Herbalist Sophie Lamb

00:00 Well, welcome once again to this month’s Ask Your Health Doctor, my name’s Andrew Murray. As always, for those who have tuned in and have not listened to the show before, we broadcast every 3rd Friday of the month from 7-8pm on KMU-DGAR before 91.1 FM. We’re discussing a wide range of alternative medicines, health topics related to alternatives, and I’m very pleased, as always, to have Dr Raymond Pete join us once more. For those who may not know you, Dr Pete, would you please give our listeners a rundown of your academic and professional background before we introduce our next guest? After studying and teaching the humanities and linguistics and various things except biology, before 1968, then I went to graduate school in biology to get a PhD in 1972, and specialized in aging physiology of reproduction, but in general studied physiology and biochemistry, 01:05 and since then have been doing short courses and counseling and such. Okay, excellent. All right, and this month, very specially, I’m very pleased to welcome a second generation. Well, actually that’s not true. I’ve called her a second generation medical herbalist because I didn’t understand her father’s actual background before. But anyway, Sophie Lam, daughter of distinguished medical herbalist Brian Lam, welcome to the Sophie. Thank you so much, I’m so delighted to be here. So, let me ask you this, I’ve always called you a second generation herbalist, but actually your father’s background is? Well, my father’s background is about four generations of doctors and surgeons going back about 200 years, and although they were surgeons and doctors, a big part of the medicines that they used at the time was herbal medicine, so they had their apothecaries alongside their surgeries. Okay, I know Brian, he’s 82 now. 02:09 I think I’m right in saying he qualified in 1978 from what was then the School of Herbal Medicine before the degrees came into place and the honours degrees that were given to herbal medicines, and he’s been in full-time practice since, and he also manufactures a wide range of fluid extracts, syrups, and some time-honoured recipes using medicinal herbs, and he has a fairly busy practice as well as working day-to-day. He does, he’s so amazing, so he’s nearly 82 and he works full-time, gets up very early with the birds and works all day long, and I’m just amazed at the energy he still has at his age, and I think it’s driven by the passion that he has for his job, the love he has for the herbs, the fact that he’s 82 and is still discovering and exploring so much because it’s something that you could study for a lifetime and still not extinguish all there is to know, so yeah, he’s driven by passion I think. 03:10 Absolutely, and he’s, excuse me, like Dr Peake, people that listen to Dr Peake and clearly hear, he’s very scientifically grounded in what he’s discussing, although sometimes his explanation is different from what would be a typical understanding of it, and that’s because he knows something different. Your father also, he’s very much into the science in herbal medicine, isn’t he? Oh, he’s really into the science, I mean when he’s not actually physically preparing herbs or seeing patients or working as a dispensary, he’s researching, he spends lots and lots of time researching still, and he loves that. Now, am I right in thinking that he, I don’t know for how long, but he came to the America working for a Utah company developing some products for them? Yeah, so he used to America giving lectures on herbal applications for cosmetics, and he’s worked for a few network marketing companies designing herbal products for them 04:12 and supplements and encapsulating them and making them work for a large-scale company. Yeah, so do you know how long that was again? He spent how… Well, I know that he, how long ago was that? No, no, how many years he was doing this for? Well, I think it must have stretched over about 10 years. Yeah, okay, good. So Sophie, winter coughs, colds, preparations are some favourites. Let’s get an idea of what it was like growing up in the household on the northernmost tip of Scotland with an herbalist as a father. Okay, well, so I have three sisters, there’s four of us daughters together, so when you have four young children growing up, typically speaking, young children develop coughs and chest infections, and that was definitely the case with us. It may have been made worse by the fact that we’re growing up on the top of the map of the UK, so our home looks over the Orkney Islands, right at the very top, but really, really incredible herbs grow locally and are very specific to this area. 05:13 So we, we have an arbor in the kitchen and my childhood memories are full of herbs drying on top and syrups being made at the side of the Argo. And yeah, so we all actually had hooping cough as children, all four of us, I believe, but my sister, my elder sister had it the worst, and what dad did for her, and he did for all of us, was he sliced up thin slices of garlic, smeared the soles of our feet with Vaseline, and applied thin slices of garlic to the soles of our feet, and applied, and wrapped around cling film and applied a sock. He would have left it on for a few minutes, I’m not sure how long, because obviously after a time, garlic can actually burn, so you don’t want to leave it on for too long, but you know, within a few minutes, the essential oils have gone up, the volatile oils have gone up through the bloodstream, and you’re breathing out garlic, and that’s what shortened the duration and severity of our hooping coughs as children. We used to pick Tostalago, which is Coltsford, and it makes the most incredible syrup, because the flowers themselves smell of honey, but by the side of the Argo, we’d do a layer of, 06:16 and I mean, all four of us were lured out to the hills and to the sand dunes and the moors, picking herbs, or we’re lured out by a quarter of a snicker bar each, because in those days we weren’t given chocolate, and we’d pick sackhills of these herbs, and we’d go home, we’d do a layer of flowers, a layer of sugar, a layer of flowers, they’d macerate by the side of the hot Argo, and we’d have the most incredible syrup. And one of the things my dad is most well known for is he makes an incredible thyme syrup, and thyme. I mean, thyme, as a herb, fits the needs of the lungs like a glove. It’s an antitossive, so it reduces the cough reflex. It’s anti-edema on the lungs when you get swelling of the lungs. It’s expectorant, helps you spit out the mucus, and it’s antiseptic, and he makes an incredible syrup using de-side water, which in itself is a healing water, and molasses. That’s interesting. Your father actually uses a specific water. I think you should stick about that for a little bit. Well, all of his extracts are made using de-side water. 07:23 De-side is a well, or a spring, which comes from the Pananik Hills around Aberdeenshire, I believe. My dad actually worked as a consultant for this water company, because he understands water very well, and that water is not just water. Different waters have different values and properties, because my dad’s also an engineer before he was a herbalist, and he’s very scientific. So people, the royalties, the royal families, used to travel to this area of Scotland to drink the healing water, these de-side water, and my dad actually extracts all of his herbs in this de-side water. How far away, because your home is up in a place called Thurzo, which is the very northernmost point of Scotland. How far away is De-side from Thurzo? So it would be about a five-hour drive south. It’s a five-hour drive south. Very good. Well, you’re listening to Ask Europe Dr. K. M. E. D. Galbival, 91.1 FM, from 7.30 until 8 o’clock. Listeners are invited to call in with questions, any questions they might want to pose. 08:24 Sophie, as well as Dr. Pete, who is on the line and is going to be joining us and interjecting, and we’re going to be questioning him about some of the science, about some of these things that Sophie’s going to talk about. I did want to say that a little bit of the background, just for people that are listening, in terms of England’s law and herbal medicine and it being protected, in 1154, Henry II institutionalized common law, and it’s been the basis of the legal systems of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Ireland, plus many other countries around the world until the present time. And common law is based on the premise that everything is legal unless it’s deemed illegal. Pretty straightforward, eh? Now, herbal medicine throughout history has always been protected under common law. However, in 1542, the medical profession at that time wanted to prevent herbalists from practicing. Fortunately, Henry VIII, as an avid user of herbs, came to the rescue and implemented the herbalist charter, 09:25 which underpinned the herbalist’s right to practice, and anyone with knowledge of herbs could continue to use them. Quoting from the text, that at all time from henceforth it shall be lawful to every person being the king’s subject, having knowledge and experience of the nature of herbs, roots, and waters. And Nicholas Culpeper in 1616-1654 was an apothecary who lived in a time when fees paid or charged by the medical professionals were out of the reach of the general public. So Culpeper translated the medical text from that into English and sold copies at a low price to the apothecaries and anyone who could read so that they could use these life-saving works. Henry VIII and Culpeper saved herbal medicine for the people, and thanks to the work in England of Fred Fletcher Hyde and other herbalists, the 1968 Medicines Act allowed herbalists to continue to prescribe and prepare herbal medicines under section 12 part 1 and section 12 part 2 of this act. However, with the current relationship with the European Union, 10:26 European law is now having a profound influence on the daily lives of herbalists, including the jurisdiction of herbal medicine. European law is founded on Napoleonic law, not common law, and Napoleonic law is based on the premise that everything is illegal unless it is deemed legal. So completely back to front. Anyway, I know that the National Institute of Medical Herbalists is still working fairly tirelessly to keep the practice out of the reach of exclusion from the Brussels establishment, and I think you’re a member of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, aren’t you? No. Or MCP people. Right. In England, there’s two authoritative bodies on herbal medicine, the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, which I think is founded in 1864, and then the College of Practicing Phytotherapists, which actually is probably more allied to the European ESCOP, the European Society on Pharmacopoeia, you know, on good. 11:28 Okay, so again, this mirrors a kind of restriction and influence one system of medicine has against another, limiting freedom of choice to the patient. We’re not quite there, both in the UK and the US, but as we’ve mentioned many times in past shows here on KNBD, the overreaching corporations in tandem with government and lobbyists are seeking to eliminate any competition in favour of monopoly in the hands of the pharmaceutical and medical industries. It’s only by the power of we, the people, speaking out against any restrictive legislation that this will be avoided. A good example is the current legislation now forcing vaccination on the people using the law to monopolise profits in the name of the greater good when the very industry producing vaccines is indemnified by law against punitive damages when individuals are crippled or killed by adverse drug events, many of which are clearly identified as the adjuvants within vaccines, like aluminum, for example. It’s one thing to produce safe, effective vaccines and quite another to manufacture drugs which have been linked to autism 12:32 and other neurological impairment. Now, we have spoken about this at a fairly good length. Now, Dr. Pete, on the subject of autism, I wanted to ask Sophie the same question afterwards and then get your feedback about the answer that she’s going to have, which I haven’t really asked her at this point. I’m not too sure what she’s going to say and I definitely don’t know what you’re going to say. But what do you see as a safe approach to helping the autistic child and what do you see as a cause? I think just about anything harmful to the parents, especially the mother, and especially during pregnancy, almost any environmental harm is going to increase the rate of autism. For example, environmental estrogens and things that cause hypothyroidism, things that cause obesity are known to be causes of autism. But I think, for example, in Texas, there was a study showing that Latino kids, 13:39 especially Mexican immigrants, had a much lower rate of autism than the well-medicalized white residents. And I think a major cause of a major source of adversity during pregnancy is what John Goffman saw was the major cause of breast cancer and heart disease in the United States, namely medical radiation or medicalization in general in the case of autism, including too many x-ray exams for the mother, too many treatments in general, including bad thyroid therapy, bad endocrine therapy, and the use of many toxic drugs. And touching has been identified as one of the things that makes kids’ emotional system 14:45 and nervous system develop properly. And there has been a kind of a culture of ignoring the babies in the standard American culture. And in Latinos, they are very touchy compared to the angle of population. So I think there are lots of causes. And enriching the environment, removing toxins, and improving the thyroid and progesterone of the person’s system, all of the endocrine system can be modified and improved to remedy, to some extent, at least, the autistic. Okay, Sophie, I wanted to ask you the same kind of thing, and then anecdotal evidence. I have a couple of friends whose children have been quite severely autistic at some point. And my friends have actually been incredibly dedicated. 15:48 They’ve been very dedicated mothers, but they’ve been very dedicated to bringing their children on as far as they can to help to incorporate them into mainstream education and just have a better hope for their futures. And they’ve done a really great job of this, and they’ve definitely focused on their diets and on their gut health because with both of these children I can think of, their digestive habits or their bowel motions have been disturbed. And one friend I can think of in particular, when her autistic son used to go into what’s called stimming, which is repetitive physical movements like jumping up and down on the spot and acting kind of more hyperactively and less responsive to his mother, she used to visit a pediatrician and this pediatrician used to prescribe her son a strong antifungal because it was suspected that he had a huge fungal overgrowth which was almost creating an alcoholic syndrome 16:49 or he was producing a lot of alcohol in his system. And the antifungals would hugely modify his behaviour and help him take him on in leaps and bounds. Dr. Pete, what do you think about that, the presence of gut organisms that metabolise carbohydrates producing ethanol and how that could impact? Yeah, the intestinal flora produce lots of toxins but the yeast in particular produce both alcohol and estrogen and the estrogen is I think more toxic than the alcohol. Okay, there you go. Okay, Sophie, sleep disturbance then. And it’s a very common presentation that I think a lot of verbalists get consulted about. Do you see many people with insomnia or other disturbances in sleep and what do you treat this with? Well, I do now because I’ve been sort of spoken about as a bit of a sleep expert but I have to thank Dr. Pete for that. 17:55 I was an eight year insomniac, a rather severe insomniac. It was extremely depressing and debilitating condition and situation to be in for such a long period of time. And when I re-hooked up and managed to speak to Sarah, your wife and you about it properly, you taught me about how Dr. Pete views insomnia. And then I started to learn the actual genuine, the true physiological approach to insomnia is that if you can get your stress hormones down, you’re most likely going to sleep well. I was a chronic under-eater, not intentionally necessarily but because when you’re chronically stressed you have a chronically depressed appetite. So I would say I was a chronic under-eater or chronically calorie deficit. And then I started to learn about sugars, about carbohydrates, about the right types of sugars to lay down as glycogen. That if we’re really healthy and if our thyroid is helping us lay down glycogen, we should be able to, a healthy individual should be able to get an eight hour sleep because that eight hour glycogen store feeds our active brain through the night. 18:58 And a very, very key point of understanding insomnia is to understand first of all that sleep is an active process. It is not a passive process. Our brain does a huge amount of repair. Our brain shrinks and we go into a deep rinse cycle. It’s a very active process. And Dr. Pete might want to correct me on this. I think that the brain uses about 100 grams of glucose through the night. So obviously and apparently to energize that active process of healing, we need to supply the brain with glucose. And if we’ve not laid down enough glycogen during the day to sleep well at night for our brain to be able to get dip into that reserve, we’re going to get a rise in stress hormones which will catabolize our fat and our muscle to deliver that energy for the brain. But of course a side effect to stress hormones or cortisol and adrenaline is mental alertness which you don’t want at night. So you’ve got to view insomnia actually as a daytime disorder which is presenting itself at night. Dr. Pete, what do you speak to in terms of the liver’s ability to store glycogen and any impairment in that which would trigger insomnia? 20:07 Thyroid is the essential thing for being able to store glucose in the form of glycogen in the liver in particular. But the muscles are a major reservoir too besides the liver and the brain itself stores when conditions are good, stores quite a bit of glycogen locally. And when you run out of glycogen in your brain, muscles and liver, you mobilize free fatty acids out of stores and the free fatty acids create the condition of diabetes in the brain as well as throughout the body. It turns off brain metabolism by essentially poisoning the mitochondria, blocking the ability to use any glucose that your body produces by breaking down protein with the stress hormones. So in the UK and I’m sure in America as well, it’s the same, we’re under this impossible situation where we’re all told to keep carbohydrates and avoid sugar 21:16 and some particularly health conscious mothers even try and avoid fructose and fruits for the children, especially fruit juice and adults are avoiding salt and you’ve got a perfect storm for insomnia. So first of all, if I have a patient with insomnia, the first place to look at is diet and the second place to look is herbs. All right, so Sophie, getting back to the kind of foundation of your background with your father being an herbalist, did you say that there was three or four generations that he was? Well, I know it goes back about 200 years and I’m pretty sure it’s four generations, but it’s on my TED Talk. Okay, there you go. Well, let’s talk about that very briefly then. Your TED Talk, I think everybody who’s listening has probably heard of TED Talks now they do in all sorts of different countries and they’re a wide range of subjects. So tell us a little bit about your TED Talk, what you did and where it was and how. Well, I gave a TED Talk with my sister Naomi and the title was Why We Are Dependent on Plants for Medicine. 22:17 We were given an opportunity to do a TED Talk and I felt the most important thing for me as a herbalist anyway was to reconnect the dots of people. People often think that herbs are some kind of archaic system or even something to be degraded like witchcraft or something, whereas actually it forms a bedrock of our most important medicines. So the medicines on the essential medicines list of the World Health Organization, a significant proportion of that, those drugs are based on herbs and we would not have those herbs if it weren’t for the discoveries in plants. So what comes to your mind? Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is morphine because if you think about what people have gone through with the Second World War, I’m not sure if it was available in the First World War, it’s tended to the wounds and grotesque injuries of wars. There’s nothing that rivals morphine still as an analgesic. Then you think about the Lidocaine, Novocaine that was discovered from coca leaves, then I think about Aspirin, which I love. You think about the diabetes medicine from Galliga, what is that? I kind of remember the name of that drug, Metformin. 23:25 Yeah, so Metformin that has its origins in goatsry. You think about 90%!o(MISSING)f our chemotherapeutic drugs have their foundations in plants and a natural, yeah, a tactile from the European U-Tree. And Vinca. And Vinca from Blasting, Great Periwinkle. I mean, so I feel that for me personally, it’s very important to get that message out there, that you look out to those fields and you’re walking past essential medicines. Right. And I think again, I know when we were discussing the outline of the show on the way in, because you didn’t show back up again, you’ve been out all day long. But basically, I drew up a guideline here of questions and answers and things that I wanted to get Dr. Pete’s perspective on. I know that you have, how long have you been, is it eight years or so? How long have you discovered that sugar wasn’t bad for you and the whole thing turned around? Eight years. Eight years ago, right. So they quickly talked to me about how you implement what you’ve learned from Dr. Pete and everything that Sarah would have discussed with you. Because I know you two are in dialogue pretty constantly by email, going backwards and forwards with different patients and talking about them and how, you know, the success and what to do next and all the rest of it. 24:35 How I implement personally. Yeah, yeah. As an herbalist, a daughter of an herbalist, a 200 year old succession of people that are doctors, you know, herbal medicine was your be-all. Yeah, it was. And I think I’m fair in saying that there is no one modality to cure anybody. It’s a multi-complex situation. So whether it’s herbs, whether it’s certain chemicals that, you know, drugs that are very helpful, whether it’s, you know, red light, whether it’s sound, whether it’s, you know, there’s many different modalities that can really be brought together by good practitioner to get the best result possible. And when you were practicing, obviously you would have got your knowledge from the same course, the same university and obviously from the whole background of your father having grown up in it since you were born. 25:36 Tell me some of the differences, perhaps, or maybe some of the cases that you’ve come to and maybe hit a wall after which treating and looking at a different angle to it or using a different, you know, compound in conjunction with herbs with or without how that’s changed your practice. Oh, how it’s changed my practice. Okay, well, now what I do with my patients is I help them remove the good and bad tags they have over all sorts of foods because they’re often very misplaced. And the problem with that, what that does is it stops them eating. The bad tags, you mean like brainwashing that’s associated with? Well, you know, sugar’s bad. Salt’s bad. Yeah, sugar’s bad, salt’s bad, vegetable oil good, margarine good, butter bad, all that kind of stuff. Because actually what that’s done, I think one of the worst things that that’s done is it’s removed people’s instinctive eating, instinctive, you know, leading of how they eat. You know, they may well be hungry and they may well be craving salt but still resisting that desire to eat salt and the same with sugar and, you know, not so much protein because that doesn’t have that bad tag attached to it. 26:43 But they’re denying themselves their basic physiological needs because they have this perception that food is bad and I think that’s one of the worst things that’s come out of it. Dr. Pete, what have you got to say about that in terms of sugar and salt and what you believe is the kind of undoing of the instinctual craving for it? Oh, those doctrines against them were distinctly created by the pharmaceutical industry. When they came out with new diuretics around 1950, they convinced doctors that pregnant women had to use them because it would prevent weight gain and water retention and pregnancy. And just absolute confabulation of making up diseases that didn’t exist so they could sell their product. And in the process they destroyed many, many pregnancies in the United States with their salt restriction and plus diuretics. 27:52 And the sugar thing appeared around the same time with the marketing of the polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Those were defined as essential and so the food industry first promoted them as medicinal in great quantity 100 times more than any possible theoretical essentiality would indicate. But they were promoted to lower cholesterol but then a doctor showed that sugar raises cholesterol and so the food industry created the cholesterol myth to sell their polyunsaturated oils and then to explain a way heart disease and the elevated cholesterol which really is the result of hypothyroidism, almost all of it. 29:09 The ban on sugar to lower prevent heart disease was promoted all through the 60s and 70s. Again the insulin industry and the drug alternatives to insulin were promoted along with basically a sugar free diet teaching people that sugar causes diabetes. And then again of course there’s a whole sugar feeds cancer misdirection. Sophie what are fish oils doing in Europe and in England now? Do you get, I mean are they still really advertised, really healthful and your patients are always talking about how good the fish oils are? You probably said them right but what do you think the general current thinking is? Yeah I tend to steer them away but the buoyant is definitely still very buoyant but interestingly last year a newspaper published a study linking fish oils with liver disease. 30:17 I think actually scarring of the liver as far as I remember and I think that hit a mainstream newspaper last year in England. I wonder Dr. P, you probably have something to say about liver scarring and fish oil consumption from a physiological perspective or even an anecdotal perspective? Yeah lots of stresses contribute but definitely not good foods like saturated fats and sugar. Okay all right you’re listening to Ask Europe Doctor, KME DeGalbable, 91.1 FM. From now until 8 o’clock callers are invited to call in with any questions either for Dr. P and or Sophie. And the number if you live in the area or if you live outside the area or outside the country is area code 707-923-3911. So that’s 707-923-3911 questions anytime from now until 8. I think we have a caller on the line already caller. 31:19 You’re on the air. What’s your name? Where are you from and what’s your question? Jeff from Long Island. Hey Jeff. I have two questions for Dr. Pete. One, the soils that plants are grown in obviously don’t have the same minerals that they used to as we all know. And there’s a couple of products that have gotten a lot of attention. Fulvic and humic acids which apparently are coming from rock formations that are very old. Are you familiar with those and whether the enzymes and the natural minerals associated with those are complementary and beneficial in any way? No, I think they’re mildly harmful. Because? To the extent that they break down they can be absorbed and release toxic things. 32:21 Any minerals such as magnesium and trace minerals would be beneficial but the substance and fulvic acid and humic acid are not in themselves safe. Okay, are there studies on that? Or is that just a gut feel that you have? Is that something you’ve done research on in the past? No, you can find the articles on PubMed. Yeah, the articles I found have all been actually favorable. And the reason I mention it and pushing it a little bit is because I am actually the same person who told you that I had a skin rash on the insides of my armpits and elbows. Literally it went on for 12 months. I mean literally 12 months. They told me to take cortisone which I didn’t want to do. So the suggestions you have to refresh were taking the salt baths with baking soda which I think was very helpful. 33:22 CO2, I think you mentioned vitamin D. And so I did some of that stuff and it was very helpful. But I must say I believe the fulvic and humic acids which I took more recently have actually improved the assimilation and the enzymatic absorption of all nutrients that I consume. I really do believe that. It’s actually a lot of articles are very positive on it. Now maybe there are some mixtures that are toxic relative to others but I strongly believe in that. I actually would love to see if you write up on that and actually can reference specific articles that describe the damage that can be done by them. I’d be really curious but I found in personal experience that it might just actually be the opposite. Anyway, the other question I have relates to thyroid. I think at one point we discussed the fact that it’s not compared to an adrenal gland which apparently can repair itself on its own. 34:23 The same is true of any gland including the thyroid gland. But the bigger more complicated issue I think we discussed was it’s more important because PUFA and other issues may affect the production, transport, conversion and uptake of T3 into the cell. And so I guess my question specifically is if someone is improving their consumption where the PUFA is down and therefore the uptake, transport and conversion is better, why isn’t it possible to eliminate thyroid? It just seems to me that for some reason you’re taking thyroid all the time and if you’re complying with a diet it seems to me that the benefits of improvement of the adrenal gland should also apply to the thyroid gland for somebody who’s a strict proponent of your diet. Where am I missing? I’ve seen lots of people who either were able to stop their thyroid supplement or greatly reduce it and that happens. 35:31 One or two people, it happened in a week. They broke the pattern so quickly they didn’t need it after having been in very serious condition. Others take three or four years, for example a fat person who is well saturated with unsaturated fats has to get rid of a lot of that stored thyroid inhibiting fat before they can get away from a supplement. What about all the electromagnetic radiation that’s certainly disruptive to thyroid activity that’s nothing to do with diet? Yeah and the environmental estrogen, there are so many things like in tooth filling material, packaging of food, almost any food you’ll get some of these estrogens. Good luck with thyroid. 36:33 Thank you for your call. Andrew, one other question that you just raised. If I can. So you mentioned red light earlier and I just wanted to understand, in Dr. Pete’s mind, the benefits of red light, what does it physiologically do relative to the CO2, whether it’s CO2 through putting yourself in a bag or putting yourself in a tub. What is it actually, the CO2 itself, I understand, lowers or stops any production of nitric oxide and what does the red light do because they’re different benefits, are they not? Yeah, very different. Red light has a variety of effects, all involving action on electrons which are out of their normal condition or orbit, especially cytochrome oxidase. Copper enzymes, the blue enzyme of the crucial enzyme of oxidative metabolism, stress lowers that activity, just going through the night it lowers its ability to oxidize nutrients. 37:49 And just a few minutes of exposure to red light will restore the electronic balance of the copper and restore the copper to its relation to the enzyme, activating the enzyme. But there are a lot of other effects related to inflammation. For example, radiation poisoning at a lethal dose can be neutralized to the point that the animal will survive by exposing, within the first hour or so, to red light following the X-ray or gamma radiation. Excellent. I really appreciate your reply there. We do have two other callers, so I don’t mean to rush you, but let’s make sure these other callers get their calls in. And anybody else listening, just ask your app Dr. K. M. D. Galbavel, 91.1 FM from now until 8 o’clock. Oh, there goes the lights, I think with three callers, 707-923-3911. 38:51 Okay, let’s take this next caller. Caller, you’re on the air, where are you from? Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon. Yeah, go ahead, what’s your question? So, one question is, perhaps it’s a fad, but what are the benefits of drinking 16 ounces of celery juice a day? Sophie, you go ahead and… Well, celery juicing is a real craze in the UK right now, maybe it is here as well. So, people are juicing about three whole heads and stems of celery juice each morning. And I don’t know specifically what it is, but I think there’s a huge amount of minerals in there, including potassium. And people do seem to feel much better on it and lose some water retention. Okay, Dr. Pete, what do you know about celery juice and its activity? I know celery seed is definitely used in the treatment of gout as a waste clearing mechanism for the kidneys, 39:53 but do you know much about celery juicing? I think the main problem is that quite a few people are allergic to it. Alright, okay. Can I ask one quick one? You go ahead, go ahead quickly. So, Dr. Pete, how much sugar do you consume a day and what are the ways that you get it? Is it white sugar and fruit juice or…? I try to get it all from fruit, but when I don’t have good fruit, then I fill in with white refined sugar. And I try to get more than half of my calories from sugar. There you go. So, like 1,000 calories? Oh, no, more like 1,500, 1,600. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I was going to say, when you’re thinking and you’re processing information 40:56 and you’re sitting on the computer and you’re researching stuff and answering calls, the brain is very hungry. Okay, next caller, you’re on the airway from, what’s your question? Hi, I’m from Australia. My question is, I’ve had some blood tests done recently and my circulating iron is fine, but my ferritin is actually quite low. And I’ve been eating a thyroid-supported diet for over 12 months now and following a lot of your methods, Dr. Pete. But the doctor is suggesting that I should have some iron injections. When I eat my red meat, I have that with orange juice to try and increase the absorption, but still it’s quite low. I’m just wondering whether I should have those injections or if there’s another method that I can use to increase my iron levels. How was the iron measured at the first? It was blood tests. 41:57 There was a ferritin with 6 micrograms per litre. Fasting blood, sorry. The saturation of transferrin? Sorry? Iron saturation, did you have your transferrin saturation done? Yes, 3.5 grams per litre. What was the percentage? 3.5 grams per litre. No, I mean the percentage of the saturation. They haven’t given a percentage. What’s the percentage I’ve got if you’ve got 3.5 grams per litre? That would be hemoglobin, wouldn’t it? Well, first transferrin, and then it’s got TIVC of 76 micro millimoles per litre. Saturation, 10, ferritin, 6. 42:58 Iron 7.8. What are the different measures here? Well, Dr. Pete, you’re rational for increasing, I know you’re always wary about increasing iron, as it’s extremely reactive and a powerful oxidant. But in terms of what the lady’s talking about, having done those things dieterrally, what would be another step so far as your perspective is concerned for raising this lady’s iron and the hemoglobin and getting the saturation back up? The hemoglobin depends on body temperature. For one thing, thyroid is required for absorbing copper from your diet. And the copper is needed for integrating the iron with the blood with the hem. 44:04 And getting your waking temperature up to close to normal, close to 98 degrees at waking and 98.6 during the day, and making sure that your arms and legs are warm close to your body temperature. It’s possible to have a normal oral temperature and still have very cold feet, and the blood is made in your long bones, so they have to be warm. And thyroid is the main factor, keeping the blood synthesis going and the copper absorption to use the iron. And you can get a very high intake of iron in a safe way if you eat some liver and eggs every day and have foreign shoes with it. I am having liver, about 200 grams per week. I have probably two eggs every second day. 45:09 My rising temperature is usually around 36. I don’t know the conversion to Fahrenheit. Well, I’m not sure. But I am doing all those things to improve. But my stores are still low 12 months later, so there’s nothing else I can do. You wouldn’t recommend having the iron injections? If your iron saturation is down around 5%!o(MISSING)r lower, then that might justify it. Have you tried oral supplements? I haven’t at this stage. I’ve known people who had such terrible effects from iron injections that I think would be, if you’re seriously low in saturation, then I think the first thing would be if the liver and eggs haven’t worked. 46:12 And oysters are another very good source. I have dyes as well. How about from an herbal perspective, Sophie, because I know you’ve dealt with this before. Well, traditionally speaking, to strengthen the blood, but I’ve also seen in practice, nettle can help. This is regular stinging nettle. Is it an infusion, or are you talking about an extract? Just as a tea or as a juice. And then also black strapped molasses. But that also is because it has iron content, and I think it also has copper. But black strapped molasses daily, and strong nettle tea might help. Because I suppose the fear is if you have an hemorrhage or if you have an accident, your stores aren’t there. OK, we do have three other callers. OK, thank you for your time. Thank you for calling in, but we’ve got three more. So let’s get the next one call away from, what’s your question? Hi, I’m from Texas. I had two questions for Dr. Pete. OK, we’ll make them quick. Dr. Pete, if we can make your responses fairly quick, these next couple of people will get a chance to ask a question, too, before 8 o’clock. 47:13 Yeah, so first, what can be done for someone who has a high temperature and pulse, but still has chronic fatigue and other hypothyroid symptoms? OK, from an adrenaline perspective, Dr. Pete, somebody with a high waking temperature and still has lethargy and… Yeah, checking your vitamin D level and your calcium intake, those support your thyroid function, and their magnesium and calcium are necessary for the thyroid to work right. And you would equate that waking temperature to be an adrenaline-based stress hormone-dominated physiology? Yeah, you should check your pulse rate at the same time as your waking temperature, but also about 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning. And if your temperature is steady, even after you’ve had some carbohydrate, 48:15 fruit juice and such, then it might be something other than high adrenaline. OK, and what was your second question, Carla? Yeah, I was wondering if you’ve heard of chlorine dioxide, and if you think it would help for reductive stress issues, like autistic symptoms? I think there are lots of antiseptic agents that are safer than that. It isn’t especially dangerous, but long-time use could promote cancer. Things like food fibers, any kind of fibrous food that goes through without causing inflammation or gas will help to disinfect your intestine. And Sophie, you wanted to interject here, so… Yeah, I personally have experienced brain irritation myself in the past, and I’ve definitely linked it to my gut. And one of the things I’ve used for patients in the past and for myself also is a herb called cat’s claw, 49:19 which is very anti-inflammatory on the gut and antimicrobial, et cetera, but it’s also, I believe, got some research for brain inflammation, too. Excellent. OK, so let’s get this next caller. You’re on the air. Where are you from? What’s your question? What does that mean? Yeah, that’s you. Hey, what’s your question? Where are you from? Hi, I’m from the Garberville area. And I’m calling because this is a very pertinent show for me. I’m nearly seven months pregnant with my first child, and we’re choosing to go a very natural route. In our local paper here, The Independent just Tuesday, they published, but there’s a potential outbreak of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, in our area. There have been a few cases recorded so far this year. They’re not labeling it as an outbreak yet, but I had a couple of questions about the treatment recommended by Sophie with the garlic and the thyme syrup. Are those safe enough and recommended to be safe enough for small children, infants? 50:22 Also, is the thyme syrup meant to be made from fresh thyme or dried thyme, and if Sophie wouldn’t mind repeating those four wonderfully useful things that the thyme syrup does that’s helpful with whooping cough, thank you. Yeah, of course. So thyme syrup is usually made from dried thyme, and the four actions of thyme are it’s anti-tussive, reduces the cough reflex, it’s expectorant, it helps you cough the phlegm up, it’s antiseptic, and it’s also anti-edematous, so it reduces swelling in the airways too. That’s wonderful. Do you think it’s safe enough to use on very small children? Well, I used it on my son from, I mean, to be honest with you, with my son, I happily gave it to him from about six months onward, and if he had a need, I possibly would have given it to him earlier too, but in much, much reduced doses, I mean, you may be able to give drop doses even. 51:23 Okay, good, thank you, and do you think the garlic sounds fairly innocuous enough to try something like that on a small child as well? It is innocuous, you just don’t want to leave it on for so long that it burns. Right, so very quickly. Well, maybe a couple of minutes. Actually, I heard a trick to keep it from burning is peel it without actually damaging the skin, and the trick I heard was to put it in a sock against the infant’s foot overnight, but if you break the actual skin of the bulb, then that oil comes out and it burns. It’s very, very gentle peeling. Yeah, okay, lovely. The peeled whole clove of garlic, not like sliced clove of garlic. Yeah, because the oil was more irritating. That’s just a trick I’d heard, I don’t have any good. I’ve tried it on myself though, and it is very, very different. You can hold that clove against you for all day. Right, that’s great. Okay, Dr. P, do you want to quickly say anything about hooping cough? No, I haven’t had any experience with it. Okay, all right. Is that the call that we’ve got through the callers? Okay, so… 52:24 Yes, thank you so much. You’re very welcome. Anybody else, have you got any calls? You can quickly squeak in a quick one between now and 8 o’clock, but I want to have a few minutes here. Okay, the engineer is shaking his head going, no, no, no. Okay, let’s just leave it the way it is, and I appreciate people calling in. Always adds interest to the show, and I’m very grateful for the acknowledgement that people are listening, even though sometimes we have the shows and we don’t get too many callers, but as always, I keep saying that these things are recorded in posterity, and they’re on the internet, and they’re on YouTube, and I’m going to be speaking with Dr. P about something to do about making sure the evidence and the information is actually correct. So, Dr. P, let me just thank you very much for your time again this month. We really appreciate it, and I’m going to give out some information about you right away. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Okay, so people that have listened to the show, Dr. Pete’s website is www.raypeat.com. He’s got plenty of articles there. 53:25 He’s been doing this for 40-plus years. And Sophie Lam, medical herbalist from England, sorry, Scotland, not England, from Scotland. Gosh, you’re like a probably a fifth generation or sixth generation herbalist. Anyway, it’s alive and well in Scotland, and your dad’s 82, and he’s been doing this for a long time, and he is very much alive and well doing it. Yep. And if you’ve got any way that people would reach you, perhaps you might want to share with people? Yeah. Well, my sleep-specific site is called donecountingsheep.com. So, D-O-N-E, countingsheep.com. That’s dedicated to sleep. I also have my own website, which is www.SophieLam.com. And you’re a member of the College of Practicing Phytotherapists, the CPP in England, very good. Okay. Okay, so for those people that have tuned in, I appreciate your calling. I can be reached Monday through Friday, any at the time, I guess, really, 54:26 because it’s a toll-free number, and I may not answer the phone, but leave a message. I will always get back to you. You can email me, Andrew, at westernbotanicalmedicine.com, or 1-888-WBM-URB. And as I’ve said before, on the last couple of shows, we are intending to get a, what do you want to call it, an authoritative source of Dr. Pete’s information, his tireless explanation, scientifically, so that people can see it for what it really is. And we love to see real science in action. I am totally an advocate of scientifically-backed medicine, herbal medicine, alternative medicines. There’s no reason to ban any of it. Let’s just be rational about this and produce good results for people. That’s all we want to do is see people get better. So until the third Friday of next month, actually, you know what? I won’t be here third Friday of next month. That’s right, August next month, I will not be here. 55:29 So it’s going to be September, so I actually need to check in with the studio about that so I get a replacement, but next month I will not be here. But back again in September. So until the third Friday of September, I wish you all good night and thanks for joining in.