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 -forest chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine. The purpose of this show
is to bring you the latest research into ways
you can take better care of your health so you
can be proactive. You can avoid becoming dependent
on pharmaceuticals for the rest of your life.
Or maybe even just find out what's actually wrong
with you when no one else has been able to help
you figure that out. We're going to go review
some of the latest research into a whole host
of different things today that's in the most
recent journals that are coming out. And top
of the list has to be this. Untreated thyroid
dysfunction in moms tied to autism in kids. So
hypothyroidism in pregnant mothers is increasing
the risk. of autism in their children. Chronic
and combined chronic and gestational hypothyroidism
was linked to a more than two -fold double the
risk of autism in children compared with the
offspring of women who had normal thyroid function.
So this is a Dr. Minosh and co -authors wrote
in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism. Longer periods of combined chronic
and gestational hypothyroidism exposure during
pregnancy increased the risk of autism in their
children. So what is gestational? What is chronic
and gestational hypothyroidism? So chronic hypothyroidism
is the most common form. Chronic just means something
that's been around for a long time. Acute means
something recent. Chronic means something that's
been there for a while, weeks, months, even years.
So the most common form of hypothyroidism is
always chronic because most people don't even
know they have it until they've had it for a
long time and it gets bad enough to warrant or
trigger someone to order the proper test to actually
diagnose it. And it's one of the most common
things that women with fatigue, difficulty losing
weight, brain fog, high cholesterol, a whole
host of other things. just very commonly have
and never know they have it. It just never gets
properly diagnosed until it's really severe.
And then when they do finally get it diagnosed,
the standard solution is here. Just take levothyroxine,
Synthroid, pharmaceutical. T4, thyroxine for
the rest of your life and will increase the dose
as you get older, by the way. Well, that's not
the best way to do it. Sometimes it's necessary,
but there's so many better ways to do that, especially
if you start early. And obviously, really important
reasons to do that, preventing those symptoms,
cold hands and feet, dry skin, hair loss, difficulty
losing weight. puffiness, high cholesterol, normal
cholesterol maintenance requires healthy functioning
thyroid hormone, whole host of symptoms, brain
fog, fatigue, but now even worse, well, particularly,
the new information is if a woman has hypothyroidism
during her pregnancy, it can double the risk
of their child getting autism if they have both
the typical chronic hypothyroidism and the very
common temporary hypothyroidism that occurs.
during pregnancy. So gestational means, refers
to pregnancy. So gestational hypothyroidism is
a common deficiency of normal thyroid production
that happens in pregnancy and then often goes
away. But if you combine the common hypothyroidism
before you get pregnant, usually, with the additional
reduction in hypothyroid function during pregnancy,
then that can double the risk. of autism spectrum
disorders in that woman's children. And the longer
you have it, the worse it gets. So any one trimester
of exposure, if it's only one trimester, the
increased risk is 1 .35 increased risk. Two trimesters
of exposure, it's doubled. Three trimesters exposure,
it's almost tripled. 2 .87 times the risk of
a child of getting any kind of autism spectrum
disorder if their mother has hypothyroidism during
pregnancy. So the dose -response pattern was
the novel finding and came as a surprise, according
to Dr. Minosh, one of the authors of this study,
because it basically proves that it is the actual
thyroid hormone imbalance during pregnancy and
not the chronic condition per se that is associated
with the autism spectrum disorder in the offspring
of that mother. This adds to mounting data that
suggests that maternal thyroid dysfunction in
pregnancy may affect fetal neurodevelopment.
Thyroid hormones are essential for fetal neurogenesis,
the development of nerves, and maturation, so
both the building and maturing of nerves in a
fetus. And they rely largely on maternal -derived
hormones. hormone by a transfer through the placenta,
particularly in the first trimester. So consequently,
disruptions in maternal thyroid levels during
pregnancy have had various adverse developmental
outcomes, including lower IQ scores, delays in
expressing language, and nonverbal cognition.
This is a study that analyzed live births at
Socorro University Medical Center in Israel from
January 2011 to December 2017. And the median
age, average age at which the autism spectrum
disorder showed up in the child was 4 .6 years,
so four and a half years old. This was 51 ,000,
over 51 ,000 women included in the study. And
of them, 44 ,000 ate. 8 .6 % were diagnosed with
abnormal thyroid function. So all of these women,
they tested their thyroid levels each trimester.
And 1 ,100 of them had chronic hypothyroidism.
1 ,600 had the gestational hypothyroidism, the
hypothyroidism during pregnancy that usually
goes away after the pregnancy. And 1 ,000 of
them had both, the common chronic hypothyroidism
and the gestational hypothyroidism of pregnancy.
So these are the ones that they were basing these
findings on, 1 ,000 roughly. A little less than
a fourth of the women that had abnormal thyroid
function of these 51 ,000 women they studied.
A little over a thousand of them had both chronic
and the hypothyroidism related to pregnancy.
So the takeaway is having hypothyroidism during
pregnancy can double the risk of your child getting
autism. And that's really important to know about.
because it's often preventable and reversible.
And interestingly, this risk in the offspring,
the risk of autism in the children of women with
thyroid function, if they just had the gestational
thyroid dysfunction alone, just the relatively
common hypothyroidism during pregnancy, those
women that just had that but not the chronic,
even more common hypothyroidism that millions
and millions of women get, that didn't change
the risk at all. So just having temporary hypothyroidism
during pregnancy did not increase the risk of
giving birth to a child with autism. So obviously,
if you know someone who is pregnant or is planning
to get pregnant soon, please tell them to make
sure they get their thyroid test. But also tell
them to email me because the standard way most
doctors test the thyroid is with one single test
called TSH. That stands for thyroid stimulating
hormone. It's not even a thyroid test. It's a
pituitary test. Your pituitary gland, the master
gland that controls all of the other endocrine
glands, sends thyroid stimulating hormone to
tell. your thyroid to make more. if it's not
making enough. So if your thyroid is low, your
TSH will go up because your pituitary is saying,
hey, you're not making enough thyroid, make some
more. And that's a really useful test. It's very
sensitive. It's a very accurate test. It's very
inexpensive. And so most doctors will test that
if someone is pregnant. But only that, they often
don't test the actual thyroid T4 levels and they
almost never test free T3, the active form of
thyroid. So really, if you want to be proactive,
if you really want to reduce your risk of having
a child with autism because of this connection,
then I strongly recommend you get a much more
comprehensive assessment of thyroid function,
including the active form free T3 and perhaps
even thyroid antibodies, which measures the most
common autoimmune condition, Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
It's where your body's overproducing immunoglobulins,
antibodies that attack your thyroid. creating
inflammation and eventually scar tissue that
displaces the healthy tissue, reducing your thyroid's
ability to produce adequate thyroid hormone.
So I've had thousands of women with underactive
hypothyroidism. We had a discussion about this
last week in my office on hypothyroidism. I shared
some case histories of some of the many people
I've treated with this. And I've had so many
women that were just amazed to find out that
this was part of their problem. This was causing
their brain fog, their fatigue, their inability
to lose weight, their cold hands and feet, etc.
And nobody even told them they had that. Or as
common, perhaps, I would say probably maybe half
of the people that come to me for this already
know they have hypothyroidism. They're being
treated, but they still have thyroid symptoms
because they're not getting adequate amounts.
And here's the most common thing. Most women
are only treated with T4, Synthroid, Levothyroxine.
And that does nothing in your body. It's the
carrier form that circulates throughout your
body. It's the most common form. Easy to measure.
But it has to be converted into T3. And then
that T3 has to be unbound from its carrier protein,
the thing that shuttles it around your bloodstream,
into free T3. So free T3 is the active form.
If you haven't been tested for free T3, then
you have no idea how well. your thyroid gland
and the system that makes thyroid hormone work
is working well or not. So I presented several
case studies on this in my office last Wednesday
for my monthly talk I do on safe, effective natural
solutions to almost any health challenge live
at Binkley Healing Center, my office in downtown
Ventura. Well, for years, people have been asking
me to do more of these, and I finally decided
to go for it. I'm making it a regular thing every
month in the office on the first Wednesday in
my office, downtown Ventura, 961 East Main Street
at 6 p .m. On a Wednesday evening, the next one
is going to be January 7th, first of the year.
Great way to start off the year by learning how
to reduce and reverse diabetes. Who do you know
that's a little bit overweight? either has diabetes
they already have or they have a family history
of it, they want to make sure that they don't
end up getting diabetes. If they've already been
diagnosed, if it hasn't been too long, if they're
not already on a high dose of insulin, even sometimes
if people are already on insulin, but especially
if they're only taking metformin, they've just
been recently diagnosed, that's the most common
drug they give you. That's usually... Completely
reversible, mainly with diet and exercise, sometimes
with a few supplements. The most important thing
is diet and exercise with that. But, well, okay,
if it's that simple, why doesn't everybody do
it? Well, because a lot of people don't really
get all the testing they need to determine all
of the facets. There's a lot of other things
that go along with that, fatty liver disease,
other things that contribute in addition to the
diabetes that cause fatigue and brain fog and
a whole host of other symptoms that when you
find out about all of that, these things. That's
why I never just test your glucose and your A1C,
for example, to see if you're diabetic. I test
a whole host of things on everyone because everything
affects everything else. One of the most common
things, risk factors, if you have diabetes is
most diabetics die of a heart attack or a stroke.
A lot of people know that you tend to become
overweight. You can damage your eyes. You can
damage the blood vessels and nerves to your feet,
even end up horrifically with amputations of
the feet and the lower leg. But it also dramatically
increases your risk of heart attack and stroke
because of the inflammation it creates. So we're
going to be talking all about that and how you
can prevent that or reverse it if you've already
started getting it. I'll start out with a 30
-minute keynote presentation and we'll have some
light refreshments and we'll have plenty of time
for questions and answers. I always love talking
about... diabetes, how you can prevent and reverse
it around this time of year, because a lot of
people have maybe overindulged in cakes and pies
and candy and cookies and all that kind of stuff
during the holidays. You know who you are. And
so this is the perfect time to, you know, get
tested. The only way you really know if you've
overdone or not, maybe you feel fine. Maybe you're
not overweight. Maybe you're still getting away
with overindulging at that. Or if you're like
a lot of people, you already know you're overdoing
it and you don't want to know if you have diabetes
or not. You don't want to know how bad it is.
because then something bad is going to happen.
You're going to have to do something you don't
want to do. Well, you want to know. You should
want to know, especially if you can do the type
of testing that I'm talking about where you can
identify ways. We'll figure out something that
you can do that will be less painful, that definitely
won't require you to take a bunch of drugs, for
example. They have a whole host of side effects
and other issues sometimes. But most importantly,
are more effective. The most effective way to
prevent and reverse diabetes is to identify all
the things that are, you know, assess your general
health, not just your blood sugar, but your general
health. What's going on with your liver and your
kidneys and your digestive system and your immune
system. And give your body all the nutrients
it needs all at once to heal everything. You
start out with your body. Your bloodstream is
a river of life. Imagine this river of life.
That's your bloodstream. And there are crews,
construction crews, waiting on both banks of
the river, sitting there, twiddling their thumbs,
waiting for the materials to show up that they
need to do that job. So if you have, if your
nutrient stream, if your river of life is flooded
with all the nutrients every part of your body
needs to heal and repair, then the guys that
are there waiting to do that job do their job,
and healing occurs. But if your river is just
depleted, if there's very little of the nutrients
you need all the time there, then those healing
and repair jobs just get put on hold indefinitely.
And that's largely what causes chronic disease.
Your body gets chronic diseases, diseases that
slowly percolate over time. and eventually manifest
into severe life -threatening conditions that
require medication and other surgery and other
horrible medical interventions because you waited
too long. But if you start early enough, you
can identify all the places where your body just
needs a little bit of help. And then healing
will occur. Normal, natural healing and repair
that you took for granted when you were in high
school, when you're young, in your 20s, all of
that stuff. You could eat whatever you wanted
back then and your body just took care of it.
Well, you can get back some of that function
if you identify the specific places where it's
missing. And then just do a few things differently.
Take a few supplements maybe. Tweak your diet
a little bit. Maybe do a little bit more exercise.
Get something to track that. It's a combination
of things. It's never one thing. A lot of times
people come in and they say, oh, I just want
to figure out. Or they think. People, we want
to think. Something's bothering us. We want to
think. I just need to identify that one thing.
I don't want to hear about how good the health
of my whole body is. I just want you to get rid
of this. Doc, just fix this one thing. Well,
I don't do that. Don't come to me if you want
that. Because that doesn't work. Everything affects
everything else. If you want a natural solution,
if you want a long -term lasting solution to
heal yourself and not end up on drugs and surgery,
needing surgery or end up on drugs for the rest
of your life, then you need to look at everything
and address everything. all at once, and then
you slowly take things away one at a time. Take
things away one at a time when you no longer
need them and you get back to just a core regimen
of good food, reasonable amount of moving your
body to get your heart rate up, get your blood
pumping, circulating nutrients to your brain,
and maybe a few basic supplements. There are
three basic supplements that I recommend to everyone.
We'll come back to that. But first, I want to
say for those who just tuned in, you're listening
to Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost
Any Health Challenge. I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, and
I'd love to hear your questions so that we can
come up with more material for the show. I'd
love to hear what you'd like to hear more about.
And last week, I had a couple of questions about
how can you reduce high blood pressure? What
are some good ways, some more good ways to reduce
blood pressure without drugs? Well, I talk about
this a lot on the show. And speaking of that,
you can get past episodes if you like what you're
hearing. You can listen to almost 100 now, past
episodes. This is episode 98, I believe. A lot
of past episodes you can listen to on demand
anytime you like, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify,
or YouTube, anywhere you find your podcasts.
Just punch in Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
in my name, and you'll see a bunch of episodes
that you can listen to about a whole host of
different health topics. So blood pressure comes
up a lot. I talk about it a lot. But here's a
new study that just came out in the medical.
So this was actually an article in the mainstream
press that cited two medical journal articles.
The first one was published by Current Pharmaceutical
Design. Its conclusion was pomegranate juice
possesses antioxidant... antihypertensive, meaning
lowers blood pressure, and anti -atherosclerotic
properties, meaning it can actually reverse.
It reduces your risk of and can reverse plaque
formation in your arteries. The other article
more recently was published in Phytotherapy.
Phytotherapy means using plant -based nutrients
therapeutically. Phytotherapy research in 2024
reviewed 22 eligible randomized controlled trials,
and the results demonstrated that... Pomegranate
consumption significantly lowered both systolic
and diastolic, the top number and the bottom
number, blood pressure in adults. So what makes
pomegranate? And this is not news. Well, it's
news that they're continuing to confirm in robust
studies. numbers of them and thousands and thousands
of patients how well it works because a lot of
people still don't maybe don't know about it
or how many of you are taking or drinking eating
pomegranates or taking or drinking pomegranate
juice As with, if you've listened to any of my
past episodes, I don't recommend drinking many
fruit juices. If you go buy pomegranate juice
at a supermarket, it's usually going to have
some kind of sweeteners in it because it's a
little tart by itself. But if you have a good
farmer's market, which we do here locally in
Southern California, go to farmer's market and
get the fresh. unadulterated, just 100 % pomegranate
juice, fresh squeezed from your local market.
That is the best. There's no better place to
get it because that's fresh squeezed juice and
it spoils in about a week. You got to drink it.
I used to go get it every week at my local farmer's
market. I'm reminding myself that I should start
doing that again. I prefer just to get the pomegranates,
but it's hard to get them. They're not in season
all year round, and sometimes it's hard to find
them. It's a little work. We'll come back to
that. But the juice is fine as long as it's 100
% pomegranate juice and not mixed with a bunch
of sweeteners or even apple juice, grape juice.
They usually mix it with some really sweet fruit
juice that is just too much sugar, too much sugar
for most people. So the whole point. is to reduce
inflammation in your cardiovascular system, which
is caused by sugar consumption. So you want to
just get the straight pomegranate juice or eat
pomegranate fruit. I'm going to come back to
how you can, it's kind of a pain to get the little
juicy seeds out of the pomegranates. I'm going
to come back to that. But let's continue with
why it's important. Why is it so important? What
makes pomegranates so powerful for lowering blood
pressure? Well, Dr. Carol Watson, MD, PhD and
attending cardiologist and professor of medicine
at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
explains that pomegranates are rich in antioxidants,
which, among other things, minimize oxidation
of cholesterol because cholesterol, when oxidized,
damages cells and triggers inflammation. And
I'll just add that inflammation also oxidizes
cholesterol. It's a circle. So this increases
the inflammation. And if you listen to previous
episodes of my show, you'll know that cholesterol
itself doesn't really cause heart disease. It's
inflammation that causes heart disease. But they
go hand in hand. It goes both directions. One
can increase the other. So the antioxidants in
pomegranates help protect against this, especially...
Anthocyanins, these are phytonutrients, nutrients
from plants that create the beautiful color,
the rich red colors in pomegranates and other
fruits. So these are natural chemicals that give
pomegranates their bright color and tangy taste.
And in addition to reducing oxidation of cholesterol
and reducing inflammation, they also ramp up
your body's production of nitric oxide, a really
important molecule that helps relax your blood
vessels. widen and relax, and this improves flow
that reduces the constant pressure and wear on
artery walls, keeping them more elastic and less
likely to get stiff and damaged over time. This
article also quotes cardiologist Asmin Chima
reminding everyone that leafy greens are an especially
beneficial food to also eat regularly if you
want to lower your blood pressure. Leafy greens
like leafy green vegetables like spinach and
kale are artery superheroes because they are
high in dietary nitrates to convert into that
nitric oxide to widen the arteries and relax
them that pomegranates also does. But they're
also full of vitamin K and vitamin K is really
important for. among so many other things, guiding
calcium into your bones where it belongs and
away from the walls of your arteries, contributing
to plaque formation. So have you ever heard that
calcium supplements, have you ever heard this,
that calcium supplements can increase your risk
of plaque in your arteries? Well, that was a
kind of a flawed and grossly misleading study
because like so many studies on calcium in the
medical press, they only use, they only always
use calcium carbonate, the cheapest form of...
ground up rocks and seashells calcium. And that
was the real reason that that increased the risk
of plaque. But it is also true, just basic physiology.
If you've got, you want to keep calcium in circulation
so you can keep your bones healthy and strong.
And because your muscles use a lot of it all
day long, calcium has many, many functions in
the body. So you always want to have adequate
amounts in circulation. And in circulation means
it's going to be bouncing against the walls of
your arteries all day long as well. And if you
have a lot of incipient plaques, new little scar
tissue plaques forming from inflammation, and
stress and all the things that damage and start
the plaque formation process, then those plaques
are formed initially by stress and inflammation,
and then they grow. The constituents that make
them grow are cholesterol, calcium, and fibrin,
which is the scar tissue -like connective tissue
that forms the scaffolding of plaques and clots
that the cholesterol and calcium become embedded
in and grow. So it only makes sense to have adequate
vitamin K at all times as well, which most people
do not. Most people do not get enough vitamin
K in those two forms, K1 and K2. That could be
a whole other talk. You need to get both forms
to keep calcium available for your bones and
away from the walls of your arteries. to prevent
them from becoming hard and calcified. So green
leafy vegetables do this for you. So we're just
about out of time here. I promised I would mention
an easy way to get the juicy seeds from a pomegranate.
So there's great videos on this. Just Google
how to easily, quickly remove the seeds from
a pomegranate. But basically, as you cut a little
circle near the top, cut that off and then cut
several slices down the sides around the edge,
kind of like you might slice an apple along the
veins of where they all come together. And then
you can break those things apart and then take
each one of those pieces, put them over a bowl
and whack them with a wooden spoon. And it just
knocks all the stuff that you want out, all the
little red seeds out into a bowl. And if there's
some pulp still in there in the bowl with the
seeds, you can fill that with water and the pulp
floats to the top. You can scoop it off and then
you've got the stuff that you want, the super
nutritious, antioxidant -rich juice. We are out
of time as always. Thank you for tuning in. 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.