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.
Functional medicine means using standard diagnostic tests to identify earlier signs of stress
on all of your organs and tissues, your heart, your liver, your lungs, your kidneys, your
spleen, your pancreas, your digestive tract, your respiratory system, and identifying things
that are out of, just not ideal, not necessarily a full-blown disease condition that requires
medical intervention, but showing some signs of stress early enough that you can restore
or correct them with better food, exercise, and supplements.
It's always best to get as many nutrients as you can from food, but there are some really
common nutrients that most people don't get enough of from food.
Minerals, and that's why I recommend that everyone take a good multivitamin, multimineral
supplement and how do you identify a good one?
It's more than one a day.
There's no such thing as a good one a day multivitamin because the forms of the minerals
in those are not readily bioavailable to your body.
The forms that are absorbable, that are plant-like, the ones that are in plants, like the minerals
that are in broccoli and spinach and other dark green vegetables, putting those into
a good multi-forms that are close to those plant-like forms into capsules and tablets,
they're bulky, they take up space, so they won't fit into, the absorbable forms will
not fit into one tablet or capsule.
So good multivitamins are always three or four capsules a day.
And my favorite one that I've been using on almost all of my patients for 25, 30 years
now is Alpha Base by Orthomolecular Products.
So everyone needs a good multi for just basic nutrition.
Vitamin D and fish oil.
So there's a little bit of vitamin D in every multi, usually about 400 units, sometimes
600.
The standard adult dose for vitamin D is 5,000 international units a day.
If you weigh less than 120 pounds, maybe a little bit less than that.
But most people, when you test their blood to optimize the functional levels of vitamin
D in your blood, and those levels are between 50 and 90, you want your blood level, if you
get your vitamin D blood tested, you want your vitamin D in the blood to be between
50 and 90.
This is the level required to make your immune system function at its peak.
So a good multi for the minerals, 5,000 units of vitamin D, and fish oil for the omega-3
fatty acids that you can only get from the ocean.
And these two omega-3s are EPA and DHA.
So any vegetable source of omega-3s that you hear about, like chia seeds and walnuts, these
are those, the omega-3s in those vegetable-based sources, that omega-3 fatty acid is ALA.
And your body can convert about 5% of that into the EPA and DHA, but only about 5%.
So all the benefits that you hear about from omega-3 fatty acids, especially for reducing
inflammation, joint, arthritis, brain health, cardiovascular health, all of the studies
on those are on EPA and DHA.
And there is no EPA and DHA in walnuts and chia seeds.
You need to get that from fish oil.
For algae, vegans can get algae supplements.
The downside of those is they cost about two and a half times a good quality fish oil to
get the same dose.
So those are three basic nutrients I recommend for everyone.
Another product that I use in a lot of patients, because it's something that's just not in
anyone's diet, is called modified citris pectin.
So we're going to talk about the benefits of modified citris pectin today on brain health.
It helps a whole bunch of other parts of your body.
The developer of my favorite brand of it, Pectisol, is a functional medicine oncologist.
So it also works really well for helping the body fight off many, many cancers.
So I want to come back to that because if you've listened to this show for a while,
if you go through my past episodes, which you can find, all of the past episodes of
this show are on my website, binkleyhealingcenter.com, so you can go there anytime and play all the
past episodes whenever you like.
Binkleyhealingcenter.com.
There's a link right on the homepage.
The first few episodes are right on the homepage, and then there's a link to all the rest of
them.
You can also find all the past episodes of the show on Apple podcasts, if you use that
little purple podcast app that comes on an iPhone or an iPad, as well as Spotify and
YouTube.
So if you're in any of those places, just punch in my name, Todd Binkley, and the name
of the show, Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions, and you can listen to all the past episodes
there.
And if you do and you like it, please scroll to the bottom and like the podcast on Apple
podcasts or Spotify or YouTube.
So anyway, I hope you enjoy listening to some of those other episodes.
People tell me all the time that they do.
A lot of people that come in for the first time after hearing the show, they usually
say, I heard a little bit of the show, and then I checked out the past episodes, and
that really armed me with information that convinced me that you could probably help,
and nothing I can help with.
All kinds of things that you just might not know about, unless you hear about that.
So one of the things that I often talk about is the direct connection between heart disease
and dementia.
Cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's, any form of dementia.
These are, I did I think three or four episodes in a row a few weeks ago about how these are
inextricably linked.
You can't have one without the other.
So functional medicine practitioners have known about this for many, many years, and
there's always new data coming out about that.
But the exciting thing more recently is the American Heart Association has finally recognized
that they just released a paper, a new scientific statement on the link between three forms
of heart disease and dementia.
So the three forms of heart disease are heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and coronary
heart disease, or coronary artery disease.
So the most common cause of a heart attack is coronary artery disease, when an artery
suddenly becomes blocked and you have a heart attack.
Everybody's familiar with that.
Atrial fibrillation, a lot of people have also heard of, that's when the upper chambers
of the heart flutter, and then therefore blood can pool in those chambers that aren't in
sync with the lower ones and increase your risk of a stroke.
So a lot of people who have that fluttering of the heart have to take medication to stop
the production of clotting, anti-clotting medication to prevent stroke.
And then heart failure doesn't mean that your heart is stopped, it just means it's failing
to keep up with demand.
So congestive heart failure is a common, quote unquote, natural cause of death.
A lot of people who just get older and weaker, and if you've ever known anybody who in their
later years, fluid starts to back, they start to get shortness of breath and fluid backs
up in their lungs or in their ankles or both, that's congestive heart failure, a very common
thing that happens as the heart just gets old and weak and can no longer keep up with
the demand that your body requires to pump oxygen to every cell in your body.
So all three of these types of very common types of heart disease are directly linked
to your risk of cognitive decline.
So the statement says, oh, it includes an extensive research review and offers compelling
evidence of the inextricable link between heart, brain, heart health and brain health,
which investigators said underscores the benefit of early intervention.
Yay.
So glad to hear the American Heart Association say that early intervention is important.
Of course, they've always encouraged people to exercise and eat better, but they don't
usually give you very much information on how to do that, how to eat better, certainly.
And there have been studies showing these links in very specific ways for years.
So it's exciting to see that high profile organization release this statement.
It goes on to say, investigators say the findings reinforce the message that addressing cardiovascular
health early in life may deter the onset or progression of cognitive impairment.
So the earlier this is done, the better, says Fernando Testa, MD, PhD, professor of neurology
and vascular neurology, head of the department of neurology and rehabilitation at the University
of Illinois.
So everything you've ever heard about keeping your heart healthy and strong, eating a healthy
diet, keeping your cholesterol under control is helpful.
It's not the most important thing.
It's the thing you hear about the most.
It's actually not the most important thing.
Controlling inflammation, eating an anti-inflammatory diet, which means not a lot of junk food,
not a lot of sugar, not a lot of grains and starch that turn into sugar and then turn
into fat and drive inflammation throughout your body.
These are some of the eating more fruits and vegetables for fiber to maintain a healthy
gut microbiome.
Basically, almost anything that you can think of to do to improve your health that you hear
about that improves your health generally is going to improve the health of your heart
and therefore help prevent and reduce the onset of dementia.
One of my favorite supplements that you probably haven't heard much about is called modified
citrus pectin.
There's some new data out that shows the tremendous benefits modified citrus pectin has on preventing
and restoring and repairing damage to nerves.
A modified citrus pectin helps protect against post-stroke brain injury.
If you have a stroke and then start taking a modified citrus pectin, it can reduce the
damage that's caused by the stroke because it helps your brain heal faster.
It also helps defend against cognitive decline and it helps protect against neurological
pain.
There's a whole bunch of studies.
I'm going to just go through some of these here because it's really exciting to see this.
I've always used modified citrus pectin for cancer patients as well because there has
been for a long time a lot of research showing that it helps protect against the damaging
inflammatory effects of cancers.
It does this with a specific measure.
A lot of this data that's come out, these exciting studies, are all talking about one
thing that it has in common and that is this.
There's a pro-inflammatory protein called galectin 3, or GAL3 for short, G-A-L-E-C-T-I-N-3.
Galectin 3 is a master pro-inflammatory protein, so it drives inflammation in a bad way.
You need some inflammation to heal and repair when you've had a trauma, but this product,
modified citrus pectin, works by blocking or reducing overproduction of this pro-inflammatory
protein.
Basically, it works as an anti-inflammatory and it does so by blocking this pro-inflammatory
protein.
A growing body of data points to microglial neuroinflammation.
What does that mean?
The brain is made up mostly of fat and water, and some nerve cells, and then some wires
that come from called axons that project from each nerve cell and they connect to other
nerves.
In between all of those cells is a sort of insulation type material, fatty padding insulation.
It also helps with conduction from one nerve to the next.
Those microglia is that part of the brain, these cells that kind of act like insulation
in the brain.
That can become inflamed and can be a contributing factor to ischemic stroke, and it is driven
that risk for having a stroke.
This inflammation of that part of the brain that increases your risk of a stroke is increased
itself by high levels of Galectin 3.
Taking modified citrus pectin can reduce that.
It does the opposite.
Preclinical study highlights the mechanisms of Gal 3, an ischemic stroke study published
in 2022 of the Journal of Inflammation Research shows how modified citrus pectin reduces neurological
deficit, brain water content, and volume of an infarct if you have a blockage from a stroke,
as well as relieving cell injury in the cerebral cortex, the higher part, upper part of the
higher functioning parts of the brain.
It also is shown to increase cell viability, the health of the existing cells, and reduce
something called apoptosis.
That's a little technical, but apoptosis means programmed cell death.
So that's one of the reasons it helps with cancer, because all cells have something called
apoptosis, which is programmed cell death.
All of your cells are only supposed to divide a certain number of times so that they don't
continue to divide forever and ever and ever, which is what cancer cells do.
So those are several mechanisms that are being studied and coming back with some really impressive
data showing how modified citrus pectin helps reduce the production of this pro-inflammatory
protein called Galactin 3.
Well, the same study also shows that modified citrus pectin decreases the expression of
a couple of other really common pro-inflammatory factors, one of which is called NF-kappa B.
Again, this is all too technical stuff, but there are several different kinds of these.
This is just Galactin 3 is just one type of pro-inflammatory protein.
There are many, many others.
And this study showed that modified citrus pectin helps block overproduction of those
as well.
So citrus pectin is just the pulp from the rind of citrus fruits, oranges, lemons, limes,
grapefruit.
That pulp is modified in a way that pectin is modified in such a way that it's made into
nano-sized particles, very, very, very fine particles that can more easily pass through
cell membranes and basically get anywhere in the body that it needs to get to.
And it does that.
That's one of the ways that it facilitates its ability to deal with inflammation, which
can just happen in any part of the body, very often happens in any part of the body.
And it also, it's on another subject, which I've talked about before.
I'll come back to it another time.
But just while we're on the topic of modified citrus pectin, it also acts like a sponge
to scavenge for toxins, heavy metal and chemical toxins.
So anytime I test somebody for exposure to pesticides, fertilizers, chemicals, heavy
metals, lead, arsenic, cadmium, uranium, mercury, these things, modified citrus pectin helps
your body flush those things out as well.
I'm Dr. Todd Benkley.
You're listening to Safe, Effective Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge.
We're talking today about how you can protect your brain against cognitive decline and heal
damage to nerves with a product called Modified Citrus Pectin.
The brand is Pectisol.
The inventors of this product, the best form of it, Pectisol, that company, that is a brand
name of a product made by a company called EcoNugenics.
So I always stock Pectisol in my office.
The professional grade Pectisol is made by a company called Clinical Synergy.
There's a whole line of clinical synergy products that are developed by a functional medicine
oncologist who seems to spend his whole life collating research on nutraceuticals, nutrients
that you can take to help your body, give your body a fighting chance to fight off certain
types of cancers.
And that's one of the primary products.
So anyway, there is a direct to the consumer company that also sells Pectisol called EcoNugenics.
It's the same, just two different divisions of the same company basically.
But if you want to find Pectisol, if you like what you're hearing, what we're talking about
today, I stock it in the office, but you can also get it online directly from the company.
And again, the product is called Pectisol, P-E-C-T-A-S-O-L.
And the company that sells it is EcoNugenics, E-E-C, let me start that over, E-C-O-N-U-G-E-N-I-C-S.
So EcoNugenics.com is where you can find Pectisol.
And it comes in powder, chewables, capsules.
I recommend getting the powder because it doesn't really have any taste.
It's just easier to get a good quantity of it by putting a scoop in water, stirring it
up and drinking it like that.
And it's the least expensive to get a decent quantity of it as well, to get the powder
form.
So, modified Citrus Pectin does all kinds of wonderful things in the body.
We just were talking about how it can help your brain repair damage from a stroke.
It also protects against cognitive decline.
So a study published in the Journal of Diabetes Investigation pointed to this Galactin 3 protein
I've been talking about as a very powerful, damaging pro-inflammatory protein.
This study showed that the overproduction of this pro-inflammatory protein is a driving
factor and key therapeutic target for diabetes-related cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.
So if you haven't heard this already, Alzheimer's disease is being called by some researchers
type 3 diabetes because hyperglycemia, having too much sugar in your blood all the time,
which is the problem with diabetes, excess blood sugar, damages nerves and damages blood
vessels.
So when you have diabetes, the longer you have it, the more at risk you are of having
damage and the most common parts of your body that are damaged are the kidneys, your toes
and feet, the eyes, and the heart and the brain.
So having high blood sugar damages nerves.
It also causes erectile dysfunction.
Sometimes that's a good motivator for some people to take better, identify that issue
and take better.
They're even, I'm glad I thought of that actually.
Erectile dysfunction is also being recommended by the cardiology organizations, cardiologists,
professional boards as a early finding, something that all doctors should be asking their male
patients about because it's an early sign of heart disease.
So it's also potentially an early sign of cognitive, something that can contribute to
cognitive decline.
So modified citrospectum helps prevent that by down regulating, by preventing the overproduction
of this pro-inflammatory protein called Gal 3.
You can just think, just to keep it simple, just think of it as a really good anti-inflammatory.
So modified citrospectum was shown in this study, published in the Journal of Diabetes
Investigation and showed that it reduced metabolic dysfunction and cognitive decline.
And another study published in the Journal of Inflammation Research also shows that this
same modified citrospectum by blocking this pro-inflammatory protein in the brain protects
against neuroinflammation and cognitive decline, reducing cognitive impairment, insulin resistance,
oxidative stress and neuroinflammation.
That was an animal study in rats.
They're also doing studies in humans that show very similar effects, as well as some
of those effects on the brain that I mentioned in that previous study, reduce oxidative stress
in the brain.
So there are both human and animal studies showing similar things.
A 2016 study published in the Public Library of Science, one journal, demonstrated that
this same blocking of that pro-inflammatory protein with modified citrospectum, this was
a study in the lab on a model of damaged nerves to study the way nerves heal and showed that
it can help repair nerves and reduce nerve pain.
And this is any cause of nerve pain.
So nerve damage from trauma, from diabetes, any type of nerve injury, the mechanisms that
your body uses to heal and repair damage to any nerve.
One of the major pathways, several of the major pathways involved in that healing process
that are made worse if you have high amounts of inflammation are reversed or reduced.
That inflammation is reduced, therefore enhancing the healing, speeding up the healing by taking
modified citrospectum.
So many functional medicine practitioners have long used modified citrospectum to help cancer
patients as well because it helps your body flush out pesticides that have become stored
in fat cells throughout your body after chronic exposures.
And this is a very exciting study that just was published this month, November 2024, in
the journal Cancer, very prestigious Cancer journal by Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE, Associate
Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine.
The headline is, Pesticides and Prostate Cancer Incidents and Mortality, an Environment-Wide
Association Study.
So 22 pesticides showed consistent, direct associations with prostate cancer incidence
in these groups of people they studied.
Of these four were also associated with prostate cancer mortality.
In other words, they're likely to, they're strongly associated with getting cancer in
the first place and 22 different pesticides are very strongly associated with your risk
of getting prostate cancer.
And four of those are very strongly associated with your risk of dying from prostate cancer.
So this is really exciting because there have been studies like this in other journals for
years.
It's the first time I've seen one directly linking this connection between common pesticides,
very common pesticides and prostate cancer in the very prestigious journal Cancer.
So the conclusions, the results of this study suggest a link between pesticides and increased
prostate cancer incidence and mortality and therefore warrant further investigation of
these specific pesticides to confirm their role in prostate cancer risk and develop potential
public health interventions.
Well here's a public health intervention.
You're listening and you're buying on this show.
Tell everyone you know, pesticides cause, or dramatically increase your risk of prostate
cancer.
So if you want to know if you've been exposed to too many pesticides or have an increased
risk from that, you can get that tested.
I can help you with that.
I can run a urine test to identify the most common pesticides and other chemicals that
people are exposed to.
We're about out of time again.
Thank you for listening.
I hope you're enjoying your holiday, all of the holiday events that you're going to do
something healthy to be healthier this week than you were last week by for example, eating
some healthy food before you go to all these holiday parties so that you'll be full when
you get there and when you're being tempted with sugary sweets and cakes and all that
stuff you'll have a legitimate reason to decline those things and not regret it later.
Have a fabulous 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 2 p.m. for Safe, Effective Natural Solutions here on 98.3 FM, The Word.