Ask Your Herb Doctor 110318 Fukushima I Episode Transcript
Hosts, Andrew, Sarah
Guest, Dr. Ray Peat
Andrew: Well, welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray.
Sarah: My name is Sarah Johansson-Murray.
Andrew: For those of you who perhaps have never listened to our shows, which run every third Friday of the month from 7 to 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. And 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 supplies.
Andrew: So you're listening to Ask Europe Doctor on KMUG Garberville 91.1 FM and from 7.15 today until the end of the show at eight o'clock you're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's last minute topic as it were of the unfolding facts in... Japan.
Andrew: I think first and foremost we want to extend our heartfelt sincere wishes for the people of Japan that their country could recover and the people there can find relief from a lack of food and shelter and protection and help from all the sources possible to help them cope with this disaster. So last Friday there was a 8.9 or 9.0 earthquake which resulted in a tsunami and the tsunami had the unfortunate effect of causing a fairly catastrophic breakdown in the cooling system of Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Andrew: We're going to be joined in a moment here by Dr. Raymond Peets who's an expert physiologist, chemist, research scientist and we're going to be hearing from Dr. Raymond Peets about some helpful things to do to counter any potential radioactive spread to this country. It was probably earlier in the week that I first started finding some internet-based evidence to show that the spread of radiation from the steam leaked from the plant, and subsequently the explosions, the hydrogen explosions on the actual plant.
Andrew: Buildings, not the containment vessel for the reactor, but the buildings that housed all of the reactor and all the machinery, that that steam was laden with things like iodine, 1,3,1, and cesium isotopes and that these had been released in the steam cloud as the engineers desperately tried to lower the pressure by allowing the steam from the reactor to leave so it didn't cause any further breakdown of the containment vessel which would certainly result in......fairly widespread and very damaging radioactive release and one of the reactors number three, the mix oxide fuel reactor that contained the plutonium, 6% plutonium and 94% uranium, that would lead to a much more serious environmental damage if that was released.
Andrew: Okay, so we started coming out on Wednesday I think it was, I first started seeing some spreading clouds as it were in colour. Showing potential spread to the east coast and then the CTBTO from Vienna released information and it became widespread public knowledge. It was no longer something that was on the fringes but fairly widespread public knowledge and today, that was on Thursday and today on Friday, quite a few government agencies are also admitting this.
Andrew: So, on Wednesday or Tuesday of last week they started saying that the radioactive components would be in......the upper atmosphere spread by the jet stream moving east and due to hit the Aleutian Islands on Thursday and then be on the west coast of America with spread potentially from Oregon down to California.
Andrew: So, yesterday I read the CTBTO report online and indeed this cloud was coming fairly close and was expected to make landfall by Friday. Funnily enough today in Sacramento, now the CTBTO is the centre of the... Basically the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation that was set up to monitor the atmosphere for radioactive particles, isotopes, emissions from nuclear testing. There's a comprehensive test ban on nuclear explosions and these sites, there are 60 of them around the world, and these sites actually measure radiation released from nuclear explosions.
Andrew: So the ones in the Pacific were starting to detect this and actually invent it in Vienna. They released the information. I think it was, I don't know if it was a mole or an insider who just wanted to make sure that it got out, because as well as radioactive data, the CTBTO collects geophysical information, so it's seismic activity, tsunami activity, and on top of that the third thing they do is maintain and monitor any radioactive release as a telltale signature from nuclear explosions.
Andrew: Okay, so they started picking this up and then on Thursday it was released from Vienna. And they said on Friday it would be making landfall in California. And actually today one of the CTBO stations based in Sacramento actually recorded very small, so although they're very small, they're present particles of iodine, I-131. And so, you know, it's fairly real that what we have in the upper air jet stream and or coming down in the rain is potentially going to land here.
Andrew: And that's something we should just be aware of at this point in time is still I would I would safely say still fairly small but it's certainly coming this way all the time now it's made its first landfall from when it first started and the fires broke out on Saturday or Sunday of last week and so for the last five days the uh cloud trail has been coming east
Sarah: so uh we're joined by Dr Ray Pete today and I want to introduce Dr Pete and then also ask him um from his sources if he believes it true that the uh radioactive iodine has reached our our um land yet
Ray Peat: um it's probably present in detectable amounts but probably not yet biologically significant but it could quickly become concentrated enough to affect pregnant women on uh because they feed us concentrates elements from the environment at least a hundred times faster than other tissues and so during the first two or three months after an accident like that there will be a radioactive iodine which would be concentrating in the embryo and fetus uh other isotopes such as cesium and and strontium would continue to be dangerous if they got into the food supply but the radioactive iodine is one that's most crucial for developing babies.
Sarah: So um Dr. Pete we wanted to go over and discuss what different foods and nutrients could help protect us from increasing levels if it does increase or more dangerous levels of radioactive iodine that may be present and or cesium and or strontium from this cloud that is coming over from Japan and we wanted to go through the list of different things that specifically can block those radioactive particles as well as in general what nutrients are protective.
Ray Peat: The first principle is to dilute the radioactive isotopes with good stable relatively stable isotopes and so old food is best. The iodine radioactive isotope is practically all gone after three months after the production of it and the others will eventually tend to wash down into the ground and so the plants that grow in the first few months after an accident will contain those isotopes.
Ray Peat: So if you have canned food, dried milk or aged cheese, these are very safe and will continue to be safe for months because they were produced before the accident. Other principle besides diluting the isotopes is to increase your resistance to stress and radiation. And it happened that my very first newsletter 30 years ago was on radiation resistance and what to do in case of a nuclear accident.
Ray Peat: And at that time I reviewed......a couple of thousand research articles both from the old APC, Atomic Energy Commission research, and a lot of it from the Soviet research. And the main conclusions that I found were that increasing the metabolic rate, which causes cells to retain magnesium, magnesium is very important in repairing cell damage, and the faster the metabolic rate is, generally the more damage can be repaired before it becomes established as a stress factor in the organism.
Ray Peat: The high metabolic rate produces carbon dioxide. Which has an antioxidant, anti-stress effect all through the organism. So if you keep your metabolic rate up and eat a balanced diet, your tissue is going to retain the magnesium it needs out of the food and produce the carbon dioxide it needs, assuming that you're getting adequate protein, sugar, fat, vitamins. a balance of minerals.
Sarah: So you mentioned to me earlier that there are ways and foods that we can eat to keep our metabolic rate high as along with taking thyroid. So can you expand on what types of sugars and fats and proteins we should be ingesting?
Ray Peat: The ideal fat is coconut oil because the short chain saturated fatty acids compete....with the other fats that normally are slowing metabolism and oxidative metabolism. And so for a couple hours after you eat more or less a tablespoon of coconut oil per meal, for a couple hours your metabolic rate is increased, producing more carbon dioxide and accelerating cell repair processes. Fruits that come from the tropics, the farther south the fruit is grown the longer it will be free of this high latitude Japanese radiation.
Ray Peat: So oranges grown in Mexico, Brazil and Florida are still going to be pretty pure in terms of radiation for a very long time. And the... The sugar and the minerals in oranges are very close to what we need. So coconut oil, orange juice and milk as a good source of calcium.
Ray Peat: During the atmospheric bomb tests in the 50s and 60s, I got interested in the study the government was doing. They were doing it secretly before it became public for a long time. They were collecting baby teeth from around the world to measure the fallout effects. The government began recommending that people not drink milk because milk was contaminated with the strontium which was taken up along with the calcium. But I looked at the... actual analysis of the food value as well as the isotope content of vegetables and found that a person getting their nutrition from vegetables was going to have about five times higher exposure to strontium-90 than people who got their nutrition primarily from milk and cheese because the cows were able to concentrate the calcium. and filter out a little more of the strontium than the vegetables were doing.
Sarah: You mentioned to me that in order to get enough calcium to protect against your body's own bone destruction that you would have to drink one to two quarts and eat some cheese daily and that same amount of calcium from green leafy vegetables would be about three pounds of spinach per day.
Ray Peat: Is it something like that?
Sarah: Yeah. And then the fact that you're eating so much spinach that could have been contaminated with strontium, you'd actually be exposing yourself to much higher levels of strontium.
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Sarah: And can you talk to us about what you'd recommend for elimination methods? Like if we are breathing in or ingesting radioactive particles, what's the best elimination method you find to take? Because I know there's a lot of stuff on the Internet about all these different things you can take that will help bind. The radioactive particles, but what do you recommend, Dr. Pete?
Ray Peat: Well, once it gets into your digestive system, if it's coming in incorporated in the food, there's really no way to sort it out. But if it's in the water, for example, if you can just keep a lot of fiber flowing through your system, like eating fruit that you know isn't contaminated. Carrots, for example, if you know that they're safely grown, uncontaminated, will sweep the material through your intestine, preventing the absorption of some nutrients at the same time that if you're exposed to a very concentrated... dose from a rain or something, it's better to go hungry for a little while, while sweeping out your intestine.
Sarah: So would you consider, just to kind of go back a little bit here, but would you consider the radiation that we might have been exposed to thus far dangerous enough to avoid drinking any milk and eating any vegetables from California and Oregon?
Ray Peat: Oh no, not yet. If the reactors start burning fuel rods, someone is likely to leak the information in time that people can take precautions. But if it reached the proportions of Chernobyl, then it would take extreme measures for a very long time using... Only stored antique food, the older food would become more valuable.
Sarah: So it sounds like we need to start stocking up on sugar and dried milk powder?
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Sarah: Okay, and other things that can help move things along in the intestine are all the various liver herbs and cascara bark powder at all speeds intestinal transit time. Well, I did want to ask you, Dr. Pete, there's a lot of hype around people using potassium iodide already and it's selling out of the stores and people using kelp, and can you please explain to our listeners how taking kelp or the potassium iodide supplement would help protect them against the high amount of radioactive iodine in our environment?
19:46 timestamp
Ray Peat: It simply dilutes the radioactive isopope when you're taking in a lot of... bold, stable iodine. It saturates your thyroid. Your thyroid shuts down and stops taking up anymore. And so you can add a radioactive iodine to a saturated person and it just gradually washes out without concentrating at a very high level in the thyroid. But if a person is deficient in iodine. Almost all of it will, once it gets into the bloodstream, it will stick in the thyroid gland and give an extremely high dose to the gland. And even more so to a developing embryo's thyroid gland. The fetus will concentrate even more than the mother's thyroid. The potassium iodide is very good. protection but only from the damage to the thyroid gland. It doesn't do anything at all to protect against the other isotopes or the other tissues of the body as some people are saying on the internet. In fact probably if you took it more than enough to saturate your tissues the center for disease control. Advocates 160 milligrams one dose. If you took that much every day for a long time, your thyroid gland would shut down, your metabolism would slow down, and you would, all of your defensive reactions would slow down, so you would become more susceptible to injury throughout the rest of your body.
Sarah: So you're not recommending that people take any kelp powder or potassium iodide at this current level?
Ray Peat: No, just the minimum requirement is only 150 or 200 micrograms and even one milligram per day continued for a very long time increases the risk of damage to the thyroid gland, thyroiditis appears. Increasingly, when people eat just a milligram of iodine or more.
Sarah: And do you know the measurements on how much is in kelp powder? How many milligrams is in a teaspoon of kelp or a half teaspoon of kelp?
Ray Peat: No, but probably a half teaspoon. I think people have calculated that it would take an ounce to be equal to the Center for Disease Control amount, but probably a half teaspoon is. Adequate to saturate most people.
Sarah: But only once we have more information saying there is actually elevated levels of radioactive iodine in our environment?
Ray Peat: Yeah, one half teaspoon dose isn't going to hurt anyone, but you don't want to do that every day for a long time.
Sarah: Andrew, did you have a question?
Andrew: No, I think what was, like you were saying Sarah, the rush on buying potassium iodide was pretty apparent. I know. I saw plenty of information regarding that, and the thing with iodine, if I'm right in saying this Dr. P, is that the radioactive iodine that was present in Chernobyl was also responsible for the big increase in thyroid cancers, and now you're saying that pregnant women are actually more susceptible even than young children.
Ray Peat: Yeah, Ernest Certainglass, who got interested in the issue. When they were doing atmospheric bomb tests, the government timed their bomb tests in Nevada so that the wind wasn't blowing towards the big California cities. They wanted all of the fallout to go into Utah. And the population of Utah suffered the most from autoimmune diseases and cancer and other diseases. Occasionally, the rainfall would be so light that no fallout would come down until it got to the East Coast and one of these times Ernest Sternglass had his students studying how to use their Geiger counters and they found that there was a terrific amount of radiation at university which the government hadn't mentioned to anyone. And that got him studying it and paying attention to how dishonest the U.S. Public Health Service and Atomic Energy Commission and state public health officials were.
Ray Peat: But he showed that probably there were tens of thousands of miscarriages and the babies that survived a very high percentage were. Hypothyroid, even, there was an epidemic of babies born without their thyroid gland. And as long as they were being breastfed, the mother's thyroid was entering the milk at a high enough level to cover up the symptoms, so as soon as they were weaned, they were discovered not to have thyroid gland.
Andrew: Going back to cover-ups or suppression of information, I found it quite interesting from the moment the tsunami happened and the evolving situation at Fukushima was passing day by day with ever increasing explosions, etc. I found the most information, funnily enough, coming from Russia today, that news agency there, I think, probably not suppressed so much by the West as the BBC even. I found the BBC's coverage was pretty good. I found Russia's today. Their coverage was pretty excellent, and they had the most up-to-date information, I presume, because the time zone, they're much more on a par with Japan. So, in the waking hours, they were picking up the information as soon as it was being released from sources in Japan. But I wonder what would be the best, I guess to keep monitoring Russia today, but the best source for people in America to be able to find out more about local......local results with real time and real figures to show what actually is in the environment. I wonder what would be the best way to go about doing that.
Ray Peat: I don't remember the web address, but there is a good nuclear site, basically an anti-nuclear power site that is getting up to date information.
Andrew: The other thing was, I was looking on eBay at Geiger counters, of all things, just to see, you know, they're out there, there's hundreds of them on eBay, and they're not expensive, and I think a lot of them are kind of post-Cold War, post-Three Mile Island, so the getting hold of a Geiger counter to actually do some physical measurements yourself.
Ray Peat: For a while, the internet stores were selling old Soviet Geiger counters. For about $15, someone just told me that she and her neighbor had bought two at $35 and as soon as the radiation scare hit, the price went up to $75.
Andrew: I saw them on eBay and they were going for about $150 to $200. I can get hold of the information pretty quick, but they were all fairly similar. They were kind of bright yellow and maybe about the size of an egg carton.
Engineer: So I'm actually holding mine right here, which I got on the internet. I could have paid anywhere. I got the cheapest, basically, which cost me about $250. I did see even cheaper ones on the places, but the really good expensive ones cost $10,000 to $20,000. The little booklet I got with this, you know, I can tell some kinds of radiation from other kinds, but I basically have it beeping, and I got it to check out both industrial metals and phosphate fertilizers, and I did find some things which are definitely hot by mine. It's not beeping much more than normal right now though.
Andrew: All right, let's get back to some of those some of those things that people could...
Sarah: Yeah, we do have a color on the line, but I did want to at least go through a few more of the anti-radiation nutrients.
Ray Peat: Dr. Peat, caffeine... There's lots of information out there about tea and coffee, and can you describe to us briefly what the nutrients are in the tea and the coffee and how caffeine helps to protect against radiation?
Ray Peat: Coffee is a good source of magnesium and of some B vitamins, niacin especially, and the caffeine is anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, and so if you happen to have some......mobile isotopes that are still in your bloodstream and going through your kidneys, caffeine helps to flush them out faster and safely. It has a slight chelating effect as well as anti-inflammatory.
Sarah: And...sorry, carry on.
Thanks for reads, hope you enjoyed it, sharing this article on your favorite social media network would be highly appreciated 💖! Sawernya juga boleh