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 doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine.
What is that you say?
What is functional medicine?
What's the difference between functional medicine and regular medicine?
Well, regular medicine, quote unquote, well the medicine that most people get from most
doctors, traditional allopathic medicine, whichever your favorite term is, is mostly
based on identifying disease you already have that requires medical care, that requires
a prescription for a pharmaceutical that you may be dependent on for the rest of your life,
that requires surgery or a scan or a referral to a specialist.
So mainstream medical care is there to save your life.
It's very important.
We're blessed to have the best medical care system in the world right here in the United
States of America.
But you know, waiting until you need medical care isn't always the best idea.
A lot of people are interested in that.
That's probably why many of you are listening to this show.
And so we think of talk about things like, well, alternative medicine or integrative
medicine, what are all these things mean?
Well, basically if you don't want to end up dependent on medical therapies that have side
effects and can be very costly and might even make you worse, might even kill you.
The figures change every year, but somewhere around a hundred thousand people give or take
are killed by properly prescribed medication every year.
So nobody wants that.
Functional medicine means using more tests.
It takes more tests.
It's really easy to diagnose full blown diabetes or liver failure or kidney disease or heart
attack or a stroke.
It requires few tests to do that because the results are glaringly obvious and predictable.
It requires doing more tests to identify things that are not working a hundred percent.
Places where your immune system or cardiovascular system or digestive system might need a little
bit support.
It requires doing a few more tests and a different type of analysis, a different yardstick to
measure whether or not things are within range or not.
So the medical ranges, the clinical ranges, the standard ranges on every blood test ordered
at every hospital or lab core or quest or wherever you can normally get your blood work
done, those ranges are to determine whether or not you have a diagnosed medical condition.
If your A1C is above 5.6, you have pre-diabetes.
If your cholesterol, total cholesterol is above 200, you have hypercholesterolemia and you
must take a statin drug right now for the rest of your life.
Well, no you shouldn't.
That's a bad idea.
But the point is these broad medical ranges are to identify the presence of a disease
that is already full blown, that is already a diagnosed condition that you need medical
care for.
So there is, and that's an important range to have, it's an important range to use.
I use it on every single patient, every single test.
It's right there on the form.
But there's also a functional range that is not on the standard forms that you only get
if you go to a practitioner of functional medicine.
And this functional range is narrower than the medical range.
It's roughly the middle third of the medical range.
It's an approximation.
It varies for your age and the health condition you're in and a few other factors.
But what does your blood work look like when you're perfectly healthy in your teens and
in your 20s?
That's what this functional range represents.
That's how it's been determined.
It's been created and tweaked and modified and further developed over the past few decades
by naturopaths and functional medicine practitioners, alternative health practitioners, whether they're
MD, chiropractor, acupuncturist, naturopath, anybody that's interested in preventing disease
and preserving health as opposed to just waiting until you need medical treatment have been
refining what's been established to be this functional range.
And it varies from one practitioner to the next even a little bit.
But there's a pretty general consensus now about what your blood work should look like
when you're healthy.
And when you identify things that are outside of this narrower, healthy functional range,
the range that represents the normal function of your liver, your kidneys, your immune system,
digestive system, et cetera, then you can usually correct those things with better food,
with exercise, gentle exercise, and supplements where necessary to replete deficiencies that
show up on these tests.
You can also identify things like exposure to toxins that you need to flush out of your
body or hormone deficiencies, imbalances in your neurotransmitters, infections in your
gut and elsewhere.
So there's a whole host of other tests that just are not part of standard medical treatment
that you get when you go to most doctors that are the realm of practitioners of the practice
of functional medicine.
So if you or anyone you love, someone you love is just, you know, they've been told
is suffering, they've got something that's bothering them, that's been bothering them
for years, maybe you've seen a dozen doctors and no one's been able to help.
Well, if you haven't had a functional analysis and proper testing, you probably haven't.
If you haven't, then there probably is a solution that these other doctors will never find.
To find something, you must first look for it.
And most doctors never look for functional deficiencies, for nutrient deficiencies, for
deficiencies in essential vitamins and minerals and enzymes and essential fatty acids and
amino acids and a whole host of other things that our bodies depend on to function normally.
We can survive without them, but we cannot thrive without them.
And these are identifiable through proper testing.
Last week I talked about patients asking me a question about can I help someone with menstrual
cramps, severe menstrual cramps.
And I cited an example of a teenager, a 14-year-old girl who had severe menstrual cramps.
You know, it's normal to have some cramping on the first two or three days of your cycle.
It's not normal to have severe cramping and pain for 10 days or two weeks of your cycle,
which is what she was having.
And I'm just thinking now of another patient I had who was in her 40s who was still having
severe cramps, who had had severe cramps on and off.
Not the whole time, but on and off.
Never really got rid of it for many, many years, decades.
You know, 10, 15, 20 years or more, I think, as I recall.
And she'd been to several different doctors and been prescribed muscle relaxers and painkillers.
But you never want to be on those things for too long.
The muscle relaxers make you drowsy and painkillers are addictive, cause all kinds of side effects,
can damage your liver and your kidneys, et cetera.
And so what did I do?
I helped this woman tremendously.
She had been in pain for so long and I completely eliminated her pain, got it back to, well,
not completely eliminated, but got it back to where it was within an expected range where
she had a little bit of pain the first couple of days of the cycle and then felt fine the
rest of the month.
And she was just, she thought it was a miracle.
She literally, she used that word.
She said, oh my God, it's a miracle.
So what did I do?
Well, I identified some spasm in some muscles that were not, not necessary, not in the muscles
of the uterus is very difficult.
It's possible, but very difficult to palpate the uterus and not necessary, not comfortable.
But muscles near the uterus, in the abdomen last week, the teenager that I talked about
had spasm in the psoas muscles.
This woman had spasm in the muscles of her back and in the muscles of her intestines.
And this is something again that most doctors never even check for.
Doctors are trained to palpate the abdomen to see, for example, if you have internal
bleeding, if you push hard, you know, just without a lot of skill on an abdomen that
should be, you know, relatively soft and it's really rock hard.
Well, that's a sign of a big chunk of clotted blood that's happened after someone has internal
bleeding from a trauma injury.
So ER doctors do that all the time as a routine part of an examination where they suspect
possible internal bleeding.
But much more delicate, gentle palpation of the abdomen can help identify among other
things spasm in any muscle in the abdomen, on the surface of the walls of the abdomen,
deeper in the walls of the intestines and deepest the psoas muscle and some of the other
deeper muscles like the diaphragm, like the uterus, et cetera.
But mostly you don't have to go that deep to identify the ones that are problematic
the most.
The psoas you do.
But for example, and I see this all the time, I palpate the abdomen.
Palpate just means, you know, touch, use a little pressure to feel, identify tension,
the presence of tension that's more than normal.
So all of your intestines have an outer wall made of connective tissue that forms the structure
of that pipe.
And then they have just inside that a muscular wall that contracts in special ways that like
a wave like contractions that help move the food through your intestine.
And then they have other layers that absorb the nutrients from your food and do other
things as well.
So anyway, a lot of people are surprised that they have muscles in their intestines.
But of course, everyone remembers that your intestines do have to push your food through
your intestines and that is going to require muscles to do it.
So you can get the quote unquote butterflies in your stomach when people are nervous about
something and they feel that cramping in their intestines.
That is literally that that's what you're feeling.
You're feeling the muscles in your intestines cramping and maybe some other ones as well.
You might feel some muscles in your back or that psoas muscle I'm always talking about,
muscles of the abdominal wall.
But it's really common.
Most people have had if you've ever had anyone who's had the experience of quote unquote
butterflies in the stomach or being nervous and feeling kind of a tension or cramping
or pain in the belly.
That is literally what it feels like when these muscular walls of your intestines over
contract or contract instead of in a nice wave like motion like they're designed to
do to move food through your stomach.
They just go into a spasm where they sort of flutter or just get stuck on and literally
just some parts will just contract nearly fully or close to a full contraction and get
stuck that way.
And they can get stuck that way for months, for years even.
And you never really know because no one ever you don't know how to check for that on yourself.
You could if you knew how to but most people don't know how to do that.
Most doctors don't know how to do that.
It requires specialized training and a sensitivity to be able to gently feel whether or not the
tension in the walls of your intestines is normal.
And it's easy to demonstrate when I palpate someone's abdomen when I feel for that tension
I can show you.
This is what it's supposed to feel like.
Nice and soft.
No hard spots.
Nice and you know it's easy to push in and out there like the Pillsbury Dough Boy or
whatever.
And here's another spot that feels quite a bit more firm, quite a bit more tense than
that other spot.
Can you feel the difference?
Oh yeah.
What's that?
Well it's spasm in the muscular layer of the intestines.
So this older woman I think she was about 46, 47 something like that was having severe
cramps had them for years and it was mainly caused by spasm somewhat from spasm in the
wall in the inner back muscles but mostly in the walls of her intestines.
And you know so the menstrual cycle itself can refer pain to the intestines and then
just the pain itself and the anxiety around the pain and just the feeling horrible can
cause your muscles in the walls of your intestines to go into spasm.
So it becomes a vicious circle.
So you can interrupt that cycle anywhere.
You can relax the back muscles first but that might not completely relax the small intestine
muscles or the large intestine muscles.
It's mainly the small intestine muscles I'm talking about.
The small intestine fills most of your belly.
Large intestine is kind of on the edges.
So you know most of your belly is filled with your small intestine.
It's about 30 feet long.
There's a lot of tissue there that can spasm.
And relaxing that might relax your back.
Relaxing your back might relax your intestines.
Often not relaxing your intestines might relax your back.
It's really best to identify all of the muscles that have tension in them that shouldn't be
there and then help your body figure out how to relax those muscles on its own.
So I help your body relax them on the table and then give feedback to your brain that
enables it to learn how to keep those muscles relaxed.
And as I mentioned last time anyone that has cramping from any cause in the belly whether
it's menstrual cramps, muscle spasm, gallbladder issue, putting moist heat, any kind of a heating
pad on your belly is a great way to relax the tension in muscles in the belly.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
You're listening to Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge.
We've been talking about menstrual cramps and that brings to mind another really, really
common problem is that often goes undiagnosed or untreated or at least not treated properly
as women who have a really heavy menstrual flow.
So how do you know if your flow is heavy or normal?
Well, most women ask their friends, their family, mothers, siblings, etc. and have a
pretty good idea.
But just in case, it's normal to bleed from anywhere from two to seven days and the average
woman loses anywhere between one to six tablespoons of menstrual fluid during each period and
it can vary in color.
But one reference is if you're using maxi or super pads and have to change them more
than once an hour and that's a pretty severe cutoff, then that is not an abnormal flow.
It can cause dangerous loss of blood and you should consult a doctor.
But most women know if their flow is more than normal and just think that that's normal
for them and that there's nothing they can do about it.
Or obviously if, or if it's not so obvious, anytime your flow suddenly becomes more than
it used to be, then that's something you should definitely get checked out.
Any menstruating woman who is not supplementing iron in some form or another from supplements
or food is going to be functionally anemic.
Well, what does that mean?
I went to my doctor and I had my blood tested and I was told that I'm fine, I'm not anemic.
Well, that means nothing because functional anemia is really important.
I talk about this distinction between mainstream medicine, these broad ranges to identify full
blown disease versus the narrower functional range to see if your body is actually working
as it should.
And this is one of the most important examples of that difference.
A slight anemia, just a tiny anemia, tiny deviation from the broad range puts a constant
strain on your heart, a constant mild strain, but a constant strain.
24-7, 365, your heart has to work harder to pump oxygen, circulate crappy red blood cells
that are struggling to deliver oxygen to all of your cells because you're not making enough
new ones in the bone marrow.
So most men who are not bleeding from hemorrhoids or an ulcer, for example, and women who are
not menstruating can usually get all the iron we need from food, especially if you eat beef.
And there's some other foods that you can get iron from like oysters, beef liver is
really high.
I'm looking at the National Institutes of Health iron content of selected foods.
You can look this up on the website, white beans, lentils, spinach, chocolate, kidney
beans, sardines.
So fish, fish meat, and some nuts and beans are basically at the top of the list.
But check this out, the US RDA, the US daily value recommended daily allowance RDA of iron
is 18 milligrams.
Well, the top of the list, next the second to the top of the list is oysters, three ounces
of oysters have eight milligrams, and not many people eat oysters very often.
White beans, a can of white beans, a cup of white beans, eight milligrams, three ounces
of liver, five milligrams, lentils, spinach and tofu, three milligrams, and then most
of the rest of the things are either one or two milligrams per serving.
And you know, so the servings, if you look at all these things, the servings and the
amounts that are listed don't add up to 18 milligrams per day for anybody's typical diet.
So how do they come up?
How do they make that work?
Well, the top of the list for recommended foods to get your 18 milligrams of iron every
day is fortified breakfast cereals.
Well, that's just a crappy supplement.
Breakfast cereals are almost always not fit for human consumption.
There's as many nutrients in the box as there are in that crap carbohydrate sugar laden
non-food manufactured product that people call food.
And you know, magically, the US RDA of 18 milligrams is exactly what they put in fortified
cereals.
That's definitely not how to get the iron you need.
So how do you know if you're functionally anemic?
Simple, just get a CBC.
Well, actually not.
So more than a CBC.
Most doctors, that's not even true.
Most doctors should, and if you have signs of a cold or a flu, they'll check your CBC.
If they suspect you have anemia, they'll do a CBC, a complete blood count.
CBC means complete blood count.
But you know, a lot of people, most of the time when people bring their blood work into
me and they've been to their annual physical or had some kind of routine blood work, it's
very more often than not, maybe 20% of the time, I'm guessing, do they even do a CBC,
a complete blood count?
It's like $15 to do a complete blood count.
It should be done regularly and everyone at least once a year.
And so if your iron is deficient, then eventually your red blood cell count will go down, your
hemoglobin will go down, or your hematocrit will go down.
These are three different ways of measuring the heme, which is the iron part of your red
blood cells, that is essential for making the oxygen carrying capacity component of
a red blood cell.
If you've ever tried to donate blood and they check your hemoglobin, if it's below 12.5,
they won't allow you to donate blood because you are anemic.
But even if your red blood cell count, your hematocrit and your hemoglobin are normal,
you can still be anemic.
And the only way to know that is if you also test ferritin.
Ferritin, and you can remember that because ferrous sulfate, for example, is the most
common type of iron supplement.
Fe is the abbreviation for iron on the periodic table of the elements in chemistry class.
And so ferritin is the storage form.
That's where your body stores iron in your liver and other tissues throughout your body.
And some of it is in circulation, which is why you can measure it in a blood sample.
But if you don't know your storage tank, whether your storage tank is full or empty or halfway,
then you don't know whether you're not anemic.
So for example, I see this all the time.
I'll tell people have been, women have been told especially that they're not anemic because
their red blood cell count hemoglobin and hematocrit are normal.
And I'll test their ferritin and it's off the charts low.
It might be 10 or 20.
And what that means is that your bone marrow is still doing the best it can to crank out
red blood cells with the limited amount of iron you're giving it.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul and that's going to come at a cost eventually.
So it's really important to do a complete blood count and test your ferritin levels
to see if your storage tank of iron is full or not.
So as with most vitamins, I recommend people ignore the recommended daily allowances or
the US government's daily values of vitamins, all those things you see printed on the labels.
Those are meaningless, useless numbers.
Those are designed to tell you the minimal amount you need to prevent a severe deficiency
disease.
They have nothing to do with the amount required to keep you healthy.
When someone shows up with anemia on blood tests, the supplement that I give them has
29 milligrams, which is a lot more than 18 to fix an iron deficiency anemia.
And I don't know where most people are getting their 18 milligrams of iron when all these
food sources are so much less than that for foods that people don't even eat that often.
What's really happening is our bodies are very good at conserving iron.
If we're not bleeding, our body recycles the iron and we shed very little of it.
So we need to eat very little on a daily basis.
But if we are bleeding through menstruation, the main cause, obviously a gunshot wound
will cause a lot of bleeding.
But the common ones after menstruation are ulcers in the stomach, some part of the digestive
tract and hemorrhoids.
So if any of those things are happening or even if they're not, the only way to tell
for sure is to do the blood test, including ferritin, the storage form.
So the frustrating thing is I see women, so many women over the years, who already know
that they have iron deficiency anemia.
Maybe they even have been told by their regular doctor, oh, you have iron deficiency.
You need to take an iron supplement.
Oh, I can't take iron.
It causes, it hurts my stomach.
It causes cramping.
It causes constipation.
This is very common because the most common form of iron supplement is ferrous sulfate.
Nobody should take ferrous sulfate.
99% of iron supplements on the market are ferrous sulfate.
If you get a prescription for iron from any regular doctor, it's virtually guaranteed
to be ferrous sulfate and no one should take that.
Why?
Because it causes constipation and cramping.
The proper form of iron, which has never caused any symptom in any of the hundreds, probably
over a thousand, maybe a couple of thousand women I've given over the past 30 plus years,
has ever had any symptoms from taking the bisglycinate form of iron.
So if you know someone who has iron deficiency, please tell them to get bisglycinate iron.
It's a chelated form of iron.
You're probably not going to find it at Costco or Trader Joe's or GNC.
That's why I recommend you not buy supplements in stores because you get what you pay for
or people buy those things because they're cheap and they often don't work.
So if you or anyone you love suspects they might have anemia, get it checked.
It's really important to know, even if you have a slight anemia because it puts a constant
mild strain on your heart.
It can also increase your blood pressure, increase your risk of a stroke or a heart
attack and it will always contribute to fatigue, tiredness, lack of energy and delayed healing
to any part of your body.
It can make it more difficult for any part of your body to get all the oxygen it needs
all day long and all night long.
Healing and repairing of that tissue will be delayed, whether it's in your liver, your
kidneys, your muscles, tendons and ligaments, your skin, especially your joints and your
nerves because these are the slowest healing tissues in your body.
If you know anyone who suspects they might have anemia and thinks they cannot take iron,
shoot me an email, have them give me a call and I'll come up with a solution that will
work for them.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley sharing with you safe, effective natural solutions to almost any
health challenge.
I look forward to the privilege of speaking with you here again next Friday at 2 p.m.
Have a blessed 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.