Diabetes type 1, KMUD The Herb Doctors, 2014

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Transcribed by Sol, Sweetly, and verified by Burtlancast.

Download link for the audio file: http://www.toxinless.com/kmud-140221-diabetes.mp3

 

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Raymond Peat, Ph.D.
Diabetes type 1
The Herb Doctors, KMUD, 2014​

HD: As always, could you give an outline of your academic professional background ?

RP: I had been interested in biology for a long time, but was doing other things: teaching English, linguistics, and such. But in 1968, I decided to go back to graduate school to get a PHD at the University of Oregon, graduated there in 1972, having specialized mostly in physiology of reproduction, biochemistry. Since then, i have been following up on the same subjects related to oxidative metabolism, progesterone, estrogen and thyroid.

HD: Dr Peat, you've been pretty much altruistic in your attitude towards helping people. I know lots of people have consulted with you, from all over the world, for various metabolic disorders. And you have a very alternative view: but in terms of the research, it's actually not that alternative. It's just that the research doesn't really surface anywhere near as quickly as we would like it to, compared to what medicine and doctors are taught, in terms of the causes of diseases, specifically metabolic disorders. And their treatment is often lagging behind, in fact contra-indicated in some ways.

RP: A big part of the problem is that medical journals are totally separated from science journals. Years ago, before the internet, Index Medicus was a list of medical journal articles, similar to Pub Med now. And, I occasionally compared things that I would find in biological abstracts, or chemical abstracts. And when I would look things up later in Index Medicus, I found that there was usually a delay of 20 or 30 years after the discovery of something absolutely essential, such as the role of Coenzyme Q10 in metabolism.

HD: The subject of your current newsletter is diabetes and fats, and the protective substances that you advocate. Before going into the causes of diabetes, could you just outline the standard definition and cause of diabetes, from the perspective of current medical understanding ?

RP: The medical understanding has changed very little in the last 200 years. It was called the sugar disease, and in ancient times, it was named, because of the excess urination, and the urine contained a lot of glucose, and people craved sugar, and discovered that the blood was loaded with glucose, so the medical concept, that it was the glucose, or the sugar disease. And the standard cure was to make them unable to eat sugar, imprison them if necessary. And they would just die, anyway. But they kept them from satisfying their sugar hunger. And then insulin was discovered, which would, for the people who were wasting away with what later was called type 1 diabetes, insulin would allow them to build muscle and put on fat, instead of breaking tissues down, and excreting them(?) in urine. But, the sugar disease concept stayed with the medical profession, and even though insulin deficiency came to be the idea of it's cause. But then, as they looked for more ways to sell insulin, they noticed that lots of people who weren't wasting away and dying at a young age, also had very high blood sugar. Some of them had sugar in their urine. Yet, when they tested their blood, they found it had a normal amount of insulin in it. But, anyway, they were good candidates for treatment. So, it came to be called type 2 diabetes, even though the original concept was that diabetes was a wasting disease in which you quickly died of tissue wasting. But now, fat people became something like 95% of the patients for treatment of their high blood glucose.


So, it definitely, isn't a problem of insulin deficiency for the great majority of people who are diagnosed with diabetes.

HD: Ok, so you’ve just mentioned what’s currently being called type 1 and type 2; type 1 is insulin-dependent diabetes; type 2 is non-insulin dependent, so its kind of a diet, (what they call diet-controlled or can be modulated by the diet). So, how does the current medical model of diabetes, differ from the research perspective of the cause of diabetes, before we get into articles and specifics?

RP: In the late 19th century, 2 doctors doubted the theory that it was from eating too much sugar, because they died even faster when they made them not eat any sugar. So they began feeding them (first, one patient with each doctor) all the sugar they wanted, which was something like 3 quarters of a pound a day of pure sugar added. And they very quickly recovered from the wasting disease and were able to go back to work after a few weeks of this super high sugar diet. And that, gradually, their followers eventually saw that fructose was part of the sucrose standard sugar molecule, which got into cells and was metabolized without needing insulin. So for 50 or 60 years, many diabetics were able to eat a normal amount of sweetener in the form of fructose. But that never became the dominant treatment for diabetes, even though it is, more or less, as effective as the simply very high sucrose diet. But experiments looking for what was the cause of ( in the case of young kids) the type 1 diabetes ( that was more common in girls than boys)…it turned out to be sort of an autoimmune problem; the inflammation killing off the beta cells. And it happens that, in vitro, and in animal experiments, you can stimulate the growth of stem cells in the pancreas with glucose. So, it isn't glucose that’s responsible for killing those cells, it's an inflammation reaction. And the inflammation causes breakdown of fatty acids which cause free radical injury to the tissue. And, because of that observation of the inflammation involving prostaglandins and fatty acids (unsaturated fatty acids), a few experimenters put lab animals on a totally fat-free diet, giving them only saturated fats, or no fat at all. Just carbohydrates, and proteins, vitamins and minerals. And then, tried to give them diabetes by all of the standard methods (poisoning the beta-cells of the pancreas in various ways) so they couldn't make insulin. And these fat-free animals didn't develop the experimental diabetes, the way all other animals do. So, experimentally, it's been pretty well demonstrated that unsaturated fatty acids, breaking down, produce inflammation which activate many of the processes seen in diabetes. The degenerative processes in the retina and nerves for example, are where the damage starts very often before the blood sugar increases at all. So, if you're getting retinal degeneration and have normal blood sugar, or if you're getting numb and tingly hands and feet, and have normal blood sugar, it's clearly not the sugar which is responsible for the degenerative changes.

HD: OK, so again, you’re pointing the finger, blaming the free fatty acid liberation and the oxidative damage that occurs from that.

RP: Yes, and the unsaturated fatty acids happen to create a vicious circle, because they create stress, and the stress activates the stress hormones which provide…( in the normal process of providing fat from the tissues as emergency fuel)… they liberate more of the unstable polyunsaturated fats, creating more free radical damage, creating more stress, liberating more fats, and so on. Where the purely saturated fats, when liberated, tend to turn off those stress hormones.

HD: ok, so another good reason yet again to avoid the liquid oils, and avoid the fish oils and all the other oils that basically are very unsaturated because they are unstable, promote oxidation and all the ,stress response and tissue damage therein?

RP: Yes.

HD: ok, I just want to mention one of these drugs medications that I know quite a few people have been on, and probably are still using, amongst others, but metformin as a diabetes medication?

RP: Yeah, phenformin was the first form of that, that was used widely in the 50’s and 60’s. But it was killing a very high proportion of people: they were dying much earlier than they would have with no treatment at all. It was causing lactic acidosis, by causing the mitochondria to be unable to oxidize glucose. Which is exactly the problem of diabetes. So that got a bad reputation, and it was replaced by metformin which was reputed to not cause lactic acidosis. But even on pubmed if you look up metformin and lactic acid, you’ll see, I don't know, there must be more than 100 articles warning about the production of lactic acidosis with this standard very common treatment. And, it works, where it works, partly by poisoning the mitochondria, so the cells are forced to produce lactic acid. And so it lowers the blood sugar by wasting the glucose, turning it to lactic acid. But it also has some other effects which accounts for why everyone doesn't die quickly from lactic acidosis; apparently it has some slightly protective anti-inflammatory effects.

HD: I wanted to also let you get into the benefits of sugar; we have done several radio shows on how good and how beneficial sugar is for the organism. And the same with salt. And we keep getting validated slowly but surely with reports of that same thing in the press where, as before, it was pretty well maligned. So we understand there are a lot of protective effects of sugar confers to the organism from the cellular range standpoint. What are the beneficial effects that sugar have when you look at it from a diabetic perspective?

RP: I’ve looked up what current journalists and doctors are saying are the mechanisms that cause nerve damage in diabetes. They have a standard 4 or 5 chemical or functional changes of the nerve cells that they say are caused by excess glucose.
They occur in the presence of excess glucose in the diabetic, but they also occur before or without the presence of glucose. And the deficiency of glucose is one of the things that can induce the same defensive reactions that are blamed on sugar. So you have to look at the evidence regarding the deficiency of glucose, and compare it experiment by experiment, with the kind of evidence they propose to explain glucose as the cause. And when you look at all of the events associated with diabetes, and the symptoms, you see that hormone changes typically go with it. Stress induces aromatase, that increases estrogen production, and also directly increases some of the pituitary hormones besides ACTH that drives the adrenals. Stress increases growth hormone which provides fuel in an emergency by increasing free fatty acids in the circulation. And the increased estrogen also increases ACTH and prolactin, several of the stress hormones in the pituitary, but, especially, growth hormone is very closely connected with estrogen. So females have higher, not only estrogen, but growth hormone and free fatty acids in circulation. And it happens that females have much more often problems with the nerve degenerative symptoms of diabetes, as well as being the ones that have the majority of type 1 diabetes during childhood. So, the effect of the free fatty acids on stress and glucoses, or, any sugars protection against those stress reactions, is one of the basic things to look at. And avoiding hypoglycemic stress long before the problem reaches the stage of producing hyperglycemia. And in hyperglycemia, what you have is the body’s adjustment to the inability of cells to get enough energy, because they can’t oxidize glucose, because the fats are blocking it. That’s been known since the 60’s, called Randle cycle, in which free fatty acids block the use of glucose. So, the body tries to overcome that poisonous effect of the free fatty acids by increasing glucose production. And so it kind of get around the block just by stuffing more glucose into the blood. So, to a great extent, the rise in blood sugar shouldn't be thought in itself the cause that interferes with the use of glucose, it shouldn’t be concentrated on. And when cells can’t get enough glucose, that not only turns on the stress hormones it turns off the production of thyroid hormone. And so, in all diabetics (if the cell isn’t able to take up and use glucose) the liver becomes unable to activate the pre thyroid hormone thyroxine, turning it into the active T3. So, supplementing the active T3 thyroid hormone will cure lots of the so called effects of diabetes. I had an old friend whose toes were basically rotting (because of what was diagnosed as diabetes degenerative nerve and circulation problems in the legs and feet), and 2 weeks after he had started using Armour thyroid, his feet recovered completely. His toes had been black with ulcerated sores going right into the bones, but they completely healed up on thyroid. But we went through 3 cycles in which his doctor said the Armour thyroid is going to increase his blood sugar and make his diabetes worse, so he would tell him to stop it and his feet would start to rotting again. So, it wasn’t just a coincidence: we did it 3 times.

HD: Someone has a friend with suspected carbon monoxide poisoning and possible brain damage and is interested in nutritional ideas to address that.

RP: CO2 is one of the things that helps to restore the cells that are damaged by carbon monoxide; good vitamin nutrition is helpful.

HD: Alright, so, carbon dioxide, and obviously, nutritional support.

RP: And thyroid hormone is the main thing we need to produce all the carbon dioxide; it’s protective. The diabetic or hypothyroid person is not producing enough energy from oxygen and glucose; and so they very easily, or even at rest, turn some of the glucose into lactic acid. And the lactic acid displaces carbon dioxide from the blood. And that has a stress producing effect throughout the body. And by simply breathing less rapidly, or breathing in a bag occasionally, to rebreathe and save your carbon dioxide, you can increase the CO2 in tissues which activates the Krebs cycle, stabilizes cells and shuts down the production of lactic acid. So it has a direct connection to the things that go wrong in diabetes as well as hypothyroidism. To simply increase your CO2, and living at a very high altitude, the body naturally does that because it isn’t being overwhelmed with high pressure oxygen like at sea level.

Caller: I’ve heard Dr Peat in another podcast refer to starch molecules ( I think we call it molecule, maybe they are like crystal-like structure), but they actually block capillaries if they somehow get into the bloodstream. I just want him to elaborate on that a little bit more possibly one other research, he had mentioned one piece of research i don’t remember who that was specifically but I wonder if this is something that’s fairly well known in the scientific community?

RP: No, it was something discovered 100 years ago. But in the 70’s, a german immunologist, Gerhard Volkheimer, wrote some papers on it, it’s called persorption. And I think there is an article of his on the internet called persorption; it has illustrations of some of the junk that can simply get squeezed right through the lining of the intestine. It isn’t being squeezed between cells necessarily: they can go right into the cytoplasm on one side, and out of the cytoplasm on the other side. Cells are much more flexible than people imagine. Particles as big as 100 microns, potato starch particles for example, if you eat a slurry of corn starch or potato starch or whatever on an empty stomach, a few minutes later you can draw blood and find these particles, which some of them are just the size of a red blood cell. But others are as much as 10 times the diameter of a red blood cell. And red blood cells are very flexible, so they can squeeze through capillaries with an opening that is only maybe 5 microns across, and their diameter is 10 microns. And even a 10 micron particle of starch will plug up an arteriole and shut down circulation to a whole block of capillaries fed by that arteriole. And the bigger the particle, the bigger the (small) artery that gets plugged up. And Volkheimer would feed mice a high content of free starch in their diet: and he found that they aged prematurely. And when he sliced them up, he found that all of their organs contained little nests of dead deteriorating cells, downstream from the plug of the starch molecules.

Caller: Would these starch materials actually resist… I mean does the body sees that as an irritant and try to somehow expel it, or is it something that just stay there for long periods of time?

RP: The body can produce the enzymes pretty much anywhere it needs to that can
break down starch; it isn’t just saliva and intestine that have those enzymes. But they can stay in place long enough (as he demonstrated) for the tissue to die; the bigger they are, I suppose, the longer they stay put, killing tissue.

Caller: so, when you were eating a potato, and, as you mentioned before, using like coconut oil, or butter, or some kind of saturated fat, that’s allowing that to basically, I guess the word would be like “slide” through the intestine, rather than “getting off to the side” and going into the bloodstream ?

RP: Yeah, if its very well cooked, it makes the starch particle easier to break down in the intestine, and the fat delays the absorption, so it has time to break down more before it’s absorbed.

Caller: So, you said , I forgot this scientist’s name, but he found all sorts of junk, junk would be all these things they’re putting into our foods, like the silicate that you mentioned, that they are using to make a viscosity for the machinery, like vitamins and minerals and different things like supplements, that they produce. So silicate would be one of those junks elements that probably lodge in different vessels in the body too, right?

RP: And I think the chemically modified cellulose molecules (that are in practically everything), some of those are toxic in themselves (seem to have a catalytic effect). And so, they might be degrading the supplement right in the tablet. That has hardly been studied, one or two papers on it. And the silica particles not only get into the tissue but they have a toxic and allergenic, or immunological effect. Gerhard Volkheimer, being an immunologist, was especially concerned about their role in degenerative and immune diseases. But people specializing in the silica (or silicone) reactions, they found that “supposedly amorphous” silica glass-like particles, that they in themselves have some of the silicone-like effects, and even overlap with the crystalline effects that produce cancer in silicosis, from asbestos crystals. But it seems to be an activation of inflammation reactions. The inflammasome particle responds to a certain shape of particle; so, if it has a given shape, it doesn't matter too much whether it’s asbestos, or carbon, or silicon, or wood. I think Volkheimer mentioned feathers and wood particles sawdust can get through the intestines. And he showed that, not only plugging up the blood vessels, about 15 minutes after they can be detected in the blood, they can be found in the liver, in the bile, having crossed another set of cell barriers. And then, the cerebro-spinal fluid right into the brain. And eventually, some of them show up in the urine.

Caller: and you’d think that would be contributing to psoriasis and different skin disorders too, because maybe reaching a surface’s capillaries? Is that possible? I mean, an irritant ?

RP: Yeah. It’s especially theorized, at least, to contribute to the various things like scleroderma. Silicone from breast implants has been connected to the generalized scleroderma. But even the silica particles used as food additives are suspected as activating the inflammatory skin hardening diseases.

Caller: One thing real quick, talking about diabetes and insulin, you’ve mentioned a few things that really seem to drive home the point that for pregnant women, the best thing we can possibly do for them is to keep them unstressed, like for the baby for the future. I have got a son myself and he turned out pretty good but I think a lot of that was how much focus and attention there was on keeping the mother happy and unstressed.

RP: One of the essential things of stress is falling blood sugar.

Caller: So if the mamma craves whatever, chocolate, peanut butter, ice cream, pickles. It’s probably a good thing, right?

RP: Yes, the glucose is essential for the baby’s brain development. And many older gynecologists and obstetricians knew that diabetic women had the brightest babies. Even hugely fat women who had diabetes, and were not in good health themselves, often produced extremely healthy babies.

HD: You’ve mentioned that intelligence was also higher in diabetic women because specifically of the increased blood sugar ?

RP: Yeah.

Caller: And not to dwell on that too much, because that is a secondary point; my main point was into the diabetes thing, and my hypoglycemia, specifically. When I was younger, a teenager, I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia, along with having really bad acne. And through this conversation, I realized a couple things; one, it could all be tied back to the amount of unsaturated fat I was consuming as a child. If all that was blocking up my ability to even process the glucose, I may have had some hypoglycemic symptoms at the same time my body is trying to like just stop and coagulate (?) around every obstacles.

RP: Yeah. A man named Adamkiewicz, about 30 or 40 years ago, showed that lowering blood sugar activates the inflammatory process. And doubling the blood sugar will stop allergies to almost everything,. So, every episode of hypoglycemia is stressing your immune system as well as activating the stress hormones that compensate by turning protein into sugar.

Caller: You expect that to be all related to my intense craving during those years for lots of sugar, like donuts and chilled Cola for lunch.

RP: Yeah, that’s the natural thing. Like in pregnancy, when women needs sugar. Or premenstrually. Same thing happens. When your blood sugar falls, you crave sugar. And if your thyroid is just temporarily depressed by stress, eating a pound of sugar over a period of 3 days will sometimes replenish the glycogen stores in all of your tissues, including the liver, where the liver uses it to activate the thyroid hormone.

Caller: To get back to the original point, the stress then, besides being an adolescent (and I’m now almost 35 and I still got the acne), the stress then to that comes from the unsaturated fat ?

RP: That’s probably the most common reason for it. Many kinds of stress can bring it on, but I think that’s the most common cause (currently). And there’s a really great book by Broda Barnes called “Hypoglycemia: it’s your liver not your mind”, he was one of the first people to point out that the liver provides 3/4 of our active thyroid hormone. And to do that, it needs glucose. And without the active thyroid hormone, you tend to get hypoglycemia.

Caller: And I assume alcohol in that factor, would be a downer?

RP: Yeah, it interferes with the provision of glucose.

Caller: I have two cysts growing ; right now they are 6.9 cm, and I’m 79 years old and my question is: do I have them removed?

HD: Where were those cysts again?

RP: Ovaries?

Caller: Yes, on my ovaries, thank you.

RP: I think you should have your blood hormones measured, the cysts could be producing a lot of estrogen. Have you had ultrasounds?

Caller: Yes, I have an ultrasound every 6 months.

RP: And, are they enlarging?

Caller: Yes, slowly.

RP: The blood test might show what is needed to break them; sometimes just one dose of progesterone is all it’s needed for the cyst to break in the way it should during a normal menstrual cycle.

Caller: So, my real question is: do I do this at my age? Is there a chance that I may not come out of it?

RP: Sure, surgery is if you’re underweight especially and over 70 then any surgery tends, in the 6 months following the surgery, it increases all kinds of risk of dying.

Caller: Gosh, hard thing to decide to do.

HD: Progesterone is a very safe compound and it’s certainly far safer than surgery. So that would be a very good start. And progesterone should be something that can easily be prescribed by your doctor.

Caller: I have an appointment so I’ll certainly bring this out.

HD: There are off course other sources of progesterone you can purchase also. So, if the doctor refuses to do that, it’s always possible to go elsewhere.

Caller: Can you get it over the counter?

HD: In California in several health stores, I thing not many health stores, I’ve seen certainly in health stores. There’s a product called progest-E which is a natural progesterone. And there are several other types of products that contain progesterone. That would be the thing that Dr Peat’s mentioning that would be useful for you.

Caller: Ok, like I said I’m at 6.9 cm and listening to Dr Oz one day he said if it get to 8 you got to have them taken out.

RP: I’ve known quite a few younger women with big cysts, that were causing pain, at least; with just one or two doses of progesterone the cyst simply broke. And they had no more problems.

Caller: Is that the same as twisting? If it twists itself?

HD: I think you’re getting confused with 2 different things. One is natural spontaneous dissolution (or breaking down) and the other thing you might be confusing with is twisted ovaries. Pregnenolone is one of those things you should definitely first ask your doctor for .And if you can’t get them from your doctor, you can always find them online. Progesterone is the thing you want to try.

Caller: I appreciate it, thank you very much.

Caller: Hi, i have a question about niacinamide. Dr Peat, in one of your articles you said that it can cause tumor cells to either mature or disintegrate, but it prolongs the replicative life of cultured cells. Could you explain that a little bit more to me, please?

RP: It’s needed to produce energy efficiently, and it lowers stress. So, the increased energy and reduced stress simply stops the processes that tend to promote cancer. But it’s main effect is protective for nerve cells, for example; almost anything that injures a nerve cell is protected against by niacinamide.

Caller: In one of your interviews, you said that a way of helping with extreme vaginal dryness is to use a suppository with a fairly high dose of vitamin A and a little vitamin E in cocoa butter. How much would be a safe high dose of vitamin A and how much vitamin E?

RP: To make a suppository it depends on whether you’re using a pure cocoa butter. With that you can get probably 1000mg of vitamin E and maybe 20,000IU of vitamin A to dissolve in one suppository.

Caller: And how often should one use this?

RP: The people who’ve told me about it did it every day.

Caller: Ok. Should i take vitamin A internally to help with other issues? How much is a safe dose ? (I have liver issues, I have a problem with my esophagus and several other problems). So, vitamin A would be helpful, but how much would be a safe dose taken internally?

RP: It depends on the status of your thyroid exactly, because the thyroid hormone and vitamin A are carried on the same protein in the blood. And if you take too much vitamin A, it can act as an antagonist to thyroid; it acts like polyunsaturated fat in competing against the thyroid hormone, and can also block the production of adrenal and ovarian steroids, if you get too much. But 10.000 IU a day if your thyroid is ok… People with very high thyroid activity sometimes need more like 50,000 IU of vitamin A because the increased thyroid raises your requirement for vitamin A. So it’s important to adjust the dose to the thyroid function.

Caller: I see. I have Hashimoto’s so I’m actually taking thyroid hormone. So would 10.000 be too much for someone like me?

RP: Yeah, unless you’re sure that your metabolic rate is up, it’s good to limit it to about 10.000 units a day.

Caller: My first question would be regards to diabetes. What would you recommend for someone with diabetes who’s given all this propaganda about avoiding sugar and such, would you recommend them to get starch and that they could see benefit from it ? And perhaps open up to trying more sugar, and things like that?

RP: Fruit is the best way to get your sugar; orange juice in the USA is the most reliable way to get sugar with every meal. Milk is very important for several reasons, as a source of protein, the high calcium as an anti-stress effect, so emphasizing every day milk, cheese, protein and some eggs and other fruits, avoiding the starchy fruits like bananas. If you actually have a problem with high blood sugar, if it’s only like 130 mg/dL that wouldn’t be a reason for working on the blood sugar. But supplementing brewer’s yeast and aspirin are things that can help to actually lower the blood sugar. And a thyroid supplement sometimes will help.​