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Well good evening and welcome once again to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray. My name is Sarah Johanneson Murray. For those of you who perhaps have never listened to our shows which run every third Friday of the month from 7 to 8 p.m. We're both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine. We run a clinic in Garboville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions and recommend herbs, supplements and nutritional counseling.
So you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMED Garboville 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 rheumatism in the broadest sense. It's rheumatoid arthritis and the other arthropathies that I think will be related and an alternative treatment to rheumatoid arthritis. We're very welcome to have Dr. Peat's expertise on the show and of course as always a very counterculture viewpoint but very positively associated counterculture.
It's a very alternative scientific viewpoint not mainstream and not even naturopathic. There's a lot of information that he comes out with very much based and rooted in firm science. Probably the science that some of which has been largely ignored and shelved in favor of new drug treatments because we all know that new drug treatments are hugely profitable and not always beneficial. So we'll be introducing Dr. Peat here very shortly. Just incidentally for people listening to the show, if they want to look at Dr. Raymond Peat's articles,
he has a pretty extensive list of articles covering many different conditions that people suffer with. And the articles are fully referenced, scientific articles, and they can lead you down a trail that will open your eyes and illuminate for you what it is that he has uncovered, continued the research that's been done from people back in the 50s and 60s and even before and brought it into a mainstream 21st century appreciation of what we now can detect with our improved skills, etc., in measuring things.
But anyway, his website, RayPeat.com, is fully referenced articles and he doesn't sell them. They're all available there for people to look at, print out, share, etc. We do encourage a lot of free material and free sharing. It's not about making money and making a profit. It's about sharing this wisdom with other people. So the other thing that people might want to make a note of is that on our website, we have a website, westernbotanicalmedicine.com, all of the audio archives are on the website.
So people, please feel free to download those, share and distribute them as well. I forgot to mention that some time ago we have a comprehensive list of shows from 2009 through 2016. There's one from 2008 there too, I think. Yeah, there's a couple there. Okay, so we can be reached toll free 1-888-WBM-ERB for consultations or further information Monday through Friday. It's going to say after the show, but we won't be here. So Monday through Friday, 9 until 5. Okay, so this month's discussion is going to be on alternative approaches to the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
It's an extremely crippling and debilitating condition that affects, I think, the last count was something like 30 million people in the U.S. and obviously people globally. It's not just confined to the U.S. So to coin this loose term arthritis, we first need to differentiate rheumatoid from osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis implies a type of joint disease that results from breakdown of joint cartilage and underlying bone. Typical visual clues in the skeleton of the hand, the knuckle joints can display masses that they call Bouchard's nodes and the fingertips have swellings referred to as Heberden's nodes.
So this is what we were taught when we were studying herbal medicine. These were very diagnostic indicators and you can see them when people lay their hands on the table. These big swellings are very typical of osteoarthritis. The inflammation is typically not red or hot and the underlying cartilage is lost with the bone underneath affected from the wear and tear. And typically only the joints are affected. Now with rheumatoid, it's a long-lasting autoimmune disorder that primarily affects the joints resulting in warm swollen painful joints.
Pain and stiffness often worse following rest and commonly the wrist and hands are involved with the same joints typically involved on both sides of the body. There can be systemic involvement which is some of the worst presentations of this type of disease from the autoimmune condition which can affect red blood cell count decreasing it, pleurisy and inflammation of the pleura and the lungs and pericarditis, the same sac membrane that the heart has around it. The inflammation of that is not also uncommon. A fever and low energy may be present as well. So it's multi-systemic.
The lungs, the kidneys, the heart and blood vessels can all be affected. So you can look at osteoarthritis as just a wear and tear breakdown of the joint with years of use and rheumatoid is an autoimmune condition where the body is attacking itself. Yeah. So it's three times. There's a couple of factors here that seem to differentiate it or single out the targets for it. Three times more common in smokers than non-smokers. I think that's particularly significant especially in men.
And vitamin D deficiency is more common in people with rheumatoid arthritis than in the general population. So from 7.30 until the end of the show, we're opening up the lines for people who want to call in with questions to ask Dr. Peat. His approach to what he'll be explaining is not particularly well treated with modern methods like methotrexate, for example, a very toxic compound, very harmful to the liver. I think also gold, sorts of gold have been mentioned as treatments for it. But anyway, let's introduce Dr. Peat. Dr. Peat, are you with us? Yes.
Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate your time. As always, folks, just recognize that we don't pay Dr. Peat and he does this very freely. So I do very much appreciate your time giving what you do. So Dr. Peat, in terms of what you are uncovering, I know it's linked to previous papers that you've written on cancer. And we've mentioned this failed war on cancer. And also this same war on rheumatism or rheumatoid arthritis is also kind of lost already.
It very rarely yields anything beneficial and doesn't seem to be really providing too much for patients. In fact, probably making people, I would like to say worse in some ways through the modalities of treatment that are being used because they're not very holistic and they're quite destructive. So how do you first see rheumatoid arthritis as a systemic condition? And how do you see it being produced and then any other viewpoints that you have around it? First of all, I don't make a clear distinction between any kind of arthritis
or even between heart failure, atherosclerosis, various degenerative diseases and any of the forms of arthritis. I think the interesting thing is to explain how a few basic metabolic problems have these very different looking expressions. And the really interesting research over the last 30 years or so has been in showing how inflammation relates to metabolism and what the factors are that can increase inflammation or reduce our ability to resolve it, get over the inflammation. And in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, many years ago I knew two women who were completely disabled
with huge swollen knee joints and hands that they couldn't use. And I was interested in the fact that the condition developed when they started taking estrogen. One was only in her 30s and her doctor, when she developed the arthritis, I think he told her that she needed to increase the dose of estrogen because of the very deep belief that estrogen is protective against almost everything. And I spent several hours over a period of two or three weeks going over some of the research with her.
And she would, after each time we talked, she would go back to her doctor and the doctor would say she had to increase the estrogen. But finally she was getting worse and she decided just to stop it. The other one had not taken so long to reconsider and had recovered within a week or two of stopping it. And this one had the same experience, total relief, clearing of the swellings. And that got me interested in why they recovered so fast when they simply stopped estrogen. So I kept that in mind.
And the next person I saw with rheumatoid arthritis was a man, about 48 years old, who every afternoon his knee would just suddenly swell up hugely. During the night it would get better, but he was increasingly disabled, hardly able to keep working at his bench fixing television. But remembering the way the women recovered from when they stopped estrogen, I thought he might have the same imbalance and got him a bottle of 500 milligrams of injectable progesterone, which he covered his leg with, all in one application.
And about two hours later the inflammation was down and the next day it didn't return. And I saw him, I think it was 40 years later, and he was just starting to get knee inflammation again. Never had a return in all of those years. So I was convinced that estrogen had a central role, that progesterone could be more curative apparently than cortisol. The glucocorticoids are the main popular treatment, but people usually end up using those for years. And one of the main side effects of the glucocorticoids is loss of bone density.
Rheumatoid arthritis, which tends to involve overgrowth of the bone around the joint, fades over eventually into breaking of the bones from osteoporosis. And I started reading about the osteoarthritis and found that some of the studies that were published only in books, not in the medical journals, made a clear association between estrogen and osteoarthritis, even though the medical journals are very consistent in saying osteoarthritis, with its loss of bone and cartilage, is caused by estrogen deficiency. I tended to believe that the research published in books somehow had been excluded from the journals.
And so looking at the research on what activates the osteoclasts that cause bone breakdown in osteoarthritis, endotoxin is a major activator of the osteoclasts. So that would have a role to play in both osteoarthritis as well as osteoporosis. Oh, yeah. And in all of the degenerative diseases. And several things follow once you start having endotoxin absorbed in your system. Then you begin overproducing nitric oxide and prostaglandins, for example. And Dr. Peat, can you please recap just for our listeners where endotoxin mostly comes from?
It's produced by bacteria and it's a combination of fatty acids and carbohydrate, lipophilic saccharides is its chemical name. And the main source is from the intestinal tract? Yeah, the intestinal bacteria are always producing it. And we absorb a little bit of it all the time and it acts as sort of a stimulant to the immune system and other cells are being constantly irritated by it. So in everyday life, it doesn't have a harmful effect.
And this is why you're a proponent of the raw carrots because they help to protect against some of that absorption of endotoxin. Yeah, the bactericidal effect of the carrot suppresses the growth of the bacteria and then the fiber absorbs and stimulates the excretion. So even in a healthy person that has a healthy digestive tract, this lipophilic saccharide is still going to be produced by commensal in our own gut bacteria that we need? Yeah, and there's always a little bit of it getting into the liver and probably a little always seeping into the general bloodstream,
but in a very small amount, it doesn't have those serious degenerative effects. When you let your liver function slow down, it massively gets past the liver barriers and it starts poisoning all of your systems, increasing nitric oxide and drastically lowering the oxygen metabolism. And this is where endotoxin and estrogen come together. They both interfere with the metabolic use of oxygen. And so that turns on glycolysis, turning sugar into lactic acid. The lactic acid shifts everything throughout. The more irritated a tissue or organ is, the more reduced it is, the more electron excess it has.
And this shifts everything coherently through that tissue and organ and eventually through the whole organism. So this is the excitotoxic stage where these electrons need to be quenched or need to be taken up by electron acceptors? Yeah. The concept of reductive stress is now pretty well established, but 50 years ago everyone was thinking about oxidative stress, but really the degenerative processes are exactly the opposite. Not enough oxygen, too much reduction. And so estrogen and endotoxin do many things that interfere with the use of oxygen
and shift us over to the glycolytic lactic acid producing condition in which we, since we can't oxidize glucose, then we are forced to oxidize fats. And that's very inefficient and leads to lipid peroxidation and the increased production of prostaglandins. Right, which are pain mediators for those people listening. They're mediators of pain and inflammation. If our bodies are well loaded with polyunsaturated fats, which we don't want, yeah, then that tends to increase steadily with aging. And so as a person increases their stores of polyunsaturated fats, every little stress becomes more reductive and more inflammatory.
So the prostaglandins act increasingly to amplify any little stress. Let me just give out some details here and we'll carry on with your description here. For those people listening, from 7.30 to 8 o'clock, the lines will be open. For those people living in the area, there's an 8707 number, 9233911. There is a toll-free number, 1, let me see here, 888, no, yeah, 1-800. K-M-U-D, rad, so that's 800-568-3723. Okay, those people that are listening on the web also can contact the studio. We've very interestingly had people from Scandinavia, from Europe, from the East Coast.
That's always fun. I think we even had one from-- South America, didn't we? South America, yeah. Okay. So Dr. Peat, can I carry on in terms of the way you understand rheumatoid arthritis in terms of the processes that you've already mentioned, things like estrogen, obviously increasing inflammation, endotoxin absorption from the gut because of either poor gut bacterial habits, either constipation I'm sure is definitely an exacerbating factor for increasing lipopolysaccharide reabsorption. As is diets that are deficient in non-digestible fibers. I know you mentioned lots of things like the carrots and bamboo shoots
as indigestible fibers that actually work to remove excess estrogen from the bowel, keep the bowel mobile so that the chances of reabsorption are minimized. So how else do you see the energetic aspect of rheumatoid arthritis and how it manifests in such a wide range of systemic conditions, many of which are life-threatening? There are two main directions other than these local processes from the intestine to whatever organ that is failing. That ends up with the prostaglandin amplified inflammation. Meanwhile, the thyroid pituitary system are being affected by the processes of the intestine
and the organ itself which is wasting energy. The organ, part of how say an inflamed knee affects the thyroid is by leaking substance, a weak cell leaks its various components, proteins in particular leak out. When a cell is under stress, the so-called stress proteins, which include heat shock proteins and the glucose regulated proteins. These are like signals then, these are stress signals, they act as a stress signal to the body. The so-called heat shock protein is activated by too much exercise or too little oxygen and glucose, anything that de-energizes,
especially heat will stimulate the cell while wasting its energy. So these glucose deficiency specifically will bring up the glucose regulated stress proteins and all of these are intrinsic stabilizing factors. They're defensive reactions that sort of hold the cell together acting as chaperones but they leak out because of the cell's structure being loosened by the inflammation and take up of too much water and these things leak out and become immunogenic. In their own right. Yes, that's where even before there are any signs at all of swollen joints, people can detect the rheumatoid factor of the antibody.
Right, that's a good point to bring up. I think I read that 70% I think of rheumatoid sufferers have it, 30% don't and there are some people that have rheumatoid factor in the absence of rheumatoid arthritis but it's a co-factor in other inflammatory processes, inflammatory diseases. Yes, I see it as a sign of stress that isn't being handled that can eventually go in the direction of visibly inflamed and stiffened joints and so on. What you were getting to is I think is that the rheumatoid factor
and the other markers of inflammation are circulating in the blood and they're either poisoning the pituitary, the anterior pituitary or was it the thyroid gland directly? The thyroid is responding to the same stress signals that the local connective tissue is responding to. So the nitric oxide for example goes up in the whole organism and this shifts the brain and the pituitary to increase the thyroid stimulating hormone while blocking the ability of the thyroid gland to produce the hormone. So your functional hormone goes down while the TSH rises and even within the normal range of TSH
which currently is something like 0.4 to 5.0 I think. Even though supposedly the American Association of Endocrinologists lowered it to 0.3 to 3.3 I think? Yes, but even within that normal range, the upper part of the range is now known to be associated with an increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease and other things. So I think the best evidence is that you want to keep your TSH low because it's a factor that promotes all types of inflammation especially the rheumatoid swelling, loss of energy, tumor necrosis factor,
interleukins 1 and 6 in particular and so on. So TSH is a major responder to the stress signals which come from the intestine and the degenerating joints for example and the antibodies that have been defined as thyroid specific antibodies turn out to be joint specific antibodies as well. Wow, so things like the TPO, the thyroid peroxidase? And the thyroglobulin? Yes, the thyroglobulin. Yes, I think the thyroid globulin specific enzyme is also specific for joint tissue. Probably they'll turn out to have even more overlaps than that if people begin looking for them. Like with heart disease?
Yes, and the known atherosclerosis associated with rheumatoid arthritis actually doesn't seem to involve attack on the blood vessels by antibodies but simply something going wrong in the whole organism that causes more or less simultaneous degeneration of the blood vessels and the joints. It isn't a specific autoimmune process even though the whole organism can be said to be in an autoimmune state. When people were studying viral encephalitis for example, they found that an antibody in the autoimmune process seemed to be involved. So they engineered the animals so that they could prevent the autoimmune antibody production
and they found that the animals died quicker when they lacked the autoimmune process. So that supports the Jamie Cuddenliffe-Polly Matsinger approach to what the immune system is really doing. Jamie Cuddenliffe's idea is that the primary function of what is called the immune system is a maintenance of order of the body and its tissues. And when something goes wrong, it can be an organism causing damage to the tissues. In that case, the organism is destroyed and creates a specific immunity to that type of organism.
But that's really, in his view, a side effect of the basic cleanup process. There are many theories of virus or bacteria of various types causing rheumatoid arthritis and the other inflammatory diseases, but I don't think you need those. When you have an energetically precarious tissue condition, it just takes any little cause to tip it over the edge into an uncontrolled degeneration and inflammation. I think what comes over time and time again, I think most people really kind of lose sight of,
is that if you want to put out that glib term, you know, we're all connected as human beings on a planet. The same interconnectedness exists in our body where nothing is done in isolation. So if you mention an organ or a tissue in any part of the body being affected, obviously the blood is passing through that organ or through that tissue and carried to the rest of the body, whether it's through the vasculature or through the lymphatics. Anything that is in any kind of degenerate state in one small location, the effects of that are far-reaching.
And like you said, when things like the thyroid stimulating hormone is picked up again and is in circulation, even in relatively low amounts, none of it is actually good. It's pretty much an inflammatory marker in itself. And so the same thing with gut-related dysbiosis or, you know, whether it's a local trauma to one small area in the body, it all has a potential to seed the whole body with these signals, these markers, these shock proteins, these defensive cries for immune cells to come in and start unloading various chemicals
in a kind of defensive mechanism to try and restore or repair. But it's very important to get the concept of healthy eating and healthy living is not just, you know, one day and then not the next. You know, it's got to be a lifestyle change. And so what reaffirms everything that you're saying and have been saying for years and years now, and that we've been interviewing you for quite a few years, I sometimes catch myself thinking, well, you know what? A lot of it is thyroid and progesterone and all these other anti-inflammatories.
But they are so key. They're so key to maintaining structural integrity, energetic resilience. And these people that you've mentioned, Jamie Cunliffe, Matt Singer, and then Metchnikoff and all the other, you know, kind of brilliant minded people that you've mentioned in the past all have this very holistic picture. And then we talk about holism as a very glib term and kind of think about, you know, I don't want to say what it is just in case it offends anybody because they do it. But the holistic approach is very much a way of life.
And these things that you've mentioned, whether it's progesterone, whether it's thyroid, whether it's vitamin D, these are all things that we should have adequate quantities of, but our diets have been radically degraded over the years. Our environment, food in the water. Everything. So it's a constant. Plastics. Our own bodies are a constant melee, you know, it's just a constant war going on to try and maintain homeostasis and energy. It doesn't always work. And there are plenty of things that can be introduced into someone's lifestyle on a daily basis that will certainly mitigate these effects.
It's 735. And I just want to let people know that the phones are open. Local number is 923-2511, 923-3911, beg your pardon. And the 800 numbers 1-800-KMUD-RAD. So we're taking calls until 8 o'clock. I think I see the lights flashing. Yeah, Dr. Peat, I wanted to have you go over a little bit more since it seems to be over the intestinal tract and the effect we can have on that in reducing these inflammatory mediators that seem to be starting up the whole inflammation. Well, before we do that, hold that thought, Sarah.
Let's take this caller because they've been waiting here. Caller, you're on the air. Where are you from? What's your question? Hi, I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area. Hi, what's your question? Hi, I listened to your July 2013 recording on your website, Western Botanical Medicine's radio archive page. Okay. And, Dr. Peat, you mentioned that it's beneficial on that recording for women to have their monthly menstrual cycles throughout their entire life, which I was really surprised about. So I have two questions regarding that point. One, why is lifelong fertility beneficial for women?
And two, what do women need to do to achieve that? One of the things about the cycle and degenerative diseases that people have noticed is that rheumatoid arthritis is frequently completely resolved during a pregnancy and then returns afterwards. And I think it's the huge production of progesterone that placenta takes over during pregnancy. And in both animals and humans, the number of pregnancies during a lifetime correlates very well with longevity. The more babies produced, the longer the mother lives and the better the health is.
And that, if you look at the age of puberty, the mortality rate decreases from infancy when the organism is very dependent on conditions. As it grows and becomes more autonomous, at around the age of 12, the likelihood of dying is very, very low. Then from puberty on, there's a steady increase in the risk of dying from any cause. And I think that's the same estrogen risk factor that when the organism is detecting something in the environment that is threatening, it turns on the reproductive apparatus.
And when that apparatus is working efficiently, it produces these huge amounts of progesterone that have a life-protecting, anti-inflammatory, life-extending effect. But if the estrogen isn't adequately compensated because of low thyroid or toxins, anything interfering with progesterone, then the estrogen cyclically produces damage to the organism and accelerates the aging process. So the reason that a cycle is valuable to maintain is that what shuts it off is the failure to produce enough progesterone. So even though the actual production of estrogen decreases somewhat at menopause, the effect of estrogen making the inflammatory factors that lead to degeneration,
those become persistent in the absence of the cyclic production of progesterone. So it would be better if you could delay puberty to the age of 70 or 80, but in the absence of that ability, then having the regular early generous production of progesterone is what makes it valuable to keep cycling as long as you can. Wow, that's fascinating. Thank you so much and thank you for all your work, Dr. Peat. Okay, thank you for your call, Carla. Okay, so the number here if you're in the area is 9233911, the area code is 707.
If you're on the web or you're outside, toll free number is 1800KMUDRAD, R-A-D. So we're taking calls until 8 o'clock. So Dr. Peat, getting back to rheumatoid arthritis and the manifestations, I came upon a fairly old, gosh, encyclopedia if you like, but it was quite an old text and they mentioned quite a few different types of arthritis and some of which I didn't recognize, but obviously I think some of these older documents would list things that we've kind of tend to forget now.
One was an arthritis from mumps and I don't even know if people know what mumps are anymore because I mean I had them when I was a child, but mumps are not that common these days. And then arthritis of leprosy, so there were infective arthritis, either gonococcal or tuberculosis arthritis. So these types of arthritis could also be bacterial in origin. Now whether or not any of the compounds that I kind of made a note of here, whether they are herbal or isolated chemical compounds that have been used in the treatment of arthritis
are directly due to the antimicrobial effect and probably the antimicrobial effect in the gut is unknown, but berberis and berberine-containing herbs were certainly implicated in reducing bacterial load and this antibacterial action I would think probably has a definitive action on endotoxin production and/or general gut health. So herbs like Oregon grape, barberry, bark, golden seal root, and you mentioned a couple Chinese herbs. Yeah. Have you had much experience with berberine and knowing its antimicrobial activity? No, none at all. I've eaten the Oregon grapes as jelly, but that's the extent of my experience with berberine.
Okay. I know they mentioned coptis, which is a Chinese medicinal golden thread, I'm pretty sure it's called, and that's actually an adulterant of golden seal because it's a lot cheaper, but apparently it's a very bright yellow, very much like golden seal root, but it contains a pretty high concentration of berberine. That's definitely was indicated here for rheumatoid and I think from an antibacterial point of view. I thought I read in one of those articles that Dr. Peat sent the abstracts that berberine actually blocks nitric oxide.
Yeah, that would be my first thought about how it's working, because infections of any sort are going to increase nitric oxide and impair oxidative energy production. Which goes back to what I was trying to say earlier about the intestines and eating foods that feed the bacteria that then make the endotoxin that then poisons the system and creates that vicious circle of inflammation. The berberine containing herbs are very antibacterial and then they're also stopping that nitric oxide production if they're antibacterial and stopping the bacteria.
Okay, well we've got a couple of callers here, so let's take the first caller. Caller, you're on the air, where are you from? Hello? Yeah, you're on the air, where are you from and what's your question? I'm calling from a little farther north than you are. I had some questions about vitamin D. Okay. Why are the stores selling vitamin D3 and not vitamin D2? I had a doctor prescribe me vitamin D2. And then what are the effects of vitamin D on weight gain and weight loss?
And what are the issues having to do with toxicity, maybe taking too much vitamin D? Okay. Dr. Peat, the difference between vitamin D3 and D2, you said you were prescribed D2? Yeah, the doctor told me he thought I was low and then I was tested and I was low and he told me take 5,000 units of vitamin D3 a day. Oh, you said D3. And that's on the shelf. And then he prescribed me 50,000 units once a week of vitamin D2
and then I know it seemed like six weeks or two months later I noticed a change in my hunger patterns. And the last couple times I went to the doctor I had lost weight. I haven't really checked on it since to see if things are happening like that, but it seems like my hunger has returned a little bit more back the way it was. But it occurred to me that I could see that vitamin D might--you know, you get more in the summer
and it might fit in with weight gains and weight losses that would be normal to people in northern and southern hemispheres. But when I go to the store, I'll see if you can just buy vitamin D on the shelf. It's not there. Vitamin D2 is not there. And I mean if it is going to help me lose weight, you know, I'd like to take lots of it. It's really nice not to be like starving hungry all the time.
Sure. Dr. Peat, from an energetic point of view, how would you--would you describe the difference between D2 and D3? No, I don't know of any real evidence, but there were some publications around 1970 and arguing that D2 was contributing to atherosclerosis and calcification of blood vessels. And up until that time, milk had been reinforced with vitamin D2. And suddenly, every milk producer in the country around that time had just quietly shifted to D3. And that was really just a few papers with superficial, largely opinions rather than facts.
But it convinced most people to stop taking the risk of using the fungal form of vitamin D. Do you think there's an energetic--I'm sure there is a metabolic energetic improvement, of course, then from D2 that might explain that--from D3 or D2 that would explain its weight loss? Well, I think it's the parathyroid hormone which is suppressed by calcium and vitamin D. Both types of vitamin D will keep the parathyroid hormone down. And so calcium and vitamin D both reduce inflammation in multiple ways.
And the reduced inflammation goes with a more productive, efficient, higher rate of metabolism, keeping the weight gain down, stopping the production of fat from protein and sugar. Okay. And from taking too much or monitoring your levels so you don't get too much, you want to have a blood test every couple of months until you find a stable level. You don't really want it any higher than 75, and you don't really want it any lower than 50.
So 50 to 75 is a good reference range to have for your vitamin D level, and you'd want to check it. You wouldn't want to just take a load of it because it can be harmful in high levels. Okay. Well, what I noticed was--and I'm not sure this is due to the vitamin D, but not much else has happened-- was that I would come in the house, say, after doing a lot of physical labor, and I could actually take a shower and take a rest, and I wouldn't have to eat, like, immediately.
And that is very noticeable, not to be hungry like that all the time. That's probably helping your liver store sugar better. And then when I was going to the doctor, I kept losing weight. And I'm not sure what's causing that. But thanks a lot. Yeah. Okay, you're welcome. There are really a lot of publications showing that a high calcium and vitamin D intake will do almost everything good, including the avoidance of abdominal fat, tending to have a leaner body, and keeping especially inflammation down.
And it's just important to note that, listeners, when you want to take vitamin D, if you change your dose or start taking it, it takes eight weeks to get to a plateau level before you'd want a blood test. And you can do finger prick tests. They're available online. Okay, so milk and vitamin D are very beneficial. So we have another one or two callers. Let's take the next caller on the air. You're on the air. And where are you from, caller? Hello. I'm from Arcata. Arcata. Okay, and what's your question?
My question is I'm diabetic, and I read some research that said the little cells that put out the insulin don't really die. Correct. They just sort of -- in your pancreas, they just become like juveniles again. Yeah. Pancreatic beta cells? And I just wanted to know if it is possible to wake them up, if Dr. Peat has any advice about diabetes. I believe it's type 1. So, Dr. Peat, senescent pancreatic beta cells. For type 1 diabetes. Yeah, the beta cells are always tending to regenerate, but they die quickly when you're having diabetes.
And the factor that seems to be the main thing that kills them as they are being reborn is lipid peroxidation. And so getting your polyunsaturated fats down, I think aspirin would be one of the protective things, but glucose happens to be the thing that maintains the renewal, constant regeneration of the beta cells. So keeping the metabolism under control so that you aren't degenerating the polyunsaturated fats into lipid peroxides and prostaglandins is the thing to keep in mind. And this takes a long time. It takes four years to replace your fat cells completely. Totally.
But you can make a big change right away. So replace your vegetable oils. Yeah, I've tried using polyunsaturated fats based on your advice, and will continue to do so and appreciate the advice and your research. Are you saying aspirin is helpful? You said that? Yeah, aspirin improves insulin sensitivity. Oh, it does? Like the baby aspirin, 81 milligram dosage, would you recommend? Or like a regular big old aspirin? One thing to remember, if you're going to supplement any quantity of aspirin for a long time, is to make sure your vitamin K is adequate.
Taking a supplement of vitamin K is a good idea because chronic aspirin will tend to give you a bleeding syndrome if you're deficient in K. So the dose is for one aspirin, 325 milligram aspirin, you'd want to be taking one milligram of vitamin K. And it is on Amazon. The Thorne Research is a very pure form that's just in a medium chain triglyceride drop form. And one drop is one milligram. And that would counteract the bleeding tendency you could get from taking one aspirin.
But Dr. Feig, how much would you recommend is a good kind of dose for helping to block that lipid peroxidation? Well, vitamin E and aspirin have overlapping effects. And so the amount of PUFA that you have stored in your tissues is what governs the amount of those that you need. Okay, we've got two more callers I think, so let's get these next callers. Thank you for your question, caller. And let's take the next one. Where are you from? What's your question? I'm from Ukiah. Okay, what's your question? I have a question about T3.
Does it affect TSH? Certainly does. Dr. Peat? What was the question? Does T3 affect TSH? Oh, yeah, it does. But since you normally have a much higher level of T4 circulating in the body, the pituitary has the ability to convert T4 to T3 locally. So usually T4 is what is suppressing the TSH. But if you get enough T3 into your brain and pituitary, then it's at least as effective as T4. Okay, we've got two more callers. Can I ask one more question? Yeah, go ahead. Reverse T3, what's the mechanism of action?
How does that affect metabolism? Apparently it's partly occupying the same response site that the active T3 would and simply competing against it. And even T4 can outcompete T3 if there's too much T4. But there are local deiodinase enzymes that some of them can eliminate reverse T3. And if those are blocked by some stress substances, then the local reverse T3 can accumulate. So the systemic level of T3 and reverse T3 are both important, but they aren't the absolute factor that determines how effective T3 will be.
That's why taking temperatures and pulses will tell you if you're getting enough T3 or if your body is converting the T4 that you might be taking or producing naturally into T3. All right, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, we have two more callers. So let's see if we can get through these callers with quick answers that will satisfy the next caller. Where are you from? What's your question? Is that me? Yes, go ahead. Your question? Hi. I have two quick questions. One, you mentioned about endotoxin and causing a problem in the bacteria.
And I have been confused about whether probiotics are a good thing or a bad thing as far as that goes. So that was one question. And then the other question is about how much exercise is too much exercise. Right. Okay. Well, I'll quickly speak with Dr. Peat for the exercise one. Any exercise that keeps you or makes you out of breath is not good for you. So gentle, moderate exercise, gentle weight-bearing exercise, definitely what you want. Or if you do have those cardiac bursts, then don't let them last for too long
because what you will do is go into the anaerobic respiration. And produce that. So if you're just walking and, you know, your heart rate is raised a little bit, you know, but you're breathing fine, I mean, you're not like huffing and puffing, is that okay? That's ideal. You don't want to be over-breathing and you don't want to get your heart rate up too much. So walking is gentle walking or just gentle weight-bearing exercise. So Dr. Peat, what do you say about probiotics in terms of the addition to the endotoxin load, pros and cons of probiotics?
Usually they're helpful but not always. And it depends on the particular species. And the individual probably can judge best by how you feel when you take it. Yeah, like some species will cause a lot of gas in people and I think that's harmful. Yeah, some people really get worse when they take certain prebiotics or probiotics. So your particular reaction, I think, should determine that. Because everybody's a commensal bacteria and their intestines are different anyway, so you're introducing another one in the interactions. Okay, we've got about two minutes left and we do have one more caller.
So rather than not giving him a chance, let's just take this next call away from him. Hello. Yeah, I heard you say that having more babies would prolong your life. I didn't hear the whole answer because I was interrupted for a few minutes, but you were saying that the more babies you have, the longer you tend to live. Before there was birth control, women got worn out having too many babies. Well, there were women that had 12 and 13, 14 children, so they must have been doing pretty good to produce that.
Anyways, the guy that built the Taj Mahal, his wife died having her 14th child. And, you know, I have a friend who got pregnant at 48 with her 7th child, and they told her she would not probably make it through the pregnancy. I mean, one lady I know had 10 children and almost died having a 10th. Dr. Peat, do you have a comment on that? There was a study in Hungary that looked at the whole population over a span of a lifetime,
and they graphed the number of babies and the age at death of the mothers, and it was a very smooth, perfectly straight increase in longevity with the number of babies up to eight. When was this? Up to eight babies. Did you hear that, Carla? Yeah, I heard she said eight. That's not 13 or 14. When was this study done in Hungary? Dr. Peat, did you hear it? The caller is asking when was the study done in Hungary. Oh, I read it in the 1970s. I think it was probably done around 1968 or '69.
Okay, we better hold it there, folks. Thanks for your call. As always, Dr. Peat, thanks for being so giving of your time and your energy and your knowledge. Thank you so much. I'll just give people your details. Okay. Thank you. Good night. Okay, so for those people who've heard the show tonight and maybe not heard Dr. Peat explain his scientific rationale of approaching things that we often find bad evidence for, his website is www.raypeat.com, fully referenced articles, well worth a look. Go check it out. He doesn't charge any money for them. They're all free.
We can be reached toll free 1-888-WBMO Monday through Friday. My name's Andrew Murray. My name's Sarah Johanneson Murray. Thanks for listening and have a good night. Until next November. See you then.