Endotoxin, Free Radicals And Inflammation- KMUD, July, 2009

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https://www.toxinless.com/kmud-090701-bowel-endotoxin.mp3 - Many thanks, Dan!

Here's the other one transcripted by our master, dd99.
Endotoxin - Kmud, November 19 2010

AM So this month, again, we're very pleased and fortunate to welcome Dr. Ray Peat back to the show, and we'll be exploring the emerging revelation concerning endotoxemia - and how unsaturated fats further burden our bodies in ways that we couldn't ever imagine. So, welcome to tonight's show Dr. Peat.

Ray Thanks!

AM Ok, perhaps, for those people that are tuning in this evening, if you could outline what is endotoxin, how is it formed, and how is it harmful to our health.

Ray Uhm, I'm not sure that people really know what it's doing in the bacterium but it's been known since 1892, it was called endotoxin to distinguish it from the older known bacterial toxins that the bacteria secrete to poison something on their environment, and, supposedly, the endotoxin it only comes out when the bacterium is broken apart but I think that it actually leaks a little bit all the time. So, I wouldn't that strictly like textbooks used to say, that it's somewhat of a structural protein but it's a medium to smallish molecule that can leak out in the process of growth, and cell division, and so on. It's other name is lipopolysaccharide, because its structure is a chain of sugar molecules with fatty acids attached, that gives it a soap-like behaviour that is part of why it's toxic so generally. They are so common in their environment that organisms have their basic defenses against them, one of our basic defenses is the high-density lipoprotein; they talk about it in terms of carrying cholesterol but I think its really historical main function is that it's our first defense against endotoxin once the endotoxin gets into the bloodstream. Normally the intestine is a good barrier against absorbing the endotoxins, and if some of it leaks through the walls of the intestines into the blood vessels and gets fwafbawf to the liver, the liver enzymes break it down, so it shouldn't normally reach the bloodstream in significant amounts; but it's a matter of 10's of mg that can circulate in the blood stream every day.

AM As an aside, do you know if there's a value, picogram or whatever value associated to "acceptable level"?

Ray Yeah, it stimulates defense reactions and so it's kind of a toughening up reaction to have a small amount of it, if you were born in a germ-free environment, your first exposure to bacteria is likely to be lethal, but absorbing a little bit of the endotoxin toughens up the system.

AM What about the environment becoming more hygienic but diseases related to the gut being more prevalent today?

Ray I think that the ups and downs when you try to be too sterile and then are inevitably exposed to germs, the sudden shock is probably a lot more stressful.

AM Ok, back to endotoxins, how are they harmful for our health?

Ray Uhm, it triggers all series of reactions and it seems to be physical-chemical process that stirs up a cell to recognize a threat and set off a chain of reactions, and it's the things that it sets in action that really causes the chronic cumulative degenerative damage. One of the first thing that it does on exciting a cell is to cause the cell to take up calcium and to activate the synthesis of nitric oxide. Nitric oxide and the cell excitation that goes with absorbing calcium trigger other reactions; small amount of endotoxin can stimulate the intestine to contract more, but if the cells are getting overloaded with it, that and other irritants can cause cells to produce so much nitric oxide that the nitric oxide becomes a major metabolic disruptor, and will cause the intestine to lose the ability to contract; it will poison the respiratory apparatus so the cells can't make energy to fight back, at that point with increased nitric oxide, reduced energy and taking up calcium, the cells also take up water.

ChickM And then they become basically non-functioning to a degree.

Ray Uhm, yeah, they're under stress and if the body can deliver enough energy to them quickly, they can excrete the wasser and the calcium, turn of the nitric oxide and return to normal functioning; but when they swell up, another place that textbooks give a simplified mistaken idea of what is involved in bowel damage from endotoxin, they talk about the leakage between cells, as if the cells loose the glue that holds them in contact with each other, so holes upen up between cells; that does happen, but it isn't necessarily the worst way that endotoxin gets into the cells and passes through the cells. The whole structure of the cells, the cytoplasm, as it takes up water instead of being fat-like and tending to exclude wasser and prefering to absorb fats, the introduction of this sugar-connected to a fat acts like a soap and make the cells tending to admit not only more water but pretty much anything that is in its environment; so the whole substance of the cells becomes kind of spongy and leaky. When this starts affecting the whole organism, that kind of change occurs all through the body, once the stuff has passed through lining of the intestine, and crosses across capilaries, and gets into the bloodstream, then the endotoxin starts doing the same thing to any cell that comes to. So it will leak out of capilaries, no matter where it is in the bloodstream, if the liver hasn't filtered it. So, if it happens to reach the brain, it will cause the brain capilaries to leak whatever is in the bloodstream, so it can contribute to multiple sclerosis. Endotoxin leaking into the brain does the same thing, triggers the release of nitric oxide and a whole chain of chemical reactions that every organ has a particular way of responding to it. But the generality, no matter what the organ, there are basic defense reactions that will occur not only to endotoxin but to any radical threat to the survival of the cell, x and gamma-rays, will produce essentially the same kind of change in brain cells or bowel cells that endotoxin does. So, if you're overexposed to x-rays for example, you'll get constipated. In the same way, the overexposure to endotoxin will cause consipation.

AM So, there's a kind of saponification going on..

Ray Yeah, and opening up, loosening up the cell structure, so it becomes instead of - if you imagine a lump of ? dipped, soaked in oil, it will stay stable in the presence of water, but if you mix a little bit of lecithin, it will quickly start taking up water and then the whole thing is on road of dissolving and breaking up.

AM What about leaky gut?

Ray Endotoxin is always in the intestine and it's always the first thing to defend against, but many other stressors and toxins like radiation, or heavy metals, or estrogenic substances, or too many polyunsaturated fatty acids, and so on; all of these things tend to loosen up or saponify the cell structure, cause the cell to take up water and let junk enter from the environment into the cell substance itself, and getting into the cell substance then it can just as easily go out the other side of the cell into the underlying extracellular material, and from there accross the capilarie cells and then to the blood stream. That is a essentially what a leaky gut is: its leaky cell substance, which involves leaky capilaries, and ultimately it can cause leakiness of any tissue. In the pre-cancerous states for example, you see substances leaking out of the characteristic cell, and those indicated tendencies to develop cancer in that organ, because that organ is most stressed and it's leaking its substance. For example, the prostate specific anagen is just a normal prostate protein that leaks out because the cell is under stress; the same protein leaks out of breast cells when they're under stress, and characteristic proteins leak out of any cell when it's under stress.

GirlM So, literally the cell is falling apart: breaking down, leaking..

Ray Yeah, something as simple as vitamin E can tremendously strengthen the cell and help to hold it together so it doesn't leak its protein substance out in the environment.

AM What's the mechanism behind that?

Ray No one really knows, but partly it's stopping the free radical damage that nitric oxide is producing, it helps to keep calcium from overloading the cell and keeps the water from associating too closely with the proteins. And a lot of protective substances will do that, the natural hormones, progesterone and testosterone, help to toughen up the cell and keep it from leaking. The factors similar to vitamin E that are associated with energy production: coq10 and vitamin K are closely associated with vitamin E and energy production; and they are extremely powerful at defending the respiratory apparatus from nitric oxide and endotoxin.

AM What about thyroid to counteract that leakiness?

Ray The thyroid is essential for making the enzyme that essentially allows oxygen to absorb electrons out of the mitochondrial system. The mitochondria take up electrons from sugars and fats, and drives energy from those electrons as they're passed along to oxygen; thyroid is the essential factor for making that happen. There are other supporting factors, a system called the uncoupling proteins, that simply make the electrons run more quickly to be taken up by oxygen; what that does is produce carbon dioxide more quickly, which turns off the formation of lactic acid and that basically turns off the nitric oxide forming system. So, if you can run a system fast enough with plenty of thyroid, then you'll make the carbon dioxide and inhibit lactic acid formation, and pretty well defend against producing nitric oxide, that gives you relative (?) immunity to the lipopolysaccharide.

AM Is that the electron transport chain? The NADH and that other cycle?

Ray Yeah, the electrons pass from that, down to oxygen, but it can't do it without thyroid. The temperature is one of the factors, when you run the electrons, through the system, you produce heat as well as carbon dioxide and ATP; and keeping the temperature up is one of the things that helps to turn off the production of nitric oxide and other free radicals destructive factors.

LadyM Those things interfere with our oxygen usage, is that correct?

Ray Yeah, not all free radicals are toxic, but nitric oxide - the one that is so widely produced in response to stress - increases greatly with aging too, just because aging involves progressive stress reactions.

AM What about Poppers?

Ray Nitroglycerin has been used as a drug to open the circulation to the heart, and nitric oxide didn't really get much interest scientifically until Viagra came along, that's basically doing the same thing as nitroglycerin but it's extremely toxic, it's just like eating toxins, getting irradiated, and getting old ahead of time.

WomanM So it's just a potent free radical?

Ray Some free radical can actually defend against the toxic free radicals. When thyroid and oxygen are working properly, the electron transport chain involves lots of free radical activity, but it's all productive and protective. The faster you run oxygen through the mitochondria and under the influence of thyroid, the less free radical damage you have to the structure of the cell and the mitochondrion. If you're low thyroid, or somehow lack oxygen acutely, the electrons instead of being safely passed through this chain of free radicals, the free radicals wander off and attack the fats that make up the mitochondrion; and then those fats become peroxides, which are some sort of a randomly destructive kind of free radical.

ChickM So those fats that you talked about are polyunsaturated fats.

Ray Those tend to accumulate in tissues, when they are given acutely, as an emulsion for example, they used to do in hospitals to fatten people up, now they do it to suppress their immune system as they transplant a kidney; they not only suppress immunity, they create instantaneous diabetes or inability to respire and use sugar.

FemaleM When you eat those foods you are ingesting free radicals?

Ray Well, very quickly yes. An experiment that I did illustrates how even at room temperature they spontaneously oxidize; I put a rubber hose in a bottle of I think it was safflower oil, and put the other in a glass of wasser; and just at room temperature, over a few hours the bottle in effect (check, doesn't change the meaning though) respiring, it was sucking oxygen up, and drawing water up into the tube; the oxygen was combining with the unsaturated fats and in the process forming liquid peroxides, which are toxic free radicals.

HerM Inside the body is worse.

Ray Yeah, it's much faster at that temperature and we have catalytic amounts of iron and heavy metals floating around to accelerate the reaction.

AM What are free radicals? What foods prevent and promote? What about foods and endotoxin?

Ray Since the polyunsaturated fats are the main material that causes sort of an explosion of free radical once the process starts with endotoxin and nitric oxide, simply minimizing those in the diet is a basic way to defend yourself. Essentially for hundred years there have been studies showing that a fat-free diet, if you give the required nutrients, extend lifespan and reduces cancers and other degenerative diseases. A 1927 study showed that there was no spontaneous cancer in rats on a fat-free diet. That have been repeated thousand of times in different ways but there are roughly a hundred studies that showed the tremendously beneficial effects of even a short-term deficiency so-called of the unsaturated fats. When a rat is made deficient in, according to the way they define the deficiency, they simply don't feed them polyunsaturated fats, but give them purified nutrients; those animals can stand tremendous physical trauma that would kill a rat on a normal diet - they can be given cobra venom and survive whereas a normal rat doesn't; toxins that produce diabetes in normal rats, does't hurt the so-called deficient rats. Basically, any kind of abuse that they can think of, the fatty acid deficient rats are much, much more able to tolerate and survive without harm.

OutofjokesM Why they are named essential then?

Ray The Burrs who in 1929, through the 1930's were promoting that idea, were working for one of the big fat businesses, lard and then vegetable shortening businesses. When independent researchers checked their claims in the 1940's, they found that what they have done was simply produce a vitamin deficiency because when an animal is not eating the polyunsaturated fats, which poison the thyroid function, their metabolic rate is about 50% higher than a normal animal; and if they feed them only a normal amount of vitamin and protein they become nutritionally deficient. These researchers at the University of Texas lab in the 1940's have been working on vitamin deficiencies, and they recognized that the Burrs had simply produced their vitamin b6 deficiency, and so they gave a fatty acid deficient diet to rats and they gave them extra vitamin b6, and they cured the syndrome, and so the whole issue was settled in 1946. But in the 1950's the nutrition textbooks said it's a controversial topic, whether they are essential or not, because were still promoting the idea that we need lard or vegetable shortening. Then the industry went through a big change when they discovered that first they'd economized on food consumption by pigs and chickens by poisoning their thyroid gland with a chemical, that turned out to cause cancer in humans, so they looked for another way to poison the animals' thyroids so they wouldn't eat so much but would get fat; what they found was that the polyunsaturated fats, just as the Burrs had demonstrated in 1932, suppress the metabolic rate; that was when feeding pigs a diet of essentially pure corn and soy for the polyunsaturated fats took off, before that they had fed them vegetable waste and whey (industrial waste), which was very good for the pigs but they ate a lot of it and didn't get fat. The agricultural industry found that they could tremendously increase return pounds of pig per pounds of food, and that same time the paint industry discovered how to turn petroleum into paints and plastics, so they didn't need linseed oil or safflower oil anymore; so there was this big industry of soy oil and so on that wanted another market besides feeding pigs and chickens, so they convinced people to eat their production that they couldn't sell as paint.

ForgothernameM And the story continues until today.

Ray Then, after 50 years, the original data, which was that the vegetable oils caused softening of the brain and infertility, and cancer and so on; but that was known in the early 1940's, finally that became too public that the essential fatty acids, known as linoleic acid mainly, everyone was catching on that those were carcinogenic and caused heart disease. So, about 20 or 30 years ago there was this gradual change of marketing as the fish industry was being pressured by the environmental protection agency to stop throwing their waste, skins and heads and so on, in the base (check) or in the landfields because they were causing tremenduous pollution. That was when fish oil came on the market. They were making fish protein out of the skin and head just to sell to Africa as a food supplement, and the oils spoil so fast they marketed (check) it for human medical use.

AM Industry is always trying to profit on everything.

Ray Yeah, shrimp shells are now medical product, <joke that I couldn't get, I think it's about ingesting rubber, but I'm not sure>.

AM Lollypopolysaccharide and the liver?

Ray The liver has several ways to catch toxins, but when it starts to work too hard to detoxify things, the brain is our second most active detoxifying organ, it has very intense enzymes analogous to those that break down toxins in the liver; but if the liver is spending too much energy detoxifying it becomes unable to produce albumin, albumin circulating in the blood is one of the layers of defense. When stuff gets into the blood stream, the high-density lipoprotein made in the liver increases when we're being poisoned, and so estrogen and alcohol, increase the high-density lipoprotein.

SpouseM And this is what the doctors refer to as good cholesterol?

Ray Well, it is good because it's a reaction to being poisoned <shouts> when we're having a bowel problem.

AM Low HDL means low toxic load?

Ray Yeah, the albumin circulating in the blood binds things, preferentially fatty molecules, and so between the albumin and the lipoprotein, our blood can hold a lot of stuff temporarily to give the liver a chance to catch up.

AM I've heard that the albumin is being one of those factors obviously responsible for colloidal osmotic pressure.

Ray When the liver is starting to be poisoned, estrogen and radiation can do the same thing as endotoxin, the ability to form albumin decreases, and so looking at the albumin in a blood test is one of the first indicators of a person's basic resistance. If it's high their prognosis is usually good; if it's down around 3, where the normal is 4.5, you're going to have to clean up the bowel. I've seen people in just a couple weeks go from below 3, like 2.5, up to over 4 just by eating fiber and fruit juice, they reduce the absorption of endotoxin.

AM Are the reference ranges accurate?

Ray Well, yeah, the best prognosis is the range of 40 to 50, or 4 to 5; they've put the normal lower and lower as people get sicker. 15-20 years ago it was considered bad to be under 4 and now it's normal down to three point something.

Caller1 Why doctors don't practice those things?

Ray The average doctor learns his high-school courses very well, and then it happens that medical school courses on the alimentary canal and digestive physiology are really just a repeat of what the junior high and high-school textbooks said in, so doctors get a very superficial picture of nutrition and digestion.

Caller1 Pushing meds?

Ray Yeah, I think that's their basic function. I've running into more and more very famous gastroenterologists who are barely better than the junior high textbooks.

Caller2 Why do people feel better when they have a pulse above 80?

Ray Because the brain needs oxygen and sugar, just to keep all of the systems warm and respiring actively, unless you have a very, very big heart, it usually takes around 80-90 beats per minute to pump enough oxygen and sugar ? the tissues to keep them warm. Over the last 30 years the normal temperatures that doctors look for has decreased considerably. From the beginning of inventing thermometers, normal temperature was around 37oC (98.6oF) or so during the daytime, in recent years the average temperature for americans has decreased considerably and that means that the heart rate can go slower and that the person feels that they're getting enough sugar and oxygen, but they don't really feel as good as they should. I've talked to a few people who had temporary episodes of hyperthyroidism, where their heart rate went to 125 for a couple of months and consistently they never felt so good in their lives.

Caller2 Opinions on kelp and iodine.

Ray Well, I've got in my files I think it's about 80 articles on the toxic effects of getting excess iodine and thyroid cancer is increasing at a tremenduous rate, I think that part of it is the polyunsaturated fats, but another part is a chronic lifelong overdose of iodine. In various studies, taking more than twice the essential required minimum of iodine is enough to increase the rate of thyroiditis, increase antibodies attack on the thyroid and so on.

Caller3 What about saturated fats on the endotoxin issue?

Ray Yeah, the saturated fats are very protective but you can make your own saturated fats if you eat enough sugar like fruits instead of breads. There are a couple groups that are curing cirrhosis and hepatitis by giving more saturated fats and excluding the unsaturated entirely. They are antiinflammatory and therapeutic but you don't necessarily have to eat the saturated fats, because you can make them if you get enough sugar in the form of fruit.

Caller3 What else to reduce endotoxin and detrimental free radical load?

Ray Anything that speeds transit through the intestines. Aspirin and anything antiinflammatory, the fruit juices contain some of the antiinflammatory chemicals, but in a pinch it can help; aspirin surprisingly can act as a laxative because it suppresses nitric oxide and defends against endotoxin. The fibers that are protective and don't support bacterial growth are the best way to stimulate quick passage through the intestine and minimizing endotoxin formation. Raw carrots and boiled bamboo shoots because they're germicidal, as well as being able to bind the endotoxin and other toxins.

Caller4 What about wheat and endotoxin? And what is irritable bowel?

Ray Basically is the inflammed bowel and the same chemicals that can cause the usual paralysis that develops with aging and causes constipation, those same substances can shift over to causing intensified peristalsis, leading to diarrhea, but it's all an inflammatory process that is triggered by irritants, wheat and other seeds contain chemicals that the plants - the two major problems with any kind of seed, especially certain grains like wheat; they contain their protein in a storage form, gluten, which happens to resemble a protein that our tissues make under the influence of estrogen or stress. So, if a person has some problem dealing with the control of estrogen, that predisposes them to react violently to the gluten, because the same sequence of amino acid exists in our own estrogen response protein and the gluten protein. But besides the problem with the gluten, all seeds are the next generation of the plant, so the plants put the most intense toxins and offensive substances into the seeds, deliberately to interfere with grazing animals and Such_, so that you can take the enzymes that are needed to digest proteins and the substance in the seed won't affect that type of enzyme in the plant but it affects all animal enzymes; so they're specifically designed to interfere with animal metabolism. The vegetarians forget how toxic the plants have to be, because they don't have the ability to fight or to run, so what they use are chemicals as defense.

AM Cascara sagrada in constipation? (Peter, it didn't sell out for no reason that day; send me comission)

Ray Well, all of these responses to inflammation tend to become progressive and even lead to the death of some of the nerves in the intestine. So, it's better to use any substance such as a plant drug, rather than suffer the consequences of inflammation; and it happens that Cascara has structural analogies to many of our own substances: vitamin K and coenzyme Q, and progesterone have structural similarities to cascara. So, what it's doing is reinforcing our defense systems and it's very unusual among drugs because it basically reinforces all of the good processes and doesn't support any of the inflammatory toxic processes; it's anti-inflammatory, anti-carcinogenic, helps to reduce anxiety for example, increases energy production the way thyroid and progesterone do; everything that our own system does, it reinforces. My newsletter is going to talk about the history of related substances, early in the century, when free radicals were discovered, a doctor in Michigan, W. F. Koch began working out the implications for how to defend our cellular respiratory system from these toxins in the environment, and one of the substances that he worked with was the anthraquinone. He went to Brazil and the famous brazilwood, it's red because of the anthraquinone, but he explored all of the quinones that he could, and found that they work with vitamin E, vitamin K and coenzyme Q, and thyroid to maintain and protect respiration.

AM End of the show.
 

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Does activated charcoal bind estrogen like fiber?
 

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