Well, welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. The third Friday of the month and
every third Friday of the month from 7 to 8pm the program runs and we have a live show
where we take callers from 7.30 until 8 o'clock, inviting them to call in with questions either
related or sometimes unrelated to the topic of the month's subject. This month we're going
to be discussing skin cancers amongst a few other things and treatment approaches and/or
prevention strategies. The number if you live in the area or indeed if you live outside
the area or you're from Australia or somewhere like that is 707-923-3911. These programs
are also archived on the web at www.kmud.org. Under the audio archives tab people want to
scroll down to Friday Night Talk, choose the third Friday of each month. They keep them
for about two months and fortunately most of these shows have been put up by several
individuals on YouTube so the YouTube channels also cover most of the shows that we've done.
And our website www.westernbotanicalmedicine.com also has a link in the resources tab and every
show that we've done by the last few months of this year are up there and free to download.
We do get calls and emails from people telling us how much they've enjoyed them and they've
just come upon them and they've never heard anything like it so that's why we do this.
But alternative approach, I graduated with a degree in herbal medicine in England in
1999, I've been practicing ever since and we run a business where we produce alternative
supplements, dietary supplements to promote and support well-being. We've had on the show
Dr. Raymond Peat with us for a number of years now. I think I last counted it was getting
on close to 10 and always very pleased to have his wisdom on the show because he comes
from a different era, not just from his age but also from the way things were understood
back then and before the financial interests steamrolled the way they do now. So Dr. Raymond
Peat is on the show to join us this evening and are you there Dr. Peat?
Yes, hello.
Well thanks so much as always for giving your time as freely as you always do every third
Friday of the month on the show. For those people who perhaps have never heard you or
never read your work, would you give an outline of your academic and your professional background
so that people know where you come from?
I graduated from Southern Oregon College in 1956 with a bachelor's degree majoring in
humanities and then I went to the University of Oregon for a master's degree, got that
and I taught for several years linguistics and other subjects and then in 1968 went back
to the University of Oregon in biology for a PhD in 1972.
And you've been working ever since then and you do your own independent research and you
always come up with at least a handful of people, published people and other authors
that show work that you probably wouldn't find too much evidence of now unless you were
really digging for it deeply and indeed you have spent and you still spend a lot of your
time.
I actually started reading old medical textbooks in the 1940s.
In libraries folks.
I found that there was more interesting stuff in the old books than they were teaching in
college that's why I studied humanities rather than sciences at first.
And you've been applying your rationale to people when they approach you asking what
would you do if such and such were happening and you've been doing this now for how many
thirty forty years?
At least forty five.
All right well good.
So without much further ado just want to remind people that is a live call in show.
People do call in from California all over the states and indeed from abroad and the
area code here is 707 923 3911 and incidentally we can be reached at the end of the business
end of the show during normal business hours 1 888 WBM ERB.
So there's a lot of ongoing debate between pro UV exposure groups and the cover up anti
UV camps.
On the one hand solar UV radiation represents a most significant environmental risk factor
for the development of non melanoma skin cancer.
Consequently protection from this is an important approach especially in risk groups.
Ninety percent of all vitamin D in the body has to be formed in the skin through the action
of UV radiation and the dilemma is the undeniable association between vitamin D deficiency and
a host of pathologies ranging from various cancers like colon prostate and breast which
have been confirmed in a large number of studies as well as bone diseases autoimmune diseases
infectious and cardiovascular diseases and hypertension.
So vitamin D's benefit is pretty unquestionable at this point.
So strict sun protection causes vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency and the idea that
sunlight and vitamin D inhibit the growth of human cancers is not new.
So looking at the radiation from the sun the main the main two groups are UV A and B with
the ozone layer taking out all of the UVC.
So both both cause damage now the UVB causes a rearrangement of DNA producing what they
call photo products which are known mutagens causing cancer and then UVA in its own right
causes damage via oxidative type processes and the suppression of the skin's immune system
has been shown to represent another mechanism by which solar radiation induces and promotes
skin cancer growth.
So I think just to start I know you've mentioned that immunosuppressive properties have been
demonstrated for both UVA and B but I think just to go over what we've already mentioned
the topic cholesterol extensively and hopefully people are beginning to get the message that
cholesterol is actually not a villain it's actually very important and everything that
they want you know for want of a better word the industry does to control cholesterol in
patients that have quote unquote high cholesterol which you've already mentioned for anybody
over 50 wants to be at least 200 milligram percent and most people that are showing you
know a cholesterol of 200 or slightly above get put on statins and we'll talk about statins
in a bit because there's even more evidence to suggest that they are very harmful and
actually they do a lot more harm than any good that they've purportedly done apart from
increasing the profits of the companies that produce them.
So can you speak a little bit of the effect of skin cholesterol on the conversion by UV
light or the conversion of cholesterol to vitamin D and the difference between a young
person's skin and an aging person's skin because I think if you mentioned that the cholesterol
content is a very important factor which is decreased in the elderly.
Yeah they've known for several years that over the age of 60 or 70 it takes about twice
as much sunlight exposure to produce the same amount of vitamin D and it turns out that
simply because old skin has only about half as much cholesterol as young skin and that
is not confined to the skin.
The age effect occurs in the adrenal glands for example which are the largest producers
of not only steroid hormones but of cholesterol itself.
The digestive system, the intestine and liver are important sources of cholesterol but the
brain and skin produce usually most of the cholesterol that they need but all of those
organs, the machinery for producing cholesterol declines with aging roughly 50% by old age
and in the skin it becomes obvious that the vitamin D isn't produced in the sunlight but
every organ, the cholesterol has many functions.
The brain produces steroids from cholesterol the same way the gonads and adrenal glands
do.
The skin can produce steroid hormones from cholesterol and any injury to the skin, even
intense blue light or injecting irritating substances will cause the skin to defensively
increase the production of both cholesterol and the vitamin D derived from it to the extent
that it can according to its age and health.
Is this, can I just interrupt for a second, is this the mechanism by which you've mentioned
in the past that the polyunsaturated lipid byproducts, lipofuscine in particular being
so oxidative damage the endothelia and the body then produces the cholesterol to repair
that damage and that actually is not a problem with cholesterol being found in blockage but
it's actually the underlying insult but the cholesterol is an immediate response to that
stress.
Once the oxidative damage occurs that damage is enough to rouse the system to produce vitamin
D and cholesterol but the polyunsaturated fat, its direct action on the cholesterol
enzyme HMG-CoA reductase, it inhibits the production where the saturated fats don't
inhibit cholesterol production.
So if you're going to use any oil on the skin it should be cocoa butter or cow butter or
anything highly saturated and not any of the PUFA.
Right, now you've mentioned this a lot of times now so people out there that are using
creams especially for things you know like rejuvenating creams or anti-aging or wrinkle
creams or you know creams that are supposedly plumping up the epidermis and returning that
youthful look should definitely not be based on polyunsaturates.
Yeah, there were experiments about 30-40 years ago on rabbits.
They shaved their backs so that they were exposed to ultraviolet sunlight and the rabbits
that were fed polyunsaturated fats developed quickly wrinkled aged skin on their backs
and the ones with the saturated diet didn't have that sun damage.
The polyunsaturated, the double bonds are especially reactive to ultraviolet light but
even through indirect pathways even blue light can activate the lipid proxidation process.
For example, vitamin B2, yellow vitamin, absorbs blue light and is excited chemically and it
becomes reactive.
Either the ultraviolet or blue light will create a vitamin deficiency in effect impairing
the ability of the cell to produce energy oxidatively and that leads to the production
of lactic acid which creates inflammation.
So even blue light can lead to a fatigued process of the cell leading to inflammation
and degeneration.
And this is via polyunsaturates and this is why you advocate eliminating polyunsaturates
from your diet and just switching it all out to saturated sources and that over time you
will change the mass of your fat content to saturated from polyunsaturated even though
we do produce some polyunsaturates ourselves.
And it's coming to be recognized that steric acid, purely saturated fatty acid has anti-cancer
effects.
Yeah, it's just a matter of time hopefully, right?
Okay, so you said that in an older person, just to recap here, that an elderly person
has 50% less cholesterol in their skin and that they need twice the sunlight exposure
to create the same amount of vitamin D. So obviously that's a big concern for, and I
know people when they talk about people in nursing homes, we generally think about people
that are well advanced, but besides the fact that they're not producing enough vitamin
D, being indoors in a nursing home and not getting sunlight further compounds their chances
of becoming susceptible to cancers as vitamin D has been shown repeatedly to be a good strategy
for protecting against cancers.
And I know you've...
Just a couple of years ago there were experiments on hairless mice, exposing them to ultraviolet
light and then giving them topical vitamin D.
Topical vitamin?
And preventing the UV carcinogenesis by treating them after the exposure with vitamin D.
D, yeah.
Good, interesting.
Okay, you're listening to Ask Your Ob Doctor on KMU DeGarboville, 91.1 FM and from 7.30
till the end of the show you're invited to call in with questions related to this month's
topic of basically skin cancers, vitamin D and cholesterol and how we're going to explain
here how they are all pulled in to produce a rationale for supporting good health.
The number if you live in the area is 707-923-3911.
Well, Dr. Peat, you've already touched on it lightly here without me asking you, but
I looked at...
While I was doing some background reading for this month's show here, I looked at the
mevalonate pathway.
Now, you mentioned HMG-CoA reductase as an enzyme without explaining all the step-by-step
formation of steroids and cholesterol from acetyl-CoA, which is a natural process and
one that's extremely important for us.
You mentioned the enzyme.
Now, statins, just to try and bring this around back to a point of people can help cement
the idea in their mind that cholesterol is not a bad molecule.
This mevalonate pathway and the production of cholesterol amongst many other compounds,
including steroids, carotenoids, saponins, limonoids, etc., they're blocked by statins
at this particular point in the pathway.
So another reason to avoid statins, and I know you've said many times, and I'll repeat
it again because there's going to be people that have probably just heard this for the
first time, but if you're over 50, you actually want a cholesterol more like 200, 210, 220.
It's actually protective.
But if you're taking statins to lower your cholesterol because it's supposedly too high
and not good for you, which we've shown time and time again is actually bad science, using
statins and blocking this enzyme will lead to a deficit in all those other steroids and
all the other products from which cholesterol is a building block.
It's now gradually being realized that ubiquitin or coenzyme Q10, which is a product of that
same enzyme, that the statins lower that and it's an essential component of the mitochondrial
respiratory system.
And when a tissue is stressed, such as a muscle during exercise, the mitochondria fails to
produce enough energy and that can lead to the breakdown of the muscle and sometimes
the muscle breakdown plugs up the kidneys in effect and kills the person.
But very commonly it's causing muscle pain made worse by exercise.
And that's because of damage to the mitochondrial respiratory system mainly, although the structural
effects of reduced cholesterol will affect the structure and function of mitochondria.
But since the brain and other organs use the same coenzyme Q10 and mitochondrial processes,
the muscle damage is just a very noticeable thing where the cognitive damage is less noticeable.
More cumulative.
You mentioned lactic acid obviously being a byproduct here and being very inflammatory.
Is that apart from this coQ10 decrease or is it in conjunction with it?
It is a necessary adaptation to anything that impairs oxidation.
Okay.
So do you see any of the other steroid hormones or like I mentioned the carotenoids or saponins
even or the liminoids part of the isoprenoid formation of essentially what we would term
components like you would find in essential oils, the terpenes and terpenoids.
Is there anything there that you would see that would be...
I suspect that even body odor will be affected by it because it's known that some of these
perfumy chemicals made by that pathway are involved in the fragrance of a young person's
skin oils.
And so I imagine it would tend to make a person lose their young fragrance.
Interesting.
Okay.
All right.
So I know that's serious from a health perspective but it's an interesting take on it.
Just an aside, what do you see as a direct link if you like or the way you understand
it?
I mean some people just don't smell good.
Some people you don't smell them.
They have no smell and they don't have to bath for two days, three days a week and they
don't smell.
Other people have to bathe every day and you smell them and they smell bad.
Alexander the Great who apparently had great vitality in general, he was famous.
Historians wrote about how sweet he smelled.
People would collect his used garments because they had a permanent perfume infused into
them.
Okay.
Do you see...
Everyone under stress can emit different chemicals.
For example, isoprene tends to show up during nighttime stress.
Oh really?
Okay.
All right.
So how else do you see body odor?
I mean apart from the kind of medical definitions of just bacterial breakdown, yeast and byproducts
of that kind of thing.
In a healthy person, the skin under the influence of thyroid hormone and feedback from the progesterone
which is produced in the skin from the cholesterol, insulin and thyroid hormone are very important
for keeping the flow going from energy through cholesterol into the steroids.
And then those steroids include among some of the minor androgens, the pheromones, the
sex attracting steroids both in men and women, some of the testosterone related minor androgens
create a perfume that is very closely associated with high production of the steroids.
Okay.
So you call it perfume.
Would you also describe it as a musk or a disagreeable smell though?
Presumably attraction should be preceded by something pleasant, right?
Yeah.
Many people aren't aware of smells but experiments show that they're influenced in their judgment
about a person by the smells on their skin.
Interesting.
I'm only saying this because I come from a perspective of still somewhat kind of medically
brainwashed but in terms of the liver and its process for deaminating and breaking down
toxins and making them ready for excretion because we don't want them building up because
they're toxins.
Is there any link perhaps to liver dysfunction?
Oh yeah.
When the liver is failing, the fats that should be breaking down and excreting can come out
in the breath.
On the breath, okay.
Yeah.
But how about in a generalized body odor?
Oh yeah.
Acutely they show up in the breath just for example when you get hungry, if your liver
isn't efficient, things in your tissues will come out in your exhaled breath but chronically
they accumulate and come out more gradually in the oils.
That's funny.
We call this death breath and you find it on children too and in fact our five year
old, you know, if we haven't made sure that she's, because she's so active, I mean she's
very, she's bright, she's intelligent, she's fast, I think she burns a lot of calories
and if we don't constantly feed her then the day before or the evening before, she'll wake
up in the morning and she'll have this smell on her that's obviously the process by which
you've described and she doesn't have it when we're really conscious about making sure she
gets plenty of sugars during that day and in the evening she has a sugary snack and
then she's totally fine, you don't smell it, it's night and day.
And yeah, that smell can precede, for example, an epileptic seizure or just other, like a
migraine, headache, anything where the blood sugar is inadequate and the stress hormones
break down tissues.
Okay, interesting.
All right, well it's 7.26 and the phone lines have been ringing here and we do have, I've
been told we do have a couple of people ready to step in, so let's just take this, we've
got plenty more things I want to ask you about, but let's, I know that the show really is
about exposing you and I like it when people call up and they ask you stuff and they challenge
you to think about the way you think about it, so let's take this first caller.
Caller, you on the air?
Hi, my name's Chris and I'm calling from Southern Humboldt.
And the first thing I want to add to your little discussion here about fragrance is
I had a friend who was a monk and he was a Tibetan monk but he was actually English and
he was quite cultivated and anyway, he was eating, I'm trying to think, rose petals.
And he smelled wonderful.
I mean he was probably like Alexander, so maybe that was the secret.
But what I wanted to talk to you about, Dr. Peat, was I don't know if you remember me
or not, I know you talk to a lot of people, but I talked to you, I inquired with you about
monk fruit sugar.
Do you remember?
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Well I've done a lot of research on it so far and I'm even trying to get the local community
college to possibly start to grow monk fruit sugar as a research product.
But anyway, the wonderful thing about the monk fruit sugar is in China, it's the reason
Chinese people don't get fat because they don't eat table sugar like we eat, they don't
eat cane sugar, they're eating monk fruit sugar exclusively and believe it or not, they've
been using it for, as long as there's been Chinese people on the planet, I don't know
how long that's been, but they've used it for controlling diabetes.
In fact, it's absolutely wonderful for that and I've done some research for you guys.
The reduction of the inflammation and oxidation, if monk fruit is administered regularly, like
half a teaspoon every day, you will reduce or eliminate inflammation and oxidation entirely.
Absolutely.
Well Dr. Peat, obviously both you and I and lots of people that we consult with and do the
same thing are big advocates of regular white table sugar.
What do you have to say about monk fruit sugar and how would you see this being a positive
and anti-diabetes type?
I actually think any sugar, but especially fruit sugar, any sugar is a good treatment
for diabetes because glucose is a promoter of stem cell renewal in the pancreas and it
opposes, tends to suppress the free fatty acids which are produced under stress and
the free fatty acids are constantly killing the beta cells in the pancreas every time
they regenerate under the influence of glucose.
If there isn't enough glucose to suppress the free fatty acids, then regenerated beta
cells get killed again.
So keeping the fatty acids down is the essence of curing diabetes and any kind of fruit,
if you eat enough of it.
Can I please inquire and ask you, I beseech you, please look into, it's called Lu Hong
Go, L-U-O-H-A-N-G-U-O, that's its Mandarin name in China, and Lu Hong Go is monk fruit.
Please do some research on this because I really think it's going to help a lot of people
that have diabetes and I think it's really going to help a lot of people that have problems
with chronic inflammation.
And that's all I have to say.
Have a great night.
Okay, thank you for your call.
Engineer, you said that you...
I just did a really quick little research and there is about 35% fructose and sucrose
in it, but there's actually a chemical they're calling, it's a triterpene glycoside, a saponin
triterpene glycoside that gives a lot of the fruit, the sweetness, and that's a powder
they extract and concentrate.
So I suspect it's more like stevia than an actual fructose.
So Dr. Peat, knowing what you know, if you've looked at monk fruit sugar, do you have anything
else to say about it as a substance and/or the direct comparison to glucose or sucrose
or fructose, obviously?
No, I haven't seen any comparisons of it in diabetes.
Yeah, well, no problem.
Okay, well, we have another caller on the air.
So caller, you're on the air, where are you from and what's your question?
I'm from New York.
Dr. Peat, I spoke before as well as a prior caller and it's consistent, following up on
the recommendation you mentioned, but it's consistent what you were talking about with
vitamin D. I had a skin rash and I had been prescribed cortisol creams and all kinds
of stuff for lots of side effects, decided not to do that.
I asked you about it and you had recommended salt and baking soda bath, like a pound each
daily.
And I think you also mentioned vitamin D. In addition to that, I did take a high volume,
like 50 billion units of not just acidophilus, but a mixed variety of those types of products.
And it got better, but it took like five months.
It is coming back now.
You also had mentioned, but very minor way.
And so I have two questions about that.
One, you'd mentioned vitamin D as well, and not so much vitamin A. I did get a vitamin
D test and it was 39, which it's not dangerous, but it's low.
And I am older, over 60.
So I was just wondering what is it that I could do to get that vitamin D level up, even
though I'm applying it topically, the sun doesn't seem to work and trying to overcome
the point she made at the outset of this particular show.
That's the first part.
The second part is when they gave me cortisol, I was thinking the adrenal glands make cortisol,
right?
So if you get older and your adrenal glands are "less efficient" for the reasons you mentioned
earlier, is that why they're suggesting topical cortisol?
Because you can't make enough yourself.
And if that's the case, it seems to me you would want to take adrenal hormones to more
rejuvenate your adrenal glands so that you can make your own cortisol and let your body
decide how much to make and where to repair.
So it's the vitamin D and the adrenal glands.
It did heal, took a very long time, but it is actually coming back now.
So I'm wondering about those two points.
Have you tried any supplements like a DHEA or progesterone or pregnenolone?
Well, you know, I took pregnenolone.
It actually is great, but I just don't know whether it affects my body's ability to produce
it.
Obviously, you feel great right away.
You've mentioned that in the past, but I just don't know how it dynamically affects other
hormones and whether or not it's actually making testosterone or converting to estrogen
because I do run a little bit and frankly, I did run today.
It's funny you mentioned this also about the damage you can do by running and afterward,
I did actually take some COQ10.
Coincidentally, I don't know why I did it, but then to have you say it and I thought,
"Wow, that's interesting that you said that.
Maybe that's a good idea if you're going to run, even if it's just a little bit, just
to keep the blood flowing."
Taking COQ10 seems to make sense as sort of a defensive measure because there are some
benefits of running, which I know you don't espouse, but it's important for me.
Obviously, you want to do it in a way that reduces the damage.
I have taken it.
I do have topical progesterone.
Being a man, I don't do a lot of it.
I have DHEA and I've taken out a little bit, but I'm just not sure how to take them and
what quantity, how often, and how they would interact with what my body's trying to do.
So I kind of have them, but I'm not actually sure how to use them, to be honest.
Have you checked your thyroid function?
Well, I do take 30 milligrams of the thyroid, but I do the natural desiccated for the same
reasons I just mentioned.
It does have some liver in it, so I don't know if that's a problem, but I do take it.
My temperature was great during the summer.
I know you've mentioned this before.
I mean, it was much better.
Now it's actually a little bit lower.
I'm finding it in the morning in the low 97s.
So I try to get to 97.6 or 7 or 8 in the morning, but I'm a little bit, about a half a degree
lower than that.
So I could increase it, but you're not depressed.
Your energy's not lower and I can get my energy up.
The red light helps.
Dry CO2 is phenomenal.
But yeah, I think I have, I definitely have a weaker thyroid and probably running hurts
it.
Other things hurt it, but I try to stick to your diet to minimize the risk.
Carrots hurt it too, by the way.
I think I have my blood sugar drops when I take that carrot.
It may help my stomach, but it hurts my thyroid function, but it goes away.
It goes away.
So the answer is yes, I do take a little bit of thyroid, but only 30 milligrams or one
grain.
I could up it to two, but the question is when do you take that during the day?
Do you do it always in the morning?
Do you do it at night?
How do you spread it out?
How does it affect my ability of my own thyroid to determine how much it needs and when it
needs it?
All right, well, let's let Dr. Peat answer what it is that you've asked and thanks for your
question.
So we got a question about the vitamin D status.
I think you said it was 36, did you?
Or 39?
36, I think.
And then cortisol, obviously concerned about adrenal production.
So Dr. Peat. Thyroid is essential for making all of these steroids and in a young person,
the ratio when you're under stress, there's a lot of cortisol produced and that will,
in a healthy person, that will also increase the cholesterol, pregnenolone, DHEA and progesterone
backing up the cortisol.
But with age, there's a constant decrease in the ratio of DHEA and the protective steroids
in relation to cortisol.
So that even though your average cortisol might stay the same with aging, in effect,
it's becoming constantly more active.
You're more susceptible to side effects from the cortisol exposure because your DHEA, pregnenolone
and progesterone are going down constantly with aging along with the decreasing cholesterol
in all of the tissues.
Okay, I think just a mention here that everybody is very variable in their absorption of vitamin
D and for some people, you know, 2000 or 4000 IU a day is fine to keep their vitamin D up
around 40, 45, 50.
Some other people use 10,000 IU a day and it does depend.
I think weight is a factor that can lower the absorption of it, somebody's body weight.
But basically using vitamin D as a supplement is probably one of the best ways to get it.
Part of this month's show, we were going to discuss the actual production of it.
But basically you get 90% or so of your vitamin D if you're not supplementing from the sunlight.
So if you're really not in the sun that much and we're going to talk about the scale here
of vitamin D that's produced by sunlight versus the cancers.
Topical or internal use of a vitamin D compound either in a thorn research, do it, life extension,
do it, Carlson Labs do it, you know, there's plenty of it available and it's not expensive.
But to get your vitamin D in the 50 nanogram per mil range is a very good strategy for
maintaining good health.
But let's just take this next caller.
Next caller, you're on the air, where are you from?
Where's your question?
I'm Mike from Connecticut.
Hey Mike, what's your question?
Yes, I just wanted to know, repeat the thoughts on the skin care bacteria and the role they
play in health.
Is it like what's in the gut where you want to keep the bacteria at a minimum?
And if so, is the UV a good treatment for killing the bacteria in the skin?
And just wondering if there's other ways to balance that.
I find that UV treatment has actually been quite potent to treat my acne.
And I'm just wondering if that's something that's valuable for UV or if there's other
ways like red light or any other way of controlling the bad bacteria in the skin.
Yeah, I had a little trouble hearing the very first thing you said, but did you say carini
bacterium as in the bacteria that cause acne?
And carcinogenesis?
Yes.
Both of you cut in, I couldn't hear that.
He said yes.
Yes, okay good.
So Dr. Peat, did you get the question there?
Yeah, I think thyroid and vitamin D are major factors in the immunity.
There's another cholesterol metabolite, 25-hydroxycholesterol, which is very similar in function to 25-hydroxyvitamin
D. They're very structurally similar and they both activate the immune system.
And I think they work right along with vitamin A and the thyroid hormone in keeping the immune
system, the skin bacteria under control.
Okay, thank you for your question.
So we're live here in 2-8 o'clock.
If people would like to call in with any questions related to this month's topic of skin cancer,
vitamin D, cholesterol and how they interplay, the number here is 707-923-3911.
Okay, so Dr. Peat, I've got lots more questions, so we'll see how far we get in terms of people
calling in or not.
I wanted to know whether or not vitamin D would be a useful topical treatment, maybe
not directly on a suspicious skin lesions, but maybe adjacent.
Like I know you mentioned progesterone shouldn't be typically topically put on, but adjacent
to an area and then let the product migrate, which it will do through the skin.
But do you think that a topical application of vitamin D with a saturated fat, either
coconut oil or something like that would be a reasonable approach to improving the vitamin
D status in the skin?
Because I know they interplay between cholesterol and skin cancers.
There's a definite causal link between vitamin D cholesterol levels in the skin and the formation
of skin cancers.
So do you think...
Yeah, I think both vitamin D and cholesterol, especially with saturated fats to compete
against whatever polyunsaturated happens to be in the skin.
I think all three of those have a good chance of overcoming the precancerous condition.
In a typical cancer, there will be a fully cancerized zone surrounded by lower degrees
of conversion of the cells as if something is being emitted from a center causing gradual
progressive change in the surrounding tissue.
It isn't that cells are traveling out, it's that the surrounding normal cells are gradually
being injured the closer they are to the cancer.
And part of that is that the normal metabolites are being suppressed by the toxins such as
lactic acid being emitted by the cancer cells.
And fairly well saturating the skin both from the bloodstream internally taken supplements
but also from things applied topically in the vicinity are going to keep those precancerous
cells from going the rest of the way and increasing the tumor.
And about 20 years ago, someone was taking samples from facial skin of people who were
just normally exposed to daylight and they found that almost everyone with any outside
light exposure had quite a few mutated cells, precancerous cells in their facial skin.
But when they covered the skin for just a few weeks, that same area that had been producing
streams of mutated cells were entirely free of mutant cells showing that the body is able
to kill off the bad cells and replace them with fresh non-cancerous cells given the chance
of just letting them simply rest from the damage.
Presumably this would be in instances perhaps where there wasn't severe and repeated sunburn
as a direct cause of mutated DNA but which is a very slight irritation that's not such
a severe...
Yeah, and other people looking at middle-aged people who had been killed in accidents found
that everyone at the age of 50, if you did a thorough autopsy, everyone has cancer by
the age of 50 somewhere in their body.
Same principle as they saw in the facial skin.
If you stop injuring it, it's going to return to normal.
Most people don't die of cancer even though everyone by the age of 50 has cancer.
So the thing is to stop making cancers in your body as far as possible and I think that's
the function of applying things such as progesterone, vitamin D, cholesterol, maybe mevalonic acid.
I want to ask you about that in a little bit but we do have another caller so let's take
this caller.
Caller, you're on the air, where are you from and what's your question?
My name's Chris and I'm here in Humboldt County.
And I apologize in advance if I'm basically asking the same question someone else already
has, I just turned on the radio.
I love your guys' show so I appreciate the time you guys put in for it.
I'm a white 51-year-old.
I grew up in Southern California getting baked on the beach.
I have been severely sunburned several, many times as a kid.
And then within the last 10 years I've kind of fought skin cancer a little bit.
It's not the melanoma, it's the mesothermal or whatever.
A basal cell calcinoma or squamous cell?
I think it's the meso maybe.
It's supposed to be a less aggressive one.
Well, actinic keratosis is the start of it I think.
Yeah, so that's the thing.
I've gotten to where I can kind of recognize it.
And I've had a couple spots cut off and then I was called back in to cut off some more
because they found it around the periphery.
And basically what I'm kind of noticing is that it's basically all over.
There's tiny little spots.
Maybe it's pre-cancer or whatever, but it's like, well, you try to cut all that stuff
off, I won't have any skin.
So I'm kind of wondering what you guys would recommend what I should do or maybe even direct
me towards, I don't know if it's on your website, some literature that I should do some research.
Sure.
Dr. Peat, okay, so what would you suggest for this 51-year-old Southern Californian
who's been burnt severely several times?
His description of the process reminded me of another person in Southern California who
had cancer on his ear.
The doctor said he was going to have to cut off his ear to cure the cancer.
And the guy didn't want to cut off his ear and so he put, I think it was progesterone
or a mixture of progesterone and DHEA on it.
And a week or two later, he said it fell off.
I said, "What, the ear?"
He said, "No, the cancer."
Progesterone and DHEA.
What's that other one?
DHEA.
Now, I just want to put the caveat out there, and Dr. Peat, you'll agree with this because
you're the one who stated it, but in terms of using DHEA, you need to make sure that
your thyroid's working well, otherwise you've run the risk of converting that DHEA into
estrogen, which you don't want to do because that in its own right is a pro-cancerous compound.
So make sure your thyroid function is working well and/or, if it isn't, use a thyroid hormone.
So whether it's desiccated natural or indeed synthetic, which is absolutely fine, you should
be making sure that your thyroid's working well so that you can convert that DHEA appropriately.
And sometimes skin cancers heal up just for increasing the thyroid because the thyroid
is going to increase the production of cholesterol and the immune steroids.
I guess that would require a visit to the doctor to check out my thyroid function or
something.
Well, you could.
Here's the thing, though.
You will probably find...
Well, you know what?
It's a good idea to get a metabolic panel done and see what your TSH is like.
I found a lot of people have really overt symptoms of low thyroid, which improve dramatically
with thyroid hormone when their labs come back showing that their TSH is within the
normal range.
So that in and of itself is not diagnostic.
Your temperature and pulses will be a very good way to see what your metabolic rate is,
which is the underlying driver of your metabolism and hormone conversion, etc.
You can get a blood test to see what your TSH is like.
It might be fairly high.
So that would be clinically a way to show that.
But your temperature and pulses would be the best way to do that.
Okay.
And is the DHEA and progesterone, is that something someone can just go pick up?
Yeah, they're both non-prescription.
Both DHEA and progesterone are both non-prescription.
They're dietary supplements, basically.
Okay, awesome.
All right.
Thank you, guys.
Yeah, you're welcome.
If you want to, you can always email me.
I'll send you a link to some resources that you can look at and indeed links where you
can buy quality products.
Broda Barnes was the person who showed how effective the temperature check could be for
diagnosing hypothyroidism.
And his books are still available on the Internet, I think.
Very important to read for everyone.
There you go.
Broda Barnes.
Okay.
We have two callers.
So let's see if we can squeeze them in for the next at least eight minutes.
Caller number one, where are you from?
What's your question?
Can we try and be as concise as we can?
I'm from Long Island.
And you mentioned skin, but vitamin E wasn't mentioned.
And I know there's vitamin E and tocotrienols.
And I was just wondering which one is preferable and how would you use them in the context
of this dialogue?
The second question I have is royal jelly versus bee pollen.
Are those the same thing and are they recommended or too much poofa?
Thank you.
Okay.
Thanks for your call.
So did you hear the first question about the vitamin E?
Yeah.
There is some information that the tocotrienols can enlarge doses in experimental animals.
They cause liver enlargement, which suggests that they're treated as a toxin by the liver.
And so ever since seeing that, I've been suspicious that maybe they're overemphasizing their value
because of the amount of money they can sell them for as distinct from a traditional vitamin
E. And one of the problems with vitamin E is it can preserve the amount of poofa in
the tissue, so it's important to keep your polyunsaturated fats down as well as using
the vitamin E to block their effects as far as possible.
Okay.
So very quickly, the royal jelly versus the pollen aspect.
I know you don't really agree with bee pollen because of the possible allergenic effects
given that it's collected from such a wide range of plants.
What about royal jelly?
I know that's a fair amount of press.
It's extremely rich in nutrients and if there was a lot of it, everyone should probably
eat some of it.
But you don't want to steal the bees' food.
They're already having problems.
That's right.
I know.
All right.
Without going any further, we have two more callers.
Let's take this next caller.
Caller, you're on the air.
Where are you from?
Yeah.
Hi.
I'm from Redway, California.
Hey, what's your question?
Well, I have a question and an observation first.
My 97-year-old grandmother recently was diagnosed with a squamous cell carcinoma on her nose.
The doctors were saying, "Look, you're going to croak before you think you'll..."
But it was annoying to her.
So she's like...
And they said, "Well, we're going to have to cut your whole nose off basically to get
at it."
And so we tried...
What kind of cancer was it?
It was a squamous cell carcinoma.
Yes.
I've had several old friends and myself with little cancers on the face that they went
away in from as little as a week to six months of applying progesterone or DHEA to them.
And a friend who was...
I think she was 94 at the time, her face was being eaten away by a melanoma.
And just a few applications of progesterone nearby, there was a hole so that she couldn't
put it directly in the melanoma.
But...
Well, I have another question for you, which is that we applied cannabis oil as an alternative
method and found efficacy within two weeks.
I mean, and so she had it for about four months, four or five months.
And when I started telling people about this, they advised me, they said, "Look, you know,
that's anecdotal.
Don't go around telling people that cannabis oil cures cancer.
You know, it is weird as not doing traditional medicines and favoring the...
You guys...
I mean, but this happened to my kid.
Now, like you said, maybe it went away on its own.
It was a coincidence that we applied that oil.
That could be.
And I just turned to the show, so I don't really know what you guys have been talking
about that much.
But I would like to get your thoughts, since you guys both need to be medical professionals,
on the potential efficacy of cannabis oil, whether it should or should not be administered
and what results other people are finding with it.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I'm afraid I don't.
The only thing I would wonder, was the product...
What kind of oil was the product extracted in, or was it just...
Olive oil.
Olive oil, right.
It was basically hash.
It was basically hashish mixed with olive oil, to get onto it, what it was.
I think the olive oil is more therapeutic than the cannabis oil.
I heard somebody say that, too.
They said, "You know, you don't know me.
It was the olive oil."
Olive oil is another thing that people have used successfully on skin cancers, to squash
the yellow leaf on the...
It was shocking to know that the doctor basically had no thoughts that he would look...
The doctor she went to was saying the only real remedy here for his excision, cut the
nose off.
Obviously, she didn't want to do that.
But it's encouraging to note that there are other...
Well, for anybody listening to the show, that we could...
What you guys have been talking about.
The oleic acid, which is the major fat in olive oil, it increases synthesis of cholesterol.
Well, that's great.
I mean, so olive oil, I mean, wow.
I appreciate your input, Caller.
Thanks for your call.
Oh, yeah.
Thanks for doing the show.
Yeah, you're welcome.
It's a couple of minutes to eight, so I'll let you sign off, Dr. Peat.
Thanks so much for doing the show, as you always...
I say always have.
I can't remember when you last didn't, but thanks so much for your time.
Okay.
Okay, so we probably only got through about half of what I wanted to get through, but
that's always good.
I always like it when people call in.
It shows that people are listening and they're interested.
And even when they sometimes don't call in very much, I get feedback on the internet
from the Ray Peat Forum, et cetera, just seeing just how many people are actually listening
to it and wanting to actually hear what Ray Peat's got to say rather than other people.
So it's always a catch-22.
I know Dr. Peat likes to be engaged with people calling up, and I know people like to hear
what Dr. Peat has to say.
So for those who called in, thanks for your time and your questions.
For those who've not heard about Dr. Peat or maybe only just listened to him once or
twice on the show, he's been doing this, like I said, for 45 plus years now, and a PhD endocrinologist
who actually practices what he preaches.
So that's the big difference there.
His website is www.raypeat.com, and he's got plenty of scholarly articles that are fully
referenced and will give you a very different perspective on things that you've been told
are the way they are.
And fortunately, they are not the way they are, but they are alternatives.
And for those people who also want to take a look at our website, it's www.westernbotanicalmedicine.com.
And on the Resources tab, there are audio files from all of the shows that we've ever
done.
There are probably about eight months' worth that still need to get put up from this year,
but we're working hard in the background to get this done.
And also on YouTube, there are most of our radio shows on YouTube.
So thanks so much for the callers, and until the third Friday of next month, have a good
night and welcome to the rain in southern Humboldt anyway.
Okay, good night.
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