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It is officially after 7 o'clock. The Herb Doctor is coming your way, so stay tuned for that.
[Music]
Well, welcome to this evening's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray.
My name is Sarah Johannison Murray.
Excuse me for not having the audio track. Okay. Anyway, so thanks so much for joining us.
As always, Dr. Peat is joining us on the show.
Tonight's subject is going to be a subject surrounding longevity and brain foods.
Dr. Peat's latest newsletter is on cognition. It's a continuing theme of his,
and we want to bring out some of the new thoughts surrounding that.
The number if you live in the area, there's a call-in show from 7.30 to 8 p.m.
The number if you live in the area is 923-3911.
If you're outside the area, there's an 800 number, which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD.
Incidentally, it is also the pledge drive for the radio station.
And just those people who are listening to the show now,
I just want to reemphasize from my own personal perspective,
that it's a very unique radio show which allows a very diverse range of topics.
And those topics are not always, not usually even, things that you're going to hear in the mainstream.
So it's a very important radio show to support radio programming.
Station. Radio station.
Station to support. Thank you. And, yeah, very much appreciate any pledges that people would like to make
or sponsorship donations, etc.
So we will be having a few brief interludes during the show and be talking about that.
Okay. So I think without any further delay, let's see if Dr. Peat's on the air.
Are you there with us, Dr. Peat?
Yes. I'm here.
Oh, hi.
Just so that people who perhaps have never listened to the show or have never heard you,
would you just give an outline of your academic and professional background before we get into tonight's subject?
I studied humanities first largely at the University of Oregon, a year at Ohio State, some in Mexico and so on.
But then I went to the University of Oregon for four years to study biology.
And I've been concentrating on biology now for 40 years or more.
Okay. And I know that you're intimately involved in, for want of a better phrase, uncovering the truth behind various claims
and, yeah, propaganda almost from, I would think, some of the pharmaceutical and other corporations
with how they would market their product to us as consumers
and how that marketing is really not very scientific a lot of the times.
And there is scientific evidence to show an argument to support most of what you,
most if not all of what you write about in your newsletters.
And just reminding people that listen to the show, Dr. Peat doesn't sell anything.
He's very much into research.
And a lot of what you do, I know from our own experience and from people that have contacted you, is very altruistic.
So tonight's show, like I said at the beginning here, is going to be surrounding longevity
and the popular sort of popularly recently exploded promulgation, if you like, of brain food, brain foods, supplements, etc.,
nootrophics, I think they're commonly referred to now in the buzz circles.
But looking at longevity first, we did a show a few months back and it was entitled "You Are What You Eat"
and I know we expanded on things that you consume can definitely affect your emotion and your psychology.
With respect to longevity, you've written in your recent newsletter that the intestinal tract of parrots and ravens
contained only a few species of bacteria and this positively correlated with longevity in these species.
The intestines being a major source of toxin and I was quite shocked when I saw it
because I know that ravens are carrion birds and you would think that dead and dying tissue and rotting flesh
would be a pretty good source of a wide range of bacteria.
So in terms of bacterial toxins in the gut and the bacteria, what have you found about the intestinal population of bacteria?
Well, birds have a very high body temperature and so probably have extremely fast digestion
and ability to extract everything good from the food, taking it away from potential bacteria.
So it's just so fast that bacteria don't have much of a chance at multiplying.
And incidentally, besides being very long-lived, those birds are extremely intelligent,
can solve extremely complex problems very quickly.
There's a lot of stuff on the internet, videos about birds solving problems.
So I think the cognition and longevity go closely together.
When you cause animals to live, to grow up their whole life free of bacteria,
they have some advantage in stress resistance and have a somewhat increased average lifespan.
High metabolic rate, a lot of the stuff produced by the bacteria ends up simply slowing metabolism.
And the aging process itself right from earliest life is a process of slowing the metabolic rate.
So things that retard that slowing should extend lifespan as well as good cognition.
That actually reminds me of another phrase, the wear and tear.
And the relationship between activity and running at a high metabolic rate and running out of energy and/or wearing out,
being kind of the opposite of what we're saying here about highly increased metabolic rates
being actually productively beneficial for the organism in terms of clearing waste material
and/or processing reactions that would denature toxins or clear waste, etc.
When I was in grade school and high school, it was common opinion that if you were very active,
had a high metabolic rate, that you would die young.
That always annoyed me that people had the image of a candle, the brighter it burns, the shorter its life expectancy.
Is this why a baby starts out with such a high pulse rate and is so warm and has a high metabolism
and then it's just aging that changes that?
Yeah, puberty especially.
It gradually slows down. When a calf is born, for example, its fats all through its body,
including its brain, are highly saturated because the mother has been saturating the fats from the food.
And so it's protected from the environment.
And as its tissues absorb the polyunsaturated fats, its metabolism slows down.
And you can see it in the ruminants because they start life extremely free of polyunsaturates.
But human babies are, according to some fat experts, everyone is born deficient in the essential fatty acids.
And so they advocate putting more of them in baby formula.
But actually, those are major things in slowing metabolic rate.
And they tend to accumulate in the brain with aging, slowing metabolism,
especially the ability to metabolize glucose all the way to carbon dioxide so that the old or the amended brain
has a chronically high level of lactic acid because it has progressively lost the ability to oxidize glucose to carbon dioxide.
And a lot of polyunsaturated fats.
I just find it strange that the placenta filters out the polyunsaturated fats.
Yeah, that's why babies are born with a so-called fatty acid deficiency.
But that's a natural thing. The baby makes its brain fats out of the glucose or fructose that it's getting from the mother.
I know it's just so strange that they say, oh, the baby has a deficiency when maybe that's how it's supposed to be.
If that's the way it is, if the placenta filters it out, maybe the baby is not supposed to have them.
So don't start giving your baby fish oil as soon as it's born.
Yeah, there have been experiments with rats and dogs and other animals in which the mother is given a high unsaturated fat diet or a PUFA-free diet.
And the babies have a bigger brain and a better problem-solving ability when their mother was free of PUFA during gestation.
Okay, so the first thing then, the intestines being clean because of being a major source of toxins, definitely accumulates inflammatory degradative processes and contributes to a shorter lifespan.
How about the manipulation of hormones then?
And I know there was an experiment that I'd like you to bring out.
I know we can't do it to human beings perhaps or people off the street, but a fellow called W.D. Denklas did an experiment removing the pituitary gland.
And this was shown decisively to increase life and/or reduce the rate of aging and the hormones that are born by both the anterior and posterior pituitary.
Things that I know you've mentioned lots of in the past, things like LH, FSH, TSH, and oxytocin are also very responsible for a lot of inflammatory processes.
He found that in general, the pituitary extract, if you injected it into an animal, slowed the ability to oxidize its glucose.
And so he called the death hormone the oxygen blocking hormone.
And he tried to extract a specific protein.
It was closely related to prolactin or growth hormone, but he never did identify a single protein, probably because several pituitary hormones do have some oxygen blocking function.
Growth hormone is really an adequate model of what Denklas was looking for.
He thought it was closer to prolactin, but that whole range of either prolactin or growth hormone can interfere with oxygen metabolism.
And it's now widely recognized that the more growth hormone you have, the shorter your life expectancy.
And I think doctors give patients growth hormone.
Yeah. The famous Methuselah mouse is deficient, lacks the ability to produce growth hormone.
And when they genetically modify mice so that they produce more than the normal amount, they're very short-lived.
So it's just anything you can do. You don't have to do surgery on the pituitary. You can live in a way that reduces the activity of those hormones.
For example, when you get hypoglycemia and then the stress tends to sharply decrease your blood sugar until you adapt.
But simply an episode of hypoglycemia increases your growth hormone and that activates the whole process of changing your type of metabolism,
blocking oxygen production, relatively the ability to oxidize glucose to carbon dioxide.
And it tends to increase phosphate, which is one of the things that happens under the influence of bowel toxins.
And it's the ratio of phosphates to calcium that you've always mentioned as being important to get dietarily so that you get enough calcium in relation to phosphate
because the phosphate from meats, particularly muscle meats, etc., and nuts and things can be fairly damaging.
I mean, yeah, it's now considered one of the most important toxins of kidney disease or uremic toxins.
Simply natural phosphate that everyone has circulating, but when it increases because of the hormonal metabolic problems,
that is a typical strong sign of the aging process and the aging or anti-aging hormone or protein called classo is a very powerful regulator of the balance and handling of phosphate.
Okay, let's hold it there for a moment, Dr. Peat, because we've got a couple of people in the studio here who've got something to share with us.
So let's just take this next five minutes and go through this.
Thank you. This is Carrie and I'm here with Lauren, otherwise known as L-Dog.
All right. Thanks, Lauren. And we're here to thank some people.
We are in our pledge drive and we know a lot of people listen in from all over the place for this show.
It's so much important health information. And KMUD to support these locally produced shows needs community support.
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In fact, you can become a new member of KMUD and we really love that.
We've got 20 new members this pledge drive. We're really excited about that.
Thank you, each and every one of you. And we've got some people to thank for their donations.
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And Jeff, we know you've got smoke and fire really close by.
So hope you're safe out there and thank you so much for listening to KMUD and listening for all the fire news.
And thank you for your pledge.
And we'd also like to thank Loris from Redway who says thanks for the fire reports and Tuesday is her favorite day.
Right. Yeah, we've got the people have favorite days here all the time.
So thank you, Loris. And an anonymous donation. Thank you so much.
And a friend of mine wants to do a shout out to people to please watch out for cyclists on the roads.
We've got windy roads here and look out.
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We will fix you up.
And they're good. I bring my bike tires in there to get repaired.
So, you know, if you make a pledge here and give us a call, you can give a shout out too.
You hear what everyone has to say and their shout outs on KMUD.
So thanks very much. And thanks for the show and all the important information.
And Smoke and Moses from Myers Flat. And I'm sure Smoke and Moses knows to put your cigarette butts out.
Don't just throw them outside because bad stuff happens.
Right. Thank you. Smoke and Moses.
And we have lots of thank you gifts for people.
If you make a pledge tonight and and LDOG has a special one just this evening.
What do you have to offer listeners tonight?
It's perfect since it's the Herb Doctor Show.
I have a St. John's Wort homebrew available for the next person who calls in and does the sustaining membership.
Love to hook them up. All right.
You've got that St. John's Wort homebrew.
It's delicious. Can I ask you how you made it?
I made a mash and added some yeast and a little bit of magic, wand waving.
I'm just kidding. Lots of love.
Okay. Cool. Okay. Good. Did it change color? What color was it?
Bright red. I was wondering.
But the St. John's Wort really brings out that red.
Yeah. Excellent. That's what you get when you infuse the flowers in a good quality saturated oil or a jojoba particularly.
Yeah. Excellent.
Great. Well, have a great rest of the show.
We'll come back with more thank yous.
I hope so. Please. We see the phone ringing.
So we'll come back with more thank yous.
Absolutely. That's what it's all about.
Thanks so much for supporting the Mudd.
Yeah. Thanks for keeping it all alive.
Okay. So carrying on with the topic of longevity and brain foods, I think actually before I start that up,
I just wanted to mention that last month we did a little expose of two gifted young individuals who had an idea
and they just followed it up and did an interview with six leading alternative scientists.
Dr. Peat was one of them.
And they had a Kickstarter and they produced a documentary.
And it was their goal to produce a full film all about all the some of the misleading thoughts in medicine
and how medicine and science has kind of gone off the straight and narrow and become fairly deranged in its beliefs.
And Brad and Stuart, Brad and Jeremy, sorry, Jeremy, Stuart and Brad Adams,
wanted to reach the goal of thirty five thousand dollars for their Kickstarter to enable them to get to post-production.
And then at that point they would have a very viable and tangible film to bring to bear and would get further funding and produce it.
Well, they smashed the thirty five thousand record and they got seventy six thousand dollars in their Kickstarter.
So well, well done.
OK, so Dr. Peat, I wanted to also ask now about the anti-aging effect of the proposition that diluting your blood serum or your lymph can actually increase your increase your lifespan because of removing toxins and how the kidneys themselves,
when the kidneys fail, how they can damage bowel function.
And I was I was wondering, is it possible that we could practically dialyze ourselves like, you know, patients go for dialysis when they're diabetic, etc.?
What about blood letting?
Blood letting?
Aren't blood donors have an increased don't blood donors have an increased lifespan?
Well, they have a lower iron, don't they?
Yeah, at least a healthy lifespan.
I'm not sure about the maximum, but they are relatively free of degenerative diseases and animal experiments have been done now for seventy five years.
This is one of the simple dilution experiments where they took out a dog's blood, centrifuged it, threw away the liquid part, put a saline solution back into replace the red blood cells and did that repeatedly.
So there were enough washings that the whole animals body fluids had been turned over and exchanged.
Wow.
So a decrepit old dog, I think something close to 20 years, became frisky and really effectively rejuvenated.
Wow. That's interesting. I mean, I guess then obviously there's no damage to the red blood cells from centrifuging them and or any other solid matter is not damaged by the G forces and it can it can be re suspended in a clean fluid.
Yeah.
Interesting.
And the bowel toxins are always entering the blood and having to be removed by the kidneys.
But they poison not only the kidneys, but the heart, the brain and the liver and the intestine in the process of being filtered out.
And so the blood contains some of these toxins, including the normal lactic acid and phosphate simply in excess, as well as the specific bacterial toxins.
But also, as these toxins affect the various tissues and organs, the body produces defensive reactions and these defensive reactions, including pituitary hormones, become part of the toxic environment circulating in the fluids.
And so the shift away from circulating renewal signals produced by the animal becomes gradually with age circulating stress signals rather than renewal signals.
And so if you put young blood into an old animal, you're causing a slight shift back towards some of the renewal signals, but you aren't necessarily decreasing the age and stress signals.
Wow.
So.
And that's very much like a bystander effect as well, right?
Yeah, it definitely is the same process that happens in the bystander effect when you injure a cell or a particular region, for example, with a beam of focused ionizing radiation x-raying your foot or hand or tooth or whatever.
That tissue emits the signals which are the same as the aging and stress signals.
And so the radiation damage is very similar to the process of aging and the intrinsic regulatory processes. Instead of being increasing your ability to adapt, they start narrowing the way you're adapting.
It creates a vicious circle, for example, in which something interferes with your oxidation and in reaction that leads to lactic acid production instead of carbon dioxide.
And the lactic acid is one of the toxins that turns on the production of nitric oxide, which spreads inflammatory signals and blocks the ability to use oxygen.
So you get a, in that case, it's a very quick feedback process in which it just gets worse and worse unless something intervenes to either stop the production of lactic acid or nitric oxide.
Okay, excellent.
I think if you were to ask people on the streets whether nitric oxide was bad for you or good for you, I think most of them would say that it was good for you.
It's so wrong.
The September issue of Life Extension Magazine has an article mentioned on their cover how to increase your nitric oxide.
Oh my goodness.
And it gives a several page article describing their product that contains some very nice flavonoid compounds extracted from oranges or something.
Right.
But the theory that they use to sell them is that they will increase your nitric oxide.
They give two references saying that.
And so I looked up that subject, what hesperidin does to.
Hesperidin.
Yeah.
Okay.
Nitric oxide.
And I found, I don't know, I think it was probably 30 or 40 articles saying that these are anti-inflammatory because they block nitric oxide.
Right, right.
So they got it.
So people will feel better using them, but they're selling them as an increasing nitric oxide when in fact it's doing the opposite.
Yeah.
Whoops.
I wonder that the editor might appreciate the comment.
Okay.
I know someone should write to the editor of Life Extension Magazine.
Okay.
You're listening to Ask Your Ob Doctor on KMED Galbraithville 91.1 FM and from 7.30 to the end of the show at 8 o'clock you're invited to call in with any questions that are related or unrelated to this month's subject of longevity and brain foods.
I think in the next half an hour here we'll get into some of the brain foods.
People might have heard about them.
People might have used them.
I know Dr. Peat certainly knows what he's talking about and some of the sites that might support some of these brain foods, I know that he would have alternative information that I think people should be aware of.
Some of them are very innocuous.
Some of them have a very good background.
Some of them have a very less than scientific background.
So brain foods I think is going to be the next thing that we'll get into.
But if people have any questions about them or about longevity or how to approach that, 923-3911 or the 1-800 number is 1-800-KMED-RAD.
So the subject of Neuotrophics being the word that's used to describe a product that would be an improving your cognitive ability, your mental prowess, your performance skills, etc.
and your alertness and readiness.
There's lots and lots out there and I'm not surprised that most people don't really understand it and probably bite the hook that's the shiniest and glossiest and fanciest hook.
It looks like it must work because it's got such a good advertising campaign behind it.
I wanted to explore then the subject of Neuotrophics with you Dr. Peat and ask whether you can support or refute the claims made by various manufacturers of performance and cognition improving substances as plausible or poor science.
And I think I wanted to start with a widely known in the trade anyway compound called acetylcholine which is a neurotransmitter responsible for improving memory, learning, problem solving ability and general cognition.
What are your thoughts on this substance?
The current and the last 20 years popular medical approach to treating Alzheimer's disease is to try to increase the level or production or persistence of acetylcholine by blocking the enzyme that breaks it down.
And they've demonstrated basically that it doesn't work.
And so they need a new fundamental theory but their theory is so mistaken that it's hard for them to get off onto a new line of drug treatment.
Because the acetylcholine is essential and part of our conscious regulating.
It's needed for memory.
All kinds of biological processes require just the right amount of acetylcholine.
But it activates the enzyme that produces nitric oxide.
And nitric oxide blocks energy production.
And so the process of excitotoxicity which it made monosodium glutamate notorious because a little too much of that activates the production of a little too much acetylcholine.
And that makes too much nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide poisons the ability to oxidize glucose to carbon dioxide.
So it increases lactic acid and the cell has less energy and is more excited by the acetylcholine.
So basically it becomes susceptible to dying in proportion to the overstimulation of acetylcholine.
And is it true that MSG can cross the blood brain barrier and cause that reaction in the brain?
Oh sure.
The amino acids all have to get into the brain to provide brain proteins and such.
And it's just one of our normal amino acids but too much of it becomes toxic or too little of the other amino acids and a relative disproportion of glutamic acid.
So arctic acid and cysteine are the other potential nerve toxins.
So another good case in point of more is not better.
In your opinion do you think most people have enough acetylcholine in their systems?
Yeah actually I think the tendency with aging is to have too much.
The shock reaction is for over a hundred years now there's been evidence that over activity of the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nerve system produces shock.
That it's the essential factor in shock.
And this is the system that acts primarily through acetylcholine producing nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide blocks oxygen metabolism.
So in shock your blood stays red and full of oxygen but the tissue can't use it.
And that happens with aging, heart failure, kidney failure, dementia, all the tissues relatively have a shock like metabolism that progresses with aging.
Do you think there's any medical benefit or interest in increasing the breakdown of acetylcholine?
Yeah there are lots of therapeutic uses of things that block the over activity of acetylcholine and accelerate its turnover.
A rich environment increases the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine.
So the environmental enrichment then would encourage the breakdown of acetylcholine?
Yeah having a good life protects you against too much.
Protects you against lots of aging problems right?
Oh what?
Having a good life protects you against lots of aging problems.
Well you have to clarify the term good life we don't mean drinking and partying.
No having lots of fun, reading interesting things, talking to interesting people.
Yeah and having an interesting job to do and interesting work and liking your job not because it pays you well but because you're fundamentally interested in it which is what you should always pursue in your life.
Yeah it might pay well too.
Well that's a benefit, that's a positive benefit, that's a blessing but it's not always.
That's the opposite of learned helplessness or behavioral despair.
Most people treat their jobs with some learned helplessness.
How can they do anything different?
They spend all this time, well perhaps in some instances they spend all the time studying for a particular degree or whatever education and then they get into the work and find out how odious it is and decide that what can they do about it?
I don't know.
Okay yeah learned helplessness another very interesting topic.
I know you've spent quite a bit of time talking about learned helplessness and how that plays psychologically into physiology and how it can have definite effects on the organism in terms of decreasing its survival odds.
That brings up another product line that is being pushed recently of the methylating agents because learned helplessness is a matter of imprinting, turning off the genes that should enliven you, increase your adaptability.
Too much methylation shuts things down, makes you helpless and that process happens progressively with aging.
Too much methylation turns off the genes of renewal.
There are lots of products pushing the idea that we need more methylation.
One of the main methyl donors is methionine, the amino acid and if you deprive animals of a major part, I forget the exact percentage but half or less of their normal methionine, they live 30 or 40 percent longer than they would otherwise.
What's a common food source that's high in methionine?
All of the high protein foods like meat.
Okay so this again another good reason to advocate the fact that muscle meats in isolation are not good for you and that balanced proteins from the whole animal with including the connective tissue and gelatin is the best way to consume a protein.
Yeah, gelatin is unique in being free of the pro-aging amino acids and another bad thing about meat is it's very high ratio of phosphate and calcium.
And so is this similar to adventuresomeness?
To what?
Adventuresomeness, it's a phrase that my dad's always using that he reads articles about people and cultures that have more adventuresomeness than others.
More adventure.
They're into adventure.
Yeah, that's what an enriched environment gives you the opportunity to have adventure every day.
Good, allows your brain to grow and to seek new opportunities and limitless potentials, that's what life should be all about.
Okay, there's a little one-liner I just wanted to mention here which kind of really supports the whole energy metabolism or the increased energy, increased metabolism being very pro-life.
There's a little sentence here that was part of, I think it was part of your newsletter, Dr. Peat.
He said that heart rate corresponding with academic standing in elderly patients improved when their pacemaker was turned up.
Yeah, they noticed that people with a faster heart rate had higher academic records and they thought maybe it was just a better brain circulation.
People with a very slow heart rate weren't getting enough oxygen to their brain so they had patients with the adjustable pacemakers.
And so they gave them mental tests when it was set at 70 beats per minute and then they turned up the rate to 85 beats per minute, gave them the same tests and they scored better in all types of brain function, memory, reasoning.
And it's so popular in culture to believe that if you have a low pulse rate, you're healthy, you're fit, you're super athletic, you know, and like these people that have pulses of 50 beats a minute, they suddenly die of heart attacks.
They're not long-lived at all and it's a complete brainwashing that low heart rate corresponds with longevity because it's the opposite.
It's the bodybuilders that live a long time, not the long-distance runners.
Well, maybe the bodybuilders might wear out their joints too.
Or take too many chemicals.
They're definitely the big bodybuilders you see that are all over the press and news.
Okay, so let's just, I just wanted to bring out a couple of new atrophics that are in the herb world and just see if there's any, well, I know there's a connection there, but just see the connection that there is.
Sage, believe it or not, I've always known sage to be a kind of cleansing purifier, mouthwash.
It can be used for, you know, boggy gums that are not holding the teeth properly.
Definitely can be used for respiratory conditions.
But sage apparently here now, there's fairly recent articles on PubMed that it has a cholinesterase inhibiting property.
Now this is something that you mentioned earlier on with acetylcholine.
So the enzyme that produces acetylcholine is acetylcholine esterase and salvia inhibits that.
Every plant, like every animal, has thousands of different chemicals.
Right.
And sage has, I'm not sure how it relates to other drug effects, but that is one of its components, actions, is to shift the balance to increased acetylcholine action.
But two of its major terpene type chemicals are inhibitors of nitric oxide, salvia nolic acid, I think one is called.
And the other Chinese or Japanese name, cationone, something like that.
These are very effective inhibitors of nitric oxide.
So they're anti-inflammatory and pro-respiratory.
So is this why it probably has an action with reducing menopausal hot flashes?
If it's reducing nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide does cause flushing and is connected with hot flashes.
So I think probably the dominant effect is to lower nitric oxide for the cholinesterase inhibitors will tend to increase nitric oxide by stimulating the acetylcholine nerves.
OK, I guess moving on to ginkgo.
Most people know ginkgo.
It's been used for a long time in the Chinese traditional medicine system, more particularly for elderly people to improve cognitive function.
They say that it improves blood flow to the brain, increases cerebral blood flow.
And that would seem to be in keeping with turning up an elderly patient's pacemaker, increasing their heart rate and their cardiac output.
But I think the vasodilating effects of the cerebral arteries is probably more the point with ginkgo.
But I also wanted to bring out what, again, maybe miscommonly known as good when it's not, perhaps, is the link between a monoamine oxidase.
And then ginkgo apparently decreases monoamine oxidase.
And that increases dopamine.
Now, I know they treat, well, unscientifically, perhaps, they might treat Alzheimer's patients with L-Dopa.
And dopamine might be touted as a precursor here, as a product to do that with.
But what are your thoughts on dopamine and monoamine oxidases?
It definitely makes you feel good.
It's sort of an upper to do anything that increases your dopamine, tends to increase adrenaline.
Usually, and certain types of M.A.O. inhibitors will increase serotonin, too.
Those don't necessarily go with well-being.
The brain circulation, for example, is decreased by serotonin.
It tightens up the blood vessels, especially the veins leaving the brain.
So if you have too much serotonin, you can get brain congestion and a migraine, for example, with the arteries opening up and the veins closing down.
So there might be serotonin inhibitors in ginkgo.
But I think the most important benefit of ginkgo is that it's a very good nitric oxide inhibitor.
And also blocks platelet aggregating factor.
Right, it's a PF blocker, isn't it?
And mentioning that, it blocks prostaglandins pretty generally.
And they're pro-inflammatory.
Yeah.
Okay, it's 746 here on KMED Gallup 91.1 FM.
From now until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in.
If you have any questions about tonight's show on longevity and brain foods, numbers 9233911.
Or if you live outside the area, there's a 1-800 toll-free number, which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD.
So to carry on with the subject of brain foods, I know we had this conversation earlier and got into a philosophical topic of the meaning or the usefulness of the determination of intelligence.
When it comes to marketing of brain food as supposedly increasing your intelligence.
But philosophically, in terms of what we as human beings are told by our peers and by media advertising, intelligence is not just intelligence.
And that there's actually many different ways of looking at intelligence that can be useful if we don't believe the IQ is the only determinant.
And if we can, you know, not do complicated mathematics in our head that if we can't do that, there's something wrong with us.
Because intelligence itself can take on many different forms and perhaps our society just doesn't recognize or want to recognize some of those forms.
The Wizard of Oz idea, maybe you can just go online and buy a diploma and become intelligent and qualified. It's starting to look like the mechanical idea of qualification.
You learn certain techniques like computer programming. They can break it down into little credits and micro degrees and so on.
And you accumulate your qualifications in terms of what the culture has to sell.
But I think the whole idea of intelligence, it's sort of like the wear and tear idea of aging.
It's an idea that there is a blueprint laid out for how the body develops.
It's all determined ahead of time. And the intelligence, the IQ idea is that there are certain mental skills that an intelligent person has that you can define IQ by.
One of the silliest kinds of IQ tests had questions that were simply stories that they had asked people at Oxford, I think it was, to interpret.
And then they had uneducated people interpret the same story.
The IQ test asks you to interpret these little short stories. And if you do it the way the Oxford graduate did, you have a high IQ.
That is silly.
So a lot of products are being sold with the idea that if you take them, you'll become clever in these ways that will make you compete in the society.
But if the society is set up in an irrational way, then it's not intelligent to succeed in terms that the society presents.
That reminds me of the caste system in India.
I read a BBC News article just the other day about a chap in India who had six degrees.
He had a couple of master's degrees in various different subjects.
But unfortunately for him, he was of a certain caste.
He was of a caste that actually was, I forget the name they gave them now, but they were basically a caste that was relegated to cleaning up human waste.
And no matter how many degrees this chap had, and he got time off to go to university and to study for his exams, etc.
And he passed one after the other.
And it started getting wise to him wanting all this time off and started to try to block him.
And he actually just protested against it.
And eventually he won and was given the time off to do these extra degrees.
And they still wouldn't do anything about him in terms of his social standing because they'd already compartmentalized him.
And that's very much the opposite of what we talk about with environmental enrichment and the kind of things that can bring to society as a whole and also to individuals that can then affect other individuals.
It's pretty much a kind of brainwashing of systems of a certain type of belief.
Yeah.
The nootropic people are really committed to the idea of intelligence as competition to gain status.
But I think there's a more general idea of consciousness and intelligence that applies to life in general, that it's an appropriateness of the way you live, which is intelligent.
Not the skill you have to fit into whatever you might encounter in the society.
It's the ability to decide whether you want to fit in or not.
Yeah.
And also the quotient here of fitting in in terms of feeling alive, alive and well, I think is very important.
Obviously, we've talked at length in the past about various toxic insults in our food supply, in our environment, you know, what people consider normal in terms of their pastimes or their free time or their occupation or just in their thoughts.
And, you know, you mentioned learned helplessness and the kind of inescapable stress and the kind of events that that promotes.
But just having an open and free outlook and or, like I said, a job that not necessarily pays well, but that you really enjoy is so much more important.
And in terms of IQ, as you've mentioned, it's a really false in a lot of ways, a false system of determining intelligence and that society itself is very much molded, unfortunately, by the huge corporations that surround us selling whatever products they have to offer.
And so when I started looking at nootrophics as a pretty endless sort of list and it's gone on from one to the next, the next.
And I know that Life Extension magazine definitely promotes a lot of life promoting products.
And so there are definitely some products, of course, like you mentioned, things like thyroid, things like pregnenolone, anti stress, basic anti stress chemicals, compounds that are naturally produced by the body to offset the toxic effects of stress and the inflammatory effects of stress.
And vitamins are important.
Yeah, I was going to mention B12. I know you mentioned B1 and then B12, fairly realistically important, you know, anti stress and thereby perhaps, you know, memory or cognition enhancing products.
Niacinamide.
And, you know, and caffeine, if it's used properly, but a lot of people are thinking of caffeine as a legal version of crack cocaine.
It shouldn't be used as speed. It should be used as a food.
It should decrease nitric oxide exposure and so it should have anti-aging properties. But if you take it on an empty stomach, it will drop your blood sugar, turn on nitric oxide, cause aging stress.
So have caffeine after you've had a big meal.
Yeah, I just want to bring out one one particular herb just because it's kind of pertinent to the subject of neurotrophic cell performance enhancing.
And it's actually under the umbrella of the general term adaptogenics, which was coined and by Russian research when they were looking at cheap alternatives to drugs that they perhaps couldn't produce in the 50s for their space program.
They were very much into looking at plant sources and the ginsengs obviously are one of those kind of crowning products that you think about when you think about both longevity and enhancing mental performance, etc.
But that resistance, that term adaptogen coined to describe a compound that improved the organism's resistance to stress.
So the Korean ginseng, Panax ginseng is one of those things obviously that I think of along with Eleuthera cocus and several other ginseng species.
OK, I cannot think that's coming towards the end of the show. I think we want to just do another shout out here.
You want to come on in? Oh, somebody's on the phone.
Well, we've got four minutes. I don't think we can. I don't think we can take it because it's going to push us over eight o'clock and there'll be unhappy, unhappy people.
But perhaps if they want to call in, I'll take the call afterwards. Perhaps we can do that.
So thank you so much for your time, Dr. Peat. OK, thank you. I just want to thank you and good night, Dr. Peat.
OK, so I just want to let people know in the next few minutes here a little bit more about Dr. Peat, how they can find out about him, read his work, look at some of the stuff that he's published.
Get a feel for him from the shows. Hopefully at any moment soon, perhaps in the next month, the website that we have will be updated.
And it is my intention to post all of the audios that we've done with Dr. Peat.
I think there's getting on for 50 or at least of them and publish those for people to freely download and listen to.
Dr. Peat's website, www.raypeat.com, is full of articles, fully referenced.
All of it is his research, his own unique way of looking at all the pieces and bringing together a cohesive framework within which to understand what medicine so often tries to hit with a hammer,
with a single drug in large amounts or toxic drugs that have negative effects.
So Dr. Peat has a very unique way of looking at things.
And I know from personal experience a lot of what he has brought out to us and taught us has really helped a lot of people.
So his website is a very good starting point to look at articles.
And that's www.raypeat.com.
And my name's Andrew Murray.
My name's Sarah Johannison Murray.
For anybody who wants to find out any more about us, we can be reached toll free on 1-888-WBMR Monday through Friday.
And it's certainly becoming, on the drive in this evening, 10 to 7, I was looking at the trees and changing colors and trees dropping their leaves already.
And I was thinking, wow, it's the 20th, 21st of August and it feels like the end of September.
It's all a month early this year.
It's all at least a month early.
Anyway, we're on the third Friday of each month.
And so until the third Friday of next month, I'll say good night.
Good night.
Yes, and good night and good evening.
And this is Carrie.
And I just wanted to jump in here at the end of your show to say a few thank yous that just came in.
Thank you to this anonymous who said, "Herb doctor info on the show is priceless."
So thank you very much.
Thank you for that.
Yes, and another thank you.
People who listen to KMUD need to pledge.
That's what Karen from Branscombe says.
Thank you so much, Karen.
That's the only thing that keeps the show going, right, is pledges.
There's no state funding.
Well, the whole station is an independent station.
It's a community radio station.
I believe we get some funding, outside funding, but it's all from the -- I'm not sure.
But it's mostly just community support, absolutely.
Which allows the radio show to be as unique as it is because perhaps there would be more outside control.
Right, we're completely independent that way.
I mean, like federal money to support the community radio station.