Nitric Oxide, KMUD 2014

Sheila

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Nitric Oxide
KMUD - Ask Your Herb Doctor – (2014)


http://www.toxinless.com/kmud-141121-nitric-oxide.mp3

HD – Andrew Murray
RP – Ray Peat Ph.D
Engineer – Sound engineer in studio.
Caller – Various people calling in with their questions.

HD Intro or end remarks not transcribed, starts at RP entrance.
Transcribed by Sheila, Verified by Moss 30/12/2014.
_____________________________________________________________________

HD: So Dr Peat, thanks so much for joining us again.

RP: Aha, Hi.

HD: For those, perhaps - people who've never heard you, would you give an outline of your academic and professional background so that people can understand the work that you've been doing.

RP: First, I studied for a master's degree at University of Oregon, in Literature related things and then studied linguistics for a while, finally came back to study biology 1968-72 specialising in physiology of reproduction and ageing, and especially the biochemical side of ageing physiology.

HD: OK – All right, so, I wanted to ask you some questions about your most recent newsletter which was based on “Nitric Oxide” and hopefully open it up for people to understand the context in which we’re talking about as a product. I think, the very first question that I wanted to pose: given that the compound manufactured by Pfizer will be well-known to many, both in its generic form, and in the off-counter, or other brand label types of product, being Viagra. Nitric oxide has a majorly vasodilatory effect, as I understand it and that's just one of them, though I guess that's mediated by Viagra, and that drug is approved as a FDA approval for erectile dysfunction. What is it about nitric oxide that makes it so dangerous and responsible for things like cardiac arrest, stroke, arrhythmias and also increased ocular pressure which most people wouldn't even associate with Viagra? I've had several people who have used it and have had heart attack and stroke and that prompted me to even look at it as being something that should be definitely taken seriously. And I know also the kind of recreational drug users whose use poppers, exactly the same compound, has some very damaging effects on the body. What's your take on nitric oxide?

RP: Speaking of poppers, several of the early theorists of AIDS were blaming it on whatever the chemical is, I guess it's nitric oxide, that's produced from the poppers, some kind of nitric compound anyway, and they were arguing that that in itself was enough to account for the AIDS among the people who were using that as a pleasure drug. But in the 1980s, everyone knew nitric oxide primarily as a toxic component of smog, and so when people started discovering that it was being produced in small amounts in the body, immediately they started looking for the parallels with smog poisoning: lung injury, circulatory disease and so on. And one of the first things they found was that it kills the beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, so in early 1940s there was this flurry of papers demonstrating that our internal smog is just as toxic as Los Angeles smog!

But then the Viagra patent and publicity came out in the later 1990s and right then suddenly the medical publications all found that it was a glorious, protective and natural or protecting just about every function you could think of, making you smarter, have more endurance and all kinds of good things. But then, after a few years, I guess the investment in publicity started wearing off and people started coming back to the diabetes-producing effects and looking at what it's actually doing biochemically. The basic way it causes harm probably is that it is kind of parallel to the effects of carbon monoxide or cyanide, in being a competitor for oxygen in the mitochondria, the enzymes that produce most of our energy. It, in several ways, knocks out not only the key final respiratory enzyme, cytochrome oxidase, but it poisons the previous electron transporting parts of the mitochondrion too. So, simply turning off the energy supply can account for a lot of its problems. But it also, when you're stopping the oxidative run through the mitochondrion, as the mitochondrion starts leaking in effect electrons that have no place to go, and the whole cell shifts over to a reduced chemical state. That the electrons aren't being constantly drawn down and so the balance, if you imagine a stream of electrons falling steadily towards oxygen, when you cut off that, they accumulate and float back and literally the reducing environment shifts the whole balance of the self-reduced sulphur compounds and it's expressed all the way out to the surface, and the surface properties of the cell change, and there are some enzymes right across the surface, so this reducing the energy from energy inside the cell is available to reduce oxygen outside the cells since the mitochondria aren't using it productively. In fact this cloud of excess electrons flows through the enzyme called NADPH-oxidase and directly reduces oxygen on the surface. And that produces super oxide; a possibly toxic free radical that’s then produces hydrogen peroxide. And in the immune cells that are under stress, that's considered productive because it helps to break down bacteria or whatever is exciting/disturbing the white blood cell. So this toxic, oxidative burst has its useful aspects but probably it’s one of the better outcomes rather than just using the hydrogen peroxide directly, or producing nitric oxide, this hydrogen peroxide can be used to oxidise chloride that is always present into hyperchloride which becomes one of the very strong germ digesting chemicals that when a phagocyte has eaten something then it's basically like “chlorox”, it helps to break down the particle.

HD: OK, so in general the nitric oxide forms are pretty energy wasteful mechanism and also damaging in its free-radical producing effects.

RP: Yeah, this shift of the whole cell away from oxidation starts that whole process that people are still just starting to put together the whole picture of how it fits in to physiology. But it has its effects on the nervous system that people are now seeing that Parkinson's Disease, for example, has the signs that nitric oxide is one of the central damaging components of the dopamine system.

HD: You're listening to KMUD......So, so far as the damaging effects of nitric oxide are concerned, I think there is three species of nitric oxide and the one I think that's most commonly referenced in PubMed and other scientific literature for its effects, both negative and for that small beneficial effect of its energy burst effect on bacteria etc is the inducible nitric oxide synthase, and that's been implicated in causing an increased severity of disease in quite a few different models, one of which was a Herpes simplex model, encephalitis, which is a brain inflammation in mice, and then I saw other references as well to chronic viral hepatitis in man as definitely being aggravated by nitric oxide and potentially nitric oxide suppression might be a useful treatment for people suffering from chronic hepatitis. What are the most reasonable ways of blocking nitric oxide synthesis in the body or at least managing its production and providing a buffer to it so that you can maintain the little nitric oxide that is beneficial whilst keeping in check any excess.

RP: The body has its various, natural ways of keeping it under control, for example, progesterone inhibits the enzyme that makes nitric oxide while oestrogen excites and activates that enzyme and so when the cell is stabilised by a generous amount of progesterone and related neural steroids, the stabilising things, including pregnenolone, those hold down the production. Anything that irritates the cell and excites it, the endotoxin from the intestine is probably the biggest single constant promoter of the production of nitric oxide and sometimes serotonin and histamine which are produced in reaction to endotoxin and other irritating things, these can increase in various tissues, serotonin and histamine can increase, the formation of nitric oxide. In some situations, caffeine and similar drugs, that are known to have a variety of protective anti-toxic effects, are acting by locally in a certain type of tissue turning down the nitric oxide production. But, in recent years, the old dye, it was used as a treatment for malaria 100 years ago, called methylene blue, it's a common lab chemical used for showing the presence of a reducing compound, for example, Vitamin C, turns it white.

Lots of people use it to demonstrate chemistry in a visible form. It's being used for a tremendous variety of therapeutic purposes and simply by turning down nitric oxide, which causes so many bad effects, methylene blue is having very positive effects in this great variety of things including herpes and other viral and chronic viral diseases. The recent news about the Ebola virus, some people have noticed that one of the things if the patient is going to die, their nitric oxide level in the blood is very high and it's what is causing the blood vessels to leak and break down, causing a blood to leak out every place where it shouldn't. But you see something similar in ordinary influenza and other viral infections, the blood vessels tend to become leaky and produce swelling, and a lot of very common side effects that you see in diseases of all sorts.

HD: What would you think would be a good, short-term approach to that, to block that?

RP: From what's available presently, niacinamide and progesterone are things that are commonly available but methylene blue is probably, when it's available, is probably a good emergency thing to turn off the massive amounts of over-produced nitric oxide.

HD: I did read an article, I think there were several references to methylene blue and its use, either promoting or suppressing, depending on a dose, and it seems like very small amounts of methylene blue were having this favourable suppressive activity where larger amounts could actually cause...

RP: Yeah, some of the toxicity experiments have been kind of ridiculous in which they feed rats the equivalent for a person, it would be, an ounce or two of crystalline methylene blue which it would, just that amount of concentrated any chemical is going to be harmful. But it’s been twenty-five years ago, someone did a very well-controlled study of severe depressed people, 15mg per day was all it took to relieve severe depression. The side effects of even many times higher doses than that are essentially zero. Two studies, one by the NIH, 6 years ago and one more recent, gave greater doses, up to what would be the equivalent of about 4 or 5 or 6 grams a day for a person of the crystalline material, many times higher than the curative, anti-depressive dose, and they did it for the whole lifespan of rats and mice and saw no life-shortening effects in either rats or mice but in female mice, in both studies, they saw an extension of the maximum lifespan with the highest dose. And so in these ridiculously high doses many times, I guess about, 5-10x higher than the dose Paul Ehrlich used more than a hundred years ago to treat malaria – and he cured two cases of malaria in a period of just a couple of weeks - giving 5 doses a day of 100mg each time orally. But with very much smaller doses you see changes in the brain and reduced stress and curing depression and so on. At several times higher doses than he used to cure malaria you still don't see any harmful effects and in animal experiments, it took one of the gigantic doses, equivalent to, I think it was about 8g a day for a person, before it stopped doing the simple anti-depressive actions.

HD: Now do you think the effects of methylene blue, there are probably multiple effects, but I wonder if any of the electron quenching or electrical stabilising activity of methylene blue might be responsible for interacting with different proteins and that kind of...

RP: Yeah, one of the known mechanisms is that it can receive electrons from the mediator that receives them from glucose, and NADH for example, can be oxidised, and then the methylene blue can pass those electrons on to the part of the mitochondrion that is still working bypassing damaged parts of the mitochondrion so it can act like the missing enzymes simply restoring mitochondrial function. In subtler ways it, for example, the receptor that causes excito-toxic damage from overdoses of glutamic acid for example, anything that is depleting the brain of energy while stimulating it, activates these glutamate receptors and there are two sulphur groups in those proteins that respond to excito-toxins, that methylene blue oxidises those, and turns off the receptor and stops the excito-toxic process. And that's one of the ways, the excito-toxic processes, one of the things that turns on nitric oxide production going ahead and killing the cell, that's why the excited state is toxic, largely because of the production of nitric oxide.

HD: OK, now I guess methylene blue is not an FDA controlled substance or anything, I thinks it's fairly widely available, it's just a dye isn't it, and typically it's known as a dye, I know it's a tissue stain...

RP: And fish stores use it, I'm not sure how they use it, whether it's for sterilising aquariums or something and fish farmers use it to cure various fish infections.

HD: OK, well people listening perhaps might want to start looking up methylene blue and its implications in the treatment and/or the prevention of different degenerative conditions. So, extremely cheap I’m sure, not at all patented, not controlled, and if there’s some good studies coming out showing methylene blue's positive effects blocking nitric oxide, I think that could be well worth people looking at as an alternative to many of the drugs that people might be using for different conditions.

RP: I've counted about 6 different ways that methylene blue stops or blocks the production of nitric oxide.

HD: OK, go on, do you want to share them or?

RP: Well no, but the excito-toxic thing was one, preventing excess polymerisation of the microtubules another, probably increasing progesterone production, inhibiting oestrogen production, but probably the most important thing people should do is to start being critical about the tremendous amount of propaganda selling the idea that people should eat more arginine to increase their nitric oxide production.

HD: Wow, it always amazes me how this stuff actually comes into circulation as quote: 'common knowledge', and how easily influenced the media is by Big Pharma, anyway, not to go on too much about that, because we could probably go on forever about how Big Pharma have their hooks all over. You're listening to Ask your Herb Doctor, KMUD....and Dr Raymond Peat is with us in the studio......OK, we have a caller on the line already look at that, OK caller you're on the air, where are you from?

Caller: I'm from Southern Humboldt here, John, I want to know if all of the oestrogen imitators that are around us in the environment that we've created for ourselves to live in are also something that will put us at risk?

HD: Very much so, yeah, yeah.

RP: I think I've seen that bisphenyl-A activates nitric oxide production.

HD: There you go, and that's an oestrogen promoter, a mimic. OK, environmental oestrogen is very much a negative impact on our health, many of which have come from petrochemical industry, plastics industry etc. Dr Peat what do you think some of the most damaging environmental oestrogens that you know of that ah……

RP: Oh, the natural oestrogen [HD: it's damaging enough!] through the sewage is getting in the rivers. For the environment, I think the natural oestrogen and the birth control oestrogen that are many times stronger than natural oestrogen and that is showing up in all of the downstream waterways that receive sewage.

HD: So waste water management does NOT selectively remove hormones from the water then, are you saying that? I wonder if it's reasonable to posit that there is detectable amount in drinking water even?

Engineer: Well, as a sewer board person I can tell you, that one of the ways that they tell whether water's coming from a sewage system or from nature, is they look for caffeine, that's considered one of the chemicals that makes it through and is a marker for sewage as oppose to animal waste or whatever and so yeah a lot of those chemicals do make it through.

Caller: Yeah, the other part of my questions was “Is there a plant or a herb that actually produces or mimics methylene blue that you can ingest instead of?”

RP: Oh, I've been looking around at various molecules and it was a precursor for many of the drugs, the tricyclic anti-depressants and tricyclic anti-histamines and anti-inflammatories, I think all grew out of the dye industry that methylene blue was one of the very first examples of, but it's a three ring molecule and that seems, probably because it's structurally roughly the same size and shape as the steroid hormones, it probably can get into the many different places that natural steroids act. And so I've looked around at plants that make analogous things, the tetracyclines have many the same anti-inflammatory effects, I suspect they're also working against nitric oxide. They just have one extra ring but in a very similar arrangement and Vitamin K and Vitamin E are even analogous in some ways. Lapacho, a chemical from a South American tree, it's a dye that has many of the anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer properties of methylene blue.

Caller: Can you spell that?

HD: Lapacho, Tabebuia impetigenosa, it's a South American tall hardwood, used extensively for cancer, as Dr Peat mentioned they call it Pau D'Arco.

HD: Recently people are talking about an Asian herb, I think one of the names is Black cumin, but it contains thymol quinone. And the quinones are, I think, the essential; model of the protective pro-oxidant stabilising chemical, and thymol quinone is considered to be a very powerful anti-inflammatory. And I suspect that it will turn out to be acting against excess nitric oxide.

HD: It's a free radical quencher again isn't it, the quinones?

RP: Yeah, that's just one of their many...they seem to activate the right kind of oxidation whilst quenching the bad kind.

HD: OK, very good.

Caller: Well thanks very much.

HD: Thanks for your call, caller, we do have three callers on the line. Let’s get them on one after the other. Caller you're on the line, and where are you from?

Caller: Arcada. Thanks, I've been listening to your show for a good 4 years or so, a couple of quick review questions from the past, I've been wondering about for a long time. It was mentioned some time ago about a nutrient I believe that could help, or remediate or you know fix an earlobe crease, does that ring any bells?

HD: What was the last thing you said? Earlobe crease? That's a thyroid deficiency isn't it?

RP: Yes, I think that is mainly a thyroid deficiency.

Caller: Did I hear at the time a simple recommendation for correction of that, was there a nutrient or is it much more complex matter to address?

RP: I think the main thing causing hypothyroidism in so many people, is an excess of the polyunsaturated fatty acids because they are able to block the thyroid, its transport and its action. So they're very capable of antagonising thyroid function.

HD: So to avoid all the nuts and seeds that contain liquid oils in them, so nuts and seeds, principally the kind of polyunsaturated sources and obviously there are other polyunsaturates commonly available in food that you should definitely avoid, so any of the liquid oils, obviously...

Caller: What about coconut oil?

HD: Coconut oil is saturated so that's good. Dr Peat is always recommending coconut oil and butter as being the two saturated sources of fat that should be the most consumed and then to avoid all the liquid polyunsaturates obviously fish oil being the worst.

Caller: OK, oh like cod liver oil?

HD: That too but I think, Dr Peat do you say that the vitamin content in cod liver oil?

RP: Oh yeah, if you don't have any better source, cod liver oil is a great source of Vitamin D, but it's better to get sunlight.

Caller: Can I ask one other quick question? There was something that came up about eating carrots, and I don't know what the term would be, but I want to say like an astringent or cleaning or purifying...

HD: Anti-septic?

Caller: ...aspect of eating carrots. It was recommended that carrots be cut diagonally. As a juicer and a cook I guess of my own food, I thought that was a bit peculiar, and I wonder if that could be elaborated upon?

HD: No, I think Dr Peat's always mentioned that grated carrot to increase the surface area is the mechanism that’s preferred and that's basically as a anti- septic, if you like, for the gut, removing excess oestrogen and other waste products and it's undigested so it has a pretty good action in the gut without being physically changed.

Caller: Like chewing it is not enough to enhance the surface area, like breaking it down?

HD: Well, it's not the same, because ultimately when you grate the product in a grater then you obviously have a big surface area then whatever you chew that up from then is going to increase it still.

RP: The juice does contain a lot of good things. But if you throw away the fibre you are then losing the most important thing for stimulating and cleaning the intestine.

Caller: Well, thanks for your help.

HD: Thanks for your call, I have a couple more callers here, lets take the next caller, where are you from? Hello caller your on the air where are you calling from? Was on the air?.....

Caller: Hello? I'm here. I’m from Southern Humboldt. Did you say that l-arginine was bad? I'd heard that was supposed to be good for you but I'm not sure what it's supposed to do?

HD: Dr Peat, arginine you mentioned a minute ago..

Caller: ...And is there a difference between arginine and l-arginine?

RP: Yes the internet is just swamped with advertisements for ways to supplement arginine; l-arginine is just the natural amino acid, but if you get more than you need, it will increase your tendency to over-produce nitric oxide and too much tryptophan happens to boost that. And possibly by increasing serotonin but it's very important to keep your amino acids in a good balance, especially avoiding too much cysteine, tryptophan, methionine and arginine.

Caller: So you don't recommend taking an l-arginine supplement?

RP: No, I think it's very dangerous.

Caller: Ohhhh! OK. Now did you say that Viagra is bad for you because
it's made out of this nitric oxide stuff?

RP: It inhibits an enzyme that is supposed to inactivate a substance made by the production of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide starts a chain reaction and Viagra keeps that chain reaction going and in the process it ends up systemically increasing, not only the effect of nitric oxide but in some situations the level of nitric oxide so it probably is increasing the aging process basically in brain, heart, pancreas, everywhere you get an excess of nitric oxide.

Caller: But they say that having sex is good for you, if you can't have sex that's not so great either...I mean is it a matter of moderation, of not using it too often, can it be OK if you use some of it? I mean I don't know I'm not a man.

RP: Well its one of the essential amino acids, and so if you eat any good, high quality protein, even potatoes, milk, cheese you're going to get all the arginine you need.

Caller: No, I'm talking about Viagra now.

RP: Oh, Viagra.

Caller: Yeah, I mean is that totally bad or is it OK you know, to have some of it. Because I'm saying if that improves the sexual function, you know, of an older man, then sexual function is supposed to be a good thing, I mean, is there a balance there or do you think it's totally bad?

RP: I think it would be a better to work on the actual physiological problem, improving natural circulation - for example, restoring good thyroid function will often increase libido and potency.

HD: Now Dr Peat, I remember now, some time ago, you also mentioning pregnenolone and/or progesterone as being very positive. In the past you've always talked about progesterone potentially being slightly sedative and maybe decreasing, I think and now you have said this, now let me quote you, I think you said, ‘decreasing penis size’, but it does not block the vasodilatory ability and so therefore actually does promote and enables erection and naturally is a reasonably safe way of doing that in males.

Caller: But what about testosterone?

HD: One thing at a time ma'am.

RP: Aging men have decreased amounts of testosterone and progesterone and increasing amounts of oestrogen and that increased oestrogen and the decreased amounts of the protective steroids I think, will increase the tendency to have erectile problems. And one of the really odd side effects of increased nitric oxide is that it decreases the ability to make testosterone and, at least in women, it lowers the progesterone synthesis. But those are synthesised very similarly, so I think in both men and women, nitric oxide is opposing and lowering those protective steroids while increasing oestrogen.

Caller: Well what about Cialis? Is that just the same as Viagra? There's several products on the market that are supposed to help men with their erection.

HD: It's another version.

Caller: Are they all the same?

HD: Yeah, pretty much.

Caller: Alright, well thank you.

HD: Thanks for your call. OK, Dr Peat, I wanted to ask you some more questions about nitric oxide and/or some of the articles that I've seen about it promoting cancer. What are your thoughts on the cancer promoting effects of nitric oxide?

RP: I think it's one of the central factors in keeping cancer going. And so turning it off....

HD: You don't necessarily think it's a promoter then?

RP: Oh yeah, it is a definite promoter of cancer growth and metastasis. Many publications are now recognising that, of breast cancer, prostate cancer and probably every cancer will, probably eventually be discovered to respond badly to nitric oxide. The function of anything interfering with respiration, that's where the Warburg Hypothesis was that simply shifting away from oxygen as the energy source, to being able to produce too much lactic acid, even when there's oxygen, because the cell has lost its mitochondrial function - nitric oxide and carbon monoxide are both able to knock out the mitochondrial function and imitate the cancer metabolism and there are several recent publications showing that the Warburg cancer metabolism is created by nitric oxide excess and is turned off by methylene blue. Simply by turning off the production of nitric oxide.

HD: OK, you're listening to KMUD........ So Dr Peat again, I had a question on my mind during this week that reading different research on different diseases and apart from that, knowing that some individuals are just inherently more able to enjoy good health seemingly against all odds, have you any understanding of why some individuals, for example, are immune to HIV, some individuals mount a successful response against hepatitis, some individuals just have an innate immunity which enables them to overcome what it is they come into contact with and they don't suffer from it. Do you think there's any connection between anything you've read that you know about that you might explain that from?

RP: Yeah, there are new ideas about the whole functioning of the immune system that have been coming up in the last twenty years. Jamie Cunliffe and Polly Matzinger are the leading figures in that view on the immune system. And I see it as imagining the body as an eco-system which is simply so strong in some people at maintaining its own organisation and stability that when something extraneous like a bacterium or a virus or a cancer cell happens to invade it, the situation is so tightly organised in favour of maintaining the host organism, that the invader can't find their place, the niches are all occupied doing business with the owner of the property, that there's simply no place to camp out.

HD: Like the strong man in the house, no one can invade it.

RP: Yeah, and I don't see it as a killing of the invader, but simply as using up all of the electron space productively so that the invader can't do strange things with it like turning sugar into lactic acid.

HD: OK, I'd love to be able to get into the subject that I saw posted last thing today. And that was to quote what I've said before many times and I think has been repeated through generations that “you are what you eat”. I'd think I'd love to get into that subject with you next month. I think we have another caller on air anyway, but I'd love to get into that subject next month and just show that what we hear sometimes really does mean a lot more than we take for granted, and that actually a lot of the things that are passed down from old generations to now really have their roots in fundamental science and that science now is at last being able to bear that out. So let me just get this other caller on the air and then we'll carry on.

Engineer: Actually, two simple questions coming through me. First one is MSM and does it have an influence on male or female libido? OK, Dr Peat, MSM...Methylsulfonylmethane.

RP: I'm very cautious about it. The dimethyl sulphide I think has its uses but I'm not sure that there's anything really fully safe with MSM.

Engineer: And what about DCA or dichloroacetate for cancers?

RP: That happens to be very similar to methylene blue in the way it is essentially non-toxic in moderate amounts, people are now getting as much as 10 or 12g of it per day intravenously and feeling great but what it does is restore the productive oxidation of glucose getting the electrons to go all the way from glucose to form carbon dioxide, pretty much what methylene blue is doing in different situations. But the DCA is reversing the cancer metabolism, or the so-called Warburg metabolism, the same way that methylene blue does, so I see it as a very important way of making up for the toxic effects of nitric oxide, endotoxin, free radical, fat oxidation and so on.

Engineer: And you've spoken of anti-oxidants that are too strong, can you maybe give a spectrum of anti-oxidants and to say is ALA too strong or what is the strongest anti-oxidant that you would recommend and is THC in that spectrum as well?

RP: Vitamin E and ascorbic acid, in the right proportion and the right situation are very safe and constructive. Alpha-lipoic acid is pretty safe but I would be very cautious with the acetyl-cysteine, I think large amounts of it can push the balance in the wrong direction.

HD: OK, alright, Dr Peat I had a question actually from a person who wrote to me who said that they were unable to call in because they were outside the country and I think by the time I responded to them to ask them what country they were in it was probably already too late. And I have come across this with other people anyway in our own practice and working with you, I think I understand the situation but I’d like to hear it from you. It was particularly with a woman who said, that she had hypothyroidism, symptoms including depression, weight gain, cold hands and feet, dry hair and skin, her TSH (her thyroid stimulating hormone) was 1.6 which wasn't super high but I know you like it to be as close to zero as possible and her T3 was 3.5. She said, she used to take Armour thyroid she was prescribed this by a Doctor and it helped with symptoms for a few months but she said that when she tried to supplement with T3 or a T3/T4 combination she developed anxiety and tachycardia. She said she's experimented with doses as small even as 1mg of T3 and she said it would send her into a hyperthyroid type state, I think that's kind of anxiety and palpitations, it maybe an adrenalin thing but she said is there anything she can do to better tolerate thyroid supplementation. She was currently taking zinc gluconate, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, she's using 4000iu of Vitamin D, she's using Progest-e the second half of her menstrual cycle, aspirin, magnesium and calcium. She also eats liver, weekly. What do you think might cause that in a person who previously might have used thyroid and then suddenly becomes what they call sensitive to it and unable to use it?

RP: Sometimes I think it's that the product has changed. European forms of thyroid supplement seem to be very unpredictable, but if it's for sure the same product, then usually a magnesium deficiency can cause exactly those symptoms because the thyroid makes your cells able to use magnesium and so take it up, but a big organ like your skeletal muscles and bones can take up so much from your blood that your brain and heart and such have trouble getting the magnesium they need to respond to the thyroid, and then you get an exaggerated stress and adrenalin reaction. And low cholesterol is another limiting factor; if you have very low cholesterol you can't respond to increasing your thyroid because one of the basic functions of thyroid is to turn cholesterol into progesterone, pregnenolone and DHEA.

HD: OK, so what kind of dose of magnesium would you think for that kind of person would be suitable?

RP: About 100mg at a time as you take the say 1-2 mcg of cytomel, or cynomel. 100mg will be plenty for the first 2 or 3 hours of responding to 1 or 2 micrograms.

HD: I looked earlier on as I was doing some searching around and saw that the main principle sources it seems of magnesium were nuts and seeds, and I think there were small amounts in soy, but I think principally what would you recommend as a good magnesium source?

RP: Fruit juices and coffee. I think if you want a really intense source you can boil leaves like kale or beet greens or something just for two or three minutes, and the green water that comes out quickly is very concentrated in magnesium and calcium. That's a very, pretty safe supplement. Coffee and fruit juices are practical and something you can do every day.

HD: OK, alright, like I said, perhaps next month if you are available, I'd love to look into that new research, well actually I think it was brought out in the mid 1960s by that Korean, it sounded very interesting about the third circulatory system in the body and actually ‘you are what you eat’, because there is a pretty intimate interaction between food products and our own DNA, they can be switched on and off and regulated and that sounded pretty fascinating.

RP: Yeah, there’s a German group that have been doing this for about 15 years now, looking at the DNA from our foods getting incorporated into our own DNA and some biologists have been theorising about this for the last 100 years and Carl Lindegren was someone who reviewed the topic about 50 years ago, showing good evidence that organisms all across the spectrum are sharing nucleic acid. Pollen for example, when you ingest pollen that's blowing in the air, some of the DNA is a probably actually getting incorporated into our chromosomes.

HD: Thanks so much for giving your time to the show this evening Dr Peat.

RP: OK, thank you.

http://www.raypeat.com for more information.
 
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Re: Transcript of KMUD Nitric Oxide 2014 PDF file

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More recently, it has been discovered that progesterone inhibits the expression of the enzyme nitric oxide synthase, while estrogen stimulates its expression. At the time of ovulation, when estrogen is high, a woman breathes out 50% more nitric oxide (“NO”) than men do, but at other times, under the influence of increased progesterone and thyroid, and reduced estrogen, women exhale much less NO than men do. (Nitric oxide is a free radical, and it decomposes into other toxic compounds, including the free radical peroxynitrile, which damages cells, including the blood vessels. brain, and heart. Carbon dioxide tends to inhibit the production of peroxynitrile.)

If nitric oxide produced under the influence of estrogen were important in preventing cardiovascular disease, then men’s larger production of nitric oxide would give them greater protection than women have.

From more realistic perspectives, nitric oxide is being considered as a cause of aging, especially brain aging. Nitric oxide interacts with unsaturated fats to reduce oxygen use, damage mitochondria, and cause edema. Ray Peat
 

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