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Well, welcome to the Get Fit with Jodell podcast. I am as usual Jodell and as usual, or at least once every month or so, I like to have Dr. Ray Pete on and so he's joining me today here again to answer your questions. If you're not familiar with Dr. Pete, well, then you're missing out. Why don't you check out raypeat.com. That's his website and you can, you can check out who this amazing person is and his wealth of expertise and his immense articles and
publications that have been put out. I highly recommend this individual. So without further ado, Dr. Pete, thank you so much for joining me. How are you? Okay. Very good. Awesome. Well, I've, I reached out to our listeners. I got a slew of questions here again today, so we're just going to jump right into those. Um, first things first, as far as like you feel about what's going on right now in the world, what are your thoughts on like the, the new variants of the COVID strain that are coming out? Can I ask your just recent
opinion on things? I haven't seen any evidence of the new properties that they are ascribing to the new variant. There's one website I've been looking at occasionally that is posting the actual RNA code of all of the base pairs that make up the code. And the first time I looked, there were 3,400 variants. A few days ago, someone reported that that website now lists 6,000 variants. But for some reason I've picked out one or two of those strains and claimed that they are highly infectious, but I haven't seen any, any information supporting that. And that
is nothing new. There are several lawyers showing state and national health information for refusing to reveal the scientific evidence that would support their mandated lockdown and mask wearing and vaccination and all of that. The government is just acting while keeping secret anything they really know. And so everything they're saying could just be pure fantasy. And for people to respond to that and obey the instructions on the basis of secret evidence, it's an extension of something governments have been getting away with for
decades. They say the information the government has is too sensitive for the people to know. And so you have to trust the government. And a friend of mine in Germany said she afraid that the people in Germany are now reacting just as obediently and foolishly as they did during the 1930s, accepting his words without any criticism. She says she sees exactly that kind of blind obedience in the population of the present. Yeah, it's such a weird world we live in for sure. And your thoughts on like the vaccine,
you know, I haven't seen a lot of research. And so what are your thoughts on this vaccine and how people are changing it? The first thing is that an entirely new principle that doesn't meet any of the standard definitions of vaccination, the whole history to really understand that you have to go back at least 120 years to get a picture of what was meant by vaccination and how the immune system was understood to react to disease. And the basic doctrine of the immune system as primarily
an antibody response, this was produced in reaction to Paul Ehrlich's sales of an arsenic compound to treat syphilis. And his claims sort of hit a magic button in the consuming population. He called the substance a magic bullet. But there never was any magic bullet defect involved in Paul Ehrlich's treatments. But what caught on was the idea that our immune system works like a bunch of magic bullets, which are called antibodies. That's the extent of the investigation of what the immune system is. Sharing the Nobel Prize in 1908 with Paul
Ehrlich was Elliot Metzenkopf, who had been the critic of Ehrlich's simplified reduced concept of immunity. Metzenkopf was an embryologist who saw multilayer defensive processes working in the organism starting with phagocytosis. And that actual scientific investigation of what's going on when an organism reacts to the environment, that has been horribly neglected in science. And what bounces along, Nobel Prize after Nobel Prize, is this silly doctrine that our immune system is primarily based on antibodies. And that just isn't a scientific idea. So, first of all, the metaphysics or philosophy behind the stuff that Fauci and
others are talking about, it's all a metaphysical system that has built up in these 110 years. So, the criticism has to start with looking at what immunity really is. And then the idea that came up just a few years ago was not to use a whole killed or weakened pathogen to arouse immunity, but to reduce it for some reason to the extremely simplified nucleic acid, the messenger RNA. And it happens that they chose the messenger RNA that produces the pathogenic effect. You don't need the pathogenic effect to have specificity for
a certain type of virus. But for some reason they've settled on that, probably because they got the code for the RNA and they can manufacture that synthetically just from the code number without ever having a natural virus to experiment with. So, it can go right from picking a number off the internet in the laboratory to manufacture a substance that will make the pathogenic component of the virus. It happens to be the component that inactivates our anti-inflammatory enzyme system because the virus sticks to that and
inactivates it, kills our defensive anti-inflammatory process, leaving the remaining part the inflammatory system without control. So, if we produce this particular protein, the spike protein, and if that takes over and regularly comes out of our cells that have assimilated the so-called vaccine RNA, our bodies will then be producing a pro-inflammatory material. And labs in Boston, White's Head lab and one of the Harvard labs, people there have tested in vitro and demonstrated that our natural enzymes are able to incorporate the RNA of the vaccine into our own genome,
into the human genome, which means that on the basis of this in vitro study, we have the capacity to pass on that genetic information to offspring forever. Well, you mentioned the immune system and my concern is that we're going to see a repercussion across the globe of that broken immune system is based on all of the lack of bacteria. We're sterilizing everything. Everyone is using hand sanitizer everywhere. No one touches anyone anymore. And we need bacteria like our entire body has different
microbiomes in the eye, in the gut, in the breast tissue. And so, what are your thoughts on just this dampening of the immune system and the over-sterilization? I think the active promotion of inflammation is a great first danger. And I suspect that the drug companies are now worried about that because it's a lab-synthesized material that makes it easy to produce in vast amounts. So they promised that millions of doses would be available almost immediately. But December 22nd, in the county of New York that hadn't
had a pace in the whole county of COVID for that month, they vaccinated in one nursing home system. They vaccinated 198 people. And of those vaccinated within, I think it was about a week, 24 people had died, an astounding percentage of them vaccinated. And the explanation of the nursing home was that at the end of the vaccine people was that suddenly there had been a resurgence of the COVID virus and that by chance killed the people who had been vaccinated. And I think with an experience like that, a vast increase in mortality followed
by around the world, people collapsing with anaphylactic shock, I think the drug companies all suddenly realized that until the government gives them special immunity beyond even what they have been given for ordinary vaccine damage, until they get that new special immunity, I think they are going to find it hard to deliver the promised number of vaccines. I think the awareness immediately was there in the industry making it because of the possibility of great liability killing tens of millions of people. And what about mental health? I mean, are you concerned about the mental health of people
having to deal with all of this lockdown and isolation and then not touching, not hugging? Yeah, that was projected years in advance that social dislocation, unemployment in particular, but any kind of interference with normal social interactions will increase drug addiction, depression, suicide, violence, violent crimes. Everything goes wrong when you damage someone's likelihood and thousands and thousands of people are losing their businesses as well as their opportunity to work. And so it was absolutely foreseeable that you would have much greater damage from the lockdown and the stupid mandated behavior than any influenza season ever produced.
And in accepting the current numbers of deaths given out by the CDC, you have to take into account the fact that there is a most glaring history of misrepresentation of flu season mortality. Some years have declared that influenza was killing as high as 50, even 80,000 people during the flu season and in a good year it might be 30,000. Then on the basis of actual testing for influenza virus, they found that the influenza virus was present maybe only in two or three thousand of those 50 or 60,000 deaths from pneumonia, something 95% or more
of the deaths from pneumonia in the hospitals during the winter season or had an unknown cause, definitely not influenza. And it came out that they were knowingly calling those tens of thousands of winter deaths pneumonia influenza deaths just to scare people to get their influenza vaccine absolute lying to the public to manipulate them into getting the influenza vaccine with its very ambiguous history. And so now when we look at their figures for total mortality, there have only been a few people starting last winter who
were keeping track of the normal annual pneumonia mortality and of any changes that were occurring in 2019 or in 2020 over preceding years. And right from the start, anyone who was looking at their numbers could see that something very unbiological was happening. And one person later in 2020 summed up those observations and the numbers that were continuing to be put out by the CDC. Genevieve Breond, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, has an article on the internet on the mortality from, based entirely on CDC's figures. And what she found
was no real increase in mortality, despite that huge surge in April, supposedly from COVID, that followed the instructions to diagnose COVID whenever a positive test for the presence of the virus, which is not a good way to diagnose a disease. But anyway, they instructed people to diagnose many things as COVID that previously wouldn't have been diagnosed, and the money distribution to compensate for the shutdown, that included $14,000 per patient diagnosed with COVID. And then if they were put on force oxygen inhalation, another $44,000, according
to the Kaiser Family Foundation website. So they were paying hospitals to diagnose and treat COVID patients. But anyway, at the same early part of April, when the so-called death from COVID increased so astronomically, there was an equal opposite decline in influenza. And since then, people around the world have commented on the historical unique event of the disappearance of influenza everywhere in the world. And in Genevieve Breon's article, she also notes that the numbers that make up for the supposed increase in COVID, there
was also a great decrease in deaths from heart attacks and several other normal diseases. So anyone just looking at CDC's own figures in detail should make their own conclusion that nothing has happened. You know, as far as like the mental health, that's what I've seen the most too, I think on the call before we started recording, I had told you about an EMT that I know that I'd asked him how much, you know, COVID have you seen in our area? And he said, Oh, not
very much. I keep seeing mental health issues. That's the biggest issue. And so, you know, for me being a practitioner, I really want to offer people that have to isolate or have to quarantine or, you know, or just are just staying at home. But go out in nature. If there's nothing else, if you can't be with the ones you love, there's something really healing and comforting about nature, about forest bathing and being in the woods. Dr. Pete, what would you offer people that are, you know, they live alone and they're not
in a position where they can go out and about very much? What would you say to them? Just stay healthy. Immediately after the great lockdown for the new Wuhan virus in China, just a couple of weeks after they declared that they had contained the infection, I think it was towards the end of 2019, there were pictures on the internet of people in public swimming pools in Wuhan crowded together at two or three feet apart playing in this giant swimming pool, hundreds of people having fun. China had the best experience, best knowledge
of it, but they considered it absolutely harmless once the confinement had done its job and went back to normal behavior. Having fun, getting together, socializing, working, doing everything normally. I think that's the only real solution is to realize that the government has seriously misbehaved. Yeah, so on that, we will jump into the questioner, Brandon, Trine's question. He said, "I'd be curious about Dr. Pete's thoughts surrounding bile acid salt and its use mixed with glycine to potentiate significant motility in cases where migrating motor complex
and peristalsis were deficient. This is really strong stuff and not something I would recommend to just anybody." He said, "As well as what are his thoughts on the top suggestions for someone with spinal pain?" Yeah, bile has been used very traditionally as an aid to digestion, and they can be dangerous, but I think with moderate use with a meal, for some people, they can improve digestion. And your top suggestions for someone with spinal pain? Oh, the back is full of cartil intramus joints, and so it's one of the, because it's
constantly flexing and under pressure, it's one of the first places that cartilage metabolism problem shows up. But I don't think there's anything in most situations unique to the spinal pain over other joints. There are specific sensitivities, like the backbone is a focus of joint pain, mostly in women, and the spondylitis, and close segments spondylitis, I think fits in more often, and the inflammation in that case can be traced to deranged bacteria balances in the intestine so fastly, typically alleviated. But the general problem of cartilage inflammation
and distortion and pain, for example, prolonged back problems during growth can lead to scoliosis or crooked growth of the back, but that same process shows up sometimes in knock knees or arms that turn out of the elbow, knees that turn in so the thighs are together when the feet are spread, and the main cause of weak and swollen cartilage leading to those use aggravated pain and distortion, the main cause of that is thyroid deficiency. The classic thyroid textbooks showed typical joint deformations because the low thyroid function leads to swelling of the cartilage.
That makes sense. So he may want to get his thyroid checked out and see if maybe some natural desiccated thyroid would work for the spine. I've seen several people who were completely incapacitated by disc problems included, all kinds of joint problems. When they hit the back, they compress on nerves and cause real total disability. But I've seen people very thoroughly knocked out by those swollen back joints in just a few weeks essentially supplementing thyroid and correcting nutritional deficiencies and go from bedridden to perfectly healthy.
Okay. The next few questions we have, apparently hormone issues are running rampant and we've got a lot of hormone questions, especially about bioidentical hormones. So Veronica Aiella asks, "What does Ray Peat think about bioidentical hormones for women like the testosterone pellet or creams? Also, if you're deficient in estrogen, what does he think is a good idea to replace that hormone with as well?" First, how do you test the deficiency of estrogen? There have only been a few studies of this, but for example, starting with rat studies, there have been hundreds of thousands
of studies of hormone effects in rats. But I only know of two publications in which they remove the ovaries. Classically, they say that creates a menopause like estrogen deficiency. But in these studies who actually measured the rat's serum estrogen a week after removing the ovaries, although there was an extreme progesterone deficiency, their estrogen level was right back to normal. Absolutely no ovaries, but perfectly normal estrogen, but lacking the balance of progesterone because that largely comes from the ovaries. If you measure a person under different conditions in the presence of progesterone, there's one group that has
looked at all of the enzymes activated or inactivated by progesterone, and there are about 10 or 11 such enzymes that are controlled in an on and off light by progesterone, which have to do with the activation or inactivation of estrogen. When estrogen is inactivated by attaching sulfuric acid or an acidic sugar to the estrogen molecule, it becomes water soluble and is no longer soluble in cell substance, and so it enters the bloodstream from which it exists via the kidneys. It happens that progesterone activates the enzymes that inactivate
estrogen, causing it to be lost from cells, no longer active inside cells. In the progesterone deficiency, you have a reverse enzyme pattern, leaving estrogen in its active, oil-soluble form where it stays inside cells and can't get out because it can't be water-solubleized. So, in the progesterone deficiency, tested in humans as well as animals, the serum estrogen seems to be practically zero, but the intracellular estrogen, it even can be newly synthesized, not to see a formulae circulating estrogen being activated on kept-in cells, but cells
in this progesterone deficient state actually begin producing their own new estrogen inside the breast, for example, or inside the uterus. So, it doesn't matter that you don't have any estrogen circulating from the ovaries. In the absence of progesterone, there will be no estrogen to speak of in the bloodstream, while the relevant breast, brain, kidney, and uterine tissues are beginning to make their own estrogen. And so, with aging, when they talk about the shutdown of the ovaries at menopause, they talk about whether it's
an estrogen deficient state, but it's exactly the things I was talking about. The first thing that disappears when you stop having periods at age 45 or 50 or whatever, the estrogen is no longer available to pass into the bloodstream on the way to leading the body and the kidneys. So, immediately, with the disappearance of progesterone, you begin to experience unopposed estrogen, and any increasing accumulated stress is going to exacerbate that or make the symptoms worse and worse, keeping serum estrogen low while increasing the amount of the relevant
tissues. The whole idea of where estrogen comes from is absolutely contrary to the science. Someone who is measuring the amount of estrogen produced by the healthy ovaries in healthy menopause wanted to compare the blood coming out of the ovarian vein to other blood in the body, so they took an arm vein and analyzed the amount of estrogen in the blood from the arm and from the ovary, and the arm vein contained just as much estrogen as the ovary, and so
when you add up blades and arms and other tissues, you can't help but conclude that the ovaries are an insignificant or relatively small source of body estrogen. So, scientifically, there is absolutely no reason to think that an estrogen deficiency can ever exist. What about your feelings on the bioidentical creams for testosterone? A lot of people I know are doing bioidentical testosterone. What are your thoughts on that? When you're under stress, such as menopause, stress caused by unbalanced estrogen and leading to low thyroid function and very low progesterone, during stress, even small amounts of testosterone
will be converted to more estrogen. So, it's going to be very dangerous unless you correct your progesterone and thyroid function to add testosterone equally with added progesterone. Yeah, it's really about addressing the thyroid first, correct, and then, if needed, addressing the hormones, yeah? Yeah, because when you correct the thyroid, you're lowering the stress hormones, lowering estrogen by accelerating the liver's detoxifying of it, and promoting very directly activating the production of progesterone from cholesterol. When your thyroid is low, your cholesterol is invariably high, except in a few specific disease states, but
there's a mirror image relationship between thyroid function and cholesterol level. And the reason cholesterol goes up when your thyroid goes down is that it's no longer being converted into progesterone. Thyroid is massively activating the conversion of cholesterol into progesterone and pregnant alone, primarily, as basic protective hormones. Okay. So, Stephen Mitchell asks, you know, he's talking about bioidentical, too, does Ray Peat believe that suppression caused from the use of bioidentical hormones, such as testosterone, is mostly an issue with the lack of pregnant alone, which you kind of
already answered that. For example, if pregnant alone is supplied exogenously, suppression of the pituitary hormones, such as LH, can that be a good thing, or would this idea be completely wrong? As far as I know, there's no strong influence of pregnant alone on LH, but too much testosterone can, the normal function of high testosterone is to turn off luteinizing hormone, and with that decrease, progesterone decreases. So, just taking too much natural, good testosterone tends to turn off your progesterone, and since progesterone is a major anti-arromatase, an aromatase inhibitor, if you lower progesterone, you're going
to release aromatase action to convert testosterone to estrogen. So, taking testosterone by itself is a risk in multiple ways of increasing your estrogen balance. So, if somebody was taking testosterone, even like you said, a good kind, you would want them to also be taking, obviously, if they're working on their thyroid, they're taking a thyroid supplement, but also progesterone, or how would you say to help that individual not convert the testosterone to estrogen? Progesterone and thyroid both tend to inhibit a healthy man in his teens and twenties that might produce four or five milligrams per
day of testosterone, and ten or fifteen milligrams of DHEA. Medical treatments very often are providing plenty milligrams a day, for example, instead of normal four or five. So, that's almost certain to suppress progesterone while increasing estrogen. TMC asks prolactinoma, "Is it possible to reverse those without surgery? What could cause them in the first place?" Just recently, someone was a mysterious, extremely high prolactin level, just by changing other things in this diet, caused something like a hundred point decrease down to absolutely
normal prolactin. But those are strongly influenced by thyroid and by vitamin D and calcium in the diet. The parathyroid hormone that there are surgeons who have created their own series of vitamin D metabolism and calcium metabolism, they're the worst people to listen to, to understand vitamin D. They're making, for example, just for a fifteen minute surgery, they're making something like fifteen thousand dollars, about a thousand dollars a minute, which justifies their inventing a new series of what vitamin D is. But they essentially
are saying that the prolactinoma has nothing to do with your diet or the parathyroid tumor. Both of them are absolutely dependent on the diet. You can turn off your parathyroid hormone with a proper amount of calcium in your diet, vitamin D, and supporting factors such as thyroid hormone. Both of those tumors are a response to a defect in the calcium handling system and the thyroid and vitamin D are usually responsible. Okay, so get out in the sunshine, TMC, and get that vitamin D too. Butch843 asks, "I
want to know the use of nicotine gum for cognitive enhancement and alertness. Does repeat recommend the use of nicotine gum?" It's a very interesting idea. I've been following it for years and people have found that in middle age animals and older, if they don't start using nicotine at a young age, there doesn't seem to be an addiction problem. But there can be directly toxic effects from nicotine and that still hasn't been. We're right in the middle of understanding what the nicotinic receptor system so-called is really doing. So I think
it's dangerous, but that does have a definite cognitive promoting effect. But I think it's safer to do it with other things such as thyroid and caffeine. I agree, yeah, for sure. Okay, this is an interesting question from Ms. Foster. "The best way to treat an adrenal body type and lower cortisol because my sleep is very poor quality due to a hiatal hernia. I wake up tired and have muscle wastage. I've tried everything I can think of to sleep, such as getting outside during the day, dimming the lights at night,
mindfulness, yoga, taking Valerian, seeing a chiropractor, nothing works. I have symptoms of low thyroid." So she's wondering what you would recommend Dr. Pete as far as this lowering cortisol. It sounds to me like she definitely needs some thyroid, but also maybe gesturone. What would you say? Yeah, I was a problem sleeper from puberty until I think I was about 46 when I finally tried supplementing thyroid. The tiniest little click in the wall would instantly wake me up during those years. Traveling around a lot, doing talks, I would
get very tired and have trouble going to sleep. After I started realizing that for other reasons I needed a thyroid supplement, once I tried a 10 microgram tablet of T3 at bedtime when I was in that fatigued traveling state. Instantly I went to sleep and slept soundly. Shortly after that I was visiting a doctor who was going to introduce talks the next night. He was haggard looking and said he hadn't slept for about four nights. Nothing worked to help
him get to sleep. I had a bottle of Cytomil in my pocket and gave him some. The next night I got to the talk late and he was already starting the introduction. When I got up to the microphone he pulled me aside and said that stuff is better than opium. There is the power in getting that thyroid regulated in order to improve sleep for sure because I also was one that suffered sleep for many years. Thyroid was the major thing that helped me get it under control.
Hyhistamine is one of the classical wakefulness activators. That's why antihistamines put you to sleep because the stress of hypothyroidism increases estrogen and so on which increases your mast cell and other release of histamine. The thyroid increases your energy over the estrogen and histamine and lets you sleep normally. Young mad dog asks, "Is it possible to get rid of gynomastia after fixing estrogen, prolactin, serotonin, cortisol?" It's been almost two years avoiding PUFA and I'm just wondering what to do about the gynomastia. Thyroid is the main thing. There's an inverse relationship in general between thyroid hormone
and prolactin. The same release hormone controls both TSH and prolactin. If your TSH is up even within the normal range, activating release hormones are probably also causing an excess of prolactin and lowering your TSH with a supplement is probably going to lower your prolactin and estrogen gradually. With T3, it can stop breast pain in 10 minutes. Women I've known with 10 micrograms of Cytomil in 10 minutes, they're agonizing breast pain, have totally stopped. A woman's breast pain is hormonally very closely connected to male gynomastia.
I love sugar is one of our big listeners. We get a lot of questions from this individual. On one of his interviews, Dr. Pete mentioned that nibbling food throughout the day is the best frequency to eat food. Assuming one would consume milk and orange juice based on appetite, does this mean sipping them every 10 to 20 minutes or so is okay? Or would that have any negative effects? How frequently does Dr. Pete sip milk and orange juice? Thanks, Dr. Pete and Jodell.
The main problem with that is that it's probably bad for your teeth to let bacteria keep growing by having food in your mouth. If your thyroid and progesterone functions are very good, your liver and muscles are going to store a huge amount of glucose. When those are good, you have no stress at all from skipping a meal. You can easily go six or eight hours without eating and without experiencing a drop in energy or increase of stress. For someone who is under stress, keeping your blood sugar up with frequent doses of nutrients, especially
carbohydrates and salt. I would say not every 10 to 20 minutes, but more like every couple of hours just to let that insulin spike relax if for some reason they have blood sugar handling problems. Is that true? That's good. Crescent Moon asks, how should one treat chronic fatigue syndrome? Any recommendations for using antibiotics? Should I take an approved antibiotic for weeks at a time if that's not what's required to reduce symptoms? Historically, for at least 25 years, many people have been observing that those symptoms
go along with above normal prolactin. Since above normal prolactin is tightly related to below normal thyroid function, I think the usual approach should be getting your energy system working again, running at a higher temperature, higher body temperature, using the more efficient oxidative metabolism, producing the anti-inflammatory carbon dioxide rather than the pro-inflammatory carbon dioxide. All of these things that interfere with calcium, vitamin D metabolism, all of these create inflammation by way of lactic acid and decrease the carbon dioxide production as a good thyroid activation of metabolism.
Turkish Postman asks, can we rub caffeine directly on our scalp to prevent or be an antagonist to hair loss or should we use it with a shampoo to dissolve it? No, it is poorly soluble in water, but some other substances like aspirin can increase the amount in the solution. And for many types of skin irritation, chronic mysterious rashes sometimes quickly disappear to a lotion of caffeine. When there is some kind of a disease process going on, it doesn't hurt to test caffeine lotion on the scalp, but the whole
energy-providing system of the hair follicle again centers closely on calcium, vitamin D, parathyroid hormone and prolactin. So you want to keep your parathyroid and prolactin low, which increases the growth and likelihood of the hair follicle. They have a question regarding toxic black mold, which I can relate to. For several years ago, I was exposed to black toxic mold. What would Dr. Pete recommend to detoxify from black toxic mold? Would activated charcoal be effective and how much and for how long? Thank you, Jodell and Dr. Pete. You guys are awesome.
I think there is any evidence that propagates itself in the body. A lot of 10 or 15 years ago, interest in black mold was being promoted by the construction industry, convincing people that they needed to tear down their house and build a new one. It had to cure the mold problem. If you have a persisting mold problem, getting the chronic humidity of the hair below 55% relative humidity will limit or prevent black mold growth. If you want to be sure that you have killed the mold and spores, you can either direct a strong ultraviolet
light on the moldy area or close the room with a good strong ozone generator. If you have fancy colored upholstery or drapes, you don't want to expose the toes to prolonged ozone exposure because they will fade. UV light and the ozone generators will do a good job. The ozone penetrates below the surface in the wood and plastic to kill the spores. I had a couple of questions. On breath work, I have been really intrigued by breath work and understanding that sometimes we hyperventilate. We breathe too much. What are your thoughts
on that? Should we do more of a relaxed, slow style of breath, or are you a fan of deep breathing? When you're anxious, you tend to turn on over-breathing and over-breathing quickly activates the lactic acid production and creates a vicious circle. The breathing training or exercise can gradually relax you enough that you can expel your breath effortlessly. Just relax and the air falls out of you. Then the diaphragm will cause your abdomen to rise as you inhale without having to expand your chest. That's the normal, relaxed way to
breathe. If you notice your chest having to expand, that's probably a stress state. When you're thoroughly relaxed, for example, when you're just waking up in the morning, you might notice that you have very fast, shallow breathing. That's normal breathing, where the diaphragm is reacting to the accumulated carbon dioxide and causing just enough inhalation to bring in the oxygen you need without blowing out too much of the protective CO2. I think the best way to do it is by making sure your thyroid function and progesterone levels are
adequate. That will produce the shift away from lactic acid towards CO2, and you don't have to go through weeks of forced remembering not to breathe too much. I love that. I love that you talked about the calming the breath down, like that we should be doing the breath work. But in addition to, like all things, we really have to address the thyroid and the progesterone. As far as someone who's a mouth breather and maybe a adjusting to nasal breathing, because I'm trying to get several of my clients to become
nasal breathers, is that something that you think also calms down the stress response in the body, becoming more of a nasal breather? The thyroid itself will usually take care of that, and it involves things like bowel irritation that create a conscious deficiency of oxygen, making new gas for breath. Just a good laxative and adding fiber to the diet temporarily and antibiotic can help to clean up. But thyroid should be the thing that maintains good bowel health, and good bowel health will make it much easier to have relaxed, un-anxious abdominal or diaphragm breathing.
Very cool. Okay, now my daughter who's six, she likes to ask you questions too, and so she had a question about brain fog. She's heard me talk about it, like about clients and stuff that have it, and she says, "What is brain fog, and how do we get brain fog, and how can we get rid of it?" Because the other day she said she felt like her brain was foggy. No one is really very clear about what it means, but partly it means that they have no
short-term memory to speak of. They can just move across the room and not remember why they went there. So the fog is something that limits your range of vision, and in that sense if you don't have the short-term instantaneous memory that is necessary to get from one moment to the next, then you feel like you're muddled and don't know what to do. When I was about 12 or 13 experiencing early puberty changes, I happened to have a bottle of vitamin B1 tablets, and didn't know why I would be taking it, but I just chewed up
one, and immediately, like three or four minutes, I suddenly had a broader range of perspective and focused behavior, and I realized that that had been what people would call a brain fog. Just feeling like you're oppressed, but for no particular reason, and when that clears away, suddenly you can acutely see what you want to do and should be doing and have been doing. So it places you in time and space in a clear way, and that's simple brain energy and thyroid and sugar metabolism are the basic source of your available brain energy.
It happens that vitamin B1 and caffeine are things that can momentarily give you a boost of metabolic energy. That work says brain energy is serving up the fogginess. Okay, I'll be sure to tell her, but I don't think I'll give her any caffeine. She already bounces off the walls as it is. Alright, well that concludes our questions. This has been fun as usual, and you're so generous. I just hope that people will return the generosity and check out your newsletter, which they can get via the mail or via their email, and
that's at Ray Pete's, that's plural, Pete's with an S newsletter at gmail.com, and I really encourage it because I love it. I look forward to each article that comes out. So yeah, I appreciate you doing that as well, Dr. Pete. Okay, thank you. Alright, well we will let you go for now, and thanks once again. Appreciate your time. Okay, bye. Thank you so much. Have a good evening. Is your gut right? Are your hormones in check? Well, ATP Science is my
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or Words with Friends or whatever it is you're doing on a device that you really shouldn't be doing at night. They've got light blockers for that. We've got to block that dangerous blue light. Did you know that right after the sun goes down, within an hour of the sun going down, if you're not blocking that blue light, you will elevate insulin. We don't want to do that. We don't want to elevate insulin. So they've got your back day or night. Check
them out. SwanwickSleep.com and you can use my code GETFIT to save 10% on either day or nighttime. Check them out. [MUSIC PLAYING]