WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:21.360 [Music] 00:00:21.360 --> 00:00:23.680 Hello everyone, I'm Danny Roddy of DannyRoddy.com 00:00:23.680 --> 00:00:27.200 and today I'm talking with painter, philosopher, biologist, Raymond Peat. 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:31.520 In this hour-long episode, we'll talk about the benefits and risks of various commercial 00:00:31.520 --> 00:00:35.760 pharmaceuticals and supplements. In addition to thanking Ray for talking with me today, 00:00:35.760 --> 00:00:40.240 I'd like to thank my patrons for making this show and all of the content I produce possible. 00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:44.720 If you would like to become a patron, please go to patreon.com/dannyroutty. 00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:49.120 As always, please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. And in the spirit of 00:00:49.120 --> 00:00:53.600 William Blake, the true method of knowledge is experiment. Without further ado, here's the show. 00:00:53.600 --> 00:01:09.360 [Music] 00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:10.000 Hello. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:10.320 Ray. 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:12.160 Yeah, hi. 00:01:12.160 --> 00:01:13.040 Hey, how are you? 00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:14.400 Good. 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:15.600 Is this an okay time? 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:16.880 Yep. 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:21.520 Okay, perfect. Thank you so much for talking with me. I sincerely appreciate it as always. 00:01:21.520 --> 00:01:28.640 Also, I wanted to say the conversation with Gavin was extremely enlightening. I'm not especially 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:35.840 interested in politics, but I am interested in your painting of physiology. And just knowing 00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:40.240 some of the things that you talk about, I was kind of interested in anarcho-capitalism. 00:01:40.240 --> 00:01:47.760 And after reading that Gavin article, I was thinking that it kind of shook me out of 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:54.080 that mindset and was maybe thinking that capitalism wasn't the best thing for health 00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:57.760 and society. Was that kind of similar to what you were saying in that article? 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:09.360 Yeah. The idea of accumulating capital so you can build machines, people wouldn't have built 00:02:10.480 --> 00:02:20.880 steam locomotives and ships and such if they hadn't accumulated capital. And so lots of good 00:02:20.880 --> 00:02:30.960 things come from accumulating capital and putting it in one place. But the trouble is, Marx pointed 00:02:30.960 --> 00:02:39.840 out that it tends to accumulate all in a few hands, and then the system stops running because 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:48.560 no one can buy what is produced so efficiently in factories. And so you have business cycles. 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:57.360 And then Lenin said, well, they discovered that you can cure the business cycle by having 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:03.040 imperialism and invading countries to make them buy your product and keep the system running. 00:03:03.040 --> 00:03:13.360 So as long as you have wars, capitalism has no problem. But that's the problem. It has its 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:21.600 internal contradictions and tends to cycle down to a crash every few years if you don't have some 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:27.200 way to break out of that. It almost perfectly put things into perspective of 00:03:27.200 --> 00:03:33.760 something Bucky Fuller said. And he was talking about how he was trying to shake the notion of 00:03:33.760 --> 00:03:40.160 everybody having to earn a living. And I was totally confused at what he was talking about. 00:03:40.160 --> 00:03:44.560 But he was saying that technology was getting better and better, and that would free up more 00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:53.120 people to this barbaric idea of having to earn your place on the planet. Is that what you're 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:55.280 getting at? Yeah, that was Fuller. 00:03:56.560 --> 00:03:58.960 I think critical path, he said it somewhere. 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:09.440 Yeah, I admired him. I listened to one of his lectures when he came to Oregon. 00:04:09.440 --> 00:04:15.840 Talked, I think, six hours steady until they closed the shop. 00:04:15.840 --> 00:04:24.320 I was reading the CIA reports on him. And somewhere they mentioned that he had an 00:04:24.320 --> 00:04:28.480 incredible capacity just to talk for many hours. 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:39.040 Yeah, he and Fidel were experts at putting the whole world story in one lecture. 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:47.040 Cool. Okay. That's awesome. I wasn't specifically wanting to talk to you about politics, but I 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:52.720 thought that was so good. And it really shifted my thinking. Oh, you know what? One last thing, 00:04:54.160 --> 00:05:01.120 I was reading two other papers by a guy named Paul K. Piff, and he was talking about the 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:07.520 social and stress consequences of capitalism, too. He has papers called "Having Less, Giving 00:05:07.520 --> 00:05:12.720 More" and "The Influence of Social Class on Pro-Social Behavior" and "High Social Class 00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:19.920 Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior." So that seemed to just really tie in to the whole 00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:27.520 thing you were talking about. Yeah, the culture, basically, it has functioned as a system of 00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:38.320 illusions to help keep a dysfunctional system working to make the people think that they're 00:05:38.320 --> 00:05:48.720 better off than they are. And so I think working on the culture is really where political work 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:58.160 should be done. Propaganda analysis everywhere, including science and philosophy. 00:05:58.160 --> 00:06:04.640 It's almost like the food pyramid and then the political system synergize to destabilize a 00:06:04.640 --> 00:06:11.120 person, like the undigested starches and then the capitalism. It's like a perfect storm for 00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:13.760 a weird culture. Yeah. 00:06:15.760 --> 00:06:22.480 Okay, let's get on to supplements. This has been just a constant evolving area for me. I don't 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:29.440 remember when I first heard you say that you preferred using the oily supplements on your 00:06:29.440 --> 00:06:36.400 skin. It must have been years ago, like 2011 or something. And I heard what you said and I 00:06:36.400 --> 00:06:40.720 kind of rejected it because it didn't really fit in with my life. And I put them on my legs and 00:06:40.720 --> 00:06:46.000 they were too oily and got on my pants and it just didn't really work out for me. So years later, 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:53.440 just like probably like six months ago, I started putting them on my legs and stopped eating them 00:06:53.440 --> 00:07:01.120 and just like various small kind of things resolve themselves. And then I forget who sent me 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:06.800 quote of yours saying that you only thought a few supplements were safe. Before we get to a lot of 00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:10.640 the specifics, you could just kind of give us a background because you've been talking about 00:07:10.640 --> 00:07:16.080 supplements like since the seventies and just perusing through nutrition for women again, 00:07:16.080 --> 00:07:22.880 you seem to be saying like a lot of similar things that you should take a careful approach 00:07:22.880 --> 00:07:29.520 to them. So, and I know you mentioned before that you were known for getting people off of 00:07:29.520 --> 00:07:36.000 their supplements. And I always thought that was a funny idea. Yeah. In the late sixties, 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:42.560 when I came to Eugene, I knew someone who started the local free clinic. And 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:53.520 in Eugene in the summer, the fields all around under the north of town were growing grass for 00:07:53.520 --> 00:07:58.560 the seed, lawn seed industry. And at the end of the summer, they would burn their fields 00:07:58.560 --> 00:08:05.200 and all of the pesticides and things that had been put on the crops would be vaporized and blow into 00:08:05.200 --> 00:08:12.960 Eugene and people with asthma would be more likely to die during the smoky seasons. And 00:08:12.960 --> 00:08:20.240 after it caused some huge traffic accidents, they finally, after many, many years, 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:31.360 limited it at least. But during that time, allergies were a major problem. And so, 00:08:32.160 --> 00:08:41.760 my friend with the free clinic was constantly sending allergy people to me. And I found that 00:08:41.760 --> 00:08:51.120 they were all taking ascorbic acid and vitamin A and the usual things that people take for allergies. 00:08:51.120 --> 00:09:00.320 And I had just a little before that been trying out Linus Pauling's idea of big doses of vitamin C. 00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:10.480 And my first bad experience with vitamin C was in the mid 1950s when it suddenly got 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:19.760 very cheap. I had had previous good experiences with tiny 50 milligram tablets that cured my 00:09:19.760 --> 00:09:25.840 poison oak right away. So, when it became cheap, I tried a 500 milligram tablet, 00:09:25.840 --> 00:09:32.640 woke up the next morning with a sore throat and cold symptoms. And over the years, I saw that 00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:42.160 repeatedly happened that a good big dose of vitamin C always gave me some kind of a cold 00:09:42.160 --> 00:09:52.400 symptom reaction. So, around 1968, when I started seeing these allergy people in great numbers, 00:09:53.040 --> 00:10:00.160 they were all taking vitamin C and some other supplements. And so, I suggested that they try 00:10:00.160 --> 00:10:10.800 stopping it. And just almost without exception, they would come back and say that their allergies 00:10:10.800 --> 00:10:16.240 were gone for the first time in years, just within a week of stopping all their supplements. 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:22.080 - And you suspect it was majorly due to some kind of endotoxin or like irritation from the intestine? 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:32.480 - Yeah. One of the things the endotoxin does is to impair oxidation of the lining of the intestine 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:48.400 and create a reduced state of too many electrons. And the sulfites and ascorbic acid are a very 00:10:49.280 --> 00:11:00.320 powerful reductants. And I think the combination of endotoxin and a massive chemical reductant 00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:09.680 can interact and set up a big inflammation in the intestine and then reflexes from that cause the 00:11:09.680 --> 00:11:15.440 nose to run and eyes to water and such. - Did that just shift your thinking to be 00:11:15.440 --> 00:11:18.640 much more careful about the supplements after you experienced that? 00:11:18.640 --> 00:11:28.480 - Yeah. I had previously found that after I had dental x-rays, it happened three different times 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:38.720 from the age of 10 to the age of 30. For about, in the first two times, I had leukoplakia on the 00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:45.680 inside of my cheek for six months following the x-rays. And the third time it happened, 00:11:46.800 --> 00:11:55.360 I've been thinking about what happens to stressed cells and membranes. And it occurred to me that 00:11:55.360 --> 00:12:05.520 the vitamin A would be destroyed by x-rays just as much as it is by sunburn. And so I took a big 00:12:05.520 --> 00:12:12.560 dose of vitamin A and it immediately, just overnight, cleared up the leukoplakia. And 00:12:13.840 --> 00:12:20.160 knowing the similarity between cervical, so-called precancerous conditions, 00:12:20.160 --> 00:12:29.120 leukoplakia can occur in the cervix as well as in the lining of the cheek. I told women about it 00:12:29.120 --> 00:12:38.240 and they tried big doses of vitamin A and vitamin E and similarly got the precancerous condition to 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:49.440 disappear. But as I continued taking the vitamin A just as a regular supplement, I started getting 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:58.080 headaches from it. And I'm not sure if the product had changed or if I just happened to be at that 00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:04.720 stage where I was more sensitive to it, but I found that just a touch of it on my lips would 00:13:04.720 --> 00:13:16.560 give me a migraine the next morning. So I tried out a series of individual supplements and found 00:13:16.560 --> 00:13:28.400 that riboflavin, a very important vitamin B2, was almost as powerful as ascorbic acid for giving me 00:13:30.400 --> 00:13:38.960 almost immediate serious headache or asthma symptoms. One other that was very intense was 00:13:38.960 --> 00:13:48.320 rutin, whatever they were selling as a rutin concentrate, was extremely allergenic. And 00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:55.680 talking to people with allergies, pretty much they confirmed that ascorbic acid was 00:13:56.560 --> 00:14:05.520 the number one problem for most people. But vitamin B2 and rutin and sometimes vitamin A 00:14:05.520 --> 00:14:11.840 caused problems. With your biochemistry background, do you suspect why these substances, 00:14:11.840 --> 00:14:16.960 are they made in just a cheap way and that poses some risks to the intestines? Or 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:22.560 why do you suspect supplements are these kinds of irritants a lot of the time? 00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:34.240 When vitamin C was first on the market up until 1953 or '54, it was sold in very small 50-milligram 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:42.240 tablets. And that was during the time when all of the classical amazing results were published. 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:51.200 I think that was because it was free of contaminants. But the new cheap way of making 00:14:51.200 --> 00:15:00.480 it from glucose at first involved sulfuric acid, oxidation of glucose, and the sulfuric acid was 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:05.440 almost always contaminated with some lead because of the way it was manufactured. 00:15:05.440 --> 00:15:15.280 Over the several decades since 1955, there have been a series of chemical innovations for making 00:15:15.280 --> 00:15:24.160 it even more cheaply. But apparently, each of them introduces some kind of chemical adulterant 00:15:24.160 --> 00:15:33.600 in trace amounts. In the Journal of Free Radical Biology, I think it's called, in the late '90s, 00:15:33.600 --> 00:15:45.840 someone published a study of the reagent grade best purity ascorbic acid that they got for lab 00:15:45.840 --> 00:15:57.920 use. They dissolved a gram of it in a liter of highly distilled water and then measured it in 00:15:58.640 --> 00:16:13.760 an electron spin analyzer, ESR or EPR, electron paramagnetic resonance, shows free radicals. 00:16:13.760 --> 00:16:23.200 And the person who did this experiment said that just spontaneously on dissolving purified 00:16:24.160 --> 00:16:33.920 vitamin C in purified water, the content of free radicals was as high as would have been produced 00:16:33.920 --> 00:16:43.840 by, I think he said, something like 6,000 rads of x-rays, basically a killing dose. 00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:51.360 He said, "Isn't it amazing that this amount of free radicals doesn't kill her intestines?" 00:16:53.600 --> 00:17:01.680 He said it was apparently from traces. He looked at the very tiny traces of heavy metals and said, 00:17:01.680 --> 00:17:06.720 "Any one of those." But iron was adequate, but there were several other 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:11.520 trace metals that wouldn't be enough to create free radicals. 00:17:11.520 --> 00:17:16.560 Unbelievable. And that's just like one problem with the supplements. I imagine like the casings 00:17:16.560 --> 00:17:22.480 they're in and then the fillers, like those are all added variables to the allergenicity 00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:30.800 of the products. Yeah. Every additive has its own manufacturing history and every reagent used 00:17:30.800 --> 00:17:39.440 in making that thing has its own history. And you have to look, you know, it's like they used to 00:17:39.440 --> 00:17:50.640 say about HIV infections, that one encounter can amount to hundreds of historical 00:17:51.600 --> 00:17:56.160 encounters and opportunities for infection. But when you look at every 00:17:56.160 --> 00:18:05.200 excipient in a product, each one of those has many components, each of which has its own 00:18:05.200 --> 00:18:09.680 history and opportunity for contamination. You've obviously mentioned a couple core 00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:15.040 things that you talk about a lot as being safe therapeutic agents, like things like thyroid and 00:18:15.040 --> 00:18:21.840 progesterone. What is your general process for evaluating something, if it's safe or unsafe? 00:18:21.840 --> 00:18:28.160 Is the history of the substance extremely important? Or like unpack your process, I guess, 00:18:28.160 --> 00:18:39.200 for us. My thinking, I think, got started along a certain path in 1960 when they were analyzing the 00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:50.320 amount of strontium-90 from atomic bomb fallout and collecting baby's teeth from all around 00:18:50.320 --> 00:19:01.040 the world to measure their exposure to radioactive isotopes. But strontium-90 happens to be 00:19:01.040 --> 00:19:10.960 concentrated in the bone, and the bone marrow is turning over rapidly. And so the exposure to 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:22.480 fallout would show up as mutated blood cells. And radiation exposure to the bone marrow is a known 00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:29.840 promoter of leukemia. And so they were looking at the connection between childhood disease and 00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:41.200 strontium-90. And because strontium-90 is similar to calcium, it associates in milk. And so the 00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:48.960 government was warning parents not to feed their children so much milk because of the 00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:55.920 radioactive strontium that the bomb tests were putting into it. But I looked at the other, 00:19:56.640 --> 00:20:04.160 how did the strontium-90 get into the milk? And it falls onto the ground in the rain. 00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:12.240 The plants that need the water and soil to grow absorb both calcium and strontium-90. 00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:23.120 And so the concentration in the soil is relatively very high after a bomb test in the ratio of 00:20:23.120 --> 00:20:33.120 strontium to calcium. And when the cow eats the grass, the cow purifies and selects for the 00:20:33.120 --> 00:20:42.640 calcium over the strontium. If you look at the ratio in grass and cow meat and milk, the milk 00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:52.640 has the least strontium-90 in proportion to other nutritional factors, especially calcium. 00:20:52.640 --> 00:21:00.720 So every organism is a purifying system, getting what's good and excluding as much as possible of 00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:09.280 what's bad, even to the matter of being able to select between the isotopes of potassium, for 00:21:09.280 --> 00:21:17.120 example. Radioactive potassium goes down every time it passes through an organism on the food 00:21:17.120 --> 00:21:24.800 chain. And so the safest thing is to get the purest food possible from an animal like a cow 00:21:24.800 --> 00:21:32.240 producing milk, which is multiply filtered from the environmental source. When they talk about 00:21:32.240 --> 00:21:42.000 the chemical purity, that's only a reality in the mind of the chemist, that it's maybe better than 00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:49.520 something from a crude or factory. But in relation to biological nutrients, 00:21:49.520 --> 00:22:02.160 it's just wildly out of the ballpark in terms of contamination. So any natural food 00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:11.360 is extremely purified. Any supplement made chemically is going to be dirty, just in 00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:16.960 principle. So sometimes somebody, I'll get an email of somebody saying, "I'm not eating liver, 00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:24.560 but I'm taking vitamin A and the B vitamins, etc." And this is just a totally non sequitur, 00:22:24.560 --> 00:22:31.840 the food versus just a litany of different pills? Yeah. And one of the problems is that you get 00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:41.520 lots of unnamed and still unidentified nutrients in any living tissue or recently living tissue. 00:22:41.520 --> 00:22:51.040 For example, in mushrooms, the content has hardly been just sketched out. There are thousands of 00:22:51.040 --> 00:23:00.800 potentially valuable nutrients or paranutritional substances, things that influence your quality of 00:23:00.800 --> 00:23:07.520 life that simply haven't been identified and tested. It's interesting you bring that up. That 00:23:07.520 --> 00:23:13.760 was actually one of the motivators for me to talk to you because I don't know what about being here 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:17.920 in Mexico made it more interesting, but the substances you were talking about in foods, 00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:23.840 like the apigenin, the norenginin, the various substances in mushrooms, those all became, 00:23:23.840 --> 00:23:29.920 I don't know why, but suddenly more interesting than the various supplements. And since they were 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:35.040 so easily attainable, I was like, "Why don't I just try to fortify my diet with these things 00:23:35.040 --> 00:23:44.160 rather than focusing on these pills or whatever?" Yeah. And some of the fruits that are most 00:23:44.160 --> 00:23:50.960 interesting happen to have some of the most amazing still unidentified substances in them, 00:23:51.520 --> 00:24:00.720 like the curimoya. Just like Mark Twain said, "It was the best tasting substance in the universe." 00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:06.080 So those have a lot of medicinal qualities as well? 00:24:06.080 --> 00:24:12.240 They haven't been studied, but if you eat them for a while, you can tell 00:24:12.240 --> 00:24:15.200 that there is something amazing about them. 00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:22.880 That's good to know. They're in my refrigerator. And then marmalade too, 00:24:22.880 --> 00:24:29.040 like something you could make that is full of norenginin and then norengin, and this is 00:24:29.040 --> 00:24:34.400 something you would normally throw away that could be, I'm doing air quotes, but like a supplement 00:24:34.400 --> 00:24:40.000 with something with great value. Yeah, like orange peeling, people usually 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:50.320 throw away, but if they're good oranges and well prepared, the marmalade is like a super drug. 00:24:50.320 --> 00:24:56.640 People might worry about the fact that marmalade is more sugar than orange peeling, but 00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:01.840 the sugar itself is part of the nutritional wonder drug. 00:25:01.840 --> 00:25:07.600 When the health gets really, like in a really serious condition and supplements or drugs 00:25:07.600 --> 00:25:13.760 would be of value, are there certain ones you typically think of that have a proven safety 00:25:13.760 --> 00:25:20.720 record or are more physiological than other drugs? Like I guess a few that you frequently mention? 00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:30.160 A general rule about drugs is that the oldest ones are best. They've been tested for more years. 00:25:33.040 --> 00:25:38.880 Since the pharmaceutical industry sort of took over the world and the government, 00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:47.120 they have had 20-year cycles in which they talk about a new generation of the drug. 00:25:47.120 --> 00:25:56.320 And the first generation is usually the safest and most effective. The second, third, and fourth 00:25:56.320 --> 00:26:06.480 generations are more weirdly dangerous, but the toxic side effects just haven't been published yet. 00:26:06.480 --> 00:26:11.600 Because you'll typically read some negative effect of like literally any substance, 00:26:11.600 --> 00:26:16.160 is there any way of understanding side effect data to understand like the real risks? 00:26:16.160 --> 00:26:24.800 Yeah, 50 years, I assume that most of the middle term side effects would have been noticed. 00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:32.400 If it's going to bring on cancer, you have to use it for at least 20, preferably 40 years 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:40.160 to know whether it's safe because cancer is a developmental process that typically takes at 00:26:40.160 --> 00:26:50.000 least 20 years. And then regarding like if it causes your children or grandchildren to be born 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:58.880 without heads, that's worth knowing. And they aren't going to know that for quite a few years 00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:04.640 for all of the drugs that have been patented in the last 20 years. 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:08.320 Just because it came to me, but the finasteride is probably a pretty good 00:27:08.320 --> 00:27:12.000 example of that. It just seems like it's ruining lives left and right. 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:13.760 What drug is that? 00:27:13.760 --> 00:27:15.120 Finasteride, Propecia. 00:27:15.120 --> 00:27:22.160 Oh, yeah, I hear from a lot of people who have had trouble from that. 00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:27.360 What kind of effects would you expect with inhibiting 5-AR? Is that 00:27:27.360 --> 00:27:30.720 just because I get the email, I think, all the time? 00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:38.720 Well, brain chemistry depends on it. The metabolism of progesterone 00:27:40.160 --> 00:27:48.960 as well as testosterone in your brain, if you block any of the enzymes used in making it, 00:27:48.960 --> 00:27:52.400 you're going to have a weird brain. 00:27:52.400 --> 00:28:00.560 There's some famous quote from the FDA saying that dihydrotestosterone apparently wasn't 00:28:00.560 --> 00:28:06.880 used in the organism or it had like no function or something. So that was the kind of thinking 00:28:06.880 --> 00:28:11.600 that apparently was going into making that drug, which is nice to know. 00:28:11.600 --> 00:28:19.360 Yeah, but it works on the progesterone system too. They said progesterone is only 00:28:19.360 --> 00:28:31.360 pregnancy-related drug chemical. Neglecting that the brain absolutely depends on making it and 00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:39.360 absorbing some of it that's produced in the ovaries and adrenals and skin. But it's a major 00:28:39.360 --> 00:28:47.920 brain hormone that you're messing with when you try to stop the production of DHT. 00:28:47.920 --> 00:28:53.920 So just to finish that thought, restoring the pregnenolone, DHEA, and thyroid function would 00:28:53.920 --> 00:28:59.600 be probably a good start to trying to resolve somebody from taking that substance? 00:28:59.600 --> 00:29:05.040 Yeah, and even better probably to start with increasing your cholesterol production, 00:29:05.040 --> 00:29:10.160 which means keeping your intestine and liver in good condition. 00:29:10.160 --> 00:29:15.680 Switching gears a little bit, can we talk about nutrient deficiencies and maybe common ones 00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:20.320 that you maybe think about often, have experienced yourself or written about, 00:29:20.320 --> 00:29:25.280 and then the best ways to go about restoring the nutrients? And I imagine that's with the 00:29:25.280 --> 00:29:26.400 simple foods. 00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:33.840 Yeah, I had fairly interesting experiences like the fact that 50 milligrams of vitamin C 00:29:33.840 --> 00:29:44.400 cured horrible cases of poison oak. I thought I was going to have to quit working in the woods, 00:29:44.400 --> 00:29:53.360 but over the weekend, I took two doses of 50 milligram vitamin C and the poison oak was gone, 00:29:53.360 --> 00:30:04.960 never had it again. And around that same period, I was feeling gloomy and happened to take a 00:30:04.960 --> 00:30:13.200 tablet of, I think it was maybe 20 milligrams of vitamin B1, and in minutes, I had a clear, 00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:23.920 happy perspective on the world. And when I worked in the woods, I always by about mid-summer 00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:29.760 was getting acne. And people talked about how sunlight was supposed to be good for your skin, 00:30:29.760 --> 00:30:37.200 but for some reason on exposure to the sunlight, I would get pimples. And one night, 00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:45.760 I think it was in the winter in Mexico, I was lying on my bed with a bright light hanging over 00:30:45.760 --> 00:30:52.560 my head and I went to sleep, spent about eight hours lying on my back with a bright light shining 00:30:52.560 --> 00:31:01.600 on my closed eyes. And I woke up with pimples starting. And that started the biochemical 00:31:02.240 --> 00:31:10.880 thinking going. And I realized that my retina uses a lot of vitamin A just in the process of 00:31:10.880 --> 00:31:20.160 making the visual pigment and so on. But then the eye is the main regulator of your reproductive 00:31:20.160 --> 00:31:29.040 hormones. And when birds are exposed to constant light, for example, they'll be constantly in their 00:31:29.040 --> 00:31:37.040 mating season, like with artificial light in the winter, birds will become fertile and start 00:31:37.040 --> 00:31:46.880 nesting. And it's because light is the signal that is springtime and it activates your adrenals and 00:31:46.880 --> 00:31:53.680 gonads to produce lots of steroids. And the production of steroids is a heavy consumer 00:31:53.680 --> 00:32:02.400 of vitamin A. And so from that enlightening insight, I took a big dose of vitamin A and 00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:09.040 immediately the pimples subsided. Then around that same time, I was getting interested in the 00:32:09.040 --> 00:32:19.280 curative effects and I read Adele Davis and a friend in Mexico City was dropping by and saying 00:32:19.280 --> 00:32:28.800 that his little niece was in the hospital with uncontrollable diarrhea. And he would stop by 00:32:28.800 --> 00:32:35.840 two or three days in a row saying that the final day he said they didn't think she would live 00:32:35.840 --> 00:32:43.520 another day. But at that point, he accepted an idea from Adele Davis. And I gave him a tablet 00:32:43.520 --> 00:32:50.800 or two of vitamin B6, 10 milligrams, which he took to the hospital, gave to the little girl, 00:32:50.800 --> 00:32:58.480 and within an hour or so, her diarrhea stopped and instant recovery. About a year or two after that, 00:32:58.480 --> 00:33:09.680 a neighbor of mine had a big alcoholic nose. He was a terrific consumer of gin and tequila. He 00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:19.680 bought it by the case. And his nose was red and large and shiny. And he had a terrific problem 00:33:19.680 --> 00:33:29.280 with vocabulary. He was a hobbyist short story writer. And he would struggle for a long time 00:33:29.280 --> 00:33:36.000 to get the right word he wanted. He had it in mind, but he couldn't call it up. And he had this 00:33:36.560 --> 00:33:43.760 odd habit of when he was looking for a word, he would put his hand on his forehead and nose. 00:33:43.760 --> 00:33:53.680 And so it started me thinking about the memory and the circulation to his nose being a problem. 00:33:53.680 --> 00:34:00.320 And possibly the circulation of his brain was affected by the same thing. 00:34:01.280 --> 00:34:11.280 And so I quoted from Adele Davis again, and described how vitamin B2 is essential for 00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:19.440 oxidation. And the blood supply is carrying oxygen. So it has to carry extra oxygen when 00:34:19.440 --> 00:34:28.800 you're deficient in vitamin B2 to make up for the inefficient use of the oxygen. And so I kept 00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:35.600 telling him this idea to try a vitamin B2 supplement. And he couldn't remember it. So 00:34:35.600 --> 00:34:42.800 I kept giving him notes and he would forget to take the note. And I think we tied the note to 00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:49.840 his finger. And he finally got to the doctor with the note. And the doctor gave him a shot of 00:34:49.840 --> 00:35:00.720 vitamins. And I saw him within a day or two, he was talking as fluently as anyone, no hesitation 00:35:00.720 --> 00:35:10.880 in vocabulary. And his nose was completely normal pink color. Then he got a weekly shot. 00:35:10.880 --> 00:35:18.080 But on some holiday, he forgot to go to the doctor for his weekly shot. Next time I saw him, 00:35:18.640 --> 00:35:24.800 he was hesitant in his vocabulary. And his nose was red and shiny again. 00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:33.200 Once you're deficient in vitamin B2, it can raise your requirement for a long time afterwards. 00:35:33.200 --> 00:35:38.560 So basically, it's endless what could be considered deficiency, like any kind of 00:35:38.560 --> 00:35:43.920 abnormal behavior or... Yeah, a friend of mine had a four-year-old 00:35:43.920 --> 00:35:50.080 kid who was having every afternoon, he would have a violent tantrum and was getting dangerous, 00:35:50.080 --> 00:36:01.600 really vicious episodes. And at night, he would wake up screaming and having a horrible nosebleed. 00:36:01.600 --> 00:36:10.800 And the nosebleed brain connection reminded me of my friend with a shiny nose. And we made up 00:36:10.800 --> 00:36:20.960 some milk powder, egg, and sugar cookies with 10 milligrams of vitamin B2 powdered up in this batch 00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:29.920 of maybe, I guess, six or eight cookies, which he ate that afternoon. That night, he slept through 00:36:29.920 --> 00:36:38.160 the night without having his nightmare and nosebleed. And he never, as far as I knew in 00:36:38.160 --> 00:36:43.840 the next years, never again had his horrible tantrums. What are your thoughts on the versatility 00:36:43.840 --> 00:36:50.000 of the body? Does it need everything every day? Because the gentleman with the larger nose, 00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:55.200 he needed a large proportion of the B2 versus the child that needed just one dose. 00:36:55.200 --> 00:37:02.080 Is there any way to tell what you need personally? Someone did experiments on rats and found, 00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:11.360 looking at the cornea, which gets its oxygen without blood vessels, so it depends on oxygen 00:37:11.360 --> 00:37:21.520 diffusing in from the inside and out. They used the cornea to test the effects of a vitamin B2 00:37:21.520 --> 00:37:34.560 deficiency and found that the mitochondria were essentially collapsed or structurally changed 00:37:34.560 --> 00:37:41.600 so that they no longer would take up vitamin B2 when it was given to the metanormal concentration. 00:37:41.600 --> 00:37:51.120 So I think that might be a unique vitamin deficiency causing more or less charitable 00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:59.200 damage to the mitochondria, which you can regenerate, create a new crop of mitochondria, 00:37:59.200 --> 00:38:06.160 but it takes support and good condition over a period of probably quite a few weeks. 00:38:06.160 --> 00:38:10.320 So your nutritional requirements depend on your parents, your grandparents, 00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:15.600 and every generation before that? Yeah. For example, something that makes your 00:38:16.560 --> 00:38:25.040 mother low in thyroid or high in estrogen or low in glucose, for example, during your gestation, 00:38:25.040 --> 00:38:35.600 that powerfully sets a pattern in your nerves and endocrine glands that will greatly increase your 00:38:35.600 --> 00:38:43.680 requirements. And if you intensely work on them, the earlier in life, the better, but at any age, 00:38:43.680 --> 00:38:48.560 if you put enough effort into it, you can overcome those pre-settings. 00:38:48.560 --> 00:38:54.000 You've mentioned that meat eaters would normally get a fourth to a half a grain of thyroid in their 00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:59.680 food every day. Do you look at thyroid? I remember being interested that you called it like a 00:38:59.680 --> 00:39:04.000 supplement where a lot of people like to label it as like a drug. Do you look at thyroid like 00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:09.840 eating oysters and liver, except it's almost impossible to get because the FDA made it 00:39:09.840 --> 00:39:18.880 illegal? Yeah. Seeing the various ways the country people ate in Mexico and in other countries, 00:39:18.880 --> 00:39:27.680 I realized that just the meaning of a traditional diet to a large extent was that it was nutritionally 00:39:27.680 --> 00:39:36.880 very complex and included hormones, especially the thyroid gland. People always would eat the 00:39:36.880 --> 00:39:46.480 chicken necks and fish heads, and they would save all of the glands from pigs and all of the 00:39:46.480 --> 00:39:53.280 food animals, sheep and cows and such. And they would use those in sausages with the smaller 00:39:53.280 --> 00:40:00.720 animals. The whole animal tended to be stewed and used in a very comprehensive way. But 00:40:01.760 --> 00:40:08.400 the blood, for example, carries a lot of hormones, and blood is a very frequent 00:40:08.400 --> 00:40:14.640 component of food in basic traditional diets. I forgot where you said it, but I think when 00:40:14.640 --> 00:40:18.480 you were talking, it might have been in relation to progesterone or thyroid, but when you used to 00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:24.400 consult very often when somebody had a problem, you would have them read books on it before 00:40:24.400 --> 00:40:31.520 they actually took anything. Do you think that's a good approach? Or is just doing 00:40:31.520 --> 00:40:37.520 it the way of really learning about it? What are your thoughts on that? Because sometimes 00:40:37.520 --> 00:40:43.360 it seems that there's just a lot of confusion involved in embarking on thyroid. 00:40:43.360 --> 00:40:49.440 When you don't know the client very well, it's best to give them the information that can make them 00:40:49.440 --> 00:40:57.840 take responsibility for themselves. But sometimes when I saw someone in desperate, 00:40:58.800 --> 00:41:07.680 like a suicidal condition, I would intervene by giving them a quick-acting thyroid or 00:41:07.680 --> 00:41:16.160 dosing them with some progesterone. When you can see it happening, you know that the person is 00:41:16.160 --> 00:41:24.160 in a desperate condition and that if they're going to be converted into a well person within an hour, 00:41:25.200 --> 00:41:34.960 you can take the time to oversee it yourself. But otherwise, if you are just consulting more or less 00:41:34.960 --> 00:41:43.040 random people, it's better if you make them get informed so that they can watch themselves 00:41:43.040 --> 00:41:44.720 undergo the changes. 00:41:44.720 --> 00:41:50.640 Yeah. For what it's worth, I think in your, from PMS to menopause, you have like a Q and A format. 00:41:50.640 --> 00:41:55.360 And when I was first learning about your work, that was, I feel like, one of the most helpful 00:41:55.360 --> 00:42:01.360 things that I embarked on when I was reading your literature at first because it was super 00:42:01.360 --> 00:42:06.880 easy to understand. By the way, are you thinking about putting your books up anywhere anytime soon? 00:42:06.880 --> 00:42:16.320 Yeah, I've got them in electronic form, but they're so big that I can't email them. And so 00:42:17.120 --> 00:42:22.320 we've been trying to just find out how to make them easily accessible electronically. 00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:28.720 Awesome. Awesome. I think I get emails every day for people asking when your books are available. 00:42:28.720 --> 00:42:35.840 Okay. Nutritional requirements for a hypothyroid versus healthy person. I know you've mentioned 00:42:35.840 --> 00:42:41.520 that vitamin A can be kind of a double-edged sword. Is there any other nutrient that is needed 00:42:41.520 --> 00:42:46.560 in, well, I know vitamin A is needed in lesser amounts for the hypothyroid person. Is something 00:42:46.560 --> 00:42:50.960 like magnesium especially important for the hypothyroid person, anything like that you can 00:42:50.960 --> 00:43:01.040 think of? Yeah. Thyroid is required to retain magnesium by cells. So when you're hypothyroid, 00:43:01.040 --> 00:43:08.240 the slightest stress makes the magnesium fall out of your cells and get lost in the urine. 00:43:09.280 --> 00:43:18.720 And so a constant daily supply of magnesium is essential for things like preventing cramps and 00:43:18.720 --> 00:43:26.080 depression and all of the inflammatory things that come from magnesium deficiency. 00:43:26.080 --> 00:43:35.200 But once your thyroid is up where it should be, then you can go for really probably two weeks or 00:43:35.200 --> 00:43:43.760 more without anywhere near the required amount of magnesium. So most nutrients you can go without 00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:48.880 for a couple of weeks as long as you're getting energy. That's interesting. So you don't need 00:43:48.880 --> 00:43:56.720 everything every day. There's lots of versatility in the, yeah, okay. That's good to know. And that 00:43:56.720 --> 00:44:04.400 Traskin study on vitamin A, he thought that the healthier people needed more vitamin A. Is that 00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:10.800 similar to your thinking as well? Yeah, because you're turning over your cholesterol to progesterone 00:44:10.800 --> 00:44:18.000 and testosterone chemistry constantly. And that uses lots of vitamin A. And when your thyroid 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:25.840 is low, then you have a very low requirement for vitamin A that the FDA sees. If you had to do a 00:44:25.840 --> 00:44:32.160 general ballpark of somebody, a healthy person with high thyroid activity, how much thyroid, 00:44:32.160 --> 00:44:38.480 I'm sorry, vitamin A do you think they would need? During my twenties, I apparently needed around 00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:48.880 50,000 units per day. The researcher, dentist, Emmanuel Traskin at one of his conventions 00:44:48.880 --> 00:44:58.240 circulated a questionnaire and asked people to list their symptoms and all of the supplements 00:44:58.240 --> 00:45:08.240 that they used. And he published a chart showing a straight line of inverse relationship between 00:45:08.240 --> 00:45:17.040 the amount of vitamin A from no supplement to 100,000 units a day. And the number of symptoms 00:45:17.040 --> 00:45:25.520 went from, I forget how many, but multiple symptoms down to zero symptoms in the high metabolizers who 00:45:25.520 --> 00:45:33.040 were using a vitamin A 100,000 per day supplement. Is there any dead giveaway? Because the vitamin D 00:45:33.040 --> 00:45:38.400 is pretty easy because there's a test. And I guess a vast majority of the emails I receive, and then 00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:42.960 that causes me to go look for papers or search through your work. And it seems like the vitamin 00:45:42.960 --> 00:45:50.000 A and then vitamin K are a little more ambiguous to how much a person actually needs and whether 00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:55.760 it's suppressing the thyroid or helping or not. Is there any dead giveaway for a vitamin A deficiency 00:45:55.760 --> 00:46:01.440 or the need for vitamin K too, do you think? Or is it just kind of experimentation? 00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:05.840 Dr. McKeon I think experimentation is best. When a person 00:46:05.840 --> 00:46:13.760 has extremely high blood pressure, especially the difference between systolic, diastolic, if that's 00:46:14.720 --> 00:46:23.600 70 or more, I figure they should try some big doses of vitamin K because it is needed for 00:46:23.600 --> 00:46:34.240 keeping calcium out of your arteries. And as they become vitamin K deficient and calcium overloaded, 00:46:34.240 --> 00:46:43.280 they become stiff and you get a very hard kind of circulation. The pressure rises sharply on 00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:50.480 contraction and then falls drastically on relaxation because there's no elasticity in the 00:46:50.480 --> 00:46:56.960 system. And I've seen people in just a week or two bring their top and bottom numbers much closer, 00:46:56.960 --> 00:47:06.720 like a hundred point difference disappearing in just a week or two from a big vitamin K supplement 00:47:06.720 --> 00:47:08.960 like 40 or 50 milligrams. Dr. McKeon 00:47:08.960 --> 00:47:15.440 Speaking of vitamins D, A, and K2, these tend to have, I mean, reading from your work and then 00:47:15.440 --> 00:47:21.520 doing some reading on my own, they seem to be extremely therapeutic when given the right amount. 00:47:21.520 --> 00:47:25.920 And I know we mentioned at the beginning of the conversation that they might be better off 00:47:25.920 --> 00:47:31.680 used topically. Can you maybe explain maybe your own process or what has worked for other people 00:47:31.680 --> 00:47:33.280 when using them topically? Dr. McKeon 00:47:33.280 --> 00:47:43.120 Oh, you have to use about, oh, sometimes 10 times the oral dose, depending on, you know, 00:47:43.120 --> 00:47:49.920 if you're going to bathe every day, you for sure need about 10 times as much on your skin because 00:47:49.920 --> 00:47:58.560 it takes some time for the vitamin D to soak in. And as your skin, the faster your skin is 00:47:59.120 --> 00:48:06.560 being replaced, the more of the vitamin D that you put on it is going to be lost with the shedding 00:48:06.560 --> 00:48:15.840 cells. So if you have some symptom like extreme weakness, that muscular weakness and the skeletal 00:48:15.840 --> 00:48:25.600 muscular symptoms will disappear in a day or two when you get, if you bring your serum vitamin D 00:48:25.600 --> 00:48:35.760 level up from say five or 10 nanograms to 30 to 50, just a tremendous difference in the brain 00:48:35.760 --> 00:48:39.360 function, muscle function, absence of bone pain and so on. 00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:43.760 Aaron So if you wanted to use 5,000 IU of vitamin 00:48:43.760 --> 00:48:48.320 D per day, you should put 50,000 IU on your skin? 00:48:48.320 --> 00:48:50.640 Dr. McKeon Yeah, but you still should, 00:48:51.520 --> 00:48:58.080 after doing it for a while, you should have a blood test. Some people with very sensitive thin 00:48:58.080 --> 00:49:03.200 skin might absorb as much as 30 or 40% of what they put on. 00:49:03.200 --> 00:49:05.520 Aaron And then A and K2 would be a little more 00:49:05.520 --> 00:49:08.160 ambiguous because the tests aren't so good for those? 00:49:08.160 --> 00:49:11.200 Dr. McKeon Yeah, you can get the vitamin A measured, 00:49:11.200 --> 00:49:19.600 but I think it's very expensive. And usually it's not worth having it done because if you just eat 00:49:20.880 --> 00:49:26.160 eggs and occasionally liver, you're going to have plenty. 00:49:26.160 --> 00:49:27.920 Aaron Do you use a combination of those every 00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:30.560 day or is it kind of just like a once or twice a week kind of thing? 00:49:30.560 --> 00:49:32.160 Dr. McKeon Of the skin? 00:49:32.160 --> 00:49:34.720 Aaron Yeah, of the oily vitamins. 00:49:34.720 --> 00:49:38.720 Dr. McKeon Yeah, in the winter, I try to do it every day. In the summer, 00:49:38.720 --> 00:49:47.600 the food supply is usually fresher and so I often don't use them every day in the summer. 00:49:47.600 --> 00:49:53.200 Aaron Your thoughts on the probiotic strains B-liciniformis 00:49:53.200 --> 00:49:58.640 and then B-subtilis? And they're contained, I guess, in a product called Biosporin that's 00:49:58.640 --> 00:50:02.480 from Europe somewhere. Go ahead. 00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:08.320 Dr. McKeon There are safe antibiotics that can work for 00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:16.720 a lot of people with a bowel dysbiosis, bad bacteria overgrowth. But I think the first thing 00:50:16.720 --> 00:50:25.120 is just to cut out the foods that are supporting the bad bacteria, which are usually polyunsaturated 00:50:25.120 --> 00:50:33.760 fatty acids and hard to digest starchy fibrous foods like grains, beans, seeds and such. 00:50:33.760 --> 00:50:42.640 And then the disinfecting foods such as cooked mushrooms and raw carrots, these are natural 00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:51.680 antibiotics. But when you have a really serious, intense bacterial problem, these subtilis and 00:50:51.680 --> 00:51:01.840 B-liciniformis, those are useful. Life Extension Magazine, I think this month, has a good article 00:51:01.840 --> 00:51:09.440 on the phage bacterial virus that kills lots of the toxic bacteria. 00:51:09.440 --> 00:51:13.360 Aaron Would this be useful in place of antibiotics 00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:17.520 like penicillin and minocycline and the macrolides? Or would this be kind of a law, 00:51:17.520 --> 00:51:21.440 like if all those fail, then this would be something to investigate? 00:51:21.440 --> 00:51:26.080 Dr. McKeon Yeah. But I've seen just carrot salad 00:51:26.080 --> 00:51:33.360 everyday work just as well as penicillin for reducing the stress that's causing a hormone 00:51:33.360 --> 00:51:42.320 imbalance, for example. If you're having very high cortisol and estrogen and low 00:51:42.320 --> 00:51:50.880 testosterone and progesterone, sometimes the supplement of any of the antibiotics can do it, 00:51:50.880 --> 00:51:55.680 but so can just having a raw carrot salad every day. 00:51:55.680 --> 00:51:58.320 Aaron Do you think if you're going to use 00:51:58.320 --> 00:52:04.720 aspirin consistently, do you think it should be dissolved in water? And then, two, do you mind 00:52:04.720 --> 00:52:08.640 talking a little bit about the relationship between aspirin and vitamin K2? 00:52:08.640 --> 00:52:13.520 Dr. McKeon It's not an acute thing. The aspirin, 00:52:13.520 --> 00:52:22.080 one of its effects, the famous effect, but it's a very trivial effect in the actual benefit you get 00:52:22.080 --> 00:52:31.760 from aspirin, is the knocking out of the clotting platelet function. And that effect that can cause 00:52:31.760 --> 00:52:40.160 uncontrolled bleeding from too much aspirin is by blocking or interfering with the proteins 00:52:40.160 --> 00:52:46.880 that are produced by the liver under the influence of vitamin K. So not everyone experiences this, 00:52:46.880 --> 00:52:54.800 but if you have taken antibiotics and have a deficiency of the type of bacteria that produces 00:52:54.800 --> 00:53:02.960 vitamin K in your intestine, then you're susceptible to aspirins knocking out of this 00:53:02.960 --> 00:53:10.000 vitamin K-dependent clotting protein. So just as insurance, it's good to have a source of vitamin 00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:17.280 K in your diet. Aged cheese or well-cooked greens are ordinary foods that are good sources. 00:53:17.280 --> 00:53:19.520 Dr. Justin Marchegiani These are the protein S and C? 00:53:19.520 --> 00:53:21.760 Dr. McKeon Yeah, those are made under the 00:53:21.760 --> 00:53:31.600 influence of vitamin K in the liver and they are the anticoagulant factors dependent on vitamin K. 00:53:31.600 --> 00:53:39.280 So people who have excess clotting problems are sometimes told to avoid vitamin K, 00:53:39.280 --> 00:53:46.320 but if you haven't measured the proteins S and C, it might be the worst thing to do is to 00:53:46.320 --> 00:53:55.200 avoid vitamin K because vitamin K is required for the normal resolution of stimulated clotting. 00:53:55.200 --> 00:54:04.400 And so you can have a tendency to strokes if you're very extremely deficient in vitamin K. 00:54:04.400 --> 00:54:07.760 Dr. Justin Marchegiani People talk about vitamin D being an epidemic 00:54:07.760 --> 00:54:10.480 like a deficiency. Do you think vitamin K is similar? 00:54:10.480 --> 00:54:15.600 Dr. McKeon Yeah, I think it's just about as general as 00:54:15.600 --> 00:54:23.440 vitamin D. The reason people are so deficient in vitamin D is mostly in the northern latitudes 00:54:23.440 --> 00:54:30.400 working indoors, only getting maybe a couple of weeks of good sunlight when they're on vacation. 00:54:30.400 --> 00:54:40.240 And in Muslim and Catholic countries, women have traditionally gone out in public, very covered up. 00:54:40.240 --> 00:54:47.760 And if you're dark-skinned, it takes a very large amount of sunlight to produce as much 00:54:47.760 --> 00:54:54.480 vitamin D as you need. So working indoors, wearing too many clothes, and having dark skin, 00:54:54.480 --> 00:55:00.800 all make you more susceptible to a vitamin D deficiency. And the use of sunscreen makes it 00:55:00.800 --> 00:55:07.840 even worse because people go on vacation and block their vitamin D formation even when they're in the 00:55:07.840 --> 00:55:08.320 sun. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:55:08.320 --> 00:55:16.400 Does the inclusion of mushrooms change any of your general diet recommendations? And part two of that 00:55:16.400 --> 00:55:20.160 question, can you replace the carrot if you just eat mushrooms every day? 00:55:20.160 --> 00:55:23.360 Dr. McKeon Yeah, I've done that. I got tired of carrots 00:55:23.360 --> 00:55:30.720 after eating one a day for 20 years. Bamboo shoots are another alternative. We made more 00:55:30.720 --> 00:55:34.560 interesting recipes than raw carrots. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:55:34.560 --> 00:55:37.600 Would it be risky to replace eggs with mushrooms? Dr. McKeon 00:55:37.600 --> 00:55:44.400 Oh, well, mushrooms have really a good broad spectrum nutritional value. 00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:47.680 But you just have to eat an awful lot of them. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:55:47.680 --> 00:55:49.120 How much have you been averaging, Ray? Dr. McKeon 00:55:49.120 --> 00:55:59.520 Oh, sometimes ridiculous amounts like once every week or two, we'll have a big bowl of mushroom 00:55:59.520 --> 00:56:10.400 soup, which is almost like porridge. But I think we must eat eight ounces at least each in the soup 00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:19.520 days. Other days, much less when it's just like tonight, we're having a liver with mushrooms, 00:56:19.520 --> 00:56:21.920 probably four ounces of each. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:56:21.920 --> 00:56:28.640 Yeah, I keep being kind of shocked on how cool mushrooms are. So I appreciate your work on that 00:56:28.640 --> 00:56:34.000 in turning me on to them. I have pretty much one last question for you. If you could take any 00:56:34.000 --> 00:56:39.840 substance on a desert island, what would it be? And including your just normal diet, whatever it was. 00:56:39.840 --> 00:56:41.040 Dr. McKeon As a supplement? 00:56:41.040 --> 00:56:43.680 Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, like just like a substance 00:56:43.680 --> 00:56:47.120 you think is really helpful, I guess. Dr. McKeon 00:56:47.120 --> 00:56:54.000 I think it would probably be either pregnenolone or progesterone. If you, for example, fall off a 00:56:54.000 --> 00:57:02.800 cliff or get sunburned or get bitten by a strange animal, no matter what happens to you, you want to 00:57:03.600 --> 00:57:11.520 have a lot of progesterone or pregnenolone. It's kind of a universal antidote. Like if you're in a 00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:18.720 car wreck and can move, you should squeeze a bunch of progesterone in your mouth. 00:57:18.720 --> 00:57:21.520 Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:57:21.520 --> 00:57:26.560 Cool, Ray. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on that I glossed over too fast or we 00:57:26.560 --> 00:57:27.280 didn't get to? Dr. Ray 00:57:27.280 --> 00:57:28.560 No. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:57:28.560 --> 00:57:30.800 And what are you working on right now? Dr. Ray 00:57:30.800 --> 00:57:39.600 Oh, I've just finished my November newsletter on autoimmunity. And I'm thinking of the next one 00:57:39.600 --> 00:57:46.080 being on glucose as an anti-aging nutrient. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:57:46.080 --> 00:57:52.960 That'll get some attention. And then can you let people know how they can purchase your newsletter? 00:57:52.960 --> 00:57:55.680 Dr. Ray Yeah, the email is 00:57:55.680 --> 00:58:01.520 raypeatsnewsletter@gmail.com. No apostrophe in Ray Peat. 00:58:01.520 --> 00:58:01.920 Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:58:01.920 --> 00:58:07.360 And that's 12 issues every two months. I'm sorry, one issue every two months. And that's for 00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:15.120 over two years. Awesome. Ray, thank you so much for talking with me. It's been a complete pleasure 00:58:15.120 --> 00:58:19.440 as always. Thank you so much. And thank you. Dr. Ray 00:58:19.440 --> 00:58:20.480 Okay, thank you. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:58:20.480 --> 00:58:22.320 I'll talk to you soon, Ray. Take care. Dr. Ray 00:58:22.320 --> 00:58:24.160 Okay, bye. Dr. Justin Marchegiani 00:58:24.160 --> 00:58:28.240 That's going to conclude this week's episode. I'd like to thank Ray again for talking with me today, 00:58:28.240 --> 00:58:32.800 along with my patrons for their support of the show and making all of the content I produce 00:58:32.800 --> 00:58:38.080 possible. That was a real special episode for me. I always enjoy talking to Ray and I hope you 00:58:38.080 --> 00:58:43.200 enjoyed it too. There were so many questions for this episode and I kind of dropped the ball and I 00:58:43.200 --> 00:58:48.400 didn't ask them all. So I didn't want to keep Ray past an hour, which I, that's what I said I was 00:58:48.400 --> 00:58:54.640 going to do. So I apologize if you had your question in line and didn't get to it. I myself 00:58:54.640 --> 00:59:00.800 didn't ask a lot of questions. I was personally interested. So thank you so much for listening. 00:59:00.800 --> 00:59:05.200 I have an amazing listenership with this show and the podcast and all of the content and I 00:59:05.200 --> 00:59:09.200 sincerely appreciate it. If you're listening to this on YouTube, hit the like button and that 00:59:09.200 --> 00:59:15.200 really supports the show. And again, thank you so much for listening and I sincerely appreciate it. 00:59:15.200 --> 00:59:22.480 And I'll talk to you guys soon. 00:59:22.480 --> 00:59:25.840 [AUDIO OUT]