Hair Loss, Inflamation, Osteoporosis

00:00 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. Okay, we’ll figure this out. So, back to our supporters. Blue Star Gas provides propane and gas appliances throughout Southern Humboldt, Northern Monsignor, and Trinity counties, locally owned and independent since 1938. Sorry about that. Support for Redwood Community Radio also comes in part from the security store incorporated in the Meadows Business Park in Redway featuring watershed dry bags 01:02 and pelican cases in many sizes. Both have lifetime warranties and have been tested over time in Humboldt County. The security store solutions for your security needs Monday through Friday, nine to five, nine to three, two, three, six, three. It’s seven, oh, one. This is Redwood Community Radio, KMUD, Garberville, 91.1 FM, and KMUE, Eureka Arcada, 88.3 FM, KLAI, Laytonville, 90.3 FM, and FM translator, K258 Baker, Quebec. Shelter Cove, 99.5, and on the web, live and archived at kmud.org. And the views and opinions expressed throughout the Kmud broadcast day are those of the speakers and not necessarily those of the station, its staff, or underwriters. Or engineers. Time will be made available for other viewpoints. Thank you for joining us. And support for KMUD. In our talk show, Ask Your Doctor comes in part from Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup, 02:03 an anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-oxidant, anti-bacterial medicine made without heat or ice. Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup is organic, edible, topical, cosmetic, and water soluble information available at Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup at gmail.com and by phone at 707-223-1569. And here we have Ask Your Herb Doctor. Thank you. 03:15 Thank you. 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 our shows, which run every third Friday of the month from 7 to 8 p.m., we’re both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine. We run a clinic in Garberville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions and we recommend herbal medicine and dietary advice. So this month we are going to have Dr. Pete on the show to talk about various different subjects. 04:20 Okay, I got a message for Kevin Peer. Kevin Peer, call back in because your call has been dropped here somehow. So we were going to bring Kevin Peer in who’s studied hypnotherapy and is going to open up a Lyme disease forum in Garberville and the Humboldt area for people to contact him. So we were going to get Kevin on the show here for the first five, ten minutes. And then Dr. Pete was going to join us again. We’re very lucky to have him back again. So we’re going to be talking about hair loss, folks. So the guys out there who may or may not be bothered about hair loss, you know, it’s pretty common, but there is some answer for it. So Dr. Pete has got some good advice, good suggestions backed up by science. There’s very much a hormone-based approach. We’re going to talk about inflammation, osteoporosis, amongst other things. So after the discussion with Kevin on the Lyme forum happening in Humboldt County here, Dr. Pete will be joining us here in five, ten minutes at the most. 05:24 So Kevin, do we have Kevin with us on the line? We don’t have Kevin on the line. Okay, well. Kevin, please call in or hang up your phone because I’m trying to call you and your phone is busy. Okay, well, perhaps if we don’t get Kevin calling here in the next couple of seconds, we should get Dr. Pete straight in here and go through it with Dr. Pete. So I know what we want to do. Do we want to switch to Dr. Pete now or do we want to try to get Kevin, I think, frantically working in the studio and I think they’ve got Kevin on the line. So in a few seconds here, we’ll switch over to Kevin and let Kevin talk about what it is he’s doing. I think we have Kevin on the line. Are you there, Kevin? Kevin, are you there? Well, I think he might have been there. I do hear a different humming sound now. 06:25 Yeah, the line looks like it’s open. I’m not hearing anybody coming over. Kevin, are you there? Here, I’ll try them on this line. Are you there now? Well, Kevin, please try calling in again. Something’s not working. Whoops, I’m sorry. Okay, well, whatever. Okay, I think maybe now we’ve finally done it. Hello? Hey, Kevin. Okay, I’m sorry that for some reason we managed to lose you. Okay, so I’ve mentioned briefly what it is that you’re doing. Do I understand correctly that you are going to create a Lyme support group 07:28 and I don’t want to rush you, Kevin, but we’re already seven minutes into the show. So you want to do a Lyme support group, is that correct? That is correct. Okay, and that will be for Humboldt County or all around? It’ll be for all around. It’s going to take place at my office at the AEE building right across there from Caymud. Okay. So that’s here in Redway? That’s there in Redway. So what was the purpose of the Lyme support group then briefly? Well, the purpose is to give people an opportunity to be able to meet with other people who are in the same boat, so to speak, who are dealing with Lyme disease and dealing with the challenges and the mysteries of that. One thing that I consistently hear from people, and I certainly experienced myself when I was really in the throes of Lyme disease, is that a lot of people who don’t have Lyme disease don’t really want to hear about it. They’re kind of confused about it. They’re not sure whether the person is being a hypochondriac or not, because a lot of the symptoms are very mysterious and very perplexing 08:29 and they change from day to day. And so one thing that I have consistently heard from people who know that I know something about Lyme disease is, God, it’d be great to have a place where I can come and talk about this and nobody’s going to think I’m crazy. Okay. How are you going to advertise it? Well, Christina Bouts did a wonderful article in this week’s issue of the independent, or find Garberville newspaper. Okay. It’ll be also advertised as an announcement through K-MUD there. And then this interview, it’ll be on the community calendar K-MUD as it gets closer to the date, August 3rd, Wednesday, August 3rd will be the first meeting. And for people who are interested in taking part in this, they should give me a call so that I can get a sense of what they’re wanting to experience in the group and what their needs are. Okay. 09:30 Well, make sure, let people know now how best to contact you and then what it is, just mention again, what it is that you’re going to do to advertise the fact so that people can after today either contact you or wait to hear other information from you. Yeah. Well, my phone number is 9867469. They can also contact me through my email, which is kevinatinneralliancecounseling.com. And that’s inneralliancecounseling.com. I’ll stop properly. Yeah. In case our listeners couldn’t hear that. I wanted to ask, what can participants expect besides what you’ve already mentioned in the fact of expressing their different symptoms that they’re experiencing? What other things can participants expect if they come to this line support group? Yeah. Well, it would be kind of a combination of just being a listening platform for people to share experiences. 10:31 It’ll be a place where they can gain information. Myself and other people, guest speakers, will be coming in to present information on some of the latest treatment modalities for Lyme disease, both in the realm of conventional medicine and also alternative medicine. We’ll be talking about things like just some of the other ways that Lyme disease affects various organ systems, hormones, what you need to be thinking of in terms of diet, just basically how to untangle the puzzle that is really presented when Lyme disease really gets entrenched in your body. Will you be discussing how hypnotherapy can help Lyme disease? Well, during the last 20 minutes or so of each meeting, I’m going to offer a kind of an in-depth, very relaxing, guided healing meditation that’ll be geared around 11:34 helping to activate the immune system so that you can be using your body, mind, spirit all together in dealing with the challenge of Lyme disease. I guess a very quick last question here. Are you going to be charging for this? There’ll be a nominal fee, probably like $5, nominal fee, nobody will be turned away for financial reasons, and the $5 would just be basically going towards helping to defray the cost of gas because I’ll be driving an hour each way to do the group. Okay, so you said that you were going to do some public service announcements on this? Yeah, so basically whatever K-MUD will allow me to do. So there’ll be some community calendar announcements. I’ll be advertising through their classified section. They’ll be making classified announcements. No, not classified ad. What is it? 12:38 Public service announcement, I think? Well, public service announcement apparently is for non-profit organizations, so it won’t be through that. But I’ll be getting the word out. There’ll be also in the community calendar in the independent newspaper that’ll be coming up the week beforehand as well. Okay, just to reiterate your number, it’s 9867469 for our listeners tonight, and that’s Kevin Peer. Yeah, Kevin at InnerAllianceCounseling.com. Kevin at InnerAllianceCounseling.com. Well, thank you, Kevin, for your time tonight to discuss this and talk to us about this. Sorry, we got off to a slow start. Oh, that’s okay. Thanks for having me on board here for a few minutes. Yeah, no problem. Okay, Kevin, thank you. Bye-bye. Okay, well, we should have Dr. Pete on the line next. So Dr. Pete, you’re with us? Yes. Hi, good evening. Hi. Again, there may be some people who’ve just tuned in this evening for the first time to this show and the first time of hearing your name. 13:42 So just for those people that are always around, would you please just let people know about your academic background? Okay, I studied biology at the University of Oregon specializing in physiology, especially reproductive physiology and quite a bit of biochemistry, but I considered myself an old-fashioned biologist, a pre-molecular biology in my way of thinking. Okay, so mainly biology, because I know that you’ve spent quite a lot of time looking at hormones as a mode of activating our own body’s mechanisms. Yeah, my dissertation was on the effects of hormones on oxidative metabolism in relation to aging of the reproductive system. 14:44 Okay, good. Well, I know that the people that I’ve mentioned at the beginning of the show here, we’d be talking about, amongst other things, hair loss and the mechanism behind hair loss. I think some of the guys that are listening to the show probably have more interest in this than the women, but that’s not to say that some women may not have some, is pricked at the sound of hair, hair growth, I think, and that’s also something that we’re going to cover. I know that there is a small subsection of females who do develop what they call hair suitism, and it’s certainly hormone-driven, and we’d certainly be very keen to hear what your take on hair loss perhaps as a starting point for the guys would be, the kind of mechanism behind it. How do you understand hair loss? Because I know they’ve mentioned male pattern baldness and genetics, et cetera, as being entrenched in the impossible to deal with, and I know that the cosmetic surgery, people do things like hair transplants for thousands and thousands. And I also know that the head of the dermatology department in Whips Cross Hospital in London when we were training, 15:49 he was completely convinced that male pattern baldness was caused by a sensitivity to testosterone, or the DHT, the more potent form of testosterone. So Dr. Pete, how can you explain to our listeners and us tonight why males develop a male pattern baldness, and is it due to testosterone? I think the belief in testosterone as the cause is similar to the old belief that males got prostate cancer because of having testosterone. Since males get a particular kind of baldness, it’s easy to blame it on testosterone, but in fact there’s no evidence showing that excess testosterone is responsible for it any more than excess testosterone causes prostate cancer, and so that’s where the idea of increased sensitivity came in, because there was no evidence of too much of the hormone. 16:55 He did say that when they measured the blood levels of men with lots of hair and men with no hair at all in their head, the levels of testosterone were not important, so the best they could come up with is that their cells had a sensitivity to testosterone. Yeah, that sort of fills in for a lack of evidence. When you look at the actual hormone situation of people with lots of hair on their head and with not much, what you see is an excess of prolactin and cortisol in the people losing their hair, both men and women. And when you look at the effect of testosterone on the growth of the hair shaft, the higher testosterone makes it grow thicker and faster, and prolactin tends to cause it to fall out. In chickens and other birds, it’s known as the molting hormone. 18:00 In humans, it’s the milk producing hormone largely, but it also regulates practically every other cell in the body, and it has that analogous function of terminating the growth cycle of the hair shaft. And cortisol and prolactin both rise during stress, and for a long time people have been noticing the association of baldness with heart disease and also with a crease in the earlobe, and both of those have been challenged repeatedly, but there is clear evidence that they are associated, and what links those is also connected to prolactin and high cortisol, which is the low energy production of thyroid deficiency, tendency, letting the metabolism of cholesterol go down more towards increased cortisol and less towards progesterone and testosterone and DHEA things that do promote hair growth. 19:27 Men who are suffering from baldness were to have their blood levels checked. Do you think they would see a higher than normal level of prolactin in their blood, although we didn’t need to talk about the levels of prolactin as far as the labs are concerned? For sure it wouldn’t be likely to be higher than normal on the current lab standards for normal, because they’ve increased the upper edge probably because of so much exposure of the population to estrogen, which estrogen increases the production of prolactin, and estrogen itself terminates the growth of hair. But didn’t you say that when they did actual studies for prolactin or pituitary tumors or tumors in which prolactin was elevated, they found like an ideal range for a female and a male, maybe we can discuss those? Yeah, back in the 70s after the wave of pituitary tumors resulting from the high estrogen birth control pills, they found that the healthy range for women on standard scale of units was around 12, somewhere maybe as high as 15, and for men was about 4 to 7. 20:47 And they’ve now raised the upper limit for men to, sometimes they say it’s as high as 20 and for women as high as 30, but all the men I’ve talked to who had close to 20, even though they said to be normal, they all had developing breasts, kind of comastia. So they obviously had, at 20, it might have been within the normal range that that laboratory stated, but if they’re developing breasts then they obviously have far too much prolactin for a man to have. Yeah, and fertility is best when a man has 4 to 7. Just getting back to developing breasts, the term is gynecomastia, correct, and in beer drinkers excessive, what, excessive, but drinkers of beer that drink very hoppy beer, so beer that has an extra infusion of hops, gynecomastia is not an uncommon sight. 21:49 I know in some British pubs, maybe where people are drinking lots of hoppy beer in the southeast, I know they grow hops still in quite large amounts. It’s not only the phytoestrogens from the hops, but the yeast that all of the alcoholic drinks require. The yeast produces estradiol, the powerful human hormone, as their own reproductive hormone. Interestingly enough, hop extract is the latest miticide for the bee industry. The brand new thing is called hop guard, and somehow it kills mites but not bees. I wonder if what that is, if there’s an anti-parasitic compound besides the estrogenic resin that’s in hops. Also, hops pickers are notoriously known to stop menstruating because it’s such a high level of hormone that they get exposed to through their skin. 22:50 That’s a similar situation we have in Humboldt County with people being exposed to clipping and having the resin go through their skin because hops and cannabis are in the same plant family. Both of those hormones in beer, and less in most of the wines, but alcoholic drinks in general, with the estrogen from the yeast at least, will stimulate the adrenals to produce both estrogen and cortisol. All kinds of estrogen increase the cortisol exposure, and so the cortisol makes the big belly and the estrogen, among other things, contribute to breast growth. I know I’m diverging a little bit on some of the subjects I wanted to ask you questions about this evening, but it’s coming from the same kind of root. What about the oral contraceptive pill and its massive exposure, if you like, to the public through urine and regular drinking water, given that so many women eat on the OCP. 24:02 Do you think that’s a credible source of estrogens in the environment? Oh, sure. You can identify the specific type of estrogen and protestant from the pills going right through the sewer processing plants right into the rivers and causing fish, muskrats, anything that lives in the rivers, getting the sewage from cities, they’re being feminized. Is there any type of filter that takes out those estrogenic compounds that could be coming from urine of females using the oral contraceptive pill? No, nothing practical that’s in use. So nothing like carbon, yeah. Activated carbon? Well, yeah, if you’re going to drink the water, you should run over activated carbon. But, I mean, wouldn’t activated carbon be a fairly cheap way for sewage plants to process water? I guess maybe not. 25:05 No. No, okay. The ozone is probably the cheapest best thing because it breaks down chemicals like that. I think Paris has been doing that for 40 years or so. Okay. All right. Let me just let listeners know what we’re all about here. We’ve got Dr. Raymond Peat on the line with us joining us live on this month’s Ask Your Web doc here. The number here to call from about 730 onwards is 9233911 or if you live outside the area, you want to call an 800 number, that’s 800-568-3723. Dr. Peat, about the connection between hair loss and the hormones, you mentioned cortisol and prolactin being two hormones that would decrease hair growth. And these are stress hormones, correct? Yeah, they go up with stress in different proportions. The classical stress hormone is cortisol, but prolactin responds to different kinds of stress. 26:16 For example, anything that blocks your thyroid function and energy production tends to increase prolactin. And at the same time, it increases the thyroid stimulating hormone. Those are both turned on by serotonin. Okay. I know I’ve heard you speak many times about the innate energy level within an organism being responsible for keeping it in a state of good health and cellular repair and regeneration. I know you mentioned a lot of thyroid as being the body’s natural hormone of energy and driving cellular respiration and repair and etc. The link between cortisol as a stress hormone and prolactin with hair loss and the opposing hormone, which I know also you’re very well published about, is progesterone. And when your thyroid is low or other factors such as cholesterol, if cholesterol is low average and if you’re deficient in vitamin A, then you can’t efficiently turn cholesterol into progesterone and the other anti-stress hormones. 27:36 And the emergency anti-stress hormone is cortisol. So if you lower your cholesterol with a drug, that’s going to force you to increase reliance on cortisol. And that will have all the degenerative effects including interference with hair growth. This is some of the reason why the statin drugs, some of which have been recalled because of degenerative effects. The thing that has got the most attention is breakdown of muscle tissue, causing bleeding in the urine and pain in the muscles. But it’s that when you poison the production of cholesterol, you’re also poisoning the coenzyme Q10 and many other metabolic systems as well as cholesterol. 28:41 Because I know you’ve mentioned a lot about cholesterol being a good guy and it’s kind of counterintuitive or counterbrainwashing. I think for some sections of society we want to tell us that our cholesterol should be a certain level and I know you’re an advocate of having a reasonably good level of cholesterol because it’s such an important building block for the steroid hormone production. Yeah, the Framingham study at one point found that people over 50 who don’t have at least 200 milligram percent of cholesterol are much more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. It’s brain protective to have over 200 if other things being equal. If you’re over the age of 50, right? And thyroid will lower cholesterol naturally, but it does by producing more of the protective hormones, progesterone, and DHEA. 29:47 So it uses up the cholesterol to manufacture those hormones. And so if you naturally have below 200 cholesterol because your thyroid is good and all of your nutrients are adequate, then that’s fine. So can we talk about some practical applications of what some people could go buy at the health food store and rub on their head to help the hair grow back? Dr. Peter? Well, okay, here we go. Vitamin D happens to be closely involved in hair development, calcium, getting enough calcium in your diet. How does a vitamin D work, Dr. Peter? Well, they call it the vitamin D receptor, but it’s a regulatory material in practically every cell in the body, bones and hair both. And the receptor itself, even without the vitamin D, is involved in regenerating, making stem cells that will produce new hairs. 30:56 And a couple of groups have discovered that if you inhibit the parathyroid hormone, you can increase hair growth. The natural inhibitors of the parathyroid hormone are vitamin D and calcium are the main ones. Parathyroids and inflammatory? Yeah, it turns on, it interrupts the use of oxygen. So it’s really kind of a paradigm of an anti-thyroid function. Thyroid makes you able to use oxygen and the parathyroid hormone can do some useful things such as shocking your bones into producing more cartilage stem cells. And capillaries simply by interfering with oxygen production. For a moment, that shock of oxygen deprivation stimulates regenerative process. 32:02 But if you keep your parathyroid hormone up continuously, then you destroy the bone because it doesn’t have enough energy to go ahead and build bone. So it’s like a stress hormone for the immediate or the very short term like cortisol. It uses, it mobilizes nutrients, it helps you get through that stressful period, but in long term it’s very detrimental. Yeah, it’s the same principle where you get a shock of parathyroid hormone that starts up the bone growth. It’s similar to what happens with an injury. Sometimes people have a cut on their scalp and they’ll get hair growing around the scar. Two or three years ago, an old man fell with his head in the fireplace and got a severe burn on his scalp and grew a whole head of hair. That’s the result of the injury, but you don’t want to rely on either injury or thyroid hormone. Okay, so people can make sure to be getting lots of calcium up to 2,000 milligrams a day. 33:06 Of course, dairy is quite high in calcium, but also to bring in some herbs here, nettle tea is high in a lot of different minerals. And vitamin D is freely available from the sunshine this time of year. So what else, Dr. Pete, would you recommend for male pattern? Let’s not call that, just regular male hair loss. Well, vitamin A intake is another thing that helps hold down parathyroid hormones and adequate thyroid. And so you want to avoid everything that suppresses thyroid functions such as polyunsaturated fats. All the vegetable oils and get plenty of coconut oil. And vitamin A is found in liver and eggs. And there’s beta-carotene found in lots of vegetables, but that conversion process does rely on the liver. If your thyroid is suboptimal, then that conversion process will probably not happen as ideally as you’d want it to. And in the last couple of years, some people have found that topical thyroid hormone, the active T3 part of it, 34:14 applied to the skin stimulates regeneration and renewal. And caffeine, which has some overlapping effects with thyroid hormone, caffeine is now being added to lotions and ointments and such to renew hair growth. And it’s a very cheap application. I think they still sell no-dos caffeine pills. I haven’t seen them for years. Well, would coffee or tea work just as well if you made an infusion of that and then dapped out on your head? I suppose so. You don’t think so? I think we’re talking about it. Yeah, I’m sure the caffeine would work, but it’s cleaner. And then also you had mentioned to us earlier about making an oil rub for your head with natural progesterone DHEA and olive oil. Yeah, those are things that regenerate many skin functions, including hair growth. 35:18 So if you took a little bit of olive oil and 25 milligrams of DHEA and about 50 milligrams of natural progesterone, and you mixed that all together, that’d last you for about a week? Yeah, I’ve seen several people do it. If you have some hair to start with, it’s kind of a sticky oily mess to put it on your scalp every day. That’s why caffeine is a neater thing because you can’t see it or smell it or feel it. Yeah, caffeine is freely available as a pharmaceutical, correct? Yeah. And what’s the dosage for the caffeine? Yeah, what’s the dosage for the caffeine? Oh, I don’t think anyone has really worked that out, but it isn’t terribly soluble in water. So if you get too much, it’s just whatever is comfortable. Okay. All right. 36:19 Well, I think we have a caller on the line anyway. So let’s take our first caller. You’re on the air? Hi. Hi, you’re on the air. I guess my line would be, I’m not going bald. I’m molting in preparation for my refreshed head of hair. There you go. Are you going to try this out? Well, you know, I’m just wondering on that. You know, you’ve talked about estrogenics from plants, and I’m wondering if in nature’s balance, there are testosteroneics in plants that would provide that support. And related to that, the yohembe plant, then yohembe, if that’s a hormone or how it works, it’s actually recognized as the only aphrodisiac. Yet the FDA says that it has no applicable uses. And that’s my definition of the FDA, which I can’t say on the air. But if you could address the yohembe and yohembe, and if there are any natural testosteroneics which may be useful or avoided in certain situations. 37:28 Thank you very much for the program. Okay. You’re welcome. Well, Dr. Pete, do you have anything to share on this? I don’t know of any plants that have a testosterone-like action. There could be some, but I’ve never run into either progesterone or testosterone in a practical sense in plants. There are some chemicals that test like progesterone in plants, but I’ve never seen an actual biological effect from them. I think the mechanism of nettle root on… But that’s just low-renestrogen. Yeah, but it’s not specifically… It’s not specifically testosteroneogenic, but I thought it had a… Yeah, maybe that’s a blocking action. And sapamedone. And that’s similar to pregnant alone, but it’s not… So, I mean, that would help with men noticing increase in their testosterone, but I think it’s just because it’s helping increase pregnant alone. 38:32 Yeah, and pregnant alone blocks the stress hormones, primarily turning off excess cortisol production. But when you block the stress reaction, you also prevent overproduction of estrogens. It can leave your own testosterone unopposed. Do you have any experience with the ohimbine, perhaps, as a…? No, and I don’t know much about it. I’ve read many particles, but I don’t really understand it. Okay, because as much as I… It’s an alkaloid that’s supposedly the aphrodisiac portion. Anyway, we have another caller on the line, so let’s take the caller. Actually, they wanted me to do the question, and I’ll do it if it’s simple, but if it’s not simple, then… I mean, you’re always going to have better success asking Dr. Beat yourself, but… 39:35 So, we have a female exbolemic who got over bulimia about a year ago or so, and it started experiencing hair loss as soon as she got over the bulimia and would like some nutritional suggestions, and there’s another call, so I’ve got to get to that. So, Dr. P, what’s your take on bulimia and post-bulimic hair loss? I suspect it led to hypothyroidism. There’s usually high prolactin and high serotonin during those appetite disturbances, and it probably was starting because of hypothyroidism, but at a certain point, then your hair can start falling when your thyroid is really low and the stress hormones high. Right, because the stress hormones are definitely going to be high in that kind of situation. Okay. All right, well, I see the lights are flashing, so, okay, we don’t… 40:36 The engineer is shaking his head. Okay, so, all right. So, so far as the hair loss, then, is concerned, one of those suggestions was DHEA and progesterone and or caffeine as a USP pharmaceutical grade caffeine. Oh, he mentioned some caffeine pills. I’ve never heard of them that you can buy at the drugstore. Oh, okay. It was Nodo’s brand. Nodo’s brand, okay. Okay, do they still sell them? Do they? Okay, maybe not. All right, and then… Aspirin is another thing that has some anti-stress pro-hair action. Well, I’d like to spend some time talking about unwanted female hair growth and female hair loss, because it’s slightly different, but some of the same hormones. So, Dr. Pete, when women have a lot of facial hair or mustache or even if it’s on their chin or cheek, what’s going on there with their hormones? 41:38 The androgens usually are up, but prolactin excess, the difference seems to be whether the prolactin is steadily high or whether it surges very high, but both chursutism and hair loss are associated with high prolactin. And the thyroid supplement is a very reliable way to control prolactin in most women. Vitamins A and calcium also help to inhibit excess prolactin. And from a herbal point of view, vitex is blocks prolactin, vitex chastryberry. And also progesterone would help with blocking some of those high androgens that are promoting the hair growth in women. Yeah, and the thyroid will, if you have enough cholesterol, the thyroid will increase your progesterone, pregnenolone and DHEA. 42:51 Okay. How about graying hair? Most commonly see that as a sign of aging, but not necessarily so, huh? I’ve seen DHEA correct it pretty quickly, but the enzyme that creates the melanin pigment uses copper as a catalyst, and probably the best food for increasing your copper while decreasing the iron which competes against the copper is shellfish, shrimp, clam, lobster, crab, squid. All of those have a high copper content, not an excessive iron. And I think contrary to popular opinion about shellfish, they’re actually lower on the food chain, so they’re lower in heavy metals and other contaminants than fish are. 44:00 And I just, from a personal note, since I started eating a serving of shellfish once a week three years ago, I haven’t noticed any new gray hairs starting. The same ones that had already started, unfortunately when I was 30, are still there. They haven’t reversed, but I haven’t noticed it continuing to spread. So it does work making sure you get your copper intake balanced, and if in the form of shellfish it’s quite balanced. Iron accumulates with aging. If a person is going to eat foods that are very high in iron such as meat or liver, I think it’s helpful in the long run to have some coffee right at the same time you’re having the meat so that you don’t absorb all of the iron. Iron is quite a damaging iron itself, isn’t it? It’s very pro-inflammatory and oxidative. 45:03 Yeah, it attacks with the polyunsaturated fats that tends to increase your serotonin. Now isn’t that, you’ve mentioned lipofusin? Oh, yeah. It’s formed by the oxidation chronically of polyunsaturated fats interacting with iron and estrogen are the main… And estrogen? Yeah. And just for our vegetarian listeners, are there vegetables that are particularly high in copper or a vegetable source? None that I know of. What about any eggs? Do eggs have any copper in them? Not enough to count. What about seaweed? Do you think seaweed would have any copper? Yeah, but you would probably get a toxic amount of iodine if you were to drink it. 46:04 Lead in heavy metals and too much of that? Yeah, the seaweed isn’t very discriminatory. On what metals it picks up? Okay, you’re listening to ask your doctor on KME decarbonville 91.1 FM and from now until the end of the show, 8 o’clock you’re invited to call in with any questions, either related or unrelated to this month’s subject of hair loss. Hormones, oxidation, and we’re going to talk a little bit about osteoporosis, I think is probably one of the next subjects we want to just open up. So if you live outside the area, there’s an 800 number, 800-568-3723, or if you live in the area, it’s 923-3911. 923-3911, I’m rushing there. Yeah, so Dr. P, I’m just keen to ask you, Dr. P, about osteoporosis. I know we all hear about calcium and brittle bones and postmenopausal women being at risk of fracture, but what’s your interpretation of the cause of osteoporosis? 47:07 My current interest in it is that it’s a good way to conceive the unified nature of aging processes, because everyone’s bones get thinner with aging, and it corresponds pretty well to the loss of muscle tissue with aging. And generally it corresponds to the calcification of soft tissues that shouldn’t have calcium, and the excitatory processes of all of the inflammatory and nervous activity, muscle cramping and so on, all of these things are associated with the misapplication of calcium, failing to put it in the bones, and all of that is under the control of energy metabolism. 48:14 So something going wrong with your thyroid and oxidative metabolism, the parathyroid lactic acid producing kind of metabolism tends to replace it and cause the stress, atrophy, shrinking of the tissues. So it’s more of an error of calcium metabolism, so in terms of correcting something, because I know you’re very big on natural sources of calcium, and the calcium recommendations that you’ve mentioned in the past may to some people perhaps seem high, but certainly prove very useful for people with conditions related to calcium decrease. So what kind of calcium intake do you think is as reasonable for people, especially those people approaching an age where 50 or whatever they’re? The Masai people and other cattle raising people in Eastern Africa often get 5,000 milligrams of calcium a day for a long period of time. 49:23 And this is all from milk? Yeah, and there’s been a lot of publicity in the last few months about calcium supplements and not being very helpful, and the most popular form of calcium supplement medically has been either calcium gluconate or calcium, I guess gluconate is probably the most popular. Citrate, yeah. Citric acid itself causes uterus, calcium in urine, lactate is another popular supplement. All of those have their anti-calcification effects causing uterus, calcium, or misplaced. And here they advertise that calcium citrate is the only absorbable form for menopausal women, and you’re saying that it actually inhibits some of the absorption of the calcium? 50:26 It activates the loss of calcium in urine where carbonate isn’t quite as soluble if you don’t have a lot of acid, but eventually all the way down your intestine it has a chance to absorb. So it’s a very effective but safe supplement because the carbonic acid, the carbon dioxide is the form that stimulates bone formation rather than breaking down the bone. And a really easy way to get an adequate level if you don’t drink dairy or drink milk or eat cheese is to do eggshell powder for calcium carbonate. And like where a quart of milk has about 1000 milligrams of calcium, am I correct Dr. Beat? Yeah, 1000 to 1200. 1000 to 1200, and if you have a quarter teaspoon of finely ground eggshell powder, if you take that three times a day with your meals so that your acid level is adequate, that’s providing around 2000 milligrams of calcium. 51:42 And that quarter teaspoon is smaller than most calcium pills you swallow. And there have been chemical analyses of comparing eggshells to other, to the commercial calcium supplements and they find that the lowest concentration of toxic heavy metals is in eggshells. Oyster shells are the next cleanest, but even they have slightly more of the toxic heavy metals. Because naturally as mammals we accumulate heavy metals and things we want out of our circulation in our bones and so if you’re taking a calcium supplement that’s from an animal’s bones then you could essentially be poisoning yourself. Is this correct Dr. Beat? Yeah, old cows are sometimes used to make the bone meal and their lead content is really high. Okay, alright so calcium in a form of eggshells is an excellent supplement for combating osteoporosis. 52:46 For those people who don’t want to drink milk because milk has the protein and the sugar that helps with bone production as well as the calcium. And aspirin is, people seldom talk about it, but aspirin improves calcium retention in bones and it is as profitable as eggshell is an osteoporosis drug as disphosphonates and such things. But it’s very safe as long as you take vitamin K along with it and vitamin K it happens to be a pretty expensive vitamin, but it is right at the center of the regulation of calcium. It protects your arteries from calcification and it allows the bone to use carbon dioxide. It carboxylates the proteins that bind calcium into the bone. 53:57 So you’re protecting your arteries and building your bones when you have adequate vitamin K and both aspirin and vitamin K are known practical bone building supplements. Do you have any recommendations for food sources for vitamin K? Kale is the vegetable that’s richest in it I think and liver is a very rich source. Okay so do you know for example how much kale someone would use to get the equivalent vitamin K in order to be able to use aspirins safely? I think every other day serving of well-cooked kale will give enough vitamin K, but the Japanese have treated osteoporosis and hardening of the arteries with doses of vitamin K that were 500 times the normal dietary requirement. 55:08 I know you’ve mentioned vitamin K, a milligram of vitamin K is sufficient which I know that I think Thorne Research produces a vitamin K that is one milligram per drop and that would be enough to use alongside one 325 milligram aspirin. The other thing too is nettle tea has some vitamin K besides the minerals. Okay because calcification of the arteries is fairly common, we hear about it quite a lot and this is then due to aberrant calcium metabolism and actually to use calcium is not the problem. Because I know I hear people say well if I’m supposed to be doing something about my calcification then I don’t want to be consuming calcium but it’s actually counter-intuitive because consuming adequate amounts of calcium will drive parathyroid hormone down. And we’ll deposit calcium in the correct location not on the arterial wall. 56:10 Dr. Pete, you still there? Yes. Okay, I’m sorry. Several years ago, several people noticed that people taking psychoactive drugs were getting osteoporosis. And the SSRI antidepressants that supposedly increase your serotonin, they don’t reliably do that but that’s what we call them. We’re seeing osteoporosis develop in people who had been on those for several years and that led to some rethinking of bone metabolism. And they see that serotonin produced and coming mostly out of the intestine reaching the bones as a result of inflammation in the intestine for example or from taking a drug that increases serotonin is interfering with bone metabolism and causing fairly quick development of osteoporosis. 57:19 And so now a couple of groups are coming out with drugs to suppress the synthesis of serotonin to cure osteoporosis. Excellent. Well Dr. Pete, I’m going to have to cut you short there and just make sure that people get your information in the next couple of minutes that we have left here. So thank you so much for joining us again. I really appreciate your time and your expertise. Okay, thank you. And thank you listeners for listening to our show. We appreciate your support. Okay, so Dr. Raymond Pete has a very good website with lots of reference published scientific articles and references for all the statements that he makes. So the website address is www.raypeat, r-a-y-p-e-a-t dot com. So go there, have a look at its website, look at these articles, some very interesting articles and some lots of perhaps counterintuitive for today. But that’s a good thing because what we know today is not necessarily the right thing. 58:22 Thank you for all those people that have tuned in to the show and as usual next third Friday of next month we’ll be back at 7 o’clock. We can be reached toll free on 1-888-WBM-ERB for consultations or further information. And thank you to all of you who listen regularly and those who tuned in this evening. To those who have ears, let them hear. Good night. Good night. And support for camera comes in part from Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup, an anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-oxidant medicine made without heat or ice. Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup is organic, edible, topical, cosmetic and water soluble. Information available at Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup at gmail.com and by phone at 707-223-1569 soon to be tested for Vitamin K. 59:28 And we are Redwood Community Radio, KMUD Garberville, 91.1 FM, KMUE Eureka Arcada 88.3 FM, KLAI Laytonville, 90.3 FM and FM translator K258BQ Shelter Cove, 99.5 and streaming live and archived on the web at kma.org. Thank you for listening. Get ready to get funked up with Cousin Mark. Please remember that this program is supported by the listener members of Redwood Community Radio. If you like what you hear, please consider becoming a member of KMUD or renewing if you’ve already joined. A regular yearly membership is $50, but we accept any amount. Help us keep free speech alive.