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This free program is paid for by the listeners of Redwood Community Radio. If you're not already a member, please think of joining us. Thank you. [Radio broadcast] And support for Redwood Community Radio comes in part from the Security Store. They're in the Meadows Business Park in Redway and feature watershed dry bags and pelican cases in many sizes. Both have lifetime warranties and have been tested over time in Humboldt County. The Security Store has solutions for all security needs and is open Monday through Saturday 9 to 5. They can be reached at 923-2363.
It is 7 o'clock. This is Redwood Community Radio, KMUD, KMUE, that's KMUD Garberville, KMUE Eureka Arcada, KLAI, KLAI Laytonville. And on the web at KMUD.org we've got the Herb Doctors coming right up and the Herb Doctor wants to tell us something. I can't imagine you'll forget the intro. The intro? The intro music? Oh yes, no I have, oh it's track 5, that's what you're saying. Alright, we got it. It's on my computer so I don't know what track it is. Don't let me disturb you.
No, here, how about you give a little pitch for a second and I'll get it lined up and I'll get the doctor on the line and we'll jump right into it. Okay, well as everyone knows, well maybe everyone doesn't know, but folks should know that the pledge drive is running through next Friday. Looks like the new total is $44,752 and the goal is $125,000. There's 19 new members and the goal is to get another 100.
And for many years now, probably 8 or 9, we've been here doing this show and as so typical of KMUD, the alternative and the unconventional, if you like, is available. So if you're not finding any solace in the normal, which I think most people who listen don't, it's an excellent radio station to get the alternatives. And the alternative view is always something that people have to dig around for normally. So listening to this show, you're going to get a wide variety of very alternative music, discussions, etc. etc.
So I very much recommend people that are not members would support KMUD radio. I think they do a great job. They're a little island, if you like, or a beacon in the dark, just shining out all the stuff that they send out on the air to people listening in the hills on their own. So it's a great station to be connected to and I'm very privileged and feel very grateful to be able to do this once a month show, Ask Your Herb Doctor.
So just putting it out there for people that if they're not a member, if you've thought about it, but you haven't actually made a decision, it's not a lot of money to keep this great radio station going that offers such a wide range of alternative subjects and keeps people connected to the local community. So I just brought Dr. Peat on right now because he's here. So thank you very much, Dr. Peat, for joining our community. Hey, Dr. Peat. Hi. Hey, thanks for joining us.
OK, well, it's a little impromptu, so we'll get going with the with the show right now. I'm just going to do the introduction as usual, just in case there's people who've never heard the show before. And can you give a phone number to for people who might not know? Because I know Dr. Peat has a lot of people from throughout the nation who are listening in right now. I would never give his phone number out. No, no, no, not his phone number. This number?
Yeah, because there are people from throughout the nation who do tune in. We get more calls from more areas. So we'd like to let those people know. I always give a number out. Always give a number out. OK, so welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name is Andrew Murray. And for those of you who perhaps have never listened to the show, which runs every third Friday of the month from 7 to 8 p.m.,
my wife and I both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine. And we run a clinic in Garboville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions and recommend herbal medicines and dietary advice. So thank you for listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor, KMUG Garboville, 91.1 FM. And from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in any questions, either related or unrelated to this month's subject of Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
And if we get time, there's a recent newsletter that Dr. Peat has just finished on cataracts, water, aging and light. And covering the theme, the ongoing theme of anti-inflammation from some things or compounds that will cause stress. So thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Peat. As usual, if you wouldn't mind just giving people a resume of your academic professional background, perhaps for those new listeners who might have tuned in to this show. I studied biology, University of Oregon, graduate school 1968 to '72.
Did my dissertation on reproductive aging and oxidative processes, concentrating on the effects of estrogen and progesterone largely. And trying to explain why an excess of estrogen resembled the physiology of aging, stress or x-ray poisoning. And that was sort of a follow-up of my interests from the 1950s on the effects of low-level radiation on public health. And that's been one of my continuing interests. Okay, so this month I got a little bit of a kind of spate of people contacting us about Hashimoto's thyroiditis. And as your specialty was hormones, reproductive and thyroid.
I know this is a subject that's very dear to your heart and something that you spent many, many years studying and researching. In terms of the condition Hashimoto's thyroiditis, I know you have a very different and kind of alternative view of it. And it's certainly scientifically based. But what constitutes Hashimoto's disease in your mind? And its characteristic lab findings and the symptoms and the treatment of it? And what do the temperature and pulses show? And we'll get into temperature and pulses in a bit more detail a bit later on.
But what do you view Hashimoto's as? A hundred years ago Hashimoto described it as an enlargement of the thyroid gland caused by infiltration of white blood cells. And some people actually stick a needle into the gland and diagnose on the basis of how he described it that long ago. But the general principle is that it's an enlarged gland that doesn't produce enough hormone. And so you can make a guess as to its cause by looking at the blood.
If you see that there seems to be a deficiency of the hormone in the blood and maybe some evidence of inflammation, such as proteins and antibodies to the proteins from the thyroid gland, then they don't bother doing the needle biopsy. So those two particular tests are the only real thing that medical doctors will be wanting to see as a confirmation? Yeah. Simultaneously, a little before Hashimoto's study, people were seeing various reasons for the enlargement of the thyroid gland, various poisonings or iodine deficiency was recognized as the main cause of enlargement.
And being in Japan, I suppose, was why Hashimoto saw the peculiar inflammation of the thyroid rather than a blatant iodine deficiency, because many people in Japan eat so much iodine that they get thyroiditis from blocking the functions of the gland. And that classically results in increasing the TSH to overcome the blockage by excess iodine. But exactly the same TSH excess is produced by a deficiency of iodine. So what you see typically is a rising TSH driving the gland to work harder as the organism shows signs of decreasing thyroid function.
OK. So in terms of the antibodies, how does the traditional medical diagnosis then differ in terms of the way that you would, because I understand that both the antibodies are looked at the antithyroglobulin antibody and the antithyroid peroxidase antibodies, which are generally measured to give a diagnosis, that these are actually present in people that don't have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So people can actually have raised levels of these antibodies and not be showing any symptoms at all. And conversely, the identity of an antibody isn't really as clear as a lot of people assume.
They've found that there's a great cross reaction between thyroid antibodies and joint antibodies. And that explains why people with thyroiditis and hypothyroidism so often have arthritis and joint problems. And the whole issue of explaining disease as blaming it on the immune system attacking the body. If you wrench your knee and sort of damage the cartilage, they've done experiments in rabbits taking a piece of foreign cartilage like from a cow, and it will produce very few antibodies in the rabbit. But if you twist it a little bit, structurally damage it,
then it produces a terrific immune reaction. And any organ that gets strained or overworked tends to leak some of its proteins. And the immune system's function largely is to clean up any mess. In fact, there is an alternative interpretation of what the immune system is doing rather than looking for foreign invading pathogens. This theory says it's primarily cleaning up messes caused by anything which is pathogenic. So in one of the so-called autoimmune brain conditions, people have demonstrated that the presence of the antibody to the brain tissue accelerates the recovery.
So cleaning up the mess is really constructive rather than always being the cause of deterioration. I've heard you, it's a little bit off base at the moment to mention this, but I just thought I'd need to bring it up because it has a relevance to what you're saying about antibodies not being a bad thing. Now, you've mentioned before that the, for example, a condition hepatitis C, number one, it's questionable. I know you've questioned even the existence of it as a virus in its own right.
But you say that the antibodies that are generally measured to show a degree of severity, the way the medical industry looks at it, is actually a bad way of looking at it because actually the antibodies to it are very important in mopping up the damage, if you like. Yeah, that's Duisburg's basic objection to the whole AIDS/HIV theory, but it applies to the hepatitis C at least as much as to HIV.
Right, and that initial insult perhaps to the liver, whether it be through PUFA or radiation or any other external stresses in its own right, may well... Decades ago, the Egyptian government had a campaign to give a very toxic drug to the whole population because of a parasite that they were eliminating. And that poison causes liver damage and now a tremendous proportion, roughly half of the Egyptian population, I think it was, showed evidence of hepatitis C. I think it's just the after effect of that poisoning.
Right, I remember you saying that, exactly what you're talking about in terms of that. OK, well you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD Galbavool 91.1 FM. From 7.30 to the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions, either related or unrelated, this month's subject of Hashimoto's thyroiditis. I also got to say that generally we open the lines at 7.30, but it is the pledge and at 7.30 the pledge is going to be pitching the drive at 7.30.
So, what I wanted to say was, in case people are anxious that they're not going to get enough time, we can pretty much open the lines any time from now on and take people. Because we will be coming in and out, making sure that people are aware that the pledge is running and that we're raising money for the studio to continue. So, hopefully people will call in and start pledging. I'd just like to jump in because I forgot to read our underwriters who basically pledge every day.
KMUD thanks Jessica Baker of Jade Dragon Acupuncture for her support of Redwood Community Radio. Practicing traditional Chinese medicine, Jessica treats conditions ranging from psoriasis to post-traumatic stress. Located at 607 F Street in Arcata, Jade Dragon Acupuncture can be reached at 822-4300 or online at jadedragonacupuncture.com. And support for KMUD comes from the Emerald Cup, presenting the 10th Annual Outdoor Medical Marijuana Competition and Exposition. It's on December 14th and 15th at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. Music, speakers, panels, vendor exhibits, comedy, organic food, awards ceremony and the KMUD booth are included.
Musical performances are by Revolution, J. Boog and many more. Tickets at local outlets and online at theemeraldcup.com. More info at 707-984-9174. Okay, I should also mention that the phone number if you live in the area here is 923-3911, area code 707. Or if you live outside the area, the toll free number we can be reached on here is 1-800-568-3723. So if people want to join in now and ask questions about this subject or have any other questions they'd like to put to Dr. Peat or myself, please feel free.
So Dr. Peat, I know you mentioned the antibodies not being that relevant and in some ways not seemingly being a bad thing in other conditions. But so far as Hashimoto's and its treatment, you always look at it as the necessity is to get the TSH down, the thyroid stimulating hormone down, which is normally quite elevated in Hashimoto's. Yeah, it's well established lately, last several years, that TSH itself causes many of the symptoms blamed on hypothyroidism. It acts on the bone marrow and many other tissues, the liver, producing, increasing the inflammatory cytokine chemicals.
So in itself, it's a basic problem of hypothyroidism, I think. Right, because you've always said that TSH in its own right is a chaperone for other immune or inflammatory molecules. And so in a normal healthy person, it's a good idea to try and get the TSH as close to zero as possible. Does it have any benefits, I mean, apart from stimulating the production or release of thyroid hormone? My newsletter on osteoporosis a couple of years ago went over the arguments that they're using to say that it prevents osteoporosis.
But I think the references that I give in there show that basically it's just increasing the load of inflammation. Okay, so in terms of the standard medical treatment for Hashimoto's, I think it's probably true enough to say that thyroxine is the main compound that they will give to a person to treat it. Yes, if they give enough, there have been some studies in which the antibodies tend to disappear after about six months of keeping the TSH under control.
Okay, so in your opinion, because I know we've seen quite a few people that have been previously treated with thyroxine that were not getting a lot of symptom relief. I mean, in terms of the compound, what do you think of its efficacy or its ability to do its job? It in itself, in almost every situation, will suppress the TSH, even though T3 can do it. And sometimes maybe two or three percent of the people need T3 to work on the pituitary to suppress the TSH.
But women in particular have five or ten times as much thyroid disease as men. And the reason is that estrogen interferes with the liver's ability to convert thyroxine to the active T3 hormone. And if your liver isn't producing some T3, your gland, which produces a ratio of about three parts of thyroxine to one part of the active hormone, if you give that person big doses of thyroxine, you're going to turn off that little bit of active hormone coming out of their thyroid gland when you suppress the TSH. And they'll go into an increasingly hypothyroid state.
And that has caused a lot of doctors to think of people being simultaneously hypothyroid and hyperthyroid, which doesn't make sense unless you see that they're interfering with the liver's ability to activate the hormone. And some people have argued that one of the needs for TSH is to induce the local enzymes in the various tissues, such as the liver, which do the conversion. But there have been several studies showing that you absolutely don't need the TSH to do that activation of the deiodinase enzymes in the various tissues,
that other signals from other glands will maintain the activating enzymes. Okay, so in terms of someone presenting with Hashimoto's, you're saying that it is reasonable to assume that thyroxine in its own right would be the treatment of choice? Well, yeah, especially in men, but since women are the main people who have Hashimoto's, it's very likely to bring on symptoms. So it's very reasonable to try it, but as soon as they start getting symptoms of worse hypothyroidism, then it's time to give them the complete thyroid hormone.
Okay, and that's like you said, it's because of the estrogen. I know your most recent newsletter, the Cataract Newsletter, has a lot to deal with estrogen being a pro-inflammatory stress-mediating chemical that attenuates the effects of other things in the body. Yeah, the industry is periodically creating new myths about estrogen, and one of the things they're currently pushing. Several years ago, they went through a wave of claiming that estrogen was an antioxidant, and even though it's primarily an oxygen-wasting pro-oxidative mediator, now they're pushing the idea that estrogen is anti-inflammatory.
We do actually have a caller on the air, Dr. Peat, so perhaps we should take this. I'm sorry to cut in there, but there's a caller, so let's see if we can get this next one on air. Hi, you're on air. Where are you calling from? Hi, I'm calling from New Jersey. Okay, you're on the air, so go ahead. Hi there. I just read the Brota Barnes book, and Hypothyroidism, the Unsuspected Illness. My entire medical history is in that book, so I'm very grateful that you provided that information.
I am having a little bit of trouble. I know how to follow instructions. He suggests that we put the thermometer under our arm for 10 minutes before we get out of bed in the morning. In other words, it's a resting temperature, and I did that. I averaged over an 18-day period 96.4, but that's not my goal in telling you this. I started to get creative after I did that, and maybe that's my mistake. I don't know.
I started to put the thermometer under my arm again for subsequent 10-minute increments, and I found that my temperature was continuing. The mercury was continuing to rise. 97, for example, is still low, but it's higher than 96.4, or sometimes it's 95.8 or something. I guess what I'm wondering is I really want to find a way of accurately gauging my temperature, and hopefully thereby my metabolic rate, so that when I start to treat myself, I don't flip over into Graves' disease. Have I just wasted time?
Should I just revert to Dr. Barnes' temperature test and go back to the 10 minutes, or should I experiment with this a little bit, if you were me? Dr. Peat? No, It would be good if you could do it for half an hour or whatever it takes to stabilize, but the trouble is that hypothyroid people have low tissue metabolism, and that often goes with high adrenaline, which cuts off circulation to your skin, fingers, toes, and keeps the circulation going primarily to your brain, heart, and lungs.
So especially if you are overweight, the skin and subcutaneous fat can take a couple of hours to reach core temperature if you're thoroughly insulated. So it's good to check your eardrum temperature, mouth temperature, as well as your armpit temperature while noticing the temperature of your fingers and toes and tip of your nose. Is there a significant difference in a basal temperature thermometer? I mean, they have these separate thermometers called basal thermometers. What is that? They're just marked off so you can read them more easily and tense,
but I don't think the small differences are that important for the thyroid guesswork. If you notice that your oral temperature is at all low and your fingers and toes are colder than other people's, that's a good sign that your metabolic rate is low. And if you consider the amount of calories you need per day compared to other people, that's a good indication of your thyroid metabolic rate. And the amount of water that you evaporate is a very good indicator. A person should take in two quarts more fluid than they lose per day in urine.
That two quarts would be an average evaporation if your thyroid is good. But many people evaporate less than a quart a day, meaning that -- We're waterlogged. Yeah, and instead of being evaporated, the low thyroid person tends to retain water. And there are so many indications other than temperature. I first started playing with Barnes's technique one hot, humid summer in Eugene when it was about 95 degrees, and even people who could hardly move, they were so hypothyroid, were very close to normal temperature.
And I realized that a squash sitting on the counter would show a normal metabolic rate if you went just by temperature. And so checking your pulse rate and the temperature of your fingers and toes in a cool room, those are more sensitive indicators. So if I'm -- I remember you writing that if people use an electric blanket at night, you place less value on the basal temperature. Am I remembering correctly? Yeah, same thing as in a hot, humid climate. If you keep the temperature up artificially, even a dead person will be warm.
Oh, well, this is actually bad news for me because I'm in a heated room when I'm doing this. My temperature may be even lower. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I think what you're saying is it's more -- perhaps more of an art than a science in some respect, just because getting an absolute gauge on this is going to be very difficult because there are so many variables. Am I approximating what you're saying? Exactly. It's the whole function.
The best single test would be how much oxygen you breathe in and how much carbon dioxide you exhale. That's actually showing what's going on chemically. And you can't produce a normal amount of carbon dioxide by being overstressed or high in estrogen. Other things will happen other than producing carbon dioxide as you burn your fuel. So the old-fashioned 1930s basal metabolic rate by breathing oxygen and blowing out carbon dioxide, that was the real thyroid test, and the temperature is just the very rough approximation of how much fuel you're burning.
Where can I go to read more about what you just said? Is there something I can do at home? Yeah, my website has several articles about it. Something else you have to do is notice the changes during the day because low thyroid people typically compensate with stress hormones increasing, sometimes mainly adrenaline, sometimes mostly cortisol, others including serotonin will increase especially at night. Histamine often increases at night. And all of the stress hormones make your tissue metabolize, but not in an energy-producing way but in an energy-wasting way.
And if you take an overdose of cortisol and adrenaline, the adrenaline will make your skin get cold. The cortisol will make you break down your muscle tissue and glandular tissue to turn to sugar, and that will heat your body up. And some people wake up with a 98 or 99-degree temperature, and when they eat breakfast by 10 or 11 in the morning, their temperature might have fallen to 94 or 95 degrees. This explains a great deal for me personally, so I thank you very, very much.
I don't want to take up any more of your time, but that's been very helpful. All right, well, thank you so much for your call. You be well. We are actually going to get into the whole subject of temperature and pulse measurements and what the differences mean, but it is 7.31, and now the engineer is sitting there, and is he going to pitch or was he going to-- I thought that the producer was going to pitch, but I'll do a little pitch.
I'll actually say that thank you, Dr. Peat, because you really do have a nationwide audience. I hear people calling in from all over, and I would like to put a word out to those people from all over that this is an unusual community radio station, and even if you live in Jersey or Missouri or wherever, you may well want to join KMUD, and you might want to check out some of our other talk shows because they are all a little different from the mainstream. That's why we have them.
We have a pitcher here in the studio, folks, so let's go ahead. Yeah, is this-- live? Can you hear me? There we go. Now you can. Wow. Yeah, this is Mark, sounds in the sewer. Just want to let everybody out there know that we have some premiums available for new members, a glass KMUD coffee mug. We've got, for renewing members, a 25-year anniversary T-shirt, and we've got a couple of nice radios, the Sea Crane Radio. I was going to actually-- the Sea Crane Radio used to be called the Zombie Apocalypse Radio,
but maybe all the zombies actually have deficient thyroid function. That could be. It's the Deficient Thyroid Function Apocalypse Radio from now on in my book. And it's a great radio. It's got the solar power. You can power a cell phone off of that thing. That's for $120 pledge. And we also have an HD radio for $150 pledge. And as most people know, or maybe some people, or maybe everybody knows, that KMUD does broadcast in HD now, and it sounds awesome. And that's, again, for a $150 pledge. And, you know, call in and make your pledges.
As you know, we can't really function too well without them, and we certainly do appreciate your listenership and your support. So make sure you call in, folks, the numbers 923-- 3-9-1-1. Or 1-800-568-3723. KMUD rad. So the phone call needn't cost you a red cent. I want to thank a couple of people here. Leah LaMatina out of Trinidad came in and donated $50. Actually, she renewed her membership. We also had--what's that? Oh, okay. Well, we also had West Botanical Medicine pledging. You weren't supposed to say anything. That's okay. Didn't they mark on there? Anyway.
Anyway, never mind that. I was kidding, of course. We're very happy to support our own radio station, folks. Okay, good. Well, I'll turn it back over to you, gents. All right. Okay. Thanks so much for that. Dr. Peat, okay, so that last caller, that was completely out of the blue, completely impromptu. So happy they called, and especially from New Jersey. Talking about temperature and pulses is actually one of the next questions that I had down to ask you during this next 25 minutes.
The interpretation of a temperature and pulse shot being the questions that I have, I understand what you're saying about the metabolic rate, peripheral temperatures, sweating, and CO2 versus O2 as being better indicators. In terms of what's practical for people to do at home, I think the temperature and pulse sheet is the thing that people can get their hands on to see for themselves whether or not they're reaching proper temperature or if they are cold or if their temperatures are dropping.
So can I just go through a couple of the things that commonly show up in people's temperature and pulse shots and just get you to describe the basic metabolic defect, if you like. So if someone has, and I don't see this too often, but a high starting temperature in the morning when they're in bed before they get out of bed and then they have the breakfast and the temperature falls. The first time I started noticing that was a friend who twice a year had alternated episodes of extreme depression and mania.
And in the periods when she was giving up sleep, sleeping only two or three hours a night, her morning temperatures were extremely high. But then after eating something two or three hours later, her temperature would fall several degrees. And that was during the time when she tended to be manic and be under the influence of too much adrenaline and other excitatory things. And so I suggested that she take enough thyroid to get her pulse and temperature to be steadier during the day.
Within a few days, she had stabilized so that her morning temperature was a couple of degrees lower, but increased after eating instead of decreasing. And since doing that, she stopped having her annual up and down cycles. Okay. So just on a recap of what you said a little while ago about cold peripheries, so fingers, toes, nose, ears, this kind of person that you just mentioned would have cold extremities because adrenaline would be driving that as a vasoconstrictor, but yet their core temperature would be high because of cortisol and the stress hormones?
In general, you have to check your pulse rate at the same time because if your cortisol is extremely high and destroying things at a terrific rate, then you're making enough heat to keep your hands and feet warm even. But in that situation, your adrenaline is going to be lower to let out the heat through your skin. And so if you have a very high temperature and the normal pulse rate and then the temperature falls after you eat, your pulse rate is probably going to get slower still.
Okay. So for a low starting temperature in the morning, so someone's in bed, they're taking their temperature and their pulses before they wake and start moving around and generating heat. If they have a low starting temperature and that falls after breakfast? Oh, that's still stress plus hypothyroidism. Okay. All right. And then how about if they have a low starting temperature and it doesn't change after breakfast, it stays the same? They probably didn't eat the right things. If you get enough sugar in and protein and the essential catalytic nutrients, B vitamins and such,
then if you have any function of your thyroid gland at all, you're going to feed your liver enough that it should just by feeding it sugar, it should start producing a little bit of T3, which would warm you. Okay. So how about the pulses then? If someone's taking their pulse in bed in the morning along with the temperature and they have a low pulse and then that pulse rises after breakfast? That probably means that their T3 is going up from eating some carbohydrate and increasing their general energy so their blood is circulating more.
And that's something that I've seen most often in women when they're premenstrual and having high estrogen blocking their thyroid. They'll get very cold when they get hungry and everything will slow down. And then when they eat, they'll warm up and the pulse will increase. Okay. Now how about if somebody, again, this is breakfast time and the person's in bed before they move around, if they have a high pulse and then this rises after breakfast? Sometimes that happens when they eat eggs without enough carbohydrate.
If you're already tending to have hypoglycemia, eating eggs will stimulate insulin secretion, drop your blood sugar more and cause a surge of adrenaline. And it depends on how you feel. If you're really increasing your thyroid and warming your metabolism up, you'll feel good when the pulse goes up. But if you feel like you're about to faint or go into shock, that happens from eating too much protein without carbohydrate. And that adrenaline makes you shaky then? Yeah. And some people wake up cyclically during the night
and when I was counseling dieters, there were some very fat people who would wake up. One of them woke up every hour during the night and the other one I think was sleeping an hour and a half or so. And I got them to set an alarm clock to wake themselves up about five or ten minutes before their expected waking and to eat anything with carbohydrate, milk or juice or even a cracker or something. And to do that every hour and within a week,
they were sleeping through the night and then they were able to start losing weight. The stress hormones that raise your temperature and pulse rate around dawn, they are also increasing the blood sugar. So in diabetics, they call it the dawn phenomenon. But it's the result of the stress hormones that rise during the night. The darkness itself is causing stress, activating hormones. And so in the winter, people are more likely to have disturbed sleep because of long nights. And getting extra carbohydrate late in the day can help you sleep longer without those episodes.
Usually it's nightmares waking people up with a pounding heart. That's the adrenaline, right? Yes. Okay. One other quick question and then there is a corner. So the last example would be perhaps a high pulse that falls after breakfast. That's good. That's the carbohydrate lowering the adrenaline. And when the temperature goes up and your pulse goes down, that's what breakfast should do. Okay. Let's take this next caller. You're on the air. Hi, what a great show. And before I ask my question, I'd just like to say to the audience, if you love KMUD,
call 707-923-3911 or 1-800-KMUD-RAD. And to decode KMUD-RAD, look at your dial and the decoder ring is right there. I always appreciate what you do and this show is one of my favorites. My question, Dr. Peat, and if it's a little too far, maybe it's in another program, is about the approaching secretion of radiation plume. I heard Dr. Helen Caldicott discussing recently on Coast to Coast AM, the coming plumes to Alaska around March and possibly the Pacific Northwest around July, June, July, and then further down the coast, subsequent to that,
so maybe late summer, early fall of next year. I'm sorry, of this COVID-19 that would actually be next year at this point. So it could be as much as up to a year from now, but maybe less. And my question goes to what are the effects of radiation, since you mentioned that as a special question at the beginning of the program, along the lines of the disease you mentioned earlier, or what kind of manifest? Does it mimic that disease that starts with an H or does it come in other ways?
And seaweed, what should we do to prevent it as far as iodine-ization of the thyroid? I want you to go and listen to the response on air. And again, thank you so much. 1-800-CANADRAB or 9233-911 in the 707 area. So please donate to this station. Keep this great show going. Okay, thank you for that. I do want to say that me personally hearing it, there's quite a bit of a sound of garble, but I did hear the very first part of it was the concern with the radiation,
oceanic radiation coming this way to the coast between the middle to the end of next year. Dr. Peat, did you hear what that caller was saying? Part of it was blurred, but basically, you're wondering what to do for radiation exposure. Right, I think so, yeah, basically. Yeah, my first newsletter 30-some years ago was on radiation defense, and I read everything that was available at that time regarding protecting against radiation and repairing the damage. And the research since then has pretty much confirmed what was available then,
that keeping your metabolic rate up accelerates the repair process faster than the injury. And progesterone decreases the injury. Thyroid increases the rate of repair. And all kinds of stress create signals from the injured cells that travel through the rest of your body. And so no matter if your face is x-rayed by a dentist, your whole body, the gonads are going to be affected by these substances emitted by the injured cells. So in the 1950s, Russian researchers had noticed that total body radiation had an estrogenic effect, would cause animals to go into estrus.
And that was blamed generally on causing the pituitary hormones to be activated, because people could do it just by irradiating the head. But the Russian researchers irradiated the animal's foot and produced the same whole body estrogenic effect, showing that estrogen and radiation are producing these toxins that communicate to all the cells of the body. And that's why thyroid and progesterone have a basic protective effect against radiation. But the whole nutritional support system, magnesium is the element that's most closely involved in repairing radiation damage after your thyroid is activated.
The cells take up magnesium and enzymes are activated that do the repair process when you have adequate magnesium with your thyroid. And that would be from the green leafy broths that you recommend. Yeah. So whether it's chard or kale, dark green leafy broths are pretty rich in magnesium. Okay, so Dr. Peat, I guess we can just put it out there again quickly if any other callers are in the air. It's KMUDRAD is the toll-free number, 1-800-568-3723, or the number if you live in the area is 923-3911.
So my other questions that I wanted to put to you about the temperature and the pulses, with reference to temperature and pulses, are morning changes reflective of a similar metabolism seen in the lunchtime temperature and pulses? Yeah, if your temperature hasn't stabilized by 10 or 11 in the morning, a low thyroid person will often, especially a woman with high estrogen and low progesterone, their temperature and pulse rate might both fall before lunch, or they might have an adrenaline attack and have a shock sensation with a fast, weak pulse.
And so the effect of feeding, you can interpret it the same for lunch or breakfast. So, and how about if the temperature doesn't reach 98.6 or the pulse never gets over 70 in the mid-afternoon? How would you view that? Well, people have their chronic adaptation and some people can stay very well at those average numbers, but on average, people have the greatest ability to resist stress and recuperate from injury if their temperature is a little above average and their pulse rate is a little above average.
So your health can be very good for most of your life, but you will have more resilience if your metabolic rate is higher. Okay, well, that was my last question. If the temperature is higher than 98.6 in the afternoon and the pulse is over 100. The brain and the immune system, for example, the optimum temperature seems to be around 101, maybe even a little higher. And I've also mentioned you, I've also remember you mentioning that the immune system is less than,
if you want to say the immune system as an organism functioning at 100% being optimal, if your temperature doesn't reach 98.6, you are not running at 100% of your immune ability. Probably. And usually you can see some evidence in your blood tests, such as unnecessarily high TSH or other pituitary hormones, indicating that you're driving your endocrine system and immune system unnecessarily hard. When things are running very smoothly on the cellular level, your endocrine system and immune system don't have to do very much. The tissue cells take care of things all by themselves.
Okay, well, we do have another caller, so I want to make sure this caller gets an opportunity to... You're on the air? Hello. Hi, you're on the air. Hi, love the show, which is interesting to me because I have a completely unrelated question, but my mother has thyroid issues and I have temperature issues, so I've been intently paying attention to your discussion. Can I just ask you where you're calling from? It's my first time listening to the show. Can I just ask you where you're calling from, incidentally? I'm sorry to butt in. I'm sorry?
Can I just quickly ask you where you're calling from? Yeah, I'm calling from Redway. Oh, okay, just down the road. Carry on. So I just recently... I've always been a really light sleeper, and I recently became hip to the idea that taking valerian tincture can improve one's ability to relax, fall asleep, and stay asleep through the night. And I've grabbed myself a little bottle down at Chautauqua, and I've been taking it, and I've found that it's really, really helpful. My brother, who also has had problems falling asleep and staying asleep,
has been taking it with me, and we're really-- it's definitely improving our sleeping patterns. And I was just wondering if you know of any possibility of developing a dependence on valerian or if it's counterindicated for any other medications or if you know anything about that being a problem in practice. No. Well, I'll put it this way. I know valerian works on GABA channels, and I'm sure Dr. Peat will know exactly what I'm saying when I mention GABA channels. But here's the thing. Some people-- and it's rare-- but some people get very stimulated by valerian.
The majority of people do find a good benefit from it, and it does shut off that internal dialogue that keeps people awake when they sit and talk to themselves, and especially if people wake in the early hours. But I know Dr. Peat's interpretation of any kind of insomnia would generally be down to high adrenaline or higher than normal adrenaline, keeping people from entering a deep, restful sleep. So, Dr. Peat, what do you think about valerian working on GABA channels and the mechanism behind insomnia? Well, that mechanism is very good.
It's a very safe drug, but I think that using a drug of that sort, it's protective, but it is potentially habit-forming. Besides my own experience when I took thyroid, being able to relax and sleep soundly, on one of my trips talking to doctors and such, I ran into a doctor who looked horrible, said he hadn't slept for three nights. I mentioned my experience with thyroid and gave him 10 micrograms of Cytomel, and the next night at my talk, he pulled me aside before introducing me and said, "That stuff's better than morphine."
Dr. Peat, I don't want to cut you short, but I just want to say that it is very nearly four minutes to the top of the hour. So, unfortunately, I'd want to cut you short here and just thank you very much for being on the radio show, and that will give me plenty of time to tell people how to find you and more about you. So, thanks so much for joining us tonight. Okay, thank you. Okay, so Dr. Raymond Peat has a pretty extensive website with an exhaustive list of researched, scientific-based articles,
fully referenced on many different conditions, disorders, and a lot of what he is espousing is very alternative, but it's very scientifically backed. So, it's not completely made up at all. It's science that's been buried, if you like, and it's not really being listened to too much. But a lot of what he has said has been vindicated very recently. I just want to quickly mention the whole thing about vitamin D in England and the British Medical Journal stating that the saturated fats were now no longer the bad guys
and that the polyunsaturates, which is what Dr. Peat has always said, are actually the cause of inflammation and disease, and they're having a complete rethink on the whole saturated fat thing. Again, with the vitamin D, it's a very good, helpful, protective molecule. So, yeah, Raymond Peat's website is www.raypeat.com. Go check him out. And we can also be reached Monday through Friday during normal business hours. And our toll-free number is, you know I hardly ever use it, it's 1-888-926-4372. We can be reached for consultations any time or for further information during normal business hours.
So, two minutes or thereabouts before the top of the hour, KMUD is the station that you heard this on. It's a great alternative station. It's a beacon in the dark, folks. It's like a red light on a hill. And unless you want to just hear standard radio stations giving standard information out, help support this radio station, folks, because it means a lot. And especially in this very tight-knit community, I would all hope that the people here value it enough to put their hands in their pockets
and give them some money to make sure that we all keep going on into the next year. Anyway, until December, third Friday of December, as always, the third Friday of every month, have a great night. Enjoy this wonderful fall before we get the imminent rain. And thanks so much for listening. [Music] Support for Redwood Community Radio comes from the Emerald Cup. Each entry receives two weekend passes to the event and potency testing. Winner receives a trip to Skunk Magazine's Cannabis Friendly Resort in Jamaica. Top three prizes are hand-blown glass trophies by Darby Holmes.
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