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Well, welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray. Just very quickly, it's the winter solstice here, December 21st, 2018, and we've got a full moon and an urcid meteor shower. Pretty cool, huh? Okay, so, beautiful, clear evening outside, and at that time of the year when we have the shortest days, we can look forward to increasing day length from here within a couple of days or so.
So, every third Friday of the month, I guess, I think for the last 14 or 15 years, I was thinking about it on the way in, we've done this monthly show, which is a live show, broadcasted from the KMUD studio in Garboville, Redway, sorry, not Garboville, in Redway, California, and every third Friday of the month, we decide on a topic based on medicine, herbal medicine, alternative medicine, nutrition, dietary advice, etc., which we believe is a good alternative to standard medical practice,
but which we still recognize medical practice as not being out of the question and certainly has a lot of benefits. It's just that some of it is very questionable. We've been very lucky to have been joined for the last 10 years now, I think, by Dr. Raymond Peat, who's a research endocrinologist, a scientist in the true sense of the word, very much involved in real research. I just want to say that when people say they've been researching something recently, they typically mean they've been looking at the internet and googling it
and getting information wherever they can. I think in the empirical sense of the word, research really involves digging into a lot of literature, a lot of documents and scientifically analyzing the data for congruence or obvious mistakes. I know Dr. Peat has spent the last 45 years or more after his PhD doing a continued research post-PhD, post-doctorate in nutrition, health, and how to really help yourself using very simple methods. He doesn't advocate anything that's super expensive.
It's really very common sense. I think in a lot of ways, the best help is to avoid some of the things that we're told is good for us rather than adding more things into our diet. Without further ado, let me just introduce Dr. Peat. You there, Dr. Peat? Yes. Hi. Thanks so much for joining us again. As always, for the benefit of those people who perhaps have never heard you before,
or heard of you, or tuned in, as we're always getting new listeners and emails from people that say they just came across it for the first time, would you just outline your academic background to where you are now before we get into the night show? First, in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was studying literature and painting mostly. Then, 1968 to '72, I did a graduate program for a PhD in biology. Talking about research, my approach to research probably is influenced by my literature background, thinking of propaganda analysis,
sensitivity to how people use language and manipulate preconceptions and such. Good point. I think everyone looking at the internet has to spend more time thinking about propaganda analysis and how advertising has invaded the medical journals, practically taking over many of the journals. Absolutely. It's a lot of money involved, and we do mention this many times. Dr. Peat, just very quickly, your specialty, let me not put words in your mouth, but just tell people what your specialism was, what it came to be when you graduated, what you looked at in research, and where you're at now.
My dissertation was on the biochemical changes involved in reproductive aging, working on the hamster uterus mostly, and seeing how many factors parallel aging in the biochemical pattern that they create. Estrogen excess, progesterone deficiency, vitamin E deficiency, exposure to radiation all create the same typical age pattern of metabolism. It's at its most extreme in cancer metabolism. That was why I was so interested in Otto Farberg's work at the time. When I was just starting in graduate school, American biochemists were turning against Otto Farberg despite his Nobel Prize,
because he was saying that cancer is a metabolic condition, not a gene mutation. Now, 50 years later, finally the US and European cultures are coming around to looking at what Farberg did almost 100 years ago. OK, good. So let me just tell people here that it's a live call-in show from 7.30 to 8 o'clock. We'll take callers with questions hopefully related to this month's subject or continuing subject of skin cancer, with some parallels with vitamin D and a little follow-up on the cholesterol-lowering statins. We all know how bad they are for us, don't we?
So the number if you live in the area or even if you're outside the area now, 707-923-3911. So from 7.30 to 8 o'clock, we'll be taking callers who want to ask Dr. Peat questions about the subject that we're talking about, or if they have any other subjects relevant to alternative medicine or indeed his protocols. Number again, 707-923-3911. So Dr. Peat, I wanted to continue. Last month I had questions that I never did get a chance to ask you because we had so many people calling in.
But rather than just carrying straight off the questions, I wanted to make sure that I got some coverage for what was later revealed to me about an Italian MD by the name of Tullio Simoncini. So he's an MD. He's been practicing for some time, although there's been controversy about him. He's one of these doctors who essentially became quite alternative in his treatments and was struck off the medical register in the end. So people can read about him and make your own mind up.
But I wanted to let people know in relation to the context of skin cancer, what he had been working with and doing to treat people. And by all accounts, was getting very successful results with people, both with topical cancers, which we were covering, we're going to cover last month, but we're hopefully going to cover this month. So the topical cancers from the basal cell carcinomas to the squamous cell carcinomas, actinic keratosis, malignant melanomas. And he also treats internal cancers with a different protocol.
So I wanted to just talk a little bit about the treatment that he was advocating with people using a 7% iodine solution for topical cancers. I think the other thing that's quite interesting is that a 7% solution for some reason is really not offered by very many people. Seems like the average concentration is between two and five. But there's something different, I guess, because the concentration is 7% and not two or five. But there's something different about people that are selling this. There's very few people doing it at 7%.
And if you look at the reviews, folks, I mean, you don't have to take my word for it. But if you go to Amazon, you know, the beam off that sells just about everything to anybody, anytime, and look at 7% iodine, and then check the reviews from the people that have used it for skin cancers.
And I wanted to ask Dr. Peat his opinions about cancers and the treatment, current therapies, including the Mohs therapy, which is a therapy where they take successive layers of the tumor away and dissect them and basically go deeper and deeper until everything has been taken away and it's all good. And then they stitch you up if you need it and everything's just fine and dandy. I know Dr. Peat doesn't really believe in cutting any kind of cancer. And he's got his own reasons and we'll ask him about that.
But what do you think about Tullio Simoncini's approach to cancers and his rationale that Candida albicans, which we probably all heard of, which is that yeast overgrowth that we all, most people actually have Candida anyway, but very few people really get a bad case of it because most immune systems are able to deal with it. So some people have it in their mouth or under their armpits or in between their toes. But he's stated categorically that cancer is actually based in a yeast and Candida albicans is essentially the organism responsible for it.
So Dr. Peat, do you have anything to put in about that in terms of being a tenable position? About 40 years ago, there was a big mania in the US blaming everything on Candida. And that led me to study how it actually interacts. And if you're under stress and hypothyroid and inclined towards diabetes or not being able to oxidize glucose thoroughly and tending to have high estrogen, it happens that all of those favor and attract Candida growth. And so the presence of Candida coincides with hypothyroidism, estrogen excess and poor ability to oxidize glucose.
So it happens that inflammation and improper oxidation of glucose is typical of cancer metabolism more intensely than of simple stress metabolism. So Simoncini is seeing something very central to the metabolism of cancer, which is intensified by the inflammation promoting effects of the Candida. And Candida itself, besides being attracted to estrogen, estrogen is a sex hormone for the Candida fungus and it contains an enzyme which can aromatize male steroid hormones. So it can become an amplifier of estrogen. First, it's attracted to it and stimulated by it. So it can convert testosterone into?
Yeah, at least one of the precursor and steroid from the adrenal rather than from the gonads. Okay. And so it's definitely in many ways an amplifier of cancer once it gets in a tissue and when the immune system is failing, the fungus can convert from a yeast form to a filament form and invade the tissues looking for sugar and estrogen. So it's very commonly associated with cancers. The sicker a person is, the weaker their immune system is.
And the less they are using their own glucose and they're producing themselves histamine and lactic acid in the tumor. And both of these are attractive to the fungus. And so if you simply increase the pH and do it with bicarbonate, which can converge to carbon dioxide, that helps to suppress the cancer promoting lactic acid formation by the tumor itself. Okay. So he's really onto something and his critics really, most of them sound sort of nasty and hysterical. Okay. Well, there's a couple of things I want to pull out from what you've said here.
I guess number one, last month we talked about a vitamin D deficiency and reports say that up to a billion people on the planet are vitamin D deficient and they're increasingly raising the vitamin D levels to reflect what would actually be a good level of vitamin D because they find now that it's so important in immune function. And last month you mentioned something about the skin's immune system and the deficiency of vitamin D in the skin of people, especially as they get older.
And so that vitamin D deficiency, localized deficiency there would also play a part in formation of a skin cancer to allow it to be outside of the body's surveillance. Yeah. And that follows from a cholesterol deficiency with aging, the ability to make cholesterol and the steroids goes down. And so when the sunlight hits old skin, it makes much less vitamin D. Just a few months ago in Poland, there was an interesting article on the so-called activated form of vitamin D, calcitriol or 1,25-hydroxyvitamin D.
And they showed that it helps that vitamin D form, the active so-called form, suppresses immunity and creates the ideal environment for causing mammary gland cancer metastasis. Wow. So hang on, you're saying the one, again, this was going to be another question that I had for you, but so now is probably a good time to ask you that you're saying the 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D is not actually the beneficial form, but that is the form in which people would use vitamin D, is it not?
No, that's produced under stress. It's sort of the way the steroid hormones under extreme stress can emphasize the estrogen version of the steroid. The calcitriol is the extreme stress form of vitamin D. It has its use under stress, but like estrogen, it easily becomes counterproductive and in the case of cancer, can promote the cancer spread. Okay. So I think probably what I meant to say was that the calcitriol is the end of the metabolic pathway for production of vitamin D.
Yeah, and when you're well supplied with calcium and the vitamin D precursors or sunlight and cholesterol, you have a very low level of calcitriol. Okay. Got it. So this again, okay, so the 1,25-dihydroxy is not what you want even though it's the end of the metabolic pathway, but that won't be reached if you have adequate levels of thyroid and the other thing you mentioned here, calcium.
Yeah, like pregnenolone is the precursor of the pathway that at its end point leads to estrogen and aldosterone and other end steroids, but if you take enough pregnenolone, you'll reduce those end products rather than increasing them. Right. Okay, good. Okay, you're listening to Ask Your Obe Doctor on KMUD Gallivore 91.1 FM. From 7.30 until the end of the show, people are invited to call in with questions about this month's subject of skin cancer and indeed cancer metabolism per se.
And the number here is 707-923-3911. So from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in. So Dr. Peat, Tullio Simoncini, you say that he's onto something in his understanding or his positing this idea that the candida albicans is actually the culprit here behind cancers. He actually shows on a couple of... There's a few YouTubes of him if people want to go to YouTube and type in Tullio Simoncini. His name is Tullio Simoncini.
There's a couple of YouTubes where he's showing... Because he's an MD, he's working with oncologists. In fact, I think he was an oncologist and that's how he got to be so opposed to the method or the methodology used in oncology to treat cancers. But he saw that tumors invariably had white centers to them, white patches, white growths, and that this was candida albicans. And I think you've mentioned that candida is a very opportunistic infection and actually will be very, very quick to take residence in locations where it's not normally allowed to be in.
In the past, when I've talked to you about candida, you've said that really, and this is again, I think, poor misinformation from maybe the internet or word of mouth repeating the same mistake, but you do not want to starve the body of sugar, which is typically what they say for candida. And that is, I think you've explained that, quote me if I'm wrong, but that the filamentous form is initiated when the fungal organism is actually deprived of sugar and it wants to go further into the tissues to pull more sugar out.
Yes, if it's happy in the intestine, it grows in the yeast form, having enough sugar. But when there's no sugar in the intestine and it starves, then it will attach itself to the surface of the intestine and then send out filaments to find sugar from the bloodstream or the cells. Okay, so that was a little bit of the overview of that doctor's approach to topical skin cancers was using a 7% iodine solution.
Like I said, if people want to go to Amazon, look at 7% iodine and read the customer reviews, they're all positive and they all talk about how they had basal or squamous cell carcinomas and they've gone. You know, given X amount of weeks of treatment with iodine, it's gone. Other people, obviously, with things like fungal situations, fungal nail or, you know, stubborn athlete's foot, etc.
I say much the same thing. I just wanted to talk a little bit about Simon Sini's work using intravenous injectable sodium bicarbonate. I know you're quite a big fan of sodium bicarbonate and CO2 and the whole concept of bicarbonate and how it's how it's helpful, not just in the context of being an alkalinizer, because I know you're not really on the acid alkaline bandwagon, as it were. But you've got a much more scientific approach to the basis for alkalinizing or or indeed how possible that is to change your pH systemically.
But locally, I think for injecting that product around or into solid tumors is what is what Simon Sini has been working with. And when the body when bicarbonate gets into the bloodstream, the sodium leaves in the urine and the bicarbonate is converted to carbon dioxide as it enters the cell. And so it acidifies the intracellular environment, despite increasing the alkalinity temporarily of the bloodstream. And the typical cancer metabolism has an alkaline intracellular pH. And so you're getting right at the heart of the problem when you increase the CO2 inside the cell.
And since the 18th century, carbon dioxide gas has been used to treat visible cancers such as ulcerated breast cancer. And the Japanese are currently using it to treat cancers using that same principle that it acidifies the cell, turns off the growth mechanism and the production of lactic acid. And several drug companies are working on enzyme inhibitors similar to acetazolamide, but things that they can patent to increase the internal acidity of cancers.
Just for the folks who maybe don't know about it, acetazolamide is something that you've said is useful for raising your own production of CO2 and if you're going to elevation or something like that can help you get ready for it. Yeah, it causes the body to retain it and acidifies the whole body when you get a certain amount. But intracellularly, that acidification turns off lactic acid production. And lactic acid is the main carcinogen effectively. Got it. Because it's an energy depletor, correct? Mm-hmm.
Okay. Well, you know, we do have actually a caller on the line here who's been waiting for five minutes or so. So let me just firstly say people want to call in from 730 till the end of the show. The number is 707-923-3911. So caller, you're on the air. What's your question and where are you from? Well, I'm from Petrolia. I guess you might have answered my question because I have the crusty carcinoma skin cancer type of thing on my back of my hands and the side of my neck.
And I was wondering about what I could do to get rid of the scab of the crust on it. And now you're telling me a 7% solution of iodine might be the solution. Yeah. Yeah. If you go to Amazon, type in 7% iodine, read the customer reviews about it. And then if you want, type in that doctor's name, Giulio Simoncini. He's an Italian MD. Like I said at the beginning of the show, he has actually been struck off the register because they've, you know, invariably called him a quack doing what he's doing,
even though he has a lot of testimonials from people that have gotten over cancer, both skin cancers and solid tumors that were previously inoperable. So it's again, it's one of those one of those paradoxes where there's somebody who's saying that something actually is very possible here. He's being disavowed by the Medical Association because what he's doing is not in medical, regular medical practice. So you can go ahead and search for the name Giulio Simoncini. Yeah. No, Giulio begins with a T. So T-U-L-L-I-O. Yeah. Giulio. T-U-L-L-I-O. And his last name is Simon, S-I-M-O-N-C-I-N-I. Giulio Simoncini. C-I-N-I.
And then he'll cover, you can read, you know, what people that are supporting his rationale are talking about. But 7% iodine has been used for some time here for topical skin cancers. Great. Okay. Well, thank you very much. I enjoy your show. Yeah, you're welcome. Okay. So we do have one more caller, I think, on the line. Okay, we have two more. Okay. So caller, you're on the air. What's your question and where are you from? My name is Peter. I'm from San Francisco. Hey, Peter. What's your question? I have a question about hypertonic liquids.
I've noticed a benefit from adding sugar to milk. I mean, sugar to milk and orange juice. And I'm just wondering what the mechanism is for that, why that works. Dr. Peat. Hypotonic liquids hitting the stomach and intestine causes stress reaction and release, among other things, serotonin into the bloodstream. And hypertonic things, if they're within reason, you can injure your stomach with like a big dose of salt or dry sugar. It has a dehydrating influence. But if it's a moderate hypertonicity, it has an anti-inflammatory effect, helps to regulate energy production, pH.
Various hypertonic solutions are being used in resuscitation now, rather than just increasing the blood volume with isotonic saline or glucose. They use three or four or five times isotonic concentrations. And the small volume, like a cup full of a hypertonic solution, has a very intense resuscitating effect in shock. Great. Thank you. All right. Thanks for your call, caller. Okay. I think we have one or two more. So, next caller, you're on the air. What's your question and where you're from? Yeah. Hi. My name is Dirk. I'm from Redway. Okay. Very nice question.
Yeah. Well, my grandmother, 96-year-old, sedentary, indoors a lot. I just learned to use, she might suffer from vitamin D deficiency. She had a squamous cell in her nose, very persistent, from a scab that would fluff off and, you know, was bothering her. It was causing a lot of itching. And, you know, excising was the doctor's recommendation. We opted against that because it would remove her entire nose, frankly. So, we applied cannabis oil in an olive oil suspension. Okay. And within two weeks, it went away.
So, I'm wondering if you have any comments about the possible efficacy of the cannabis or was it the olive oil that did it? I mean, do you have any, you know, any idea about that? Yeah. Let's ask Dr. Peek. I know you've got certain opinions about cannabis and/or the olive oil. Yeah. I'm inclined to think it's the olive oil that's therapeutic because it has so many anti-inflammatory effects. I think the cannabis oil has some potentially pro-growth, pro-inflammatory components or effects.
Do you think that's the oleanolic component of the olive oil or do you think there's only one thing about it? The things related to the cannabis, the characteristic, what are they called, the endogenous cannabinoids, anandamide I think is the endogenous one, it is a metabolite of a very unsaturated fatty acid and the effects that I've seen really are along the line of the polyunsaturated fatty acids themselves which as a group are amplifiers of the estrogen effect. So not positive at all but you think the components within olive oil could well be beneficial.
Yeah. There are several things in it that I think can have a protective anti-cancer effect. Within two weeks the tumor completely vanished. Good. That's the main thing. All right. Thanks for your question. We've got a couple more callers on the air. People want to call in, like I said, from now until the end of the show, the number is 707-923-3911. Dr. Raymond Peat is our guest. Skin cancer is the topic of this evening. So caller, you're on the air. Where are you from? What's your question? New York. Two questions on the topic.
First, on vitamin D, you mentioned PUFA and fish contain a lot of PUFA but not as bad as seed oils. What about like sardines because it's like a whole fish so you're getting a lot of different type of minerals and also it seems like it's a pretty good source for vitamin D as well and perhaps bioavailable versus taking a pill which, you know, I know you mentioned cholesterol and sunlight but there might be other vitamins or other minerals that might be needed within the body to actually absorb that vitamin D.
I'm just thinking those might be available if you eat like a whole sardine. So trying to figure out whether the PUFA in sardines is closer to halibut because I know you mentioned halibut. It's a pretty good one. So that's one question. Then the second one is related to the earlier comment that was mentioned on candida albicans. If you have like fungal toe, I know I'll look up this Tulio MD, but Dr. Peat, what would you say to someone?
Do they have to be really healthy to try to attack fungal toe given the comment that it could spread to another area and be more problematic in the body if you chase it out of your toe? Or how do you approach something like that? So those are my questions. Thanks for your questions. So Dr. Peat, first question about sardines. How do you rate sardines? The calcium content maybe from all the bones is probably beneficial, but what do you think about sardines?
Very good general nutritional value including selenium and iodine and other trace minerals that all of the ocean organisms have. But it does have a lot of the polyunsaturated, so I think maybe one meal a week is fine. Okay. And then do you... Actually, I was asking about the vitamins. Is it also a good source of vitamin D or not? I don't know how much, but everything that is exposed to sunlight tends to have some of it. Okay.
And then what's your other rationale for, as the caller says, chasing fungal organisms out from the nail bed by treating them into other areas? Is that even a possibility? No, I don't think that would happen if you're using something like 7% iodine on the infected nail. It takes a long time to diffuse through a toenail, but it is a good fungus killer. Okay, good. All right. Well, thanks for your call, caller. We've got a couple more callers on the air, so let's get this next caller. Caller, where are you from and what's your question?
Hi, I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area. Hey, welcome. Hi, I have a question not related to the topic. It's a question about relationships. I was in a very toxic relationship this year and found out that there was substance abuse, which led to a lot of the lying and manipulation and, unfortunately, cheating, which ultimately ended the relationship. And I'm curious, Dr. Peat, about relationships, how do they affect individuals, and can they affect one's physiology, obviously, when there's stress involved? It's a very powerful stressor. Right, I was just thinking the same thing.
Eating well can help to offset the stress, but the attitude, the way you interpret the experience, is also essential to see it as just one of the challenges of living, I think, and not interpreted in any way that impairs your understanding of yourself. It should just be seen as one of the environmental challenges. Very good. Okay, so there you go. Number one, it does cause a lot of stress, which we all know is bad for you,
and that stress can lead to things like rapid weight loss because you go off food and just you don't feel good. And number two, just not let that become a psychological damaging mechanism because it's just part of what we go through and how you deal with it. Excellent answer, Dr. Peat. Okay, so I think we have another caller on the air. Caller, where are you from and what's your question? Hi, I am calling from Finland on the longest night of the year. And my question was regarding to CO2.
I understand it was discussed previously on other shows that CO2 is beneficial, and I found out that they are selling for growers mostly bags, I think, of fungus, I suppose, which generates CO2. And I was wondering if it could be a good idea to have those bags around the house to increase the CO2 level. Presumably there's no spores with it too, right? I imagine. Yeah, well, hopefully not. You'd be sitting there breathing that in day and night. Anyway, Dr. Peat, did you hear all of that question? Not all of it. Where was the fungus?
Yeah, just describe again. I mean, is it a bagged product? How does it release it? Exactly. I suppose it's a plastic bag of several kilograms or maybe, I don't know, six pounds or so. Okay, and you just lay it on the soil? And I suppose that in there, there is some kind of fungus and something to feed it. Okay. All right. Yeah, I had a bag of masa arena from Mexico. The humidity in Oregon started a fungus growth, and for about a year, it was hot and producing carbon dioxide.
So it's a very productive, passive way to increase the carbon dioxide in your bedroom, for example. I don't think it emits anything seriously harmful other than the carbon dioxide is beneficial. I don't think if it has a cloth enclosure, I don't think it's going to put out any spores. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, thank you for your call. Okay, so the number if you live here or even if you don't live here, if you live in Finland, the number is 707-923-3911. And I have a question. My name is Michael. I'm from Redway.
I might have missed this when I was dealing with collars, but I know a lot of people would have candida in our community and would go through the candida diet, which would involve starving it with no sugar. So does that imply that you could get some sort of colon cancer or something from it latching on? And how do you get rid of it if you have the overgrowth? I've heard of some bacteria which eat it. Yeah, given that we are on the subject of candida here being positively associated here with tumors and cancers,
and the underlying belief is that you starve candida from sugar because everyone's demonizing sugar, which people always maintain is actually very good for you. How do you see the treatment of candida? Just a pinch of flowers of sulfur if it's internal. If it's on your cheek, you can rub it with your finger into the white spot. Just wet your finger, dip it in the flowers of sulfur, rub it on.
Otherwise, if it's in your stomach or intestine, a pinch of it every day for three or four days is very reliable for cleaning it out of your intestine. If it's on your skin, genital or crotch area in general where it's living in the sweaty area, dusting the area with flowers of sulfur. Or I had a whole body coverage of some kind of fungus when I was in a tropical area of Mexico and someone from the Amazon had a similar experience and she told me about the 10% sulfur soap. One bath eradicated it.
It's amazingly effective against skin candida infections. And is flower of sulfur, is that the same thing that winemakers or wine growers, the powder they put on their grapes? I think they use a cruder, cheaper form of it. It's a good fungus killer on plants, on roses and grapes. Just elemental sulfur. I think they sublime it. For some reason, I think that's the relevance with flowers of sulfur. But you can get it. I know that we've gotten the local pharmacy here a few years back now to get it.
It was one of those things you could get easily at one point in time, but like so many things, like iodine even, become relegated to the rather more profitable and toxic versions of the latest craze. So yeah, anyway, flowers of sulfur either topically or using a medicated sulfur soap. Okay, so we have one more caller on the air. Caller, where are you from? What's your question? I live in Pepperwood. My question is, I was just recently diagnosed with Hashimoto's, which is hypothyroidism. I have two questions.
I am reading a book by Anthony William called "Thyroid Healing," and I wanted to know if Dr. Peat had read that and what he thought of it. My other question is, my symptom is erratic blood pressures, no pattern to day or night, and just what he would suggest to support thyroid function and maybe stabilizing the blood pressure. Have you had your TSH measured? Yes. It was high. So I've had two blood works done. It was 5, the TSH, and then I also had the free T3 and free T4.
And the practitioner that I saw said that it was in the normal range. According to another book that I have been reading, it was not thought to be in the normal range. Do you know what the values were? Do you have the labs with you? I don't. They were higher than-- So I'm reading--the other book I'm reading is "The End of Alzheimer's," and the ranges that were given in that book, my ranges were--for one, it was lower, and for the other, it was a little bit higher.
Did you--you actually got a diagnosis of Hashimoto's based on just the TSH or antibody studies that they did or anything else? They said that my magnesium was also in a low range and not too much alpha. It was a difficult appointment, and I called back and got more information over the phone. Caller, you're fading out there. Oh, I'm sorry. What was suggested to you as a way forward? Just before we asked Dr. Peat his advice. Wait three months and come back. Okay, great.
Okay, so I think the main question is, Dr. Peat, the erratic blood pressure she's talking about with no seeming pattern to it and a TSH of five, which is a little outside the reference range, and what do you think about that? I know you've dealt with very few people over your lifetime with true Hashimoto's, but what would you speak to that? Well, Broderbarnes in his books advocated the use of temperature as an important basis for diagnosing functional hypothyroidism.
Back in the 1930s, if we used their definitions of hypothyroidism, about 40 percent of Americans would fit their definitions. In the 1940s, the drug industry came in with some ways of chemically diagnosing hypothyroidism. It happened that they were completely meaningless biologically, but they convinced everyone that 95 percent of the population is not hypothyroid. And this is a thyroid stimulating hormone you found? They were using a protein-bound iodine, which has absolutely no relation to how you're experiencing your thyroid. And about 20 years later, when that was thrown out as completely meaningless, they switched to the TSH,
which is the, they call it the gold standard of thyroid diagnosis, but they completely neglect the fact that stress lowers your TSH, so that you can be under such intense stress with high cortisol that your TSH can be down near zero while your thyroid gland is producing nothing. Also, they neglect that TSH is an inflammation promoter. It in itself creates hypertension by causing inflammation directly in the blood vessels as well as in the bone marrow and every place it's been studied. It has harmful tissue effects.
One of the effects of the thyroid hormone on your blood pressure is simply that it suppresses TSH. People in a population that was determined to be generally healthy without heart disease or cancer, their TSH was 0.04 or less. So they were all in what would be diagnosed as a hyperthyroid state. So many people now are saying that the upper limit of TSH should not be higher than 2.0. And the T4 and T3 in the bloodstream can't be interpreted all by themselves.
You have to know what the reverse T3 is because it can interfere with the activity of the T3 itself. Okay, and then how about I think without going any further for this particular person in terms of understanding it, what would you speak to their erratic blood pressure? Do you know what your blood pressure is? Yes, it varies. But it's been typically in the 140s, usually the bottom number can be 79, 85, 93. My pulse is I believe high at 70, 74. Sometimes it's lower than that, you know, 52.
It's good to check your temperature and pulse rate when you first wake up and then later in the day. Broda Barnes believes that the waking temperature should be very close to 98 degrees and then the mid-afternoon temperature should be closer to 98.6. Okay. And my own experience, when I stopped taking thyroid for a while, my blood pressure has gone up to something like 170 over 110. And other times as low as most doctors wouldn't believe it, but 55 over 28. Wow. Did you feel bad when it was high? No, I felt fine.
But I got back to taking more sugar and thyroid quickly when I saw how high it was. Wow. I see. Well... If you want, Carla, I'll give out the details at the end of the show. Okay. But in case I forget, you can email me, Andrew, A-N-D-R-A-W, at westernbotanicalmedicine.com. Okay. And if you want to email me, just put in there, you know, I was the caller about temperature. And I'll send you something that you can go fill out and we'll take a look at it. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Okay.
We have another caller on the air. Caller, where are you from? What's your question? I'm from New Jersey. Two questions. On vegetables, you mentioned in a previous show that they provided a lot of calcium. When you eat cooked vegetables, whether it's root vegetables or greens, and you cook them, do you get rid of the PUFA? And also, do you have, in addition to PUFA, a phosphate to calcium ratio issue, depending on the type of vegetable? Because I believe that maybe Andrew's wife had mentioned something about cooking vegetables in baking soda.
And for some reason that perhaps helped the phosphate ratio. I could be misremembering. But that's question one. The second one on mushrooms, does that have the same effect as carrots and charcoal and pade arco? And if so, how is it different from those? So those are the two. What was the question about the mushrooms again? Well, that was the second question about is it really most targeted toward endotoxins similar to charcoal and the carrot salad? And if so, how does it work differently from those?
Should it be a main staple of eating to replace or to trade off against using carrot salad or charcoal? Yeah, it has a good balance of all of the nutrients compared to carrots. Cooked mushrooms have, in general, a fair balance of minerals. They're somewhat low in calcium, but not as bad as grains and beans and meat. And they have the fibrous effect that the carrot has of helping to sweep out the intestine just by the bulk effect. Okay, and the first question was on the vegetables and the root vegetables.
If you cook them in baking soda or water, but you add baking soda, does that somehow reduce the phosphate and reduce the PUFA? It makes the substance more digestible, so you get more protein out of it. But the greens do have too much PUFA to use them as your main food. When the cows... Even if you cook them? Even if you cook them for 40 minutes or whatever? If you cook them for hours, much of the PUFA would float to the surface, and you could get some of it off that way.
But still, they're high in PUFA, and the cow's digestive system uses bacteria and vitamin E to eliminate 98% of the PUFA, so it's better to process greens through cows. Drink the milk. Yeah. The calcium-phosphorus ratio is the best thing about greens. They're extremely high in calcium relative to phosphate. Are root vegetables the same? Do you look at those differently? You still have to cook those for an hour, and do they have benefit? Yeah. Turnips, for example, they have a fructose when they're in a young and fresh state and are relatively nutritious. Just not a PUFA...
No PUFA problem on those? The what? Much less of a PUFA problem in the roots than there are in the greens? Much less of a PUFA problem. Okay. I think we better hold it right there because it is just a couple of minutes to the top of the hour where we're going to be ending the show. So thank you so much for all the callers that have called in. Dr. Peat, once again, thank you so much during this year, as well as all the others, for
just giving your time and making yourself available and leaving a lasting testimony, both on the internet as well as currently with people further researching what you're talking about. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks again. Okay. So for people who have listened to the show and are interested to find out more about what we've discussed, what Dr. Peat's perspective on skin cancers is in relation to Tullio Simoncini, his work with iodine and bicarbonate is an anti-cancer treatment, as well as Dr. Peat's perspective on cancers and health-related topics of which most people may be getting
the wrong information, visit his website. It's www.rayPeat.com. He's got a lot of fully referenced articles that you can download. You can read everything that he's published so far, which is pretty voluminous. And you could, I believe he's still answering emails, although I know he is so swamped and has gotten so busy, but I think he does his best to answer those. And he has a newsletter also, which I know a lot of people have subscribed to over the last decades.
But anyway, for those people who have listened to the show and have enjoyed what we have to talk about and or anything else, we can be reached Monday through Friday at 1-800-1888. Sorry, it's not an 800 number, it's 1-888-WBM-HERB or visit our website. It's westernbotanicalmedicine.com. I'm actually a medical herbalist from England and we produce extracts of medicinal herbs. And obviously we love alternatives to traditional, not traditional, the current therapies, which unfortunately a lot of which seem to be very untried and causing more problems than most cases.
Anyway, thanks so much for listening and be back 3rd Friday of January 2019. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.