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the old world pickling crocks, oh and old world pickling crocks. Organic Grace is on the main street in Garberville and on the web, organicgrace.com. Alright, stay tuned. [Music] [Music] [Music] Welcome to this month and this New Year's Ask Your Herb Doctor. Happy New Year everybody. My name is Andrew Murray. For those of you who perhaps have never listened to the shows which run every third Friday of the month from 7 to 8 p.m., I'm a licensed naturopathic doctor who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine.
We run a clinic in Garberville where I 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 KMU DeGarberville 91.1 FM and from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's subject of digestion and emotion. Some of it is carrying on from last month's topic of "You are what you eat." I had quite a few people writing afterwards on that subject.
It was quite interesting to get some feedback from people who'd listened, so thank you for that. The number here if you live in the area is 923 3911 or like so many people these days, if you live outside the area, there's a toll-free number which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD. So that's 1-800-568-3723. So we'll be taking calls live from 7.30 onwards. But until then, let's just introduce Dr. Peat. Dr. Peat, you with us? Yes. Hi. Thanks so much for joining us again. I, as always, want to give people the benefit of understanding your professional and academic background
for those who maybe have never heard of you or who've just tuned in. So if you'd like to just tell them your professional and academic background. After working several years in humanities areas, I decided to study biology because of wanting to get a concrete grasp of how the brain works in making language, images, and so on. So I intended to work on a PhD at the University of Oregon starting in 1968 in brain biology. And I quickly found that that was the most dogmatic area in biology, genetics, and nerve biology.
And so immediately I looked around for less dogmatic areas. And it turned out that the extreme other end of the organism, the reproductive system, happened to be the most scientific empirical. So I did my dissertation on oxidative changes in the female reproductive system with aging. And that involves a lot of nutrition-related topics that were of interest to me. I wanted to just, I think, just let people know, at one time, you were actively consulting with people, weren't you, for quite a few years?
Yeah. In the '70s, I just happened to meet some women who were having hormonal problems. In graduate school, I had talked to some girls who immediately, when they came to the university, got a cheap basement apartment, started having terrible PMS. And that 1967, '68, I got interested in the role of light in brain and hormone functions and how I called it "windward sickness" from a light deficiency. And then when I started running into women with a slightly older group, 40, 45, and 50, having really serious problems like multiple sclerosis and several other nerve-related conditions,
I recognized the work I had been doing with hamsters and hormones as being directly applicable to them. So I started doing nutritional consulting and finally started suggesting that they use progesterone and thyroid supplements because in some cases, the diet just wasn't enough to take care of acute problems. Yeah. Okay. And also, just so people that are listening can be aware of this also, you produce a monthly, or is it bi-monthly now? Bi-monthly. Yeah. A bi-monthly newsletter. So anyway, we'll be giving out Dr. Peat's information at the end of the show
for people who'd like to either contact him or find out more about his website and all the articles that he has that are freely available and referenced there. Well, Dr. Peat, I wanted to carry on partly from last month's topic on "You Are What You Eat" and a little bit more of a focused look at diet, digestion, and emotion because I know that some of the things that you brought out in your most recent newsletter, as well as the prior ones, kind of peaked my interest in some other directions.
And I also have questions from people that have been garnered since the last month that I want to see if we can get time to put to you. But going back to last week, you mentioned this gut peptide called cholecystokinin was previously shown to have a crucial role in mediating the effects of intragastric fatty acid solutions on brain activity. And they were saying that the receptors for CCK, this cholecystokinin, are known not only for their role in digestion but also for roles in memory function and learning and in the modulation of panic and anxiety.
So there's this link between the gut and the emotion. So it's not just for digestion and picking up food and sending it off to the various departments that store it like the fat cells, et cetera, but it also triggers emotive events in people. How do you interpret, from my suggestion, that CCK's role in the stimulation and secretion of bile and the digestion and the absorption of nutrients, especially fats, supports the link between this mental function and digestion? I think it's good to consider at least one other digestive peptide, the gastric inhibitory polypeptide, GIP.
My general picture of the organism, for example, analogous to the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system, the day and the night sides of the nervous system, everywhere you look you can see this sort of a polar opposition in two kinds of function. One is mobilizing, the other is demobilizing and relaxing. Okay, that's the parasympathetic is the relaxing and the mobilizing is the sympathetic. Yeah, yeah. And when the organism is young and healthy, that opposition works very nicely for night and day action and rest, cycling.
And in the digestive system, when you eat fats and proteins, you secrete the cholecystokinin. When you eat sugar, you secrete the GIP, which is also called the insulinotropic hormone, because it calms down, stops your acid digestion because you don't need acid to handle sugar, but it activates the insulin so that you handle the sugar. And when you look at the effect in the brain, CCK activates the corticotropic release hormone, which turns on anxiety and stress and the pituitary, ACTH, which turns on the adrenals to handle stress. Okay. The gastrointestinal, gastric inhibitory peptide,
responding to glucose has pretty much the opposite effects. And in the hippocampus, for example, which is a part of the brain that's expanded by opportunity and learning and shrunk, strengthened by stress, the insulinotropic hormone responding to sugar also has receptors in the hippocampus that stimulates the birth of new cells. So learning and stimulating experience and eating sugar have the same effect. Go hand in hand, huh? Yeah, the same effect in your brain. Eating fat and protein surprisingly turn on anxiety and stress. Even protein, huh?
Well, that tends to lower your blood sugar because it also stimulates insulin. Got it. And lowering the blood sugar turns on stress. Okay. And in the farther down the intestine, if you could be born without bacteria, they've created situations with cesarean birth of rats and dogs and pigs and such and keeping them in a germ-free environment. They find that everything develops perfectly. In fact, the animals live longer and are very resistant to obesity and diabetes and degenerative diseases. Okay. They have a very high metabolic rate too, don't they? Yeah, they're very much like the…
The bonus is… Calorie-restricted animals and fat-free diets where they don't have the so-called essential fatty acids, those animals have an extremely high metabolic rate too. And so the calorie restriction and being free of germs both stimulate your ability to oxidize food, produce energy, and prevent obesity and be generally healthy and long-lived. So something is happening in the intestine that the bacteria are responsible for. The main thing that it turns out that the bacteria are doing is usually converting starch. Starch is the main bacteria promoting food.
The bacteria living on these foods that we don't digest produce endotoxin, and the endotoxin everywhere it reaches a human cell stimulates the production of nitric oxide. And nitric oxide is on the demobilizing side of the balance. It turns off metabolism, slows down oxidation. Okay. So it's the main reason that having too many bacteria in the intestine creates obesity and lethargy and short life. Is it all forms of starch that will promote the endotoxin production or…? No, if they're very well-cooked and easy to digest and aren't complex with fibrous material,
the difference would be a corn tortilla that had been processed in alkali to open up the starch granules, making them easy to digest, versus the bean carbohydrates, the type of polysaccharides that human enzymes can't work on or ideal for feeding bacteria. Hence all the gas. Yeah. It's not good for you folks. When they've experimented with rats on this type of soluble indigestible fiber, the ones that get the fiber that supports the bacterial growth become anxious and aggressive. They're fearful and so they fight too easily. All right. So there's a definite connection there.
Let me just put your information out for a moment here, Dr. Peat. So welcome to this month's Ask Your Rob Doctor. You're listening to Ask Your Rob Doctor on KMED Galbraith 91.1 FM and from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's subject of digestion and emotion. We have Dr. Raymond Peat with us in the studio. We'll be taking calls from 7.30 to 8 o'clock.
So Dr. Peat, OK, you've looked at and interpreted the link then between sort of decreased mental performance and poor digestion with the endotoxin formation, especially from starch. I'm glad you brought up nitric oxide because, again, when I was looking at some articles this afternoon, I think you need to bring this out as a fairly important point because I think just like sugar and just like polyunsaturates, both of which, well, sugar was demonized and polyunsaturated fats were promoted. So the liquid oils, the polyunsaturates are now definitely swinging the other way.
Even medical opinion is of the mindset now that maybe saturated fats are actually much better for the cells and much more stable and more health-promoting than the polyunsaturates, but it's taking a long time. And maybe I think sugar, perhaps in time, will come around again. But it seems at the moment that nitric oxide is a pretty prevalent supplement or rather the L-arginine that nitric oxides manufactured from is becoming a fairly popular supplement, especially in the bodybuilding world. And I wanted to ask you, given that these things are so freely available and publications, numerous publications,
even so-called scientific journals are coming out with studies that support nitric oxide's importance and saying that it's extremely important for endothelial health. So the inner lining of the arteries, arterioles, et cetera, is the endothelia. And nitric oxide is produced within that to prevent things like stroke, angina, and a whole other host of cardiac events that would be considered causative without nitric oxide in terms of the kind of starvation, as it were, because of the vasoconstriction that would happen, because nitric oxide's a vasodilator.
But yet there's so much evidence contrary to that, and that's what I'd like you to bring out. Why is nitric oxide so dangerous? Because I know it's been implicated in stroke in people that use Viagra, for example. Yeah, I just recently heard about a doctor who treats cancer patients with intravenous arginine. And just before I heard about him, I had been reading way back to the 1940s, people discovered that arginine stimulates cancer growth, and that starvation or reduction of arginine stops cancer growth.
And through the '50s and '60s, continuing, it's being picked up again just recently, methods to stop the conversion of arginine to nitric oxide or to reduce the availability of arginine. It's being investigated again as a way to cure cancer. So there are these two very opposite things going on. One, nitric oxide is being proposed to cure cancer, or suppressing nitric oxide, it's demonstrated to stop the growth of cancer. And the first things that I was hearing about nitric oxide, I happened to be interested in endogenous carbon monoxide in the early and mid '80s.
And it can promote cancer by blocking the respiratory enzymes. And then in the mid and late '80s, people started realizing that something was producing nitric oxide in the body. And I think it was '88 or '89 when the enzyme was demonstrated that we actually have the enzyme that makes this smog-like free radical in our tissues. And because it was already known as a major toxin in smog, immediately people were investigating what it's really doing in the body.
And from about 1990 up until the middle '90s, there are many publications showing that very clearly nitric oxide produced in the pancreas kills insulin-producing beta cells. That was just massively documented up until about '96. And then the Viagra people, they got a patent and started promoting the idea that somehow nitric oxide is associated with virility. And suddenly the research by the late '90s was turning just 180 degrees, saying everything that nitric oxide does must be wonderful because it is related to male virility.
Am I right in thinking also that nitric oxide in smog is a causative agent for asthma? Yeah, and there are people recommending arginine and breathing nitric oxide to treat asthma, but others demonstrating that people with asthma are producing it themselves so you can measure it in their breath. The worse their asthma is, the more nitric oxide comes out in their breath. And it's the same with hepatitis, cancer, any major systemic disease. You can find increased amounts of nitric oxide-related chemicals in the blood.
Interesting. I'm glad you mentioned that because I've got a question from a couple of other people that I want to ask you in a bit about that subject. But let me just go back because nitric oxide is – okay, here's the deal. Nitric oxide is produced in the body and supposedly has beneficial functions.
So what do you think about the beneficial function of nitric oxide in the body and how is that mediated to a point where it's not dangerous as it is if you're looking at being exposed to it or taking arginine to produce it in your body more than your body does? What's its real benefit? It helps cells to de-differentiate by blocking their energy production. If you think of the mitochondrial high-energy oxidative system as being what creates a complex organism that uses energy so efficiently, it can have many different types of tissue.
If you want to de-differentiate, produce a stem cell, you knock out the energy production and it goes back and becomes amoeba-like or fungus-like. So this is like a stem cell recruitment. Yeah, and when a tissue is injured, it secretes a great burst of nitric oxide and that calls up stem cells from the environment, but it also creates them. It de-differentiates joining tissues so that they can form whatever new tissue is needed. So de-differentiation is part of forming the organism in the first place. As the embryo develops, nitric oxide has a constructive role.
And then for tissue, wound healing is essential. But that very same burst calls up repair cells and de-differentiates cells to make repair cells. If that doesn't have the ability to be turned off, it keeps de-differentiating and stimulating tissue renewal so that you get an unhealing wound. The least bad example of that would be a keloid, a scar tissue that just keeps growing and getting bigger without forming the right kind of tissue. But in the worst case, it becomes a tumor and a cancer.
Okay, so how do you see the control of nitric oxide so that it's a proportion response if and when you need it through injury and blocking it dietarily or supplementally so that you're not exposed to this pretty dangerous compound at all until such a time as your body might need it for whatever reason? Everything that we have that is involved in producing oxidative energy helps to turn it off. So vitamin D1, niacinamide, the anti-inflammatory things like progesterone and pregnenolone, thyroid hormone, all of the differentiating, mobilizing energy intensifying substances turn it off.
And everything that interferes with those turns it on and keeps it going. So it's the demobilizing, for example, going into hibernation, an animal produces these demobilizing signals with nitric oxide. And anything that makes the organism tend to give up and stop struggling, demobilizing because of stress or isolation, inescapable stress, powerfully turns on nitric oxide. So in the brain function, when your brain is being turned off, it experiences depression, wants to retreat. And things like anxiety and aggression, you aggress if someone doesn't let you retreat.
Hi, I wanted to ask you about the mind-body connection because I know that when I've spoken to you previously, you've kind of advocating what I think a lot of kind of new age or alternative thinking people would have held as a tenant of their belief in sort of a higher power, if you like, through focused attention and positive thinking, your body, your physical body can definitely be improved. And I know I've had this conversation with you previously about what would come first, you know,
would you use supplements that will promote, you know, everything that we've been talking about now, progesterone, thyroid, the B vitamins, et cetera, to turn this negative cascade off? Or would you have a positive mental outlook? Or do you see the two being as important together? And do you have any kind of protocol that you would be looking at would be a good rationale for achieving both of those things? When you look at the example of the psychologists who create depression by torturing animals, convincing them that they can't escape,
once they form the idea that they can't escape, they don't try to escape anymore. So it's an intellectual switch that happens from the bad experience. And if you have made an animal helpless by those experiences, just one experience of escape will cure it. It'll have the knowledge. Yeah, it's resistant because of that knowledge. And the culture is telling people too often that they can't escape. They have to do what they have to do. Put up and shut up.
Yeah, and so something as simple as taking a vacation or getting a new job can make a tremendous difference. A person can pop right out of a prolonged depression if they get a new kind of work, for example. Let me just hold your train of thought there, Dr. Peart. We've got the first caller of the evening, so let's take this caller and see where they're going. Caller, you're on the air. And where are you from? I'm from Kansas City. Kansas City. Hi, go ahead.
Yeah, my question for Dr. Peart is do you think using low-dose aromadex as an aromatase inhibitor would be appropriate for a female who is correcting her metabolic rate by a thyroid and diet but has a fair amount of fat to lose still? Would that be safe to use while she loses the fat safely? Those chemicals all have some side effects, so there are much better ways to turn off estrogen production. Just the endotoxin from bacteria is a powerful promoter of aromatase and estrogen production.
And so taking an antibiotic or eating a kind of fiber that doesn't support bacterial growth or avoiding starches and eating saturated fats, which have a germicidal effect, saturated fatty acids are very much like antiseptics as far as intestinal bacteria go. So just by making those dietary changes, you can make a tremendous impact on your balance between estrogen and cortisol versus the protective progesterone and androgens and so on. Okay, that sounds good. I have one more question. Could you just explain briefly the mechanisms of histamine and good ways to correct that? Histamine and ways to what?
Just ways to correct someone who has histamine responses periodically. Since I was mentioning the saturated fats, some of the shorter chain saturated fats in coconut oil have an antihistamine effect. Coffee is a very effective signal to turn off histamine production. Anything that energizes and restores cell function tends to prevent the production of histamine. How about sugar? Oh, definitely. A person wrote a book about histamine about 40 years ago, and he demonstrated that histamine is produced in every kind of cell in the organism when it's sufficiently stressed.
And that was before nitric oxide was known, but histamine turns on nitric oxide. So those are the two probably universal stress injury signals. Okay, great. We do have another caller that's just come in, so let's take this next caller. Hi, caller. You're on the air, and where are you from? Yes, Andrew. This is David in Missouri. Oh, hey, David. You know, on the last show we were talking about the bacteria in the intestine, and you had mentioned that a lot of times tetracycline will be used and it will kill.
I don't remember the exact wording, but it was something to the extent that the harmful bacteria are killed and the beneficial survive. Do we know that for sure? Or like if you're using something like tetracycline, does it pretty much, you know, depending on the dose, does it kill most of the bacteria? And how does it collectively spare the what we would call beneficial? And then I guess along the same lines there, I've always heard that there is kind of a symbiotic relationship with certain intestinal bacteria that help to absorb certain nutrients.
And so I'm assuming that would be considered a beneficial bacteria if that is true. I think the interactions of the intestinal bacteria are too complicated to divide them neatly into beneficial and harmful. In the germ-free animals, they've done experiments with introducing a single species of lactobacillus, and even the supposedly beneficial bacteria will make the germ-free animals susceptible to injury that it wasn't susceptible to before. So it's the context and interaction of the different bacteria. And generally, the healthier a person is, the more sterile their small intestine is. Okay, interesting.
So, you know, what do you think of the idea that certain nutrients are absorbed through the actions of so-called beneficial bacteria? Is that kind of a fallacy? Yeah, I think there's a little effect there, but I don't think it makes a big nutritional difference. The totally germ-free animals have extremely efficient digestive systems. And I've heard you say that. I was just curious because you still hear this being talked about all the time, like there's these beneficial bacteria.
And, of course, I know people are selling beneficial bacteria, so that's part of the reason that's being done, I'm sure. The other thing I wanted to ask you is the term "free fatty acids," is that always referring to polyunsaturated fat, or is there instances where free fatty acids are actually saturated fat? Yeah, they can be either way. Coconut soap is the salt of the saturated free fatty acids. And so if you actually could eat a bite of free fatty acids, it would taste like acidic soap. Ah, interesting.
We do have a couple of callers also, so let's wrap this one up. Okay, we're good. Thanks for your call. So let's get this next caller on the air. We've got two more, so let's take this next one. Where are you from? Hi, I'm Kim from Garberville. Oh, hey. Welcome to the show. Thank you. So I just had a question. I was wondering what the effect of infrared, like sauna, would have on the cell's mitochondria. It produces nitric oxide, doesn't it?
Dr. Peat, what do you think of infrared in terms of possible nitric oxide production from the mitochondria? Water absorbs infrared very powerfully, and so real infrared feels warm and it helps to keep your body temperature up, and keeping your body temperature up is very good, essential for the mitochondria. And the stress of cold is enough to turn on nitric oxide, and that can start down the pathway of hibernation and turning off functions. So infrared, as it keeps your body temperature up, helps your mitochondria. The far-red visible light, dark red, anywhere from orange to dark red,
these aren't very well absorbed by water, and so they go right through your tissue. You can see a red light shining through your whole body if you're in the dark. You can see it through your hand. Yeah. Put a light behind your hand. That's because it penetrates and is only absorbed by blue copper is the main thing that absorbs it, enzymes that contain copper in a blue form that does absorb red, and those happen to be the respiratory enzymes. And so the far-red activates the respiratory enzymes,
and probably a major reason for that is that it bounces the nitric oxide molecule, loosens it, and frees it from the respiratory enzymes where it has been blocking it. Interesting. So that's beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. You're welcome. We've got two more callers. Still another one called in while the first one's on hold. So let's take this next caller. You're on the air. And where are you from? Hi. I'm calling from Sacramento. Okay. Welcome to the show. What's your question?
This is related to what Dr. Peat said about treating corn with alkali or lime, rather, to make it more digestible. And I was wondering, do sprouted grain tortillas, are they also considered good for digestion? Dr. Peat, sprouted grain. Oh, yeah. The starch is largely consumed and used. And the storage proteins in the seed happen to have lots of ammonia or amino groups which are used to make actual functioning proteins with the energy from the starch. And so when you sprout a grain, you get rid of the toxic proteins that could release too
much arginine and produce nitric oxide and histamine. And you get rid of most of the starches. So sprouts are basically good nutrition, like leaves. Oh, great. So it doesn't matter whether it's sprouted wheat or barley or whatever. In general, it's a good thing. Dr. Peat, did you hear that in the last minute? No. The gentleman asked, it didn't matter whether it was wheat or barley, that generally sprouted things were a good thing. Did you hear what I said or was there a problem with the line at the moment?
Yeah, the line is getting a little garbled. Okay. The gentleman wanted to know if all sprouted things were beneficial because of what they went through. Yeah, all seeds, as far as I know, have some toxic effects. Many of them are built in by the plant to protect their offspring. And once the sprouting has begun, the seed detoxifies those intrinsic chemicals. And so, especially if it's very well cooked, then it becomes nutritious. Okay. So I think to answer your question then, Cora, the activity of sprouting neutralizes the defensive compounds that are in the seeds originally.
So I think the answer would be yes. Most sprouted items would be beneficial and nutritional for you. Oh, great. Thank you. One final question, if I may. Okay, quickly. Progesterone for men, is it beneficial or harmful? Dr. Peat, did you hear that? Oh, yeah. Men who are in good health have a fair amount of progesterone. It's rarely measured in men, but it prevents abnormal excess clotting. And it's a precursor for other hormones. But if you have a good amount of progesterone, it protects you against fluctuations in the adrenal steroids, aldosterone and cortisol.
So that progesterone is sort of an all-purpose defensive hormone. And it's very highly concentrated in the brain, men as well as women. So it's definitely not just a female hormone. But if you have too much of it, if you take a supplement, it opposes testosterone. And so a man doesn't want to take it regularly and stop his whiskers growing, for example. But for an emergency, a big supplement can be helpful for, for example, epilepsy or arthritis. It's very helpful for men as well as women.
How, and just so I can interrupt you for a second, Dr. Peat, how quickly would you metabolize a dose of progesterone if you did take it and it was a large dose for something that was, you know, go ahead. I know a doctor who insisted that taking progesterone orally wouldn't show up in the blood. So he took, I think, a fourth of a teaspoon and then drew his blood every half hour for 12 hours, I think. And he showed that it peaked in around the first hour and then gradually decreased over the next day.
Okay. All right. So within 24 hours or so. Okay, we have another caller still waiting here. So let's take this next caller. Caller, you're on the air? I am. And where are you from? Garboville. Oh, you're in Garboville too. Okay, go ahead. What's your question? Well, thank you again for a wonderful show. A lot of wonderful information. There was one thing that an earlier caller mentioned about beneficial bacteria. Is it the doctor's opinion then or your opinion as well that yogurt for its supposed beneficials is not so beneficial?
If it has had some of the lactic acid drained off or if it has just coagulated without becoming very sour, then it's fine. Is there a difference then between Greek yogurt and goat milk yogurt? Yeah, I think the Greek, which isn't sour, is safe. But the very acidic ones and the related products, I discovered that by drinking a cup of kefir. Every day I would have a cup of that for lunch. I would get a migraine for several hours afterwards. And so I started reading about what's happening.
And for one thing, the type of lactic acid produced by bacteria is racemic. And the kind we make is mostly the one confirmation that works differently. And the racemic type made by bacteria is more able to produce inflammation and fibrosis if you're chronically overloaded with it. Really, that actually dovetails nicely into my main question, I think. I was recently more or less diagnosed by a Western-style doctor with a particular type of skin condition that I've been suffering for 20 years or so.
Hydrogenitis Superativa, supposedly something that deals with the adipine gland, which is a type of sweat gland that causes cysts. So do you have any info on that? And when you're talking about yogurt and the inflammation caused by certain bacterias, I've been actually trying to support my system in general with, well, kefir, you mentioned. I enjoy it. Maybe that's a bad idea. People have experimented with even killing the lactobacillus, and in itself, even when it's dead, it has a very definite anti-inflammatory effect in the intestine. Anti-inflammatory.
So it would be a good thing then for a condition that causes inflammation and cysting? Yeah, that seems to be the implication. It isn't the lactic acid or the metabolism of the lactic acid bacteria that is anti-inflammatory, but just something about the chemistry of the organism, even if it's dead. Since the inflammation in the intestine is quickly reflected in the physiology of the skin, soothing your intestine will take care of a lot of skin conditions. So you're saying the bacteria itself is beneficial, but not the lactic acid that is common with many sour yogurts? Yeah.
Yogurt minus the lactic acid is better. Awesome. Well, thank you very much. All right. Thank you for your call. Okay. If anybody else is listening and wants to get a question or two in before the end of the show at 8 o'clock, the number if you're in the area is 923-3911, or there's a toll-free number, which is 1-800-568-3723. That's 1-800-KMUD-RAD. Okay. So, Dr. Peat, I think just if perhaps you've got the time, I'll get some of these questions that I've had put to you anyway.
I'm glad that we've had some of these questions surrounding what you've been talking about and not something completely different. That's always very useful to have people newly challenged, if you like. So, I wanted to ask you that from a perspective of kind of Hippocratic medicine, they always mention that the liver was the seat of anger. Do you have any comment on how this might come about? It might be related to digestion and endotoxin and inflammation. Jim, what do you think about that? Does that make any sense?
The liver, to the extent that it's injured, will ruin the whole organism. It's the chemist for the whole organism. If you're starving and not getting enough protein, especially, or not enough B vitamins, your liver loses the ability to detoxify and you get gross hormone imbalances. That can lead to progressive inflammation, fibrosis. As these processes get more serious, the liver becomes a larger source of nitric oxide. At the point that it's becoming inflamed and cirrhotic, then it starts secreting nitric oxide to the whole system.
The lungs, with an acute injury to the liver, the lungs will become acutely inflamed. When they transplant a liver, if measured, the sick person's nitric oxide is very high. When they put in a new liver, suddenly the nitric oxide is low and the lungs suddenly begin working more efficiently, demonstrating that the liver is poisoning the lungs so that the oxygen doesn't get through efficiently. With the brain, the same thing is happening. Edema is produced in the brain by the endotoxin-nitric oxide combination. Ammonia produced by the liver, which is being injured,
was the traditional explanation for why the brain has problems in proportion to the liver. Now it's known that ammonia is activating the nerves that are excited by the glutamic acid, MSG, excitatory amino acids. Those excitatory amino acids act largely through nitric oxide. So depression, anxiety, and I assume aggression is part of this mixture of gradual poisoning to different degrees. Do you know if there's any blood test for nitric oxide like there is for cholesterol? Or any other compounds that are fairly common? Have you heard of that? I don't know what labs have available.
It's becoming very common in research to look at the whole range of things produced by nitric oxide, but I don't know of any local medical labs that do that. Okay. Well, I have another question. It's a little bit different from all of the others, but nonetheless. In terms of well-being, emotional well-being, being restorative, and a kind of dynamic process that is going to improve the general health of an organism when their mind's in that place of emotionally being satisfied, happy, having a positive outlook, in a positive thinking, etc.
Exercise, I know, and having, you know, in my younger days, I sound like an old person now, but in my younger days when I used to go to the gym, I remember feeling really very positive about it. And I'm looking back at it now, it's probably because I was probably running on a lot of adrenaline from working out and just charging around like a crazy person. But in terms of exercise, I know that you always advocate gentle weight-bearing exercise. You don't advocate any aerobic exercise. In terms of generating a healthy physique with exercise,
what would you suggest rather than, you know, protein shakes and amino acids and supplements, what would you suggest as being some of the best food sources? And perhaps maybe you have mentioned gelatin. I don't know if you think that gelatin is a good thing because of the amino acids, and what would you suggest? Yeah, gelatin is at least safe. It doesn't stimulate muscle growth the way other proteins such as meat can do. But the person's history really has to be taken into account when you're looking at the diet and the exercise program
because I've known people who ate gigantic amounts of meat and were producing so much cortisol in response to the meat that they had extremely high levels of amino acids in their urine and their muscles were being damaged by that same high level of cortisol. And so ideally, like the germ-free animals, they can run on very little protein and lots of carbohydrate. The carbohydrate gets used for energy and you would assimilate essentially all of the protein that you eat because your cortisol wouldn't be destroying it and excreting it. Interesting. Well, what kind of carbohydrates?
It wouldn't be starchy and dangerous. Fruits. Yeah. All right. So that's it pretty much, then. You're saying that fruit would be a very good source of amino acids as muscle-building compounds. Yeah, as long as you're getting all of the essential nutrients, for example, from some seafoods and eggs. Then fruits and gelatin would be a very safe diet for adults. Okay, very good. Well, I know we've got four minutes left. That's probably not too long to go too much further without having trouble with the engineer and the next person on the show.
So I do thank you for your time, Dr. Peat, once more. And let me give out your information to people who've listened. Okay, thank you. Thanks so much. Okay, so Dr. Raymond Peat is viewable, if that's the right word, on the web, www.raypeat.com, R-A-Y-P-E-A-T.com. He has a wealth of articles on links on the home page, all of which are fully referenced, very scholarly articles. Some people might find them a little hard reading because they're pretty technical, but there's a lot of information in there that if you want to start delving into some of it,
I know on the web you can find out quite a bit about what he's saying in terms of the descriptive terms that might be used. But very good articles, like I said, well referenced and well researched. That's his job and that's what he's spent the last 25, 30 years doing. So www.raypeat.com. For people who'd want to contact me Monday through Friday, I have a toll-free number, 1-888-WBM-ERB. Let's see what else. We've got a couple of minutes here. I don't think I'll just close the show by thanking you for your time.
And until February, the third Friday in February of next month, I wish you a happy new year again. Good night. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] All right, everybody. That was Ask the Herb Doctor, great show. All right. A couple things I'm going to throw your way here. K-Mudd thanks Jessica Baker of Jade Dragon Acupuncture for her support of Redwood Community Radio. Practicing and teaching Chinese medicine, herbalism, aromatherapy, and aromatherapy, Jessica is available for conferences, workshops, and private consultations. Located at 607 F Street,
that's in Arcata, Jade Dragon Acupuncture can be reached at 822-4300 or online at jadedragonacupuncture.com. Also support for K-Mudd comes from the Inn of the Lost Coast and Shelter Cove. Fireplace, spa, and sauna suites overlooking the ocean offer views of the migrating California gray whales. Fish Tank Espresso and Delgada Pizza and Bakery are open daily. Inn of the Lost Coast, home of the Yellow Submarine, where all you need is love and a reservation.