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. Last week at the top
of the show, I promised I was going to talk about
why no one should take gummy supplements, and
I didn't get to it. We ran out of time, so I'm
going to start with that. We're also going to
get to an exciting case, another exciting case
about someone who had a woman, a 70 -year -old
woman, who went on a trip to Thailand and came
back, had diarrhea for three months. I don't
know why she waited so long before she came back.
came in to me but we got her fixed up feeling
a lot better i'll tell you how we did that a
microbiome update and if we have time some exciting
new information about another great test information
some of it's which has been out for a while but
more research has come about identifying how
another really good blood test can identify earlier
signs of arteriosclerosis the hardening of the
arteries plaque forming in the arteries the best
way to tell how much plaque you have in your
arteries is to do a CT scan but there's a lot
of radiation and expense involved with that so
when we can give you earlier signs of stress
and motivate you to do something about reversing
and reducing the formation of that plaque in
your arteries anytime we find another test that
can do that it's a great great news and cholesterol
is not what I'm talking about that's the standard
what most doctors use cholesterol is just not
a very good indicator of your risk of heart disease
it is an indicator it's not completely useless
But cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease.
Inflammation causes heart disease. And you can
have very high cholesterol and very low plaque
in your arteries. And you can have very low cholesterol
and still have very high plaque in your arteries,
which doesn't make it a very good test, nor does
it make it a very good target for therapy. So
we're going to come back to that. But first,
we're going to talk about it. I'm excited to
do this. I hope you find it interesting. Because
this is shocking to me that anyone takes... Gummy
supplements. Why would anyone do that? They're
obviously candy, aren't they? Well, apparently
not. People who don't want to take any vitamins,
but okay, if you give me some gummies, they taste
good. I'll chew on those. Well, gummies are useless.
All gummy supplements are useless. Why is that?
Because they're candy. They're mostly gelatin,
sugar, artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives.
They also have a tiny amount of nutrients in
them, but they're almost always the cheapest,
least bioavailable form of those nutrients. So
what am I talking about? Well, here's a popular
one. Nature's made multivitamin gummies. Over
50 years of experience, they say, on their label.
Quality you can trust. No artificial flavors.
No synthetic dyes. No high fructose corn syrup.
No artificial sweeteners. And gluten -free. Well,
no multivitamins have gluten in them, so that's
kind of silly to point out that they're gluten
-free. But here's the fun part. No high fructose
corn syrup. Well, that's good. But instead, the
first ingredient, the thing that there is more
of than anything else in Nature's Made Gummy
multivitamins, is glucose sugar. That's the number
one ingredient, glucose syrup. The second ingredient
is sugar. The third ingredient is water. The
fourth ingredient is gelatin. So that's like
99, I don't know what the exact percentage is.
It's probably something like 90 plus percentage
of what's in that gummy is glucose syrup, sugar,
water, and gelatin, and a tiny amount of vitamins.
But even more importantly is what type of vitamins
are in there and how much. So here's another
takeaway key point to remember. Ignore the percentage
daily value, what used to be called the RDA,
the recommended daily allowance. The government
recommended amounts of vitamins is now the percentage
daily value. So the daily value on the supplement
facts and the label on any vitamin product is
really useless information. What is that information
for? Where does that come from? Well, the daily
value of vitamin C, That's enough to prevent
scurvy. The recommended daily value of niacin,
vitamin B3, is 16 milligrams. That's enough to
prevent pellagra, the severe deficiency disease
that happens if you get no vitamin B3, no niacin
in your body. It causes discolored skin, diarrhea,
mental confusion, eventually multiple organ failure
and death within a few years. The U .S. recommended
daily value of thiamine, vitamin B1, is 1 .2
milligrams, which is enough to prevent beriberi
disease that causes swelling in the legs, feet,
ankles, shortness of breath, heart palpitations,
and chest pain. The point is there are severe
deficiency. diseases of every vitamin and most
nutrient minerals. That's where these daily values
come from. In the early 20th century, people
used to actually die from inadequate amounts
of vitamin C and various B vitamins, vitamin
D. Vitamin D, if you have lack, most people know
if you don't get sufficient vitamin D, your bones
will collapse, among other things. But the point
is, hopefully no one is taking a multivitamin.
I don't think anyone is going out and buying
multivitamin gummies to prevent scurvy or beriberi
or pellagra or any other severe nutrient deficiency
disease. These things have been largely eliminated,
at least in the Western world. The point of taking
a multivitamin is the same as the point of taking
any other supplement. You're not getting enough
nutrients from your diet to be healthy. to maximize
your immune function, to maximize the intake
of nutrients your body needs to heal and repair
itself and maintain vital health all of the time.
Most people don't get enough of some of the vitamins
and many of the minerals from their diet, as
well as omega -3 fatty acids and especially vitamin
D from their food. or the sun in the case of
vitamin D, which is why I recommend that everyone
take a good multivitamin, and fish oil for the
omega -3 fatty acids that are difficult to get
enough of from your diet, and 5 ,000 units of
vitamin D for most adults, which no one gets
from the sun, except for very rare circumstances.
If you sunbathe a lot in the summer only. So
back to the ingredients on nature -made multivitamin
gummies. They have 36 milligrams of vitamin C,
which is a ridiculously small amount. Vitamin
C capsules on their own come in 500 milligram,
1 ,000 milligram. The gummies have vitamin E
as D -alpha -tocopherol. Look for that on the
labels. That is the cheapest form of vitamin
E. The cheapest form of vitamin E is D -alpha
-tocopherol. And many top -shelf companies are
doing away with this entirely. It is the cheapest
form of vitamin E. but it actually slows the
absorption of several other forms of vitamin
E, which are much more important. The tocotrienols,
for example. The gummies have niacin, 8 milligrams,
a teeny tiny amount. It's 1 .7 milligrams of
B6. A good amount of folate, 400 micrograms of
folate. That is a good dose. That is the RDA.
The RDA for folic acid is adequate for most people.
Here's another really bad one, vitamin B12. The
gummies have 2 .4 micrograms. That is just weight.
That's just not enough for anybody to maintain
health. And it's in the cyanocobalamin form,
which is the cheapest form. 99 % of B12 supplements
are cyanocobalamin. That is the cheap form. The
active form is methylcobalamin. So if you want
to know if your vitamins are good or not, look
at the B12 on the label and see if it's methyl.
and see if the folate is methylfolate instead
of the B12 being cyanocobalamin. And you definitely
need more than 2 .4 micrograms. to stay healthy.
In addition, these gummies, the nature -made
multivitamin gummies, have a little tiny little
bit of iodine, a little bit of zinc, and a little
bit of chromium. That's it. Three minerals. So
I'm going to compare this list to the multivitamin
that I recommend. It's not the only good one.
There are lots of good ones, but all good multivitamins
are three or four capsules a day, never a gummy,
and never a one -a -day tablet or a capsule of
any type. Why is that? Everyone, why are there,
why are there, if they're no good, then how come
there's so many, the shelves are full. Every
store has, you know, shelf feet of one a day
multivitamins. Well, the answer is very simple.
Everyone wants a one a day multivitamin. If they're
going to take anything, just give me one pill
with a little bit of everything I need. The market
for one pill is insatiable. So those will always
be there. But you now know. They're useless.
There's not enough room in one capsule or one
tablet to fit bioavailable forms of any decent
amount of the nutrients that you need. So if
you want to know if your multivitamin is good,
it should be at least three or four capsules
a day. I'm going to tell you about it. Compare
these Nature's Made gummies to my favorite multivitamin.
It's not the only good one, but it is four capsules
a day. It is Alpha Base. Alpha Base, like alpha,
the first letter in the Greek alphabet, and base,
like the basic nutrients you need. to be healthy,
not to survive, not to prevent scurvy, but to
be healthy, to support a healthy diet with vitamins
and minerals that most people just don't get
enough of from food. So it's Alpha Base by Orthomolecular
Products. In contrast with the 36 milligrams
of vitamin C that are in the nature's made gummies,
alpha -base has 500 milligrams of vitamin C.
That's a good amount of vitamin C. Alpha -base
has 500 micrograms of methylcobalamin, the form
of vitamin B12 that you want. It has 25 milligrams
of niacin, three times the amount in the gummies,
37 milligrams of vitamin B6. 20 times the amount
in the gummies. And most importantly of all,
a whole host of vitamins and minerals that aren't
in any amount in the gummies. For example, the
gummies have a little tiny bit of iodine, zinc,
and chromium, but zero calcium, zero magnesium.
zero selenium. The gummies have no copper, no
manganese, no molybdenum. They're missing multiple
important B vitamins like vitamin B1, thiamine,
vitamin B2, riboflavin. They have a little bit
of niacin, no vitamin B5, pantothenic acid. In
total, the list of vitamins and minerals on the
Nature's Made Multi Gummies is 11. 11 vitamins
and minerals. The list of vitamins and minerals
and nutrients in Alpha Base, the vitamin that
I recommend four capsules a day, is 29 vitamin
minerals. And most of them in much larger amounts
than the US RDA and far larger amounts than in
any gummy. Because they just don't fit. So it's
just the most important thing is I want people
to understand is if you're going to take a multivitamin
you should because no one gets enough especially
of the minerals you can get vitamins from food
but very few people get enough manganese and
chromium and selenium and zinc and calcium and
magnesium from their food that's the reason to
take a good supplement so alpha base has 29 vitamins
and minerals in it. And it's always going to
be four capsules a day because the bioavailable
forms of the minerals in particular are bulky.
They take up space. If you mine minerals from
the surface of the earth, you can put them in
one tablet in an amount that reaches the U .S.
daily value, but not in forms that your body
can absorb very well. We're not designed to eat
dirt and absorb minerals from ground up rocks
and seashells and other things mined directly
from the surface of the earth. earth if you stick
a plant in the surface of the earth especially
in good soil then it will absorb those same minerals
and bind them in the leaves and the vegetables
and the parts of the plant that we eat and forms
that are easy for our digestive systems to break
apart and absorb and these forms are bulky they
take they physically take up more space than
the same stuff took up when it was in the dirt
and that's why you'll never find you'll net you
there will never ever be a one -a -day multivitamin
that has those same bioavailable forms, other
minerals that everyone needs to be healthy. I'm
Dr. Todd Binkley. You're listening to Safe, Effective,
Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge.
And I've spent the first 12 minutes of this show
talking about why no one should take multivitamin
gummies or any other gummy supplements because
they're mostly... candy they're mostly sugar
and gelatin and just to finish off the label
on here's a common popular nature's made gummies
multivitamin a popular brand that lots of people
buy it says right here on the label from the
number one pharmacist recommended vitamin and
supplement brand in small print at the bottom
based on a survey of pharmacists who recommend
branded vitamins and supplements well Pharmacists
are essential if you need information about the
prescriptions that you're picking up that have
been prescribed for you. But if this crappy candy
multivitamin is recommended by any majority of
surveyed pharmacists, then I recommend not asking
your pharmacist what kind of vitamins you should
take. Because they're in the medical system.
They're subject to the same misinformation that
most medical doctors get, which is that vitamins
are at best useless. Might even be harmful. It's
ridiculous. This is all marketing funded by the
pharmaceutical industry. If you want to be healthy,
you're probably not getting enough vitamins and
especially minerals from your diet. That's why
it's good to take a good multivitamin, which
is always going to be four capsules a day and
never one a day and definitely never a gummy.
It's time for a microbiome update. I love presenting.
There's always new information coming out about
the importance of the gut microbiome, the balance
of healthy bacteria and other beneficial organisms
in your gut versus the non -beneficial or even
sometimes pathogenic. viruses, bacteria, worms,
parasites, et cetera, that can show up in your
gut. And this is, I have a really great case
to talk about as a 70 year old woman who had
recently visited Thailand. And when she got back,
she started having really bad diarrhea, gas,
bloating, cramping pain and her stomach and her
intestines. And I don't know why she waited three
months to come see me. Cause she was a previous
patient who I hadn't seen in a while. Cause she
was feeling good. Her back was feeling better.
So she hadn't seen her in a while. And she said,
well, I didn't want to go to any doctor because
they're just going to give me antibiotics. And
I didn't want to do that. I don't want to kill
off. She knew her microbiome was important. She
knew that antibiotics can. kill off all the beneficial
bacteria in your gut. Well, if you have a really
bad bacterial infection, it might be a good idea
to take antibiotics for a little while. And then
you can rebuild the beneficial microbiome in
your gut by taking probiotics and prebiotics
to feed the good bacteria in your gut. But it's
never always about bacteria either. She could
have had a virus. She could have had a parasite,
worms, a fungus, a whole host of other, several
other categories of bugs that can cause her symptoms.
And obviously it's a That's an important thing
to consider if somebody's returning from a foreign
country where you haven't lived, you haven't
developed the natural defenses that the people
who live there have developed against bugs that
are prevalent in their environment. And so I
told her, well, we need to do a stool test. The
only way we're going to know for sure. What kind
of bad bug you have is to do a comprehensive
stool test. And the one that I use from Doctors
Data, GI 360, the report from it is generally
12 to 16 pages. There are other companies, there
are a few other good companies that offer a comprehensive
good stool test like Genova Diagnostics. Vibrant
Wellness. There are a couple of others. But anyway,
I like the doctor's data reporting because it
shows it in a really nice form that's easy to
explain the results and educate you about what
needs to be done. So anyway, it includes a very
long list of virtually every known bacteria,
virus, worm, parasite that human beings ever
encounter. And that is often a problem in a case
like this. So what was really interesting about
this 70 -year -old woman who had just come back
from Thailand is that she didn't have any bad
bugs. She didn't have any pathogenic viruses,
bacteria, parasites. or worms. She just had a
severely depleted microbiome. She had severe
deficiencies of the normal healthy bacteria in
her gut. And that's why she had diarrhea for
three months, because her normal bacteria weren't
there in sufficient amounts to do the job of
the microbiome, to facilitate the absorption
of essential nutrients, to maintain the balance
of the structure of the feces that are produced,
to fight off bad bacteria and keep them in check,
and to control inflammation. There's a long list.
And they do this primarily, one of the main reasons
the microbiome becomes deficient is because lack
of fiber in the diet. So just the actions of
fiber in the gut. help increase the abundance
of important species like bifidobacterium, acromantia,
some specific forms of beneficial bacteria in
the gut. The fiber also helps maintain glucose
balance by slowing the absorption of sugar from
food and stimulating GLP -1 production, which
is huge in the media, ozempic. Terzepatide, all
these medications for weight loss are GLP -1
agonists. And GLP -1, the production of that
is stimulated by having adequate amounts of fiber
in the gut. And then also... Prebiotic seeding.
Fiber is one of the main categories of prebiotics,
food for the good bacteria to help them produce
short -chain fatty acids and other essential
nutrients that keep your microbiome in balance
and keep it doing its job. Only about 5 % of
the population consumes... enough fiber per day.
And it's really interesting because I'm a strong,
I'm a huge advocate of a low carbohydrate diet,
of a ketogenic diet, of eating, you know, adequate
amounts of protein and good fats and minimizing
your consumption of grains, starch and sugar.
But everything is in balance, should be in balance.
And people that are on diets like that who eat
no vegetables, who eat no carbs at all. So I'm
not, you know, I like to talk about grains, starch
and sugar instead of carbs because hardly anyone
needs bread or pasta or rice or potatoes or corn
in their diet but you do need vegetables and
there are carbohydrates in broccoli and cauliflower
and spinach and leafy greens and tomatoes so
you can get all the carbohydrates you need from
food but you do need to eat the vegetables you
need and among other reasons you do need some
carbohydrates and you need the the fiber most
importantly you need the fiber and excellent
sources of fiber for bulk are vegetables for
the inside fiber that help form proper stools,
control the balance between constipation and
diarrhea. But you also need soluble fiber, soluble
fiber from things like chickpeas and beans, kidney
beans, lima beans, lentils, chia seeds and onions,
even bananas and oat bran and rice bran. One
of my favorites, fresh garlic has something called
oligosaccharides, which are prebiotic fibers
that feed the healthy bacteria in your gut. I'm
Dr. Todd Binkley. If you've just tuned in, we're
talking about a case of a 70 -year -old woman
who came back from vacation in Asia with a severe
pain in the gut, diarrhea, bloating, etc., and
nothing was helping. And I did a stool test on
her and found out that she had and did not have
any horrible virus or bacteria or parasite. from
an exotic, faraway place. In fact, she just had
a very weak, insufficient, normal microbiome
in her gut. So she was getting sick from just
being unable for her gut to control against inflammation
and the bacteria that we consume in our food
every day. She needed her normal microbiome to
be bolstered. And so insoluble fiber is an important
way to do that. Also, polyphenols from plants,
antioxidants that you've heard of from things
like blueberries and pomegranates, cranberries.
So I needed to get a large dose of these things
into her system. So I gave her a powder, a powder
from Pure Encapsulations called Polyprebiotic.
It has high doses of oligosaccharides, these
things that are in garlic and onions, but a lot
of people can't eat large amounts of those. So
in powder form, you can get these in combination
with some large amounts of powdered cranberry
extract, blueberry extract, and pomegranate to
feed the healthy bacteria in her gut. I also
gave her a really good probiotic to just get
in some healthy bacteria to support. the ones
that live in the gut. It's important to understand
that probiotics never take up residence in your
gut. They don't replace the good bacteria that
live in your gut. They just support them, give
them a little bit of a break. But the most important
thing when you have a severe gut issue is to
feed and restore healthy amounts of the normal
good bacteria and other beneficial organisms
that live in your gut. So we did this for her.
It took several weeks, but finally her gut got
back completely to normal, diarrhea gone. cramps,
all the bloating and gas and all of her horrible
abdominal symptoms were completely eliminated.
If you like what you hear about when I do case
studies like this and the general information
I talk about every Friday on this show, I'm happy
to announce that I'm hosting a monthly series
in my office the first Wednesday of every month
live at Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
If you like hearing about published research
on natural evidence -based treatments that you
might not hear anywhere else, I've got a number
of PowerPoint presentations that I've presented
at local hospitals and Rotary groups and several
other organizations around. Ventura County for
many, many years now, and I love speaking live
in person. It gives me a chance to see you in
person and answer your questions, bring your
friends and family. I'd love to see you in my
office Wednesday, October 1st. It's going to
be a talk about breast cancer, how to reduce
your risk, recurrence, and conventional treatment
side effects. So I don't treat breast cancer,
but I have lots of patients that I treat for
other things who also have or have had breast
cancer, and I love presenting cases like this
to show how You can reduce your risk of getting
breast cancer in the first place. You can reduce
your likelihood of having a recurrence if you've
recently recovered and gotten through treatment,
but you want to make sure that it's not going
to come back and you want to identify earlier
signs of your body fighting off cancer before
it becomes visible on another scan or a mammogram
or an x -ray or CT. There are ways to do that
and measure your response to that with blood
tests. There are also natural ways to deal with
the side effects. Many women who have survived
breast cancer and had an excellent outcome still
have lingering side effects from the chemo and
the radiation, numbness and tingling, neuropathies
in their feet, hands and feet, legs. Fatigue
is a huge one. Several other symptoms. A lot
of these things can be identified and relieved
with essential nutrients that are often missing,
especially magnesium. A specific form of magnesium
called magnesium threonate is really important.
for any kind of neuropathy. As an example, I'll
be talking about several other things like this
that are relevant to breast cancer survivors.
Survivors of any type of cancer who have undergone
standard oncology, standard medical treatment,
often have lingering side effects that they don't
get sufficient help for. As always, remember,
the condition of your body is always more important
than any condition you've been diagnosed with.
Thank you for listening. I look forward to speaking
with you here next Friday at 2 p .m. Have a fantastic
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.