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Here we go. Welcome to the Get Fit with Jodell Podcast. I am as usual Jodell and are you ready for another hour spent with Dr. Ray Peat? Well, I know I am immensely looking forward to it. If you haven't heard of Dr. Peat, I would encourage you to go directly to his website right now and that is RayPeat.com and look at the plethora of articles and information he regularly puts out to educate us all on proper nutrition, proper hormone and thyroid
balance. He has been doing this longer than most of us have been alive so it's somebody you can really trust. Dr. Peat, I do consider you one of my mentors and I am so pleased to continue to learn from you. I know you guys will be pleased too and if you want more of Dr. Peat, I also encourage you to order his newsletter. Highly, highly informative and information directly from him that he puts a lot of effort into and he puts it out
nowhere else on the interwebs of the world. To get that, you can use PayPal and send $28 for an emailed copy of his printable newsletter and you send that to the email address, RayPete's newsletter at Gmail.com. Without further ado, Dr. Peat, welcome to the podcast once again. How are you? I must ask you, being in Oregon, did you fare okay from all the fires that were over, that are going on still? Yes, we're okay now. A little bit smoky but the worst of the concentrated smoke was really dangerous to go outside and do any activity.
It finally got me to wear a mask when I had to go outside on an N95 mask but it's a lot like for the virus particles, the most dangerous particles of this kind of smoke are small, as small as the virus or even smaller until it goes right through even on the N95 mask. Wow, so yeah, the mask actually doesn't serve a purpose much in either case, huh? Yeah, in the case of the smoke, it takes out the biggest particles because they are the most deadly. Well, I'm glad you're well and I appreciate
your time again. We have so many great questions this time. Let's dive right in. I wanted to make mention of this first one because it is something that I myself have dealt with so I can empathize with this listener. Jessica wrote in and asked, "Dr. Peat, what would you suggest for a toxic mold healing protocol?" I've tried all the binders, the fungus-free and mold-free diets and the herbal supplements to help my ailing liver and thyroid. I did get a diagnosis of NASH, non-alcoholic stahatohepatitis and my test still shows high on okra toxin.
I would love to hear what you would recommend and also your thoughts on NASH from Toxic Mold and what to do about it. Having your liver working at top speed is the main thing, reducing inflammation and that means usually avoiding foods that would feed fungus and bacteria in your intestine because when you're feeding bacteria excessively, those toxins, especially if you have bacteria growing in the small intestine where there shouldn't be but most Americans do have bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine, that especially poisons
the liver and reduces its ability to detoxify. And so foods such as well-cooked mushrooms or raw carrots will help to sweep out some of the bacteria and suppress their growth, letting the liver be more effective. I've seen people change their hormones in a period of just three or four days simply by adding raw carrots every day because the toxins that were being removed were stopping the liver from inactivating estrogen and cortisol and blocking the body's ability to produce adequate progesterone. So I've seen the cortisol
and estrogen levels drop sharply as the progesterone rose simply from having a daily carrot and that means the liver has returned to a vigorous activity and is balancing the hormones. And as far as the NASH goes, the non-alcoholics to hepatitis, do you think she should deal with some supplements with that? Like if you've seen any research on things she could take for that issue or what she could do? Usually the problem is caused by eating a very starch-based diet and sometimes too much phosphate. Nuts and beans and too much fish
and your diet. But thyroid is the main detoxifying substance. Your liver simply doesn't run fast enough to manage to detoxify mold or industrial pollution or whatever if it doesn't have adequate thyroid activity. Okay. Very good. Okay. Raj Singh asks, "What is Dr. Peat's actionable advice for a 25-year-old man with mild gynomastia? I have high prolactin, estradiol, and elevated liver enzymes. Also, hair loss, thinning, hair, and what concrete steps can I take? Any foods, supplements, or topicals he'd recommend? Thank you both Jodell and Dr. Peat for your time, knowledge, and commitment to truth proliferation." I
like that. "Dr. Peat is my hero," he says. A lot of unsuspected things will activate the parapsyroid hormone. That's very seldom measured, but when it increases, it suppresses not only thyroid function but the mitochondrial energy production all through the body. So if it's really elevated, your estrogen will rise. Your hair growth will flow and tend to fall out. The rising estrogen will cause gynomastia and other symptoms. And supplementing vitamin D to get your blood level up to at least 50 nanograms per milliliter. And having about
at least 2,000 milligrams of calcium per day in a form that is well assimilated. So that would mean roughly two quarts of milk per day as a calcium source. And if you are getting sunlight, it would mean supplementing 4,000 or 5,000 units of vitamin D usually. Absolutely. Sunlight is definitely a cure-all. And then Bevne, she asked something similar to go along with that hyperlactin. She asked, "Could you ask Dr. Peat to list some of the most effective prolactin antagonists?" So what say you to that? Again, thyroid is the most common solution
in your life. You have the most effective prolactin. And so if your TSH is elevated, prolactin is going to be elevated. And having a proper thyroid supplement to keep your TSH at the very low end of the normal range will usually take care of the prolactin. But some of the calcium and vitamin D are very important because prolactin is one of our calcium regulators. Cortisol, pyrrhothyroid hormone, and prolactin are -- they mobilize calcium into your bloodstream. But they do a lot of harmful things, makes the calcium cause problems in taking it out
of your bones. And if you supplement calcium on vitamin D, you're going to help your balance of prolactin, pyrrhothyroid hormone, and cortisol at the same time. And that will support your thyroid function. But it's important to make sure that you do have adequate thyroid function, keeping your temperature pulse rate up. There's a way to check on that. Okay, so good to know about thyroid supplementation is pretty key for prolactin antagonism. So Agnes Finoli asks, "What does Dr. Peat think about the rising trend of doing ice-cold showers,
or cold baths? Is it really beneficial to our health?" I don't think it's beneficial. It momentarily activates your stress hormones. And in a healthy animal, in a healthy young person, it will sometimes increase your thyroid activity. But that isn't always true. If your thyroid is too low to start with, it will just make you cold and feel sick. Okay, so not a fan, huh? Yeah, it seems to be invigorating if you're already in very good health, and your thyroid can respond, but it can be dangerous. I've known people who did it because they heard
it was good for the health. I'm checking their temperature hours later. Their oral temperature was down to 95 or 96 degrees, very bad. Yeah, so there seems to be a theory that people will do the cold baths and showers to force their thyroid to respond to the cold and heat up faster. Is there any truth to that? Will the thyroid respond in that manner? Yeah, that's the way it should, in a healthy animal. The thyroid function in the winter, in normal animals and healthy people, is four times the level of thyroid production as in
the summer. And that's because of all of the changing stimulation, but especially the cold weather. And so you would die if your thyroid didn't undergo those winter increases, and people living indoors without the normal temperatures usually tend to put on weight and get lethargic because their thyroid has failed to increase along with the shortening of the days. And that means that other hormones that depend on the thyroid are going to have problems. The cortisol will become very high. Seroton, enterothyroid, hormone, prolactin, all of the
stress hormones, tend to increase during the winter if your thyroid isn't increasing as it should. And the reason that that happens so typically in humans, but not in animals, is not only that we're staying indoors and not being stressed, but that our diet isn't right for supporting a proper reaction to the stress. Okay, cool to know, because yeah, it's definitely a trend out there, but just because something's trendy doesn't mean it's right for every individual. So really, they need to be in a good metabolic shape before they engage in that. So that's good to know.
I love sugar is the next person she or he says, and this is an interesting question. I have continuous intrusive thoughts about recent stressful events when I do things that do not fully capture my attention like cooking and eating. These thoughts disappear, the intrusive thoughts disappear when I watch movies or TV shows. These intrusive thoughts started after an untreated respiratory infection a few years ago when I was under eating and over exercising. And they say I am supplementing thyroid, but it does not help much because
of probably not eating enough. I have trouble eating due to the stress. So the question is, Dr. Peat, what can I do to take care of these thoughts? An infection or an accident or emotional stress can knock down your thyroid function and block you into a pattern of low thyroid, high cortisol, and high serotonin stress reactions, and breaking out of that pattern. The diet can do it, but it's important to check on your temperature and pulse rate and supplementing thyroid or protective hormone such as progesterone or
ketone. Sometimes just those drugs or supplements can immediately get you out of those obsessive intrusive thoughts and depression and so on. But one of the sources of histamine and serotonin is producing that background stress pattern. The diet is failing to keep your blood sugar steady and reduce inflammation. You want to avoid inflammation producing foods, make sure you're getting enough protein. Around 100 grams of protein is needed by almost everyone with moderate amount of activity. Protein, calcium, vitamin D, and some kind of fiber
in the diet such as raw carrots will help to reduce the intestinal source of serotonin and histamine. This really sounds like more of a thyroid issue based on the infection that they experienced. He mentioned supplementing thyroid doesn't help much, but maybe they're not doing enough. How much are they doing and would they benefit from a higher dose of thyroid supplementation? The thyroid can't work if you don't have vitamin D, calcium, protein, and sugar in your diet or if you have a tremendous amount of inflammation in
your diet. Sometimes just a single factor such as increasing your protein, having some eggs and milk and cheese, or even a huge bowl of ice cream or a big milkshake, something that can sometimes lower your cortisol and your pituitary and thyroid will spontaneously break out of the stress cycle. There you go. I love sugar. Since you love sugar, you can have a big bowl of ice cream and sit in the sunshine while you eat it so that you can improve your thyroid naturally too. That's awesome. This next question is something that
I've wanted to ask myself because I have my own opinion on this, but I'd love to hear what you have to say. Johnny Mojo asks, "Does Ray think that having a colonoscopy is ever a good idea? Mainstream medicine makes it seem like everyone needs to start having them semi-regularly by the age of 40. The whole process of having one seems like torture. What do you think, Dr. Peat? I looked at the incidence of mortality from colon cancer and the number of colonoscopies performed. They had a positive connection with countries where
almost no colonoscopies are done, have extremely low colon cancer, which it could be that since no one suffers from colon cancer there's no reason for doing the colonoscopies, but it also suggests that there isn't a great amount of reduction of mortality just from having polyps removed. I'm convinced that polyps are continually forming and being swept off and that if you happen to find them during the colonoscopy it doesn't mean that you're in the process of getting colon cancer because I think most of them just heartlessly fall
off of their past out. I think I agree. I feel like there's always precancerous and cancerous things forming in our body, but if we give the body the proper conditions and we weren't just always checking every MRI and every scopic evidence that we can go through, we might just be surprised that they can come and go on their own. We just have to give the body the proper conditions. Several pathologists have observed that in the autopsies they do on people who die from accidents, for example, or from bleeding stomach ulcer or whatever.
When they do a cerebral autopsy they find that 100% of the people who are studied over the age of 50, 100% of them have places in their body where a biopsy would have found and diagnosed cancer, but the fact that 100% of the 50-year-old people could be diagnosed with cancer. They have little nests of cells in one tissue or another. What it means is that cancer usually is not fatal. It develops and doesn't do any harm if you don't notice it. There have been some studies starting in the 1950s, people, very confident statisticians
looked at the people who rejected surgery or chemotherapy and found that the people who went the longest after diagnosing cancer went the longest without treatment, also were the longest survivors. Those studies showed a correlation between the increasing rate of treatment and the increasing mortality from cancer. They also showed that the actual mortality from tumors such as breast cancer had been absolutely steady across the years. Before there was intensive searching of diagnosing and frequent breast checkups and so on. Absolutely no change in the death rate as the rate of diagnosis tremendously increased suggesting
the best futility of the treatment. In the case of prostate cancer, when the PSA test occurred in the 1980s and was accepted as a way to diagnose prostate cancer, the number of treatments, surgery or radiation for prostate cancer, suddenly there was a tremendous increase in the number of medical treatments because of the increased ability to diagnose it. But the death rate from prostate cancer suddenly surged in those same years and a few years after that happened, a great increase in the number of people dying from prostate cancer
corresponding to how many were being diagnosed. Surveys asking specialists in prostate treatment, asking a man what they would do if they found they had prostate cancer and the majority of them said they would do nothing but they were still treating their patients. And at that time you might remember the popularity of treating prostate cancer with estrogen. That was established on the basis of a questionnaire. Absolutely no science behind it. But millions of men for 50 years were treated with huge doses of estrogen. I got interested in them
because a friend of mine who was continually in perfect health had the PSA test led to diagnosis of cancer. He began treatment within a few days. He was very sick with asthma and then within about three weeks he died of cancer which hadn't been causing any trouble until he got these huge doses of estrogen. It was stopping the estrogen treatment in the 1990s that led to a great decrease of mortality from prostate cancer. It begs the question, years ago, a century ago, we didn't have all the tests that we
have now and it just makes me wonder. We have all these tests that are able to diagnose certain things but is that the reason why there's an increase in all these things or is it because the fear that is put behind the diagnosis to the individual that causes such a high stress reaction because they've been given a cancer diagnosis or they've been given a diagnosis of some fatal disease. Is it the fear or is it actually that they've diagnosed it more now than ever?
Well, like the study I mentioned that showed that the longer you avoid the treatment the later you died indicating that it was a treatment causing premature death. Since they were diagnosing pretty much cancer 150 years ago the proportion of people dying of cancer in the population was smaller. I think there have been carcinogens in the environment increasing some types of cancer but I think the big part of the problem is over treatment using very toxic, deadly treatments such as for 50 years those insane treatments with high estrogen
doses when estrogen is actually the major stimulus to the development of prostate cancer. The men who have originally the highest level of natural testosterone have the lowest mortality from prostate cancer. The men with the lowest and the natural testosterone because it's being converted to estrogen are the ones with the high prostate cancer risk. The 50 years of medical opinion treating prostate cancer with estrogen were based on the completely ignorant absolutely unscientific doctrine that if testosterone makes the prostate grow the women don't have prostate plans therefore using a female hormone there should be an appropriate
cure for prostate cancer. Absolutely stupid reasoning but that governs medicine for 50 years. Oh my gosh. Going back to the diagnosis thing I saw that first hand with my own mom. She was given five years if she did nothing from her stomach cancer diagnosis and so she took treatment and died within one year so she actually would have lived longer based on the diagnosis if she had done nothing but yeah so c'est la vie right. So Nanu A asks what course of speaking of cancer from estrogen excess what course of therapy would Dr. Peat
recommend to someone who has cancer from estrogen excess what would he advise? In those situations estrogen is a basic promoter of inflammatory processes and signals and so everything anti-inflammatory can stop those signals and stop the development of the whole process that leads to failure of the immune system too much inflammation shifts your immune system from not having cancer to promoting the growth of cancer. The wrong kind of antibodies promoted by estrogen will stimulate cancer growth. They call them blocking antibodies but it's really just that the body shouldn't be making all of those antibodies. It should
be using a different kind of immunity or resistance which is supported by everything anti-inflammatory and those things include thyroid and progesterone among the intrinsic substances carbon dioxide under the influence of a good balance of thyroid and progesterone carbon dioxide is a basic anti-inflammatory substance which for 150 years has been recognized as a useful palliative at least for cancer. There's a book on the internet that gives a survey of the use of carbon dioxide breathing bathing inflation putting a tube into the area of the cancer
introducing carbon dioxide gas and so on. That's simply our basic anti-inflammatory process is to lower lactic acid which is produced when we aren't making enough carbon dioxide. Estrogen increases our lactate production reduces carbon dioxide, thyroid and progesterone increase our CO2 production and support a whole anti-inflammatory system but then you can back up all of those anti-inflammatory processes with aspirin the local anesthetics like lidocaine which can be used systemically, or absorb short skin. The blockers of angiotensin that are used for
blood pressure and now are starting to be used for the lung infections such as the COVID-19. Even political corticoids that are supported by things like progesterone and thyroid even those in some cases help to reduce the growth of the cancer. Okay, perfect. I'm going to throw in my own question here to kind of break up the monotony of the questions. This one's kind of a personal repeat question. Dr. Peat, is there a Mrs. Ray Peat? Yes, Catherine. We've been together for 40 years.
I love that. I love to hear good lung marriages like that so that's awesome. Another listener asked another question just about you in general. What would Dr. Peat order at a Mexican restaurant? Most often when it's available, usually in your seacoast, it would be Sopa de Mariscos mixed shellfish, super stew at other restaurants. One of my favorites is Closoli. How many in pork soup usually? In the absence of a restaurant at Empanadas or Quesadillas, this is a simple little cheese and tortilla of operations. Are you a fan of chicharrones or pork rinds? Oh, always, yeah.
Me too. I do enjoy those. Okay, Naomi asks, what is high albumin due to? Or albumin? Sometimes it's just evidence of dehydration. If you have done something exerting that makes you sweat and haven't had any fluid for several hours, the water content of your blood will decrease and that makes everything go up including the albumin concentration and the estrogen excess by increasing your water content will make the albumin go down along with other things. Usually it's good to have albumin up around the 50 level. They're starting to say that as low as 38 is acceptable,
but I think a person should be in the range of 44 to 50 roughly. Yeah, I agree. Joseph asks, for someone wanting to alter the timing of a woman's cycle, how many milligrams of progesterone daily is enough, and I'm assuming humans, like maybe they want to prolong it to weigh the certain length of time or maybe speed it up to alter the timing of it? That varies tremendously. The average healthy young person is making probably 30 milligrams a day during the luteal phase, often much more, sometimes less, but that's a healthy natural number.
But if there's a problem, like if your thyroid is low, then it can take a much larger amount. And if your thyroid is good, sometimes just 5 or 10 milligrams can be enough because progesterone has a positive feedback effect, at least on the ovaries. When you have an ovary in the teeth measuring how much progesterone is being produced and you increase the concentration of progesterone in the solution, the ovary makes progesterone faster. And so I've seen many people who have, for example, one woman, ever since puberty roughly,
who was in her late 20s, had strangely pale skin and purple lips, a very progesterone deficient, extremely high estrogen pattern. And she just thought that was her normal self. But one moderate dose of progesterone within, I think it was about 40 minutes, she said she felt something happening, went home and looked in the mirror, and she said her face looked like it hadn't looked since she was 13 years old, and then weeks later when she saw her parents after a long absence, the first thing they said was, "What happened to you?"
Because she had retained the ability to make progesterone just from that single catalytic dose. That often happens in the case of PMS or migraines. If the diet is good, all it takes is something to break the stress and your ovaries will recover their full ability. That's why I've never liked the idea of progesterone replacement therapy. If you don't have ovaries, then replacement is something that's helpful forever. Yeah, and would you say that the bigger a person is, they would probably do better on a higher dose of progesterone,
such as someone who's heavier, their body's bigger, maybe they're 6 foot tall woman versus a 5 foot 2 woman? Oh, absolutely. Especially the amount of body fat, because progesterone, like vitamin D, progesterone tends to disappear in the fatty tissue. You need it available in the bloodstream, not just saturating your fat cells. Okay, perfect. Rubicon5 asks, "What about the hyperthyroid disease? Graves, any metabolic solution for hyperthyroid?" The first thing is to make sure that you're actually hyperthyroid, because over the last 50 years, I've run across, I don't know, a few dozen people with that diagnosis.
But when I actually got them to describe their symptoms and their measurements, there were only two or three, actually, people who, according to the classical definitions, are recognizing that thyroid is a hormone that does particular metabolic functions in the body. If you don't see those functions operating to an excessively high degree, then you can't properly call it hyperthyroidism. Doctors are diagnosing hyperthyroidism in very unfounded ways. For example, there are many things that can cause TSH to be low. Stress can lower the TSH. Malnutrition can lower.
So just having low TSH doesn't mean that you have high thyroid activity. Being excitable, tense, having a fast heart rate, those are very common in hyperthyroid people, because sometimes the body will produce 30 or 40 times more than the normal amount of adrenaline to keep the body functioning in spite of low thyroid. And if a doctor looks at only the TSH and their speedy behavior, they can guess there might be hyperthyroid. But if they actually look at what's going on chemically, it usually turns out that they're really hyperthyroid compensating with tremendous amounts of stress hormones.
So you need to measure at a minimum adrenaline or catecholamines production and cortisol production, and you should look at several other hormones as well. On the temperature pattern, high cortisol can keep your temperature up so you want to see what carbohydrate in your food does. If it's really temperature produced by thyroid excess, sugar will increase it by increasing the amount of T3, the active hormone, of being produced. But if it's being produced by cortisol, a big, sugary meal can lower the temperature and heart rate.
And the total amount of food consumed, if you're eating 4,000 calories a day and losing weight and getting skinny, then that's hyperthyroid, almost for sure. But most of these people with a diagnosis of hyperthyroidism who are in danger of being given radioactive iodine to destroy the land or having it surgically removed, most of these people are maintaining their weight on a 2,000-calorie a day diet so they can't be hyperthyroid. And one of the first things that happens with hyperthyroidism is the increased conversion of cholesterol to break net alone and progesterone.
And so the cholesterol level falls as the metabolic rate increases under the influence of thyroid. And so checking your cholesterol level is another supportive thing. If you have below-normal cholesterol, then that would be consistent with hyperthyroidism. If your temperature and food consumption and water consumption, if those are all elevated, then that's really hyperthyroidism. And sometimes a person with actual hyperthyroidism, if they just drink a glass or two of fresh raw cabbage juice, that will stop the gland long enough for the body to re-establish control.
And sometimes they have to keep doing that. But in studies where they had actual hyperthyroidism, simply suppressing the gland, usually with a pill resembling cabbage juice that blocks the formation of the hormone, doing that for a few months will allow the gland to slowly get rid of the excess hormone that it had stored up during a period of stress. And most of the cases didn't recur after six months of using a suppressive pill. And in the others who returned, another six months course was all it took.
So in none of the cases that were studied in that way, was it necessary to remove or destroy the thyroid gland? Okay, good to know. Okay, so Katie asks a general dieting eating regimen question. So she was wondering about a couple things. Your thoughts on a caloric intake guideline for a female who's post-menopause, mid-50s, healthy and mildly active.
So she's asking, you know, what range of calories is too low? What range would be too high for that kind of person? And as far as like, what general macronutrients do you recommend or do you recommend even following macronutrient ratios such as 40% carbs, 30% fat, 30% protein? What do you think? That proportion would be okay. It can vary a lot. And the quality of the protein is very important and the quality of the fats. The more saturated your fats are, the more harmless they are.
So even as a matter of weight gain, the worst fats for gaining weight are the polyunsaturated vegetable oil fats. The saturated fats don't stimulate weight gain to the same degree. And the average size person with moderate activity, the calorie needs with age decreases because your tissues just don't respond as intensely to the thyroid and other hormones. But in the age range of 40 to 60, usually calories between 1700 and 2200 will meet your needs without making you either gain or lose weight.
Okay. Perfect. Okay. And then her other question was about food combining. Do you recommend this such as separating protein foods from sugar to prevent advanced glycation end products and fermentation? What do you think? I know that the experiments with isolated intestine have tested what happens to the intestine when it's given pure protein or pure fat or pure carbohydrates or a mixture.
And the intestine responds as if to relatively alien substance when it's chemically too pure. And when it gets a good balance of protein, fat and carbohydrate all at the same time, then the protein goes, the intestine goes into action and absorbs everything properly. Awesome. Okay. So we're on to Craig Doe asks, "Dr. Peat, the significance of vitamin D for multiple sclerosis. Is there anything else one could do to help with the symptoms?"
Vitamin D calcium is the central hypo portion of calcium in your diet along with the vitamin D because the problem is inflammation in the brain. And the calcium and vitamin D are close to our basic anti-inflammatory systems. Cyroid and the carbon dioxide that it produces are the other main protective things. Several people who told me that they had a diagnosis of MS, when I looked at their diet and their symptoms, a couple of them were simply protein deficient.
Eating a big fish dinner, for example, was enough to stop their symptoms. I think it was five people in a row who told me they had an MS diagnosis that were so obviously hypothyroid. But when I pointed out their symptoms to them, they recognized that when they started taking thyroid instantly, their MS symptoms disappeared and they discovered it was a mistake on diagnosis. I would agree with that. Okay. Mitchell Lester asks, "I have had allergies to dogs and cats and tree nuts and shellfish my entire life. Luckily grew out of an egg allergy.
Any recommendation on how to mitigate or overcome these allergies? I've tried antihistamines, elevating blood sugar and aspirin which do reduce symptoms but not completely. Thanks." Sometimes, chyproheptidine works when other antihistamines happen. Making sure that your blood sugar and calcium and vitamin T are optimal because things that interfere with the use of sugar, increase your tendency to release the inflammatory things such as histamine and serotonin.
And in experiments, sometimes just tripling the amount of glucose in the bloodstream will prevent an even deadly anaphylactic shock producing allergens that will fail to produce a reaction simply because the sugar or it wasn't being detectively used so increasing the amount of it overcame the need for inflammation which is the body's attempt to make glucose available. And finding out whether you have anything blocking the ability to use glucose such as elevated parathyroid hormone is one of the most often overlooked.
That's why vitamin T and calcium and enough sodium in your diet, salting your food to taste, these things will correct hyperparathyroidism. And by restoring your cells' ability to use sugar, producing carbon dioxide, suppressing lactic acid production, that will at least reduce the intensity of the allergic symptoms. Okay, good information. Do we have time for about three more questions with you? Okay. Turkish Postman asks, "Can high cortisol and high ACTH on its own raise adrenaline in the body?" High ACTH raise adrenaline? No, usually if your adrenals respond by making cortisol, that keeps the adrenaline down.
And the first reaction when you don't get enough glucose into your system, first reaction is to increase your adrenaline to mobilize stored glycogen to release it in the form of glucose. And if you run out of glycogen, then adrenaline can't do that and that's when ACTH rises. But normally adequate glucose or carbohydrate will keep down both adrenaline and ACTH and so cortisol. Yeah, so when I read his question, that's what I was wondering too. I was thinking, well, I think it's the other way around.
It's the high adrenaline that actually leads to the high ACTH, right? Yeah, it's the body's first reaction, and then if it doesn't produce enough sugar, then the body brings in the deadlier armament, which is the ACTH and cortisol. And the reason that a restrained reaction is that the way cortisol and ACTH produce the glucose is by breaking down tissue protein, and we don't have any protein storage.
So when cortisol goes up, it means some part of our structure and machinery, some part of it is converted to sugar with loss of function and strength of connective tissue, for example. So a surge of adrenaline does a good warning that you should either improve your efficient sugar metabolism or increase the amount of carbohydrate in your diet. Yes, which goes into the next question from Sven. He asks solutions to chronic sleeplessness other than adequate protein and sugar intake.
But really, if someone is waking up a lot or having chronic sleeplessness, that usually is an adrenaline issue where there may just not be enough sugar or glucose in the system, yes? Yeah, not storing enough glycogen in the tissues. And usually thyroid is the limiting factor. Getting the right amount of thyroid increases the rate at which you can synthesize glycogen. And sucrose, as an energy source, provides fructose, and fructose is especially good at converting to glycogen.
So instead of getting all of your carbohydrate in the form of strokes, having a lot of it from fruit providing sucrose increases your ability to store glycogen.
And he had also asked, like, outside of protein and sugar, you know, what else would you recommend? Are there any, like, sleep supplements that you like or that you recommend or strategies outside of food and supplements, like, such as what I would tell somebody, you know, make sure you're powering down all of your electronics a couple hours before bed so you don't have that blue light exposure and stuff, but what else would you say?
Most often the problem is irritation coming from the intestine, which at first it's slightly irritating and poisoning the liver, so it has already, even before you go to bed, that irritation and intestine is causing your liver not to store enough glycogen. But then when you go to sleep, your irritated intestine is sending danger signals to your brain, tending to increase your adrenaline and wake you up and force you to eat something to get back to sleep. Having a clean intestine is the first most important thing for having good, continuous sleep.
And that green's palates are one of the most overlooked causes of bowel inflammation. We simply don't have the enzymes needed to digest raw vegetables, such as spinach or lettuce or any of the popular raw vegetables. Vegetables will necessarily produce inflammation, because they're absolutely ingestible. Okay, good. So work on your gut, too, there, Sven. Okay, Dr. Peat, last question here. Can you suggest a diet that could help rebuild the enamel in some way to prevent the need for extraction, so a diet that rebuilds enamel?
No, the enamel can't be rebuilt. It's not in communication. We can rebuild the underlying structure, but the enamel is formed as the tooth is in process of growth. And once it has erupted, there's no communication between our blood treatment, though it is with the dentine. The quality of this saliva is a protective factor. It's hardly been studied. There's very little science behind dentistry.
The few actually physiological studies of the mouse system show that the saliva varies tremendously and can support destruction of the enamel or it can be very protective and maintain the right pH and preventing the growth of the bacteria.
Okay, good to know. That's an interesting question. That was from Dan Pearlman. He wanted to ask that. And just to say thank you to everybody that asked questions. I didn't get to all of them on the list, but I now have those on the queue for next time for when we podcast again. So yours will be at the top of the list if you didn't hear yours on today's episode.
So again, Dr. Peat, you're awesome. Thank you for your time. I hope you stay well out there and I hope all those the issues with the fires can be dealt with soon so that you can go back to that beautiful Oregon fall weather. Thank you for your time. You guys stay tuned for the next one and we'll be in touch. Don't forget to sign up for his newsletter and have an awesome day. So thanks once again, Dr. Peat.
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