Endotoxin
02:35 Well welcome to this months “Ask Your Herb Doctor”, my name’s Andrew Murray.
My name’s Sarah Johannesen Murray.
For those of you, perhaps, have never listened to our shows, which run every third Friday of the month from 7 ’till 8 P.M, we’re both liscensed medical herbalists who trained in England, and graduated their with a degree in herbal medicine. We’ve run a clinic in Garberville where we consult with clients about a wide range of conditions, and recommend herbal medicines and dietary advice.
To continue, the last two months we’ve been talking about the role of ‘good’ sugars and ‘bad’ sugars. And again, this month, we’re very please to be joined by Dr. Ray Peat, who’s going to expose the risk of endotoxin, and dietary effects that influence endotoxin production. There’s a lot of research now to show that endotoxins are associated with many inflamatory diseases that you wouldn’t normally associated with food. So the addage “you are what you eat” is very true. And perhaps we should say you suffer as a result of what you eat.
So we’re excited to have Dr. Ray Peat with us again this month, and we’ll be hearing from him on this scientific-based approach to endotoxin.
And, you’re listening to “Ask Your Herb Doctor” on KMUD Garberville 91.1 FM, and from 7:30 until the end of the show at 8 o’clock you’re invited to call in with any questions, anything related or unrelated to this month’s topic. The number here, if you live in the area is 9233911, or if you live outside the area the toll-free number’s 1800-KMUD-RAD.
04:19 So, Dr. Peat are you with us?
Yes.
Thank you so much for joining. As always, new people can be listening who, perhaps, have never heard you before, so would you please just give an outline of your expertise?
04:34 I’m studying hormones and nutrition, mostlly. I got my PhD in physiology with a biochemical orientation, concentrating on reproductive aging, and that was when I go interested in the interactions of estrogen, oxygen, unsaturated-fatty-acids, and the toxic interactions of some of our natural materials with environmental materials and processes.
05:18 Okay, so to talk about, this month, the role of endotoxin— would you just describe endotoxin?
Its chemical name is lipopolysaccharide. There are several kinds of bacteria that make similar things: this combination of a starch-like molecule with some fatty acids attached to it. It’s so widely distributed that all animals have a system for reacting to it and defending themselves against it. And it seems to be partly a bacterial defence against the bacteria’s environment. So there’s an evolved back and forth relationship between the animals and the bacteria. It’s a matter of things getting out of balance that causes the endotoxin to be a problem.
06:32 Okay, so I hear of many foods that promote this production. Would you be able to list some specific foods that people should be thinking about before they consume them, given that we are going to open up the negative effects of endotoxin?
Mostly it seems to be things that are poorly digested that pass along with a lot of food value down into the intestine where bacteria thrive on them. Things like fruit are so quickly digested by most people. The liquid parts, minerals and sugars can be largely absorbed before you get down to the bacterial area of the intestine. So the more indigestible the food is, the more risky it is for supporting an overgrowth of bacteria. And if your digestion happens to be poor, then more foods will pass along and become bacteria food.
Indigestible fibrous materials, types of starch that can’t be broken down by animal or human enzymes, become good food for bacteria and many of these are being promoted for intestinal health to stimulate peristalsis and so on, but about 30 years ago some Australian studies saw that people who ate a lot of oat-bran actually were increasing the risk for bowel cancer. Certain types of fibre cause such intense growth of bacteria that the bacteria produce many types of toxins—not just the fragment of the bacterial coat that’s known as endotoxin—but they can produce modified proteins, modified fats and so on from undigested foods. So endotoxin is just one kind of universal toxin. Everyone has some basic defences against it, while there are other types of toxins that are more specifically influenced by your diet.
09:26 So when people say ‘Oh, I can’t have a normal bowel movement if I don’t eat lots of fibre in my diet’?
Well, there are some very safe fibres that come from plants that have their own defences against bacteria and fungi. Raw carrots, for example. If you’ve noticed that many vegetables will spoil in the refrigerator, while carrots still seem to be completely clean and unattacked by bacteria or moulds. That’s because there are chemicals that are defensive for those plants. When we eat them, they remain like antibiotics all the way through our intestine, so they are very hard for bacteria to grow on.
10:19 And in that way they also provide good roughage that doesn’t get broken down by bacteria?
Yeah. And it can also bind some of the toxins produced by bacteria, so that rather than increasing the amount produced, it can actually bind it and carry it out, subtracting toxins. It’s almost like the activated charcoal that’s used for detoxifying ingested chemicals. Carrot’s a natural way of doing that.
10:54 And when people say ‘Oh, if I eat a good green salad, then I have a wonderful bowel movement’ is that because the bacteria are actually stimulating the peristalsis, because we don’t have cellulose digesting enzymes and it’s actually relying on the bacteria to ferment and digest the cellulose?
Yeah, some people get terribly constipated when they eat raw vegetables. Other people, it’s enough irritation to stimulate the intestine. Doctors for a long time have warned against using stimulant laxatives, but when they recommend eating vegetables, it’s really primarily a stimulant action produced by irritating substances, either in the vegetable itself or produced by the bacterial growth. If you’ve ever left a head of lettuce in a closed container at room temperature, you’ll know how quickly lettuce can decompose. Compared to a carrot, lettuce is very good bacterial food and so it can become very toxic, if you happen to catch the wrong bacteria.
12:15 So the last couple of months we’ve spent time talking about the different types of sugars, the ‘good’ sugars versus the ‘bad’ sugars—I don’t really like to use that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ description—but even describing, Dr Peat, the health benefits of an easily digested sugar, one that gets digested in the stomach and very high up in the intestinal tract, thereby not providing any food for bacteria further down, and these are mainly soft, ripe, juicy fruits and honey, and even white sugar is pretty rapidly absorbed.
And the lactose in milk is another good sugar.
And lactose in milk. And those are all things that our human digestive tracts can absorb quickly and efficiently without having to rely on bacterial degradation.
They also have a defensive effect against the products of the bacteria, so that once you are poisoned by the endotoxin, the sugars protect by decreasing the inflammation reaction to them.
13:30 So if you eat starches for dinner tonight, then tonight before bed, some good sugars will help protect against some of the endotoxin that could be produced by the bacteria that are digesting the starches. So those are what we call the ‘bad’ sugars and they come from the starches that are more resistant to digestion, and include the breads, pastas, cakes, cookies, flours, grains, beans, rice, those types of food products that don’t get immediately digested in the stomach and then can be digested further on down by the bacteria.
Another kind of defensive food is the saturated fats. These are, if you think of soap and its antibacterial effect, the saturated fats are mildly antiseptic and so if you eat butter with your potatoes, the starch is less likely to become toxic material for the bacteria, because the butter saturated fats will suppress bacterial growth.
14:49 So that means mashed potatoes with lots of milk and butter can protect against eating these starches that are a little more resistant to digestion. And cooking them well. If you cook your starches really, really well. Weren’t you saying, Dr Peat, if you boil your potatoes for 45 minutes to an hour, that if they are softer, then they will be digested more easily in your stomach?
Yeah.
It’s pretty basic, when you think of it. You think of grains. They’re quite resistant to digestion. And then you think of a beautifully ripe papaya or mango or right now we have soft persimmons in this part of the country, those are pretty easily digested.
15:33 I was wondering Dr Peat, you don’t actually sign up for the belief of the commensal organisms in the gut. Is that right? As far as you understand it, there needn’t be gut bacteria. When we were studying, it was such a doctrine, the commensal organism theory, everyone has commensal gut bacteria and you need them.
Well, the experiments with germ-free animals, they do find they are actually healthier than the normal germ-infected animals. If they grow up never exposed to bacteria, they seem very healthy, but then they’ve never developed their immune defences, and so, when they are exposed, they are extremely susceptible to infection. If we’re going to live in a world with germs, we might as well get used to them.
16:43 When I was looking at some of the research on endotoxin and when we were studying for the microbiology lectures, endotoxin was always something you associated with e. coli or salmonella or typhoid. And so far as our own normal—we’ll say that they exist—commensal gut bacteria are in their own right able to be a reasonable threat to us in terms of toxin production if, when we use foods that you’ve mentioned are helpful for those bacteria to live on, then the endotoxin production by our own bacteria can be significant. Is that right?
Yeah, all the bacteria produce something that can be sickness inducing. The lactobacillus itself, even though it’s on balance probably favourable, the polysaccharide materials in its covering can also produce inflammation and a whole range of pathological reactions. So it’s really a matter of balance.
So the very cell wall of these bacteria can in their own right trigger inflammatory responses, is that correct?
Yeah.
18:20 So what about the research that’s been done on endotoxins in the formation of cancers, because of that chronic inflammation that happens with endotoxin being absorbed into the bloodstream and triggering those secondary effects?
I think that’s a very plausible approach. If you look at practically any degenerative disease—arthritis, gout, dementia, epilepsy, hepatitis—almost anything is crucially made worse by the endotoxin. Once you get stressed, then all of these things are exacerbated by endotoxin.
19:20 Just describe the word stressed. What do you mean when you say stressed?
Just a mental stress, for example, that will shift the blood away from your digestive system out to your legs and arms: the fight or flight reaction.
Right, so the adrenaline.
Yeah. If that persists or is very intense, the intestine loses its barrier function and bacteria can go right through the membrane lining the intestine into the bloodstream, even passing through the whole intestine out into the abdominal cavity. And before the whole bacteria goes through, a much lower degree of stress will begin letting the endotoxin flow in at an increased rate. So just thinking stressful thoughts will tend to increase your endotoxin absorption.
20:28 Right, so it’s very real. I think most people when they hear that ‘stressful thoughts’, they’ll probably start chuckling. But it’s pretty straightforward. It’s cause and effect. And what you’re saying about stress is very real physiologically. So that’s why I wanted to bring out the whole endotoxin thing and the diets that promote endotoxin because of the bacteria feeding on them, and what you can do to help yourself can be a very simple way of improving your health.
Like sitting down and having a relaxing meal, instead of eating on the go.
The things that you’ve done in the last several years contribute to how risky any little stress is. For example, women who were going to a fertility clinic, the doctor had a theory that maybe their ovaries were infected: the reason they were infertile. So he put some of them on a moderate dose of penicillin or other antibiotic and many of them noticed that their mood and headaches were relieved by the antibiotic and that got the doctors interested in seeing what was happening to their hormones. And they also became pregnant. They saw that before they took the antibiotic, circulating in their blood they had a stress level of cortisol and a very high ratio of estrogen to progesterone. Taking the antibiotic, their cortisol and estrogen decreased and progesterone increased. In that particular study they didn’t determine the mechanism, but they have also seen exactly the same pattern in studies with rats. And I’ve done the same measurements in women who had those syndromes—PMS and infertility—and just two or three days of eating a raw carrot salad every day, they had exactly that shift of hormones: increased progesterone, decreased estrogen and cortisol.
The other research shows that endotoxin alone will account for exactly those changes. You inject an animal with endotoxin and its estrogen—even in a male animal—will go up maybe five times higher than normal and the progesterone and testosterone fall sharply.
23:56 So Dr Peat, in terms of endotoxin production and diet—because I know that you’re very keen on the saturated fats and you’ve got lots of research, and there is plenty of research out there to show that the polyunsaturated fats are actually pretty bad for you—how about endotoxin and PUFA? Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Is there any increased link between the two?
Yeah, they do favour the growth of many microorganisms but they also interact at every stage. For example, the permeability of the intestine is increased by the polyunsaturated fats. One of the first reactions when a cell senses the endotoxin is to produce nitric oxide and nitric oxide increases the permeability (leakiness) of the intestine. And if your tissues happen to be well supplied with polyunsaturated fats, the nitric oxide increases the release and amount of free fatty acids in circulation. And so the person who has eaten a lot of polyunsaturated fat, once a stress triggers the absorption of endotoxin, then the reaction can be much more intense. And those same things will trigger the release of serotonin and increase all of the inflammatory mediators and the environment of increased estrogen and decreased progesterone and testosterone will continue that like a cascade of bad effects.
26:11 So just to describe to some of our listeners, estrogen is a very inflammatory hormone that’s involved in a lot of cancers. It is useful at a level when it is balanced with progesterone, which is an anti-ageing, fertility hormone. So, you could look at it as: the estrogen’s the bad guy, progesterone’s the good guy and these bacteria tend to increase the estrogen in relation to the progesterone. And then for the polyunsaturated fats, those consist of fats from mainly nuts and seeds—almond oil, sunflower oil, safflower, corn, soy, cottonseed—all those liquid oils, except for olive oil, which is not very polyunsaturated (olive oil is only 10% polyunsaturated). And the saturated fats are the ones that are antibacterial, so they are antimicrobial and will inhibit the bacterial growth in the intestine. And those include butter, coconut oil, palm oil, palm shortening (not the unrefined) and also animal some fats that are from animals that haven’t been eating corn and soy, unless they are beef and lamb that do eat corn and soy, they have four stomachs, they process the fat into a saturated fat. Whereas chicken fat and pig fat are going to be polyunsaturated because the chickens and the pigs are fed polyunsaturated greens and beans and corn and soy. So that’s just to give the listeners a little update on what we’re talking about here with the polyunsaturates, and the saturated fats and the different hormones.
28:04 How about the association of cancer with endotoxin production?
Every level you look at, practically, is a promoting effect. There are a few positive effects of endotoxin. Long exposure to these toxins will build up certain defences, but beyond that very basic kind of immunity, which includes things like HDL High Density Lipoproteins cholesterol. The lipoproteins are defences against the endotoxins, largely, so that’s one of the defensive effects of high cholesterol. The reactions beyond that very simple level of defence are all pro-inflammatory, tend to stimulate development of fibrosis as a sign of deteriorating tissue function. Fibrosis and atrophy make the tumor harder to get at and more autonomous. The atrophy effect is something that estrogen participates in in many ways.
The medical establishment has convinced the public that estrogen has some anabolic protective effects, especially through the bone, preventing osteoporosis. But the overall effect of the inflammation produced by endotoxin creates a systemic age-like atrophy of all of the tissues. Osteoporosis, for example, is extremely sensitive to endotoxin. Endotoxin activates all of the factors that stop the bone replacement and accelerate its decomposition. And it’s those atrophic processes that weaken the immune system’s ability to remove a cancer once it starts. So, atrophy and tumor formation are really very closely connected and endotoxin is pushing on both of those in an unfavourable way.
31:15 Pretty scarey, huh. The whole thing about your food—what you eat and what you shouldn’t eat—really should be taken quiet seriously just because it’s a very inexpensive way to stay healthy. There’s no drugs involved. There’s no treatment involved. You’re your own doctor, and the more you take of yourself, in terms of what you put into your body, the better off you’re gonna be.
So, just to recap the endotoxin, gut bacteria, and lipopolysaccaride side of the liberation from the bacteria: the starches—the offending substances—Sarah, do you want to cover the offending substances?
32:00 Besides the starches, Dr. Peat, that I’ve alreay mentioned—the breads, the grains, beans, and flours and starchy root crops—what other foods will encourage the growth of bacteria that then could subsequently produce endotoxin?
The so-called fibrous materials. A lot of them are being promoted as health foods. Lignans that are woody materials in many vegetables and grains—
And in flaxseeds?
Yeah. Generally, they have an estrogen promoting effect and support the growth of bacteria.
Flaxseeds also have PUFA and those won’t be inhibiting the growth of the bacteria like a saturated fats would.
Yeah.
33:04 That’s interesting, I just want to hold it there, very quickly, with what you just mentioned about lignan. Because I was just reminded again that the Dow Chemical were actually trying to incorporate lignans into bread and they were doing some research at a USDA The United States Department of Agriculture lab to see whether or not these lignans could be a viable starch source to be put in bread. And here you have already mentioned lignans as one of the bad foods. So it could possibly be implicated.
I think they’ve used sawdust for many years. The cellulose is probably the safest fibre, if it’s a clean kind of cellulose.
33:46 I’m friends with one of the scientists at the food safety department of the USDA labs in Albany and they were testing to see if they could boost the fibre content. And my friend said, ‘If they’re going to eat bread, why can’t they just eat wholegrain bread? Why do they have to add a sawdust into it?’.
34:08 Yeah, it’s another cautionary warning to people listening. The industry is certainly keen to make sure that there are no byproducts of an industry that are not sold. So just beware. High-fructose corn syrup is one of those examples. If something isn’t naturally occurring, don’t be surprised if what you are consuming is a byproduct of another industry that you’re being told is actually gonna be good for you. It’s the whole fish oil thing. And the paint industry with how flaxseed oil suddenly became a food source, rather than a paint additive.
So we’re back to diet, and endotoxin— oh, one minute.
34:51 This is your egineer. I actually had someone who called up and questioned, very much, in this line. She had a question about Pediatric Crohn’s Disease, and a diet that would be good for that.
Dr. Peat?
I think it’s good to try raw carrot. It’s important how you use the carrot. Just eating a raw carrot is fine, but if you’re going to eat a salad it should be, if possible, grated longitudinally so that you have the longer pieces of fibrous material. When you chew it, you’ll have pretty elongated fibres. You don’t want to put it in a blender and definitely don’t want to use a juicer. The juice isn’t protective.
And it removes most of the fibre, as well.
Yeah.
Okay, So that would be a starting point for Pediatric Crohn’s.
And usually having plenty of milk and cheese in the diet is protective. The bacteria that grow on milk are generally the safer type of bacteria.
Okay, because when we were studying, I know that Crohn’s was lumped together in the inflammatory bowel disorder section of pathology.
Quite a few people respond well to a thyroid supplement, because there is usually that typical stress pattern of high cortisol, high estrogen, low progesterone. And thyroid is the hormone that helps to restore the protective hormones and reduce the stress hormones.
36:54 Okay then, so for that caller, certainly the addition of carrot fibre (in terms of carrot salad) and checking thyroid function, maybe, not necessarily against the medical model of blood tests for TSH and T3/T4. I know you’re a great advocate of— and in fact it’s not yours, it was something that you said was always done, and up until the 20s it was commonly used to test for low thyroid, and that was taking the resting pulse and temperature, as an indicator of thyroid function, before and after meals.
So, for that person that called, again thryoid function can be measured by temperature, before and after meals. And if anybody wants any more information on that we’ll be happy to send people, via email, a chart. And they can maintain, or measure, their temperature and their pulse in relation to food. There’s a very definite pattern to how the temperature and pulse should rise before and after meals.
So, yeah, between thyroid function and carrot salad, for that caller—
And plenty of milk and cheese.
And plenty of milk and cheese. There you go. Right. And, again, they’re always maligned as mucus forming products, but it’s not true.
So, there’s another caller on the line:
Hi!
Hi. You’re on the air.
38:13 I have a couple questions:
One was regarding the carrots not being juiced. I used that a lot for someone who has— maybe not cancer, we don’t know yet— but any of those cancer diets really call for a lot of vegetable juices and carrot juice is a big one.
The other thing is, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Budwig diet? But Dr Budwig, a German woman, she discovered or introduced combining flaxseed oil with organic cottage cheese and blending them so that they would bond and that bond would help cells form a stronger electrical charge so they could break away and form new cells and not form cancerous or abnormal cell structure.
So, one is on the carrot juice and the other is for the flaxseed oil. Of course, not the lignan flaxseed oil. But does it change that bacteria when it’s combined and bonded with something like cottage cheese? And I can take my answer off the air, that’s fine.
Alright, thank you for your call.
Thank you.
39:35 So, Dr. Peat. Carrot juice?
One of the oldest treatments for cancer was enemas. Thousands of years ago, doctors were recommending regular enemas to treat cancer and a few hundred years ago laxatives became a standard feature of cancer treatment, as well as many others.
Just about 60 or 70 years ago Max Gerson cured his own migraines with a change of diet. In the 20th century, he was the most famous advocate of a mostly vegetable diet, but he did use liver—liver juice was one of his components—and typically a good dose of thyroid was part of his program. And so it was a nutritionally rational program, but twice in his book, in capital letters, said ‘absolutely no oils’.
His followers have changed the book. I think they were influenced by Johanna Budwig and her flax oil and cottage cheese diet.
In 1954, before Budwig had started writing about cancer, a Mexican professor had an article in Prevention magazine advocating—I think it was—a cup of linseed oil per day, as a purge, in the tradition of getting the intestine as clean as possible. And when you drink that much of a highly unsaturated oil, the unsaturated fatty acids are converted to prostaglandins and cause intense contraction and secretion of the intestine. So it’s a very quick thorough kind of laxative.
But that was changed in Budwig's writing several years later, to think of the linseed oil as a nutritional factor rather than as a laxative. And to the extent that it works as a laxative, it’s very likely helpful. But the rest of her program was curds—cottage cheese, basically—and that’s a very soothing, safe diet that happens to be less able to promote endotoxin than other proteins.
I think there are reasons that when you juice vegetables you get lots of minerals that allow you to assimilate the sugars that are present in leafy and other vegetables. So the Gerson diet and the Budwig diet had some very rational factors. Basically, keeping the intestine clean and keeping the thyroid function up I think were the most important.
43:28 And, Dr Peat, can you explain to our listeners why the carrot juice in particular would be lowering your good hormones?
Yeah. The carrot is rich in carotene. When you eat it as a whole vegetable, raw, the fibre keeps you from absorbing [the carotene as] almost all the carotene passes through you. When you juice, you get quite a bit of good sugar and minerals, but you also get a tremendous amount of carotene. And carotene works like unsaturated fats in blocking thyroid function and progesterone function.
In the early years of treating thyroid patients, they noticed that infertile women often turn out to have a red spot in the ovary in place of the yellow spot, which is called the corpus luteum. And it was red because such a tremendous amount of carotene had accumulated in it, that instead of being yellow it was a red spot. And that indicates both that the thyroid is unable to convert the cholesterol into progesterone and that the vitamin A, which should be used in the conversion, is blocked by the carotene accumulating in the tissue.
It’s the same with the adrenals. The excess carotene blocks adrenal steroid production.
45:12 And if you eat a lot of cooked pumpkin and carrots (I know this time of year we’re gonna be having our pumpkin for thanksgiving) byt if you eat a lot of that all year round, you’re going to be absorbing a lot of carotene and that could be blocking your vitamin A receptors and causing these hormonal imbalances.
If a person has a very vigorous thyroid function and plenty of vitamin B12, they can take care of a lot of carotene. But if you notice that the calluses on your hands and feet are starting to get an orange tint to them, that means you’ve got too much carotene.
Alright. There is another caller on the line. You’re on the air!
Hi, yes, is that me?
Yes, you’re on.
45:57 Hi. I was wondering. I’m 50 and I’m going through menopause and I’m having, for about the last 5 months, these horrific night sweats, where I literally have to get up three or four times in the night to change my sheets and everything. And somebody recommended borage oil. And I wondered what your thoughts were about that. And if that is appropriate. And if so, how does that work. And also if you could recommend if there’s are any dietary changes I should make. I’m actually vegetarian, I don’t drink and I’m pretty healthy.
Okay. Alright, well, so far as your perspective on that lady’s situation, Dr. Peat, would you like to discuss that? I know we’ve got some certain thoughts on it, but I’d love you to be able to share.
The highly unsaturated oils like borage have some short-range beneficial effects by blocking some of the immune inflammatory reactions, but that ends up as being an immunosuppressive process down the road, and in the long run it will actually increase inflammatory and stress processes.
The quickest way to alleviate the night sweats and hot flushes is to increase your sugar intake and your protein intake. One of the functions of the sugar is to lower the cortisol and adrenaline. Your protein intake should be 80 grams of good protein. Among vegetables, it happens that the potato protein is the only one that ranks up with the animal proteins. It’s even better than egg protein. But milk, for example, and cheese and eggs and potatos, are the high quality proteins, and you should have around 80 grams of good protein per day.
If you don’t get enough sugar or starch in your diet, then you’re gonna to use some of your protein for energy, which impairs your liver function by starving it for protein. When the liver isn’t functioning well, it can’t store enough sugar to get you through the night with a steady sugar level. So first your adrenaline surges to try to get more sugar out of your liver and when your liver’s depleted, then your cortisol rises to turn some of your muscle tissue and thymus tissue and skin and other things into sugar, to keep your sugar up to a survival level during the night.
So it’s actually the cortisol surges at night that cause the hot flushes. Sugar is the first aid. Sugar and salty foods are quick relief for that, but it has to be against a background of adequate protein and other nutrients.
I see, and you said milk, cheese, eggs and what was the other one for the protein?
Potatoes. 8 ounces of potatoes contains about 8 grams of protein.
It’s very similar to milk on a weight basis in terms of quality.
8 ounces of milk contains 8 grams of protein, too.
49:50 So then borage oil actually isn’t a good thing for me to take?
No, one of the things it does is to inhibit your ability to digest and assimilate protein, and it also tends to inhibit your thyroid function which makes your liver less able to get you through the night without sugar depletion.
50:14 Okay. And then one more quick question. Is agave a good sugar?
Um, yeah, unless it’s been overheated. When it’s fresh it’s extremely good, but if it’s very dark it is possible that it has become cooked to the point that it’s allergenic. It’s a matter of how you react to it.
I see.
50:37 I think all of those agave nectars they have to boil them down to some degree, so they are caramelising the sugar. Even if they say ‘raw’, they still have to concentrate them. It’s not like honey that’s just very, very sweet when raw. And so when you boil the sugars down and you don’t filter out the caramelised portion, those are allergenic and carcinogenic.
Wow. Okay, well thank you so much. I appreciate it.
You’re very welcome.
Thank you for your call.
Okay. I don’t think there are any more callers on the line at the moment.
51:07 So, Dr. Peat, in terms of the endotoxin production by the bacteria that we’ve been talking about that are feeding on bad foods—the starches and grains and those kind of products—what’s your view on increasing gut motility and decreasing the amount of time it takes for the food to leave the body as a means of reducing endotoxin production. Is that viable, in your mind?
Yeah, eating the right balance at each feeding—some sugar, some protein and some fat—and having small meals is usually easy on the intestine. Some people feel they have to eat for theoretical nutrition, rather than for hunger. If you force yourself to eat when you’re not hungry, that can lead to stress and sluggishness of your intestine.
52:14 I do want to mention some herbs. Cascara is an herb that decreases transit time and increases intestinal peristalsis and is a laxative that, if it’s been aged properly— research has shown that if it’s sun dried and then aged for one year the anthraquinones, which are the compounds in the cascara, are safe and effective in not only decreasing transit time, but also as an antibacterial.
And Dr. Peat, tell us about the structure of tetracycline and cascara.
There is a series that starts, actually, with vitamin K. It’s a quinone structure that has been studied from about 1910 on, as an anti-cancer, antiviral, energy-promoting, respiration-improving, anti-inflammatory, anti-fibrotic substance. For example, vitamin K is now used to strengthen bones, prevent osteoporosis and prevent calcification of arteries. That’s a basic, vital function that does that tremendous range of functions. The emodin in cascara is a three-ring substance and the tetracycline is a four-ring substance, but they’re all quinones that are intensified by adding the extra ring. So from the vitamin K, all the way up to tetracycline, it’s a similar biological effect. It sounds too good to be true, to be able to stimulate respiration, be anti-inflammatory, germicidal, anti-cancer and so on.
54:35 In case some of our listeners don’t know what tetracycline is, it’s a very broad-spectrum, old antibiotic that has now mostly been replaced by doxycycline. I’ve had plenty of arguments with doctors, saying ‘please prescribe tetracycline to this client’ and not doxycycline, which is the new generation tetracycline, which isn’t as safe as tetracycline. But nature has a very similar compound in cascara as well as in tabebuia - otherwise known as pau d’arco, and that is not only antibacterial, it’s also anti-tumour, antiviral, antifungal and anti-parasitic. Both of those herbs can be used without having to make them into a tincture. They’re readily water soluble. Cascara, the dose is so low, you can just use a pinch of powder as needed and the tabebuia makes quite a nice tea.
And Dr Peat, you were talking to me about a decoction, a boiled wine and tabebuia/pau d’arco compound. Can you tell me a little bit more about the doctor who used that?
W.F. Koch was a Michigan chemistry professor who went into medicine. He was at the University of Michigan at the time Moses Gomberg had discovered free radicals. It was 20 or 30 years before chemists would believe that such a thing existed. But Koch was there at the university and saw the stuff, understood its properties, and started thinking about what that kind of reaction would mean in the body. And he proposed that we have free radicals in the form of quinones in our mitochondria handling energy, creating all of these functions (anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anti-tumour, and so on).
And he created a whole range of substances, some more powerful than others, and began giving them to cancer patients and allergy patients and even infected cows. There was a study in California in which they cured various animal diseases with his so-called anti-cancer reagent. The famous Albert Szent-Györgyi, who got a Nobel prize related to respiration and vitamin C research, based practically his whole career on working out the meaning of Koch's work with the quinones. The vitamin K— ubiquinone is the substance that came much later to be discovered in the mitochondria. The government twice tried to put Koch in jail, saying that it was inconceivable that people could have free radicals in their cells and that it would be toxic if they did. But then it turned out that exactly the type of chemical, the quinone, that Koch had postulated turned out to be the essence of how human life creates energy.
58:27 Wow. Well, Dr. Peat, sorry for cutting you short. I know that people who are listening would love to hear more of what you have to offer. Sarah?
We’re running out of time here. But I do want to mention some herbs and also, especially, comming up to this time of the year, with thanksgiving and christmas, and so many people suffering from so many different infections, a lot of times it’s the gut endotoxins from the gut bacteria that creates the flu-like symptoms and the sniffles and the colds that people get this time of year.
So sock up on your raw carrot salad, and some cascara powder, tabebuia, like I mentioned, pau d’arco, another good herb to use is echinacea, also goldenseal, barberry [sic?], oregon grape root [sic?] those also are anti-microbial if you come down with a nasty bug in your intestine.
59:20 For people who’d like to hear more of Dr. Ray Peat, or read his articles, please go to his website www.raypeat.com. Lot’s of good information.
Well, thank you so much for listening. And thank you for the callers. We really enjoy doing the show. We’re so pleased to hear that people want to ask questions and are into it as well.
That’s November. We’ll see you in December. And the days are getting shorter. And thank you for your time.
59:47 And thank you.
Thank you Ray Peat, so much.
Okay. Thanks. Bye.
Bye bye.