Urea, pH, Thyroid

00:00 Andrew Murray. My name’s Sarah Johanneson Murray. Now for those of you who perhaps have never listened to the shows which run every third Friday of the month from seven to late p.m. we’re both licensed medical herbalists who trained in England and graduated there with a degree in herbal medicine and we run a clinic in Garberville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions and recommend herbal medicine and dietary advice. So you’re listening to Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMD Garberville 91.1 FM and from 7.30 until the end of the show at eight o’clock you’re invited to call him with any questions related or unrelated to this month’s subject of the continuing research on urea. The number if you live in the area is 9233911 or if you live outside the area there’s a toll-free number which is 1-800-KMUD-RAD which is 1-800-568-3723 and we can also be reached toll-free on 1-888-WBM-ERB for consultations or further information Monday through Friday. 01:01 Okay so once again we’re very pleased to have Dr. Raymond Pete joining us on the show to share in his latest research. Dr. Pete are you there? Yes. Okay thanks so much for joining us again. As always just like to start the show by giving you the opportunity here to let people know your academic and scientific background what you do and who you are. I got my PhD in biology specializing in physiology and biochemistry especially reproductive physiology at University of Oregon 1972 and before that I had been interested in language philosophy and psychology and planned to study brain biology but I found that the reproductive physiology seemed more scientific and more interesting so I specialized in that but continued to be interested in 02:02 the rest of the organism and so I first thing I did after graduating was to write a book on the brain the reviewing of Russian science 19th century through the 20th century on on brain biology and so I’ve continued interest in how the basic energy physiology relates to things such as reproduction aging and brain functions. Okay all right well I know that your most recent newsletter you are continuing your discourse and your thoughts on urea and it’s use in pathology and how you see the function of urea as benefiting people in light of perhaps it being dismissed if you like by mainstream medical 03:03 science. I know that you mentioned Danopoulos the Greek physician who’s been successfully using urea as a therapy injecting it into tumors and it’s use in cancer but this newsletter that you’ve most recently written more explores some other physiological effects of urea that perhaps people might not have been aware of or if in fact the research has been done some time ago it may now be buried and forgotten so just wanted to pick up on quite a few of the things that you mentioned in your newsletter yeah go ahead. So Daphne can you tell us what urea is? It’s name chemically is carbamide it’s just a combination of ammonia with carbon dioxide and so it’s the body’s way of detoxifying ammonia and it requires oxidative production of carbon dioxide 04:06 to combine with the ammonia to get rid of it and so it regulates cell pH which regulates water metabolism and everything else in cell function. So it’s something that our bodies produce? Yeah all right so given that we now understand excess water in the cell is a central feature of the major degenerative diseases that you outline things like heart failure, dementia and cancer how do you explain how this happens and what is the best strategy to prevent this if water accumulation in the cell is implied in such a inflammatory situation as these things that we’ve mentioned? One of the dimensions of thinking about water in cells is that it comes up against some of the basic dogmas of what life is and how cells work and so on and I think the reason that Denopolis amazing results in curing cancer with simply injecting or giving intravenous urea 05:13 I think the reason it’s been ignored and dismissed is that it involves some ideas that don’t fit with these mechanical dogmas of 20th century of biology such as the membrane theory the idea that there are pumps in cell surface membranes that regulate the amount of water and minerals in cells by somehow grabbing the molecules and pushing them in or out of the cell it’s really a silly impossible concept but it’s what everything officially is based on so when you actually look at the facts of what’s happening with water it if you think in terms of things such as what happens when gelatin gets wet and swells up and if you put acid or alkali 06:19 on it what happens to its relation to water and so on acid makes it shrink alkali makes it swell up and simple physical ideas like that are very useful for thinking about what happens in all of the diseases okay they said acid makes it shrink and alkaline situations make it swell yeah and and swelling has an anabolic effect and turns on cell division and uncontrollable cell division can produce everything from cancer to various skin diseases dandruff for example psoriasis uh overgrowth of fibrous tissue uh the control of of cell growth is uh 07:24 very deeply controlled by by water and ph and and so the uh the membrane pump people blame everything in life on this magical pump that regulates the water and the ph but uh if if you just think about the basic metabolic processes in which you turn sugar or fat or protein into energy and carbon dioxide this constant streaming of substance the carbon dioxide is an acid and you’re making it inside cells and so you’re uh uh when you’re alive you’re making cells acidic and as it leaves it takes minerals out of the cell with it in the form of carbonic acid and the alkaline minerals associated with it well this is the better state than the alkaline state though right um yeah the the alkaline 08:30 the acidic state produced by carbon dioxide causes a shift in the whole balance of electrons in the protein fat nucleic acid system and that shift of electrons accounts for the preference of the cell for um potassium normally over sodium okay if the cell is disturbed then it shifts and loses so loses potassium and takes up calcium and sodium um this is what Gilbert Ling has devoted his life to for the last 60 some years because sorry i just wanted to say that this uh i guess for people without listening i think a lot of people in the lay lay people um associate this kind of ass what we’re talking about acid versus alkali they’re always thinking about or an acid situation is more cancer promoting and to be 09:31 alkaline is a better situation in terms of health benefits and that’s true when you apply it to the blood and the fluid outside of cell right but the reason the fluid outside of cells is alkaline is that the uh protons uh the electrons are being uh retracted into an acidic state inside the cell and uh that shifts uh the balance and makes it alkaline outside so what you’re saying is when the cell inside and then when the inside of the cell becomes alkaline that’s when it becomes swollen and boggy and that’s what can contribute to heart disease cancer yeah psoriasis all these degenerative diseases we’ve mentioned and and that goes with a shift towards acidity in the blood outside fluid all right so that’s where got it people are thinking about you don’t want to be acidic metabolically that that refers to the fluids outside of cells and it’s only since the 10:38 nuclear magnetic resonance uh apparatuses have been used the last 40 years mostly that people have started to recognize that inside cells should be slightly acidic so how do we make the inside of our cells more acidic and keep the outside of our cells extracellular and the blood alkaline keeping the energy flowing producing carbon dioxide constantly by consuming oxygen so we need ourselves to be consuming oxygen properly yeah and uh just suffocating just turning off the oxygen supply so you stop making steady supply of carbon dioxide the metabolism shifts over to making lactic acid and the lactic acid takes acid out of the cell as it’s uh leaving and acidifies the environment but leaves the cell 11:42 more alkaline right and that’s and that’s a negative that’s a negative acidic situation that most people commonly refer to when they talk about acid versus alkaline blood yeah it’s a local inflammatory situation anytime a tissue is entered it tends to produce excess lactic acid and become inflamed and inefficient so how does urea help our cells use oxygen better um the um hard to keep the cell more acidic the um cell holds its structure by the way proteins are folded which requires an interaction with the everything in the cell has to participate in that slightly acidic state making carbon dioxide uh keeping the ATP level at a high energy state um um keeping the water 12:48 participating in the way proteins are folded so that there’s a lot of internal surface area exposed in the cell you know how the surface of a glass of water has a sort of rubbery uh film on the top that you can float a piece of steel or such on the surface tension inside the cell when the proteins are energized the ATP is holding them in this state exposing their surface keeping the cell water in that energized tough state that helps to hold the cell together uh when it’s de-energized the um the structure collapses in in various ways for example uh spherical proteins that we’re exposing all of their surface polymerize into stalk like proteins that have less surface exposure and the water becomes more like plain bulk water under the 13:54 tough surface and this water then behaves very differently and that’s the kind of water that is involved in cell swelling growth uncontrolled cell division and so on it’s also the pH inside the cell also regulates the proteins folding ability to a large degree that um proteins don’t confirmationally fold properly in the wrong pH um yeah and it’s uh in the case of uh any protein uh jelly even some synthetic plastics uh the alkalinity has the same effect making the jelly swell up and get watery and soft right so again another another reason why the alkaline internal environment would not be helpful yeah okay good inside the cell inside inside the 14:55 cell yeah yeah so urea clarify that happens to be a strange kind of of solvent that um is pretty much uh equally at home inside and outside the cell but it’s slightly more at home in a healthy stable cell so that just by solubility if you immerse cells in a solution with a certain amount of urea the urea is going to come to rest at a higher concentration in cells no no pumping is involved it’s simply that it’s soluble in the cell at a slightly higher degree than in plain water and inside the cell it participates with the relaxed or energized state of the cell in which surfaces is exposed so the urea helps the proteins to expose the energized surface that keeps cells in the functioning high energy state and that’s how 16:00 denopolis helped with cancer was by injecting the urea into the cells and that helped them maintain their shape and function to a better degree and and to keep it towards the slightly acidic metabolizing uh state in which it doesn’t uh tend to proliferate or relatively uh slightly dehydrated effect so it’s like you have now a new uh solvent solute uh substance when when it has the right amount of urea mixed in with the proteins and fats and water it creates a new state of matter that has its own uh solubility properties for other things including the preference for potassium over sodium and for magnesium over calcium and so on right so it’s helping the mineral balance of the cell be more balanced now i think you also stated that um 17:07 urea itself is not an osmanlight and it does not affect ph is that right i mean yeah that’s been known for over a hundred years uh people simply use the uh the semi permeable membrane setup and found that uh it doesn’t behave like a sodium or or potassium or other things that are known to be osmalites and to uh pool water across the semi permeable membrane and so on uh in 1914 i think it was the first one but uh around the first world war uh someone was demonstrating that the uh you could make it five or six times more concentrated than it should be osmotically and it would be in balance and not cause cells to lose water it would hold the the cell in the 18:08 proper state or if you had five or six times the concentration of uh sugar or salt you would dry after you’ve been in trouble wait when you put salt on the slug it yeah right takes all the water out of it okay so presumably a slug wouldn’t mind concentrated urea interesting and i think i think you’ve also mentioned that uh that concentration five to six times is nothing as much as uh i say a hundred times which is still compatible with life it doesn’t actually it’s not has a very very low toxicity it’s not at all toxic is it no and the sea or organisms uh sharks for example have a very very high level of urea in balance is that right and the experiments have shown that even more than a hundred times what we normally have uh doesn’t cause any uh damage that can be seen in in cells and therapeutically uh denopolis and others have found that maybe a hundred times are 19:16 normal uh urea level in the serum it’s actually therapeutic for certain things cancer and and brain function for example because i think there’s quite a lot of uh references to urea from a scientific quote scientific community that are not really interested in it or just trying to play it down as being irrelevant and they have a urea analogs i think which are far more problematic that they would want to want to suggest or even not even mention urea um sickle cell anemia for example was being treated uh successfully with urea uh and normal cells under stress tend to be hardened the way sickle cells become stiff and won’t go through capillaries just during heart surgery uh the stress causes uh ordinary uh round blood cells to to become uh 20:22 stiffened and malfunction tending to kill the patient and with a supplement of urea that hardening of the red cells by stress is prevented and it was uh therapeutic for the the sickle cell patients but because of the myth of urea being an osmolite someone used plain urea at a certain concentration without the normal uh sodium and other minerals in the solution they found that broke immediately caused red blood cells to break down so that that can’t be good they stopped using it and shifted over to very toxic carcinogenic hydroxy urea which is still in use so but you do know doctors that use this uh current day right um there are publications currently uh recommending us to use hydroxy urea but did mean using real urea oh yeah i was i was 21:27 meaning the real urea a few people are using it for example uh to prevent killing patients in heart surgery but it definitely isn’t a well recognized treatment did you say i understand you correctly when you said that uh urea in the absence of the other electrolytes would have a negative effect and um yeah it acts like distilled water as far as the osmotic property goes so it has to be osmologically balanced with the regular concentration of solute such you’d normally find in blood it would take about six times as much urea as as normal to uh not break down the rib cells interesting so if you whatever they i’m not too sure what it is but for example just for people that are listening to understand the concept that i’m trying to uh describe to you and that you’re describing to me is that if you have for example a one millimolar concentration of urea in your blood normally then if you were to inject a five or 22:30 six millimolar concentration of urea into the capillary or into the arterial whatever um it wouldn’t have a negative effect it would be acceptable but if it was injected as a one millimolar solution which you’d find naturally in the blood they would have a you’d have a problem with that um yeah assuming that the other things like sodium and calcium and potassium are compensating for the the difference in urea okay so what about taking it orally um that’s been done also for um over a hundred years of treating heart failure and uh one person reported on i think he he said he had had heart failure patients doing well on oral urea for as long as nine years and this is because it’s a diuretic and it’s uh yeah that was the argument that they were using it because it did relieve the the swollen legs and such uh that occur in a 23:36 congestive heart failure but i think it since you you also see it bringing people back from brain damage in uh traumatic head injury and strokes and such it i think has much deeper therapeutic effects uh stabilizing cells in many ways not just reducing the swelling by causing diuresis okay well you’re listening to um ask your doctor kmed 91.1 fm garbable uh this month dr p is um being questioned about his latest newsletter on urea i know we’ve mentioned urea and uh a greek physician dr danopoulos several months back in his treatment of cancer but this month we’re going to be talking more about the other beneficial aspects of urea and certain other inflammatory conditions dementia cancer etc we’ll be bringing out some of the reasons how urea could actually be very helpful for this uh the number if you live in the areas 24:41 nine two three uh two five one three uh nine two three sorry beg your pardon nine two three three nine one one uh or there is a toll free number which is one eight hundred km ud rad uh so from seven thirty to the end of the show people are invited to call him with any questions uh it would be good if people could keep to the subject matter um okay so anyway uh the other question i wanted to ask you about the diuretic activity of urea and you’ve mentioned it um being useful in congestive heart failure and other edema type uh water swelling situations because of its ability to mobilize water do you do you um do you have any um any comparisons if you like for traditional diuretics i know that there used to be uh non-potassium sparing and then they brought out these kind of loop diuretics that were potassium sparing oh i mean the common frozen eye that still used is not potassium sparing and you have to take a potassium supplement with that so how do you uh 25:42 are you are you able to answer that whether you um have any um opinion about um diuretics and uh use versus something like urea yeah i have opinions but i haven’t finished thinking about this subject you remember mercury was a traditional diuretic and it’s apparently worked just by sort of killing the tubes of the kidney and letting the water kind of fall out of the body not to be recommended so and like you know radiation was useful for treating psoriasis x-rays were useful for treating psoriasis and arthritis right yeah and i think the um some of the chemical diuretics are about as well founded as mercury as diuretic chemicals that made the kidneys give up more water don’t necessarily really improve the person’s health 26:43 the cells could be still holding onto the water and not yeah and um besides stress uh it uh for example in in a heart surgery it uh involves water retention failure of of the kidney function leading to things like hardening of the red blood cells and stiffening of the capillaries and so on but any stress involves a series of reactions all of which relate to the way cells handle water nitric oxide is a universally produced thing by injury and stress and it causes deenergizing and swelling of cells and estrogen is a physiological producer of swelling uh imitating a stress reaction and being produced by stress and 27:45 the um one of the brain or pituitary hormones anti diuretic hormone is another stress induced producer of water retention and edema and old people as well as traumatized people who are hospitalized fairly often develop a state of water retention with sodium loss they call it hyponatremia or the syndrome of inappropriate anti diuretic hormone secretion but estrogen happens to produce the same effect and so they say estrogen activates the receptors of the anti diuretic hormone when you can’t find the actual hormone but the same conditions they say it’s because the receptors are acting independently and the nitric oxide estrogen and anti diuretic 28:51 hormone produce the state of getting waterlogged while losing sodium into the urine and producing fairly concentrated urine but keeping over hydrated cells and blood supply and the normal basic thing that regulates the ability to release water through the kidneys while retaining sodium is the particular energized electronic state of the cells governing the way the the the tube of the kidney uh electrically relates to its surroundings uh the production of carbon dioxide and carbonic acid uh the um carbonic anhydrase enzyme is one of the targets of some of the diuretics such as the cesatolamide 29:57 so that the body retains more carbon dioxide and doesn’t lose so much sodium um and the normal regulator of carbon dioxide and and so of sodium water balance is the thyroid hormone and hypothyroid people always tend towards this syndrome of inappropriate anti diuretic hormone secretion or the appearance of simply hyponatremia being waterlogged having a lot of water not sodium so the sodium itself uh sodium chloride or sodium bicarbonate can cure a lot of these uh stress conditions do you think the same waterlogging could be borne out in things like a boggy intestine or a swollen intestine that fails to 30:59 move food along properly and contributes to endotoxin reabsorption because of the inefficient movement yeah the the intestine is especially exposed to things such as endotoxin which release nitric oxide which um has this de-energizing cell swelling effect waterlogging effect so bicarbonate sodium you mentioned just before i interrupted there was uh would be another good um good way of liberating co2 and i could take an internally would have a local topical activity too yeah and surprisingly it even sodium chloride has a diuretic effect in most people and when you use the baking soda the kidneys are able to retain as much sodium as they want but the the bicarbonate can be changed back into carbon dioxide and 32:01 it can actually help to acidify cells on the inside while maintaining the sodium on the outside so that’s something people can just swallow by the quarter teaspoon or half teaspoon mixed with water um yeah um i know people who have taken a teaspoon two or three times a day with water for many years um athletes sometimes take a tablespoon with water before an endurance race and i think part of the effect on endurance is more basic than just preventing getting waterlogged i think it’s actually helping to prevent excess nitric oxide production and i’m not right in thinking that the endurance runners marathon runners uh some some of these people collapsing from cardiac arrest are um hyponitremic so they’re low they suddenly get low sodium yeah i think that’s 33:05 probably the most common reason for um endurance runners collapsing and dying huh okay well you’re listening to ask your obdoctor k.m.d galvapool 91.1 FM and from now until eight o’clock you’re invited to call in with any questions surrounding this month’s continuing topic of urea and its treatment in such things as cardiac illnesses dementia cancer and we’ll get into a few others here later on the number is like i said 93 391 or 3911 or if you live outside the area there’s a 1800 number which is 1800 k.m. u.d. rad so going on to um aging um seems a little bit uh just indistinct perhaps from this one subject but in terms of um the concept of hydration and skin and the appearance of skin and the water content of cells uh not necessarily being helpful but being more detrimental and in a lower energy state um i wanted you to uh just 34:08 discuss the uh the the idea of young in a young babies and newborns and young teenagers and adult young young adults having a kind of a fairly plump healthy skin that’s fairly thick uh i don’t want to confuse that with the skin being boggy because that was him to imply that there’s too much water in the cells but um in terms of the aging and youth and the skin’s appearance and the production of keratin which is that kind of flaky layer maybe more associated with older people um is there anything perhaps that can be done um to improve the quality of the skin that would uh be related to uh water um the plumpness is uh largely the water content of any cell all the way from a fertilized ovum all the way to a hundred-year-old person uh the cell water content decreases pretty steadily with aging until uh an old cell which is still 35:14 uh very functional uh no disease evident is uh pretty dried up relative to the uh 92 percent water of fertilized ovum that gets down to something like 65 percent water in old cells as a steady progression without any particular disease happening and as that happens uh cell division is slowed so that in your skin uh over time the uh you see fewer cells in the skin meaning that it’s thinner there just isn’t as much living skin there in old people uh the column of growing cells in the uh uh the surface layer the the squamous epithelium of uh skin and uh ucus membranes 36:18 there is a column of eight or ten growing cells in the young skin and only um maybe two or three cells that are still actively growing in old skin and that’s uh partly just because they’re slowing down but they’re also uh the um piling up uh collapsed cornified or or keratinized cells uh accumulate in the old skin the um maturing process uh comes on prematurely um in uh with with aging or with um some types of stress for example a vitamin aid deficiency uh will cause premature uh keratinizing or hardening of the skin and the skin uh will become uh uh inner and uh tougher uh lower water content um estrogen does this normally 37:27 cyclically in the uh ucus membranes um causing uh at first a faster growth because there’s a greater water uptake under the influence of estrogen uh uh rapid thickening and growing but then uh uh an increased formation of keratin fibers and hardening of the surface so uh some of the effects of estrogen are just like vitamin aid deficiency and uh you can offset some of the effects both of aging and estrogen by simply supplementing some vitamin a and vitamin e directly into the skin and urea old skin has much less urea in it than young skin uh and uh that’s probably both both the cause and effect of the uh lower water content with aging 38:28 i we do have another call not another we have the first call on the line so let me hold you there dr p if you don’t mind and let’s take this next call and uh see where we’re going hi call you on there and where you from i’m from white thorn okay hi hi so my dad is in the hospital right now with the hf and dementia and also interactions between his medicine for the most might for the diuretic and gabapentin and one for his heart too but his lactic acid normal but the creatinine was not normal and i’m wondering if that oil urea would be better for him to take with that and not take the ferocimide dr p add there there are you can find articles about the use of urea in heart failure and uh comparing it to other diuretics on pub med for 39:30 example if you put in urea heart failure you can find the articles on pub med okay thank you so would that be something he could use um orally uh it’s um very tasteless uh a little maybe on the salty side so it’s usually taken with orange juice or grape grapefruit juice just so you don’t taste it a small amount anywhere from a fourth of a teaspoon to a glass up to maybe a teaspoon per glass okay good would it be okay to take that with his diuretic is already prescribed um i don’t think it interferes with the diuretics but it just makes them unnecessary okay well that’s good to hear i thank you for for helping me all right thanks very cool we’ve got two more callers on the air so let’s take the next caller 40:32 caller you’re on the air away from yes hello uh so so oh hi um yes i would like to uh to know um what one should ingest to uh make the um the self more acidic on the inside and the blood better out you know more alkaline on the outside like you’re saying is good for you you say that ingesting this urea is good getting adequate protein in your diet is probably the thing that most people could make the biggest difference with oh that increases urea you’re saying dr peat um yeah the you can measure the increased output of urea in the urine in proportion to the amount of protein you’re eating if your digestion is good and if your thyroid function is good then you can digest eating red meat is good for that um it should be too high in phosphate meat is very high in phosphate oh and and so gelatin is good as a 41:36 supplement uh if you make soup with uh uh the uh collagenous uh uh joint tissue for example uh like ox tail or shank do you recommend uh then just eating a little bit of meat and not too much yeah i think it’s better to get a big part of your protein from other foods such as like what milk and cheese and uh some eggs of the high quality vegetables like potatoes and mushrooms eggs milk and cheese potatoes mushroom those are some high protein are eggs good yes eggs very good okay and um you mentioned sodium chloride uh that’s salt is it good is salt good for for your heart or for your blood or what what were you talking about is is uh salt you know putting salt in your food good there are some articles on my website about salt you can use the 42:37 little search device on the website to find i don’t have a computer i’m oh um yeah salting your food to taste is the best way to tell and that will keep your kidneys functioning better um yeah in in people who are under stress for example uh women with toxemia of pregnancy well what about just in in general just normal uh you know aging and wanting to keep uh as as healthy as you can when you’re getting older yeah i’ve known many young women and a few old people who uh had been put on a low sodium diet because of various problems and uh using the studies on pregnant toxemia people uh i suggested that they try the same thing now what about potassium what does that do for you are you i know low potassium isn’t good too much potassium can 43:37 slow your heart rate but it the right amount uh such as having lots of fruit and and vegetables potassium tends to protect against high blood pressure relaxing blood vessels so as you were saying Dr. Pete you were saying that using the studies they did with the pregnant women you can apply the same principle to aging yeah i i saw the uh the same problems existing in women in their 20s and 30s and men in their 60s 70s and 80s uh having a variety of inflammatory high blood pressure symptoms and such and i suggested that they salt their food to taste instead of low sodium diet yes i know there’s a lot of controversy about salt and we’ve been taught a lot that salt is bad it causes high blood pressure it causes water retention so you don’t think that’s true well they’ve just proven that and they only started saying you shouldn’t 44:37 eat salt when they wanted to sell their diuretics so it’s just been all one one big scam uh okay well i’ve had one cardiologist tell me not to eat salt although she didn’t want to give me a diuretic and the other one said yes eat salt because it’ll keep up your blood volume and that’s probably good for you yeah the blood volume gets oxygen and nutrients to the kidneys and keeps them working so hydration is very important yeah but what about the first question i asked about this cell to get to make sure that the inner cells are acidic enough well that was the protein that’s why he suggested the protein because that will keep the urea up okay so eat protein eat salt but not too much meat i know that there was a there’s a gout is supposed to be caused by eating too much meat i’m not sure what gout is well doctors aren’t too sure what it is either but the essential thing people can have a lot of uric acid crystals in her body without having any symptoms at all it seems 45:40 to be endotoxin from an inflamed intestine uh getting deposited on the crystals of uric acid causing these symptoms so we want to have urea but not uric crisp urea uric acid yeah urea is protective uric acid okay so that’s by eating a proper amount of protein is the good thing to do for that you say yeah and okay all right thank you very much thank you for your call okay we do have another uh caller on the line so let’s take this next caller call away from Willow Creek hi what’s your question okay i’ve been uh i’ve had water retention problems uh ever since i was pregnant with my first child okay and i do have an underactive thyroid and they always tell me not to eat any salt and then i went to a healer like a few months ago 46:40 and he told me that i should use um this uh oh it’s a salt from france i forget what it’s called but anyway um so i did but i was still swelling up and i’m on um i’m on diuretics you know how much how much thyroid are you using how much what how much thyroid did you say you were using thyroid oh yeah thyroid pills yeah i i think like i don’t know 100 milligrams or something one gram of centroid or and you said that you were levathroxin level you said that you had water retention since your first child yeah how many years how many years since my first pregnancy uh that was 45 years ago 45 years ago dr p yeah so i’ve had it all these years and my mom had it and said to my grandmother um for quite a while it’s been known that estrogen 47:41 interferes with the conversion of levathroxin into the active hormone and that accounts for white women have about five times as much thyroid problems as men do because of the interference of estrogen with activating it and so illogically uh doctors prescribe thyroxin to women without measuring uh the liver function of producing the active hormone t3 uh huh yeah i don’t think i’ve ever had a test for that so it’s it’s it sounds like you’re not using the uh the right kind of hormone so the the the thought the levathroxin that you’re on uh it’s just t4 is probably being blocked the conversion of it to the active hormone is more than likely getting blocked because of high estrogen so you’d be better off using a t3 supplement which does not need you to perform the conversion so you basically are still you’re 48:42 probably still a low thyroid even though you’re taking thyroid hormone because you’re not converting yeah well according to their tests i’m normal now well they they would yeah there’s a lot of uh controversy about the uh thyroid test the tsh that’s used as the measurement is very poor science and whilst the tsh may be in the range you probably find it’s on the higher end and naturally your uh temperature impulses would be much more indicative of your thyroid performance oh what do you mean by temperature high or low probably low temperature and uh falling temperatures i tend to have a low temperature and then obviously obviously things like stubborn weight gain lack of energy insomnia very lack of energy very it’s gotten worse yeah low pulse really bad and i went to the doctors for it and they said they can’t find any problem well it’s probably just that you’re not turning the thyroid you’re taking into an active form that your body can use so it’s probably that’s probably the base problem and that’s very common to occur after 49:44 pregnancy so i wanted to get that test so i have to ask my doctor to do it for me i’d like to request it yeah you could but like he said you know you’re probably falling within you fall within the reference range for supposedly normal but actually your your physiology and your symptoms are far from so yeah i’m not too sure how relevant getting another blood test would be i think more relevantly uh would be if you were to take your temperature impulses it’s a little bit outside the scope of the radio show because we do have other callers calling but yeah if you wanted to if you wanted to you can always contact us outside of business hours and i can discuss with you how you would take this and you can see for yourself whether or not your metabolism okay so i would go on the website then for that uh no you can call us you can call us Monday through Friday i’ll give the number out at the end of the show okay okay thank you okay you’re welcome okay we have another we have another caller on here so let’s take this thank you for your call hi you’re on the air and where you from hello yeah you’re on the air where you’re from 50:47 yes hello i’m from Bellevue Idaho and uh my question is uh is is drinking your own you’re in a good way to get urea dox p um i know quite a few people who have done it at the seem to be very healthy and it’s been practiced for about three or four thousand years but uh i don’t know how pleasant it i think most people would prefer to use the purified chemical rather than their own urine yeah uh there’s a funny video of a man in india in india who is uh preparing products from cow urine uh it’s a very common folk remedy around the world so there you go if you if you don’t fancy the idea of consuming your own urine you can use urea 51:51 as a purified form did you okay i’m not too sure if the call is still there anyway that that was the answer thank you for your question call i don’t know if you can hear us still but i appreciate you calling in so uh yeah six minutes to if anybody wants to get a quick question in quick question in right excuse me uh they’re welcome 9233 911 if you’re in the area or the 1800 number is 1800 KMUD rad so dr p uh let’s just quickly talk about um psoriasis and urea and inflammatory bowel disease given that there is a kind of parallel between psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease in terms of the inflammation aspect of degenerative conditions and urea’s uh use in both psoriasis and possibly um it with inflammatory bowel disorder and eczema it’s used in eczema right because they um the the the science shows that um urea actually blocks uh sorry i was thinking 52:53 about tumor necrosis factor that was it and um curcuma so in turmeric uh it blocks the active compound curcumin blocks tumor necrosis factor and that is implicated in a lot of inflammatory conditions of which skin disorders and inflammatory bowel disease could be exacerbated or even caused by do you have any uh any one one thing to consider when you have both um bowel and skin symptoms is that uh the bowel is actually causing or or uh contributing to the skin problem and eliminating uh gluten for example sometimes clears up both the bowel and skin problem because some of the same enzymes are activated by inflammation uh that uh cause the premature uh hardening and flakiness of the skin in psoriasis that same process is activated by gluten and other inflammation producing agents in the intestine um the um 54:01 uh process of psoriasis is uh an accelerated uh cell division which is probably caused by the over hydration and the possibly lack of the right balance of estrogen progesterone and thyroid and maybe a deficiency of vitamin a which is a restraining influence or vitamin d right yeah both vitamin d and a can restrain the rate of multiplication and besides having a very fast cell division in psoriasis it divides quickly a few times and then prematurely ages and collapses into the flaky horny dry uh condition and uh urea has been demonstrated to uh delay or prevent that premature hardening process by 55:06 governing the expression of of the genes so that the uh synillity producing proteins aren’t produced so early and uh keeping the uh the cell in a vital state longer and delaying the uh both the replication and the premature aging so it sounds like urea can be injected or doctors are injecting it into cancer cells it can be injected into the bloodstream it can be rubbed on topically for skin conditions and it can be taken orally you know there are uh creams available on the internet at drugstores and so on containing anything from five percent to 40 percent uh urea 40 percent is almost a concentrated solution and uh it’s very effective for treating several ichthyosis and and the psoriasis 56:14 various skin uh conditions and some doctors and pharmacists might tell you that it’s used to remove toenails or to remove dead tissue and so on and so they all scare you and say that because you can remove calluses with it it must be dangerous to good skin but uh the 40 percent solutions are very soothing and therapeutic it is now widely used for treating the skin inflammation of breast cancer patients who have been exposed to so much x-ray uh that the skin has been damaged and it prevents the inflammation and fibrosis produced by x-rays and it’s also um the topical skin creams of urea are also very similar in action to how comfrey works with the alantoin we we’ve got about a minute left so i’d really need to hold it right 57:18 there so we don’t get too overextended dr p thanks so much for your time i really appreciate you giving your time the way you do as freely as you do and let me just tell people how they can find more out about you okay thank you okay good night okay for those people who’ve listened thanks so much for listening and for those callers that called in thanks for putting your questions in we always always appreciate questions and let’s just know that people are out there listening apart from anything else okay so for people that want to find out more about dr p www.raypeat.com has a wide list reading list of published material it’s fully referenced and um