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 some of the latest research that's
come out in the medical press. Exciting things.
Documenting the benefits of wine on cardiovascular
health. And we're going to talk about some of
the new FDA healthy food claim rules that are
appearing on food in supermarkets. And also some
connections between wildfire smoke and dementia.
But before we get into that, I'd like to remind
you that if you like what you hear on this show
and you want to hear more, maybe you've only
just heard a tiny portion, you can always listen
to all of the past episodes anytime you like,
anytime you like, on demand on my website, BinkleyHealingCenter
.com. That's Binkley. Healing like health and
healing. BinkleyHealingCenter .com, as well as
on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify,
and YouTube by just searching for my name and
the name of the show, Safe, Effective, Natural
Solutions. And if you want to contact me directly,
the best way is email. And my email address is
DrBinkley at BinkleyHealingCenter .com. D -R
-B as in boy, I -N -K -L -E -Y at BinkleyHealingCenter
.com. My love. Fielding questions about any health
-related subject. All questions are good questions,
so please get those in to me. The purpose of
this show is primarily to describe various aspects
of functional medicine and how that might help
you. So what is functional medicine? Functional
medicine means using standard diagnostic tests
like blood tests, saliva tests for hormones,
urine tests for toxin exposure, hair tests and
urine tests for heavy metal exposure, stool tests
for chronic gut inflammation conditions, and
any other standard diagnostic scans. Also CAT
scans, MRIs, any other standard diagnostic. tests
that all doctors use for diagnosing and treating
disease can also be used for finding earlier
signs of things that need support, stress on
your liver and your kidneys and your cardiovascular
system and your immune system. How healthy are
you really on the inside? Well, the only way
to, you're as different on the inside as you
are on the outside. And the only way to know
for sure how healthy you are is to do diagnostic
testing. And the best way to find out what testing
is most appropriate for you or someone you love
is to do an initial consultation with me. And
that usually takes a half hour and costs as little
as $100. Someone asked me the other day, where
do I get all the information that I talk about
on this show? And it is mainly from the medical
press, places like Medscape and MedPage, who
publish numerous releases every week, dozens
of them that I subscribe to, Medscape generally.
general medicine and medscape for neurology,
for cancer, for autoimmune conditions, for gastroenterological
conditions, etc. And so anybody can access this
information, but it requires time to keep up
with and weed through. I don't report on all
of the stuff about pharmaceuticals. It's not
of interest to my listeners in this show or me
for that much. But I do consider it a part of
my job to translate the latest medical research
into language anyone can understand so that you
can... incorporate it into the list of considerations
you use to make choices about your health. So
somebody asked me the other day also, why doesn't
my regular doctor do this? Why doesn't my regular,
why don't all doctors do functional medicine?
Well, a couple of reasons, mainly because they're
busy. diagnosing and treating disease. Most people
wait until they need medical care to go to a
doctor and they need crisis care. And that's
important that they provide that. And they also
are not trained in functional medicine. It requires
special extra training that functional medicine
practitioners, whether they're medical doctors
or chiropractors or acupuncturists or naturopaths,
we go to extra seminars every year to maintain
our knowledge, all the latest research and new
treatments and techniques that become available
every year. in hotels around the country. All
doctors are required to do continuing education
like this to maintain their licenses. And so
functional medicine practitioners choose to focus
that continuing education on functional medicine
seminars, conventions, symposium, et cetera,
including the endocrinology conference that I
go to every year. It's coming up next month in
Austin, Texas. So I'll be there with the laboratory
endocrine and neurotransmitter symposium in Austin,
Texas next month. So yeah, current doctors just
don't have that training. They're probably, most
of them are not that interested in it. And the
other main reason is insurance companies, by
and large, do not pay for functional medicine
insurance. Health insurance has nothing to do
with health. There's nothing that your health
insurance will pay for that will keep you healthier.
It is medical insurance. Medical insurance pays
for medical care. People pool their resources
so that when one of us is in a crisis, there's
money there available to get you through that
crisis. It's not going to pay for your gym membership
or your vitamins or to come see me. It will pay
for diagnostic tests. If you go to your regular
doctor who has a contract with your insurance
company, then that doctor, anything they do is
by definition considered medically necessary.
But that's also why they won't do all of the
tests that are often required to do a good functional
medicine. workup because they are literally medically
unnecessary. It's really easy to diagnose an
obvious medical condition like high cholesterol
or high blood pressure or kidney, full -blown
kidney disease or liver disease or cardiovascular
disease with just a few blood tests. These things
are obvious and simple to diagnose. It requires
more tests to get an impression, a good impression
of what's happening in every organ and system
in your body. So that's why 80 % of the time
I order a 55 -point blood panel that would cost
most insurance companies about $1 ,400. Well,
I get that $1 ,400 panel for $225. So even though
you have to pay out of pocket for it, you get
a lot of really good information for that money,
and it's a lot of value for your money. Here's
some exciting news in the medical press. Moderate
wine consumption has maintained its association
with cardiovascular benefit when self -reports
were taken out of the equation. PREDIMED trial
showed. So this is really exciting because there's
been a lot of controversy about, you know, is
wine beneficial? How beneficial? How much is
too much? Et cetera. The same. There are some
studies that say there are no safe amounts of
alcohol, but there are lots more that suggest
that for men consuming two servings or less per
day, 14 per week. is healthy and for women half
that, one per day, seven per week. And that includes
wine, obviously. And these are studies about
the benefits of wine are mainly red wine because
of the antioxidants and polyphenols like resveratrol
that are in the skins of grapes. But what they
did in this study, which is really neat, they
used a marker called tartaric acid in urine.
So they did urine tests and used tartaric acid
as an objective biomarker. to measure wine consumption
because you can directly determine how much wine
someone drank by how much tartaric acid shows
up in their urine. And they tied this to lower
risk of long -term cardiovascular disease, combined
heart failure, myocardial infarction, which is
a heart attack, strokes, and cardiovascular disease
death. This was in an older Mediterranean population
and reported at the University of Barcelona.
The lead study, Dr. Ramon Estruc, MD, PhD of
the University of Barcelona and his colleagues.
And they compared people with the lowest tartaric
acid, say that three times fast, lowest tartaric
acid level to people with tartaric acid levels
consistent with moderate wine consumption and
found that they had a cardiovascular protection
over a nine -year follow -up period. So this
was the equivalent of drinking. one or two glasses
of wine per day, three times a week, which for
most people is perfectly reasonable. So cheers
to that. While we're on the subject, the one
group that always comes to mind, which for whom,
unfortunately, no alcohol. is safe. If a woman
has a high risk, family risk factors, siblings
who had breast cancer, other risk factors for
many, look up on breastcancer .org the risk factors
for breast cancer. Any woman who has a lot of
risk factors for breast cancer really should
not drink any alcohol because it dramatically
furthers that increased risk of getting breast
cancer. But for most of us, drinking one or two
glasses of wine three times a week is reasonable
and healthy. It increases your cardiovascular
health. I'm Dr. Todd Binkley. You're listening
to Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost
Any Health Challenge. Here's an exciting headline.
White bread out, salmon in. FDA releases, quote,
healthy food claim rule. So this is the first
update to the nutrient content claims that can
be put on food in 30 years. Salmon, low -fat
yogurt, trail mix, olive oil, and eggs are among
the foods that can now be called healthy under
a final rule issued by the FDA last Thursday.
Meanwhile, fortified white bread. and highly
sweetened yogurt and cereal, which previously
qualified, ridiculously qualified as healthy,
failed to meet the upgraded criteria. So this
is exciting because people think bread is healthy.
You know, it's fine for most people to eat some
bread, but it's a really good, it's like the
first thing a lot of people should eliminate
from their diet if they're overweight, if they
have risk of diabetes or heart disease, any chronic
inflammatory condition. Yes, white bread is worse
than whole wheat bread or Ezekiel or, you know,
heavy grain breads. But all of that stuff ends
up being starch that turns into sugar, raises
your triglyceride levels, increases inflammation
in your body. causes weight gain. et cetera.
And so it's good. It's really, it's really good
that that's no longer the bread is no longer,
especially fortified in white bread, uh, is no
longer going to be called a healthy food. It
is not also sweetened yogurt. So what sweetened
yogurt? It's most of the yogurt people buy from
stores. If any, if your yogurt has any flavor
in it, I can virtually guarantee you that it
also has sugar in it. Um, if it's sugar free,
it's also, it often has sugar alcohols in it,
which all have all kinds of problems. I've done
it, did a whole podcast on on the problems with
sugar alcohols like mannitol and xylitol and
erythritol. So yeah, sweetened yogurt, no good.
Get the plain Greek yogurt. Full fat, plain full
fat Greek yogurt. Anything that's low fat is
high sugar. And most of the low fat yogurts have
sugar in them also. So the best kind of yogurt
to get is plain full fat, not low fat Greek yogurt.
And add your own things to flavor it. Add your
own berries, fresh or frozen. Add your own nut.
and seeds and cinnamon and you know lots of things
you can add to your own yogurt to make it delicious
that are better for you as well and it's my most
exciting to me cereal can no longer be called
a healthy food there's about as many nutrients
in the box the most breakfast cereal comes in
as there are in the contents of the box no one
should eat breakfast cereal in my opinion it's
just not food it's just sugar and starch and
among the worst kinds of starch and sugar worst
one of the worst things to put in your body first
thing in the morning when you really should be
eating some healthy fats and protein like eggs.
Whole fat Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. And,
you know, you can also, it's actually legal to
eat anything you would eat for lunch or dinner
first thing in the morning. I eat a savory breakfast
every morning. Things like sardines and salmon
and smoked oysters and sometimes just a little
ham or turkey. Olives, olive oil. The Greeks
and other Mediterranean cultures start out the
day with a shot of olive oil. So if you're going
to do that, you don't want to get Bertolli's
or cheap crap. oil from a supermarket, get some
good olive oil from a farmer's market or Whole
Foods or a health food store. They have sometimes
a couple of good ones at Trader Joe's as well.
You want to think of that olive oil that you're
going to drink as a shot or to put on your salads,
not to cook with. The cheap stuff is okay to
cook with. Cheaper stuff is okay to cook with.
But if you're going to drink it, you want to
get the good stuff. And the good stuff costs
about $16 or more for a small bottle. But for
putting on your salads, you know, you're not
going to cook with this because it will destroy
many of the beneficial polyphenols that give
it that sort of... kind of dry, astringent taste
in the back of your throat. That's a good way
to tell if you've got a good olive oil. A good
olive oil has this kind of peppery, astringent,
dry taste that hits the back of your throat when
you eat it, especially if you do a shot of it.
And you can blunt that a little bit by adding,
if you're going to do a shot of olive oil in
the morning, you can blunt that spicy, astringent
sea by adding a little balsamic vinegar or lemon
to it. A small amount of salt and pepper is also
nice. If you've never tried that, I recommend
it. It's a great way to start the day with fat
that your body can burn slowly as energy throughout
the day so that you won't get that crash in the
middle of the morning that makes you want a sugary
snack and more coffee like you get after eating
pancakes and waffles and hash browns and donuts
and bagels first thing in the morning. You get
a sugar spike and a crash, and that's not a good
way to start any day. If you're finding it difficult
to eat breakfast at all, if you're one of those
people that just gets up and has coffee and a
piece of toast on the way out the door, then
a good way to plan your breakfast so that you
have something that's ready so you don't have
to prepare anything. So yogurt's easy, obviously.
If you don't have time to cook eggs, but you
don't mind having hard -boiled eggs, you can
hard -boil an egg the night before, stick it
in the fridge, and have that ready to go. And
you can eat things that are prepared, like my
favorite, tinned salmon packed in olive oil.
tinned smoked oysters packed in olive oil, pole
caught low mercury tuna. Pactin oil, these are
whole filet tunas in a can, brand like Wild Planet.
Just the thought of fish from a can sounds disgusting
to you. In my opinion, a lot of it is, especially
if it's packed in water. Because it gets more
exposed to the air if it's packed in water. And
exposure to the air rancifies the omega -3 fats,
the healthy fats you want from fish. And that's
what causes, that's a big part of what causes
fish. to taste fishy. So that is minimized, and
the fish in a can is much more delicious if it's
packed in olive oil. So look for those things.
They're available at Bonds and Trader Joe's most
places. So getting back to this FDA ruling, Jim
Jones, Deputy Commissioner of the FDA's Human
Foods Program, stressed that diet -related chronic
diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes
are the leading causes of disability and death
in the U .S., and they are one reason that our
nation, our great nation, has one of the lowest
life life expectancies among large high income
countries how sad is that for the richest country
on earth and have the lowest life expectancy
among other rich countries so now people will
be able to look for the healthy claim and find
nutritious foods that are actually that actually
are healthy under unlike some of the claims from
times past examples of the new claims for a cereal
to have the label healthy claim on it. It has
to have a minimum amount of whole grains and
adhere to limits for saturated fat, salt, and
sugar. Nuts and seeds, higher fat fish such as
salmon, certain oils, and water are examples
of foods that did not qualify. Unbelievable.
Did not previously qualify for a healthy claim.
I'm going to say that again. Nuts and seeds,
higher fat fish such as salmon, certain oils,
and water didn't used to be considered by the
FDA to qualify for the healthy claim on their
food label. So now they are considered foundational
to a healthy eating pattern and recommended by
the dietary guidelines. Finally, they point out
that there are some foods that are affordable
for people on a budget that are also going to
have the healthy label now, such as peanut butters
and some canned fruits and vegetables that are
not packed in sugar. And, of course, an easy
way to find the healthiest food in a grocery
store or supermarket is to stick to the perimeter
of the store where all the fresh food is and
maybe stop off through the middle, usually in
the middle where the frozen vegetables and berries
are kept because they're preferable to most canned
vegetables and almost always better than canned
fruit that's packed in corn syrup. All right,
another headline, wildfire smoke and incident
dementia. So I've done several shows before about
all the dangers of wildfire smoke, something
that we're going to be exposed to more and more
as the years go by. It just seems like there's
never any way to get rid of the risk for wildfires,
especially here on the West Coast, but around
the world increasingly. Washington School of
Public Health, published in JAMA Neurology, discussing
the dangers of wildfire smoke. And so what is
wildfire smoke? What are the dangerous aspects?
Why does it cause so many problems? Well, it's
a mixture. of gases and particles, the most important
particle being PM2 .5 or particles less than
2 .5 micrometers in diameter. So these are the
things that float small enough to float in the
air and obviously you can see them. So anything
that you can see floating in the air can get
into the lungs, into the deepest recesses of
the lungs and then move directly into the bloodstream
and causing inflammation and oxidative stress
and DNA damage to the body. And so in that study,
they saw a much stronger relationship between
long -term exposure to particulate matter, 2
.5 or smaller, specifically from wildfires, than
other sources of small, fine particulate matter,
like the dust from, if you live near a highway,
the dust from car tires and other things that
generate dust from just the surface of the earth.
Wildfire smoke is mainly organic material burning
in forests, but it's also, even that's bad enough.
but it's obviously way worse when you're getting
wildfire smoke from houses and cars and buildings
full of toxic heavy metals and chemicals that
become part of that ash that we end up breathing.
So wildfire smoke has more of these ultra -fine
particles that move from the nose directly into
the brain, potentially damaging brain cells and
resulting... in dementia. So most days when people
are walking around, we're not exposed to wildfire
smoke at all. But those few days a year matter
more than we used to understand. And climate
change intensifying, there's going to be more
times when we're exposed to really high levels.
And so just a big one -time exposure they're
showing now can result in a dramatically increased
risk of dementia. So on the days, I've done shows
about this before too. Please check those out.
again on the days when there's wildfire smoke
and for several days after the fires go out.
It's a good idea to stay indoors if you have
allergies or, you know, older difficulty breathing
for any other reason. But especially at night,
keep the windows closed, get a good MERV 13 filter,
change your filters in your homes, in your offices
after the fires and make sure it's rated MERV
13. That's the rating for filtering. That high
of a rating will filter out fine particulate
matter and COVID and other viruses. And then
also in your house, I recommend in your bedroom,
especially getting a HEPA filter, a quiet HEPA
filter so that all night at least you're breathing
air that's been cleaned thoroughly. And you can
get a good HEPA filter on Amazon for $99. Shoot
me an email if you want a link to that. The brand
is Medify. My favorite one is Medify MA25 model.
That's a size that's about a foot and a half
high and 10 inches square. It's big enough to
do about 500 to 700 square feet or, you know,
one room. And it's quiet and it doesn't waste
a lot of filters. So the filters last longer
than in some other types of HEPA filters. And
it's very, very quiet. So you can run it in your
bedroom and it won't keep you awake at night.
So the study found that a one microgram per meter
cubed three -year average in wildfire -generated
fine particulate matter caused an 18 % increased
risk in developing dementia in the people they
tested. So if you live in areas where wildfires,
which we all do, do what you can to protect yourself.
And, you know, if you want to find out, you can
go to airnow .gov to find out the Air Quality
Index. Anywhere you live, go to airnow .gov.
And you can see there's different ratings for
air quality. And you can look at the air quality
index and find out if you should be maybe even
wearing a mask when you're outdoors. An N95 or
a KN95. Or, you know, if you need to stay inside,
run a filtration system. The air quality index
of over 101, they recommend... For older adults
to stay indoors, reduce outdoor activities, wear
a face mask, etc., and try to stay inside, shut
the windows, run an air filtration system. For
everyone else, not older people, but everyone
else, the Air Quality Index recommended to take
protective measures is 151. And you can see what
that is for your area anytime by going to airnow
.gov. I have had so many patients over the years
who are complaining of phlegm or coughing when
they wake up or post -nasal drip, especially
if it's first thing in the morning, then anything
like that, any respiratory symptoms that you
have, coughing, sneezing, post -nasal drip, phlegm
coming up that you have to spit out, especially
if it's first thing in the morning or at night,
then it's clear that running a HEPA filter, high
-efficiency particulate air filter, in your bedroom
to filter that stuff out makes a huge difference.
And I've seen this on scores of patients. They're
always surprised when it happens, very pleasantly
surprised that you can wake up in the morning
and now you can breathe because you've been breathing
clean air all night long. So when you have that
phlegm being produced in that mucus, that's your
body's natural response to particulates getting
down into the crevices of your lungs. Your body
produces that mucus and causes you to cough it
up and spit it out to get rid of it. That's what
you want. You definitely want. to get rid of
that stuff but if you find that you're doing
that all the time it'll still be a good idea
to eliminate your exposure to that or at least
keep it to an absolute minimum And when you do,
not only will you find that your body's producing
less phlegm and you're not coughing and sneezing
and having to spit that stuff up as much as you
used to, but you're also reducing your risk of
dementia and reducing your risk of any chronic
issues with your sinuses, with your lungs, reducing
your risk of even certain lung cancers. and cardiovascular
disease. There's more and more data coming out
on this all the time. Check out my previous podcasts
talking about the links between wildfire smoke
and cardiovascular disease. So I hate to be a
doom and gloom forecaster because wildfires are
going to be unavoidable for most of us in so
many places around the world. But you can take
protective measures to dramatically reduce your
risk. We are out of time. As always, thank you
for tuning in. Have a wonderful weekend. 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.