Well here we are again, June the 21st, 2019, another solstice.
I think for some reason probably the third Friday of the month helps, but it seems to
have been on quite a few solstice Fridays in the last 14 or 15 years.
Anyway, yeah, happy solstice to all you out there, longest day of the year, and things
are getting warmer and warmer even though the days are going to get shorter and shorter
from here on in and hopefully the imminent threat of war with the Middle East is not
going to materialize any time in the foreseeable future, folks, so we can enjoy our lives and
raise our children and try and live in peace.
All right, so this is Ask Your Herb Doctor.
The third Friday of every month from 7 to 8 p.m. this show runs.
It's a live show, folks, and so from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock you
are invited, welcome, to call in, hopefully with questions related to this month's topic
or a random loose topic around postpartum depression, steroid hormones, new drugs with
dangerous consequences, and all the other fun stuff that we bring up to light, and as
always Dr. Peat's going to bring his science-based wisdom to bear in on these subjects.
So from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock you're invited to call in with questions
either related or unrelated to that subject matter that I spoke of, and then, yeah, we're
always very pleased to get people from all over the world.
It's kind of a fun thing when people call in from Australia or they call in from, you
know, somewhere in England or wherever.
Anyway, the number here, if you'd like to call in from 7.30 on to pose any questions
you have to Dr. Peat or myself, the number is area code 707-923-3911, and I can be reached
at the end of the show or through business hours, Monday through Friday, or any time
on the web either at the 888 number which is WBMERB, so 1-888-WBMERB, or you can email
me, Andrew@westernbotanicalmedicine.com.
So once again we're very pleased to have Dr. Peat on the radio show.
Are you there, Dr. Peat?
Yeah.
Okay, thanks so much for giving your time as you've done for many years now on this
show and we really do appreciate it.
Okay, so your latest newsletter on postpartum depression, brain aging, and reductionism
continues along those lines and topics of the ongoing reductionism in science and how
short-sighted that science is and linked to aging and the disease that some of these drugs
are now causing that we'll get into later on with the obesity and Alzheimer's and diabetes
epidemic.
So for those people perhaps who've never listened to the show before or maybe even haven't heard
your name, would you just outline your scientific and academic background for us before we start?
After teaching a variety of subjects including linguistics and literature, I decided to go
to graduate school in biology and got my PhD in 1972 and have been continuing to study
mostly physiology and stress and aging since then.
Okay, and if people aren't aware of also you've spent a long time and you still do spend a
lot of time emailing people about health-related issues and that's pretty much what you've
been working on for the last 40 years or so since you graduated.
Yeah, okay, good.
So after looking at your newsletter and formulating some questions for you based on it, I just
wanted to get a little bit of your inside thought processes here when you've claimed
or made the statements that you make.
I think it's hard for sometimes for people to understand the things that you say because
it's sometimes seems so counter, well not sometimes but quite often it's fairly counter
intuitive to all the brainwashing that we get daily from books, magazines, TV, adverts,
etc.
And as the world becomes more homogenous and the internet links people more fluidly into
this kind of cohesive organism, as you've always said, you know, William Blake's quoted
that a lie travels around the world quicker than truth can get bootstraps on.
But I wanted to just talk briefly about the product that has just been given FDA approval
this month called Zoreso, also known as Brexanilone or also known as allopregnanolone which we've
mentioned in the past.
So naturally occurring metabolite of naturally produced progesterone but it's been used and
given approval as an injection, given over a 60-hour infusion in hospital to treat postpartum
depression and it costs $34,000.
Okay so why not simply use a $30 bottle of progesterone or pregnenolone, both of which
quickly convert in the body to allopregnanolone and don't require extortionate hospitalization
and drug costs further skyrocketing health insurance costs and drug manufacturer profits.
What's your take on the reason that this drug has been given?
Now I guess firstly FDA approval for this condition which I'd like you to outline and
I'm sure you will as the questions go on here in terms of the treatment of postpartum depression
or why it occurs in the first place because I know you definitely have your own opinions
for that.
But why allopregnanolone and then why an infusion and now they're patenting previously what
would have been classed as a natural product that women naturally produce and is naturally
converted to this substance as a byproduct of metabolism?
If it was an actual therapy it would be cheap and not patented and no one would make or
hope to make several billion dollars a year from selling it.
For the last 10 or 15 years the FDA has acted as though it's in the business of creating
monopolies.
They did it with the sedative or semi-anesthetic drug oxybate several years ago and it went
from costing a few dollars for a bottle of it to thousands of dollars for a course of
treatment.
Because it's been patented and the company's been allowed to use this as their standard
and it's been protected?
Yes and after that they declared quinine was a new drug and assigned the new drug approval
to one company.
And since they depend on fees to approve the drugs a large part of their existence sees
the money coming in from the drug as sustaining their existence.
If a doctor for example wants to use quinine bark or a natural nutritional substance for
a therapy and it happens to compete with one of these new drug assignments it's in effect
the doctors attempting to break a monopoly.
And in some situations doctors are actually losing their licenses for using traditional
medical reasoning and avoiding the so-called evidence-based medicine.
Which has become very popular as a phrase in the last few years.
I'd never heard of that up until probably 2014 or so when studies would say the evidence-based
medicine and things seem to be gearing up to using that as a new paradigm.
What they mean by evidence is a study that cost maybe $150 billion and not just any researcher
has that money to test for example a particular nutrient or hormone to treat a disease.
So what constitutes good evidence in this new paradigm is the monopoly paradigm.
It's a study that no one but the giant corporations can afford and so the only drugs that have
legal approval by the FDA are monopoly drugs.
And the extent to which the state licensing boards are putting pressure on doctors to
conform and follow guidelines in some situations it's just getting ridiculous that they're
telling doctors for example not to consider any of the traditional signs of hypothyroidism
in treating hypothyroidism but to go only by the TSH to ignore all of the metabolic
and functional signs that are recognized for 200 years as hypothyroidism.
It's a kind of communism right where there's only one way.
So it's strictly monopoly capital.
Maybe totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism.
Okay right.
Well communism for the pure definition of the word maybe not but it's very dictatorial.
Yeah.
Okay so you can't produce these drugs unless you can afford to play and when you do you
get the monopoly and the payback keeps the system going and keeps the monopoly going
in place.
But to speak a little bit more about the evidence-based medicine and the kind of destructive nature
of it you've mentioned the fact that doctors no longer can use reasoning and their brains
and I know them.
I know some of them for sure.
I don't know a lot of them but I know some very well-intentioned doctors which are purely
altruistic about what they want to do whilst studying medicine and when they're actually
consulting with people they really do have a genuine heart for the well-being of the
patient you know and quite probably the Hippocratic Oath to exist too in their prescribing.
But in terms of a doctor using their reasoning and this evidence-based medicine paradigm
being becoming something that is really in a place to inhibit and prohibit and punish
reasoning.
That's very dangerous.
In the newsletter I mentioned the movement to abolish the so-called basic science part
of medical education the first two years where they actually study science.
Just describe that a little too you know just people hear it because most people won't subscribe
to a newsletter and they probably won't understand won't hear this so just speak a little bit
about that about the person who came up with this ridiculous statement and how what it
implies.
Yeah he has written articles pointing out that there have been over 350 reversals of
traditional medicine done by these big gold standard corporate studies and so he's seeming
like a progressive constructive person wanting to get truth in the science but he says that
these big studies are the evidence that we have to take into account and all we need
is guidelines what to do how to use these approved well-documented so-called scientific
treatments and if we have guidelines for all of the diseases how to just follow a chart
of reasoning laid out by the committees government basically for treating a disease everyone
will treat the disease in the same way being coming blind to the individual variations
and their unique history and it's trying to reduce and abstract medicine to the point
that no brain is necessary only following guidelines.
Right you probably just need a simple flow chart yes or no if A plus B equals C go to
D. Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
And if that's the case then they don't need the first two years of medical school because
that's where they study the science but the trouble even with that reasoning is that the
sciences themselves over the last hundred years have been all of the sciences related
to medicine have been powerfully invaded by the drug companies so that physiology neurology
and necronology the kidney heart lung brain all of the systems of the body have had their
understanding shaped by the reductionist ideal that one sickness can be defined for everyone
and treated with a specific drug.
Scary well hold on a second there are you listening to Ask Your Ob Doctor on KMED Gallivo
91.1 FM from 830 sorry from 730 to 8 o'clock the last half hour of the show you're invited
to call him with any questions related or unrelated to this month's subject based loosely
on postpartum depression new drugs that are coming out and things pathology surrounding
pregnancy a number here is 707 707 986 sorry 923 gosh I'm making a few mistakes tonight
707 923 3911 I'm just too excited and it is a solstice.
So doctor giving us your phone number in all fairness.
I gave you my phone number earlier.
Alright so Dr. Peat getting back to this new drug that's just been patented it's a metabolite
of a naturally occurring product called out allopregnalone and given as an infusion cost
$34,000 reminds me of the Harvoni Solvalde for Hep C treatment which is 90 something
thousand and I saw more genetic one I saw one in England it just came out as $234,000
for the treatment it's a new targeted antibody process where you individually send blood
blood the patient's blood to a lab in North America they basically just sequence it and
they target the antibodies that they produce into the cell and send the blood back in the
blood then re-infused into the patient and they're saying that they're getting some fairly
good results for lymphoma but the side effects seem pretty dangerous anyway so I digress
a little but so far as the allopregnalone and its infusions concerned why wouldn't you
know why couldn't you just use pregnenolone as a precursor or progesterone?
Yeah someone tested that and found that just a tiny dose of oral progesterone 20 milligrams
tripled the amount of allopregnenolone in the body.
20 milligrams right.
So there's absolutely no reason not to use orally progesterone or pregnenolone and if
the sole purpose of treating patients I guess have been pre-identified as having post post
partum depression because they're still in the hospital in this hospital situation for
a 60 hour infusion that just seems gosh I don't know it just seems like an expensive
stay in a very expensive you know hotel it's like a I don't know.
Yeah ordinary reasoning would say that if you want to increase the amount of allopregnenolone
in the brain why not take 20 milligrams of progesterone.
So I just don't think for a dollar or so I just don't think enough people know and as
time goes on it just gets more and more buried and if we're talking about evidence-based
medicine becoming this forced new standard and there is only one pathway through from
diagnosis to prescription you know it's only something like the internet that's going to
keep this evidence or this information alive but I know and I think it's happening more
and more as time goes by but when you search for things on Google or other you know search
engine I don't recommend Google for a minute but I'm just saying when you search for things
a lot of things becoming very difficult to find and I know this happens but I don't want
to get off the beaten track with that statement.
So Dr. Peat. One other point is that allopregnenolone is essentially the end of a line of metabolites
and starting with cholesterol and those are regulated at many steps before they come into
existence and so when you give the end product without looking at the condition of all of
the preceding steps that's a great opportunity for throwing the whole system out of balance
for example estrogen and aldosterone are other end products of a line of steroid metabolism
and each of those has a long history in which it turns out that their excess is very dangerous.
I don't know if anything like that will turn out for using the simple allopregnenolone
without any of its precursors but it's something they haven't examined.
Right a little bit too new.
That reminds me and I found a kind of I think there's a reasonably good link here between
the GABA receptor that valerian a common medicinal abuse for anxiety and insomnia.
Valerian acts on a GABA receptor in the brain.
The GABA receptors are mediated by chloride ions and they cause inhibition and sedation
and they calm excitability down so they're anti-excitotoxic.
So I saw a study here with allopregnenolone and it was actually a fairly old article.
It was a 2006 article from a university in Sweden in Umeå and they noted that the thing
was biphasic.
They were saying and this reminds me like I said of valerian because most people use
valerian for insomnia and over excitation.
It calms people down.
That's what it's you know that's what it's traditional use has always been for but I've
noticed definitely I know other people that practice herbal medicine in England and see
a lot of people and use and prescribe valerian have noticed that there is a small subset
of the population that actually gets stimulated by it and this article about allopregnenolone
said the same thing that at certain doses it was excitatory and other doses it had more
of a calming stabilizing effect.
Do you that's the sort of thing you risk when you're using an end of line metabolite because
normally it can never get above a certain level because it has to go through all of
these stages in which each precursor produces some kind of smaller amount of product and
so if you artificially have given amount that the body could never experience on its own
then you're going to for example possibly anesthetize some of the regulatory inhibitory
nerves and release things that are less sensitive to inhibition.
So what you're doing is risking something that the organism has never experienced before
and is unpredictable.
What I was going to ask you a little bit later on but probably now is a good time to ask
you the question about postpartum depression for which this drug has been approved and
your understanding of the cause of postpartum depression how this can be avoided by women
if they do the right thing because I believe you know it's very treatable.
It happens in women with a history of stress, difficult pregnancy, difficult birth or maybe
those were routine but maybe there was a history of stress earlier in life and each stage she
was compensating for but the burden of going through the pregnancy and birth when you're
building the baby's body and brain if you don't have enough calcium available in your
diet for example you increase your parathyroid hormone and take calcium out of your bones
to build the baby's bones and vitamins and hormones are the baby gets priority over some
of these nutrients and so even in an apparently healthy woman the pregnancy increases the
risk of a nutritional deficiency and the fact is that the women who suffer postpartum depression
have had some kind of a history of preceding stress.
Okay do you think there's any relation to menstrual disorders because I think PMS exactly
is closely related to postpartum.
Okay alright so you're listening to Ask Your Ob Doctor, Kami DeGalvo 91.1 FM and from 7.30
here in a few moments until the end of the show you're invited to call in the questions
are related or unrelated to the subject here and it's 707 923 3911.
Okay so I wanted to ask you again about exposure to high levels of estrogen if we would tend
to posit the suggestion that exposure to very high levels of estrogen being directly responsible
for the dramatic shrinkage in grey matter of the brain which has been shown which women
refer to as baby brain in which the MRI studies confirm being analogous to advanced aging.
Why isn't progesterone supplementation after birth recommended to speed up recovery of
the grey matter resolution as it's clearly been shown to reverse the effects and what
would be a reasonable amount of progesterone postpartum and for how long?
In healthy women the progesterone level in the cerebrospinal fluid and plasma increases
considerably during the time when the brain is being repaired after the stress of pregnancy.
But the amount of cholesterol can be determining.
Normally during this time of progesterone increase in a healthy woman after the birth
cholesterol is well above normal and is the precursor for making the large amount of progesterone.
Women with postpartum depression typically have a reduced level of cholesterol and so
they just couldn't possibly make enough progesterone if the precursor isn't there.
And vitamin A and thyroid are other limiting factors so even if the cholesterol is there
but there's a little thyroid or have a vitamin A deficiency then they won't make the restorative
amount of progesterone.
And like that one experiment showed 20 milligrams orally of progesterone is enough to triple
the amount of allopregnanolone.
But a normal cycling woman produces about 30 milligrams of progesterone daily in the
luteal phase.
So I think that would be a reasonable amount therapeutically in the postpartum time.
But the requirement depends if she's still under stress and producing or not eliminating
estrogen as well as she should then it might take larger amounts and that depends on things
like your thyroid function, cholesterol level, vitamin A and stress hormones.
Okay, I've heard you mentioned in the past hydroxymethylbutyrate as a possible compound
to improve cholesterol levels but I know you've always mentioned lots of fructose with a healthy
liver and thyroid also being responsible for improving cholesterol levels and these specifically
to enable downstream manufacture of steroid and neuroprotective hormones like progesterone
in females etc.
Do you have any other suggestions for increasing, it seems a little odd to ask but for increasing
cholesterol levels?
I think having enough carbohydrate, sugar in the diet is a very important thing.
Okay, sugar and carbohydrate.
Okay, so next question then and I've wondered this, I don't have any evidence for it but
I'm going to put it out there and you probably thought about it so I think it's a good point
to ask you.
Do you think there is a subset of women who despite the massive rise of progesterone they
benefit from during pregnancy are still actually estrogen dominant essentially?
Oh sure, especially if they have a history of PMS or any kind of biological stress and
most often it's associated with slightly low thyroid function.
Okay so that can exist, only because I've seen the numbers that they put out there whether
it's medical publications or alternative but the huge increase in progesterone, you would
think without way that the rise, because I know it's also a concomitant rise of estrogen
but do you have any idea of the proportion?
About 50 years ago I saw a good chart based on very large number of pregnancies in which
there was a steady increase of progesterone through the whole pregnancy, just a very steady
increase at a level I think it was 50 times higher than the estrogen level and charts
are very misleading usually.
They often graph them with different axes for estrogen and progesterone so it really
should show an extremely low line for the estrogen being 50 times lower on the concentration.
Okay but it is still very possible to be estrogen dominant during a pregnancy and regardless
of the amount of progesterone being secreted which is pretty high.
You have a limited capacity to carry progesterone because of this needing 50 times more than
estrogen and so if your background estrogen is staying high because of low thyroid function
or a low B vitamin or low protein intake or something, then it's impossible to produce
and distribute enough progesterone to offset that falsely high amount of estrogen and so
no amount of progesterone increase will make that pregnancy healthy.
It requires getting the estrogen under control with nutrition and good thyroid function.
Okay, alright well before we take this first call let me just say that from now until the
end of the show if you'd like to call in the number is 707-923-3911.
Let's take this first caller call away from what's your question?
New York and two questions for Dr. Peat. First I guess you're not a fan of vigorous exercise
but I've read that as long as you're not running a marathon if you're running for 20 minutes
or whatever and you're doing sprints that it actually increases CO2.
You agree with that?
Because I know nitric oxide and lactic acid are the ones that you want to avoid excess
amounts of.
It depends entirely on your physiology especially your thyroid function.
A person with borderline hypothyroidism will with just the most slight exertion will start
producing lactic acid which displaces the carbon dioxide.
So if you're really in great condition you can keep your carbon dioxide level up and
not produce any lactic acid with a moderate amount of exercise.
Okay so it's not whether or not it's useful or not it's sort of depending on the health
of the individual I guess.
For a healthy person it could be very positive for an unhealthy person it could be very you
know add to their problems.
When the lactic acid goes up because you're not using oxygen properly then you release
first a lot of histamine which produces soreness and maybe asthma and various symptoms and
then the histamine is causing the blood pressure to go down after the exercise but with greater
exercise then you release serotonin from the mast cells that could cause a blood pressure
spike which is much worse than just the histamine effect.
Okay so just second part of my first question if you take the assumption that people over
50 are predominantly hypothyroid even if they weren't you know in their earlier years and
60 certainly then if people are exercising what are the two things that people should
do I've heard one from your talks that if you take you know maybe even just three drops
of or 60 I use a vitamin E that that would actually be very protective and so the benefits
of exercise you know might outweigh the negatives because you're taking precautions prior to
the exercise.
Is that true?
And a lot of athletes are starting to use baking soda before the stressful exertion
that provides extra sodium and bicarbonate and CO2.
Okay so both of those are protective so if you did that and you had a little bit of sugar
or whatever or orange juice that would somewhat mitigate the DNA damage or whatever that might
occur.
Yeah.
Okay second question relates to I don't know if you've heard of this but it's called cat's
claw and supposedly what it does it's a I think a root bark that ultimately if you boil
it for 30 minutes and maybe it's like mushrooms where you know there's bad things in them
but if you boil it for an hour you know the bad things go away and all the good stuff
stays but it supposedly repairs DNA and it's been used for like a thousand years by the
Aztecs and Incas.
Have you familiar with it at all or do you agree or disagree with it?
What's the name of it again?
Cat's claw bark.
Cat's claw B-A-T-S and then C-L-A-W.
I've never studied that.
Okay so you're talking about a product called Uncarrier Tementosa and yeah and they've produced
it was a big deal for Lyme's disease about four or five years ago.
They produced or in fact a company called Mediherb in Australia produced a TOA free
which is the oxyindole alkaloid that was supposedly responsible for you know mitigating the effects
of Lyme's.
I'm not too sure of its activity for what you're mentioning but I know it in the context
of its use in Lyme's disease.
Okay so there is some benefit to it.
Well definitely for Lyme's yeah.
The other question I had is you know you talk about vitamin K then there's the vitamin you
know MK vitamin K2 there's MK4 and MK7 and you know you see MK7 but my understanding
sorry there's MK1, MK4 and MK7.
If you're supplementing vitamin K is it appropriate to make sure that you have just MK4 because
that's the one that is the most important for the...
If you eat animal liver you're getting the whole variety of them and that's because the
liver can convert K1 or K2 to the other higher chains and so I think K1 is adequate or K2
because our liver can make the others.
Our own livers?
Yeah.
Oh okay okay.
All right so if I may this is one I so I have a thought if your thyroid is active that means
that your adrenals are inactive so I think they work in reverse.
So if you take an example of someone who's always low thyroid and their adrenals are
very active so that they're generating lots of cortisol throughout their whole life.
Since that's the fight-or-flight response if they train their body to chronically produce
that cortisol to make up for their chronically low thyroid activity is it conceivable that
those people because it's fight-or-flight that they if in the absence of some sort of
crisis that they might actually try to create a crisis to essentially enable them to maintain
that that that long cycle?
I mean it sounds crazy.
No in the early 60s that was a very common idea among psychologists and psychiatrists
and I've known people that seem to typify that condition where they know how to create
excitement and turmoil.
So you agree with it and then the solution that would be to try to get your thyroid action
up is then and to really change the cycle to make sure your thyroid is active with all
the ways that you've described.
People who have been creating turmoil just sit around and enjoy and smile.
Okay all right.
Thanks very much.
Yeah I appreciate your call.
Okay so the number if you're in the area or even out of the area or even on a different
continent it's 707-923-3911.
Okay so Dr. Peat just moving on a little bit from postpartum depression but still keeping
the thread of where we're going with the hormones and or the approach to the treatment.
Apart from progesterone supplementation could anything else be done for women who exhibit
gestational diabetes as a symptom of this kind of energetic defect?
Yeah I started thinking in relation to the previous question but it isn't just a matter
of the thyroid and the adrenals but all of the hormones are involved in the energy process
and so the importance of sodium and calcium in pregnancy it isn't just for blood volume
and bone building and such but those are closely involved with thyroid in avoiding the adrenal
stress hormone excess and keeping up the energy system.
Okay all right because it seems time and time again the prerequisite here is metabolic energy
and it's that defect here that's largely in part for causing everything else to fall with
it and so thyroid hormone and those things that support an active thyroid and the uptake
by the cell and all the secretion.
And people who have a history of stress besides all of the essential nutrients, protein and
vitamins and trace minerals and so on will have an increased requirement for sodium and
calcium and the vitamin D to help assimilate the calcium.
Okay I had a question that was written to me about a website this person had visited
and this person was a doctor, excuse me I think they're a naturopath and it was devoted
to the idea of chronic vitamin A toxicity as the underlying cause of most conditions
and I quote the statement there said the basic premise is that many autoimmune diseases are
caused by being in a chronic state of elevated storage levels of retinol, retinoic acid and
possibly the carotenoid vitamin A precursor.
Do you have any comment about this website's author and what was your views on the necessity
of vitamin A, B and are you aware of toxicity in general with this?
It is used to make the steroid hormones all of them from cholesterol.
Thyroid and vitamin A travel together on the protein in the blood, they're so closely associated
and they're taken up by the steroid producing cells together.
So you just don't produce steroid hormones for example without vitamin A and it's used
in protein synthesis making hair and skin and so on will fail if you're deficient in
vitamin A. Mucus membranes thicken and stop producing mucus with the vitamin A deficiency
and someone sent me these books by a recent author claiming that there is vitamin A toxicity
rampant and I looked through it and couldn't find any facts at all.
All right so you were contacted by somebody who had a similar question about vitamin A
toxicity being you know touted as being the causal.
Many years ago some Arctic explorers ate polar bear liver and their skin got inflamed and
started peeling off and that has been cited in textbooks for I guess 80 years or so as
proof that vitamin A is toxic but you know polar bears sometimes eat fish that have been
poisoned by algae and their livers will store that for up to 24 hours at a very toxic level
and they might have just gotten some fish toxin, algae toxin by way of the fish.
So even that very famous basis for claiming vitamin A toxicity, there's no fact.
And when the drug companies were coming out with things like retin-A, there were sudden
news releases all around the country from medical schools reporting incidents in which
people for example went blind from taking vitamin A and one of them at University of
Oregon, I phoned the department and tried to get in contact with the professor who had
told that to a newspaper.
I couldn't get any personal verification.
I think they were all just made up with the encouragement of the drug companies to create
the desire for the safe non-toxic synthetic vitamin A.
Interesting.
I just quickly can ask you about vitamin B12 because I wasn't going to as part of the outline
I'd produce for the show but given that I do and have seen lab work where people's vitamin
B12 is outside the range and is pretty high.
It can be produced by bacteria in the intestine and I've seen probably a dozen people with
extremely high vitamin A or vitamin B12 who weren't eating any source of it but I think
it must be coming from overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine.
Years ago, I knew a guy who was very sick, a vegetarian and he showed me his blood test
had extremely high carotene and extremely low vitamin A and knowing that vitamin B12
is used in converting carotene to vitamin A, he suggested that he eat some vitamin B12.
Within just a few days, vitamin A was up to normal, the carotene had gone down and all
his symptoms had disappeared.
Okay.
All right.
So you're listening to Ask Your Doctor, KMEDGalvan 91.1 FM.
From now until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions.
The number is 707-923-3911.
Okay.
We'll carry on here with the other questions that I've got for you on the light flashing.
I was wondering if people, everybody's out for the solstice to celebrate and that they're
going to hear this later on in the archives.
I regularly get people emailing me, they've listened to the show on the archive and they
ask questions, you know, then and then on the emails but I was wondering, the phone's
ringing and let's take this next caller.
Caller, you're on the air, where are you from?
I'm curious.
I have been hearing from a lot of my football friends lately that there's a product out
in Texas called pickle juice.
Are you guys familiar with what the...
Pickle juice?
... constituents of pickle juice are?
Hmm.
Lots of athletes drink pickle juice.
I drink kimchi juice for the salt to put off cramps.
All right.
Okay.
Do they say what it contains?
Well, it's astringent, you know, it obviously has pickles that are, you know, molecularized
in it.
But, you know, it's something, they claim it's for people who have hangovers and, you
know, we know that in our little town people have a hell of a hangover and that's why they
drink their coffee in the morning.
Curious to know if you guys know anything about that.
You might want to look into that, Dr. Peat.
I would imagine it would contain lactic acid, if it's the true traditional way of making
pickles and salt.
And just some salty anything in the morning can be very settling.
Oh, very good.
Helps to regulate your blood sugar and lower the stress hormones.
I did have another question.
I've contacted you in the past and it was concerning that monk fruit sugar.
Have you done any more research on that by any chance?
No.
Okay.
Well, I'll tell you, you know, just for the folks out there, pretty soon people are going
to be able to eat their chocolate candies, won't have any sugar in it, they won't have
to look over their shoulders apprehensively at their doctors anymore, and they'll be able
to eat a 36 count box of the monk fruit sugar because it's actually a cure-all in China
for diabetes.
All right.
We'll keep our ears and eyes open and we'll see where the research comes from and see
the published reports.
We look forward to that.
I appreciate your call.
Thank you.
And I'll just repeat, I had again, I wanted to post another email question to you for
your response to it because that person was unable to call during the last show.
It was about SLE, systemic lupus arrhythmatosis, typically characterized as an autoimmune disorder
and the butterfly rash is something that we were always told when we were doing pathology
at school.
And so the butterfly rash, the malar rash was an outward classic sign of it.
What do you know about SLE and what would be your approach to this "autoimmune disease"
that attacks the joints and the brain, the kidneys and other organs?
Like the other autoimmune diseases, it's much more common in women than men.
And animal models can be created with an estrogen excess.
Estrogen activates a whole row of inflammatory processes.
And thyroid and progesterone are things that have been pretty successful.
Women believed they were going to have to have a kidney transplant or something when
they took progesterone and thyroid, found they had no more symptoms.
So you could definitely see it as an estrogen excess symptom?
Yeah.
Okay, good.
All right, well we do have another caller here.
So caller, let's take this question.
Where are you from?
What's your question?
Jersey.
Question, there's a...
New Jersey or Jersey?
Yeah.
Okay.
There's a professor from MIT that's been studying glyphosate and some of the effects.
And well, she hasn't done her research on it.
She seems quite knowledgeable, although she's probably not...
She's an engineer by training.
And seems to have an hypothesis that glyphosate is so similar to the glycine molecule that
it actually can potentially displace glycine, which seems to be similar to the notion that
fluoride can actually displace iodine because it's so similar, which is obviously troubling
for the thyroid, which is probably why they want the water fluoridated to mess people
up.
But do you know anything about how damaging glyphosate is?
Because I know you've mentioned in the past it's water soluble, but the notion that it
could replace glycine, that could seem to have more systemic issues.
What's your thought?
I think it's very toxic at such small amounts, extremely small amounts.
Interfering with glycine wouldn't do much at that tiny level.
I think the mechanism is more likely related to DNA regulation.
DNA damage?
Yeah.
Okay, so one other question relating to green vegetables.
I know you've mentioned that they're a good source of calcium, but they have PUFA in them.
And just to clarify my understanding, I remember at one point you were saying that if you boil
them like for an hour that they become, or somehow the PUFA content goes down and they
become more of a proper food.
You can skim it.
If any fat rises to the surface, you just pour that off.
Well, actually I wasn't talking about boiling them in water as opposed to actually steaming
them.
Is there a difference there or do you treat that the same?
Because steaming them, you'd have the water boiling and there'd be nothing to pour off.
I think it's an advantage to be able to pour off any of the fat that rises.
So you're saying it's better to boil them essentially than to steam them, would be safer?
And to drink the liquid because the magnesium and calcium, a lot of it goes into the water.
Oh, you're saying that and don't eat the vegetables?
Well, if you need carbohydrate and any protein and such, they do have that value.
But the important magnesium and calcium, a lot of it goes into the water.
Oh, I see.
And so does the PUFA remain in the leaves even when you're boiling them or does that
mitigate itself too?
Yeah, a lot of it remains tied into the proteins of the leaf.
Because when you eat it, your bile salts will cause you to absorb most of the PUFA that
is associated with the protein in the leaf.
So you're saying no matter how much you boil it, that's one of the reasons why you don't
eat green vegetables?
Yeah.
Okay, thank you very much.
There you go, like it is.
Okay, so we've got six minutes here.
If anybody else wants to call in with a quick question, that's fine.
Otherwise, we'll wrap up with another question, but 707-923-3911.
Dr. Peat, I wanted to ask you about another, you may not have an answer to this, in which
case I have one more question for you.
But it came out today, I think they patented it and the FDA approved it.
It's another drug and it's based on melanocortin and it's used for females as a kind of Viagra
alternative for increasing sexual arousal and appetite, both for men and women.
And it's called Vilezi.
Do you know anything about it?
If you don't, it doesn't matter.
No but the principle, two things stand out.
The pro-opio melanocortin is the precursor protein for making melanocortin and beta-lipoprotein
and the endorphins and ACTH.
And so those are things that come up during the stress reaction.
And so the melanocortin and its receptors are normally activated during stress.
And again, if you take one of the end hormone products and take it out of the context of
the rest of the stress reactions, you're going to have wildly unpredictable effects.
And the suppression of appetite is one of the things known to be associated with those
receptors.
And if a woman is lacking desire for a physical reason rather than just social, there are
probably serious metabolic problems that are going to be ignored if you just try to push
up one single mental function.
And you should be looking at the, for example, the DHEA is a great activator of libido, but
it goes down under stress.
When cortisol rises, the cortisol has an anti-libido effect suppressing the effect
of DHEA.
So you should be concentrating on lowering the stress and if anything, giving a boost
to the anti-stress things with pregnenolone, progesterone or DHEA or thyroid.
Okay.
And very quickly for people that are listening out there, don't just use DHEA.
You've always mentioned that DHEA should be used in conjunction with adequate thyroid,
otherwise you can turn or convert some of that DHEA into estrogens, correct?
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks so much for your time, Dr. Peat.
It's three minutes to the top of the hour here and I'll let people know how to find
you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
So for people that have listened to the show this evening, Dr. Ray Peat's website is www.raypeat.com.
He's got lots of articles that he's written.
He produces a newsletter.
It's fully referenced and keep your eyes and ears out.
The show is going to be up on an Instagram page.
It's going to be dedicated to Dr. Peat, what he actually said, not what unfortunately some
of the bloggers on the Ray Peat forum are just creating their own imaginations and creating
a theory from it.
But just to make sure that people get exactly what's been said, it'll be posted on the internet
here or probably three or four months time.
Busy getting together and collaborating with a very, very kind person who's agreed to type
up a lot of the stuff and to put it up and I'll be collating it with that person and
probably in three or four months, we'll have a Instagram page dedicated to Dr. Peat's philosophies.
We can be reached Monday through Friday or in fact Monday through Sunday if you just
want to leave a message or you want to write an email.
It's Andrew@westernbotanicalmedicine.com or 1-888-WBM-ERB.
Thanks for listening and until the third Friday of next month, thanks for joining.
(laughs)