WEBVTT 00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:08.320 The following show was recorded on the 29th of January, 2012 with Dr. Raymond Peat. 00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:12.720 It's a part two discussion about progesterone. 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:18.200 Some podcasts of this show are available at radionumeralforall.net. 00:00:18.200 --> 00:00:20.420 That's radionumeralforall.net. 00:00:20.420 --> 00:00:25.480 And when you get to the website, search for Politics and Science. 00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:28.680 And now here's the show. 00:00:28.680 --> 00:00:30.400 Welcome to Politics and Science. 00:00:30.400 --> 00:00:32.680 I'm your host, John Barkhausen. 00:00:32.680 --> 00:00:37.080 And I'm very happy that Dr. Raymond Peat is returning to the show. 00:00:37.080 --> 00:00:43.200 This is a follow-up show about progesterone from the one we did last week. 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:48.720 And for those who don't know, Ray Peat has a PhD in biology from the University of Oregon 00:00:48.720 --> 00:00:51.200 with a speciality in physiology. 00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:56.920 And he's done extensive research in the fields of endocrinology and I should say science 00:00:56.920 --> 00:00:58.720 and chemistry. 00:00:58.720 --> 00:01:09.880 I've been reading in both of those areas since I was about 14 or 15 years old. 00:01:09.880 --> 00:01:12.600 You mentioned before that when you were a little kid, you were reading the little blue 00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:13.600 books. 00:01:13.600 --> 00:01:14.600 Yeah. 00:01:14.600 --> 00:01:17.720 And when did you first encounter Kropotkin? 00:01:17.720 --> 00:01:21.680 This is completely unrelated to our topic, but I was curious about that. 00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:30.920 He was really, besides the little blue books, he was the first really political argument. 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:40.880 His book on cooperation and animals and as a basis for his anarchy theory. 00:01:40.880 --> 00:01:45.040 I think I was 14 when I found that at the library. 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:52.080 And that shaped my thinking both in politics and in biology. 00:01:52.080 --> 00:01:56.600 Yeah, he was a pretty amazing person. 00:01:56.600 --> 00:02:04.800 And well, back to the subject of progesterone, which we left off last week talking about 00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:09.880 the Wall Street Journal article about this doctor who had done a lot of research on the 00:02:09.880 --> 00:02:17.720 effect of progesterone on brain damage, both through accidents and through strokes, and 00:02:17.720 --> 00:02:20.080 found it a very effective therapy. 00:02:20.080 --> 00:02:25.080 I think people recovered twice as fast and probably a lot of people recovered that wouldn't 00:02:25.080 --> 00:02:26.240 have. 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:28.560 And there were no negative side effects. 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:34.120 And I asked you last week about any negative side effects you knew about progesterone. 00:02:34.120 --> 00:02:40.200 And one thing you mentioned was the danger of being over anesthetized by it. 00:02:40.200 --> 00:02:45.720 And I was just wondering, is that a danger from actually stopping your heart if you potentially 00:02:45.720 --> 00:02:46.720 took too much? 00:02:46.720 --> 00:02:51.560 Or is that just from you might get into an accident if you fell asleep? 00:02:51.560 --> 00:02:55.880 I think what it would do first is stop breathing. 00:02:55.880 --> 00:03:00.080 But up to a certain point, it stimulates breathing. 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:09.720 So it's probably somewhat of an antidote to things like morphine, because progesterone, 00:03:09.720 --> 00:03:20.960 as long as it's within something like several hundred milligrams at a time or per day, it's 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:26.880 like an imitation of pregnancy where it stimulates breathing. 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:35.160 But up in the pharmacological range of something like three or four thousand milligrams all 00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:43.160 at once, then instead of being a stimulant to respiration, it just puts everything to 00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:45.720 sleep. 00:03:45.720 --> 00:03:52.840 And I think that would include the respiratory system at some very high level. 00:03:52.840 --> 00:04:02.960 In Mexico, some students were experimenting with the idea that maybe progesterone works 00:04:02.960 --> 00:04:08.160 like morphine because of those sedative effects. 00:04:08.160 --> 00:04:19.600 And so they combined naloxone, the anti-morphine drug, with progesterone and their experimental 00:04:19.600 --> 00:04:20.600 rat died. 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:33.040 And it was okay on a given amount of either of them, but that pretty much said that progesterone 00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:47.280 isn't acting like morphine because the anti-morphine chemical seemed to exaggerate the anesthetic 00:04:47.280 --> 00:04:50.000 effect of progesterone. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:56.440 Is it the equivalent of saying that maybe water supports life, but if you drink too 00:04:56.440 --> 00:05:01.240 much of it or fall into it, it can potentially kill you? 00:05:01.240 --> 00:05:08.540 What's the range of the dose we're talking about for overdosing on progesterone? 00:05:08.540 --> 00:05:11.440 No one really has done that. 00:05:11.440 --> 00:05:18.440 My student's rat was the only death that I know of, even experimentally. 00:05:18.440 --> 00:05:30.360 In the 1940s, Hans Elie had told his technicians to experiment with very big doses of progesterone. 00:05:30.360 --> 00:05:38.480 And after doing some experiments, they said those high doses had killed the rats. 00:05:38.480 --> 00:05:40.200 And he didn't believe it. 00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:43.360 He said, "What did you do with them?" 00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:47.200 And they went to the garbage and fished them out. 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:54.960 And he published photographs holding them by the skin on their back. 00:05:54.960 --> 00:06:02.320 They looked sort of like a wet dishrag, just the most relaxed rat you ever saw. 00:06:02.320 --> 00:06:07.720 But they weren't dead, they were just deeply sleepy. 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:10.560 But his technicians had thought they'd died. 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:21.640 So I'm not even sure that my students were not mistaken about the naloxone and progesterone 00:06:21.640 --> 00:06:24.880 combination, but they thought the rat had died. 00:06:24.880 --> 00:06:25.880 I see. 00:06:25.880 --> 00:06:29.040 Well, I think that settles that then. 00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:35.280 So it's only potentially fatal in enormous quantities. 00:06:35.280 --> 00:06:36.760 Yeah. 00:06:36.760 --> 00:06:46.520 And you also said that vasectomies in men tended to lower progesterone in those men. 00:06:46.520 --> 00:06:49.440 And I was wondering, what's the mechanism behind that? 00:06:49.440 --> 00:06:59.280 Well, it wasn't consistent, but when the men had very distinct symptoms following the vasectomies, 00:06:59.280 --> 00:07:06.560 they studied what was going on and found that the ones who had the symptoms had very low 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:10.320 to almost zero progesterone. 00:07:10.320 --> 00:07:15.080 And they recovered when they gave them progesterone. 00:07:15.080 --> 00:07:20.480 But most of the men having vasectomies didn't have any symptoms. 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:35.120 And so my interpretation is that it's a biological analog to what's reasonable in the female. 00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:44.200 If the female has an infection in the uterus or tubes, for example, it's biologically 00:07:44.200 --> 00:07:51.840 reasonable to turn off progesterone production so that pregnancy can't happen. 00:07:51.840 --> 00:08:00.520 And so irritation in the uterus or tube in the female causes sterility by turning off 00:08:00.520 --> 00:08:03.600 progesterone and increasing estrogen. 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:11.960 And I think the event in the men who had the bad reaction to vasectomy, I think it was 00:08:11.960 --> 00:08:24.160 the biological equivalent of a signal traveling up the ducts to the testicle, maybe to the 00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:29.520 pituitary, turning off steroid production. 00:08:29.520 --> 00:08:31.440 So and it's interesting. 00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:36.680 These hormones, they seem very complicated so that when we, as you pointed out before, 00:08:36.680 --> 00:08:42.120 try to name them by one purpose that they might have, it gets very confusing. 00:08:42.120 --> 00:08:47.840 So we think of progesterone as, I have been lately thinking of it as the female fertility 00:08:47.840 --> 00:08:52.720 hormone, but there you have it, that men are actually producing it in their testicles or 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:53.720 pituitary. 00:08:53.720 --> 00:08:59.920 And then negative effects that they were experiencing from their vasectomies were actually potent, 00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:01.840 wasn't it, one of the negative effects? 00:09:01.840 --> 00:09:02.840 Yeah. 00:09:02.840 --> 00:09:08.720 And I've seen several men, I don't remember whether they had vasectomies or not, but they 00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:16.680 were suffering from impotency and it just immediately was resolved by taking just very 00:09:16.680 --> 00:09:20.960 small doses a couple of times of progesterone. 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:23.680 It's sort of like priming the pump. 00:09:23.680 --> 00:09:30.800 Progesterone has a positive feedback apparently in men as well as in women. 00:09:30.800 --> 00:09:39.000 People have experimented with slices of either ovary tissue or adrenal tissue which makes 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:41.160 some progesterone. 00:09:41.160 --> 00:09:50.080 And they found in both cases that if you add a little bit of progesterone, it increases 00:09:50.080 --> 00:10:01.320 the organ's production of progesterone, positive feedback, which is unusual in hormone regulation. 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:06.280 And that indicates to me that the body doesn't see it as something you can get too much of. 00:10:06.280 --> 00:10:07.680 Yeah. 00:10:07.680 --> 00:10:13.560 From that kind of engineering, you would think that the body believes that more is always 00:10:13.560 --> 00:10:18.360 better in the case of progesterone. 00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:24.680 Which seems to be what happens in pregnancy. 00:10:24.680 --> 00:10:30.120 If a person is having some biological problem where their progesterone drops off and they 00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:38.480 start bleeding during the pregnancy, there have been studies where women who habitually 00:10:38.480 --> 00:10:44.080 either miscarried or had monthly bleeding every month of the pregnancy and then delivered 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:51.480 at five or six months, maybe seven months, they would give early in the pregnancy one 00:10:51.480 --> 00:11:00.680 shot of progesterone and I think it was two-thirds of the women maintained full increasing production 00:11:00.680 --> 00:11:07.920 every week higher than the preceding week until they had a normal nine-month delivery. 00:11:07.920 --> 00:11:17.120 Another, I think it was about 30%, required a second injection several weeks later after 00:11:17.120 --> 00:11:25.200 the first one and they too went back to the full production. 00:11:25.200 --> 00:11:34.720 I forget the percentages exactly, there was a small group which didn't recover so completely. 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:39.720 And I know a lot of people are going in for fertility therapy in this day and age, I don't 00:11:39.720 --> 00:11:45.600 know if it's more than in the past, but do you know, does progesterone still play a big 00:11:45.600 --> 00:11:48.720 role in modern fertility therapies? 00:11:48.720 --> 00:11:59.840 Yeah, but very few of the clinics that specialize in that really understand, if they would read 00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:08.600 more animal research, they would understand people better, but there's really a medical 00:12:08.600 --> 00:12:16.440 bias against endocrine science based on animals. 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:19.280 And why is that, do you think? 00:12:19.280 --> 00:12:23.600 I think the marketing thing has done it. 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:30.600 After 40 or 50 years, the estrogen industry said don't pay any attention to the fact that 00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:40.000 estrogen causes clotting, heart attacks, cancer, brain damage, and so on. 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:45.720 That's just in animals, but it has just the opposite effects in humans. 00:12:45.720 --> 00:12:49.880 That's interesting, yeah, it does seem that they've thrown out a lot of the earlier research 00:12:49.880 --> 00:12:55.800 that was done back, that you write about quite a bit, back in the early 20th century. 00:12:55.800 --> 00:13:04.600 And when the industry wants to sell something that they can't demonstrate in humans, then 00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:12.120 they will base the whole thing on animal experiments, like the osteoporosis thing. 00:13:12.120 --> 00:13:18.800 They found that there was no evidence that they could demonstrate bone improvement with 00:13:18.800 --> 00:13:20.600 estrogen in people. 00:13:20.600 --> 00:13:26.280 So they looked around at different animals, tried it on beagle dogs, found that it caused 00:13:26.280 --> 00:13:32.560 more osteoporosis in dogs, and so they forgot about that and looked around, found that in 00:13:32.560 --> 00:13:41.800 rodents it could seem to be causing increased bone strength. 00:13:41.800 --> 00:13:49.560 But it happens that in rodents, even cortisol can increase bone strength. 00:13:49.560 --> 00:13:56.320 There are some situations like prolactin in rats will increase progesterone, where in 00:13:56.320 --> 00:14:02.400 humans it generally decreases it. 00:14:02.400 --> 00:14:08.400 If you look at the interactions, it's really all the same principles that apply in people. 00:14:08.400 --> 00:14:14.160 But for example, rodents are generally nocturnal animals and we aren't. 00:14:14.160 --> 00:14:22.120 And so you have to take into account what time of day you give the injections, because 00:14:22.120 --> 00:14:31.200 you're either intensifying or weakening their normal rhythms. 00:14:31.200 --> 00:14:38.760 And by using animals with an upside-down rhythm compared to humans, you can sometimes get 00:14:38.760 --> 00:14:40.600 very nice upside-down results. 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:41.600 I see. 00:14:41.600 --> 00:14:45.160 And you're saying that the pharmaceutical companies who are paying for these studies 00:14:45.160 --> 00:14:48.720 are actually engineering them that way on purpose. 00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:49.720 Yeah. 00:14:49.720 --> 00:14:56.480 They like rat experiments when they can be arranged to sell a product, but they want 00:14:56.480 --> 00:15:06.680 to forget completely about the dog experiments which cause only bad effects. 00:15:06.680 --> 00:15:12.880 Going back to estrogen and progesterone, which is the subject of our show today, effect on 00:15:12.880 --> 00:15:19.440 fertility or contraception, I was curious if there's any effect on estrogen or progesterone 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:25.480 production when somebody gets a tubal ligation. 00:15:25.480 --> 00:15:32.840 Because at the same time that the impotency experiment saw that in men, some other group 00:15:32.840 --> 00:15:40.800 within just a month or two of that publication saw exactly that effect in the result of the 00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:43.160 tubal ligation. 00:15:43.160 --> 00:15:51.080 And that really helped to explain how IUDs work. 00:15:51.080 --> 00:15:59.400 And animal experiments had been demonstrating that for years, that if you want to have the 00:15:59.400 --> 00:16:05.360 animal become infertile, you just put a little suture in the uterus. 00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:07.060 That's usually all it takes. 00:16:07.060 --> 00:16:14.400 And the signal travels up from the slightly injured uterus to turn off the ovary progesterone 00:16:14.400 --> 00:16:15.400 production. 00:16:15.400 --> 00:16:23.240 And so injuring the tubes does the same thing. 00:16:23.240 --> 00:16:25.720 Not always, but often. 00:16:25.720 --> 00:16:31.400 So that could lead to a progesterone deficiency in somebody who's either had an IUD or a tubal 00:16:31.400 --> 00:16:32.400 ligation. 00:16:32.400 --> 00:16:33.400 Yeah. 00:16:33.400 --> 00:16:34.400 Yeah. 00:16:34.400 --> 00:16:35.400 Huh. 00:16:35.400 --> 00:16:41.960 So let's, if you don't mind, we'll pick up where we left off in your sort of life's path. 00:16:41.960 --> 00:16:47.560 You were, I believe, teaching at naturopathic colleges after you'd gotten your PhD. 00:16:47.560 --> 00:16:51.960 And you, I think where we left off in the last show, you had decided to start recommending 00:16:51.960 --> 00:16:56.880 progesterone use to some of your nutritional patients. 00:16:56.880 --> 00:17:00.960 You worked as a nutritional consultant, I think, also. 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:02.780 Yeah. 00:17:02.780 --> 00:17:12.100 I guess I was teaching endocrinology at the naturopath school, but I was doing mostly 00:17:12.100 --> 00:17:16.420 nutritional counseling at home. 00:17:16.420 --> 00:17:26.740 And I found that it was more and more involved hormone interactions with the foods. 00:17:26.740 --> 00:17:38.900 And so I just, when I saw these two or three women with such absolute recoveries from just 00:17:38.900 --> 00:17:51.140 small amounts of progesterone, I realized that I would be basically injuring people 00:17:51.140 --> 00:17:57.900 that I talked to if I didn't give them the true information that I knew about in animals 00:17:57.900 --> 00:18:02.700 and was starting to see in humans. 00:18:02.700 --> 00:18:10.940 And so I would just mention what I saw was the case. 00:18:10.940 --> 00:18:21.220 And over a period of, I guess, two or three years in Eugene, I had spoken to enough women 00:18:21.220 --> 00:18:31.140 about the effects of thyroid and progesterone and their symptoms that the local gynecologists 00:18:31.140 --> 00:18:37.700 had turned 180 degrees in their practice just because there were so many dozens of their 00:18:37.700 --> 00:18:45.940 patients saying that they wouldn't take estrogen and insisted on getting a prescription for 00:18:45.940 --> 00:18:49.740 progesterone or thyroid. 00:18:49.740 --> 00:18:55.220 Just took a couple of years and doctors saw that their business was being affected and 00:18:55.220 --> 00:18:58.660 so they totally reversed their practices. 00:18:58.660 --> 00:19:08.860 And that went on until those doctors retired and then I think the pressure from the industry 00:19:08.860 --> 00:19:13.380 and profession probably reverted the situation. 00:19:13.380 --> 00:19:15.500 So it sounds like those doctors were pretty open-minded. 00:19:15.500 --> 00:19:18.140 No, very, very closed-minded. 00:19:18.140 --> 00:19:19.140 Okay. 00:19:19.140 --> 00:19:29.100 I had a terrible experience of the first dozen or so women who went to them. 00:19:29.100 --> 00:19:33.460 Just awful personal attacks. 00:19:33.460 --> 00:19:39.460 The doctors at first would tell the patients not to come back because they had personality 00:19:39.460 --> 00:19:44.020 defects that they wouldn't accept their advice. 00:19:44.020 --> 00:19:45.020 Like I said, very open-minded. 00:19:45.020 --> 00:19:46.020 Yeah. 00:19:46.020 --> 00:19:47.020 Oh dear. 00:19:47.020 --> 00:19:53.020 And we're talking about the late 70s and early 80s at this point, is that right? 00:19:53.020 --> 00:19:57.780 Yeah, between '76 and '82. 00:19:57.780 --> 00:20:05.860 Yeah, it's pretty astounding the attitudes of the pharmaceutical companies and the medical 00:20:05.860 --> 00:20:06.860 world at that point. 00:20:06.860 --> 00:20:11.740 I have a quote here if I can find it from the report that you referred to last time, 00:20:11.740 --> 00:20:12.740 Carla Bronsenberg. 00:20:12.740 --> 00:20:14.300 That's right. 00:20:14.300 --> 00:20:17.300 Which is very available on the web if anybody wants to look it up. 00:20:17.300 --> 00:20:23.140 You go to Carla Rothenberg, Google that name, and she wrote a report when she was at Harvard 00:20:23.140 --> 00:20:26.620 about the history of hormone replacement in this country. 00:20:26.620 --> 00:20:32.020 It's about advertising hormone replacement therapy and it relates to what Ray just said 00:20:32.020 --> 00:20:36.060 about doctors' attitudes. 00:20:36.060 --> 00:20:46.460 Barbara Seaman was my contemporary in studying estrogen and progesterone and she wrote a 00:20:46.460 --> 00:20:49.340 lot of good stuff. 00:20:49.340 --> 00:20:57.620 Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones I think was one of the titles. 00:20:57.620 --> 00:21:07.260 She was very good at, despite knowing a thousand times more, when she got the opportunity to 00:21:07.260 --> 00:21:15.420 debate someone from Yale Medical School, for example, they ended up looking like complete 00:21:15.420 --> 00:21:18.660 ignoramuses, which they were. 00:21:18.660 --> 00:21:25.700 But she was very influential against estrogen for progesterone. 00:21:25.700 --> 00:21:29.340 I see, and how do you spell her last name, Ray? 00:21:29.340 --> 00:21:30.340 S-E-A-M-A-N. 00:21:30.340 --> 00:21:33.820 M-A-N, okay. 00:21:33.820 --> 00:21:36.260 Did you work with her at all or just knew about her? 00:21:36.260 --> 00:21:39.340 No, I talked to her. 00:21:39.340 --> 00:21:47.460 She called up a few years ago and mentioned that we had met after some of my talks, but 00:21:47.460 --> 00:21:54.420 I wasn't aware of who she was when we talked at that time. 00:21:54.420 --> 00:22:01.500 Here's the ad campaign from hormone replacement therapy, I think back in the '50s and '60s. 00:22:01.500 --> 00:22:07.060 The treated menopausal woman in other ads is a happy, trouble-free wife standing proudly 00:22:07.060 --> 00:22:11.180 next to her husband because otherwise she would have emotional and physical problems 00:22:11.180 --> 00:22:13.740 and be a burden to those around her. 00:22:13.740 --> 00:22:21.140 An ad for Hoffman LaRoche's Menrium, I guess that's the drug, says, "His wife has a lot 00:22:21.140 --> 00:22:25.300 of different menopausal symptoms, but only a few really irritate him. 00:22:25.300 --> 00:22:30.020 Her hot flashes, her vertigo, her palpitations, that's her problem. 00:22:30.020 --> 00:22:35.980 What really bothers him is her nervousness, her irritability, and her excessive anxiety, 00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:42.180 often expressed by endless 'book shuffling,' chain smoking, and reading lamp insomnia." 00:22:42.180 --> 00:22:44.340 Oh, I see, reading lamp insomnia. 00:22:44.340 --> 00:22:49.820 "Merinium takes care of the vasomotor symptoms as well as the emotional symptoms. 00:22:49.820 --> 00:22:54.620 This means the symptoms that bother his wife the most and the symptoms that irritate him 00:22:54.620 --> 00:22:56.100 the most. 00:22:56.100 --> 00:23:00.220 So to help them both get through menopause, remember Menrium." 00:23:00.220 --> 00:23:04.540 There we go, in case you want to go get some. 00:23:04.540 --> 00:23:09.500 Probably off the market at this point, but that was, I thought, a pretty astounding example. 00:23:09.500 --> 00:23:12.700 Yeah, go ahead, Ray. 00:23:12.700 --> 00:23:26.060 Well Barbara Seaman went over advertising and the public relations very thoroughly. 00:23:26.060 --> 00:23:38.340 And I guess Carla Rothenberg did more on the actual conspiracy aspects, but on public misinformation, 00:23:38.340 --> 00:23:41.660 Barbara Seaman was very good. 00:23:41.660 --> 00:23:50.060 And at one point she mentioned that Hitler had tested estrogen on people in the prison 00:23:50.060 --> 00:23:55.780 camps as a way to make them meek and submissive. 00:23:55.780 --> 00:24:03.460 And she thought that that was probably, if you put it in context with an advertisement 00:24:03.460 --> 00:24:11.820 like the one you read, it makes a more obedient, servile wife. 00:24:11.820 --> 00:24:17.020 It's less irritating to the lord and master. 00:24:17.020 --> 00:24:22.460 So you were basically helping people find out about progesterone and then they were 00:24:22.460 --> 00:24:27.820 working on getting their doctors to help them do that, I mean use progesterone. 00:24:27.820 --> 00:24:31.380 And what form would they get the progesterone in from their doctors? 00:24:31.380 --> 00:24:36.260 And at some point you patented a progesterone formulation, right? 00:24:36.260 --> 00:24:44.020 Yeah, the woman I mentioned, who I talked to and who lectured in my class, who had had 00:24:44.020 --> 00:24:53.460 MS and optic neuritis, she was using exclusively injectable progesterone. 00:24:53.460 --> 00:25:01.900 And so she was getting really big amounts of benzoyl alcohol, which is nerve toxic. 00:25:01.900 --> 00:25:13.940 And it happens, Hans Selye called it the catotoxic effect of progesterone and pregnenolone, 00:25:13.940 --> 00:25:18.860 that it helps the body destroy toxins and eliminate them. 00:25:18.860 --> 00:25:30.260 And even injecting vegetable oil and a toxic solvent, progesterone's antitoxic effect 00:25:30.260 --> 00:25:40.580 is so great that people were just tremendously benefiting from these injections of progesterone. 00:25:40.580 --> 00:25:48.700 But sometimes if a doctor didn't like those toxins in the injectable form, there was also 00:25:48.700 --> 00:25:52.620 a micronized solution in water. 00:25:52.620 --> 00:25:59.780 But if they would inject that in the hip, for example, where there was supposed to be 00:25:59.780 --> 00:26:09.580 a good fat pad, sometimes the particle would cause irritation that would cause destruction 00:26:09.580 --> 00:26:11.300 of the fat cells. 00:26:11.300 --> 00:26:15.260 And they would have a dent wherever they got an injection. 00:26:15.260 --> 00:26:23.060 And because of the known toxic effects of the oily version and the irritating effect 00:26:23.060 --> 00:26:31.900 of the so-called water-wettable solutions, and those weren't really just progesterone, 00:26:31.900 --> 00:26:38.980 there was a molecule, a carbohydrate-like molecule attached to the progesterone particle 00:26:38.980 --> 00:26:41.180 making it wettable. 00:26:41.180 --> 00:26:44.220 And those particles are toxic. 00:26:44.220 --> 00:26:50.340 So that was probably what was making the particle destroy the fat cells. 00:26:50.340 --> 00:27:00.500 But anyway, knowing about the problems with injection and the medical indoctrination that 00:27:00.500 --> 00:27:09.300 stomach acid destroys progesterone, even though the manufacturer involves boiling the steroid 00:27:09.300 --> 00:27:18.140 in acid so your stomach couldn't make it bend in the activity of progesterone. 00:27:18.140 --> 00:27:26.860 But anyway, as an alternative, I decided, since I had noticed that I could taste progesterone 00:27:26.860 --> 00:27:34.340 just sticking my hand in the powder, I decided that if I could get doctors to use it on the 00:27:34.340 --> 00:27:42.820 skin, that would let them have the opportunity to see what it really does. 00:27:42.820 --> 00:27:51.220 Easy to give to the patient, and the patient wouldn't have to go in and pay for an injection 00:27:51.220 --> 00:27:53.540 every week and so on. 00:27:53.540 --> 00:28:03.980 And the first experiments for several months, I would heat it in olive oil and get a good 00:28:03.980 --> 00:28:09.820 high concentration and then the olive oil would, in less than an hour, it would bring 00:28:09.820 --> 00:28:15.580 their blood levels up to a perfectly normal amount. 00:28:15.580 --> 00:28:28.340 And I was thinking about the old research, for example, in Italy, in explaining why vitamin 00:28:28.340 --> 00:28:38.260 E would protect against the sterility producing effects and other toxic effects of estrogen. 00:28:38.260 --> 00:28:47.920 They explained vitamin E's action as being the progesterone sparer, somehow activating 00:28:47.920 --> 00:28:51.140 progesterone in the system. 00:28:51.140 --> 00:28:58.700 And so I was thinking about those old studies to explain vitamin E's anti-estrogen effects 00:28:58.700 --> 00:29:08.140 and it made me think about what vitamin E is doing in the mitochondrion where progesterone 00:29:08.140 --> 00:29:12.380 is produced and has its effects. 00:29:12.380 --> 00:29:22.620 But I realized that for them to both act in and be produced in the mitochondrion, they 00:29:22.620 --> 00:29:27.660 have to be compatible in solubility. 00:29:27.660 --> 00:29:35.580 And so I dropped some progesterone powder in vitamin E and saw that I could get a 50/50 00:29:35.580 --> 00:29:39.980 solution with a very pure form of vitamin E. 00:29:39.980 --> 00:29:44.660 They were just absolutely inter-soluble. 00:29:44.660 --> 00:29:59.060 And so that was a compact, stable way to get doctors to start using the transdermal progesterone. 00:29:59.060 --> 00:30:04.860 I had told them about the effect in olive oil, but no one wanted to have to heat the 00:30:04.860 --> 00:30:07.820 solution up every time they applied it. 00:30:07.820 --> 00:30:21.100 But you could get a stable 5, 10, or 20% solution that would be convenient to rub into the skin. 00:30:21.100 --> 00:30:28.220 But you only absorb maybe 10 or 20% at best when you rub it into the skin. 00:30:28.220 --> 00:30:38.260 And so after doctors were willing to prescribe it for their patients using it on the skin, 00:30:38.260 --> 00:30:47.020 then I pointed out to them that they could take it orally and save about 80% of the cost 00:30:47.020 --> 00:30:51.500 at least. 00:30:51.500 --> 00:30:56.260 So even when it's dissolved in vitamin E, which I guess it just does without even heating 00:30:56.260 --> 00:31:00.060 it, it's just totally compatible with vitamin E? 00:31:00.060 --> 00:31:04.020 Yeah, you don't have to get it hot. 00:31:04.020 --> 00:31:09.580 Just warming it so that it's thin enough to stir and just stirring it at room temperature 00:31:09.580 --> 00:31:11.460 will do it. 00:31:11.460 --> 00:31:15.940 And when you buy progesterone, it's in a powder form, is that right? 00:31:15.940 --> 00:31:22.940 Yeah, crystals or micro-crystals. 00:31:22.940 --> 00:31:28.100 A lot of it is still sold with the carbohydrate wetting agent attached. 00:31:28.100 --> 00:31:34.900 And they don't even list that as an ingredient, but it's a potential toxin. 00:31:34.900 --> 00:31:36.860 I see. 00:31:36.860 --> 00:31:44.820 And why is only 20% absorbed through the skin when you put it on with the vitamin E? 00:31:44.820 --> 00:31:56.900 Well, it binds to the skin, the cells collapse as they mature and prepare to shed. 00:31:56.900 --> 00:32:04.660 And the keratin fibers, the protein that makes up part of the structure of the cell, these 00:32:04.660 --> 00:32:14.980 are cross-linked and become sort of a semi-tanned, hardened barrier to water. 00:32:14.980 --> 00:32:25.460 But they bind oil so that the oils in your skin link to these cross-linked keratin proteins 00:32:25.460 --> 00:32:32.260 and make like a raincoat effect, closing off the surface to the water. 00:32:32.260 --> 00:32:36.940 But those also bind progesterone very strongly. 00:32:36.940 --> 00:32:45.260 And so the progesterone will saturate those, and some of it passes on and gets into your 00:32:45.260 --> 00:32:52.100 deeper tissues from which it can be gradually absorbed into the bloodstream. 00:32:52.100 --> 00:33:04.980 But a good part of it sticks on these superficial barrier cells, and then those are shed. 00:33:04.980 --> 00:33:05.980 I see. 00:33:05.980 --> 00:33:08.380 So it might be good for your skin if you're having skin problems, but if you're trying 00:33:08.380 --> 00:33:09.380 to get it in further... 00:33:09.380 --> 00:33:17.540 Yeah, it's more economical just to take it orally because when it's dissolved in oil, 00:33:17.540 --> 00:33:28.380 when you eat a lot of fat in your diet, your bile emulsifies it so it breaks down into 00:33:28.380 --> 00:33:38.420 very small particles about the size of a bacterium, the chylomicrons that will pass through intestinal 00:33:38.420 --> 00:33:47.860 cells into the lymphatic ducts that are called black teals because the absorbed fat particles 00:33:47.860 --> 00:33:50.540 give it a milky look. 00:33:50.540 --> 00:33:58.620 And from there it goes right into the bloodstream as little fat globules that circulate. 00:33:58.620 --> 00:34:07.740 They're much smaller than red blood cells, and they circulate and reach all the tissues 00:34:07.740 --> 00:34:17.340 directly as fat particles, but also the liver will eventually metabolize them and help to 00:34:17.340 --> 00:34:22.260 distribute whatever was in the fat. 00:34:22.260 --> 00:34:31.300 And since the progesterone and vitamin E are fat soluble, they get divided up as you're 00:34:31.300 --> 00:34:38.300 digesting your other fats in the chylomicrons which get directly into the bloodstream. 00:34:38.300 --> 00:34:48.140 If you eat powdered progesterone, the cells of your intestine have the same enzymes that 00:34:48.140 --> 00:34:59.260 the liver has for adding sugar to hormone molecules and making them water soluble. 00:34:59.260 --> 00:35:07.260 And so when the crystalline progesterone hits your intestine cells directly, a lot of it 00:35:07.260 --> 00:35:16.660 is processed just as it would be in the liver, and the rest of it is sent from the intestine 00:35:16.660 --> 00:35:21.700 as a particle into the liver for further processing. 00:35:21.700 --> 00:35:28.620 So you lose a big part of your progesterone if you take it still in the crystalline form. 00:35:28.620 --> 00:35:34.700 But when it's in the fat globule form, it bypasses the liver because it's taken up as 00:35:34.700 --> 00:35:38.700 these nutritional fat particles, chylomicrons. 00:35:38.700 --> 00:35:44.860 That's a good explanation, thanks. 00:35:44.860 --> 00:35:52.580 So basically something like 99% of it gets into your circulation quickly when you eat 00:35:52.580 --> 00:35:55.340 it in the oil form. 00:35:55.340 --> 00:36:01.260 And it would be distributed probably in the same proportion that your circulation works, 00:36:01.260 --> 00:36:06.100 so that if your brain is getting a lot of circulation, then it will get a lot of progesterone. 00:36:06.100 --> 00:36:14.420 Yeah, everywhere red blood cells go, these chylomicrons will circulate a few times. 00:36:14.420 --> 00:36:21.900 So how difficult, when did you decide to patent it and what was your thinking on that? 00:36:21.900 --> 00:36:30.420 I wrote, I was constantly submitting articles to medical and science journals, and medical 00:36:30.420 --> 00:36:37.060 journals didn't want to have anything to do with it because they were doing business with 00:36:37.060 --> 00:36:43.660 the estrogen industry basically, didn't want anything good about progesterone. 00:36:43.660 --> 00:36:50.940 And since I couldn't get anything published about it, I was just having to give talks 00:36:50.940 --> 00:36:56.340 up and down the West Coast to alternative medical groups and such. 00:36:56.340 --> 00:37:03.180 And so I wanted to get the information out and figured that publishing it as a patent 00:37:03.180 --> 00:37:08.980 would be the only way I could get it on the record and openly distributed. 00:37:08.980 --> 00:37:13.820 So was it difficult getting the patent from the government? 00:37:13.820 --> 00:37:25.100 No, I wrote up the whole story and sent it in and I think it was the patent examiner 00:37:25.100 --> 00:37:36.220 talking to me through a lawyer, said you can't say anything about cancer if you want to get 00:37:36.220 --> 00:37:47.500 the patent issue and said that that's a standard rule that the only thing they really are concerned 00:37:47.500 --> 00:37:52.300 about the accuracy of is a cancer claim. 00:37:52.300 --> 00:38:04.980 And so I just deleted the things that I said about the things I had seen it do to cancer. 00:38:04.980 --> 00:38:08.380 And so it went right through. 00:38:08.380 --> 00:38:13.220 What is the prejudice against cancer claims? 00:38:13.220 --> 00:38:21.140 Just that it would be used as a marketing tool by the cancer industry. 00:38:21.140 --> 00:38:29.020 You can claim perpetual motion, free energy, all kinds of things in a patent. 00:38:29.020 --> 00:38:35.140 There are thousands of those crazy patents and the examiners, if you can draw a picture 00:38:35.140 --> 00:38:38.260 of it, they'll patent it. 00:38:38.260 --> 00:38:43.900 But they have some standards. 00:38:43.900 --> 00:38:49.660 So once you patented it, did you figure out some way to make it available to people who 00:38:49.660 --> 00:38:52.700 wanted to buy it? 00:38:52.700 --> 00:38:56.620 I was mixing up some myself and selling it. 00:38:56.620 --> 00:39:05.100 Sean Lee, for example, was one of the first people who started buying my mixture. 00:39:05.100 --> 00:39:12.740 And I tried to get various people to manufacture it over the years. 00:39:12.740 --> 00:39:20.060 As long as I had the patent, I thought that I could make an arrangement for a drug company 00:39:20.060 --> 00:39:27.140 to use the patent themselves as a basis for marketing it. 00:39:27.140 --> 00:39:36.980 And that I could keep them some control by whatever arrangement I made in licensing it 00:39:36.980 --> 00:39:42.300 so that they couldn't take it off the market by buying the patent. 00:39:42.300 --> 00:39:48.220 So I talked to all the big drug companies and they said, "No, thanks." 00:39:48.220 --> 00:39:54.940 And those drug companies then, about a year or two later, came on the market with a crystalline 00:39:54.940 --> 00:40:00.980 progesterone mixed with oil. 00:40:00.980 --> 00:40:05.580 They saw that there was increasing interest in progesterone so they had to get on the 00:40:05.580 --> 00:40:15.300 market but probably my having the patent on vitamin E as the solvent prevented them from 00:40:15.300 --> 00:40:25.060 messing with that even though it was the economically effective way to have progesterone. 00:40:25.060 --> 00:40:27.180 They would mix it with things like peanut oil. 00:40:27.180 --> 00:40:29.540 That's what I was going to ask. 00:40:29.540 --> 00:40:30.540 What oils did they use? 00:40:30.540 --> 00:40:33.180 So that sounds rather toxic. 00:40:33.180 --> 00:40:37.900 Yeah, and it's not a very good solvent. 00:40:37.900 --> 00:40:47.500 It does dissolve some of it so it's effective but not extremely effective. 00:40:47.500 --> 00:40:52.900 And then did you manage to set up your own plant or I guess it wouldn't be a plant. 00:40:52.900 --> 00:40:56.260 There's a home-scale production line? 00:40:56.260 --> 00:41:04.860 And first I tried to get someone that I had worked for in nutrition counseling. 00:41:04.860 --> 00:41:12.940 He got interested in it and dealt with the FDA and we got a cream form of it available 00:41:12.940 --> 00:41:22.300 but then he kept making it cheaper by buying things that weren't quite progesterone or 00:41:22.300 --> 00:41:32.860 that weren't quite vitamin E. And that eventually became its own product but I wasn't connected 00:41:32.860 --> 00:41:44.460 with it after I guess 1979 was when I stopped being involved with any real company. 00:41:44.460 --> 00:41:56.820 Then I got friends to gradually develop their own business and seeing what this other person 00:41:56.820 --> 00:42:09.980 had done with the FDA and how it's basically sort of a crony system, I suggested that they 00:42:09.980 --> 00:42:14.700 just sell it to the doctors who were already interested in it. 00:42:14.700 --> 00:42:21.140 And then those doctors would over the years tell their friends and so there was never 00:42:21.140 --> 00:42:32.700 anything said about progesterone by the people who took it over with Kenogen for example. 00:42:32.700 --> 00:42:37.020 Because it was never marketed to the public, just to doctors? 00:42:37.020 --> 00:42:45.500 Yeah and only by a direct personal contact doctor to patient and patients to other doctors 00:42:45.500 --> 00:42:54.620 and so on so it wasn't necessary to ever say anything about its medical effects. 00:42:54.620 --> 00:42:55.820 Oh I see. 00:42:55.820 --> 00:43:02.060 So basically you didn't make any claims about it? 00:43:02.060 --> 00:43:11.100 When I was dealing with the FDA at various times they said that, they looked at my books 00:43:11.100 --> 00:43:18.820 and said those are federal crimes because you have a patent. 00:43:18.820 --> 00:43:25.060 So they didn't prosecute me for writing the books about it but they said that I couldn't 00:43:25.060 --> 00:43:27.940 say anything good about progesterone. 00:43:27.940 --> 00:43:33.860 Oh even in your books you couldn't say anything about it even though it's not attached to 00:43:33.860 --> 00:43:37.300 the actual vial of progesterone? 00:43:37.300 --> 00:43:42.980 I asked them if they would put that in writing just because it seemed so ridiculous and they 00:43:42.980 --> 00:43:43.980 said no. 00:43:43.980 --> 00:43:52.180 Yeah well I guess somebody is sort of flexing their muscles there but they didn't really 00:43:52.180 --> 00:43:54.340 want to throw the punch. 00:43:54.340 --> 00:43:57.220 Yeah that's standard policy. 00:43:57.220 --> 00:44:02.980 They can be very nice people on the telephone and then they talk to the lawyers and act 00:44:02.980 --> 00:44:07.280 like thugs when they put anything in writing. 00:44:07.280 --> 00:44:13.740 So I know when I first started looking for progesterone I was able to find it in places 00:44:13.740 --> 00:44:20.980 like Vitamin Express which is a large nutritional supplement and vitamin online store and I 00:44:20.980 --> 00:44:27.940 think they have real stores as well and they were carrying Dr. Ray Peat's Progest-E. 00:44:27.940 --> 00:44:33.940 So at what point did you start managing to get it into some stores? 00:44:33.940 --> 00:44:44.780 Oh I don't remember when that started but they got that out of John Lee's books and 00:44:44.780 --> 00:44:53.860 so I don't remember when his books made it famous but that's where they got attached 00:44:53.860 --> 00:44:59.100 my name to it which they weren't supposed to do but John Lee described it as Ray Peat's 00:44:59.100 --> 00:45:06.500 Progesterone and so that's what the customers wanted and so these places like Vitamin Express 00:45:06.500 --> 00:45:14.060 attached my name to it even though I hadn't been involved with it for I guess 15 years 00:45:14.060 --> 00:45:15.060 at that time. 00:45:15.060 --> 00:45:20.180 I don't believe there's any claims made on the packaging or even in the literature 00:45:20.180 --> 00:45:25.100 at say Vitamin Express for what it's used for. 00:45:25.100 --> 00:45:28.620 How is it sold under FDA supervision? 00:45:28.620 --> 00:45:39.300 Well I talked to, in 1991 I talked to a man in FDA headquarters in Bethesda who described 00:45:39.300 --> 00:45:47.060 himself as the head of the drug division of the whole thing as opposed to the food and 00:45:47.060 --> 00:45:57.180 cosmetic sections and he said that he had just read an internal magazine historical 00:45:57.180 --> 00:46:06.260 article that in 1941 when they were getting around to enforcing the I think it was the 00:46:06.260 --> 00:46:15.260 1937 Food and Drug Act, they had had a meeting in which they decided they would not take 00:46:15.260 --> 00:46:23.620 authority over natural hormones and he said that I had it right here on my desk, I'll 00:46:23.620 --> 00:46:31.460 send you a copy when I can find it but then months later I got a letter apparently written 00:46:31.460 --> 00:46:39.740 by his lawyers which didn't mention that article at all and under Freedom of Information Act, 00:46:39.740 --> 00:46:49.900 I tried to get a copy of that meeting and after a very long time I got some edited pages 00:46:49.900 --> 00:46:57.940 that cut off right at the point where they were going to say that and so I gave up. 00:46:57.940 --> 00:47:06.260 At one point I explained that the pages weren't complete and whoever I talked to at that point 00:47:06.260 --> 00:47:12.180 said well the meeting was a long time ago and we didn't save the records. 00:47:12.180 --> 00:47:17.940 Wow, well that sounds like classic bureaucratic obfuscation. 00:47:17.940 --> 00:47:28.580 Yeah, they will give you information freely if it's not anything that is important. 00:47:28.580 --> 00:47:31.500 Yeah or anything that disagrees with what they want to do now. 00:47:31.500 --> 00:47:36.940 So it sounds like they want to take over the authority to regulate hormones, is that what's 00:47:36.940 --> 00:47:37.940 going on? 00:47:37.940 --> 00:47:54.100 Well in 2005, in 2002 the Women's Health Initiative and another study done in one of the research 00:47:54.100 --> 00:48:03.740 agencies of the government announced that estrogen causes dementia, heart attacks, strokes, 00:48:03.740 --> 00:48:18.620 deep vein clots, lung embolisms and such and that the Prempro industry, I think their sales 00:48:18.620 --> 00:48:26.180 went from over 2 billion down to a little over 1 billion over a period of about 3 years. 00:48:26.180 --> 00:48:36.940 I think 2005 was the bottom and that really got their attention and besides thinking up 00:48:36.940 --> 00:48:46.340 new ways to market the estrogen products, they realized, they saw that progesterone 00:48:46.340 --> 00:48:55.780 sales had gone from a few, I forget, a ton or something a year up to many tons over just 00:48:55.780 --> 00:49:02.300 a period of a few years as estrogen sales were falling. 00:49:02.300 --> 00:49:16.100 And in 2005, YF petitioned the FDA to prosecute pharmacists who were preparing natural progesterone 00:49:16.100 --> 00:49:30.540 and the response of the FDA was that they aren't designed to initiate enforcement actions 00:49:30.540 --> 00:49:40.500 in response to a public petition, but a little later they did send out letters telling pharmacists 00:49:40.500 --> 00:49:53.060 to stop making any claim for progesterone and also in 2005, the lawsuits against progesterone 00:49:53.060 --> 00:49:55.420 started. 00:49:55.420 --> 00:50:06.980 A women's law group had a $300,000 donation, the source of which they wouldn't reveal, 00:50:06.980 --> 00:50:18.500 to claim that progesterone was causing breast cancer and they sued something like 60 companies 00:50:18.500 --> 00:50:25.220 that were selling topical progesterone and I think most of them just stopped selling 00:50:25.220 --> 00:50:26.220 progesterone. 00:50:26.220 --> 00:50:32.220 Now you're saying this is in response to the World Health Initiative study where they found 00:50:32.220 --> 00:50:37.540 estrogen was causing cancers and other health issues. 00:50:37.540 --> 00:50:44.380 The National Lung, Heart and Blood Institute did another similar study right almost at 00:50:44.380 --> 00:50:45.380 the same time. 00:50:45.380 --> 00:50:46.380 I see. 00:50:46.380 --> 00:50:56.420 And then in 2003, there was a Lancet study, I guess, in the UK which had similar results. 00:50:56.420 --> 00:51:04.420 So they're going after progesterone in response to these studies blaming estrogen for these 00:51:04.420 --> 00:51:07.100 various serious health problems. 00:51:07.100 --> 00:51:08.420 What's the logic there, Ray? 00:51:08.420 --> 00:51:10.380 I don't quite understand. 00:51:10.380 --> 00:51:18.740 They saw the tremendous increase in progesterone sales exactly at the same time their estrogen 00:51:18.740 --> 00:51:28.380 sales were falling and so it was obvious that women were shifting at least their menopause 00:51:28.380 --> 00:51:38.980 treatment from estrogen to progesterone and the timing of that petition and the lawsuits 00:51:38.980 --> 00:51:53.940 and grants to medical schools, a '09 lawsuit revealed that I think they said tens of millions 00:51:53.940 --> 00:52:05.860 of dollars were being spent by WIATH to basically bribe doctors, medical journals and researchers 00:52:05.860 --> 00:52:13.460 to say that estrogen is really the thing they should be using. 00:52:13.460 --> 00:52:21.300 And looking at one of the schools that has published most of the anti-progesterone stuff 00:52:21.300 --> 00:52:33.620 since, basically since that WHI study, University of Southern California had a website and they 00:52:33.620 --> 00:52:44.500 looked up estrogen found I think it was 150 items indicating how good estrogen was and 00:52:44.500 --> 00:52:50.260 looking at progesterone, I couldn't find a single article saying anything good about 00:52:50.260 --> 00:53:01.820 it and I think it was 30 or 40 publications that were investigating the carcinogenic and 00:53:01.820 --> 00:53:08.540 other toxic effects of progesterone and there were several other universities and research 00:53:08.540 --> 00:53:17.980 groups that were getting big financing against progesterone as well as reconsidering the 00:53:17.980 --> 00:53:25.460 World Health Initiative facts against estrogen saying really it wasn't estrogen that was 00:53:25.460 --> 00:53:29.700 causing those cancers. 00:53:29.700 --> 00:53:41.300 It was a combination with a synthetic progestin and so that links into the need to attack 00:53:41.300 --> 00:53:42.300 progesterone. 00:53:42.300 --> 00:53:50.180 I see and they found it's basically a scapegoat by blaming progesterone for the problems of 00:53:50.180 --> 00:53:54.260 estrogen and of synthetic progestins. 00:53:54.260 --> 00:54:00.260 And that shows up in the whole history of how progesterone is labeled by pressure on 00:54:00.260 --> 00:54:01.260 the FDA. 00:54:01.260 --> 00:54:12.220 They found that the synthetic progestins were toxic, caused heart defects in babies and 00:54:12.220 --> 00:54:20.300 so on and so the natural progesterone has to bear the label that it might cause birth 00:54:20.300 --> 00:54:27.700 defects even though it's a completely different substance having completely opposite effects 00:54:27.700 --> 00:54:32.180 it carries the label of these so-called progestins. 00:54:32.180 --> 00:54:37.280 Labeling is a very powerful tool if you want to pin something on somebody and for people 00:54:37.280 --> 00:54:44.820 who think it's silly that they would go to these lengths you should know that just sales 00:54:44.820 --> 00:54:55.640 of Premarin products alone generated $2.04 billion in sales in 2001. 00:54:55.640 --> 00:55:02.820 So these people, the drug companies, were wildly successful with these products and 00:55:02.820 --> 00:55:07.500 the WHI study seriously dented that success. 00:55:07.500 --> 00:55:13.060 Yeah, it lost them billions and billions of dollars. 00:55:13.060 --> 00:55:16.860 Ray we've come to the end of the hour, it's hard to believe, and we still haven't gotten 00:55:16.860 --> 00:55:24.900 to the meat of what's been happening or what did happen with progesterone under California 00:55:24.900 --> 00:55:32.020 law and I do want to cover that so would you be willing to do a part three show to follow 00:55:32.020 --> 00:55:33.020 up? 00:55:33.020 --> 00:55:41.180 Yeah, the article on my website really covers it but I don't know very much about what has 00:55:41.180 --> 00:55:45.140 happened since I wrote that article five years ago. 00:55:45.140 --> 00:55:48.540 Well the thing that concerns me and I think that people should know is that our public 00:55:48.540 --> 00:55:55.340 policy is determined by these regulatory boards and what drugs we have available to ourselves 00:55:55.340 --> 00:56:02.100 is determined by them and I think your case in point about progesterone and the fact that 00:56:02.100 --> 00:56:09.660 you know the details of what happened in California is very illustrative of how our entire basically 00:56:09.660 --> 00:56:14.660 public health policy is going and would be educational for everybody to hear your point 00:56:14.660 --> 00:56:23.340 of view so if we could talk about what you do know I think that would be more than adequate. 00:56:23.340 --> 00:56:27.700 So thanks so much for being on Politics and Science today, we've been talking to Dr. Raymond 00:56:27.700 --> 00:56:33.260 Peat who's a PhD in biology which he received from the University of Oregon and he specializes 00:56:33.260 --> 00:56:38.620 in physiology and endocrinology and is also a science historian and you can find out a 00:56:38.620 --> 00:56:45.620 lot more about Dr. Raymond Peat at raypeat.com where he has many articles to read about this 00:56:45.620 --> 00:56:48.020 subject and many more. 00:56:48.020 --> 00:56:53.260 Alright thank you very much Ray and have a good week if I don't talk to you. 00:56:53.260 --> 00:56:55.580 Okay thanks, you too. 00:56:55.580 --> 00:57:02.860 You've been listening to a conversation with Dr. Raymond Peat made on the 29th of January 00:57:02.860 --> 00:57:10.460 2012, it's a part two discussion about progesterone and hopefully in the coming days part three 00:57:10.460 --> 00:57:15.320 will be recorded and available to listen to. 00:57:15.320 --> 00:57:20.580 If you're interested in hearing the show again or checking out other shows of Politics and 00:57:20.580 --> 00:57:27.240 Science a growing number, slowly growing number is available at the podcast website which 00:57:27.240 --> 00:57:39.580 is at the Radio4All.net website, you put in RadioNumeral4All.net, Radio4All.net and they 00:57:39.580 --> 00:57:45.180 want you there search for Politics and Science. 00:57:45.180 --> 00:57:50.620 I hope you've enjoyed today's broadcast and I hope you will tune in again next week for 00:57:50.620 --> 00:57:52.980 another edition of Politics and Science. 00:57:52.980 --> 00:57:55.840 [static]