Andrew: Hi, welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray and we'll have to wait a moment for Sarah to join us in the studio. She's just on a call at the moment. For those of you who perhaps have never listened to our shows which run every third Friday of the month from 7 till 8pm, we are 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 recommend herbal medicine and dietary advice. So you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD Garberville 91.1 FM and from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock you're invited and welcome to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's topic of the subject of radiation and its widespread use. Okay so the number if you live in the area is 923 3911. Alternatively there's a toll free number 1-800. K-M-U-D-rad. So we're very pleased to be joined by Dr. Raymond Peat, who has recently published an article about the very subject of the prevalent effects of radiation in the environment and how seemingly subjected we are to it on a daily basis and how it, rather than being a normal fact of life, it's really something to be aware of. So Dr. Peat, thank you for joining us.
Ray Peat: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Andrew: As always, people tune in, they've never listened to KMUT before, they're passing through, or to some people who just happen to be in front of the radio and haven't heard the show before. Would you just explain to the listeners your academic background?
Ray Peat: In biology, I started graduate school as a specialist in nerve biology, but I felt that they weren't. They were very scientific, they were so dogmatic, and I wandered around the various labs until I ran across the reproductive physiology people, and they actually seemed to be just getting information and thinking about how the organism works, where the nerve biology people were really just trying to... develop a dogma more than discover how brains work. And so I did my dissertation on aging of the reproductive system in mammals.
Andrew: OK. All right, well, I think with particular relevance to something that you've recently published, I know the controversy surrounding the full-body scanners that began rolling out, oh, about 2007, but of which you recently hit the......mainstream news on television, I think of last month in November. So far as the radiation from, we'll want to get into that a little bit later too, the radiation from medical devices and other sources. What's your opinion of the devices themselves in terms of their potential for causing any negative effects through the mechanisms by which you'll describe?
Ray Peat: I think... I think the situation is similar to in the 1950s. The government was assuring the public that fallout from atomic bomb testing in the atmosphere was completely harmless because of their way of explaining the biological effects. And they're still promoting those theories of biological effects. And even though this kind of X......ray treatment or examining is much less dangerous than the radioactive isotopes falling out of the bomb tests. The science by which they assure us of its safety is just exactly as faulty as it was in the 1950s. And John Goffman, who was a government......defender of the safety of radioactive isotopes from bomb tests through most of the fifties, when he suddenly thought about what he was doing, saying that we don't know that it is going to have long-range deadly effects, so we should keep doing it, he just suddenly realized that... If the effects are going to be disastrous sometime in the future, it's better to learn about the dangers now rather than wait until we're all dead from the long-range effects. And the trick that they've been using now for almost a hundred years, around the beginning of the last century, people knew that you could cause mutations in organisms either with... radiation or with toxic chemicals and by the 1920s people were seeing the effects on the mutations or the genetic changes as being in the chromosomes entirely and as the chromosomes and genetic storage were seen to be in the DNA, the doctrine. Focused on the interaction of radiation with DNA, but that was really strictly a matter of reasoning from the fact that they cause hereditary changes and that they decided that heredity was all in the chromosomes and DNA. But in the 1960s people were demonstrating that if you... for example, do microsurgery on a protozoan and just change the orientation of its cilia right on the surface of the cell, that its offspring will, for generations onward, will all have backward cilia on that part of the cell.
Andrew: So it's like a biological memory.
Ray Peat: Yeah, and totally separate from the DNA. The frog biologist, Gerden, was doing similar things on frog eggs, showing that surgery on the surface of a frog egg generations later could cause the whole line of frogs to die out. Even though that egg would mature into an adult, that adult could reproduce, but eventually several generations later there would be no more frogs....treating the surface of the egg and he showed that if you heat a spot on the surface you will get mutations. But the inheritance wasn't necessarily by way of mutations but it just showed that some harmful influence other than direct interaction with DNA is able to eventually cause mutations and death.
Andrew: OK, do we actually know what it is at this point in time that's actually transferred several generations down the line even to produce those mutations in offspring later on?
Ray Peat: Not really, just some good guesses. A man in Hungary named Chaba Csaba has been working on what happens with these early life experiences that are passed on from... cell to cell and even from adult to its offspring.
Andrew: I think that's probably, like you've said time and time again, that's the fault with the doctrine of biology, the way it's evolved, is that people are led to believe that things are understood a certain way when in actuality there's very different reasons why things are changing and they're not actually looking in the right direction. So far as the radiation issues concerned, and again I've mentioned the whole body scanners that are coming into place in American airports across the USA, so far as the potential dose of radiation, because I know obviously they'll want to tell you, tell us that these things are safe and that they've been tested and I even heard of the... the chap who was giving the speech saying that even his children have been through it and he's... not to say that it's anything good or safe, but what potentially is the... just tell us about the potential risks and what this causes, so that is the fact that this can happen, this is a potential risk.
Ray Peat: For 70 or 80 years people have been noticing that x-rays, even in moderate doses......seem to accelerate the aging process, and the idea of imprinting is that you might get acceleration of the aging process from generation to generation if that's passed on the way the other cytoplasmic injuries are. But the doctrine that everything is controlled by the genes, many people insisted that the aging process was... the result of accumulating mutations, but someone used a chemical mutagen to produce more mutations than the x-ray treatment was producing. And the mice that were treated that way lived just as long as normal mice. But the x-rays producing even fewer mutations shortened their life. Physiological effect and mutations are much less deadly than whatever this other cytoplasmic or general physiological process is.
Andrew: Starting then, perhaps just to listeners who perhaps have just started listening to this other show, we're talking about the inherent risks....of exposure to radiation, especially in the light of the whole body scanners that are being deployed. I think there are about 450 airports across the USA at the moment, and they plan to expand the range, and they want to tell us that they're safe. But there's evidence out there to the contrary, and like most things, unfortunately, probably 10 or 20 years later on, we'll find even more evidence with actual... actual physical, well we probably won't, that's a problem, not in this lifetime, it's probably something that's going to take a couple of generations to come through, but hopefully the science that underlies that will see that there's a fault in it. So far as the difference between what we know as ionising and non-ionising radiation, what would you have to say about that?
Ray Peat: Well, all kinds of electromagnetic or other radiation interact with matter. That's how we know that they're there. Light bounces off something and is absorbed in our retina and we can see things. And that light is causing a certain amount of electronic excitation. And if you use a blue light rather than a full spectrum centered on yellow, the excitation of the......electrons is enough to damage the mitochondrial energy production. They've seen this for 50 or 60 years, growing plants under different colored lights. If you put a plant which thrives in sunlight, if you put it in pure blue light, the mitochondria are damaged almost as if they were being irradiated with a... X-rays are ultraviolet, but when you add back the rest of the spectrum, there's something about the red light that neutralizes that toxic effect of the blue light. And I think that on a slightly different energy scale, if you put a piece of glass out in the desert for many years, it turns purple, and with a given... energy of radiation, you can bleach that purple out of the glass. What happens is that electrons are excited by the very energetic radiation, and they lose contact with their normal system and are trapped in sort of the peak of a mountain, if you imagine, a dimple at the top of the peak. It takes a lot of energy to knock the electron. up to that peak. But when you shine a just right energy like red light, you can typically move an electron out of its little trap and restore it to its normal position. That works. People who have burned their retina, for example, with ultraviolet light, if they get red light soon enough, it prevents the burning. You can demonstrate this in seeds and other types of tissue, or even a piece of hair will show excited electrons after being in the sunlight, but if you shine red light on it, that excitation disappears. So the excitation and moving of electrons isn't strictly an X-ray, gamma-ray phenomenon. It's something that happens in different substances at different energy levels, but when you get up to ultraviolet and higher the main effect is that the electrons get completely knocked out of the system and that constitutes ionization. But you actually have some degree of sort of ionization. even from blue light.
Andrew: Okay. And then the non-ionizing type doesn't have the same amount of energy, doesn't displace electrons, it doesn't have that kind of energy to change an atom.
Ray Peat: Yeah, you get very similar chemical effects from ultraviolet and x-rays, but the good thing is that ultraviolet light is absorbed just a few millimeters into your skin. Okay. And you get the same kind of damage to the skin cells from ultraviolet that you get to your heart and brain cells from x-rays. Right. So it's very similar biological damage except the very high energy radiation goes right through you and affects all of your cells.
Andrew: Okay. I just wanted to let people know that we were talking about this subject. So I just want to let people know you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD 91.1, Garbleville. And from 7.30 till 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 radiation. Also, I'm getting a signal that a question would be asked, but I'm wondering if we could just wait until we get to that point in the show, because I know we want to......try and hear as much as possible from you, Dr. Peake. In terms of... I think I could jump on a little bit. I wanted to, and I know I have an article, actually, about the... It's something I think we might have covered a couple of weeks, a couple of months back, rather, which was by......Gothman, John, John Gothman. And that was the article that he'd written on......the damaging effects of radiation from medical procedures. A very big article and very well, very well referenced, but what I wanted to bring out a little bit more was that the phenomena of red light to reverse the effects or to calm down the excitation of electrons which is behind the whole free radical thing, behind the destruction of tissues and the inflammatory changes in cancers. So red light is extremely healing then?
Ray Peat: Yeah, the most surprising example of an experiment. To demonstrate that was a Russian experiment in which they gave a lethal dose of gamma rays to frogs and the dose was so intense that the frogs would just live a few days after the exposure. But within the first hour after exposing frogs to that same intensity of gamma rays, if they shined bright red light on them, they didn't get sick at all. So we're talking about a red light bulb, are we talking about infrared or are we talking about just red light?
Ray Peat: Red light but in an ordinary incandescent bulb if you have a prism or a tapered piece of glass to look at an incandescent light bulb you'll see that it varies from blue to red and the red end of it. It's a lot more intense than the blue and green end just because the temperature of the bulb isn't nearly as hot as sunlight.
Andrew: Okay so red light so there you go folks so if you're listening that the healing curative effects of red light go far beyond just that mellow kind of ambience in the room that some people have red lights on for.
Sarah: So if somebody has been exposed to an x-ray or a form of radiation then what would you recommend they go sit under, Dr. B?
Ray Peat: Well, if you can do it very quickly, that gamma ray frog experiment shows that within the first hour you can almost completely block the chain of events that follows the exposure. But since people who were exposed to Chernobyl, or even... the Nagasaki atomic bombing, they still, in recent years, their blood serum is still toxic. They can add it to cells in vitro, and the blood from these people who were exposed decades ago is still toxic to cells. And so it's similar to the effect of when you irradiate an animal's... foot, the whole body is influenced, the thymus will shrink, the ovaries will... if it was intense enough, the ovaries will degenerate, the uterus swells up. It acts like a systemic dose of estrogen to irradiate any part of the body.
Andrew: And this is the whole reason why it's so important for people to refuse medical x-rays wherever. Wherever possible if they have any control over it and to exercise as much diligence as possible when they know they could potentially be in a situation where they could be exposed from these CT scans and that's why we're talking about the whole full body scanners as another most modern form of intrusion.
Ray Peat: The lingering inflammation from exposure a long time ago probably could be effective. Slightly, even years later by getting a very intense exposure to penetrating red light.
Andrew: How far actually, how far into the skin does red light penetrate? Years ago I made some LED red light emitting diodes in a paddle, so there were about a hundred of them side by side. And... I let my eyes adapt to the darkness until about 2 a.m. and I put this paddle under my thigh and I could see the bone silhouette. The light, just moderate, not really brilliant light, but just a hundred of these LEDs was enough to go entirely through my thigh, showing a shadow.
Andrew: Wow, so it will penetrate that deeply. So presumably, would you think it would have an effect within the marrow of bones to have a quenching effect on excitatory damage there?
Ray Peat: Yeah, I could see the walls, the center of the bone looked almost transparent and I could see the thickening of the cortex of the bone as a dark shadow, so it was definitely. going right through the marrow too.
Andrew: So I wonder why it is that no one tells, no one tells anybody about this. Has this been public knowledge, say in the 40s and 50s and it's been just out of fashion and suppressed since then?
Ray Peat: Yeah, the information about it being estrogenic started appearing in the 1950s and in my newsletter, I... I give a little graph that was published by Seagaloff in 1971 and 73. He showed that irradiation and estrogen synergize. A little bit of one added to a little bit of the other one is like a lot of either of them. And since you can block the effects of estrogen toxicity with progesterone, he......tried treating the deadly cap carcinogenic dose of irradiation, treated the animals with progesterone, and it essentially completely blocked the cancer formation from the radiation.
Andrew: Wow.
Sarah: So if you were to advise someone to purchase a light bulb, what type of light bulb would you recommend, Dr. Bates? A red light bulb?
Ray Peat: When they paint or use colored glass, it actually doesn't increase the amount of red coming out of the bulb, and it makes the bulb more expensive and hotter to handle. So it's just a clear front bulb, but they make them designed to run on 130 volts, so when you run them on a standard 120-volt circuit, they... aren't as blue biased as ordinary incandescent bulbs. They're much weaker in the blue and stronger in the red.
Sarah: But they appear to be white light.
Ray Peat: Yeah, sort of yellowish white, warmer than standard bulbs.
Sarah: So like a 130 clear front incandescent. And what type, what number, how many watts?
Ray Peat: Oh, I think they come in 150 to 250. And they're... The high wattage 250, I think, are only about $4, usually.
Andrew: Okay, good. Thank you. Okay, so there you go, folks. It's a very cheap and inexpensive way to do some healing on yourself without taking anything into your body that's potentially a problem. Okay, so we've reached... Coming up to 7.30. So I just want to remind people that we have Dr. Raymond Peat joining us, and he's sharing his research and his experience. His experience with us once more for his knowledge with radiation and the biological effects of radiation. So just to carry on, I know you mentioned at the very beginning of this that the dogma was surrounding the belief that everything was genetic and mutations were carried in the chromosomes, and that's not actually the case. There is this concept, well not concept, there is this biological memory that is elicited by... something that we don't quite know yet, but it has a very real effect later on in generations. Between, gosh, radiation and estrogen, I know you've mentioned this before as well, that there is also a link in that the liver's ability to metabolise metabolic waste products can be severely influenced by both estrogen and radiation in conjunction. What would you say about the possible sequelae of that?
Ray Peat: The first thing, the most intense, visible first thing is that both estrogen and radiation interfere with mitochondrial energy production and that is associated with inflammation and adaptive lactic acid production as the... Carbon dioxide production goes down, lactic acid goes up and the lactic acid itself triggers inflammatory mediators and in experiments with both cells and whole organisms it's been demonstrated that when you irradiate one cell it emits inflammatory mediators that will affect other cells in the same dish even if you put them in the dish later and even taking the medium off the cells and putting it in another dish so it's a chemical that goes into the cells environment that then will cause mutations, inflammation, degeneration in other cells that are exposed to it so that's what happens when your foot is irradiated, the fluids. Escaping from those damaged cells circulate throughout your body and that inflammatory signal, lactic acid for example, the reason I advise against eating a lot of yogurt and other things with lactic acid is that even natural lactic acid in your diet contributes to formation of fibrotic tissue inflammation first then fibrosis. And within the fibrosis then there is the increased risk of tumor formation.
Andrew: I read a part of that article known as the bystander effect that fish exposed to this radiation could affect other fish previously not exposed if the unexposed fish share the same water so there is something coming out. of the irradiated animals that is something more than the sum of the radiation which yeah
Ray Peat: and they've been able to block that by using antagonists to serotonin
Andrew: oh okay
Ray Peat: so um serotonin itself contributes to fibrosis and impaired energy production and so on so
Andrew: and people people in this country that they're almost encouraged to use serotonin as a as a kind of a mood a mood type uh supplement for lifting your mood for seasonal affective disorder and sleep improvement and that kind of thing that seems a little bit erroneous
Ray Peat: um yeah the the whole system relating to serotonin for example it's made from cryptophane and cryptophane has some of the bad effects of serotonin partly by increasing serotonin but also tryptophanes happens to be probably the most sensitive amino acid to absorbing radiation. It's where, for example, the lens is injured by ultraviolet light. It's largely the tryptophanes absorbing that energy.
Andrew: Consuming a lot of meat is not a very good idea, if you do, because the tryptophanes in the meat is another excessive source of tryptophanes.
Ray Peat: Adults have a very low requirement for tryptophanes, cysteine and methionine.
Sarah: How many ounces of meat product, since all muscle meat is very, very rich in tryptophanes, do you think is a safe limit for a person per day?
Ray Peat: Well, um... There's some experiments with animals in which they've given them almost zero methionine. Methionine is one of the amino acids that's very rich in meat. And they live 30 to 40 percent longer when they're almost completely lacking methionine. And similar effects with tryptophanes, these are the anti-metabolic amino acids. So an adult. Has very low requirements, but no one has really, some rat experiments suggest that maybe just an ounce or two would be safe. And gelatin, which lacks those amino acids, is safe in very large amounts. So for people who eat the tough bits of the animals, that chicken feet and wings and such are getting much more gelatin than this. the rich people who eat the tender steaks
Andrew: yeah okay okay well it is 7 34 and i know the uh i know the engineer had a question so let's pass it over to the engineer
Engineer: uh when you were talking about the red light versus the damage healing the damage from the ultraviolet uh i had one one question is uh say is natural sunlight a better thing to tan by than the tanning beds
Ray Peat: um yeah because you're absorbing all the way through your body from sunlight and it's um doing many it increases your energy all the way through your body your um your liver and brain uh... everything is is being refreshed and renewed the any sunburn that develops from staying in the sunlight too long your skin oozes these inflammatory mediators in your bloodstream and causes, you know, some people get a fever and feel sick if they stay in the sun too long but the general saturation with the red light is protecting you to a great extent against that systemic bystander stuff seeping out of the damaged skin
Engineer: And is near-infrared beneficial too, so say sitting by a wood stove?
Ray Peat: Well, it mostly just warms you and keeping your temperature up to close to 99 degrees, that activates your respiration and all of the protective processes. So I think its main value is helping to keep your core body temperature up where it should be.
Engineer: Thank you, and the lines are open.
Andrew: Okay, so yeah, we've gone past the 7.30 point, so if people would like to call in... This month with any questions related or unrelated to the effects of radiation or any other questions they may have Please feel free to call the numbers nine two three three nine one one or if you are outside the nine two three Hairy code there's a toll free number and it's 800 KMUD rad which is eight hundred five six eight three seven two three Okay, so to continue with the topic of radiation the Radiations effect is neither instantaneous It's neither apparent nor instantaneous and candlinga for many generations And so the I think the lights are flashing actually I don't know if there is a call who will take it otherwise we'll we'll carry on is there I Think someone may be actually giving a question to the engineer. Okay, so the fact that The effects of radiation are not perceived instantaneously Is a bit of a bit of a worry because most people will be told that something is safe and most people will follow it
Ray Peat: like Many of the experiments that measure the dangers of radiation just look at a very short time span and then they throw the animals away if they didn't get sick or die from the radiation, but any meaningful experiment would have to follow those exposed animals' offspring for generations. Yeah, definitely. We do actually have two callers, Dr. Pete, so let's see what our first caller has to say.
Engineer: The first caller wanted me to ask for them. So if you're familiar, Dr. Pete, with grow lights by any chance?
Ray Peat: Grow lights?
Engineer: Lights for growing plants.
Engineer: Yes. Yes, so what are the benefits of those? And she was asking specifically about grow, but I would like to ask a question about the flower lights.
Ray Peat: The red fraction is used for making energy as well as for protecting against the irritating higher energy frequencies, but if you grow... Most plants, if you grow them under pure red light, they'll grow extremely fast, but they'll be very weak, and they tend to fall over, just because they need some of the irritation to build the cellulose skeleton for strength, so the typical grow light has red, blue, and a little either......ultraviolet, or at least blue and violet, to irritate the cells enough that they produce cellulose for strength.
Andrew: Okay. Okay, there's... Go on, sorry.
Ray Peat: The irritating frequencies tend to make crops rich in certain defensive chemicals, and so for food crops, it makes them tend to be bitter, but those defensive... substances in the plants are very often anti-oxidants for humans.
Caller:...Two days later my back got really inflamed, so I was very interested to hear what you had to say, that you could be irradiated in one place and then it could cause inflammation in a different area.
Ray Peat: Just a few years ago a study in Seattle was measuring the responses to standard dental x-rays and they were putting on lead aprons....to shield the person's body from the chin down and women who were pregnant at the time they got a set of mouth x-rays had smaller babies than the women who weren't exposed to x-rays. Even though the baby was shielded, there was the systemic stress or estrogen-like effect that caused even the embryo to grow.
Caller: My question was about serotonin and this estrogen thing. I have been taking Prozac for more than 20 years and I don't really see that it does anything for me anymore and would like to get off of it, but they always say the serotonin thing is what you need and so on and I only take it every other day. Still, I'm very concerned about, I'd like to quit taking it and I was just wondering what that's doing to my body all these years.
Ray Peat: There have been several studies in which when thyroid is added to the antidepressants, when the antidepressant isn't working, it works when they add thyroid but the drug companies never test the thyroid. by itself because that wouldn't sell their product but they can make several of the antidepressants work better just by adding thyroid. They talk about the generations of antidepressants in the 50s it was the monoamino oxidase inhibitors then those patents expired and the drug companies said well those turn out to be toxic but we now have the cryocyclic. Antidepressants and for 17 or so years those were the good things but it turned out that they increase prolactin which has many harmful effects to like bone loss and so on and now they were replaced by the so-called serotonin reuptake inhibitors but serotonin is now... turning out to cause bone loss too by raising prolactin just the way the older ones did and some comparative studies have found that the old 1950s style is actually safer than some of the newer ones.
Caller: Oh my goodness. So my question is then is just taking something for thyroid is that a better way to go?
Ray Peat: Well that would be my choice. Some of these so-called serotonin reuptake inhibitors are actually promoting adrenaline and dopamine at the same time, but they don't emphasize that. One of the most interesting recent antidepressants actually has the opposite effect. It increases the reuptake of serotonin, just the opposite of the currently popular ones. It is very effective for many people as an antidepressant.
Caller: Well, thanks so much. This is really very interesting. I worked in brain research for many years and I quit about 20 years ago, but I'm very interested in what you're doing. Thank you so much.
Sarah: Thanks. Thank you for your call. Thank you for your call, yeah.
Andrew: Okay, there's two more callers on the line, so next caller, you're on the air?
Caller: Yes, Dr. P? Mm-hmm. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, I am a 64-year-old woman with 100-year-old bones. I've kept them that way for approximately 12 years, and I'm now doing Forteo injections for approximately three months, and I've been given 17 x-rays in this last one week because of the pain level from previous injuries. I'm headed for an MRI and a CT scan. I've had hepatitis C for 16 years, and kept it at level 2. Can you tell me what possible effects could all this have on me in the future as far as the MRI and the CT scan, which I have not done yet?
Ray Peat: I couldn't hear part of that. Andrew or Sarah, could you summarize it?
Sarah: The woman has had, I believe, 17 x-rays in the past week. And she's headed for an MRI and a CAT scan, and she's wondering... I've had, I have 100 year old bones and I've been injecting Fortale for 3 months. I didn't hear that last part, actually.
Ray Peat: What was the last thing you said? What's the name of the drug? Fortale, it's an injection for bones. Okay.
Caller: And I've been doing that for 3 months. I have hepatitis C for 16 years. I'm in stage 2.
Ray Peat: Okay. All right, Dr. P, can you hear us now? Yeah. Okay. I think the lady's main concern is what can she do to strengthen her bones. She says she has 100 year old bones and she's only in her 60s.
Ray Peat: Oh, well, probably the safest, most effective thing is besides getting lots of calcium in your diet and adequate magnesium, a vitamin K is very safe and it... complements vitamin D and calcium and since exposure to radiation, one of the first things it does as it knocks down the energy production, it causes cells to take up too much calcium into the soft tissue and that's what Goffman demonstrated that a tremendous amount of heart disease and arterial disease is being caused by radiation exposure. The calcium goes into your soft tissue rather than the bones and vitamin K is safe at much larger doses than have been traditional and it can actually reverse the calcification of arteries while greatly accelerating the growth or repair of bones and their uptake and retention of calcium.
Caller: And would that replace the Forteo?
Ray Peat: What was that?
Caller: Would that replace the Forteo injections?
Ray Peat: I can't hear it clearly.
Andrew: The lady's asking whether or not what you've suggested there would replace the current injections that she's been been having or is about to have.
Ray Peat: Um, well, it's, vitamin K is, is very, important for energy production as well as for calcium deposition, and, um, I didn't hear what the current injections were.
Andrew: Well, she said Forteo, I think that's what... Forteo injection.
Ray Peat: Oh, is that a bisphosphonate?
Caller: I inject it once a night, once a day.
Andrew: But do you know, Dr. Pease asking, is it a bisphosphonate?
Caller: I, I, no, I don't believe so.
Andrew: Okay. I think until we know what the drug is, it's, it's difficult to be able to discuss it.
Caller: Okay, okay. I'm sorry.
Caller: So.
Andrew: But vitamin K, calcium, and vitamin D are the most important things that Dr. Pease was mentioning for your, for your bone strength.
Caller: Right.
Sarah: And get your thyroid checked. And obviously make sure your thyroid's working optimally and that will certainly help.
Caller: Right. Okay. Now, the herbs for pain level. Now, I haven't taken any. Any prescription drugs in quite some time, and the doctor gave me valium to take. I do not like it. I replace that with valerian root. Okay. Okay? Okay. What can I replace for blood pressure medicine?
Andrew: Okay, so you have high blood pressure, huh? i
Caller: Only on occasion.
Andrew: Only on occasions, okay. Well, I mean, the traditional herbs for blood pressure are things like hawthorn, hawthorn flowers and berries. They have a cardio active. Effect to lower blood pressure and to decrease the, increase the force of contraction, but decrease the rate. So that's kind of primary number one, cardiotonic. There are several other, you know, obviously things that reduce your stress will certainly have a potential benefit for high blood pressure because stress will increase adrenaline, adrenaline will drive up blood pressure. The Hawthorns are the nurse of the heart, that's always what they... And the Valerian should help as well. Yeah, the Valerian should do.
Caller: Even if you have hepatitis C.
Ray Peat: And the calcium and vitamin K should help blood pressure.
Andrew: Yeah, okay. And as for the hepatitis, I think the most important thing for the hepatitis is to avoid polyunsaturated fats. Certainly they have been majorly implicated in causing inflammation and inflammation is not what you want with hepatitis. There's plenty of other things, but they're mainly going to be dietary factors, so increasing your gelatin consumption, making sure that you get good proteins from a mixed range.
Caller: Okay, and I have the information on the forteo. Okay. It's T-E-R-I-P-A-R-A. T-I-D-E.
Andrew: Hmm. Rampages. I've not heard of it.
Caller: R-D-N-A origin.
Andrew: Yeah, I haven't heard of it.
Caller: Oh, okay. I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
Andrew: but we do have two more callers, so I would like to...
Caller: Okay, thank you very much for your help. Yeah, you're very welcome. You've been a wonderful help.
Andrew: Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Okay, the other callers on the line, you're on the air?
Ray Peat: I, um, I have a... My neck? I have a question about non-ionizing radiation. I've read that they didn't used to think that actually caused cellular damage and DNA breakage but that more recent research is showing that non-ionizing radiation can cause these problems too and I'm concerned about this with regards to the new PG&E smart meters and all the Wi-Fi that's being installed. Can you comment on that?
Ray Peat: Some of the electromagnetic low, relatively low energy radiation can still break chromosomes. It's a matter of how they resonate. For example, men working around power lines have very few male offspring. Birds living near those same power lines have almost purely female offspring because of the apparently cellular and chromosome damage from those pretty low-energy, low-frequency emissions.
Caller: Do you know anything about the frequencies, the microwave range of the frequencies that smart meters and Wi-Fi emit in particular?
Ray Peat: Well, I've got a gauge that I check my things with. I went to a flat screen monitor years ago and have only wire connections because of the known effect on the brain, for example. Way back in the 50s, the Russians were lowering their standard, safety standards, for that type of radiation because of the effect, for example, on the inheritance, lowering fertility.
Sarah: So do you recommend people just buy an EMF meter and check? Check their electrical appliances?
Ray Peat: Yeah, I think they cost about $20 and I just got a new microwave oven and it has really intense fields out about two feet away from it so even with the new ovens it's good to stand back three or four feet at least.
Andrew: I think just to answer the other late caller's question about the microwave, Wi-Fi, I think wherever possible if you have a... If you have a microwave, microwave internet, you can just hard-wire your connection to your computers. You don't have to be, you don't have to have your house bathed in, in Wi-Fi signal.
Caller: So, just hard... That's a smart meter. They're going to be attached to our houses and they're going to bathe our houses in it and we don't get a choice about it. So, that's what I was concerned.
Andrew: Yeah. Okay, well, I'm not too sure about that, but we... Do you have several callers?
Sarah: Buy a field meter and check a smart meter.
Andrew: Okay, we've got three more callers. I'm not sure how many we'll get through, but let's take the next caller.
Caller: Hi, my question is actually pretty simple. Um, on the serotonin stuff, I'm sorry to echo you, but my radio's off. Okay. Um, I take some supplement called 5-HTP. Okay. Uh, does that fall in the benign or bad category?
Ray Peat: Many of its effects are essentially the same as serotonin.
Sarah: Yeah. So that's inflammatory?
Caller: Yeah. It's inflammatory?
Andrew: Yeah, the same effects, 5-HTP or 5-hydroxy-tryptophan has got the same negative effects that serotonin does, and that is that it's inflammatory.
Ray Peat: And serotonin, for example, stimulates cell growth. And inflammation, it can increase the growth of plaques in arteries and accelerate tumor growth and so on, and tryptophan, which isn't quite as active as the 5-hydroxy, tryptophan itself is considered to be slightly carcinogenic in excess.
Caller: Hmm, well that's how I'd actually do struggling with healing tendons. Taking this at the same time, so perhaps I've been shooting myself in the foot. Thanks so much.
Andrew: Okay, for that caller who was just on, who's just just left the air, the tendons, certainly one of the best things that you should be doing for tendons is one of Dr. Pete's recommendations of a bone broth or gelatin broth from bone shanks and gelatin is an extremely protective anti-inflammatory and the components of which are utilized in the formation of tendons and the protective material around joints.
Andrew: Okay, there's another caller on the line.
Caller: Hi Andrew, I talked to you this morning. My name is Chris and I was curious if the good doctor would know I'm currently looking to lose weight and I was wondering is there any meat that's any better than any other meat out there?
Ray Peat: I think avoiding the pork and the non-ruminants because those reflect whatever they ate and are usually highly unsaturated and anti-thyroid. So instead of chicken and pork, beef and lamb? Yeah, beef and lamb are saturated. Coconut oil is a vegetable oil which is highly saturated and so it promotes metabolism, increases calories.
Caller: You don't recommend turkey?
Ray Peat: Turkey usually eats the same stuff chickens and pigs do, corn and soybeans.
Caller: That's all you need. Well, thank you so much.
Andrew: Okay, you're very welcome. Okay, well, I think we should hold the callers there. I know there's more on the line, but I'm sorry we don't have the time this month. We do have a few minutes, however, to thank Dr. Pete very much for his time. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day just to share what you have. I know a lot of people that listen in this area particularly are very, very interested. What you have to say is very researched, it's scientific, it's not. Quackery, it's not suspect, it's all out there, you know, you can find it for those people that want to hear, you know, what you're saying is very well researched and thank you so much for helping. It is December now and just a by-product of December 21st, full lunar eclipse folks if you get a chance to see it, it's about 11 o'clock, 70 minutes long. Okay Sarah, do you have anything else you'd like to say? No, I just want to make sure you hand out Dr. Pete's contact details. That's right, that was the very next thing, of course.
Okay, anybody who wants to find out more about Dr. Raymond Pete, his website is www.repeat.com and he's got many fully referenced articles, he's been doing this for many, many years and has a wealth of information. So if people would like to read his material... then that certainly would be certainly would be the first step in greater understanding. I also want to let people know that these radio shows are archived. Everything that KMUD puts out on the air, including Marky Mark's couple of hours that come next every time we're on our show, everything's archived.
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