wp-121123-foundational-hormones.vtt

WEBVTT

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 [Music]

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 Hello and welcome. This is Taya Stey, your host of the 'Your Health' series,

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 broadcasting from World Food Network.

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 I'm delighted and excited to present engaging, in-depth conversations

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 with my very credible guests who are leaders, researchers, authors

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 in the field of advanced nutrition, biochemistry, emotional intelligence,

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 energy-based medicine and mind-body connection,

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 which orchestrates our state of health, energy levels and inner happiness.

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 Every show is designed to give you the bottom line in practical information

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 on ways to optimize your physical, emotional and mental aspects of your well-being and your life.

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 And I personally invite you to step up and make it your goal to become the optimal you

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 by managing the number one resource, your energy of course, to your health and wellness.

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 [Music]

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 Hello again, this is Taya from World Food Network, broadcasting to your health.

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 And with me I have Raymond Peat.

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 And just a brief introduction, Raymond is an author.

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 He's written 'Nutrition for Women' for Additions, 'Mind and Tissue' to Additions,

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 'Progesterone in Othomolecular Medicine' to Additions and 'Generative Energy'.

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 He also has two patents for 'Progesterone in Tocopherol' 1984,

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 'DHEA and Other Steroids for Arthritis' 1986

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 and 'The Use of Steroids in Treatment of Osteoporosis and Other Degenerative Diseases'.

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 He received his PhD in progesterone and related hormones in 1972

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 and that was actually a very interesting story how they came about.

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 So I'm really looking forward to putting Raymond in the hot seat

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 and literally picking his brain at simplifying some very complicated topics on foundational hormones.

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 Raymond, hello.

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 Hello.

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 How are you doing?

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 Very good.

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 Fantastic.

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 So you did your PhD because you really wanted to study science.

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 You really wanted to dedicate yourself to something where you could discover something new.

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 Yeah, I had been studying interesting stuff, just trying to understand how the world works.

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 So I had specialized in linguistics, literature, painting and things that I was interested in.

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 But I decided I should make knowledge useful.

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 I was around the age of 30 I think when I decided that useful knowledge was really the purpose of the brain.

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 And you're now 73, is that correct?

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 Yes.

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 And you're still pursuing knowledge?

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 And what?

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 And you're still pursuing knowledge?

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 Oh, yeah.

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 That's why I do a newsletter every two months

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 because I'm still trying to get the big picture more sharply focused.

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 Yes.

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 I have actually read all your articles, just read all your articles on your website.

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 Some of them I've read two or three times because I really, really wanted to understand the complexity that you simplify

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 that you just said in a couple of sentences.

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 And what really fascinated me was the foundational hormones, the pregnenolone, progesterone and the estrogen.

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 I could not find that information anywhere and I have been researching that for personal reasons and for my clients.

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 And I find that people really need to understand foundational hormones to see the bigger picture.

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 And your thesis was actually energy interrelated with structure.

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 That was the purpose of you doing that.

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 Can you take us into the world of foundational hormones and why do we need them and what are they?

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 I have been working in Mexico for several years and when I moved back to the U.S.,

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 I started noticing the effects of the weather on my health and especially on young women's health.

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 In the winter at the university, lots of students would spend most of their time indoors

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 and sometimes get no sun at all for several months at a time.

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 I started seeing symptoms like premenstrual syndrome and depression that came on in the winter.

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 And people who had never experienced those symptoms until they came to Eugene,

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 which is a very cloudy place in the winter, I started realizing that the sunlight is a major factor

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 in allowing us to produce and use certain hormones and progesterone is the main hormone that is needed

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 for both brain development and fertility.

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 And sunlight, the reason animals are fertile in the spring is because the sunlight,

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 as the days get longer, the anti-stress hormones increase and that is mainly progesterone

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 that increases in the spring, causing the brain to function more with greater variety and energy

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 and it allows fertility to be carried to completion.

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 So that would be vitamin D, which is also a pro-hormone?

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 Well, that is one of the factors in sunlight.

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 The vitamin D allows us to absorb and use calcium and calcium holds down some of the basic stress hormones

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 that tend to put us into a torpid hibernation state when it is too dark.

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 And the hormones that make people depressed and sick in the winter are the same hormones that allow

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 animals in nature to go into torpor or hibernation when the days are very short.

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 Progesterone is the main anti-stress hormone that is inhibited if we are deficient in either calcium or vitamin D.

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 When vitamin D and calcium are not adequate in either the diet or the exposure to the environment,

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 the cells go into an excited, inefficient state and they have to be quieted and put into a torpor by various other hormones.

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 Progesterone keeps us out of that state, but to do it you need to have your calcium under control.

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 And it isn't just the vitamin D that regulates calcium, it is the energy produced in the mitochondria

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 under the influence of good hormones and good nutrition.

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 The mitochondria produce energy that keeps calcium out of cells and in the bones where it should be.

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 And if you are deficient in vitamin D and calcium, the hormones allow it to get into the mitochondria and poison them.

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 But if the days are very long, even if you don't have vitamin D, the light that penetrates into your tissues

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 is mostly red and yellow light and that light happens to quench the free radicals that damage the mitochondria.

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 So it's basically a low energy state that is caused by a deficiency of sunlight and/or vitamin D and/or calcium.

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 So we actually require the ultraviolet light from the sun to synthesize vitamin D, is that correct?

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 Yes, and also the red light to quench free radicals that are produced by stress.

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 Yes, and so if we go out in the sun in the morning, early morning, or probably after 5, we will not be getting enough ultraviolet light.

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 So therefore, even though we are getting the sun, we are actually not getting the synthesis for vitamin D, is that correct?

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 Well, we are getting the anti-stress effect.

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 If you get enough calcium and other nutrients, you can really get along with an extremely low vitamin D intake or synthesis.

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 They have done experiments with animals in which they gave them a diet lacking vitamin D and low in calcium,

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 but when they gave them sugar rather than starch, simply the energy efficiency of the sugar

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 allowed them to build strong bones and avoid rickets.

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 So it's much more complex than just taking vitamin D. It's the whole balance of nutrients.

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 Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

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 And you did talk about sugar or glucose and starch, and some people actually don't know the difference.

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 Carbohydrates are carbohydrates, and there are different types of carbohydrates.

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 What do you mean by starch and sugar?

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 Well, in one of the basic lab experiments that physiology professors have traditionally given their students,

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 you would feed a rat with a stomach tube a huge gob of corn starch or other pasty starch mixed with a little water,

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 the equivalent of about a quart for a person.

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 And then you would wait five minutes, and you were instructed to find how far the starch had moved in the digestive system.

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 And in just ten minutes, the students would find no trace of starch.

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 It had been totally dissolved, turned into sugar, and absorbed in ten minutes,

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 even though it was the equivalent of a quart for a human being.

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 And starch is a chain of glucose molecules,

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 and so if you eat a given amount of energy or calories in the form of starch,

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 what you get is an instantaneous blast of glucose.

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 If you eat the same amount of energy in the form of sucrose, just plain granulated sugar,

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 the absorption of the sugar is slower, the glucose stimulates insulin and tends to turn on fat production.

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 Fructose slightly inhibits the production of insulin and slightly inhibits the blood sugar disturbing effect of the glucose.

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 That's kind of interesting because the corn starch is very predominant in most foods these days.

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 I mean, you would find corn starch in the form of melted oxygen,

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 and I personally tell people not to take that because even though it seems to be harmless,

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 it actually does cause quite a high blood sugar increase.

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 Not to mention the side effects of, you know, a little bit of gas and flagellants,

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 and I think when people take that ingredient out of everything in their diet, there's enormous improvement.

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 Yet it seems so innocent because it's added to everything, melted oxygen, as a corn starch.

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 Yeah, if the starches are instantly absorbed, as in the rat experiment, they cause obesity.

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 And if they're mixed with other ingredients so that they are more slowly absorbed,

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 then they are fermented in the intestine,

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 and that type of slowly digested starch was found to cause animals to become fearful and aggressive

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 because of the toxic effect produced by fermentation in the intestine.

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 So that's a classic of "we are what we eat,"

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 and often we don't realize the effect that food has on our moods, our brain chemistry, energy level,

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 because we think if we could buy it from a supermarket, if it's being promoted on television, it's harmless.

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 And yet a lot of the times it actually does impact our health, even interferes with hormone production.

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 Is that correct?

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 Yes. Sugar is needed for the liver to activate the thyroid hormone,

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 which is what produces the energy that prevents stress and regulates minerals and growth and so on.

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 And if someone tries to eat a low-carbohydrate diet,

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 or if they eat only starches so that their blood sugar is going up and down very quickly,

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 their thyroid doesn't function properly.

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 Sugar is the essential ingredient for about 70% of our thyroid function,

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 which involves the liver's activation of thyroxine into the active thyroid hormone.

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 And without the active thyroid hormone, none of the steroid hormones can be made.

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 So the adrenals, the ovaries, and even the brain, which is a major source of steroids,

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 can't adequately produce the protective steroids.

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 And why do we need protective steroids?

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 Well, the steroids are a feature of all life.

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 It's not really sufficiently studied exactly what their role is,

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 but cholesterol, for example, is known to be involved in the process of cell division,

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 and the expression of genetic information.

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 Every function of life involves either cholesterol or one of the steroids made from cholesterol.

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 So it's some function that if a cell is living and dividing, it's going to need steroids.

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 Few people really know about pregnenolone.

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 When I often mention it, because it's probably, in my opinion, the safest one to take,

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 if you wanted to up up your boost of foundational hormones,

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 as we live in a world of stress, stress is unavoidable, it's predictable, it's always there,

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 and some people actually get addicted to stress.

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 We actually get addicted to the adrenaline.

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 I think if that is what we do, then we probably need a boost of pregnenolone after the age of 40,

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 yet most people don't know, probably because it can't be patented.

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 Is that correct?

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 Yes, pregnenolone is the first hormone produced from cholesterol when our thyroid function is adequate.

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 And I'd just like to emphasize it is made from the LDL, which is classified as the bad cholesterol.

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 Is that correct?

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 Yes.

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 And cholesterol has been injected into animals, and when they're being trained,

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 they become more intelligent and learn more quickly when their cholesterol is higher.

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 And in the Framingham study, it was found that people at the age of 50 or more

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 who don't have cholesterol above average, above 200 milligrams per cent,

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 which the ideal is supposed to be 160 or so, so it's slightly above what is considered optimal.

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 If they don't have at least that much cholesterol,

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 they have a much higher risk of becoming demented.

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 Cholesterol is a very important brain chemical,

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 but one of its main functions is that the brain can turn it into pregnenolone and DHEA

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 and progesterone in very large quantities.

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 And if you're limited in your ability to turn it into those hormones,

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 taking pregnenolone bypasses one of the steps.

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 And so you can sometimes see a tremendous improvement of a person's ability to cope

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 when they take just a little bit of pregnenolone.

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 Yes, I have definitely noticed that,

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 and a few people that I have recommended to take pregnenolone,

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 if they really, really needed it,

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 they actually noticed improvements in their brain function within the first few days,

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 and they just actually couldn't believe that it worked so fast.

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 If we are avoiding cholesterol and if we are avoiding eggs,

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 most people are shocked to eat two or four eggs a day,

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 which kind of makes sense because the egg yolk has everything you need to make pregnenolone.

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 So if they're only having two eggs a week, that obviously would be deficient in pregnenolone

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 and probably progesterone, is that correct?

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 Well, you can make cholesterol if you have enough of all of the other nutrients.

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 Such as?

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 I recommend drinking a quart or two of orange juice per day

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 for a person who wants to bring their cholesterol up quickly.

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 It's much more efficient than eating a dozen eggs.

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 Yes, I don't think eggs actually raise cholesterol as most people are being trained

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 or through media to believe,

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 and I do think that probably a high sugar diet or carbohydrates

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 would raise cholesterol to a glitter, it's faster than anything.

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 If people are lowering their cholesterol, which is the aim of,

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 we should all have low cholesterol, I don't agree with that,

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 then they would be avoiding the very things they need.

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 So what other things could they take in terms of supplements?

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 Well, vitamin A is the main cofactor for thyroid

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 to be able to turn cholesterol into those hormones.

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 And that vitamin is from animal sources?

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 Yes.

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 In the 1930s, one of the signs for diagnosing hypothyroidism

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 was a progesterone deficiency.

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 And when some of these women who had had severe symptoms

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 of high estrogen and low progesterone,

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 when some of them had their ovaries removed,

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 the corpus luteum, which means the yellow body

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 where progesterone is synthesized,

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 these parts of the ovary were found to be bright red.

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 They had accumulated carotene in place of vitamin A

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 and carotene at that high concentration competes

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 for the enzymes that use vitamin A,

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 and so it has an anti-vitamin A function.

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 And unless people eat things like chicken livers

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 and once again egg yolks, or take cod liver oil,

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 which is not very pleasant,

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 they're probably not getting enough vitamin A

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 from that retinol source.

00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:38.000
 Yes.

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 If your metabolic rate is high,

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 your vitamin A requirement is very high

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 because you will be producing large amounts

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 of pregnenolone and progesterone,

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 and that uses up vitamin A very quickly.

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 Sometimes people notice that in bright, sunny weather,

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 they'll get acne or dandruff

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 or some of the annoying little symptoms.

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 And if they just take a big supplement of vitamin A

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 and watch their thyroid,

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 because vitamin A can inhibit the thyroid function,

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 if those are in balance,

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 then you're able to make the amount of progesterone

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 and pregnenolone that you need to respond

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 to the long summer days.

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 So you had some very interesting experiences yourself

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 when you were implementing some of those steroidal hormones

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 like DHEA.

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 I mean, that's quite amazing.

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 I have read that you grew one and a half inches

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 at the age of 46.

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 Did you really need to grow?

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 Yeah, I had grown up in Oregon,

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 and the winters in all parts of Oregon

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 are pretty dark and stressful.

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 And I didn't know that I was hypothyroid

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 or lacking in hormones because, for example,

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 when I would work in the woods,

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 I would eat sometimes over 10,000 calories per day.

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 I ate tremendous amounts and didn't get fat,

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 so it took me a long time to realize

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 that I could be hypothyroid

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 and still have such an extremely high metabolic rate.

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 But when I did try taking thyroid,

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.000
 I found that my rate of metabolism decreased sharply.

00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:47.000
 It did something to increase my efficiency,

00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:52.000
 which was probably increasing my production of progesterone

00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:54.000
 and pregnenolone.

00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:59.000
 And so that led to a series of other experiments

00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:05.000
 in which I tried taking each of the hormones individually.

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:10.000
 And some doctor friends had noticed

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:16.000
 what they thought was a melanoma growing very fast.

00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:22.000
 It looked like an arrowhead, irregular and rapidly enlarging.

00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:27.000
 And I didn't intend to have it removed,

00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:29.000
 but I was watching it.

00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:34.000
 And it happened just a few days after I began taking the DHEA.

00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:41.000
 That thing flared up, and within about three days was gone.

00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:45.000
 And around the same time, I noticed that my wisdom teeth,

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:51.000
 which had started to erupt when I was around the age of 18 or 20,

00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:58.000
 had just stayed, never finished erupting for 25 years roughly.

00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:03.000
 And within a couple of weeks of taking a small amount of DHEA,

00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:08.000
 they began rotating, and in just, I guess,

00:26:08.000 --> 00:26:13.000
 a total of about a month, they were perfectly oriented,

00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:17.000
 vertical rather than submerged and sideways.

00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:22.000
 That's really quite motivating and inspirational

00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:26.000
 to want to make people go and take a little bit of DHEA.

00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:29.000
 And you only recommend one to two milligrams a day,

00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:33.000
 which is infinitesimal, which is a tiny amount,

00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:39.000
 compared to most supplements that are 12 milligrams, 25, 50,

00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:40.000
 even go to 100.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:47.000
 Yeah, teenage boys only make about 12 milligrams per day at the maximum.

00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:54.000
 And so if you take 10 milligrams when you're only 30 or 40,

00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:58.000
 some of it is likely to be turned into estrogen.

00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:03.000
 So when people are buying these supplements,

00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:07.000
 because in America you could pretty much get DHEA over the counter,

00:27:07.000 --> 00:27:14.000
 not knowing all of this, and if they were to get 25 milligrams,

00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:18.000
 is it likely that they're actually not really getting the pharmaceutical grade,

00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:24.000
 that maybe they'd be best at getting 5 milligrams?

00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:29.000
 Well, I think they should just cut the tablet in fractions

00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:33.000
 and just go by what the label says,

00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:39.000
 but cut it down so that they're only taking about 2 to 5 milligrams per day.

00:27:39.000 --> 00:27:45.000
 When buying supplements or looking through supplements,

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.000
 it's always important to see what the company stands for.

00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:52.000
 It's a kind of reliable measure.

00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:55.000
 And I think for me personally, if I look at other fillers

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.000
 and things that shouldn't be there in some other formulas,

00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:02.000
 I probably tend not to go with that company.

00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:05.000
 And at the same time, there are very, very few

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.000
 that really do use pharmaceutical grade that you can rely on.

00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:12.000
 Do you have any favorites that you can recommend?

00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:18.000
 And if you have patents, may I ask why you have not come up with your own formulas?

00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:27.000
 Well, I did sell some of the DHEA dissolved in vitamin E,

00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:33.000
 which makes it a very quick-acting and controllable form

00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:39.000
 that will circulate and distribute itself without affecting your liver.

00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:43.000
 If you take it in the crystalline powdered form,

00:28:43.000 --> 00:28:49.000
 your liver will get the first opportunity to metabolize it,

00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:54.000
 and that's when it most easily turns into estrogen.

00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:59.000
 But it is dissolved completely in oil.

00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:05.000
 If you don't mind eating extra olive oil or coconut oil or butter, for example,

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.000
 you can meld a few milligrams in a spoonful of that.

00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:13.000
 But if you're taking just a plain DHEA capsule or tablet

00:29:13.000 --> 00:29:18.000
 as one would have from an everyday supplier,

00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:22.000
 if you're not taking it with some sort of oil such as olive oil or vitamin E,

00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:25.000
 then your liver will have to work really hard.

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:27.000
 Is that what you're saying, Raymond?

00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:32.000
 If you take it with the oil, that helps to keep it from going into the liver.

00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:33.000
 Okay.

00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:40.000
 It helps to absorb it in the general circulation dissolved in the oil.

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.000
 What if they just take pregnenolone and don't worry about the DHEA?

00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:46.000
 Would that do it?

00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:48.000
 That's best, I think.

00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:57.000
 Several years ago I stopped giving people any DHEA because they tended to feel so good

00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:03.000
 they would keep taking more and more of it until one person enlarged his liver

00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:10.000
 and had the estrogen level of a teenage girl.

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:21.000
 And that effect can cause a lot of long-range problems.

00:30:21.000 --> 00:30:28.000
 I shifted to recommending that almost everyone use pregnenolone instead of DHEA

00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:38.000
 because in animal experiments rats were given a 10-gram dose of pure pregnenolone

00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:41.000
 and then their hormones were examined.

00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:48.000
 And it did nothing to the hormones of happy, healthy rats,

00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:53.000
 but if the rat was under stress it lowered the stress hormones.

00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:56.000
 So no matter how much you take,

00:30:56.000 --> 00:31:03.000
 that would be like about two cups of powdered pregnenolone for a human.

00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:06.000
 Even that much doesn't disturb your hormones.

00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:15.000
 And if you were under stress it will remove the stress hormones.

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:20.000
 So is this such a thing as taking too much pregnenolone?

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:28.000
 Well, for an experiment I ate a kilogram of pregnenolone spread over a year.

00:31:28.000 --> 00:31:33.000
 That averaged out to about 3,000 milligrams a day.

00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:37.000
 And I felt great all that year.

00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:39.000
 I could eat anything I wanted to

00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:45.000
 and my metabolism just was ideally regulated.

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:51.000
 But the only reason I didn't keep it up was it's very expensive.

00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:55.000
 And where do you get your pregnenolone these days?

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:56.000
 I haven't been using it.

00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:05.000
 I've been working on how to increase my own production of it by adjusting the foods.

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:07.000
 That would be fascinating.

00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:10.000
 And how is progress?

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:12.000
 Very good.

00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:22.000
 I use a small amount of a thyroid supplement such as Cytomel or Cenomel, a T3 supplement,

00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:35.000
 and then I emphasize sodium, calcium, and the sugary fruits in my diet

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.000
 and try to get a lot of gelatin.

00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:44.000
 And by keeping the ratio of calcium to phosphorus very high

00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:52.000
 and having a slight excess of sodium either in the form of table salt or baking soda,

00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:56.000
 that helps to regulate all the other minerals

00:32:56.000 --> 00:33:06.000
 so that you don't have to worry so much about getting enough magnesium.

00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:10.000
 Many foods are very low in magnesium,

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:19.000
 but if you eat extra sodium, your body retains almost all of the magnesium that you give it.

00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:22.000
 So coffee is very high in magnesium, is that correct?

00:33:22.000 --> 00:33:27.000
 Yes, that's my main source of magnesium.

00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:29.000
 So you drink coffee.

00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:33.000
 And I did read an interesting article about your perspective on caffeine

00:33:33.000 --> 00:33:36.000
 and how it actually helps with the brain function

00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:44.000
 and it inhibits adenosine, something to do with affecting other neurotransmitters.

00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:49.000
 And of course if our neurotransmitters are balanced, it's like we're more balanced.

00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:55.000
 And it's perfectly normal to have two or three cups of coffee a day, is that correct?

00:33:55.000 --> 00:34:05.000
 Yes. It doesn't hurt to drink 50 if that is what balances your metabolism,

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:12.000
 but I think everyone should try to get from three to five cups a day.

00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:16.000
 There have been studies in which people who drank more than five cups

00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:24.000
 had lower incidences of various kinds of cancer and lower incidence of dementia too.

00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:31.000
 So brain protection and avoidance of cancer are probably the two most important things that coffee does,

00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:40.000
 but it's anti-inflammatory and anti-stress and has a very broad range of protective effects.

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:47.000
 Except it does raise cortisol levels, so if one doesn't need the cortisol levels to be raised,

00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:49.000
 which is the real stress hormone,

00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:53.000
 they probably should limit their coffee one to two cups a day.

00:34:53.000 --> 00:34:57.000
 And how you can tell if your cortisol is high is that I read somewhere

00:34:57.000 --> 00:35:03.000
 if you're craving carbohydrates after you have a cup of coffee, you're probably having too much.

00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:13.000
 Yes, and by adjusting all of your nutrients, getting lots of calcium from milk and cheese, for example,

00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:24.000
 and plenty of sugar from fruits in particular, those things all help to hold down your cortisol.

00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:32.000
 And eating small amounts at a time will reduce your stress hormones too.

00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:37.000
 So if someone is vegetarian, like if they're really a strict vegan,

00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:45.000
 what would they need in terms of foundational hormones and how to increase them?

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:51.000
 Well, vitamin A is the main problem for a vegetarian

00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:57.000
 because carotene can so easily get in the way of vitamin A functions.

00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:03.000
 I learned that by a young man who was extremely sick

00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:08.000
 and his doctors had found that he had practically no vitamin A in his blood,

00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:14.000
 but extremely high carotene, which was blocking all of his hormones.

00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:19.000
 And sometimes people get very orange hands if they actually have too much carotene.

00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:24.000
 And the carotene turns off your thyroid function very powerfully.

00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:30.000
 In his case, all it took was one dose of vitamin B12,

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:35.000
 which is needed to convert carotene to vitamin A.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:42.000
 And within a week, his symptoms had gone and his vitamin A level was normal.

00:36:42.000 --> 00:36:48.000
 And he was able to convert the carotene to vitamin A easily.

00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:53.000
 Yes, a lot of vegetarian diets, unless they take vitamin B12 shots,

00:36:53.000 --> 00:36:59.000
 probably don't have enough B12 because it needs to be synthesized in the liver.

00:36:59.000 --> 00:37:03.000
 It needs to be synthesized actually in the stomach.

00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:09.000
 And people think if they take spirulina or spinach and they're getting vitamin B12,

00:37:09.000 --> 00:37:15.000
 it's actually nowhere near as effective as perhaps having egg yolks.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:24.000
 Yes, and any little source of vitamin B12 can keep a vegetarian in good health

00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:29.000
 as long as they avoid too many of the toxins.

00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:33.000
 Many plants put out defensive substances,

00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:41.000
 some of which are specifically designed to block our digestive enzymes.

00:37:41.000 --> 00:37:46.000
 Proteolytic enzymes, for example, are blocked by polyunsaturated fats.

00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:52.000
 And it happens that it's a proteolytic enzyme in the thyroid gland

00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:55.000
 that allows it to secrete hormone.

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.000
 And so the same thing that plants put in their seeds

00:37:59.000 --> 00:38:03.000
 to prevent the seeds being digested by animals,

00:38:03.000 --> 00:38:08.000
 if that fat is absorbed and circulates in the bloodstream,

00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:11.000
 that's the secretion of thyroid hormone.

00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:14.000
 Yes, so that is a very interesting point.

00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:18.000
 I'd like to pause here because most people do consume

00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:21.000
 far more polyunsaturated fats in terms of nuts.

00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:25.000
 Most people think that protein is in nuts and if they're vegetarian

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:30.000
 or they just think that if I have 50 grams of almonds or cashews,

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:32.000
 I'm going to get some protein.

00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:35.000
 And that's actually not really the complete protein,

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:38.000
 but it has a very high level of unsaturated fats,

00:38:38.000 --> 00:38:43.000
 which cause an underactive thyroid and cause estrogen dominance.

00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:44.000
 Is that correct?

00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:45.000
 Yes.

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:52.000
 About 30 years ago I ran into a young woman who was wasting away

00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:58.000
 and she tried to eat eggs and liver and all kinds of protein,

00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:01.000
 but she couldn't digest any protein.

00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:06.000
 And she was down to 65 pounds and was a fairly tall person.

00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:14.000
 And I had been reading about research with some of the amino acid

00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:17.000
 equivalents that are found in potatoes.

00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:24.000
 Potato protein turns out to have a higher quality rank than egg yolk protein,

00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:30.000
 and it's because of these equivalent substances that aren't quite amino acids

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:33.000
 all they need is ammonia.

00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:39.000
 And when this woman ate meat or eggs, she would burp ammonia

00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:44.000
 and something was causing the protein to be short-circuited

00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:48.000
 into an instant conversion to ammonia.

00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:56.000
 And knowing about the research on potato protein equivalents,

00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:02.000
 I juiced some potatoes for her, made about a cup of the raw potato juice

00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:07.000
 with all the starch removed and then cooked it like a scrambled egg.

00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:15.000
 And she could eat it without the ammonia burps because it's very low in ammonia.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:20.000
 But from that meal, that single meal on,

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.000
 she went straight up to 130 pounds and right back to work.

00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:30.000
 And since then I've seen people who have just extreme problems

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:37.000
 like inability to sleep for months at a time causing them to become demented.

00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:43.000
 And with one meal of the cooked potato juice,

00:40:43.000 --> 00:40:52.000
 one of these people went to sleep while eating the bowl of potato juice soup.

00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:59.000
 It works so fast to energize the brain and start protein synthesis and repair.

00:40:59.000 --> 00:41:05.000
 So if vegetarians will emphasize protein from potatoes

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:10.000
 and not worry about the nuts that contain inhibitors,

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:17.000
 you don't really assimilate any protein of value for many of the oily nuts and seeds.

00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:23.000
 And not to mention the whole polyunsaturated oils and canola oil and sunflower oil

00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:28.000
 which is so prevalent in anything that we buy these days.

00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:34.000
 And the good fat, the only fat that's really recommended is the coconut oil,

00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:41.000
 the coconut fat, the saturated fat that most people are too scared to even try

00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:47.000
 because in naturopathic community, alternative complementary medicine community,

00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:54.000
 mainstream doctors always mention to stay away from saturated fats, especially coconut.

00:41:54.000 --> 00:41:58.000
 And yet it's unique. It's so unique and it's underrated.

00:41:58.000 --> 00:42:04.000
 And you write a lot about coconut oil, especially supporting the thyroid.

00:42:04.000 --> 00:42:13.000
 One of the first studies I saw about it, they had fed I think there were 15 experimental groups of rats

00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:18.000
 which got a low-fat diet, an average fat or a high-fat diet.

00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:28.000
 And each of the diets consisted of either coconut oil or corn oil or a mixture.

00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:34.000
 And it turned out that at the end of a normal lifespan,

00:42:34.000 --> 00:42:40.000
 the fattest rats were the ones who had the unsaturated fats,

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:43.000
 either in the low-fat or high-fat diet, it didn't matter.

00:42:43.000 --> 00:42:50.000
 It was the ratio of unsaturated to saturated that created the obesity.

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:55.000
 And the leanest animals were the ones getting the coconut oil.

00:42:55.000 --> 00:43:00.000
 Even in the high-fat diet, they were still the leanest.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:03.000
 Well, I certainly get a buzz every time I have coconut oil.

00:43:03.000 --> 00:43:05.000
 It's like an instant energy.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:10.000
 And in winter when it's really, really cold, that's when it's most noticeable.

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:15.000
 So I do find that that particular fat is used instantly for fuel

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:21.000
 whereas other fats like lard and beef tallow, probably not.

00:43:21.000 --> 00:43:24.000
 And fat is an energy.

00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:29.000
 I guess the more fat we have in the diet that we can use, the more energy we have, the more heat.

00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:32.000
 Yeah, for quick, intense energy production,

00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:37.000
 the shorter fats, as in coconut oil, are most effective.

00:43:37.000 --> 00:43:46.000
 But even the very long-chain saturated fats have specific protective biological functions.

00:43:46.000 --> 00:43:53.000
 Liver researchers are finding that alcoholics with hepatitis and cirrhosis can be cured

00:43:53.000 --> 00:43:59.000
 if they completely eliminate the polyunsaturated fats such as fish oil

00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:08.000
 and replace them with absolutely saturated fat such as stearic acid and coconut oil.

00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:11.000
 Yes, and of course, most of the time they're not advised that.

00:44:11.000 --> 00:44:17.000
 So it's like really taking the basic chemistry 101 in fats.

00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:21.000
 And Mary Enoch wrote a fantastic book. She actually did a PhD

00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:26.000
 where she explained the breakdown and the carbon bonds in all the fats.

00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:31.000
 And coconut fat was unique. It's like a genre of its own.

00:44:31.000 --> 00:44:36.000
 In fact, I think it says that it doesn't even require to be emulsified.

00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:40.000
 It goes straight into the bloodstream and used for fuel.

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:50.000
 Yeah, the mitochondria can use it directly as if it were sugar for ease of producing energy.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:55.000
 And it's really so nice. Coconut oil and coconut cream is just one of the yummiest foods.

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.000
 I think they're out there. And it's such a shame that they're given a bad name

00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:02.000
 because they grouped into a saturated fat.

00:45:02.000 --> 00:45:05.000
 And then saturated fat is actually quite a healthy thing.

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.000
 I mean, 50% of your heart is made of saturated fat.

00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:14.000
 So why would we need 50% of it around the heart?

00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:22.000
 Well, there were studies about 30 years ago in which pregnant mice were fed

00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:26.000
 either corn oil or coconut oil.

00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:36.000
 And the babies that were exposed prenatally to corn oil had smaller brains and weren't very smart.

00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:43.000
 And the babies that were exposed prenatally to coconut oil had actually bigger brains

00:45:43.000 --> 00:45:45.000
 and were more intelligent.

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:51.000
 And similar experiments have been done on dogs and other animals.

00:45:51.000 --> 00:45:59.000
 It actually increases the brain size relative to the body size to have plenty of saturated fats.

00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:03.000
 They really are the essential fatty acids.

00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:09.000
 It's a shame that these experiments have not been done on people because--

00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:22.000
 Well, just recently a prenatal study was done on the trainability of the fetal heart rate.

00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:36.000
 They found that the fetus responds to conditions and there is both a short-term and a long-term learning

00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:43.000
 that can be demonstrated simulating the fetus at different ages before birth.

00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:52.000
 And they compared the intelligence of the fetus, the ability to learn,

00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:58.000
 with the amount of fish oil in the diet and in the mother's tissues.

00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:07.000
 And they found that the only two things that corresponded to better short-term and long-term memory

00:47:07.000 --> 00:47:14.000
 was the absence of the common essential so-called fatty acids

00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:19.000
 and of the long-chain fish oil type fatty acids.

00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:27.000
 So a deficiency of those prenatally was just recently demonstrated to make the human fetus learn better.

00:47:27.000 --> 00:47:32.000
 Is that being interpreted into no fish oil?

00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:37.000
 In other words, fish oil is not as good as we've been made out to believe it is?

00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:38.000
 Yes.

00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:49.000
 There are many studies that people aren't being told about in which fish oil increases metastatic cancer,

00:47:49.000 --> 00:48:00.000
 has very serious immune suppressive effects that possibly relate to the fact that the cancer becomes more metastatic.

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.000
 And is it because probably the fish oil is not really good quality

00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:11.000
 and if it doesn't have vitamin E it oxidizes, goes rancid very quickly in our body?

00:48:11.000 --> 00:48:14.000
 Would that be part of it?

00:48:14.000 --> 00:48:20.000
 Some experimenters found that the beneficial so-called effects of fish oil,

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:26.000
 which the anti-inflammatory effect is what most people are recommending it for,

00:48:26.000 --> 00:48:36.000
 but they found that that anti-inflammatory action only exists after the oil has been oxidized

00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:43.000
 and it oxidizes very spontaneously so that by the time you swallow it and it gets in your bloodstream,

00:48:43.000 --> 00:48:47.000
 it's almost always oxidized.

00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:57.000
 It used to be used for varnishes because it oxidizes and hardens so spontaneously and thoroughly.

00:48:57.000 --> 00:49:06.000
 So the so-called beneficial effects really are associated with the breakdown products of it.

00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:11.000
 To summarize that, should we be taking fish oil with vitamin E

00:49:11.000 --> 00:49:16.000
 or should we just not worry about it and stick to salmon and sardines?

00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:25.000
 I even avoid salmon and sardines because of those toxic effects of the oils.

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:33.000
 Just in the last two or three years, the effects of certain breakdown products in the brain,

00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:38.000
 they're highly associated with Alzheimer's type dementia.

00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:45.000
 And these, they're called neural prostates and isoprostates

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:51.000
 and their origin can be traced directly to the essential fatty acids

00:49:51.000 --> 00:49:56.000
 and the DHA and EPA of fish oils.

00:49:56.000 --> 00:50:06.000
 And those have some very special involvement in producing Alzheimer's dementia.

00:50:06.000 --> 00:50:12.000
 So if you look at the prenatal effect and the Alzheimer's effect,

00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:21.000
 both ends are now incriminating the fish oil as a toxin.

00:50:21.000 --> 00:50:28.000
 And in between, what's most clearly established is that it's immunosuppressive.

00:50:28.000 --> 00:50:31.000
 Well, that definitely defies the world of economics

00:50:31.000 --> 00:50:35.000
 and all the wonderful mission statements that supplement companies make.

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.000
 So it's almost like we all really need to read widely and deeply

00:50:39.000 --> 00:50:44.000
 to get to the bottom line of cellular energy.

00:50:44.000 --> 00:50:50.000
 And speaking of energy, we're all advised to exercise.

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:56.000
 Doing aerobic exercise is one of the best ways to release energy, feel energetic.

00:50:56.000 --> 00:50:59.000
 And yet, a lot of the time, it's actually kind of productive.

00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:03.000
 Exercising for 40 or 50 minutes every day, doing cardio,

00:51:03.000 --> 00:51:08.000
 will actually shut down the thyroid or reduce the thyroid gland.

00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:11.000
 Can you explain that in depth?

00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:17.000
 Well, when you reach the threshold at which lactic acid rises,

00:51:17.000 --> 00:51:21.000
 that's when you start feeling out of breath.

00:51:21.000 --> 00:51:30.000
 The lactic acid has a pro-inflammatory effect, and that goes with a falling blood sugar.

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:35.000
 The blood sugar is being suddenly consumed at a higher rate

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:43.000
 because lactic acid production is much less efficient than aerobic oxidation.

00:51:43.000 --> 00:51:47.000
 So when the lactic acid appears, the sugar is low,

00:51:47.000 --> 00:51:51.000
 and you can't make your active thyroid hormone.

00:51:51.000 --> 00:51:56.000
 And if you're in very good health, your liver will be able to --

00:51:56.000 --> 00:52:00.000
 when you rest, your liver will get rid of the lactic acid.

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:06.000
 Your blood sugar will hopefully come back, and your thyroid will be okay.

00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:11.000
 But if your nutritional level isn't ideal,

00:52:11.000 --> 00:52:17.000
 sometimes just one episode of lactic acid-producing exercise

00:52:17.000 --> 00:52:22.000
 is enough to knock you down into a lower metabolic state.

00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:30.000
 So the difference between exercise that people define in high intensity, endurance,

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:36.000
 or even six-minute exercise where you just basically run uphill for 45 seconds,

00:52:36.000 --> 00:52:38.000
 you rest for 10 minutes, and you repeat that,

00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:42.000
 and that seems to build an enormous amount of lean muscle tissue

00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:46.000
 and kind of keep the lungs and the heart expanded.

00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:48.000
 And it's all a lot of debate.

00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:53.000
 And in my personal experience, I've seen as a nutritionist and a kinesiologist,

00:52:53.000 --> 00:52:56.000
 I see people that are fatigued, they're exhausted,

00:52:56.000 --> 00:52:58.000
 and they're actually putting on weight.

00:52:58.000 --> 00:53:02.000
 And they can't lose weight because they're exercising too much.

00:53:02.000 --> 00:53:06.000
 And they're convinced that they need to do something with their diet

00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:11.000
 as opposed to cut down on exercise and change their form of exercise

00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:14.000
 to suit the stress level because, after all, exercise is stress.

00:53:14.000 --> 00:53:17.000
 Too much is stress.

00:53:17.000 --> 00:53:22.000
 Some of the Eastern European exercise physiologists long ago

00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:25.000
 discovered that they could improve performance

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.000
 by making their athletes stop exercising.

00:53:29.000 --> 00:53:34.000
 And one of the things that happens is when you stop exercising soon enough,

00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:40.000
 your testosterone and pregnenolone and DHEA levels rise.

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.000
 And so they were accused of doping them.

00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:51.000
 If you just stop exercise early enough, the muscle activity,

00:53:51.000 --> 00:53:55.000
 for example, lifting a dumbbell just a few times,

00:53:55.000 --> 00:54:01.000
 will cause your muscles to produce testosterone and other androgens such as DHEA.

00:54:01.000 --> 00:54:08.000
 So the muscle becomes a steroidogenic gland when it's properly stimulated

00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:13.000
 and not forced to the point where it starts making lactic acid.

00:54:13.000 --> 00:54:19.000
 So high intensity, say two sets of dumbbells to failure

00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:23.000
 and then resting for three days would probably be more effective

00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:27.000
 than doing cardio for four or five times a week.

00:54:27.000 --> 00:54:32.000
 And since the mitochondrion is the source of steroid production,

00:54:32.000 --> 00:54:36.000
 you have to take good care of the mitochondria,

00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:40.000
 which in the type of exercise you do,

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:45.000
 ideally it should be mostly concentric exercise,

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:53.000
 meaning load while shortening and no load while relaxing and lengthening the muscle.

00:54:53.000 --> 00:54:59.000
 And that would mean running upstairs and sliding down the banister

00:54:59.000 --> 00:55:03.000
 or riding a bicycle uphill and coasting down

00:55:03.000 --> 00:55:11.000
 so that you get the loaded contracting muscle and the unloaded relaxing muscle.

00:55:11.000 --> 00:55:14.000
 In the gym, if they were just doing weights,

00:55:14.000 --> 00:55:18.000
 that would look like bicep curls, tricep extensions?

00:55:18.000 --> 00:55:26.000
 It would be lifting the weight and dropping it, which isn't polite.

00:55:26.000 --> 00:55:33.000
 They have machines designed to basically let you drop the weight after lifting it.

00:55:33.000 --> 00:55:36.000
 There are some people who actually do that at the gym

00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:40.000
 and I thought that was just that they were just fed up with the exercise

00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:45.000
 and now realize it's part of the concentric force.

00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:51.000
 Some exercise physiologists found that old people who seem to have deteriorated,

00:55:51.000 --> 00:55:55.000
 basically non-functioning mitochondria in their muscles,

00:55:55.000 --> 00:55:58.000
 after a few weeks of doing only concentric exercise,

00:55:58.000 --> 00:56:03.000
 they had brand new mitochondria.

00:56:03.000 --> 00:56:06.000
 So the bottom line is to do less.

00:56:06.000 --> 00:56:11.000
 When it comes to intense exercise, less is more.

00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:17.000
 Yes, or more of the right kind than none of the wrong kind of activity.

00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:21.000
 Exactly.

00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:29.000
 So you studied linguistics, which was your first priority to do your PhD?

00:56:29.000 --> 00:56:36.000
 Yes, I got as far as working on my dissertation.

00:56:36.000 --> 00:56:40.000
 It was closely related to the Forfian hypothesis

00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:43.000
 that language limits the way we think.

00:56:43.000 --> 00:56:55.000
 It was comparing the structures and ways people used Chinese and German and English

00:56:55.000 --> 00:57:02.000
 and showing that people could think more efficiently about certain subjects

00:57:02.000 --> 00:57:08.000
 in Chinese and English than in German or Hindi.

00:57:08.000 --> 00:57:17.000
 The decisive thing that made me shift to first brain biology

00:57:17.000 --> 00:57:23.000
 and then reproductive biology was I submitted a paper to a journal

00:57:23.000 --> 00:57:28.000
 and the editor said they accepted it,

00:57:28.000 --> 00:57:34.000
 but they wanted a clarification of a little remark I made about Noam Chomsky's linguistics.

00:57:34.000 --> 00:57:42.000
 When I expanded the paragraph, it was clear that I was criticizing Chomsky's view of language,

00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:46.000
 which is genetic and sort of absolute,

00:57:46.000 --> 00:57:51.000
 that there's no alternative except to think in language.

00:57:51.000 --> 00:57:57.000
 The editor said, "Oh, but you've criticized Chomsky. We can't publish that."

00:57:57.000 --> 00:58:04.000
 I saw that the linguistics culture was really just a cult

00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:09.000
 in which at that time Chomsky's linguistics happened to be--

00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:13.000
 he was the pope of linguistic theory.

00:58:13.000 --> 00:58:17.000
 Then when I began studying brain biology,

00:58:17.000 --> 00:58:23.000
 I found that the brain biologists had a similar authoritarian hierarchy

00:58:23.000 --> 00:58:31.000
 in which you had to think in terms of tape recording,

00:58:31.000 --> 00:58:37.000
 circuitry, and membrane all or nothing, cell function, and so on,

00:58:37.000 --> 00:58:40.000
 certain stereotype dogmas.

00:58:40.000 --> 00:58:44.000
 If you didn't do that, you couldn't be a brain biologist.

00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:50.000
 At that point, I looked around and decided to become a reproductive physiologist

00:58:50.000 --> 00:58:57.000
 because they were the least dogmatic of the biology community.

00:58:57.000 --> 00:59:02.000
 How was your thesis received at the time on progesterone in '72?

00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:11.000
 Oh, well, I don't think professors usually devote much time

00:59:11.000 --> 00:59:15.000
 to thinking about their students' work.

00:59:15.000 --> 00:59:20.000
 In my master's thesis on William Blake, for example,

00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:26.000
 it circulated among my committee for around six or seven months,

00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:30.000
 and I found when I got it back approved

00:59:30.000 --> 00:59:35.000
 that the typist had left out paragraphs that no one had noticed.

00:59:35.000 --> 00:59:41.000
 In my PhD dissertation, there was really only one criticism

00:59:41.000 --> 00:59:50.000
 out of the whole committee, and that was something that I just explained repeatedly,

00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:55.000
 and the professor finally understood my point.

00:59:55.000 --> 01:00:03.000
 No one really paid attention to the basic thesis very much.

01:00:03.000 --> 01:00:10.000
 In your experience, and you've obviously had lots of them and vast research,

01:00:10.000 --> 01:00:14.000
 is there such a thing, Raymond, as a scientific fact?

01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:19.000
 And if there is, what would it be?

01:00:19.000 --> 01:00:24.000
 Well, people mean different things when they say "fact,"

01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:31.000
 but I think there is such a thing as a fact, which is the experience,

01:00:31.000 --> 01:00:36.000
 the actual substance that is perceived.

01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:43.000
 But then we live in a world of meaning, and those perceptions,

01:00:43.000 --> 01:00:49.000
 it's sort of like the Gestalt psychology illustrations.

01:00:49.000 --> 01:00:55.000
 They have pictures of ambiguous figures, profiles, and a vase,

01:00:55.000 --> 01:01:02.000
 or a young girl and an old hag, in which some people will see one figure

01:01:02.000 --> 01:01:05.000
 and others will see the other.

01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:12.000
 And that's the process of imposing meaning on those experiential facts.

01:01:12.000 --> 01:01:20.000
 You can have an absolutely clear experience, an event that happens,

01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:26.000
 and then different people will interpret it and impose their meaning on it differently.

01:01:26.000 --> 01:01:32.000
 And that's where science becomes very much the same situation.

01:01:32.000 --> 01:01:38.000
 And as I said, in linguistics, we live in a universe of meaning,

01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:47.000
 which for most people is nothing but the culture and the language that they grew up knowing.

01:01:47.000 --> 01:01:54.000
 And so an ant and I can experience a situation,

01:01:54.000 --> 01:02:02.000
 and I'll tend to agree with the ant more than I'll agree with a biologist or a physicist.

01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:07.000
 So the more languages we speak, or the more concepts we understand,

01:02:07.000 --> 01:02:12.000
 the more ways we see the world, the more meaning we have.

01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:23.000
 Yeah, there have been studies comparing the intelligent behavior of polylingual kids

01:02:23.000 --> 01:02:29.000
 to that of bilingual kids, really are more intelligent than monolingual kids,

01:02:29.000 --> 01:02:41.000
 because they somewhat get out of the rigid way of perceiving the world that one language gives.

01:02:41.000 --> 01:02:48.000
 And by the age of three, people are already getting into that authoritarian,

01:02:48.000 --> 01:02:59.000
 habituated frame of mind, so that monkeys at the same age as a three-year-old kid

01:02:59.000 --> 01:03:06.000
 will behave more intelligently at solving some kinds of problems than the child,

01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:14.000
 because the child is already using linguistic preconceived ideas.

01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:21.000
 Or the monkey or the ant or whatever animal that doesn't have language

01:03:21.000 --> 01:03:27.000
 will look at the situation freshly.

01:03:27.000 --> 01:03:33.000
 Yes, and the whole world and understanding of linguistics and seeing the world

01:03:33.000 --> 01:03:40.000
 through the description of the language we speak deserves at least another hour.

01:03:40.000 --> 01:03:48.000
 So, Raymond, is there a question I have not asked you that you would have liked to answer?

01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:51.000
 Oh, nothing occurs to me.

01:03:51.000 --> 01:03:55.000
 Okay, then it was a very thorough, engaging conversation we had.

01:03:55.000 --> 01:03:58.000
 I certainly could have asked you a lot more questions,

01:03:58.000 --> 01:04:03.000
 and I'll find that your knowledge is so in-depth that I do probably need to read your articles

01:04:03.000 --> 01:04:08.000
 twice or three times, and I often recommend people to visit your website

01:04:08.000 --> 01:04:11.000
 and to equate themselves with the bottom-line information

01:04:11.000 --> 01:04:18.000
 to cipher through a lot of irrelevancies that we find in the world of information or infoglut,

01:04:18.000 --> 01:04:24.000
 and your website is www.raypeat.com.

01:04:24.000 --> 01:04:29.000
 That's Ray Peat with P-E-A-T.

01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:33.000
 Ray, it's been really a pleasure talking to you,

01:04:33.000 --> 01:04:38.000
 and you were put on the hot seat, and you've done a marvelous job,

01:04:38.000 --> 01:04:43.000
 and I'd like to thank you, and have a great day.

01:04:43.000 --> 01:04:45.000
 Okay, thank you.

01:04:45.000 --> 01:04:47.000
 Okay, bye for now.

01:04:47.000 --> 01:04:53.000
 And I'd like to thank Monica Brown for her wonderful contribution from Amayah's Production,

01:04:53.000 --> 01:04:57.000
 and until next time, in wellness, to your health.