From Marcus This is an audio interview with Ray Peat from 2022. It's part of my effort to archive and augment Ray's complete works within this website, Ray Peat Rodeo. You can donate to the project on GitHub sponsors, cheers🥰.
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00:00 Alright, 7 o’clock, straight up. You are listening to Redwood Community Radio KMUD Garberville, 91.1 FM in HD1, KMUE Eureka 88.1 FM in HD1, KLAI Laytonville 90.3 FM, on the web KMUD.org and in Shelter Cove, we’re at 99.5 on FM Translator K258BQ.
01:30 Well, welcome to this month’s August 19th, 2022 edition of Ask Your Herb Doctor. My name’s Andrew Murray.
My name’s Sarah Johanneson Murray.
For those of you who perhaps have never listened to the shows before or you’ve just tuned init’s a once a month radio show, third Friday of each month from 7 till 8pm. It is a live show and we do open up the telephone lines from 7:30 to 8 o’clock for listeners to call in with any questions about the show. So from 7:30 on, we’ll be opening up the lines and the number to call is 707-923-3911. Once again, from 7.30 until the end of the show, 8 o’clock, the number to call is 707-923-3911.
Again, for people who perhaps have never listened to the show or have just tuned in, it’s a once a month radio show 02:32 where we are joined with the expert scientific viewpoint, not opinion, but scientific viewpoint of Dr Raymond Peat who I think has become pretty worldwide known. I know people in Europe and Scandinavia have called in in the past and people from across the states have called in. We’ve had people from Down Under and we’ve had people from South America even calling in. So I appreciate all those people that do tune into the show either live or who listen to it on the archives and the KMUD archives are available for about two months post production. So from now until about October, you can go to kmud.org, go to the audio archives, select the Friday Night Talk drop down and go to the third Friday of the month to download the show that’s been recorded on that day. And also, incidentally, we have on our website westernbotanicalmedicine.com a fairly exhaustive list from 2007 through to about 2020 03:44 but I still have a good number of shows to put on there, it still hasn’t been done, so excuse me for that.
So once again, very pleased to welcome Dr Peat to the show who I think has somewhat recovered from some voice hoarseness due to the wildfires up in Oregon up there, so I know he was a little bit croaky earlier on today. How are you doing, Dr Peat?
Yeah, it comes and goes. I probably should clarify what I mean by scientific viewpoint. I’m not like Fauci. I don’t have the scientific viewpoint, but I think of the scientific viewpoint as a critical one: always thinking about the evidence and what you’re really implying. So it’s a matter of criticism and thinking.
Yeah, well, I know you’re always able to back up what you say with either articles or journals 04:52 or other information that is bonafide published information and very often you’ll point to various authors or publications that support what it is you’re describing.
So perhaps I think just initially, as we always do, just in case anybody listening doesn’t know you, could you just give an outline of your academic and professional background before we start the show?
Yeah, I studied the humanities first through a master’s degree and then went back in 1968 to the University of Oregon for a PhD in biology, basically physiological chemistry, specifically the metabolic changes, physiological changes that happen in the reproductive system in aging. And so there was more or less a chapter of that dissertation that I concentrated on what at that time was still sometimes called 06:03 metaplasm or lipofuscin as a basic cause of aging.
Okay, so engineers just asked me to ask you if you could speak up a little. I can hear you quite well through my headset, but I’m not too sure the engineer can or if the levels are fairly low on the desk. So yeah, if you can, if you’re speaking on the phone, if you could just get as close to it as you can.
So Dr. Peat, I think what I wanted to expand with you is your work and your kind of discourse on lipofuscin. I know we’ve mentioned it in the past and we definitely mentioned it in relation to polyunsaturated fatty acids, which definitely have— I think that the awareness from the public has exploded definitely in the last 18 months with publications coming out saying that they’re not safe and that they are dangerous and that the whole thinking of the last three decades was quite erroneous and has actually resulted in quite a lot of pathology, 07:10 not just obesity and diabetes and other, you know, metabolic disorders, but all sorts of other degenerative conditions.
So can I, can, I guess, just start by going over some basics with you for these so-called essential fatty acids? So if you look online, it seems to imply that they are only available from the diet, is that correct?
No, some very simple experiments make that really clear, but that amount of clarity in 80 years has hardly penetrated the beliefs about the fats, because industry has found a motive in claiming that they are essential where the evidence is of an extremely vague inferential type.
08:18 But the evidence against it is as clear as— for example, you can grow human cells in culture, like for making specific proteins extracted from them, and if you’re growing huge masses of cells in culture, you know exactly what they’re being fed, and you can feed them on a diet absolutely excluding fatty acids, especially the unsaturated fatty acids. So you know they’re multiplying enormously on a diet of no environmental unsaturated fats, so obviously any unsaturated fat that they contain is something that they have made themselves so they can’t be essential.
09:25 And the basic recognized evidence that we aren’t getting environmental linoleic acid or arachidonic acid and are becoming deficient in these so-called essential fats is to find that we are making something called mead acid, which is an omega-9 series of polyunsaturated fats. And having a long saturated tail, just the opposite of fish oil: the N-3 has unsaturated groups within three carbons of the tip. And the type we make ourselves, the mead acids, are the saturated fats [which] extend down to within only nine carbons of the end, 10:35 and that makes them relatively resistant to external contact with oxygen.
So that’s kind of, I think that’s pretty important what you’ve just mentioned about the erroneous doctrine of being essential, and that they are able to be manufactured, and that will bring out way more questions about the whole fish oil industry and pumping the narrative with the anti-inflammatory dogma or doctrine of the essential fatty acids.
I think what I just want to quickly ask you, haven’t you said in the past that the placenta doesn’t allow these fats to cross?
Oh, yeah, it’s a very, very good filter, and even when the mother is eating fish and grains and unsaturated fats, 11:37 the general recognition is that at birth babies demonstrate, almost always they demonstrate, making some of the anti-inflammatory natural mead acid, showing that they were assimilating very, very little of the PUFA from the environment. And so defining the newborn baby as almost always essential fatty acid deficient, the formula companies argued that they need to add basically fish oil extract to baby formula to make up for the fact that the newborn brain shows evidence of deficiency of exactly those fats.
12:38 And so they do add it to baby formula, and within a few days of reaching the grocery store, these fats are degrading and becoming oxidized and toxic. And then after about a month in the store they degrade even more so you find less and less of the oxidized fish oil products. But the evidence is that what you’re doing is feeding your baby rancid fish oil products which are toxic in many ways.
Now haven’t you also said that they’ve done plenty of experiments to support the fact that babies that are fed on these formulas, because of these EPAs and other fatty acids that are in the formula, they can show that they have decreased cognition, decreased awareness, and I think we’ve mentioned this in the past to the comparison of the kind of quote unquote fussy baby, 13:50 not one that’s got griping colic, but it’s fussy and active and awake and just behaving like a normal baby.
Yeah, those studies were done over the last 70 or 80 years in rats and dogs and other animals showing that in proportion to the amount of PUFA in the diet their brains are reduced in size and in learning ability after they’re born. So the deficient animals without the PUFA in their brains have bigger brains, are higher metabolizers all over, and learn much faster. The difference in learning in the 70s, some studies said it was like the average rodent deficient in PUFA having something like a 140 IQ, 15:05 upper few percent of the brain learning ability—
—compared to his EPA drugged siblings?
Yeah, and if you look at the aging brain, right from birth all the animals that have been studied, the amount of PUFA in the brain does steadily increase from the so-called deficient state at birth up until a heavy overload state in old age and dementia, a steady increase in PUFA concentration bound, interfering with cholesterol synthesis. But as the PUFA content of tissue increases the heat production and metabolic energy of the whole animal decreases in proportion. 16:08 So the baby has extremely high overall oxygen consumption and metabolic rate supporting that fantastic rate of learning that is normal for a newborn.
Wow, excellent.
An interesting side note, can you guys hear me?
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Okay, an interesting side note is I’m not someone who suffers from heartburn, but when I was pregnant, all three times, if I ate any PUFA-rich animal fat like a duck fat or a chicken fat or a pork fat, even just the tiniest little bit, because I was avoiding that because I knew those contained PUFA (because I wasn’t eating any vegetable oil that contained PUFA) but that was the only time I would get heartburn is when I ate those fats or even just a little bit of those fats. So it was very easy for me to see why I shouldn’t be eating any kind of PUFA fats when I was pregnant, because I immediately got heartburn.
17:10 Okay, so I think what we’ve outlined here— you’ll listen to Ask Your Herb Doctor, KMUD Garberville, 91.1 FM. And from now, or 7:30 rather, until the end of the show you can call in with any questions related to this month’s subject of lipofuscin, Dr. Raymond Peat joining us live.
I think what I want to say right off the bat here is first of all that, gosh, the essential fatty acid myth has just been, again, destroyed, and the whole, gosh, and the word collusion gets banded around so much especially during this whole COVID debcale, but the word collusion in terms of the industries that are multi-billion-dollar industries, and the fish oil industry is one of those massive conglomerates worldwide pushing this stuff, and all the academia pumping out the supporting evidence, as it were, with the studies showing the anti-inflammatory effect for your psoriasis or anti-inflammatory effect for your asthma, 18:15 of these so-called essential fatty acids, which are not essential.
And the very fact that, and I don’t have any problem bringing this out, but at the end of the day we’re divine creatures and God made us in His image. And the baby that is born in the mother’s womb, the feeding mechanism selectively blocks the transport of these products. Now why is that? I think you got your answer right there.
So interesting, so let’s carry on. Dr. Peat, the fact that these N-3 and N-6s are not essential, but they are found in many different foods, and I know you’ve always said nuts and seeds are number— well the fish oil is kind of number one, the most reactive or the most rapidly oxidizable PUFA, but nuts and seeds, that we shouldn’t be eating nuts and seeds, because maybe they’re not so bad in their raw state if they’re sprouted for example, but when they make oil from nuts and seeds, 19:18 they never would have found that volume of oil within that nut or that seed to actually use it. So, when they come up with canola oil, because corn does have a pretty high component of N-3 and N-6 oils, the liquid oils that we are subjected to and have been for 30, 40, 50 years as a result of this huge industry, both number one, denying the fact that these essential fatty acids are essential, because they’re not, we can actually live without them and produce them ourselves spontaneously, but that the foods that have these are beneficial for us, and we need to buy their products, especially the liquid oils that have been used and fish oil that’s become a multi-billion dollar market.
The nuts and seeds that produce the oils and the snakes and frogs and fish that use them habitually and without any special problem. 20:20 They don’t think of themselves as food, but those oils are appropriate for manufacturing their own energy stores or to be obtained from their food. Because they live at a fairly low temperature, room temperature and below for example, and animal fats at room temperature tend to solidify, and a snake with solidified fat just doesn’t work very well. The same with the fish. If you’re going to have flexible active tissues, you need to have fats that are liquid at body temperature, and so these fats which are appropriate for cold animals if you put these fats into a very hot animal that’s when they’re extremely unstable: 21:30 high temperature plus the fact that they’re designed to be very sensitive to heat so that they’re flexible at room temperature. That means that you shouldn’t eat them if you’re going to live at 98 degrees Fahrenheit.
So what you’re saying is that it’s okay for the frogs and the snakes and the fish to eat these Omega-6 and Omega-3 oils because they’re cold-blooded and they’re not going to heat those fats up to a high temperature and oxidize them. Whereas we’re, because we should be around 98, 99 degrees Fahrenheit, we’re going to rapidly oxidize those and turn them into free radicals. Is that what you’re saying, Dr. Peat?
Exactly. In some studies, they decided to see how efficient as energy sources fish oil was for fish. 22:43 Naturally, it has to be liquid enough to function at a cool temperature but they added some animal fat (more saturated fat) so it wasn’t quite so fish oil-like to [the] salmon diet and then put them through an endurance test. And the salmon that were eating salmon fat didn’t have the endurance that they would have if you gave them a little more saturated fat.
Okay, so you’re listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor KMUD 91.1 FM, from 7:30 onwards you’re invited to call in. Number’s 707-923-3-911.
So, Dr. Peat, I think the focus and the thrust of the show being on lipofuscin and its danger, its build-up, how it’s virtually impossible to detox from it, remove it, gets bound up in neurons, 23:50 and is very much an aging causative factor and also one that is, I think, well implicated in neurodegenerative conditions, and I think we can look at little later things like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and those other neuro-vegetative disorders.
But given that our diet is so broad and we have access to so many things and the health industry wants to point us towards the nuts and the seeds and the fish, and all of these things that are rich in these N-3 and N-6 oils, I know you’ve always supported a saturated diet and using minimal starches too, but saturated fats as a prime source. In terms of your diet and the amount of foods that people do eat, 24:55 do you think that it is not just overconsumption, but do you think that they should be consumed at all?
I think they should be avoided as far as possible.
Yeah, avoided as far as possible, there you go. So, I think the basis of the lipofuscin, would you outline your understanding of the process by which things like metal ions as well as stressors exert their effect on these N-3 and N-6 oils in the presence of our body temperature, and how destructive these things are, and then we’ll go down the rabbit hole of decreased age and dementia and all the other neuro-vegetative disorders.
Starting [in] the 1930s to explain why food got rancid, the process of breakdown of fats and how it works inside tissues: 26:05 it was studied in various ways including model systems, and people learned to manufacture something that looked and functioned like lipofuscin by reacting, for example, copper and vitamin C, iron and just about any kind of fat and various biological components including nucleic acids and proteins. And you can see that a free radical process is triggered by the copper or iron and reductant such as vitamin C, that attacks the oily materials, 27:10 especially if they’re unsaturated, and causes a spreading catalytic oxidative process that creates more free radicals.
And so you can identify various things that are pulled out of tissues depending on which tissue you start to process in. If it’s the liver and you’re under the influence of estrogen or alcohol, for example, the liver is going to produce lots of porphyrin (a chemical used for making heme in energy metabolism), and that porphyrin will spontaneously amplify the formation of the lipofuscin.
And so some ready-made molecules are great amplifiers of the process, but that depends on the organ and the physiology of the organism at the moment it’s happening. 28:24 But it varies with every organ and [the] momentary conditions of the organ and the environmental availability of the various breakdown products.
Tissue injury of any sort releases fragments of the damaged cell material and all of that fragmentary evidence of damage contributes to the formation of the lipofuscin. And at first it can be only in a soluble form, it can travel outside of cells, inbetween the cells through the connective tissue, through the bloodstream, back into cells in different parts of the organism. 29:36 And some of it forms only as particles in lysosomes or mitochondria, or any particular part of the cell might be where the majority of it starts, but it all depends on the situation, the conditions of that particular tissue.
So it’s a very comprehensive theory of sickness, aging, and the degenerative process. It is so infinitely varied that the ability to believe that it’s happening, it has taken 80 years to pass from a fairly vague idea of what aging is to a recognition that it’s a very powerful way of explaining disease, 30:46 degeneration and aging.
Did you say that lipofuscin can be soluble?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Huh. Okay, so it’s not this insoluble material that is a complex of iron, protein, and sugar residues.
Yeah, the smaller particles form soluble, medium-sized molecules.
So, for example, when we— okay, so let me just back up. When it comes to— because I— when I was looking at the lipofuscin and its main, the main areas that it’s deposited in essentially there’s three categories: I think nerves, cardiac muscle (I think it may have also mentioned skeletal muscle), and then skin. And I always kind of relate lipofuscin with the age pigment that you see on, you know, the hands because they’re visible with older people, for example. 31:52 But you have said also that—it’s kind of a separate question, I’m kind of digressing a little bit—that the lipofuscin can actually be present in somebody in pretty high and dangerous amounts without actually showing itself on the skin.
But let me just first hold the thought with that, to say that the lipofuscin itself, I thought it was always the kind of complex between, like I said, the kind of iron or copper or zinc or, you know, some cation, and some kind of oxidized protein, and then sugars. And that it was insoluble when it got laid down into the nervous tissue, for example. And because it was complex, the way it was, it was basically resistant to being broken down and removed. But you’re saying that there is some lipofuscin at some point in time that is quite soluble and freely moving about. Is it able to be excreted at that point?
Oh, sure. Yeah, some of it shows up in the urine.
Right. Okay. So, if that’s the case then— 32:56 okay, I’m just trying to think about the excretory pathways and seeing— I was thinking about, you know, liver support and liver stimulants and things that would increase diuresis and improve kidneys function and removal of waste and that kind of thing. But if that’s the case then during the day, for example, if you’re using things like bitters— in England (we just came back from being over there for a few weeks) but bitters are very kind of European and English, and people use bitters to stimulate bile and, you know, emulsify fats and improve digestion. Is there any mileage in supposing that these kind of bitters or aperitifs could have a positive effect in removing soluble lipofuscin, and before it gets converted or laid down into something that is less soluble and more permanent?
Oh, I think so. Accelerating your digestive processes in general are going to help.
33:58 Right. I mean, not just using, for example, like you always recommend Cascara as a laxative to decrease the transit time, but even those agents that would just improve liver function and digestion and excretion in general?
Uh-hmm.
Yeah. Okay. All right. So let me ask you this then: what’s the difference then between the lipofuscin that’s found both in endothelial plaque as a result of, you know, an atheroma that they say someone’s died from because of the cholesterol that’s there (but we know that cholesterol is actually a protective mechanism under which that initial insult is visible in the forms of the lipofuscin on the endothelia), but how about also the lipofuscin that’s found as these lewy bodies that is very prevalent, amyloid plaque that’s prevalent in neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. 35:02 How have they become insoluble and basically cause the demise of that person in a neurovegetative way rather than just aging?
So many things go into the composition. It depends on the type of injury and exposure, the type of fat and the quantity that you’re exposed to, as well as the natural factors such as the hormone products. There is such variation that if it’s going to be extremely fat-loving material that means it’s going to stick in your nerve cells primarily. Huntington’s disease is very closely connected to certain types of PUFA-derived lipofuscin. 36:07 Each type of nerve malfunction associated with a protein like synuclein, each variation of lipofuscin molecule is going to affect which kind of nerve is affected in exactly what way.
Interesting.
So you can trace its history and even you can work on unraveling the history. Because if you know that it’s a matter of a balance between how fast you’re putting it in and how fast you can remove it— the process of removal is very slow but if you essentially stop the formation by stopping your excess intake of aluminum, iron, copper and so on, and of unsaturated fats and other irritants 37:23 then you can reduce the formation of it almost to zero, at which point this attrition Transcription note: The word “attrition” sounded like “nitotrition” but I couldn’t find any such word. by way of vitamin E can gradually reduce the amount in the brain.
Interesting. So do you think then that fish oil for example would be a far more implicated fatty acid in the production of these lipofuscins over a flaxseed oil say or corn or?
Yeah, the type of molecule is extremely variable and some of the early studies with feeding a lot of fish to pigs and horses and dogs and mink in particular, they identified something called yellow fat disease in which the animal’s fat became a source of dangerous inflammation.
38:34 Let me hold you there for a second, Dr. Peat—
PUFA accumulated in a form that created an intense degenerative inflammation throughout the fat system.
Let me hold you there for a second, we do have a caller. So once again, you’re listening to KMUD Garberville, 91.1 FM, from now until the end of the show at eight the number to call is 707-923-3911. Once again 707-923-3911. So let’s take this caller. Caller, you’re on the air. Where you from? What’s your question?
Yes, I’m calling from Garberville, California. My question is: as a general rule I love the organic coconut milk, and I’m wondering what its benefits are. And I’m also wondering what you would recommend as another type of nut milk that are an excellent product.
Okay, so coconut milk Dr. Peat. I know you’re not too into nut milks per se. What have you got to say about coconut milk?
39:36 I’m not especially wild about it. Studies in the Philippines have found that people who cook with it frequently have a high incidence of breast cancer.
Ouch.
So I’m not sure about what it’s actual contents are.
Basically, what I’m asking is: to drink the coconut milk without heating it, just using it as a general rule, in a cool basis of putting fruit in it, that sort of thing.
If it’s just the actual water, if you puncture an unripe coconut and get the water out. But what they call coconut milk or cream is a manufactured process where they grind up some of the solid material and suspend it in the water and I don’t think it’s safe.
40:40 Okay, the other question was the nut milks. What ones do you recommend?
I don’t think there’s such a thing. They can make any emulsion that’s white and liquid and call it a milk.
Like almond milk.
Grain milk or bean milk or nut milk, but that doesn’t have any nutritional value in the positive sense.
Okay, the third question was you were mentioning the linoleic acid, which is one of the most fabulous ones you can put in your body. And we do all these— under eat these, under consume these linoleic acids. What other related acids would you highly recommend that we do consume?
The coconut oil in itself has some real adaptogenic properties by interfering with the PUFA.
41:52 And it’s thermogenic, obviously it’s saturated and so it doesn’t have any of the side effects of being able to be converted into a lipofuscin product. And it’s definitely a metabolism stimulator. Okay I think the—
Hi, can I just try to clarify for that caller
Yeah.
that Dr. Peat really only recommends coconut oil and he does not recommend the Omega-3 or the Omega-6 or any nut seed oils or nut milks or seed or bean milks. But basically I think you were trying to say Dr. Peat.
Yeah, right.
Okay, alright so let’s move on.
Say again. I’m really close to it. I’ll be kissing it in a moment. Alright, that’s it, turn it up. Transcription note: Andrew Murray is almost certainly talking to the shows audio egineer who is likely asking him to move closer to the microphone to increase the volume of Murray’s voice.
I caught you saying a little while ago Dr. Peat that other reductants like vitamin C could drive lipofuscin production in the presence of those N-3, N-6s. Did I hear that correct?
43:10 Yeah, too much vitamin C easily activates any stray atoms you have of aluminum, iron, zinc, mercury and so on.
Okay, so how does that relate to orange juice and consuming large amounts of orange juice? Editorial note: Orange juice is often consumed liberally by those studying Ray Peat’s work. I mean, obviously following what you’re following then there wouldn’t be a problem but if people are out there drinking lots of orange juice but they’re still eating certain products that would contain either of these oils, wouldn’t that vitamin C there be a danger?
Oh sure, but there are so many chemicals other than vitamin C. The oranges, citrus fruit in general, grape juice, fruits and vegetables very widely contain the bioflavonoids which are basically inside the cell. 44:21 They are oxidants, and in the right quantity vitamin C is an oxidant inside the cell, in the healthy non-cancerous cell.
Yeah, I mean you— just…
So the function of anti-oxidation of the bioflavonoids and vitamin C comes when you get the right amount in cells which activates oxidative processes, absorbing potentially stray electrons that would contribute to lipofuscin.
Is there any way that you would say would be a sure way to get these pumped inside the cells then so that you’d have that ability there and then at the cell level?
To use them in moderation.
Okay, so— okay, so I just want to kind of get my head around the— because I frequently drunk half a gallon of orange juice a day, I mean for months and months all through the summertime for sure, especially when I’m working. 45:27 So given that that is a pretty good source of vitamin C, I’m obviously not consuming any PUFA at the same time because I kind of live on milk and orange juice (during the summer months especially). But you say in moderation to have this, you’re talking about having this spread out over time because I do, sometimes I get into a spate where I drink in orange juice, I’ll almost drink a half a gallon in one go sometimes. But you’re saying just the moderation side of it during the day would be a safe enough way to get it into the cells rather than having any negative effect from it?
Yeah, you’re getting equally large amounts of the other pro-oxidant bioflavonoids and so they are helping to keep the cell oxidizing. But if you take say five grams of vitamin C, then you get this gigantic surge of reductive energy that throws cells in just the opposite direction: turning on the lipofuscin, carcinogenic, degenerative processes.
46:45 Right, this is why you recommend orange juice and you’re not at all really behind vitamin C as a tablet. Because you also say that the manufacturing process for this is very, very spurious…
Uh-hmm.
Yeah. Okay—
So basically what you’re saying Dr. Peat is that if you’re getting a half a gallon of orange juice you might have quite a lot of vitamin C there but it’s also balanced by the bioflavonoids: the naryngin and the quercetin and the other antioxidants that are in the orange juice so it doesn’t cause a problem. The vitamin C is balanced and in the right ratio with the other nutrients.
Ah, Yeah.
So would you condone the use of citrus bioflavonoids because they’ve been around for a while now and I’ve looked at them in the past and I’ve wondered that, what ben…
In the purified form some of those can be reductants the same way excessive vitamin C can.
Right. Right. 47:46 All right, so probably more a case of getting whole plant sources rather than purified bioflavonoids.
Yeah, I think one bioflavonoid probably intensifies and works with the system in the same fruit.
Interesting. Okay.
So we had a caller that had really bad reception so he relayed to me, he wanted me to ask you, why do you think that cow milk is okay for humans since we’re the only species that drinks another species milk after being weaned?
Okay, that’s a very Southern Humboldt Transcription note: Humboldt is the Californian county home to the small town of Gaberville which hosts this radio show. question I think. I don’t know if the person came from a Southern Humboldt or not, but Dr. Peat?
What was the first part of the question?
The first part of the question was relating to milk and why is it that we’re the only species that drink another animal’s milk? If it was so good other animals would be drinking milk and we’re the only ones that do. I think that was a thrust to the question wasn’t it? 48:48 Yeah.
I think it has to do with the size of our brain and our culture, that we have evolved on a high fruit diet, high carbohydrate diet, and in that diet a very high calcium intake happens to be sort of synergizing with the other factors in the diet to optimize brain function.
Okay, so can I ask you about vitamin E’s protective antioxidant role? Because I know I’ve read a few articles that were talking about vitamin E offsetting, mitigating some of the effects of these N-3 and N-6s and the formation of lipofuscin. But some authors seem to suggest that really we have to take large amounts of vitamin C to have a beneficial effect. But what have you seen from any kind of standpoint of scientific experiment?
49:59 The definition of vitamin E has changed radically since the first studies in the 1920s and 30s. It was originally thought of as a fertility extending anti-estrogen chemical. But then as the toxic effects of unsaturated fats became identified vitamin E lost its anti-estrogen clot preventing, heart preventing mystique and was shifted over to nothing but an antioxidant.
In the 1940s it lost all of its hormonal benefits to the public knowledge and became only an antioxidant. 51:09 But that has now changed back and so it’s coming to be recognized again that it’s an anti-inflammatory, estrogen regulating substance.
What kind of dose would you recommend daily for someone to use as a supplemental form of vitamin E, just to get this antioxidant effect? Because mixed tocopherols have been a kind of advertising campaign for some time in terms of listing exactly what tocopherols are present.
Something like 20 or 30 milligrams.
20 to 30, okay, interesting. Alright.
And how many, sorry Dr. Peat, 20 to 30 milligrams, how does that compare to the international units?
Oh, now it’s used instead of the international units.
So what would be the comparison? Would it be like 100 IU or?
Yeah, the language has simply changed. 52:14 So you can talk about the different forms in terms of milligrams and it’s recognized that they have their value as vitamin E regardless of their antioxidant properties.
Okay, but what would be the, 20 to 30 milligrams a day is what you would say would be a good supplement dose of vitamin E. But how would that relate if someone has a product that is an international units?
Has a what?
Some of these vitamin E products are in international units like they’ll say 200 IU or 400 IU. So how would the 20, what’s the equivalent?
Well, sometimes there’s still talking in terms of the antioxidant value
Oh.
or the D-alpha tocopherol concentration.
53:17 Right.
For about 20 years you could only refer to D-alpha tocopherol
Right
as vitamin E potency.
No, not the gamma and the delta and the other mixed tocopherols?
Yeah, they had to be overlooked.
Right.
But now that effect is disappearing.
Okay, so when you state 20 to 30 milligrams, you’re stating 20 to 30 milligrams of a mixed tocopherol.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, I know you said in the past— oh look out, is there…
I wanted to give a brief public service announcement here, please. A caller was quite upset that there’s a couple of goats in the middle of the road by the airport. She said they’re in the middle of the road and it’s getting dark and she just wanted— if they belong to anybody, that’s where they are. They’re by the airport on Sprawl Creek Road, two black and white goats. There you go. Thank you so much.
54:18 Thank you. All right. Very, very lastly, Dr. Peat, I do appreciate you soldiering on through this, I can tell that your voice is giving out, but just, well say one last thing about estrogen and we’ll wrap up the show for the evening, in terms of you’ve always talked about estrogen being inflammatory. We’ve had plenty of discussion about why estrogen is bad for you and how its counterpart progesterone is the anti-inflammatory molecule, especially for women. But estrogen’s inflammatory nature in terms of its effect on the N-3 and N-6s and lipofuscin’s formation, it’s [un]equivocal correct, in terms of the destructive effects of estrogen?
Yes. So you can treat all of these things as synergizing either beneficial factors or harmful factors: 55:19 The amount of PUFA, the amount of ionizing radiation, the exposure to heavy metals. And each of the components is at least additive to the others. And so if you do something to oppose any one of those reducing inflammation, you’re going to reduce estrogen exposure, rate of aging and so on.
Tissue fibrosis and inflammation, degeneration, aging and cancer. All of these can be alleviated by simple, Transcription note: “simple” is likely incorrect, the word sounds perhaps like “soothfull”. natural anti-inflammatory things, including carbon dioxide, progesterone, thyroid function and so on.
56:21 Okay, well thank you very much, just hold it there Dr. Peat I’ll give out your information. Thanks so much for joining us.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, so—
Thankyou Dr Peat.
Dr. Peat can be found online at www.raypeat.com. And we can be found online at westernbotanicalmedicine.com. I think what I wanted to bring out from the show was that the whole concept of these polyunsaturated fatty acids from many different sources of which some are touted as being health beneficial and good for us, or they call them cholesterol lowering or blood pressure lowering, in many, many cases this is completely erroneous and not just that, but that there is actually something that we can do to mitigate the absorption and the permanence of these things. I wasn’t even aware that some of these, this lipofusion can be soluble. I thought it just formed into these complexes fairly rapidly under the presence of iron, cations or aluminum or zinc or other cations with the heat that we have on our body, 57:31 that they rapidly get converted into fairly insoluble products, but that’s not the case. So definitely a good cause for those people listening out there from a herb perspective and it’s something that they’ve always done in Europe for a long time: digestive bitters, hepatic stimulants, laxatives. All of these things will certainly be beneficial and actually be a very good mitigating strategy, especially for people who’ve just found this information out and want to start switching their fat sources to saturated. The people that still think that fish oil is good for you, having listened to this show I don’t know how you can. It is not true and it’s definitely a lie. And it’s an industry fighting to maintain a huge hold on a multi-billion dollar industry.
So yeah, there’s things that can be done, and stimulants, hepatic stimulants and bitters and aperitifs and all of these things that will improve your liver function and clearance of waste, 58:33 as well as your bowel function and preventing constipation will definitely have a bearing on you not absorbing these things by the same degree. And so therefore it can only be beneficial.
Anyway, so until the third Friday of next month, hopefully Dr. Peat’s voice is better and the wildfires have calmed down. I’m not too sure how that works because they do tend to burn on for the whole summer, but without being negative on that, I wish all of you a very good summer and until the third Friday of next month, my name’s Andrew Murray.
My name’s Sarah Johannesen Murray. Thank you very much for listening and joining the show.
Thank you.
Okay, just one more time we want to remind folks that there are two goats right near the airport on Sproul Creek Road, black and white, and they’re in the middle of the road, so if those are your goats that’s where they are. Check them out. Make sure your goats are where they’re supposed to be.