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.
Today we're going to talk about reducing your risk of prostate cancer, a certain type of
lung cancer, kidney disease, dementia, a natural treatment for neuropathy, which is a common
complication of diabetes and several other things, time permitting.
So thanks for tuning in today.
But before we get into that, people often ask me or they'll say, hey, I heard part of
your show or when was your show on again?
Or I'd like to hear some more about that.
I had an interview yesterday with Brian Toohey, the station manager of KDAR, and he was talking
about how he gets phone calls as well, people calling in asking when the show is on or can
you tell me how to find out more information about that health show that's on Fridays?
And so all of the past shows are available on my website.
You can listen to them anytime you like by just going to binkleyhealingcenter.com.
They're right on the homepage.
Just scroll down.
The two or three episodes are right on the homepage.
And then there's a link to click to get to all the rest of them.
And I've recorded over the past year.
There's over 50 of them now.
And they're also on Apple podcasts.
So the little purple app on your iPhone, if you use that, they're also on Spotify and
YouTube.
Just search for my name, Dr. Todd Binkley, and the name of the show, Safe, Effective,
Natural Solutions.
And you can get past episodes of this on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or you can just
go to my website, binkleyhealingcenter.com.
And I love questions.
If you have questions about any health concern or health concern of a family member of yours,
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner yesterday.
And if somebody that you know and love and are concerned about, if you have a question
about them, please email me.
Email is the best way to contact me because it's easy to send documents and easy to read
them on a large screen.
Like with any doctor's office, the first step is always sending a questionnaire if somebody,
if you do want to come in and get an evaluation.
And the initial consultation for functional medicine to identify what tests might be most
appropriate for you or help start the process of figuring out an alternative if you're not
happy with the care that you're getting for one of the conditions that we talk about on
this show.
Basically, if you can walk and don't need hospitalization, if you don't have a fever,
if you don't obviously have something that requires medical care, then there's a pretty
good chance I can help.
A way to figure that out for sure is to fill out a seven page questionnaire and do a consultation.
And the initial consultation is $100 per half hour.
So it also makes a great gift.
It's a great way to get someone you love to come in.
If they're reluctant, tell them that you've already paid for it.
And it's $100 per half hour.
I say that instead of $200 per hour because it usually takes a half hour.
If someone has a lot of questions or a lot of conditions that, you know, it's hard to
talk about, then it might take 45 minutes or an hour.
But 80% of the time, at least, it takes about a half an hour.
You can also call the office if you want.
The landline at the office is 805-641-9000.
I encourage people to email instead though because it's just easier to reach me that
way.
And you're going to get voicemail.
I'm sorry to say that, but the ringer on my phone is always off.
The voicemail on the landline at the office forwards to my cell and the ringer is always
off because I just get too many spam calls.
If I'm in the office, I'm with patients and I have the ringer off.
And other times I have the ringer off all the time unless I'm expecting a call.
But I'm happy to talk on the phone to you if you just simply email me and ask me to
call you.
So, happy to do that as well.
Another thing that came up when I was chatting with Brian at the radio station the other
day, as he said, he really liked how I often talk about stuff that can be sometimes fairly
technical on the show, but break it down in a way that makes it easier to understand.
So I hope that's true.
That's a pretty high compliment.
I like to think that my listeners, you, are people that listen to the show, are pretty
smart.
The ones that have been showing up in the office seem to be fairly well educated about
their health and the things that matter most to you.
And I think, you know, most people are ready and willing to do a little research on their
own if they're concerned about something and they're not getting the results they like.
It is important to know where to get good information.
There's a lot of misinformation on the internet that can confuse people and sometimes even
be dangerous, especially on blogs or social media forums or places where there are no
doctors weighing in and commenting on health information.
And there are some excellent sources like the Mayo Clinic's website and the Cleveland
Clinic's website and PubMed, the National Institutes of Health place where all medical
research in America is funded, even research from around the world even.
That's where I get a lot of material for this program.
And as always, anything you don't understand or want more information about, send me a
question to Dr. Binkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
I routinely help people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, restless
leg syndrome, just a few of the things that come off the top of my head.
Fatigue is a really common thing that people come to me for.
These are things that, well, obviously lots of people are on medication for high blood
pressure and high cholesterol, but those medications have side effects.
It's important to take medication if you have high blood pressure and can't control it or
are not controlling it with natural means, but there are other options available for
many people.
The medications for cholesterol have a lot of side effects that are best avoided and
there are really, really effective options for lowering your cholesterol and more importantly
protecting your heart because that's what really that's out about.
There's much better ways to control your cholesterol and protect your heart than taking statin
drugs, many natural alternatives for that.
I routinely get people to lower their cholesterol 25 or 30 points in a few months with natural
options like bergamot, pantothene, niacin are some of the most common things that I
use.
I've even had people drop their total cholesterol and their LDL bad cholesterol by 50 points
or more.
So let me know what you're most concerned about, what you're wondering if there's a
safe, effective natural solution for some condition that you're dealing with.
Last week I was talking all about wildfire smoke, how to protect yourself from it and
some of the very important reasons to protect yourself from it and just yesterday another
article came out about wildfire smoke exposure and dementia.
So breathing wildfire smoke can increase the risk of dementia.
This is the headline from a study that was just published in JAMA Neurology and you know
we're camp, wildfires are just going to be more and more.
They already have become more frequent.
Anyone who lives in Southern California knows this or watches the news and it's only looking
like they're going to grow more frequent as time goes on.
So we're getting more and more information about the damaging effects of breathing that
stuff so it's really important to protect yourself from it by closing the windows, getting
a good HEPA filter so you're breathing clean air at night and you can also check the air
quality.
There's a government website called airnow.gov where you can check the air quality index
wherever you live and the number you're looking for older adults or people with sensitive
conditions, lung conditions, diabetes, heart disease, if the air quality index is over
101 they recommend that folks stay inside for everyone else.
If it's over 151 they recommend that you stay inside or wear a mask if you go outside or
you're better still if it's really bad wear a respirator.
I talked about that on last week's show as well so check that out.
So this study that was just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
Neurology was led by Joan Casey, an environmental epidemiologist and professor at the University
of Washington School of Public Health and she talked about how wildfire smoke is a mixture
of gases and particles and the most important ones being the fine particulate matter that
is smaller than 2.5 microns, 2.5 microns or less which is smaller than the diameter of
a human hair and these micro particles can get into the lungs and move directly into
your bloodstream.
They cause inflammation and oxidative stress and even DNA damage in the body and in this
study she presented data that showed a much stronger relationship between long-term exposure
to wildfire micro particles than other sources of particles that have been around for four
years from industrial sources, from cars and other things that produce particulate matter
traffic if you live near a freeway things like that.
The stuff from wildfires is worse, the organic material that's burning in forests, the things
that go up in smoke when a house or cars or electronics burn.
These things are shown to cause much more inflammation in the body than other ultrafine
particles and they can move directly into your brain and damage brain cells resulting
in dementia.
Well fortunately wildfires aren't happening every day, we had one recently here but she
stressed in this study that the way the data is looking a lot of people that were only
briefly exposed maybe even just a few days to really high levels which happens all the
time when there's wildfires.
If there's a wildfire and you're out and that stuff you want to even if it's only a few
days it can cause enough damage to increase your risk of dementia so it's really important
to protect yourself from that and for example she found the way to quantify this one microgram
per cubic meter for a three-year average increased 18 percent increase risk of developing dementia
so it's kind of hard to imagine exactly what that is but this is basically a common exposure
that she was seeing in southern California and it was increasing those people's risk
of dementia by 18 percent so that's obviously not good.
Fortunately here in Ventura County we've got some rain so the rain is a great way to clear
all that smoke out of the skies and I just went on to airnow.gov to check and the air
quality index is 12 which is great it's in the green zone so we're not having to breathe
that smoke now but just remember the next time you are exposed to any kind of smoke
it's a really good idea to protect yourself from that and to get a good HEPA filter in
your bedroom especially so that you're breathing clean air all night while you're sleeping
and even though we've gotten these rains I was just noticing out behind my house in
a little storage shed there everything's covered with ash so you want to clean that stuff up
get rid of it vacuum it if you have a shop vac ideally because if you sweep it and definitely
don't use a blower that's just going to blow it around vacuums clean that stuff up also
the return air vents in your heating ventilation and air conditioning systems have a filter
you want to get a Merv 13 filter that's the minimum quality number to clean out this fine
particulate matter and everyone should be changing those right now and everyone in Ventura
County anybody who's had a anytime you have a wildfire near you where you see smoke in
the air you should change that filter it costs maybe 18 20 dollars for a Merv 13 filter depending
on the size but it is worth it that's going to keep that stuff from recirculating around
your house I'm Dr. Todd Binkley you're listening to safe effective natural solutions to almost
any health challenge here's another interesting study that just came out this was published
in the Journal of American Medical Association internal medicine about night time leg cramps
vitamin K supplementation this is the headline by it which is really unusual to see a vitamin
study like this in JAMA so that's always exciting they're finally getting it the major medical
press does get it right or is learning more about this the super importance of several
vitamins and anyway this one's pretty exciting vitamin K supplementation significantly reduces
the frequency intensity and duration of night time leg cramps in older adults so this is
a double blind a double blind placebo controlled randomized clinical trial say that three times
fast hundred and ninety nine participants age 69 65 years or older and it's important
to know with vitamin K a lot of people understand that there is vitamin K in dark green leafy
vegetables and that is true things like spinach kale a lot of people don't like kale but anything
dark green broccoli any kind of salad greens have a lot of vitamin K one that's vitamin
K one phylloquinone and that's not what this study is talking about this is talking specifically
about vitamin K two so vitamin K two you can really only get from a supplement it is made
from a Japanese fermented soy food called natto and most of most people in the West
are not going to eat natto it's a porridge that has the consistency and slight odor of
nasal mucus it's gooey and stringy and it's really disgusting I have a cousin who lives
in LA who married a Japanese woman and the Japanese serve it to their children from birth
so they get used to the taste of it it wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be but yeah
most people are not gonna eat natto but it's great that they do because it's that's where
vitamin K two comes from super important vitamin and it's also where something else called
natto natto kinase comes from so natto kinase is an enzyme that's that's useful for preventing
arthritis reversing even arthritis osteoarthritis any kind of arthritis as well as plaque forming
in the arteries but this study is about vitamin K two there are several forms of vitamin K
two there is a common the two most common ones are called mk7 and mk4 so this study
used the mk7 menaquinone form you don't need to remember that if you want more information
about just just email me and say which is the right kind of K to get I stock it in the
office I get it from a company called Orthomolecular Products there's a product I recommend that
everyone take a good multivitamin for the minerals vitamin D and fish oil those are
just three basic things that most people don't get enough of in their diet and the vitamin
D if you're over 50 I recommend that you take a combination vitamin D with vitamin K two
in it because those vitamins work together especially for bones so for preventing osteoporosis
you need a good source of calcium preferably from food from supplements if you're not getting
enough from food and vitamin D keeps good calcium in circulation and vitamin K two deposits
that calcium in bone so for people with osteoporosis really important often really important to
take extra vitamin K two and the dose used in this study is the same amount I recommend
for people with osteoporosis or osteopenia if you've had one of those bone density scans
and been told that you have osteoporosis or the earlier form osteopenia can often definitely
stop it and often reverse it by getting adequate amount adequate amounts of good quality absorbable
calcium vitamin D and vitamin K two and the one I use is this mk7 form in a product called
K force has the standard adult dose of vitamin D 5000 units of vitamin D and 180 micrograms
of K two so that's important 180 micrograms of K two that's four times the amount that's
in most multivitamins if they have a good multivitamin if it has any K two in it we'll
usually have something closer to 45 or 50 milligrams 45 is typical and some have 90
and some have 180 so those are common doses so for this study about nighttime leg cramps
they used 180 micrograms of vitamin K two menaquin on seven and it significantly reduced
the frequency how often the intensity and the duration how long they lasted of nighttime
leg cramps and older adults so that's pretty exciting that's the first time I've ever seen
a study that showed that there are so many benefits to vitamin K especially the K two
form that it's starting to become the next vitamin D because vitamin D has myriad effects
on almost every part of the body not just bones and other exciting news that just came
out in the medical press is a paper submitted by dr. Krittal Kritty Mittal genitourinary
medical oncologist at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center talking about the
benefit of the gut microbiome and renal and other genitourinary tract cancers so cancers
kidney cancer bladder cancer and this came about because one of the most common treatments
for these types of cancers is something called checkpoint inhibitors which help facilitate
normal immune system function and a type of immunotherapy the problem with immunotherapy
drugs is they have a lot of really horrible side effects like diarrhea fatigue cough nausea
skin rash poor appetite constipation muscle and joint pain somewhat similar to chemotherapy
so you know if there's a way to help your body fight off cancer better on its own obviously
that would be nice to know more about and that's basically the thrust of this paper
because she's showing data that shows that dysbiosis too many bad bacteria and insufficient
good bacteria interferes with the T cell function of the immune system and cytotoxic activity
which is important for fighting cancers and microbiome profiling by rectal swab or gut
composition analysis distinct what has revealed a notable distinction between patients found
to have prostate cancer compared to patients with benign prostate conditions and similarly
urinary microbiome so the microbiome in the bladder reveals a greater abundance of bad
bacteria in patients with cancer of the bladder so interventions include probiotic supplementation
dietary modifications for to get more prebiotics so it's important often in a situation like
this if you have any immune system compromise especially if you have any kind of cancer
but obviously much more important to prevent and reduce your risk of getting cancer in
the first place and keep your immune system strong is pay attention to your gut so anytime
somebody has any gut conditions when they come to see me I'll often recommend that we
do a stool test to check and see do you have sufficient good bacteria in your gut do you
have an overabundance of bad bacteria in the gut if you have any digestive symptoms that
have been going on for years gas bloating constipation diarrhea that nothing is ever
helping then there's a very good chance that you have dysbiosis in the gut and dysbiosis
like dysfunction just means that you have too many bad bacteria and or not enough good
bacteria in your gut or both and there is you know so the gut is the is the microbiome
that we hear about the most it's the most important one but there is a microbiome and
every cavity of your body there's a normal flora of bacteria in your urinary bladder
in the mouth and basically any opening in the genitalia especially women so these are
all things that are have a tremendous amount of research going on about them and this article
was pointing up the difference between you can identify weaknesses and more cancer prevalence
in people with insufficient good bacteria so she's recommending more studies on this
so that's exciting hopefully we'll hear more about that as time goes by and they can identify
their have they have identified an abundance of these certain bad bacteria in patients
with certain types of cancer and they're treating them with probiotic supplements dietary modifications
like I was talking about to get more prebiotics prebiotics are types of fiber that your good
bacteria feed on and it helps produce a larger prevalence of the good bacteria that you need
to keep your immune system strong and then in critical conditions they often use fecal
microbiota transplants so that's not very exciting to think about it is actually very
effective there's a lot of data on it for certain things still better than doing the
chemotherapy and immunotherapies because of the lack of side effects anyway it's exciting
to know that the medical press is discovering more and more data about how to support and
the importance of supporting a healthy microbiome in your gut to reduce in this case to reduce
your risk of your own bladder urinary bladder cancers prostate cancers and kidney cancer
but the real takeaway from this is just the importance of everyone maintaining a good
healthy microbiome in their gut I had a woman in her 70s earlier this year who I ran a stool
test on because she was having severe diarrhea and just nothing nothing was helping had been
going on for weeks before she even I asked her why didn't you come in earlier she had
been suffering for a long time and nothing was helping she'd been to her regular doctor
and they didn't they did a it actually did a stool test couldn't really get any useful
information from it so anyway I did a good a good stool test costs about four or five
hundred dollars at least four hundred dollars usually and requires collecting a sample over three days
and I was expecting to have her to have a really bad bad overabundance of some bad bacteria in her
gut because she had recently traveled to Asia to Thailand I believe it was and she was concerned
that she might have eaten some bad food she got sick you know when she she'd eaten something there
and so you know it wasn't there was a lot of reason to expect that she may have gotten something
that way but it turned out that the real problem with her was just insufficient good bacteria
she was getting sick over and over and over again because she just lacked sufficient good bacteria
and when we gave her some supplements some prebiotics to build up her natural good bacteria
and some probiotics to take care of the the burden until the good guys could get their
reinforcements built up completely eliminated that problem for her and I saw her recently and
she's doing great now looks like we're about out of time have a fantastic rest of your thanksgiving
weekend everybody please tune in next Friday right here at 2 p.m. I look forward to the privilege of
speaking with you then 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 binkley healing center dot 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 2 p.m.
for safe effective natural solutions here on 98.3 fm the word