Well, welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor (16 July 2010).
Andrew: My name's Andrew Murray.
Sarah: My name's Sarah-Johanneson Murray.
Andrew: For those of you who perhaps have never listened to our shows, which run every third Friday of the month from 7 till 8pm, we're both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine. And we run a clinic in Garberville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions. We manufacture all our own certified organic herbal extracts which are either grown on our CCUF certified herb farm or which are sourced from other USA certified organic suppliers. You're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD Garberville 91.1 FM and from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's mixed topic of elevation and the protective effects of CO2 and its many health benefits. We are once again very pleased to be joined by Dr. Raypeat who will be sharing his research and knowledge of this topic. The number here if you live in the area is 923 3911 or if you live outside the area the toll free number is 1800 568 3723 that's 1800 KMUD RAD. We can also be reached toll free on 1 888 WBM ERB for further questions. During normal business hours Monday through Friday. For those listeners who perhaps have never heard you speak, Dr. Pete, would you please give us an outline of your academic work before we start this month's show?
Ray Peat: Oh, I started out in literature and painting because I was aware that American biology in particular was pretty backward at the time I was in university and it wasn't until I had got a master's degree and taught linguistics and tried being a professional painter and such that finally I decided to go back and study physiology because I had been reading that all along. So academically I started fairly late in science. That was sort of an advantage because it kept me from having to conform to the dogmas that rule the scientific world.
Andrew: OK, so you've extensively lectured and taught at universities and you have a few, if not many, specialties. Would you just briefly outline your particular interests?
Ray Peat: Progesterone, thyroid, ageing, and the last 10 or 20 years I've been thinking a lot about carbon dioxide and its physiology.
Andrew: Excellent. Well that's actually what we're going to talk about this month, so that's good news. I know that for some time now I've been made aware, like all things and most things, we are slowly, for want of a better word, evolving. And being, I don't know, being re-trained, my mind certainly has been re-trained, Dr Pete, since I left university, studying herbal medicine, in much the same way our physiology and pathology, clinical skills, not so much, but pathology and physiology was very much dictated by the texts at the time and quite a lot of that seems to be... erroneous. I know that you've really, gosh, opened our eyes to certain things that I thought were just just the way they were, but actually they're very different. I know perhaps during this evening's talk, when we, when I'm going to ask you to outline the benefits, say for example, of elevation, that I know we're going to come across a lot of different co-factors which are all helpful and all have a part to... to play, if you like, in Restoration of Health. So, perhaps, let's start with elevation as we're going to talk about the effects of high elevation. What does high elevation do for a person? How does it... Because I think the thing that strikes me most is that we all know about communities that are famous for having high populations of longevity, and how does elevation confer longevity to a human?
Ray Peat: That's... that's a... The essence of the problem is what is the outstanding feature that affects all of the high populations. A hundred years ago, insurance companies already knew that the actuaries were looking at the mortality figures for different diseases and they saw that cancer, for example, was much less common in all of the high cities of the world. As recently as the 1950s, Blaine's Pauling was sure that those figures must be wrong because he said he knows radiation causes cancer and the radiation in Denver is much higher than in New Orleans, for example. But the figures show that the cancer rate in New Orleans and San Francisco is much higher than in Denver. He said that just must be a mistake. The insurance companies have had the figures for over 100 years, and part of the thing is that the radiation that you get at high altitudes is less harmful because of its lower energy transfer. Its high energy cosmic rays basically go through you without causing much damage. But the altitude causes... The Haldane-Bohr effect, everyone knows about that in physiology that it explains what happens when you breathe and when the oxygenated hemoglobin reaches your tissues down in the capillaries. The Haldane-Bohr effect explains the fact that oxygen, when it sticks to hemoglobin......changes the hemoglobin molecule, causing the carbon dioxide to come loose. And when you have a high concentration of carbon dioxide down in your capillaries, the carbon dioxide sticking to the hemoglobin causes the oxygen to come loose and become available to the tissues. And, strangely, there has been almost... no research, just maybe a couple of dozen papers, applying that Haldane effect to other proteins. But, in the case of hemoglobin, the molecule just happens to be in the right position to transport oxygen and CO2 in the blood, but a few people who have tested other proteins find that... That's a general effect. The Haldane-Bohr effect applies to proteins in general. When there's a lot of carbon dioxide, it basically changes the pH, or the isoelectric point of the protein, making it less accessible to oxygen, and that in itself is a protection against... the attack of oxygen against proteins, but more than that, the particular group that carbon dioxide sticks to on a protein such as hemoglobin is an amino group, and any amino group in your body, whether it's on your DNA or your enzymes or the so-called hormone receptors, these all contain amino groups which... When there's enough carbon dioxide, it will stick to those groups and in the absence of carbon dioxide, other stuff will stick to those, such as glycation, various free radical fragments of unsaturated fats will tend to stick to those and derange the hormones. Insulin, for example, is... a different hormone in the presence of CO2 or in the absence of CO2, so everything in your body is different when it's well saturated with CO2. You can't suffer the side effects of diabetes, for example, if your proteins are well protected.
Andrew: Because I find it very, as many other instances, I find it's yet another example of reorganizing my mind. To get to grips with the fundamentals of it, I think we all think about carbon dioxide as being the bad guy, you see? I think that's the problem. It's a bit like the common misconception that sugar is the bad guy, or the common misconception that saturated fats are the bad guy. CO2, carbon dioxide, how does that confirm more benefits than oxygen, when we all think that oxygen is the life-giving molecule?
Ray Peat: In 1940, someone did a survey of organisms, including a great variety of bacteria and amoebas and things that all require oxygen to live, but he found that they can't live more than one generation if they aren't exposed to adequate carbon dioxide. Even the obligate, respiring, oxygen-dependent organisms....need carbon dioxide, so he concluded that really it's more important as a life-supporting element than oxygen is because all organisms require it and not all organisms require oxygen.
Sarah: And also, Dr. Peat, you explained to us just a few minutes ago how if you increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream... That tends to knock those oxygen molecules off the hemoglobin so that the tissues can pick up the oxygen.
Ray Peat: Yeah, so, for example, in the heart, when you increase the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood, you increase the actual amount of oxygen in the heart. It delivers the oxygen to the heart. And what's more important than that is that it delivers it. In the optimum way it makes the oxygen go to the right places in the heart because it's having the same effect on the heart proteins that it has on the hemoglobin and it retracts the electrons so the oxygen doesn't stick where it shouldn't. The electrons go directly to the oxygen down the electron transport chain. And the electrons are prevented from deviating and getting off and attacking the polyunsaturated fats which is what causes the bad oxidation that people take anti-oxidants for.
Andrew: That's the free radical damage isn't it that people know about. So free radical damage is where the electrons are free to interact with things that cause harm whereas. The presence of an increased amount of CO2 actually prevents those electrons from becoming wild and reacting with harmful or good tissues.
Ray Peat: Yes, the essential electron moving cofactor NAD and NADH which takes electrons from sugar or fat and moves it to the respiratory system. In the presence of carbon dioxide, that is more oxidized, meaning that the oxygen is doing its work better in the presence of CO2.
Sarah: So basically, just to try to recap for our listeners here, in case you haven't heard it before, CO2 is referring to carbon dioxide. So we breathe in oxygen-rich air and our hemoglobin... And our blood picks up that oxygen from our lungs and carries it to our tissues. And what is happening at higher elevations is that you have an increased amount of carbon dioxide in relation to the amount of oxygen. So the carbon dioxide is at a higher level at higher altitudes than it is at lower altitudes.
Ray Peat: In the body, there's less oxygen pressure pushing the carbon dioxide out of your body so your body retains... a higher concentration as you go higher in altitude because of the lower oxygen pressure and you can see that in the cornea becomes more compact at higher altitude and people often notice that their nearsightedness improves by two or three diopters
Andrew: Okay, I read that there was an article that you... I'm pretty sure you published it explaining how nocturnal cornea edema can result in kind of bulging, not that bulging, but swollen eyes because the cornea has to absorb oxygen from the air and when we're awake, where our eyes are open and the diffusion is happening and the oxygen is getting into the cornea but at night time our eyelids are closed over our corneas and our cornea swells because it's not able to get oxygen.
Ray Peat: And they've done experiments putting goggles over people and infusing extra carbon dioxide into the goggles and that makes the oxygen get used more efficiently in the cornea where it's depending on the outside for its energy supply. And the carbon dioxide helps the oxygen get in and tightens up the... energy structure of the corneas.
Sarah: Well, why are hospitals so concerned, especially in the emergency rooms, you know, they test your oxygen saturation by putting this meter over your fingertips and then they give you oxygen to breathe.
Ray Peat: Well, for one thing, I've tested those things on my finger and everyone feels really good when they have a 99% saturation. I've noticed that when I'm feeling really the best, I can get mine down to 89%. And I've thought about that a lot and watched the different conditions that cause it. And hyperventilating will cause the saturation to go up. And having just cold fingers will make the oxygen go up. If you're not using the oxygen. It doesn't do you any good to have your hemoglobin saturated if you're not using it. So those finger meters aren't really very informative unless you know what temperature your fingers are at. And then I've talked to the doctors specializing in giving oxygen to stroke patients. Way back in the 1930s, Jan Del Henderson became famous for providing resuscitation equipment to fire departments which provided 7% carbon dioxide with the oxygen and that was based on physiology and it worked and the same for altitude sickness. I have friends now who take a bottle of carbon dioxide with them when they go to bale for high altitude skiing. When they start getting mountain sickness they take some carbon dioxide and traditionally people have been using acetazolamide for altitude sickness. That causes you to retain your own carbon dioxide at the higher level.
Andrew: OK, so let's go over the health benefits of increasing your CO2, either artificially or when you live at high altitude, how that actually dampens down the... because I understand it's the inflammatory reactions that happen inside the body that are controlled by an increase in carbon dioxide. So, do you want to just cover how the inflammatory process is quelled?
Ray Peat: Yeah, if you imagine... If you've ever hyperventilated just for fun, sometimes it'll make your hands drop into a cramp or make your toes curl up in a cramp. Losing carbon dioxide when you hyperventilate is the same as living at a very low altitude. There's too much oxygen and too little carbon dioxide. And the cramping effect......is just the first immediate thing. It also causes the cramping of your blood vessels, shutting down the diameter of your blood vessels, and it can cause fainting by cutting off the blood supply to your brain. But it also causes the capillaries to leak, even though they're tending to close down. They also become leaky and let water leak out because of the carbon dioxide. at the proper concentration, holds your platelets, causes the platelets to retain their histamine, serotonin and other inflammatory substances. When you hyperventilate, your platelets leak these and make your blood vessels leak causing edema and if you have something else causing lactic acid to increase. Other than hyperventilation, you get the same effect that lactic acid displaces the carbon dioxide, makes your platelets and red blood cells leak and starts the inflammation cycle. And one of the ways that the carbon dioxide is working, one of dozens of different beneficial effects is that it combines with the ammonia which is produced by... stress and protein metabolism and in combining with the ammonia it stops the stimulation of the formation of lactic acid. Ammonia accelerates the formation of lactic acid so carbon dioxide is directly turning off the production of lactic acid.
Andrew: Now lactic acid is a thing that we feel when we exercise and our muscles cramp.
Ray Peat: Yeah and it triggers the release of a whole series of mediators of inflammation also of fibrosis and so they're now finding that when they're doing abdominal surgery if they blow in a fairly concentrated carbon dioxide solution or gas they'll suppress the formation of fibrosis and adhesions.
Ray Peat: Well because it decreases inflammation.
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Andrew: Now how about, sorry, sorry.
Sarah: So the common myth that when your muscles hurt it means that they're growing bigger and that's better is, is, I mean the common, not the common myth, the common belief is a myth.
Ray Peat: Well yeah, the, anything that injures your muscle, the lactic acid is probably long gone but the damage persists. And the damage involves the loss of CO2 and that causes the uptake of water, swelling and so on. And the swelling and the injury does cause the muscle to get bigger but not healthier.
Andrew: This is another misconception again. Athletes, athletes you know we all look at people doing the Olympics and we just imagine them to be the most supreme fit human beings that there are and yet actually they're in a very stressful state.
Ray Peat: Yeah, there have been studies that found that very well trained athletes typically go around with an elevated lactic acid in their blood even days after their last exercise. They've suppressed their carbon dioxide then become sort of habituated to increased lactic acid which has those long range harmful effects.
Andrew: Okay, let me just let people know that who perhaps have just tuned in. You're listening to Ask a Herb Doctor on KMUD Carverville 91.1 FM and from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock you're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's mixed topic of elevation, the protective effects of CO2 and its many health benefits and we're joined once again and very pleased that Dr Ray Peat is with us sharing his research. and his knowledge of this and many other topics.
Sarah: I wanted to ask you Dr Peat why people who go to oxygen clinics and have intravenous oxygen or oxygen therapy why they feel the health effects that they do the positive health effects that they do and how that how that interacts with human physiology?
Ray Peat: There are different treatments that are called oxygen therapy they range from simply injecting a solution of hydrogen peroxide or exposing the blood to ozone or to ultraviolet light but generally the treatments are exciting the white blood cells and causing them to some of the effects of excited white blood cells are beneficial they become more aggressive when they're slightly injured. But they also release substances that trigger the stress hormones, ACTH, leading to activation of your adrenals, and activated adrenals will combat other inflammations, so it's a way of turning on your anti-inflammatory, anti-stress hormones. There are better ways to... generally suppress your inflammatory responses, for example, things that increase progesterone will decrease cortisol causing in the long run much better consequences.
Sarah: So people might experience an increased immune system or decreased inflammation.
Ray Peat: Yeah, the carbon dioxide activates the......phagocyte process of various cells in your blood, and that's a part of normal repair and regeneration, is the baby, for example, gestating in the uterus is completely free of germs normally, but it still has very active phagocytes, which are...their activity is......is supported in proportion to the carbon dioxide tension, which is usually high in the uterus, and that activity of the phagocytes is part of the developmental process. When a tissue is changing from one form to another, the old form has to be digested and removed to make room for the new form.
Sarah: So the phagocytes will eat up the old cells and... Yeah, and so the carbon dioxide,
Ray Peat: high concentration of it supports the developmental process of cleaning up the junk. And if you...
Andrew: Sorry, will any of this phagocytosis be involved in destroying cancer cells or other...
Ray Peat: Oh yeah, it's essential and it's probably one of the main things lacking. The cells enter the cancer but they are unable to... Right....to produce the right results because the cancer is producing lactic acid which knocks out the... That's surprising to you too....by carbon dioxide.
Andrew: Huh.
Sarah: So...
Ray Peat: And scar formation too of the developing fetus is practically resistant to forming scars only at a later stage when it's... Being exposed to environmental fats that the mother eats will form a scar but healing is ordinarily scarless in the early fetus. And it's the things causing loss of carbon dioxide mostly that inhibit the phagocytes which should clean up the collagen.
Andrew: Is it in part due to the decreased fibrosis that increased CO2 will also......bring about, leading to less scars or is that not the same?
Ray Peat: Yes, I think that's a big part of it. Excess oxygen causes a malfunction of a lot of things. Displacing the carbon dioxide changes everything systematically so it causes many derangements, not just these. The lack of phagocyte activity
Andrew: reminds me now of a spring that we have here in California called Vichy. It's just in Ukiah down on Highway 101. I know we've been there several times. We, you know, we always enjoy going there because those mineral-rich spring waters are highly carbonated and you can you get this thing called a reactive hyperemia after you've been in the water about five minutes where you get this flushing. Your skin turns pink and you feel warm even though the water is probably only about... 96 degrees. No
Sarah: it's 96.
Andrew: Yeah it's 96. Well okay and it doesn't actually feel that warm. When you get in it first of all it feels a little cool but when you're in it you start warming up because you get this vasodilation going on at your skin surface.
Ray Peat: If you have a giant plastic bag like a leaf bag or something you can fill it with pure carbon dioxide and... it'll be at room temperature or even colder if you just blew it out of a tank and when you step into that you instantly feel warmth and your skin turns pink and when you're in a hot spring even though the water doesn't dissolve a very high concentration of CO2 still you absorb it against a gradient there can be many times higher concentration of CO2 in your... tissue, but it moves from a lower concentration into your body, as if your body were pumping it in, but it's really a matter of being more soluble in your body.
Andrew: Yeah. So, just for example, do you think... You're getting more benefits from CO2 by bathing in beachy or sitting in a trash bag full of CO2.
Ray Peat: It's more fun to bathe in a hot spring.
Andrew: I know. I know it might be more fun, but actually, from a very standard point of view, do you think you're probably going to get more CO2 doing a CO2 therapy in a sealed container than you would be...
Ray Peat: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Just don't put it above your neck.
Andrew: It's a lot cheaper.
Sarah: Don't try to breathe it.
Andrew: Yeah. Okay, good. Well, you're listening to Ask Your Herb, Dr. Cammie de Galberville, 91.1 FM. We're joined by Dr. Ray Peat, and the lines are open from now until 8 o'clock. For anybody who'd like to ask any questions, either related or unrelated to this month's topic of altitude and CO2 and the health benefits of high elevation. So, unless we get any callers, Dr. Peat, we'll just... Oh, look out, there is a caller.
Host: Oh, someone is calling, but I have a question. How come it is when people have weakened lungs, high altitude bothers them?
Ray Peat: Oh, well that's really the only condition that is bad for a high altitude. When they've done studies for example in New Mexico mortality from heart disease as well as cancer decreases for every thousand feet of higher altitude but asthma is the one condition which is bad. A problem at higher altitude but in Mexico City there have been surveys through Mexico in which actual incidents and suffering from asthma increases as you go down in altitude. So if you have asthma to start with you don't want to go to Leadville right away. But as a matter of developing......the problem, living at a high altitude, you're much less likely to develop it than living at sea level.
Andrew: OK, good. All right, I think we've got some callers on the line, so let's go. You on the air? Good evening.
Caller: Good evening. Great topic. I have a question, and it has to do with mountaineering. With who, sorry? Mountaineering. Oh, mountaineering. In the 6-2, maybe. Caller, can you turn your radio off, please? Oh, sure.
Andrew: Just getting a little feedback. Is that better? Let's go, let's try that, yeah.
Caller: Okay. Not nearing in the 6,000 to 8,000 foot range, maybe even up to 11,000 feet. Normally we use a technique of a big abdominal exhale when we're feeling the effects of the altitude, but what you're saying is you should breathe into a bag instead and breathe in your own CO2.
Ray Peat: Yeah, on one of the Everest expeditions, I think it was on Everest, they were treating people by putting them in a big plastic bag with oxygen and that's a fairly standard way to treat them and it works, but they found that it was the carbon dioxide that they were breathing out that was accumulating in the bag. Which was the really therapeutic agent.
Caller: So that would be a good technique to test is to have a paper sack and to exhale into it or a plastic bag and to exhale into it and take maybe 30 seconds of deep breaths into it.
Ray Peat: I think so. People with high blood pressure, I've seen several of them in a day or two bring their blood pressure down 30 points. Just by bag breathing repeatedly.
Caller: Okay, well thank you. We'll try that this winter.
Sarah: And also, Dr. B, you mentioned before that you can breathe if you tightly seal the bag around your mouth. You can breathe in and out of that bag for a couple of minutes if it's a big bag before you start to feel uncomfortable. And just that small amount of bag breathing can increase your carbon dioxide, which means a lot of your cells work better and you're getting more oxygen into the cell.
Ray Peat: Yeah, how the adaptation works is that each time you increase the CO2 to an uncomfortable level, it's suppressing the lactate a little bit and lowering the adrenaline and various other factors, free fatty acids and many things that cause you to hyperventilate. And so you're basically curing your tendency to breathe too much by adapting....to repeated exposures to extra CO2.
Andrew: OK. Now, on to this kind of divulge a little bit, but this is why I said at the beginning of the show to people that will be listening, there are many different factors influencing the healthful benefits of CO2. I just wanted to bring out a little bit about people with, again, this is another topic that's been opened up and we've seen it ourselves, that people who may be... totally normal on a blood test for a thyroid panel actually show definite low thyroid status when they're tested with other methods that were traditionally used as markers of low thyroid. So for people with low thyroid I understand that their CO2 or their carbon dioxide state is generally lower anyway because they have an increased adrenaline and adrenaline depresses carbon dioxide. So having a better thyroid will increase your likelihood of retaining CO2 and decrease your adrenaline.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and there are many side paths to that. For example, the thyroid helps to lower the estrogen level and estrogen and many of the related factors tend to cause you to hyperventilate even to the point of having alkalosis. And diabetes. Even though supposedly the diabetic isn't using glucose, typically a diabetic has elevated lactic acid. And carbon dioxide makes a big effect on the diabetic lactate.
Andrew: Another reason not to aerobically exercise like running or jogging. Cycling and all those things that would increase your respiration, increase your oxygen, decrease your CO2, increase your adrenaline. All of those things are pointing out to be more negative than healthful.
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah. Okay, so the kind of exercises for people that do exercise a lot and really think they get a lot of benefit for it, and I'm not saying they don't, I mean psychologically I know there's a huge benefit in being active and being fit and enjoying a healthy lifestyle. The actual exercises that would be more beneficial for a person would be?
Ray Peat: I think mild muscle building activity as well as anything that's fun, enjoyable activity that doesn't cause discomfort, but there have been studies of old people with their muscle mitochondria that apparently had... genetic damage, loss of DNA, but by several weeks of concentric exercise, just contracting the muscle against resistance, they repaired the mitochondrial DNA to have restored mitochondrial function. But the eccentric exercise where your muscle is forced to lengthen... while resisting. For example, when you're walking downhill, that's the kind of exertion your muscle is having, eccentric stretching. That damages the mitochondria.
Sarah: So this is why you suggest pushing the bicycle up the hill and riding the bicycle down the hill. Or throwing weights or loading firewood. Throwing pieces of firewood.
Andrew: Okay, how about the, I didn't know this, that the effects of elevation, say if you go up to a high city for a couple of weeks and you come down, the effects of that, positive effects of that increased altitude with the increased CO2 can actually linger for several months. Yeah. How does that work?
Ray Peat: The Russians were the ones that really pioneered all of the...
Andrew: Good old Russians, huh?
Ray Peat: Yeah, after Yandel Henderson was forgotten, the Russians took up the... the study and they found that if an animal was kept at high altitude for a few months, when it went back to low altitude, it lived the rest of its life retaining about twice as many mitochondria as it had at lower altitude, meaning it was basically twice as efficient.
Andrew: Wow.
Sarah: And it could produce twice as much energy.
Andrew: Because the mitochondria, for those people that listen, the mitochondria is the kind of the factory in the body, the powerhouses that utilize fuel and produce energy and do all the different things.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and it's failure of the mitochondria that causes the degenerative diseases. Otto Warburg 80, 90 years ago was showing that mitochondria fail in cancer. And Russians, the same groups that were... We're showing that high-altitude causes increased mitochondria produced cancers artificially in rats. And the ones that were left at low altitude, 100% of them died. And the others that were taken to 17,000 feet, 50% of them spontaneously threw off the cancer.
Andrew: Wow. Wow. I just find it incredible the more... The longer I'm alive and the more I find out, I mean, you know, the beach and the seaside in Victorian England was the place to go to. It was, you know, it was expensive, all the health benefits were well touted, of breathing, you know, the sea air and everything else. It's actually one of the worst things you can do. You need to go to a high elevation if you want to get some positive effects. So how come if the insurance companies... There's another startling fact that makes it pretty obvious for people to see what's going on. The insurance companies are losing money if they make a bad... if they hedge a bet badly. Now... So, the insurance companies are usually pretty smart because they don't want to lose money. And so, for them to know a hundred years ago that the benefits of altitude were such, how come... how come yet again, you know, we on the streets don't... it doesn't trickle down to us? It's just another glaring example of...
Sarah: And when you go into the hospital...
Andrew: How they want to keep the stuff from us. When you go into the hospital, they want to CAT scan you, they want to X-ray you, they want to give you... drugs.Sarah: No, they want to put an oxygen mask.
Andrew: And they want to put an oxygen mask on you. Yeah, exactly, the people who should be getting carbon dioxide.
Ray Peat: I've talked to some of the doctors who were doing it and they said, but wouldn't that cause acidosis or various things that just don't apply. They reason a certain way from the textbooks. And they don't look at enough of the actual studies, like Yandell Henderson's resuscitation studies.
Sarah: Well, can you tell us, Dr. P, about those people that live at very, very high altitudes and their lifespans? You were telling me about some typical lifespans of 130 to 150 years old.
Ray Peat: Yeah. I think it was about 1950. The first time I heard about it was a Peruvian who was brought to tour the United States as an oddity. Newspapers had a picture of him, a little tiny guy. The church record showed him as being 187 years old and after a couple of weeks visiting around the U.S. he was sent back to Peru and died shortly after that. Wow, oops. And an old paren. In London, he was a guy in the country that was famous for being 150 something and the king had him brought to London to study and he died shortly after living the high life in London.
Andrew: At sea level. Yeah. Goodness.
Sarah: Well. My mother and I just went to Michoacán, the mountains of Michoacán in Mexico, and we were staying in Patzcuero, which is a town at 7,200 feet in elevation. And for the short seven days we were there, the health benefits were very noticeable, and I'm looking forward to them lasting for more than one week. So, Dr. Pete, you're suggesting that if someone spends a week to a month at a higher elevation, then the health benefits will last for how long will they last?
Ray Peat: Oh, after a month, probably a year and a half, something like that. A friend of mine who was there at that altitude last winter, for I guess almost two months, lost 20 pounds while he was there.
Sarah: Oh yeah, that was the other thing. Their food is so delicious. They're wonderful corn tamales and their chepos and corundas. And I ate probably two to three times more than I normally eat. And I came back weighing the same weight. And my mother did the same because we were so hungry it sped up our metabolism. We were so much more hungry and we ate so much more food and it was so delicious. And we went out for meals here or we were invited there. And she came back and she had lost weight.
Ray Peat: The Indian Army noticed that their soldiers, when they were sent to Kashmir or other very high altitude places, lost weight very quickly and so they've done a lot of studies on how to keep the soldiers weight up at high altitude.
Sarah: Wow, well, it's quite incredible that even just down to the way your skin and your hair feels, it's very different. You do feel different at a high altitude and you know a lot of people were concerned that we would suffer breathing difficulties. We hiked up. this old ancient volcano every morning and that was a two hour hike an hour up an hour back and we didn't have any we didn't notice any change in our breathing as far as being at 7200 feet so
Ray Peat: the conventional physiologists for years have noticed what they called the lactate paradox which is that you can work full force at a high altitude without producing lactic acid and it's not really a paradox, it's that the oxygen is not at a high enough concentration to displace carbon dioxide so the carbon dioxide is taking care of the lactic acid
**Andrew:**so in increased carbon dioxide states oxygen is utilised way more efficiently and way less of it if any of it is actually available to react in free radical formation
Ray Peat: um yeah um it works one one of the ways is is that carbomino effect simply protecting any any amino group from attack by by oxygen
Andrew: but these are on proteins
Ray Peat: yeah but it also simply activates the enzymes that direct the electrons to move from glucose or fat down to oxygen it creates a sort of a greased pathway for the electron movement and if you block the carbon dioxide or oxygen the NAD reflects the increased access to electrons and those electrons tend to diffuse. Out through the cell causing attack of polyunsaturated fats and genetic material and so on.
Sarah: Well, at least most people listening have probably heard of oxidation and the production of free radicals and this is why you want to eat your fresh fruits because they're rich in antioxidants and they protect you. So basically the carbon dioxide is acting like an antioxidant, a very powerful antioxidant, preventing... Any of those electrons from forming free radicals and reacting with things they shouldn't be, instead they're going...
Ray Peat: During surgery, hospitals have noticed that their patients often had severe lung damage from free radical oxidation from ventilating them too hard. So now they practice what they call permissive hypercapnia. They under-respirate them, let the carbon dioxide accumulate and it has... An antioxidant protective effect.
In horses, there were studies in which they caused the blood by changing the atmosphere. They raised the blood carbon dioxide concentration three times normal from 30 to 100. At that level, there were no free radicals detectable. In their bloodstream where normally there is a certain amount, but as though we're designed to live with much more carbon dioxide than is available at this altitude. And people studying the early embryo before implantation between the zygote and the blastocyst stage, traditionally they were over-culturing them.
In an atmosphere with 5 percent carbon dioxide and maybe 15 or 20 percent oxygen and they were having four results but someone tried increasing the CO2 and found that at 10 or 15 percent CO2 and 5 percent oxygen, much more CO2 than oxygen, that the blastocyst were more vigorous, more of them survived and implanted better so even at the crucial stage of early embryo development, carbon dioxide is the crucial factor, much more important than oxygen
Andrew: What are any good ways of increasing your CO2, the best ways of doing it?
Ray Peat: Shifting your diet away from the polyunsaturated fats is I think the basic thing
Andrew: So how does that help?
Ray Peat: The polyunsaturated fats interfere with the enzymes that send electrons to oxygen and shift away from glucose metabolism to fat metabolism. You can show that when they give intravenous fat to people in hospitals to increase their calories. Within a few minutes, their ability to use glucose is suppressed. The fats simply block the enzymes....produce the oxidized glucose and when you burn glucose you get much more carbon dioxide per unit of oxygen used or fuel used and so at high altitude a person uses their oxygen more efficiently and they're more reluctant to... burn their stored fats and anything you do to increase the carbon dioxide will tend to protect you against the mobilizing your fats and creating that diabetes-like state.
Sarah: So, just to explain for our listeners, polyunsaturated fats are those fats that are liquid at room temperature apart from olive oil which is mainly monounsaturated. And they include the long list of vegetable oils, soy, canola, safflower, cotton seed, corn, sunflower, hemp seed, flax seed, fish oil. Those are all polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Ray Peat: Yeah, there is a big push now to sell fish oils in place of those seed oils that were promoted for 50 years. And now they're shifting over to fish oils because they don't produce some of the toxic effects of the seed oils but part of the reason they don't do that is that they are so unstable that they break down even before they reach your bloodstream. A very high proportion has become the free radical fragments that inhibit your immune system and even though in the long-range. They increase your infections and suppress immunity in the short-range they seem to be anti-inflammatory just by their suppressive effect but some of the people who are promoting those very oils DHA and EPA for example they've been saying that your baby will be smarter if you put it in their in their baby food in the baby food these things are so unstable there are about 20 times more broken down into toxic free radicals than even when you get them in the normal food form and some of these people believe that the women who ate fish oil and the other highly unsaturated fats would have more intelligent fetuses presented sounds to the gestating baby to see how quickly they could habituate and respond as if they recognized the sound and they were predicting that the women with the highly unsaturated babies would have the smartest fetuses and they found just the opposite that the women showing evidence of a deficiency of fatty acids had the babies that behaved most adaptively
Sarah: so they had a deficiency of these toxic fatty acids and
Ray Peat: yeah and when the baby was born they found they measured their head circumference, length and weight and they were growth retarded as well as behavior retarded I believe.
Sarah: The babies that were born to women who ate a lot of fish oils.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and 30, 40 years ago animal studies showed the same effect. They fed one group of rats cocoa, butter, or I think it was safflower oil. And the ones that got safflower oil were stupid and had small brains, the babies. And the others were better learners with bigger brains. I had the cocoa butter.
Sarah: Well, there you go. So there's lots of research out there showing all of these things we've talked about tonight. And thankfully to Dr. Pete, he digs up a lot of this research and brings it to our ears. So thank you very much, Dr. Pete, for sharing all of this with us. We really appreciate your expertise.
Andrew: I think our engineer has a question for you, Dr. Pete. I have a couple, just one.
Engineer: Prior to 1920, I heard that when corn oil got... out in the country that there was more heart attacks. I don't know if that's true or not. And the other is butter and coconut oil. Are those two the ones I should be eating? Because that's the ones I do.
Ray Peat: Yeah, if you eat lots of butter or cream it can make you fat, but it is protective against the oxidative degenerative diseases. But the coconut oil tends to stimulate your use of oxygen so fast that it protects against... even obesity and milk and milk fat, the milk contains other things that stimulate your safe use of oxygen and so if you're going to use the cream it's better with milk rather than just in the butter form.
Sarah: And also, I think your question about the heart attacks was that prior to 1920s there were studies that showed that heart attacks were much, much less prevalent. And so it was once people started eating these polyunsaturated fats in the corn oil and the big Missoula corn oil push, that's when the heart attack incidence was on the increase.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and the age pigment is formed from the polyunsaturated fats of corn oil and soy oil and such. And this has been identified repeatedly in the atherosclerotic plaques that are involved in heart disease. ==There are direct connections between the polyunsaturated fats and heart disease as well as cancer.==
Sarah: So there's lots of this research out there and you can visit Dr. Ray Peat's website, it's www.raypeat.com.
Andrew: There's lots of articles there, plenty of articles about subjects that we've talked about this evening and a lot of other articles. That we haven't covered, but well worth checking out. Fully referenced scientific articles, folks, not witch doctoring or hearsay, but validated scientific articles.
Sarah: Not that the witch doctors didn't have some things right too.
Andrew: Not that the witch doctors didn't have some stuff, but we're talking to people who want facts.
Andrew: Okay, so go to raypeat.com and get some facts. Thank you for listening to Ask Your Doctor until next month, August. The 20th. August the 20th. The third Friday of August. Third Friday of every month. Keep enjoying that warm weather and we look forward to being with you then. Thank you, Dr. Peet. Thank you, Dr. Peet. And thank you, listeners. Yeah, good night. Bye.
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