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- Well, welcome to this month's Ask Your Ab Doctor. My name's Andrew Murray. This is the October 2019 broadcast. For the last 10 years, I think it's actually been just over 10 years, we've been doing our monthly, 7 till 8 p.m., call-in. Given the loose topic of alternative holistic medicine with Dr. Ray Peat. Now, for those of you who've never heard him, we'll be introducing Dr. Peat in a moment. For those of you who do know him and have read his articles, his newsletters, the books that he's written,
or if you've been fortunate enough to attend any of the lectures that he's given after graduating, you'll understand that he is a pretty deep thinker. Over the last 10 years, we've covered a wide range of topics on health, alternative health, biosciences, and all those subjects around it. And Dr. Peat has a pretty broad education, background understanding of physiological processes. And we're very fortunate to have his input on the show. The lines are open, it's a live call-in show from 7.30 till 8. People are invited to call in with any questions
related to the continuing topic of false narratives, misconceptions about things. We're told are one way, but actually when we look at the science, they're actually not. And a continuing part of Dr. Peat's writing were his newsletters on serotonin. The number, if you'd like to call in after 7.30, it's 707-923-3911. Once again, 707-923-3911. My background has been in herbal medicine. I graduated in 1999 and have since practiced herbal medicine and researched and developed best methods. And in the last 10 years, I've been working with Dr. Peat, getting his input on challenging cases
and other cases that were largely not responding. But I think in retrospect now, certain elements of an approach to that were missing at the time. And myself, like many other people who did a mainstream medical herbal medicine education in England, pretty much got the facts presented to them erroneously. And not all of it erroneously, but a lot of fairly pivotal and foundational parts of physiology that are just not accurate. So let's go ahead and introduce Dr. Peat. Dr. Peat, you with us? - Yes. - Hi. Okay, thanks for joining us.
For those people who perhaps have not heard you or your work and your background, your life, would you just give us a rundown of your academic and professional background before we get started? - My first teaching job happened to be in biology, but I had been studying linguistics and the humanities and mostly was teaching in those areas for about 10 years after getting my master's degree. Then I went back to get a PhD in biology at University of Oregon, 1968 to '72 I was there. And since then I've been following up on interests
I had all through the 1960s in biology, brain function, and how social interaction and environmental influences affect our biology. - Okay, thank you. Just before we do get started, can I ask the engineer if there's anything that can be done 'cause I noticed last month, and I think it's happened before now, there's quite a hum on the line. And when I listen to the audio archives, that hum is very-- - I can try calling them back and see if we get a different line. Would you like me to try that?
- That hum's coming directly from that line that you're using, is it? Yeah. I don't know how much mileage there is in there. I'm just wondering if there's any feedback in the studio. - Oh, no, it's on that line. - We'll keep going and then maybe sometime halfway through we can quickly swap over and see if it makes a difference. - I can actually, do you have two lines on this number I'm calling, Dr. Peat? 'Cause I can try calling from one of the other studio lines where you're on. Do you have call waiting?
- No, I don't. - Okay, well, if it gets unbearable, we will try calling again and maybe from a different line. - And it's also mainly with callers, when the people call in, it's sometimes very difficult to hear them 'cause there's a lot of humming. - Believe it or not, they have a harder time hearing you. (laughing) - All right, well, without any further ado. - Only the dedicated call in. And there's a lot of them. - Okay. All right, well, once again, let's put that number out. It's 707-923-3911.
Okay, so Dr. Peat, again, the kind of the misconceptions, things that we're told are a certain way, we find out they're not. And it becomes ingrained in our minds and our psyche and people repeat it often. The blood brain barrier. When I was studying physiology, I was told that the pia mater, the dura mater and the arachnoid mater formed those meninges and that the blood brain barrier existed to keep certain pathogens and toxins out. Although I know things like cysts can get into the brain and there's certainly a pathogen. What's your opinion?
I know you have a very fluid, very fluid understanding of the body and red blood cells and how they definitely move around a lot and how communication is just not the way you'd read it in a normal 21st century physiology text. But how do you understand the blood brain barrier and its function? - It relates to the general idea of integrity of tissue and cells. And when something goes wrong with a tissue, an energy failure, for example, any tissue loses its barrier function or integrity and things that are inside leak out,
things that are outside can get in. And different tissues are composed of different degrees of fatty material and proteins, but every cell, when it's in a highly energized state, the whole cytoplasm has a fat loving property, a hydrophobic property. The idea of a membrane barrier on the surface of a cell is really a myth. Gilbert Ling spent 40, 50 years disproving that myth. That it's really the structure of the cytoplasm that creates a barrier between any cells inside and that's outside. And Russian researchers in the middle of the last century
showed that the energy level of the cell is what governs its barrier function. A high energy state, the cell has a lipid loving quality. Takes up fat easily. And when it's de-energized, a water soluble dye will leak in it. That has been demonstrated for more than 100 years on simple organisms as well as tissue culture. So it's really an old idea. But about 50 years ago, someone demonstrated in rats that the lipid loving quality of the brain is what governs the so-called barrier function. The brain has to live at a very high energy state.
And in that high energy state, it's more hydrophobic or fat loving. These researchers put an emulsion of, I think it was soy oil, into the carotid artery of a rat and then measured the content of the blood coming out of the vein draining the brain. And they found that on a single pass through the brain, 17% of this fat was taken up from the blood. And if you imagine that when you're under stress, your blood becomes loaded with unbound fatty acids, free fatty acids that travel on the albumin in the blood.
And hormones as well as free fatty acids travel on the albumin. And when you're under stress, the increased free fatty acids will displace those hormones. And the albumin delivers large amounts of free fatty acids or fat soluble hormones to the capillaries serving the brain. And the fact that the fat solubility is what governs the entry, that was well established, but people still resisted the idea that hormones could freely get into the brain without having a special transporter. But as long as they're able to be carried on albumin,
albumin can deliver its burden right into the brain. And the water solubility of tryptophan has been one of the arguments that people insist that the huge amount of tryptophan produced in your intestine and carried on your platelets can't get into the brain to influence your behavior. Even though when people had a tumor, the carcinoid tumor, I think it was called, that produces huge amounts of serotonin, they were characteristically having emotional turmoil. There would be a surge of serotonin and their skin would show vasoconstriction and vasodilation alternating,
and their emotions would have extremes of ups and downs that went with these surges of serotonin. So there's a good medical history of the effect of intestinal serotonin getting into the brain. And serotonin itself powerfully breaks down barriers, including the blood-brain barrier, so-called. The lungs and the brain happen to be the best equipped with enzymes that destroy serotonin. Monoamine oxidase is very concentrated in these capillaries. So normally when the blood passes through the lungs, it happens that the surge of oxygen changes the pH and carbon dioxide content and causes serotonin
to be released from the platelets, where it can be destroyed by these MAO enzymes in the lining of the lung. And the same thing should happen in the brain. The MAO should be detoxifying all the serotonin that reaches these capillaries in the brain. But under the influence of a nutritional problem or too much stress where you're simply pouring out gigantic quantities of serotonin, or when your other hormones are disturbed, such as high estrogen, will inhibit the MAO and the capillaries fail to detoxify the serotonin. So then the serotonin is free to enter the brain
and disturb the brain function. - Getting, that's a very rounded breakdown of all of the inherent activity and the problems surrounding that. Does the bilipid membrane, does that exist? I mean, in terms of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic components of it lining up to form this kind of barrier to either water or fat soluble components, is that accurate? Or, I mean, it always kind of amazed me when I first started doing physiology and basic physiology and looking at cells and all the cells and the lipid membrane and looking at cholesterol.
Is that lipid membrane, is that a reality? Or is that, again, another very fluid relationship with the cell? - In an old medical book from the early 19th century, I saw that the treatment for a burn or an ulcer to close up the weeping wound on the surface of the body, they used osmic acid, osmium tetroxide solution. And that was to create what they called a false membrane. - Oh, like an eschar. - Yeah, it's first use in medicine. It was defined as to create a false membrane. When the first electron microscopes
started looking at cells, they didn't find the membrane that they had theorized had to be there. And meanwhile, Gilbert Ling was demonstrating the cell behaves electrically as it does without needing a membrane. But within two or three years, someone discovered that they could make use of this osmic acid false membrane creator. And they did produce a membrane on cells. Ever since then, they've been able to produce a membrane consistent with the current theories. At first, the membrane was very thick to suit the theory of the time. But as the tendency towards this lipid bilayer membrane
took root, they had to adjust their membrane-making technology to suit this idea of a single bilayer. - It's almost a religion. - Yeah, when I was taking a course in electron microscopy, I tried out different stains, not just osmic tetraoxide, and found that I could make a cell look like an onion membranes all the way through. - Again, it's a little bit off the post here, but talking about electron micrographs and just looking back in past shows that we've done, in terms of viral inclusions, that these things often have been shown to be completely fabricated,
not actually any part of any virion, for example, when they're looking at virology, and they show you these viruses that they are showing on a scanning electron micrograph, for example. - Yeah, Harold Hillman, who died not long ago, wrote some books showing how official biology is really all artifacts. - Yeah, well, all right, let's stop there for a second. Okay, so you're listening to AskUrb, Dr. K. Mudigal, with 91.1 FM. From 7.30 till 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with questions about this month's continuing subject of misconceptions and looking at serotonin inflammation
and serotonin reuptake inhibitors and monoamine oxidase inhibitors, and all of these things that we're told are good for you, like serotonin and melatonin, and they're happy hormones, and actually how the science that Dr. Peat's bringing out here, which has been known for quite some time, is actually showing exactly the opposite, but it's such a deeply rooted investment in our consciousness that it's so difficult to break away from it. Anyway, the number here, if you live in or outside the area, 707-923-3911. Dr. Peat, getting back quickly to the blood-brain barrier, you mentioned obviously that the brain
is an extremely energy-hungry organ consuming a lot of glucose, and it's 90-something percent plus cholesterol, correct, of the white matter? - I don't know what percentage, I was very high percent. - Okay, what I was trying to get at, though, for the fact that it consumes a lot of energy, it's lipid-rich, we've all been told, at least in school when we're studying, that this blood-brain barrier exists as some protective mechanism to keep the contents of the regular vascular system out of the brain. But obviously, like I mentioned initially,
things like, you know, people, patients have had brain trepanning done to remove cystic formations in the brain from pigs, you know, producing, a tapeworm, rather, producing these cysts. Things do get by the blood-brain barrier quite regularly, and it's not a strictly mechanical system that prevents the ingress or egress of certain substances. It's actually quite fluid, and it very much depends on the energetic, gosh, I don't know, the energetic reserves of the organism, how well-energized the cells are, how much energy the organism has in terms of its ability to keep things coherent.
- And when the energy breaks down, you get diseases based on the excess permeability, the breakdown of the so-called barrier. - Right. - Multiple sclerosis and-- - This is when you talk about estrogen producing leakiness in leaking contents and excess edema, water, you know, uptake into cells. - Yeah, this morning I got an email from a woman who experienced what the myth does to the medical practice. She was found to have extremely high creatine phosphokinase, a CK or CPK enzyme in her blood, as well as a very high thyroid-stimulating hormone, TSH.
- Is that CPK, is that muscle breakdown byproduct, or? - Yeah, exactly, and the doctor assured her that the muscle leaking that large amount of enzyme couldn't have anything to do with hypothyroidism, that it must be a sign of autoimmune disease. And autoimmunity is now a great medical business, and fixing the thyroid function isn't of much interest. But the knowledge that hypothyroidism causes muscle disease goes back 100 years easily. It was a diagnostic basis for considering hypothyroidism if a person had swollen muscles. Old textbooks showed little kids with massively swollen muscles,
and then when they were given a thyroid hormone, muscles would go back to looking like little kids' muscles. - And this would be through edema, water retention? - Yeah, the swelling of the muscle. And the amount of exertion that it takes to injure the muscle, like if you lift a barbell too many times, your muscle will get hot and swell up. But if your thyroid is low, it gets hot and swells up with very little effort or no effort. - That makes me think, again, it's a little bit off the beaten track here
for the purpose of the show's questions I wanted to get through to you, but chronic wasting disease, that is an interesting definition of a process that they wanna say is prevalent in the animal population here in the States. I know in England, the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in cows, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and that whole prion supposedly based disorder. That again, in terms of chronic wasting, that whole physiology there seems very much like a very energy wasting process. - Yeah, the thyroid hormone is our basic anabolic hormone. - Yeah, okay.
Okay, so do you think, I wasn't even gonna ask this question too, but in terms of chronic wasting disease, what do you think is probably the main deficit there? You think that's a deficit in energy production based on thyroid or? - Well, around 1960, Hans Selye was working on exactly that, muscular dystrophy. He could experimentally produce muscular dystrophy just by giving an animal serotonin. And when thyroid function goes down, serotonin goes up. And either removing the thyroid or giving serotonin or both will cause that energy failure that leads to a breakdown of the barrier function
and leaking of substance and eventually atrophy. - Wow, okay, well, I think we have one caller who's waiting in the, okay. So it's 7.30 basically, but people listening, if you want to call in from now to eight o'clock, please do the number 707-923-3911. We've got Dr. Raymond Peat joining us on the show and we're gonna keep covering the parts of his newsletter on serotonin and also tying this in with some of the misconceptions about what we've been told is positive and beneficial for us like serotonin and melatonin being happy hormones when actually they're very destructive
and inflammatory hormones. So yeah, number two call is 707-923-3911. So let's get this first caller, you're on the air call away from? - I'm in Trinidad, California. - Trinidad, California, welcome to the show. What's your question? - My question is, is there any hope for getting off of the SSRI LetsaPro? I have been on it for 17 years. I went on it in graduate school. I've tried to get off it a number of times over four months weaning periods and it triggers a withdrawal, deep sadness that's pretty out of control.
And then most recently a symptom I've never experienced before which is almost like extreme highs and extreme lows. - Yeah, Dr. Peat, okay, the lady withdrawing from SSRI is experiencing extreme sadness and the other mood related changes that SSRIs are supposedly indicated for in the first place. - One of the chronic effects of serotonin promotion is to interfere with cellular respiration. And that should be under the control of a thyroid but that gradually is depleted and glycolytic energy production tends to replace it. So you have to get back to reactivate oxidative metabolism
while suppressing the glycolysis and lactic acid production. And carbon dioxide is a main regulator of metabolism. It helps to keep serotonin under control, keep oxidation running and suppress the production of lactic acid. And working on everything connected to the thyroid function will gradually wean you away from that, that stimulation that comes from the SSRI. - So do you think this particular person would be a good candidate to self-assess their metabolic rate, temperature and their pulses and then see from there whether or not they look like they are, excuse me, either low thyroid or not responding
or the body's not responding as it would normally in a healthy individual from the stimuli of thyroid hormone? And then from there get to a place where they could slowly but surely use thyroid hormone along with adequate dietary sugars and withdrawal from polyunsaturates and all the other negative things that affect thyroid function to get to a place where they could regain their proper control of their metabolism and-- - Yeah, vitamin D and calcium are usually helpful to get the thyroid going again. - Okay, does that make any sense to you, Carla?
- Yes, is that something that your office would also work with somebody on or is that-- - Yeah, I could work with you on that for sure. - Okay. - You can always contact me any time, Monday through Friday. I'll give out the information at the end of the show but I'm sure there's probably plenty that could be done for you if you've been struggling with this this long. - Thank you so much, both of you. I appreciate the time. - I was curious about something you mentioned, carbon dioxide.
Could that be one reason why exercise improves people's mood and regular exercise helps because you're producing more carbon dioxide? - Well, you're probably producing less of it if you're working anaerobically exercising. You're probably blowing off more CO2 than you would if you didn't do that. - Yeah, there's evidence that too much exercise when you get to the point of fatigue, serotonin is the signal that creates fatigue and it can lead to the chronic fatigue syndrome which tends to go with inflamed muscles and any other symptoms. - It's probably the endorphins you're responding to
when you say that exercise makes you feel good. I think there's some of those endorphins that are naturally produced as a part of a stress response to exercise like that that probably dulls the pain of the exercise. - And they have looked at the blood condition of intense, like a soccer players or marathon runners and find evidence of breakdown of the blood brain barrier in all of these very high stress athletics. - All right, good. There's two callers on the air. So let's get these callers get going here. So first caller, you're on the air,
where are you from and what's your question? - Hi, is this me? - Yeah, yeah, where are you from? - I'm from Utah. - Utah, okay, what's your question? - My question is, I've got a family member who has been taking prednisone, I think five milligrams for the past several years. And at this point they'd like to get off of it, but it seems like they're reliant on it. What would you suggest as a strategy to address that? - What were they using prednisone for? - For initially a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis
and pain in general. - Dr. Peat, if somebody wants to withdraw from prednisone and its damaging effects, and they've been put on it because they've got either inflammatory damage or changes in the pain, et cetera, et cetera, for the reasons that they prescribe steroids, what would you suggest? - Behind the original diagnosis, there was probably something like a vitamin D deficiency or low thyroid function. And so you wanna make sure that you're not forgetting what led to the original prescription of the drug. - 'Cause the rheumatoid is just an inflammatory, an inflammatory arthritis.
So you'd characterize that inflammation as probably being related to things like serotonin, related to just basic energy deficit. - Serotonin is elevated in all of the autoimmune so-called diseases. And so correcting the energy problem with calcium, vitamin D, and thyroid is usually the basis for getting the original symptoms corrected. Then you can just taper off the prednisone. - Okay, does that-- - I see. Is there any, how would you feel about addressing the prednisone use directly with something like pregnenolone or other hormones? - I've known several people who accidentally got addicted
to a glucocorticoid such as prednisone who used either progesterone or pregnenolone to taper off and got off it in just a few weeks. - There you go. - Good to hear. Thank you. - Yeah, thank you for your call. Okay, just to remind people here, wanted to question Dr. Peat again and just bring out this whole selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, just nightmare, poor information, bad information, very damaging in how the whole serotonin issue plays into cell inflammation and just basic destruction. We've got another caller on the air, so let's get this next caller.
Caller, you're on the air, where are you from? What's your question? - I'm right here in Garboville, and I'll make this as quick as possible. As far as I can tell what you guys are talking about, may key into what I'm going through. I'm going under a lot of stress lately, and certain health things have been flaring up, aches and pains, various other things, and my mood has been pretty down. My question is, though, is kind of anecdotal. I've been craving a lot of milk. Like, middle of the night, I'll wake up feeling funky,
and I want milk. Or during the day, if I want something refreshing, I want milk. I heard Dr. Peat say vitamin D and calcium are both essential to thyroid function, so I'm wondering, is there a chance that my stressed-out state is depressing my thyroid, therefore my body is wanting more calcium and vitamin D? - Very much so, yeah. Dr. Peat? - Yeah, almost. Disregarding the cause of the stress, all of the stress hormones rise at night just because of the darkness, but any particular stress you're having
will just make it worse for all of the stress hormones. And serotonin happens to activate every pituitary hormone, and those all rise during the night. Calcium and sugar and thyroid are the three crucial things for minimizing that nocturnal rise of stress. So basically, it sounds like my body's trying to tell me something. - Yeah, but from a calcium and vitamin D perspective, the milk would definitely be a good idea. And like Dr. Peat says, when your stress is rising during the nighttime due to the fast of not eating or drinking when you're asleep,
milk's actually a very good, I mean, prior to bedtime, it's a very good idea to consume milk and/or sweet milk or custard or that kind of product because of the calcium content and in the milk, if it's fortified, perhaps the vitamin D content in the milk. But that's why it's so important to make sure you get a good source of vitamin D, either Carlson Labs do a 4,000 IU per drop vitamin D. And vitamin D is just gaining more and more traction as a panacea for a lot of different inflammatory processes
because of its utility in that. - Excellent, thank you so much, guys. - Yeah, you're welcome. Okay, so it's 20 to eight. The number, if you wanna call in, it's 707-923-3911, Dr. Peat expanding his understanding and information of things that we are all misinformed about and serotonin is his latest newsletter. We mentioned last month, Dr. Peat, the whole travesty surrounding the SSRIs, their prescription, their overprescription, the suicides resulting from it, and the complicit behavior of pharmaceutical companies, as well as political entities and government even, for allowing this kind of thing to go unchecked
when actually the evidence is there to very much dam the product. And how the whole misinterpretation of serotonin as a happy hormone, how this whole quip, this cliche is just gripped hold of everybody. And if you talk to anyone about serotonin or melatonin, they will tell you, "Oh, it improves your sleep," or "It makes you feel good." And I found it so hard to find any information on the internet about serotonin being anything other than good for you that I was gonna get into it during this show about some of the things
that are purported by various entities for serotonin and how it seems like there's absolutely nothing wrong with serotonin and serotonin has got the best kind of advertising going for it. But we'll get into that after this next caller 'cause we do have another caller who's called in. So let's take this caller away from, what's your question? - From New York. Can you hear me? - Yeah, could you speak up a little? I think you may be. - Okay, I have a couple of questions. First one, you talked about PUFA and how damaging it is,
and particularly it accumulates with age. And Dr. Peat, I was just wondering if it's mitigated by taking vitamin E since it's very hard to calculate how much PUFA you take in every day, why wouldn't you over time be taking these small amounts of vitamin E to further protect yourself? I'm just curious 'cause you don't take vitamin E, right? - I use it on my skin because it irritates my digestive system to take it orally, but I think it is good to take a little bit of it. - Okay, so you're saying you do do that,
but you do it more safely by not orally, but putting it on the skin. Okay, so my concept, I got the right interpretation. Okay, so you talked about CO2, I think the, somebody mentioned about running. Couple things on that. So when you run, assuming you're healthy, I think you do increase your CO2 at least initially, and I think you mentioned once you get to the point of fatigue and then you go over a level. But do you agree that initially, if you don't overdo it and everybody's got their own limit in terms of their health
and their capacity for exercise, that you do increase your CO2 initially? Is that, do you agree with that? - Until you increase your lactic acid, and that's the first sign that you're damaging yourself. - Okay, so I know someone who, the minute they finish running, to take that risk into consideration, they go into a CO2 dry bath. Does that help mitigate the risk and the damage that actually is underway if you push beyond the limit? - Yeah, a CO2 bath is good almost for any condition, especially if you're at the point of making lactic acid,
it'll help to recover quickly. - Right, okay. And the other question I had relating to thyroid, you know, the test that Broterbarnes, I think the way Broterbarnes got into this business is because he had to pick a gland. If I read his book correctly, and everybody else, the other glands were taken, so he did this. And obviously his experience and the number of patients he had over time gave him a massive amount of information. But there's, in my humble opinion, it's just an opinion, I've never met the man,
but I think your knowledge, your depth and breadth of physiology and knowledge is just so much broader than his, and I'm just thinking that there must be a better way than the basic methods, that the knee and other reflexes and the temperature, which is kind of imperfect. - Oh, the oxygen consumption is by far the best. - Oh, sorry, which one? - Oxygen consumption. - How do you get that one? - There might still be apparatus available on the internet, old used medical equipment for measuring the BMR. They should cost about $200,
because it's just an inverted tank and a measuring indicator for how far you make the tank sink as you breathe the oxygen out of the air that's holding the tank up in the water. And that was used medically around the world for diagnosing hypothyroidism. According to that, 30% of Americans were hypothyroid in 1940. And if you use that apparatus now, it's more like 60%. - I agree, and particularly if you do it by age group, it's even higher for old people like me. The other question, sorry, is,
if you, so the imperfect ways of diagnosing hypothyroidism, you know, you've gone through those pretty well, but, and you mentioned pulse, but you know, to me, pulse is correlated to blood pressure. So what would you say about a person who, you know, you're not sure about whether they have it, but you know, the hypothyroid problem, or whether it's like minor, but their blood pressure is 120 over 80. I'm just giving you, and it's always 120 over 80. When they sit down, they measure it's 120. You stand up, you're supposed to stand up
to see whether it's really an accurate measurement. And it stays around 120 over 80 immediately after standing up. That means the blood pressure is stable consistently. Does that tell you anything that, since it's related to pulse, that might be, you know, also some information that would give you insight into whether or not someone's chronically hypothyroid? In my experience, that would mean very good nervous system energy regulating things. But I've known a few people who can't increase their pulse, even with exercise. That's me. I can't do that. I can't do it. You're right. That's me.
I'm sorry, continue. Well, that would be a good argument for measuring your oxygen consumption because you can't have any other explanation for low oxygen consumption than a need for more thyroid. Yeah, the reason I say this is 'cause I have a pulse around 60. I can maybe get it up to 70 sometimes when I go to the doctor, but I'm always 120 over 80. And I do the standup to double check it. I'm always, they say, "Wow, your blood pressure's right on the money." Yeah, but my pulse, according, I tell this, seems low.
And they said, "No, you must be an athlete." It's typical. Cholesterol is another pretty good indicator if you're cholesterol. Actually, actually, one other quick story. So the doctor told me I had like one, no, 330 was my total cholesterol, right? I'm about 60, right? I go, "So I wanna put you on statins." I said, "Well, do you know that there's a guy "from Stanford who said that it's salt?" And I said, "No, I'm not gonna take 'em, "but I'll come back and see you." So then what I did, I took some thyroid,
but I also increased my salt, and I did a lot of things that you suggest. Came back, dropped like 100 over 150 points. The guy was like, "Wow, that's incredible. "Could I see you again?" And just to confirm it, he goes, "How did you do that?" (laughs) And literally, you've been saying this for 30 years, and no one wants to listen. And I just did the basic things, nothing fancy. And what you said is exactly correct. Anyway, you're a legend. Thank you very much for answering my questions. I appreciate your time.
- Okay, thank you for your call. All right, so we got 10 minutes left here. If you'd like to call in with questions related, or unrelated, but related to medical issues or questions, the number is 707-923-3911. Dr. Raymond Peat will be with us for the next eight minutes or so. So Dr. Peat, I've hardly covered anything that I had originally set out to ask you about some of these misconceptions, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing, because you've spent a long time elaborating on some of the answers for this,
and we've had plenty of callers. I did want to do another misconception, and I think next month, I'd like very much to carry on with the serotonin, yeah, the serotonin mistakes, and just question you a little more about the whole tryptophan and its conversion to serotonin and how our diets are rich in tryptophan, whether we like it or not, unless we are very fastidious about it, and we don't produce our own tryptophan, per se, to be synthesized de novo. But I'll leave that for the next month, 'cause there's another question I wanted to ask you
about things that we've heard, that it's just another example of how we get brainwashed into believing something that's not actually true, but we do actually have another caller who's called in here. So let's take this next caller. Caller, you're on the air. Where are you from, and what's your question? - Hi, this is a caller from Utah again. Just had a question related to exercise. So I enjoy certain types of exercise, mostly things that you could consider as a game, like basketball or soccer or volleyball, and I've noticed that those are way more fun
than something like chess or something that doesn't involve exertion. I'm wondering if you think that it would be probably more ideal if you could get that same sort of enjoyment from something that involves less energy expenditure, or if maybe the reliance on something like that is a symptom of something maybe unideal in the environment that kind of makes you turn to something like that? - Yeah, I think the experience of having fun or doing something meaningful powerfully overrides the toxic effects of lactic acid and serotonin and can push things back into shape
just because that's how the organism builds itself, is doing meaningful things and having fun. - Gotcha, so, but on the surface, it doesn't really seem like a sport really has that much meaning to it, so do you think that it might be a sign that you should be looking for a more ideal environment if you do find yourself turning to things like that? - Work really should be a fun exercise, but if you don't have experience in your ordinary working activities, I think it's good to have the game type of exercise.
- Okay, cool, yeah, that makes sense. Thanks again, Dr. Peat. - Okay, I just wanted to interject there with something I read a little earlier on that mentioned that the whole learned helplessness concept, Dr. Peat talked about various animal models and the learned helplessness that they experience as a result of just giving up and it's just all too much. It's actually mediated by too much serotonin. What do you say to that, Dr. Peat? - Yeah, and it can be brought on by anything that overwhelms your self-regulation. I think a diagnosis often creates
a learned helplessness situation and the person lets their serotonin get out of control. - Yeah, I think that's a very good point. I've long said for a long, long time now that a diagnosis is probably the worst thing that a person can get and I think-- - Why do they call it a die diagnosis? - Yeah, I don't know. But I often think that as organisms, as energetic spiritual beings that we are, when we get a diagnosis of something that is quote unquote terminal or just serious,
I think it's the worst thing in the world to hear because I think energetically it just whacks you for six. - And the diagnosis is almost certain to be wrong in some of its explanations and it makes you think of yourself as a machine that needs fixing. - All right, well, we'll cover a little more of that maybe next month. Like I said, next month I really want to, I want to play devil's advocate with you so far as serotonin's concerned and explore that link, go down the rabbit hole with serotonin
or rather with tryptophan and its conversion into serotonin and how the whole industry got generated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors that prevent its breakdown to enable the serotonin in the membrane space there to last longer and to make you feel good and just to do all that good stuff when obviously there's a lot of research showing how dangerous it is. - It interacts with the antioxidant industry too. - Okay. - They come together in very interesting ways. - I bet they do, good, all right. Well, I've got plenty more questions I want to ask you
and we do still have about seven minutes. So talking about oxidants, antioxidants might be a good place to finish up questioning you this month, but to start that for next month and then get into the whole issue around tryptophan and how we can cut this out of our diet as best we can, but how obviously it's needed. There's a certain amount of serotonin that is part and parcel of regulating our physiology because there are certain things that are implicated in serotonin's secretion that are quote unquote necessary. But the other dogma then about oxidants and antioxidants,
we're always told, oh, antioxidants are good for you. They kind of mitigate the damage that oxidants cause and oxidation is a bad thing. If you think about a cut apple, the surface of a cut apple turning brown, that's an oxidation reaction. And so, oxidation is not a good thing, right? It's like rust, it's breakdown, it's a kind of a failure as it were. So in terms of the antioxidant myth, have you got anything to say about oxidants and antioxidants that would better describe them and then maybe we might not feel quite so confused
about the antioxidant myth that is surrounding taking antioxidants per se for health benefits? - One thing to keep in mind is that cancer cells have a very powerful intrinsic antioxidant system and what you want to do to restore health is to overcome that antioxidant system. And the Down's syndrome involves probably the crucial genetic problem is a huge overdose of the antioxidant enzyme superoxide dismutase, a thing that is being sold in health stores. - Right. - But when you add this extra gene for the superoxide dismutase to animals or cells in culture,
it creates accelerated aging as in the Down's syndrome or in Alzheimer's disease. And the normal function of superoxide, it's just an oxygen molecule with an extra electron and it seems to be the active agent in the monoamine oxidase enzyme for destroying serotonin. And so the Down's syndrome platelet is unable to destroy serotonin, unable to hold it even. And so the person is saturated with free serotonin because the system isn't able to destroy it at a normal speed. - Interesting. Now, they call Down's syndrome, it had the old name of trisomy 21, right?
'Cause the gene, well, yeah, the chromosome 21, there was three copies and then they said, okay, there's an extra 50% increase in the products derived from that chromosome of which the gene encoding for superoxide dismutase was part of it. But I did read, and again, it's kind of confused me a little bit because I also read some other kind of quote unquote, conflicting information about that, saying that the same chromosome also had the genes for coding beta amyloid precursors, which have been implicated in Parkinson's Alzheimer's in terms of the amyloid protein deposition there.
And also encoded for other oncogenes that cause these kind of negative metabolic processes in Down's patients. So-- - But the amyloid protein accumulates in many conditions where you're simply hypothyroid, for example, or under stress. But it's possible that there are many other defects, but the spectacular one is the failure of the platelet to oxidize serotonin. - Well, it's two minutes to, I'm gonna have to cut you short there, but thanks for joining us again. And next month we'll pick up where we left off. I think we've got plenty to go on here
and hopefully re-educate as we go on. So thanks so much for your time. - Okay, thank you. - Okay, so you've listened to Ask Your Ob Doctor, KMED Gallup 91.1 FM. It's once a month from seven to 8 p.m. And we take callers from 7.30 to eight. Most people questioning Dr. P either about what he's talking about at the time or protocols they've been using, giving him positive feedback about that. As from tonight's person in New York, that was good to hear about his cholesterol. Dr. Peat's been saying that for a long time
about high cholesterol patients using thyroid to bring it down. And it being a basic defect in high cholesterol is that most of it's due to hypothyroidism. So Dr. Peat's information is found at www.raypeat.com. He's got lots of articles that he's been publishing here for several decades now. He's written several books and he's got a wealth of information. The shows, unfortunately, I've got about two years worth of these shows to post on the internet on our website, which is westernbotanicalmedicine.com. I'm a graduated medical herbalist from England, producing herbal extracts,
but Dr. Peat's wisdom has also guided my practice in seeing people. So anyway, yeah, westernbotanicalmedicine.com, raypeat.com. I'll see you next month at seven o'clock, third Friday of next month.