WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:07.200 Hi Ray, how's it going? Hi, very good. Awesome, well thank you for doing this 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:12.000 today. I think this is going to be great. I'm really looking forward to this 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:16.640 question and answer session. What we've done, I have some help from my wife, and 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:23.080 we compiled a list of questions from the basically a northern California birth 00:00:23.080 --> 00:00:29.280 community and listeners of the podcast and just in general we've kind of 00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:33.560 gathered an assortment of questions. They might be all over the place, but I've 00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:39.080 tried to compile them in a way that kind of makes sense. But before we get into 00:00:39.080 --> 00:00:43.560 the questions and hear your thoughts, could you go into your background a 00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:49.360 little bit, especially as it pertains to women's issues, pregnancy, and human 00:00:49.360 --> 00:01:03.040 development in general? In 1968, after studying many other things for about 12 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:11.160 years after getting out of college, I went to graduate school at the 00:01:11.160 --> 00:01:18.120 University of Oregon specializing in reproductive physiology. I did my 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:29.720 dissertation in 1972 on oxidative changes in the uterus with aging. 00:01:29.720 --> 00:01:36.600 That had been one of my lifelong interests was the physiology of aging. 00:01:36.600 --> 00:01:44.360 It seemed especially relevant to the process of reproduction because I had 00:01:44.360 --> 00:01:55.400 seen publications in the 40s and 50s in which they saw that when you make a 00:01:55.400 --> 00:02:03.280 graph of the baby's birth weight and head circumference, that both of these 00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:10.960 increase with each subsequent pregnancy so that the older the mother is, the 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:23.920 bigger her baby's brain is. That held true up until about the age of 38. At 00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:33.000 that time, women were having many more babies each, and so it tended to be the 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:40.880 third or fourth or fifth baby by the time she reached her late 30s. At that 00:02:40.880 --> 00:02:51.760 point, instead of increasing the last birth before she became infertile, the 00:02:51.760 --> 00:02:58.320 last baby tended to be lighter with a smaller head. But the general drift of 00:02:58.320 --> 00:03:07.360 both aging and parity was for the birth weight and brain weight to increase 00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:17.160 steadily. That was sort of in the background. I had started out intending 00:03:17.160 --> 00:03:25.120 to study brain physiology in graduate school, but I found that that subject was 00:03:25.120 --> 00:03:31.800 completely dogmatic, whereas the reproductive physiology actually 00:03:31.800 --> 00:03:36.800 tolerated a scientific approach. 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:43.000 Oh, that's great. So one of the questions, actually this leads right into one of 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:47.520 our first questions. I love that summary of your background as it relates to 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:53.760 pregnancy and child development issues. One of the questions from a woman was 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:58.320 directly related to kind of what you spoke to, and it's maintaining fertility 00:03:58.320 --> 00:04:03.760 as a woman ages. This is kind of a general question, but what could a 00:04:03.760 --> 00:04:09.360 woman do to maintain fertility as she does get older? 00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:19.720 The failure of progesterone around it starts statistically happening in the 00:04:19.720 --> 00:04:27.600 mid-30s. Estrogen production and concentration in the body tends to 00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:35.520 increase steadily from the 20s, about the age of 20, up until the late 30s. 00:04:35.520 --> 00:04:44.880 That's about the time when aging and stress symptoms start becoming 00:04:44.880 --> 00:04:57.200 noticeable. Sometimes a woman is gaining excess weight around that age, and any 00:04:57.200 --> 00:05:03.600 kind of nutritional or environmental problem limits the ability to produce 00:05:03.600 --> 00:05:12.720 progesterone. As the ratio of estrogen continually increasing and 00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:22.280 progesterone reaching a limit determined by stress and nutrition, at that point 00:05:22.280 --> 00:05:32.000 you start getting the signs of menopause and infertility. So there are two 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:42.200 processes that tend to extend fertility as well as lifespan in general. One is 00:05:42.200 --> 00:05:51.480 that the liver metabolically, when it's healthy, excretes 100% of the 00:05:51.480 --> 00:06:00.760 estrogen arriving in the circulation to be made soluble for excretion in the 00:06:00.760 --> 00:06:08.480 urine or put into the bile for excretion. The estrogen that goes into the bile, it 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:15.880 tends to be reabsorbed if there's not enough fiber in the diet. So keeping a 00:06:15.880 --> 00:06:22.400 steady increase, a steady supply of fiber running through the intestine 00:06:22.400 --> 00:06:35.200 allows the liver to get rid of the bile- excreted estrogen. And the other, 00:06:35.760 --> 00:06:42.960 it's a sulfated or glucuronidated water-soluble form of estrogen that goes 00:06:42.960 --> 00:06:49.440 out in urine. To make that, the B vitamins and protein are the most 00:06:49.440 --> 00:06:58.600 essential nutrients. So keeping up the B vitamins and in general good nutrition, 00:06:58.600 --> 00:07:07.800 adequate protein and calcium keep the liver able to minimize estrogen. As it 00:07:07.800 --> 00:07:12.240 reaches the liver, it should be a hundred percent excreted so it doesn't build up 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:20.240 steadily with aging. And that in itself makes the problem of producing adequate 00:07:20.240 --> 00:07:28.880 progesterone manageable because it isn't against this rising tide of estrogen 00:07:28.880 --> 00:07:39.760 with aging. Vitamin A, protein, adequate minerals, a balance of calcium and 00:07:39.760 --> 00:07:50.480 phosphate, and vitamin D are the main limiting factors for making progesterone. 00:07:50.480 --> 00:08:00.000 Vitamin A is used almost a one-to-one relationship with the amount of 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:08.040 progesterone you produce. Thyroid hormone travels on the same protein in the blood 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:17.360 as vitamin A and that protein with the vitamin A in thyroid are taken up by 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:25.000 cells along with cholesterol and are used in the conversion of cholesterol to 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:32.160 progesterone. So it's essential to maintain a good level of cholesterol in 00:08:32.160 --> 00:08:38.400 your blood to be able to keep producing adequate progesterone. 00:08:38.400 --> 00:08:44.640 Awesome. So Ray, when you talk about vitamin A and the B vitamins, would it be 00:08:44.640 --> 00:08:51.360 preferable to get these from food sources rather than supplemental sources? 00:08:51.360 --> 00:08:58.920 Yeah, the supplements always contain manufacturing contaminants and 00:08:58.920 --> 00:09:08.360 breakdown products. Vitamin A, for example, is extremely oxidizable and many 00:09:08.360 --> 00:09:15.000 people get serious side effects when they take vitamin supplements that they 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:22.400 don't get at all when they eat foods that are very rich in those. So eggs, milk, and 00:09:22.400 --> 00:09:31.280 cheese and liver, for example, are very safe sources of vitamin A to some extent 00:09:31.280 --> 00:09:37.120 vitamin D, but if you don't get sunlight then you will need a supplement of 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:44.680 vitamin D. Okay, great. That's great. Now for progesterone, if a woman is 00:09:44.680 --> 00:09:49.080 obviously supporting an environment where natural progesterone continues to 00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:56.240 be adequate or optimal, that's great, but as a woman ages and progesterone levels 00:09:56.240 --> 00:10:02.880 decrease, does it make sense for a woman to supplement progesterone 00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:13.960 more as she ages? Yeah, in the 1950s, Katharina Dalton in England, at that time, 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:22.680 the main progesterone product on the market was injectable in oil solution. 00:10:22.680 --> 00:10:32.160 She was treating women with premenstrual syndrome with these monthly or 00:10:32.160 --> 00:10:38.800 twice-monthly injections of progesterone and found that the women who suffered 00:10:38.800 --> 00:10:48.040 from PMS tended to have their previous babies before they had come in to have 00:10:48.040 --> 00:10:58.000 their PMS treated, their previous babies had a very high likelihood of being 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:05.960 premature, underweight, and mentally not up to par. And she found that the 00:11:05.960 --> 00:11:13.280 patients that she had treated adequately for PMS were having healthier 00:11:13.280 --> 00:11:22.200 pregnancies and if they continued having a PMS symptom in the pregnancy, she 00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:29.960 would continue treating their PMS symptoms. And many of these women had 00:11:29.960 --> 00:11:36.280 previously had monthly bleeding episodes right up into the fifth or sixth 00:11:36.280 --> 00:11:43.600 month of pregnancy and then they would deliver prematurely. And she found that 00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:54.440 by preventing the symptoms of depression, anxiety, headaches, and so on, that she 00:11:54.440 --> 00:11:59.680 prevented the monthly bleeding episodes and the babies were carried to full 00:11:59.680 --> 00:12:07.560 term. And after doing that for about 15 or 20 years, someone mentioned to her 00:12:07.560 --> 00:12:13.880 that her patients' babies were remarkably intelligent. She said that isn't very 00:12:13.880 --> 00:12:25.320 likely because the women who deliver prematurely are known to have 00:12:25.320 --> 00:12:33.200 babies with an average IQ of about 95. She did a study and found that her 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:44.960 babies were averaging about 130 IQ. So the younger siblings were all many IQ 00:12:44.960 --> 00:12:51.680 points better, just the difference was simply the mother was a little older and 00:12:51.680 --> 00:13:00.440 was getting progesterone support. Wow, that's awesome. Ray, there was a poll 00:13:00.440 --> 00:13:06.800 going around I saw recently where there were women who wrote in and answered the 00:13:06.800 --> 00:13:11.920 question, "Is progesterone supplementation being effective?" And a lot of the women 00:13:11.920 --> 00:13:17.640 said yes, extremely effective. They noticed positive effects from the 00:13:17.640 --> 00:13:23.880 progesterone and then some women said they weren't seeing positive effects. Can 00:13:23.880 --> 00:13:28.360 there be a reason that some women would see positive effects from 00:13:28.360 --> 00:13:34.600 supplemental progesterone and then other women maybe would not? Some women have a 00:13:34.600 --> 00:13:40.560 much higher need and many of the products simply aren't able to deliver 00:13:40.560 --> 00:13:50.400 enough progesterone to be effective. I think it was 1951, there was a study of 00:13:50.400 --> 00:13:56.680 using the commercial progesterone that was available at that time for treating 00:13:56.680 --> 00:14:10.160 uterine cancer. The treatment, it turned out, the doctors examining the changes 00:14:10.160 --> 00:14:20.120 saw just remarkable improvements in the uterine cancer, but they were giving 00:14:20.120 --> 00:14:29.840 what they considered to be a maximum dose, many, many injections of, I think it 00:14:29.840 --> 00:14:33.680 was a couple hundred milligrams per injection. They would give several of 00:14:33.680 --> 00:14:41.200 those per day, but they never mentioned that the patient was being anesthetized 00:14:41.200 --> 00:14:53.800 or they didn't even mention a sedative effect, but it's now recognized that when 00:14:53.800 --> 00:15:02.120 you get the amount of progesterone that the placenta produces in the latter half 00:15:02.120 --> 00:15:08.880 of pregnancy, those amounts of progesterone are strongly affecting the 00:15:08.880 --> 00:15:15.000 nervous system, preventing childbirth pain, for example, with an actual 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:24.160 anesthetic effect and having a sedative effect improving the quality of sleep. So 00:15:24.160 --> 00:15:30.440 what they were demonstrating in that 1951 study was that even injecting 00:15:30.440 --> 00:15:37.080 hundreds of milligrams of progesterone, it wasn't being available to the 00:15:37.080 --> 00:15:45.920 bloodstream. It was dissolved in oil and it was simply staying in the muscle or 00:15:45.920 --> 00:15:53.280 fat tissue where they infected it, and when you take it orally in a powdered 00:15:53.280 --> 00:16:03.680 form, the particulate, even micronized progesterone, as it touches the lining of 00:16:03.680 --> 00:16:14.240 the intestine, a small amount of it is passed into the cell structure and in 00:16:14.240 --> 00:16:22.080 that form in the intestine and as it moves from the intestine to the 00:16:22.080 --> 00:16:30.480 liver in that form, both the intestine and the liver have the enzymes to 00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:39.040 solubilize it, the way the liver handles estrogen, and so any of the powdered 00:16:39.040 --> 00:16:46.640 estrogen or progesterone preparations that touch the intestine tend to go into 00:16:46.640 --> 00:16:54.360 the soluble form and leave the body quickly. And if it gets into the 00:16:54.360 --> 00:17:02.240 circulation as a sulfated progesterone, that will have its own sedative effect, 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:09.280 but definitely doesn't follow the metabolic pathway that natural 00:17:09.280 --> 00:17:18.480 progesterone produced by the ovaries or in the brain would have. And the closest 00:17:18.480 --> 00:17:25.040 you can get to a natural supplement of progesterone is when it's dissolved in 00:17:25.040 --> 00:17:37.840 oil and taken orally. The digestive system has the ability to break it up 00:17:37.840 --> 00:17:49.680 into micron-sized particles for absorption directly through the intestine 00:17:49.680 --> 00:17:58.880 into the lymphatic system where those particles are transmitted directly to 00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:05.920 the bloodstream. So it circulates as fat-dissolved particles 00:18:05.920 --> 00:18:12.320 through the general circulation, bypassing the liver repeatedly because 00:18:12.320 --> 00:18:20.640 red blood cells and these chylomicron particles are not recognized as 00:18:20.640 --> 00:18:27.280 something for excretion. They pass through the liver over and over and can 00:18:27.280 --> 00:18:36.960 be absorbed by the uterus, brain, all of the tissues. Wow, that's great. So would 00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:42.080 you say if you are taking a progesterone that gets into that metabolic pathway, 00:18:42.080 --> 00:18:49.280 for example, like dissolved in vitamin E and you aren't noticing 00:18:49.280 --> 00:18:57.520 effects, would a good gauge be to just try taking more? Yeah, a fourth of a 00:18:57.520 --> 00:19:08.080 teaspoon of the solution containing 100 milligrams will, for a man, that amount 00:19:08.080 --> 00:19:16.160 will likely bring on sleep very quickly. For a woman, it will have a definite 00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:27.920 relaxing sedative effect. And a dose of that sort during pregnancy, the tendency 00:19:27.920 --> 00:19:36.400 of any given dose of progesterone that is sensed to be adequate, the ovary when 00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:44.160 you're not pregnant or the placenta when you are pregnant will be stimulated so 00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:49.840 that there's a positive feedback between a given dose and the ability of the 00:19:49.840 --> 00:19:55.760 ovary or the placenta to maintain and increase its production of progesterone 00:19:55.760 --> 00:20:04.040 so it can have a catalytic effect. There were studies in which women who were 00:20:04.040 --> 00:20:09.920 giving signs that they were about to miscarry at maybe the third or fourth 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:17.880 month of pregnancy were given an injection of progesterone and it was 00:20:17.880 --> 00:20:24.400 two-thirds of the group went from the third month when they got that injection 00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:33.520 all the way to a full term. One third of the group needed another injection 00:20:33.520 --> 00:20:41.120 around month six and they then carried it to full term. So there's a positive 00:20:41.120 --> 00:20:49.400 feedback catalytic effect that one good strong dose will often solve the 00:20:49.400 --> 00:20:56.240 deficiency problem. Wow, that's great. One woman, it's kind of related, one 00:20:56.240 --> 00:21:00.560 woman asked a question about miscarriage. You mentioned miscarriage and thyroid. 00:21:00.560 --> 00:21:05.800 So thyroid and progesterone are related, I imagine. Can you talk about thyroid and 00:21:05.800 --> 00:21:15.040 miscarriage in the same line? Yeah, everyone who is hypothyroid becomes 00:21:15.040 --> 00:21:23.280 subject to an excess of estrogen relative to the other protective 00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:31.440 hormones, progesterone, pregnenolone, and DHEA and to some extent testosterone. 00:21:31.440 --> 00:21:40.720 When the thyroid is low, the tissues accumulate water and shift their 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:47.720 metabolism, their energy production towards lactic acid formation rather 00:21:47.720 --> 00:21:53.640 than carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide that should be produced under the 00:21:53.640 --> 00:22:03.680 influence of thyroid has a relaxing sedative effect on the uterus, tends to 00:22:03.680 --> 00:22:10.280 deliver more oxygen to the fetus. When your thyroid is low and you don't 00:22:10.280 --> 00:22:15.920 produce that carbon dioxide, you make a lot of lactic acid which has an 00:22:15.920 --> 00:22:25.080 excitatory effect on the tissues, tending to over activate contractions in the 00:22:25.080 --> 00:22:33.560 uterus, causing stress to the fetus and triggers cortisol production which 00:22:33.560 --> 00:22:45.960 tends to produce delivery. The thyroid acting on the liver is lowering 00:22:45.960 --> 00:22:52.560 estrogen which has the tendency to shift metabolism towards lactic acid. 00:22:52.560 --> 00:23:01.680 The estrogen itself activates cortisol production and excites contractions in 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:15.800 the uterus. The direct effect of thyroid and cholesterol on the ovary or the 00:23:15.800 --> 00:23:24.800 placenta is to increase the conversion of cholesterol to progesterone so that 00:23:24.800 --> 00:23:34.480 at every level of metabolism, thyroid is working towards maturing the 00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:41.000 pregnancy, keeping the delivery of sugar for the development of the embryo's 00:23:41.000 --> 00:23:48.280 brain, keeping the progesterone high and the uterus relaxed. 00:23:48.280 --> 00:23:54.040 Great. So then would thyroid sometimes be appropriate as another supplement? 00:23:54.040 --> 00:23:56.680 It could be used by pregnant women? 00:23:56.680 --> 00:24:06.680 Even before getting pregnant, there have been many studies showing that thyroid 00:24:06.680 --> 00:24:13.760 hormone for both men and women is the most important single fertility hormone 00:24:13.760 --> 00:24:20.800 there is. I've known dozens of men and women who were unable to get 00:24:20.800 --> 00:24:27.160 pregnant. Usually the very first month they supplement thyroid, they're 00:24:27.160 --> 00:24:33.440 pregnant. Some of them after 10 or 15 years of trying, all it took was one 00:24:33.440 --> 00:24:45.640 month of thyroid. So it's good to start early. Another study looked at women who 00:24:45.640 --> 00:24:53.160 had used a supplement of progesterone even for just one month preceding 00:24:53.160 --> 00:25:03.400 conception, where the normal percentage of birth defects in that study was 4%. 00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:09.960 Those women who had, even for just one month, who had used progesterone before 00:25:09.960 --> 00:25:19.080 conceiving, there was only 1% incidence of birth defects. So progesterone has a 00:25:19.080 --> 00:25:29.640 very powerful stabilizing effect on the chromosomes and thyroid is working 00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:37.280 right along with the progesterone, stabilizing the genetic system. 00:25:37.280 --> 00:25:44.800 Wow, that's great. Ray, you mentioned the lactic acid or the lactic metabolism 00:25:44.800 --> 00:25:52.120 being maladaptive for a developing fetus. A lot of people seem to be 00:25:52.120 --> 00:25:57.920 into intense exercise. Can over-exertion and intense exercise actually 00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:01.840 be not really what we want for a healthy pregnancy? 00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:09.720 Yeah, if you look at just athletes, not pregnant athletes, but just men or women 00:26:09.720 --> 00:26:18.600 either, one of the definitions of over-training is to look at their lungs' 00:26:18.600 --> 00:26:27.400 ability to diffuse oxygen. One study found that athletes who thought they 00:26:27.400 --> 00:26:35.320 were in great condition but who were over-training had a tremendously 00:26:35.320 --> 00:26:44.000 deficient ability of their lungs to emit oxygen to the blood. The over-training 00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:52.720 gave them a chronic oxygen deficit and lingering lactic acid level in the blood. 00:26:52.720 --> 00:27:00.720 They found that those athletes who had elevated lactic acid even 12 hours or 00:27:00.720 --> 00:27:08.640 more after their exercise, those were the ones whose lungs had taken up so much 00:27:08.640 --> 00:27:17.280 excess water that the diffusion pathway was about twice normal. So no matter 00:27:17.280 --> 00:27:26.680 how fast they breathed, they just couldn't get efficient oxygenation. The 00:27:26.680 --> 00:27:32.840 same sort of thing happens under the influence of too much estrogen. A study in, 00:27:32.840 --> 00:27:43.280 I think it was mice, gave one injection of estrogen and then monitored the 00:27:43.280 --> 00:27:50.120 ability of oxygen to move through their lungs. They found that 95% of the 00:27:50.120 --> 00:27:56.960 diffusion capacity was knocked out in an hour following a single overdose of 00:27:56.960 --> 00:28:04.880 estrogen. Wow, great. I'm going to go back to a general question here from a 00:28:04.880 --> 00:28:10.040 woman. She asked, "What is the most important piece of advice that you would 00:28:10.040 --> 00:28:21.920 give an expecting mother?" To eat well. That means keeping protein up, having a 00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:32.280 good ratio of calcium to phosphate in the diet, be getting around 100 00:28:32.280 --> 00:28:40.320 milligrams of good protein every day, and something like a one-to-one ratio of 00:28:40.320 --> 00:28:48.520 calcium to phosphate if possible. Great, that's awesome. Thanks, Ray. Another 00:28:48.520 --> 00:28:52.960 question here from a woman, "What are your thoughts on the common suggestion that a 00:28:52.960 --> 00:29:02.520 pregnant mother should be consuming high volumes of water?" Water can be very 00:29:02.520 --> 00:29:14.480 dangerous. Your requirement for protein and calcium means that during, once 00:29:14.480 --> 00:29:24.440 pregnancy gets going, two quarts of milk a day is kind of the minimum, along with 00:29:24.440 --> 00:29:31.320 maybe a quart of orange juice. With two or three quarts of those going in as 00:29:31.320 --> 00:29:44.520 food, you have very little need for other liquid. If you don't balance your 00:29:44.520 --> 00:29:51.320 water intake, especially with sodium, but also with calcium, magnesium, and 00:29:51.320 --> 00:30:00.000 potassium, sodium is very often the most important mineral lacking in 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:08.480 pregnancy, and if you add water to your regime without balancing it with 00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:17.920 salting your food to taste, that can have a very bad outcome. In the 1950s, when the 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:26.040 drug companies devised new chemical diuretics, they decided pregnant women 00:30:26.040 --> 00:30:31.480 would be a good market for them, so they invented the idea that you shouldn't 00:30:31.480 --> 00:30:38.360 gain so much weight during pregnancy. And almost every doctor in the country fell 00:30:38.360 --> 00:30:46.040 for the advertising for diuretics and taught women to control their weight 00:30:46.040 --> 00:30:56.640 gain, and to do that largely with the water pills. That had really a 00:30:56.640 --> 00:31:05.000 disastrous effect on the outcome of millions of pregnancies. The progesterone 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:13.240 is pretty much the basis for the body's ability to regulate water and salt 00:31:13.240 --> 00:31:20.120 accurately, but you have to take in a generous amount for the progesterone to 00:31:20.120 --> 00:31:33.400 be able to regulate it. In two different studies of preeclampsia, in which the 00:31:33.400 --> 00:31:42.440 women were developing high blood pressure, knowing the physiology, 00:31:42.440 --> 00:31:50.440 when progesterone is deficient, you tend to retain water without sodium, 00:31:50.440 --> 00:31:59.120 potassium, calcium, and so on. And so they tried giving pretty big supplements of 00:31:59.120 --> 00:32:07.440 table salt to these women with eclampsia, where the standard medical 00:32:07.440 --> 00:32:15.040 prescription was to have them avoid salt and take diuretics. These two studies 00:32:15.040 --> 00:32:21.800 supplemented several grams per day of table salt and cured the preeclampsia, 00:32:21.800 --> 00:32:30.040 regulated their blood pressure, and that same principle works anytime your 00:32:30.040 --> 00:32:37.520 progesterone is deficient relative to estrogen. You seem to be retaining 00:32:37.520 --> 00:32:44.680 water, but it's really that you're losing sodium too fast, and balancing your 00:32:44.680 --> 00:32:52.320 minerals will help you get rid of the water. How that works is that albumin in 00:32:52.320 --> 00:33:02.640 the blood forms the negative charges on albumin molecules bind the positive 00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:12.000 charges of sodium, and that combination of electrical charges binds water around 00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:19.680 that cloud of molecules. And if you don't have enough sodium, the albumin can't 00:33:19.680 --> 00:33:26.560 retain its water. The albumin tends to fall out of solution going into your 00:33:26.560 --> 00:33:33.600 tissues or out your kidneys. The preeclampsia, high blood pressure women 00:33:33.600 --> 00:33:43.400 tend to lose a lot of albumin in their urine. And how these researchers cured 00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:52.680 the preeclampsia with sodium, it was because the sodium allowed the albumin 00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:58.800 to stay in the bloodstream and to attract water to it, pulling water out of 00:33:58.800 --> 00:34:05.560 the tissues and keeping it to increase the volume of blood needed to perfuse 00:34:05.560 --> 00:34:14.640 the placenta and uterus. So water without sodium, especially with the diuretics 00:34:14.640 --> 00:34:22.840 that were being sold to American and European and Australian women, the 00:34:22.840 --> 00:34:29.440 excess water and diuretic combination and salt restriction is a very deadly 00:34:29.440 --> 00:34:38.480 mixture. Wow. Ray, one woman who works with families who are becoming 00:34:38.480 --> 00:34:43.640 pregnant, she's worked with midwives and she's worked with pregnant women 00:34:43.640 --> 00:34:48.640 directly. She said there definitely seems to be an increase in preeclampsia. So 00:34:48.640 --> 00:34:53.120 what you're saying is it sounds like this, and I'm asking you I guess, could 00:34:53.120 --> 00:34:58.360 it be from something as simple as not having enough salt and consuming way too 00:34:58.360 --> 00:35:07.960 much liquid? Yeah. Salt and protein, milk especially, because it comes 00:35:07.960 --> 00:35:16.000 with the calcium. Awesome. You mentioned earlier the B vitamins, vitamin A. Are 00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:22.400 there any prenatal vitamins that are on the market that could be good 00:35:22.400 --> 00:35:29.720 apart from just getting the vitamins and nutrients we need from food? I don't 00:35:29.720 --> 00:35:39.800 really know of any. Traditionally they have emphasized iron and the idea that 00:35:39.800 --> 00:35:49.000 women need more iron than men isn't true because estrogen gives women a powerful 00:35:49.000 --> 00:35:57.720 advantage for efficient absorption of iron. From a meager diet, estrogen makes 00:35:57.720 --> 00:36:07.080 you attract into the intestine about ten times as much iron as a man would. And 00:36:07.080 --> 00:36:16.880 the reason so many women seem deficient in iron isn't that they're losing some 00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:25.560 every month with menstruation, that's true, but since the average diet contains 00:36:25.560 --> 00:36:33.720 enough iron if they're absorbing it efficiently, the real cause for the 00:36:33.720 --> 00:36:43.800 apparent anemia is low thyroid function. Thyroid is what governs the formation of 00:36:43.800 --> 00:36:52.040 red blood cells and as the red blood cells form, if you have enough copper in 00:36:52.040 --> 00:37:02.840 your diet that will attach the iron. I would guess it's more than half of the 00:37:02.840 --> 00:37:11.440 diagnosed iron deficiencies in women are really thyroid deficiencies. The 00:37:11.440 --> 00:37:18.080 temperature of your arms and legs powerfully governs your ability to make 00:37:18.080 --> 00:37:24.840 red blood cells and if your thyroid metabolism is low, your arms and legs 00:37:24.840 --> 00:37:31.400 tend to be cooler than optimal and so you slow down your production of red 00:37:31.400 --> 00:37:39.640 blood cells. That's great. Ray, one woman, I'm trying to connect some of these 00:37:39.640 --> 00:37:45.040 questions here, one woman had a question about iron, speaking of iron, and her 00:37:45.040 --> 00:37:53.640 teenage boy, she wanted to know is there a way for us to help my teenage 00:37:53.640 --> 00:38:01.000 boy, my son, lower iron levels even though he's not eligible to donate blood yet? 00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:08.360 Is he having symptoms of iron excess? I don't know anything other than the 00:38:08.360 --> 00:38:16.680 question I got from the woman. If a person simply goes on a milk and 00:38:16.680 --> 00:38:25.080 cheese heavy diet, a couple of eggs per day will provide the required amount of 00:38:25.080 --> 00:38:34.280 iron from them without an excess. If you just go without meat, meat or fish, things 00:38:34.280 --> 00:38:44.640 that are higher in iron, the milk and cheese are so low in iron, within a 00:38:44.640 --> 00:38:54.200 couple of weeks you will probably have normalized your iron stores. You can 00:38:54.200 --> 00:39:01.520 often go on for many weeks without developing an iron deficiency on a milk 00:39:01.520 --> 00:39:08.560 and cheese based diet, but at some point you'll start craving foods that are 00:39:08.560 --> 00:39:15.000 rich in iron when you actually start needing iron. Awesome, that sounds like a 00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:22.680 good rule of thumb. Now iron excess is similar to like 00:39:22.680 --> 00:39:28.480 polyunsaturated fat excess, right? Over time that can be really problematic. Can 00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:36.760 you talk about that at all? Yeah, those interacting tend to start 00:39:36.760 --> 00:39:46.520 causing problems about the age of 45 or 50 or so. With aging, just eating an 00:39:46.520 --> 00:39:54.480 average diet, because the polyunsaturated fats tend to go into storage while 00:39:54.480 --> 00:40:02.880 saturated fats are preferentially oxidized, just an average diet after 00:40:02.880 --> 00:40:10.080 several decades, your tissues become very high in the polyunsaturated fats. 00:40:10.080 --> 00:40:20.000 On a typical American-European diet, we're all getting more iron than we need 00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:28.680 and so the liver and marrow and so on become overloaded with iron. A 00:40:28.680 --> 00:40:36.400 stress that makes us short of oxygen, the same thing that leads to lactic acid 00:40:36.400 --> 00:40:43.400 production, it's a shift in the reducing direction away from the oxidizing 00:40:43.400 --> 00:40:54.520 direction that turns iron atoms in the sources of reactive electrons producing 00:40:54.520 --> 00:41:04.480 hydroxyl ions that cause tissue deterioration. And when the tissues are 00:41:04.480 --> 00:41:10.240 overloaded with phospholipids that have been constructed out of 00:41:10.240 --> 00:41:18.160 polyunsaturated fats, our very tissue structure starts being attacked by these 00:41:18.160 --> 00:41:27.640 hydroxyl activated free radicals of producing chain reactions of inflammation 00:41:27.640 --> 00:41:34.720 of toxic breakdown products that tend to destroy mitochondria and put the cell 00:41:34.720 --> 00:41:43.320 over into the glycolyzing lactic acid producing condition. Interesting, so while 00:41:43.320 --> 00:41:47.560 there are several foods a pregnant woman should definitely be aiming to include 00:41:47.560 --> 00:41:53.240 in her diet, polyunsaturated fat is something a pregnant woman should be 00:41:53.240 --> 00:42:02.560 trying to avoid. Yeah, the studies in various species but for example cows 00:42:02.560 --> 00:42:11.560 that they're easy to study because they're used for meat and so the studies 00:42:11.560 --> 00:42:19.200 there are large amounts of tissue to examine, they find that newborn calves 00:42:19.200 --> 00:42:28.440 brains and other tissues are what we would, dieticians nowadays would say are 00:42:28.440 --> 00:42:37.640 deficient in the so-called essential fatty acids, but eating hay and grass 00:42:37.640 --> 00:42:46.920 and so on, very quickly the tissues start acquiring these polyunsaturated fats. 00:42:46.920 --> 00:42:56.080 But even though the cow was eating a diet rich in the grass PUFA, polyunsaturated 00:42:56.080 --> 00:43:04.240 fats, the newborn calf was completely free of these in its brain and looking 00:43:04.240 --> 00:43:12.120 at humans, they are now saying that the full-term newborn baby typically is 00:43:12.120 --> 00:43:19.640 deficient in the essential fatty acids so they want to give them a supplement 00:43:19.640 --> 00:43:26.840 of these to make the tissue start accumulating them faster. But if you look 00:43:26.840 --> 00:43:33.400 at the brain metabolism of a healthy full-term newborn, their oxygen 00:43:33.400 --> 00:43:39.680 consumption is very high and their free radical toxic breakdown products in the 00:43:39.680 --> 00:43:47.240 blood are extremely low and in the first couple of years the brain and other 00:43:47.240 --> 00:43:54.680 tissues of healthy kids tend to be borderline deficient in the so-called 00:43:54.680 --> 00:44:01.360 essential fatty acids and their brain metabolism and brain function ability to 00:44:01.360 --> 00:44:08.600 learn language quickly are very high and as the brain gets more and more 00:44:08.600 --> 00:44:16.640 saturated over time with the PUFA, the learning ability and the brain 00:44:16.640 --> 00:44:24.800 metabolism are slowing down. That process in an Alzheimer's brain, for example, 00:44:24.800 --> 00:44:34.000 prematurely aging, the polyunsaturated fats are extremely high and they are 00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:41.520 bound up with cholesterol so that the available cholesterol is very low but 00:44:41.520 --> 00:44:49.760 the potentially reactive toxic fatty acids are very high. That's a process you 00:44:49.760 --> 00:44:56.760 want to get to as late as possible and so you don't want to supplement the baby 00:44:56.760 --> 00:45:05.080 with these unstable highly oxidizable polyunsaturated fats. Many of the best 00:45:05.080 --> 00:45:13.880 hospitals now give premature babies intravenous soybean emulsion because of 00:45:13.880 --> 00:45:23.520 this absurd doctrine of essential fatty acids in the brain. Simultaneously at the 00:45:23.520 --> 00:45:32.080 University of California Riverside, professors found that animals brains 00:45:32.080 --> 00:45:43.360 were damaged by a single injection of soybean emulsion. Forty-five years 00:45:43.360 --> 00:45:51.360 previous to that, someone else demonstrated that injecting this soybean 00:45:51.360 --> 00:46:01.160 emulsion, intralipid for example, into a rat's carotid artery, 17% of that 00:46:01.160 --> 00:46:07.840 injected emulsion stuck in the brain, was taken up directly into the brain as 00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:15.240 soybean oil, causing changes, microscopically visible changes from that 00:46:15.240 --> 00:46:23.640 one dose of soybean oil. So almost all the doctors in the country are going to 00:46:23.640 --> 00:46:31.880 be pushing pregnant women and their newborn babies to either eat fish 00:46:31.880 --> 00:46:41.520 oil or supplement with various kinds of polyunsaturated fats. It's basically an 00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:52.200 advertising campaign for industry that is counterfactual. Seems just fraudulent. 00:46:52.200 --> 00:47:01.440 Yeah. So clearly to avoid maternal stress, one way to do that is to 00:47:01.440 --> 00:47:07.320 limit polyunsaturated fat as much as possible. Yeah. What are some non-dietary 00:47:07.320 --> 00:47:18.080 ways a woman can reduce stress during a pregnancy? Oh, doing interesting things. 00:47:18.080 --> 00:47:30.280 Just avoiding things that are fatiguing. Resting as much as feels right. 00:47:30.280 --> 00:47:40.200 Activity that feels good is fine, but whenever it seems desirable to rest, 00:47:40.200 --> 00:47:49.480 that's very important to do. Fifty years ago, it was recognized that bed rest 00:47:49.480 --> 00:47:58.040 sometimes was all that was needed to have a healthier delivery, but recently I 00:47:58.040 --> 00:48:05.560 heard doctors saying that there have been no controlled double-blind studies 00:48:05.560 --> 00:48:12.560 showing that bed rest was helpful for preventing miscarriage, so they didn't 00:48:12.560 --> 00:48:22.840 advocate it. Wow. Great. Thank you for that. This is so great. One woman asked, 00:48:22.840 --> 00:48:28.320 "Can you talk a bit about cholestasis and why that might occur during pregnancy?" 00:48:28.320 --> 00:48:39.400 About what was the word? Cholestasis. Say it again. Cholestasis. Am I saying it right? Oh, of the 00:48:39.400 --> 00:48:47.640 biome. Yes, yes, yes, yes. High estrogen is known to be the villain. 00:48:48.280 --> 00:48:55.120 Just keeping your thyroid up, I think, is the essential thing. Thyroid and 00:48:55.120 --> 00:49:02.680 progesterone are the treatment as well as the prevention. Awesome. Okay, thanks. 00:49:02.680 --> 00:49:10.440 And another woman wrote, "The occurrence of cesarean births, specifically, have 00:49:10.440 --> 00:49:16.240 tripled, have more than tripled in the past 30 years, from about 6% of all 00:49:16.240 --> 00:49:23.840 births to now around 31% as far as statistics go." Wow, that's crazy. 00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:28.160 "How might this impact the generation being born by cesarean?" is the first 00:49:28.160 --> 00:49:31.400 question from this woman, and the second question is, "What effect might this have 00:49:31.400 --> 00:49:40.040 on future generations?" I think the main statistical thing is that it's being 00:49:40.040 --> 00:49:46.160 done for the convenience of doctors and hospitals. They don't like to sit around 00:49:46.160 --> 00:49:55.400 waiting for the woman to be ready to give birth, and I think it often results... 00:49:55.400 --> 00:50:05.720 they have a mechanical calendar model of when the delivery should happen. For 00:50:05.720 --> 00:50:11.760 example, if a woman is just slightly hypothyroid or just has a less than 00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:19.920 optimal ratio of progesterone to estrogen, they can mature the brain 00:50:19.920 --> 00:50:25.680 properly if they just stay pregnant for another month or so. There's 00:50:25.680 --> 00:50:30.880 nothing wrong with prolongation of pregnancy if the woman is still healthy 00:50:30.880 --> 00:50:38.640 and eating well, getting enough sugar and other nutrients delivered to the baby. 00:50:38.640 --> 00:50:49.160 Just by an arbitrary definition of when the pregnancy should terminate, the 00:50:49.160 --> 00:50:56.960 hospitals are creating a lot of underweight babies, and if the baby is 00:50:56.960 --> 00:51:03.000 underweight, its brain is underdeveloped. And in those last three months of 00:51:03.000 --> 00:51:15.360 pregnancy, there's a tremendous... at month six, I think it's about twice as 00:51:15.360 --> 00:51:23.160 many brain precursor cells as will be there at full term. So during that last 00:51:23.160 --> 00:51:32.480 month, if you slow down the death of these brain precursor cells, you're going 00:51:32.480 --> 00:51:38.720 to massively increase the number of functional mature brain cells when the 00:51:38.720 --> 00:51:50.040 baby is born. And the process of brain growth is fastest in the last month, and 00:51:50.040 --> 00:51:57.680 if that's allowed to continue, the future of the baby is going to be healthier in 00:51:57.680 --> 00:52:05.840 every way. The brain is in control of the circulatory system, the immune system, 00:52:05.840 --> 00:52:12.600 metabolism, and so on. So it isn't just that the baby will get in the heart 00:52:12.600 --> 00:52:20.880 ridge, that it will have good immunity, circulation, general vitality if the 00:52:20.880 --> 00:52:26.840 brain is allowed to mature. That was great. Wow, you really you really covered 00:52:26.840 --> 00:52:32.920 a lot in that one. That's amazing. And I, yeah, it's just so sad that the doctors 00:52:32.920 --> 00:52:38.360 are on schedule and that's determining, it seems like, when they want women to 00:52:38.360 --> 00:52:44.840 give birth rather than just the natural course. Yeah, many things are tending in 00:52:44.840 --> 00:52:53.320 the same direction. For example, multiple vaccinations, I think, various 00:52:53.320 --> 00:53:02.720 environmental pollutions, but one of those is multiple vaccinations and other 00:53:02.720 --> 00:53:12.160 over-medicalization. The history of birth weight and brain weight have been 00:53:12.160 --> 00:53:20.040 pretty steadily increasing for a hundred years or so. In the 1980s, in three 00:53:20.040 --> 00:53:27.640 countries, Japan, Germany, and the United States, brains stopped growing. In 00:53:27.640 --> 00:53:33.400 Germany, the body kept growing, getting bigger, heavier babies, but 00:53:33.400 --> 00:53:40.840 without a bigger brain in proportion. In Japan and the U.S., there has been 00:53:40.840 --> 00:53:51.680 actually a downward trend in head circumference at birth. Wow. Ray, you 00:53:51.680 --> 00:53:57.800 mentioned autism and vaccination, I mean, sorry, you mentioned vaccination. Your 00:53:57.800 --> 00:54:02.200 recent, one of your recent newsletters, which I thought was so great, and people 00:54:02.200 --> 00:54:10.200 can subscribe to that by writing to you at Ray P. Newsletters, at gmail.com, is 00:54:10.200 --> 00:54:16.080 that right? Right. It was just, it was great. Can you, can you briefly talk about 00:54:16.080 --> 00:54:21.080 maybe, several women actually asked about the autism connection with 00:54:21.080 --> 00:54:27.400 vaccinations and autism in general, why is autism increasing? Could you speak to 00:54:27.400 --> 00:54:32.880 that at all? Yeah, there have been several studies showing that a woman's 00:54:32.880 --> 00:54:42.480 estrogen balance during pregnancy strongly corresponds to the risk of 00:54:42.480 --> 00:54:54.520 autism. Estrogen creates inflammation and lactic acid excess. Inflammation in, 00:54:54.520 --> 00:55:07.920 during gestation in animal experiments creates behavior that resembles autism. 00:55:07.920 --> 00:55:19.880 The various things that contribute to inflammation during pregnancy include 00:55:19.880 --> 00:55:31.080 the aluminum adjuvants in vaccinations, not only the intentional aluminum 00:55:31.080 --> 00:55:38.320 adjuvant, but a lot of the junk. For example, if they grow the vaccine in a 00:55:38.320 --> 00:55:44.440 culture, the vaccines are known to contain contaminants from the culture 00:55:44.440 --> 00:55:55.680 medium, milk protein, egg protein, various things known, synthetic chemicals known 00:55:55.680 --> 00:56:04.480 to be used in some of the culture media for producing vaccines. All of this junk 00:56:04.480 --> 00:56:13.600 is there producing inflammation. The purpose of the adjuvant is deliberately 00:56:13.600 --> 00:56:21.360 to produce an inflammatory state to activate the immune system to produce the 00:56:21.360 --> 00:56:30.600 antibodies, but an inflammatory state in every study that has investigated it in 00:56:30.600 --> 00:56:37.280 humans and animals both. Inflammation during pregnancy damages the nervous 00:56:37.280 --> 00:56:45.600 system of the fetus. The whole outcome of the organism's health is 00:56:45.600 --> 00:56:52.320 deteriorated by inflammatory conditions during pregnancy. 00:56:52.320 --> 00:56:59.040 Wow. Ray, this question actually is, I think, related. Someone said we seem, and 00:56:59.040 --> 00:57:04.000 you talked about any kind of stress, any kind of inflammation in pregnancy which 00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:12.600 comes from stress, it can be detrimental. Someone said we seem to be so caught up 00:57:12.600 --> 00:57:17.600 recently with this idea of hormesis in our society, like that if you do 00:57:17.600 --> 00:57:22.000 something that's stressful that we're going to have like 00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:28.800 positive adaptation from it. That's another advertising ploy. 00:57:28.800 --> 00:57:37.120 The radiation industry was a leader in developing the whole idea of hormesis. 00:57:37.120 --> 00:57:50.360 If it's something that we produce in making atomic bombs or in doing our 00:57:50.360 --> 00:58:02.480 CAT scans and so on, or radium technologies and so on, it goes way back 00:58:02.480 --> 00:58:13.360 to trying to explain away why some certain commercially valuable amount of 00:58:13.360 --> 00:58:19.120 poisoning isn't something that you can sue the industry for because it's really 00:58:19.120 --> 00:58:26.960 good for you. In the 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission was getting data that 00:58:26.960 --> 00:58:35.760 they were exploding bombs in Nevada. They were causing cancer in people in Utah 00:58:35.760 --> 00:58:44.400 and all of the downwind states, but especially in the nearest towns in Utah. 00:58:44.400 --> 00:58:51.640 To explain away the radioactive elements they were seeing in babies' teeth and 00:58:51.640 --> 00:59:01.440 the increasing mortality in small children with leukemia and bone cancer, 00:59:01.440 --> 00:59:07.360 to explain that away, they invented the idea of hormesis, that these small doses 00:59:07.360 --> 00:59:17.680 are actually good for you. Incredible. They called their big project, 00:59:17.680 --> 00:59:23.600 one of their projects, they called it Project Sunshine. That was the one 00:59:23.600 --> 00:59:30.800 looking at the strontium-90 in babies. Oh my gosh. It sounded nice to call it 00:59:30.800 --> 00:59:38.080 Project Sunshine. Unbelievable. Wow. Ray, one woman asked in relation to the 00:59:38.080 --> 00:59:45.040 autism subject, she said, "If kids already have autism or they are on the 00:59:45.040 --> 00:59:51.320 spectrum," what's a good way to go about this? Are there any things we can do 00:59:51.320 --> 01:00:00.400 to mitigate some of the effects of autism? Yeah, everything that's good for 01:00:00.400 --> 01:00:08.720 the brain of the developing baby is probably still good at any age for 01:00:08.720 --> 01:00:14.400 helping the cells to mature and function. Pregnenolone, progesterone, 01:00:14.400 --> 01:00:22.480 DHEA, all of these are at any stage of life, they're essential brain hormones. 01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:29.360 There are some drugs that have been developed in relation to blood pressure 01:00:29.360 --> 01:00:37.360 and heart disease that probably are working on part of the inflammatory 01:00:37.360 --> 01:00:47.120 system. For example, ACE inhibitors, conferring enzyme inhibitors, and 01:00:47.120 --> 01:00:55.520 enzyme receptor blockers, and calcium blockers. All of these stabilize the 01:00:55.520 --> 01:01:03.640 living state of the cell. The way they're explained isn't necessarily 01:01:03.640 --> 01:01:12.480 very illuminating, but what they're doing is protecting cells against things 01:01:12.480 --> 01:01:18.920 like high estrogen, high lactic acid, deficient sugar, and deficient carbon 01:01:18.920 --> 01:01:27.280 dioxide, and so on. Oh, good to know. Awesome. Now, so Ray, this question is still 01:01:27.280 --> 01:01:32.560 related to pregnancy, during pregnancy. "What would be the best course of action," 01:01:32.560 --> 01:01:39.680 this woman asked, "for someone who experiences frequent migraines?" My own 01:01:39.680 --> 01:01:44.720 migraines were one of the things that got me interested in studying brain 01:01:44.720 --> 01:01:54.880 physiology. And when I was about 10 years old, I noticed that girls were much more 01:01:54.880 --> 01:02:02.320 likely than boys to have migraines, and that got me interested in the physiology 01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:16.600 of estrogen. And the two techniques that I came across, someone in the 1960s told 01:02:16.600 --> 01:02:24.920 me that eating a carrot every day often prevented headaches. I tried it, and it 01:02:24.920 --> 01:02:38.320 worked. And the method, someone studying fertility had one group of women who had 01:02:38.320 --> 01:02:45.360 frequent infections, and so they gave them a series of antibiotic treatments, 01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:51.520 and they found that their cyclic monthly migraines had disappeared when they were 01:02:51.520 --> 01:03:02.760 taking the antibiotic. And it turns out that a carrot a day or an antibiotic has 01:03:02.760 --> 01:03:10.680 the same effect. The antibiotic is suppressing the inflammatory bacteria in 01:03:10.680 --> 01:03:16.160 the intestine. The carrot is, to some extent, suppressing them and carrying 01:03:16.160 --> 01:03:23.920 them out of the body. Following up on the antibiotic effect, they saw that the 01:03:23.920 --> 01:03:31.800 women taking the antibiotic had lower estrogen, lower cortisol, and higher 01:03:31.800 --> 01:03:42.960 progesterone. Same thing, we tested a few women without and with a daily carrot, 01:03:42.960 --> 01:03:47.720 same thing happened. Their estrogen and cortisol went down when they ate a daily 01:03:47.720 --> 01:04:01.120 carrot. And then supplementing thyroid, I found that I wasn't so bound to my carrot 01:04:01.120 --> 01:04:09.160 addiction. The thyroid itself helps to lower estrogen and cortisol and keep your 01:04:09.160 --> 01:04:18.920 progesterone, DHEA, and pregnenoline up. And once when I, for example, in San 01:04:18.920 --> 01:04:26.400 Francisco, I was taking my thyroid supplement and not realizing that 01:04:26.400 --> 01:04:37.240 fluoridated water knocks out T3, destroys T3 totally. And I became suddenly very 01:04:37.240 --> 01:04:46.840 hypothyroid and developed a migraine. And I happened to have the progesterone and 01:04:46.840 --> 01:04:53.440 vitamin E. I took about 100 milligrams on my tongue. And within seconds, the 01:04:53.440 --> 01:05:02.080 visual flashing effect started right at the center of my visual field, quieted 01:05:02.080 --> 01:05:10.920 down, and this area of visual quiet spread quickly during about 30 or 40 01:05:10.920 --> 01:05:19.120 seconds, covered my whole visual field. And a sense of well-being kept flowing. 01:05:19.120 --> 01:05:24.760 And after about a minute, all of the sickness and headache had disappeared 01:05:24.760 --> 01:05:33.560 and I got sleepy. I experienced that effect twice, exactly the same effect of 01:05:33.560 --> 01:05:41.440 about 100, 150 milligrams of progesterone, quieting the visual effect within 01:05:41.440 --> 01:05:47.480 seconds and totally knocking out the headache in about two minutes. 01:05:47.480 --> 01:05:56.000 Wow, that's amazing. Ray, with the carrot and the antibiotic, is like twice a week 01:05:56.000 --> 01:06:02.440 activated charcoal, would that be kind of a similar deal? The animal studies 01:06:02.440 --> 01:06:08.960 suggest, yeah, that it's doing much of the same. It has an antibiotic effect. The 01:06:08.960 --> 01:06:20.560 pores in the charcoal act as catalysts and break down endotoxin. So it's 01:06:20.560 --> 01:06:30.720 working chemically as well as an antibiotic. Great, awesome. This woman, Ray, 01:06:30.720 --> 01:06:36.920 asks about PCOS or polycystic ovary syndrome. She says, "How can I begin to 01:06:36.920 --> 01:06:47.640 correct it?" Having a vitamin D blood test probably is helpful. Vitamin D is 01:06:47.640 --> 01:06:56.680 one of the things widely recognized as helping it. And the animal experiments in 01:06:56.680 --> 01:07:05.760 which they would remove the thyroid gland and then give a gonadotropin to 01:07:05.760 --> 01:07:13.360 increase the estrogen production, that combination boosting the ovaries while 01:07:13.360 --> 01:07:21.040 cutting out the thyroid will reliably produce polycystic ovaries in animals. 01:07:21.040 --> 01:07:27.520 And so that implies that you would want to start with normalizing the thyroid 01:07:27.520 --> 01:07:33.880 and then check on the balance of estrogen to progesterone, probably 01:07:33.880 --> 01:07:42.640 needing a supplement of progesterone to balance the overactive adrenals. When 01:07:42.640 --> 01:07:48.640 something like a hypothyroidism limits the ability of the ovary to make 01:07:48.640 --> 01:07:57.960 progesterone, the adrenals become hyperactive in response to the estrogen 01:07:57.960 --> 01:08:05.080 excitatory action. The adrenals aren't as good at making progesterone, so they 01:08:05.080 --> 01:08:11.840 make lots of testosterone, which has the same anti-excitatory protective effect. 01:08:11.840 --> 01:08:19.200 But that becomes a vicious circle and you can break it with thyroid, 01:08:19.200 --> 01:08:27.080 progesterone, and vitamin D. Oh, great. Ray, this woman asked about labs 01:08:27.080 --> 01:08:32.560 too. You said about the labs, getting a lab done during pregnancy. 01:08:32.560 --> 01:08:38.440 One woman asked, "What are the most helpful labs? Are there any other labs that 01:08:38.440 --> 01:08:42.680 would help during pregnancy to best understand current health status?" 01:08:42.680 --> 01:08:47.880 Yeah, making sure that your thyroid is good. Temperature and pulse are very 01:08:47.880 --> 01:08:55.120 important. Waking temperature and pulse rate and middle of the day, another 01:08:55.120 --> 01:09:03.240 measurement. And any blood tests that would validate a good thyroid function. 01:09:03.240 --> 01:09:10.920 But the ratio of progesterone to estrogen is very important. Some fertility 01:09:10.920 --> 01:09:19.480 clinics found that women whose progesterone was not 50 times or more 01:09:19.480 --> 01:09:26.560 higher than the estrogen were the ones who didn't get pregnant. So, if they had 01:09:26.560 --> 01:09:32.920 50 to 100 times as much progesterone as estrogen, they were the ones that would 01:09:32.920 --> 01:09:39.640 get pregnant. And then their ratio would tend to stay very good, heavily 01:09:39.640 --> 01:09:47.280 towards progesterone. And that's something that should be tested about at 01:09:47.280 --> 01:09:52.680 least twice during a pregnancy to make sure that the estrogen isn't creeping up. 01:09:52.680 --> 01:10:00.480 In animal studies, if you make a graph of estrogen and progesterone, all of the 01:10:00.480 --> 01:10:06.080 animals studied, there is a constant increase, just a straight line of both 01:10:06.080 --> 01:10:11.680 progesterone and estrogen, but with the progesterone being many times higher 01:10:11.680 --> 01:10:22.520 until the day of delivery. The recognition in the medical world that 01:10:22.520 --> 01:10:31.280 most pregnancies are defective turns up as advice that your progesterone should 01:10:31.280 --> 01:10:36.960 level off after month six. But all of the animal studies say that the best 01:10:36.960 --> 01:10:43.360 pregnancies turn out when the progesterone has continued to rise 01:10:43.360 --> 01:10:50.280 steadily right up to the last days of pregnancy. Wow, that's great. The same 01:10:50.280 --> 01:11:02.520 woman, Ray, asked, "Is metabolism linked to the length of gestation?" Yeah, a good high 01:11:02.520 --> 01:11:09.800 thyroid metabolism, keeping your blood sugar steady, letting you keep the 01:11:09.800 --> 01:11:16.760 progesterone increasing, not letting the estrogen get out of proportion. Since 01:11:16.760 --> 01:11:24.240 estrogen dominance triggers cortisol production, cortisol triggers premature 01:11:24.240 --> 01:11:29.920 delivery. So you want to keep your sugar intake high enough that your 01:11:29.920 --> 01:11:39.320 cortisol doesn't tend to rise terminating the pregnancy. Okay, great. 01:11:39.320 --> 01:11:45.920 And is that because in general sugar can help? Yeah, the sugar is the 01:11:45.920 --> 01:11:55.880 primary limiting factor for brain growth. Chickens, for example, have very 01:11:55.880 --> 01:12:05.320 small brains. The egg holds only a certain amount of glucose and some of 01:12:05.320 --> 01:12:13.400 the protein can break down to make glucose, but an egg is a closed world. 01:12:13.400 --> 01:12:21.960 The brain is known to stop developing when the glucose present in the egg is 01:12:21.960 --> 01:12:29.880 used up, but experimenters made a hole in the egg and then at the day that they 01:12:29.880 --> 01:12:39.160 knew that the glucose was reaching zero, they injected either glucose or 01:12:39.160 --> 01:12:44.280 amino acids that could be turned into glucose, and they found that the 01:12:44.280 --> 01:12:52.120 chicken's brain kept developing for the rest of its gestational period, producing 01:12:52.120 --> 01:13:03.360 chickens with bigger brains than it ever happened naturally. So the amount of 01:13:03.360 --> 01:13:09.840 brain development in the case of a chicken isn't developmental, it's 01:13:09.840 --> 01:13:16.000 environmental. The egg just didn't hold enough glucose to finish making a smart 01:13:16.000 --> 01:13:24.680 chicken, and if your glucose is limited after the six months of 01:13:24.680 --> 01:13:33.520 pregnancy, the brain stops developing. In the 50s, experiments were done on dogs 01:13:33.520 --> 01:13:40.160 and other animals, and they found that if they gave a little bit of insulin, lowering 01:13:40.160 --> 01:13:47.760 the mother's blood sugar, the cell division in the fetus's brain came to a 01:13:47.760 --> 01:13:55.240 stop. If they added estrogen, same thing happened. Blood sugar dipped, the brain 01:13:55.240 --> 01:14:01.720 stopped growing. On that note, Ray, would you say anything to a 01:14:01.720 --> 01:14:11.800 woman who has been tested as a gestationally diabetic? Oh, that was... 01:14:11.800 --> 01:14:22.440 First, there was the real diabetes, which was defined as high blood sugar and 01:14:22.440 --> 01:14:29.800 excess urination, leading to wasting away. The body tissues were being turned into 01:14:29.800 --> 01:14:38.240 sugar, so it was a wasting disease. So they developed a market for insulin, and 01:14:38.240 --> 01:14:46.200 they found that they could create a new type 2 diabetes and have a new 01:14:46.200 --> 01:14:54.120 market for selling insulin and then other drugs to lower the blood sugar. 01:14:54.120 --> 01:15:01.920 That market was saturated, type 1 and 2 diabetes. They came up with gestational 01:15:01.920 --> 01:15:13.880 diabetes, but the old obstetricians, several of them have told me that they 01:15:13.880 --> 01:15:20.200 observed that women, diabetic women, so-called, who had high blood sugar 01:15:20.200 --> 01:15:29.600 during pregnancy often had babies with very large heads. I happened to talk to 01:15:29.600 --> 01:15:37.200 one of those women. Her doctor had sent her to me for a weight loss diet, and her 01:15:37.200 --> 01:15:42.680 blood sugar was only 130 or so, but the doctor told her she needed to stop 01:15:42.680 --> 01:15:52.600 gaining weight and not have another baby like the previous one. I said, "What's 01:15:52.600 --> 01:15:59.240 that baby like?" She said, "He's two years old, wears an adult hat, and reads adult 01:15:59.240 --> 01:16:09.760 literature." So I don't think the invention of gestational diabetes was 01:16:09.760 --> 01:16:18.200 very constructive. Great. Ray, this question comes from a woman. She's 01:16:18.200 --> 01:16:24.200 asking about extended breastfeeding, and she says she's asking if for those who 01:16:24.200 --> 01:16:29.400 are extending breastfeeding beyond two years or more, would there be 01:16:29.400 --> 01:16:34.880 any additional considerations as far as diet and supplementation? Yeah, drinking 01:16:34.880 --> 01:16:45.440 lots of milk. Some women whose milk seems to be limited, just drinking, 01:16:45.440 --> 01:16:50.800 adding a quart of orange juice to their diet, getting their sugar and 01:16:50.800 --> 01:17:00.440 potassium up, is sometimes overcoming limited ability to lactate. But if you're 01:17:00.440 --> 01:17:05.760 doing it chronically for more than a year, you need to make sure you're 01:17:05.760 --> 01:17:13.560 getting lots of calcium and protein yourself. Awesome. Same woman asks, "Does 01:17:13.560 --> 01:17:19.960 the continued production of high levels of prolactin involved in breastfeeding 01:17:19.960 --> 01:17:25.560 necessary to lactate, does that have a negative impact on the breastfeeder 01:17:25.560 --> 01:17:33.520 itself?" If you keep your thyroid function up, you won't experience bad effects 01:17:33.520 --> 01:17:41.800 from that prolonged... the prolactin does guide metabolism towards producing milk, 01:17:41.800 --> 01:17:49.160 and thyroid is the other. It keeps your ability up to produce the sugar if 01:17:49.160 --> 01:17:54.800 you're getting lots of protein and carbohydrate and minerals in your diet. 01:17:54.800 --> 01:18:02.640 The thyroid supports the lactation and it keeps your pituitary from over 01:18:02.640 --> 01:18:10.400 producing a stress-induced prolactin. So it would be good to have both the 01:18:10.400 --> 01:18:20.040 thyroid and the prolactin test maybe a year into lactation. Okay, great. 01:18:20.040 --> 01:18:25.080 That's awesome. This woman asked about childhood allergies. Actually there 01:18:25.080 --> 01:18:30.120 were several women who wrote in about childhood allergies, specifically eczema, 01:18:30.120 --> 01:18:36.720 and they're asking what might this be caused by and how can we mitigate or 01:18:36.720 --> 01:18:44.880 help that. Some studies found that the women who were urged to supplement 01:18:44.880 --> 01:18:51.760 with things like fatty fish, high intake of omega-3 fats, those were the 01:18:51.760 --> 01:19:02.800 women who had the most allergic children. So it's prenatal inflammation again. 01:19:02.800 --> 01:19:11.320 Those fats aren't really very compatible with pregnancy and so they 01:19:11.320 --> 01:19:19.840 create a tendency to suppress the thyroid and maintain inflammation. 01:19:19.840 --> 01:19:26.320 If a kid is having allergies, you should check especially their vitamin D 01:19:26.320 --> 01:19:35.320 and thyroid level. Sometimes supplementing those will make an allergy 01:19:35.320 --> 01:19:43.160 disappear. Awesome. Thanks, Ray. A few more here. These questions I think are 01:19:43.160 --> 01:19:48.960 great and they're obviously directly related to some concerns and some 01:19:48.960 --> 01:19:52.920 thoughts and just things that these women think I think are important, which 01:19:52.920 --> 01:20:00.560 is great. This woman asked about reversing autoimmunity in the toddler. 01:20:00.560 --> 01:20:11.160 Oh, progesterone has the most immediate effects against some things like 01:20:11.160 --> 01:20:20.680 rheumatoid arthritis and estrogen for a long time has been known as the main 01:20:20.680 --> 01:20:27.600 villain. Women have at least five times the incidence of all kinds of 01:20:27.600 --> 01:20:36.520 autoimmune diseases as men and so it's been known for several decades that 01:20:36.520 --> 01:20:46.600 estrogen creates these. Way back in the 50s, women who were getting the early 01:20:46.600 --> 01:20:52.120 estrogen treatments were coming down with horrible rheumatoid arthritis and 01:20:52.120 --> 01:21:00.120 other autoimmune conditions, but the estrogen industry has diverted attention 01:21:00.120 --> 01:21:09.120 from that. Just by stopping taking supplements, I saw one woman in a week go 01:21:09.120 --> 01:21:18.200 from totally incapacitated by rheumatoid arthritis to having no symptoms just by 01:21:18.200 --> 01:21:25.240 stopping her medical estrogen supplement. Another woman with scleroderma 01:21:25.240 --> 01:21:32.360 was getting a hardening of the backs of her hands and her face just by stopping 01:21:32.360 --> 01:21:41.560 the estrogen. That cleared up. Adding progesterone has the same effect as 01:21:41.560 --> 01:21:54.640 withdrawing from estrogen. Normalizing thyroid function and maintaining a good 01:21:54.640 --> 01:22:03.560 level of progesterone and vitamin D. So far I haven't seen it fail to stop the 01:22:03.560 --> 01:22:10.720 so-called autoimmune symptoms. Dry eyes is another one. Sometimes thyroid load 01:22:10.720 --> 01:22:21.080 does it, but all of the natural stabilizing factors, vitamin D, calcium, 01:22:21.080 --> 01:22:28.400 adequate protein, as well as the thyroid and progesterone. 01:22:28.400 --> 01:22:34.560 That's great. Ray, this woman asks, "What is actually considered early puberty in 01:22:34.560 --> 01:22:41.200 children?" Another woman asks about preteen hormones and should I honor 01:22:41.200 --> 01:22:48.160 craving that my child might have for sugar, for example, or should I let them 01:22:48.160 --> 01:22:52.400 eat as much sugar as they want? 01:22:52.400 --> 01:23:04.480 It's important not to keep sugar in your mouth steadily so it satisfies the 01:23:04.480 --> 01:23:15.680 appetite, but then rinse the mouth to reduce cavities. What was the first 01:23:15.680 --> 01:23:16.680 question? 01:23:16.680 --> 01:23:20.960 Yes, sorry about that. I kind of asked a few questions at once. The first 01:23:20.960 --> 01:23:24.720 question was, "What is actually considered early puberty in children?" 01:23:24.720 --> 01:23:36.200 It's just a statistical thing. I looked at the average age of puberty in girls 01:23:36.200 --> 01:23:50.960 in areas that were coconut-based economies. Their average age was 18. In 01:23:50.960 --> 01:23:57.720 animal experiments, polyunsaturated fats acting like estrogen, increasing 01:23:57.720 --> 01:24:05.480 estrogen production and activity, you can bring on puberty earlier with 01:24:05.480 --> 01:24:12.840 excess PUFA in the diet. My interpretation was that the coconuts in their 01:24:12.840 --> 01:24:21.800 diet were protecting against the estrogenic effects of polyunsaturated 01:24:21.800 --> 01:24:29.680 fats. The tendency in the last several decades has been for puberty to come 01:24:29.680 --> 01:24:36.440 earlier and earlier so that even 8 years old isn't considered extreme 01:24:36.440 --> 01:24:48.320 anymore. It had been that 9 years old about 40 years ago was notable as 01:24:48.320 --> 01:25:00.280 early puberty, but 8 years, I think now, is in the same position that 9-year 01:25:00.280 --> 01:25:03.440 old puberty was 40 years ago. 01:25:03.440 --> 01:25:11.760 Wow, that just seems awfully early, for sure. Back to the sugar question, 01:25:11.760 --> 01:25:15.480 because I kind of put those together. You mentioned something about keeping 01:25:15.480 --> 01:25:20.000 sugar in the mouth too long. Does that just mean maybe rinsing after you've 01:25:20.000 --> 01:25:23.800 consumed sugar being a good effective measure? 01:25:23.800 --> 01:25:24.800 Yes. 01:25:24.800 --> 01:25:28.600 Rinsing with water and salt or what? 01:25:28.600 --> 01:25:31.200 No, just plain water. 01:25:31.200 --> 01:25:38.080 Okay, great. Ray, there's two more questions here. One woman asked, 01:25:38.080 --> 01:25:41.560 actually three more questions. This is so great, by the way. Thank you so 01:25:41.560 --> 01:25:47.360 much for doing this. This woman asked about endometriosis, how that 01:25:47.360 --> 01:25:53.320 developed and why the tissue can become displaced in various spots in the 01:25:53.320 --> 01:25:57.640 body. 01:25:57.640 --> 01:26:07.920 The estrogen effect is to activate cell division and at an extreme, 01:26:07.920 --> 01:26:14.960 it increases the motility of the cells and the looseness. Progesterone 01:26:14.960 --> 01:26:21.240 should come in quickly and change the development of the tissue into 01:26:21.240 --> 01:26:30.840 glandular tissue. I think the basic problem is low thyroid function. When 01:26:30.840 --> 01:26:38.280 your estrogen isn't eliminated quickly and progesterone isn't produced 01:26:38.280 --> 01:26:45.760 abundantly and quickly, then the endometrial cells keep getting the 01:26:45.760 --> 01:26:56.200 stimulus and besides growing excessively, they lose their tissue 01:26:56.200 --> 01:27:00.400 integrity when there isn't enough progesterone. It's the same effect in 01:27:00.400 --> 01:27:08.080 the cancer cell. Cancer under the influence of estrogen becomes more 01:27:08.080 --> 01:27:16.880 likely to metastasize and progesterone makes it tend to stay put. All of 01:27:16.880 --> 01:27:24.320 the women that I've known who had very serious endometriosis, I cured it 01:27:24.320 --> 01:27:30.800 immediately when they corrected their hypothyroidism. Just an immediate 01:27:30.800 --> 01:27:34.000 turning off of all of the symptoms. 01:27:34.000 --> 01:27:39.520 - Awesome. That's great, Rick. All right. I saved these last two 01:27:39.520 --> 01:27:45.440 questions because I thought they were kind of more general parenting kind 01:27:45.440 --> 01:27:51.600 of topics. The first was from someone who said, "What do you think is the 01:27:51.600 --> 01:27:56.400 ideal learning environment for a young human together with a young family?" 01:27:56.400 --> 01:27:58.680 - Together with what? 01:27:58.680 --> 01:28:05.320 - Together with a young child and the family. What's the appropriate or 01:28:05.320 --> 01:28:10.040 what's the optimal learning environment? Also schools, et cetera, is the 01:28:10.040 --> 01:28:11.040 question. 01:28:11.040 --> 01:28:21.400 - I think the optimal thing is to have an interesting environment and that 01:28:21.400 --> 01:28:30.760 includes having adults talking about interesting things, constantly being 01:28:30.760 --> 01:28:44.040 engaged in doing something that's interesting, which could be working. Any 01:28:44.040 --> 01:28:49.000 activity that is meaningful to the adult is going to be a learning 01:28:49.000 --> 01:28:59.480 experience for the kids. Experiencing adults being interested in life, I 01:28:59.480 --> 01:29:05.080 think, is the most important thing for kids to see that the world is 01:29:05.080 --> 01:29:15.560 intrinsically interesting and a matter for exploration, not for 01:29:15.560 --> 01:29:16.560 indoctrination. 01:29:16.560 --> 01:29:22.960 - That's awesome. Ray, that's so great. The last question is, I guess, 01:29:22.960 --> 01:29:30.080 kind of related because it was, "Does Ray have any kind of parting message 01:29:30.080 --> 01:29:34.880 from this for parents?" I think you might have kind of talked about that, but 01:29:34.880 --> 01:29:38.480 the question was, "Would you have any kind of overriding message that you 01:29:38.480 --> 01:29:45.200 would give to parents of our next generation of people?" 01:29:45.200 --> 01:29:59.440 - To be watchful for imposed doctrines and ideologies and procedures, being 01:29:59.440 --> 01:30:13.040 critical of medical doctrines is just a starting point. The world, the 01:30:13.040 --> 01:30:22.240 culture has some very dangerous things that it wants to impose. You have to 01:30:22.240 --> 01:30:27.840 be watchful for the multiple ways those keep turning up. 01:30:27.840 --> 01:30:32.080 - We certainly have our work cut out for us, don't we? 01:30:32.080 --> 01:30:32.880 - Yeah. 01:30:32.880 --> 01:30:41.680 - Ray, you're such a...I mean, this is such a bright light in so many ways. I 01:30:41.680 --> 01:30:45.680 really enjoy this. I also know that there's so many women who are going to 01:30:45.680 --> 01:30:50.320 listen to this and so many families and so many men and so many children who 01:30:50.320 --> 01:30:54.560 are actually going to hear this. I think we're all grateful for your time and 01:30:54.560 --> 01:30:59.760 your knowledge and your experience and your thoughtfulness. Thank you so 01:30:59.760 --> 01:31:00.800 much. 01:31:00.800 --> 01:31:03.440 - Okay. Fun talking to you. 01:31:03.440 --> 01:31:05.200 - Likewise. Until next time. 01:31:05.200 --> 01:31:07.280 - Bye. 01:31:07.280 --> 01:31:09.920 - Okay. Bye.