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 Bankley, board -certified
doctor of non -force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine. What is functional medicine?
A lot of people have heard about functional medicine.
People, listeners to the show are getting more
and more familiar with it every time you listen.
Thank you for tuning in. But a lot of people
still have no idea. What does that mean, functional
medicine? What's the difference between functional
medicine and regular medicine? Well, regular
medicine, the practice of medicine normally is
the diagnosis and treatment of disease. full
-blown disease that you already have that reaches
the criteria of a medical diagnosis, meaning
it's bad enough to warrant the risks and expense
of standard medical treatment, usually drugs.
So drugs are essential when you need to intervene
now and get a quick, controlled, reliable response
to something that might kill you if you don't
get that quick response. But what if you haven't
felt right for several months or years? What
if you've been to several doctors and been told
that there's nothing wrong with you? Or what
if you've been told that you need some kind of
medication and tried it for a while and the side
effects were so bad you decided you'd rather
deal with the effects of whatever's bothering
you that maybe weren't as bad as the side effects
of that drug? Well, functional medicine primarily
uses the same diagnostic tests as regular medicine
to diagnose and figure out what's going on with
your body, what it's missing. But we look for
earlier signs of stress on your various organs
and tissues. Earlier signs of a problem with
your liver or your kidneys or a stress on your
immune system or your cardiovascular system.
And early enough that you hopefully don't need
medication yet. Or even if you do, you can still
do in combination with that. High intensity or
high dose nutrient therapy based on the testing,
identifying nutrients that your body's lacking
that will enable it to heal itself if you get
adequate amounts in bioavailable forms. of those
nutrients. Things like adequate protein, adequate
vitamin D deficiency is very common. Deficiency
in hydrochloric acid in the stomach that allows
you to absorb protein and minerals is a very
common thing that I find a lot. So functional
medicine uses the same testing, but then usually,
well, instead of medication, sometimes in addition
to, there are medical doctors that practice functional
medicine with pharmaceuticals and better food
exercise and supplements. So all functional medicine
practitioners generally recommend Better food,
exercise, and supplements. Many, many disease
conditions get better if you just get out and
move your body once in a while. Everyone knows
the importance of good diet, but the particulars
vary from one person to the next. And with testing,
you can identify, are you getting way too much
starch and sugar in your diet? Are you not getting
enough protein? Are you not getting enough of
certain vitamins and minerals? We can identify
these things with testing and make adjustments
accordingly. So functional medicine mainly uses...
better food, exercise, and supplements to enable
your body to better heal itself. Well, what's
the difference between a drug and a nutrient
or a supplement? Well, drugs directly alter and
manipulate cell receptors and biochemical pathways.
That's why they work nearly instantly. But it's
also why they're potentially toxic and often
literally toxic, have side effects because they
interfere with your normal physiology. The normal
control mechanisms are overridden. And consuming
too much or too many drugs can easily kill you.
100 ,000 people a year in this country on average
die from properly prescribed medication. Not
medical errors, not where they couldn't read
the doctor's handwriting, but taking medicine
as directed kills about 100 ,000 people in America.
So drugs are essential in many cases, but there's
lots of good reasons to try and find other options
if they're available. So nutrients, unlike drugs,
nutrients are foods that our bodies have evolved
the ability to assimilate and utilize for sustaining
life. They provide the raw materials that your
body needs to... heal cells to create new cells,
build and maintain living tissue. They're non
-toxic because they support your normal physiology
and the innate control mechanisms remain intact.
In general, if you consume more than you need
of most nutrients, your body will simply excrete
them. So a great referral for a practitioner
of functional medicine is someone who's been,
who's having a problem, has been to the regular
doctor and is not getting any better or maybe
is even been told that there's nothing that they
can do for them. So here's an example. Somebody
that just came in today, came in a few weeks
ago, he just came back today, a 24 -year -old
man with irregular bowel movements, going back
and forth between constipation, constipation
and diarrhea, and his stools are orange. And
his main complaint was abdominal pain. So he
had unexplained abdominal pain. Nobody could
figure out why his abdomen was hurting. And he'd
also lost 50 pounds in the last few months. So
when he went to his regular doctor, they found
out that he had a really elevated bilirubin,
which is often a sign of a gallbladder, gallstones,
or an inflamed gallbladder, or a stone blocking
the ducts that go from the gallbladder and the
liver and the pancreas to the small intestine.
Could be sometimes a liver issue or an issue
directly with the pancreas. Anyway, they did
an ultrasound and confirmed that he didn't have
gallstones. He didn't have any blockages in the
gallbladder or the ducting. He didn't have any
liver disease or any disease in the pancreas.
Basically, everything on the ultrasound was clear.
And so his doctor basically said, well, there's
nothing we can do. It'll probably resolve on
its own, come back if it gets worse. He wasn't
very happy with that, to say the least. And so
I looked at his tests and ordered a few more
tests and told him that he probably has some
kind of chronic inflammatory infection or autoimmune
condition that's causing increased breakdown
of red blood cells. Bilirubin is a product of
the breakdown, the normal breakdown of red blood
cells, and it's yellow. And so if that bilirubin
has got to be coming from someplace and bilirubin
is normally excreted in the bile. But if he's
overproducing it, it's got to come from somewhere.
So I ordered a couple more tests. One of them
was to get what's called a peripheral smear,
where it takes some blood and have a pathologist
look at it under a microscope. That takes a little
longer to do. We haven't gotten that test back
yet. But with the latest blood work, we did find
that he had some stress on his kidneys, that
he was severely deficient in vitamin D, and that
his white blood cell count was really low as
well, which means that he's got some kind of
chronic stress on his immune system. This is
something I see relatively frequently that often
gets ignored by most doctors. When you think
of an infection, usually you're looking for expecting
to find an increased white blood cell count.
If you have a cold or the flu, you get the signs
of an infection that everybody knows about. You
feel achy, you get a fever, nausea. frequently
end up needing antibiotics, et cetera, to fight
off that bug. Well, a chronic infection, chronic
doesn't mean severe. Chronic doesn't mean bad.
Chronic, like chronological or chronos, means
time. It means something that's been there for
a long time. It could be mild. It just means
it's been there for a while. So a chronic infection,
the result of having some kind of bug, some kind
of bacteria, virus, parasite in your system that
your body's never able to completely fight off.
That causes a drain on your immune system and
it results in the inability to keep up with demand.
So it causes your white cell count to go down.
So it's really important if your white blood
cell count is too high, but it's also really
important to know if it's too low and do something
about it. So this is a young guy. He's pretty
smart. He was doing some things on his own. He
was really frustrated with what he wasn't, the
help he wasn't getting from his regular doctor.
He was really excited to hear that there were
some other things that he needed to do. And in
the meantime, he'd done some reading on his own
and he figured out that there could be a problem
in his gut. And he went out on his own, found
some really good supplements to support the normal
gut microbiome. He was taking some good probiotics,
some prebiotics and other things to support.
boosting the immune system and restoring a healthier
microbiome in the gut, which was great. And it
had only been a couple of weeks he was doing
that, and we put him on some high -dose vitamin
D, some fish oil, a good multivitamin to get
minerals that he's probably deficient in, something
called loricidin. to help support the immune
system, and one supplement to support the kidneys.
His blood tests also showed some stress on the
kidneys. I also told him he needs to drink some
more water, just getting adequate amounts of
water, about half your body weight in ounces
per day, or for most people, two or three quarts
a day. If you're over 170, 180 pounds, I recommend
closer to a gallon a day, and he was doing about
half that. And so just those things will probably
resolve his kidney issues. He's already doing
a little bit better. Some of his tests are already
improving and he's having much less pain and
less discomfort and stools are starting to get
a little bit better. So, you know, in three months
we'll retest him again and there's a very good
chance that he'll be fine. I'm Dr. Todd Bankley.
You're listening to Safe, Effective, Natural
Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge. If
you're just tuning in now, we just spoke about
the difference between regular medicine and functional
medicine and talked about a case of a young man
who was having some abdominal discomfort and
not getting the results he was looking for. And
it looks like we're going to be able to get him
feeling a lot better with some support for his
immune system. Last week, I ran out of time talking
about three more things I wanted to talk about
for naturally reducing. High blood pressure.
It's so important to check your blood pressure
so that you know if it's normal or not. And on
previous episodes, I've also talked a lot about
the importance of breathing clean air. Here in
the Western... West Coast and almost everywhere
now, actually, we're getting bombarded with particulates
in the air from wildfires and other fires and
that particulate matter from smoke and other
pollutants is damaging to so many parts of the
body. More and more research coming out about
that. And so I often encourage people to get
a HEPA filter, high efficiency particulate air
HEPA filter, and use it in your bedroom so that
at least at night you're breathing clean air.
If you or someone you know wakes up with post
-nasal drip or itchy nose or sneezing or phlegm.
mainly first thing in the morning, then that's
a good thing for anyone with those symptoms to
try to breathe cleaner air all night with a HEPA
filter. And I have one in particular that I recommend.
I've tried a bunch of different ones, and it's
important to get one that's quiet so that you
can sleep okay without the sound of it bothering
you and that has good filters that don't get
eaten up quickly. So anyway, email me if you
have a question about that. But this is an interesting
study that just came out, how air filters can
help elevated blood pressure. This was published.
by Dr. Douglas Bruges, Ph .D. of the University
of Connecticut in Farmington, published in the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
It was a trial of 154, small study, 154 adults
living near I -93 and Route 38 in eastern Massachusetts.
And they were randomly assigned to each receive
a month of either HEPA filter filtration or a
sham filtration where they just had a HEPA filter
unit with no filters in it. And then they compared
them. And his group highlighted the growing literature
that indicates that air purifiers have an important
beneficial effect on blood pressure. Even in
places where the particulate matter is low. there's
lots of preliminary data that has been shown
that that could help. So the results came back
and showed that, on average, the participants'
blood pressure went down by three points, which
might seem like a modest result, but it aligns
with other lifestyle interventions and things
that are commonly recommended for lowering. blood
pressure is clinically significant. And the general
recommendation is if you live within 200 meters
or 200 yards, call it, of a high traffic highway
or within 100 yards of a high traffic road, then
it's probably worth getting a HEPA filter. Here's
another exciting study that I just came across.
I'm often talking about the benefits of the gut
microbiome on literally every aspect of your
health. And blood pressure is no exception. It's
an interesting study that was published in the
Journal of the American Heart Association. where
researchers gave a group of men butyrate enemas.
Well, what's butyrate? We'll come back to that.
So they gave them butyrate enemas and then did
blood tests and stool tests and measured for
changes in their blood pressure. And the end
result is their daytime systolic, the top number,
blood pressure, the most important one, the top
number was significantly lower after giving them
a butyrate enema. And their conclusion is this
study suggests that increasing gut butyrate availability
can improve blood pressure. But not a lot of
people are going to want... a butyrate enema
very often, I wouldn't imagine. And here's the
good news. Butyrate is a short -chain fatty acid.
Well, that's kind of technical. We don't have
time to go into the chemistry of that, but just
take it on face value for now. Short -chain fatty
acids are, butyrate is one of them. There are
several others, and these are things that are
made by the gut bacteria, fermentation of dietary
fiber in the gut. And these SCFAs, short chain
fatty acids, play a crucial role in maintaining
gut health by providing energy for the beneficial
bacteria and sustaining the gut barrier that
prevents leaky gut. If you've ever heard anybody
said, oh, my doctor told me I have leaky gut
and that can cause autoimmune conditions where
things that are in your intestines that don't
belong in your bloodstream leak through that
thin barrier and end up in your bloodstream.
And then your immune system attacks those things
and healthy tissue gets caught in the crossfire.
the etiology the cause of a lot of autoimmune
conditions so these short chain fatty acids help
play a crucial role in maintaining that gut barrier
and they just generally reduce inflammation so
these short chain fatty acids are made by beneficial
bacteria in the gut and so a good way to even
better way to increase butyrate availability
to improve blood pressure, among other things,
is to do a stool test. Because a standard comprehensive
stool test, well, when I say standard, I shouldn't
say standard, I should say comprehensive. Because
the stool test that most doctors do in a typical
doctor's office medical setting is not generally
going to be very comprehensive. There are very
few labs that even do that. The best one is doctor's
data, in my opinion. The good one is Genova Diagnostics,
and there are a few others. But you're unlikely
to get any of those from a regular visit to a
doctor with any kind of a gastric. So anyway,
a comprehensive test will include measuring short
-chain fatty acids, directly measuring butyrate
production levels, and the beneficial bacteria
that produce those. So then you know what you
need. You know what you need to change in your
diet, sometimes with supplemental probiotics
and prebiotics to help your body make more of
these short -chain fatty acids on its own, and
then maintain the healthy bacteria in the gut
that will continue producing them. And then once
you have a better level, if they're deficient,
then among other things, among so many other
things, there's even a good chance that can help
lower your blood pressure if it's high. One of
the most commonly overlooked causes, potential
causes, and often a significant existing cause
for a patient that I see that most doctors don't
even check for is subclinical anemia. So anemia
is defined as the inability to produce enough
red blood cells to carry oxygen to all of your
tissue in adequate amounts. There are a number
of different ways to test that, but the most
common one is just to do a CBC and measure your
red blood cell count and your hemoglobin and
your hematocrit. And if that's within the broad
standard medical range, then you do not get a
diagnosis of anemia. And that's fine. They're
basically waiting until it's bad enough to justify
certain medications or a blood transfusion in
the most severe instance. But many, many, many
people who are fatigued and don't understand
why or who are not healing and repairing or have
a chronic condition that just never heals have
anemia. They're not carrying enough oxygen to
all their cells, which is obviously essential.
And it doesn't meet the medical criteria. but
it is still not ideal. It's outside the narrower
functional range, these same tests, and you can
identify that you're slightly deficient. You
have slightly low iron, slightly reduced hemoglobin
or hematocrit, or increased concentration of
hemoglobin. If you're not making enough new red
blood cells because of a B12 deficiency, a folate
and B12 and sometimes B6 deficiency, then the
concentration and the average size of your red
blood cells gets bigger. So your red blood cells
live about three months, and as they get older,
if you're not delivering enough oxygen to your
cells, your body senses that, and the older cells
that haven't been replaced yet like they should
have get bigger to try and take up the slack,
and that shows up on a CBC. Interestingly, pernicious
anemia. Anyone heard of pernicious anemia? That
sounds pretty awful. Until the discovery in 1920s
that liver cured it, it was a death sentence.
Doctors would identify that you have anemia and
they'd tell you, sorry, there's nothing we can
do. It might take two, three years, but you're
going to die because your body will eventually
be unable to produce enough red blood cells to
carry enough oxygen to sustain life. And in the
19th century, this was common. People would just
be told that... There's nothing you can do, and
they would eventually die from lack of red blood
cells and oxygen. So then in the 1920s, some
physicians found out that if you fed people liver,
it would cure Pernicillinemia. And then in the
1960s, they identified vitamin B12, the fact
that vitamin B12 was the thing in liver. Vitamin
B12 is stored in the liver, in our livers and
in the liver of animals. If you eat cow's liver,
pig's liver, any other kind of liver, you'll
be getting some B12 from that food. Carnivores,
like big cats, animals that are carnivores, that
don't get B vitamins from plant -based sources.
You'll notice in the wild, they often eat the
liver and the other organs first because they
know that they're full. They just have evolved
to know that they need the nutrients that are
in that tissue. So now, you know, it's very,
very rare to get a diagnosis of pernicious anemia.
If you've got a smart doctor, all you need to
do is supplement folate and B12 and your body
will naturally correct that. but only if it's
way outside the medical range. So a lot of people
do have deficiencies, slight anemia from lack
of iron, sufficient iron, and or sufficient vitamin
B12, folate, and sometimes vitamin B6. Well,
here's an interesting study that was just published
in General American Medical Association based
on data from more than 8 ,000 people who had
laboratory iron levels on file as part of the
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
that was done from 2017. to 2020. And the headline
is nearly one third of U .S. adults may have
low iron levels that can add to problems ranging
from fatigue to heart failure. Even a minor anemia
is a constant strain on your heart and it's a
silent strain. You never know you have it until
your heart just gives out or you have a heart
attack or a stroke. So it goes on more striking.
7 % of U .S. adults have full -blown anemia that
meets that medical criteria. But more striking
was the finding that a significant portion of
the population may have less severe iron deficiencies
that have been linked to serious health problems,
including restless leg syndrome, mental and thinking
difficulties, reduced physical abilities just
from the fatigue, and heart failure. Well, this
is exciting. This is the first time I've seen
a study that actually measured for earlier signs
of some of these functional effects of deficiencies.
14 % of people have absolute iron deficiency
where they don't have enough iron stored. That's
measured with a test called ferritin. And another
15 % have functional iron deficiency, which they're
measuring from doing a CBC and measuring your
red blood cell count, hematocrit, and hemoglobin.
So this is a common yet underappreciated public
health problem, said study author Leo Buckley,
doctor of pharmacology and clinical pharmacology
specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in
Boston. Because routine blood work, as part of
an annual physical, doesn't typically include
a check of iron levels unless there's an obvious
cause for concern. And so this study was looking
at regular people who would otherwise not have
been screened. And, you know, treatment of low
iron levels, often you can just remedy it with
supplemental capsules, supplemental iron with,
you know, a regular supplement. If it's severe
enough, you might need to do IV iron, intravenous
iron, for a while. Sometimes just getting more
iron in your diet can do the trick because your
body's very good at storing iron, but it just
doesn't tell you if you're deficient in it until
it gets really, really bad. Well, here's another
huge problem. Millions of people, especially
menstruating women, know they have iron deficiency.
And their doctors give them a supplement and
say, take this iron, you'll be fine. And they
don't. They don't take the iron because it causes
constipation and cramping in the gut. And the
reason for that is 99 .999 % of iron supplements
on the market are something called ferrous sulfate.
And that's the most common form because it's
cheap. It's almost free. It's really cheap. But
the problem with it is it's very difficult for
most people to break down and absorb efficiently.
So it causes cramping. and constipation. There's
an easy solution for that. There is a readily
available other form of iron called bisglycinate.
Bisque glycinate form of iron never causes cramping
or other problems for anybody. I've been giving
it to thousands of people for over 25 years,
and literally I've never had a single patient
that had difficulty with it. So it's usually
really easy to fix just by taking the bisque
glycinate form of supplemental form in capsules
and then retesting to make sure that your iron
levels are good. And so the takeaway really is
just even a slight anemia can raise your blood
pressure. and causes a constant mild strain on
your heart, which never gets a break. It's continually
beating 24 -7, and even a slight deficiency in
these things puts an extra strain on it that's
easy to fix. It looks like we've got time for
just one more here. This study was published
in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Low -level tragus stimulation reduces... blood
pressure in young individuals with hypertension.
So this is a randomized controlled trial. It's
a small trial, but significant. Tragus is a cartilage
on the outer ear where they applied this low
-level electrical stimulation on the surface
to stimulate the vagus nerve. So it's also known
as transcutaneous across the skin vagus nerve
stimulation. What's the vagus nerve? Nothing
to do with Las Vegas, V -A -G -U -S, the vagus
nerve. is the main nerve of the parasympathetic
nervous system. It's a cranial nerve that comes
directly off the base of your brain, comes down
through your neck, and then once it reaches your
abdomen, branches out and innervates everything
in your abdomen. You've got the, everyone's heard
of the fight or flight sympathetic nervous system.
The parasympathetic is rest and digest or calming
and relaxing. So stimulation of the vagus nerve,
the parasympathetic nervous system, calms you,
reduces your blood pressure. And so you can reduce
it directly by putting a little device. You can
order. these things they're very uh you know
low level so it means that anyone can try it
just to see if it works you can buy one on amazon
and see that's just another way if you have questions
about that email me another way that anyone can
use a small simple device to reduce their blood
pressure. As always, thank you for tuning in.
Remember, the condition of your body is always
more important than any disease that you've been
diagnosed with. Invest in your most valuable
asset, your health. Thank you for tuning in.
Have a wonderful 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
Here on 98 .3 FM, The Word.