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Well, welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name's Andrew Murray. My name's Sarah Johannison Murray. For those of you who perhaps have never listened to our shows, which run every third Friday of the month from 7 till 8 PM, we're both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine. We've run a clinic in Garverville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions and recommend herbal medicines and dietary advice.
To continue, the last two months, we've been talking about the role of good sugars and bad sugars. Excuse me. And again this month, I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr. Ray Peat who's going to expose the risk of endotoxin and dietary effects that influence endotoxin production. There's a lot of research now to show that endotoxin is associated with many inflammatory diseases that you wouldn't normally associate with food. So, the adage "You are what you eat" is very true. And perhaps we should say that you suffer as a result of what you eat.
So, we're excited to have Dr. Ray Peat with us again this month and we'll be hearing from him on this scientific-based approach to endotoxin. Now, you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KNUD Garverville 91.1 FM and from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's topic. The number here if you live in the area is 923 3911 or if you live outside the area, the toll-free number is 1-800-KMUD-RAD. So, Dr. Peat, are you with us? Yes.
Hi. Thank you so much for joining. As always, new people can be listening who perhaps have never heard you before. So, would you please just give an outline of your expertise? I'm studying hormones and nutrition mostly. I got my PhD in physiology with a biochemical orientation concentrating on reproductive aging and that was when I got interested in the interactions of estrogen, oxygen, unsaturated fatty acids and the toxic interactions of some of our natural materials with environmental materials and processes. Okay. So, to talk about this month, the role of endotoxin, would you just describe endotoxin?
Its chemical name is lipopolysaccharide and there are several kinds of bacteria that make similar things but it's a combination of a starch-like molecule with some fatty acids attached to it and it's so widely distributed that all animals have a system for reacting to it and defending themselves against it and it seems to be partly a bacterial defense against the bacteria's environment and so there's an evolved back and forth relationship between animals and the bacteria and it's a matter of things getting out of balance that causes the endotoxin to be a problem.
Okay. So, I hear of many foods that promote this production. Would you be able to list some specific foods that people should be thinking about before they consume them given that we're going to open up the negative effects of endotoxin? Mostly, it seems to be things that are poorly digested that pass along with a lot of food value down into the intestine where bacteria thrive on them. Things like fruit are so quickly digested by most people.
The liquid parts, minerals and sugars can be largely absorbed before you get down to the bacterial area of the intestine and so the more indigestible the food is, the more risky it is for supporting an overgrowth of bacteria and if your digestion happens to be poor, then more foods will pass along and become bacteria food. Indigestible fibrous materials, types of starch that can't be broken down by animal enzymes or human enzymes become good food for bacteria and many of these are being promoted for intestinal health to stimulate the peristalsis and so on.
About 30 years ago, some Australian studies saw that people who ate a lot of oat bran actually were increasing their risk for bowel cancer. Certain types of fiber cause such intense growth of bacteria that the bacteria produce many types of toxins, not just the fragment of the bacterial coat that's known as endotoxin, but they can produce modified proteins, modified fats and so on from indigestible food. So endotoxin is just one kind of universal toxin that everyone has some basic defenses against it
while there are other types of toxins that are more specifically influenced by your diet. So when people say, "Oh, I can't have a normal bowel movement if I don't eat lots of fiber in my diet." Well, there are some very safe fibers that come from plants that have their own defenses against bacteria and fungi. Raw carrots, for example, if you've noticed that many vegetables will spoil in the refrigerator while carrots still seem to be completely clean and unattacked by bacteria or molds. That's because there are chemicals that are defensive for those plants.
When we eat them, they remain like antibiotics all the way through our intestines, so they are very hard for bacteria to grow on. And in that way, they also provide a good roughage that doesn't get broken down by bacteria. Yeah, and it can also bind some of the toxins produced by bacteria so that rather than increasing the amount produced, it can actually bind it and carry it out, subtracting toxins. It's almost like the activated charcoal that's used for detoxifying ingested chemicals. Carrots are a natural way of doing that.
And when people say, "Oh, if I eat a good green salad, then I have a wonderful bowel movement," is that because the bacteria are stimulating, actually stimulating the peristalsis because we don't have cellulose-digesting enzymes and it's actually relying on the bacteria to ferment and digest the cellulose? Yeah, some people get terribly constipated when they eat raw vegetables. Other people, it's enough irritation to stimulate the intestine. There are doctors for a long time who have warned against using stimulant laxatives, but when they recommend eating vegetables, it's really primarily a stimulant action
produced by irritating substances either in the vegetable itself or produced by the bacterial growth. If you've ever left a head of lettuce in a closed container at room temperature, you know how quickly lettuce can decompose compared to a carrot. Lettuce is very good bacterial food, so it can become very toxic if you happen to catch the wrong bacteria. So the last couple of months we've spent time talking about the different types of sugars, the good sugars versus the bad sugars. I don't really like to use that good and bad description,
but you've been describing, Dr. Peat, the health benefits of an easily digested sugar, one that gets digested in the stomach and very high up in the intestinal tract, thereby not providing any food for bacteria further down. These are mainly fruits and honey, soft, ripe, juicy fruits and honey, and even white sugar is pretty rapidly absorbed. And the lactose in milk is another good sugar. And lactose in milk. And those are all things that our human digestive tracts can absorb quickly and efficiently without having to rely on bacterial degradation.
They also have a defensive effect against the products of the bacteria, so that once you are poisoned by the endotoxin, the sugars protect by decreasing the inflammation reaction to them. So if you ate starches for dinner tonight, then tonight before bed, some good sugars will help protect against some of the endotoxin that could be produced by the bacteria that are digesting the starches. So those are what we call the bad sugars, and they come from more resistant to digestion. The starches are more resistant to digestion and include the breads, the pastas, the cakes, the cookies,
the flours, the grains, the beans, rice, those types of food products that don't get immediately digested in the stomach and then can be digested further on down by the bacteria. Another kind of defensive food is the saturated fat. These are, if you think of soap and its antibacterial effect, the saturated fats are mildly antiseptic. So if you eat butter with your potato, the starch is less likely to become a toxic material for the bacteria because the butter saturated fats will suppress bacterial growth.
So that means mashed potatoes with lots of milk and butter can protect against eating these starches that are a little more resistant to digestion. And cooking them well, if you cook your starches really, really well, like weren't you saying, Dr. Peat, if you boil potatoes for 45 minutes to an hour, that if they're softer, then they'll be digested more easily in your stomach. It's pretty basic when you think of it. You think of grains, they're quite resistant to digestion, and then you think of beautifully ripe papaya or mango,
or right now we have nice soft persimmons in this part of the country. Those are pretty easily digested. I was wondering, Dr. Peat, you don't actually sign up for the belief of the commensal organisms in the gut. Is that right? As far as you understand it, there needn't be gut bacteria. When we were studying it, this is such a doctrine, the commensal organism kind of theory. Everyone's got commensal gut bacteria and you need them. Well, the experiments with germ-free animals, they do find they're actually healthier than the normal germ-infected animals
until if they grow up never exposed to bacteria, they seem very healthy, but then they've never developed their immune defenses, and so when they are exposed, they're extremely susceptible to infection. So if we're going to live in a world with germs, we might as well get used to them. When I was looking at some of the research on endotoxin, and when we were studying for the microbiology lectures, endotoxin was always something associated with E. coli or salmonella or typhoid.
So far as our own normal, we'll say that they exist, but our own commensal, our own gut bacteria, then are in their own right able to be a reasonable threat to us in terms of toxin production if when we eat these foods that you've mentioned are helpful for those bacteria to live on, then the endotoxin production by our own bacteria can be significant. Is that right? Yeah, all the bacteria produce something that can be sickness-inducing. The lactobacillus itself, even though it's unbalanced, probably favorable, the polysaccharide material in its covering can also produce inflammation
and a whole range of pathological reactions. So it's really a matter of balance. So the very cell wall of these bacteria can, in their own right, trigger inflammatory responses. Is that correct? Yeah. And so what about the research that's being done in cancer, in endotoxin in the formation of cancers because of that chronic inflammation that happens with endotoxin being absorbed into the bloodstream and triggering those secondary effects? I think that's a very plausible approach. If you look at practically any degenerative disease, arthritis, gout, dementia, epilepsy, hepatitis,
almost anything is crucially made worse by the endotoxin once you get stressed. Then all of these things are exacerbated by the endotoxin. Now, just describe the word "stress." What do you mean when you say "stressed"? Just a mental stress, for example, that will shift the blood away from your digestive system, out to your legs and arms, the fight or flight reaction. Right, so the adrenaline. Yeah. If that persists or is very intense, the intestine loses its barrier function and bacteria can go right through the membrane,
lightening the intestine into the bloodstream, even passing through the whole intestine out into the abdominal cavity. Before the whole bacteria goes through, a much lower degree of stress will begin letting the endotoxin flow in at an increased rate. So just thinking stressful thoughts will tend to increase your endotoxin absorption. Right, I mean, it's very real. I think most people, when they hear that, stressful thoughts, they probably start chuckling, you know. But it's pretty straightforward. It's cause and effect, and what you're saying about stress is very real physiologically.
So that's why I wanted to bring out the whole endotoxin thing and the diets that promote endotoxin because of the bacteria feeding on, and what you can do to help yourself can be a really very simple way of improving your health. Like sitting down and having a relaxing meal instead of eating on the go. Yeah. And the things that you've done in the last several years contribute to how risky any little stress is. Okay. For example, women who were going to a fertility clinic,
a doctor had a theory that maybe their ovaries were infected, the reason they weren't fertile. He put some of them on a moderate dose of penicillin or other antibiotic, and many of them noticed that their mood and headaches were relieved by the antibiotic. And that got the doctors interested in seeing what was happening to their hormones, and they also became pregnant. But they thought that before they took the antibiotic circulating in their blood, they had a stress level of cortisol and a very high ratio of estrogen to progesterone.
And taking the antibiotic, their cortisol and estrogen decreased and the progesterone increased. And that turns out in that particular study, they didn't determine the mechanism, but they've also seen exactly the same pattern in studies with rats. And I've done the same measurements in women who had those syndromes, PMS and infertility, and just two or three days of eating a raw carrot salad every day, they had exactly that shift of hormones, increased progesterone, decreased estrogen and cortisol. And the other research shows that endotoxin alone will account for exactly those changes.
You inject an animal with endotoxin and its estrogen, even a male animal, the estrogen will go up maybe five times higher than normal, and the progesterone and testosterone fall sharply. Okay. All right. Well, you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMU Decalberville, 91.1 FM, and from 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock. You're invited to call in with any questions either related or unrelated to this month's topic of endotoxin and its systemic effects and how you can help yourself.
The number here is 923 3911, or if you're outside the area, the toll-free number is 1-800-KMUD-RAD. So, Dr. Peat, in terms of endotoxin production and diet, because I know that you're very keen on the saturated fats and you've got lots of research and there's plenty of information out there to show that the polyunsaturated fats are actually pretty bad for you. How about endotoxin and the PUFA, the polyunsaturated fatty acids? Is there any increased link between the two? Yeah, they do favor the growth of many microorganisms, but they also interact at every stage.
For example, the permeability of the intestine is increased by the polyunsaturated fat. One of the first reactions when the cell senses the endotoxin is to produce nitric oxide. Nitric oxide increases the permeability, leakiness of the intestine. And if your tissues happen to be well-supplied with polyunsaturated fats, the nitric oxide increases the release and amount of pre-fatty acids in circulation. And so the person who has eaten a lot of polyunsaturated fat, once a stress triggers the absorption of endotoxin, then the reaction can be much more intense.
And those same things will trigger the release of serotonin and increase all of the inflammatory mediators. And the environment of increased estrogen, decreased progesterone, and testosterone will continue that like a cascade of bad effects. So just to describe for some of our listeners, estrogen, estrogen, estrogen, is a very inflammatory hormone that's involved in a lot of cancers. It is useful at that level when it's balanced with progesterone, which is an anti-aging hormone. It's a fertility hormone. So if you want to look at it, the estrogen is the bad guy, progesterone is a good guy,
and these bacteria tend to increase the estrogen in relation to the progesterone. And then for the polyunsaturated fats, those consist of fats from mainly seeds, nuts and seeds, almond oil, sunflower oil, safflower, corn, soy, cotton seed, all those liquid oils except olive oil, which is not very polyunsaturated. Olive oil is only 10% polyunsaturated. And the saturated fats are the ones that are antibacterial, so they're antimicrobial, and they will inhibit the bacterial growth in the intestine. And those include butter, coconut oil, palm oil, palm shortening, not the unrefined,
and also some animal fats that are from animals that haven't been eating corn and soy, unless they are beef and lamb, that do eat corn and soy, they have four stomachs, they can process the fats into a saturated fat, whereas chicken fat and pig fat are going to be polyunsaturated because the chickens and the pigs are fed polyunsaturated grains and beans and corn and soy. So that's just to give our listeners a little update there on what we're talking about here with the polyunsaturates and the saturated fats and the different hormones.
Okay. How about the association of cancer with endotoxin production? Every level you look at practically is a promoting effect. There are a few positive effects of endotoxin. Our long exposure to these toxins will build up certain defenses, but beyond that very basic kind of immunity, which includes things like HDL cholesterol, the lipoproteins are defenses against the endotoxins largely. So that's one of the defensive effects of high cholesterol. And the reactions beyond that very simple level of defense are all pro-inflammatory, tend to stimulate development of fibrosis as a sign of deteriorating tissue function,
and fibrosis and atrophy make the tumor harder to get at and more autonomous. The atrophy effect is something that estrogen participates in in many ways. The medical establishment has convinced the public that estrogen has some anabolic protective effects, especially for the bone preventing osteoporosis, but the overall effect of the inflammation produced by endotoxin creates a systemic age-like atrophy of all of the tissues. Osteoporosis, for example, is extremely sensitive to endotoxin. Endotoxin activates all of the factors that stop the bone replacement and accelerate its decomposition,
and it's those atrophic processes that weaken the immune system's ability to remove a cancer once it starts. So atrophy and tumor formation are really very closely connected, and endotoxin is pushing on both of those in an unfavorable way. Yeah, pretty scary, huh? Okay, so there's, like I was wanting to bring out, the whole thing about your food, what you eat and what you shouldn't eat, really should be taken quite seriously, just because it's a very inexpensive way to stay healthy. There's no drugs involved, there's no treatment involved.
You're your own doctor, and the more you take care of yourself in terms of what you put into your body, the better off you're going to be. So just to recap the endotoxin gut bacteria and lipopolysaccharide side of the liberation from the bacteria, and the starches, the offending substances. Sarah, do you want to cover the offending substances? Besides the starches, Dr. Beatman, I've already mentioned the breads, the grains, beans, and flowers, and starchy root crops. Besides those, what other foods will encourage the growth of bacteria that then could subsequently produce endotoxin?
The so-called fibrous materials, a lot of them are being promoted as health foods. Lignin, lignans that are woody materials in many vegetables and grains. And like in flax seeds. Yeah. Generally, those tend to have an estrogen-promoting effect and support the growth of bacteria. As well as have flax seeds also have PUFA, polyunsaturated fat, so those won't be inhibiting the growth of the bacteria like a saturated fat would be. Yeah. That's interesting. I just want to hold it there very quickly with what you mentioned about lignin,
because I was just reminded again that the Dow Chemical Company were actually trying to incorporate lignans into bread, and they were doing some research at a USDA lab to see whether or not these lignans could be a viable starch source to be put in bread. And here, as you've already mentioned, lignans as being one of the other bad foods that could possibly be implicated. I think they've used sawdust for many years. Yeah. The cellulose is probably the safest fiber if it's a clean kind of cellulose. Yeah, no, they were testing it.
I'm friends with one of the scientists at the Food Safety Department of the USDA labs in Albany, and they were testing to see if they could boost the fiber content. And my friend said, "If people are going to eat bread, why can't they just eat whole grain bread? Why do they have to add sawdust into it?" Yeah, as another cautionary warning, I think, to people that are listening, the industry is certainly keen to make sure that there are no byproducts of an industry that are not sold.
So just be aware, there's lots of high fructose corn syrup. It's just one of those examples. If something isn't naturally occurring, don't be surprised if what you're consuming is a byproduct of another industry that you're being told is actually going to be good for you. So it's the whole fish oil thing. And then the paint industry with the flax seed oil, how that suddenly became a food source rather than a paint additive. Okay, well, back to diet and endotoxin. One minute. This is your engineer.
I actually had someone who called up and had a question very much in this line. She had a question about pediatric Crohn's disease and a diet that would be good for that. Okay. Dr. Peat? I think it's good to try raw carrot. It's important how you use the carrot. Just eating a raw carrot is fine. But if you're going to make a salad, it should be, if possible, grated in a longitudinal way so that you have the longer pieces of fibrous material. When you chew it, you'll have pretty elongated fibers.
You don't want to put it in a blender and definitely don't want to use a juicer. The juice isn't protective. And it removes most of the fiber as well. Okay, so that would be a starting point for pediatric Crohn's. And usually having plenty of milk and cheese in the diet is protective. The bacteria that grow on milk are generally the safer type of bacteria. Okay, because when we were studying, I know that Crohn's was lumped together in the inflammatory bowel disorder section of pathology.
Quite a few people respond well to a thyroid supplement because there's usually that typical stress pattern of high cortisol, high estrogen, low progesterone. And thyroid is the hormone that helps to restore the protective hormones and reduce the stress hormones. Okay, so for that caller, certainly addition of carrot fiber in terms of carrot salad and then checking thyroid function, maybe not necessarily against the medical model of blood tests for TSH and T3 and T4, but measure. I know you're a great advocate of the, in fact, it's not yours.
It was something that you said was always done. And up until the 20s or something like that, it was commonly used to diagnose low thyroid. And that was taking the resting pulse and temperature as an indicator of thyroid function before and after meals. So for that person that called, again, thyroid function can be measured by temperature before and after meals. And if anybody wants any more information on that, we'll be happy to send people via email a chart. And they can maintain or measure their temperature and their pulses in relation to food.
This is a very definite pattern to how the temperature should rise and/or the pulse should rise before and after meals. So, yeah, between thyroid function and carrot salad and for that caller. And plenty of milk and cheese. And plenty of milk and cheese. There you go. Right. And again, they're always, I don't know, always maligned as mucus-forming products, but it's not true. So there's another caller on the line. Hi. Hi, you're on the air. I have a couple questions.
One was regarding the carrots not being juiced because I use that a lot for someone who has maybe not cancer. We don't know yet. But any of the cancer diets really call for a lot of vegetable juices and carrot juices as a big one. And so the other thing is, I don't know if you ever heard of the Budwig diet, but Dr. Budwig, a German woman, she had discovered or introduced combining flaxseed oil with cottage cheese, organic of course, and blending them so that they would bond.
And that bond would form -- would help cells form a stronger electrical charge so that they could break away and form new cells and not form cancerous or abnormal cell structure. So one is on the carrot juice and the other is for the flaxseed oil using that. Of course, not the linseed flaxseed oil, but does it change that bacteria when it's combined and bonded with something like cottage cheese? I can take my answer off the air. That's fine. All right. Thank you for your call. So Dr. Peat, carrot juice.
One of the oldest treatments for cancer was enemas. Thousands of years ago, the doctors were recommending regular enemas to treat cancer. And a few hundred years ago, laxatives became a standard feature of cancer treatment as well as many others. And just about 60 years -- 70 years ago, Max Gerson started -- he cured his own migraines with a change of diet. And he was -- in the 20th century, he was the most famous advocate of mostly vegetable diet, but he did use liver. Liver juice was one of his components.
And thyroid, typically a good dose of thyroid was part of his program. And so it was a nutritionally rational program. But he twice in his book, in capital letters, said absolutely no oils. And his followers have changed the book. And I think they were influenced by Johanna Budwig and her flax oil and cottage cheese diet. In 1954, before Budwig had started writing about cancer,
a Mexican professor had an article in Prevention magazine advocating, I think it was a cup of linseed oil per day as a purge in the tradition of getting the intestine as clean as possible. And when you drink that much of a highly unsaturated oil, the unsaturated fatty acids are converted to prostaglandins and cause intense contraction and secretion of the intestine. And so it's a very quick, thorough kind of laxative. But that was changed in Budwig's writing several years later to think of the linseed oil as a nutritional factor rather than as a laxative.
And to the extent that it works as a laxative, it's very, very likely helpful. But the rest of her program was curds, cottage cheese basically. And that's a very soothing, safe diet that happens to be less able to promote endotoxin than other proteins. But I think there are reasons that the vegetables, when you juice them, you get lots of minerals that allow you to assimilate the sugars that are present in leafy and other vegetables. So the Gerson diet and the Budwig diet had some very rational factors.
Basically keeping the intestine clean and keeping the thyroid function up, I think, were the most important. And Dr. Peat, with the carrot juice, can you explain to our listeners why the carrot juice in particular would be lowering your good hormones? Yeah, the carrot is so rich in carotene. When you eat it as a whole vegetable, raw, the fiber keeps you from absorbing almost all of the carotene that passes through you. And when you juice, you get quite a bit of good sugar and minerals, but you also get a tremendous amount of carotene.
And carotene works like unsaturated fats in blocking thyroid function and progesterone function. In the early years of treating thyroid patients, they noticed that infertile women often turned out to have a red spot in the ovary in place of the yellow spot, which is called the corpus luteum. And it was red because such a tremendous amount of carotene had accumulated in it that instead of being yellow, it was a red spot. And that indicates both that the thyroid is unable to convert the cholesterol into progesterone
and that the vitamin A, which should be used in the conversion, is blocked by the carotene accumulating in the tissue. And it's the same with the adrenals. The excess carotene blocks adrenal steroid production. And if you eat a lot of cooked pumpkin and carrots, I know this time of year we're going to be having our pumpkin for Thanksgiving, but if you eat a lot of that all year round, you're going to be absorbing a lot of carotene, and that could be blocking your vitamin A receptors and causing these hormonal imbalances.
If a person has a very vigorous thyroid function and plenty of vitamin B12, they can take care of a lot of carotene. But if you notice that the calluses on your hands and feet are starting to get orange tint to them, that means you've got too much carotene. Okay. All right. There is another caller on the line. So you're on the air? Hi, yes. Is that me? Yes, you are. Hi. I was wondering, I'm 50 and I'm going through menopause,
and I'm having for about the last five months these horrific night sweats where I literally have to get up three or four times in the night and change my sheets and everything. And somebody recommended orange oil. And I wonder what your thoughts were about that and if that is appropriate, and if so, in what way, how does that work? And also, if you could recommend if there's any dietary changes I should make. I'm actually vegetarian. I don't drink. I'm pretty healthy.
Okay. All right. Well, so far as your perspective on that lady's situation, Dr. Peat, would you like to discuss that? I know we've got some certain thoughts on it, but I thought we'd be good to share. The highly unsaturated oils like Borage have some short-range beneficial effects by blocking some of the immune inflammatory reactions. But that ends up as being an immunosuppressive process down the road. And in the long run, it will actually increase inflammatory and stress processes.
And the quickest way to alleviate the night sweats and hot flushes is to increase your sugar intake and your protein intake. The sugar, one of the functions of the sugar is to lower the cortisol and the adrenaline. And if your protein intake is too low, it should be 80 grams of good protein. And among vegetables, it happens that the potato protein is the only one that ranks up with the animal proteins, and it's even better than egg protein. But the milk, for example, and cheese and eggs and potato are the high-quality proteins.
And you should have around 80 grams of good protein per day. And if you don't get enough sugar or starch in your diet, then you're going to use some of your protein for energy. And so that impairs your liver function by starving it for protein. When the liver isn't functioning well, it can't store enough sugar to get you through the night with a steady sugar level. And first, your adrenaline surges to try to get more sugar out of your liver.
When your liver is depleted, then your cortisol rises to turn some of your muscle tissue and the thymus tissue and skin and other things into sugar to keep your sugar up to a survival level during the night. So it's actually the cortisol surges at night that cause the hot flushes. And sugar is the first aid. Sugary and salty foods are a quick relief for that, but it has to be against the background of adequate protein and other nutrients.
I see. And just quickly, you said milk, cheese, eggs, and what was the other one for the protein? Potatoes. Oh, potatoes. Okay. And eight ounces of potatoes contains about eight grams of protein. It's very similar to milk on a weight basis in terms of quality. Eight ounces of milk contains eight grams of protein too. So then, gorge oil actually isn't a good thing for me to take? No. One of the things it does is to inhibit your ability to digest and assimilate protein,
and it also tends to inhibit your thyroid function, which makes your liver less able to get you through the night without sugar depletion. Okay. And then one more quick question. Is agave a good sugar? Yeah, unless it's been overheated. When it's fresh, it's extremely good, but if it's very dark, it's possible that it has become cooked to the point that it's allergenic. It's a matter of how you react to it. I see. I think all of those agave nectars, they have to boil them down to some degree, so they are caramelizing the sugar.
Even if they stay raw, they still have to concentrate them. It's not like honey that's just very, very sweet when raw. So when you boil the sugars down and you don't filter out the caramelized portion, those are allergenic and carcinogenic. Wow. Okay, well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thank you for your call. Okay, I don't think there are any more callers on the line at the moment. Okay, so Dr. Peat, in terms of the endotoxin production by the bacteria that we've been talking about that are feeding on bad foods,
and then the starches and those kinds of grains and those kinds of products, what's your view on increasing gut motility and decreasing the amount of time it takes from the food to leave the body as a means of reducing endotoxin production? Is that viable in your mind? Yeah, eating the right balance at each feeding, some sugar, some protein, and some fat, and having small meals is usually easy on the intestine. Some people feel they have to eat for theoretical nutrition rather than for hunger,
and if you force yourself to eat when you're not hungry, that can lead to stress and sluggishness of your intestine. Okay. I do want to mention some herbs. I know we're getting close to the top of the hour, but cascara is an herb that does increase transit -- decreases transit time, increases intestinal peristalsis, and is a laxative that if it's been aged properly, which research has shown that if it's sun-dried and then aged for one year, the anthroquinones, which are the compounds in the cascara, are safe and effective in not only decreasing transit time,
but also as an antibacterial. And Dr. Peat, tell us about the structure of tetracycline and cascara. There's a series that starts actually with vitamin K. It's a quinone structure that has been studied from about 1910 on as an anti-cancer, anti-viral, energy-promoting, respiration-improving, anti-inflammatory, anti-fibrotic substance. And, for example, vitamin K is now used to strengthen bones, prevent osteoporosis, and prevent calcification of arteries. That's a basic vital function that does that tremendous range of functions. And the imodin in cascara is just one ring -- it's a three-ring substance.
And the tetracycline is a four-ring substance, but they're all quinones that are intensified by adding the extra ring. So from the vitamin K all the way up to tetracycline, it's a similar biological effect, which has this extreme -- it sounds too good to be true to be able to stimulate respiration, be anti-inflammatory, germicidal, anti-cancer, and so on. Well, so in case some of our listeners don't know what tetracycline is, it's a very broad-spectrum, old antibiotic that has now been mostly replaced by doxycycline.
I've had plenty of arguments with doctors saying, "Please prescribe tetracycline to this client or that client," and not doxycycline, which is the new generation tetracycline, which isn't as safe as tetracycline. But nature has a very similar compound in cascara as well as in tababouie, otherwise known as pau d'arco. And that is not only antibacterial, it's also anti-tumor, anti-fungal, antiviral, and antiparasitic. And both of those herbs can be used without having to make them into a tincture.
They're readily water-soluble, or you can just use the -- cascara, the dose is so low, you can just use a pinch of powder as needed. And the tababouie makes quite a nice tea. And, Dr. Peat, you were talking to me about a decoction, a boiled wine and tababouie pau d'arco compound. Can you tell me a little bit more about the doctor who used that? Oh, W.F. Koch was a Michigan chemistry professor who went into medicine. And he was at the University of Michigan at the time Moses Gomberg discovered free radicals.
He created a free radical that was 20 or 30 years before chemists would believe that such a thing existed. But Koch was there at the university and saw the stuff, understood its properties, and started thinking about what that kind of reaction would mean in the body. And he proposed that we have free radicals in the form of quinones in our mitochondria handling energy with creating all of these functions, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antitumor, and so on. And he created a whole range of substances, some more powerful than others.
And began giving them to cancer patients and allergy patients and even infected cows. There was a study in California in which they cured various animal diseases with his so-called anti-cancer reagent. And the famous Albert Szent-Györgyi, who got the Nobel Prize related to respiration and vitamin C research, he based practically his whole career on working out the meaning of Koch's work with the quinones. The vitamin K, ubiquinone, is the substance that came much later to be discovered in the mitochondria.
The government twice tried to put Koch in jail saying that it's inconceivable that people could have free radicals in their cells and that it would be toxic if they did. But then it turned out that exactly the type of chemical, the quinone, that Koch had postulated turned out to be the essence of how human life creates energy. Well, Dr. Peat, I'm sorry for cutting you short. And I know that people are listening would love to hear more of what you have to offer.
Sarah? I know we're running out of time here, but I do want to mention some herbs. And also, especially coming up to this time of the year with Thanksgiving and Christmas and so many people suffering from so many different infections. A lot of times this gets the gut endotoxin, endotoxin from the bacteria that creates the flu like symptoms and the sniffles and the colds that people get this time of year. So stock up on your raw carrot salad and some cascara powder. Tababoui, like I mentioned, Paudarko, another good herb to use is Echinacea.
Also, golden seal, barberry and Oregon grapefruit, those also are antimicrobial if you come down with a nasty bug in your intestine. For people who would like to hear more of Dr. Ray Peat or read his articles, please go to his website www.raypeat.com. Lots of good information. Well, thank you so much for listening and thank you for the callers. We really enjoy doing the show. We're so pleased to hear that people want to ask questions and are into it as well. So that's November. We'll see you in December and the days are getting shorter.
And thank you for your time. And thank you. Thank you, Ray Peat, so much. OK, thanks. Bye. Bye bye. [Music] And support for Redwood Community Radio comes in part from the Security Store, incorporated in the Meadows Business Park in Redway, featuring 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, solutions for your security needs, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, 923-2363. And support for KMUD comes in part from...
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Help us keep free speech alive. Please remember that this program is supported by the listener members of Redwood Community Radio. If you like what you hear, please consider becoming a member of KMUD or renewing if you've already joined. A regular yearly membership is $50, but we accept any amount. Help us keep free speech alive.