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This free program is paid for by the listeners of Redwood Community Radio. If you're not already a member, please think of joining us. Thank you. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] (Music) (Music) (Music) (Music) (Music) 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 our shows, which run every third Friday of the month from 7 till 8pm, we're both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England
and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine. We run a clinic in Garboville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions, and we manufacture all our own certified organic herbal extracts which are either grown on our CCOF certified herb farm or which are sourced from other USA certified organic suppliers. So you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD 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 blood pressure regulation, heart failure and muscle atrophy amongst others. Let's see what else we may or may not get into. So the number here if you live in the area is 923 3911 or if you live outside the area, the toll free number is 1800 568 3723 which is 1800 KMUD RAD. We can also be reached toll free on 1 888 WBMERB for further questions during normal business hours Monday through Friday. Well, as is becoming a routine, a regular routine here on a third Friday of every month,
we're very pleased to have Dr. Peat to share his experience and wisdom that is difficult to find somewhere else. I'm not sure that we've ever found anybody quite like him. So he's been extensively researching many, many different areas of health and nutrition probably for 25, 30 years or more and over 40. There you go. Okay. Well, tonight we're actually going to start. I'm going to first ask Dr. Peat to introduce himself, but we're going to start with what he has been certainly educating us in the last three to four years
as being an untruth and there's scientific evidence showing in the medical literature now. Folks show exactly what he's been saying for quite a long time. So, Dr. Peat, thanks so much for joining us on the show again. Hi. Okay. For those people who perhaps have never heard the show before, which is totally possible, and perhaps for those people who may not know you, would you just let the listeners know your professional academic background? I studied biology for a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, 1968 to '72,
and before that had been in various things, linguistics, art, taught a variety of health-related courses, psychology, philosophy, and things that were perspectives on my basic orientation, which is biological, but biological in a very broad sense. My graduate study in biology concentrated on aging of the reproductive system, but the reason I went to the graduate school, I was intending to study brain biology because of my previous work in linguistics and psychology. I wanted to understand how the brain handled consciousness and language, but at the university I discovered that the biologists were really no more scientific
than the people in the humanities and social sciences. It was very heavily ideological, so that was why I shifted over to the other end of the organism where I could look at more physical biochemical processes. Well, it sounds very well-rounded because the psyche affects biochemistry, and biochemistry affects the psyche, right? Yeah. Okay, well, the subjects that we wanted to expand on with the research that you've done and the articles that you've written, in fact, this month's newsletter is pretty much based around-- rather, the show is pretty much based around your newsletter for this month,
and the subjects that you had on the newsletter there was basically blood pressure, regulation, muscle atrophy and heart failure in perspective along with edema, and one thing that really caught my attention, I know for the longest time-- well, all the time that we've been speaking and consulting with you, probably three years, maybe four now. Over four. Over four, but just tell me, how many years has it been that you have been purporting that saturated fats are better than polyunsaturates as a first off? I really started thinking intensively about it at the end of the '70s,
but I ran into the question very directly in the aging research in the reproductive system because way back in the 1930s and '40s, people were showing that estrogen accelerated the breakdown of polyunsaturated fats, which intensified the effects of estrogen and accelerated aging, especially in the reproductive tissues. But it took several years after finishing my dissertation before I got around to really concentrating on the nutritional implications of that and emphasizing the benefits of coconut oil around 1978 or '79. So way back then, it was already--
there was already literature showing that the saturated fats, which are coming from animal fats and coconut oil, versus the polyunsaturates, which are the liquid vegetable oils and are now present in pork and chicken fat and fish because of what they're feeding these animals, including the fish, the farm-raised fish. And the whole food chain. Well, yeah, and then it filters down the whole food chain. So you're saying back then, all of this research was available for people to view? Yeah, by the 1940s or '50s, the polyunsaturated fats, both fish oil and seed oil,
had been incriminated in intensifying some of the estrogen and age-related diseases. The Schutt family, who were the first ones to popularize the therapeutic use of vitamin E, started out with it preventing blood clots related to high estrogen, and that overlaps with the estrogen activating the breakdown production of free radicals from the polyunsaturated fats and causing vascular disease and so on. So vitamin E was a fertility drug and an anti-estrogen nutrient, as well as a protection against the polyunsaturated fats.
So lots of people consider vitamin E to be an antioxidant to help protect us against free radicals, but you're saying that a free radical-producing substance is this vegetable oil, this liquid oils and the fish oils and the other liquid vegetables apart from olive oil? Yeah, in the 1940s, before that antioxidant concept was introduced, vitamin E was being thought of as an anti-estrogen, but in 1942, the estrogen industry basically took over the FDA and public consciousness and suppressed everything that incriminated estrogen in aging, miscarriage and so on.
And so since vitamin E was, by the Schutt family and others, identified as an anti-estrogen, the estrogen industry shifted the emphasis to protection against free radical oxidation. And there was very quickly an awareness that there was an inverse relationship between the polyunsaturated fats and vitamin E. If you increased your vitamin E greatly, you could prevent damage from either estrogen or polyunsaturated fats. But with aging and the accumulation in the body, you had to increase the amount of vitamin E to prevent miscarriage, for example.
My thesis advisor, Arnold Soderwall, did experiments in which he showed that you could prevent middle-aged infertility just by increasing the amount of vitamin E in the animal's diet progressively and extrapolating to human levels, it would be the equivalent of 400 units of vitamin E per day by the age of about 45 to maintain fertility. But that amount increases if you increase the amount of polyunsaturated fat in the diet. If you carefully avoid the polyunsaturated fats, your requirement for vitamin E is very low. It creeps up gradually with aging.
So then maybe the dietary amount that you can get from the foods you eat would be enough. Yeah. But with increasing polyunsaturated fats in the American and all over the world diet, the need for vitamin E has gone up. Yeah. And it very quickly reaches the point where you can no longer stop the free radical production just by increasing the vitamin E. Okay. Well, the main reason I started the conversation towards this direction is because there were two articles. One was published by the... and I could kick myself for not having them.
I thought I had a laptop with me. Anyway, I'm sure you probably know about them, Dr. Peat. But if you could remember any more than I did from reading them, there was basically a 2009 and a 2011 peer-review article which published data conclusively proving that saturated fat intake improved mortality and morbidity in patients with heart failure. And this is one of the first direct references to seeing that saturated fats... Oh, and it was also in reference improved mortality and morbidity compared to PUFA, which is the polyunsaturates.
So this was another direct piece of evidence to show that the scientific community at least are getting this point across and hopefully the medical community will start taking notice of it as time goes on. Yeah, that 2011 study was by Gal Vow and others, T.F. Gal Vow. And did you have anything more to say than I remembered from the article without having it in front of me about the morbidity and mortality improvements? Just that a high intake of saturated fat improves survival, while a high intake of polyunsaturated fat impairs survival.
And how do the triglycerides affect the level of triglycerides in your blood? How does this affect the... According to Horwich and others, the 2009 study, there have been several studies that show that a higher level of lipoproteins, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein, and high-density, and triglycerides are all associated with improved survival in heart failure patients. Right. So a higher cholesterol is directly responsible for an improved outcome. So that's pretty staggering as far as I'm concerned because the medical community at large are telling people not to consume saturated animal fats because it raises cholesterol
and cholesterol is bad for you. And you've been talking about this for years and years and years, and we've only heard from you for the last three or four years. And we've been trying to get this aired to people that will listen to it, who don't just disregard it out of hand without recognizing the science behind it. And here we have one medical university in Los Angeles and another medical university-- I forget where that one was--but peer-published reviews showing the improved outcome. So that's pretty significant. So why did it get so back to front?
Well, I think that's just a general weight of pressure from the industry, and it's just not a-- Yeah, the seed oil industry created that myth because they found that eating a lot of seed oil can lower your cholesterol, and since you have cholesterol in atherosclerotic arteries, they said it must be causing the atherosclerosis. That was never demonstrated, and in fact it protects you against atherosclerosis, among other things. And wasn't it the Japanese who came up with an article showing--or another-- Yeah, that there's polyunsaturated fat in the plaques in the old deteriorated arteries.
Oxidized omega-3 and omega-6, so that's underneath the cholesterol bandage, and the cholesterol bandage is trying to stop that rapid rate of oxidation. Yeah, and the pigment is the product of breakdown of the polyunsaturated fats. So we can look at cholesterol as an antioxidant. It's slowing down that rapid oxidation of free radical damage to our arteries. The cholesterol is actually bandaging that up and acting as an antioxidant. That was demonstrated and published already in a major medical textbook in 1922. 1922! That's just when the--
This is where you get that saying that you quoted before now, that a lie spreads around the world quicker than truth can get our shoelaces tied. Well, if you put millions of dollars in advertising and bribes. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know what? There is actually a caller on the line, and although we don't generally take callers until 7.30 in the show, I don't want to keep them waiting any longer, but if any other callers could hang on until 7.30. Let's take this first caller and see what's-- You're on the air?
Hello, and thank you very much for taking my call. I'm 68, very active, and I've been eating yogurt and fruit and fresh vegetables with olive oil now for about six months. There is a lot of stroke and heart failure in my family tree. My doctor recently prescribed a blood pressure medicine that makes me unactive, unenergetic, and for the past two weeks I've been taking a tablespoon of chia seeds into my diet, which is very strictly kept. And they do, in fact, give me energy, and I chew them really well.
I'm wondering what is the doctor's opinion of my counteracting the blood pressure medicine with chia seeds. I couldn't hear what the substances were. Chia seeds? And you didn't mention the name of the blood pressure drug, but-- Almadopine. Almadopine. Did they say that that was to lower or inhibit the anthotensin converting enzyme? That's the one heart drug that I think is probably beneficial. It lowers inflammation, if it's the one I'm thinking of, but I don't know the brand names of them. So her question is, do you think that--
What do you think about the way she's been feeling with the chia seeds helping re-energize her after she started taking this blood pressure drug that is making her lethargic? Oh, I don't know of anything in the chia seeds that would be beneficial. I mean, they're seeds. I don't know if they're very high in oil, but they're very mucilaginous. When I've tried them, they're very mucilaginous, and they could be acting as a laxative to your bowels. Have your bowel movements improved? They were never any better.
Well, I'm not sure. I know it's traditionally been used to be an energizer. I'm not sure exactly what compound in it that has been reported to be energizing. If it works as a bulk laxative, it would make you feel better by lowering bacterial endotoxins. Okay. Well, I don't know if that's-- Thank you so very, very much. I'm going to go back to the radio where it's easier to hear. Okay. Thank you for your comment. You're welcome. Thank you for your call. Okay. So you're listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD Garberville, 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 blood pressure regulation, heart failure, and muscle atrophy, so muscle weakening and wasting. Now, I know, Dr. Peat, you did quite a lot of personal research on aging as a process and have come across many different things that are anti-aging in their own right or anti-inflammatory or energy-producing in terms of increasing cellular respiration and thyroid hormone being one of those things.
In terms of heart failure, and I think just to go back to the articles or the reference articles that were published about the saturated fats and the improvement in outcome of people with heart failure and higher cholesterol being more beneficial and higher triglycerides being more beneficial, and this being completely counter what we've normally been told for whatever reasons, the link to heart failure and these fats, the saturated fats, and why it is that they're actually protective and why cholesterol is actually very protective
and not something you want to avoid, but actually something you want to make sure your cholesterol is reasonably high and a 180, 190 cholesterol is actually not a problem. And you've always said that for elderly people, not that elderly, but 50 plus, you want to have a cholesterol that's about 200, and even if it was over that, between 200 and 220 is actually not a problem, whereas the medical community wants to put you on statin drugs, and now many of these have been recalled for being precluding to other disease.
What's your take on the saturated fats in terms of their either anti-inflammatory effect or their heart protective effect? I think it's all one thing for all of the systems. The saturated fats tend to inhibit the stress hormones which produce a shift to fat metabolism away from sugar metabolism by liberating fats from storage. Once you get too much of the polyunsaturated fats in your body, a little stress tends to become a big stress because that type of fat intensifies the stress hormones, creating a vicious circle.
The saturated fats turn off the inflammation rather than amplifying it, and that applies. There was a Hindu who about 30 years ago, maybe 35, noticed that alcoholics in the Indian regions that use a lot of butter didn't get liver disease. So he did the animal experiments and found that butter or other saturated fats protect the liver. There have been a lot of studies since then published in the U.S. that even large amounts of alcohol don't hurt the liver if a person is getting saturated fats.
But if they get any of the polyunsaturated fats, their hepatitis flares up and cirrhosis. The same with cancer. If you look at the ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats in the body, they call it the saturation index. The more saturated your fats are, the less susceptible you are to developing cancer. So fibrotic, inflammatory, and tumor diseases, as well as heart failure and blood clotting diseases are all closely associated with the polyunsaturated fats and so protected against by the saturated ones. So these polyunsaturates really interfere with energy production.
I know when you just mentioned to that caller that if somebody took a bulk laxative, they would feel better because of lowering endotoxin in the gut. That's another thing that severely interferes with energy production in our body. So can you tell us a little bit about endotoxin and how that poisons us and what foods we should avoid in order to not support the growth of those bacteria that produce the endotoxin? The endotoxin, one of the first things that it triggers is nitric oxide,
which is a vasodilator, and both nitric oxide and endotoxin increase the production of serotonin. And all of these, besides inhibiting the production of energy using oxygen and shifting it over to lactic acid production, all of these increase the leakiness of blood vessels. And if you simply turn off the supply of sugar, in diabetes, for example, you can't metabolize sugar. In starvation, you don't get the sugar in your diet. In hypothyroidism, you are under stress, and so you're shifting over to liberating fats and burning fats instead of sugar.
So anything that impairs energy production, whether it's the toxins starting with endotoxin, nitric oxide and serotonin, or if it's the actual environmental interference with your production of energy and supply of energy, all of these make your blood vessels leaky. All of them raise free fatty acids, which interfere with the use of oxygen, and the free fatty acids lead to a whole cascade of inflammatory mediators, especially prostaglandins. And the prostaglandins in turn interact, making more nitric oxide and other inflammatory things.
So once you get loaded up with the polyunsaturated fats, all of these things tend to interact. The fats lower your thyroid function and increase your estrogen production, both of which intensify the inflammation, leakiness, and loss of energy production. So other things that can influence the intestinal health and the dilation of these blood vessels in the intestine are things like starchy carbohydrates that feed the bacteria that produces endotoxin. And those things can be, you know, you can mitigate the bacteria from feeding on the starches by not eating them. That's the best thing.
And Dr. Peat, you also recommend carrots and bamboo shoots because they're like antibacterial fibers that the bacteria can't seem to feed on. Yeah, it's extremely rare for a person to have microorganisms that can survive a good supply of either carrots or bamboo fiber. Certain organisms can adapt to live on them, but it's very rare. And also herbs like golden seal and cascara bark, those herbs can decrease the number of bacteria in there that are wreaking havoc and producing a lot of endotoxin and therefore then help you protect your liver.
And actually the saturated fats, that's one of the direct effects. They're antibacterial. Yeah, coconut oil is antimicrobial. It's antibacterial. Nothing grows in it. It just sits there for ages and doesn't change. Now what about the other thing that interferes with energy production? You were writing in your last newsletter about the substitution of iron for copper in the respiratory enzyme. So is this with a copper deficiency and an iron overload? Is that how this is seen? Yeah, just the diet can affect it, but stress tends to intensify it.
Not getting enough light, anything that stresses your energy production system, such as high estrogen or nitric oxide or low thyroid or too much darkness, will tend to make you lose copper from your respiratory system. And as copper gets lost, iron just tends to fill in for it, binding to some of the same enzymes. I know shellfish are a rich source of copper, but with the current situation with our Pacific Ocean having Japanese debris wash up on the shores, what would you recommend? A good source of copper? Liver. Just beef liver, calf liver. Buffalo liver?
Yeah. It has a lot of iron too, but the copper tends to concentrate in the liver. So the place that copper occupies in the respiratory enzyme that you're mentioning has a greater affinity for copper than it does for iron. So if you have an adequate supply of copper, then it will get picked up? Yeah. Because iron, there's lots of things being written about iron, how destructive it is, how readily it reacts. That being its main problem is that it's very reactive in the body. It's another oxidant.
Yeah, and taking a supplement of a free metal, iron, zinc, or copper in the form of a free metal, it can interact with nutrients in your digestive system and oxidize them. But iron is the worst one to take as a supplement. And another thing for our listeners to avoid is cooking acidic products in cast iron pans or making soups in cast iron stockpots, because you will be dissolving that iron when you're cooking them.
So Dr. Peat, can you tell us some more about what else can interfere with the thyroid hormone and how this can affect heart failure and high blood pressure? The polyunsaturated fats and stress are probably the most common things throughout Western diet culture. But traditionally, the cabbage family and beans were the main goitrogens, things that interfere with formation of the thyroid hormone. And in the Andes and parts of southern Mexico and Western China, there's still a tremendous amount of thyroid deficiency and cretinism.
I've read that there are, I think it was 100 million cretins in Western China, and beans are a major factor in the Andes and Mexico and I think in China too, besides some actual iodine deficiency. But the cabbage family, especially if they aren't cooked well, so the coleslaw, if a person ate coleslaw every day, they would very likely have a thyroid problem. And what about poor protein intake? Does that influence the thyroid hormone?
Yeah, in the 1940s, studies were done showing that they saw that people in the concentration camps, men who came out and started eating well, would often grow breasts. And they saw that starvation for protein in particular causes the liver to become unable to destroy estrogen and thyroid is needed to inactivate estrogen. And if you're getting low calories, but especially low thyroid, you turn your metabolism down so that you don't eat up the proteins in your muscles so fast. So just a fairly slight protein deficiency will cause your thyroid to slow down defensively.
And that means that your liver is leaving more estrogen in circulation. And then estrogen blocks the enzymes which attach iodine to the protein to make the thyroid hormone. So just stress or a protein deficiency will let estrogen rise and the rising estrogen will block the secretion from your thyroid, creating a vicious circle. But then when they came out and started eating well, their livers were damaged so severely that their estrogen was really high.
Yeah, and animal studies showed that vitamins B1 and B2 as well as protein were the main things that activate the liver to inactivate estrogen. And one of the best sources for B vitamins is liver, is that correct? Yeah. Okay, good. Well, I just want to let people know that this is 7.30, it's gone now, but you're listening to Ask Your Rev. Doctor on KMUD Garboville 91.1 FM.
So if anyone in the area would like to call about this month's subjects of blood pressure regulation, heart failure and muscle atrophy, which we'll get into a little bit later. The number here if you live in the area is 923 3911. If you live outside the area, toll free number is 1-800-KMUD-RAD. And Dr. Raymond Peat is joining us on the show here to impart his wisdom and we'll be giving out his contact details towards the end of the show.
So another question I have for you Dr. Peat is how does salt restriction adversely affect pregnancy, toxemia with high blood pressure and high blood pressure in general for the normal population, unpregnant population? I think we might want to keep that call actually. Sorry, Sarah, we might want to keep that question until we've listened to the callers because there are actually a couple of callers coming now. So let's take this first caller. Hold that thought, Sarah. That's a good question. Hello? Yeah, you're on the air.
Hi, thank you so much. I was wondering what the doctor thinks about a regimen of Simvastatin 80 mg for the past three years. I had a heart attack four years ago and I've been prescribed Simvastatin for cholesterol control and 80 mg for the past three years. What's the downside of that? Okay, Dr. Peat, did you hear that? Not exactly. Okay, the caller was asking what the downside of an 80 mg dose of Simvastatin that he's been on for three years prior to, I think he said he had a heart attack. Four years ago.
Four years ago, there you go. He wants to know what the downside to the Simvastatins are. We've heard lots of bad press about the statins but he obviously wants to know your opinion. It depends on how much it interferes with cholesterol synthesis but one of the side effects that turns up is because when you interfere with cholesterol synthesis, you're also interfering with some other very essential things such as the synthesis of coenzyme Q10 and other regulatory things and that can cause muscle problems because coenzyme Q10 is needed for producing energy.
If the caller is still there, do you know what your cholesterol is at this point? Yes, it's come down quite a lot. It's like 49 is the HDL and 46 is the LDL. Do you know what the total is? I think it's 147. Yeah, that's pretty low. That's very low. I've got down very low. How old are you? Fifty-three to four.
Okay, Dr. Peat, maybe you'd like to answer that question about what a total cholesterol of 154 would be to that caller and perhaps some of the research that's come out showing that high cholesterol is actually a lot better for people. I think also in light of the gentleman's previous heart attack, perhaps the ways of avoiding that in terms of what we've been discussing. How long can I stay on Simvastatin? Is that going to take its effect on me over 10 years or five years?
Do you know what your cholesterol was before you had the heart attack? I really don't know. It wasn't that high, but it was at the high end of normal. Okay, Dr. Peat. I doubt that there was any connection at all between the cholesterol and the heart attack if it was in the normal range. You might actually not have had enough protective effect from cholesterol. It depends on what your exposure was because cholesterol can protect you from heavy metal poisoning, many kinds of poisoning. I've heard of this cholesterol protective. I'll look into that.
On Dr. Peat's website at the end of the show, we'll give out the address, but there are several articles specifically on cholesterol and their relation, their cardioprotective effects, and they're basically their anti-inflammatory health effects. As I said at the very beginning of the show when we opened up this month's topic with Dr. Peat, there are two articles that came out, both scientific peer-reviewed scientific literature, one from the University of Los Angeles, and the other was, I forget the institution that provided it, demonstrating clearly that cholesterol was actually beneficial in the outcome of heart failure patients.
Just to show what Dr. Peat's been saying for a long time has actually been brought to bear. That's what I've heard, but I thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thank you. Thank you for your call. Okay, I think there's another call on. We had a shy person, and I'm reading their simple question. She had atrophy, or maybe her friend had atrophy related to a pinched nerve in the neck and was curious about any dietary information that might be able to help atrophy related to a pinched nerve. Okay, Dr. Peat, any --
Yeah, there are several things that could hormonally and nutritionally relate to a pinched nerve. One of the most common situations of nerve pinching has to do with swelling of the sheath or membrane around the nerve. It swells up so much, for example, in a thyroid deficiency or estrogen excess that the water makes this sheath compress the nerve so that even without much external pressure or irritation, the nerve starts being damaged by the waterlogged condition of its environment. And if it's in a neck joint where your cartilage might be softened because of hypothyroidism,
which tends to cause waterlogging of the cartilage and causes it to be over-compressible so that the structure of the disc, for example, can compress under the weight of your head and upper body, causing the disc to spread out and push on your spinal cord and nerves. But all of the connective tissues tend to swell up with high estrogen or low thyroid, and so you want to check your hormones whenever there's a nerve pressure pinching problem.
In dogs and horses, many years ago, they saw that dogs and horses both suffered spinal nerve compression and paralysis of the rear legs was a common result from a compression of the spinal cord. They found that a copper deficiency was responsible, and keeping horses indoors, eating dry hay was considered responsible for the copper deficiency. But the absence of light is one of the things that makes your respiratory enzymes lose its necessary copper. So the combination of darkness and possibly a copper deficiency in the diet will cause an energy failure,
leading to a swelling of the connective tissues, leading to pinching of the nerves. Excellent. So going back to liver, good quality grass-fed organic calves or beef liver or buffalo liver, that's a good source of copper. Yes, and it's important to check your thyroid. The medical community for 30 years now has been relying on the TSH measurement as an indicator of hypothyroidism, but they don't like to see the TSH get very low, but TSH is in itself the cause of many of the symptoms blamed on low thyroid.
It's partly the lack of the respiratory effect of the thyroid hormone, but when your hormone is low, the TSH is high, and the TSH has pro-inflammatory actions that, for example, increase the fibrinogen in your blood, making your blood harder to circulate, more viscous. And more easily clotted. Yes. So it's really best for your circulatory system and nervous system and so on to have your TSH at least at the low end of normal, which according to the American Academy of Clinical Endocrinologists is 0.3 to 3.0.
But one study found that a population that had TSH below 0.4 had the lowest incidence of thyroid cancer. And so somewhere between 0.0 to 0.4 would be the safe range probably. Because if you have enough thyroid hormones circulating, then there shouldn't be a high level of TSH. Yes. And that can be a little bit confusing for patients sometimes. Okay. Sarah, the question that you had just prior. Right. So I wanted to talk about salt and how this affects water retention and heart failure, swelling of the heart and heart failure, and pregnancy toxemia.
Maybe I should ask you one question at a time, Dr. Beat, but I think they're all linked to a salt deficiency. And scientific studies have shown that. If you just inject a fairly concentrated salt solution, you can see that it directly reduces the leakiness of blood vessels. But once anything such as starvation or high estrogen or whatever starts the leakiness problem of your capillaries, sodium tends to be the first thing that you lose.
Estrogen is a major factor in causing the retention of water and the loss of sodium so that your tissues, the fluids, become hypotonic and they tend to force water into your cells rather than drawing water out as it's produced. And this is common with PMS. When the estrogen rises for ladies, a lot of women experience increased swelling and bloating around this time. Yeah. And the toxemia symptoms of pregnancy are essentially the same as PMS symptoms. And surprisingly, menopause involves many of the same symptoms as premenstrual syndrome.
And that's one of the great mystifications created by the estrogen industry is that all of these bad symptoms, they say, are caused by a deficiency of estrogen. But in fact, you see the effects on the circulatory system, high blood pressure, leakiness, a tendency to form aneurysms and to have the aneurysms rupture and cause bleeding, the spontaneous hemorrhaging. All of these tend to associate with the time of menstruation at the end of the premenstrual time when the progesterone falls, leaving unopposed estrogen.
And in toxemic pregnancies, when the woman isn't getting good nutrition, especially not enough protein and salt, and in menopause, but the menopause in particular has been characterized as a time of estrogen deficiency. But if you look at all of the events of menopause, the health failures of the various systems, they're all identical to these other times of estrogen excess. And that's why they had to stop that HRT trial. About 10 years ago, they stopped a trial because too many women were getting heart attacks because of the high estrogen and strokes. And Alzheimer's disease.
And so for a while, their doctors were not recommending HRT and they wanted women to come off of it. But somehow I'm now seeing women that are back on HRT. And I don't know how it just got switched around in less than 10 years. But we do have a caller on the line. [phone ringing] Oh, we don't have a caller on the line. They hung up. Okay, that caller was there. They'd like to call back. That's just fine. So, Sarah, you're --
So how does salt play a part in helping relieve this edema and excessive leak of water from the blood into the tissues, the surrounding tissues? So it's a loss of fluid from the blood that leaks into the surrounding tissues and causes a puffy feeling appearance. It has some direct effects on the mitochondria, increasing energy production and shifting the balance of the cell in the right direction to produce more carbon dioxide. And working with the carbon dioxide, it's very close to thyroid's effect in regulating its own concentration in the body.
It increases carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide helps to retain as much sodium as you need. Without the sodium or thyroid, you tend to produce more lactic acid, displacing the carbon dioxide, causing inflammation and water retention. So the -- many doctors will just insist that the more salt you eat, the more water you will retain and the higher your blood pressure will be.
But David McConnell, I think his name was, was the first medical person to point out that it's a calcium deficiency rather than a sodium excess that accounts for so much of the high blood pressure related to nutrition. So they had it right in the 50s and before in the wars that were conducted in the deserts and the hot places, maybe in North Africa, that they used to give the troops salt tablets.
So it wasn't unknown. It was pretty popular, I think, in India when the troops were in -- the British troops were in India colonizing it and also in the North African wars. I remember my stepfather telling me about the salt tablets they used to get. That's been very common and normal. One of the interesting effects of increasing your sodium intake is that it tends to stabilize your blood sugar, partly because it works with thyroid to improve energy efficiency.
But it lowers adrenaline and that makes your whole system work more efficiently. And it prevents hyperventilation, which is another way that people tend to lose carbon dioxide and shift over to lactic acid. It's also a good thing to take if you have a performance or a show and you're a little bit nervous about it. If you drink some orange juice with a little salt in it, that's also good for dehydration. But if you have that right before your show, it can really lower adrenaline so you're a little more calm and more relaxed for your show.
But we do have another caller on the line and this will probably have to be our last caller. Hi, how are you doing? You're on the air. Great show, great show. Hey, I was just wondering, do you happen to know of an herbal supplement for isosorbide? Isosorbide? Isosorbide, yeah. I've never heard of it. It's a time-release nitroglycerin for my heart. Okay, nitroglycerin. There's nothing that's an herbal nitroglycerin. Dr. Peat, do you want to talk about nitroglycerin to this client? Well, it increases your nitric oxide, which is an age-accelerating free radical.
That's the worst thing about it. As far as herbs for the heart, there's lots of herbs that are helpful for the heart, like hawthorn. Right. Okay, I was just wondering specifically about isosorbide. Sorry, I can't help you there. Okay, thanks a lot. Great show, guys. Thanks for your caller. Thanks for calling. Okay, Dr. Peat, that's an interesting question. I know it's not a very simple one-off question, but the whole point of coronary artery occlusion or blockage that the medical fraternity will put down to cholesterol,
the main way that people can help themselves not to get blocked arteries from their diet, just say a few quick words about it. Eating enough calcium, interestingly, is protective of the circulatory system and prevents hardening of the arteries with calcium accumulation because the parathyroid hormone rises when you don't eat enough calcium or eat too much phosphorus. Beans, wheat germ, and meat are very high in phosphorus and low in calcium. And vitamin K is very powerful at preventing calcification of the arteries.
Vitamin K is very high in nettle, herb, and kale, and liver is also a very good source of vitamin K. Okay, we do actually have one more call, Dr. Peat. Sorry to cut in there, but we've got one more caller. I'm squeezing the quick question in. A newly diagnosed diabetic would like some nutrient and dietary and herbal advice. Just quick off the cuff. Okay. Do we know how old they are? A couple of my articles on the website explain why you shouldn't be panicked into avoiding sugar. Polyunsaturated fats are the best documented cause of diabetes.
So avoiding all those liquid vegetable oils, oily fish, pork fat, chicken fat, turkey, any poultry fat. Switching your diet to saturated sources. Saturated fat, butter, coconut oil, beef, lamb fat. Okay, so the whole diabetes thing, I know we've talked about this in previous shows, but we're not going to get the time for this round. And how it works is, just real quick, is the polyunsaturated fats poison the pancreatic beta cells from producing insulin. So eventually, once those are removed, then your pancreatic beta cells can recover and start producing insulin again.
And glucose stimulates the regeneration of the beta cells. And so the thing they tell you not to do, glucose, is what you need. Is what you need. So read those articles on Dr. Peat's website. They're very, very informative. And they've done clinical trials where they have actually seen pancreatic beta cells come back. It's not as though they're not there and it's not as though they've all been destroyed. So Dr. Peat's website. Right, let's give out Dr. Peat's website. It's all about Dr. Peat, folks. So make sure you go and read his articles.
They should turn your life around. I know they've definitely made a huge difference to us and the people that we see. Okay, so Dr. Peat's website is www.raypeat.com. And on the homepage there, there's a link to the articles. There's probably 30 or 40 articles, most of which are sort of 10 pages long with 3 or 4 pages of scientific references to them. So it's very well written. And whilst it may be a little difficult to understand if you don't have a particularly scientific mind,
if you folks out there have heard the radio show and you've got a particular condition that you think may be there, go take a look because there's certainly the information that you'll need. And if you can't at least understand it, maybe someone else can help you understand it. Well, there's always things that everyone can understand about the different foods and the different supplements that can help you, the different nutrients, micronutrients, macronutrients, that can help you recover from whatever it is you're suffering from. Dr. Peat, do you have anything else to say before we--
We've got three minutes. I should mention the work of Ravenskov, a doctor who researched the role of saturated fats and unsaturated and showed that there's no basis whatsoever at any time in history for the cholesterol scare. Okay. Do you know the spelling of his name so people can write it down? R-A-V-E-N-S-K-O-V Right. Okay. Is he Eastern European or? His first name I think is Oufi. Oufi. U-F-F-E or? I think U-F-E. U-F-E. Okay. Good. Okay. So, Oufi Ravenskov, for those people that are listening who'd like to know any more about the wise and wherefores of that.
Okay. So, that's about two minutes too. So, we're going to start to wrap up here. So, thank you so much, Dr. Peat, for giving your time to the people that are listening. We really appreciate your time and expertise. Okay. And thank you, callers, for calling in. Okay. So, that's the third Friday of July. We'll be back the third Friday of August. Summer's moving right along. It's getting warmer and warmer now. And I hope when we come back next time you guys will have got plenty of vitamin D from the sunshine.
Make sure you get exposed to it. Obviously, you don't have to sit there and burn. But get plenty of vitamin D. Make sure you get your saturated fats. Avoid the liquid oils. Make sure you get plenty of calcium and all that good stuff. So, anyway, until the next third Friday of August, good night. Good night. [Music] And support for KMUD comes in part from Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup, an anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, antibacterial, antioxidant medicine made without heat or ice. Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup is organic, edible, topical, cosmetic, and water-soluble. Information is available at [email protected].
And by phone at 707-223-1569. This is Redwood Community Radio, KMUD Garberville, 91.1 FM. KMUE Eureka Arcada, 88.1 FM. KLAI Laytonville, 90.3 FM. And FM translator K258BQ Shelter Cove, 99.5. We're also live and archived on the web at kmud.org. Stay tuned and get ready to get Funk'd Up with Cousin Mark. [Music] 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.
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