Chris Masterjohn: Hormones Are Never In Charge

[Gawdawg]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8m-hnJiw_I



Certainly an interesting perspective; unfortunately I am not knowledgeable enough to analyze it from a Peat perspective, so posting for discussion.

Thyroid hormone is the conductor.

 

[TheSir]

I'm saying quite the opposite -- there only exist universal "cures," and there exist no specific ones for specific diseases, save maybe for some edge cases like scurvy and vitamin C. Ultimately my argument here is that assigning cause and effect and waxing about "underlying problems" is just a theoretical game, and what really matters are statistics. And the statistics on hormone therapy are as good or better than anything you would theoretically consider to not be "complimentary" but rather fundamental. And therefore I question whether that is a useful or true delineation.

Given that nothing can ever be 100% effective, we have to view this in terms of probabilities. For example, the Gerson method has been known to "cure" almost any degenerative disease. It probably has one of the highest statistical chances of success (although we can only infer that since it will never be formally studied for obvious reasons). I think if anything deserves to fall under the category of "cure" that we can all agree on (focused on eliminating toxins and supplying nutrients), that's as good of a candidate as we're going to get. And yet it still has its limits and is far from a guarantee.

So the question is, is a type 2 diabetic that goes on testosterone and in a few months is no longer diabetic "cured" or not? If he ceases treatment and has changed nothing else, then the answer may be "no," but those few months of metabolic reprieve will still allow his body a better chance at recovery than if he had not used it. If he stays on indefinitely, and never tests positive for diabetes again in his life, regardless of what you want to say about underlying problems, I think it's hard to argue that the answer isn't "yes." And if he uses those few months of reprieve to make changes that would not have been nearly as effective without the intervention, and then successfully ceases treatment and remains non-diabetic, I think the answer has to be an unequivocal "yes." In other words, you wouldn't be able to separate out the lifestyle changes from the hormonal intervention to say what had the larger effect, and there is a very good statistical reason to believe that it's the intervention.

Lastly I would add that many conditions are obviously incurable on their face. Diseases like schizophrenia where neurons literally develop in utero to fire the wrong direction. Obviously there will never be a cure that flips them around the right way. Even Max Gerson would say, if a patient is too far gone or has received dialysis, the method will not work. This is the extreme end of the spectrum on which all disease exists, and the diseases we are most concerned with are degenerative, which slide along this spectrum, and are fundamentally indistinguishable from aging. We are all going to die from degeneration if we are so lucky to not get killed in some other manner. As such, I would argue that anything that delays that degeneration, even if only from a 9/10 to 7/10 as you say, is fundamentally indistinguishable from a cure.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. You are right, my argument is very theoretical. Yet whether we approach the subject from the point of view of theory or statistics does not matter much so long as we are not in agreement over what constitutes a cure. You are proposing that hormones have a statistically good curative ability without specifying whether a cure simply means successful management of the overt symptoms, or permanent remission of the pathology on the underlying biological level.

To bridge this to the similar question which you aimed at me in the third paragraph: in my eyes a condition that returns upon discontinuation of the treatment is not a cure, but a band-aid. A cure has to be a permanent, complete and unconditional remission. For example, having to stay on a treatment in order not to relapse is a condition. Verdict: not a cure. Same goes for partial or temporary recovery. If you are cured, then why would you be at risk of further symptoms?

Regarding your last paragraph, if the severity of your Alzheimer's goes from 9/10 to 7/10, are you now fundamentally indistinguishable from those who are not demented at all? It seems like you would be willing to settle for extremely little when it comes to calling something a cure. Why, if i may ask? Is your view on health that fatalistic?

And if he uses those few months of reprieve to make changes that would not have been nearly as effective without the intervention, and then successfully ceases treatment and remains non-diabetic, I think the answer has to be an unequivocal "yes." In other words, you wouldn't be able to separate out the lifestyle changes from the hormonal intervention to say what had the larger effect, and there is a very good statistical reason to believe that it's the intervention.

If you are not able to separate out the effects of the lifestyle changes from the hormonal intervention, how are you able to say that the former would not have been as effective without the latter? Furrhermore, is testosterone able to cure diabetes for good by itself ( cure as per my definition)? If not, how could testosterone be anything but a complementary treatment? No amount of combining it with other treatments would change this. If yes, I'd like to learn more about this.

I guess it depends what we mean by cure but I am unaware of anything else with these types of therapeutic effects with so few negative effects

Ray talked about a study where dropping an anti-thyroid substance into a tadpole's water tank resulted in a large tadpole that failed to become a frog. Dropping thyroid into the tank produced a premature frog. To me that suggests thyroid has an essential role in development.

A cure is something that results in a permanent and complete remission without forming a dependency. There is no doubt that hormones can be used to great benefit. Yet their benefit is dependent on their continuous application. Taking progesterone might kill a tumor, but it will not nudge the body permanently away from the underlying cancer metabolism, leaving you at risk for new tumors. Taking thyroid can give you your life back, but it will not address the root of your hypothyroidism. Hormones have strong therapeutic powers, and like you said they play important roles in our development, but because they are mere intermediate level actors in the body, they can't truly cure diseases because diseases affect the very (non-hormone) foundation of the body.

Thanks for the resource! I‘ve read a great deal of it today, as I am a skeptic of this approach. After reading, it still seems like an HTMA leaves a lot room for analysis and interpretation. (and maybe even speculation) The mineral-interactions also seem never-ending and complicated. (that reminded me of gbold‘s post thats I could barely follow or understand when i read them)

The mineral-interactions are exceedingly complex. It took Eck ten years and about 120k hair samples to correlate the various mineral levels, ratios and patterns with specific states of the body. Ultimately he got to a point where he was able to predict exactly what kind of symptoms his clients would be suffering from, including symptoms which they themselves were not aware of initially. In some fifty years HTMA has built itself a pretty solid and immutable foundation. It's not perfect, but it's easily the best way to examine what is going on in the body that I have come across in my 15 years of armchair nutrition research.

 

[Clyde]

…

Just my 2 cents on this..

And I would like to see evidence that diet and nutrients fix or reverse type 1 diabetes, primary hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, addisons disease, cushings syndrome or primary hypogonadism.

Many on this forum are not even able to fix their more „simple“ diseases like IBS or depression with diet and nutrients.

I've never known anyone to go from a really bad body composition to a lean, athletic body type with a couple abs showing etc. It's almost like it doesn't happen. I'm trying to think anyone and I can't.

Mostly people go from fat to overweight (like 33% to 23%) or something like that and go back and forth. On the occasion they get skinny but more likely they end up skinny fat and drop their lean tissue.

So I've wondered whether getting a lean, ancestral body with activity and sunlight could cure some of these conditions. It's worth trying and imo dropping healthy foods if it makes it easier to reach your goal is good strategy. I've had the mindset that I need to get this food in or that food in bc I came up short on this macro or micro and I'm obsessing on food at all times gaining weight which then throws off your hormones.

The first part of his presentation made a lot of sense to me. I'm glad he's still around producing content.

 

[Runenight201]

This whole thing sounds like a chicken or the egg problem to me. I don't know of any disease with an actual cure to begin with. Hormones are probably the closest thing to that, at least for any degenerative disease. The whole point of their use is an attempt to optimize physiological function. Improving quality of life indefinitely sounds pretty darn optimal to me.

Diet is important, sure. But try to get a man to "cure" his type 2 diabetes (just for example) through diet alone, and then give him some testosterone and let him sort the diet out in time. I'll bet on the success of #2 and the failure of #1 any day.

There was Walter Kemp’s rice diet back in the 50s or so that reversed diabetes.
…

I've never known anyone to go from a really bad body composition to a lean, athletic body type with a couple abs showing etc. It's almost like it doesn't happen. I'm trying to think anyone and I can't.

Mostly people go from fat to overweight (like 33% to 23%) or something like that and go back and forth. On the occasion they get skinny but more likely they end up skinny fat and drop their lean tissue.

So I've wondered whether getting a lean, ancestral body with activity and sunlight could cure some of these conditions. It's worth trying and imo dropping healthy foods if it makes it easier to reach your goal is good strategy. I've had the mindset that I need to get this food in or that food in bc I came up short on this macro or micro and I'm obsessing on food at all times gaining weight which then throws off your hormones.

The first part of his presentation made a lot of sense to me. I'm glad he's still around producing content.

Changing overall morphology is incredibly difficult and requires a high level of knowledge and consistency over a long period of time. It certainly is possible tho.

Becoming A Man With Peat And Haidut

What’s up RPF! I wanted to share my progress with raising androgen levels with Peat and @haidut insight. The information he shared with me awhile ago, using DHEA, Preg, and K2 to raise T, has been a hot topic on the forum the last few days. (thread below) Raising Serum Androgens Using DHEA...

raypeatforum.com

Check his before in 2016 and the his current in 2023. 2 different morphologies.

Also look at those progesterone therapies before and after in this thread. The one with the women were most striking because you could see her entire body. Before she had a very unattractive and weak morphology and you can see the after as her sexual traits become more pronounced and the body skeletal shape morphs into a more mechanically aligned posture.

The reason why you almost rarely see impressive transformations is because most people REALLY don’t know how to truly change our fundamental structures

Hormonal therapy is a tool in the tool kit. Useful and powerful, but you gotta have a diverse toolkit to maneuver through this life. Imagine fixing a car with just a wrench… you need so many other tools to properly maintain the vehicle.

 

[Clyde]

There was Walter Kemp’s rice diet back in the 50s or so that reversed diabetes.
…


Changing overall morphology is incredibly difficult and requires a high level of knowledge and consistency over a long period of time. It certainly is possible tho.

Becoming A Man With Peat And Haidut

What’s up RPF! I wanted to share my progress with raising androgen levels with Peat and @haidut insight. The information he shared with me awhile ago, using DHEA, Preg, and K2 to raise T, has been a hot topic on the forum the last few days. (thread below) Raising Serum Androgens Using DHEA...

raypeatforum.com

Check his before in 2016 and the his current in 2023. 2 different morphologies.

Also look at those progesterone therapies before and after in this thread. The one with the women were most striking because you could see her entire body. Before she had a very unattractive and weak morphology and you can see the after as her sexual traits become more pronounced and the body skeletal shape morphs into a more mechanically aligned posture.

The reason why you almost rarely see impressive transformations is because most people REALLY don’t know how to truly change our fundamental structures

Hormonal therapy is a tool in the tool kit. Useful and powerful, but you gotta have a diverse toolkit to maneuver through this life. Imagine fixing a car with just a wrench… you need so many other tools to properly maintain the vehicle.

Extremely! interesting, thanks. I think this is the best chance most people have at a cure even if supplements, hormones and drugs are required to get them there.

 

[Highserotonin90]

Health research is a puzzle and the overall picture must always be considered, not just the details unfortunately I have never found any doctor capable of this. Maybe once you find health it's a bit like the pursuit of happiness and you always want more? (dopamine) I don't know, this scares me about substance abuse instead of removing as many exogenous things as possible.

 

[Pete Rey]

If you are not able to separate out the effects of the lifestyle changes from the hormonal intervention, how are you able to say that the former would not have been as effective without the latter?

This is exactly my point -- neither of us can. I merely suspect (strongly) that this is true based on experience and study, but there is no way to prove it outright. Which is why it is my contention that the word "cure" must exist on a spectrum. And therefore why this definition doesn't work for me:

A cure is something that results in a permanent and complete remission without forming a dependency.

To me this is a contradiction because "remission" in a medical sense is by definition temporary. Fatalistic or not, I don't see how one could argue that aging is not a permanent condition (without even going into any specific permanent conditions like I mentioned where reversal is simply not in the cards). At some point, degeneration will overcome any and all interventions.

Additionally, one would be by definition dependent on whatever changes were made, even dietary. So in my mind the question of dependency is moot, and the real question is: Which interventions will have the greatest effect towards the "remission" of the symptoms of aging for as long as possible, given the inevitability of decline? That's how I would frame the definition, if we are to use the word at all. The farther along that spectrum it falls, the more deserving it is to be called a cure, regardless of any other biological theory regarding intermediary status or anything else.

 

[Bioenergy_Space]

Part of the reason that many people think hormones are not effective is because most hormone use is conservative and not experimental. Natural hormones are not the end-all-be-all. Evolution constantly produces new and better substances to serve as endocrine signals. The potential power of hormones can be seen for example In people who take 1mg of metribolone per day and don`t die of liver failure. Their bodies transform in ways that are impossible to achieve without it.

Hormones are on a molar basis the most powerful modulators of the organism that exist.

 

[gd81]

A cure is something that results in a permanent and complete remission without forming a dependency. There is no doubt that hormones can be used to great benefit. Yet their benefit is dependent on their continuous application. Taking progesterone might kill a tumor, but it will not nudge the body permanently away from the underlying cancer metabolism, leaving you at risk for new tumors. Taking thyroid can give you your life back, but it will not address the root of your hypothyroidism. Hormones have strong therapeutic powers, and like you said they play important roles in our development, but because they are mere intermediate level actors in the body, they can't truly cure diseases because diseases affect the very (non-hormone) foundation of the body.

I guess that will depend greatly on the context. As you said progesterone will cure a tumor but obviously if somebody is still being poisoned with PUFA etc it could return. But progesterone can also greatly improve thyroid function etc, it's use will help steer the body back to health rather than just being some drug of dependence.

The root causes of hypothyroidism are probably many, probably not understood and probably hard to do anything about like an insane society, chemical poisoning from exposure to toxic pharmaceuticals early in childhood/pregnancy etc. Thyroid use is probably the only thing available in these circumstances. Aside from occasional diet success. and pregnenolone I haven't seen anything else that can cure hypothyroidism

 

[TheSir]

This is exactly my point -- neither of us can. I merely suspect (strongly) that this is true based on experience and study, but there is no way to prove it outright. Which is why it is my contention that the word "cure" must exist on a spectrum. And therefore why this definition doesn't work for me:

Fair, however this only undermines your own hunches, rather than anything I have written. You are, in essence, demonstrating that neither of us can prove your point. I can live with that, heh. In case of mineral balance & HTMA, the effects of nutrition and lifestyle can be scientifically identified and usually even predicted separately.

Unfortunately I'm not following how your point would lead to a cure having to exist on a spectrum.

To me this is a contradiction because "remission" in a medical sense is by definition temporary.

Ah, forgive me for my lackluster semantic expertise. I don't know what word would be more apt to describe the resolving of a disease.

I don't see how one could argue that aging is not a permanent condition

I think any attempt at equating (degenerative) diseases with aging is unrealistic. The body can continue to age biologically all the while specific degenerative pathologies improve, or even vanish. Likewise, old people sometimes pass away in good health, free of disease, with no discernible cause of death. Often these people might intuitively know that they have mere days left to live. It's as if their designated life energy just runs out. This produces an interesting question from the perspective of your view: are these people biologically old or young when the die?

I think arguing that we can't cure diseases because we can't stop aging suggests a failure to understand what disease is. Aging merely creates an environment for disease to thrive, but it's not a prerequisite to disease, as degenerative diseases occur in all age groups and can be caused by factors that have nothing to do with aging, such as heavy metal poisoning or nutritional deficiencies.

At some point, degeneration will overcome any and all interventions.

Herein lies the difference between a treatment and a cure. Degeneration will always overcome a treatment. Yet a cure resolves and reverses the cause of the degeneration to such degree that eventually there remains nothing that could overcome the new bodily homeostasis. For example, if your arthritis is caused by an overload of iron or vitamin A, resolving the overload will cure the disease for good. Or, if your Parkinson's is caused by a functional deficiency of thiamine resulting from lead toxicity, detoxing the lead will give you your health back. In contrast to this, trying to alleviate joint pain with steroids or improve cognition with levodopa does nothing to stop the course of the disease. Hence they are not cures.

Additionally, one would be by definition dependent on whatever changes were made, even dietary. So in my mind the question of dependency is moot

The difference is that you are dependent on a sufficient intake of nutrients to begin with. You are not forming new dependencies by taking the very things the body needs to source from the environment in order to sustain itself. The same can't be said of hormones, which the body desires to produce endogenously in accordance to its own intelligence.

the real question is: Which interventions will have the greatest effect towards the "remission" of the symptoms of aging for as long as possible, given the inevitability of decline?

In this case, the answer is unequivocally: the treatment which concerns itself with the most fundamental level of biology.

 

[Pete Rey]

Fair, however this only undermines your own hunches, rather than anything I have written. You are, in essence, demonstrating that neither of us can prove your point. I can live with that, heh. In case of mineral balance & HTMA, the effects of nutrition and lifestyle can be scientifically identified and usually even predicted separately.

Unfortunately I'm not following how your point would lead to a cure having to exist on a spectrum.


Ah, forgive me for my lackluster semantic expertise. I don't know what word would be more apt to describe the resolving of a disease.


I think any attempt at equating (degenerative) diseases with aging is unrealistic. The body can continue to age biologically all the while specific degenerative pathologies improve, or even vanish. Likewise, old people sometimes pass away in good health, free of disease, with no discernible cause of death. Often these people might intuitively know that they have mere days left to live. It's as if their designated life energy just runs out. This produces an interesting question from the perspective of your view: are these people biologically old or young when the die?

I think arguing that we can't cure diseases because we can't stop aging suggests a failure to understand what disease is. Aging merely creates an environment for disease to thrive, but it's not a prerequisite to disease, as degenerative diseases occur in all age groups and can be caused by factors that have nothing to do with aging, such as heavy metal poisoning or nutritional deficiencies.


Herein lies the difference between a treatment and a cure. Degeneration will always overcome a treatment. Yet a cure resolves and reverses the cause of the degeneration to such degree that eventually there remains nothing that could overcome the new bodily homeostasis. For example, if your arthritis is caused by an overload of iron or vitamin A, resolving the overload will cure the disease for good. Or, if your Parkinson's is caused by a functional deficiency of thiamine resulting from lead toxicity, detoxing the lead will give you your health back. In contrast to this, trying to alleviate joint pain with steroids or improve cognition with levodopa does nothing to stop the course of the disease. Hence they are not cures.


The difference is that you are dependent on a sufficient intake of nutrients to begin with. You are not forming new dependencies by taking the very things the body needs to source from the environment in order to sustain itself. The same can't be said of hormones, which the body desires to produce endogenously in accordance to its own intelligence.


In this case, the answer is unequivocally: the treatment which concerns itself with the most fundamental level of biology.

Without going point by point, I think it's unrealistic to expect most states of degeneration to be resolved by simply correcting an overload of this or that. Let's leave actual toxins like lead that have no place in the body out of the conversation, which actually plays to my point. Enough heavy metal poisoning in the wrong places and you're never getting it all out or reversing all the symptoms. It is for all intents and purposes permanent. 7/10 might be as good as you're going to get.

As for iron or any other similar "goldilocks" nutrient, could an imbalance be a problem? Sure. Could addressing it provide relief? Sure. Is that one thing likely to be the missing link that takes a person from a dysregulated metabolism to a hardy metabolism that lasts into old age? Possible but doubtful. Will the symptoms return once something else in the metabolism becomes dysregulated as the subject ages? Probably. And if not those exact symptoms, then something else. Is there something that works immediately and indefinitely to improve the dysregulated metabolism causing these symptoms? Yup. Could you spend a decade or more fishing for imbalances and underlying problems and come up empty handed or worse? Yup. So which more deserves to be called a cure? I'll let the reader decide, and leave it at that.

 

[TheSir]

Without going point by point, I think it's unrealistic to expect most states of degeneration to be resolved by simply correcting an overload of this or that. Let's leave actual toxins like lead that have no place in the body out of the conversation, which actually plays to my point. Enough heavy metal poisoning in the wrong places and you're never getting it all out or reversing all the symptoms. It is for all intents and purposes permanent. 7/10 might be as good as you're going to get.

As for iron or any other similar "goldilocks" nutrient, could an imbalance be a problem? Sure. Could addressing it provide relief? Sure. Is that one thing likely to be the missing link that takes a person from a dysregulated metabolism to a hardy metabolism that lasts into old age? Possible but doubtful. Will the symptoms return once something else in the metabolism becomes dysregulated as the subject ages? Probably. And if not those exact symptoms, then something else. Is there something that works immediately and indefinitely to improve the dysregulated metabolism causing these symptoms? Yup. Could you spend a decade or more fishing for imbalances and underlying problems and come up empty handed or worse? Yup. So which more deserves to be called a cure? I'll let the reader decide, and leave it at that.

Well, yes and no -- correcting an overload is never just that, rather it involves increasing the adaptiive metabolic energy to the point where the body will voluntarily let go of the metal or mineral in question. Neither is it ever about just one minerral or metal, as such toxicities or deficiencies are merely manifestations of a larger imbalance.

It is crucial to understand that the body is holding onto these elements in order to compensate for something else, and that the body permits this compensation to eventually result in overt disease (maintaining homeostasis at the cost of disease is preferable to losing homeostasis at the cost of death). Thus, resolving the overload inherently includes resolving the disease-causing compensation, as they are the same singular process.

It is completely realistic to expect an overload of toxins to be at the root of any degenerative disease. This is almost always the case, because toxicities and deficiencies occur hand in hand. Heavy metals, chemicals and the prerequisite deficiencies that invite the accumulation and integration of the first two as surrogate building blocks are causing the vast majority of our health problems by their secondary effects. What else is there? Diseases don't just spontaneously appear. They have a root, and this root is practically always indirectly or directly linked to mineral-metal balance. Your vulnerability to EMF, viruses and infections, lifestyle stressors, carcinogens, malnutrition, metabolic diseases, injuries, mental illness etc is determined by this. Only genetic diseases escape the causative influence of minerals and metals

It is not right to assume that heavy metal toxicity is permanent, even if it's difficult to deal with.. Complete heavy metal elimination is fully possible over the course of 10-15 years of supporting the body in the right ways. It is slow and painstaking, but still possible. Interestingly, yogis and Buteyko folk achieve a lot of this with hypoventilation alone within a much shorter span of time.

The beauty of HTMA is that you don't need to go around fishing for imbalances or trying to decipher what is causing what. Just by keeping the mineral ratios in balance or working towards it, you are providing the body with increasing amounts of adaptive metabolic energy, which it will then use to solve its own issues according to its own hierarchy of priorities.

If I'm reading right, you're looking to wrap this conversation up. If this is the case, I want to thank you for exchanging ideas with me in such a calm and mature manner.

 

[Highserotonin90]

@TheSir Does hypoventilation facilitate the excretion of heavy metals? Have you ever looked into zeolite?

 

[TheSir]

@TheSir Does hypoventilation facilitate the excretion of heavy metals? Have you ever looked into zeolite?

Yeah, Artour Rakimov touched the subject in the following articles:

Body Cleanse (Detox or Sanogenesis Reaction): Diets vs. Breathing Retraining (Review)

Review of benefits from body cleanses with diet or drinks and how to detox the body naturally

www.normalbreathing.com

Cleansing Reaction and Body Detox (Buteyko Breathing Technique)

Buteyko manual on cleansing sanogenesis reaction and gut and body detox from heavy metals

www.normalbreathing.com

Zeolite can be used to chelate some of the more superficial layers of toxicity, but it tends to be contaminated with aluminium and possibly other metals as well. The downside of using chelators is that they forcefully eliminate metals with no regard for whether the body is trying to hold onto them in an attempt to balance body chemistry. Many metals are used as crutches to support the metabolic rate or the adrenals, for example. Taking them away might leave the body worse off in ways that are not immediately obvious. This is why it's safer to simply try to balance the body, because the body will voluntarily let go of the metal crutches when they are no longer needed.