jf-190601-cortisol-low-testosterone.vtt

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 Del podcast. I am pleased to have Dr. Peat on with me again today. So I don't think he needs any

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 introduction, but I will give a slight introduction. And those of you who have not

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 familiarized yourself yet with Dr. Raymond Peat, you can check him out at r a y p e a t.com. And

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 we're going to be talking today about testosterone and high cortisol. And, you know, I, I wanted to

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 touch on this because we're seeing a lot, or at least I am seeing a lot in my nutrition practice

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 of clients coming in with their blood work and having too high of cortisol and too low of

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 testosterone, even women. So I think it's a pretty important topic. And I wanted to ask the, what I

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 consider the, in my opinion, the leading authority in health and wellness, since he's been teaching

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 now and probably, well, I would say learning and teaching for how many years, Dr. Peat, altogether?

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 As early as 1960. I was doing it independently. Then I concentrated on the hormones between 1968

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 and 72 when I got my PhD. Yeah, I, I know you've taught at many numerous schools,

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 the University of Oregon, Urbana College, Montana State University, the Natural College of

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 Naturopathic Medicine, and you've even taught internationally in Mexico as well. So I mean,

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 since I consider you the leading authority based on everybody that I've looked into over the years

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 to try to get my information from, and as a nutritionist, I find that yours is the most

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 logical and the most backed with science. So I really appreciate all that you've taught me so

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 far. And I know my listeners will really benefit from this podcast too. So I want to talk to you

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 specifically about low testosterone and high cortisol, kind of a tag team of symptoms I'm

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 seeing. And I want you to fill my listeners in on why this might be happening. Maybe you've

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 seen it kind of come to fruition too. And maybe there's some listening out there that have some

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 of the symptoms that I wanted you to touch on with regard to it as well. So could you talk about

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 why maybe cortisol is so high in so many people right now and the sex hormones basically are down?

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 Well, it isn't the sex hormones as a group because estrogen rises when you're under stress

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 along with cortisol. And when the androgens in general decrease, that usually goes with a

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 decrease of progesterone. And that creates a susceptibility to stress. And everything harmful

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 practically will increase both your estrogen and cortisol. And the first barrier to harm

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 is the group of steroids, pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone. All of

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 these have broadly overlapping protective effects that protect your energy apparatus,

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 your sensory apparatus, keep things stable and working. And

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 injury simply doesn't happen when you have a great abundance of those things.

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 You can run a marathon or swim in ice water, do all sorts of things that could kill a more fragile

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 person. But if you're really well supplied with pregnenolone and its derivatives down to

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 testosterone, you've got endurance so you don't experience stress. When something happens that

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 you're not abundantly producing the protective steroids, then any little thing becomes stressful.

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 Just walking can be a stress. Breathing harder, you will shift over to the lactic acid metabolism.

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 With increasing age or malnutrition, anything that interferes with the production of these

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 protective steroids makes you then shift over to the emergency production of cortisol.

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 And all of these protective steroids block the effect of cortisol so that you can take a cortisol

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 pill or prednisone or whatever and have very little harm from it if you're

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 fairly saturated with progesterone, DHEA, testosterone. Because they're preventing

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 the action as well as taking care of some of the things that cortisol would produce.

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 For example, cortisol maintains your blood sugar level so that you can keep working.

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 But it does it by converting your protein tissues, muscles, skin,

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 thymus gland, lymphatic tissues in general, and finally digestive system,

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 liver and intestine, will be cannibalized to make sugar and energy under the influence of cortisol.

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 The protective effect of testosterone was demonstrated once using radioactive

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 testosterone molecules. They infected it into athletes and thought that they would see

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 radiation coming out of their muscles, but what they saw was that most of the radiation

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 was coming from their heart. Testosterone is most concentrated in the organs that are most

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 vital to survival. So it concentrates in the heart, lungs, and brain at the highest

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 ratio to protein. Even though it's responsible for making an athlete's muscles bigger and bigger

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 under the influence of testosterone, what it's doing is preventing those being used up for energy.

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 So with age, if you're producing less of the protective steroids, a given amount of cortisol

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 might not look extremely high in relation to the standards. But if you're pregnant on progesterone,

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 DHEA, and testosterone are lower than average, even a moderate amount of cortisol begins eating

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 up your muscles and skin, and eventually it can start deteriorating your heart, lungs, and brain.

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 Wow, that is... I wanted to come back to the athlete kind of mentality of low testosterone

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 and high cortisol, because I think that's really important to talk about too. But you had said

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 something that kind of made me question, like, is it the chicken or the egg? Like, is it a high

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 cortisol response that leads to things like low progesterone, low testosterone? Or is it something

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 happening that causes the low progesterone, low testosterone, and leads to the stress response

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 of high cortisol? It's usually a gradual deterioration from poor nutrition or eating

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 foods that are irritating or toxic, or things that, for example, foods that suppress your

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 thyroid function. Thyroid is necessary to produce these protective steroids.

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 Cholesterol is converted pretty massively in the pregnenolone and the other protective steroids,

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 if you have vitamin A and thyroid hormone adequately. But if you're deficient in either of

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 those, the cholesterol will rise in your blood. That generally means that you're not making enough

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 DHEA and testosterone, for example. So low thyroid, which causes high cholesterol,

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 the real meaning of that is that you're not making enough of the protective testosterone

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 and related steroids. And when that happens, your cortisol and other stress hormones rise.

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 So low thyroid is the most common thing responsible for a bad ratio of cortisol to testosterone.

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 That makes complete sense. And so then leading into, like, whether it's the bad foods or

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 the thyroid being a result of poor nutrition, as you say, too, could it also be, like the athletes

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 we were talking about, maybe over-training, over-exercising that can also lead to this,

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 like just too much chronic output that's stressing the body in a physical manner?

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 Yeah, someone did an experiment putting people on a treadmill and measuring their active thyroid

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 hormone, T3, and they had them walk at, they kept their pulse rate at 120 beats per minute or less,

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 just very mild walking on the treadmill. And in an hour, they had become hypothyroid in the sense

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 of reducing their activation of thyroid into T3. But doctors are now being taught that

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 they should ignore T3, the active hormone, and think about only thyroid-stimulating hormone, TSH,

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 and only thyroxin or T4. But when you're, an athlete, for example, is suppressing their T3,

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 their thyroxin will actually rise in a reaction. And so doctors are being taught things that will

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 make them necessarily miss the effects of stress on your thyroid, and that leads to

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 misinterpretation of everything downstream. For example, when your thyroid goes down from stress,

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 your estrogen normally is being excreted and kept at a low level systemically by the thyroid

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 activating the liver metabolism. The liver solubilizes estrogen, making it leave through

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 the kidneys and be excreted. If your thyroid drops from stress, very quickly your estrogen will rise,

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 and then the estrogen activates directly on the adrenals. It increases cortisol production

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 and many other levels. It activates your pituitary to stimulate cortisol production from the adrenals,

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 and it activates your brain in many different ways through the corticotropic

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 release factor, CRH, to activate the adrenals and pituitary. So just dropping the

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 active thyroid, you very quickly turn on both the estrogen and the whole cortisol stress system.

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 And I would assume someone who is looking to put on muscle and maybe an athlete that's looking to

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 train for an event, they're not going to want excess estrogen. And so what that study you were

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 saying is like they were just walking and T3 was reduced. And so imagine these people, are you

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 familiar, Dr. Peat, with like CrossFit? Yeah, intense over exertion. The Russians were 50 or

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 60 years ago being accused of using testosterone because they had worked out the way to under

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 train, avoid over exertion, and so keep their stress hormones down and their cortisol up.

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 It takes really a very moderate amount of muscle building exercise to increase testosterone and

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 lower cortisol. The muscle itself becomes an endocrine organ in a constructive sense.

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 If you're under stress, your muscle will actually produce cortisol and not testosterone. When it's

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 properly stimulated, the muscle becomes a testosterone producing organ. It isn't just the

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 gonads that produce testosterone if you're doing things right.

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 Interesting. So pretty much this chronic output of like these CrossFit classes they're going to

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 and heavy lifting or heavy duty weight training and things like that.

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 Yeah, a woman doing just one or two minutes of mild dumbbell lifts and a few squats for the big

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 leg muscles can shift her balance from cortisol to testosterone.

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 Okay, and so any more than that? And it just takes a minute or two, two or three times a day,

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 whatever it takes to increase the muscle mass. It's really a very small, small amount of

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 muscle lifting type exercise. Okay, so that's good to know. So it's like

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 it is beneficial to lift heavy things, but we don't need to do these hour-long CrossFit classes

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 that are pushing your body to the limit and doing it every day kind of thing to where

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 instead of creating muscle building, you're actually inducing a cortisol response, yes?

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 Yes. Okay, yeah. So that's really, I'm glad we're talking about this because I think there's a

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 mentality out there that more is better. So if lifting heavy things is good, I should lift it

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 all the time and strain my body and stress my body. But the people that I've seen that exercise

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 the most, like my clients that have exercised the most, they're the ones that I'm seeing with

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 high sex hormone binding globulin and low testosterone. So can you talk a little bit

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 about sex hormone binding globulin, if I can say that word right? I think that is the body's

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 defense against estrogen. When it's high, a woman has a lower risk of breast cancer because

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 it keeps the estrogen out of cells. It actually tends to pull estrogen out of cells protectively.

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 But when it's high in response, depending against estrogen, it can also interfere with

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 testosterone effect. So you mentioned a little bit of how cortisol and estrogen are related,

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 but there's another kind of player in all of this too that we should talk about, which is adrenaline.

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 Like are they all intertwined together as far as adrenaline and cortisol and estrogen too?

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 Yeah, all of the stress hormones interfere with the conversion of T4 to T3. And in fact,

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 instead of making the effective respiration promoting T3, they convert thyroxine into reverse

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 T3. They dispose of the precursor and turn it into an interfering inactive suppressor of respiration.

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 And those same stress hormones that produce the inactive blocking reverse T3 also tend to suppress

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 the pituitary TSH, making it look like you're even hyperthyroid because doctors are taught to

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 diagnose hyperthyroidism in terms of abnormally low TSH. But in fact, the stress, which is lowering

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 most people's TSH, is causing the hypothyroidism and is caused by hypothyroidism.

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 So a low thyroid person raises their estrogen, cortisol, and adrenaline, and these

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 end up to lower your TSH and make it look like you have too much thyroid,

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 according to the way doctors are being indoctrinated.

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 And so that would be why so many people go to the doctor and say, "Well, you're actually,

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 you have too much thyroid going on." But yet the person is exhibiting all the signs of

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 low thyroid, such as weight gain and hair loss and energy loss, but yet the doctor's seeing

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 it on the other end, right? Yeah. For 65 years, it's been known how it works, but doctors are

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 increasingly misinformed. I don't know what the real power for this is, but the indoctrination

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 has become more intense in just the last two or three years, telling doctors, "Don't look at T3,

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 even just look at TSH. Don't worry, even if the TSH is as high as 10, which is dangerous,

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 it's horribly toxic, TSH itself is an inflammation-promoting hormone. Even if a person

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 isn't hypothyroid in the sense of not having enough T3, if their TSH is increased, they will

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 get the worst heart disease signs of hypothyroidism. So part of the disease effects of hypothyroidism

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 are really an excess of TSH rather than the direct lack of metabolic stimulation from T3.

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 Yeah, and I definitely want to do a whole podcast on thyroid with you because I think that's so

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 fascinating with regard to how stress affects the thyroid and then conversely how the thyroid

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 affects everything else. But as far as talking about weight gain, I don't think people understand

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 the importance of women having testosterone, the right adequate testosterone. I think we always

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 think of it as a male hormone, but women really need testosterone as well. And what I see is with

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 low testosterone in women, they do have this additional weight gain, which I'm assuming is

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 because conversely they're also experiencing high estrogen. But can you talk about the importance of

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 a good amount of testosterone for women and not just men? It has to be balanced, both in men and

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 women. It has to be balanced with DHEA and cortisol. And normally it is unless you're

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 supplementing it as a drug. But all of these, especially the DHEA, is an activator of fat

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 oxidizing. And your muscle is the organ that is most equipped for oxidizing fat.

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 Your brain and heart don't do well oxidizing fat compared to glucose, but the muscles

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 are perfectly adapted for burning fat. And everything you do to increase your muscles,

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 production of testosterone and reduction of cortisol is favoring that fat burning.

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 So just the right amount of exercise to build muscle will shift your metabolism to safely

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 consume fat in your muscles while leaving adequate glucose for your brain and lungs.

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 And so weight gain is probably one of the symptoms of low testosterone. Could you talk

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 some other symptoms that people might see if cortisol is high and testosterone is low?

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 Depression. The whole stress system that ends up increasing your cortisol and decreasing DHEA,

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 progesterone and testosterone, that whole system is related to the inflammatory and degenerative

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 processes. And depression is how we experience that process. The body senses that it's being

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 destroyed by the stress hormones and it wants to stop everything, to sort of hibernate or

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 go into hiding until the stress is over. So what you experience is depression. Sometimes

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 anxiety and aggression. Aggression comes up when you're being overstressed and anxiety. It's all

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 different sides of the same reaction. But when your body is being damaged, you get these negative

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 emotions. Aggression, anxiety and depression. That makes a lot of sense because that's what

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 I'm seeing in the people that have those lower, you know, like you mentioned testosterone,

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 DHEA and progesterone and then higher cortisol. So that makes complete sense.

00:23:41.520 --> 00:23:48.480
 As far as like the, like you'll hear a lot of people that in order to regulate their hormones,

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 they're being taught like with YouTube education, I call it. And of course, I'm on YouTube too,

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 but I'm trying to interview people like yourself that actually have valid information and valid

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 science behind it. But you hear a lot about fasting and intermittent fasting as a way of

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 improving hormones and cortisol. And I don't buy into that. And I wanted to get your opinion. Do

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 you see fasting as a way to improve hormones and lower cortisol? Or is it actually contributing to

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 the stress response in the body? Yeah. One day of fasting, the body stores several ounces of

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 glucose in the form of glycogen. And you can go, if you're healthy, you can go up to 24 hours

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 on your stored glycogen. And as the body senses stress, lowering the T3 slows the rate of

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 fuel use. So when your glycogen has gone away, that means you have to start using

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 your tissue to make glucose out of your muscles. And if your thyroid didn't slow down,

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 when you have this prolonged stress or fasting situation, if your thyroid didn't drastically

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 shut down your oxygen requirement, you would eat your whole body up in just a few days.

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 But since the depressive process turns off the metabolism and makes you want to hibernate,

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 that slows the rate of degeneration of all of your organs.

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 If you at least give a little bit of glucose and minerals, just some sodium chloride

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 and/or calcium, magnesium, and potassium during the fasting or low-calorie period,

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 you can greatly reduce your tissue loss on a low-calorie diet. For example, a person

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 on just a water fast for 10 days, they found that 80% or more of their weight loss came

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 from destruction of their muscle and skin mass. But if they had a 500-600 calorie diet with

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 adequate minerals, almost all of the weight loss was in the form of fat loss rather than muscle.

00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:48.720
 Interesting.

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 So a complete fast is very destructive to the body.

00:26:53.840 --> 00:26:59.520
 Yeah, and it's good to hear you say that because there's a lot of misinformation out there about

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 it. So I hope people will do their own research too and look into some things about fasting before

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 they attempt it. Because really, fasting in a nature sense, if we were out fasting, that would

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 mean we didn't find food. So it would be a stress response to the body, right?

00:27:16.320 --> 00:27:24.320
 Yeah. Some of the professors when I taught at the Naturopathic School were advocates of fasting,

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 and they talked about detoxifying by fasting. But that got me interested in what really happens.

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 The liver is the organ of detoxification. And when you're depriving the liver of sugar and

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 exposing it to cortisol, not only does the estrogen rise, but it loses its ability to

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 detoxify other things. The reason the estrogen rises is that the sulfation and glucuronidation

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 detoxifying systems are shut down by fasting. And so it's exactly the opposite of detoxifying.

00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:20.720
 In Mexico, I had been exposed to a type of insecticide disinfectant that they used on

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 buses and motels for a while. And it had a particular odor to it that was recognizable.

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 When I realized I was being poisoned by inhaling the fumes of this in public places,

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 I decided to leave. And as I was driving home across the desert, every time I got hungry,

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 I would smell this insecticide cleansing material in my exhaled breath. And for about two months

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 after that, every time I would have low blood sugar, three o'clock in the morning, I would wake

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 up and smelling on my exhaled breath, this pine-salt insecticide odor. And as soon as that

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 odor stopped leaving my body when I got hungry, then I went into a hyperthyroid state.

00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:36.400
 So it had been suppressing my thyroid. And I was exposing myself to it anew every time

00:29:36.400 --> 00:29:46.080
 I would lower my blood sugar by mobilizing fat. And so that was disturbing my liver function and

00:29:46.080 --> 00:29:55.760
 thyroid and so on. When you're hungry and starving, you're living on your body tissues,

00:29:55.760 --> 00:30:03.520
 including fat, but also your muscle. And that can mobilize the toxins that had been

00:30:04.320 --> 00:30:13.440
 fairly safely stored away. In animals, they were careful to make sure that the animals hadn't been

00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:22.240
 exposed to insecticides or herbicides or whatever for 24 hours before slaughtering them. And

00:30:22.240 --> 00:30:32.400
 they sampled the various tissues that the fat at the slaughterhouse was found to be full of

00:30:34.080 --> 00:30:44.480
 the whatever insecticide they had been exposed to. But the liver was the cleanest organ. After 24

00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:54.160
 hours, it had cleaned itself up and had the lowest concentration of all of the poisons.

00:30:55.600 --> 00:31:05.360
 The meat had the next highest concentration and the blood lower because it was constantly being

00:31:05.360 --> 00:31:17.120
 detoxified by the liver. So a fast is a way to maybe clean up your liver, but definitely

00:31:17.120 --> 00:31:24.880
 it's not good for your brain and immune system. Yes. And the liver, as far as I'm understanding,

00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:29.040
 is also important for things like testosterone too. So you really want good liver

00:31:29.040 --> 00:31:34.240
 production and detoxification just for the production of testosterone, right?

00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:49.520
 Yeah. In the case of progesterone, which in a woman is produced even in greater quantities than

00:31:49.520 --> 00:31:57.520
 a man produces testosterone, during the premenstrual time, the daily progesterone production

00:31:57.520 --> 00:32:06.320
 is maybe 30 milligrams a day. But the liver adapts to that very large production. And

00:32:06.320 --> 00:32:13.440
 after two weeks of that high production, the enzymes increase and start excreting

00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:24.240
 progesterone as well as estrogen and testosterone. So at menstruation, the synthesis of new

00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:32.720
 progesterone stops and for two weeks, the liver has very low exposure to progesterone,

00:32:33.760 --> 00:32:45.520
 meaning that it will have a chance to reset its detoxifying enzymes to zero. So that at ovulation,

00:32:45.520 --> 00:32:53.680
 it's all ready to let your body experience the full force of the progesterone. But if a man

00:32:53.680 --> 00:33:04.960
 is supplementing testosterone every day, if he exceeds the liver's normal preference for a level

00:33:04.960 --> 00:33:11.680
 of testosterone, the same thing happens. If he takes 30 milligrams by injection, for example,

00:33:11.680 --> 00:33:19.600
 the liver experiences the same thing a woman's liver experiences with high levels of progesterone.

00:33:20.240 --> 00:33:28.640
 And the man throws off the testosterone very quickly. So after a week or two of being exposed

00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:39.760
 to high testosterone, he is now excreting it very fast and probably is getting about as much

00:33:39.760 --> 00:33:50.640
 estrogen effect as testosterone effect. And the medical use of testosterone, they sometimes give

00:33:50.640 --> 00:33:58.240
 50 or 100 milligrams at once. So their liver experiences this gigantic overdose, where it

00:33:58.240 --> 00:34:08.000
 should be four or five milligrams per day in the young man. The liver goes into a testosterone

00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:16.480
 destroying condition. So with regard to things like since we're talking different diseases and

00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:21.520
 stuff too, and with regard to the liver, I wanted to get your thoughts on cancer and how high

00:34:21.520 --> 00:34:28.000
 cortisol can play into that. My mom actually died of stomach cancer at 45. And she lived a very,

00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:33.760
 very stressful existence, both physically, she was like an overexerciser, she was emotionally,

00:34:33.760 --> 00:34:39.440
 she was emotionally stressed, mentally stressed from work and hardly slept. And she also starved

00:34:39.440 --> 00:34:45.200
 herself quite frequently to achieve a body shape that she was looking for. And I'm convinced the

00:34:45.200 --> 00:34:49.520
 stress is what killed her. But how, in your opinion, does chronically elevated cortisol

00:34:49.520 --> 00:34:55.840
 and it's related to like, how is it related to things such as the

00:34:57.600 --> 00:35:09.600
 below behind the rise of estrogen and cortisol and the fall of thyroid is the tissue level of stress.

00:35:09.600 --> 00:35:18.960
 And in the alimentary canal, histamine and serotonin are massively produced 95%

00:35:20.080 --> 00:35:28.960
 of our serotonin in the body comes from the intestine. And stomach ulcers can be produced

00:35:28.960 --> 00:35:40.480
 just by an excess of serotonin. And the intestine is involved in all stress, but especially

00:35:41.120 --> 00:35:53.040
 in prolonged, ultimately carcinogenic stresses. And as the histamine and serotonin increase in

00:35:53.040 --> 00:36:05.840
 the digestive system, that allows endotoxin and nitric oxide to rise. All of those interfere with

00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:15.840
 our ability to produce respiratory energy shift over to the lactic acid production. And lactic acid

00:36:15.840 --> 00:36:26.080
 activates the stress hormones and promotes inflammation. And lactic acid is carcinogenic

00:36:26.080 --> 00:36:34.960
 in itself. It not only is produced by cancer, but it promotes all of the features of cancer,

00:36:34.960 --> 00:36:47.680
 inflammation, accelerated cell division and so on. And the serotonin is one of the most powerful

00:36:47.680 --> 00:36:59.120
 activators of the cortisol stress hormone system. And it acts powerfully on the part of the

00:36:59.120 --> 00:37:08.240
 hypothalamus that makes the CRH, corticotropin release hormone. And that is produced not only

00:37:08.240 --> 00:37:16.800
 in the brain, but in all of the peripheral tissues. And it's a promoter of tissue inflammation and

00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:30.240
 shift of metabolism. Stomach cancer and intestinal cancer are very deeply involved with excess

00:37:30.240 --> 00:37:42.000
 serotonin, which is really a base activator of the whole stress system. It works directly on the

00:37:42.000 --> 00:37:51.440
 pituitary as well as on the brain and other tissues. And incidentally, other tissues besides

00:37:51.440 --> 00:38:00.240
 the adrenals are potential cortisol producers. Even our skin can make cortisol when it's under stress.

00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:07.520
 So she had some pretty intense habits that led to a stress response such as, you know,

00:38:07.520 --> 00:38:12.240
 sleeping maybe two or three hours a night, burning the candles at both ends. She was an overthinker,

00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:18.080
 overanalyzer, overexerciser. Are there like certain habits, not just foods, but certain

00:38:18.080 --> 00:38:23.360
 things people are doing like just overachievers in life, people doing too much that are also

00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:28.960
 creating the stress response in the body that can contribute to that loss of all those important

00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:38.720
 hormones? Yeah, regular sleep is a powerfully protective thing. It should be somewhere in the

00:38:38.720 --> 00:38:48.720
 range of six to nine hours every night, but the regularity is very important. It becomes a built-in,

00:38:50.080 --> 00:39:01.760
 almost a machine-like, once you get a schedule set. And any variation of that schedule puts the

00:39:01.760 --> 00:39:12.960
 whole 24-hour cycle into a stress pattern. So it isn't just the number of hours, but the regularity

00:39:12.960 --> 00:39:22.000
 with which you get those hours of sleep that is anti-stress. And hypertestosterone and DHEA

00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:34.400
 are promoters of restorative sleep. Cortisol really interferes at all levels of sleep

00:39:35.040 --> 00:39:43.200
 restoration as well as daytime maintenance. And prolonged starvation, for example,

00:39:43.200 --> 00:39:54.640
 anorexia nervosa. Usually it's young women, and they've given, made MRI pictures of their brain

00:39:54.640 --> 00:40:04.640
 during and then during the recovery. And during the anorexia, their brain, especially the frontal lobes,

00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:13.680
 shrink. And then when they refeed, it rebuilds itself. So it's actually causing brain damage to

00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:22.400
 fast too much. And a stressful pregnancy with too much exposure to estrogen and the associated

00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:32.560
 cortisol does the same thing. Androgens, DHEA, and testosterone and progesterone protect the

00:40:32.560 --> 00:40:42.000
 athlete, the brain, heart, and lungs are protected by those. But prolonged exposure to high estrogen,

00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:51.920
 even in pregnancy or in anorexia, will shrink the frenulobes of the brain that handle long-range

00:40:51.920 --> 00:40:58.080
 perspective. But I liked what you said about it can be rebuilt. I think people aren't aware that

00:40:59.200 --> 00:41:04.000
 if even if you've had a really strong cortisol response for a long time, you've been in a stress

00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:09.440
 response for a long time, that if we can do things to mitigate that, we can actually get our body

00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:14.560
 back into a calm state. There is a way to do that. And it doesn't have to do with taking ashwagandha

00:41:14.560 --> 00:41:19.520
 and all these things. There is a really safe way to do it. And so can you talk about that? Can you

00:41:19.520 --> 00:41:27.360
 talk about like how we can rebuild? It's very much like exercise, but you have to stop the stress

00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:36.480
 first before you can exercise effectively. They know that a given activity, for example, taxi

00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:46.800
 drivers have a bigger part of the brain that handles memory. They know every street in a big

00:41:46.800 --> 00:41:55.200
 city and that requires a bigger part of that brain. One of my first students at the necropathic

00:41:55.200 --> 00:42:05.360
 college was a taxi driver who decided to study medicine. And she was just spectacularly able to

00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:14.640
 put things together. Unlike the students who had just gone to college. She had this global ability

00:42:14.640 --> 00:42:26.240
 to perceive how things interact. And that kind of exercise works best if you maintain the protective

00:42:26.240 --> 00:42:35.920
 hormones, even supplementing pregnenolone, progesterone, GHGA, and testosterone combined

00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:45.760
 with the kind of mental activity that you want to develop. That will, in a relatively short time,

00:42:45.760 --> 00:42:57.280
 rebuild and it changes your attitude. Learned helplessness, for example, from prolonged stress

00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:05.200
 can be overcome. Yeah, I've heard you talk about learned helplessness. Can you expand

00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:14.080
 on that a little bit for my listeners? Yeah, that can be repaired with any of these protective

00:43:14.080 --> 00:43:31.360
 hormones or with behavioral insight. But the stress process that causes you to become helpless or

00:43:33.120 --> 00:43:43.760
 obsessive or over analytic or whatever, stopping the stress is the first thing. And that requires

00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:54.240
 good nutrition. And good nutrition should include plenty of carbohydrates so that you don't have to

00:43:56.320 --> 00:44:08.560
 rely on the cortisol to convert protein amino acids into glucose. And usually

00:44:08.560 --> 00:44:18.080
 something more than 100 grams per day of carbohydrate, preferably in the form of sucrose.

00:44:18.720 --> 00:44:26.480
 But it can be, if you're very active physically, as 200 or 300 grams a day of

00:44:26.480 --> 00:44:32.560
 carbohydrate, especially sugar, can be restorative to the brain.

00:44:32.560 --> 00:44:38.880
 I'm so glad you brought this up because one of my next things was to talk about the dangers of

00:44:38.880 --> 00:44:45.440
 sugar-less diet. So like, I think people are all about talk about the dangers of how dangerous

00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:51.920
 sugar is, but you actually talk about the dangers of a sugar-less diet and how our body runs on

00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:56.080
 glucose and therefore if you don't take it in, your body will simply make it from its own bodily

00:44:56.080 --> 00:45:00.800
 tissues such as breaking down muscle like you were talking about before. So I think we don't know the

00:45:00.800 --> 00:45:06.640
 dangers of going sugar-less, actually. We know too much about eating sugar but not enough about how

00:45:06.640 --> 00:45:13.440
 much we actually do need to eat it. Yeah, all of the things that trigger the stress hormones

00:45:14.320 --> 00:45:25.760
 involve interference with glucose metabolism. Hypoglycemia itself is a powerful activator of

00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:34.560
 the stress system. Excess of free fatty acids which will block the ability to use glucose

00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:45.840
 will activate the stress hormones. Lactic acid which results when you're not using your glucose

00:45:45.840 --> 00:45:56.480
 properly, it's a sign that there's in effect a deficiency of glucose that activates cortisol

00:45:56.480 --> 00:46:08.720
 production. All of these stress signs, inflammation, overexertion, these require

00:46:08.720 --> 00:46:14.800
 more glucose to suppress inflammation to get energy production going.

00:46:14.800 --> 00:46:25.440
 And so the obvious way to stop the stress reaction is to provide enough glucose and oxygen

00:46:25.920 --> 00:46:36.720
 along with the other nutrients. If you provide only protein and fat as your bulk nutrients,

00:46:36.720 --> 00:46:47.840
 you're going to increase your cortisol just to convert the protein to the amount of glucose

00:46:48.400 --> 00:46:57.280
 that your brain and blood cells need. And that cortisol, even though it's being fed with protein,

00:46:57.280 --> 00:47:06.720
 is going to have all of these indirect actions that are harmful in the long run. It's going to

00:47:06.720 --> 00:47:14.880
 change the way your immune system works, for example. Yeah, and so as far as the glucose in

00:47:14.880 --> 00:47:20.000
 your diet, we know from listening to you that's important. So that's why on the last podcast we

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:25.840
 talked about how ketogenic and low-carb diets are actually causing some of the stress response as

00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:30.480
 opposed to helping with cortisol. So are there certain foods, I mean I know you've mentioned

00:47:30.480 --> 00:47:35.840
 sugar in different forms like fructose and sucrose, but are there different foods that

00:47:35.840 --> 00:47:41.040
 can actually help lower cortisol and increase things like progesterone and testosterone?

00:47:42.880 --> 00:47:49.840
 Yeah, the reason I talk so much about milk and orange juice is that they are the most available

00:47:49.840 --> 00:47:58.560
 foods that have the most components that tend to shut down excess cortisol production, lower

00:47:58.560 --> 00:48:09.280
 adrenaline, reduce serotonin, nitric oxide, all of the harmful mediators of inflammation and stress.

00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:20.320
 Everyone can, with some luck, can find good milk and sweet orange juice. Each of them

00:48:20.320 --> 00:48:29.680
 has hundreds of beneficial factors. The calcium itself in milk and the minerals,

00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:40.960
 potassium and the other minerals in orange juice, lower the stress factors in multiple ways.

00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:51.920
 Most people are having a borderline calcium and vitamin D deficiency in most of the world.

00:48:54.800 --> 00:49:04.000
 When you're borderline in vitamin D and calcium, you increase your parathyroid hormone. If you're

00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:14.800
 borderline in your mineral, especially sodium intake, your aldosterone and entratensin increase.

00:49:15.760 --> 00:49:26.560
 These parathyroid hormone and aldosterone interact very closely and turn off your energy production,

00:49:26.560 --> 00:49:37.360
 shift you over to wasting sugar, increasing your cortisol, destroying your protein tissues.

00:49:38.720 --> 00:49:45.760
 So getting your aldosterone and parathyroid hormone as low as you can

00:49:45.760 --> 00:49:57.120
 will at the same time increase your metabolic efficiency and so reduce your exposure to the

00:49:57.120 --> 00:50:03.520
 stress hormones. That's great information. So I'm also assuming that foods that help with thyroid

00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:07.840
 production would also lower a stress response in the body and therefore help with hormone

00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:21.360
 production too? Yeah. People are being misinformed about what thyroid does. It isn't a stimulant and

00:50:21.360 --> 00:50:31.360
 a catabolic hormone. It is anabolic and the anabolic function goes with what should be a

00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:44.320
 reduction of adrenaline and cortisol. So it is required for deep restorative sleep and relaxation.

00:50:44.320 --> 00:50:53.440
 Doctors tell people that it's a stimulant and the catabolic hormone exactly the opposite of the

00:50:53.440 --> 00:51:01.920
 truth. So what foods as far as your favorite foods are pro thyroid that would help lower that stress

00:51:01.920 --> 00:51:17.200
 response? Avoiding the polyunsaturated fats is a universal benefit as far as possible. Not to add

00:51:17.200 --> 00:51:27.920
 for example fish oil or algae oil to your diet. Not to use safflower, canola oil,

00:51:27.920 --> 00:51:36.640
 none of the liquid oils. Those are all anti-thyroid, anti-progesterone, anti-DHEA and so

00:51:36.640 --> 00:51:44.560
 on. And in effect they increase your stress hormones. They are the precursors for the

00:51:45.120 --> 00:51:53.280
 prostaglandin like materials which amplify all of the inflammatory and stress reactions.

00:51:53.280 --> 00:52:01.440
 So just cutting out the polyunsaturated fats shifts you, increases your thyroid function

00:52:01.440 --> 00:52:10.080
 and lowers the stress hormones. So therefore that leaves us with saturated fats which I would assume

00:52:10.080 --> 00:52:15.360
 are pretty good at helping to lower cortisol as well. Do they help increase progesterone and

00:52:15.360 --> 00:52:20.400
 testosterone? I guess the main goal is to lower the cortisol so that those particular hormones

00:52:20.400 --> 00:52:31.200
 will rise, correct? When you are not eating the proof of polyunsaturated fats, if you eat extra

00:52:31.200 --> 00:52:40.960
 calories, you produce the saturated fats. And so your tissues will gradually, over a period of

00:52:40.960 --> 00:52:52.160
 several years, gradually become more saturated. If you look at the ratio of saturated fat to

00:52:52.160 --> 00:53:02.800
 polyunsaturated in your tissues, the saturation index corresponds to lifespan. Animals with the

00:53:02.800 --> 00:53:10.480
 highest saturation index, the lowest polyunsaturated fat in their tissues have the longest life

00:53:10.480 --> 00:53:20.720
 expectancy. And a lot of that is related to thyroid and these protective steroids.

00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:30.480
 Wow, so I'm assuming that you're pretty saturated then for being 82 and you are just the epitome of

00:53:30.480 --> 00:53:34.640
 health. And so I assume based on your diet, you're pretty saturated then, huh?

00:53:34.640 --> 00:53:48.800
 I hope so. I don't eat a completely ideal diet. It takes a lab to prepare food to get rid of

00:53:48.800 --> 00:54:01.520
 all of the toxic fats. In the 1930s, the lab intended to demonstrate that taking out all of

00:54:01.520 --> 00:54:10.000
 the fat would cause a deficiency of the essential fatty acids. But this guy had lifelong headaches

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:18.400
 and blood pressure problems. After, I think it was three or four months on this fat-free diet,

00:54:18.400 --> 00:54:27.200
 he stopped having his headaches and his blood pressure normalized. And as long as there was

00:54:27.200 --> 00:54:33.760
 any information about him after that diet, he never had a recurrence of his health problems.

00:54:35.040 --> 00:54:43.520
 So far from producing deficiency diseases, this extreme laboratory-defined

00:54:43.520 --> 00:54:51.200
 fat-free diet cured his lifelong health problems.

00:54:51.200 --> 00:54:58.480
 Wow, that's incredible. So there is some validity to watching your fat intake and making sure that

00:54:58.480 --> 00:55:04.080
 you have good glucose intake. And so where does protein fit into all this? What are your favorite

00:55:04.080 --> 00:55:08.560
 sources of protein for lowering cortisol and increasing those hormones we've been talking

00:55:08.560 --> 00:55:17.920
 about like progesterone and testosterone and DHEA? Gelatin happens to be fairly close to

00:55:17.920 --> 00:55:28.800
 an ideal protein for an adult. Milk protein has a fair amount of tryptophan, cysteine,

00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:43.600
 and these are pro-inflammatory amino acids that are used in growth. Milk is ideal for growing

00:55:43.600 --> 00:55:52.560
 and has anti-inflammatory, anti-stress factors. But for an adult, I think it should be supplemented

00:55:54.640 --> 00:56:02.880
 with something like gelatin as an extra protein which lacks the pro-inflammatory

00:56:02.880 --> 00:56:11.280
 growth-related amino acids. So that's interesting. So you could almost do like blend your morning

00:56:11.280 --> 00:56:16.640
 coffee with a little collagen gelatin and some milk and make almost like a little protein smoothie

00:56:16.640 --> 00:56:26.720
 that way with a little coffee, huh? Yeah, I use about 8 or 9 ounces of milk with an ounce or two

00:56:26.720 --> 00:56:34.960
 of extremely concentrated coffee for my breakfast meal. You sound like an espresso lover. That

00:56:34.960 --> 00:56:38.480
 sounds like a concentrated coffee that's an espresso and that's what I love too.

00:56:40.240 --> 00:56:48.000
 Yeah, you don't get an excess of water that way. Yes, that's true. Well, Dr. Peat, I could go on

00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:52.480
 and on and on, but I know that you are getting ready to work on your next newsletter and so I

00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:57.440
 want to touch on that a little bit. I want to let people know that they can actually sign up for your

00:56:57.440 --> 00:57:03.680
 newsletter which is amazing and they can sign up via to receive it through the mail or also through

00:57:03.680 --> 00:57:11.600
 email and it's $28 I believe for email, the newsletter, and then it's $38 to get it through

00:57:11.600 --> 00:57:20.160
 the mail? Yeah, and that's for 12 issues by monthly. So it's for two years, 12 issues.

00:57:20.160 --> 00:57:25.680
 Yeah, and they can do that by emailing raypeatsnewsletter@gmail.com and I'll have all

00:57:25.680 --> 00:57:30.320
 that information in the show notes as well. And I also want to encourage you guys to go check out

00:57:30.320 --> 00:57:36.720
 all of his articles at raypeat.com because that's where you're really going to get just a cornucopia

00:57:36.720 --> 00:57:42.880
 of information that will just blow your socks off. So Dr. Peat, I just so appreciate your time. I

00:57:42.880 --> 00:57:48.640
 love, love, love talking with you and sorry we had a little connection issues today, but I really

00:57:48.640 --> 00:57:53.840
 will take any part of you that I can get. So I appreciate your time today. Okay, thank you.

00:57:54.720 --> 00:58:00.720
 And you guys stay tuned for more. Hopefully next time we can talk about the thyroid a little bit

00:58:00.720 --> 00:58:06.880
 more Dr. Peat, if that's okay with you. Okay. Okay, sounds good. Thanks everybody for listening. Bye

00:58:06.880 --> 00:58:07.360
 for now.