WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.640 Hi everyone, the following show with Dr. Raymond Peat was recorded on January 22, 2012. It's 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:14.960 about progesterone. And a growing number of shows can be found at the Radio 4 All website, 00:00:14.960 --> 00:00:23.040 that's radionumeralforall.net, and then search for "Politics and Science." 00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:28.280 Welcome to "Politics and Science." I'm your host, John Barkhausen, and today, once again, 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:33.600 I'm delighted to say that Ray Peat is here to join me, Dr. Raymond Peat. Dr. Peat has 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:42.720 a PhD in biology and has done extensive research in the fields of physiology and endocrinology. 00:00:42.720 --> 00:00:45.400 Is that enough, Ray? Oh, that's enough. 00:00:45.400 --> 00:00:50.940 That's enough, okay. That's enough for me. And I was just saying that we've never really 00:00:50.940 --> 00:00:57.020 touched on the subject in the pure form of progesterone. And I was looking back through 00:00:57.020 --> 00:01:03.560 your newsletters, for those who don't know, Ray Peat has a website, raypeat.com, where 00:01:03.560 --> 00:01:08.280 he's posted a lot of your newsletters. What percent of your letters are up there at this 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:16.440 point, Ray? I've written 300 and some, and I think there 00:01:16.440 --> 00:01:20.480 are only about 75 on the website, so about a quarter. 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:25.400 There's so much knowledge in each one, and plenty of food for thought, even if you don't 00:01:25.400 --> 00:01:30.520 agree with what you're putting forward. I find I can read them many times, and they 00:01:30.520 --> 00:01:35.360 always seem new because there's so much information packed into them. So they're all there for 00:01:35.360 --> 00:01:40.560 people just to enjoy when you want to do it. Yeah, the search, the little search device 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:47.760 on the website helps to find, for example, if you put in progesterone, you'll find lots 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:53.800 and lots of newsletters that talk about it. That's right. And the newsletters, I started 00:01:53.800 --> 00:02:00.520 off with one, but there were actually three almost in a row that you did in 2007, dealing 00:02:00.520 --> 00:02:09.160 with progesterone and the regulation of progesterone, which is starting to happen then. And I thought 00:02:09.160 --> 00:02:14.120 maybe we could start the show, unless you had a better idea, just talking about how 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:22.120 you first got interested in progesterone. Yeah, I had been writing about it somewhat 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:30.320 in the 70s, but this Proposition 65 thing in California, calling it a carcinogen, that 00:02:30.320 --> 00:02:38.720 was the occasion for me writing this new bunch of newsletters a few years ago. But I had 00:02:38.720 --> 00:02:48.320 been studying, oh, linguistics was what I was studying right before I came to Oregon, 00:02:48.320 --> 00:02:57.360 and moving from Mexico to Montana and then Oregon, I noticed a great change in the way 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:07.520 my health worked and realized that it was the absence of sunlight, dark cloudy weather. 00:03:07.520 --> 00:03:14.160 I saw the same thing happening to all the women I knew during the winter, especially 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:23.080 students who came from sunny areas and then lived in dark student apartments during the 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:32.120 winter. They would get PMS and I called it winter sickness, a whole range of things, 00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:41.720 but especially PMS was outstanding. And at that time, I was aware of the old experiments 00:03:41.720 --> 00:03:49.120 and observations in which birds, for example, in Times Square, people have noticed that 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:59.080 the sparrows mate all year round because of the bright lights. And what in other species, 00:03:59.080 --> 00:04:04.760 for example, there are animals that can mate during the winter, but they don't really 00:04:04.760 --> 00:04:12.680 get pregnant until about March 20th when days become longer than nights. And what happens 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:20.960 in that situation is that the embryo is formed, but it doesn't implant in the uterus until 00:04:20.960 --> 00:04:31.560 the progesterone reaches a certain level and light is the certain day length of light exposure 00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:41.880 that raises the progesterone and allows fertility to proceed. And I was interested in that because 00:04:41.880 --> 00:04:54.440 I noticed that during bright, sunny, long days, my vitamin A requirement increased tremendously. 00:04:54.440 --> 00:05:04.480 And I gradually came to understand that the sex hormones go up in the spring with long 00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:14.760 hours of light and vitamin A is massively used in producing pregnenolone and progesterone. 00:05:14.760 --> 00:05:25.000 And so right at the beginning of moving to Oregon before I actually began attending the 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:35.800 university, I was seeing that progesterone and daylight were very powerful on the emotions 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:49.600 and body functions. The premenstrual mood changes were evident even in men. Typically, 00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:59.560 men coming from a sunny climate would be depressed all winter living in cloudy Oregon. 00:05:59.560 --> 00:06:04.800 How did you link sunlight to progesterone? Was it something that was already discovered 00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:06.760 or were you working on that? 00:06:06.760 --> 00:06:16.240 Yeah, it was one night I went to sleep reading a book with a bright light shining in my face 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:23.120 and I woke up starting to get pimples and I realized that just the light shining on 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:33.240 my eyes activating my brain had done something to affect my metabolism and in trying to understand 00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:41.720 how the light affected my skin even though it was just mild incandescent light. That 00:06:41.720 --> 00:06:50.640 was what I started rereading and I ran across the winter fertility of sparrows from bright 00:06:50.640 --> 00:07:02.640 light and the springtime implantation of animals. So I realized that everyone from birds to 00:07:02.640 --> 00:07:15.120 men experience the driving of their hormones by daylight and the first steroid made is 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:18.480 either pregnenolone or progesterone. 00:07:18.480 --> 00:07:23.940 And do you think, you said that people coming from southern climates experience depression 00:07:23.940 --> 00:07:29.140 coming north and I've noticed that among friends of mine who have done that. Do you think there's 00:07:29.140 --> 00:07:34.760 an adjustment that's made whereby even with less light you can produce progesterone or 00:07:34.760 --> 00:07:38.640 all of us in the north are depressed for that reason? 00:07:38.640 --> 00:07:48.120 Yeah we just get used to being depressed. If you look at Scandinavian movies you see 00:07:48.120 --> 00:07:52.600 that depression seems to be the rule. 00:07:52.600 --> 00:07:58.680 The Bergman approach to life. 00:07:58.680 --> 00:08:05.960 So when did you become aware that progesterone was useful therapeutically for cancer and 00:08:05.960 --> 00:08:09.040 other things? 00:08:09.040 --> 00:08:18.420 I started, I was intending to study nerve biology and the very first few weeks at the 00:08:18.420 --> 00:08:28.780 university I realized what dogmatists the brain and nerve biology people were. So I 00:08:28.780 --> 00:08:39.140 just went looking around poking into all the labs at the university and saw that the reproductive 00:08:39.140 --> 00:08:48.980 physiology people were open-minded and actually studying things rather than trying to confirm 00:08:48.980 --> 00:08:58.140 their dogma. And so I immediately switched over from nerve biology to reproductive biology. 00:08:58.140 --> 00:09:06.980 Rick, can I interrupt? What was the giveaway? What gave it away that they were open-minded, 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:07.980 non-dogmatic? 00:09:07.980 --> 00:09:19.340 Well, talking to the nerve biology people, it was just their personalities were absolutely 00:09:19.340 --> 00:09:33.460 militaristic, rigid, closed-minded, single-minded. And the money went along with that, big research 00:09:33.460 --> 00:09:43.260 grants. And the reproductive physiology had grants but very low prestige in the department. 00:09:43.260 --> 00:09:53.740 And people were very relaxed and open and had basically a willingness to learn and consider 00:09:53.740 --> 00:09:59.060 things. Just the personality was very obviously different. 00:09:59.060 --> 00:10:01.060 And so you were saying... 00:10:01.060 --> 00:10:10.100 There was one group working on male reproduction and the other one female. Arnold Soderwal 00:10:10.100 --> 00:10:21.700 was the person in charge of the female reproductive end. And there were only, I guess when I was 00:10:21.700 --> 00:10:26.980 there, there were three graduate students working in the lab. 00:10:26.980 --> 00:10:35.980 Well, that sounds very intimate. It sounds like a good atmosphere. 00:10:35.980 --> 00:10:48.700 And Soderwal was the link with previous students and what they had been doing. So his work 00:10:48.700 --> 00:10:55.180 made us feel that our stuff was continuing a tradition that had started in the '30s and 00:10:55.180 --> 00:11:04.740 '40s where Soderwal was a graduate student. And so the three of us were working on different 00:11:04.740 --> 00:11:13.500 parts of the system. Bev Stockton was working on implantation, which involved an age-related 00:11:13.500 --> 00:11:24.060 delay in the production of progesterone. And Terry Parkinning was working on, I think, 00:11:24.060 --> 00:11:34.620 some enzymes at that time, but he later shifted over to see that the failure of progesterone 00:11:34.620 --> 00:11:43.220 was an essential... Excess estrogen and falling progesterone was an essential change of aging 00:11:43.220 --> 00:11:54.580 infertility. And I was working on the oxidative changes in the aging reproductive system. 00:11:54.580 --> 00:12:02.900 And as I worked with the chemicals, I noticed that handling progesterone, I had always had 00:12:02.900 --> 00:12:08.940 the tendency to hang nails. And just being careless in the lab and getting some of the 00:12:08.940 --> 00:12:15.260 progesterone on my hands, I noticed that my hang nails disappeared and have never come 00:12:15.260 --> 00:12:17.900 back. 00:12:17.900 --> 00:12:24.580 So even though it's considered to be somewhat of a female hormone, I think, by you, it's 00:12:24.580 --> 00:12:29.660 also an important... has an important role in males as well. 00:12:29.660 --> 00:12:40.700 Yeah. As I got acquainted with how it felt on my hands, for example, and I noticed that 00:12:40.700 --> 00:12:49.020 if I stuck my hand in the powder, I could very quickly taste it on my tongue or sense 00:12:49.020 --> 00:12:58.860 an awareness that it had got into my bloodstream. I looked at the changes that were known to 00:12:58.860 --> 00:13:06.140 occur in males and I saw that someone had two different groups just almost at the same 00:13:06.140 --> 00:13:16.660 time had observed that an intrauterine device for contraception often caused systemic health 00:13:16.660 --> 00:13:26.340 problems. And they found that the problems were related to a falling progesterone. And 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:34.900 animal studies showed that if you put a slight wound into the uterus, signals travel up to 00:13:34.900 --> 00:13:43.740 the ovary and block the production of progesterone because the animal system recognizes that 00:13:43.740 --> 00:13:53.740 it isn't wise to get pregnant when you have a wounded uterus. So that was recognized as 00:13:53.740 --> 00:14:01.140 the effect of the IUD or one of the effects. But at the same time, another group found 00:14:01.140 --> 00:14:08.900 that men who had had the vasectomy often suffered very serious effects, impotency and such. 00:14:08.900 --> 00:14:16.100 And they found that the men who suffered the health effects from a vasectomy had very low 00:14:16.100 --> 00:14:23.860 progesterone and that replacing their progesterone levels up to normal cured their symptoms. 00:14:23.860 --> 00:14:30.980 And very often just one dose was all that was needed to start the ovaries in the woman 00:14:30.980 --> 00:14:38.700 or the gonads in the man to begin producing the normal amount. 00:14:38.700 --> 00:14:44.580 And of course you've mentioned before that progesterone is the hormone of fertility that 00:14:44.580 --> 00:14:45.580 promotes life. 00:14:45.580 --> 00:14:56.900 Yeah, it's the basic implantation stabilizer. Estrogen creates a release of histamine throughout 00:14:56.900 --> 00:15:04.540 the body but especially where it's concentrated in the uterus. And the histamine creates a 00:15:04.540 --> 00:15:14.460 site of inflammation that is actively growing. But the inflammation focus under the influence 00:15:14.460 --> 00:15:25.020 of estrogen prevents survival of the implanted embryo. And progesterone turns off the histamine 00:15:25.020 --> 00:15:35.500 and estrogen and makes it possible to deliver oxygen and sugar to the implanted embryo which 00:15:35.500 --> 00:15:43.340 would be killed if the estrogen influence continued. So it's the shift towards oxygen 00:15:43.340 --> 00:15:51.820 and sugar delivery that makes progesterone the preserver of pregnancy. 00:15:51.820 --> 00:15:59.780 And interestingly people have removed animals' ovaries at the time of fertilization and then 00:15:59.780 --> 00:16:07.820 given them different hormones and they found that testosterone worked to preserve pregnancy 00:16:07.820 --> 00:16:17.740 by delivering oxygen and sugar to the implanted embryo. So you could say that testosterone 00:16:17.740 --> 00:16:27.220 is a progestin in the sense of supporting pregnancy. And the things that are called 00:16:27.220 --> 00:16:36.180 progestins or progestogens, the term implies that these are acting to preserve pregnancy 00:16:36.180 --> 00:16:45.620 the way progesterone is. But in fact the synthetic so-called progestins are used in birth control 00:16:45.620 --> 00:16:53.660 pills because exactly what they don't do is support pregnancy. So they've got the naming 00:16:53.660 --> 00:17:03.900 system very confused in which testosterone functions potentially as a progestin and the 00:17:03.900 --> 00:17:12.140 so-called progestins are really anti-progestational chemicals. Doctors have been very confused 00:17:12.140 --> 00:17:13.660 by that terminology. 00:17:13.660 --> 00:17:19.100 Yeah, well it's very confusing for all of us. It sounds like our filing system is a 00:17:19.100 --> 00:17:21.100 little bit screwed up. 00:17:21.100 --> 00:17:32.620 Yeah, the estrogen industry really contributed to that by creating a theory of how estrogen 00:17:32.620 --> 00:17:43.140 is a potential contraceptive because it was known from the time Soderwall began his studies 00:17:43.140 --> 00:17:49.820 from the late 1930s through the 40s it was known that estrogen is an abortifacient. It 00:17:49.820 --> 00:17:58.980 kills the embryo either at the time of implantation or any time later when it becomes the dominant 00:17:58.980 --> 00:18:10.660 influence. And the estrogen industry didn't want their product known to be killing the 00:18:10.660 --> 00:18:22.660 embryos and so they claimed that it stopped ovulation. That was invented just in time 00:18:22.660 --> 00:18:28.140 for them to come on the market with birth control pills. But it was just a complete 00:18:28.140 --> 00:18:37.980 fabrication that they made up so that it wouldn't be seen as causing abortions. 00:18:37.980 --> 00:18:44.180 It does seem bizarre that estrogen is almost universally, among the public anyway, considered 00:18:44.180 --> 00:18:50.420 to be the female hormone when that's actually the hormone of infertility and abortions. 00:18:50.420 --> 00:19:01.100 Yeah, and the reason for that was that progesterone turned out to be such a basic simple substance 00:19:01.100 --> 00:19:09.300 that works to preserve both male and female fertility and to stabilize nerve cells and 00:19:09.300 --> 00:19:16.620 blood sugar level and oxygen delivery and all of those things. Only that one molecule 00:19:16.620 --> 00:19:31.980 as the first steroid made out of cholesterol, only that single molecule has those functions. 00:19:31.980 --> 00:19:41.300 And estrogen, they very early in the 1930s discovered that soot could be extracted to 00:19:41.300 --> 00:19:50.620 form almost an infinite number of estrogenic substances. And so it was possible for the 00:19:50.620 --> 00:20:03.420 industry to patent various synthetics. Diethylstilbestrol, D-E-S, became a popular product for the industry 00:20:03.420 --> 00:20:15.780 and they wanted the idea that it was a female hormone for sales purposes, even though it 00:20:15.780 --> 00:20:26.180 was known that it actually is essential for male traits to develop. So estrogen could 00:20:26.180 --> 00:20:33.020 be also called the male hormone better than it could be called the female hormone. 00:20:33.020 --> 00:20:36.340 Because it causes hair growth and what else? 00:20:36.340 --> 00:20:48.140 Well, the early development of male characteristics is induced by the local production of estrogen. 00:20:48.140 --> 00:20:53.300 Testosterone has to turn into estrogen before it androgenizes the brain, before it brings 00:20:53.300 --> 00:20:55.100 out the male features. 00:20:55.100 --> 00:21:00.660 How long did you continue to work under Arnold Soderwal? 00:21:00.660 --> 00:21:14.740 Until 1972. I started, I moved over to his area, I guess, early 1969. And then with Nixon, 00:21:14.740 --> 00:21:23.180 Nixon canceled a lot of science grants and that closed the lab that Soderwal had been 00:21:23.180 --> 00:21:26.340 running for many years. 00:21:26.340 --> 00:21:29.580 That's a shame. Is that where you got your PhD, Ray? 00:21:29.580 --> 00:21:38.100 Yeah. I had to write my dissertation quickly in the summer of '72 because Nixon had shut 00:21:38.100 --> 00:21:47.060 off the grant. The government approved the grants, but Nixon simply cut the funds off 00:21:47.060 --> 00:21:50.980 for even the approved grants. 00:21:50.980 --> 00:21:56.900 Well looking back at science history a bit, when was progesterone discovered and how has 00:21:56.900 --> 00:21:58.700 it been used? 00:21:58.700 --> 00:22:08.340 In the early '30s, the molecule was identified and very quickly, I think Armour was the company 00:22:08.340 --> 00:22:20.300 that made the corpus luteum pork ovaries were separated from pregnant pigs and the corpus 00:22:20.300 --> 00:22:32.020 luteum was very richly supplied with progesterone. And so the corpus luteum powder was sold as 00:22:32.020 --> 00:22:45.500 early as, I think, 1935. And I think I was probably one of the early progesterone babies. 00:22:45.500 --> 00:22:55.820 My mother having been infertile and getting, I think it was the Armour corpus luteum product. 00:22:55.820 --> 00:23:04.500 So you do have a personal stake in this. What for myself and everybody else is the corpus 00:23:04.500 --> 00:23:08.900 luteum? Is that a place where progesterone is concentrated? 00:23:08.900 --> 00:23:22.580 When the follicle ovulates, releases the egg to be fertilized along with a burst of estrogen, 00:23:22.580 --> 00:23:32.100 then this area turns into steroid producing cells and reduces the production of estrogen 00:23:32.100 --> 00:23:40.220 relative to the total steroids and progesterone is the main steroid produced from that time 00:23:40.220 --> 00:23:49.380 on. And in humans, that is the basic source of progesterone for the first nine weeks, 00:23:49.380 --> 00:23:56.100 nine or ten weeks of pregnancy and then the placenta takes over production and the corpus 00:23:56.100 --> 00:24:04.220 luteum fades out. But with each pregnancy, some of those cells remain in the ovary. So 00:24:04.220 --> 00:24:12.740 a woman who has been pregnant eight times in her lifetime will have higher residual 00:24:12.740 --> 00:24:21.660 progesterone levels and will live much longer than on average a woman who hasn't had so 00:24:21.660 --> 00:24:29.740 many pregnancies. They saw the same thing in animals. The more litters the animals had, 00:24:29.740 --> 00:24:34.980 the younger their tissues were at a given age. 00:24:34.980 --> 00:24:41.260 Is that perhaps why some women who get fibroids, they've noticed that the fibroids go away 00:24:41.260 --> 00:24:45.420 if they get pregnant and likely don't return? 00:24:45.420 --> 00:24:52.340 Oh, I don't think I had heard of that. But yeah, progesterone was recommended for many 00:24:52.340 --> 00:25:01.100 years for treating making fibroids redress. But partly that involves increased thyroid 00:25:01.100 --> 00:25:07.900 function. Progesterone is needed to be in balance for the thyroid to work and then the 00:25:07.900 --> 00:25:16.500 thyroid working causes the liver to lower the estrogen level systemically. So sometimes 00:25:16.500 --> 00:25:24.660 just one dose of progesterone is all it takes to free the thyroid to function, to stimulate 00:25:24.660 --> 00:25:33.500 new progesterone synthesis and to lower estrogen systemically. 00:25:33.500 --> 00:25:40.860 And you've often talked before about estrogen and progesterone basically opposing each other 00:25:40.860 --> 00:25:46.780 where you might get a surge of estrogen for a certain purpose, but if the progesterone 00:25:46.780 --> 00:25:52.900 doesn't come out to nullify that effect, you'll end up with bad health effects. 00:25:52.900 --> 00:26:01.340 Yeah, estrogen stimulates the uptake of water by, I think its first action is to block the 00:26:01.340 --> 00:26:08.900 use of oxygen. That causes the cell to take up water in the first few hours or minutes 00:26:08.900 --> 00:26:20.100 of exposure. And the overloading cells with water causes them to go into a growth inflammation 00:26:20.100 --> 00:26:29.740 state where they forget what they had been doing and simply start multiplying. And so 00:26:29.740 --> 00:26:38.620 for the first 12 hours that gives a burst of new cells in the uterus ready to receive 00:26:38.620 --> 00:26:46.780 an implantation. In the breasts it creates a mass of new cells to enlarge the milk production 00:26:46.780 --> 00:26:57.340 capacity and in the pituitary it enlarges the cells that will take over production of 00:26:57.340 --> 00:27:07.340 prolactin at the time of lactation. But if you continue that exposure more than a day, 00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:16.300 that growth continues and then you increase the risk of breast tumors and pituitary tumors. 00:27:16.300 --> 00:27:23.980 When birth control pills were first on the market in the 1960s, they had big doses of 00:27:23.980 --> 00:27:36.500 estrogen and there was a terrific epidemic of pituitary tumors producing prolactin. There's 00:27:36.500 --> 00:27:43.020 been very little written about it but it was like the yearly production in one hospital 00:27:43.020 --> 00:27:52.780 of pituitary tumors went from I think just a few like five per year up to 300 per year 00:27:52.780 --> 00:28:00.140 in one publication. Wow, that's significant. And you were talking about your mother having 00:28:00.140 --> 00:28:08.140 taken Armour corpus luteum and was it used for other things? Was that for getting pregnant? 00:28:08.140 --> 00:28:16.180 Is that why she was taking it? Yeah, it was recognized that estrogen wasn't the fertility 00:28:16.180 --> 00:28:24.180 factor as really as that and that progesterone was. But the estrogen industry not being able 00:28:24.180 --> 00:28:31.540 to patent progesterone because there was only one substance and it was very expensive to 00:28:31.540 --> 00:28:41.460 make, they found that soot is as cheap as anything and so you can for no production 00:28:41.460 --> 00:28:50.660 cost you can make any kind of estrogenic substance you choose to. And so they created the whole 00:28:50.660 --> 00:29:01.820 mythology of what the female hormone is and at that time progesterone had to be very laboriously 00:29:01.820 --> 00:29:12.100 converted from cholesterol the way the ovary does it and it was later in the 40s when Russell 00:29:12.100 --> 00:29:20.660 Marker devised a way to make it from the yam steroid and it became very cheap in the early 00:29:20.660 --> 00:29:31.500 1950s. But the first synthetic forms of progesterone that could be patented that were later developed 00:29:31.500 --> 00:29:46.020 as contraceptives, these were modified molecules that they marketed as synthetic progesterone 00:29:46.020 --> 00:29:51.380 with the argument that real progesterone is destroyed in the stomach and so you have to 00:29:51.380 --> 00:29:57.540 take our product because we've modified it and made it biologically active when you take 00:29:57.540 --> 00:30:05.540 a pill otherwise you would have to inject it. There were doctors injecting progesterone 00:30:05.540 --> 00:30:14.140 and curing all kinds of things through the 1940s from premenstrual syndrome, premature 00:30:14.140 --> 00:30:20.940 births, cancer and so on. 00:30:20.940 --> 00:30:23.780 Using natural progesterone. 00:30:23.780 --> 00:30:33.700 Natural progesterone, but the drug companies did their campaign to say that that's too 00:30:33.700 --> 00:30:41.820 expensive and very few women would want to be injected every month and so here's the 00:30:41.820 --> 00:30:51.660 synthetic pill which you can take orally and just out of thin air they said natural progesterone 00:30:51.660 --> 00:30:58.820 can't be taken orally even though a few companies were selling 10 milligram progesterone tablets 00:30:58.820 --> 00:31:07.500 that worked fine even though the dose was low and fairly expensive. But they convinced 00:31:07.500 --> 00:31:13.860 doctors just with a few unsourced claims in the medical journals that natural progesterone 00:31:13.860 --> 00:31:20.100 didn't work so they had to use the synthetics and it turned out that the synthetics had 00:31:20.100 --> 00:31:25.940 estrogen like anti-conception effects. 00:31:25.940 --> 00:31:31.380 I see, so they weren't actually doing the full physiological effects of progesterone 00:31:31.380 --> 00:31:33.540 and they had side effects. 00:31:33.540 --> 00:31:42.100 Yeah, they were not progestational support agents. They had some slight overlap that 00:31:42.100 --> 00:31:51.540 allowed them to make the claim. You put some cells in vitro and you get certain changes 00:31:51.540 --> 00:32:01.420 that are similar to what happens in the pregnant uterus but you can't get the same beneficial 00:32:01.420 --> 00:32:08.340 looking effects in the whole animal, only in the culture dish. 00:32:08.340 --> 00:32:12.900 Can you describe basically how it was used therapeutically? I think you've mentioned 00:32:12.900 --> 00:32:19.980 a few examples but I know, I think her name was Katerina Dalton who's a doctor in England 00:32:19.980 --> 00:32:25.340 and she wrote a book whose name escapes me, maybe you know the name of the book. But her 00:32:25.340 --> 00:32:32.500 primary method of giving it was injections. 00:32:32.500 --> 00:32:41.020 One of the problems was that it's extremely insoluble in everything. Hot olive oil will 00:32:41.020 --> 00:32:49.700 dissolve a lot of it so it will work on your skin or orally in solution for the first three 00:32:49.700 --> 00:32:59.260 or four hours but it crystallizes out of solution so the only way you can market an injectable 00:32:59.260 --> 00:33:13.300 effective product in oil is to use something like benzoyl or benzoyl alcohol. In our lab 00:33:13.300 --> 00:33:22.660 we had some old containers of benzoyl, benzoate just touching the outside of a bottle that 00:33:22.660 --> 00:33:31.300 hadn't been opened for 10 or 15 years, my fingers began to crack from an allergic reaction 00:33:31.300 --> 00:33:38.420 to it and that stuff was injected massively as a solvent with a lot of the early progesterone 00:33:38.420 --> 00:33:46.660 treatments but still the patient got better because of the powerfully anti-inflammatory 00:33:46.660 --> 00:33:57.500 effects of progesterone and the less allergenic benzoyl alcohol was the one that persisted 00:33:57.500 --> 00:34:06.780 in use the longest and it is a nerve toxin that will kill the nerves in the region where 00:34:06.780 --> 00:34:15.860 it's injected except that again progesterone's powerfully detoxifying effects over rode those 00:34:15.860 --> 00:34:27.620 poisonous effects of the benzoyl alcohol and so Catherine Adalton's results were just amazing. 00:34:27.620 --> 00:34:30.540 What was she using it for I was going to ask? 00:34:30.540 --> 00:34:41.700 Premenstrual syndrome which was related to the tendency to miscarry and the women who 00:34:41.700 --> 00:34:52.700 did have pregnancies usually delivered very prematurely and their babies were usually 00:34:52.700 --> 00:35:04.940 underweight and tended to have I think the average IQ was 90 and so she was giving them 00:35:04.940 --> 00:35:10.700 the injections to cure their premenstrual syndrome and they would become pregnant and 00:35:10.700 --> 00:35:21.740 she would continue giving the injections during the pregnancy sometimes several hundred milligrams 00:35:21.740 --> 00:35:28.540 sometimes up to I think 3000 milligrams per pregnancy depending on what they seemed to 00:35:28.540 --> 00:35:35.460 need although other researchers found that in a lot of women who had the tendency to 00:35:35.460 --> 00:35:42.660 bleed every month and then to miscarry that very often just one dose of progesterone was 00:35:42.660 --> 00:35:49.540 all it took to stop that monthly bleeding and make them able to carry each term but 00:35:49.540 --> 00:35:58.980 anyway Catherine Adalton treated this large number of patients over the years and someone 00:35:58.980 --> 00:36:08.180 mentioned that it was interesting that her patients' babies all turned out to be so bright 00:36:08.180 --> 00:36:17.220 they were mostly working class women and she said yeah that's hard to believe because these 00:36:17.220 --> 00:36:27.780 women the previous babies all had a 90 IQ and so she did a study and found that in fact 00:36:27.780 --> 00:36:38.260 her babies tended to average 130 IQ just as a result of the regular progesterone dosing 00:36:38.260 --> 00:36:48.380 a 40 point average increase and she saw that the intelligence of the babies corresponded 00:36:48.380 --> 00:36:55.340 to the amount of progesterone she gave the mothers during pregnancy the ones who got 00:36:55.340 --> 00:37:07.580 more than 1500 milligrams per pregnancy turned out the brightest and in England working class 00:37:07.580 --> 00:37:17.820 kids have very low probability of going to the university and her patients the ones born 00:37:17.820 --> 00:37:26.780 after the progesterone treatment had a very high academic success outstanding at all levels 00:37:26.780 --> 00:37:35.340 of school and got scholarships to university and their personalities were very good she 00:37:35.340 --> 00:37:44.260 said the only problem was that they didn't do well in gym class because they didn't like 00:37:44.260 --> 00:37:58.300 to march in ranks didn't like to follow orders weren't placid enough to do the kind of arts 00:37:58.300 --> 00:38:04.460 and crafts things that were expected of them but in all the academic subjects they were 00:38:04.460 --> 00:38:05.460 outstanding 00:38:05.460 --> 00:38:14.900 , that's remarkable and maybe your mother's corpus luteum ingestion might have helped 00:38:14.900 --> 00:38:24.780 you in similar ways possibly so what did you do after you left the lab Ray you got your 00:38:24.780 --> 00:38:29.700 PhD and did you keep working with progesterone after that? 00:38:29.700 --> 00:38:40.980 Not much it was several years until I was doing nutrition consulting and I think the 00:38:40.980 --> 00:38:51.580 first time I decided I was giving talks to medical groups and trying to convince them 00:38:51.580 --> 00:39:00.540 to use progesterone but I was just working out diet changes that could optimize the hormones 00:39:00.540 --> 00:39:13.300 increase thyroid and lower estrogen and I was hoping that doctors would come to understand 00:39:13.300 --> 00:39:21.340 why they shouldn't give estrogen because there's really no such thing as an estrogen deficiency 00:39:21.340 --> 00:39:31.700 any tissue that's injured will become a source of estrogen production and the absence of 00:39:31.700 --> 00:39:39.780 estrogen in the blood stream it often means that there's an excess of estrogen inside 00:39:39.780 --> 00:39:52.020 cells because when progesterone is adequate it will destroy the proteins that bind estrogen 00:39:52.020 --> 00:39:57.660 inside cells causing the harmful estrogen effect. 00:39:57.660 --> 00:40:03.940 Progesterone causes the estrogen to be released from inside cells into the blood stream where 00:40:03.940 --> 00:40:13.380 it can be controlled and eliminated so you can't go by a blood test that seems to show 00:40:13.380 --> 00:40:21.300 an estrogen deficiency and the more a tissue is injured or aged the more likely it is to 00:40:21.300 --> 00:40:31.260 have aromatase inside making estrogen so an injured breast tending to develop a tumor 00:40:31.260 --> 00:40:39.980 becomes a source of estrogen itself and injured uterus becomes a source of new estrogen. 00:40:39.980 --> 00:40:49.620 Fat a person isn't metabolizing their energy system very well so they lay down fat and 00:40:49.620 --> 00:40:53.380 fat becomes a source of estrogen. 00:40:53.380 --> 00:40:58.940 Well you were saying that aging can be equivalent to an injury and so does that mean as we get 00:40:58.940 --> 00:41:02.380 older we're all producing more estrogen? 00:41:02.380 --> 00:41:05.860 Yeah, more of our tissues. 00:41:05.860 --> 00:41:13.580 The person tends to lose muscle and bone and replace it with fat and connective tissue 00:41:13.580 --> 00:41:22.380 and those tissues become sources of inflammatory materials and estrogen. 00:41:22.380 --> 00:41:29.180 And progesterone in its role is opposing that inflammatory process that would shut down 00:41:29.180 --> 00:41:31.300 that estrogen cycle? 00:41:31.300 --> 00:41:40.420 Yeah, it's one of the things that turns off aromatase but it also turns off the enzymes 00:41:40.420 --> 00:41:46.780 that inflammation causes estrogen to concentrate in the tissue besides being produced in the 00:41:46.780 --> 00:41:55.020 tissue so any estrogen that your liver is trying to get rid of through the kidneys if 00:41:55.020 --> 00:42:05.460 it happens to pass by an inflamed cell enzymes will catch the estrogen by releasing gluturonic 00:42:05.460 --> 00:42:10.260 acid or sulfate from the estrogen molecule. 00:42:10.260 --> 00:42:19.060 Estrogen inactivates both of those enzymes that cause tissues to catch estrogen and it 00:42:19.060 --> 00:42:27.460 activates the opposite enzymes right in that tissue allowing the tissue to send estrogen 00:42:27.460 --> 00:42:37.300 back out by attaching sulfate or gluturonic acid to it and it shifts the balance of reduction 00:42:37.300 --> 00:42:48.020 oxidation enzymes so that it shifts away from the powerful estradiol to the weak estrone. 00:42:48.020 --> 00:42:54.740 I think there are nine different things that happen in a single inflamed cell under the 00:42:54.740 --> 00:43:01.860 influence of progesterone to release estrogen from the cell and stop its production. 00:43:01.860 --> 00:43:13.620 And what got me started recommending it directly to people was a woman, a 52-year-old woman 00:43:13.620 --> 00:43:18.980 who had been epileptic from the age of 35. 00:43:18.980 --> 00:43:27.700 She was a school teacher and had had migraines and the neurologist told her that migraines 00:43:27.700 --> 00:43:39.980 were like epilepsy and gave her an anti-seizure drug and she said it did stop her migraines 00:43:39.980 --> 00:43:46.500 but it made her so stupid she couldn't go back to teaching school and so she stopped 00:43:46.500 --> 00:43:50.020 taking the drug and had an actual seizure. 00:43:50.020 --> 00:43:55.380 Her first seizure was when she stopped taking the seizure medicine that she hadn't really 00:43:55.380 --> 00:44:03.060 needed and so she went to the doctor and he said, "See I told you, migraines were like 00:44:03.060 --> 00:44:04.060 epilepsy." 00:44:04.060 --> 00:44:09.220 It's like she'd been vaccinated with the flu vaccine and then got the flu. 00:44:09.220 --> 00:44:16.980 Yeah, and so right from the age of 35 she was having so many seizures that she couldn't 00:44:16.980 --> 00:44:23.700 teach school anymore and after 17 years she said every year the neurologist would give 00:44:23.700 --> 00:44:32.540 her a mental test and declare that her mind had deteriorated farther and she was so demanded 00:44:32.540 --> 00:44:38.320 that she couldn't find her way home if she went outside the house. 00:44:38.320 --> 00:44:44.220 So the first time she visited her son brought her so he could take her home. 00:44:44.220 --> 00:44:51.540 She said she was spending all but a couple of hours every day in bed having seizures 00:44:51.540 --> 00:45:02.500 and taking her anti-seizure drugs and she had some arthritic fingers all puffed up and 00:45:02.500 --> 00:45:11.180 red and I told her that since I had been talking to some of the doctors telling them that since 00:45:11.180 --> 00:45:18.780 they were convinced that progesterone can't be taken orally I dissolved it in oil and 00:45:18.780 --> 00:45:26.900 convinced them that they could use it transdermally as a way to get around their prejudice, the 00:45:26.900 --> 00:45:31.780 mistaken belief that it isn't active orally. 00:45:31.780 --> 00:45:39.100 So I had some of the progesterone in oil and told her about it, how it was anti-inflammatory 00:45:39.100 --> 00:45:48.900 and anti-seizure and suggested she try it and she held up her fat fingers and said well 00:45:48.900 --> 00:45:54.900 these are inflamed so I'll start and she dipped her fingers in the beaker full of progesterone 00:45:54.900 --> 00:45:59.260 oil and her son took her home. 00:45:59.260 --> 00:46:08.700 I gave her a sheet of paper and told her to mark each day how she felt starting at the 00:46:08.700 --> 00:46:14.980 left and moving day by day across the sheet and she said well that's easy, every day I 00:46:14.980 --> 00:46:22.820 feel the worst possible and so she drew some circles in the lower left hand corner and 00:46:22.820 --> 00:46:31.100 I think it was four or five days later I saw her coming down the walk without her son waving 00:46:31.100 --> 00:46:40.060 the paper in one hand and wiggling her fingers on the other hand and she had drawn a curved 00:46:40.060 --> 00:46:48.060 line with the fourth or fifth circle up in the upper right hand corner of the paper and 00:46:48.060 --> 00:46:58.840 her fingers were not arthritic anymore and she said she felt fine and was working all 00:46:58.840 --> 00:47:05.140 day around the house and could find her way home. 00:47:05.140 --> 00:47:11.220 That was in the summer and she enrolled back in the university for a master's degree in 00:47:11.220 --> 00:47:22.540 gerontology and got straight A's and got her degree nine months later and she had been 00:47:22.540 --> 00:47:26.140 told for years that she was hopelessly demented. 00:47:26.140 --> 00:47:28.100 And what about her seizures, Ray? 00:47:28.100 --> 00:47:29.100 No more. 00:47:29.100 --> 00:47:35.980 Just that one week of doses got everything back to normal. 00:47:35.980 --> 00:47:39.860 And that was just transdermal, topical applications? 00:47:39.860 --> 00:47:41.140 Yeah. 00:47:41.140 --> 00:47:49.980 And her blood tests showed that she had quite a bit more estrogen in her blood than progesterone 00:47:49.980 --> 00:47:57.660 and you should have about a hundred times more progesterone than estrogen. 00:47:57.660 --> 00:47:58.660 So that's remarkable. 00:47:58.660 --> 00:48:04.940 And so at that point you started to recommend it regularly to people? 00:48:04.940 --> 00:48:05.940 Yeah. 00:48:05.940 --> 00:48:16.780 And at that time I was teaching endocrinology at the Naturopathic College and somehow, I 00:48:16.780 --> 00:48:24.660 guess someone that the epileptic person knew heard I was interested in progesterone and 00:48:24.660 --> 00:48:32.860 she had read Katharina Dalton's book and had talked a doctor into giving her progesterone 00:48:32.860 --> 00:48:41.380 shots and she had had multiple sclerosis or optic neuritis, had been paralyzed, bedridden 00:48:41.380 --> 00:48:51.540 and I think she was mostly blind for weeks at a time because of the optic neuritis and 00:48:51.540 --> 00:48:58.540 she was getting these periodic semi-toxic injections of progesterone every time she 00:48:58.540 --> 00:49:00.860 could talk a doctor into it. 00:49:00.860 --> 00:49:05.540 Toxic because of the vehicle, was it the benzo alcohol or something? 00:49:05.540 --> 00:49:06.540 Yeah. 00:49:06.540 --> 00:49:17.860 And she volunteered to lecture to my endocrine class in Portland which was in an old building 00:49:17.860 --> 00:49:26.220 upstairs and she drove herself there, walked up to the, whatever it was, second or third 00:49:26.220 --> 00:49:33.420 floor and lectured through the two-hour class about what she had learned about progesterone 00:49:33.420 --> 00:49:37.660 from her own experience and Katharina Dalton's work. 00:49:37.660 --> 00:49:46.860 And so my naturopathic students were pretty well convinced by her lecture. 00:49:46.860 --> 00:49:48.860 What year was this Ray? 00:49:48.860 --> 00:49:49.860 '78. 00:49:49.860 --> 00:49:51.860 '78 and at that point... 00:49:51.860 --> 00:49:53.540 '77 or '78. 00:49:53.540 --> 00:49:54.540 Okay. 00:49:54.540 --> 00:50:00.340 And at that point, I mean obviously it sounds like progesterone is one of the obvious ways 00:50:00.340 --> 00:50:06.740 it's doing its work is as an anti-inflammatory because all those problems sound like inflammation 00:50:06.740 --> 00:50:08.340 problems don't they? 00:50:08.340 --> 00:50:09.340 Yeah. 00:50:09.340 --> 00:50:16.840 After that first experience with the fat fingers I started telling people about the topical 00:50:16.840 --> 00:50:28.740 use and I think it was about 30 people who had essentially immediate or overnight recovery 00:50:28.740 --> 00:50:35.740 from various types of arthritis, not just rheumatoid but so-called osteoarthritis. 00:50:35.740 --> 00:50:46.820 A woman from Sweden who had some metal joints installed and was planning several more installations 00:50:46.820 --> 00:50:49.700 and was basically crippled. 00:50:49.700 --> 00:50:57.180 She was visiting in Eugene and a psychologist friend who started using progesterone herself 00:50:57.180 --> 00:51:05.660 gave her some and she spread it all over her body and spent her time in Eugene walking 00:51:05.660 --> 00:51:11.380 around town enjoying the sights and having no arthritis. 00:51:11.380 --> 00:51:15.140 Because the inflammation had gone down so there's no pain. 00:51:15.140 --> 00:51:16.140 Yeah. 00:51:16.140 --> 00:51:23.580 Now you've cautioned man against using too much progesterone because it opposes testosterone 00:51:23.580 --> 00:51:27.220 too or what's... 00:51:27.220 --> 00:51:32.620 If you take a very big dose it has a cold shower effect. 00:51:32.620 --> 00:51:42.980 It simply displaces testosterone temporarily and so if a man isn't understanding the physiology 00:51:42.980 --> 00:51:52.420 of it he might be frightened by the sudden effect but it passes in two or three days. 00:51:52.420 --> 00:51:57.700 So I know from what you're saying it sounds so amazing and I know a lot of people with 00:51:57.700 --> 00:52:05.460 arthritis so if they're listening to this they might obviously want to try some and 00:52:05.460 --> 00:52:12.620 if men are doing it are there any other cautionary tales about using progesterone? 00:52:12.620 --> 00:52:15.260 Well, yeah. 00:52:15.260 --> 00:52:23.860 Once a friend accidentally put a spoonful of it in a margarita thinking it was pregnenolone 00:52:23.860 --> 00:52:33.700 and I guess I had about 500 or 1000 milligrams and I couldn't feel where my hands and feet 00:52:33.700 --> 00:52:38.100 were for about half an hour. 00:52:38.100 --> 00:52:40.100 Because it's an anesthetic. 00:52:40.100 --> 00:52:47.780 Yeah, and it will anesthetize you totally if you take very large doses. 00:52:47.780 --> 00:52:56.740 So at first when I found that vitamin E was a good solvent I made very concentrated solutions 00:52:56.740 --> 00:53:06.380 but I realized that a person getting too enthusiastic might kill themselves by anesthetizing themselves. 00:53:06.380 --> 00:53:11.740 There's nothing in the literature about using it as an anesthetic in humans but I've had 00:53:11.740 --> 00:53:19.620 the experience so I don't think it should be more than a 10% solution. 00:53:19.620 --> 00:53:26.740 Now I know we're actually almost out of time here so I think I wanted to talk about sort 00:53:26.740 --> 00:53:32.780 of the broad science implications of progesterone and how it's been approached by science in 00:53:32.780 --> 00:53:36.020 the medical world in general but I don't even think we're going to get to that. 00:53:36.020 --> 00:53:43.300 So if you wouldn't mind Ray making maybe this two shows we can take on the other issues 00:53:43.300 --> 00:53:44.300 next time. 00:53:44.300 --> 00:53:53.500 But I wanted to ask you something which just flew out of my mind like a bird. 00:53:53.500 --> 00:53:57.020 What we were just talking about before I interrupted you again. 00:53:57.020 --> 00:53:58.300 Arthritis? 00:53:58.300 --> 00:54:07.380 Yeah, surprisingly the effect even when your knees have been examined and the cartilage 00:54:07.380 --> 00:54:12.220 is crumbling to pieces or your knee looks like a football. 00:54:12.220 --> 00:54:19.860 The second person I gave progesterone to we just bought a flask of the injectable stuff 00:54:19.860 --> 00:54:30.060 in the toxic alcohol and my friend had a knee that he said it was agonizingly painful and 00:54:30.060 --> 00:54:36.020 it was swelling up every day for weeks and weeks. 00:54:36.020 --> 00:54:38.060 Had it been injured? 00:54:38.060 --> 00:54:46.300 No just from working at his bench every day and we spread this whole flask from his thigh 00:54:46.300 --> 00:54:53.900 around his knee down to the upper part of his calf and within two or three hours this 00:54:53.900 --> 00:54:57.300 football sized knee had deflated. 00:54:57.300 --> 00:55:09.260 That was in 1978 or 9 and for all the years up until two or three years ago he had never 00:55:09.260 --> 00:55:11.300 had arthritis again. 00:55:11.300 --> 00:55:14.580 30 years roughly. 00:55:14.580 --> 00:55:17.700 Wow, I know what I wanted to say. 00:55:17.700 --> 00:55:22.900 We were talking about the possible negative sides of progesterone and you were saying 00:55:22.900 --> 00:55:30.020 you know the worst thing that could happen is maybe overdosing and going to sleep and 00:55:30.020 --> 00:55:36.380 that reminded me of the Wall Street Journal article about brain damaged people, people 00:55:36.380 --> 00:55:40.020 who have been in accidents or had strokes. 00:55:40.020 --> 00:55:52.740 It was known in the 50s as a brain preserving hormone both prenatally and in animal studies. 00:55:52.740 --> 00:56:00.460 It's a growth factor for nerves and an anti-stress, anti-inflammatory agent. 00:56:00.460 --> 00:56:03.940 So it's anti-edema. 00:56:03.940 --> 00:56:09.260 Edema is one of the factors that kills the rest of the brain cells after some of them 00:56:09.260 --> 00:56:10.940 have been injured. 00:56:10.940 --> 00:56:17.580 So it's an obvious way to stop the progression of the damage after brain trauma but it's 00:56:17.580 --> 00:56:24.100 also a growth factor that optimizes the repair. 00:56:24.100 --> 00:56:33.500 It promotes the remyelinization of the fibers. 00:56:33.500 --> 00:56:38.940 For example in multiple sclerosis that seems to be or in optic neuritis that seems to be 00:56:38.940 --> 00:56:42.020 the way it's therapeutic. 00:56:42.020 --> 00:56:45.300 One of the most impressive things about that long article in the Wall Street Journal was 00:56:45.300 --> 00:56:52.180 that he did a very extensive study on all these brain injured people and stroke victims 00:56:52.180 --> 00:56:59.700 and many of them made miraculous recoveries and there were no side effects from the use 00:56:59.700 --> 00:57:00.820 of the progesterone. 00:57:00.820 --> 00:57:04.940 So there's not many treatments that you can say that about. 00:57:04.940 --> 00:57:14.900 Yeah, in the 70s I advocated that everyone should carry a bottle with them in case they 00:57:14.900 --> 00:57:24.540 were in an accident as first aid for whatever happened to you because for example a friend 00:57:24.540 --> 00:57:31.540 spilled a pan of boiling water on her thigh and we happened to have a beaker of progesterone 00:57:31.540 --> 00:57:40.940 there and we poured that on and an hour or so later there was no pain or redness or blister. 00:57:40.940 --> 00:57:41.940 Wow. 00:57:41.940 --> 00:57:48.860 Well Ray, we are out of time and sped by as usual and we've been talking to Dr. Raymond 00:57:48.860 --> 00:57:55.420 Peat, endocrinologist, physiologist with a PhD in biology from Eugene, Oregon and you 00:57:55.420 --> 00:58:04.260 can find out more about Ray at his website, Raypeat.com. 00:58:04.260 --> 00:58:08.740 Ray thanks so much for being on and I hope to continue this in a part two discussion 00:58:08.740 --> 00:58:10.420 in the days to come. 00:58:10.420 --> 00:58:12.540 Okay, very good. 00:58:12.540 --> 00:58:13.540 Thanks a lot Ray. 00:58:13.540 --> 00:58:14.540 Bye. 00:58:14.540 --> 00:58:15.540 Bye bye. 00:58:15.540 --> 00:58:21.380 And you've been listening to Politics and Science, an interview with Dr. Raymond Peat 00:58:21.380 --> 00:58:30.180 recorded on the 22nd of January 2012, hopefully a part two discussion will follow shortly 00:58:30.180 --> 00:58:35.500 and you can find a number of politics and science shows at the Radio for All website. 00:58:35.500 --> 00:58:39.420 I'm getting them up there slowly but hopefully surely. 00:58:39.420 --> 00:58:48.740 Go to radionumeralforall.net, radioforall.net and then search for politics and science and 00:58:48.740 --> 00:58:54.940 you will find the webpage where there are now maybe I think 15 shows up there and there 00:58:54.940 --> 00:58:56.900 will be more to come. 00:58:56.900 --> 00:59:00.600 So thanks for listening and stay tuned again next week for another edition of Politics 00:59:00.600 --> 00:59:01.460 and Science. 00:59:01.460 --> 00:59:11.460 [BLANK_AUDIO]