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- Welcome to this evening's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name's Andrew Murray. - My name's Sarah Johanna Sun Murray. - For those of you who perhaps have never listened to the shows, they run every third Friday of the month from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. We have call-in from 7.30 until 8 o'clock. And once again, we have our very special guest speaker who's full of information about current events as well as historically accurate, important past events. So that brings it into context for all of us. You're listening to KMUD Garville 91.1 FM
and from 7.30 until the end of the show, like I said, we're asking callers, call in with any questions either related or related to this month's loose topic on stress, GABA systems, different herbs that combat stress in different ways, mitochondrial support, and Dr. Peat will be bringing his wisdom and his expertise in terms of mitochondrial activity and how that all plays in with the hormones and other substances like thyroid, progesterone, pregnenolone, et cetera, that all support the anti-inflammatory cascade, as it were, that battles the inflammation that most people just constantly under attack with.
We are going through a pledge drive this evening, so sorry for those people who perhaps waited, thinking it was starting at seven. It's just started just now. So it's all good. So without this radio show, this kind of program would not be on the air. So those people that are listening, there is a pledge drive going on. It's basically a supported network of people, volunteers, and donors that keep this radio station independent and make just this kind of show possible because you're not gonna hear too much of what we say
and too much of what other people have to say in their various programmings from regular broadcast. It's not controlled mainstream media, folks. It's the alternative. So please support it wherever and however you can. So like I said, this evening, Dr. Raymond Peat's joining us and hopefully he's with us on the VIP line. Are you there, Dr. Peat? - Yes, hi. - Thanks so much for joining us again and sharing your wisdom and giving your time as freely as you do. I really appreciate it. Thank you. As usual, I think it's always very good
to just outline your professional and academic background. So people who perhaps have never listened to the show, or heard you even before, can hear your background. And I know when they hear you speak, they know you know what you're talking about. But if you can just say a little bit about your background and your past, that'd be great to illuminate. - Okay, after 10 or 15 years of working in language and literature, I have shifted over to biology and especially aging and metabolism reproduction. Studying at the University of Oregon 1968 to '72
for a biology PhD. - Okay, so I know we've heard a lot about you in the past in terms of thyroid, your specialty with thyroid hormone, physiology, explaining the mechanisms by which you have come to see thyroid activity within the body, as well as, like you mentioned, progesterone and pregnenolone and the aging that is one of your specialties. In terms of what we're gonna get into this evening with a loose connection to the topic of mitochondria and their job in the body, what they do, how they operate, what things decrease their activity,
and how they are slowly deactivated and the substances that deactivate them over time with aging. I think, can I just start with GABA. There's a compound called GABA, it's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. And I know there's some herbs that I'd like to link that to as we get on with this discussion about things that stimulate the nervous system, things that help it to relax, and what that relaxation is as opposed to the excitotoxic effect of stress. So in terms of GABA, what do you wanna say, Sarah? - Well, I just wanted to ask Dr. Peat
if you can explain simply what the mitochondria is in the cell and the power. I've been told it's the powerhouse of the cell. And can you please explain that to our listeners in case people might not know what mitochondria is? - That's a good enough definition, I think, but there's a very stereotyped textbook-y definition of it that it consists of a certain kind of membrane and special enzymes and some DNA separate from the nucleus. And it handles various functions other than energy production, but steroid synthesis is one of its very important functions.
It converts cholesterol to pregnenolone, progesterone, and those turn into all of the steroid hormones. - So is that why people, when they age, their cholesterol goes up because their mitochondria isn't as efficient in converting the cholesterol into those hormones? - Yeah, and thyroid is the main hormone that activates the oxidative metabolism of the mitochondrion. And so if your thyroid is low, the mitochondria don't pull in the cholesterol and turn it to pregnenolone. And the other cofactor working with thyroid happens to be vitamin A. And that protein in the blood carries thyroid
and vitamin A on a single protein and delivers it to the mitochondria over there like a factory with a conveyor belt bringing in the raw materials and the catalysts. - And that's how they make the hormones because the cholesterol plus the vitamin A makes progesterone and- - Yeah, the vitamin A is involved in steroid formation in not only the gonads and the adrenals, but also in the brain and the skin. The skin and the brain are major steroid endocrine glands. - So every cell in our body has a mitochondria
and does its job in that particular part of the body. But if you don't have adequate thyroid, then you won't be getting adequate oxygen into that mitochondria and basic energy production of that cell and cellular function will be decreased. - Yeah, red blood cells don't have mitochondria. They depend on sugar for their energy, glucose. - Okay, just quickly getting onto, I just caught on what you said. I know in the past you've always mentioned it and I think people who perhaps have heard you speak and have listened to you would begin to understand
that the physiological explanations of membranes is pretty flawed. When I was studying- - That includes the textbook definition of what a mitochondrion is and how it works. They use a membrane and what they call the chemiosmotic hypothesis. - Okay. - And the membrane has to have certain kind of metaphysical, physical properties. And if you look at a real cell oxidizing, it turns out that the outer surface of the cell has mitochondrial-like properties. The same enzyme reactions using oxygen and consuming electrons happens right at the surface of the cell as well as in the mitochondrion.
- So the whole supposition that the membrane is a cohesive barrier and it's not fluid, it's not dynamic, it's very much a skin, which is the way I always understood, was told to understand membranes. - And with channels. - And with channels and pumps and all the rest of it. - And what about all the organelles? Is that completely bogus as well? - They are suspected to be artifacts of fixation largely, but things are differentiated. But when you kill them and take out the water and harden them and slice them,
things don't look the way they did when they were alive. - So is there no way they can look at the cell while it's alive? - Yeah. People have done an atlas of the brain, for example, slicing the brain and freezing it and making pictures and then doing the standard fixation where you get a nice sharp image. Their size is tremendously different. The internal structure, of course, is different too. - Well, don't the fixatives change the structure as well though? - Yeah. Harold Hillman is probably the person most famous for challenging conventional biology,
saying that everything is an artifact of fixation. - What about the live microscopy? - Yeah, where you use a fluorescent stain, for example. You can see very amazing things, things swirling around and doing things that are fairly parallel to the theoretical descriptions, but sometimes the structures seem to be more like a whirlwind than an organelle. In the 1940s, when radioactive isotopes became available, the whole idea of the barrier membrane was eliminated. Gilbert Ling reviews the history of that, but there is no barrier to sodium, for example. It just slips in and out of the cell.
- 'Cause I was always taught about the sodium potassium ATP eggs which needed a molecule of ATP to pump in and pump out a molecule of sodium and potassium in return. - Yeah, but if you take a hair which is perfectly dead and wash out the minerals and then dip it in blood serum or plasma, you get the same unequal distribution of the minerals, potassium inside and sodium outside. And it's exactly the same principle as a water softener where you charge it with sodium and then it removes calcium from the hard water.
A man named Meiselt wrote a book on things including the physics of water softeners and he recognized Gilbert Ling's work in biology as the best explanation for how a water softener works. The physics was so good in describing cells that even physicists recognized that it worked for something as common as a water softener. But biologists just don't like that way of looking at cells. It tends to leave out a lot of their favorite beliefs about genes and so on. - Is that where the word Meiselt was coined from? - No. - No, okay.
- Just a funny coincidence. - All right, you're listening to Ask Your Obdoctor, K. E. Meadie Galbraith, 91.1 FM. From 7.30 to the end of the show, eight o'clock, you're invited to call in with questions related or unrelated to this month's topic of mitochondria, energy production, and we're gonna cover things like valerian and rhodiola, schizandra and ginseng as typical herbs that have plenty of scientific data and pharmacological data to support their effects in supporting mitochondria and in energy production and mediating the negative effects of stress. A number if you live in the area is 923-3911.
If you're outside of the area, there's a toll-free number, which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD. Those people listening to us on the web, that toll-free number's a good number to call. If you have any questions, either related or unrelated, and Dr. Peat is joining us again this month. We are going through a pledge drive, folks. Those people who perhaps have just tuned in, K. E. Meadie Galbraith, 91.1, conducting one of our several pledge drives that go on through the year to raise finances to keep this great show on the air
and to keep other shows on the air, not just this one. I didn't mean this great show, but great shows on the air. - This great station. - Yeah, this great station that actually brings out a lot of very alternative information to people that's not mainstream. You probably won't find this kind of stuff too many other places, so keep it alive because it's rapidly disappearing in this country. Okay, so Dr. Peat, you mentioned that there was a single protein which carries vitamin A and cholesterol. If you know the name of the protein, great,
but otherwise, do you know if there's anything that would be supportive to that protein? That seems like a fairly key intermediary in that process. - It's the low-density lipoprotein that delivers cholesterol and then prealbumin or transthyretin, which transports the thyroid and vitamin A. - Which is why it'd be so dangerous to have a low LDL, which is what most doctors call the bad cholesterol. - It's a good one because it brings us stuff to make progesterone out of. - Okay, good, so people, did you get that?
Once again, it's just another call to arms, as it were, that cholesterol is not the enemy. So the LDL cholesterol, which is always coined as the bad cholesterol, is actually the cholesterol that chaperones these very important molecules to enable things like steroid synthesis to occur. So without cholesterol, you'd be in bad shape. Another fact, I think, I just, I coined, I heard this coined not too long ago, was that the brain's white matter is 95% cholesterol. So if cholesterol's not important, then why is the brain 95% cholesterol?
- Well, that's why they did that study in older people who had low cholesterol were much more prone to dementia. - And Dr. Peat, just to let people know, again, you always advocate a cholesterol should be between 180 and 200, that's quite healthy, and also after 50 years of age, you should be slightly over 200. - Yeah, according to the Framingham study, people over 50 who weren't above 200 in their cholesterol were more likely to have dementia. - Yeah, okay. All right, so let's move on to some of those things
that have been written about and recorded, and pharmacology's been provided, and scientific background's been explained for the action of, but I know that you probably have some other ways of tying in what perhaps we were taught when we were studying how these things worked. So perhaps filarium root is one of those herbs that a lot of people would have used, would have heard about, and have tried, and certainly would have gotten benefits for either insomnia or anxiety as a mild sedative. And I was always told that its main attribute
was that it provided GABA and prevented the breakdown, so the valeranic acid was actually responsible for inhibiting the breakdown of GABA as well. What do you know about GABA as a neurotransmitter, and how do you feel about valerian's use being warranted, given what I've said? - I think valerian also increases the activity of the enzyme that converts the excitatory glutamic acid into the inhibitory GABA, so it does just about everything needed to protect the brain, increasing GABA, and the effect of GABA. And GABA is, the system called the GABA receptor
is probably the most complex bunch of proteins that has the name receptor. Many different things affect it in different ways. Valerian, or valium, the specific molecule, apparently binds to it in a way similar to GABA, and in a slightly different way than progesterone, pregnenolone, and probably the androgens of some types. And even carbon dioxide probably is involved in binding in some way near this so-called receptor, stabilizing a whole system of proteins to turn off the excitatory process in the cell. - Yeah, it's a very excitation. I think when people hear the word,
we need to support its definition. Excitatory is a very wasteful situation or state to be in, isn't it? When in terms of the cell being excited, I think for very short-term activity, that's not a problem, but the excitation in general when it's longer term is actually very detrimental to the cell. - Yeah, that's what causes brain fatigue if you stay awake too long. And if you don't have a good supply of glucose producing carbon dioxide, for example, you more quickly get into the fatigued state. Glucose, one of its functions is actually
to substantially contribute to the formation of GABA, the part of glucose molecule is involved in the synthesis, but also the carbon dioxide stabilizes it. And when the glutamic acid is converted into GABA, it also releases carbon dioxide that helps with the inhibitory process. So oxidative metabolism in the brain is doing many things, producing GABA and progesterone, pregnenolone, carbon dioxide, and keeping down the excitatory things, lactic acid, nitric oxide, glucamic acid, pneumonia, for example. - Well, it's estimated that 10% of people respond to valerian in the opposite way that you would want them to,
and they actually get excited from taking valerian, almost like cats do when they get around it. Can you possibly explain why that might be happening? - No, not at all. - Yeah, 'cause there are some people that definitely give feedback of, oh, it woke me up, it didn't help me sleep and relax, actually it had the opposite effect. - Yeah, it stimulated me, it made me feel jittery. - Anyway, it's not a big deal. Okay, so I wanted also to bring out that St. John's wort is another herb
that's posited to be a reuptake inhibitor of GABA, and that compound was shown to be hyperforin, which was one of the actives that are sometimes standardized in terms of making a standardized extract of St. John's. And then I also found some evidence here to show that lemon balm was shown to be a GABA transaminase inhibitor, so that is it blocks the enzyme GABA transaminase, which converts GABA to a compound called succinic semialdehyde and glutamate. So all of these reactions are reversible for very obvious reasons, and the body obviously has a very fine tune
in order to keep this whole homeostasis running properly and preventing over-excitation and over-restfulness, somnambulance almost in some ways. I did read the article on mitochondrial disease. There's a known syndrome of it, and one of its main downsides, obviously it's a complete downside having a syndrome, but one of the main downsides is the kind of somnambulance that you get with it where people just either getting seizures and just being completely unable to perform. - In terms of keeping that balance between the GABA-ergic side of keeping things stable and calm, are we even to think of that
as being the optimum state and that actually it's like thyroid where thyroid itself is not at all a stimulant, it actually helps you relax, helps the cell repolarize and re-energize its resting potential? - I call that the high-energy resting state in which the cells all through the body, especially in the brain, have so much energy that they're ready to do anything. But when you get very fatigued, they lack the energy needed to replenish that work-ready condition, and so they are in sort of a hypersensitive state. A agitated condition. Their voltage, so-called resting voltage,
goes very low and they stay in a more or less constantly excited but unable to work condition. And magnesium is one of the things that helps to restore the relaxed state. Thyroid helps you to retain magnesium. Magnesium stabilizes the high-energy ATP molecule, and without thyroid you can't make that very quickly. And so if you have adequate thyroid-producing oxidative energy and producing ATP, that causes the cell to retain magnesium, and that complex of things holds the cell in a ready-to-work state with lots of reserve energy. Simply a magnesium deficiency will cause seizures, insomnia, inflammation,
everything that a lack of energy leads to. - So do you think then it's very important to, and I'm saying this because I understand that this is the way, but just for our listeners, to have small amounts of sugars, foods regularly so that your body's energy supply is constantly stocked rather than going four, six hours or more without food and then having a loaded meal in terms of keeping mitochondria as happy as possible rather than allowing them to get depleted to a point where they're no longer really able
to bounce back or for you to be able to pick up again relatively quickly? - And the B vitamins are essential for using oxygen efficiently in the mitochondria. - Okay. - Vitamin B1, biotin B2. - Okay, all right. So what about melatonin? Let's move on to melatonin as a substance that I've read quite a few articles, some of which have been very disturbing, I must admit, and we'll get into that in a little bit, but I know most of the advertising for melatonin is very pro-sleeping, pro-relaxing. They don't say anything dangerous about it.
It's naturally produced. It is found in different products from foods, liquids and foodstuffs. So it's a fairly ubiquitous chemical. It obviously has a very specific function. It really does work physiologically and it's very important, but what's your impression of melatonin in terms of its use and whether or not you feel comfortable around it? - Well, I think the good side of it is that in the fatigued state of the brain, the excitatory de-energized condition, nitric oxide rises and starts a vicious circle in which it activates acetylcholine, which activates nitric oxide synthesis
and it rises and can keep you awake. And melatonin is effective at turning off that cycle. So when your brain is in a bad, fatigued state, melatonin can protect it by getting down the nitric oxide and excitation. - But wouldn't that be like in a small dose or is it different for every patient? - Yeah, one publication refers to the physiological dose, which would be equivalent in an average sized adult to five micrograms per body. An ultra small amount would replenish your whole body. Others have measured it as up to maybe two or three
milligrams in the whole body as a physiological concentration. So when a person takes 10 milligrams for sure, it will put them to sleep, but it probably is doing lots of other things. And in the antioxidant experiments or the radiation protection experiments, they've used something like a thousand or maybe a million times the concentration that exists physiologically. So it can do amazing things like protect you against gamma rays. But if you do that more than during or shortly after the exposure, the outcome might have unexpected consequences. It was only in the later 1990s
when the material became very cheap and widely sold that all of this amazing stuff about being a little anti-cancer, anti-stress, anti-inflammatory, issue protecting against everything, all of these studies came out by the thousands. But when I was in graduate school, it wasn't even certain that melatonin was the main pineal hormone. And what was known was that the pineal extract had very specific effects that imitated nighttime and winter. And in the winter, all animals from fish, turtles, lizards, rats, sheep, and so on, everyone's reproductive system shrinks away during the winter.
Some species can manage to reproduce in the winter, but in general, it's a principle that not only the gonads regress, but the thymus gland regresses in all of these different types of animals. And the thymus atroviar involution during the winter strongly affects the way the immune system works. And that's part of why people are more susceptible to infections during the winter. And this involution of both the reproductive glands and the immune thymus gland, this has lots of behavioral consequences. Everyone knows about the seasonal affective disorder or winter sickness in which depression
and weight gain become so common during the winter, long nights. And melatonin is the main thing that causes involution of the thymus gland and gonads. The original studies were done with extracts of the pineal gland, but you get effectively the same thing just with melatonin. - So what about different parts of the world? You know, like if someone was in Hawaii. - Yep, the seasonal changes don't exist near the equator. - So their thymus and... - Yeah, you don't have the winter sickness or winter immune disturbance. - Okay, you're listening to Ask Your Obloxer,
KMUD Galbraith 91.1 FM. From now to later clock, callers are invited to call in questions either related to what we've been talking about so far from GABA to melatonin, to the various mitochondrial issues. Number here is 391, sorry, 923-3911, or 1-800-KMUD-RAD. That's 1-800-568-3723. Okay, Dr. Peat, I had some articles that I was reading this afternoon whilst putting this together to see if this was gonna be something that we were gonna be supporting or helping people discourage the use of, 'cause I know melatonin's use along with serotonin is very popular, but not always a good thing.
I did read the papers, and again, there was conflicting information on PubMed. Some of the information was saying, for example, that melatonin suppresses tumor aerobic metabolism, which is the kind of Warburg effect that Otto Warburg described. And some of them said that melatonin was actually pro-cancerous. How do you see that? - Some of that varies with the variety of mouse that they're using, for example. In some studies, they've implanted an extra pineal gland or used melatonin. Sometimes it decreases tumors. Sometimes it increases them. The effect on the immune system partly depends on the dose.
And when you're using a thousand-fold variation in doses, that's the first thing you have to think of. What's actually happening physiologically in the normal range? A lot of studies are getting anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, but at least two groups, one in China and one in Denver, are seeing very clear pro-inflammatory effects from physiological amounts of melatonin. - There you go. Okay, so-- - It doesn't seem like you'd want to be taking something that triggers the wintertime response. - That's what I've always thought. In our hamster lab, we noticed that even though the lab was supposedly
well-insulated and temperature-controlled and had a 12-hour light and dark cycle, the hamsters during the winter had essentially no thymus gland. That was one of the things that started me thinking about the potential risk of changing your whole endocrine system by supplementing something like that. - Okay, we have a caller on the air, so let's take this first caller here. See, caller, where are you from? You're on the air? You're on the air? I think your engine is waving around. I'm not too sure what's going on.
We have a caller on the air, though, but go ahead. Yeah, I think-- - Caller, you're on. You can speak up. - Okay, so someone needs to find out how to get that going 'cause we do have a caller, but they're not coming through at the moment, so. Okay, well, until we get this caller back, let's just ask you about the, I think you did mention this early on, but just to reiterate, again, I had read some information about melatonin potentially helping in radiation oncology treatments where people get radiotherapy.
What do you think about that in terms of its negative effects that we've heard about? Actually, let's hold it there before we go any further. Let's take this caller whilst they're on the air. Let's take 'em, where are you from, caller? Okay, we're getting messed around here. Might be something to do with the pledge drive and all the calls coming in to pour money into the studio to keep us going. Okay, so Dr. Peat, what do you think about the use of melatonin in radiotherapy, perhaps? - If you're bound to have the radiation,
I think that the very large doses of melatonin are probably very protective against that damaging effect. The trouble with using it for treating tumors is that you can kill off all of the actual bulk cells of the tumor, which are really defective and weak cancer cells that are in the normal tumor. They're being replaced very quickly. And when you kill them off, you irritate the region where the tumor was and stimulate that region's ability to recruit new repair cells. And those cells zoom into the irradiated area and recreate the tumor,
because you haven't cured the organism's problem. - Because it is a very, and I'll just say the last word on melatonin. The only reason I was asking for its use in radiotherapy was that it's potently antioxidant. And like you said, potentially for what it is and what it's capable of structurally, it's very good at mopping up free radical damage causing compounds. So I think that was some of the reason for the research that was done on it. Okay, well, let's move on to, I've got a few other things I wanted to ask you about.
And I know you know, as usual, you know plenty about it. I didn't even know that you had looked at it, but I know I'd spoken to you a while back here and you'd mentioned what you had known. So Rhodiola rosea is a crassula, so that kind of a fleshy, thick, fleshy-leaved succulent type of plant. I didn't realize that it's actually been used for about 3,500 years. It was first mentioned 13th century BC and in the Greek Bronze Age. And then there was documentation, plenty of documentation about the Vikings
using it to enhance physical strength and endurance. And then obviously lots of Chinese data about the emperor sending expeditions to Siberia to bring back this golden root, which is its common name for medical preparations. And then I know we talked about adaptogens in the past, but this is another one of those kind of golden adaptogens that was discovered in '47, the term adaptogen by the Russian scientist Nikolai Lazarev, who coined that fact. And then Dr. Lazarev was also a mentor of Dr. Breckman, who conducted extensive research on adaptogenic herbs.
So Rhodiola rosea, in terms of it being an adaptogen, being a physical enhancement, a cognitive enhancer, anti-cancer. Do you know much about Rhodiola and perhaps how you'd see that being supportive in terms of mitochondrial protection or anti-stress? - Yeah, I happen to be studying the progesterone family of steroids around the same time I was running into ginseng and Rhodiola research. And Hans Selye had the concept of catotoxic steroids, he called them. - Catotoxic? - Catotoxic, they destroyed the toxin effect. And it isn't exactly the same as detoxifying, but they protect the organism
by blocking the effect of a toxin. And I think that's one of the effects of the adaptogens. They have some steroids that are analogous to progesterone and testosterone in that catotoxic or stress-blocking effect. And a Russian heart researcher, Felix Meerson, was continuing Hans Selye's concept of stress and adapting to stress and applying it on the mitochondrial level, which Hans Selye never really focused very much on. But Meerson's idea was that we have many layers of stress-limiting signals and hormones and processes and it happens that the steroids are one major stress-limiting system
where cortisol and serotonin and nitric oxide and estrogen activate the short-term stress reactions that can stimulate brief defense. If those continue, they destroy the organism. So you need a stress-ending process. And that's where the progesterone, testosterone, pregnenolone come in and things that turn off the nitric oxide and serotonin and estrogen. And it happens that these plants not only have the steroid level of stress-limiting factors, but many other types of substances, the polyphenols and flavonoids, for example, specifically turn off nitric oxide production and limit the excitatory serotonin pathway, for example, which turns on cortisol.
- I want to ask you about that in relation to red compounds too, but we do have a caller on the air. - Let's try again. Caller, you're on the airwave, on third time lucky. - San Francisco, California. - San Francisco, California. Welcome to the show. What's your question for Dr. Peat? - Hi, Dr. Peat. I wanted to know what causes tooth decay and how do you reverse it? - What causes what? - Tooth decay. - Tooth decay. - Oh, I think it's stress-related. There is one type of cavity that starts with a dark area,
or just, I think the stress one starts with a white area rather than the usual dark area, and it comes on very fast with the mobilization of calcium from the dentine under the influence of stress. Another kind is related to stress starting from the outside with the mobilization of calcium because of imbalances and pro-inflammatory factors in the saliva. So the basic thing is to keep your energy up and stress low so that you don't have either harmful saliva or an internal anti-calcium system. And vitamin D and vitamin K
are very important for putting calcium into the, keeping it in the heart tissue. Serotonin, in the last three or four years, has been found to be a major calcium disruptor in the bones and teeth as well. So it's really a matter of your total systemic health more than just what happens in your mouth. - Wow, thank you very much. - Thank you for your caller, caller. Okay, well, I guess we have time. If it's eight minutes to eight, let's just see. We'll let people know anyway. Otherwise, we'll carry on here for the next eight minutes.
But if you're in the area, the number's 923-3911. Or if you're outside the area, there's a toll-free number, 1-800-KMUDRAD, or 1-800-568-3723. So we've got about five minutes or so before we need to wrap up. - So Dr. Peat, I wanted to ask you about hypericin, you know, the red oil from St. John's Wort that you can make. I remember you saying something to me about red compounds are very antioxidant and protective. - Yeah, that is a big polycyclic molecule that the reason it's red is that it is,
the electrons resonate and absorb a lot of light. And that makes it analogous to the molecules such as in cascara, imodin, or in aloe, and in the tetracycline antibiotics, and the tricyclic antidepressant, antiserotonin, antihistamine agent. - How about Pau d'Arco? There's a dark root and Catawaba bark is a-- - Yeah, exactly that same type of polycyclic molecule. I think it's analogous to the stabilizing multi-ring steroid molecules. They have a kind of geometric stabilizing action on the microstructure of the cell, as well as the electronic withdrawing effect.
When a cell is stressed and its voltage goes down, the local electrons, in effect, are concentrated. They become very active and reduce or attack molecules that they shouldn't be acting on. When you don't have enough oxygen, you get loose electrons that cause mischief all through the cell. - That's what we term free radical reaction? - Yeah. - Okay, now, Eubiquinone is another one of those structural molecules, similar to the structures that are formed by the compounds that give those dark red pigments. Eubiquinone, and then I was gonna ask you about Bio-PQ-Q,
which seems to be the latest kid on the block in terms of the most potent antioxidant and mitochondrial stimulator going. It's kind of another form of Eubiquinone. - Yeah, I'm not sure how important it is to have the most potent antioxidant. - Well, in marketing, it's very important, but that's-- - The vitamin K happens to stabilize Eubiquinone. And all of these things work in a system. So when you're using vitamin C, it is in an oxidized form that keeps vitamin E in the right condition, and these and progesterone
keep Eubiquinone and vitamin K in the right system. It's a much more organized system on the small molecule level than the big molecule people usually recognize. - Okay, all right, so B vitamins, very quickly here. In terms of mitochondria, I know we've mentioned here CoQ10, Eubiquinone, and BioPQQ, if people want to take a look at that and whatever research. - Doesn't CoQ10 stabilize the vitamin K? - Yeah, that's right. - They work together with the mitochondria. - So the B vitamins are also very important in terms of electronic stability.
- Yeah, keeping the cell pretty free of lactate, because lactate represents the shift towards loose electrons that get in trouble. - Right, okay, and then-- - Buffalo liver pate. (laughing) For your B vitamins. - We do like buffalo liver pate, by the way. And then the antioxidants, obviously, things like vitamin C and vitamin E. We've already mentioned those in plenty of different instances where they're important. Well, Dr. Peat, thank you so much for joining us. I know we didn't get, we got one caller. I think it probably, I'm not too sure why.
Sometimes it's lots, sometimes it's not many, but anyway, I know the show's gonna get listened to on the web and on the audio archives, and I know lots of people call me later. I get several weeks or months, even, people telling me how they listen to this and that show. So it's recorded there for future history, as long as our species exists, put it that way. So thanks so much for your time, Dr. Peat. - Okay, thank you. - Thank you, good night. - Okay, so for those people who've found the show
this evening for the first time, Dr. Raymond Peat has got a wealth of information on his website, that is www.raypeat.com. Plenty of scholarly articles, fully referenced. He's always writing articles, so usually every month he produces a newsletter. I'm not too sure how subscription to that's going. I think at one point he stopped it 'cause it was getting out of control, but I'm not too, people should definitely ask him if it's still available, though don't take my word for it. I think things may have improved a little, but I know he's a very busy person, so.
- Just check his website. - Yeah, just check his website. Okay, and we can also be reached toll free, 1-888-WBMER, Monday through Friday, nine to five. And my name's Andrew Murray, until the third of, the third Friday of next month. Have a good night. - My name's Sarah Johanneson Murray, and good night. And before, I wanna make sure that we gave Ray Peat's email, I mean, website, www.raypeat.com. And our website is www.westernbotanicalmedicine.com. Thank you for listening. Thank you.