Well, welcome to tonight's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray.
And my name is Sarah Johannison Murray.
For those of you who perhaps never listened to the shows, they run every third Friday of the month from 7 to 8 p.m.
We're both licensed medical herbalists who graduated in England with a master's degree in herbal medicine.
We provide a wide range of medicinal herb extracts from our own CCOF certified herb farm.
And we consult with clients all over the States on wide ranging subjects,
many of which we've discussed on the show even.
So, once again, very pleased to have Dr. Ray Peat with us to share his wisdom.
I've just got his latest newsletter.
He does produce pretty prodigious amounts of written work.
And I know some people sign up for his newsletters.
And I know there's been a bit of a shortage with his newsletters in terms of reaching the production that's necessary to fill people's desires.
So, that's good news and bad news in some ways.
So, Dr. Peat, you on the line with us?
Yes.
Okay, great.
What I think I want to do is just let people know that the show does run 8 to 8 o'clock.
It's a live program.
And I just want to let people know that normally we open the lines from 7.30 to 8 o'clock.
But just like to bring that point open now where if people want to call in,
because I've got some questions here from previous shows that people haven't been able to get on air to ask the questions.
And they've written them to me, emailed them to me.
So, I've compiled several of them.
And there are others I know that are out there that perhaps if they listen to the show now, they might want to call in any time.
So, the number if you want to call in, if you live in the area, there's a 707 number.
That's our area code, 707-923-3911.
And for those people, and it was written to by a gentleman in Australia earlier on today,
said he's had trouble getting through to the internet line.
But there is an 800 number.
It's 1-800-568-3723.
Although international callers would want to use the 707-923-3911 number.
That's correct.
Or if I'm not too sure what people do with internet-based calls to the show.
I'm not too sure if that's – does that happen?
People call in on Skype numbers?
No.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
So, there's the 800 number, 800-568-3723 or a local number, 707-923-3911.
Okay.
So, for tonight's show, we're going to open up parts of previous shows based on inflammation.
And Dr. Peat's current work looking at autoimmunity, linking that to estrogen, linking that to
inflammation and how the whole concept of cell energy is something that he's constantly
advocating with thyroid hormone as one of the pillars.
Not forgetting things like progesterone, pregnenolone, vitamin D. Obviously, there's plenty of other
supplements and nutraceuticals that we're going to be mentioning as we go on.
But Dr. Peat, would you, just in case people that tune in, we do get them fairly consistently.
They've heard the show for the first time or they heard the podcast for the first time.
They've heard of you for the first time.
And I was speaking or rather was written to by a lady who'd first discovered your works
in 1990 and has been following your advice ever since.
So, there's a wide spectrum of people.
Would you just outline your background, your professional and academic background?
I'm a PhD study at the University of Oregon, 1968 to '72.
Before that, I had been a graduate student and teacher in linguistics, philosophy, psychology,
English lit, among other things.
I see that one of your questions from last month, I think, was about the trophoblast
theory of cancer.
Right.
And just when I was starting in my biology study in 1968, I had known a famous old cancer
genetics researcher, Leonel Strong, and he was studying the curability of cancer, mammary
cancer in the strains of mice that he developed by different types of liver extract.
And in thinking about that, I realized that there might be an overlap with the work he
was doing with the old John Beard trophoblast theory of cancer, which was behind the lay
trial treatment that we were in.
From almond seeds.
Okay.
The lay trial activates a process that its proponents thought just as a poison for the
cancer cells.
But since it involved activation by the enzyme beta glucuronidase, which happens to be an
enzyme that activates estrogen, I saw a link with Leonel Strong's work in which the cancer
prone animals inherited from their mothers, the prenatal gestational conditions, they
inherited a tendency to have high estrogen.
And he used a liver extract, the animals that he treated with the liver extract not only
didn't get cancer themselves, but their offspring for several generations didn't get cancer.
And was that because of the vitamin B6 in the liver helping their bodies?
He believed it was one of the nucleotide fractions that has analogs in the mainline cancer chemotherapy,
but he believed it was stabilizing the DNA.
And my impression was that there were anti-estrogenic substances in the liver and some of them were
also the nucleotides that Leonel Strong was talking about.
But anyway, the trophoblast theory, even though I think it's wrong in its details, it's extremely
rich in its overlap of the actual facts of how cancer develops.
So the estrogen factor that Leonel Strong was working on and the role of enzymes such
as beta glucuronidase, the late trial theory was based on, overlap with the trophoblast
theory.
And the main treatment that people used going by the beard trophoblast theory, the pancreatic
enzyme or extract to the pancreas were a main part of that therapy.
Okay, so I have a couple of questions I want to ask you about what you've just said as
your statements.
You mentioned now the product later or that some people listening might recognize as the
seed kernel extract from almonds?
Apricots.
Apricots, sorry.
Apricots.
Okay, so wasn't the rationale for that that it would break down the sugar linkage and
release cyanide and that's how it was kind of a…
That was the Krebs idea that it was poisoning.
His theory was very nice except there was a theory for the late trial that he defined
as the glucuronide, the molecule that he published had the glucuronic acid on it which would
be specifically released by cancer cells or by any inflamed cell but would be poisonous
only to cancer cells because they lack the ability to detoxify cyanide.
Right, right.
Now isn't beta glucuronidase an enzyme that breaks down the beta linkages, sugar linkages?
Yeah, and the glucuronic acid happens to be how toxic substances are detoxified for excretion
by the liver through the kidneys.
Estrogen glucuronide is the excreted, one of the main excreted forms.
It can be sulfate or glucuronide mainly.
I have a great liver mushroom pate recipe if people want to make that for the holidays
and the mushrooms have anti-estrogen compounds in them too if you boil them down really well
before you cook the liver with it.
Yeah, we mentioned the…
You've mentioned in the past here the button mushroom extract which has been used as an
aromatase inhibitor.
So that's another interesting point.
I wanted to get in later on tying these things together because there are lots of different
herbs that have compounds in them that show anti-aromatase activity and that's very interesting
in the concept of treating cancers.
There are plenty of literature out there from Native American cultures to cultures from
other countries that use different herbs for carcinomas in situ, for skin cancers, for
solid cancers, abdominal, etc., organ-based cancers and it seems like quite a few of the
instances there is an aromatase inhibiting activity within that herb and that's probably
would best explain by your understanding and what you've written and that would be a estrogen
suppressing effect.
I guess we will get into that a little bit later on but I just want to run these questions
by you from people who have tried to call in previous shows.
And the number again if you live in the area 707-923-3911 or there's an 800 number, it's
800-568-3723.
Dr. Ray Peat's joining us once more.
And if you want to email me for the liver pate recipe, it's Sarah, S-A-R-A-H @westernbotanicalmedicine.com.
All right, so I had a couple of questions based on sugars and one of them was does dextrinization
and protein coagulation change complex carbs into simple sugars?
Do you know much about this dextrinization?
Yeah, it is a process that has been used for about 200 years.
The first form of it was basically what they used to make carob syrup, corn syrup, boiling
corn starch with sulfuric acid and it makes a pale, almost clear syrup but the longer
you cook it and the harsher the acidic or basic conditions are, the browner it gets.
And the, when you talk about a browning reaction, molasses, they know that the brown stuff in
molasses is mutagenic and carcinogenic.
Just like any charred carbohydrate is, right, or charred starch or sugar.
Yeah, and generally when you sort out the corn starch from the germ, you're still getting
enzymes and there are amino groups spread throughout the starch part of the grain and
those amino groups participate in the classical browning reaction that makes these mutagenic
carcinogens which have a brown color.
So the dextrinization produces some dextrose, some simple sugars, but that's a matter of
how sweet and liquid it is or how viscous and gummy it is, depending on how far you
carry the breakdown reaction.
So on average, dextrins are considered to have mainly groups of glucose molecules that
are around 10 molecules long, 5 to 10 or 15.
Alright, so this is a process and it could change complex carbs into relatively simple
sugars but not so simple because the simple sugars, obviously, things like glucose, fructose,
sucrose, etc., just single units, subunits or two.
Yeah, the gumminess of it corresponds to the amount of starch left in it, broken up starch
makes, turns the solid starch into a semi-liquid gummy material.
So like cane juice, if anyone has ever had cane sugar juice, fresh juice, it's very thin,
very, very thin.
There's like basically zero starch in that, right?
The refined cane sugar?
Oh no, just if you have like fresh cane juice.
Or you just, they juice the sugar cane and they give you a little...
Yeah, the sugar...
It's very thin.
It contains sucrose itself so you don't need to process that.
Right, but I'm just saying that's why cane juice is so thin whereas corn syrup is so
thick because it still has a starch in it.
Yeah.
Alright, and just to recap there, anything really to do with temperature and starches
involving caramelization is, it can definitely be termed as carcinogenic in terms of the
makeup of the caramelized products.
Yeah, at least as far as the combination with amino groups and amino acids and proteins,
those are the best known mutagens.
But...
The burnt toast.
Yeah, acrylamide turns up in every time you heat a natural carbohydrate that contains
traces of amino acids or proteins.
And in the absence of the amino acids instead of acrylamide, you probably get small amounts
of acrolein which is another very toxic carcinogenic material.
And what about protein like meat and eggs, when they brown, is that also carcinogenic?
There are traces of sugar in those and so you do get some of the same compound.
Alright, well another question was, do amylase or amylopsin help change complex carbs into
sugars?
I know amylase but I'm not too familiar with amylopsin.
Yeah, that's just a pancreatic amylase.
Got it, okay.
Alright, so this is amylase would be like a salivary amylase.
Yeah.
Okay, alright, so that was those two questions.
I had some other questions from another person based on diet and, you know, recommendations
for diet.
They've been a long time listener.
They were also quite aware of your favorites in terms of foods from basic orange juice
to your constant advocation of carrots, grated carrots and coffee for B vitamins.
In terms of general nutrition, I just wanted to recap for those people that maybe haven't
listened too much before but in terms of calories for a female, what would you rate as being
generally acceptable calories for relatively sedentary type work just so we can understand
those people that perhaps they look at their food caloric intake, they'll probably recognize
they're getting far too many calories and what is actually realistic to burn in somebody's
healthy metabolism versus the calories they're getting from food.
So what do you think is a caloric intake for a female?
I would 2,000 is a ballpark.
You can be very sedentary and still burn close to 3,000 and some people can be moderately
active and get along on 1,700 and lots of people now are hypothyroid enough that they
can move around with just ordinary daily activity and still gain weight on 700 or 800 calories.
So you really have to look at your metabolic rate.
And also if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, I know when I was full-time breastfeeding,
I think I probably ate 3,000 a day.
And didn't gain weight.
No, and maintained weight.
Okay, how about proteins in terms of someone's intake for a female for example?
The military did a big study on people mostly of military age in their 20s, both men and
women of all the different sizes that are in the military and found that to do just
ordinary work, office work or whatever, both men and women needed at least 100 grams of
good protein every day.
But you see lots of people getting by on 25 or 30 grams and I've known people always with
pretty serious symptoms who were getting only 20 or even less grams per day.
Right.
Now do you expect things like tissue repair to be poor, muscle mass obviously not to be
in evidence and difficulty maintaining skin, nails, hair, that kind of thing with low protein
intake.
Yeah.
And it's hard if you're a meat eater, you could say, "Oh, it's easy," but then you don't
want to eat that much meat.
You don't want to be eating meat three times a day.
It's too much meat intake.
So then you really have to rely on eggs, which you can't eat any more than two eggs a day
because they contain some PUFA.
And so then you're left with dairy.
So really I think dairy is the primary source of protein that's healthy for people to be
getting.
Yeah.
Well, I know you advocate gelatin a lot in terms of protein content and...
Yeah, but that's not going to make up to 100 grams of protein when one eight ounce glass
of milk has eight grams.
Okay.
And then what do you recommend for sugars?
It really depends on your digestion, your intestinal health.
When I was in Mexico, I saw a lot of nutritionists trying to justify a bean and rice-based diet
and there are lots of reasons that you can't get along very well.
Even though the amino acids seem to be equivalent to protein, it turns out that potatoes are
infinitely better than beans as a source of protein.
But that requires, either of those require that your intestine be in fairly good health
because the complex carbohydrates of either of those can support bacterial growth if you
have a sluggish digestion.
Hang on, are we talking about juicing potatoes and cooking it?
No, just...
Yeah, if people were going to eat potatoes as a source of protein, they better have a
pretty strong intestinal wall.
Right.
Otherwise, all that starch will irritate them.
Yeah, because I know you advocate potato juice and use that in a double boiler to make a
kind of scramble that's actually starch-free, isn't it?
Yeah, that's for people who have a digestive problem but still need a very high quality
protein.
Yeah.
Okay, so just to recap in terms of the amount of grams of sugar for somebody in a day to
be...
If you...
The studies that I've written about in the late 1800s, they found that diabetics were
putting out about 12 ounces of sugar in extreme terminal diabetes.
They had about 12 ounces of sugar in their urine every day as glucose.
And so they reasoned that they would die less quickly if they replaced that amount of sugar
that they were losing.
And so they gave them a regular diet plus 10 or 12 ounces of plain white sugar and found
that instead of dying more slowly, they got well.
So it depends on what stress your system is under.
Huge amounts of sugar like that can be curative if you're under stress and need something
to compensate for the stress.
But if your digestive system is very healthy, you can get along just with starch instead
of sugar.
You still need a few hundred grams of carbohydrate, either a starch or sugar every day.
So like we had a client who had broken his knee and ankle and had very extensive surgery
and he was needing, I think, up to 400, I think a pound of sugar a day in various forms,
you know, marshmallows and homemade marshmallows, sugar in the milk in order to sleep, to lower
the amount of stresses he was recovering when he got out of the hospital.
That was what he needed to sleep.
And of course, he weaned himself off of that when he got better.
But initially, that was very curative for his sleep and his healing.
I've seen similar things in people with cancer or just extreme old age insomnia when they
drink a little syrup like concentrate of sugar in milk or eat a bowl of ice cream during
the middle of the night, they could get back to sleep.
Yeah, he went from not sleeping at all, like waking every hour and just completely restless
and in pain, just sleeping all through the night, just from increasing his sugar.
Okay, so in terms of a daily diet, and I do get this question pretty often in terms of
it's new to people and so they think initially the diet is pretty restrictive.
We've kind of produced a three-page or thereabouts breakdown of foods that we know from you and
what you've researched that is healthy, thyroid supportive, anti-inflammatory foods and those
kind of foods that are definitely to be avoided, obviously, the polyunsaturates which really
kicked off this entire thing with you, with us seven years ago.
In terms of, I even ask you personally, what kind of foods that you would, you typically
eat just to throw that out there and then we'll break down some of the foods here that
may be not obvious that people probably don't eat too much of that, they don't know they
can because it probably sounds like it's too either fattening or sugary or too problematic
from another perspective.
But what kind of foods do you typically gravitate towards that keep you going?
Two or three quarts of milk up to a gallon of milk per day, usually 1%, and usually one
big egg fried in butter typically, and orange juice as much as is available if it's good.
At least a pint, preferably more good sweet orange juice, and typically about once a week
some oysters or some liver, almost every day some kind of gelatinous soup, tail soup or
sometimes chicken soup with all the fat skimmed off.
Okay, well that's kind of key ingredients.
So Sarah, I mean because the person asked, they said they were very aware from listening
to you and having, they came across you in the early 90s they said and they've been paying
attention to you ever since in terms of your books and newsletters, but what they were
asking for which was kind of, in some ways it was a little strange because they thought
by now they would have recognized all the kind of foods that you do gravitate towards,
but we've produced a pretty extensive list of those foods that are thyroid suppressive
that people don't always recognize whether it's beans, nuts, seeds, you know, and that
kind of typical polyunsaturated rich foods that would have a thyroid suppressing effect.
But I know Sarah's a very good cook and you do make some excellent food and so I'm very
lucky to have that, so I don't ever find there's any shortage of variation.
I mean every now and again obviously we eat lots of different cheeses, we drink a lot
of milk and orange juice.
We eat milk powder pancakes every morning that I make ahead of time so I don't have
to make them every day and that's a pretty easy recipe if you can find some good organic
nonfat milk powder.
How often do you eat the milk powder pancakes, Dr. Peat?
Every day when we have the powder supply, then we run out of it and don't eat them for
a few months.
Now I know what to get you for Christmas, Dr. Peat.
So yeah, we usually have one meal.
I try to tell my clients that if you split your meals up into proteins, you're going
to have your liver or your oysters or your meat or your broth because it doesn't have
to be heavy on the protein side, then you want to have that with one meal.
You want to have your dairy, like whether it's cottage cheese or homemade ricotta cheese
is really easy to make or your milk powder pancakes and you can make them savory too
and grill them with melted cheese on top.
Also you can do Greek yogurts.
There's some good organic Greek yogurts that are very, very high protein and not sour.
And then you have your egg meal and I tend to like eggs for lunch rather than breakfast
because of the blood sugar lowering effect of the eggs.
I feel it's nicer to have something sweeter like the milk powder pancake for breakfast
with coffee rather than having eggs with coffee because both of those things lower your blood
sugar.
And then all the bone broths and the types of meats that are certainly good for you in
terms of not being purely muscle meats like brisket has an excellent saturated fat layer
on it.
And then lamb shanks are nice to roast.
Ox tail like Dr. Peat talked about, that's very gelatinous.
Otherwise if you have ground meat, I just sprinkle a little extra gelatin in there and
maybe some leftover drippings from a roast I made to moisten it up and to give a little
extra gelatin.
Okay.
Anyway, but that was one of the questions asked by somebody.
And incidentally, if people want to contact us anytime, Monday through Friday, you can
either write, best thing to do actually is probably write an email to either Andrew or
Sarah at westernmetallicalmedicine.com and we do have a pretty extensive sheet that we've
produced about three pages or so.
And it's pretty much based around thyroid supporting and thyroid suppressive foods.
So it gives a pretty good overview.
And for sugars, I mentioned the proteins for sugars.
I like to use honey.
We have our own bees and that's great to get a good raw honey.
Otherwise there's lots of honey available.
And sugar and milk or orange juice, honey or sugar and milk, orange juice, ice cream,
fruit when it's in season.
Right now we're getting some really good little tangerines and satsumas.
We have a bunch of apples from our tree that are really ripe.
It's just important when you eat fruit that it's from an organic source and it's a ripe
source.
I know Dr. Peat, you talk about how a ripe apple can be okay, but an unripe apple that
was picked unripe can be very disturbing to the intestines.
Lots of the fruit in supermarkets aren't properly ripened.
Even plums are sometimes hard to digest and allergenic.
And things like dried prunes, you have to experiment with them.
Because a lot of them will give you gas, dried fruit will give you gas and it's just something's
wrong.
I don't know.
What goes on with dried fruit?
What do they do wrong?
They use unripe fruit before they dry it, Dr. Peat?
I think so.
When the polymers haven't broken down, they will feed bacteria rather than the person.
So you'll know whether it's easy to digest because if it isn't and it's not good for
you, you'll be getting gas.
Isn't that a pretty good rule of thumb, Dr. Peat?
Yep.
So getting on to another question.
One more thing I just want to mention is milk.
It's a very good source of high-quality sugar, lactose.
So one glass of milk has 12 grams of sugar, one glass of orange juice has 25.
So you can add extra sugar to your milk to make up your quota.
And I basically say 150 grams a day is like a diet level.
Wouldn't you say so, Dr. Peat?
Yeah.
Well, for an active person, for someone sedentary, maybe that's the right amount to maintain.
Yeah.
And the lactose in milk is famous for helping to absorb the calcium, but some studies indicate
that fructose or sucrose can serve the same purpose and spare the calcium in your diet.
So you can be deficient slightly in calcium and make it up by having enough sugar to keep
the stress down so you don't waste your calcium.
And also, Dr. Peat, you said that people who think that they're lactose intolerant because
when they drink milk they get terrible gas and indigestion, you can almost retrain your
digestion, but basically remanufactured lactase so you can break down the lactose.
It's just if you're not drinking milk, your body will stop producing the enzyme to break
it down.
It's as simple as that.
It's just science.
And especially if a person is hypothyroid in the intestine, it has trouble producing enough
enzymes.
And also has trouble producing enough stomach acid and all sorts of digestive problems you'll
develop with hypothyroidism.
So if you just take a tablespoon a day, and if you're really sensitive, you can start
with like a half a teaspoon or a teaspoon and every day increase it.
Within a month, you'll have a full spectrum of enzymes because that's what it takes.
If you've studied pharmacology, you'll learn that it takes a month to fully manufacture
the amount of enzymes.
But Dr. Peat, you were saying that it might only take two weeks.
Yeah, especially if your thyroid is good, you can change your enzymes more quickly.
And then the more you drink, the more enzyme you'll make and you'll be able to adjust to
it.
So it's not like you can't ever eat dairy or eat cheese or drink milk again.
I just had another question here I wanted to get by.
It's pretty quick.
It won't take too long.
I'm not too sure where they were going with it.
Red LEDs, I know we've done shows on red light.
They wanted to know if red LEDs would be sufficient for red lights as opposed to the 250 watt
heat lamps that normally we're recommending.
Probably at least some of the wavelengths are enough to reactivate the respiratory enzyme.
And that's one of the best known but crucial effects of sunlight, incandescent light and
some of the LEDs.
The respiratory enzyme copper atom in the darkness, it tends to be displaced from the
enzyme causing failure of the respiratory system.
And the red light has just the right amount of energy to move the copper back into its
proper oxidizing position.
Okay, cool.
So red LEDs will work.
And then if people have them, that's all well and good.
Otherwise, red light from a good source 250 watt heat lamp.
Okay, we have our first caller here.
So let's take this next call and see where you're from calling.
What's the question?
Hello, you're on the air.
We can hear your TV so we know you're there.
Hello.
Yeah.
Hi, you're on the air.
Hi.
Okay.
I want to know what you think about being a vegan.
Vegan eating...
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I know, I'll let Dr. Peat answer the question.
I know it's very popular now.
Being a vegan means you don't eat anything from an animal.
Is there any way you can eat that way and be healthy and get enough protein and vitamin
B and all that?
Yeah, let Dr. Peat answer it.
I've got personal experience with this, but I know Dr. Peat's got a lot more.
So Dr. Peat.
The closest you can come to it would be eating potatoes and mushrooms.
Mushrooms are very similar to animal protein.
And your intestine can make vitamin B12, which is sometimes deficient in a vegan diet.
And so with the trace minerals of mushrooms and the high quality proteins and vitamins
of potatoes, you can do pretty well.
But most vegans don't do very well.
What do you think they're really deficient in, Dr. Peat?
Oh, calcium.
Yeah.
There you go.
They break bones too easily once they get to be 60 or 70.
Well, what is the advantage to being a vegan?
I think it's usually an ethical thing.
They don't like to bother their animal neighbors by eating them.
There you go.
It's mainly an ethical consideration.
Oh yeah, they don't want to eat killed animals from big agribusiness and that sort of thing.
But living in a country, you can have your own goats and chickens and that sort of thing
and raise everything you want.
Other than that, from a health point of view, it doesn't seem very healthy at all.
And I once heard that there was no natural indigenous cultures, let's say, that were
vegan.
There were some that are vegetarian in very hot countries where I guess it's hard to preserve
meat and there's lots of fruit available and there'd be a different balance if it's really
a hot country.
But there's no place where you're going to find a vegan diet among indigenous people.
Is that true?
Some people have studied the Fulani people of Africa and found that they were pretty
close to vegan but very sick, lots of heart disease.
So you mean from atheroma, from some kind of polyunsaturated damage?
Probably because of the calcium deficiency.
Calcium is good for your heart?
Very very important for your heart.
How much calcium do you need a day?
2,000 milligrams a day, which is basically two quarts of milk.
So you can break that down if you wanted to do yogurt, cottage cheese.
I take additional eggshell powder from my own eggs, ground up in a coffee grinder as
fine as you can get them.
A quarter teaspoon is about 600 milligrams.
Coffee has calcium?
No, sorry, I grind the eggshell in a coffee grinder to make powder.
But coffee has some minerals in it.
Yeah, you say that coffee is good.
I drink a cup of coffee every morning.
Good.
I think three or four would be better, but not in the morning.
Anyway, thanks for your call.
Alright, thank you.
Okay, we have another caller on the air.
Let's take this call away from, and what's your question?
Spirock, I was wondering about the correlation of a high dairy allergy and I'm also a vegan.
So what will I do for calcium and protein besides the potato every day?
What about eggshells?
I was just talking, would you do eggshells or not because that's from an animal?
Yeah.
Oyster shell, wow.
That's another animal, I guess.
Hard to swallow, isn't it?
But you can put it in capsules.
I just swallow it down with a little water.
It kind of forms a little bolus and it's easy to swallow.
It wants to...
You can't get it from like vegetables.
Well, you can boil greens.
Leafy greens, if you cook them thoroughly and save the water, are a good source of calcium
and magnesium.
How much do you think you would have to eat if you were strictly vegan and this is how
you were going to get your calcium?
About a pound, I think.
You'd have to boil a pound down a day and then drink all that water?
I think so.
And another way to help get the minerals out of the greens, especially those with oxalic
acid, but even with kale, is put baking soda in it.
And that helps neutralize oxalic acid because oxalic acid that's in spinach and chard blocks
your absorption of the calcium.
And you'll notice they cook much quicker and the liquid goes very dark colored because
of the minerals that are leaching out of the cellulose leaf into the...
What about the protein intakes?
The protein, I mean, the fruit does have some protein, the potatoes.
How many pounds of potatoes would you have to eat a day, Dr. Peat, to get, would you
say five pounds?
Five pounds.
Yeah, there you go.
So you could eat five pounds of potatoes or you could juice those potatoes better still
if you didn't want to physically eat the bulk of five pounds of potatoes.
And are a lot of nuts bad for you?
Say that again?
Was that...
Nuts.
Is nuts bad for you?
No.
Well, yeah, nuts have a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids that are very estrogenic.
So a lot of nuts is not good.
That's correct.
And better to have more seeds.
Seeds and nuts are both very high in polyunsaturated fatty acids.
They're not a great source of protein.
I mean, what do you think about the protein in nuts compared to the protein in beans and
legumes, Dr. Peat?
Oh, some of them are slightly better.
But the only nuts that I know of that are fairly safe for the fats would be the macadamias.
They're pretty saturated.
Macadamias are the better one?
Yes.
I don't know what the protein content of macadamia nuts are though.
It isn't very high.
Okay.
Well, thank you for your call, Paula.
Thank you.
And just a side note about that potato juice, I have made it.
Have you made it, Dr. Peat, too?
Where you scramble the potato juice?
What was that?
Where you juice the potatoes and then you separate it from the starch and you scramble
it?
Yeah.
It's pretty tasty.
Oh, yeah.
It tastes pretty much like mashed potatoes when you put butter on it.
And if you let the potato juice, I noticed I had to let it settle.
So all the starch went to the bottom and you can tell.
Like if you put cornstarch with water, the starch falls to the bottom and you can feel
it.
It's starchy.
So with potato juice, it's the same way.
The starch falls to the bottom and you have this juice on top and you just pour that juice
that's on the top.
But you have to let it settle.
Don't use it right away.
And it's all protein, isn't it, pretty much?
Well, once the water's gone.
Yeah.
The slimy part of the juice is it should be sort of like egg white, depending on the type
of potato.
Some of it is very gelatinous and cooks easily.
The others are kind of watery and you get a mushy mashed potato effect.
Okay.
So it's probably the waxy versus the floury potato.
Okay.
We have another caller here.
So let's take this next caller.
Call away from.
And what's your question?
Bob in Willis.
Willis.
Hi.
What's your question?
We're getting involved with fermented vegetables, cabbage and all kinds of fermented vegetables.
We're doing it ourselves and it's just terrific.
And it really straightens up the flora in your gut and throws your whole digestive tract
in.
What do you think about fermented vegetables?
I'll take the answer off the air.
Thanks for your call.
And did you hear that caller's question?
Not most of it.
Fermented what?
Vegetables.
He said he's been getting into making his own fermented vegetables.
And what do you think about that?
Oh, some of them taste very nice, like sauerkraut.
But I don't think there is much nutritional value in them.
And there's a risk of getting bad fungus contamination in them.
In Asia, where fermented vegetables are very popular, they've seen a lot of stomach and
throat cancer that comes from the fungal contamination of fermented vegetables.
And what about the lactic acid content?
Lactic acid puts a burden on your liver to turn it back into glucose.
It takes more energy than you get out of the glucose.
So you think it's more nutritious to boil the vegetables rather than ferment them?
Yeah.
And what about the, the caller also mentioned about the gut bacteria, the probiotics?
The small intestine, I think, is best when it's cleanest.
Very vigorous people with good digestion and high thyroid function have almost a sterile
small intestine from their mouth to their appendix, basically.
There's nothing growing.
So they get a chance to absorb all of the nutrients without competing with bacteria.
Then in the healthy person, the bacteria grow just in the colon.
So you don't want to support bacterial growth higher up in your intestine.
The H. pylori is an example of much too high in the digestive system for bacteria to live.
I just had a throat swab done and it was, they couldn't find anything in my throat swab.
So the doctor said there's something wrong because your mouth is sterile.
Anyway, we have another caller.
I just wanted to put out the number again for those people that listen to the show.
We've gotten to eight o'clock here.
Dr. Ray Peats, very kindly joining us again.
Okay.
Number is 707-923-3911 or 800 number for those folks in different parts of the States.
1-800-568-3723.
So we have another caller on the air.
What's your question and where are you from?
Yes, Colorado.
Colorado.
Welcome.
And the question is, how would I find out if my methylation is interfering with my vitamin
D absorption?
I tried a therapeutic dose, a higher therapeutic dose of 12,000 I used for a couple of months
and I did bring the level up to 73, but my symptoms persisted that I'm trying to figure
out what to do.
I went from 30 to 73.
Okay.
So Dr. Peat, did you hear that?
The line's not that great, but...
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
Methylation.
Yeah.
How would I know my methylation is working?
Dr. Peat.
Vitamin in general?
I think she's saying in relation to B, B vitamin.
No, D. I'm sorry.
D as in dog.
Oh, D. I beg your pardon.
Okay.
I know, because I was saying, I just wrote a note to Andrew.
I said, "What B vitamin?"
Yeah.
Okay.
It's D.
D, vitamin D. Have you had your vitamin D blood level checked?
Yes, I did.
It's 73.
Yeah.
Oh, that sounds plenty enough.
That's pretty good.
That's good.
So what, in terms of methylation, you were saying, because I thought we were dealing
with methylating vitamin B12 and that being an issue.
Right.
I understand that the receptor sites of vitamin D may recede if your methylation is not correct.
Dr. Peat.
I would guess that any symptoms you have that are related to vitamin D might be from not
having enough calcium and magnesium or maybe having too much phosphate in your diet.
Okay.
It's important to have more, on a molar basis, more calcium than phosphate in the diet.
Americans often have five or six times too much phosphate relative to calcium.
Because of the high meat intake and the high starch intake and the high bean and grain
intake.
Well, I've been about nine months without any, one meal of some meat a day.
And what about calcium?
I drink about two or three quarts of milk a day.
Well, that should be adequate for calcium.
Yeah.
What are the symptoms you associate with the vitamin D?
I get a headache in the middle of the night.
What about sugars?
How much sugars are you getting a day?
I get lots of sugar.
I drink milk all night long with sugar and honey.
And I eat marshmallows.
It used to be coffee that would take the headache away, but now I found marshmallows help better.
And gelatin?
Do you eat any antiseptic fibrous food like raw carrots?
Yes.
Every day.
What about your thyroid function?
Have you tested your temperatures and pulses?
Yes.
I can only keep it up to about 98.
I can't get higher than that.
Well, that could be a big problem because if you're below 98, your immune system's at
like half power.
It's only 50% functioning.
Exactly.
And so I think I have some kind of mycoplasma.
I've been taking the tetracycline low dose for about six months now.
And it has not changed it.
And so I was thinking I was going to have to...
Did you identify what mycoplasma it was?
Not yet.
I think I'll do a nasal swab and try to find out because it seems to be connected to my
trigeminal nerve neuralgia.
What about your liver function?
Liver function has come back to a normal function because I've been on this diet.
Yeah, that's definitely diets and a long time.
Have you tried aspirin?
I do.
I'm up to three aspirin three times a day.
I take every six hours.
You're taking vitamin K?
With vitamin K, yes.
Good.
What do you think about the thyroid function helping the...
How much thyroid do I take a day now?
I'm up to 1.75.
So how it is...
And I take the T3 also with meals and between meals.
How it works with thyroid is some people need like two micrograms.
Some people need 200.
It depends on your body.
And the best way to tell is with your ankle reflex and also with your temperatures and
pulses and if you can't get your temperature up above 98, then you don't have enough thyroid
basically.
Unless I have a bad stress day and then it'll go up.
Yeah.
Well then that's just adrenaline raising it but you'll notice it will fall after meals.
Sometimes a mysterious headache can be traced to a single supplement or a single food that
you might have only once a week causing an allergic irritation.
Yes.
I think I found that the microbial enzymes in cheeses and I try to find the very best
I can find.
I'm going to eliminate that and see if that doesn't make a big difference.
Because you can definitely find cheeses.
It's not so much a plug but it's just a fact that Costco do actually sell some very good
European cheeses that are made with animal rennet and not microbial enzymes.
Thank you very much for that.
And the two cheeses that we know are made with animal rennet are the Parmigiano Reggiano,
the very hard Italian Parmesan and then also the sheep and that's cow's milk and then they
have a sheep's milk Pecorino Romano.
Those are both very traditionally made cheeses and people that have sensitivity to cheese
don't find any problems with those two.
Very good.
Thank you for that suggestion.
I'll keep on going but I appreciate all the help you've given me.
You're welcome.
I really appreciate it.
You're welcome.
Thank you for your call.
Okay.
Well it looks like we do actually have another caller who's calling in now so I didn't get
a chance to really ask you any questions Dr. Peat about this month's subject but that's
not a problem.
I'm glad people have got their answers to their questions and there's one more person
here who their call is being fielded to see if they actually want to pose a question or
they just have comments.
Yeah, it does.
Okay, so let's take this next caller away from.
What's your question?
Hi, it's Scott from Ontario, Canada.
Ontario, Canada.
My question I'd ask you, just a quick one hopefully, when raising calcium and getting
heartburn, what would be the cause and secondly what to do for oily skin?
Okay.
So wait a minute, you said when you increase your calcium intake you get heartburn?
Yeah, so if I'm drinking two quarts of milk a day and having lots of cottage cheese and
then trying to use extra eggshell or calcium carbonate and then getting like a heartburn
reaction.
Do you know if you get it specifically just to the eggshell when you take that in isolation
or without food though?
Are you aware of that or do you take?
Or the cottage cheese if it's very acidic.
Yeah, I think the only one I add in like the extra, like the supplement of calcium carbonate
or eggshell.
How much eggshell are you taking?
About half a teaspoon.
Half a teaspoon.
At a time or during the day?
At a time.
That might be too much.
I take like an eighth of a teaspoon at a time but then I drink a lot of milk so if people
don't drink milk then you'd need to take like a quarter teaspoon at each meal with the food,
after the food.
And you definitely want to take it with food because it...
I have, yeah, I've noticed people...
Quite a lot of people talk about upset...
It's usually more loose, it causes their stools to be loose or hard.
But Dr. Peat, what would you think is contributing to this gentleman's heartburn?
Oh, lots of people get stomach irritation from calcium supplements and magnesium supplements.
When manufactured or in an excessively pure form, the eggshell is almost a pure calcium
carbonate and your stomach and intestine have trouble with pure chemistry.
The more mixed substance is like milk, is extremely complex and so it's very soothing
to the digestive membranes but any pure chemical...
It sounds like a good rationale against pharmaceuticals.
Yeah.
Okay, so the question about the heartburn, what do you think of that?
And then oily skin, I think, was the other part of the question.
In general, oily skin is very good.
It ages very slowly.
If you have oily skin when you're 25 or 30, you'll probably have young looking skin when
you're 60, just because it's metabolically so active in general.
So it signifies a good thyroid function in terms of the turnover?
Usually yeah.
Yeah, good.
Okay, so did you have any other comments about the heartburn though from that caller regarding
the calcium?
Is the caller still on the air?
I'm still here.
Yeah.
Do you take it with a big shell and an empty stomach or after food?
No, I take it with food.
Okay, well maybe it's just too much at once.
What do you think, Dr. Peat?
Half a teaspoon at a time is maybe a little intense?
Yeah, I would just skip it for a week and see what happens.
I mean, if you're getting two quarts of milk plus some cottage cheese, you're probably
good.
Yeah, I think I am good.
I'm just trying to really push that calcium phosphate ratio.
How much meat are you eating a day?
I'm not doing any meat right now at all.
I'm doing basically all dairy and fruit, cooked fruit.
Well, that's a diet very low in phosphate.
Dairy is not high in phosphates.
Yeah.
He's trying to increase the calcium to phosphate ratio by bringing his phosphate consumption
down.
How much, are you taking vitamin D at all?
Yeah, I do take vitamin D, vitamin A, E, and K.
Yeah, especially up there in Canada.
Don't take too much A.
Sometimes vitamin A can be irritating to the intestine.
I had to stop using it orally several years ago and use it only on my skin.
There you go, because it's fat soluble.
Planet thyroid suppressive, how much A were you using a day?
Are you using it?
It depends.
I try to do it orally or transdermally, so usually maybe five to 10 every couple of days,
about 10K.
That might be a little bit too much for your thyroid function because if you ate four ounces
of beef liver, it typically has on average about 10,000 units and you would want to eat
four ounces of beef liver once a week, so that might be a little bit too much A.
Okay.
Okay, well, thank you for your call anyway.
We're right to the top of the hour now, so it's kind of coming to the close of the show.
Appreciate your time.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Dr. Peat, are you still there, Dr. Peat?
Yeah.
Thank you very much for joining us again.
We're at the closing show of 2016.
We'll look and see, gee, I think by the third Friday of next month, we might have a new
president and we might have got through the ups and downs of the contentious ongoing electoral
results with the college and yet to cast their final vote on the 19th.
And it's been, it has been eight years.
And Dr. Peat first joined us on the show in 2008.
I thought it was seven, but yeah, okay.
You said it has only been seven years, but yeah.
It was 2008.
Dr. Peat, thank you very much for your time.