Andrew: Well, welcome to this month's Ask Doctors. My name's Andrew Murray.
Sarah: My name's Sarah Johannesson-Murray.
Andrew: For those of you who perhaps have never listened to our shows, which run every third Friday of the month from seven till eight 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 Garbleville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions and we recommend herbal medicine and dietary advice. So, this month we are going to have Dr. P on the show to talk about various different subjects. Okay, I got a message for Kevin Peer. Kevin Peer, call back in because your call has been dropped here somehow. So, we were going to bring Kevin Peer in who's studied hypnotherapy and is going to open up a Lyme disease forum. In Garberville and the Humboldt area for people to contact him. So, we were going to get Kevin on the show here for the first five, ten minutes. And then Dr. Peet was going to join us again. We're very lucky to have him back again. So, we're going to be talking about hair loss, folks. So, the guys out there who may or may not be bothered about hair loss, you know, it's pretty common, but there is some answer for it. So, Dr. Peet has got some... good advice, good suggestions, backed up by science as a very much a hormone-based approach. We're going to talk about inflammation, osteoporosis, amongst other things. So, after the discussion with Kevin on the Lyme Forum happening in Humboldt County here, Dr. Peet will be joining us here in five or ten minutes at the most. So, Kevin, do we have Kevin with us on the line? We don't have Kevin on the line? Okay, well...
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Andrew: Okay, well, we should have Dr. Pete on the line next. So, Dr. Pete, you with us?
Ray Peat: Yes. Hi, good evening.
Andrew: Again, there may be some people who've just tuned in this evening for the first time to this show and the first time of hearing. Your name. So, just for those people that are always around, would you please just let people know about your academic background?
Ray Peat: Okay. I studied biology at the University of Oregon, specializing in physiology, especially reproductive physiology and quite a bit of biochemistry, but I considered myself an old-fashioned biologist, pre. molecular biology in my way of thinking.
Andrew: Okay, so mainly biology, because I know that you've spent quite a lot of time looking at hormones as a mode of activating our own body's mechanisms.
Ray Peat: Yeah, my dissertation was on the effects of hormones on oxidative metabolism. in relation to aging of the reproductive system.
Andrew: Right, okay, good. Well, I know that the people that I've mentioned at the beginning of the show here, we've been talking about, amongst other things, hair loss and the mechanism behind hair loss. I think some of the guys that are listening to the show probably have more interest in this than the women, but that's not to say that some women may not have some ears pricked at the sound of hair. um hair growth i think and that's also something that we're going to cover there's i know that there is a small subsection of females who do develop what they call hirsutism and it's certainly hormone driven and uh we certainly be very keen to hear what your take on hair loss perhaps as a starting point for the for the guys would be the the kind of mechanism behind it how do you understand hair loss because i know they mention male pattern baldness and genetics etc as being entrenched in the impossible to deal with, and I know that the cosmetic surgery, people do things like hair transplants for thousands and thousands.
Sarah: And I also know that the head of the dermatology department in Whips Cross Hospital in London when we were training, he was completely convinced that male pattern baldness was caused by a sensitivity to testosterone or the DHT, the more potent form of testosterone.
Ray Peat: So, Dr. P. How can you explain to our listeners and us tonight why males develop a male pattern baldness and is it due to testosterone?
Ray Peat: I think the belief in testosterone as the cause is similar to the old belief that males got prostate cancer because of having testosterone. Since males get a particular kind of baldness, it's easy to blame it on. Testosterone, but in fact there's no evidence showing that excess testosterone is responsible for it any more than excess testosterone causes prostate cancer, and so that's where the idea of increased sensitivity came in because there was no evidence of too much of the hormone.
Sarah: Right, he did say that when they measured the blood levels of... men with lots of hair and men with no hair at all on their head, the levels of testosterone were not important, so the best they could come up with is that their cells had a sensitivity to testosterone.
Ray Peat: Yeah, that sort of fills in for a lack of evidence. When you look at the actual hormone situation of people with lots of hair on their head and with not much, what you see is an excess of... prolactin and cortisol in the people losing their hair, both men and women, and when you look at the effect of testosterone on the growth of the hair shaft, the higher testosterone makes it grow thicker and faster, and prolactin tends to cause it to fall out. In chickens and other birds, it's known as the molting hormone. In humans, it's the milk-producing hormone, largely, but it also regulates practically every other cell in the body. It has that analogous function of terminating the growth cycle of the hair shaft. Cortisol and prolactin both rise during stress. And they're... For a long time, people have been noticing the association of baldness with heart disease and also with a crease in the earlobe. And both of those have been challenged repeatedly, but there is clear evidence that they are associated. And what links those is also connected to prolactin and high cortisol, which is... The low energy production, a thyroid deficiency tendency, letting the metabolism of cholesterol go down more towards increased cortisol and less towards progesterone and testosterone and DHEA, things that do promote hair growth.
Sarah: So if men who are suffering from baldness were to have their blood levels checked, do you think they would see a higher than normal level of prolactin in their blood? Although we didn't need to talk about the levels of prolactin as far as the labs are concerned.
Ray Peat: For sure wouldn't be likely to be higher than normal on the current lab standards for normal because they've increased the upper edge probably because of so much....exposure of the population to estrogen, which estrogen increases the production of prolactin and estrogen itself terminates the growth of hair.
Sarah: But didn't you say that when they did actual studies for prolactin or pituitary tumors or prolactin......tumors in which prolactin was elevated, they found like an ideal range for a female and a male? Maybe we can discuss those?
Ray Peat: Yeah. Back in the 70s, after the wave of pituitary tumors resulting from the high estrogen birth control pills, they found that the healthy range for women on the standard scale of units was around 12, somewhere maybe as high as 15. And for men was about 4 to 7 and they've now raised the upper limit for men to, sometimes they say it's as high as 20 and for women as high as 30, but all the men I've talked to who had close to 20, even though they were said to be normal, they all had developing breasts.
Sarah: So they obviously had at 20 it was might have been within the normal range that that laboratory stated, but if they're developing breasts and they obviously have far too much prolactin for a man to have.
Ray Peat: Yeah and fertility is best when a man has 4 to 7.
Andrew: Just getting back to developing breasts, the term is gynecomastia, correct? And in... Beer drinkers, excessive, well, not excessive, but drinkers of beer that drink very hoppy beer, so beer that has an extreme fusion of hops. Gynecomastia is not an uncommon sight, I know in some British pubs, maybe, where people are drinking lots of hoppy beer in the South East, I know they grow hops still quite, in quite large amounts.
Ray Peat: It's not only the phytoestrogens from the hops, but the yeast that... all of the alcoholic drinks require the yeast produces estradiol, the powerful human hormone, as their own reproductive hormone.
Engineer: Interestingly enough, hop extract is the latest miticide for the bee industry. The brand new thing is called HopGard, and somehow it kills mites but not bees.
Sarah: I wonder if there's an anti-parasitic compound besides the... estrogenic resin that's in hops. Well, and also hops pickers are known, are notoriously...
Andrew: The female hot pickers.
Sarah: Yeah, are notoriously known to stop menstruating because it's such a high level of hormone that they get exposed to through their skin and that's a similar situation we have in Humboldt County with people being exposed to clipping and having the resin go through their skin because hops and cannabis are in the same plant family.
Ray Peat: And both of those hormones in beer and... less in most of the wines but alcoholic drinks in general with the estrogen from the yeast at least will stimulate the adrenals to produce both estrogen and cortisol and all kinds of estrogen increase the cortisol exposure and so the cortisol makes the big belly and the estrogen among other things contribute to breast growth.
Andrew: Now what about, I know I'm diverging a little bit on the some of the subjects I wanted to ask you questions about this evening, but it's coming from the same kind of route. What about the oral contraceptive pill and its massive exposure if you like to the public through urine and you know regular drinking water given that so many women eat on the OCP. Do you think that's a credible source of estrogens in the environment?
Ray Peat: Oh, oh sure. You can identify the specific type of estrogen and progestin from the fields going right through the sewer processing plants right into the rivers and causing fish, muskrats, anything that lives in the rivers....getting the sewage from cities, they're being feminized.
Sarah: Is there any type of filter that takes out those estrogenic compounds that could be coming from urine of females using the all-contraceptive pill?
Ray Peat: No, nothing practical that's in use.
Andrew: So nothing like carbon?
Sarah: Activated carbon?
Ray Peat: Well, yeah, if you're going to drink the water you should run an over-activated carbon.
Sarah: But, I mean, wouldn't activated carbon be a fairly cheap way for sewage plants to process water? I guess maybe not.
Ray Peat: No.
Sarah: No, okay.
Ray Peat: The ozone is probably the cheapest, best thing because it breaks down chemicals like that. I think Paris has been doing that for 40 years or so.
Andrew: Okay. All right. Let the listeners know what we're all about here. We've got Dr. Raymond Peat on the line with us, joining us live on this month's Ask Your Web Doctor. The number here to call from about 7.30 onwards is 923 3911 or if you live outside the area you want to call an 800 number that's 800 568 3723. Dr. Peat, about the connection between hair loss and the hormones you mentioned cortisol and prolactin. Being two hormones that would decrease hair growth and these are stress hormones, correct?
Ray Peat: Yeah, they go up with stress in different proportions. The classical stress hormone is cortisol but prolactin responds to different kinds of stress. For example, anything that blocks your thyroid function and energy production tends to increase. Prolactin at the same time it increases the thyroid stimulating hormone. Those are both turned on by serotonin. I know I've heard you speak many times about the innate energy level within an organism being responsible for keeping it in a state of good health and cellular repair and regeneration and I know you you mentioned a lot thyroid as being the body's natural hormone of energy uh and driving cellular respiration and repair and etc the the uh the link between cortisol as a stress hormone and prolactin with hair loss and the opposing hormone which i know also you're very very well yeah published about uh is progesterone and um to
Ray Peat: when when your thyroid is low or other factors such as cholesterol, if cholesterol is low average and if you're deficient in vitamin A, then you can't efficiently turn cholesterol into progesterone and the other anti-stress hormones and the emergency anti-stress hormone is cortisol. So when you, if you lower your cholesterol with a drug. That's going to force you to increase reliance on cortisol and that will have all the degenerative effects including interference with hair growth.
Andrew: This is some of the reason why the statin drugs, some of which have been recalled, because of degenerative effects.
Ray Peat: Yeah, the thing that... has got the most attention is breakdown of muscle tissue causing bleeding in the urine and pain, pain in the muscles. But it's that when you poison the production of cholesterol, you're also poisoning the coenzyme Q10 and many other metabolic systems as well as cholesterol.
Andrew: Right. Because I know you've mentioned a lot about cholesterol being the good guy. And it's kind of counter-intuitive or counter-brainwashing, I think, for some sections of society would want to tell us that our cholesterol should be a certain level and I know you're an advocate of having a reasonably good level of cholesterol because it's such an important building block for the steroid hormone production.
Ray Peat: Yeah, the Framingham study at one point found that people over 50 who don't have at least 200 milligram percent of cholesterol are much more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. It's brain protective to have over 200 if other things being equal.
Sarah: If you're over the age of 50, right?
Ray Peat: Yeah, and thyroid will lower cholesterol naturally, but it does by producing more of the protective. Hormones, progesterone, pregnenolone and DHEA.
Andrew: So it uses up the cholesterol to manufacture those hormones. Yeah, and so if you naturally have below 200 cholesterol because your thyroid is good and all of your nutrients are adequate and that's fine.
Sarah: So can we talk about some practical applications of what some people could go buy at the health food store and rub on their head to help the hair grow back, Dr. Pete?
Andrew: Okay, here we go, here we go guys.
Ray Peat: Vitamin D happens to be closely involved in hair development, calcium, getting enough calcium in your diet.
Andrew: How does the vitamin D work, Dr. Pete?
Ray Peat: Well, they call it the vitamin D receptor, but it's... It's a regulatory material in practically every cell in the body, bones and hair both. And the receptor itself, even without the vitamin D, is involved in regenerating, making stem cells that will produce new hairs. And a couple of groups have discovered that... If you inhibit the parathyroid hormone, you can increase air growth. The natural inhibitors of the parathyroid hormone are vitamin D and calcium, are the main ones.
Andrew: Parathyroids and inflammatory...
Ray Peat: Yeah, it turns on... it interrupts the use of oxygen, so it's really kind of a paradigm of an antithyroid function. Thyroid makes you able to use oxygen, and the parathyroid hormone can do some useful things, such as shocking your bones into producing more cartilage stem cells and capillaries, simply by interfering with oxygen production. For a moment, that shock of oxygen deprivation... stimulates a regenerative process, but if you keep your parathyroid hormone up continuously, then you destroy the bone because it doesn't have enough energy to go ahead and build bone.
Sarah: So it's like a stress hormone. For the immediate or the very short-term, like cortisol, it uses, it mobilizes nutrients, it helps you get through that stressful period, but in long-term, it's very detrimental.
Ray Peat: Yeah, it's the same principle for you get a shock of parathyroid hormone that starts up the bone growth. It's similar to what happens with an injury. Sometimes people have a cut on their scalp and they'll get hair growing around the scar. Two or three years ago, an old man fell with his head in the fireplace and got a severe burn on his scalp and grew a whole head of hair....but you don't want to rely on either injury or thyroid hormones.
Sarah: Okay, so people can make sure to be getting lots of calcium, up to 2,000 milligrams a day. Of course, dairy is quite high in calcium, but also to bring in some herbs here. Nettle tea is high in a lot of different minerals. And vitamin D is freely available from the Sunshine this time of year.
Andrew: So what else, Dr. Peat, would you recommend for male pattern, or let's not call it that, just male, regular male hair loss?
Ray Peat: Vitamin A intake is another thing that helps hold down parathyroid hormones and adequate thyroid. And so you want to avoid everything that suppresses thyroid function, such as polyunsaturated fats.
Sarah: All the vegetable oils and get plenty of coconut oil.
Sarah: And vitamin A is found in liver and eggs and there's beta carotene found in lots of vegetables but that conversion process does rely on the liver and if your thyroid is suboptimal then that conversion process will probably not happen as ideally as you'd want it to.
Ray Peat: In the last couple of years some people have found that topical thyroid hormone, the active T3 part of it. Applied to the skin stimulates regeneration and renewal and caffeine, which has some overlapping effects with thyroid hormone, caffeine is now being added to lotions and ointments and such to renew hair growth and it's a very cheap application. I think they still sell nodos. Caffeine pills, I haven't seen them for years.
Sarah: Well, would coffee or tea work just as well if you made an infusion of that and then dabbed that on your head?
Ray Peat: I suppose so.
Sarah: You don't think so?
Ray Peat: I think we're talking about... Yeah, I'm sure the caffeine would work, but it's cleaner.
Sarah: Yeah. And then also you had mentioned to us earlier about making an oil rub for your head with natural progesterone, DHEA, and olive oil.
Ray Peat: Yeah, those are things that regenerate many skin functions, including hair growth.
Sarah: So if you took a little bit of olive oil and 25 milligrams of DHEA and about 50 milligrams of natural progesterone, and you mixed that all together, that would last you for about a week?
Ray Peat: Yeah, I've seen several people do it. Some hair to start with, it's kind of a sticky, oily mess to put it on your scalp every day. That's why caffeine is a neater thing because you can't see it or smell it or feel it.
Andrew: Right, caffeine is freely available as a pharmaceutical, correct?
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Engineer: Yeah. And what's the dosage for the caffeine?
Andrew: Yeah, what's the dosage for caffeine?
Ray Peat: Oh, I don't think anyone has really worked that out, but it isn't terribly soluble in water, so... You can't... If you get too much, it itches, so it's just whatever is comfortable.
Andrew: OK. All right, well, I think we have a caller on the line anyway, so let's take our first caller. You're on the air?
Caller: Hi.
Andrew: Hi, you're on the air.
Caller: So I guess my line would be, I'm not going bald, I'm molting in preparation for my refreshed head of hair. There you go. Are you going to try this out? Well, um... You know, I'm just wondering on that. You know, you've talked about estrogenics from plants, and I'm wondering if in nature's balance, there are testosterone implants that would provide that. And related to that, the yohindein plant, the yohindein, if that's a hormone or how it works, it's actually recognized as the only aphrodisiac. Yet the FDA says......that it has no applicable uses, hence my definition of the FDA, which I can't say on the air, but if you could address the Yohimbi and Yohimbin and if there are any natural testosterone which may be useful or avoided in certain situations. Thank you very much for the program.
Andrew: Okay, you're welcome.
Andrew: Well, Dr. Pete, do you have anything to share on this?
Ray Peat: I don't know of any plants that have a testosterone like action. There could be some, but I've never run into either progesterone or testosterone in a practical sense in plants. There are some chemicals that test like progesterone in plants, but I've never seen an actual biological effect from them.
Andrew: Do you think the mechanism of nettle root on,
Sarah: but that's just lowering estrogen. Yeah, but it's not specifically,
Andrew: it's not specifically testosterone, but I thought it had a, yeah, maybe that's a blocking action.
Sarah: And saphametam is similar to pregnenolone, but it's not something that would help with men noticing an increase in their testosterone, but I think it's just because it's helping increase pregnenolone.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and pregnenolone. It blocks the stress hormones, primarily turning off excess cortisol production, but when you block the stress reaction, you also prevent overproduction of estrogens, so it can leave your own testosterone unopposed.
Andrew: Do you have any experience with yohimbine perhaps as a...
Ray Peat: No and I don't know much about it just I've read many articles but I don't really understand it.
Andrew: Okay because I as much as I just the it's an alkaloid that's supposedly the aphrodisiac portion anyway we have another caller on the line so let's let's take the caller.
Engineer: Actually they wanted me to do the question and you know I'll do it if it's simple but uh uh if it's not simple then... I mean, you're always going to have better success asking Dr. Pete yourself, but... So, we have a female ex-Bolemic who got over Bulimia about a year ago or so and started experiencing hair loss as soon as she got over the Bulimia and would like some nutritional suggestions and there's another call, so I gotta get to that.
Andrew: So Dr. Pete, what's your take on Bulimia and post-Bolemic hair loss?
Ray Peat: I suspect it... It led to hypothyroidism. There's usually high prolactin and high serotonin during those appetite disturbances. It probably was starting because of hypothyroidism, but at a certain point your hair can start falling when your thyroid is really low and the stress hormones high.
Andrew: Right, because the stress hormones are definitely going to be high in that kind of situation. Yeah, okay. Alright, well I see the lights are flashing, so, okay, we don't, the engineer's shaking his head. Okay, so, alright, so, so far as the hair loss thing is concerned, one of those suggestions was DHEA and progesterone and or caffeine as a USP. Pharmaceutical grade caffeine.
Sarah: He mentioned that some caffeine pills, I've never heard of them, that you can buy at the drugstore.
Engineer: It was Noto's brand.
Sarah: Noto's brand, okay.
Andrew: They still sell them, do they? Okay, maybe not. All right, and then
Ray Peat: aspirin is another thing that has some anti-stress pro-hair action.
Sarah: Well, I'd like to spend some time talking about unwanted female hair growth and female hair loss. Because it's slightly different but some of the same hormones. So Dr. Pete, when women have a lot of facial hair or mustache or even if it's on their chin or cheek, what's going on there with their hormones?
Ray Peat: The androgens usually are up but prolactin excess, the difference seems to be whether the prolactin is steadily high or whether it's... Surges are very high, but both hirsutism and hair loss are associated with high prolactin. And the thyroid supplement is a very reliable way to control prolactin in most women. Vitamin A and calcium also help to inhibit excess prolactin.
Sarah: And from a herbal point of view, Vitex is blocks prolactin, Vitex, Chase, Treeberry. And also, progesterone would help with blocking some of those high androgens that are promoting the hair growth in women.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and the thyroid will, if you have enough cholesterol, the thyroid will increase your progesterone, and progesterone, and pregnenolone, and DHCA.
Andrew: How about graying hair? Most commonly you see that as a sign of aging, but not necessarily so, huh?
Ray Peat: Yeah, I've seen DHCA corrected pretty quickly, but the enzyme that creates the melanin pigment uses copper as a catalyst, and the... Probably the best food for increasing your copper while decreasing the iron which competes against the copper is shellfish, shrimp, clam, lobster, crab, squid. All of those have a high copper content, not an excessive iron.
Sarah: And I think contrary to popular opinion about shellfish, they're actually lower on the food chain so they're lower in heavy metals and other contaminants than fish are. And I just, from a personal note, since I started eating a serving of shellfish once a week three years ago, I haven't noticed any new gray hairs starting, the same ones that had already started, unfortunately, when I was 30. I'm still there, they haven't reversed, but I haven't noticed it continuing to spread. So it does work making sure you get your copper intake balanced, and in the form of shellfish it's quite balanced.
Ray Peat: Since iron accumulates with aging, if a person is going to eat foods that are very high in iron, such as meat or liver, I think it's helpful. In the long run, to have some coffee, right at the same time you're having meat, so that you don't absorb all of the iron.
Andrew: Yeah, iron is quite a damaging, quite a damaging ion itself, isn't it? It's very pro-inflammatory and oxidative and...
Ray Peat: Yeah, it attacks with the polyunsaturated fats and it tends to increase your serotonin.
Andrew: Now isn't that, you've mentioned lipofuscin?
Ray Peat: Oh, yeah, it's formed by the oxidation chronically of polyunsaturated fats interacting with iron and estrogen are the main...
Andrew: And estrogen? Yeah.
Sarah: Right. And just for our vegetarian listeners, are there vegetables that are particularly high in copper? Or a vegetable source or?
Ray Peat: None that I know of.
Sarah: What about any eggs? Do eggs have any copper in them? Not enough to count. What about seaweed? Do you think seaweed would have any copper? I would have thought so.
Ray Peat: Yeah, but you would probably get a toxic amount of iodine in your drink.
Sarah: Lead and heavy metals and too much of that?
Ray Peat: Yeah. The seaweed isn't very discriminatory
Sarah: on what metals it picks up.
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Andrew: Okay, you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMED, Garbleville 91.1 FM and from now until the end of the show, 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's subject of hair loss, hormones, oxidation, and we're going to talk a little bit about osteoporosis. I think it's probably one of the next subjects we want to just open up. So if you live outside the area, there's an 800 number. It's 800-568-3723, or if you live in the area, it's 923-3911.
Sarah: 923-3911.
Andrew: I'm rushing there. I'm sorry. Yeah, so Dr. P, I'm just keen to ask you, Dr. P, about osteoporosis. I know we all hear about calcium and brittle bones and postmenopausal women being at risk of fracture. But what's your interpretation of the cause of osteoporosis? Osteoporosis.
Ray Peat: It's, my current interest in it is that it's a good way to conceive the unified nature of aging processes. Because everyone's bones get thinner with aging and it corresponds pretty well to the loss of muscle tissue with aging. Generally it corresponds to the calcification of soft tissues that shouldn't have calcium and the excitatory processes of all of the inflammatory and nervous activity, muscle cramping and so on, all of these things are associated with the misapplication of calcium. Okay. Failing to put it in the bones and all of that is under the control of energy metabolism, so something going wrong with your thyroid and oxidative metabolism, the parathyroid lactic acid producing kind of metabolism tends to replace it and cause the stress atrophy, shrinking of the tissues.
Andrew: Right. So it's more of an error of calcium metabolism so in terms of correcting some because I know you're very big on natural sources of calcium and the calcium recommendations that you've mentioned in past may to some people perhaps seem high but certainly proven very useful for people with conditions related to calcium decrease so what kind of calcium intake do you think is as reasonable for people especially those people approaching an age where you know 50 or whatever they're
Ray Peat: um the Maasai people and other cattle raising people in in eastern Africa often get 5000 milligrams of calcium a day for a long period of time okay and
Andrew: this is all from milk
Ray Peat: uh yeah
Andrew: yeah
Ray Peat: and uh the there's been a lot of publicity in the last few months about calcium supplements and not being very helpful and the most popular form of calcium supplement medically has been either calcium gluconate or calcium uh I guess gluconate is probably the most popular
Sarah: citrate
Ray Peat: yeah citric acid itself causes you to lose you calcium in your urine lactate is another popular supplement all of those have their anti calcification effects causing you to lose calcium or misplace it
Sarah: and here they advertise that calcium citrate is the only absorbable form for menopausal women and you're saying that it actually inhibits some of the absorption of the calcium
Ray Peat: it activates the loss of calcium in urine where carbonate isn't quite as soluble if you don't have a lot of acid but eventually all the way down your intestine it has a chance to absorb so it's a very effective but safe supplement because the carbonic acid, the carbon dioxide is deformed. That stimulates bone formation rather than breaking down the bone.
Sarah: And a really easy way to get an adequate level if you don't drink dairy or drink milk or eat cheese is to do eggshell powder for calcium carbonate. And like where a quart of milk has about a thousand milligrams of calcium. Am I correct Dr. Pete?
Ray Peat: Yeah, a thousand to twelve hundred.
Sarah: A thousand to twelve hundred. And if you have a quarter teaspoon of finely ground eggshell powder, if you take that three times a day with your meals so that your acid level is adequate, that's providing around two thousand milligrams of calcium. And that quarter teaspoon is smaller than most calcium pills you swallow.
Ray Peat: And there have been chemical analyses of comparing eggshells to the commercial calcium supplements. And they find that the lowest concentration of toxic heavy metals is in eggshells. Oyster shells are the next cleanest, but even they have slightly more of the toxic heavy metals.
Sarah: Because naturally as mammals we accumulate heavy metals and things we want out of our circulation in our bones. And so if you're taking a calcium supplement that's from an animal's bones, you're taking a calcium supplement that's from an animal's bones....then you could essentially be poisoning yourself. Is this correct, Dr. Peat?
Ray Peat: Yeah, old cows are sometimes used to make the bone meal, and their lead content is really high.
Andrew: Okay, alright, so calcium in the form of eggshells is an excellent supplement for combating osteoporosis. For those people who don't want to drink milk, because milk has the protein and the sugar that helps with bone production. As well as the calcium.
Ray Peat: And aspirin, people seldom talk about it, but aspirin improves calcium retention in bones. And it isn't as profitable as an osteoporosis drug as the bisphosphonates and such things. But it's very safe as long as you take it. Vitamin K, along with it, and vitamin K, it happens to be a pretty expensive vitamin, but it is right at the center of the regulation of calcium. It protects your arteries from calcification, and it allows the bone to use carbon dioxide. It carboxylates the proteins. that bind calcium into the bone. So you're protecting your arteries and building your bones when you have adequate vitamin K. And both aspirin and vitamin K are known practical bone building supplements.
Andrew: Do you have any recommendations for food sources for vitamin K?
Ray Peat: Kale is the vegetable that's richest in it, I think, and liver is a very rich source.
Andrew: OK, so do you know, for example, how much kale someone would use to get the equivalent vitamin K in order to be able to use aspirins safely?
Ray Peat: Oh, I think every other day. A serving of well-cooked kale will give enough vitamin K, but the Japanese have treated osteoporosis and hardening of the arteries with doses of vitamin K that were 500 times the normal dietary requirement. It's safe even at those high levels.
Andrew: Because I know you've mentioned vitamin K, a milligram of vitamin K. is sufficient, which I know that I think Thorn Research produced a vitamin K that is one milligram per drop, and that would be enough to use alongside one 325 milligram aspirin.
Ray Peat: Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah. Okay, yeah, so.
Sarah: And the other thing too is nettle tea has some vitamin K besides the minerals.
Andrew: Good, okay, because calcification of the arteries is fairly common, you hear about it quite a lot. And this is then due to aberrant calcium metabolism and actually to use calcium is not the problem because I know I hear people say well if I'm supposed to be doing something about my calcification then I don't want to be consuming calcium but it's actually counterintuitive because consuming adequate amounts of calcium will drive parathyroid hormone down.
Sarah: And will deposit calcium in the correct location not on the arterial wall.
Andrew: Dr. Pete, you still there? Yes.
Andrew: Okay, I'm sorry.
Ray Peat: Several years ago, several people noticed that people taking psychoactive drugs were getting osteoporosis and the SSRI antidepressants that supposedly increase your serotonin, they don't reliably do that, but that's what we call them. We're seeing osteoporosis develop in people who had been on those for several years, and that led to some rethinking of bone metabolism, and they see that serotonin produced and coming mostly out of the intestine, reaching the bones as a result of inflammation in the intestine, for example, or from... taking a drug that increases serotonin is interfering with bone metabolism and causing early quick development of osteoporosis. And so now a couple of groups are coming out with drugs to suppress the synthesis of serotonin to cure osteoporosis.
Andrew: Good. Excellent. Well, Dr. P, I'm going to have to... have to cut you short there and just make sure that people get your information in the next couple of minutes that we have left here. So thank you so much for joining us again. Really appreciate your time and your expertise. Okay, thank you. Thank you listeners for listening to our show. We appreciate your support. Okay, so Dr. Raymond P has a very good website with lots of reference published scientific articles and references for all the statements that he makes. So, the website address is www. raypeat, r-a-y-p-e-a-t dot com, so go there, have a look at its website, look at these articles, some very interesting articles and some lots of perhaps counterintuitive for today, but that's a good thing because what we know today is not necessarily the right thing. Thank you for all those people that have tuned in to the show and as usual next third Friday of next month, we'll be back at seven o'clock.
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