Conquering degenerative disease

The following is based on information I found in various corners of the web, but overwhelmingly at raypeat.com. Dr. Peat is a biologist specializing in the effects of hormones on the body. He has done a great deal of very important original research of his own, and he has also absorbed mountains of research done by a great many others, from well back in the past up through to the present.

His website presents, in great detail, and for those able to follow the science, the conclusions he's drawn from his lifetime of research. The evidence for the assertions I make below, including very extensive footnotes and references, can be found there.

Judging from his writings, Dr. Peat is both highly intelligent and highly incorruptible, and therefore beyond the reach of the debauched federal health establishment, which has been thoroughly suborned by the pharmaceutical industry. For anyone seeking good health for himself or others, knowledge of his work is essential.

My goal is to present a brief and orderly introduction to some of Dr. Peat's ideas as they relate to degenerative disease. I believe I've gotten the gross and scope of his ideas right, but I'm not a biologist, nor have I ever met or corresponded with Dr. Peat. I would urge you, therefore, to verify the accuracy of what I've written by studying his work for yourself.

The cause of degenerative disease

The human body is a collection of cells. In the absence of infection, trauma, or genetic abnormality, if the cells are healthy then the body will be healthy too. The key to good bodily health, therefore, is good cellular health.

Every cell has a number of jobs to do. One of the jobs every cell must do is take out the trash, i.e., expel from the cell the different kinds of debris that are the inevitable by-product of normal cellular activity. If the debris is not expelled expeditiously then cellular function will become compromised.

To perform its jobs the cells require energy. Most cellular energy is provided by the mitochondria within the cell. As we get older, however, the mitochondria become less efficient. When this happens the amount of energy available to the cell for it to do its various jobs is reduced. This can cause debris to begin to accumulate within the cell and cellular function to gradually decline.

This degraded cellular function is then expressed, in the body as a whole, as one or more of a broad range of degenerative diseases, depending on the type and location of the cells involved. Included among these diseases are cancer, heart disease, diabetes, cirrhosis, and various neurological, reproductive, and immunological disorders. Mitochondrial decline is therefore the fundamental cause for a very broad range of diseases.

In fact it would be more appropriate to think of these disorders as different expressions of the one disease of mitochondrial malfunction. How this malfunction is expressed in any particular individual is determined by which types of cells are in the lead in terms of decline. The expression in the individual of mitochondrial malfunction in breast tissue might be breast cancer. The expression of mitochondrial malfunction in liver cells might be cirrhosis. The expression in nerve cells might be Alzheimer's.

And which type of cells will be in the lead in terms of decline will depend on the individual's genetic composition in combination with his pattern of exposure to environmental toxins over the course of his lifetime. The breast cancer patient may have a genetic composition that yields reduced levels of progesterone in the body. Or she may have been exposed to greater environmental doses of estrogen, through pollution or by drinking soy milk. The cirrhosis patient may have been genetically predisposed in some way or just a heavy drinker. But in most cases involving such degenerative diseases there is an underlying mitochondrial disorder in the cells of the affected tissues, such that if the mitochondria were functioning properly there would be no disease.

But mitochondrial decline is not caused by aging per se. Instead it is caused by repeated exposure to certain chemicals that are toxic to the mitochondria, chemicals that are common in our environment. What's more, the effect of repeated exposure is cumulative, which explains in significant part why the onset and progression of degenerative disease is correlated with age. The older we get, the longer our mitochondria have been exposed to the environmental toxins.

Fortunately, however, if exposure to such toxins is substantially eliminated, mitochondrial function will slowly recover. What's more, there are certain other chemicals that are notably protective of the mitochondria, which can therefore be used to help accelerate recovery. When mitochondrial function begins to improve the cells will become more energetic, the accumulated debris will begin to be expelled, and the progression of degenerative disease in the individual will be retarded, halted, or reversed.

Mitochondrial toxins

The main culprits in poisoning the mitochondria are unsaturated fats, especially polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), and a wide variety of estrogenic substances, including estrogen itself.

Unsaturated fats

The main source of exposure to unsaturated fats is the diet. Corn oil, safflower oil, canola oil, peanut oil, soy oil, etc., are all highly unsaturated and therefore toxic to the mitochondria. There is also some exposure through the skin when using creams that contain these oils.

Estrogens

The main sources of exposure to estrogen are diet, pharmaceuticals, pollution in our air and water, and, of course, the body itself. The most significant source of dietary estrogen is soy, a phytoestrogen. Measure for measure soy is considerably weaker than estrogen, but there is so much of it in the typical diet that it constitutes a very substantial dose.

Soy is consumed directly as an ingredient in a large variety of foods, but also indirectly in much of our meat since many of our food animals are fed diets high in soy. Soy is favored as animal feed because, due to its toxic effect on the mitochondria, it makes the animals fat and sluggish (as it does also to humans). As a result, the fat of most pork, chicken, and farmed fish contain significant amounts of soy.

Pharmaceutical hormones are taken by many women for birth control or a variety of issues surrounding menstruation and menopause, and these pharmaceuticals very often have strong estrogenic effects in the body.

Soot and smoke in the air are estrogenic and carcinogenic (the latter at least partly because of the former). There are lots of estrogens in our water too. The large quantities of pharmaceutical estrogens consumed by women are excreted in the urine. The estrogens then flow into the sewage system, out of the sewage system and into water sources, and from there, in a great many cases, into our tap water.

Estrogen is also produced naturally in the bodies of both men and women in the gonads, of course. But it is also produced in significant quantities, through enzymatic action, in a variety of other tissues, especially fat. For most people, aging is accompanied by both increasing amounts of bodily fat and increasing amounts of the enzymes that produce estrogen in fat and other tissues. The compounding of these two factors results in increasing estrogen production in the body as we get older.

Restoring mitochondrial health

Reducing exposure to unsaturated fat

Unsaturated oils are toxic to the mitochondria and therefore should be eliminated from the diet. Until recent times polyunsaturated fatty acids had never been part of the human diet, just as they have never been part of the natural diet for any other animal. Simply put, they are not food and should not be consumed.

The natural and traditional fats for human consumption have long been animal fats. Unfortunately, however, lard and tallow have also recently become unhealthy for human consumption. Lard has become estrogenic because it is made from the fat of pigs that are now fed soy, and tallow often contains lard as an ingredient.

Fortunately a healthy alternative is readily available. Coconut oil is almost fully saturated and is therefore the ideal substitute for unsaturated oils in the diet. Because coconut oil is fully saturated it is not subject to the oxidation that causes the unsaturated oils to break down and become rancid, both inside and outside the body. (The reason antioxidants are beneficial is that they inhibit the oxidation of unsaturated fats. Such oxidation does not occur with saturated fats.) Until recently many snack foods were prepared using coconut oil, which allows them to stay fresh without preservatives. With today's snack foods, however, you consume not only the toxic oil but also the preservatives, which are often estrogenic. The result is a double dose of mitochondrial toxin. Olive oil is another acceptable substitute for unsaturated oils, but it breaks down when heated so it should not be used for cooking.

Note that other consequences of the consumption of unsaturated fats include increased glycation of proteins, which reduces the suppleness of tissues throughout the body, including skin and arteries, and increased formation of lipofuscin, which appears as "liver spots" on the skin, and which significantly interferes with proper tissue function throughout the body.

Note also that the pork industry experimented with coconut oil in animal feed in the expectation that saturated oils, which are supposed to be fattening, would fatten the animals. The result, however, was lean, energetic pigs.

Reducing exposure to estrogens

The main estrogen in the diet is soy. All products that contain soy should be eliminated from the diet. The fat of pork, chicken, and farmed fish, which contain significant amounts of soy due to the feed they are given, should be avoided. The fat of beef and mutton, however, are safe to eat because cows and sheep are ruminants and the soy is largely destroyed in the first stomach. (Soy sauce is harmless because the fermentation process eliminates the estrogenicity.)

Women who take pharmaceutical hormones should, in almost all cases, either stop taking them, or take bioidentical hormones instead. With estrogen, supplementation is virtually never needed since the body makes it in many tissues and in considerable abundance, the more so as we age. Furthermore we are all already exposed to significant quantities of estrogen through our environment. So much so, in fact, that it is causing early puberty in girls, increasing breast size in women, feminization in boys, reduced sperm counts in men, and the fish in our streams to become hermaphroditic.

As for progesterone, women who are taking prescription "progesterone" are actually taking no such thing. Real, bioidentical progesterone is inexpensive, available without a prescription, and highly beneficial. (See below.) Prescription "progesterone" is expensive, available only with a prescription, and significantly harmful. And it's not even progesterone. The pharmaceutical industry, in an attempt to piggy-back on the numerous studies showing the many protective benefits of progesterone, have manufactured a large variety of molecules that they call "progesterone". Though they have some effects in common with real progesterone, they have even more effects in common with estrogen, and very often a nasty side-effect profile as well. The net effect is that prescription "progesterone" actually engenders disease. There is almost no reason for women to take prescription hormones.

Short of moving, air pollution would seem to be difficult to avoid. I also have no feel for how estrogenic the soot and smoke are at the concentrations common in our air. Smoking should obviously be avoided.

Water filters would seem advisable, though there seems to be little data on their effectiveness at removing pharmaceuticals. But there are many other pollutants in water, some of which are likely to be estrogenic, that are removed by filtration. Note that water used for drinking is not the only issue with polluted tap water. Showering also exposes you to significant quantities of whatever may be in the water, both by absorption through the skin and from breathing it into the lungs.

As for estrogen naturally produced in the body, there is little that can be done to reduce the amount produced other than to keep the amount of body fat under control.

Actively protecting the mitochondria

Women produce more estrogen than men, and yet women have a lower incidence of degenerative disease than men do. Given all the foregoing, that seems puzzling. But women also produce significantly more progesterone than men, and that fact explains the mystery. Progesterone protects the mitochondria to such an extent that higher levels of estrogen in women is more than offset by their concomitant higher levels of progesterone.

After menopause, however, the production in the ovaries of both estrogen and progesterone drop significantly, while estrogen continues to be produced in significant quantities in other tissues of the body. The result is that post-menopausal women get less protection from progesterone, their unprotected exposure to estrogen increases, and they begin to catch up with men in incidence of degenerative disease.

Protective levels of progesterone can be easily restored, however, through supplementation. Again, it's important to emphasize that only real bioidentical progesterone provides protection to the mitochondria. Not only does pharmaceutical "progesterone" provide no mitochondrial protection, it is notably toxic to the mitochondria.

Progesterone, although critically protective of the developing fetus, is in no sense a "female hormone". Men and women of all ages should supplement with progesterone, especially given the high levels of environmental estrogens to which we are constantly and unavoidably exposed. Ovulating women who wish to continue to ovulate should take it three weeks on and one week off, and everybody else should take it continuously. Everyone is involuntarily supplementing with significant doses of estrogen, so everyone should voluntarily supplement with progesterone to counteract it.

Vitamin E is another substance with notably protective effects on the mitochondria, and should also, therefore, be taken as a supplement.

Directly invigorating metabolism

The fundamental metabolic rate of the human body depends on the amount of thyroid hormone produced in the thyroid gland. Supplementing with desiccated thyroid, therefore, can be very beneficial for invigorating cellular metabolism. Desiccated thyroid is very different from the Synthroid/levothyroxine/T4 beloved of endocrinologists, which can actually depress metabolism under certain circumstances.

(This anomalous result can occur as follows. The thyroid gland makes a certain amount of both T4 and T3, but T4 has no direct metabolic effect. It must first be converted into T3, which does have a direct metabolic effect. The conversion of T4 into T3 takes place to a significant extent in the liver. Liver function, however, is often degraded in people with metabolic illness. In that case the rate of conversion of the otherwise inert T4 into the metabolically active T3 may be reduced. But supplementing with prescription T4 will raise the level of T4 in the blood, and thereby signal to the thyroid gland to reduce production. When the thyroid gland reduces production, however, it reduces production of both T4 and T3. The net effect of T4 supplementation, therefore, can actually be a reduced level of the metabolically active T3, and a further reduction in the metabolic rate.)

Desiccated thyroid is just dried glandular thyroid, and it contains both T3 and T4. Glandular thyroid is a natural part of the diet for all predators, including humans. When predators eat their prey they typically consume the entire animal, including the thyroid gland. Thyroid, therefore, has been a standard part of the diet of humans throughout our evolutionary history (and it still is in many cultures). It can be returned to the diet through supplementation to invigorate cellular metabolism under all circumstances.

Summary

One of the major causes of degenerative disease is decline in cellular metabolism. The decline in cellular metabolism is the result of the gradual poisoning of the mitochondria over many years. The main mitochondrial toxins are unsaturated fats, especially polyunsaturated fatty acids, and the various forms of estrogen. Mitochondrial health can be restored by minimizing exposure to unsaturated fats and estrogens, and by taking protective supplements. The main supplements protective of mitochondrial function are progesterone and vitamin E. Also, desiccated thyroid supplements can directly invigorate metabolic function.

Fox's Law of Intellectual Dispute

In any intellectual dispute the side that's wrong is the one that makes greater use of the following "evidence":

1. Shut up (includes shouting down, threatening with jail (legal speech prohibitions), personal or professional harassment, etc.)
2. There is no debate
3. We are smarter than you (or we have more advanced degrees, went to better schools, etc.)
4. We are more numerous than you (or everybody knows, etc.)
5. Unsavory characters believe as you do (Hitler liked puppies so puppies are bad, etc.)
6. You are evil (or racist, or a Nazi, etc.)
7. You are in the pockets of those who are evil
8. You are a dupe of those who are evil
9. Peer review is the gold standard (and they get to pick the "peers")
10. The burden of proof is on you (except preponderance of evidence is the only reasonable standard outside of criminal court)

Fox's Law functions in even extreme circumstances. For example, suppose there is but one person on Earth that believes "A", and everybody else on Earth believes "not A". If the "not A" multitudes appeal to the types of evidence enumerated above more than does the one holdout, then the proposition "A" is certainly right and everybody on Earth is certainly wrong except our lone hero.