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Well, welcome to this month's Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name's Andrew Murray. My name's Sarah Johanneson Murray. For those of you who perhaps have never listened to the shows, they run every third Friday of the month from 7 to late p.m. We're both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England, graduating 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 supplements and nutritional counselling. You're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMED Garboville, 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 subject of antioxidant theory and the continued war on cancer. The number here, if you live in the area, is 923 3911, and there's an 800 number, which is 1-800-568-3723 for those outside the area and also for those people listening on the web. So www.kmed.org, and this show is streaming live, so I think many of our people that come from the Midwest and the East Coast
are probably listening to this on the web. We can be reached, incidentally, toll-free on 1-888-WBM-HERB for consultations or any further information at the end of the show and/or Monday through Friday, 9-5. So I wanted to open up with a little repeat or a paraphrase of some of our previous discussions with Dr. Peat, both in July and in May. So U.S. Vice President Joe Biden addresses the session "Cancer Moonshot, a Call to Action" during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 19, 2016.
Biden, whose son Beau died last year at the age of 46 from brain cancer, has helped fuel Biden's sense of urgency about the project, which was first announced by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address in January. In July's program we discussed your newsletter, Dr. Peat, entitled "100 Years of Cancer Metabolism," which outlined the stark contrast between the objective and scientific inquiry-based approach to disease exemplified by early 20th century biologists like Otto Warburg, Albert Szent-Györgyi, William F. Koch, and the mechanistic, cancercidal approaches of the multibillion-dollar cancer industry,
which has failed spectacularly to find a cure for cancer, and whose funding continues to grow disproportionate to any other industry, whose ability to prove "good" on their research funding would normally cause their exit from the marketplace. It is more a matter of continuing the war and the money generated in cancer's feared diagnosis, which perpetuates the industry. Cures are really not very profitable, nor self-perpetuating. Thus, misled strategies to conquer cancer prevail against the truly objective and scientific discourses of yesteryear, with the emergence of globalistic monopolies with different objectives to truly curing anything,
but continuing to play both sides of the war, not unlike real wars, so waged by corrupt governments and corrupt politicians alike. The free radical theory of aging was conceived by Denham Harmon in the 50s, when a prevailing scientific opinion held that free radicals were too unstable to exist in biological systems. Two sources inspired Harmon. One was the rate-of-living theory, which holds that the lifespan is an inverse function of metabolic rate, which in turn is proportional to oxygen consumption, and to Rebecca Gershman's observation that hyperbaric oxygen toxicity and radiation toxicity
could be explained by the same underlying phenomena, i.e. oxygen-free radicals. Now, Harmon's hypothesis has been seriously challenged by recent studies showing that reactive oxygen species actually evoke metabolic health and longevity, and as for Rebecca Gershman's observation, it's interesting that Joseph Priestley, the English chemist who discovered oxygen in 1774, had questioned whether the gas, which is so essential to life, might also in some way be harmful. Modern research has revealed that oxygen is actually a very toxic material, and that the body has a number of antioxidant defense systems that act continuously
to keep tissue oxygen levels from getting too high. One of the built-in systems that accomplishes this is the enzyme superoxide dismutase discovered by Erwin Fridowicz and Joe McCord in '67. It begets the question why the neurosis in the ICU of most hospitals, if your oxygen saturation is lower than 97%, they poison you with pure oxygen when it's common knowledge that increased CO2 is protective. Like the previous show in May, where Dr. Peake's newsletter explained and explored the societal paranoia versus trust-annoyer, referring to the government's working for our benefit to keep us safe from disease, etc.,
Dr. Peake displayed evidence contrary to this related to cancer therapies ignoring objective science, but rather a creasing to rank order within academia. And now, Dr. Peake, you've uncovered research which shows a different perspective to our previous understanding of antioxidants and how they should actually be referred to as pro-oxidants and how that affects the organism. So thank you so much for joining us again, Dr. Peake. You're welcome. For those people, as always, who may have not listened to our show, would you outline your academic and professional background for those people listening? I appreciate that.
My biology study was at the University of Oregon, 1968 to '72, where I worked on my thesis on reproductive aging and the oxidative metabolic changes that are involved in aging. And at that time, I was really just bringing together information on oxidative metabolism that had been developed over the preceding 50 years. And I thought the situation was ripe for sort of a conclusion. I, at the time, couldn't have imagined that 45 years later, it would have gone backward to the 1890s situation of the government pushing a purely genetic causation of cancer and other diseases.
Now, Harmon's hypothesis would have been relevant at that time. You said in the '50s, the early or mid '50s, you were doing this kind of post-grad work? Yeah, in the 1950s, there were lots of new discoveries. Daniel Mazia and his collaborator Katsuma Dan discovered how the mitotic apparatus works, the controlled cell division, and they found that the reduction of the sulfur groups, sulfhydryls, increased at the time of cell division. And if you look at those as the interface between metabolic energy production and cell growth and differentiation,
it suggests a very direct course to curing the tumor-producing diseases at least and the inflammatory diseases by working on metabolism. The genes are only in the background, don't have any role in therapy actually, except everyone has to have genes. We have to produce proteins and everything else. Okay, we'll get into a little bit later how the gene theory has been totally discredited in a lot of ways in terms of the evidence that we'll bring out in some of these abstracts. But in terms of what interested me when I started reading these abstracts and articles
was that I think a lot of people recognize the term "oxidant" and "antioxidant" probably erroneously and we've always looked at antioxidants as being the things we were necessarily looking for when in fact when they've done autopsies in the brain, they find things like glutathione, which is one of the main antioxidants in the system, is actually not that depleted and so they're looking at other reasons for aging and cell death, etc. How is your current understanding of antioxidants different? Because essentially what I think you're trying to say was that antioxidants really should be termed,
sorry, antioxidants should really be termed "proxidants." Yeah, the ones that are therapeutically useful, such as vitamin E and vitamin C, actually shift the balance inside the cell. Vitamin C is known to be in a very highly oxidized condition, so it isn't really the vitamin C we know. It's a dehydroascorbate when it is inside the healthy cell. And these are maintaining, it's actually a constant flow of electrons, but the balance at every moment is pushed in the direction closer to oxygen and farther from the reducing electrons.
And so if you're deficient in vitamin E and vitamin C and so on, the electrons predominate and shift over to reducing the sulfur groups all through the cell into the sulfhydryl form, promoting inflammation. And if you think about what happens when any kind of injury happens, whether it's a microbe or getting stuck with a thorn or whatever, you disrupt the ability of the organized tissue to deliver oxygen and sugar and other nutrients to the cell. And so the cell in that area is starved, can't oxidize,
and it has an immediate shift over to basically the antioxidant side. The cell has a variety of enzymes that function as antioxidants, but they are only activated during injury or stress. And what happens to the cells in that condition is the sulfhydryls are reduced, the mitotic apparatus is activated, the cells de-differentiate, lose their functions except to grow and divide and move. So they creep into the injured area and multiply to repair the area. And then if the surrounding organism is able to deliver oxygen and sugar and other nutrients,
then they are able to differentiate and finish the healing process. So this whole theory of antioxidant, that we don't want to oxidize things, is really we want the cell to be oxidizing and an injured cell is not using the oxygen. It's actually in an anti-oxygen state. Yeah, and if you get stuck in the antioxidant state, that keeps the healing process from being completed. And that's where cancer is. It's stuck in the inflamed antioxidant state, only able to divide without knowing exactly what it should be doing.
So how can we understand how CoQ10 and naringenin and apigenin are actually working on the inside of the cell? The apigenin and naringenin from like orange peel, marmalade and celery seeds. And apigenin from celery seeds. Those potent antioxidants, as we're told, they're antioxidants, but how are they actually working in the cell? Well, the coenzyme Q10 is now known to fit very specifically in certain places in the mitochondria that deliver electrons to the electron transport system, delivering it ultimately to oxygen to complete the production of ATP and carbon dioxide.
So it plugs right into the oxidative system. So it's actually oxidizing. It's oxidizing everything upstream to deliver those electrons into the oxidizing pigments, which deliver the electrons to oxygen. So it's a necessary link between oxygen and all of the reducing factors. So if you don't have that link, that's one of the essential links that you need to prevent the electrons from going into the growth cell division system. Right, because if they don't have, if the cells don't have enough oxygen,
then they'll start dividing and potentially becoming cancerous if they don't get that oxygen and the oxidizing process happening. Yeah, and where the actual antioxidant function comes in is when you have an oversupply of polyunsaturated fats, for example. When you don't have enough oxygen and go into that inflamed cell division state, the electrons that can't be taken up by oxygen are free to locate on iron atoms, for example. And the iron, when it's reduced, there's always some potential iron. But the older you are, the more free iron there is likely to be in your cells.
The electrons activate the iron, which then attacks any of the polyunsaturated fats in the environment. And that sets up an oxygen-consuming system, which produces nothing of value. The electrons have no place proper to go, so they go to iron, which then gives its electron to the polyunsaturated fat, which becomes a free radical and consumes, reacts directly, then sometimes with oxygen or with more iron. And you get cycles of oxidation without purpose. Right, okay, so you want the oxidation to be in the cell producing carbon dioxide using sugar and oxygen
and the whole proper cellular respiration to be going on, not to where you're in this reduced state where your body, the PUFA, the polyunsaturated fats are so hungry for oxygen and so is the iron, and so those things are oxidizing and not producing. Is that a good way to understand it? Yeah, and in the process of consuming oxygen, they are creating oxygen starvation. And so they're setting up the situation to spread. So it's a very energy-wasteful situation. Yeah, an oxygen-wasting system. Is that because the polyunsaturates will attract the oxygens more strongly than the respiring cell?
Yeah, they become a trap for oxygen. And as they deteriorate, they interact with the iron and proteins and create imitation oxidative enzymes, except as a short circuit directly between NADH and oxygen, by way of the iron and proteins that are condensed in the form of age pigment or lipoflaskin, made up of polyunsaturated fats and parts of the cell which have been destroyed. And so those function as a very powerful oxygen sink, keeping the mitochondria from getting the oxygen they need.
So that's why you don't want to eat fried foods that are fried in liquid vegetable oils, because you're going to create oxygen starvation for your cells that need the oxygen, because the vegetable oil is going to soak it all up. Yeah, and with time, as that process accumulates, for example, small amounts of practically invisible of the age pigment begin accumulating and keeping those cells in a state in which they take up preferentially more of the polyunsaturated fats, if they're available. And so with age, organs like the brain, which are normally very high energy users,
become slowed down and reduced and preferentially concentrate more and more of the highly unsaturated fats, especially DHA, the predominant fat in fish oil, concentrates more and more in the brain with age and makes the brain more and more susceptible to the lipid peroxidation and losing function because the oxygen is being diverted. Yeah, and it's the byproducts of that lipid peroxidation which are themselves very damaging. Yeah, and tends to produce more of the age pigment. So what is cumulative is the catalytic products of the degenerating polyunsaturates and not specifically mutations in the mitochondria,
which the Harmon free radical theory of aging insisted on. Right. Okay, good. Let me hold you there. You're listening to Ask Your Doctor, KMED, Gallivaville, 91.1 FM. We're very pleased to have Dr. Raymond Peat with us exploring the latest concepts in oxidants, antioxidants, cancer theory. The lines will be open from 7.30 to 8 o'clock if callers would like to call in with any questions either related to this month's subject or to other relevant subjects surrounding health. The number here for in the area is 923 3911.
Well, there's an 800 number for those out of state, perhaps 800 568 3723. Dr. Peat, you brought up an interesting point here, Lipofruskin. So I know we've mentioned it many times in the past in reference to fish oils, which unfortunately are still portrayed as being very healthful and is still a very multi-billion dollar industry for certain corporations. Obviously, these things take a long time before they reach the mainstream and people understand that what they're doing for themselves is actually very harmful.
So I was thinking about the link and it's a little bit of a kind of curveball, but the outbreak of Zika, let's just explore. I haven't really prepared. I know you haven't prepared for it, but I know you've normally got a very different perspective at which to approach a problem. So in terms of Zika and the prevalence of microcaffeine, if that indeed is a manifestation of Zika only, I was looking earlier on just at Lipofruskin in general. I came across the term neuronal steroid Lipofruskinosis.
Now, steroid apparently is a product that's produced as a result of the inability to remove Lipofruskin. And there were apparently there are eight types or so they've recognized these types or subtypes, genetically separate neurodegenerative disorders that result, as I said, from the excessive accumulation of the pigment Lipofruskin. Now, with reference, like I said, to steroid, it apparently is formed when a disposal system for Lipofruskin is overloaded. But what caught my attention was that they had eight types and types one, two and three were associated with microcaffeine.
And I know that without bringing up this or changing the subject of this month's show to Zika and the, you know, the political ramifications and or the conspiracy theories about Zika. In terms of microcaffeine in the infantile brain developing in utero with reference to polyunsaturates and the production of Lipofruskin and or the inability to remove the waste producing Lipofruskinosis. How do you how do you see microcaffeine in the kind of in the overall picture for the explanation of what Zika does to infantile children?
Well, it could be a virus like that, or it could be the insecticide that people absorb when they're spraying the mosquitoes that carry the virus. The insecticides are known to damage brain development. But 50 years ago with experiments in mice and then a little later in dogs, they found that in proportion to the unsaturation of the fat in the mother's diet, the brain development was retarded. The animal, the baby animals had smaller brains and were less able to learn in proportion to the amount of prenatal polyunsaturated fat they absorbed.
Because isn't it true that the placenta will try and filter out all of the polyunsaturated fat from the mother's diet? Yeah, the placenta preferentially absorbs glucose and fructose. But if the diet if the mother happens to have low blood glucose, then more of the mother's circulating fats as your blood sugar goes down, you liberate into the bloodstream free fatty acids. So when the mother has hypoglycemia, the placenta loses the ability to screen out the fats to some extent, where the baby should make its own brain fats purely from glucose.
And those would be saturated fats. Those wouldn't be polyunsaturated fats, correct? Primarily saturated, but then we intrinsically are able to make a series of polyunsaturated fats called the omega minus nine series. And those are present in any healthy baby's brain, whether it's a human or a cow or a bird or rodent. The developing brain turns sugar into saturated fats and the omega minus nine series. And the brain is predominantly lipid in its structure? About 50% fat, very high fat content compared to other tissues.
OK, so another thing that came out looking at the breakdown of the different subtypes of lipofuscinosis, were those that were associated positively with epilepsy, either childhood epilepsy, midlife or late life epilepsy. How do you how do you see epilepsy in relation to polyunsaturates in the diet? Vitamin E has been proven to reduce the incidence of seizures in lots of animal experiments. And the process of stress in a brain cell lowers the oxygen availability, triggers that reductive process causing lipid peroxidation. And if your tissues are well saturated with vitamin E, that's much less likely to happen.
OK, so let's let's move on to a couple of other examples of the evidence that's been disproven in terms of mitochondrial energy production, mitochondrial health, the theory of aging. There are instances, well not instances, it's very well documented knowledge that parrots are very long lived compared to quail, for example. And there's a naked mole rat which lives for 32 years compared to regular mice that live for three years. In terms of the metabolic energy of an organism to deal with insults, essentially, by having the energy to overcome that in the system.
What do you what do you have to say about the longevity of different species that exist even within the same species? So the parrots and the quail and the mole rat and the regular mouse? Well, flamingos also long live, yeah. There are a few researchers who have surveyed a lot of different animals and found that the highly unsaturated animals in the given species don't live as long as those less highly unsaturated. Hulbert and Pamplona are two of the people who have done the most research.
And they find that birds in general are much less unsaturated in all their tissues than mammals. And part of that is that they don't activate enzymes that extend, for example, linoleic acid in a mammal. It's processed to remove electrons until it can, with the addition of more carbons, can become EPA or DHA, the highly unstable polyunsaturated. The birds simply don't use those enzymes to the extent that mammals do. So they can eat a polyunsaturated and it just doesn't turn into the EPA or the DHA.
Yeah, so they have more of the unprocessed linoleic acid than the highly unstable longer ones. And part of that, I think, is because they live at a much higher body temperature than mammals. Mammals are usually somewhere between 90 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the birds generally are well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, up to as much as 110 degrees.
And that means that they will very quickly oxidize any of the most unstable fats. If they eat something with a highly unsaturated fat, it's more likely that the fat will be used for energy rather than circulating to cause trouble. So how about the decreased problems with PUFA in the presence of higher temperature? You're saying that just purely the higher temperature could cause PUFA to be oxidized more rapidly and therefore not within the cell but actually within a GI tract or elsewhere?
He's just saying it's not going to get stored and it will get used up for fuel right away because their metabolism is so fast. Yeah, even in a mammal at say 98 degrees, it turns out that a very high proportion of the DHA breaks down even by the time it gets into the bloodstream. And it's the breakdown products that act on the immune system to suppress inflammation by temporarily stopping the production of prostaglandins.
Okay, we actually have a couple of callers, so let's start in with our first caller. Caller, you're on the air. Where are you from? Okay, me already? Yeah, I can hear you now. Where are you from, caller? Okay, hi. Well, I'm calling you from way, way far away. I'm calling you from Finland in Europe. Finland, excellent. The sun hasn't risen yet and it will not rise for another couple of hours. Good to hear your voice from Finland. All the best. What's your question for Dr. Peat?
Well, I'd like to first thank you for the show and I'd like your opinion about two very different types of devices. The first one are the so-called PEMF devices like Earth Pulse, Delta Sleep. The goal would be to induce Delta Sleep in a 46-year-old male as myself. And the second type of device I'd like your opinion on is CO2 breathing machines and CO2 bath devices. Okay, well, the CO2 question, no problem. The first one, Dr. Peat, have you heard of this device, a PEMF? No, I don't know what it means.
Can you, caller, can you just elaborate a little bit on the fundamentals of this? Sure. So those are, I think, in the PEMF there must be EM, must be electromagnetic field. So it's EMF, right. They are devices that you wear on your upper chest and they're supposed to deliver some light pulsing electromagnetic signal to induce deep sleep like Delta Sleep. Okay, interesting. Dr. Peat, what do you think about that EMF generator? About 40 years ago, there was research on stimulating the brain across from one temple to the other with gentle,
just one or two volts and very few microamps of current would be enough to induce those slower rhythms of the brain and improve sleep. But I don't know what the present apparatus is. Do you know, sir, do you know what the volts are of the machine you're dispensing? I think that we're in a 10. Now, I'm not sure about the hertz and the micro and mega, but something around 10. Let me check.
So basically, the latest devices seem to be, have to be worn on some artery between the heart and one of the sides, like the arm. And I think it's something like 10 hertz or something like that, but I'm not sure about the, yeah, you can vary them from 1 to 14 hertz, but they recommend mostly around 10, 8 or 10 hertz. 10 is a natural frequency for humans. Okay, well, I don't know if we can expand too much on that, but definitely can with the CO2 question. So your main question about the CO2 was?
Yeah, so now I can see, for example, on the Ray Peat Forum, there are people doing all kinds of experiments. And one of them being to basically bathe, well, there are breathing machines where you can regulate how much CO2 you're getting. And then one gentleman even invented some kind of bath device. So it's like a huge plastic balloon that you wrap around yourself. And there's something for access to or for infusing yourself basically with CO2, and this can be worn for hours.
Yeah, we've used that with our clients with injury that they wrap their injured limb in a plastic bag that they filled up with pure carbon dioxide. It certainly increases the vasodilation and gives you that sense of warmth that you'd either get from CO2 gas or being in these soda waters that liberate CO2. I know Dr. Peat's got a lot to say about carbon dioxide. Let me let you say what you want to say about CO2, Dr. Peat, though you're always more eloquent.
I think it was in 1908 that someone wrote an article about the medical uses of both treating colon inflammation, vaginal inflammation and such with the actual application of the gas or filling a bathtub. Since CO2 is heavier than air, if you seal the drains on a bathtub, you can just fill the bathtub with it and get in. And the person said an hour in the bathtub was like a day at the beach. You could probably leave your clothes on as well, couldn't you?
Yeah, you don't have to take your clothes off because it instantly goes right through the clothing. You can feel it as a warm sensation because it relaxes blood vessels in the skin. And we have used huge plastic bags that come up to the shoulders. And you fill the bag and then get on a chair or something so you can step in it without spilling the CO2 and pull it up around your body without spilling it and then tighten it around the top.
And that will usually stay put for at least an hour and your skin gets pink and warm from the relaxing effect. And it has a systemic effect. It absorbs very quickly into your bloodstream and affects your blood pressure, improves pumping efficiency of your heart, reducing peripheral resistance in the arteries. Yeah, positively associated with good health. Yeah, and the increasing your CO2 lowers all of the transmitters of inflammation by shifting you out of the over-reduced electronic state. It suppresses lactic acid production, for example. It helps your mitochondria to use the oxygen quickly.
Yeah, in many different ways. It activates the Krebs cycle and reduces meaningless excitation, lets you produce the energy in the right way rather than an inflamed, pointless way. Out of curiosity, can you drink sparkling water and would that help? Like internally as opposed to externally? You tend to burp it out and lose much of it, but the little bit you absorb is very helpful. I think that's one of the reasons why it's so calming on an upset stomach, right? Soda water or?
Yeah, I think Priestley was really working on carbon dioxide when he accidentally discovered oxygen. Okay, good. Well, thank you for your call, Carla. We do have another caller on the air, so let's take this next caller. Where are you from, Carla? Hello? Hi, where are you from? Hi, near Philipsville. Okay, hi. What's your question? I have a couple of questions. Hello? Uh-oh. I think you've cut her off. Can you get her back? We've lost her. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you now. Okay. Yeah, I've got two basic questions about the antioxidants.
Number one, I want to get clear about what's good and what's bad. CoQ10, is that good or not? I've always heard that that was very good for your heart. Is that good or is that not good? It's very good. It is good. So it's good to take CoQ10. How much do you think -- I've been taking 100 milligrams a day. Is that a good amount? I don't think anyone really knows what the best amount is. You don't know the amount. Okay. Now, what about EPA?
I've heard that EPA, as the vitamin -- not vitamin E, but the -- you know what I'm talking about. Fish oil. Yeah, probably unsaturated oil, yeah. Yeah. Is that good or bad? I heard that EPA was really good to support the heart function. Yeah, that's exactly the wrong kind of antioxidant. It's the reductive kind that imitates stress and promotes degenerative processes. So it's okay to have CoQ10 but not to have EPA? That's correct. And it also says that it supports your mood and is better for your brain function. Definitely.
And you don't think that is it? No, definitely not better for your brain function. No, that was what we were discussing earlier and how an aging brain will have more and more of this EPA, which means that your brain actually gets less oxygen and it becomes more demented and more senile. And what about vitamin E? Is that good or not? Yeah, that's one of the main antioxidants Dr. Peat was outlining at the beginning of the show. It is a good one. Yeah, along with vitamin C. And vitamin K2 functions with coenzyme Q10 to deliver energy.
And do you think glucosamine is good for the joints? Which? Glucosamine. Oh, I'm doubtful about that. It's been associated with changes in the pancreas like diabetes. Okay, so you're not sure about that one. All right, well, thank you very much. Thank you for your questions. Just last month an article came out by Sue and Yin identifying EPA and DHA as brain toxic fats. There you go. Good. I mean, the evidence is just so overwhelming. I don't know how people that listen to this show can possibly continue eating or taking this stuff.
Anyway, it takes a long time sometimes for people to come to finally fully accept it. Well, there's so much mainstream media. It's just like with everything else. There's so much mainstream media telling you that EPA and DHA are good for your brain. Okay, we have another caller on the air. So let's take this next caller. Caller, where are you from? Hi, I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area. Hi, what's your question? Dr. Peat, I've noticed tremendous results by being on your nutrition program.
I consult with Andrew Murray and things have been wonderful and even better now that I'm on thyroid hormones. My question is why are my eyes changing colors? I noticed they were brown and now they're getting lighter and lighter. My guess is they might become a hazel, but online a lot of people like raw vegan people on YouTube are saying that their eyes change from brown to blue, and I guess the lighter your eyes' color is, the healthier you are.
So my question is why is this happening and is it true that the lighter color your eyes are, the healthier you are? I don't know about that, but I know that people who use prostaglandins, eye drops to treat glaucoma, very often have a darkening of the iris, and that I think is a directly toxic effect where the -- like ultraviolet light darkens your skin because it's injuring it and the pigment is a defensive reaction to protect you against ultraviolet light. I think the prostaglandin, which is made from polyunsaturated fats,
is activating a defensive formation of pigment in the iris. So I suspect that it's good if you reduce your polyunsaturated fat intake and have lightening of your iris. I suspect it's a corrective process. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you for your call. Okay. We have another caller on the line, so let's take this next caller. Caller, where are you from? Yes, this is the first caller again. Thank you for letting me jump in line again. No problem. I had another question that came to mind.
Does MCT oil do everything, every good thing that you recommend or that you say coconut oil can do from a health and metabolism point of view? So, Dr. Peat, medium-chain triglycerides, do they do the same thing as coconut oil? Yes, essentially they're doing the same thing of bypassing your stored polyunsaturated fats and letting you oxidize more safely the saturated fats. But one of the problems is that they are so mobile relative to the longer chains that they can be irritating to your stomach and intestines.
You have to take it in a good balance with other foods. And that's why a lot of times these supplements like the vitamin D is in it, MCT oil, or the vitamin K, they can be irritating on people's digestion, and therefore then they can use those vitamins topically if they experience intestinal irritation from the MCTs. And that was another question, Dr. Peat, I wanted to ask you. Can you please describe the relation between vitamin K and cocutin? Is it a precursor for cocutin? It works at the same site in the mitochondrion,
and it seems to just act as a stabilizer or amplifier of the effect of coenzyme Q10. So it's almost like if you take vitamin K, you're helping protect the cocutin that you have in your system? Yes, I think vitamin E and K both have that function of working at the cocutin site. So do you think it's necessary for someone to supplement with cocutin if they're using vitamin K? Well, I wouldn't mix them even in your stomach. I think it's good to take them at a different time because I've seen a reaction which,
at least in the presence of light, I think it might cause other reactions to happen when the vitamin E reacts with vitamin K. Okay, we have another caller. So let's take this next caller. You're on the air. Where are you from? Hi, this is Sue. I'm in Albion. Albion, okay. Hi, what's your question? I got some thyroid levels drawn because I do have Hashimoto's. It inflamed quite a bit, and I just wanted to read them out and see if there's a T3 level, T4, TSH. TSH was 0.48.
Free T4, 0.97. And the T3 was 110 nanograms per deciliter. And the endocrinologist was saying to increase a thyroid medication to kind of make that thyroid go to sleep so that the inflammation would go down. And I wanted to get Dr. Peat's thoughts, and I'd like to hang up unless he has a question for me. Sure. Dr. Peat? Yeah, keeping the TSH, that's probably a safe level, but I know lots of people who keep it at 0.01 and less and feel fine. But the TSH is a promoter of inflammation, not only in the thyroid gland,
but in blood vessels, bone marrow, every place it's been studied, it promotes inflammation. And it happens to be activated by the stress, oxygen-deprived condition of the cells. So it's one of the mediators of the oxygen-deficient stress condition, along with estrogen, prostaglandins, cortisol, and nitric oxide. TSH itself is an inflammation promoter. So if you govern your dose by things like heart rate, temperature, and especially your middle of the day temperature and resting heart rate, and your appetite and thirst and quality of sleep,
a doctor can do the Achilles reflex relaxation test to find out how your nerves and muscles are acting. People have different sensitivities to the T3 and T4, and the tissue-specific effect of either of those is affected by how inflamed you are generally. So if you have a lot of polyunsaturated fat and prostaglandins circulating, then a given amount of T3 isn't going to have the same local effect on any of your tissues. So really this persistence of an inflamed thyroid where I'm feeling like I'm being strangled may have more to do with my generalized inflammatory response.
Yeah, I think so. Okay, thank you so much. Bye-bye. Also, when you're low thyroid, you produce a lot of antibodies to lots of things, and you can also produce antibodies to your own thyroid. So part of the low thyroid condition is producing extra antibodies. And those antibodies are part of a cleanup process. So when you stop the inflammation, the antibody production will stop, and then it will take several months for the circulating level of the antibodies to disappear. So basically to summarize, to try to keep your TSH as close to zero as possible,
and the blood levels of free T3 and free T4 are not as indicative of a-- well, not a good measurement or not a good guideline to assess your thyroid function, all those things Dr. Feet mentioned, like your heart rate, your temperature, and your appetite. Those things are much more accurate at diagnosing yourself. And George Kreil at the Cleveland Clinic in the 1970s found that even for most types of thyroid cancer, if you keep your TSH near zero, it keeps down almost all of the recurrences of thyroid cancer.
Okay, we have another caller, so let's take this next caller. Caller, where are you from? Miranda. Miranda, what's your question? Okay, it's regarding magnesium supplementation. I take a magnesium glycinate one in the morning, and I take one in the evening, and I find that it helps my nervous system in general. But my one complaint is that whenever I do it, whenever I start supplementing with magnesium, I find that my belly fat gets worse. And, I mean, people that see me with my clothes on would say I'm just this tall, gawky guy,
but underneath my belly fat is very pronounced. And if I drop the magnesium, it doesn't seem to be quite as pronounced. But I had read from another source many years ago that magnesium chloride didn't stoke that problem, and that most others, especially magnesium oxide, would really provoke it. But I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on that. Dr. Peat, what do you think about magnesium glycinate as a substance that might be good? I've never used that one myself, but all of the forms that I've experimented with,
and for quite a few other people, magnesium supplements can cause intestinal inflammation or irritation. And I would guess that that's happening with an increase of histamine, nitric oxide, and absorbing endotoxin and such. Yeah, so it's not actually an increase in belly fat and chlorine. It's probably more due to an increased bogginess or a water retention within the tissues that this magnesium may be causing that would then push your stomach further out and might make you feel like you'd actually increase more fat. Is that what you're suggesting, Dr. Peat?
Are you suggesting that that increased inflammation could actually lay down more fat? Well, the fat would increase over a period of many months or years, but the water can increase overnight. Okay, well, I'm taking a prostate medication because I have an enlarged prostate, but PSA had no indication that it was out of an abnormal range. So I am playing with my water a bit. I have to go to the bathroom quite a bit because I'm taking this herbal from New Chapter for the prostate. Okay, so you're finding benefit from it?
That's probably based on pumpkin seed extract and saw palmetto. Right, right, yes, it does have those for sure. I don't know. You know, it's almost from not passing enough urine to passing too much, getting up too many times during the night. But it feels healthier than insufficient urine flow. Dr. Peat, a quick -- we've only got a few minutes left here at the end of the show, but a quick word on prostatic hypertrophy, benign prostatic hypertrophy, and urination difficulties and what your approach to that would be?
Well, the thyroid is the basic thing because it helps you make the anti-inflammatory pro-oxygen steroids, pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone, and keeps down the estrogen. When anything is irritating your intestine, increasing histamine and other anti-oxidative mediators, the inflammation spreads from your intestine through your whole pelvis in particular, and it will cause the smooth muscle of the bladder wall to become hyperactive and oversensitive, and that causes frequent urination. And lots of people assume that there's something wrong with their prostate when it's really the intestine inflaming the whole urinary system.
I see. And so, as you were saying, if the magnesium is inflaming the irritation, then the magnesium might be possibly indicated? I think so. You can get adequate magnesium. If your thyroid lets your cells retain magnesium, then 400 milligrams per day is easy to get from foods, fruit, fruit juice, milk, cheese, eggs, meat, seafood. All of those things are very good sources of magnesium. Coffee? Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of those are-- I'm definitely a committed vegetarian, so I don't have eggs.
Okay, I don't want to butt in there, but let's put it like this. It's three minutes to eight o'clock, and we're going to wrap up with the show here. So thank you very much for your call, caller, and all the calls we received. Yeah, thank you very much. And I just want to say one more thing about magnesium and thyroid. Dr. Peat, you've said that when you have a thyroid deficiency, you're not able to store magnesium properly, and so it almost is like you have a magnesium deficiency as well.
Yeah, and you can correct a magnesium deficiency if you go at your thyroid dosing carefully. Over a few days, it helps you extract it from your ordinary diet. Right, so you don't need to supplement such large doses. Yeah, in the first two or three days, if you're going to start a thyroid supplement, sometimes magnesium helps you adapt more quickly to the thyroid. But usually, for a vegetarian, you can boil any kind of green leaves. It doesn't matter what kind, but the magnesium comes out very quickly when you boil it.
Just make sure to drink the water you boiled in. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you so much for your time. I don't want to cut you off, Dr. Peat. I just want to make sure people know how to reach you. So once again, thanks so much for giving your time. You were so very generous, and we really do appreciate it. For those people who have heard Dr. Peat or want to find out more about him, www.rayPeat.com. Lots of articles, scientifically referenced. He really does know what he's talking about.
For those of you who've listened to the show, we can also be reached toll-free on 1-888-WBMERB, Monday through Friday, for consultations or further information. My name's Andrew Murray. My name's Sarah Johanneson Murray. Thank you for tuning in tonight. We've enjoyed your calls. Good night. time.