Well, welcome to this month's live Ask Your Herb Doctor.
Sarah is not with us tonight.
She is well, but she is not with us, so we are doing the show with Dr. Peat as a regular
guest this evening and continuing the last two months topic of the endocrine system.
I would like to break at some point during the show and intersperse some questions that
we have had from people that have been emailed to us who for one reason or another can't
get Dr. Peat by email or whatever, but they are corresponding to me and I am posing these
questions this evening.
And also there is a latest newsletter from Dr. Peat.
For those of you who don't know, Dr. Peat does a monthly newsletter.
I think it was bi-monthly.
Dr. Peat might correct me when he comes on.
But I think it is a monthly newsletter that he does.
So for those people as always who are interested in his work, there is lots of information
that can be found on the web now.
I have been amazed at how the web has exploded the availability of knowledge in all areas.
And Dr. Peat and his discussions with various different people from politics to science
and health are available all over the internet as are these broadcast and recorded programs
I found on the internet myself.
I didn't even know they were there up until about a year ago.
But there is probably 60 or so YouTube shows of this done on the internet.
So for people that want to hear more and they are titled by topic, you can just go to the
internet, go to YouTube and type in Dr. Ray Peat or Ray Peat Andrew Murray KMUD.
And also on our website, I have a full archive up until 2015.
It's not as full as it could be.
I've got 2016 and a few of this year's.
So there's probably another 16 or 17 shows that have yet to get put up.
I will endeavor to get those done fairly soon.
For people that haven't really heard about Dr. Peat, we always get new listeners and
from time to time we get people that don't know anything about what he's advocating.
And for them, there's plenty of information either on the internet by typing in Dr. Ray
Peat or going to our website which is westernbotanicalmedicine.com and looking at the resources tab on the right
hand side and dropping it down to askyourherbdoctor.
And also there's plenty of literature that Dr. Peat has published himself.
So he does a newsletter and without going on too much about this newsletter, this month's
newsletter is right up our street as far as I'm concerned.
It's a kind of continuation and expose of covert but now disclosed somewhat CIA and
other foundational groups that basically, certainly ruling if you like, the top tier
of society and molding and coercing the system to follow its edicts and obviously that comes
with a lot of tyranny.
Most people that listen to this show, it's an alternative show, probably agree that there
certainly is a tyranny at large and to resist tyranny I think is a call to arms, not necessarily
with violence and guns but to resist tyranny by immersing yourself in alternative education
and the knowledge of that education is a powerful weapon against the tyrants who would tell
us otherwise.
So Dr. Peat, are you with us?
>> Yes.
>> Okay.
Well, thanks so much for your time on the show.
Like I said, we'll go through what I'd like to ask you about with regards to the endocrine
system and then there are some questions posed by callers.
As always, people who are listening, the number that we open up from 7.30 to 8 p.m. for callers
to ask questions directly to Dr. Peat, there's a 800 number which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD and then
there's the regular number which I want to make sure has not changed but it's 923-3911
so that is the local area code 707 number.
So 707-923-3911 or if you're out of the area or in Australia, well, not for Australians,
I guess they can't use the 800 number but they're on the internet so we can be reached
through the internet too but there's an 800 number which is 1-800-568-3723 and we take
callers from 7.30 on to the end of the show at 8.
So Dr. Peat, I guess without further ado, I saw where we left off last month and we
just got started into the hypothalamus and I brought out one of the things that struck
me as kind of unusual but I wanted to ask you a little bit more about it.
So from last month breaking the question, what is a hormone and how the endocrine system
regulates metabolism, you discussed thyrotropin releasing hormone which stimulates TSH from
the anterior pituitary as well as prolactin.
Now prolactin is a hormone that's responsible for lactation in females and so is there another
mechanism perhaps to satisfy the TSH production in low thyroid individuals to upregulate the
TSH for production which does not result in increased prolactin production.
So for those of you who are listening perhaps, the TSH is a thyroid stimulating hormone and
this is basically stimulated at the same time as prolactin is.
So in low thyroid individuals, my question to you Dr. Peat is the potential for women
to be exposed to higher than normal levels of prolactin and have you known women that
would lactate when they weren't you know nursing or outside of you know, well not outside of
menstruation, but when women weren't fertile or nursing.
Is this something that you've actually found?
Yeah probably maybe a hundred women that I've talked to who were simply hypothyroidism was
their basic problem, but unwelcome lactation was just one of their symptoms and usually
there were menstrual irregularities at the same time, either too much or too little menstruation
and just correcting their thyroid function took care of the lactation and menstruation
both and what it's doing, it's partly regulating oxygen metabolism so that you can use your
fuel very efficiently, keep your blood sugar steady so that you don't experience stress.
Estrogen is in good health, it's produced for about 12 hours once a month in a big surge
to basically create tissue stress to stir up cell division to prepare the uterus and
the breast and other tissues, pituitary are the main things that are activated by estrogen.
Low thyroid by letting you get low blood sugar inappropriately, at the same time it's activating
the stress hormones and inactivating the parts of the liver that are normally destroying
estrogen as soon as estrogen reaches the liver.
Normally the small amount of estrogen being produced under moderate stress is kept very
low by an active liver when the thyroid is activating the liver.
When the thyroid is low, estrogen tends to rise and both of these tend to create an oxygen
deficiency and a glucose deficiency.
One intensifies the other and these are the first step in any kind of stress reaction
and the stress reaction turns on your pituitary as a way to organize the adaptive system of
the body and prolactin in fish, prolactin regulates salt and water metabolism and mammals
have various components of milk formation involving both the flow of water and salts
but including proteins and sugar.
So prolactin in all animals has a range of anti-stress functions and lactation is just
a useful component for handling the stress of pregnancy fertility.
I picked up on what you said about estrogen being a once monthly, a 12-hour period, a
once monthly surge but I just want to ask you this, it seems a very ubiquitous poison
for want of a better word that women are continually subjected to.
How can you compare that to the background levels of estrogen that you are always advising
women to protect themselves from either environmentally or with things like pregnenolone or progesterone
if they have excessive inflammation going on in the body for some different causes?
Any tissue of your body that is stressed will start to produce estrogen.
It's a very basic reaction to stress and so with aging for example, when you've lost some
of your basic anti-stress hormones, thyroid and progesterone and pregnenolone, then all
of your tissues are suffering from oxygen and glucose, bad metabolism.
They're simply not interacting properly and that means that all of your tissues will begin
producing a little bit of estrogen.
For example, the postmenopausal breast tissue is producing several times more estrogen than
it does during menstruation and if the liver slows down because the thyroid is low, then
that little bit that's being produced by any stress tissue is going to pile up in the blood
because it should be eliminated constantly through the liver and kidney.
Interesting.
This brings me back to some of the reasons for wanting to cover some of this endocrine
stuff with you is that I think, and it's a little bit tied into your newsletter funnily
enough like a lot of things do, in terms of the brainwashing that science has been guilty
of brainwashing the public into deceiving them to believe that things are a certain
way when actually there's previous research that showed exactly the opposite.
That's been buried, it's been closed up and money's been diverted away from it and diverted
towards the wanted information.
So again, when I was studying, I was under the impression that basically the ovaries
were the main estrogen secreting organ in the female body and that really men didn't
really have estrogen.
It wasn't, you know, men had testosterone, females had estrogen.
Things were fairly simple but actually it's really very different from that and hearing
that I think you said any cell can essentially secrete estrogen in response to stress and
inflammation.
Yeah and old men get low testosterone because their stress tissue is turning it quickly
into estrogen.
Right, this is aromatization, right?
Yeah and a younger man who is very sick or has an accident will have very high estrogen
and that will bring up usually prolactin and growth hormone and a lot of adaptive secondary
hormones.
Interesting, so I think hopefully by continuing some other little tidbits will come out that
people will pick up on and maybe start looking into things further themselves.
I wanted to again, just to get back briefly to that first question about lactation and
prolactin being secreted in females and actually causing some milk production.
I wanted to also ask, is it a quantitative issue or where there's not enough prolactin
being stimulated by the release of TRH or is oxytocin for example a more powerful stimulator
of lactation or not?
Oxytocin really is just to release the milk once it's formed.
It isn't involved in directly in forming it.
When I was a little kid during the depression, there were very poor people moving into Southern
California and some of them were finding jobs and one family we knew, the mother was able
to find a job when they had a baby that was a few months old and the father, they had
been starving for years and the father was able to lactate to nurse the baby while the
mother was at work.
Do you see any difference, out of interest, do you see any difference in the quality of
the milk?
Oh sure, men aren't nearly as good at lactating.
Not as much fat maybe.
And it's a very extreme thing.
Lots of men when they came out of the World War II prison camps, when they started eating,
they got enough energy to mobilize cortisol and some thyroid and such, they began lactating
because they had injured their tissues much that they were very high in estrogen.
Wow, I mean it's well documented now, certainly not hidden, that male breasts or gynecomastia
is a common phenomenon in males that are exposed to estrogen and from the industry in England,
the beer drinking, it's not uncommon for men that drink a lot of beer daily to grow basically
breasts and even in this country, related to estrogen substances, whether it's the hops,
that the estrogen mimics in hops or even environmental mimics in plastics etc. that get into the
environment that some more sensitive individuals are being exposed to.
Yeast can produce estradiol, so they think that the yeast for men is a major source of
the breast development in beer drinkers.
Interesting, so it may not necessarily be down to the humulone, lupulone or the other
byproducts of the hop?
Yeah, they're probably not as harmful as the yeast produced estrogen.
Okay, you're listening to Ask Your Doctor on KMED Garboville 91.1 FM.
We're joined with Dr. Peat who's on the show basically questioning the endocrine system
and what we understand about it and finding out some certain differences and contradictions
that perhaps people understand the facts by until they hear differently.
The number if you're in the area is 707-923-3911.
If you're outside the area, I would like to ask Dr. Peat any questions from 7.30 on, there's
an 800 number which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD which is 1-800-568-3723.
So let's move on to the next hormone in the hypothalamic section of this endocrine discussion,
the corticotropin releasing hormone, how this stimulates adrenocorticotropic hormone from
the anterior pituitary and this acts on the adrenals to promote and secrete cortisol.
Now most people have probably heard of cortisol if they're at all health-minded, cortisol,
cortisone, hydrocortisone, they're all kind of derivatives.
Most of these derivatives here have at some point in time and/or are still being used
to control inflammation and I've known asthmatics and eczema patients and psoriatic patients
that have been prescribed cortisol and corticosteroids to control that.
The natural production of cortisol is inhibited by negative feedback mechanism so we're never
normally naturally constantly and chronically exposed to cortisol.
It obviously has some beneficial effect although I understand your interpretation puts a far
more negative view of cortisol probably in relation to its chronic exposure.
But what dangers do you see in the chronic use of hydrocortisone either topically or
aerosolized and what would be a better approach to quell inflammation than of this type that
you're aware of?
Within the first two or three hours of a big dose of cortisol or the synthetic glucocorticoids,
the thymus gland starts shrinking and the skin and muscles begin shrinking as the cortisol
shifts the metabolism in the opposite direction of testosterone.
Towards the estrogenic side?
Well they activate the proteolytic enzymes that break down the proteins and inhibit the
anabolic protein synthesizing mechanisms.
The brain, heart and lungs are very concentrated testosterone metabolizers and retainers.
If you give someone radioactive testosterone, you see the emission from those organs, most
of it from the heart and the brain, the lungs are so full of air you don't see much radiation.
But the testosterone is there protecting these vital organs.
But when you give a big dose of cortisol, you swamp that protective effect of progesterone
and testosterone and the tissues that aren't very well protected very quickly shrink.
Your skin becomes thinner, blood vessels weaken, you tend to get little bloody spots, petechial
hemorrhages and bruise very easily.
Lots of women have constantly bruised thighs and sometimes upper arms because if they're
low in thyroid and progesterone, then they compensate with increased cortisol which weakens
their small blood vessels and they bruise easily.
If that continues over the years, it leads to strokes and osteoporosis and the typical
aging conditions.
I've known people in England especially that I don't know whether or not the doctors there
were just more readily prescribing aerosolized inhalants, corticosteroids inhalants for asthma
and/or topical creams for eczemas but it was the only thing that was ever really done.
I've known people that have been on these things for years and years and I'm sure to
their detriment.
You're saying it's essentially switching off the protective anti-exciter toxic mechanism
and route by which inflammation typically or estrogen-induced inflammation is mediated?
And asthma is one of the typical estrogen-induced inflammation.
High estrogen women are very susceptible to asthma especially during the night and one
of the effects of estrogen is to directly stimulate the adrenal glands to produce cortisol
so high estrogen leads to weak blood vessels and shrinking bones and aging skin and low
immunity in such a way, shrinking effect of cortisol on the thymus gland.
And estrogen shifts the balance towards serotonin away from dopamine and this shift in the serotonin
dopamine ratio is one of the things that activates the prolactin system and it also serotonin
is one of the major activators of the corticotropic release hormone CRH.
So estrogen activates the pituitary, the hypothalamus, the adrenal glands directly to increase the
tissue breakdown effect.
Okay, so I caught on what you said about female asthmatics getting particularly worse at night
and this again I guess this is night time stress that worsens the inflammation?
All of the stress hormones rise during the night.
Again in response probably to low blood sugar because of fasting or?
Yeah, and hypoglycemia or disturbed oxygen availability increase both prolactin and usually
growth hormone stress induces.
I think all of the pituitary hormones except for luteinizing hormone, the one that produces
testosterone and progesterone.
So when you activate all of the other parts of the pituitary, you are likely to become
sterile by losing your progesterone and testosterone.
I think from a male perspective, for those males that are listening, I know we do tend
to get more female listeners that I think intuitively are more nurturing and empathic
maybe.
But for the guys that are out there, I think testosterone is extremely important to reiterate
not just the prostatic involvement with decreased testosterone but to maximize your testosterone
is the best thing that you can do as a guy because it is the counterpart to estrogen
and it is the anti-exciter toxic route by which inflammation is quelled and the body
is governed by an orderly system of growth and sugar metabolism, etc.
It's close enough in function to progesterone in protective tissues.
They've experimented removing the ovaries from rats after they've been impregnated and
then giving them testosterone during pregnancy.
It is a progesterone in that sense of being able to sustain pregnancy in the absence of
ovaries.
Well I guess we do actually have a caller.
So I'll pick up this question I wanted to ask you about testosterone for the males that
are listening just to help them see their way forward through any lack of muscle and
muscle building and how testosterone is really very beneficial for you and you can generate
it yourself.
You don't have to buy it, etc.
So let's take this first caller.
Caller, you're on the air.
Where are you from?
Hi, I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Okay, hi.
What's your question?
I'm wondering can an imbalance of hormones influence someone's perception of his or her
gender?
I'm curious as I'm certain we're constantly exposed to environmental estrogens and I've
also heard of instances like Caitlyn Jenner where Bruce Jenner knew from a very young
age that he was the opposite gender.
So what's your take on that?
Dr. Peat?
When that happens during gestation or in the first few months after being born, the actual
structure of the brain is still going on and it's either masculinized or not by the presence
of testosterone which is turned into estrogen and estrogen in those stages of development
is the masculinizing hormone.
And so a deficiency of progesterone early in life leaves the estrogen unopposed and
tends to masculinize the brain and so it can set up the feeling of the gender that is chemically
related rather than what the chromosomes were able to do.
Does that answer your question?
That does, thank you.
You're welcome.
Okay, well let's see here, we do have another caller.
So let's take this caller, next caller, you're on the air.
What's your question and where are you from?
Yes, good evening.
I'm calling from Finland.
Okay, I've finished.
I would have a question.
I've been reading your wonderful Generative Energy book and basically it's prompted me
to think about what I think they call now transhumanism.
Nowadays we have basically the modern version of the six million dollar man.
We have people with robotic hands.
A friend of mine with Parkinson's disease has two chips implanted in his brain with
remote control.
And my question to Dr. Peat would be, do you believe that this transhumanism might fit
into future evolutions of man?
You know, I'm referring to this theory about life trending towards maximum metabolism,
maximum energy.
I wonder if you have any thoughts about that.
I think the technology is so simplified compared to what actually is needed by the organism
to maximize its metabolism and function and experience that I don't think the technology
is going to have a role in future development of health, longevity or brain development.
It's certainly not going to be passed on to the next generation so it's certainly a very
temporal thing.
And I think from my perspective the human body, I think the psyche plays a much bigger
part in the protection and the development of the human organism far more than perhaps
people give real credit to for positive thinking, etc. etc.
Self-empowerment, doing the right thing in terms of everything that you propose in terms
of nutrition and/or some of the few supplements that you recommend, things like thyroid and
progesterone and things that protect the anti-inflammatory side, I think we have a far better chance
of living a genetically very healthy life and something that I think that can be passed
on to next generations.
Certainly we hear about in utero effects onto the fetus.
I'm fairly interested about the transhumanism subject with, like the callers mentioned,
things like robotic replacements and/or chips to secrete or to prompt secretion of neuropeptides,
etc. etc. into the brain or other areas.
But it doesn't continue, it's a very temporal thing.
I don't think it's something that can ever be transmitted but what can be transmitted
is a mental state of mind that is based on positive thinking, creating that in harmony
and whether it's yoga or doing exercise and getting outside and just appreciating everything
that you have around you rather than looking at negative things which I do hear people
calling about from time to time in terms of help with negative emotions and how it's actually
one of the questions, funnily enough, later on in the show.
But this is something that can be...
Can I ask a follow-up question?
Go ahead, yeah.
I was wondering about, because this is a topic that I haven't heard on the show yet, but
we're also in an increasingly hairless society.
People want to shave more and more of their bodies more and more regularly.
How stressful is frequent shaving to the body in your opinion?
It's interesting you say that.
I'll just jump in there, Dr. Peat, before I let you answer.
But I read the article just a couple of days ago, it was actually on the Drudge Report.
It was that the increasing hairiness of females is actually becoming recognized in polls.
I think they did a poll in 2004, I think 95% of females shaved.
They did a recent poll here.
I think it was down to 78 and they were saying that essentially there was more...
Au naturale was becoming more normal.
Whether or not you're talking about the hair on a male's head from a baldness perspective,
I don't know, Caller.
But Dr. Peat, what do you think about the...
I think the hair on the head actually has the function of preserving heat, helping to
keep the brain warm.
Wearing a wool hat will substitute somewhat for not having enough hair on the head.
And the other hair, armpits and pubic hair, I think that has the function of helping to
distribute pheromones.
But the facial hair and the arm hair probably has that pheromone distributing function.
But I think the body hair that is tending to appear more often in women is a sign of
stress that it's probably related to that pheromone system shifting to an exaggerated
steroid production in the skin.
Okay, thanks for your call, Caller.
Thanks for the show.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Thanks for calling in.
For people that want to call in with any questions, if you're in the area, 923 3911, that's a
call, 923 3911, or if you're outside somewhere in the States or even in a different country,
1-800-KMUD-RAD, 1-800-568-3723.
So, Dr. Peat, just to carry on with testosterone a little bit, it's a bit of a divergent question,
but in terms of men being able to maximize their testosterone production without thinking
they have to go to the gym and get aerobic and pump huge amounts of weights to build
muscle, what would you say would be a good program for a male who wanted to increase
lean muscle mass in order to be exposed to more testosterone because it's the muscle
itself that actually promotes a testosterone surge in the body and by its own mechanism
will directly relate back to testosterone itself?
Yeah, muscle contraction activates the synthesis locally in the muscle of testosterone and
decreases the cortisol activity.
So good physical work is probably the central thing to keeping your testosterone up.
It shouldn't be episodic, intense, stressful work.
That is known to lower your testosterone and increase cortisol.
At the same time, keeping your metabolic rate up so that you can do more intense activity
without it being stressful.
Having your liver very healthy is essential for keeping your testosterone up because otherwise
the episodes of falling blood sugar activate cortisol, estrogen, all of the other stress
hormones.
Okay, so stocking your liver with plenty of sugar, not being aerobic about your approach
to exercise and ideally having more of a kind of work approach that is a physical type of
work if you're possibly able.
So moving on to dopamine, I wanted to ask you a little bit.
I know we've mentioned the discussion related to Parkinson's and Parkinsonism.
We said that this dopamine itself inhibits prolactin release and helps regulate emotional
responses and the reward and pleasure response is something I wanted to ask you about.
This enables a person not only to see the rewards but to take action to move towards
them and lack of dopamine has been cited and implicated in the propensity to addiction.
If you want to feel better and mood enhancing drugs are a route to this, does this imply
that many addicts have naturally low levels of dopamine and may develop Parkinson's type
symptoms in the future?
And would dopamine supplementation be useful to wean addicts or prevent addictive behaviors
from developing?
I think that even in Parkinson's disease, I think the studies are moving towards thinking
of a balance between serotonin and dopamine and the other symptoms.
So you're thinking of serotonin excess?
Yeah.
They are somewhat antagonistic.
For example, serotonin increases the CRH and prolactin, dopamine tends to inhibit them.
So a bad bowel function or poor elimination would certainly speed that serotonin excess
up.
Yes.
Nitric oxide, endotoxin and serotonin all shift your body towards the stress and progesterone
and its derivatives in the brain, allopregnenolone for example, are important for keeping the
balance in the right direction.
Estrogen increases the serotonin and stress, progesterone tends to reverse that and increase
the balance towards dopamine.
So do you think though that this would be any reason or cause for Parkinson's down the
road though, perhaps if people have addictive natures, if it is at all connected with lack
of dopamine?
Well, I think you can correct it most safely with progesterone and testosterone or the
precursor of both of those, pregnenolone.
Because when you try to push the dopamine system, you tend to increase oxidative damage
and it is safe to work at the anti-stress level rather than pushing the end product
of dopamine.
Got it.
So improved muscle mass, plenty of sugars, then obviously pregnenolone thyroid, all helpful
and anti-inflammatory aspects.
And keeping the toxic fats down and sugar stable.
Okay, so can I ask you about growth hormone?
So the growth hormone releasing hormone stimulates growth hormone release from the pituitary
again, from the anterior pituitary and this has regulatory effects on protein, carbohydrate
and lipid metabolism as well as promoting slow wave sleep, often referred to as deep
sleep.
I know people that perhaps have sleep issues where they're unable to get into that phase
of deep sleep.
I did read that the slow wave sleep was apparently, but I know this is not particularly true because
I know you think it's very much related to low blood glucose, but the slow wave sleep
was implicated in nightmares and sleepwalking, especially when sleepwalking was joined to
raiding the fridge at night and to eat.
I found that quite a bizarre connection, but I think it's well known in popular culture.
I've even seen, I remember an old advert back in 1970 for R. White's lemonade and the advert
was more or less this person was getting out of bed and was sleepwalking downstairs to
the fridge where he'd go open the fridge door and there'd be a bottle of R. White's lemonade
and he would sit there drinking it and his wife would come down and say, "What's going
on?"
But anyway, between the desire to eat, sleepwalk and growth hormone, do you think the deep
sleep that it relates to is in any way, do you think this is a real subject or do you
think this has been again mismanaged scientifically?
No, I think deep sleep is important as a restorative part of your brain function and I think a lot
of people would be happier and healthier if they would eat during the night.
People who resist eating near bedtime or during the night often have more stress, more hypoglycemic
insomnia, and most people can get back to sleep if they have, it could be orange juice
or lemonade or milkshake or ice cream.
It's almost a cultural barrier where there's this feeling that if you eat close to bedtime
you're just going to put it on as fat.
I think I've certainly heard that doctrine that excess carbohydrates are stored as fat
which I don't know that it's completely inaccurate but the nighttime stress that is achieved
by lowering your blood glucose is probably offset by the very fact that you're going
to consume some glucose before you sleep.
It's very important to restore your glycogen level during sleep.
I think that's one of the main purposes of sleep is to get the glycogen back into your
brain cells and heart cells and other tissues so that you can expand it to resist stress
during the daytime.
Okay, let me just move on to a few questions that I know people have written in that wanted
to get your take on this.
I had two questions for one listener.
One of the questions goes, "Did Jimmy Carter's cancer cure have anything to do with receptors?
Isn't the entire cell a receptor?"
I think he was having standard chemotherapy for a while and then brain radiation and then
he got this new antibody that is specific for allowing cells to undergo the normal apoptosis.
So statistically, it doesn't look like it was a terribly impressive cure because the
number of people studied was not very big and the percentage who responded well, I think
it was 24%, had a temporary regression of the tumors and that happened in a lot of the
people who had only the preceding brain radiation.
Okay, all right.
The other question, I wonder that it might be a little bit self-explanatory perhaps,
but it says, "Since gums like carrageenan and xanthan gum are toxic, does the same apply
to gums like frankincense and myrrh?"
The carrageenan and xanthan are basically polysaccharides.
The carrageenan is a sulfated polysaccharide and I think all of the sulfated polysaccharides
besides their own heparin, I think all of those are toxic and dangerous and the xanthan
gums and gum arabic and lots of the plant gums are not digestible but they can support
bacterial growth in the intestine.
Where the carrageenan is specifically pro-inflammatory and very dangerous, the other gums are simply
nuisances that tend to increase bacterial growth and gas production and such.
Where the frankincense and myrrh contain lots of anti-inflammatory substances, probably
anti-cancer effects, some steroid-like molecules, not so different from testosterone and progesterone.
They seem to have an anti-inflammatory, anti-proliferation effect on cancer cells.
I wasn't aware of myrrh being used internally but I've known frankincense for a long time,
especially by the Bedouins.
They'll chew frankincense straight off the tree in the pearls that it comes formed in
when it dries to freshen their breath and as a kind of bacteria static for their teeth
and their mouth.
I've heard of people eating the crude gum ground up just by the spoonful.
On the issue of receptors, there are actual proteins that are called receptor proteins
but my position is that since the condition of the cell determines what a particular substance
binding to that receptor is going to do to the cell, it isn't as meaningful as some people
think to activate a receptor because it can have opposite effects depending on the history
of the cell and the present condition of other cells.
While we're talking about cells, just quickly, what's your view on stem cell technology?
Do you think it's a real way forward to turn around degenerative processes?
What do you think about stem cells?
Yeah, I think we're full of stem cells and what we have to do is activate them intelligently.
Do you think the research is going in the right direction?
You probably know more about what is actually being conducted in some of these experiments
and see if it's actually reasonably positable to bring about something positive.
Yeah, finding out exactly what the kind of stress signal is that activates them.
It's already known that many types of stress will activate the maturing of stem cells and
that things like progesterone and testosterone, once they have been activated, will keep them
going in the right direction so that they replace tissues rather than replacing cancer.
When they kill cancer by radiation or chemotherapy or surgery, the cancer tends to come back
even though they remove the tumor completely because the place where the cancer was has
been injured and it calls out to the body for stem cells to repair the damage.
Having damaged itself as a framework, it misdirects the stem cells so they develop into cancer.
We have a caller that's just called in.
So let's take this next caller.
Caller, where are you from and what's your question?
Hi, my name is Derek.
I'm here in Denver, Colorado.
Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, yeah, sounds great.
What's your question, Derek?
Well, first off, I just discovered this show not too long ago and it's fantastic.
I really appreciate you taking your time to do this for the public.
So I've been into nutrition research for the last, I don't know, last five years or so
and looking into, I've had a lot of food intolerances and looking into like permeability and I'm
curious, Dr. Peat, your take on, because a lot of these protocols involve avoiding otherwise
really nutrient-dense foods, eggs, dairy, etc.
So I'm curious, I've looked into controlling endotoxin through various polyphenols.
I know you talk about the carrot salad and bamboo shoots, but is there any other compounds
you like to incorporate to heal or strengthen the lining of the intestines?
I know gelatin can be beneficial.
The nutrients that are most important are magnesium and vitamin A, just for the actual
replacement and repair of cells, but the whole range of nutrients, protein, zinc, vitamin
D, anti-inflammatory things like vitamin E and vitamin K, everything is really essential
ultimately for protecting the intestines.
So having liver and eggs and milk and orange juice, for example, can often get the repair
going.
I think the reason eggs have a bad reputation is that they are extremely concentrated protein
and if a person eats an egg or two without carbohydrate, their blood sugar is going to
fall for sure, especially if their liver doesn't have good glycogen stores.
The egg will drop their blood sugar, that will activate mast cells and you'll have allergic
reactions.
Without the carbohydrate, you're going to increase inflammation and sugar and progesterone
and aspirin are things that will protect you from those surges of histamine and serotonin,
etc.
And does the histamine get produced because you don't have enough glycogen due to a cortisol
spike then?
Well, low thyroid ultimately is the most common reason for not having enough glycogen stored
and the cortisol weakens the tissues so that even though it helps get your blood sugar
up and momentarily protects the glycogen, in the long run, it's adding to the problem
of unstable blood sugar.
And anytime your blood sugar falls, the mast cells are likely to degranulate and that's
influenced by a lack of testosterone and progesterone or an excess of estrogen.
And am I correct in understanding that thyroid is often times or lack of thyroid hormone
is often times a root cause of small bowel overgrowth or SIBO which can be a root cause
of leaky gut?
Your digestion slows down when your metabolic rate slows down from hypothyroidism and so
your stomach becomes sluggish, doesn't secrete much and doesn't move fast enough.
People might have cancer time, they might eat a carrot today and it might not come out
for four or five days.
That's what happens with hypothyroidism and speeding up your digestion and secretions,
it should be so active streaming fluid from your stomach and pancreas and liver should
wash your whole small intestine clean so that no bacteria can thrive in it.
And Dr. Peat real quick, I don't want to hold you up too long, is there a good quality nutrition
based textbook that you find favorable that kind of gets into good mechanisms with nutrition
and hormones and their relation?
Not that I know of.
You can.
I know, that's tricky.
I mean I know there's some great online databases for some good research that's put out there
but I just didn't know if you had a recommendation there.
I really appreciate your time.
Years ago I've seen some really good monographs on particular topics like how the intestine
works, how the digestive glands work and so on but I don't know of one that has put everything
together.
Sure, sure, sure.
Well I guess that's part of the journey.
Thank you so much, I appreciate your time.
Yeah, you're welcome.
If you want to email me, my email address is andrew@westernbotanicalmedicine.com.
We've produced a pretty comprehensive three or four page breakdown of those things that
Dr. Peat definitely advocates and those things he definitely doesn't advocate so that's certainly
been very useful in guiding a lot of our clients to a better place.
Dr. Peat, thank you so much for joining us again.
Okay, thank you.
For those people who perhaps like the last caller have never really listened to Dr. Peat
but just discovered him recently, he can be found on the internet at www.raypeat.com.
He has lots of archived and referenced material so most of the, most if not all of the articles
that he writes are fully referenced and they range in broad terms from thyroid to sugar
to progesterone, epto-diabetes.
I mean it covers a wide range of situations and gives you the scientific rationale behind
why he's advocating what he's advocating.
So it's not just flippant off the top of his head, it's based on a lot of research and
based on a lot of previous good science which unfortunately is becoming fairly bad science
today and if we get time next month, we'll get into the newsletter that he's produced.
It's titled "Language and Criticism of Science".
We've done quite a few exposes of whether it's Codex Alimentarius after the Second World
War and the development of the global corporate structure which would squat on our necks to
this discourse that Dr. Peat has outlined in his newsletter mentioning people, organizations
such as the CIA and the CCF and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations all basically being in
on it.
We'll get into that next month but for those people who want to find out more about him,
raypeat.com, we can always be reached Monday through Friday, toll free number is 1-888-WBMERB
or it can be emailed Andrew or Sarah at westernbotanicalmedicine.com.
So next month, we hope to be here.
I don't have any plans but I may or may not end up getting off to England but based on
the fact that I'll be here, it's going to be already the solstice, it's already going
to be upon us.
So this will be the last month of increasing day length.
So between here and the next couple of months, you've got a chance to get exposed to lots
of sunshine, get that anti-inflammatory red light, get your vitamin D going, make sure
you're drinking plenty of milk, getting plenty of sugar, fruit juices at night time, keep
your stress hormones down, look at your temperature and pulses, see how your thyroid is doing
and address it.
It's certainly a very simple way of putting things right.
So between your thyroid and anti-inflammatory hormones and get your testosterone up guys,
it certainly puts you in a better place, alright, and it's all pretty much free of charge,
you know.
Okay, so thanks for joining us and we'll speak to you next month.