WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:16.120 Welcome to your own health and fitness. I'm health integrationist Laina Berman with Jeff 00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:22.440 Hossett, Ph.D. We come to you weekly with a critical, independent voice on the politics 00:00:22.440 --> 00:00:29.920 and practice of health. If you are a woman or man benefiting from the use of bioidentical 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:35.240 progesterone, you have today's guest to thank. I'm grateful to him for starting me on my 00:00:35.240 --> 00:00:42.080 path after hearing him lecture at UCSF about early animal research on helplessness. That's 00:00:42.080 --> 00:00:47.440 when I understood the importance of learning enough to be at the center of my own health 00:00:47.440 --> 00:00:55.200 care and not at the mercy of a long-term treatment plan. That was about 30 years ago, and it's 00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:01.600 formed my work this many years later. This radio program is designed to introduce you 00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:07.580 to critical thinking about science and what promotes the capacity to live fully, embracing 00:01:07.580 --> 00:01:13.040 a complexity of ideas that will challenge the current ecclesiastic convention in health 00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:19.320 care. Challenging ideas is what you'll hear in this next hour with Dr. Raymond Peat. Stay 00:01:19.320 --> 00:01:25.000 tuned as we discuss heart, brain, cancer, and hormones. First, a commentary about this 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:28.160 week's health news by Dr. Jeffrey Hossett. 00:01:28.160 --> 00:01:32.560 Thank you, Lena. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has created 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:38.640 something called the Social and Behavioral Science Team. The team is intended to draw 00:01:38.640 --> 00:01:44.080 upon these fields in order to make government policies more effective and efficient. The 00:01:44.080 --> 00:01:48.200 approach is discussed in a New York Times article by a professor at the University of 00:01:48.200 --> 00:01:53.600 Chicago who has advised the Obama administration and who also advised the villainous David 00:01:53.600 --> 00:01:59.700 Cameron administration in Great Britain. Fox and other right-wing media were sent into 00:01:59.700 --> 00:02:05.680 a fit with fears of Obama brainwashing. It's nothing of the kind, which doesn't mean that 00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:11.560 the team's work is benign. I'll tell you why. The Times article mentions three issues that 00:02:11.560 --> 00:02:17.380 are receiving the team's attention. At three years of age, poor children have a significantly 00:02:17.380 --> 00:02:22.480 smaller vocabulary than well-off children. Much of this is attributed to how caregivers 00:02:22.480 --> 00:02:28.480 and parents speak to and read to their children. Coaching and new technologies are cited that 00:02:28.480 --> 00:02:34.600 could improve the performance of parents and caregivers. A second category concerns domestic 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:40.680 violence and the effectiveness of domestic violence hotlines. Women who call are too 00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:47.080 often left on hold. The call is dropped and help is not received. Improved call handling 00:02:47.080 --> 00:02:52.460 methods and technologies are cited, for example, communicating wait times so that callers are 00:02:52.460 --> 00:02:57.680 kept on the line until they can get the help they need. The final category concerns the 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:02.440 failure of patients to follow a course of treatment, such as taking medications at the 00:03:02.440 --> 00:03:07.840 prescribed times during the day or getting to appointments, changing medication design, 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:15.480 for example, from three times daily to once, and information technologies for mental crutches 00:03:15.480 --> 00:03:21.840 are cited as ways to make compliance easier. Although only the last is called a health 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:27.180 issue, I believe that all three are health issues and serious ones. It's disappointing 00:03:27.180 --> 00:03:32.160 that the solutions offered ignore the obvious political economy of each of these problems. 00:03:32.160 --> 00:03:37.960 Yes, enabling parents to improve children's language skills is desirable, but that's not 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:44.600 the problem. The problem is they're poor. Providing those families with economic security 00:03:44.600 --> 00:03:49.240 will do far more than coaching parents to read to their children. Yes, having better 00:03:49.240 --> 00:03:55.640 communication techniques for victims of domestic violence is a good thing, but eliminating 00:03:55.640 --> 00:04:00.960 the economic insecurity that is the soup from which domestic violence bubbles up is going 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:07.380 to be far more effective than telling a caller how long she has to wait before she can talk 00:04:07.380 --> 00:04:13.440 to someone. And for that matter, why not spend money making sure that no one ever needs to 00:04:13.440 --> 00:04:20.040 be put on hold? Yes, some people have trouble following a doctor's orders. How often is 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:25.640 the problem not three pills versus one, but choosing between the pill and the meal with 00:04:25.640 --> 00:04:31.000 which you're supposed to take it? Oddly, the article opens this section by citing a study 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:37.720 that showed better compliance when the copayment for a treatment was eliminated. After concluding, 00:04:37.720 --> 00:04:43.520 "For some highly effective treatments, there should be no copayment at all." The article 00:04:43.520 --> 00:04:50.120 pats the idea on the head and moves on to redesigning pills. Why not eliminate all copayments 00:04:50.120 --> 00:04:56.920 altogether? Characteristic of the Obama administration's disappointing performance in general, the 00:04:56.920 --> 00:05:03.040 work of the social and behavioral science team will nibble at the edges of serious problems. 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:08.120 The ideas are not necessarily bad ones for what they are. They come from an academic 00:05:08.120 --> 00:05:13.260 literature on what's called nudging, which means making small environmental changes that 00:05:13.260 --> 00:05:18.280 have a significant effect on our health and well-being. An example that sticks in my head 00:05:18.280 --> 00:05:24.960 concerns organ donorship. Both the US and France manage organ donation through their 00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:31.200 driver's license system. Your driver's license designates you as a donor or not. You choose 00:05:31.200 --> 00:05:36.080 when you get your license and can have it changed at any time. But there's a big difference 00:05:36.080 --> 00:05:42.120 between the US and France. The percent of people who are donors in the US is very low, 00:05:42.120 --> 00:05:48.040 while in France it's very high. The difference has nothing to do with altruism, but with 00:05:48.040 --> 00:05:54.240 how the question is asked. In the US, you are asked to opt in, that is, you have to 00:05:54.240 --> 00:06:01.360 check the box to be a donor. In France, you are asked to opt out, that is, you're a donor 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:08.120 unless you check the box. You might think it's too bad that the US has such a bad system, 00:06:08.120 --> 00:06:14.280 one that prevents a noble life-saving act. However, the organ donation system is less 00:06:14.280 --> 00:06:20.320 than a noble undertaking, and there is some evidence that many donations are made before 00:06:20.320 --> 00:06:26.800 the donor has joined the choir invisible, both from the haste of the extraction team 00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:32.640 and the questionable parameters used to decide when someone is dead. What I'm saying is that 00:06:32.640 --> 00:06:39.080 making a policy work better using nudges is a smart thing, but we should make sure we're 00:06:39.080 --> 00:06:45.200 signed up for the policy and understand the de facto effect of the policy. It seems to 00:06:45.200 --> 00:06:50.080 be a de facto policy that children should live in poverty. It seems to be a de facto 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:55.280 policy that women should live in fear of domestic violence. It seems to be a de facto policy 00:06:55.280 --> 00:07:01.080 that medical care should require financial sacrifice. It's those de facto policies that 00:07:01.080 --> 00:07:06.660 the social and behavioral science team is nibbling at in the name of efficiency, producing 00:07:06.660 --> 00:07:13.120 band-aids at best. The transcript of this comment is available at YourOwnHealthAndFitness.org. 00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:15.120 I'm Jeffrey Fawcett. Take care of yourself. 00:07:15.640 --> 00:07:20.360 Jeff Fawcett is a political economist, writer, health educator who produces the show with 00:07:20.360 --> 00:07:26.040 me and is the primary author of our book together, Too Much Medicine, Not Enough Health. Now 00:07:26.040 --> 00:07:31.320 to our topic, which is heart, brain, cancer and hormones, although I'm sure we'll move 00:07:31.320 --> 00:07:36.280 into all sorts of other places as well, time permitting. Our guest, I'm very pleased to 00:07:36.280 --> 00:07:42.880 introduce you to Dr. Raymond Peat, P-E-A-T. He has a PhD in biology from the University 00:07:42.880 --> 00:07:49.200 of Oregon with a specialization in philosophy. He has taught at the University of Oregon 00:07:49.200 --> 00:07:56.200 Urbana College, Montana State University, National College of Naturopathic Medicine, 00:07:56.200 --> 00:08:03.200 Universidad Veracruzana, the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de México and Blake College. He 00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:12.840 also conducts private nutritional counseling. Dr. Peat first started his work with progesterone 00:08:12.840 --> 00:08:19.840 and related hormones in 1968. In papers in Physiology, Physiological, sorry, Chemistry 00:08:19.840 --> 00:08:29.240 and Physics 1971-1972, in his dissertation at the University of Oregon in 1972, he outlined 00:08:29.240 --> 00:08:36.280 his ideas regarding progesterone and the hormones closely related to it as protection of the 00:08:36.280 --> 00:08:42.240 body's structure and energy against the harmful effects of estrogen, yes, I said estrogen, 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:49.240 radiation, stress and lack of oxygen. The key idea that underlies Dr. Peat's work is 00:08:49.240 --> 00:08:54.600 that energy and structure are independent and interdependent, I'm sorry, interdependent, 00:08:54.600 --> 00:08:59.600 not independent at every level. Boy, I made a hash of that. Welcome to you, Raymond. 00:08:59.600 --> 00:09:06.600 Hello. Hi. His commentary got me thinking about how I happen to gravitate in the direction 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:15.920 of those hormones. I was in the 50s, you know, the political situation was totally desperate 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:26.760 but the beginning of democratic movements around 1960 coincided with changes in the 00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:34.760 science and I hadn't considered going into science during the 50s because science was 00:09:34.760 --> 00:09:45.120 so politicized and basically oriented towards militarism and psychiatrists were working 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:55.680 on things such as lobotomies and electroshock and torturing animals to see what happened 00:09:56.120 --> 00:10:03.120 and in 1960 the opposite interest developed in which rats were put into an enriched environment 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:15.240 and they discovered that they became more intelligent and their brains even enlarged 00:10:15.240 --> 00:10:22.920 and that enlargement was passed on to the next generations growing with each generation 00:10:22.960 --> 00:10:29.960 and that got me interested in science and I thought science had some real possibilities 00:10:29.960 --> 00:10:37.960 if it could be integrated with social stimulation, nutrition and so on. So I went to university 00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:47.360 to thinking to study brain biology but I found that the brain biologists were totally doctrinaire 00:10:51.960 --> 00:10:58.960 looking to the government grants for their approval basically of whether they should 00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:06.840 go in a certain direction, a mechanical kind of thinking so I went over to the other end 00:11:06.840 --> 00:11:13.840 reproduction and saw that stress and aging and radiation injury which had been an interest 00:11:16.360 --> 00:11:23.360 of mine in the 1950s because of the bomb tests, I saw that all of these kinds of stress and 00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:30.480 injury created the same situation which essentially was a brain shrinking process. The follow-up 00:11:30.480 --> 00:11:40.080 of the 1960s studies at Berkeley in which freedom and enrichment enlarged the brain, 00:11:42.200 --> 00:11:49.200 they tested different hormones during pregnancy and found that stress shrank the brain and 00:11:49.200 --> 00:11:57.560 that overlapped with some of the torture experiments that had begun in the 50s but by the 1970s 00:11:57.560 --> 00:12:07.720 when I had finished my dissertation and research on the aging effects of progesterone and estrogen, 00:12:09.560 --> 00:12:16.560 body culture had shifted away from that and basically medicine and biology couldn't see 00:12:16.560 --> 00:12:23.680 the connection between enriched growth of the brain and suffering causing shrinkage 00:12:23.680 --> 00:12:30.680 of the brain and inability to help oneself, learned helplessness goes with shrinking of 00:12:30.680 --> 00:12:36.160 the brain. 00:12:36.160 --> 00:12:41.760 Can I say something? I was going to lead you into helplessness because you sent me those 00:12:41.760 --> 00:12:47.360 three abstracts last night which bring up some interesting questions about serotonin 00:12:47.360 --> 00:12:52.840 and things like that but to backtrack a little, the New York Times just published an article 00:12:52.840 --> 00:12:59.840 about a new study about urban animals, rats, mice, bats, who are, their brains are growing, 00:12:59.840 --> 00:13:05.880 they're getting smarter because they're living in urban environments. The explanation is, 00:13:05.880 --> 00:13:11.400 you know, their conclusion is that it's because they're being forced to think harder about 00:13:11.400 --> 00:13:15.880 where to find food and all this stuff. That can't quite be right because in fact... 00:13:15.880 --> 00:13:20.600 It's more like being a wild animal. Wild animals have bigger brains than... 00:13:20.600 --> 00:13:26.160 Well, what I was going to say is that they're reporting that these urban animals are suddenly 00:13:26.160 --> 00:13:30.320 becoming smarter because they have to work so hard to get food and I'm thinking, you 00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:36.960 know, in the 1700s in London they had to get food too. And, you know, they don't mention 00:13:36.960 --> 00:13:42.840 the fact that urban environments will also give them shorter lives. So it was a very 00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:48.000 selective piece of reporting that seemed to indicate that they believe that just putting 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:51.040 people in urban environments, which is the trend these days... 00:13:51.040 --> 00:13:58.040 Well, I imagine the rats in New York are eating better than they have at other times when... 00:13:58.040 --> 00:13:59.240 Could be. 00:13:59.240 --> 00:13:59.840 ...living was harder. 00:13:59.840 --> 00:14:05.480 Yeah, could be. Anyway, let me just say again because we're going to get into a break thing 00:14:05.480 --> 00:14:10.320 here that this is your own health and fitness and I'm on the phone today with Ray Peat, 00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:16.720 P-E-A-T, PhD. And you will find as you listen to the show that he is a very provocative 00:14:16.720 --> 00:14:23.720 and very interesting biology professor and researcher. So, you know, conventional medicine 00:14:25.720 --> 00:14:32.720 as you just said is only interested in prevention as early intervention and doing invasive things 00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:39.560 of various sorts to prevent people from dying of heart disease and cancer. But the rates 00:14:39.560 --> 00:14:44.160 of these diseases, as you point out in your papers and your newsletters, are climbing 00:14:44.160 --> 00:14:47.920 and they tend to be somewhat lower in people in the third world who are not getting treated 00:14:47.920 --> 00:14:53.840 as much, which is ironic. You have a different way of thinking about what makes people vulnerable 00:14:53.840 --> 00:14:58.320 and the helplessness stuff, which really caught my attention, really got my attention and 00:14:58.320 --> 00:15:03.520 got me thinking 30 something years ago when I heard you speak. You just sent some abstracts 00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:09.520 about helplessness. It's very interesting. Everybody's heard me talk about the research, 00:15:09.520 --> 00:15:15.200 which is that they threw rats into vats of water to see whether they would keep swimming 00:15:15.200 --> 00:15:20.400 if they were held long enough for them to give up. If they were held for a while and 00:15:20.400 --> 00:15:23.400 put back in, they'd swim to save their lives for any length of time. If they were held 00:15:23.400 --> 00:15:25.640 beyond that point, they would give up. 00:15:25.640 --> 00:15:32.640 Yeah, but the naive rats typically would swim for three or four days before giving up. But 00:15:32.640 --> 00:15:40.400 if they had been held in someone's fist until they gave up or were shocked and couldn't 00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:46.120 get away from the shock, they would usually drown after six or seven minutes. 00:15:46.120 --> 00:15:48.440 More animal cruelty. 00:15:48.440 --> 00:15:55.440 Yeah. Several of the experimenters observed that when they died, their hearts were in 00:15:55.440 --> 00:16:03.280 a relaxed state. They were actively turned off. That's where this relates very directly 00:16:03.280 --> 00:16:12.600 to what was seen in the very first 1960s experiments with enriched rats. The insight that increased 00:16:16.880 --> 00:16:23.880 along with intelligence was cholinesterase, which destroys acetylcholine, which is thought 00:16:23.880 --> 00:16:33.000 of as the agent of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the relaxed and sleep and 00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:40.760 regeneration associated nerves, where the adrenaline side is associated with fight or 00:16:40.760 --> 00:16:47.760 flight. So the acetylcholine along with the parasympathetic nervous system are given this 00:16:47.760 --> 00:16:57.600 ideology sort of like serotonin. It's all sweet and positive. But the stress can go 00:16:57.600 --> 00:17:07.400 in either direction of excess. Too much adrenaline and cortisol, which tend to break down your 00:17:07.400 --> 00:17:14.400 tissues or too much of the turning off mobilization, too much acetylcholine. And that turns on 00:17:14.400 --> 00:17:28.600 all kinds of inflammatory, cancerous, degenerative processes. 00:17:28.600 --> 00:17:29.960 So that's a shock response? 00:17:29.960 --> 00:17:31.200 That's what... 00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:34.560 Is it sort of a shock response? 00:17:34.560 --> 00:17:41.560 Yeah. When you give up, going into shock and giving up is biologically involves things 00:17:41.560 --> 00:17:51.160 such as too much nitric oxide, too much serotonin, and too much acetylcholine. So it's too much 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:58.640 of the relax and be serene. It goes over the edge into quick death. 00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:03.040 Okay. So let me just stop you there because that's really interesting. I mean, that's 00:18:03.040 --> 00:18:10.040 what I thought I read here. So that the way that too much serotonin works is it literally 00:18:10.040 --> 00:18:16.160 kind of puts you out in a certain way. I mean, it's because I thought acetylcholine was excitatory. 00:18:16.160 --> 00:18:23.160 Yeah. It's excitatory to muscles and it has some inhibiting functions, but it is one of 00:18:26.320 --> 00:18:33.320 the three basic excitatory toxins that is known to kill brain cells. Cysteine, the amino 00:18:33.320 --> 00:18:41.680 acid works with glutamic acid and aspartic acid that got famous with MSG. 00:18:41.680 --> 00:18:43.960 Right. And aspartame. 00:18:43.960 --> 00:18:50.960 Yeah. And acetylcholine has just been given the assumption that it's all a pleasant and 00:18:51.960 --> 00:18:58.960 relaxing, but in fact, it's one of the excitotoxins. It excites nerves and if they don't have enough 00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:10.520 sugar basically and oxygen to support that excitation or if they have too much cortisol 00:19:10.520 --> 00:19:18.800 interfering with their ability to use both glucose and oxygen, then the acetylcholine 00:19:19.480 --> 00:19:24.720 stimulation kills them just as much as the glutamic acid would. 00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:31.720 This has really interesting implications for not only long-term treatment in general, which 00:19:31.720 --> 00:19:37.820 increases helplessness and that's what you were talking about at UCSF and that was really 00:19:37.820 --> 00:19:43.680 interesting because I was in treatment for chemical sensitivity. I was being treated 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:50.680 for what was called back then environmental allergies and stuff. If people are given serotonin 00:19:50.680 --> 00:19:57.680 reuptake medications and their serotonin gets too high, they become manic and they feel 00:19:57.680 --> 00:20:04.680 like they're on speed. So not only are we treating, not us personally, not only is the 00:20:04.680 --> 00:20:09.680 medical institution treating people by overdosing them with serotonin when they're depressed, 00:20:09.680 --> 00:20:14.680 but you're, you know, so in every way, this is dangerous is what I'm trying to say. 00:20:14.680 --> 00:20:21.680 Yeah, and because of this ignoring the dark side of stress, the cholinergic side of stress 00:20:21.680 --> 00:20:31.800 or the giving up side, the medical business has used it the same way they've used the 00:20:34.760 --> 00:20:41.760 serotonin drugs building on a myth to sell drugs that in fact are doing exactly what 00:20:41.760 --> 00:20:51.520 they should be undoing. Progesterone happens to activate the cholinesterase enzyme the 00:20:51.520 --> 00:20:59.760 same way that enriched environment activates it. So it protects the brain against this 00:20:59.800 --> 00:21:06.800 excitotoxic so the brain can become excited and active without killing itself. But if 00:21:06.800 --> 00:21:13.800 you're deficient in progesterone, you run the risk of over exciting the brain and any 00:21:13.800 --> 00:21:23.840 injury and it doesn't have to be a behavioral stress, but just a physical knock on the head 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:32.080 that excites the nerves and if you get enough progesterone soon enough, the brain recovers 00:21:32.080 --> 00:21:39.080 with great ability. Just being low in progesterone, any little stress becomes a dangerous injury. 00:21:39.080 --> 00:21:48.560 And the Steins group in the last 10 years has made great progress in treating traffic 00:21:48.560 --> 00:21:55.760 accident victims of concussion and brain injury with progesterone. 00:21:56.760 --> 00:22:03.760 But it's stuff that was already being demonstrated in the 1960s with the brain expanding effects. 00:22:03.760 --> 00:22:12.520 Marian Diamond, for example, wrote a book showing that stress changes the shape of the 00:22:12.520 --> 00:22:20.200 face and thins the cortex making rats look mean and stupid and actually being stupid 00:22:21.760 --> 00:22:28.760 and prenatal stress. But giving them extra sugar and progesterone to nourish the brain 00:22:28.760 --> 00:22:36.000 prenatally gave them a sort of baby face look like a puppy with a big head and a good disposition 00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:39.040 and higher intelligence. 00:22:39.040 --> 00:22:46.040 Let's roll this back for some perspective for people. John Lee is now long dead, Dr. 00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:54.160 John Lee. For people who have been listening to my show for the length of time it's been 00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:59.280 on which is getting close to 20 years, they will have heard many shows with John Lee when 00:22:59.280 --> 00:23:06.000 he was alive. And John Lee learned about progesterone from you. And I knew about progesterone from 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:10.760 you because I started using it after hearing you speak and getting to know you. So I started 00:23:10.760 --> 00:23:15.960 using progesterone in my 30s and it was very helpful to me. John Lee, who was a physician 00:23:15.960 --> 00:23:22.960 in Mill Valley for 30 years, used it in his practice and never had any case of breast 00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:30.120 cancer or any kind of cancer in his practice. And he also was able to cure infertility problems 00:23:30.120 --> 00:23:37.120 in women by giving them progesterone. And I, in my own practice, have made those suggestions 00:23:37.120 --> 00:23:45.320 to people and have also observed that as women move into menopause, their progesterone drops 00:23:45.320 --> 00:23:50.160 off precipitously and the estrogen is still present, but they can't use the estrogen because 00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:55.240 there's no progesterone. Plus, estrogen being excitatory, they're basically jumping out 00:23:55.240 --> 00:24:01.460 of their skin during that period. So the progesterone is remarkable. But progesterone is also remarkable 00:24:01.460 --> 00:24:08.460 in very, very small doses for men. Right? Right. It works for arthritis and epilepsy 00:24:11.080 --> 00:24:18.080 in men just as well as in women. And it hasn't been used as much for treating cancer. Alexander 00:24:18.080 --> 00:24:26.880 Lipschutz in the 1940s showed that progesterone would stop the cancerization of basically 00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:34.480 every tissue, starting with the uterus, breast, then lungs, kidney, brain. 00:24:34.480 --> 00:24:35.600 And prostate. 00:24:36.120 --> 00:24:43.120 Yeah. But that was picked up by a few medical doctors to treat uterine cancer, breast cancer, 00:24:43.120 --> 00:24:54.280 and kidney cancer. But all of his implications weren't followed up and it just dropped out 00:24:54.280 --> 00:25:02.200 of consciousness about 1955 when more chemicals were coming on the market for treating cancer. 00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:09.640 Yeah, which makes more money. You can't patent a natural substance. So then we have, obviously, 00:25:09.640 --> 00:25:15.320 Provera, which is synthetic progesterone, which really causes cancer fast and doesn't 00:25:15.320 --> 00:25:21.560 do anything protective. The one thing to be mindful of with progesterone in my own experience 00:25:21.560 --> 00:25:28.280 and my experience with at least my clients and in men is that hormones like to be in 00:25:28.280 --> 00:25:33.120 a milieu that's balanced. And the balance should always favor progesterone, but an overdose 00:25:33.120 --> 00:25:38.440 of progesterone is sedative. So it will basically put you out. It will make you sleepy and you 00:25:38.440 --> 00:25:45.240 feel kind of loggy and blue. So one problem, I think, is that sometimes women hear that 00:25:45.240 --> 00:25:52.240 it's good and they slather this stuff on and then they feel awful. So it's good to remember 00:25:52.240 --> 00:25:59.280 that. Well, what do you think a good replacement dose of progesterone is in the two genders? 00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:06.720 Well, for my own experience, I've taken as much as 1,000 milligrams of progesterone. 00:26:06.720 --> 00:26:15.800 And stayed awake? No, I couldn't tell where my hands and feet were. 00:26:15.800 --> 00:26:20.960 You and Oliver Sacks like to do stuff like that. Yeah. 00:26:20.960 --> 00:26:27.960 Taking about 10 milligrams had a very soothing effect, but if I kept it up, I'd be in a 00:26:27.960 --> 00:26:34.040 coma. But if I kept it up for about a week, it was like I was constantly getting out of 00:26:34.040 --> 00:26:39.040 a cold shower. It had a definite antagonistic effect to testosterone. 00:26:39.040 --> 00:26:46.040 Yes, it reduces your test. I think a good dose for men is 5 to 8 milligrams, which is 00:26:46.040 --> 00:26:51.200 a really small dose. And in women, what do you like to see? It's going to vary, obviously. 00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:58.200 It's variable. Some women can take 400 milligrams. I know some women who couldn't feel it at 00:26:58.200 --> 00:27:05.680 all because their estrogen was so high. It has to reach a ratio of 5 or 10 times at least 00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:13.520 higher than estrogen. And if your bloodstream is full of estrogen, you just can't get there. 00:27:13.520 --> 00:27:19.040 You've got to get the estrogen under control. Then 30 to 100 milligrams is fine. 00:27:19.040 --> 00:27:26.040 I rarely see women who can tolerate 100, but I have had clients who are quite obese and 00:27:26.040 --> 00:27:34.400 can't use a transdermal method because progesterone likes to soak into the fat cells and hang 00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:40.040 out slowly, releasing itself. So with those cases, I gave it to them under the tongue, 00:27:40.040 --> 00:27:43.560 which is still transdermal, but it absorbs faster. 00:27:43.560 --> 00:27:50.560 You can just add it to food and swallow it. It absorbs all the way down. 00:27:50.560 --> 00:27:57.560 I would probably depend on the method. I like to put it on my skin. 00:27:57.560 --> 00:28:05.080 Several men have used it transdermally, but putting some olive oil on their skin first 00:28:05.080 --> 00:28:13.400 and then rubbing in hundreds of milligrams. A friend of mine, for example, had a rheumatic 00:28:13.760 --> 00:28:20.760 arthritic knee that looked like a football. It had been going on for many weeks. One application 00:28:20.760 --> 00:28:28.680 that way, 500 milligrams, but oiling from his thigh to his ankle, it cleared up in about 00:28:28.680 --> 00:28:30.280 two hours. 00:28:30.280 --> 00:28:31.040 That's remarkable. 00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:37.720 Thirty years later, he hadn't had a recurrence after that one application. That's an extreme 00:28:37.720 --> 00:28:40.960 case, but several others have done the same thing. 00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:45.360 I remember that, again, we're talking about a single application, because keep in mind 00:28:45.360 --> 00:28:50.700 that a very, very large dose of progesterone in either gender has the potential to knock 00:28:50.700 --> 00:28:56.400 you out, literally to put you out, to put you to sleep, because it is very sedative. 00:28:56.400 --> 00:29:00.840 If you prolonged the application of lots of it, you will feel low-key, and some people 00:29:00.840 --> 00:29:02.240 feel depressed as a result. 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:06.980 You have to monitor. Also, another thing that can happen in women, I discovered this the 00:29:06.980 --> 00:29:12.440 hard way, literally, is that if you use too much progesterone, your breasts will think 00:29:12.440 --> 00:29:17.280 that you're lactating. So you'll end up with these very attractive, very large, buoyant 00:29:17.280 --> 00:29:21.960 breasts that no one can touch because they're so painful. That's one way to tell that you've 00:29:21.960 --> 00:29:23.760 overdone it. 00:29:23.760 --> 00:29:30.760 Your breasts are really... But it's not dangerous. Again, the synthetic, the patented, altered, 00:29:33.800 --> 00:29:38.620 particularly altered versions of this are very, very toxic, birth control pills and 00:29:38.620 --> 00:29:43.500 Provera and things like that, but the natural forms are extremely benign. And like I said, 00:29:43.500 --> 00:29:46.980 the worst thing that will happen is you'll feel blue or tired or you'll go to sleep. 00:29:46.980 --> 00:29:53.140 I need to take a very brief musical break. When we come back, we'll continue this discussion 00:29:53.140 --> 00:29:58.180 about hormones and progesterone and hopefully talk about heart and brain and cancer. Raymond 00:29:58.180 --> 00:30:03.820 Peat is my guest today. Hang in and come back for more. You're going to really enjoy this 00:30:03.820 --> 00:30:10.820 interview. So stay tuned. I'll be right back. 00:30:10.820 --> 00:30:17.820 [music] 00:30:17.820 --> 00:30:24.820 [music] 00:30:24.820 --> 00:30:31.820 [music] 00:30:31.820 --> 00:30:38.820 [music] 00:30:39.820 --> 00:30:46.820 [music] 00:30:47.820 --> 00:30:54.820 [music] 00:30:54.820 --> 00:31:03.820 [music] 00:31:03.820 --> 00:31:12.820 [music] 00:31:14.820 --> 00:31:21.820 [music] 00:31:21.820 --> 00:31:29.820 [music] 00:31:29.820 --> 00:31:35.820 Welcome back. This is Your Own Health and Fitness. I'm Lena Berman. Visit our website, 00:31:35.820 --> 00:31:41.820 yourownhealthandfitness.org, all spelled out, for access to over 500, it's actually more 00:31:41.820 --> 00:31:45.820 like 600 now, archive shows with our library card feature. Find out about our practice 00:31:45.820 --> 00:31:50.520 for free stream of this week's show, our book, Too Much Medicine, Not Enough Health, and 00:31:50.520 --> 00:31:55.820 lots more at yourownhealthandfitness.org. You can email us if you'd like to reach us. 00:31:55.820 --> 00:32:05.820 It's admin, A-D-M-I-N, at yourownhealthandfitness.org. Ray, you have a website with articles and 00:32:05.820 --> 00:32:07.820 all sorts of stuff? 00:32:07.820 --> 00:32:09.820 Yes, raypeat.com. 00:32:09.820 --> 00:32:25.820 I love that. Let me just... Okay. So, the music choice today was because both Dr. Peata 00:32:25.820 --> 00:32:35.820 and I have a fondness for Dvorak's, the pieces that he did that were folkloric. So, did I 00:32:35.820 --> 00:32:36.820 get it right? 00:32:36.820 --> 00:32:38.820 I don't know. 00:32:38.820 --> 00:32:42.820 Was it folkloric enough for you? 00:32:42.820 --> 00:32:45.820 It was fine, yeah. 00:32:45.820 --> 00:32:55.820 Okay. All right. Now, since we're talking about progesterone, it really does beg to 00:32:55.820 --> 00:33:01.820 go ahead and talk about both heart disease and cancer, because in both cases, you know, 00:33:01.820 --> 00:33:08.820 there's been press about how... There are studies that show estrogen to be heart protective. 00:33:08.820 --> 00:33:14.820 So, I'm not going to... Estrogen is mostly excitatory. If there's an imbalance in the 00:33:14.820 --> 00:33:19.820 body, which most women have, and men too, because men pick up estrogen as they age, 00:33:19.820 --> 00:33:24.820 particularly if they get heavy, it's going to contest and lower testosterone in both 00:33:24.820 --> 00:33:30.820 genders, which is heart protective and cancer protective, I think. So, I'm going to just 00:33:30.820 --> 00:33:32.820 let you kind of go. 00:33:32.820 --> 00:33:40.820 Albert St. Georgi was who got me interested in the effect of estrogen and progesterone 00:33:40.820 --> 00:33:50.820 on the heart. And he showed in rabbit hearts that progesterone basically strengthens the 00:33:50.820 --> 00:33:58.820 heartbeat as the heart has more demand put on it. Progesterone lets it respond to the 00:33:58.820 --> 00:34:08.820 demand, where too much estrogen keeps it in the basically small stroke, but having to 00:34:08.820 --> 00:34:15.820 speed up faster and faster because it can't make a bigger stroke. And in some ways, that's 00:34:15.820 --> 00:34:23.820 analogous to what happens in other tissues. Progesterone facilitates the ability to gather 00:34:23.820 --> 00:34:34.820 resources by relaxing. Its basic effect is to prevent excess stimulation and response 00:34:34.820 --> 00:34:44.820 until it has the resources to respond fully and correctly. So, in the heart, it quiets 00:34:44.820 --> 00:34:54.820 the heart while increasing the amount of blood it can pump in each stroke. And in the brain, 00:34:54.820 --> 00:35:04.820 it does the same thing where too much stimulation fatigues cells and can kill them. Progesterone 00:35:04.820 --> 00:35:15.820 activates a whole system that will tend to calm the brain. The uterus is another dimension 00:35:15.820 --> 00:35:23.820 like the heart. It has to function according to whether it can relax or contract. To give 00:35:23.820 --> 00:35:30.820 birth, it has to contract strongly, but during pregnancy, it definitely doesn't want to contract. 00:35:30.820 --> 00:35:37.820 Progesterone has to be dominant all through right up until the time of birth. And one 00:35:37.820 --> 00:35:43.820 of the ways that progesterone is doing that is the same way it does in the brain to keep 00:35:43.820 --> 00:35:58.820 the brain able to be stimulated but grow. It allows the uterus to destroy acetylcholine 00:35:58.820 --> 00:36:08.820 even when it's receiving irritation and stimulation. It activates enzymes that prevent inappropriate 00:36:08.820 --> 00:36:16.820 stimulation. So, it lets the uterus keep growing and resisting that unnecessary stimulation. 00:36:16.820 --> 00:36:25.820 And in an overdose in the brain, that's what you see as the sedation and basically anesthesia. 00:36:25.820 --> 00:36:34.820 You can create a complete anesthesia with adequate progesterone, but with the injected 00:36:34.820 --> 00:36:40.820 kind, for example, the type that Katharina Dalton had such great results with all through 00:36:40.820 --> 00:36:51.820 the 40s and 50s, she was using an oil-alcohol injectable form in which the alcohol counteracted 00:36:51.820 --> 00:36:57.820 the effects of progesterone to a great extent, but still she was getting terrific results. 00:36:57.820 --> 00:37:06.820 But when that form has been injected, for example, for treating uterine cancer, they 00:37:06.820 --> 00:37:12.820 could inject around a thousand milligrams into a person and they weren't sedated at 00:37:12.820 --> 00:37:22.820 all, showing that the infected form was very poorly assimilated into the whole body. So, 00:37:22.820 --> 00:37:33.820 the body has to deliver progesterone in the appropriate way to keep things relaxed. 00:37:33.820 --> 00:37:41.820 So in terms of what sorts of mechanisms are occurring when cells lose individuation and 00:37:41.820 --> 00:37:47.820 start to be recruited as cancer cells, how does progesterone help? Well, I think all 00:37:47.820 --> 00:37:52.820 hormones, to some extent, protect the cells from losing. In other words, if you look at 00:37:52.820 --> 00:37:56.820 a cancer cell from the breast, you can't tell where it came from, it's just a cancer cell, 00:37:56.820 --> 00:37:59.820 it doesn't look like a breast cell anymore. 00:37:59.820 --> 00:38:09.820 Yeah, cells react to stress either by growing too fast or by dying the same way as the whole 00:38:09.820 --> 00:38:20.820 organism, either goes into a fight or flight state or gives up. And the cancer is basically 00:38:20.820 --> 00:38:26.820 the fight or flight state that cells try to get out of the bad situation, multiplying 00:38:26.820 --> 00:38:37.820 faster and moving, getting away from whatever is causing the stress. And progesterone keeps 00:38:37.820 --> 00:38:45.820 cells from experiencing that kind of stress in the first place. But it's one of the factors 00:38:45.820 --> 00:38:55.820 that can, if a cell has started down a stem cell pathway, basically, progesterone helps 00:38:55.820 --> 00:39:01.820 to guide it in the right direction. 00:39:01.820 --> 00:39:12.820 One pathway, when a stem cell invades the heart, for example, if it finds a slightly 00:39:12.820 --> 00:39:23.820 injured heart, it can mature into a functioning muscle cell. But once the heart is under great 00:39:23.820 --> 00:39:30.820 stress, not enough progesterone to keep it quiet periodically, the stem cells moving 00:39:30.820 --> 00:39:37.820 into the heart are either killed or, in the case of the heart, they become a fiber-producing 00:39:37.820 --> 00:39:45.820 cell, produce collagen and make the heart progressively harder. And that's one of the 00:39:45.820 --> 00:39:55.820 things that happens in just about every cancer. The cells which don't die, a few of them become 00:39:55.820 --> 00:40:06.820 multiplying cancer cells, others become fiber-producing cells in an attempt to wall off whatever the 00:40:06.820 --> 00:40:17.820 irritant is. For example, the polycyclic hydrocarbons, the famous carcinogens from smoke, when these 00:40:17.820 --> 00:40:27.820 are painted on an animal's skin, it usually produces cancer. But in the process, if the 00:40:27.820 --> 00:40:34.820 animal is able to resist the cancerization, it will produce a walled-off, collagenous 00:40:34.820 --> 00:40:43.820 lump that protects the cells and the animal by closing in the irritant. 00:40:43.820 --> 00:40:55.820 So, the defensive process of a hardening heart or a thickening, stiffening tumor, it's the 00:40:55.820 --> 00:40:58.820 same defense reaction, just in a different context. 00:40:58.820 --> 00:41:04.820 Let me try saying that in another way to see, tell me if I'm saying it right, just to sort 00:41:04.820 --> 00:41:11.820 of unpack it for listeners. I think what you're saying is that when the heart, either from 00:41:11.820 --> 00:41:16.820 stress or from the stress of something in the environment, because radiation of all 00:41:16.820 --> 00:41:25.820 forms, including microwave, wireless radiation, which is non-ionizing, ionizing radiation, 00:41:25.820 --> 00:41:31.820 pollution, toxins, all of this is stress, in really horrible food and toxins that are 00:41:31.820 --> 00:41:38.820 ingested, and your social, psychological, it's all environmental. So, environmental 00:41:38.820 --> 00:41:47.820 irritants can cause the body to create, to encapsulate damaged tissue, to go to an area 00:41:47.820 --> 00:41:52.820 of inflammation, of chronic inflammation, and encapsulate it, and that's a tumor. And 00:41:52.820 --> 00:41:59.820 this can happen, this fibrolytic action can happen both in terms of just tissues in the 00:41:59.820 --> 00:42:05.820 body trying to encapsulate an irritant and forming a cancer, or in the heart as it becomes 00:42:05.820 --> 00:42:12.820 more fibrolytic and more stiff and almost scarred from a number of other kinds of assaults. 00:42:12.820 --> 00:42:20.820 Yeah, and every stressed or irritated tissue is constantly open to receiving cells coming 00:42:20.820 --> 00:42:30.820 in from the bone marrow or nearby tissues. These fairly undifferentiated stem-like cells 00:42:30.820 --> 00:42:38.820 are constantly available. Anytime a cell or a tissue needs help, these cells tend to come 00:42:38.820 --> 00:42:46.820 in and fill in whatever is needed. But as a person, usually it starts over the age of 00:42:46.820 --> 00:42:57.820 50, as the whole system starts getting congested with all kinds of stresses and poisons and 00:42:57.820 --> 00:43:07.820 failure to eliminate toxins. Many of these areas accumulate half walled off, half controlled. 00:43:07.820 --> 00:43:15.820 And a person who has had cancer removed, for example, there have been studies following 00:43:15.820 --> 00:43:21.820 up on populations of these people who had no signs of cancer, but a large proportion 00:43:21.820 --> 00:43:29.820 of them had constantly circulating cells identifiable as cancer cells going around in their blood 00:43:29.820 --> 00:43:36.820 but not causing any harm because their body was just able to use them as repair cells 00:43:36.820 --> 00:43:44.820 maybe or just close them up in little collagen package and forget about them. 00:43:44.820 --> 00:43:52.820 Now, the next part of this, which is very important, is that I've always felt that if 00:43:52.820 --> 00:43:59.820 possible, you don't have surgery with a cancer if you can avoid it. I mean, unless you've 00:43:59.820 --> 00:44:04.820 got this huge thing hanging, you know, unless it's really interfering, it's certainly better 00:44:04.820 --> 00:44:13.820 not to do things like the stereostatic, you know, needle, so-called needle biopsy. This 00:44:13.820 --> 00:44:18.820 is really a gun with a thing that they shoot into. But these disturb the cells and I've 00:44:18.820 --> 00:44:22.820 never understood what the mechanism was and I read it in your newsletter. Why is it bad 00:44:22.820 --> 00:44:24.820 to cut into cancers? 00:44:24.820 --> 00:44:37.820 It's just one more stress. It calls on the body to mobilize the healing process and if 00:44:37.820 --> 00:44:47.820 the body has a lot of it, if it's young and healthy, it can stand being cut up and recover 00:44:47.820 --> 00:44:55.820 perfectly. But the sicker the individual is, the more likely the stress is to either reactivate 00:44:55.820 --> 00:45:01.820 the cancer in the same place or activate a completely new cancer somewhere else. And 00:45:01.820 --> 00:45:12.820 it doesn't have to be just surgery, but chemical poisoning and radiation all activate the carcinogenic 00:45:12.820 --> 00:45:21.820 process either in the place that's being treated or elsewhere. So it's just a matter of the 00:45:21.820 --> 00:45:25.820 total stress and the body's ability to respond to it. 00:45:25.820 --> 00:45:29.820 Yeah, what you say in your newsletter is it is now clear that normal cells are attracted 00:45:29.820 --> 00:45:38.820 to an irradiated area and you're quoting Klopp et al. in 2007 and Kidd et al. in 2009 that 00:45:38.820 --> 00:45:46.820 it's a recognition of a "bystander effect" in which radiation for other... Anyway, the 00:45:46.820 --> 00:45:52.820 point is that it causes injury and the cell injuries cause nearby cells with signals to 00:45:52.820 --> 00:45:56.820 go to the injured... Anyway, just what you said. So, I mean, my mouth kind of hung open 00:45:56.820 --> 00:46:00.820 when I read this because it seemed so obvious to me and yet you said it very succinctly. 00:46:00.820 --> 00:46:06.820 Yeah, the people like... I think her name is Carmen Mothersill. 00:46:06.820 --> 00:46:08.820 Yeah, you quote her here. 00:46:08.820 --> 00:46:20.820 They've demonstrated that cells send out SOS signals, including serotonin, to recruit their 00:46:20.820 --> 00:46:29.820 neighbors to come and help repair the damage. And at a certain point, instead of repairing 00:46:29.820 --> 00:46:36.820 the damage, the local situation is so bad that they pervert the recruits and let them 00:46:36.820 --> 00:46:38.820 cause more damage. 00:46:38.820 --> 00:46:43.820 Well, you know, again, I should mention this is your own Health and Fitness. I'm Melina 00:46:43.820 --> 00:46:52.820 Berman on the phone with Dr. Ray or Raymond Peat, P-E-A-T. He's a biologist. He's a researcher. 00:46:52.820 --> 00:46:57.820 He has been a professor for many years. He has a newsletter and articles that you... 00:46:57.820 --> 00:47:01.820 Well, the newsletter is a prescription, I think, a subscription, should be a prescription, 00:47:01.820 --> 00:47:07.820 subscription. Is that through your website? It's raypeat.net? 00:47:07.820 --> 00:47:09.820 No, dot com. 00:47:09.820 --> 00:47:16.820 It is dot com, raypeat.com. That's too easy. Raypeat.com, but articles are there and whatnot. 00:47:16.820 --> 00:47:18.820 And those are, I believe, paintings that you did? 00:47:18.820 --> 00:47:19.820 Yeah. 00:47:19.820 --> 00:47:22.820 Remarkable, really. Lovely. 00:47:22.820 --> 00:47:29.820 I was going to be a painter until I thought I saw a possibility to work in biology. 00:47:29.820 --> 00:47:38.820 Yeah, kind of me too. Although I haven't painted in years. So people are terrified of cancer 00:47:38.820 --> 00:47:43.820 and heart disease, terrified. And when they have, they find something or there's a diagnosis, 00:47:43.820 --> 00:47:49.820 there's this train that starts coming at them. And it's very hard for people to resist. I 00:47:49.820 --> 00:47:53.820 have had some very interesting clients who did resist. I had a woman come to see me who 00:47:53.820 --> 00:48:00.820 had a remarkably large breast tumor that she was just living with and doing all these alternative 00:48:00.820 --> 00:48:06.820 things with. And it was just there and she's still around. So, you know, I don't want to 00:48:06.820 --> 00:48:11.820 advocate on the air that people should not treat things because I would get sued for 00:48:11.820 --> 00:48:16.820 doing that. So I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that people should be very considerate 00:48:16.820 --> 00:48:22.820 about when they go and get screened for things, because if they find even something tiny that 00:48:22.820 --> 00:48:28.820 your body might mop up on its own, the doctors are going to push you toward having surgery, 00:48:28.820 --> 00:48:32.820 which may make the situation worse, or they may give you radiation, which they're still 00:48:32.820 --> 00:48:36.820 doing, which definitely causes more cancer. John Goff's five-year research that shows 00:48:36.820 --> 00:48:43.820 all medical interventions with radiation cause other cancers over time, especially if you're 00:48:43.820 --> 00:48:45.820 young. Anyway, go ahead. 00:48:45.820 --> 00:48:53.820 About 40 years ago, three different doctors diagnosed, told me that I should have a biopsy 00:48:53.820 --> 00:49:00.820 on three different things. And since I had already been studying what doctors do and 00:49:00.820 --> 00:49:11.820 know about cancer, I ignored them and increased my thyroid and used a little nutritional addition 00:49:11.820 --> 00:49:14.820 like extra vitamin A and folic acid. 00:49:14.820 --> 00:49:15.820 Methylation. 00:49:15.820 --> 00:49:16.820 Methylation. 00:49:16.820 --> 00:49:21.820 I put some progesterone and DHEA on the area. 00:49:21.820 --> 00:49:22.820 Vitamin D. 00:49:22.820 --> 00:49:28.820 And so far, that's 40 years ago, and none of them have persisted. 00:49:28.820 --> 00:49:34.820 Okay, but I have known very smart people who did all kinds of really good things and held 00:49:34.820 --> 00:49:38.820 things off, and then things metastasized and weird stuff happened, which might come under 00:49:38.820 --> 00:49:43.820 the category of you've got to die of something. But we also do know about things like young 00:49:43.820 --> 00:49:50.820 people getting a melanoma and ignoring it, letting it go, and then it metastasizes. 00:49:50.820 --> 00:49:57.820 I don't think you should ignore things. You should try to figure out what signals are 00:49:57.820 --> 00:50:06.820 occurring in your body. The things that produce learned helplessness, I think, are sometimes 00:50:06.820 --> 00:50:16.820 after a certain age at least, there are signals from inside the body telling your nervous 00:50:16.820 --> 00:50:25.820 system to do something. And if your resources don't tell you what to do, then you can get 00:50:25.820 --> 00:50:36.820 pushed by symptoms into a more helpless state in which the medical signals to control you 00:50:36.820 --> 00:50:43.820 and make you more helpless, they just add to the internal stresses. So it's important 00:50:43.820 --> 00:50:49.820 to try to do something, but to figure out what the best thing to do is. 00:50:49.820 --> 00:50:54.820 I would be remiss if I didn't get you to talk a little bit. You've talked a lot in all of 00:50:54.820 --> 00:50:59.820 your literature about radiation. And I think when we talked, you confessed to also being 00:50:59.820 --> 00:51:06.820 very concerned about the proliferation of microwave wireless radiation everywhere. I 00:51:06.820 --> 00:51:12.820 have interviewed lots of people all over the globe about this stuff and read a lot of research. 00:51:12.820 --> 00:51:16.820 And part of the mechanisms here is that it causes, as you have always been concerned 00:51:16.820 --> 00:51:21.820 about, a shock and stress reaction in the body. It causes heat shock proteins to go 00:51:21.820 --> 00:51:27.820 up. It causes granulation in the mast cells. This is Olli Johansson in Sweden. So people 00:51:27.820 --> 00:51:34.820 get eczema, they get skin cancers in places where the sun doesn't shine. And people are 00:51:34.820 --> 00:51:40.820 getting a lot of heart symptoms, lots and lots of heart symptoms because of the hyperarousal 00:51:40.820 --> 00:51:45.820 this causes. So if you can spend a little time talking about, because I am getting, 00:51:45.820 --> 00:51:49.820 I'd like to hear you talk a little more about the heart and heart symptoms and stomach, 00:51:49.820 --> 00:51:51.820 your intestinal symptoms are big. 00:51:51.820 --> 00:51:58.820 Yeah, the intestine really is where people should be paying more attention because any 00:51:58.820 --> 00:52:05.820 kind of stress or shock reduces circulation to your intestine. And that makes it more 00:52:05.820 --> 00:52:13.820 permeable or leaky. And aspirin, incidentally, is now being studied as possibly the best 00:52:13.820 --> 00:52:20.820 defense against a leaky intestine, even though there's a tremendous amount of Tylenol type 00:52:20.820 --> 00:52:26.820 propaganda saying don't use aspirin, it makes your intestine leak. But in fact, it prevents 00:52:26.820 --> 00:52:32.820 endotoxin and bacterial movement from your intestine into your bloodstream. 00:52:32.820 --> 00:52:40.820 I'm sorry to interrupt you. You must be saying that if people use aspirin, to use real, honest 00:52:40.820 --> 00:52:44.820 to God, just aspirin, and to take it with food. 00:52:44.820 --> 00:52:50.820 Yeah, to dissolve it, preferably in water and take it with a good amount of food so 00:52:50.820 --> 00:52:54.820 it doesn't form a pocket of concentrated acid. 00:52:54.820 --> 00:52:59.820 Right, exactly. Yeah, it's a cool, bitter, basically. 00:52:59.820 --> 00:53:10.820 Yeah, and what happens in following up the initial phase of shock where you have released 00:53:10.820 --> 00:53:20.820 too much histamine, acetylcholine, and serotonin are the main chemical factors, but the leaky 00:53:20.820 --> 00:53:30.820 intestine allows endotoxin from the bacteria to be absorbed systemically, and that activates 00:53:30.820 --> 00:53:32.820 things like nitric oxide. 00:53:32.820 --> 00:53:37.820 Yes, and do you know about Marty Paul's work? He wrote a book called The No-Oh-No Cycle. 00:53:37.820 --> 00:53:38.820 Oh, no. 00:53:38.820 --> 00:53:43.820 Yeah, we should get him to send you a copy. Anyway, what he's saying is that the cycle 00:53:43.820 --> 00:53:46.820 gets, it just goes crazy and it starts overproducing. 00:53:46.820 --> 00:53:55.820 Yeah, the nitric oxide in some organs like the brain makes iron more toxic. The endotoxin 00:53:55.820 --> 00:54:06.820 makes you absorb too much iron if it's present in your food, and the series endotoxin, iron, 00:54:06.820 --> 00:54:14.820 nitric oxide has one further step. Nitric oxide activates heme oxygenase, which produces 00:54:14.820 --> 00:54:25.820 carbon monoxide and releases free iron from the heme complex, which is kept as under control. 00:54:25.820 --> 00:54:33.820 So iron participates, once it gets loose, participates in a series of activation that 00:54:33.820 --> 00:54:43.820 increases the local production of free iron, and that has been traced to dementia, Parkinson's 00:54:43.820 --> 00:54:55.820 disease, heart disease, diabetes, organ failure of a great variety. And, for example, just 00:54:55.820 --> 00:55:04.820 studying the stressed brain, the traumatized brain, for example, blocking nitric oxide 00:55:04.820 --> 00:55:10.820 can, nitric oxide synthase can have tremendously protective effects. 00:55:10.820 --> 00:55:14.820 Yes, and we neglected, but you did mention it, that one of the things on the list here 00:55:14.820 --> 00:55:18.820 was to talk about iron and its toxic effects in the brain and its contribution to Alzheimer's. 00:55:18.820 --> 00:55:20.820 So, yeah. 00:55:20.820 --> 00:55:26.820 The ratio of copper to iron is one of the characteristics. It decreases in relation 00:55:26.820 --> 00:55:33.820 to the iron content of the brain in Alzheimer's, and copper is used in the superoxide dismutase 00:55:33.820 --> 00:55:40.820 that is an antioxidant, and in the respiratory enzyme that produces the energy which is lacking 00:55:40.820 --> 00:55:43.820 in all of the stress conditions. 00:55:43.820 --> 00:55:48.820 And one of the important issues here is that I learned long ago that when women were really 00:55:48.820 --> 00:55:55.820 high, or men, in estrogen, estradiol, they tended to bioaccumulate copper and be low 00:55:55.820 --> 00:56:02.820 in zinc. So I found myself suggesting people avoid copper. Now I understand that most people 00:56:02.820 --> 00:56:07.820 are bioaccumulating iron as well because of the diets, unless they're strict vegetarians. 00:56:07.820 --> 00:56:16.820 In a comparison of female animals to male animals, especially the pregnant female, nine 00:56:16.820 --> 00:56:21.820 times as much iron from a given dose was absorbed by the female under the influence of high 00:56:21.820 --> 00:56:22.820 estrogen. 00:56:22.820 --> 00:56:27.820 That's right, and even though it increases your cerula protein, anyway, but the point 00:56:27.820 --> 00:56:32.820 is that iron status is very important. It's something that should be checked, and it's 00:56:32.820 --> 00:56:38.820 very important to take copper because of its relationship to iron, and if your iron is 00:56:38.820 --> 00:56:43.820 high, there are lots of tricks. We actually did a show on iron overload with Richard Cunyon 00:56:43.820 --> 00:56:48.820 in our library, but we're running down on time. It's clear that we're going to have 00:56:48.820 --> 00:56:53.820 to have you on again and again and again. 00:56:53.820 --> 00:57:03.820 So, if people want to read your articles, if they want to subscribe to your newsletter, 00:57:03.820 --> 00:57:13.820 they can go to raypeat.com. Do you want to say any last thing about wireless? 00:57:13.820 --> 00:57:23.820 Oh, well, one of my recent newsletters mentioned that working at a sewing machine in the factory 00:57:23.820 --> 00:57:31.820 for years had enough electromagnetic field just from the sewing machine in order to increase 00:57:31.820 --> 00:57:34.820 the risk of dementia. 00:57:34.820 --> 00:57:38.820 So, just imagine if you're using a wireless router in your house and a cell phone and 00:57:38.820 --> 00:57:45.820 all the rest of it, because that's radio frequency versus, but they're all part of the spectrum. 00:57:45.820 --> 00:57:53.820 Okay. What can I tell you? You're a wonderful interview, Raymond. I really appreciate you 00:57:53.820 --> 00:57:59.820 taking the time to go over this stuff with us. I hope that if people have questions, 00:57:59.820 --> 00:58:04.820 they will go to your website, raypeat.com, and read some of your articles, and we will 00:58:04.820 --> 00:58:06.820 plan on having you back soon. 00:58:06.820 --> 00:58:08.820 Okay. Any time. 00:58:08.820 --> 00:58:12.820 Thank you so much, Ray Peat. Thank you again. 00:58:12.820 --> 00:58:13.820 Okay. Bye. 00:58:13.820 --> 00:58:22.820 I want to thank you all for listening. I'm Laina Berman. Visit our website, yourownhealthandfitness.org, 00:58:22.820 --> 00:58:28.820 for access to our over 600 archive shows with our library card feature. Find out about our 00:58:28.820 --> 00:58:32.820 practice, a free stream of this week's show, if you want to go back and listen. Our book 00:58:32.820 --> 00:58:37.820 and lots more at yourownhealthandfitness.org. If you'd like to reach us, please do email 00:58:37.820 --> 00:58:48.820 us. The email address for us is admin@yourownhealthandfitness.org. Your Own Health and Fitness is produced by Laina 00:58:48.820 --> 00:58:52.820 Berman and Dr. Jeffrey Fawcett. Remember, being informed not only protects your health, 00:58:52.820 --> 00:58:53.820 it protects your freedom. 00:58:53.820 --> 00:58:59.820 [Music]