Progesterone vs Estrogen Part Two

00:00 Well, welcome to this month’s Ask Your Health Doctor. My name’s Andrew Murray. From 7 to late PM, this is a live show. We have callers calling in from 7.30 to 8 PM to ask questions about the topic that we’re going to go through. This month’s topic is going to be a roundup of the point that we left off in March, discussing progesterone and estrogen. And this month, I want to dissect that a little more with some of the facts and some of the arguments against, and in fact, plain refuting of those quote unquote facts about how positive estrogen was and how negative progesterone was, and a paper that was written by a Inga Sundstrom promona at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, apparently one of the leading experts on brain metabolism and sex hormones. I mentioned in March that the protect and synapse, 01:00 which are acronyms, protect and synapse trials of progesterone’s anti-inflammatory effects used in the treatment of traumatic brain injury, were published and reviewed and apparently were relatively unsuccessful. Now, Dr. Stein, a 30-year-old PhD brain injury expert at Emory University, was part of the team, which published a paper in the Journal of Neurotrauma. And he outlined some very obvious mistakes in the studies and basically said that the criteria with which the study was done did not produce valid results, and he was strongly opposed to the findings, which showed there wasn’t a positive benefit for progesterone, citing some very good facts and evidence to the contrary. So in terms of the ongoing lives, if you like, about how positive estrogen is for you 02:01 and or how dangerous progesterone is for you, we have had for many years now Dr. Raymond Pete joining us to discuss his findings and cover a lot of evidence that he’s unearthed himself. And I’m very pleased to have him on the show. So I wanted just to quickly welcome Dr. Pete and then give people a little more information about how to contact the studio for call-ins from 7.30 on. So Dr. Pete, are you with us? Yes, I’m here. OK, thanks so much for joining us. For people that are in the area, there’s a 707 number, which is 707-923-3911. And I wanted to quickly ask, I just noticed as I came into the studio that the 800 numbers have been scratched out. I was just about to correct you in case you started saying that. Yeah, apparently there’s a problem with the 800 numbers. So anybody can call from anywhere. There you go, all right. The country code is 01, I believe. Yeah, there you go, because we have people from Finland. We’ve had people from Australia and other places in the world. 03:04 So OK, yeah, 707-923-3911. So I also wanted just to point out that after business hours or during business hours, rather, 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, people can either call in and either or write to me at my address at Andrew at westernbotanicalmedicine.com or call if they have any questions or if they want to follow up any consultations, nutritional consultations, or related subjects around health and the things that we are purporting to be things that are very beneficial for you, which you won’t normally hear in the mainstream. Dr. Pete’s been a big advocate of things like thyroid and sugar and progesterone. And the mainstream medicine and science would argue that sugar is not good for you, or that prognolone or progesterone, for example, are not good for you when there’s plenty of evidence to show that there is. I think this is probably never so clear as in the trials 04:06 of HRT and some of the withdrawing of those HRT programs, the hormone replacement therapy, quote, unquote, that women with estrogen dominance is probably the last thing that they want is estrogen replacement. But yet the industry and doctors still continue to say that the bone health benefits of estrogen are to be advised and that women with hot flashes and other mood disorders, that estrogen is a lacking substance that they actually need and will help them. So during the course of the next 30 minutes or so, I’m going to be discussing some of the arguments for progesterone and the arguments against estrogen. And Dr. Pete, with his background, has probably never so qualified to speak on the subject, given that his PhD was in reproductive hormones. So Dr. Pete, would you just give an outline of your professional and academic background so people that are listening can hear where you’ve come from? 05:08 Before I studied biology, I was a literature, linguistics, and art major and teacher. And I decided to study biology initially to get more understanding of how language and intelligence and consciousness work. And what I found was that brain biology, cognitive science, so-called, was pure dogmatism, very little science in it. So I shifted over to reproductive physiology to basically study how the organism works, all the way from the germ cell to the brain. And the brain science really is not distinct from reproductive physiology. The brain is really the motor for the whole life process. 06:11 And I did my dissertation in 1972 on the oxidative changes in the uterus, in particular, as it changes with aging. OK, good. So I guess let’s just jump straight into some of the questions that I had that we got left off from March. And these are basic inquiries into the mechanism by which estrogen has its negative effects. And then we’ll get into an article that was written by Inga Sundstrom, who’s a professor at the University of Uppsala and a parent leading expert on brain metabolism and sex hormones, who said some very strange things that I’d like you just to hear and give your take on it. The catamanial epilepsy and the estrogens, like estrone, estriol, and estrodial, 07:13 how do you understand the triggering of the epilepsy in these certain susceptible females? Is this estrogen related, isn’t it? Yeah, in my research, I looked through everything that had been done on physiology, especially as it relates to the brain and uterus, up until 1970. I couldn’t find any evidence that would clearly distinguish the physiology of estrogen stimulation from x-ray stimulation or oxygen deprivation, or vitamin E deficiency, which interferes with oxygen use. All of those things deplete the energy production of the cell, which is based on oxidation. And when the brain is oversupplied with estrogen 08:15 or laxate antagonists, especially progesterone, the whole system, but everything in the brain included, wastes oxygen and is unable to keep the energy level up to the point that the cells are stable. And one of the strange things that has been overlooked or seen upside down in both biology and medicine for most of the century is that a high energy state of a cell is the state in which it’s ready to work and function, but it is not acting all the time. It’s sitting there ready to work. And when it is forced to work, more than it is ready for, the energy level falls and it gets into a state trying to restore the energy, 09:17 but it is in a constantly active state. If you cause hypoglycemia by interfering with the liver, for example, it works the same as a lack of oxygen. And estrogen happens to interfere with the supply of glucose to cells. It activates insulin, but it also activates the release of fatty acids from the tissues. And the fatty acids block the ability to oxidize glucose. So estrogen activates the cells by increasing the function of glutamic acid, a brain excitant. And in increasing glutamate, it decreases GABA, the inhibiting signal. 10:19 GABA should be produced by the breakdown of glutamic acid. So estrogen is exciting for the brain cells and at the same time interfering with their use of oxygen and glucose. OK, so estrogen and the estrogens, estrogen, estriolus, et cetera, these really mimic a kind of stress response then? Yeah, I consider estrogen’s function to be the controlled stress. The whole organism is moving through a developmental process. And it requires a constant supply of energy. And if that energy supply becomes fatally impaired, then the function of estrogen in the reproductive system 11:20 is to erase the whole scheme that was producing the organism’s development through its life process, suddenly the excess of estrogen as a stress signal erases the whole program and reverts to the single multiplying cell. So without anything interfering, estrogen tends to produce the cancer cell. But it also activates the production of the egg and the readiness of the egg to start a new organism. So its proper function should be once a month for a few hours to activate the potential new life. And that only starts up until puberty. 12:26 The brain is metabolizing at a very high rate. And the catamennial epilepsy tends to begin around the age of nine when estrogen is rising and progesterone hasn’t risen yet. And the brain metabolism slows down at puberty. And so the body takes it as a threat to survival. And so it turns on the reproductive process. Interesting. I just wanted to kind of recount that. You said that, and I think I’ve understood this in the correct way, that estrogen, the only real benefit for estrogen then is the inflammation it provides or promotes to stimulate implantation of a new site in the endometrium in terms of successful pregnancies. And correct? And outside of that, it doesn’t really have too much benefit. Yeah. 13:26 Throughout the organism, whenever the tissue is stressed, it tends to turn on locally the production of estrogen. That’s how it so easily leads to cancer. Because every tissue has the apparatus for making estrogen. Right. You said every cell in the body can secrete it, essentially. Yeah. And after menopause, when the production of progesterone becomes very limited, there is a tendency for all of the body’s tissues to begin making estrogen. So it’s just the opposite of what the menopause doctors have been teaching. When progesterone disappears, the breast, the uterus, the brain, the liver, the skin, the fat, muscles even begin producing estrogen. But it can escape from the cell because it also increases the estrogen binding protein, the estrogen so-called receptor. 14:27 And in the absence of progesterone, the intracellular estrogen increases, but it doesn’t get into the blood. So you measure the blood, and it looks like your estrogen deficient. Fantastic. It doesn’t get into the blood, huh? Yeah. Exactly when you’re being systemically poisoned with intracellular estrogen. And as you’ve mentioned before on previous shows, estrogen is very responsible for edema, cell swelling, and that inefficiency that comes with that waterlogging from an energy point of view. The individual cell swells up when it’s being excited and de-energized. When you can get the energy back up, that squeezes the water out. And that same swollen state occurs in capillaries and blood vessels. And even though they get thicker, they become leaky. Water goes through them into the tissues and out of your bloodstream. 15:28 And that’s involved in the circulatory problems of pregnancy. The blood volume can’t be maintained while the legs and feet tend to swell up. And the kidneys sense the lack of circulation because the blood volume has shrunk. And so the kidneys send out signals to raise the blood pressure to try to get more circulation. Interesting. And then lastly, just wanted to recap what you said about that depolarized and repolarized state of the cell. So you mentioned that when a cell is in a ready state to perform work, that relaxed state is what is so important for that proper contraction, that proper action potential to occur, to do work. And that in hypothyroidism, the cell remains in a constantly stressed state where it’s not able to relax. And it’s that very lack of relaxation that 16:29 causes the energy problems. Yeah, you can see exactly the same process in the heart, muscle, and in the brain and other cells. But it’s very easy to study in the brain and then muscle because the muscle is such a concentrated muscle system. And estrogen weakens but makes more frequent the contraction. And it’s a great excess of estrogen causes a shock-like state of the heart, rapid but very, very weak pulsation. Where progesterone strengthens, it lets the cells build up energy so that when it does contract, it’s a very powerful contraction and pumps very efficiently. OK, good. Well, I never like to turn on people away. And I know you do this because you like the interaction with people asking questions that you’ve no preparation for, if you like. 17:30 You’ve not been prepared. So there’s a caller on the line who, I think, wants to ask a question. So let’s take this caller away from and watch the question. Yes, hi. My name is Shauna from Hesperia. Hey, Hannah. Welcome to the show. What’s your question? My question is regarding chronic fatigue syndrome. Can Dr. Ray Pete elaborate on what this is and what is the underlying condition, hypometabolism or what? And then my second question is, is it effective for CFS? OK, I think there’s a lot of break up on the line. But I think that first question was related to chronic fatigue syndrome. What do you see? Your ideas on chronic fatigue syndrome, how do you see it? And then also naltrexone, I think, was low dose. Yeah, low dose, low dose now. Yeah, LDN. OK, Dr. Pete, what do you think of chronic fatigue syndrome as a? 18:30 One way of thinking of it is that it’s very similar to in the brain, the seizure state or in the heart, the failure state under the influence of a lack of progesterone and excessive estrogen or simply such a deficiency of energy that the cell goes into that swollen, overexcitable state. When a cell is in very bad condition, as far as I know, every cell in the body can also produce histamine as it’s getting very desperate. Not only in a chronic sort of desperation, cells produce estrogen. But in a most acute situation, they produce histamine. And in the hypothyroid, low progesterone, chronic state, the body tends to locally produce a lot of histamine 19:33 and other inflammatory things. OK, and what do you think about low dose naltrexone? Does it have any merit? In my experience, using naloxone more than naltrexone, but they’re essentially identical. One is a little more oil-soluble. I found that from 1 to 4 milligrams per day of naloxone would break a depressed condition by suppressing the endorphins, which are induced by lactic acid and fatigue. The endorphins are another emergency measure to turn off the excitation. But with a very small dose, some people use even a hundred of a milligram and find a very therapeutic effect. 20:35 So I consider four milligrams a day a fairly big larger than necessary dose. OK, good. So let me just quickly ask. I think we have another call on. Oh, yeah. OK, well, let’s take this next call and see where we’re going. Call out. You’re on the end. Watch the question. Where is it from? Hi. I had a question about the B complex vitamins. I’ve been listening for a while. So I understand a B1, B2, and B3 and why they are beneficial. I wanted to go backwards. So B9 is, I guess, folic acid and B7 is biotin. And I think in some of the stuff I’ve read about what people seem to be interpreting regarding your research or point of view is that 1, 2, and 3 are important. And 6, in a smaller amount, but B5, anaphenic acid, B4, adenosine, and folic acid in B12 are probably not to be taken. 21:39 And so I’m probably not giving the full story. So I just wanted to say that’s sort of the question. Are these the bad guys? And if so, why? Because when someone gets a B complex vitamin, they actually have specific ratios of all these in many cases. And I’m just wondering, are they properly named B vitamins? And or should they be taken and thought of separately as opposed to particular ratios between each one of them to have the proper effect systemically? Dr. P, I know you’re an advocate of liver for that reason. But how would you define the B vitamins in terms of necessity and the sources of? Their main metabolic similarity is that they are regulators and facilitators of cell oxidative energy processes. Panthenic acid is somewhat off the main group. 22:40 But it’s very essential. Anti-stress helps with regulating blood sugar and allergies. So sometimes 400 to 500 milligram dose of panthenic acid can relieve stress symptoms. And it’s unusual in that it doesn’t affect the interactions of the others. It’s sort of on a sideline where it can be taken in monkeys. They fed them a cup a day of pure panthenic acid with no side effects. If you did that with any of the other B vitamins, you would quickly reach a toxic effect. OK, so panthenic acid can be taken daily, because all these are water soluble, but this can be taken daily up to 400 milligrams. And you will see some benefit of cellular oxidative energy, 23:42 particularly I’m thinking more about digestion, too, because some of these, like I’ve taken B1 and B2 recently, and I really believe it’s helped my ability to digest things. I’m a young man of around 60. So I’m just wondering how to take these, how much to take, and how often, as opposed to what’s being out there in the research, because it seems to not be accurate relative to what you’re saying. Yeah, the orthomolecular movement 40 years ago, I think, encouraged a lot of overdose excess use of them. You can get extremely therapeutic results sometimes with five or 10 times the minimum daily requirement, like 10 or 20 milligrams of B1, 10 milligrams of B2, 10 milligrams of B6, and so on. But sometimes larger doses are effective, 24:48 but I think it’s good to try the smallest dose, maybe five times the minimum daily requirement. OK, so it’s OK to take that daily. So for the ones you mentioned, about 10 to 20 milligrams in a day is OK. And I guess B3 is a little different in the sense you could take 4 to 500 of that one, too, right? It’s not just B5, but B3 also, am I right? Niacin, or is it B? Niacin amide, niacin amide. Yeah, it’s important to get the amide form. The other releases, inflammatory mediators. And the niacin amide is safe up to at least a couple of 100 milligrams, but I think I’ve seen people with terminal brain diseases cure themselves, taking just 150 or 200 of niacin amide per day. OK, and B7 is biotin. 25:49 I hear people say that that will reduce your blood, your glucose levels. But then I read and I say, well, gee, maybe that’s not true. Maybe it actually regulates them dynamically. So what about biotin? Is there any negatives to taking biotin in like 5 to 10,000? I think it’s micrograms, not milligrams. I’ve seen the good results from very, very big doses of biotin, but 50 years ago, some animal studies showed that moderate overdose could cause liver cancer. So I’ve always been leery about it, but I’ve never seen people repeating those experiments. What’s a dose? I mean, what, so is 5,000 an excessive dose? Micrograms or are you talking about something like? I would stick to around one milligram of biotin. OK, one milligram. OK, gotcha per day. 26:50 OK, and then folic acid, you’re kind of, I mean, I’ve read that you somehow think that’s like somehow dangerous to take at all. I could be wrong, too, but that’s why I read. I think it’s safe at a dose of around one milligram, maybe as high as five milligrams per day, but you have to be cautious with especially vitamin B2 and folic acid because something in the synthetic process makes a lot of people get migraine headaches and hemorrhoids and other very intense symptoms from those which happen to be yellow molecules. And I think it’s something about their sensitivity to delight and oxidation that makes the pure chemical pretty allergenic for a lot of people. So could it give you a rash, too, or something like that, or just a headache? 27:50 I didn’t hear that. Could it give you a rash or just a headache? The worst symptoms I’ve heard about are migraine, like headaches and bowel problems, but that could the bowel inflammation come to lead to rashes. OK, that makes sense. And then B12, I nearly see almost no writing on that, or just curious, because a lot of people say you’ve got to have your B12 up, and I know that gets to methylation, but is there an amount or is it the amount that you consume in your basic diet? Should be more than enough. Yeah, if you eat animal products in particular, and the intestine bacteria can make a lot of it. I hear from a lot of people with small intestine inflammation who have about 50%!h(MISSING)igher than the upper normal range for B12, apparently, because their bacteria are thriving where they shouldn’t be. 28:54 I appreciate your questions, caller, and I’ve got to get on with the questions that I’ve got for Dr. Pete surrounding last month’s or March’s radio show, so we can get into some fresh topic. Dr. Pete, I wanted to go over the article just briefly that was written by this professor at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, who is an expert on brain metabolism and sex hormones, just to illustrate to people how wrong things can get from the quote, unquote, academic professionals. And just to see how this was twisted in terms of what I’m about to speak verbatim from the article. And I just want to stop you at different points during this just to hear your side of it so that you can point people in the right direction, because people are going to read these things on Research Gate or PubMed or other places and just take it as the truth because it’s written by a university professor who specializes in this kind of thing, but just want to bring it the truth home again wherever possible. 29:54 So an article was written about pregnant alone and saying in progesterone and saying that basically the negative associations with it were fairly rife. And so just going through what she had written, she talked about PMS and saying that for some people it was unpredictable and for many it was hard to explain but feelings of worry associated with a menstrual cycle had very specific cause and that this was the same hormone used in much birth control and that 85%!o(MISSING)f women experience premenstrual stress or PMS in the days leading up to the period. And according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as well, that this condition comes with physical symptoms like painful joints or breasts, headaches, sleeplessness, et cetera. And I’m sure most women can identify with these symptoms. And she says it’s pretty much down to one hormone, progesterone, and she’s the leading expert on brain metabolism and sex hormone. So she goes on to mention that progesterone appears 30:55 after ovulation, one of the two main female hormones, the other being estrogen, and it’s present in the first two weeks of the cycle and has a broadly positive effect on news. So this is estrogen. Estrogen increases the brain serotonin. The hormone most associated with happiness, progesterone on the other hand can have a depressing effect. So Dr. P, what do you think about, maintain this sentence, even just regarding serotonin’s positive effects? To be polite, I think it’s very, very silly. Everything there is confused and backwards. For example, the serotonin thing, the happiness signal. Serotonin is very essential for the inflammation, osteoporosis, cancer, blood clotting, spasms, 32:00 all sorts of bad effects. Inflammatory processes, right? From an excess, what was that? Is it the inflammatory processes that are dictated by serotonin? Yeah, it’s right there with histamine as the most intense acute local inflammatory signal. And in the brain, that inflammatory process of serotonin turns on the whole stress system that activates ACTH and cortisol. Estrogen not only activates that serotonin dependent pathway, but it directly activates the adrenal glands to produce cortisol. So estrogen is a basic stress hormone, serotonin is kind of a terminal mediator of that stress process, turning on the defensive anti-stress cortisol production. 33:03 But in itself, serotonin is a very powerful bone destroyer by its inflammatory process. It’s basically an alarm signal, though. Yeah. Okay, well, without, I guess, laboring that point, she mentions, as well as creating anxiety, another side effect of progesterone could be to cause the blues. According to research by Torbjorn Bachstrom from the University of Umiah in Sweden, it seems to have the same effect on the brain as depressive drugs like alcohol and sleeping pills. So where does she get that from, that progesterone has this depressant effect? That’s a very interesting confusion of the meaning of depression. In the heart, for example, progesterone depresses the spastic activity that leads to a cardiac arrest. And it depresses the premature contractions 34:05 and facilitates a good rhythm. The estrogen has the opposite effect, tends to produce arrhythmia by delaying the ability to regain its energy charge and get ready for the next beat. Okay, all right, so she also goes on to say, most substances in the body, including hormones, get broken down into other substances known as metabolites before eventually being removed by the kidney or the liver. When progesterone is broken down, its metabolites become active in the brain, and it appears they, and one in particular, allopregnanolone that we mentioned last month, sorry, in March, allopregnanolone and pregnanolone, which both incidentally can be produced in the CNS, both in the oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. So it’s not, you don’t have to consume this product, it’s actually de novo synthesis from cholesterol. She says these, in particular, allopregnanolone binds to a system called the GABA A receptor. 35:06 Now, we’ve mentioned, and I’ve talked about the GABA A receptor in relation to things that bind to the GABA A receptor to produce relaxation, like valerian, because it is the opposite to the excitotoxic system. But she says that the GABA A receptor is a little like the brain’s police force. It regulates making sure there isn’t too much excitement going on, which seems okay on the face of it. The drugs that bind to it may cause it to step up policing, and Backstrom’s research suggests that metabolites of progesterone may be doing the same thing. So, if female hormones have such distinct effects, the next step is to wonder why the female body is designed in this way, and she suggests that it’s more a result of evolutionary design meeting modern living. Progesterone’s effects, she goes on to say, may be particularly pronounced now because women are having far more periods and far fewer children than in the thousands of malnourished years before birth control, like birth control is a popularly appreciated product. 36:11 Anyway, 300 years ago, women started menstruating around 17 or 18 because they were less healthy than today. So, I’m not too sure what you’ve got to say about being less healthy and having a later menarche, which you’ve actually said and is well-unshown, that is actually a positive thing. To actually have your periods start early is actually related to high estrogen. It’s actually a very detrimental to your long-term health, isn’t it? Yeah, the age at menarche is getting lower and lower all the time over the last several decades, and that is now known to correspond to all of the estrogen problems later in life. One of the recent groups of studies related to the early puberty and the tendency to have autistic babies, the uterus during gestation, it has a higher estrogen level in the women 37:13 who started at a very young age. Okay, she goes on to say that most women got pregnant almost immediately, you know, several hundred years ago without birth control, and remained pregnant or breastfeeding for most of their reproductive lives, which ended around 40. Now, this would have subjected them to a fairly sustained level of progesterone, correct? Through being pregnant. Yeah, she seems to get it just exactly wrong with pregnancy as a time of low progesterone, but the normal cycling woman produces maybe 30 milligrams a day during the luteal phase before menstruation, and the ovaries weighing six or seven grams maybe are working pretty efficiently 38:15 when they can produce 30 milligrams a day, but the placenta in the term pregnancy weighs about a pound and a half, roughly a hundred times bigger than the ovaries, and it can produce at least 30 times as much progesterone per day, and there’s an interesting discussion of the effect of pregnancy on aging and general health in the book by AV Everett and others, called Hypothalamus Pituitary and Aging, in which he describes experiments mating rabbits constantly, as soon as they have a lived litter, mate them again so that they live their whole lives producing a maximum number of litters, and others that were not mated, 39:19 the multi-litter rabbits had much more flexible, young, connective tissue. Their tissues were less aged at the end of their lives than the non-mated, and they mentioned studies done in Hungary looking at the lifespan of women in relation to the number of babies they had produced, and graphing it from zero babies to eight babies, the maximum that they calculated. They showed a straight line of life expectancy increasing with each baby that was born, and in the rabbits they showed that it was this very high constant, almost constant exposure to progesterone that was protecting or reversing the estrogen-induced 40:20 age changes in the connective tissue that made them live longer and be healthier. Okay, good. Well, let’s see, put the word out there for people that may have questions. I know several people have called in and haven’t got on so far, so the area code is 707-923-3911, and the lights are flashing, so in a few moments here, we’ll take this next call to find out where they’re from and what the question is. Hi, caller, you’re on the air. What’s your question and where are you from? You asked him again, he was, that was quick. Okay, you’re on the air, caller, so where are you from and what’s your question? Mike and from Connecticut. Okay, Mike, what’s your question? Yes, I have a quick question for Dr. Ray Pitch. I was wondering if you had a chance to review the recent study that came out of Northwestern University about the correlation with taking aspirin daily and the risk, a melanoma, looks like there’s a double the risk in men. Dr. Pitch. 41:21 Yeah, I saw that and I don’t know what happened with all of the other cancers that have been studied at aspirin prevents them. Yeah, I find it strange as well. It looks like it was a surprising result versus all the other cancers. You’ll probably find the same thing with the synapse studies and the protec studies on progesterone that didn’t turn up with positive information. You’ll probably find the same thing, either the methodology or some of the methodology is probably going to be in question. Sure. Okay, and just one more question. What are his thoughts about hydrogen, molecular hydrogen water and the benefits? It looks like there’s a few studies coming from Japan. It looks like there’s some positive benefits. Yeah, everything I’ve seen looks like it’s maybe 42:21 simply reducing the free radical oxidative damage substances like lipid peroxides. It lowers inflammation in all the experiments I’ve seen. Okay, that’s a question. We’ve got two or three more people on the line waiting. So let’s take this next caller. Caller, what’s your question away from? Yeah, from the island. My question relates to CO2, carbon dioxide therapy. You’d mentioned bag breathing and I’ve also heard about dry CO2 baths. And I was just wondering if CO2 is heavier than air, can you just put it in the bathtub? Sure. And how would you measure it? Because if you move around, it seems like there’d be quite a bit of disturbance. If you get in slowly and get out slowly, 43:24 it’s so heavy that you don’t flush much of it out. But you can check with a match or a lighter to find the level the match goes out as soon as you sink it into the pure CO2. Oh, I see. And you don’t even have to take your pleasure to have a bath there. Stay in there for benefit. How could you do this once a week or something like your recommendation on liver, for example? A 1908 article described it at a weekly bath in CO2 as being equivalent to a vacation at the ocean. For how long, like at one time, to have effect? That’s boring after an hour, but you can get a big bag or tub and a plastic tub works fine. 44:24 Doesn’t have any leaks in it like a bathtub does. And you could sit in it and read or watch TV or whatever. Okay, does that lower your temperature? Because I know. It has a warm sensation when it touches your skin, but that’s because it’s opening up blood vessels, getting more blood to your skin. So you could chill yourself, I think, if you did it in a cold place because it would make you lose heat faster through your skin. Does it matter whether it’s like food grade or? I use it from a welding shop. I appreciate your call, Colla. We do have three more people, so I just wanna make sure they all get a chance. So let’s line up the next caller. Colla, where are you from and watch the question? Hello, Colla, where are you from and what’s your question? How can you tell me about MitoQ, M-I-T-O-Q? 45:25 Oh, I think that’s a new variant of CoQ-10. And I don’t know whether it’s any better. I’ve never used it or studied it much. Okay, thank you. Dr. Peake, very quickly on CoQ-10 and mitochondria activity, you think there is a relative merit there for using CoQ-10? Yeah, I think so. In many cases, a person is not producing enough of it and it happens that vitamin K works with CoQ-10 and makes it more effective and stable. Incidentally, in terms of dosage for K2, I noted that one of the kind of more leading producers of K2, Thorn Research, they produce a liquid vitamin K2 that I know has been recommended to people, especially if they’re using aspirin as a therapy 46:25 and they use a one milligram per drop product. Now, I’ve just noticed that Thorn have rebranded their packaging and actually on their supplement fact label, it says one serving size is now 10 drops. And so therefore 10 milligrams is a serving size. What do you think about K2’s use with or without aspirin in that instance, if you’re mentioning its affinity with CoQ-10? The Japanese have experimented with it at higher levels, up to 40 or 45 milligrams per day. And I’ve known several people who had extremely high, persistently high blood pressure, like 240 over 140 I think was one person’s regular pressure for a year because his blood vessels were very calcified. And he took 40 or 50 milligrams per day of Thorn vitamin K. And after a week, the pressure was much lower. 47:26 And after two weeks, it was essentially normal, 140 over 70. Okay, we’ve got two more questions at least, sorry, two more calls at least. One was, what’s the dosage for progesterone for a person who’s thinking about trying it? You know, that’s probably a very variable question, a very variable answer in terms of the use it’s being used for. But what do you think, Dr. B, is a general for a female now presumably, what a progesterone dose would be? And if you’re taking it orally in an oil dissolved form, 20 or 30 milligrams is a very effective dose. I’ve used as much as 100 milligrams myself for a headache. It took about two minutes to knock out of migraine. There you go, now you’ve mentioned, again, I won’t go back to the article because we’ve got callers, but the quote unquote depressing effect of progesterone, it’s mildly sedative and that’s not a depressing effect, but I guess in an energy term it is, 48:28 but it has a sedative effect, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s a powerful sedative if you take enough. 100 milligrams after it knocked out the migraine, it put me to sleep for a couple hours. Okay, let’s take these next callers. Okay, so caller, you’re on the air, where are you from and what’s your question? Hi, my name is Peter, I’m from San Francisco. Hey Peter, what’s your question? I had a question regarding the concept of earthing. There’s a lot of people that promote going to the beach, going to nature and taking off your shoes and walking around and I felt benefit from going to the beach and taking my shoes off and walking around like that and coming in contact with the actual earth. What does Dr. Pete think is the mechanism behind that, if there is any? Hey Dr. Pete. Negative ionized air is more abundant near the ocean or waterfalls. I think that’s part of the good feeling you get at the beach. Another thing is the skin stimulation 49:31 of freeing your shoes from being imprisoned in shoes and socks, that’s a very powerful stimulus. But supposedly the body does the immune system, for example, reacts to the electrically charged things in the environment. For example, they put an aisle on some animals that supposedly was interfering with the normal skin ionization and found that their immune systems were suppressed and that the earth is always a source of electrons, actually relative to the higher atmosphere. You get a gradient with a positive at high altitude and the negative fall at the earth. 50:32 Okay, thanks for your question, Cora. There’s actually a couple more. I’m gonna hold for one second, we’ve still got two more quarters on the line, so I hope to get to three, now the light’s going again. I just wanted to let you know that the article that was also written that Inga quoted in that paper on supposedly progesterone’s negative effects, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologist quoted this during some part of her paper that she’s written in, diet and vitamin supplements may help ease PMS. The ACOG, the American Congress on Obstetrics and Gynecologists, suggests keeping blood sugar levels up with smaller, more frequent meals. Now there’s good advice for you. Okay, next caller. I wanted to comment, one very bad thing about her paper was that she was talking about the amygdala activation. Yeah, I know that there’s so many other questions I wanted to ask about it, but carry on. She was presenting it as a negative fear thing, 51:33 but the amygdala regulates affection, love, anxiety and fear, it isn’t just one-sided. Yeah, okay, good. Let me quickly mention to people so they can get online themselves and look at this paper, then they want to rewind this radio show or download it from the archives. Her name is Inga, I-N-G-E-R, Sundstorm, S-U-N-D, S-T-R-O-M, Poroma, P-O-R-O-M-A-A, University of Uppsala in Sweden. And you know what, when you type in her name, you do that search, you’ll get directed to research gate and you’ve got to scroll through the papers that she’s written, but you won’t find this one there. What you’ve got to do in the search, when you look for it, you’ll find that it’s related to PMS and basically, you know, it’s a treatment for PMS and those situations where estrogen typically is the cause of it and progesterone is the alleviator, but when you click on that link, you’ll find her paper and then you’ll find what I’ve mentioned here, word for word of what she’s quoted 52:34 and then Dr. Pete here has refuted it. All right, so two more callers on the line. Let’s take this first, this next one. Hello. Yeah. Where are you from and what’s your question? I’m Naomi from Willis and you’ve talked about migraine and things that can make them, can give you a migraine and things that can take it away, but I missed the first one, I think you said biotin and folic acid was a tricky combination that could cause migraine and then you said something that I just missed while you said actually alleviated it. Sure. Riboflavin and folic acid are the ones that are most irritating and getting the intestine free of any of those irritants is very important. A fibrous food such as raw carrots or cooked mushrooms helps to clean out the inflammatory substances from the intestine, but sugar helps to stop the production 53:38 of histamine and serotonin. Okay, and you said some, I mean, I have a B50 complex with C and it’s got all those things and I do suffer migraines. I don’t know if I should be taking riboflavin and folic acid. If I took one, I would have a migraine for about three days, I think. But I don’t. That’s good, they’re probably protected. Could you say again what you felt, what alleviated migraine? Progesterone, sugar, and things that stimulate your intestine such as raw carrots and cooked mushrooms. To remove bowel waste like estrogen and endotoxin. Progesterone and sugar? Yeah, sugar helps to stop the production of histamine and serotonin. Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Well, maybe… 54:39 A fascinating show. Yeah, good. I don’t want to prejudge it, but maybe that last caller didn’t really listen to any of the other previous shows where she would recognize that sugar is actually very beneficial for you as well, just like progesterone, pregnelling are beneficial. And that’s the cause and the reason that we do these shows is just to help people understand that what they hear on the radio or read in the papers is not always the way it is and it’s driven by fairly powerful interests and lobbies. Okay, we have one more caller, so let’s make this real quick. Just two minutes caller, and then I’ve got to have to terminate you. Real quick, one question, you mentioned COQ10. What about PQQ? Is that also helpful to manufacture and replace damaged mitochondria in conjunction with COQ10? What was the name of it? PQQ, that’s the acronym. PQQ, pure quintalone, I believe? I’ve heard about that, but never studied it. Okay, so then the other question is before adenine was mentioned that you didn’t, 55:39 that’s something that’s not really mentioned is a B vitamin, and I was just wondering, is that really just an omission for, and it should, is something that could be taken beneficially, externally, like the other ones that someone went through earlier? Did you say adenosine? Or I think it’s adenine. It might even be four is what I’ve heard it referred to. How did you pronounce it? I guess, well, I thought it was adenine, but maybe it’s adenosine. Yeah, I think so. Oh yeah, adenosine is sort of risky. It’s the opposite of caffeine in some way, and it can bring on symptoms that caffeine can alleviate. So it’s, I wouldn’t risk using adenosine because it can cause an asthma attack, for example. Okay, thank you. Okay, thanks for your course, Cora. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Pete. I really appreciate your time giving it as always. Okay, thank you. Okay, so for those people who’ve listened 56:41 to this evening’s show and or who may be called in, I think there’s two other callers that never got through, but Dr. Pete can be found online at www.reypeat.com. He’s got a pretty big comprehensive library of articles that are fully referenced. You’ve heard him speak. I’ve worked with him for a long time and have seen a lot of people get beneficial results from his methodologies, where other alternatives have not really produced as much as I would have hoped. So I’m forever grateful to his teaching and his wisdom. Okay, so for those people who never listened, go check out his website. I can always be reached at www.westernbutanicalmedicine.com. All of the shows are uploaded there. They’re free to download. They’re on the resources tab under Ask Your Herb Doctor. 57:43 And for the growing YouTube population and the internet population that has exploded, his words, his teachings, his advice is all over the internet. And there’s different repeat forums and clubs, et cetera, which spin off different parts of what he has advised. Anyway, go educate yourself. You don’t believe everything that you hear. Even me, go read it. Go look at it. Find out for yourself. Just do the work and thanks so much for joining us.