients, antioxidants, so they're worth eating.
If you like to make a shake in the morning, I'm just thinking of this because it comes
up a lot.
A lot of people like to make a shake, blend some fruits and protein powder.
If you're going to do that, I recommend adding some berries, no sugar, some berries, unsweetened
almond milk is better or regular milk is okay, but unsweetened almond milk is better than
soy milk or some of the other crap, air quotes, milks that people drink.
If you're going to add, a lot of people like to add a banana.
A banana is nice, but also often too sweet.
The way to make it not too sweet is to buy organic bananas, which keep a little bit longer,
and when they're still green, while they're still green, cut the tips off and peel them,
put them into little one-inch segments, freeze them overnight, and then put them in a bag
the next morning and they'll be ready to throw into your shake.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
We're out of time.
Thank you for listening.
I'll look forward to talking to you right here on KDAR next week.
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.