WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.320 Del podcast. I am pleased to have Dr. Peat on with me again today. So I don't think he needs any 00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:12.000 introduction, but I will give a slight introduction. And those of you who have not 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:20.560 familiarized yourself yet with Dr. Raymond Peat, you can check him out at r a y p e a t.com. And 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:26.400 we're going to be talking today about testosterone and high cortisol. And, you know, I, I wanted to 00:00:26.400 --> 00:00:31.360 touch on this because we're seeing a lot, or at least I am seeing a lot in my nutrition practice 00:00:31.360 --> 00:00:36.080 of clients coming in with their blood work and having too high of cortisol and too low of 00:00:36.080 --> 00:00:42.480 testosterone, even women. So I think it's a pretty important topic. And I wanted to ask the, what I 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:48.000 consider the, in my opinion, the leading authority in health and wellness, since he's been teaching 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:53.520 now and probably, well, I would say learning and teaching for how many years, Dr. Peat, altogether? 00:00:55.120 --> 00:01:06.960 As early as 1960. I was doing it independently. Then I concentrated on the hormones between 1968 00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:12.880 and 72 when I got my PhD. Yeah, I, I know you've taught at many numerous schools, 00:01:12.880 --> 00:01:17.120 the University of Oregon, Urbana College, Montana State University, the Natural College of 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:23.760 Naturopathic Medicine, and you've even taught internationally in Mexico as well. So I mean, 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:28.800 since I consider you the leading authority based on everybody that I've looked into over the years 00:01:28.800 --> 00:01:33.280 to try to get my information from, and as a nutritionist, I find that yours is the most 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:38.880 logical and the most backed with science. So I really appreciate all that you've taught me so 00:01:38.880 --> 00:01:43.920 far. And I know my listeners will really benefit from this podcast too. So I want to talk to you 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:49.440 specifically about low testosterone and high cortisol, kind of a tag team of symptoms I'm 00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:53.840 seeing. And I want you to fill my listeners in on why this might be happening. Maybe you've 00:01:53.840 --> 00:02:00.560 seen it kind of come to fruition too. And maybe there's some listening out there that have some 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:04.960 of the symptoms that I wanted you to touch on with regard to it as well. So could you talk about 00:02:04.960 --> 00:02:12.800 why maybe cortisol is so high in so many people right now and the sex hormones basically are down? 00:02:15.200 --> 00:02:23.520 Well, it isn't the sex hormones as a group because estrogen rises when you're under stress 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:35.200 along with cortisol. And when the androgens in general decrease, that usually goes with a 00:02:35.200 --> 00:02:48.240 decrease of progesterone. And that creates a susceptibility to stress. And everything harmful 00:02:48.240 --> 00:02:58.560 practically will increase both your estrogen and cortisol. And the first barrier to harm 00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:09.280 is the group of steroids, pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone. All of 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:18.240 these have broadly overlapping protective effects that protect your energy apparatus, 00:03:19.040 --> 00:03:26.320 your sensory apparatus, keep things stable and working. And 00:03:26.320 --> 00:03:34.560 injury simply doesn't happen when you have a great abundance of those things. 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:51.600 You can run a marathon or swim in ice water, do all sorts of things that could kill a more fragile 00:03:51.600 --> 00:04:00.240 person. But if you're really well supplied with pregnenolone and its derivatives down to 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:12.880 testosterone, you've got endurance so you don't experience stress. When something happens that 00:04:12.880 --> 00:04:22.080 you're not abundantly producing the protective steroids, then any little thing becomes stressful. 00:04:24.320 --> 00:04:36.160 Just walking can be a stress. Breathing harder, you will shift over to the lactic acid metabolism. 00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:47.840 With increasing age or malnutrition, anything that interferes with the production of these 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:57.600 protective steroids makes you then shift over to the emergency production of cortisol. 00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:08.320 And all of these protective steroids block the effect of cortisol so that you can take a cortisol 00:05:08.320 --> 00:05:15.920 pill or prednisone or whatever and have very little harm from it if you're 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:26.720 fairly saturated with progesterone, DHEA, testosterone. Because they're preventing 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:33.040 the action as well as taking care of some of the things that cortisol would produce. 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:41.040 For example, cortisol maintains your blood sugar level so that you can keep working. 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:48.400 But it does it by converting your protein tissues, muscles, skin, 00:05:48.400 --> 00:05:58.800 thymus gland, lymphatic tissues in general, and finally digestive system, 00:05:59.760 --> 00:06:08.320 liver and intestine, will be cannibalized to make sugar and energy under the influence of cortisol. 00:06:08.320 --> 00:06:19.760 The protective effect of testosterone was demonstrated once using radioactive 00:06:20.560 --> 00:06:30.320 testosterone molecules. They infected it into athletes and thought that they would see 00:06:30.320 --> 00:06:38.320 radiation coming out of their muscles, but what they saw was that most of the radiation 00:06:38.320 --> 00:06:47.440 was coming from their heart. Testosterone is most concentrated in the organs that are most 00:06:47.440 --> 00:06:54.560 vital to survival. So it concentrates in the heart, lungs, and brain at the highest 00:06:54.560 --> 00:07:07.840 ratio to protein. Even though it's responsible for making an athlete's muscles bigger and bigger 00:07:07.840 --> 00:07:15.520 under the influence of testosterone, what it's doing is preventing those being used up for energy. 00:07:16.640 --> 00:07:23.760 So with age, if you're producing less of the protective steroids, a given amount of cortisol 00:07:23.760 --> 00:07:31.440 might not look extremely high in relation to the standards. But if you're pregnant on progesterone, 00:07:31.440 --> 00:07:40.000 DHEA, and testosterone are lower than average, even a moderate amount of cortisol begins eating 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:50.160 up your muscles and skin, and eventually it can start deteriorating your heart, lungs, and brain. 00:07:50.160 --> 00:07:58.080 Wow, that is... I wanted to come back to the athlete kind of mentality of low testosterone 00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:02.080 and high cortisol, because I think that's really important to talk about too. But you had said 00:08:02.080 --> 00:08:07.680 something that kind of made me question, like, is it the chicken or the egg? Like, is it a high 00:08:07.680 --> 00:08:14.400 cortisol response that leads to things like low progesterone, low testosterone? Or is it something 00:08:14.400 --> 00:08:19.280 happening that causes the low progesterone, low testosterone, and leads to the stress response 00:08:19.280 --> 00:08:29.120 of high cortisol? It's usually a gradual deterioration from poor nutrition or eating 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:36.000 foods that are irritating or toxic, or things that, for example, foods that suppress your 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:43.680 thyroid function. Thyroid is necessary to produce these protective steroids. 00:08:43.680 --> 00:08:53.360 Cholesterol is converted pretty massively in the pregnenolone and the other protective steroids, 00:08:53.360 --> 00:09:01.440 if you have vitamin A and thyroid hormone adequately. But if you're deficient in either of 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:10.080 those, the cholesterol will rise in your blood. That generally means that you're not making enough 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:19.280 DHEA and testosterone, for example. So low thyroid, which causes high cholesterol, 00:09:19.280 --> 00:09:26.320 the real meaning of that is that you're not making enough of the protective testosterone 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:33.440 and related steroids. And when that happens, your cortisol and other stress hormones rise. 00:09:33.440 --> 00:09:45.680 So low thyroid is the most common thing responsible for a bad ratio of cortisol to testosterone. 00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:52.000 That makes complete sense. And so then leading into, like, whether it's the bad foods or 00:09:52.000 --> 00:10:00.400 the thyroid being a result of poor nutrition, as you say, too, could it also be, like the athletes 00:10:00.400 --> 00:10:04.720 we were talking about, maybe over-training, over-exercising that can also lead to this, 00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:08.800 like just too much chronic output that's stressing the body in a physical manner? 00:10:08.800 --> 00:10:17.440 Yeah, someone did an experiment putting people on a treadmill and measuring their active thyroid 00:10:17.440 --> 00:10:27.120 hormone, T3, and they had them walk at, they kept their pulse rate at 120 beats per minute or less, 00:10:27.120 --> 00:10:35.200 just very mild walking on the treadmill. And in an hour, they had become hypothyroid in the sense 00:10:35.200 --> 00:10:44.960 of reducing their activation of thyroid into T3. But doctors are now being taught that 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:54.000 they should ignore T3, the active hormone, and think about only thyroid-stimulating hormone, TSH, 00:10:54.000 --> 00:11:02.480 and only thyroxin or T4. But when you're, an athlete, for example, is suppressing their T3, 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:14.560 their thyroxin will actually rise in a reaction. And so doctors are being taught things that will 00:11:14.560 --> 00:11:21.120 make them necessarily miss the effects of stress on your thyroid, and that leads to 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:30.080 misinterpretation of everything downstream. For example, when your thyroid goes down from stress, 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:40.000 your estrogen normally is being excreted and kept at a low level systemically by the thyroid 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:48.560 activating the liver metabolism. The liver solubilizes estrogen, making it leave through 00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:57.840 the kidneys and be excreted. If your thyroid drops from stress, very quickly your estrogen will rise, 00:11:57.840 --> 00:12:05.680 and then the estrogen activates directly on the adrenals. It increases cortisol production 00:12:06.880 --> 00:12:15.600 and many other levels. It activates your pituitary to stimulate cortisol production from the adrenals, 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:21.040 and it activates your brain in many different ways through the corticotropic 00:12:21.040 --> 00:12:34.400 release factor, CRH, to activate the adrenals and pituitary. So just dropping the 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:46.880 active thyroid, you very quickly turn on both the estrogen and the whole cortisol stress system. 00:12:46.880 --> 00:12:53.440 And I would assume someone who is looking to put on muscle and maybe an athlete that's looking to 00:12:53.440 --> 00:12:58.160 train for an event, they're not going to want excess estrogen. And so what that study you were 00:12:58.160 --> 00:13:04.240 saying is like they were just walking and T3 was reduced. And so imagine these people, are you 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:16.080 familiar, Dr. Peat, with like CrossFit? Yeah, intense over exertion. The Russians were 50 or 00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:23.120 60 years ago being accused of using testosterone because they had worked out the way to under 00:13:23.120 --> 00:13:32.080 train, avoid over exertion, and so keep their stress hormones down and their cortisol up. 00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:39.440 It takes really a very moderate amount of muscle building exercise to increase testosterone and 00:13:39.440 --> 00:13:45.840 lower cortisol. The muscle itself becomes an endocrine organ in a constructive sense. 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:54.400 If you're under stress, your muscle will actually produce cortisol and not testosterone. When it's 00:13:54.400 --> 00:14:04.160 properly stimulated, the muscle becomes a testosterone producing organ. It isn't just the 00:14:04.160 --> 00:14:08.720 gonads that produce testosterone if you're doing things right. 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:15.600 Interesting. So pretty much this chronic output of like these CrossFit classes they're going to 00:14:15.600 --> 00:14:19.040 and heavy lifting or heavy duty weight training and things like that. 00:14:20.400 --> 00:14:32.080 Yeah, a woman doing just one or two minutes of mild dumbbell lifts and a few squats for the big 00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:38.160 leg muscles can shift her balance from cortisol to testosterone. 00:14:38.160 --> 00:14:45.200 Okay, and so any more than that? And it just takes a minute or two, two or three times a day, 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:52.320 whatever it takes to increase the muscle mass. It's really a very small, small amount of 00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:58.320 muscle lifting type exercise. Okay, so that's good to know. So it's like 00:14:58.320 --> 00:15:03.760 it is beneficial to lift heavy things, but we don't need to do these hour-long CrossFit classes 00:15:03.760 --> 00:15:08.000 that are pushing your body to the limit and doing it every day kind of thing to where 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:12.400 instead of creating muscle building, you're actually inducing a cortisol response, yes? 00:15:13.760 --> 00:15:18.880 Yes. Okay, yeah. So that's really, I'm glad we're talking about this because I think there's a 00:15:18.880 --> 00:15:23.280 mentality out there that more is better. So if lifting heavy things is good, I should lift it 00:15:23.280 --> 00:15:27.840 all the time and strain my body and stress my body. But the people that I've seen that exercise 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:32.240 the most, like my clients that have exercised the most, they're the ones that I'm seeing with 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:38.480 high sex hormone binding globulin and low testosterone. So can you talk a little bit 00:15:38.480 --> 00:15:47.520 about sex hormone binding globulin, if I can say that word right? I think that is the body's 00:15:47.520 --> 00:15:55.760 defense against estrogen. When it's high, a woman has a lower risk of breast cancer because 00:15:55.760 --> 00:16:04.320 it keeps the estrogen out of cells. It actually tends to pull estrogen out of cells protectively. 00:16:05.760 --> 00:16:12.640 But when it's high in response, depending against estrogen, it can also interfere with 00:16:12.640 --> 00:16:18.880 testosterone effect. So you mentioned a little bit of how cortisol and estrogen are related, 00:16:18.880 --> 00:16:24.080 but there's another kind of player in all of this too that we should talk about, which is adrenaline. 00:16:24.080 --> 00:16:29.040 Like are they all intertwined together as far as adrenaline and cortisol and estrogen too? 00:16:30.400 --> 00:16:39.520 Yeah, all of the stress hormones interfere with the conversion of T4 to T3. And in fact, 00:16:39.520 --> 00:16:51.840 instead of making the effective respiration promoting T3, they convert thyroxine into reverse 00:16:51.840 --> 00:17:03.840 T3. They dispose of the precursor and turn it into an interfering inactive suppressor of respiration. 00:17:03.840 --> 00:17:17.280 And those same stress hormones that produce the inactive blocking reverse T3 also tend to suppress 00:17:18.080 --> 00:17:26.640 the pituitary TSH, making it look like you're even hyperthyroid because doctors are taught to 00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:38.240 diagnose hyperthyroidism in terms of abnormally low TSH. But in fact, the stress, which is lowering 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:52.080 most people's TSH, is causing the hypothyroidism and is caused by hypothyroidism. 00:17:52.080 --> 00:18:05.360 So a low thyroid person raises their estrogen, cortisol, and adrenaline, and these 00:18:07.120 --> 00:18:11.920 end up to lower your TSH and make it look like you have too much thyroid, 00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:16.880 according to the way doctors are being indoctrinated. 00:18:16.880 --> 00:18:22.960 And so that would be why so many people go to the doctor and say, "Well, you're actually, 00:18:22.960 --> 00:18:27.280 you have too much thyroid going on." But yet the person is exhibiting all the signs of 00:18:27.280 --> 00:18:32.800 low thyroid, such as weight gain and hair loss and energy loss, but yet the doctor's seeing 00:18:32.800 --> 00:18:41.920 it on the other end, right? Yeah. For 65 years, it's been known how it works, but doctors are 00:18:41.920 --> 00:18:50.160 increasingly misinformed. I don't know what the real power for this is, but the indoctrination 00:18:50.160 --> 00:18:57.600 has become more intense in just the last two or three years, telling doctors, "Don't look at T3, 00:18:57.600 --> 00:19:09.280 even just look at TSH. Don't worry, even if the TSH is as high as 10, which is dangerous, 00:19:09.280 --> 00:19:18.400 it's horribly toxic, TSH itself is an inflammation-promoting hormone. Even if a person 00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:29.600 isn't hypothyroid in the sense of not having enough T3, if their TSH is increased, they will 00:19:29.600 --> 00:19:43.760 get the worst heart disease signs of hypothyroidism. So part of the disease effects of hypothyroidism 00:19:43.760 --> 00:19:54.560 are really an excess of TSH rather than the direct lack of metabolic stimulation from T3. 00:19:54.560 --> 00:20:00.160 Yeah, and I definitely want to do a whole podcast on thyroid with you because I think that's so 00:20:00.160 --> 00:20:05.920 fascinating with regard to how stress affects the thyroid and then conversely how the thyroid 00:20:05.920 --> 00:20:13.680 affects everything else. But as far as talking about weight gain, I don't think people understand 00:20:13.680 --> 00:20:19.520 the importance of women having testosterone, the right adequate testosterone. I think we always 00:20:19.520 --> 00:20:24.640 think of it as a male hormone, but women really need testosterone as well. And what I see is with 00:20:24.640 --> 00:20:30.000 low testosterone in women, they do have this additional weight gain, which I'm assuming is 00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:36.240 because conversely they're also experiencing high estrogen. But can you talk about the importance of 00:20:36.240 --> 00:20:44.960 a good amount of testosterone for women and not just men? It has to be balanced, both in men and 00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:53.600 women. It has to be balanced with DHEA and cortisol. And normally it is unless you're 00:20:53.600 --> 00:21:06.160 supplementing it as a drug. But all of these, especially the DHEA, is an activator of fat 00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:17.280 oxidizing. And your muscle is the organ that is most equipped for oxidizing fat. 00:21:19.040 --> 00:21:25.360 Your brain and heart don't do well oxidizing fat compared to glucose, but the muscles 00:21:25.360 --> 00:21:34.320 are perfectly adapted for burning fat. And everything you do to increase your muscles, 00:21:34.320 --> 00:21:43.440 production of testosterone and reduction of cortisol is favoring that fat burning. 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:53.280 So just the right amount of exercise to build muscle will shift your metabolism to safely 00:21:53.280 --> 00:22:00.880 consume fat in your muscles while leaving adequate glucose for your brain and lungs. 00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:06.960 And so weight gain is probably one of the symptoms of low testosterone. Could you talk 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:11.360 some other symptoms that people might see if cortisol is high and testosterone is low? 00:22:13.760 --> 00:22:25.040 Depression. The whole stress system that ends up increasing your cortisol and decreasing DHEA, 00:22:25.040 --> 00:22:33.600 progesterone and testosterone, that whole system is related to the inflammatory and degenerative 00:22:33.600 --> 00:22:46.400 processes. And depression is how we experience that process. The body senses that it's being 00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:56.800 destroyed by the stress hormones and it wants to stop everything, to sort of hibernate or 00:22:56.800 --> 00:23:05.680 go into hiding until the stress is over. So what you experience is depression. Sometimes 00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:14.400 anxiety and aggression. Aggression comes up when you're being overstressed and anxiety. It's all 00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:23.280 different sides of the same reaction. But when your body is being damaged, you get these negative 00:23:23.840 --> 00:23:32.800 emotions. Aggression, anxiety and depression. That makes a lot of sense because that's what 00:23:32.800 --> 00:23:38.080 I'm seeing in the people that have those lower, you know, like you mentioned testosterone, 00:23:38.080 --> 00:23:41.520 DHEA and progesterone and then higher cortisol. So that makes complete sense. 00:23:41.520 --> 00:23:48.480 As far as like the, like you'll hear a lot of people that in order to regulate their hormones, 00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:52.560 they're being taught like with YouTube education, I call it. And of course, I'm on YouTube too, 00:23:52.560 --> 00:23:56.880 but I'm trying to interview people like yourself that actually have valid information and valid 00:23:56.880 --> 00:24:03.280 science behind it. But you hear a lot about fasting and intermittent fasting as a way of 00:24:03.280 --> 00:24:10.000 improving hormones and cortisol. And I don't buy into that. And I wanted to get your opinion. Do 00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:16.000 you see fasting as a way to improve hormones and lower cortisol? Or is it actually contributing to 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:28.880 the stress response in the body? Yeah. One day of fasting, the body stores several ounces of 00:24:28.880 --> 00:24:38.400 glucose in the form of glycogen. And you can go, if you're healthy, you can go up to 24 hours 00:24:38.400 --> 00:24:52.000 on your stored glycogen. And as the body senses stress, lowering the T3 slows the rate of 00:24:52.000 --> 00:25:02.080 fuel use. So when your glycogen has gone away, that means you have to start using 00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:11.600 your tissue to make glucose out of your muscles. And if your thyroid didn't slow down, 00:25:11.600 --> 00:25:19.280 when you have this prolonged stress or fasting situation, if your thyroid didn't drastically 00:25:19.280 --> 00:25:27.840 shut down your oxygen requirement, you would eat your whole body up in just a few days. 00:25:28.560 --> 00:25:35.280 But since the depressive process turns off the metabolism and makes you want to hibernate, 00:25:35.280 --> 00:25:43.040 that slows the rate of degeneration of all of your organs. 00:25:48.560 --> 00:25:59.520 If you at least give a little bit of glucose and minerals, just some sodium chloride 00:25:59.520 --> 00:26:08.640 and/or calcium, magnesium, and potassium during the fasting or low-calorie period, 00:26:08.640 --> 00:26:18.000 you can greatly reduce your tissue loss on a low-calorie diet. For example, a person 00:26:18.400 --> 00:26:29.600 on just a water fast for 10 days, they found that 80% or more of their weight loss came 00:26:29.600 --> 00:26:37.760 from destruction of their muscle and skin mass. But if they had a 500-600 calorie diet with 00:26:37.760 --> 00:26:47.280 adequate minerals, almost all of the weight loss was in the form of fat loss rather than muscle. 00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:48.720 Interesting. 00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:53.840 So a complete fast is very destructive to the body. 00:26:53.840 --> 00:26:59.520 Yeah, and it's good to hear you say that because there's a lot of misinformation out there about 00:26:59.520 --> 00:27:05.200 it. So I hope people will do their own research too and look into some things about fasting before 00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:11.120 they attempt it. Because really, fasting in a nature sense, if we were out fasting, that would 00:27:11.120 --> 00:27:14.800 mean we didn't find food. So it would be a stress response to the body, right? 00:27:16.320 --> 00:27:24.320 Yeah. Some of the professors when I taught at the Naturopathic School were advocates of fasting, 00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:32.720 and they talked about detoxifying by fasting. But that got me interested in what really happens. 00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:41.440 The liver is the organ of detoxification. And when you're depriving the liver of sugar and 00:27:42.800 --> 00:27:50.720 exposing it to cortisol, not only does the estrogen rise, but it loses its ability to 00:27:50.720 --> 00:28:00.720 detoxify other things. The reason the estrogen rises is that the sulfation and glucuronidation 00:28:00.720 --> 00:28:08.720 detoxifying systems are shut down by fasting. And so it's exactly the opposite of detoxifying. 00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:20.720 In Mexico, I had been exposed to a type of insecticide disinfectant that they used on 00:28:20.720 --> 00:28:28.080 buses and motels for a while. And it had a particular odor to it that was recognizable. 00:28:28.080 --> 00:28:38.080 When I realized I was being poisoned by inhaling the fumes of this in public places, 00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:46.800 I decided to leave. And as I was driving home across the desert, every time I got hungry, 00:28:46.800 --> 00:28:58.320 I would smell this insecticide cleansing material in my exhaled breath. And for about two months 00:28:58.320 --> 00:29:06.560 after that, every time I would have low blood sugar, three o'clock in the morning, I would wake 00:29:06.560 --> 00:29:18.400 up and smelling on my exhaled breath, this pine-salt insecticide odor. And as soon as that 00:29:18.400 --> 00:29:26.000 odor stopped leaving my body when I got hungry, then I went into a hyperthyroid state. 00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:36.400 So it had been suppressing my thyroid. And I was exposing myself to it anew every time 00:29:36.400 --> 00:29:46.080 I would lower my blood sugar by mobilizing fat. And so that was disturbing my liver function and 00:29:46.080 --> 00:29:55.760 thyroid and so on. When you're hungry and starving, you're living on your body tissues, 00:29:55.760 --> 00:30:03.520 including fat, but also your muscle. And that can mobilize the toxins that had been 00:30:04.320 --> 00:30:13.440 fairly safely stored away. In animals, they were careful to make sure that the animals hadn't been 00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:22.240 exposed to insecticides or herbicides or whatever for 24 hours before slaughtering them. And 00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:32.400 they sampled the various tissues that the fat at the slaughterhouse was found to be full of 00:30:34.080 --> 00:30:44.480 the whatever insecticide they had been exposed to. But the liver was the cleanest organ. After 24 00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:54.160 hours, it had cleaned itself up and had the lowest concentration of all of the poisons. 00:30:55.600 --> 00:31:05.360 The meat had the next highest concentration and the blood lower because it was constantly being 00:31:05.360 --> 00:31:17.120 detoxified by the liver. So a fast is a way to maybe clean up your liver, but definitely 00:31:17.120 --> 00:31:24.880 it's not good for your brain and immune system. Yes. And the liver, as far as I'm understanding, 00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:29.040 is also important for things like testosterone too. So you really want good liver 00:31:29.040 --> 00:31:34.240 production and detoxification just for the production of testosterone, right? 00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:49.520 Yeah. In the case of progesterone, which in a woman is produced even in greater quantities than 00:31:49.520 --> 00:31:57.520 a man produces testosterone, during the premenstrual time, the daily progesterone production 00:31:57.520 --> 00:32:06.320 is maybe 30 milligrams a day. But the liver adapts to that very large production. And 00:32:06.320 --> 00:32:13.440 after two weeks of that high production, the enzymes increase and start excreting 00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:24.240 progesterone as well as estrogen and testosterone. So at menstruation, the synthesis of new 00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:32.720 progesterone stops and for two weeks, the liver has very low exposure to progesterone, 00:32:33.760 --> 00:32:45.520 meaning that it will have a chance to reset its detoxifying enzymes to zero. So that at ovulation, 00:32:45.520 --> 00:32:53.680 it's all ready to let your body experience the full force of the progesterone. But if a man 00:32:53.680 --> 00:33:04.960 is supplementing testosterone every day, if he exceeds the liver's normal preference for a level 00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:11.680 of testosterone, the same thing happens. If he takes 30 milligrams by injection, for example, 00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:19.600 the liver experiences the same thing a woman's liver experiences with high levels of progesterone. 00:33:20.240 --> 00:33:28.640 And the man throws off the testosterone very quickly. So after a week or two of being exposed 00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:39.760 to high testosterone, he is now excreting it very fast and probably is getting about as much 00:33:39.760 --> 00:33:50.640 estrogen effect as testosterone effect. And the medical use of testosterone, they sometimes give 00:33:50.640 --> 00:33:58.240 50 or 100 milligrams at once. So their liver experiences this gigantic overdose, where it 00:33:58.240 --> 00:34:08.000 should be four or five milligrams per day in the young man. The liver goes into a testosterone 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:16.480 destroying condition. So with regard to things like since we're talking different diseases and 00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:21.520 stuff too, and with regard to the liver, I wanted to get your thoughts on cancer and how high 00:34:21.520 --> 00:34:28.000 cortisol can play into that. My mom actually died of stomach cancer at 45. And she lived a very, 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:33.760 very stressful existence, both physically, she was like an overexerciser, she was emotionally, 00:34:33.760 --> 00:34:39.440 she was emotionally stressed, mentally stressed from work and hardly slept. And she also starved 00:34:39.440 --> 00:34:45.200 herself quite frequently to achieve a body shape that she was looking for. And I'm convinced the 00:34:45.200 --> 00:34:49.520 stress is what killed her. But how, in your opinion, does chronically elevated cortisol 00:34:49.520 --> 00:34:55.840 and it's related to like, how is it related to things such as the 00:34:57.600 --> 00:35:09.600 below behind the rise of estrogen and cortisol and the fall of thyroid is the tissue level of stress. 00:35:09.600 --> 00:35:18.960 And in the alimentary canal, histamine and serotonin are massively produced 95% 00:35:20.080 --> 00:35:28.960 of our serotonin in the body comes from the intestine. And stomach ulcers can be produced 00:35:28.960 --> 00:35:40.480 just by an excess of serotonin. And the intestine is involved in all stress, but especially 00:35:41.120 --> 00:35:53.040 in prolonged, ultimately carcinogenic stresses. And as the histamine and serotonin increase in 00:35:53.040 --> 00:36:05.840 the digestive system, that allows endotoxin and nitric oxide to rise. All of those interfere with 00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:15.840 our ability to produce respiratory energy shift over to the lactic acid production. And lactic acid 00:36:15.840 --> 00:36:26.080 activates the stress hormones and promotes inflammation. And lactic acid is carcinogenic 00:36:26.080 --> 00:36:34.960 in itself. It not only is produced by cancer, but it promotes all of the features of cancer, 00:36:34.960 --> 00:36:47.680 inflammation, accelerated cell division and so on. And the serotonin is one of the most powerful 00:36:47.680 --> 00:36:59.120 activators of the cortisol stress hormone system. And it acts powerfully on the part of the 00:36:59.120 --> 00:37:08.240 hypothalamus that makes the CRH, corticotropin release hormone. And that is produced not only 00:37:08.240 --> 00:37:16.800 in the brain, but in all of the peripheral tissues. And it's a promoter of tissue inflammation and 00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:30.240 shift of metabolism. Stomach cancer and intestinal cancer are very deeply involved with excess 00:37:30.240 --> 00:37:42.000 serotonin, which is really a base activator of the whole stress system. It works directly on the 00:37:42.000 --> 00:37:51.440 pituitary as well as on the brain and other tissues. And incidentally, other tissues besides 00:37:51.440 --> 00:38:00.240 the adrenals are potential cortisol producers. Even our skin can make cortisol when it's under stress. 00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:07.520 So she had some pretty intense habits that led to a stress response such as, you know, 00:38:07.520 --> 00:38:12.240 sleeping maybe two or three hours a night, burning the candles at both ends. She was an overthinker, 00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:18.080 overanalyzer, overexerciser. Are there like certain habits, not just foods, but certain 00:38:18.080 --> 00:38:23.360 things people are doing like just overachievers in life, people doing too much that are also 00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:28.960 creating the stress response in the body that can contribute to that loss of all those important 00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:38.720 hormones? Yeah, regular sleep is a powerfully protective thing. It should be somewhere in the 00:38:38.720 --> 00:38:48.720 range of six to nine hours every night, but the regularity is very important. It becomes a built-in, 00:38:50.080 --> 00:39:01.760 almost a machine-like, once you get a schedule set. And any variation of that schedule puts the 00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:12.960 whole 24-hour cycle into a stress pattern. So it isn't just the number of hours, but the regularity 00:39:12.960 --> 00:39:22.000 with which you get those hours of sleep that is anti-stress. And hypertestosterone and DHEA 00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:34.400 are promoters of restorative sleep. Cortisol really interferes at all levels of sleep 00:39:35.040 --> 00:39:43.200 restoration as well as daytime maintenance. And prolonged starvation, for example, 00:39:43.200 --> 00:39:54.640 anorexia nervosa. Usually it's young women, and they've given, made MRI pictures of their brain 00:39:54.640 --> 00:40:04.640 during and then during the recovery. And during the anorexia, their brain, especially the frontal lobes, 00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:13.680 shrink. And then when they refeed, it rebuilds itself. So it's actually causing brain damage to 00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:22.400 fast too much. And a stressful pregnancy with too much exposure to estrogen and the associated 00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:32.560 cortisol does the same thing. Androgens, DHEA, and testosterone and progesterone protect the 00:40:32.560 --> 00:40:42.000 athlete, the brain, heart, and lungs are protected by those. But prolonged exposure to high estrogen, 00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:51.920 even in pregnancy or in anorexia, will shrink the frenulobes of the brain that handle long-range 00:40:51.920 --> 00:40:58.080 perspective. But I liked what you said about it can be rebuilt. I think people aren't aware that 00:40:59.200 --> 00:41:04.000 if even if you've had a really strong cortisol response for a long time, you've been in a stress 00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:09.440 response for a long time, that if we can do things to mitigate that, we can actually get our body 00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:14.560 back into a calm state. There is a way to do that. And it doesn't have to do with taking ashwagandha 00:41:14.560 --> 00:41:19.520 and all these things. There is a really safe way to do it. And so can you talk about that? Can you 00:41:19.520 --> 00:41:27.360 talk about like how we can rebuild? It's very much like exercise, but you have to stop the stress 00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:36.480 first before you can exercise effectively. They know that a given activity, for example, taxi 00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:46.800 drivers have a bigger part of the brain that handles memory. They know every street in a big 00:41:46.800 --> 00:41:55.200 city and that requires a bigger part of that brain. One of my first students at the necropathic 00:41:55.200 --> 00:42:05.360 college was a taxi driver who decided to study medicine. And she was just spectacularly able to 00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:14.640 put things together. Unlike the students who had just gone to college. She had this global ability 00:42:14.640 --> 00:42:26.240 to perceive how things interact. And that kind of exercise works best if you maintain the protective 00:42:26.240 --> 00:42:35.920 hormones, even supplementing pregnenolone, progesterone, GHGA, and testosterone combined 00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:45.760 with the kind of mental activity that you want to develop. That will, in a relatively short time, 00:42:45.760 --> 00:42:57.280 rebuild and it changes your attitude. Learned helplessness, for example, from prolonged stress 00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:05.200 can be overcome. Yeah, I've heard you talk about learned helplessness. Can you expand 00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:14.080 on that a little bit for my listeners? Yeah, that can be repaired with any of these protective 00:43:14.080 --> 00:43:31.360 hormones or with behavioral insight. But the stress process that causes you to become helpless or 00:43:33.120 --> 00:43:43.760 obsessive or over analytic or whatever, stopping the stress is the first thing. And that requires 00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:54.240 good nutrition. And good nutrition should include plenty of carbohydrates so that you don't have to 00:43:56.320 --> 00:44:08.560 rely on the cortisol to convert protein amino acids into glucose. And usually 00:44:08.560 --> 00:44:18.080 something more than 100 grams per day of carbohydrate, preferably in the form of sucrose. 00:44:18.720 --> 00:44:26.480 But it can be, if you're very active physically, as 200 or 300 grams a day of 00:44:26.480 --> 00:44:32.560 carbohydrate, especially sugar, can be restorative to the brain. 00:44:32.560 --> 00:44:38.880 I'm so glad you brought this up because one of my next things was to talk about the dangers of 00:44:38.880 --> 00:44:45.440 sugar-less diet. So like, I think people are all about talk about the dangers of how dangerous 00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:51.920 sugar is, but you actually talk about the dangers of a sugar-less diet and how our body runs on 00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:56.080 glucose and therefore if you don't take it in, your body will simply make it from its own bodily 00:44:56.080 --> 00:45:00.800 tissues such as breaking down muscle like you were talking about before. So I think we don't know the 00:45:00.800 --> 00:45:06.640 dangers of going sugar-less, actually. We know too much about eating sugar but not enough about how 00:45:06.640 --> 00:45:13.440 much we actually do need to eat it. Yeah, all of the things that trigger the stress hormones 00:45:14.320 --> 00:45:25.760 involve interference with glucose metabolism. Hypoglycemia itself is a powerful activator of 00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:34.560 the stress system. Excess of free fatty acids which will block the ability to use glucose 00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:45.840 will activate the stress hormones. Lactic acid which results when you're not using your glucose 00:45:45.840 --> 00:45:56.480 properly, it's a sign that there's in effect a deficiency of glucose that activates cortisol 00:45:56.480 --> 00:46:08.720 production. All of these stress signs, inflammation, overexertion, these require 00:46:08.720 --> 00:46:14.800 more glucose to suppress inflammation to get energy production going. 00:46:14.800 --> 00:46:25.440 And so the obvious way to stop the stress reaction is to provide enough glucose and oxygen 00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:36.720 along with the other nutrients. If you provide only protein and fat as your bulk nutrients, 00:46:36.720 --> 00:46:47.840 you're going to increase your cortisol just to convert the protein to the amount of glucose 00:46:48.400 --> 00:46:57.280 that your brain and blood cells need. And that cortisol, even though it's being fed with protein, 00:46:57.280 --> 00:47:06.720 is going to have all of these indirect actions that are harmful in the long run. It's going to 00:47:06.720 --> 00:47:14.880 change the way your immune system works, for example. Yeah, and so as far as the glucose in 00:47:14.880 --> 00:47:20.000 your diet, we know from listening to you that's important. So that's why on the last podcast we 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:25.840 talked about how ketogenic and low-carb diets are actually causing some of the stress response as 00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:30.480 opposed to helping with cortisol. So are there certain foods, I mean I know you've mentioned 00:47:30.480 --> 00:47:35.840 sugar in different forms like fructose and sucrose, but are there different foods that 00:47:35.840 --> 00:47:41.040 can actually help lower cortisol and increase things like progesterone and testosterone? 00:47:42.880 --> 00:47:49.840 Yeah, the reason I talk so much about milk and orange juice is that they are the most available 00:47:49.840 --> 00:47:58.560 foods that have the most components that tend to shut down excess cortisol production, lower 00:47:58.560 --> 00:48:09.280 adrenaline, reduce serotonin, nitric oxide, all of the harmful mediators of inflammation and stress. 00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:20.320 Everyone can, with some luck, can find good milk and sweet orange juice. Each of them 00:48:20.320 --> 00:48:29.680 has hundreds of beneficial factors. The calcium itself in milk and the minerals, 00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:40.960 potassium and the other minerals in orange juice, lower the stress factors in multiple ways. 00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:51.920 Most people are having a borderline calcium and vitamin D deficiency in most of the world. 00:48:54.800 --> 00:49:04.000 When you're borderline in vitamin D and calcium, you increase your parathyroid hormone. If you're 00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:14.800 borderline in your mineral, especially sodium intake, your aldosterone and entratensin increase. 00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:26.560 These parathyroid hormone and aldosterone interact very closely and turn off your energy production, 00:49:26.560 --> 00:49:37.360 shift you over to wasting sugar, increasing your cortisol, destroying your protein tissues. 00:49:38.720 --> 00:49:45.760 So getting your aldosterone and parathyroid hormone as low as you can 00:49:45.760 --> 00:49:57.120 will at the same time increase your metabolic efficiency and so reduce your exposure to the 00:49:57.120 --> 00:50:03.520 stress hormones. That's great information. So I'm also assuming that foods that help with thyroid 00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:07.840 production would also lower a stress response in the body and therefore help with hormone 00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:21.360 production too? Yeah. People are being misinformed about what thyroid does. It isn't a stimulant and 00:50:21.360 --> 00:50:31.360 a catabolic hormone. It is anabolic and the anabolic function goes with what should be a 00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:44.320 reduction of adrenaline and cortisol. So it is required for deep restorative sleep and relaxation. 00:50:44.320 --> 00:50:53.440 Doctors tell people that it's a stimulant and the catabolic hormone exactly the opposite of the 00:50:53.440 --> 00:51:01.920 truth. So what foods as far as your favorite foods are pro thyroid that would help lower that stress 00:51:01.920 --> 00:51:17.200 response? Avoiding the polyunsaturated fats is a universal benefit as far as possible. Not to add 00:51:17.200 --> 00:51:27.920 for example fish oil or algae oil to your diet. Not to use safflower, canola oil, 00:51:27.920 --> 00:51:36.640 none of the liquid oils. Those are all anti-thyroid, anti-progesterone, anti-DHEA and so 00:51:36.640 --> 00:51:44.560 on. And in effect they increase your stress hormones. They are the precursors for the 00:51:45.120 --> 00:51:53.280 prostaglandin like materials which amplify all of the inflammatory and stress reactions. 00:51:53.280 --> 00:52:01.440 So just cutting out the polyunsaturated fats shifts you, increases your thyroid function 00:52:01.440 --> 00:52:10.080 and lowers the stress hormones. So therefore that leaves us with saturated fats which I would assume 00:52:10.080 --> 00:52:15.360 are pretty good at helping to lower cortisol as well. Do they help increase progesterone and 00:52:15.360 --> 00:52:20.400 testosterone? I guess the main goal is to lower the cortisol so that those particular hormones 00:52:20.400 --> 00:52:31.200 will rise, correct? When you are not eating the proof of polyunsaturated fats, if you eat extra 00:52:31.200 --> 00:52:40.960 calories, you produce the saturated fats. And so your tissues will gradually, over a period of 00:52:40.960 --> 00:52:52.160 several years, gradually become more saturated. If you look at the ratio of saturated fat to 00:52:52.160 --> 00:53:02.800 polyunsaturated in your tissues, the saturation index corresponds to lifespan. Animals with the 00:53:02.800 --> 00:53:10.480 highest saturation index, the lowest polyunsaturated fat in their tissues have the longest life 00:53:10.480 --> 00:53:20.720 expectancy. And a lot of that is related to thyroid and these protective steroids. 00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:30.480 Wow, so I'm assuming that you're pretty saturated then for being 82 and you are just the epitome of 00:53:30.480 --> 00:53:34.640 health. And so I assume based on your diet, you're pretty saturated then, huh? 00:53:34.640 --> 00:53:48.800 I hope so. I don't eat a completely ideal diet. It takes a lab to prepare food to get rid of 00:53:48.800 --> 00:54:01.520 all of the toxic fats. In the 1930s, the lab intended to demonstrate that taking out all of 00:54:01.520 --> 00:54:10.000 the fat would cause a deficiency of the essential fatty acids. But this guy had lifelong headaches 00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:18.400 and blood pressure problems. After, I think it was three or four months on this fat-free diet, 00:54:18.400 --> 00:54:27.200 he stopped having his headaches and his blood pressure normalized. And as long as there was 00:54:27.200 --> 00:54:33.760 any information about him after that diet, he never had a recurrence of his health problems. 00:54:35.040 --> 00:54:43.520 So far from producing deficiency diseases, this extreme laboratory-defined 00:54:43.520 --> 00:54:51.200 fat-free diet cured his lifelong health problems. 00:54:51.200 --> 00:54:58.480 Wow, that's incredible. So there is some validity to watching your fat intake and making sure that 00:54:58.480 --> 00:55:04.080 you have good glucose intake. And so where does protein fit into all this? What are your favorite 00:55:04.080 --> 00:55:08.560 sources of protein for lowering cortisol and increasing those hormones we've been talking 00:55:08.560 --> 00:55:17.920 about like progesterone and testosterone and DHEA? Gelatin happens to be fairly close to 00:55:17.920 --> 00:55:28.800 an ideal protein for an adult. Milk protein has a fair amount of tryptophan, cysteine, 00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:43.600 and these are pro-inflammatory amino acids that are used in growth. Milk is ideal for growing 00:55:43.600 --> 00:55:52.560 and has anti-inflammatory, anti-stress factors. But for an adult, I think it should be supplemented 00:55:54.640 --> 00:56:02.880 with something like gelatin as an extra protein which lacks the pro-inflammatory 00:56:02.880 --> 00:56:11.280 growth-related amino acids. So that's interesting. So you could almost do like blend your morning 00:56:11.280 --> 00:56:16.640 coffee with a little collagen gelatin and some milk and make almost like a little protein smoothie 00:56:16.640 --> 00:56:26.720 that way with a little coffee, huh? Yeah, I use about 8 or 9 ounces of milk with an ounce or two 00:56:26.720 --> 00:56:34.960 of extremely concentrated coffee for my breakfast meal. You sound like an espresso lover. That 00:56:34.960 --> 00:56:38.480 sounds like a concentrated coffee that's an espresso and that's what I love too. 00:56:40.240 --> 00:56:48.000 Yeah, you don't get an excess of water that way. Yes, that's true. Well, Dr. Peat, I could go on 00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:52.480 and on and on, but I know that you are getting ready to work on your next newsletter and so I 00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:57.440 want to touch on that a little bit. I want to let people know that they can actually sign up for your 00:56:57.440 --> 00:57:03.680 newsletter which is amazing and they can sign up via to receive it through the mail or also through 00:57:03.680 --> 00:57:11.600 email and it's $28 I believe for email, the newsletter, and then it's $38 to get it through 00:57:11.600 --> 00:57:20.160 the mail? Yeah, and that's for 12 issues by monthly. So it's for two years, 12 issues. 00:57:20.160 --> 00:57:25.680 Yeah, and they can do that by emailing raypeatsnewsletter@gmail.com and I'll have all 00:57:25.680 --> 00:57:30.320 that information in the show notes as well. And I also want to encourage you guys to go check out 00:57:30.320 --> 00:57:36.720 all of his articles at raypeat.com because that's where you're really going to get just a cornucopia 00:57:36.720 --> 00:57:42.880 of information that will just blow your socks off. So Dr. Peat, I just so appreciate your time. I 00:57:42.880 --> 00:57:48.640 love, love, love talking with you and sorry we had a little connection issues today, but I really 00:57:48.640 --> 00:57:53.840 will take any part of you that I can get. So I appreciate your time today. Okay, thank you. 00:57:54.720 --> 00:58:00.720 And you guys stay tuned for more. Hopefully next time we can talk about the thyroid a little bit 00:58:00.720 --> 00:58:06.880 more Dr. Peat, if that's okay with you. Okay. Okay, sounds good. Thanks everybody for listening. Bye 00:58:06.880 --> 00:58:07.360 for now.