Cellular Repair KMUD Ask Your Herb Doctor Transcript 15-06-2012
Hosts: Andrew Murray, Sarah Johannesson Murray
Guests: Ray Peat, Callers
Andrew: Well, welcome once again to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray.
Sarah: My name is Sarah Johannesson Murray.
Andrew: For those of you who perhaps have never listened to the shows which run every third Friday of the month from nine, I'm sorry, from seven till 8 p.m., we're both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine. We run a clinic in Garberville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions. We manufacture all our own certified organic herb extracts, which are either grown on our CCOF certified herb farm or which are sourced from other USA certified organic suppliers. So you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD Garbleville 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 loose subject of cellular repair and we're going to look into avoiding scarring.
Andrew: Amongst other things so the number here if you live in the area is 923 3911 or if you live outside the area the toll free number is 1 800 568 3723 and we can also be reached toll free on one 888 WVM herb for further questions during normal business hours Monday through Friday.
Andrew: Well once again we have our very popular ever present scientist to share his views and opinions with us on this show. And that's Dr. Raymond Peat. Dr. Peat, thank you for joining us again. Again, as always, for those people who perhaps have never listened to the show, if you would just give people a resume of your background that would be much appreciated.
Ray Peat: 1968 to 72, I studied mostly physiology and biochemistry at the University of Oregon and did my dissertation on......age-related changes in the uterus, oxidative changes, and I found that estrogen and polyunsaturated fats tend to accumulate or increase in the tissues with aging and interfere with the use of oxygen. And since then I've been... working out the implications of that and the topic you mentioned derives from that subject.
Andrew: Yeah, good. Okay, so you did say that oxidative changes in utero and I think that's one of the first things I think I'd like you to open up with, the parallels between the development that you've mentioned that happens in utero, which is very interesting, which happens without a scar, so whenever... tissues damaged in utero, the scar actually doesn't happen, whereas in regular life, once we're exposed to the things that you'll bring out, scarring is pretty common, but there is definitely a way to do something about it, isn't there?
Ray Peat: In the uterus, early in the development of the embryo, there's no blood supply, and so the cells are just absorbing... oxygen and sugar and amino acids and vitamins and such from their environment. And as the cells change, every time they divide, the environment for each new cell is different. The more cells there are, the more complex the environment is. If you happen to be next to a hungry cell, you won't get the same supply of oxygen and sugar. And so the changing shape as the embryo grows interacts with and modifies the supply of nutrients.
Ray Peat: And so the very shape that the embryo develops into is governed partly by... the supplies that the mother can deliver to it.
Andrew: Now, this relates to things like brain size or skull size and...
Ray Peat: Everything, yeah. For example, they knew in the 50s already that if you lowered the blood sugar of a well-developed fetus using either estrogen or insulin, which would lower the blood sugar. The brain cells would simply stop multiplying as long as the blood sugar was inadequate. And when, if you take a chicken embryo and an egg, for example, its brain stops growing exactly when the hen's provided glucose supply is used up. But if you open the egg and... inject a little bit of glucose, the brain will start growing again and the chicken will develop with a bigger brain than normal chickens ever had.
Sarah: So this is why it's so important for pregnant mothers to have optimal nutrition because it's supporting the growth, the brain's development and the growth of their baby to an optimal level.
Ray Peat: Yeah, but from the month six to delivery. Most of the brain cells develop. In fact, about half of the brain cells that are present at month six die off. And that's how you can influence the size of the brain by providing sugar. The more sugar there is, the fewer of those month six brain cells will die off.
Sarah: Maybe pregnant mothers needed to just be hooked up to an IV of... of fructose.
Andrew: There you go. I know you've mentioned in the past that fructose crosses the placenta, like glucose, but it doesn't come back to the mother, so
Sarah: it's... It stays trapped. Yeah, it's a good sugar to provide.
Ray Peat: Yeah, it's what the baby wants, apparently, because it doesn't give any back.
Sarah: Well, supposedly, it's very traditional in the Steiner philosophy that mothers should eat a lot of honey, and honey is very, very... you know, high in fructose like sugar is as well. They're both similar, aren't they, Dr. Pete?
Andrew: Yes. Okay, so let's open up a little bit more. The differences between scarring in adults when they are compromised by what it is they eat and what they don't do, and how in utero, with the high levels of progesterone and the absence of the... well, hopefully the absence of the polyunsaturated fats. Scarring is virtually absent.
Ray Peat: Yeah, there's no inflammation involved in the repair. If you remove some tissue in the fetus or embryo, the advening cells simply multiply and fill in with more cells. Apparently, you've left the available nutrient supply. Increased relatively by taking out some cells and so the neighboring cells have more and can simply grow faster and fill in the space. But in a mature animal, there are many things that interfere with that. The blood supply is interrupted if you have an injury. And so the supply of sugar and oxygen....is reduced. And so there are mechanisms to make up for that to try to increase the delivery of sugar and oxygen.
Sarah: And this is a stress metabolism. I tried to describe it to people that it's your emergency backup. Basically, if you're not performing, if your body's not performing under ideal conditions, then...
Andrew: It does the next best thing, which isn't a particularly good job.
Sarah: Right, but at least it gets the sugar there to... the degree it does, but it has other harmful inflammatory effects.
Ray Peat: Yeah, the glucose is largely provided during stress from breaking down proteins. First you use up what's stored as glycogen, but when that runs out then you have to break down protein.
Sarah: That's why it's important to only have... Do not go longer than eight hours because you use up all of your glycogen in your liver, right?
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Sarah: Sorry, not to go more than eight hours without eating.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and the lack of oxygen or the presence of lactic acid, which is produced by a lack of oxygen, either of those turns on the production of a very simple protein that serves as......supporting material, but also it's a barrier substance, so that cells that are injured put out the framework collagen material. But too much of that will increase the distance that oxygen and sugar has to travel to reach the cell, so it can make the problem progressively worse. The more a cell embeds itself. in collagen as a result of the stress and so you get more framework material but less functioning cellular material and that's a scar.
Ray Peat: But if you look at the whole life development of the organism, every tissue has to renew itself constantly. Like your skin and your intestine, everyone knows that those are streaming from the stem cells at the bottom of the layer. As the cells multiply and mature, they reach the surface where they fall off. But every tissue and organ in the body is undergoing the same sort of movement from stem cells to mature functioning cells. And that is, ideally, that's just a continuation of the development of cells in the embryo and fetus.
Ray Peat: They're fed, they multiply, expand and complexify. But as things interfere with the ability to use energy or oxygen... The mature animal progressively moves into a generalized inflammatory state. It doesn't take a specific wound to turn on these cytokines and hormones and such. Histamine and serotonin and so on.
Sarah: Which are all the backup stress. Yeah, stress itself. Emergency.
Ray Peat: A generalized systemic stress. Starts turning these on in your fat cells, your liver, every organ can produce these. And that starts basically to shift the whole body in the same direction that scar formation goes. Your whole body loses vital functioning cells and replaces them with collagen inert....connective tissue so that old meat, for example, is tough because it's full of collagen. An old animal hide is thicker and tougher because there's more collagen, and then kid gloves are delicate. But mature goat skin is a thicker kind of leather, and that happens in all of the tissues are progressive.
Ray Peat: Basically, turning towards a scar tissue type of function.
Andrew: So that's... go ahead,
Sarah: sir. So what... so I just wanted to ask what types of processes inhibit the ideal use of oxygen and sugar in our bodies?
Ray Peat: Well, the thyroid is the basic thing, and thyroid activates the respiratory enzyme. For which copper is the crucial co-factor, and so if you load up on iron, an excess of iron is one of the things that tends to displace this crucial copper, and anything that interferes with your thyroid function will also interfere with the functioning of this copper-containing enzyme. Too much darkness, not enough good light, reduces the activity of this enzyme.
Sarah: So people need to get lots of sunshine this summer, and it doesn't have to be during the hottest time of the day. Actually, it's more ideal if it's not during the burning hours, so it's in the morning or in the later afternoon, evening. It's the red light that's so regenerative and healing and helps your body use oxygen and sugar more efficiently.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and... In the absence of sunlight, if you just shine a very bright incandescent light on your tissues, within a few minutes, the oxidative enzymes are activated and reduce stress.
Sarah: And of course, the more of your body that's exposed to the red light from the sun is good, or from the light bulbs, normal incandescent bulbs, but even if you just walk around with short-sleeve shirts and shorts on. In the summertime you'll be getting, it doesn't matter which part of the tissue it touches, any part will help all of the tissues throughout the body.
Andrew: Okay, so you're listening to Ask Your Reb, Dr. KMU de Galbaville, 91.1 FM from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock. You're invited to call in with any questions related to, or unrelated even, to this month's subject of cell repair and how to avoid scarring, amongst other things. Our guest speaker is Dr. Raymond Peat. Thank you again for joining us, Dr. Peat.
Andrew: I just wanted to carry on the kind of concept of not scarring, healing without scarring is pretty new to me in terms of the way I think most people understand the way their bodies work when they get injured, they get cut, generally form a scar. So what you're saying is really especially in the absence of PUFA, now the polyunsaturates that people consume in their diet from The liquid vegetable oils and the other sources of polyunsaturated oils have a very negative and inflammatory effect in the cascade that would otherwise produce active cell repair without scarring as well as other products would have to be necessary.
Ray Peat: And some of the worst inflammatory agents are produced directly from the vegetable oil polyunsaturated fats omega minus six class. They form the prostaglandins
Andrew: and these are very pro-inflammatory
Ray Peat: and the fetus is highly protected against those so that people talking about the essential fatty acids have noticed that human babies and calves are born in an extremely deficient state and that's been used to sell. The addition of fish oil to baby formula and such things.
Andrew: Oh goodness, when actually it's completely the opposite, that they don't need it and don't want it.
Ray Peat: The placenta protects the baby against those fats.
Andrew: They don't cross the placenta then?
Ray Peat: No, the sugar that the baby does absorb makes the omega-9 series, which are anti-inflammatory.
Sarah: So humans haven't eaten these oils in such large quantities. ever before until the 1920s and that's part of the reason why there's so many degenerative diseases and we're going to talk about a few more like the pancreatic damage that happens to the beta cells from excess omega-6.
Andrew: Yeah if you would Dr. P, I know in the past you've mentioned this as well but I think to people that are listening would certainly love to hear it again. Diabetes I know you've mentioned that as a typical illustration of that vicious cycle that builds up when polyunsaturates intensify the stress reaction and the stress can be just everyday stress that's true isn't it just normal stress it doesn't have to be physical trauma
Ray Peat: yeah anytime your blood sugar falls that's a stress reaction it first calls up adrenaline to move glycogen into the bloodstream largely out of your liver but your muscles have quite a bit of of stored glycogen too that they can use and adrenaline first activates that but when you run out of a stored glycogen and your blood sugar falls more.
Andrew: And how long does that take?
Ray Peat: Some people do it in two or three minutes but with a good liver you should be able to go eight hours without any stress.
Sarah: That's why as soon as you wake up in the morning you should have a glass of orange juice. Or something sweet to get your blood sugar back up from the long night of fasting. That's why it's called break fast.
Engineer: I didn't mean to interrupt you there Dr. Pete.
Ray Peat: So when the blood sugar falls or when you have any stress the adrenaline after the glycogen is depleted the adrenaline starts mobilizing free fatty acids out of your fat cells but also out of your other tissue cells. Phospholipids are turning down very fast and the phospholipids will come into the blood releasing free fatty acids and if you've incorporated a lot of the polyunsaturated fats into your tissues these free polyunsaturated fats happen to not only interfere with sugar metabolism. But they also signal more stress hormone production.
Ray Peat: So they will tell your brain that the stress is worse than it was.
Andrew: Right, they have an intensifying effect then.
Ray Peat: Yeah, as opposed to the saturated fats which tend to inhibit the stress reaction. So it's a self-limiting thing if you've been a sugar or saturated fat eater. Have a stress you release the saturated fats which are anti-inflammatory and turn off the stress hormones.
Sarah: Okay so that's why if you don't eat then you'll eat yourself. If you don't feed your body then your body will eat itself. And just to detail for our listeners Dr. Peet can you please explain which oils are included in these polyunsaturated fatty acids that we're talking about tonight or otherwise known as PUFA?
Ray Peat: Yeah, all of the things you see widely advertised. Corn oil, canola, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, walnut oil, sesame oil.
Sarah: Cotton seed oil.
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Andrew: OK, so to look at, I think, again, to refresh people perhaps listening, because I know... the epidemic of diabetes is certainly taking the quality of life away from a lot of people. So, perhaps if you illustrate the role of the cause of, or maybe not the cause, but the sequelae of diabetes as a kind of illustration of this stress reaction and the vicious cycle of inflammation.
Ray Peat: Yeah, the American diet in the last 30 or 35 years... When the diabetes and obesity have been increasing so much, the polyunsaturated fats are the biggest increase in our diet, not sugar. If you look at the nature of the pancreas, there's a constant renewal of the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas. So the idea is that once you're diabetic... you're doomed to always be diabetic because you don't have the cells in the pancreas. That went out when people discovered the idea of stem cells.
Ray Peat: In one of my newsletters on sugar and diabetes, I mentioned the studies that showed that glucose stimulates renewal of the beta cells in the pancreas.
Sarah: So that's sugar for... Helping a diabetic's pancreas regenerate.
Ray Peat: To renew itself, but if... since the polyunsaturated fats and the prostaglandins that they form are toxic to the beta cells, if you don't have enough glucose, you'll just keep killing any beta cell that appears. Even though you do have the stem cells, they'll......be converted to beta-cells just to get killed by the PUFA. And it happens that the stem cell, the flow from the new cell to the mature insulin cell, it happens that one of the early stages in this streaming is from the glucagon-producing alpha cells in the pancreas. The alpha cells turn into beta cells as they mature, and the glucagon-producing alpha cell raises the blood sugar. And so if you have a lot of the alpha cells in proportion to the beta cells, that will create apparent diabetes because the glucagon causes the breakdown of protein tissue. And increases the glucose, which is helpful potentially if it's only a temporary measure.
Sarah: So it's like a stress reaction. The body's trying to emergency save the lack of sugar in a diabetic's pancreas by increasing the amount of glucagon to raise the blood sugar.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and then if you have a lot of sugar supplied... You don't need the glucagon producing cells so they move on under the influence of sugar. The flow is increased and you produce the beta cells and the sugar should be holding down the stress and preventing the free fatty acids which would form the prostaglandins that would kill the beta cells.
Sarah: So this is why you mention that study done in England. That showed in the early treatment of diabetes they actually gave the diabetics sugar because they noticed they were losing so much sugar in their urine and they actually improved.
Ray Peat: Something like 12 ounces a day they said of the highest quality white sugar.
Andrew: And they started picking up weight.
Sarah: Because it lowered the stress and allowed their beta cells to fully develop.
Ray Peat: Within just a few days they stopped producing so much sugar in their urine. As they were eating these huge amounts of sugar and as they stopped destroying their own tissues they began gaining weight instead of losing weight.
Andrew: Okay so again I think this moves on to our next topic. The concept of cell streaming and stem cells. Stem cells are a pretty hot topic in the last certainly the last decade and I wanted to just make people aware of a couple of different um doctrines and and you're you're in in one of them so it's a kind of um the hayflick doctrine that i know you've mentioned before in the 60s that basically uh the one extreme was to say there were no stem cells and then uh an article that you pointed out that i read earlier from a uh well i don't think he's actually israeli but he's he's a jew and his name is Gershom Zychek and he uh has produced a lot of uh articles on he's actually an md but he's produced a lot of articles on the internet um about the streaming organism and amongst other things the uh kabbalistic uh meditative methods of uh overcoming cancer amongst other things but not to diverge from that and your your opinion about the streaming uh of cells from one cell type to another is that there really is no point at which stem at which cells do not um turn into different cells.
Andrew: You're saying that ultimately any cell can become a progenitor or a stem cell.
Ray Peat: Yeah, that's easiest to see probably in the liver. The Zyotech has demonstrated that there is a flowing from the portal vein side of the lobule in the liver and moving the cells towards the... the vein in the center of the lobule. But about 50, more than 50 years ago, L.P. Polishaev was demonstrating that kind of renewal in muscle cells and even brain cells, showing that even mature neurons, given the right kind of stimulation, can undergo....mitosis and become new cells. One of the current places where this is important is the idea of adrenal fatigue that a lot of people are talking about.
Ray Peat: It ultimately derives from the idea of Addison's disease and a misinterpretation of Hans Selye's. Stress research in which he showed that very intense stress would cause the adrenal glands to enlarge and even bleed and then die and then the animal would die. But if the stress is moderate, the adrenal is very good at renewing itself. You can demonstrate the......total renewal of the adrenal cortex by scooping out the contents.
Ray Peat: Everything that's inside the capsule of the adrenal gland can be scooped out. And the cells of the inside of the capsule, the fibrous capsule, there's a layer of cells that will multiply. And they will, within about three months, produce a fully-structured brand new. Adrenal plant. And so it's the same idea as the pancreas renewing itself, if you give it a chance. And the same logic that you can see in the feedback systems of sugar and glucagon and the shift to insulin in proportion to the available sugar in the... adrenal gland, the cells that are near the capsule are the cells that produce aldosterone or the other class of mineral steroids, mineral regulating steroids.
Ray Peat: As they mature and stream towards the center, they turn into... another layer that produces cortisol and the glucocorticoids. And then at the last stage, they produce the androgens and sex steroids.
Sarah: And they know, it's amazing how one cell knows how to differentiate into all those different types of cells to produce different hormones.
Ray Peat: And it happens that the things that are most stress producing, like serotonin, for example, Or shock, will turn on the activity of the glomerulosa layer that produces the aldosterone. And aldosterone intensifies some of these defensive stress reactions. And the people are now starting to speak of it as an endogenous toxin that activates so many of these stress reactions. But serotonin is a major factor in turning it on, but it's the first thing produced. And as the organism starts surviving, if it can get past that shock stage with adequate sugar, then the glucocorticoids are produced, and finally the sex steroids, which aren't needed if you're going to be in shock. I was starving to death and so on.
Sarah: They're the least important in the emergency mode, but the most important in a healthy mode.
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Sarah: So this is why it's so important to eat optimal nutrition so that all of your cells can function normally and healthily and regenerate.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and when you... are in this healthy state producing an abundance of progesterone and testosterone, for example, these turn off the aldosterone production. So once you achieve the mature happy state, then even though your cells are still there and they're still streaming, their function is inhibited the same way that sugar is. It inhibits the function of the glucagon producing cells.
Andrew: OK, you're listening to Ask Your Ob-Doctor on KMU-D Carbapul 91.1 FM. And from now 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 subject of cell repair and how to avoid scarring, amongst other things. Guest speaker is Dr Raymond Peat and the number here if you live in the area is 923 3911. Or if you live outside the area, the toll free number is 1 800 568. 3723
Andrew: I just wanted to bring bring out the point that you'd mentioned that in Africa and I think the same parallel is something that we heard about or were taught that honey has been traditionally used to heal wounds and is actually very effective at doing that in the absence of antibiotics or other anti-infective measures that He's also mentioned that sugar can be packed into a wound If you don't have antibiotics even if you have a fairly large wound and you can pack sugar into it You have a very good chance of healing it properly.
Ray Peat: Yeah in in Africa when there was no Antibiotic available and they had to do chest surgery They simply filled up the chest hole with massive amounts of sugar and They discovered that it not only didn't get infected, but it healed basically without scarring. In the newsletter on diabetes, I mentioned some of the references where they find that packing a wound with sugar inhibits the formation of excess collagen and causes almost scarless healing.
Sarah: Well, honey never goes bad, right?
Ray Peat: Yeah, partly it's the... osmolarity. It dehydrates things, but it also has the antiseptic... Antimicrobial, yeah....ingredients that white sugar doesn't have, and it has the fructose which promotes actual healing instead of scar formation.
Andrew: Okay, and some of that also is linked to the fact that the energy supply is present to drive. The cellular repair locally.
Ray Peat: Yeah, keeping the energy supply equal to the demand is what short-circuits the inflammation system. It goes right to repair like the fetus.
Andrew: Okay, all right, well, let's move on to another subject. I know that you've talked about a little bit in the past, but we've never really done a show based around it. And that was the similarities of toxemia, and this will be a subject that will be of interest and importance to pregnant ladies who perhaps are halfway through their pregnancy or not even, that toxemia and pre-eclampsia have similar effects to what you would expect to see in aging and fibrotic inflammatory conditions as well as atrophy in general.
Ray Peat: Yeah, just about everything that happens to a woman in pre-eclampsia and to the fetus is similar to what is happening to advanced aging symptoms, loss of functional tissue, all kinds of circulatory problems, hypertension, nerve problems, liver malfunction. Inflammatory processes everywhere, and in the 1950s, Dr. Tom Brewer was shocked when he saw the drug companies promoting the sale of diuretics to pregnant women to prevent edema, and at the same time, doctors began. Advocating salt restriction besides use of diuretics and diet restriction to prevent, supposedly to prevent toxemia, because toxemia involves swelling and edema, and so the drug company said, here's a diuretic to get water out of the body, but the mechanisms by which it gets water out.
Ray Peat: Reduces the blood volume and that tells the kidneys that you need more circulation, more blood and the kidneys signal with renin to activate the adrenals, for example, to produce more aldosterone to try to increase the blood volume. To save sodium, and so when you cut down sodium, you make the adrenals produce more aldosterone to retain it.
Andrew: Right, self-defeating.
Ray Peat: So Tom Brewer reviewed the evidence already in the 1950s. He had a good collection of scientific studies showing that more salt was the cure to toxinium. Protein was the thing he mostly emphasized, but protein and plenty of salt and calcium. So milk was the ideal protein because drinking two quarts of milk you'd get more than 2000 milligrams of calcium. And the calcium is one of the things that helps to turn off aldosterone and the sodium. It is very powerful at turning off the aldosterone and the aldosterone is one of the immediate villains in producing many of the symptoms such as leakiness of blood vessels, lets the water fall out of your blood, cause your feet and face and such to swell up, so just drinking more water just causes more demons.
Sarah: And that's still a common recommendation that doctors give to pregnant mothers. I'm not just talking about in general, but actually to pregnant mothers. They say, you need to increase your fluid intake. And they don't mean orange juice or milk or other nutritious liquids. They mean water.
Ray Peat: Yeah, the medical profession has pretty much quietly forgotten about the salt restriction and diuretic episode because it......probably would be considered a crime against humanity that would lead to replacing medicine with chiropractics or something, but now they're still doing silly things like advocating drinking more water.
Andrew: Okay, so to get on to calcium... And in its role, I think a lot of people don't understand this and again, I don't know how it happens I don't know how the whole thing happens with the salt restriction being a medical piece of advice And actually causing edema. I don't understand how people take it on board that the diuretics They're given I'm really doing the opposite of what they should be Not what they should be doing is they shouldn't be used but that diuretics are actually self-defeating in terms of how they work physiologically and and how sugar has been so maligned and how it's so important the calcium again is another one so the concept of when you have a low calcium diet i.e you're not drinking a lot of milk you're not eating cheese and the other sources maybe greens the other sources of calcium that when you have a low calcium in your diet your blood calcium actually gets bigger the concentration of calcium in your blood increases and that calcium is very damaging to soft tissues need to say a little bit about that because that's such i think that's another common misconception that
Ray Peat: um yeah uh David Maturin uh about uh 30 some years ago worked at a california university and and he noticed that according to the government's own figures the people who had the highest blood pressure ate the least salt and the people who ate the most salt had the lowest blood pressure and he said there's something wrong with this idea of restricting salt and so he looked at the figures and saw that calcium was really the main thing affecting blood pressure
Ray Peat: He got fired from that university and moved to Portland and had I guess about 30 years working at a university in Portland continuing to do research so there are many papers by McCurran showing that it's really a calcium deficiency rather than the sodium excess that causes high blood pressure
Sarah: Because calcium is another thing that will lower the stress hormones and that helps the stress and that helps lower blood pressure
Ray Peat: the parathyroid hormone is what you can see most easily coming down when you eat more calcium and have adequate vitamin D and parathyroid hormone increases aldosterone and so you restrict calcium your parathyroid hormone goes up that makes your aldosterone stress hormone go up that makes you increase your blood pressure and retain sodium
Andrew: Okay, I think for the last time, this is Ask Your Herb Doctor, it's quarter to eight, so from now until the end of the show at eight o'clock you're invited to call in. The number here if you live in the area is 923 3911 or the 800 number is 568 3723. It would be a first for the show if no one called in and I'll take that as a very excited state of listening listeners. People are just so plugged into listening here. I know sometimes we get lots of calls and. At this point in time it doesn't really matter but if you try to call that would be just fine.
Andrew: Okay so the whole calcium thing is a another misnomer then that calcium when you don't take adequate calcium your blood calcium goes up and calcium gets deposited in the soft tissues and this is also part of the reason why the cardiovascular disease happens in the first place because of the insult we've taken and calcium being taken up into the into the arterials. And then becoming less flexible.
Ray Peat: Yeah, the parathyroid hormone takes calcium out of your bones and moves it into all the soft tissues. Kidneys and arteries are where it causes the blood pressure to rise and the arteries to become stiff.
Sarah: So a calcium deficient diet leads to hardened arteries and high blood pressure. Yeah. That's a lot of milk.
Andrew: We've actually got three callers now. So we better start taking some callers. Hello? Hi, you're on the air.
Caller 1: Yes, I know you were just explaining the salt connection, but I want to get a little more clear on that because so many doctors seem to think that salt is just the worst thing in the world, especially if you have high blood pressure. And recently I had a situation, well, I'm a bit overweight and my blood pressure was high. I'm on medication that takes care of that. It's pretty mild, it doesn't have side effects but I've always liked salt, kind of had a craving for it and I had atrial fibrillation recently which it turned out was related to suddenly I'd had an overactive thyroid and I'm taking treatments for that to try to balance everything out but the cardiologist thought that I should... like practically cut out salt because she thought that that would help me lose weight and bring my blood pressure down and that the blood pressure could aggravate the atrial fibrillation although it's interesting that weight doesn't seem to have anything to do with atrial fibrillation like it does other kinds of heart disease so I haven't had an atrial fibrillation attack since I've been dealing with the thyroid balancing it out but in the meantime... I'm wondering about the salt thing. I mean my blood pressure seems to be controlled with the medication. Is there any advantage to cutting back on salt for me?
Andrew: Dr. P?
Ray Peat: The hypothyroidism causes you to lose sodium and it's probably the main cause of people having... high aldosterone and once you have high aldosterone because of low thyroid or low calcium...
Caller 1: Well, I had hyperthyroid, I had an overactive thyroid and now I'm getting it under control.
Ray Peat: That's often a diagnosis but it's often doubtful how factual the diagnosis is because stress will cause your TSH. To give an indication of hyperthyroidism and the high stress hormones can give you many of the symptoms of hypothyroidism but those can very often be cured by a supplement of thyroid.
Caller 1: I'm actually taking thyroid now to balance me out.
Sarah: Did you have a treatment?
Caller 1: Yes, I had the radioiodine treatment to shrink my thyroid. So now it's down, it's producing less than it should be. And I'm just about at the end of the shrinkage. And so now they've got me on 88 milligrams or micrograms of thyroid to balance it out so I don't produce less because producing more can be really dangerous too.
Ray Peat: Increased blood viscosity is... a major thing causing the rhythm problems, atrial fibrillation.
Caller 1: Well, it got me on a blood thinner and a heart regulator.
Ray Peat: Thyroid, by making you able to regulate your minerals, thins the blood and it makes it easier for your heart to pump the blood. by lowering viscosity and regulating the minerals to maintain the right volume of blood at the right viscosity. So, investigating your thyroid function in more detail, you might not need the blood thinner because thyroid is probably the... the basic thing that keeps the blood viscosity low and hypothyroidism is extremely common as a cause of hypertension and that involves increased albastrone and that will create the appearance of so-called salt sensitivity, a calcium deficiency and low thyroid function make you actually sensitive to salt so that you can raise your blood pressure. By taking salt.
Caller 1: Well now I'm getting my thyroid balanced to where it's supposed to be. So you're saying that will thin my blood naturally. They're hoping that that will occur. But where does the salt fit in? Can I have a normal amount of salt without worrying about it?
Ray Peat: If your calcium intake is well over a thousand milligrams per day and your vitamin D. is good, then there's very little likelihood that you will be one of those salt-sensitive people.
Caller 1: Okay, because I am taking a good amount of vitamin D. I've been tested and I don't have a shortage of vitamin D, which most people apparently do. And calcium, how much calcium do I need again?
Ray Peat: A thousand or two thousand milligrams.
Caller 1: Okay. All right. Well, thank you. I'll let somebody else have a turn. Thank you very much. Okay.
Andrew: Okay, we've got two more callers, so let's see if we can give them both equal opportunity. You're on the air?
Caller 2: Hello?
Andrew: Hi, you're on the air.
Caller 2: Hi. Yeah, my question is about one of Dr. Pete's newsletters on tissue-bound estrogen and aging. And I was just wondering, he mentions that for menopausal women, they often get a lot of the estrogen concentration in their tissues as opposed to their blood. But progesterone can knock it out of their tissues and into their blood. I was just wondering if it would be......advantageous if they could take a dose of progesterone and then get a phlebotomy? Would that help to decrease the systemic estrogen?
Ray Peat: No, if the liver is working, if you're eating enough protein and if your thyroid is okay, your liver will send the estrogen straight to your kidneys to be excreted as soon as the progesterone gets it out of your cells into the... bloodstream. And there are several enzyme systems involved in this. The progesterone basically destroys the estrogen receptor that binds estrogen. It destroys the enzyme that releases estrogen from the glucuronic form to deposit it in cells. It activates the enzymes that are... add the glucuronic acid to remove it from cells, and it shifts the oxidative enzymes so that they destroy the active form of estrogen. So everything progesterone does to estrogen system gets it out of the cells. Then your liver will send it to your kidneys to excrete.
Sarah: And progesterone helps the liver get rid of the excess estrogen as well. Yeah, progesterone activates the thyroid to do that.
Caller 2: Okay, so their body would take care of it naturally without having to take the blood out?
Ray Peat: Yeah, basically thyroid and protein nutrition are the things that shift the balance.
Caller 2: Okay, excellent. Thanks a lot.
Sarah: Thank you for your call.
Andrew: One more caller. You're on the air.
Caller 3: Hi. I was... I'm going to talk quick and get to the point because I know you've got a little time. I was told that in this culture, because people's diets are so acidic, that there's like a lot of cultures that don't eat any dairy whatsoever, that they... and the white race, but they like a lot of fish and... well, not a lot of fish, like small amounts of fish, but a lot of vegetables, and they get all their calcium just straight from that and they never take supplements and they don't have a fair process, and it was told to me that because of the acidic... diets that we have, that the body will actually release calcium out of the bones and teeth in order to save the arterial walls from being destroyed ultimately from all the acidity in an attempt to alkalize it, and that's why we have so much osteoporosis, and I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that.
Caller 3: Basically, I was told that it wasn't necessary to take calcium supplements if you were eating a......balanced alkaline diet.
Ray Peat: Well, one of the problems with calcium supplements is that some of the co-factors are very bad like calcium phosphate. Some of the supplements have so much phosphate that it's the phosphate that increases the stress hormones and activate the breakdown of the bones. But the... The main things that take calcium out of the bones besides an excess of phosphate are cortisol, prolactin, and serotonin.
Sarah: And those all trigger parathyroid hormone.
Ray Peat: Yeah. And other stress hormones.
Andrew: In terms of the caller's question about the acidic diet... Do you think that has a direct effect on calcium mobilization from the bones into the blood?
Ray Peat: Well, phosphate is the main acidifying thing in the diet and it mostly comes from beans, whole grains, and seeds and nuts, and meat.
Andrew: Sounds like a vegetarian diet. Oh, and meat, yeah, of course.
Sarah: So that's why I think the generalization is an American diet. is very acidic because beet is very acidic whereas dairy products are actually milk is almost I mean it's very neutral if anything it's a little bit alkaline because of the high calcium and it's actually a calcium deficiency that will cause so much calcium to leach out of the bones and get deposited in the places you don't want it like your kidneys and your arteries.
Andrew: Okay I don't know if that answers the question but we do only have three minutes left so we need to give credit to Dr. Pete and let listeners know how they can find out more information for themselves.
Caller 3: Thank you so much.
Andrew: Yeah you're very welcome thank you for calling and for those people that called in this evening thanks for calling. Okay Dr. Pete thanks so much for your time again.
Ray Peat: Oh okay thank you.
Andrew: So Dr. Raymond Pete's website is www.raypeat.com and there's lots of scholarly articles there for you to read there's probably something in the region of about 50 and they're all fully referenced and many different topics of contention being exposed for what they are incredible lies
Sarah: I think in in short and like I said a lie travels around the world faster than truth can get her boots
Andrew: on yeah there you go okay so we can also be reached as I said at the beginning of the show uh toll free uh during monday through friday at 1888 wbm herb and in a few days here it'll be the solstice the middle of the year and the days will start to get slowly shorter but at this point in time the sun's right in the middle of the sky and people's thyroid should be doing good from all the sunlight so vitamin d is going good and people keep this polyunsaturated fats out of your diet and you'll be going a long way to improving your health anyway more next month the third friday of next month so thanks for listening
Sarah: Thank you for listening.
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