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Broadcasting from the beautiful Hill Country in Texas, this is Juan, Radionetwork.com. Well, a very pleasant good morning to you. Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed Dr. Massey. He's always fun and likewise always fun and informative. Here's our next guest. He's here on the third Monday of the month at 1130 Central. It's Dr. Ray Peat. He's been a nutritional counselor a very long time, a PhD from the University of Oregon, specialization in physiology, and he wrote his dissertation in '72. He outlined his ideas on progesterone and the hormones
closely related to it. His main thesis is that energy and structure are independent at every level. Energy and structure are independent at every level. That's a mouthful, Dr. Peat. Good morning. Good morning. Interdependent. Interdependent. So tell us what that means. I think St. George was one of the first people to point that out with his studies of the rabbit heart, for example. There's a thing called the staircase effect where if you accelerate the stimulation of the heart, each beat gets bigger, so a tracing of it rises like a stair step. He
explains that the structure that governs the contraction builds up sort of the way if your heart doesn't get a lot of blood to fill it very quickly, then it has a very weak beat and fails to make that staircase effect as it accelerates. That's typical of shock. In the normal heart, if you need more blood, your heart will accelerate, but besides accelerating, each pump gets bigger because more blood is returning quickly to fill it. In the healthy normal state, progesterone
is essential for being able to build up that structure that allows it to beat harder rather than just faster. So the anti-shock effect on your heart is a characteristic of progesterone. It's very similar to the effects of DHEA and digitalis or digitoxin, the cardiac glycoside. In a way, progesterone is our natural cardiac glycoside that allows us to build the structure that performs the strong beat. Under the influence of estrogen, like shock, the heart can't build the structure. So when you stimulate it faster, it just has a weaker beat, if anything, as it goes
faster. So it's possibly even a negative staircase under the influence of estrogen, which is preventing the building of structure in the tissue under the influence of energy expense. So that would be more like anxiety, would be a faster heart rate, but it's weaker. Yeah, anxiety borders on the shock state to some degree, like panic. Is that then estrogenic? High estrogen causes that? It's a whole range of physiological things that are analogous to estrogen. Lactic acid is the characteristic thing in panic attacks. The estrogen anti-staircase action or pro-shock action
involves the substitution of lactic acid for carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide helps you to relax and restore your structures that guarantee performance. That's why breathing into a bag or not over-breathing helps with the anxiety or panic attacks. Yeah. And if you practice something like swimming as far as you can underwater, that gradually builds up the effect of retaining more carbon dioxide and having less anxiety. So anxiety is tied, though, with, it could be, as you say, a multitude of factors to be the
causative for anxiety or fast heart rate or something. Thinking that motions could all be tied in together with even high estrogen, dietary-wise? Oh, most often it is. Yeah, low thyroid, high estrogen. Low thyroid, high estrogen. Wow. So that's why when people are manipulating their little thyroid beds, they can feel it. If they got too much or too little. Wow. Interesting. We were talking about it before. You've actually experimented with getting carbon dioxide and putting it in your bathtub and laying in there? A big plastic bag will do. Really?
But if you don't have a lot of breeze in your bathroom, then you can plug the drains with tape Right. and fill it up and carefully get in. You can test the level of carbon dioxide by having a candle that you, or just striking a match so you can see exactly where the surface of the carbon dioxide is. Isn't it? So you can actually take a candle, move it down the tub, and as soon as the candle goes out, you know that's where the carbon dioxide level is. Yeah. And for more than 100 years,
people have described the effect. For example, one source said sitting in a tub of CO2 for an hour or so is like a day at the beach for feeling rejuvenated. Is that right? And have you done this before? Oh yeah. Do you do it often? It's not very convenient to sit around in a plastic bag, but sometimes we watch TV while sitting in these giant bags. So you could actually, you've made a bag so you put the carbon dioxide in a bag?
You empty a big bag and then put the CO2. Put a hose in the bag and fill it up so there's no air there, all pure CO2, and then carefully get in the bag without tipping the top and spilling the gas. So why doesn't the CO2 must then be heavy? And so that's why it stays where you put it. Yeah, much heavier than air. Much heavier than air. Have you done it in the bathtub as well? And it's just more user-friendly to do it with a bag rather than a bathtub?
Yeah, because if there's a breeze, you lose the CO2 fairly quickly. Any kind of a breeze, wow. So it's not that heavy. I mean, heavy enough to withstand a breeze, right? Yeah, like if there's a crack in the window, a little movement of air will cause turbulence and takes about 10 minutes to empty a tub. Whoa, so you really have to be careful. And where do you get this CO2? Where do you get it? A welder shop. A tank that is possible to move is very heavy, but a tank about two feet tall
holds 10 kilograms of it, and you can get several dozen bags full out of that. Wow, so if you just get a two foot tall CO2, you can get quite a few bags full in that. Yeah, it's something you can, if you're fairly strong, you can carry it from your car to the house. Sure. Yeah. How much does it weigh about? Any idea? The metal tank probably weighs 30 pounds in itself, and so with 10 kilos of gas in it. 50 pounds, right? Yeah. And the alternative would be the huge things that you need a
hand cart to move. Yeah, you could get a dolly and get it from your car. Wow, that's pretty interesting. So this bag, where do you get that? Is that like just a big trash bag? That'll do. Sometimes you can find one that reaches all the way to your neck. Huh. But armpits is good enough. Oh, so if you just get as high as you can. Have you ever seen somebody actually makes these bags that you could purchase? I don't know who sells them, but
we got some, for example, from a florist supply wholesaler that specializes in plastic wraps and such, but I'm not sure of where a reliable source is. I'll be. I bet you somebody could find one of them. I bet somebody makes one of those, you think? I mean, they probably. Oh, sure. There are people working on fairly elaborate things like a suit you can put on. Really? Wow, that's fascinating. A couple years ago, we talked to a fellow, and he kind of talked
me into getting an oxygen tank and filling up a big, huge plastic thing, right? And then you put on a mask, and then you breathe oxygen while you exercise. But I kind of got rid of it pretty soon. I sent it back. It didn't feel right. That's not a good idea, right? Yeah, it can hurt your lungs to breathe high concentration oxygen. Wow. And a few hospitals make a carbon dioxide to oxygen mixture called carbogen that was proven to be the proper way to resuscitate people and to
maintain people with breathing problems. But in 1955, a British government committee declared that when you're suffocating, adding carbon dioxide is the last thing you want to do. But in fact, it's essential for delivering oxygen to the tissues to have a certain amount of CO2 present. And so pure oxygen is just about the worst thing you can do it. Wow. First harms the lungs, and then the brain. So when they put people on oxygen at the hospital, that's other than the very best thing for them. It's kind of the rule for something with a stroke.
The reasoning is that like hyperventilating, or is your CO2. And in effect, you're making the stroke patient hyperventilate by giving them oxygen without CO2. And that shrinks constricts the brain and blood vessels and reduces circulation to the brain. Not good. That is not at all good for the brain. But the reasoning is that injuries to the brain causes edema that causes increased pressure with problems. So they want to shrink the delivery of blood to the brain. CO2 just isn't scientifically based. But it's like 99% of the hospitals in the
US still refuse to use carbogen. Carbogen. So 99% of the hospitals, they don't they refuse to use it or don't know about it. One of the other. Yeah, up until 1955. It was used everywhere, practically. Wow. Then this ignorant declaration of the British Medical Committee spread around the world and hospitals swallowed it without evidence. Now there's a couple of groups in the US showing that carbogen protects the lungs, heals the lungs, protects the brain, all the organs safely delivers oxygen to them, reduces edema. CO2, one of its
obvious effects is to reduce edema. If, for example, you injure your hand or your lower leg, you can put it in a small plastic bag of CO2. And in about an hour, you get pain relief and the elimination of the swelling and edema. Fascinating. So up until '55, carbogen was routinely used when they went to the hospital and then this British medical thing came out and then they just changed it. They just stopped doing it. Right. Wow. Man. There were several changes around 1964. Something that hospitals had been doing right
seemed illogical and someone said, "No, that's going to hurt the patient rather than healing them," as had been observed. For example, brain injury causes brain swelling. It was found that quite a lot of extra urea added to their system, either orally or in the bloodstream, resolved the brain edema. Someone conceptualized that as an osmotic effect. And so they counted the number of molecules in a gram of urea and were previously isotonic salt solution, normal for the body fluids, had been used with added urea. So by number,
it seemed to be hyperosmotic. And so people doing their arithmetic, but not their science, thought that using distilled water with the proper concentration of urea was proper, not to use saline solution. And since urea is not an osmotically active molecule the way salt is, what it amounted to was giving an intravenous solution of distilled water, and that breaks your red blood cells and interrupts the delivery of oxygen. So after one or a few people miscalculated and didn't use the facts about urea, that convinced people that urea was going to
break down of red blood cells and that stopped its use for brain swelling. But it could be used if it was used properly. Yeah, and it was used for heart failure patients, for example, and kept a failing heart working for years and years, just taking it orally because of the anti-edema effect. Could that be an argument why some people advocate urine therapy, drinking some of your own pee in the morning? Yeah, I'm sure that's part of it. Part of the misconception of what urea is, is the concept of uremic poisoning for your kidneys
are failing because they call it uremic. They think urea might be the cause of uremia. In fact, it's counterbalancing the toxic effect of intestinal toxins formed from breaking down food, especially breaking down serotonin. It's intestinal toxins that accumulate in uremia and poison the kidneys. But urea is an anti-edema, anti-inflammatory substance. How could that idea of urine therapy, just from your perspective, there's a lot of people that do it. I've drunk pretty every morning for 20 years. I don't know why. Why does it work? The kidneys aren't putting out waste material?
Oh, sure they do. But they use healthy cows sometimes for the source of the urea. I think that's better than having a sick person drink their urine because a sick person is going to have the toxins from the intestine. Because when you're sick, you're trying to discharge toxins. Yeah. The liver detoxifies them and it leaves through the kidneys. As you probably know, all of these porta-potties around the world, they sell this urine. Really? Oh, yeah. They sell it. I think it's Sandoz, S-A-N-D-O-Z. They sell it. The Swiss company,
they sell it. They clean it up and they put it in most face creams, right? Most face creams and cosmetics for women and all that. Guys, too. All has urine here, doesn't it? The bulk of urea on the market is chemically produced. Is it? Wow. Just ammonia and carbon dioxide combined to make urea. That's one of the functions of CO2 in the body is to combine with the toxic ammonia and eliminate it as a safe urea. It's eliminated as a safe urea. Wow. That's what carbon dioxide does. Yeah. Detoxifies the ammonia.
And then the CO2 can be retained with things like butyco-breathing and just not over-breathing, right? And retaining more CO2, right? Wow. I'm going to call around with some welding shops and they'll sell you or rent you the whole tank and everything. You just go pick it up? Yep. You take the empty one in and they give you a full one for, it costs about $20. Oh, you probably have to buy the first one, buy the first tank? Yeah. That's a good idea to spend $60 or whatever for having a tank of your own.
A 10 kilo you would get 10 kilo? Yeah. I think they often charge about $2 a kilogram. I think. Somebody wrote in and said, "Would a cadaver bag work for a CO2 bag?" I think so. Experimenters at high altitudes had, I think it was like a cadaver bag that zipped up and made a fairly tight seal that they would put them in the bag with oxygen at the high altitude and the oxygen they thought was curing their altitude sickness. But being in the closed bag,
they quickly filled up the bag with CO2 as they consumed oxygen. So someone just put some CO2 in a bag and found that it cured mountain sickness. After that, lots of people going skiing at a high altitude would take a little hand-sized tank of CO2 with them and take a whiff when they started feeling altitude sick. Rather than oxygen? Rather than oxygen. It's the main therapeutic thing that prevents lung edema. Isn't that fascinating? That's amazing. The whole hospital thing is just to me, just wow.
Is it any wonder that once you go to the hospital, so many people just have a hard time getting out of there? Is it any wonder? Yeah. They're ruled by formulas that they don't understand how to apply in many cases. It's really pretty unusual when you find someone in the hospital who reasons properly rather than by rote formula. Here's an email from George. Patrick talks about in the Molecular Hydrogen Institute, they use hydrogen that he breathes for stroke patients. Does Dr. Peat know why that would be
the case? It's anti-inflammatory. That's its number one thing, right? Anti-inflammatory. So a stroke is an inflammation process? Yeah. Immediately when there's some injury to the brain, edema starts setting in and spreading the influence from the injured cells to healthy cells. It can spread clot formation as well as inflammation. It's important to catch it quickly after a stroke using things like CO2 and aspirin and progesterone. Back to this progesterone idea, that's why you created a little product. I think it's Progest-Ease and you just recommend a little dab of that every day, correct?
Yeah. When a person is under some kind of stress like aging or if they've been unable to control their own estrogen levels, a combination of thyroid and progesterone will tend to correct the estrogen excess. The estrogen excess. Could that be similar to what this stroke... What's that? How do you say it? Strophanthesis that Dr. Cowan talks about? It's this climbing ivy out of Brazil for heart. Do you know the function of that? What do they call that? Something that's a plant, strophanthin. Yeah, strophanthin, right. It's similar to digitalis and progesterone in their effect.
Similar kind of an idea, right? Here's an email. What are the details of carbon dioxide therapy or is the best place to buy or rent a CO2 tank? Does it take more than a regular bathtub plug to keep the CO2 from leaking? We covered a lot of that. You say you would just tape up the drain, right? Yeah. If you think you're going to stay in the tub for a long time and want to really save it, I will usually put a layer of tin foil over the drains
and then tape that down. It won't go at all through the tin foil, but it will slowly go through tape. Kind of sneaky. I hear you saying that the bag idea could be easier to work with. Yeah, a lot easier. We just got to find a bag that may be up to your neck or something and just make sure it doesn't leak out. What keeps it from leaking out? Just tape? Keeping the opening of the bag higher than the bulk of the bag. Oh, so it works the same way.
It's just not going to run out of there, right? Yeah. Some people put a bungee cord around the top of the bag to tighten it. How long do you sit in there? An hour, typically. Then you just let it go after that, huh? Yeah. When you are doing it just on one arm, for example, in 30 minutes to an hour, that arm becomes pink. It will keep its pinkness relative to the rest of your body for a few hours because all of the tissue becomes so saturated with CO2 that it
remains for quite a while after you stop putting it in through the skin. But is this more than just an hour symptomatic thing, feel good and benefit? Is this CO2 going deep in there and helping long-term? Yeah. There's fairly recent research in Japan using it to treat cancer of the mouth or places where you can deliver the gas. A very old book written, I think, in 1905 gives a history up until then of using it to treat various diseases, including cancer, or they can apply it,
for example, to the uterus or to the breast or any place that's accessible to flooding it with CO2. For almost 200 years, people have been recognizing that natural carbon dioxide springs, for example, are therapeutic. Priestley, the oxygen discoverer, was interested in the therapeutic effects of these naturally carbonated springs, and so he was working on carbonating water as a therapy. That was very influential. It actually started the practice of carbonating water. First it was for medicine, but then people liked the flavor of it, and so they kept doing it for
just a pleasant drink. So in general, is carbonated water pretty good to drink? Oh, yeah. If you take it gradually so you don't burp it all out, it gets into your cells and acidifies a stressed cell. Under stress, the inside of a cell becomes relatively alkaline, where it should be slightly acidic, and replenishing the CO2 restores the natural acidity of all of your cells. You can do that with baking soda. Same thing. You have to do it in stages. One person treated his cancer for years with,
I think, two ounces of baking soda during the day, divided up in three or four tablespoons in a glass of water during the day. In your body, the absorbed baking soda, bicarbonate, sodium is quickly eliminated by the kidneys, and that lets the bicarbonate equilibrate with the cells. If they're under stress, it turns into CO2 and acidifies the cell, for example, the cancer cell or the stressed cell. So that is why... Who was a fellow, Dr. Peat? Simoncini in Italy, and he was using baking soda to go in and go after cancer cells, right?
Yeah, it actually works. He was helping lots of people, but he was strangely saying that cancer is just a fungus. That didn't go over well with this establishment. So they watched him closely. He had lots of people he was treating, and when one of them died of their cancer, he was arrested and imprisoned. If you did that with every person treating cancer, you'd have hundreds of American doctors imprisoned. They put him in prison, Dr. Peat? Yep. Yeah, we interviewed him years ago. It's still on our website somewhere, the show,
if you'd like to look it up. Simoncini, and we called him in Italy. Interesting fellow. Do you know, is he still in prison, or did he ever get out? No, he was sentenced to five years, but I don't know how much he actually served. Then a second patient died, and they took away his license. Probably be a good interview now, right? See what's going on. Yeah, I'll check him out, see if I can find him again. Dr. Peat, stay right there. Ray Peat, Patrick Timpone, One Radio. Boy, what a strange world we're living in now.
How many people must die of cancer, and they blame it. If you'd like to get Dr. Peat's newsletter, it's a great one. Not very expensive at all. It's very inexpensive. Comes out every other month, and it's raypeatsnewsletter, raypeats, plural, newsletter, at gmail.com, [email protected]. We have this little guy on sale right now, and Ray Peat's on the 800 line. So just use email if you'd like to give him a question. [email protected]. One of the very first things I do in the morning is come sit at my meditation chair,
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because you're getting too much calcium, even if it is bioavailable. Now that I've been inhaling the hydrogen, I find that I get my major nutrition, which is the hydrogen, calorie free. So I was able to lose a few extra pounds. The cells won't regenerate. You won't have stem cells and that sort of thing. If you have got enough hydrogen, your cells have a certain life and they're shutting down if they're not getting their hydrogen. They're literally dehydrating. That's where the word comes from. Dehydrate, go figure. Dehydration, which is dehydrogen. Exactly. Whoa. Maybe you'd
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on both sides of the periodic table, but you got to be careful with it. And that's why George's machines are very safe. And I'm very confident that I use it. And he has all the different safety features. If you get a lower high, it just turns off. So it's pretty cool. Hydrogen Browns Gas. Promo code 1RADIO for 20% off right now on the front page of oneradionetwork.com. Broadcasting from the beautiful Hill Country in Texas, this is oneradionetwork.com. Well, we have the honor of talking with Dr. Ray Peat every third Wednesday. Dr. Peat,
thank you so much for coming on the show. We deeply appreciate your time. Thank you. Okay. I wanted to mention that the newsletter has changed to quarterly instead of bimonthly. So now there are four issues instead of six per year. But the subscription can still be for 12 issues. Now it takes three years to get 12 issues. And what is the subscription cost? Pretty close to what it was. I'm not sure because we have just changed, but it's something like $30 probably for 12 issues. That's great. And that's correct, right? [email protected].
Yeah, somebody sent me this. Our Lin who takes our notes, 2018, he received a Simoncini, a five-year jail sentence, culpable manslaughter of cancer patient. Wow. And then in 18, that's what, got two, oh, and his assistant radiologist, Romberto Gandini, got two years in jail, both were found guilty of manslaughter. That's really something. Wow. So let's see if I get my mouse to work here, Doc. Let's see if we can go to some emails. Okay. Oh, I wanted to mention
this and get your take on it. Adam Bergstrom, who's a big fan of yours, and he kind of got turned on to orange juice from you long ago, and he's on our show regularly. He lives out in California. He said that the orange juice thing just kind of cures his edema. It just went away. What's up with that? Yeah, orange juice is one of the most available and pleasant to use sources of the flavonoids. Coffee and purple grape juice are other good sources, but for quantity use, orange
juice contains a great variety of the anti-inflammatory flavonoids. So the flavonoids, but, and coffee actually has it as well. Yeah, quercetin is a major flavonoid, but there's several minor ones in coffee. Well, that's really, really something. And orange juice tastes great. I mean, holy cow. Yeah. Did you ever hear of Johanna Brandt's Grape Cure? She wrote a little book about six years ago, and the purple grapes are an extremely good source of the flavonoids. People actually did, didn't they call it the Grape Cure, Cure Doc, or something like that?
Yeah, but some of the institutionalized places charged horrible amounts and gave them watered down grape juice. They essentially were putting them on a semi-fast and collecting their money. Yeah, I guess now these days you can get organic grape juice. Even Welch's has an organic variety these days. Yeah, yeah. Orange juice for daily use is, for drinking a quantity of it, it's more pleasant for a lot of people. Sure. Here's an email for Dr. Peat from Phil. He's in London. Dr. Peat, you recommended button mushrooms on one of Patrick's shows.
What are your thoughts on other mushrooms like shiitake or oyster mushrooms? Oh, oysters are my favorite. Oyster mushrooms, they're good, aren't they? Yeah. Shiitakes? I don't think I've enjoyed them. I think I tried them once, but if they taste good and they're well cooked, I think they're all going to have some benefits. And so most mushrooms, if they're well cooked, are beneficial for us. Most mushrooms. Can you please ask Dr. Peat this? White blood cell count in the blood could be the cause of, and she'd like to increase
the white blood cell count. It's usually a sign of stress or infection. Mm-hmm. But in an extreme depleted condition, I suppose you can actually have too few white blood cells. But general nutrition and anti-inflammatory conditions tend to normalize either high or low white blood cells. Here's an email from Lily. She has what's been diagnosed as dysmenorrhea. D-Y-S-M-E-N-O-R-R-H-E. She's 45 and she vomits, have the shake sweats, and severe menstrual cramping. And this has been going on for a long time. No gynecologist understands it.
They all say I produce too much progesterone. Is this true cause of it? They put me on a pill when I was 25. I was on the pill for over 10 years. I've been off the pill since 18. But every month I eat Advil like it's candy. I want to have normal menstrual periods and get off the ibuprofen. Any ideas Dr. Peat has? Wow. I think actually aspirin is in the long run safer than ibuprofen, although anything anti-inflammatory helps. But hypothyroidism is the main cause for dysmenorrhea, leading to
high estrogen and relatively low progesterone and prolonged bleeding. I've known women who have been hemorrhaging for three weeks or longer, very heavy bleeding, who were able to turn off the menorrhea just with frequent doses of T3 triiodothyronine, the quickly active thyroid. And it's fairly well recognized that it goes with hyperlactin, high estrogen, and low thyroid and low progesterone. So literally you're suggesting she look at her thyroid carefully, make sure her TSH is like 0.5 or below. Yeah, and checking body temperature and pulse rate.
And for a woman her age, she's 45, a good pulse rate would be in the neighborhood of? It should be in the 70s when waking up and then during normal daily activity in the 80s. Different for guys? What was that? Different for men? Oh, not very different, but women have smaller hearts generally and so slightly faster pulse. Dr. Peat, do you know of any bad effects from taking cascara sagrada? What are the benefits? Thank you. If it hasn't been properly aged, it causes overstimulation, irritation, cramping,
considerable pain. But when it's very well aged and is darker than chocolate, approaching the dark rose coffee color, then it doesn't have that stimulating cramping effect. What it does is reduce inflammation and increase the flow of water through the intestine to soften the stool or prevent over dehydration of the stool. And the FDA several years ago took it off the market as a laxative. At that time, the pharmaceutical industry was investigating it, discovering that its main active ingredient, Imodin, was very promising as a cancer treatment. But the FDA used the excuse
of calling it a possible carcinogen to take it off the market because they wanted to promote a better equivalent. Except it turned out that the maximum safe use period was only five or six months. At the end of that time, they said, "Then you have to find some other laxative." But they had taken cascara off the market, so the real alternative didn't exist. It turned out that very quickly they took this new laxative, a proprietary chemical, off the market because it
was causing death of the colon. Death of the colon? Yeah. It reduced the blood supply to the colon by increasing serotonin. The serotonin was causing increased spastic type stimulation. That would force the bowel to move for a while, but then it was creating chronic irritation and deprivation of oxygen to the intestine, so they had to have their colons removed. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Now, but so I suspect then if one is a good researcher, they could find a cascara sergrata that is well-aged. You just have to figure it, find it,
right? Yeah. The whole ploy calling it a potential carcinogen really was motivated by the urge to sell something that turned out to be really deadly. Wow. Wow. Now, something like cascara sergrata or some people use, well, let's just do that one. Would one be at risk to become totally dependent on that or would it just be used now and then or? Yeah. Well, using it to prevent all of the constipation symptoms and reduce inflammation, then you can figure out what is wrong with the foods that you're eating that are causing the inflammation and constipation.
I see. So you use it as a medicine and not something you take every day. Yeah. Although people have taken it every day for decades. Really? And the first argument was that there might be something wrong with it because chronic laxative users had brown pigmented colons. But doing the study properly, it turns out that constipation and irritation cause the pigmented colon and proper use of laxatives would be reducing the irritation and formation of the brown pigment. But that was just part of basically the pharmaceutical FDA
campaign against natural substances. So in your opinion, after all these years, what would be like the number one cause behind constipation, which is kind of like an epidemic in our culture? Slow digestion makes every food a potential. So it starts in the stomach if you're not really digesting the food, right? And hypothyroidism is the main cause of sluggish digestion. Low thyroid will cause the acid to get messed up and you don't digest well? Yeah. Slow down of all of the digestive secretions and of peristalsis. And so simply
adding a bulk fiber to your diet, if it isn't something that can be converted in the gas by bacteria, if it's a really indigestible fiber, that will stimulate the peristalsis, that will eliminate estrogen and other toxic irritants, and that will tend to increase thyroid function. Interesting. Because estrogen is a blocker of thyroid. And what would be your favorite kind of to take a supplemental fiber if you wanted to take one for our listeners? For many years, I was recommending a daily carrot, especially grated
with a little bit of vinegar and salt and olive oil. But that easily becomes very tiresome. And so I looked around and found that bamboo shoots are very, you can put cheese sauce on them and make them very early tasty dish. And mushrooms, well cooked mushrooms are another functional bulk provider with a slight antibiotic action. How do you find bamboo shoots? Are they raw, like in produce or health Japanese stores? Yeah, in some Asian stores, they will be
available raw, but they have to be cooked. Sure. And you can buy them in huge cans at a good price. I've seen a can that in our Asian store sells for $2.50, I think 20 ounces or something like that. Some places want to charge $25 for it. But it should be a very cheap food. And you would just eat some of it out of the can and then put it in the fridge and then eat the rest of it? Yeah, it's good, I think to boil them a little in case the can was leaching
chemicals. What's that one kind of fiber that so many people take? And the name's escaping me right now. Pure cellulose. There was a product sold for weight loss and diet control. It was called AIDS. Which was basically really fairly pure cellulose. But with the appearance of the disease AIDS, had to either change their name or went out of business. What's your opinion of you can get organic psyllium husks? What's that? They work for most people. But you have to be watchful if you really have an inflamed intestine.
Some people find that the mass of the husk instead of holding water, the husk itself or the gel becomes dehydrated and turns into a roping material that makes the problem worse. So you got to be careful with that one. But you like the cascara sagrada because it holds the water. It causes the intestine to secrete more water. Here's an email from Rachel for Ray Peat on this 21 February day as we are live here. [email protected]. We are going to have
Mike Stone on tomorrow. Mike Stone was recommended by Dr. Cowan. Mike Stone, his website is amazing and the work that he's done with the work in virology and showing what this whole germ thing is about. So we're excited to have him on. That'll be tomorrow at 10 o'clock. I recently started taking Progest-E, writes Rachel. Could you please ask Dr. Peat if it is anabolic for females or if I should be concerned about losing muscle because of its effects on testosterone. Also, is it true that if the dose is too low, it reverts to becoming estrogen
at a higher dose it's initially required? No, in humans, it doesn't turn to estrogen. It does not? No, its product can be glucocorticoids like cortisol or aldosterone. But since its effect is antagonistic to cortisol and to aldosterone, you can't increase your corticoid effect by eating more progesterone infected. It's a partial antidote to those and to the stress in general. It antagonizes estrogen's ability to increase your cortisol and aldosterone. I see. Okay. It's anti-catabolic is the effect the studies on animals have found. It is neither pro-catabolic nor pro-anabolic. Thyroid itself is muscle anabolic, but progesterone,
its action is mainly by preventing excessive action of estrogen and cortisol. And both of those are antagonistic to good muscle development. But the progesterone, if I hear you correctly, is neutral as far as muscles? Yeah, as far as the animal studies can find. Sure. Our second question is, does T3 increase histamine levels? No, it's basically protective against all kinds of inflammation. I see. Okay. All kinds. For example, overactive bladder involves estrogen and mast cells producing histamine. And combining aspirin and/or antihistamine with thyroid supplement will take care of
the overactive bladder. Again, a little aspirin and what? Say it again? A little aspirin and what for overactive bladder? Oh, antihistamines and thyroid. Antihistamines. Can you get a real good antihistamine over the counter, natural that you could use for that to get the bladder not so overactive? Pretty much the FDA has taken care of all of the most useful natural drugs, getting them off the market. Oh, great. So bad imitations can come on from the pharmaceutical industry. You had mentioned a pharmaceutical one show, an antihistamine that you like. Do you recall?
Oh, acyproheptadine. Yeah, cyproheptadine. That's pretty safe? Yeah. I've known people who went up to 28 milligrams a day for the normal doses, two to four, and took that for a few weeks and were cured from their, for example, dysmenorrhea and hemorrhaging and didn't need to keep taking it. But I suppose there's some extremely high dose that will, for example, turn off your urinating ability. So kids who have taken a gigantic overdose of cyproheptadine sometimes have to be catheterized to get the urine out. Wow. So is the cyproheptadine and aspirin totally symptomatic for an overactive bladder
or will it help the body to get back normal? It gradually helps the body to, it takes quite a while to eliminate the mast cells that were attracted by the estrogen. But if you cure the symptoms for a while, your thyroid and progesterone will tend to prevent their activation. So that's the initial cause of the overactive bladder, which many people have, is too high of estrogen. Yeah, leading to a high concentration of mast cells. Mast cells. Wow. And too high estrogen, if I keep following this black hole, I'll keep
going down this rabbit hole, too high estrogen, the main cause? Yeah, it attracts mast cells, progesterone inhibits them. And what causes the estrogen to be too high generally? Hypothyroidism. Back to thyroid again. Yeah. And the polyunsaturated fatty acids have intriguing estrogen effects in themselves and also block thyroid very specifically. And so the PUFA in at least two different ways increases the action of estrogen while decreasing thyroid. Can you tell what the PUFA, there must be some place online to tell the PUFA content of various oils? Oh yeah, you can just look up fatty acid
composition of different foods. I see. And does any PUFA not just stay away from it or low? Yeah, since the food oil industry tried to convert the population to eating stuff that they've been selling for making paint because of the petroleum innovation of making paint more cheaply, the seed oil industry dug up defunct science of George Brewer whose claim that the PUFA are essential fatty acids. They revived that even after it had been many times disproved 20 years after it was disproved.
They convinced the public that PUFA is an essential nutrient. And contrary to all of the evidence since the 1930s, they've convinced the public that PUFA is a nutrient rather than a hormone disruptor. And it just isn't. It's a hormone disruptor. And again, so if I'm clear, any PUFA you just stay away from, even low, low on some oils? Low? Yeah, small amounts you can handle unless you're overeating in general. I see. And when you overeat in general, PUFA tends to be the part that gets stored to gradually
increase your body PUFA content. I see. Hi Patrick, when you asked Dr. Peat what is the cure for, let me spell it for you, URTICARIA angiodema, I am struggling with it for a couple of months now for the second time in the past six months. That's another thing involving concentrated mast cells and activating them. For example, low blood sugar will activate them, many irritants, but things that cause a drop in blood sugar will activate the mast cells that secrete histamine and serotonin and cause edema.
Again, these mast cells do their thing, right? Yeah, so antihistamines are the first treatment. Could you please ask Dr. Peat if he has any suggestions for eliminating cataracts that does not involve surgery? No, basically preventing them involves things like keeping your PUFA intake low, but once they're formed, their disappearance is very slow. A few people I've known, just by changing their way of living, who had beginning cataracts when they were in their 60s, by their 70s, had no detectable cataracts. So very good living conditions can very slowly cause them
to fade away. I see. Rhonda wants to know, she says, "I've been reading that taking a bath in 3% hydrogen peroxide and magnesium flakes is good pain relief remedy." Can you ask Dr. Peat if he knows if this would be a reasonable thing to do? Oh, it's very bad for your skin. Bad for their skin. Stay very long in contact with that concentration of hydrogen peroxide. I see. Not good. Can Dr. Peat please discuss the pros and cons of using DMSO and also MMS, chlorine dioxide?
They both have potential problems. The DMSO got famous when it was used for treating arthritis pain, and it can activate the respiratory process and help to eliminate water from tissues. Too much of the sulfur compounds can very easily lead to disturbance of your thyroid function. This is from Emily, "I've been taking the sulfur that Patrick promotes and I like it, but now I'm seven months pregnant. Can I still keep taking sulfur? This is just pure sulfur." What do you think, Doc? Hundreds of milliliters of sulfur. That's different, right?
Yeah, it's a very safe thing to take. Just a pinch of it, two or three hundred milligrams orally will help to suppress the candida and other fungus development without causing any noticeable change in the person. But the sulfur that she has, can you comment if this is okay if she's pregnant? I told her I didn't know and I would ask you. She emailed me. That very small amount, if you have a candida problem, it will clear out the candida and then doesn't have to be used continuously.
But it's very good and safe for getting rid of the fungus. But if she wants to take it on going like a lot of people do for detoxification, that could be an issue when you're pregnant, could it? It hasn't. There's no evidence I know of that it's harmful, but I think it's best to minimize all kinds of treatments when you're pregnant. Yeah, to be careful. Here's something. I have constant mucus, writes an emailer, one side of my throat. If I push my finger into my throat near the
clavicle and swallow it helps. I drink very little milk and it makes it worse. Even though it's from a local grass-fed cow, I eat a little cheese, eat a pretty clean diet. Do you have any ideas on how to clear this clogging feeling of the mucus? Sometimes, fallen thyroid gland causes all kinds of swallowing discomfort and difficulty. So I would have a doctor check for any swelling of the gland and any elevation of TSH. MK wants to know if Dr. Peat could talk about premenstrual dysmorphic disorder.
Apparently, it can happen to younger women in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. I have a normal reaction to progesterone. Was it dysphoric or dysmorphic? Dysmorphic. The usual thing is dysphoric, meaning basically premenstrual syndrome. But the dysmorphic thing that some women have is misperceiving the amount of fat in their belly and feeling that their body shape isn't right. So they feel they have to diet even when it isn't objectively abnormal. Dr. Peat wants to know the difference between pig thyroid and the prescription kind.
Most of the prescription kind has been historically from pigs. But the Armour Company used beef and/or pork thyroid. They were both identical in function. But the standard thing that American medicine has moved to is to say, "Don't take anything with T3 in it. Take only synthetic thyroxine." That works fine for most young men, but for very few women, it's appropriate because the estrogen blocks the ability to convert T4 to the active form of the hormone T3. So the thyroid that the conventional MD prescribes is okay? No, it's likely to be thyroxine.
And so what kind could you get prescribed? What would you ask for? The last of the fairly reliable desiccated thyroids is Armour. By chance, you might come across one of the natural desiccated products that is well standardized, but it's a fairly random thing now. Wow. And there's only one well-balanced product that I know of, CINO+, which was a synthetic imitation of the old Armour product. There are others containing both T3 and T4, but the balance is best in CINO+.
And the CINO+ has a good product that has a little more T4 in relation to the T3. And the CINO+? Mm-hmm. And you like a little more T4 than the T3? Yeah, a good ratio is three or four to one, T4 to T3. And the CINO+, would that be the closest thing to a natural kind of piggy desiccated? Yeah, it's the closest thing to the traditional Armour. And the CINO+, if I recall, the only place you can get that, can you get that in the United States or do we have to go to Mexico?
Yeah, Mexican drugstores such as Farmacias Del Nino at .mx. Farmacia Del Nino, you can get CINO+. And would that be the same kind of dosage as the other, similar? The pills come in a potency that's a little more than two grains equivalent of Armour. So it's good to start with one-eighth of a tablet, which is a quarter grain. And just kind of work your way up, huh? Mm-hmm. Interesting. And can you get too much progesterone and what symptoms would you have? I'm supplementing with progesterone in a couple of different forms, progest-E and a prescribed form.
In vitamin E, it actually gets into your bloodstream through the digestive system. And too much of it will put you to sleep, and so it shouldn't be combined with opiates, for example. Too much of the progest-E? Yeah, because it's a sedative. The normal rise during pregnancy should become the anesthetic for childbirth. When progesterone is high enough in relation to estrogen, delivery is without pain. They used to call it the chemical midwife. Interesting. Can you use progest-E for sleep, insomnia?
Oh, yes. I knew one woman who used a half a teaspoon of the progest-E every night to go to sleep. Is that safe? I don't recommend it because it might make you so drunk you stumble on the way to the bathroom or something. Really, it gets you that kind of loopy, huh? But you could experiment with it and maybe help sleep? Yeah. I accidentally overdosed, probably got close to a thousand milligrams of progesterone. I was in a margarita by accident. I first noticed that I couldn't tell where my hands
were, and then I couldn't tell where my feet were unless I looked at them. That's great. Somebody wants to know about the long-term effects of ivermectin. It's safe if you follow the traditional anti-worm doses of just a few milligrams on one or two days periodically, but it's definitely not something to take every day preventively. Rachel has recently added another T3 to my Synthroid. My body shuts down conversion from T4 to T3 during synthetic ingestion. Should you still take T4 even if your liver is ineffective at converting to T3?
The other tissues have some ability to do the conversion if that isn't blocked too by estrogen and PUFA. So you do get some effect even if your liver is malfunctioning. I see. Wow. Here's a 68-year-old male, bicycle, no booze, good weight, having wild arrhythmias for the past few weeks. Wow. Taking magnesium and bio-BC complex, what can I do to get heartbeat back to normal without drugs? What is wrong with his heart rate? It's arrhythmias. He's getting arrhythmias. The low progesterone, high estrogens, one of the things like Synthroid showed, but low
thyroid leading to high adrenaline is a very common cause. The clotting system tends to become overactive with hypothyroidism and doctors are very afraid to prescribe thyroid for various kinds of arrhythmia because it can suddenly increase your adrenaline, which increases the clotting system, which can lead to strokes and so on. So it's something that you have to correct very gradually with, for example, increasing your orange juice and milk intake to stabilize things first. Orange juice and milk. Here's an interesting one I haven't heard. Phil, I've had eye
bags, bags under my eyes for years. What's the original root cause of this? Stress and too much fat in the diet, for example, are blocking thyroid function. Sometimes the area around the eye is pigmented brown as well as being puffy. I've seen both of those corrected in just a matter of days by getting the right amount of thyroid supplement. Just puffy could be not enough thyroid or too much? Not enough. Not enough. Let's see, one more and then we're going to let you go to work here.
Hi, Dr. Peat. What can a 50-year-old man do to keep his receding hair? Boy, if we had the pure answer for that, we'd be millionaires. So what do you think hair loss is the root cause, doc? There are several things that starve the follicle for energy. Not enough calcium and vitamin D in the diet increases your parathyroid hormone, and that is closely connected to under-functioning of the follicle, but it also goes with blocking thyroid function. So there's a connection between aging and blood lipids, hypothyroidism, low vitamin D, not any one thing that's
going to correct it, but getting your whole metabolism at a higher level is a basic thing. And again, that's generally low thyroid. Yeah. Low thyroid. And temperature first thing in the morning, how relevant is that for your thyroid function? Very important. Broderbarn's books are worth reading. Really? He was working before any good blood test came on the market, and he found that it was extremely reliable. And what's your minimum temp you want to be to let you know you've got good thyroid function? Close to 98 degrees Fahrenheit when you wake up. 98? 97.8 to 98.2.
Oh, so even 97.8 is okay? Yeah, for waking up, but after breakfast it should go up above 98. Throughout the day then it wants to be above 98, somewhere around there. Yeah, around 98.6. And that's a good indication. Very good. And if you were taking too much, would that temperature get too high? Yeah, generally it holds your temperature around 99 degrees even when you're resting. Do any of these, have you ever seen any of these little things where you put on your forehead, are they accurate do you think? No.
You've got to put it in your mouth, that's the only way to go. Or eardrum. Or eardrum? Oh, there's some eardrum? Yeah, the electronic IR infrared thermometers work on the eardrum. Electronic infrared on the eardrum, so you don't have to sit there and hold a thing in your mouth, huh? Yes, quicker. Quicker, yeah. Electronic infrared, oh, never heard of those guys. Well, Dr. Peat, we have another show under our belt. Thanks so much for being here. We've covered a lot of territory today. Appreciate your help, sir. Okay, thank you.
You take care of yourself, all right? Very good. Thank you. Bye-bye. Dr. A. Peat, Patrick Timpone, OneRadioNetwork.com. What a nice guy, right? What a nice guy. So grateful for him to come on the show once a month. And we've got a few more emails, but we generally only keep them an hour and a half. That's the deal, so we did an hour and a half. All right, I love you all. Thank you for your ongoing support. Probably a 90% chance that Mike Stone is going to be here and talk about this whole germ thing.
I got an email from him this morning. He says that they have some pretty bad weather up where he is, not sure where he is. And he may have to take his son to school or his son may be home and he'll have to take care of him. So stay tuned. If it doesn't happen, I'll just come on and we'll play. But we'll let the snow angels take care of it and not concern ourselves with it. But it should be a pretty fascinating show.
And if it wouldn't happen because of the weather, well then we're going to make sure that he comes on real soon. Mike Stone. Then also, Stuart Nunley, I think one of the best biological dentists anywhere. So if you have a dental question, root canals, cavities, any kind of thing about your mouth, just email me, [email protected]. Dr. Stuart Nunley out of HealthySmilesForLife.com. You can look at his website. He's out of Marble Falls, Texas. He's going to be here Wednesday at 10 o'clock. So get your questions in for him.
And then one of our faves guys in the world of finance, Richard Mayberry at 11 o'clock on Wednesday. So thanks for your ongoing support. Don't forget now we have the Saunas. I'm sorry. Well, Saunas everyday sale, $12.95. But the Hydrogen Machine, 20% off, promo code OneRadio if you'd like to get that. Like Peat just said, hydrogens are excellent antioxidant. We've been talking about that. And then also the Shaga and the Reishi are on sale for the next week or so. Sir Thrivill, use promo code Fortify15. F-O-R-T-I-F-Y 15. I'm going to get myself some.
They're fun to take. Really very beneficial medicinal mushrooms. They're tonics, so you can take them everyday. All right. Love you all. We'll see you tomorrow. The creeks don't rise and the snow don't fall with Mike Stone, OneRadioNetwork.com. Thank you. Take care. May the blessings be. . (upbeat music)