and organic produce, natural groceries, nutritional supplements and body care products.
Chautauqua Natural Foods is open Monday through Saturday 9 to 7, Sunday 10 to 5, just off the town square in Garberville.
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Alright, Ask Your Herb Doctor coming up, stay tuned.
My name's Andrew Murray.
My name's Sarah Johannison Murray.
Now for those of you who perhaps have never listened to the shows which run every third Friday of the month from 7 to 8 p.m.,
we're both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine.
We run a clinic in Garberville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions and recommend herbal medicine and dietary advice.
So you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMED Garberville 91.1 FM.
And from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions related or unrelated to this month's subject of the continuing research on urea.
The number if you live in the area is 923 3911, or if you live outside the area, there's a toll-free number which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD, which is 1-800-568-3723.
And we can also be reached toll-free on 1-888-WBM-HERB for consultations or further information Monday through Friday.
Okay, so once again, we're very pleased to have Dr. Raymond Peat joining us on the show to share in his latest research.
Dr. Peat, are you there?
Yes.
Okay, thanks so much for joining us again.
As always, just like to start the show by giving you the opportunity here to let people know your academic and scientific background, what you do and who you are.
I got my PhD in biology, specializing in physiology and biochemistry, especially reproductive physiology at University of Oregon 1972.
And before that, I had been interested in language, philosophy, and psychology and planned to study brain biology, but I found that the reproductive physiology seemed more scientific and more interesting.
So I specialized in that but continued to be interested in the rest of the organism.
So the first thing I did after graduating was to write a book on the brain, reviewing Russian science, 19th century through the 20th century on brain biology.
And so I've continued interest in how the basic energy physiology relates to things such as reproduction, aging, and brain functions.
All right, well, I know that your most recent newsletter, you were continuing your discourse and your thoughts on urea and its use in pathology and how you see the function of urea as benefiting people in light of perhaps it being dismissed, if you like, by mainstream medical science.
I know that you mentioned Danopoulos, the Greek physician who's been successfully using urea as a therapy, injecting it into tumors and its use in cancer.
But this newsletter that you've most recently written more explores some other physiological effects of urea that perhaps people might not have been aware of, or if in fact the research has been done some time ago, it may now be buried and forgotten.
So just wanted to pick up on quite a few of the things that you mentioned in your newsletter.
Go ahead.
So, Daphne, can you tell us what urea is?
Its name chemically is carbamide.
It's just a combination of ammonia with carbon dioxide.
And so it's the body's way of detoxifying ammonia.
And it requires oxidative production of carbon dioxide to combine with the ammonia to get rid of it.
And so it regulates cell pH, which regulates water metabolism and everything else in cell function.
So it's something that our bodies produce.
Yeah.
All right.
So given that we now understand that excess water in the cell is a central feature of the major degenerative diseases that you outline, things like heart failure, dementia and cancer.
How do you explain how this happens and what is the best strategy to prevent this if water accumulation in the cell is implied in such an inflammatory situation as these things that we've mentioned?
One of the dimensions of thinking about water in cells is that it comes up against some of the basic dogmas of what life is and how cells work and so on.
And I think the reason that adenopolis amazing results in curing cancer with simply injecting or giving intravenous urea,
I think the reason it's been ignored and dismissed is that it involves some ideas that don't fit with these mechanical dogmas of 20th century biology,
such as the membrane theory, the idea that there are pumps in the cell surface membranes that regulate the amount of water and minerals in cells by somehow grabbing the molecules and pushing them in or out of the cell.
It's really a silly, impossible concept, but it's what everything officially is based on.
So when you actually look at the facts of what's happening with water, if you think in terms of things such as what happens when gelatin gets wet and swells up,
and if you put acid or alkali on what happens to its relation to water and so on, acid makes it shrink, alkali makes it swell up.
And simple physical ideas like that are very useful for thinking about what happens in all of the diseases.
Okay, so acid makes it shrink and alkaline situations make it swell.
Yeah, and swelling has an anabolic effect and turns on cell division and uncontrollable cell division and produce everything from cancer to various skin diseases of dandruff, for example,
psoriasis, overgrowth of fibrous tissue, the control of cell growth is very deeply controlled by water and pH and the membrane pump people blame everything in life on this magical pump that regulates the water and the pH.
If you just think about the basic metabolic processes in which you turn sugar or fat or protein into energy and carbon dioxide, this constant streaming of substance, carbon dioxide is an acid and you're making it inside cells.
And so when you're alive, you're making cells acidic and as it leaves, it takes minerals out of the cell with it in the form of carbonic acid and the alkaline minerals associated with it.
This is the better state than the alkaline state, though, right?
Yeah, the alkaline acidic state produced by carbon dioxide causes a shift in the whole balance electrons in the protein, fat, nucleic acid system and that shift of electrons accounts for the preference of the cell for potassium normally over sodium.
If the cell is disturbed, then it shifts and loses potassium and takes up calcium and sodium.
This is what Gilbert Ling has devoted his life to for the last 60 some years.
Sorry, I just wanted to say that this, I guess, for people that are listening, I think a lot of people in the lay people associate this kind of, what we're talking about acid versus alkali, they're always thinking about an acid situation is more cancer promoting and to be alkaline is a better situation in terms of health benefits.
And that's true when you apply it to the blood and the fluid outside of cell.
Right. But the reason the fluid outside of cells is alkaline is that the protons, the electrons are being retracted into an acidic state inside the cell and that shift of the balance and makes it alkaline outside.
So what you're saying is when the cell inside and then when the inside of the cell becomes alkaline, that's when it becomes swollen and boggy and that's what can contribute to heart disease, cancer, psoriasis, all these degenerative diseases we've mentioned.
And that goes with a shift towards acidity in the blood and the outside fluid.
So that's where people are thinking about.
You don't want to be acidic metabolically.
That refers to the fluids outside of cells and it's only since the nuclear magnetic resonance apparatuses have been used the last 40 years, mostly, that people have started to recognize that inside cells should be slightly acidic.
So how do we make the inside of ourselves more acidic and keep the outside of ourselves extra cellular and the blood alkaline?
Keeping the energy flowing, producing carbon dioxide constantly by consuming oxygen.
So we need our cells to be consuming oxygen properly.
Yeah. And just suffocating, just turning off the oxygen supply so you stop making any supply of carbon dioxide.
The metabolism shifts over to making lactic acid and the lactic acid takes acid out of the cell as it's leaving and acidifies the environment but leaves the cell more alkaline.
Right. And that's a negative acidic situation that most people commonly refer to when they talk about acid versus alkaline blood.
Yeah. It's a local inflammatory situation.
Anytime a tissue is injured, it tends to produce excess lactic acid and become inflamed and inefficient.
So how does urea help our cells use oxygen better?
The...
Or to keep the cell more acidic?
The cell holds its structure by the way proteins are folded, which requires an interaction with the... everything in the cell has to participate in that slightly acidic state.
Making carbon dioxide, keeping the ATP level at a high energy state, keeping the water participating in the way proteins are folded so that there's a lot of internal surface area exposed in the cell.
Now the surface of a glass of water has a sort of rubbery film on the top that you can float a piece of steel or touch on the surface tension.
Inside the cell when the proteins are energized, the ATP is holding them in this state exposing their surface, keeping the cell's water in that energized tough state that helps to hold the cell together.
When de-energized, the structure collapses in various ways. For example, spherical proteins that were exposing all of their surface polymerize into dock-like proteins that have less surface exposure and the water becomes more like plain bulk water under the tough surface.
This water then behaves very differently and that's the kind of water that is involved in cell swelling, growth, uncontrolled cell division and so on.
It's also the pH inside the cell also regulates the protein's folding ability to a large degree that proteins don't conformationally fold properly in the wrong pH.
Yeah, and it's in the case of any protein jelly, even some synthetic plastics, the alkalinity has the same effect making the jelly swell up and watery and soft.
So again, another reason why the alkaline internal environment would not be helpful.
Inside the cell.
Inside the cell, yeah, yeah.
Urea happens to be a strange kind of solvent that is pretty much equally at home inside and outside the cell, but it's slightly more at home in a healthy stable cell.
So that just by solubility, if you immerse cells in a solution with a certain amount of urea, the urea is going to come to rest at a higher concentration in cells.
No pumping is involved, it's simply that it's soluble in the cell at a slightly higher degree than in plain water.
And inside the cell participates with the relaxed or energized state of the cell in which surfaces is exposed.
So the urea helps proteins to expose the energized surface that keeps cells in the functioning high energy state.
And that's how Denopolis helped with cancer was by injecting the urea into the cells and that helped them maintain their shape and function to a better degree?
And to keep it towards the slightly acidic metabolizing state in which it doesn't tend to proliferate.
A relatively slightly dehydrated effect.
So it's like you have now a new solvent solute substance when it has the right amount of urea mixed in with the proteins and fat and water.
It creates a new state of matter that has its own solubility properties for other things, including the preference for potassium over sodium and for magnesium over calcium and so on.
Right. So it's helping the mineral balance of the cell be more balanced.
Now, I think you also stated that urea itself is not an osmolite and it does not affect pH. Is that right?
Yeah, that's been known for over 100 years.
People simply use the semi-permeable membrane setup found that doesn't behave like sodium or potassium or other things that are known to be osmolites and to pull water across a semi-permeable membrane and so on.
In 1914, I think it was the first one, but around the First World War, someone was demonstrating that you could make it five or six times more concentrated than it should be osmotically.
And it would be in balance and not cause cells to lose water.
Hold the cell in the proper state where if you add five or six times the concentration of sugar or salt, you would dry up.
You'd be in trouble.
When you put salt on the slug, it drinks it.
Takes all the water out of it.
Presumably, a slug wouldn't find concentrated urea.
Interesting. And I think you've also mentioned that that concentration, five to six times, is nothing as much as, say, a hundred times, which is still compatible with life.
It has a very, very low toxicity. It's not at all toxic, is it?
No. And sea organisms, sharks, for example, have a very, very high level of urea imbalance.
And experiments have shown that even more than a hundred times what we normally have doesn't cause any damage that can be seen in cells.
And therapeutically, Danopoulos and others have found that maybe a hundred times our normal urea level in the serum is actually therapeutic for certain things, cancer and brain function, for example.
Because I think there's quite a lot of references to urea from a "scientific community" that are not really interested in it or just trying to play it down as being irrelevant.
And they have urea analogs, I think, which are far more problematic that they would want to suggest or not even mention urea.
Sickle cell anemia, for example, was being treated successfully with urea.
And normal cells under stress tend to be hardened the way sickle cells become stiff and won't go through capillaries.
Just during heart surgery, the stress causes ordinary round blood cells to become stiffened and malfunction, tending to kill the patient.
And with a supplement of urea, that hardening of the red cells by stress is prevented.
And it was therapeutic for the sickle cell patients.
But because of the myth of urea being an osmolite, someone used plain urea at a certain concentration without the normal sodium and other minerals in the solution and found that it broke, immediately caused red blood cells to break down.
So they said that can't be good.
They stopped using it and shifted over to very toxic carcinogenic hydroxyurea, which is still in use.
But you do know doctors that use this current day, right?
There are publications currently recommending us to use hydroxyurea.
Did you mean using real urea?
Yeah, I was meaning the real urea.
A few people are using it, for example, to prevent killing patients in heart surgery.
But it definitely isn't a well-recognized treatment.
Did you say, did I understand you correctly when you said that urea in the absence of the other electrolytes would have a negative effect?
Yeah, it acts like distilled water as far as the osmotic property goes.
So it has to be osmotically balanced with the regular concentration of solutes that you'd normally find in blood.
It would take about six times as much urea as normal to not break down the red cells.
Interesting. So if you, whatever they, I'm not too sure what it is, but for example, just for people that are listening to understand the concept that I'm trying to describe to you and that you're describing to me,
is that if you have, for example, a one millimolar concentration of urea in your blood normally,
then if you were to inject a five or six millimolar concentration of urea into the capillary or into the artery or whatever, it wouldn't have a negative effect.
It would be acceptable.
But if it was injected as a one millimolar solution, which you'd find naturally in the blood, it would have a problem.
You'd have a problem with that. Yeah. Assuming the other things like sodium and calcium and potassium aren't compensating for the difference in urea.
So what about taking it orally?
That's been done also for over 100 years of treating heart failure.
And one person reported on, I think he said he had had heart failure patients doing well on oral urea for as long as nine years.
And this is because it's a diuretic and it's.
Yeah, that was the argument that they were using it because it did relieve the swollen legs and such that occur in heart failure.
But I think since you also see it bringing people back from brain damage and traumatic head injury and strokes and such,
I think has much deeper therapeutic effects, stabilizing cells in many ways, reducing the swelling by causing diuresis.
OK, well, you're listening to AskUrEUp, Dr. KMED 91.1 FM Garbovill.
This month, Dr. Peat is being questioned about his latest newsletter on urea.
I know we've mentioned urea and Greek physician Dr. Danopoulos several months back in his treatment of cancer.
But this month, we're going to be talking more about the other beneficial aspects of urea and certain other inflammatory conditions,
dementia, cancer, etc.
We'll be bringing out some of the reasons how urea could actually be very helpful for this.
The number, if you live in the area, is 923-2513.
923, sorry, beg your pardon, 923-3911.
Or there is a toll free number, which is 1-800-KMED-RAD.
So from 730 till the end of the show, people are invited to call in with any questions.
It would be good if people could keep to the subject matter.
OK, so anyway, the other question I wanted to ask you about the diuretic activity of urea,
and you've mentioned it being useful in congestive heart failure and other edema type water swelling situations
because of its ability to mobilize water.
Do you have any comparisons, if you like, for traditional diuretics?
I know that there used to be non-potassium sparing,
and then they brought out these kind of loop diuretics that were potassium sparing.
Well, I mean, the common furosemide that's still used is not potassium sparing.
You have to take a potassium supplement with that.
How do you--are you able to answer that, whether you have any opinion about diuretics and use versus something like urea?
Yeah, I have opinions, but I finished thinking about the subject.
You remember, mercury was a traditional diuretic,
and it apparently worked just by sort of killing the tubes of the kidney
and letting the water kind of fall out of the body.
Not to be recommended.
So unlike, you know, radiation was useful for treating psoriasis,
x-rays were useful for treating psoriasis and arthritis, right?
Yeah, and I think some of the chemical diuretics are about as well-founded as mercury diuretics.
The chemicals that made the kidneys give up more water don't necessarily really improve the person's health.
The cells could be still holding onto the water and not--
Yeah, and besides stress, for example, in heart surgery, it involves water retention,
failure of the kidney function leading to things like hardening of the red blood cells
and stiffening of the capillaries and so on.
Any stress involves a series of reactions, all of which relate to the way cells handle water.
Nitric oxide is a universally produced thing by injury and stress,
and it causes de-energizing and swelling of cells.
And estrogen is a physiological producer of swelling, imitating a stress reaction
and being produced by stress.
And one of the brain or pituitary hormones, antidiuretic hormone,
is another stress-induced producer of water retention and edema.
And old people as well as traumatized people who are hospitalized
fairly often develop a state of water retention with sodium loss.
They call it hyponatremia or the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone.
Estrogen happens to produce the same effect,
and so they say estrogen activates receptors of the antidiuretic hormone.
When you can't find the actual hormone at the same conditions,
they say it's because the receptors are acting independent.
Nitric oxide, estrogen, and antidiuretic hormone produce the state of getting waterlogged
while losing sodium into the urine and producing fairly concentrated urine
but keeping overhydrated cells and blood supply.
And the normal basic thing that regulates the ability to release water through the kidneys
while retaining sodium is the particular energized electronic state of the cells
governing the way the tube of the kidney electrically relates to its surroundings.
The production of carbon dioxide and carbonic acid, the carbonic anhydrase enzyme,
is one of the targets of some of the diuretics such as acetazolamide
so that the body retains more carbon dioxide and thus doesn't lose so much sodium.
And the normal regulator of carbon dioxide and so of sodium water balance
is the thyroid hormone, and hypothyroid people always tend towards this syndrome
of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion or the appearance,
simply hyponatremia, of being waterlogged, having enough water, enough sodium.
So the sodium itself, sodium chloride or sodium bicarbonate,
can cure a lot of these stress conditions.
And the same waterlogging could be borne out in things like a boggy intestine or a swollen intestine
that fails to move food along properly and contributes to endotoxin reabsorption
because of the inefficient movement?
Yeah, the intestine is especially exposed to things such as endotoxin,
which release nitric oxide, which has this de-energizing cell swelling effect, waterlogging effect.
And the bicarbonate of soda you mentioned just before I interrupted there
would be another good way of liberating CO2,
and taken internally would have a local topical activity too?
Yeah, and surprisingly, even sodium chloride has a diuretic effect, most people.
When you use the baking soda, the kidneys are able to retain as much sodium as they want,
but the bicarbonate can be changed back into carbon dioxide
and it can actually help to acidify cells on the inside while maintaining the sodium on the outside.
So that's something people can just swallow by a quarter teaspoon or half teaspoon mixed with water?
Yeah, I know people who have taken a teaspoon two or three times a day with water many years.
Athletes sometimes take a tablespoon with water before an endurance race.
I think part of the effect on endurance is more basic than just preventing getting waterlogged.
I think it's actually helping to prevent excess nitric oxide production.
Am I not right in thinking that the endurance runners, marathon runners,
some of these people collapsing from cardiac arrest are hyponatremic, so they suddenly get low sodium?
Yeah, I think that's probably the most common reason for endurance runners collapsing and dying.
Okay, well you're listening to Ask Your Ob-Doctor, KMED Galvapour 91.1 FM, and from now until 8 o'clock.
You're invited to call in with any questions surrounding this month's continuing topic of urea
and its treatment in such things as cardiac illnesses, dementia, cancer,
and we'll get into a few others here later on.
The number is, like I said, 93391 or 3911, or if you live outside the area, there's a 1800 number, which is 1800 KMED Rad.
So going on to aging seems a little bit indistinct perhaps from this month's subject,
but in terms of the concept of hydration and skin and the appearance of skin and the water content of cells,
not necessarily being helpful but being more detrimental and in a lower energy state,
I wanted you to just discuss the idea of young babies and newborns and young teenagers and young adults
having a kind of a fairly plump, healthy skin that's fairly thick.
I don't want to confuse that with the skin being boggy because that would seem to imply that there's too much water in the cells,
but in terms of the aging and youth and the skin's appearance and the production of keratin,
which is that kind of flaky layer, maybe more associated with older people,
is there anything perhaps that can be done to improve the quality of the skin that would be related to water?
The plumpness is largely the water content.
Any cell, all the way from fertilized ovum all the way to a 100-year-old person,
the cell water content decreases pretty steadily with aging until an old cell, which is still very functional.
There's no disease evident. It's pretty dried up relative to the 92% water of fertilized ovum.
It gets down to something like 65% water in old cells as a steady progression without any particular disease happening.
As that happens, cell division is slowed so that in your skin, over time, you see fewer cells in the skin,
meaning that it's thinner. There just isn't as much living skin there in old people.
The column of growing cells in the surface layer, the squamous epithelium of skin and the mucous membranes,
there's a column of eight or 10 growing cells in the young skin,
and only maybe two or three cells that are still actively growing in old skin.
That's partly just because they're slowing down, but they're also the piling up,
collapsed, cornified or keratinized cells accumulate in the old skin.
The maturing process comes on prematurely with aging or with some type of stress.
For example, a vitamin A deficiency will cause premature keratinizing or hardening of the skin
and will become thinner and tougher, lower water content.
Estrogen does this normally cyclically in the mucous membranes, causing at first a faster growth
because there's a greater water uptake under the influence of estrogen, rapid thickening and growing,
but then an increased formation of keratin fibers and hardening surface.
So some of the effects of estrogen are just like vitamin A deficiency,
and you can offset some of the effects both of aging and estrogen
by simply supplementing some vitamin A and vitamin E directly into the skin.
And urea, old skin has much less urea in it than young skin,
and that's probably both the cause and effect of the lower water content with aging.
We do have another call, not another, we have the first call on the line,
so let me hold you there Dr. Peat if you don't mind, and let's take this next call and see where we're going.
Hi, caller, you're on there, and where are you from?
I'm from White Thorn.
Okay, hi.
Hi, my dad is in the hospital right now with CHF and dementia,
and also interactions between his medicine for the most of my for the diuretic and gabapentin
and one for his heart too, but his lactic acid was normal,
but the creatinine was not normal,
and I'm wondering if the oral urea would be better for him to take and not take the fluorosamide.
Dr. Peat, you can find articles about the use of urea in heart failure,
comparing it to other diuretics on PubMed, for example.
If you put in urea heart failure, you can find the articles on PubMed.
Okay, thank you.
Would that be something he could use orally?
It's very tasteless, a little maybe on the salty side,
so it's usually taken with orange juice or grapefruit juice just so you don't taste it,
a small amount, anywhere from a fourth of a teaspoon to a glass, up to maybe a teaspoon per glass.
Okay, good.
Would it be okay to take that with his diuretic he has already prescribed?
I don't think it interferes with diuretics, but it just makes them unnecessary.
Okay, well, that's good to hear.
I thank you for helping me.
All right, thanks for your call.
We've got two more callers on the air, so let's take the next caller.
Caller, you're on the air, and where are you from?
Yes, hello, Philipsville.
Oh, hi.
Yes, I would like to know what one should ingest to make the cells more acidic on the inside
and the blood better, you know, more alkaline on the outside, like you're saying is good for you.
Protein.
You say that ingesting this urea is good.
Getting adequate protein in your diet is probably the thing that most people could make the biggest difference with.
Oh, that increases urea, you're saying, Dr. Peat?
Yes, you can measure the increased output of urea in the urine in proportion to the amount of protein you're eating
if your digestion is good and if your thyroid function is good.
So eating red meat is good for that?
It shouldn't be too high in phosphate.
Meat is very high in phosphate, and so gelatin is good as a supplement.
If you make soup with the collagenous joint tissue, for example.
Like oxtail or shank.
Oxtail, yes.
Do you recommend then just eating a little bit of meat and not too much?
Yeah, I think it's better to get a big part of your protein from other foods such as eggs, milk, and cheese.
Eggs?
And some high-quality vegetables like potatoes and mushrooms.
Eggs, milk, and cheese, potatoes, mushrooms, those are some high-protein.
Are eggs good?
Yes.
Eggs are very good.
Okay, and you mentioned sodium chloride.
That's salt.
Is salt good for your heart or for your blood?
I'm sorry, what were you talking about?
Is putting salt in your food good?
There are some articles on my website about salt.
You can use the little search device on the website to find--
I don't have a computer.
Yeah, salting your food to taste is the best way to tell.
And that will keep your kidneys functioning better?
Yeah, in people who are under stress.
For example, women with toxemia of pregnancy.
Well, what about just in general, just normal, you know, aging and wanting to keep as healthy as you can when you're getting older?
Yeah, I've known many young women and a few old people who have been put on a low-sodium diet because of various problems.
And using the studies on pregnant toxemia people, I suggested that they try the same thing.
Now, what about potassium?
What does that do for you?
I know low potassium isn't good.
Too much potassium can slow your heart rate, but the right amount, such as having lots of fruit and vegetables,
potassium tends to protect against high blood pressure, relaxing blood vessels.
So as you were saying, Dr. Peat, you were saying that using the studies they did on the pregnant women,
you can apply the same principle to aging?
I saw the same problems existing in women in their 20s and 30s and men in their 60s, 70s, and 80s,
having a variety of inflammatory high blood pressure symptoms and such.
I suggested that they salt their food to taste instead of a low-sodium diet.
Yes, I know there's a lot of controversy about salt, and we've been taught a lot that salt is bad,
it causes high blood pressure, it causes water retention, so you don't think that's true?
Well, they've disproven that, and they only started saying you shouldn't eat salt when they wanted to sell their diuretics,
so it's just been all one big scam.
Okay, well, I've had one cardiologist tell me not to eat salt, although she didn't want to give me a diuretic,
and the other one said, "Yes, eat salt because it'll keep up your blood volume, and that's probably good for you."
Yeah, the blood volume, oxygen and nutrients to the kidneys, and keeps them working.
So hydration is very important.
But what about the first question I asked about the cells, to make sure that the inner cells are acidic enough?
Well, that was the protein. That's why he suggested the protein, because that will keep the urea up.
Okay, so eat protein, eat salt, but not too much meat.
I know that there was a--gout is supposed to be caused by eating too much meat.
I'm not sure what gout is.
Well, doctors aren't too sure what it is either, but the essential thing,
people can have a lot of uric acid crystals in their body without having any symptoms at all.
It seems to be endotoxin from an inflamed intestine getting deposited on the crystals of uric acid, causing the symptoms.
So we want to have urea, but not uric crystals?
Yeah, urea is protective uric acid.
Okay, so that's--by eating a proper amount of protein, the good thing to do for that, you're saying.
Okay, all right, thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Okay, we do have another caller on the line, so let's take this next caller. Caller, where are you from?
Willow Creek.
Hi, what's your question?
Okay, I've been--I've had water retention problems ever since I was pregnant with my first child.
Okay.
And I do have an underactive thyroid, and they always tell me not to eat any salt.
And then I went to a healer a few months ago, and he told me that I should use--oh, it's salt from France.
I forget what it's called.
But anyway, so I did, but I was still swelling up, and I'm on diuretic.
How much thyroid are you using?
How much what?
How much thyroid. Did you say you were using thyroid?
Oh, yeah, thyroid pills, yeah. I think, like, I don't know, 100 milligrams or something, 1 gram.
Of synthroid or--
And you said that you were--
Levothroxine.
You said that you had water retention since your first child.
Yes.
How many years since?
Since pregnancy. That was 45 years ago.
45 years ago. Dr. Peat?
Yeah, so I've had it all these years, and my mom had it instead of my grandmother.
For quite a while, it's been known that estrogen interferes with the conversion of levothyroxine into the active hormone,
and that accounts for why women have about five times as much thyroid problems as men do because of the interference of estrogen with activating it.
And so, illogically, doctors prescribe thyroxine to women without measuring the liver function of producing the active hormone T3.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever had it for that.
It sounds like you're not using the right kind of hormone, so the levothyroxine that you're on--
It's just T4.
--is probably being blocked.
The conversion of it to the active hormone is more than likely getting blocked because of high estrogen,
so you'd be better off using a T3 supplement, which does not need you to perform a conversion.
So you're probably still a low thyroid, even though you're taking thyroid hormone, because you're not converting it.
Yeah, well, according to their tests, I'm normal now on the levothyroxine.
Yeah, there's a lot of controversy about the thyroid test.
The TSH that's used as a measurement is very poor science.
And whilst the TSH may be in the range, you probably find it's on the higher end,
and naturally your temperature and pulses would be much more indicative of your thyroid performance.
Oh, what do you mean by temperature, high or low?
Probably low temperature and falling temperatures.
I tend to have a low temperature.
And then obviously things like stubborn weight gain, lack of energy, insomnia.
Very lack of energy.
It's gotten worse this year.
Yeah.
Low pulse.
It's really bad.
And I went to the doctors for it, and they said they can't find any problem.
Well, it's probably just that you're not turning the thyroid you're taking into an active form that your body can use.
So that's probably the base problem, and that's very common to occur after pregnancy.
So if I wanted to get that test, do I have to ask my doctor to do it for me?
Do I have to request it?
Yeah, you could, but like you said, you're probably falling within the reference range for supposedly normal,
but actually your physiology and your symptoms are far from.
So I'm not too sure how relevant getting another blood test would be.
I think more relevantly would be if you were to take your temperature and pulses.
It's a little bit outside the scope of the radio show because we do have other callers calling.
But if you wanted to, you can always contact us outside of business hours,
and I can discuss with you how you would take this, and you can see for yourself whether or not you're metabolizing.
Okay, so I would go on the website then for that?
No, you can call us Monday through Friday.
I'll give a number out at the end of the show.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, you're welcome.
Okay, we have another caller on the air, so let's take this next caller.
Thank you for your call.
Hi, you're on the air. Where are you from?
Yes, hello?
Yeah, you're on the air. Where are you from?
Yes, hello. I'm from Bellevue, Idaho, and my question is, is drinking your own urine a good way to get urea?
Dr. Peat.
I know quite a few people who have done it and seem to be very healthy,
and it's been practiced for about 3,000 or 4,000 years,
but I don't know, I think most people would prefer to use the purified chemical rather than their own urine.
There's a funny video of a man in India who is preparing products from cow urine.
It's a very common folk remedy around the world.
So there you go.
If you don't fancy the idea of consuming your own urine, you can use urea as a purified form.
Did you, okay, I'm not too sure if the call is still there.
Anyway, that was the answer.
Thank you for your question, caller.
I don't know if you can hear us still, but I appreciate you calling in.
So, yeah, it's six minutes to, if anybody wants to get a quick question in,
either welcome, 923 3911 if you're in the area, or the 1-800 number is 1-800-KMUD-RAD.
So, Dr. Peat, let's just quickly talk about psoriasis and urea and inflammatory bowel disease,
given that there is a kind of parallel between psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease
in terms of the inflammation aspect of degenerative conditions and urea's use in both psoriasis
and possibly with inflammatory bowel disorder.
And eczema, it's used in eczema.
And eczema, right, because the science shows that urea actually blocks, sorry,
I was thinking about tumor necrosis factor, that was it, and curcuma.
So, in turmeric, it blocks the active compound curcumin, blocks tumor necrosis factor,
and that is implicated in a lot of inflammatory conditions of which skin disorders
and inflammatory bowel disease could be exacerbated or even caused by.
Do you have any--
Well, one thing to consider when you have both bowel and skin symptoms
is that the bowel is actually causing or contributing to the skin problem
and eliminating gluten, for example, sometimes clears up both the bowel and skin problem
because some of the same enzymes are activated by inflammation
that cause the premature hardening and flakiness of the skin in psoriasis.
That same process is activated by gluten and other inflammation-producing agents in the intestine.
The process of psoriasis is an accelerated cell division which is probably caused by the overhydration
and possibly lack of the right balance of estrogen, progesterone, and thyroid
and maybe a deficiency of vitamin A which is a restraining influence.
Or vitamin D, right?
Yes, both vitamin D and A can restrain the rate of multiplication.
And besides having a very fast cell division in psoriasis, it divides quickly a few times
and then prematurely ages and collapses into the flaky, horny, dry condition.
And urea has been demonstrated to delay or prevent premature hardening process
by governing the expression of the genes so that the denility-producing proteins aren't produced so early
and keeping the cell in a vital state longer and delaying both the replication and the premature aging.
So it sounds like urea can be injected or doctors are injecting it into cancer cells.
It can be injected into the bloodstream, can be rubbed on topically for skin conditions,
and it can be taken orally.
Yes, there are creams available on the Internet at drugstores and so on
containing anything from 5% to 40% urea.
Forty percent is almost a concentrated solution,
and it's very effective for treating several ichthyosis and psoriasis, various skin conditions.
And some doctors and pharmacists might tell you that it's used to remove toenails
or to remove dead tissue and so on, and so they all scare you
and say that because you can remove calluses with it, it must be dangerous to good skin.
But 40% solutions are very soothing and therapeutic.
It is now widely used for treating the skin inflammation, breast cancer patients
who have been exposed to so much x-ray, the skin has been damaged,
and it prevents the inflammation and fibrosis produced by x-rays.
And it's also the topical skin creams of urea are also very similar in action
to how Comfrey works with the allantoin.
We've got about a minute left, so I really need to hold it right there so we don't get too overextended.
Dr. Peat, thanks so much for your time.
I really appreciate you giving your time the way you do as freely as you do,
and let me just tell people how they can find more out about you.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, good night.
Okay, for those people who've listened, thanks so much for listening,
and for those callers that called in, thanks for putting your questions in.
We always appreciate questions.
It lets us know that people are out there listening, apart from anything else.
Okay, so for people that want to find out more about Dr. Peat, www.raypeat.com, R-A-Y, P-E-A-T,
has a wide list, reading list of published material that's fully referenced.