2012-02-07_Progesterone 3 - John Barkhausen & Ray Peat

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Audio recordings were available 15-Sep-2020 at:-

https://www.toxinless.com/polsci-120207-progesterone-3.mp3

https://github.com/Ray-Peat/interview/wiki/_pages

2012-02-07-Progesterone 3 John Barkhausen + Ray Peat (transcript) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDU-117j92M

https://www.raypeatdiet.com/ray-peat-john-barkhausen-politics-and-science:-2-07-12-progesterone-part-3/

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JB: - John Barkhausen
RP: - Dr Raymond Peat 19361012 b. yyyymmdd

#mm:ss denotes mm minutes, ss seconds of the audio recording position

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JB: The following show was recorded 7th of February, 2012 and more information can be found about Ray Peat’s work at raypeat.com That’s r-a-y-p-e-a-t,com #00:15

Hello and welcome to “Politics and Science” I’m your host John Barkhausen and this is part 3 of a discussion about progesterone and Dr Raymond Peat’s work with progesterone over the years #00:29

And Dr Raymond Peat for those that don’t know has a PhD in Biology from the University of Oregon and with a speciality in Physiology and he has done a lot of research in the fields of endocrinology and science history.

So Ray welcome once again to “Politics and Science.” #00:47

In the last two shows Ray we covered some of the history of and your work with progesterone. This week I’m hoping we will be able to cover some of the politics and economic pressures affecting the science of progesterone. #01:01

So to start this off. In spite of it’s proven anti-cancer / anti-inflammatory effects progesterone is now deemed a carcinogenic substance under California’s Proposition 65. So I guess my question is how did this turn of events come to pass? #01:18

RP: The proposition says that you can sell carcinogens in any form that you want but you just have to quote the law that says “this is known by the state of California to cause cancer” and/or birth defects and such. But it isn’t a law against selling carcinogens just you have to warn against them. And the personally driven by lawyers who were given the opportunity to enforce the law instead of the state. Lawyers could make collective items themselves they chose to interpret the law to mean that the presence of anything which could be carcinogenic in any other situation makes a product require the warnings of it. #02:20

So it ended up that parking lots, the public had to be warned that they were carcinogenic. The public had to see a sign if they went into the parking lot. #02:32

JB: What was the rationale for the parking lots Ray?

RP: It was either the paving material or the fact that there were cars there emitting exhaust fumes. Chocolate producers were sued, manufacturers of drinking glasses that had paint on the outside. Bread manufacturers, potato vendors, vegetables there was a whole wave of these insane prosecutions and the lawyers made a lot of money #03:13

The real function of that law besides enriching lawyers it was to put the warnings everywhere in the produce department of grocery stores and on apartment buildings, on fishing tackle and hardware and so on. So that it became a joke #03:38

Everything was labelled a carcinogen so the carcinogens became invisible. The real carcinogens were submerged in this phony warning business and it was still legal to sell carcinogens but since everything had the warning the public basically wasn’t warned against the real carcinogens. And the physicians could prescribe the carcinogens as long as they were under a doctors orders #4:14

JB: That is a brilliant, brilliant strategy on the part of business it sounds like. #04:20

RP: Yeah and very bad for the public. It had been brought to the attention of the attorney general and so on and the lawyers basically were in control of the government so that anything that incurred terror or the ability to shake down the public doesn’t interest the law enforcement people. #04:50

I gathered some evidence and then asked the attorney general if the non-profit corporations aren’t supposed to take money from industries to destroy their competitors and such and I gathered up evidence that made it look pretty clear that was what was going on and they said that if I can prove that they have committed a crime they will investigate #05:21

JB: So you do all the work.

RP: Then they would just investigate they didn’t say they would prosecute

JB: I didn’t quite follow What had the non-profit have to do with it? #05:33

RP: The non-profit organisations were being formed either as friends for lawyers to extort money or as I couldn’t prove it because as I couldn’t subpoena the documents but on the surface it very much looks like the competing industries are using those organisations to get rid of progesterone and other products #06:06

JB: Sure that makes perfect sense. So they basically formed kind of a cartel and go after their competitors. It is a very strange law where you, sounds like the wild west where you, just anybody can deputise themselves to go after somebody else to enforce that very open ended law #06:22

RP: Yeah and the state prescribes the type of penalty that they can get. I forget, like it was $50 for each drinking glass that was sold without a warning. #06:38

JB: Wow.

RP: It was a huge amount of money Billions of dollars that the lawyers have collected #06:44

JB: So Kafkaesque It sounds so ridiculous but it had serious repercussions for somebody who is trying to sell a product that they think is helpful. For instance what happens to you if you don’t obtain the California seal of approval of not being a carcinogen? #07:04

RP: If you don’t have don’t have ten employees or more the law doesn’t apply to you. So you should be able to supply anything legally without a warrant. Except the lawyers ignored that, they go ahead and extort money from people who just on the face of the law it can’t be applied to them.

JB: Do they threaten to pursue you in court if you don’t pay them off or do they actually … #07:33

RP: Oh they do. First they threaten then they pursue you And then they keep it going for years.

JB: So it is basically extortion I’d guess. #07:44

RP: Yeah if you would Goggle “Shakedown lawyers California” you’ll get some of the history of it. #07:52

JB: OK I had no idea. Cause in our state I think it carries quite a bit of weight if you don’t. If you are listed as a carcinogen in the State of California #08:01.

RP: Yeah the Californian lawyers were getting big money from foreign corporations even outside the US because they do business with California. California has such a big economy that they control the world #08:16

JB: Okay that well sort of sets the context of the legal environment in California… #08:22

When did you become aware that progesterone was going to be coming under the sights of these guys? #08:28

RP: I guess about ten or fifteen years ago (1997 - 2002 Willim) that some of the manufacturers started labelling the progesterone itself “Known by California to be a carcinogen.” #08:44

JB: So it was already a done deal when you first heard about it? #08:47

RP: Yeah I think it was about 1987 when the California review happened. I’m not sure of the date when The office of environmental health hazard assessment is what #09:04 California’s board is called. They call it ???? T-H-S-A ? #09:13

But I think they weren’t willing to give me the names of the people who were their qualified experts, by their definition, who made those decisions but the law requires them they either just automatically listed because World health organisations or national toxicology programme listed they couldn’t just refer to them #09:38 But in this case they decided to have their board of qualified experts look at the relevant evidence and out of thousands of publications on the issue cancer and progesterone they picked out about a dozen articles that they said were the relevant decisive evidence and of those several of them weren’t even progesterone they were birth control pills and things that contained no progesterone at all.#10:18 They listed them as the relevant evidence but when I asked them to send me copies they weren’t even about progesterone in several cases.#10:28

And then the ones that did involve progesterone in the research every one of them was totally incompetent as toxicology or science or cancer research. They were clearly manipulated to get a case against progesterone, but they failed in every case. #10:54

They had had only one outside person testify during the meeting, Richard Edgrin. And they asked him why he had chosen to testify and he had said, “because progesterone isn’t a carcinogen.” #11:12

JB: Imm .. Hmm

RP: And then he went over some of the studies and mentioned that one of the studies using non-progesterone chemicals had produced some tumours that weren’t metastatic but in that moment he wasn’t talking about progesterone but the chairman of the committee heard him say metastatic and even though he had said they weren’t #11:49

JB: Imm .. Hmm #11:50

RP: And since the topic of the meeting was progesterone you know Edgrin wasn’t talking about progesterone in that case. That was the basis of for making the decision. Like the Marx Brothers couldn’t have been sillier. #12:07

JB: Yeah or Kafka couldn’t have been more surreal #12:12

You said Richard Edgrin, they asked him why he had chosen to testify. Sounds like that he wasn’t even going to be there except that he was concerned with this? #12:19

RP: Yeah because he pointed out that if you call non-carcinogens carcinogens then what is the public going to think about real carcinogens. You are going to ruin the whole issue of public safety if you border anti-carcinogen with carcinogens #12:40

One of the studies that they listed as evidence that proving that progesterone was a carcinogen. The article introduced itself by reference to some studies by Alexander Lipschutz who had published many papers and a book describing the anti-tumour properties of progesterone #13:07

JB: Yeah

RP: This article referenced that and said they were checking up on Lipschutz’s work . But Lipschutz in his papers that they were referring to had specified that progesterone given continuously prevents or even sometimes reverses cancer #13:32 But in this paper that California considered evidence of carcinogenicity they gave intermittent progesterone treatments exactly what Lipschutz had said wouldn’t prevent cancer. #13:50

JB: Imm .. Hmm

RP: And they concluded that it doesn’t prevent cancer. #13:54

That was all the paper consisted of, a bad reputation of Lipschutz's evidence that progesterone prevents cancer. And California presented this, this strange non-recognition of progesterone as a cancer preventing as evidence that it causes cancer. Again it’s … it’s #14:24

JB: Yeah. It is bizarre. But very effective, it sounds like nobody is going to question it because they are the experts #14:33

RP: All that was there was the title, Their panels of experts was probably the receptionist to put up some titles that had cancer and progesterone progesterone in them. #14:43

JB: And they just figured nobody would ever care or look into it? 14:46

RP: Yeah

JB: And that’s because there is no money behind making progesterone as you pointed out in the earlier show. So they are not really stepping on any big toes when they do this, except the people who are actually benefiting from this use of progesterone #15:01

RP: Yeah and around the time that someone petitioned to take progesterone off the list. And that petition was rejected because the person in charge of responding to the petition mentioned a study that was done at the World Health Organisation Cancer Research agency as having shown that progesterone was a carcinogen. #15:31

So I looked that up and the people at the World Health Organisation said they didn’t know of any such statement but they looked carefully and finally found one with the same date that California had cited and it wasn’t about progesterone #15:51

JB: What was that about?

RP: Synthetic progesterone

JB: Oh I see #15:59

RP: And California had cited that one obscure article not about progesterone to refute the petition that had presented evidence that progesterone protects against cancer #16:15

But that was just a way of saying,”No! don’t bother us.” At the point I asked them who made the decisions that were decisive even though the decisions violated their own regulations. The head of the agency said, “We don’t have the resources to answer your questions any more.” #16:39

JB: Like go away.

RP: Yeah

JB: Please go away you are bothering us. Yeah #16:46

RP: And around the same time someone petitioned to remove saccharin from the list of carcinogens and there is a lot of evidence that saccharin is a carcinogen. And California decided to remove it from their list on the basis that the reason it causes cancer of the bladder in rats is peculiar to rat bladders. And it sort of crystallisation and the concussion caused by falling crystals on to the wall of the bladder. Basically that’s what the argument consisted of. #17:34

They had had no evidence that it was the contact of crystals with the bladder but they found a paper that said it does cause crystallisation in the bladder. But there are also articles that showed human urine crystallises in exactly the same way the rats did. There was nothing special about the rat crystals. Just again reaching as far as they could not to see the evidence #18:06 And so they took it off the list. Again just as false in the other direction to take saccharin off the list because it is a big industry money maker #18:19

JB: Yeah. So it sounds like they are there to represent certain interests. And basically be a filter for what becomes available to the public or not. Based on those interests not the public’s interests #18:33

RP: Yeah That’s their public – the corporations are the only public they are concerned with #18:40

JB: I recall from your newsletters that some of the tests they had cited against progesterone some of them were progestins as you said and as you explained last time progestins actually have, many of them have the opposite effect of progesterone. They are synthetic progesterone and they don’t. Are they considered synthetic? Is that the right term? Progestins. #18:59

RP: Well yeah, they are synthetic but they are a different molecule so they aren’t progesterone at all. #19:05

JB: Right. OK.

RP: And they are the industry got the FDA to allow them to call them progestins even though they are are good contraceptives. They prevent gestation but because there is a change in the lining of a rabbit uterus under their influence. It happens to coincide with the changes caused by progesterone at least in one or two features #19:35

JB: Imm hmm

RP: On the basis of that they call that a non-progesterone a progestin. It is a contraceptive but they can see one feature of overlap with progesterone so that’s the strength for calling them progestins. #19:53

JB: I see and for those who didn’t hear the first two parts of this talk about progesterone Dr Peat was telling us that many times progestins are prescribed people think they are taking progesterone but they are actually taking these different molecules. Named after progesterone but actually do not have many of the benefits progesterone does #20:15

RP: Yeah in 1970 when I was working on progesterone occasionally someone would say, “Did you see the paper?” in “”some big science magazine””?” that “progesterone causes cancer.” At that time they were actually putting it in the title “Progesterone causes cancer” but they weren’t working with progesterone. They weren’t just, even the editors of science journals were letting them to get away with calling things by false names #20:49

By the early ‘70s the science world had clarified their terminology enough so that they started consistently calling the other molecules progestins or progestogens and so there has been much less scientific confusion about the terms. But medical doctors are still pretty well confused about the difference between anti-progestational progestins and the real progesterone #21:25

JB: And consequently the public thoughts also very confused cause I know a lot of people who are taking oestrogen with progestins and think they are getting both progesterone and oestrogen. #21:37

RP: Yeah natural progesterone has to carry the warning that it can cause heart defects because some of the things that are called progestins cause heart defects and so something that has one property of progesterone gets to be called a progestin. And then anything if found toxic that molecule gets laid over on real progesterone and that prevents for example women with epilepsy are told to avoid progesterone during pregnancy because it will cause heart defects. #22:19

Actually the real progesterone has been reported to prevent almost all birth defects when it is used before pregnancy #22:29

JB: And as we talked about in the earlier shows most of these rulings seem to be connected to the oestrogen industry which just one drug alone we were talking about last week, premarin I think. Was two billion dollars in sales roughly before the World Health Initiative tests became public and then oestrogen sales dropped. So Dr Peat was saying last week that as oestrogen sales dropped and progesterone sales were going up this alarmed the industry consequently there seems like there is a move against progesterone #23:01

RP: Yes You can see it in some of the traditional centres of oestrogen promoting research they around that time turned against progesterone instead of concentrating on how good oestrogen is they are stretching to find something bad linked to progesterone #23:28

JB: Imm .. that’s very interesting. Who is sitting on these boards Ray? Where do these people come from do you know any of them? Or have heard of them? #23:37

RP: Oh I looked up everyone on the board

JB: We are talking about the board that decided what was a carcinogen in California #23:47

RP: Some of them were linked to the universities that was doing the anti-progesterone research and the leading anti-progesterone guy was Malcolm Pike. And he and one or two others formed a company to promote a birth control pill based on this idea of protecting against progesterone #24:24 And the state of California was using federal grants and other funding to support corporations, his included. So government money was flowing into his anti -progesterone business while he was sitting, influential in saying that progesterone is a carcinogen. #24:53

And everyone I looked up on the board was either directly or indirectly concerned with something competing. For example, one of the people was on the board of a company promoting transdermal medical treatments, things that will administer drugs through the skin while most of progesterone products was being delivered through the skin. This person was representing a company that would probably be in line to market a medical progesterone transdermal. #25:48

JB: I see. And what universities were they working for? And what were their fields of expertise? Are they physiologists, do you know? #25:56

RP: Most of, there was only one biologist on the committee and several toxicologists and the University of Southern California has I think the biggest concentration of anti-progesterone work. I looked at the USC web site about five, six years ago (2006 – 2007 Willim) and I found easily I think it was 140 references to the glorious properties of oestrogen and I found, I forget, numerous but not a competitive number, numerous references to progesterone but every one of them was about it’s harmful properties and if you look at them objectively you have to look hard to find an objectively beneficial effect of oestrogen and you have to stretch very hard to find a harmful effect of progesterone #27:09

JB: Is the contents of this library because they culled it or just always cultivated articles with the right attitude as far as they are concerned? #27:17

RP: Well the things on the web site were research projects in progress. I think they were all in progress #27:27

JB: So right they were being funded through the university probably from pharmaceutical research companies? So that university basically the revenues come down on the side of the pharmaceutical companies that are funding them in short? #27:44

RP: There are several labs around the country Berkley has more recently moved in that direction. Michigan was a big centre of oestrogen research and some of those people moved to UC Berkley #28:06

And interestingly these the Lawrence Livermore laboratory it is involved in anti-progesterone research which seems to have grown out of the chemical warfare line of thinking. #28:21

JB: That’s really interesting That’s a weapons lab basically and why are they interested in oestrogen research or anti-progesterone research do you think? #28:31

RP: Well obviously would be for benign and harmless purposes #28:39 (laughter)

JB: So Yeah . Are they affiliated with businesses? Ray I don’t know anything about Lawrence Livermore laboratory #28:50

RP: No I think it is all government money

JB: One of the things you have written about Elwood Jensen who is the supposed inventor of the concept of receptor protein, the hormone receptor? That right he invented that concept? #29:10

RP: Yeah. The idea of receptors in general was being discussed in various fields but for oestrogen the enzymologists were progressing very quickly in understanding the effects of oestrogen and molecules like oestrogen through the 1940’s into the 1950’s. #29:44

And one of the lines of very productive research was showing that ? can change oestrogen back and forth between oestrone and oestradiol. Oestrone is relatively inactive, oestradiol is very active and that was kind of in psychology and Jensen’s argument was that oestrogen acts by activating a genetic programme and so it is only a female acting substance because females are genetically determined to become female and so what oestrogen does is act on a receptor that activates the genetic programme and then if something is acted on by enzymes. #30:48

Men have enzymes that are going to do the same reactions and enzymology tended to generalise the oestrogen issue and making it a masculine problem as well as a female but Jensen got the only support from the atomic energy commission which controlled the isotopes needed to do enzyme studies and he used an isotope labelled form of oestrogen and in his experiments with uterus tissue claimed to show there was no oxidation or reduction of oestrogen by the uterus and said that’s the end of the enzyme condition it is all receptor and genes now. And that spread through the research world and by the mid 1960’s was the dogma. #32:02

But then the enzymologists started getting the same isotopes that he had had and showed that in fact the old 1940’s research was exactly what was happening and now everyone knows that oestrogen, oestradiol and oestrone are perfectly interchangeable. And that is exactly where progesterone and thyroid and stress hormones interact with oestrogen. #32:34

Progesterone turns off some of the enzymes that activate oestrogen and activates enzymes that inactivate oestrogen So the enzyme approach opens up the whole issue of environmental physiology, nutritional metabolic effects on the oestrogen system and the oestrogens deranging effects on all of those systems. So that’s all now coming back but fifty years of belief in genetic explanation of why oestrogen is so good for females and harmless to everyone else #33:20

JB: Yeah, yeah

RP: .. you have got too fuzzy on the last sentence I couldn’t understand it.

JB: Yeah I was saying that Elwood Jensen the reason that I brought him up was cause that you mentioned Livermore labs and he worked in the chemical weapons industry isn’t that right #33:37

RP: Yeah, University of Chicago I think was where he was working and that was the big weapons laboratory. The government doesn’t say much about their chemical biological warfare research but if you look at the careers of some of the famous biologists you see that their, you can’t explain, their achievements other than they were being pushed by the pentagon to get the information that they needed for germ and chemical warfare #34:20

JB: So just to put a political context on Elwood Jensen’s work and relate that to science you are saying that the fact that he was able to shift the damage that oestrogen does to the genetic causes that sort of removed the liability of government pollution and industry pollution away from them to basically random genetic problems. #34:45

RP: Yeah until I guess about twenty five years ago (1987 Willim) biologists thought about oestrogen working on the oestrogen receptor as simply activating femaleness in genetic females and that therefore it would act only on the uterus or a female breast or the female pituitary as if a man didn’t share practically all enzymes and genes with women. It was just an extreme case of genetic clean up of the dangerous possibilities. #35:36

JB: The actual reality of how things work #35:40

RP: Oestrogen has been known for about for thirty or forty years to act on every kind of tissue. You can find the oestrogen receptor everywhere but even without the oestrogen receptor you can demonstrate that it works on any kind of tissue and some of the oestrogenic compounds attached to the so called oestrogen receptor but some have oestrogenic effects without touching the oestrogen receptors so they, really, it should have a new name #36:16 It’s the sometime oestrogen receptor activator system that isn’t really the crucial thing because you can get oestrogenic effects from radiation or cyanide or suffocation or various stresses and infections and so on they will all bring on oestrus and swelling of cells and activation of the uterus and so on. #36:46

JB: Inflammation #36:47

RP: Yeah, The overlap of stress and radiation and industrial smoke and so on with oestrogen that’s one of the things that has been carefully avoided and the receptor idea is crucial in covering that up #37:12

JB: Yeah it sounds like what he came up with was a very sort of smoke and mirrors cartoon for selling a concept that how everything works such a way that it fits in with the popular idea the gene being how life is directed. People may be wondering why we are talking about oestrogen when this is a show is about progesterone #37:33

RP: Well oestrogen in the physiological situation activates the production of progesterone and then progesterone knocks down the production of oestrogen so it is a matter of an occasional stimulus from stress or oestrogen which then turns on a system that then dependingly gets a rid of oestrogen and leaves things operating for the rest of the month. #38:11

And it has only the exaggerated prolonged effect of oestrogen becomes a danger and progesterone is the basic thing for getting rid of oestrogen and if you look at the enzymes involved. Progesterone inactivates the aromatase enzyme that produces oestrogen from the androgens and it activates the two types of detoxifying enzymes the glucuronide transferase and the sulphur transferase that attach the sulphuric acid to make it water soluble and it, oestrogen opposes those and progesterone inactivates the oestrogen activated enzymes that remove the detoxified sulphate gluteramide so it is just an amazingly comprehensive system that progesterone does and only real progesterone does that so systematically. #39:24

It knocks out the production and maintenance and activation of oestrogen and it even destroys the so called oestrogen receptor protein so that the action ends the production ends and all of the intermediate steps progesterone systematically destroys the oestrogens system and that’s one of the reasons progesterone is so universally important. It’s the opposite side of why oestrogen is so universally dangerous #40:08

JB: Hmmm #40:09

RP: Progesterone even protects against radiation as part of that same system because radiation imitates oestrogen and the cancers produced by either radiation or oestrogen these are equally protected against by progesterone. So it is a comprehensive protective substance against the full range of biological effects. #40:44

JB: And Elwood Jensen the inventor of the oestrogen receptor that concept he goes onto talk about his work it was apparent to him that very small amounts of oestrogen cause cancer that was his challenge just to figure out why that was and went on to try to discover other chemicals that opposed oestrogen. And he came up with tamoxifen and I think everybody knows that has a lot of bad side effects #41:10

RP: A man named Dan Ledneser? gives a more insider view of where tamoxifen came from and the people who were working on the fact that oestrogen is likely polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in causing not only cancer but inflammation and fibrosis. #41:40 They were looking for anti-inflammatory things because the polycyclic hydrocarbons and oestrogen create inflammation and in looking for anti-inflammatory things he accidentally found that tamoxifen was anti-oestrogen as well and out of that line of research according to them Ledneser? even celebrex … the cox 2 hitting NSAIDs even these derived from that line of research that was thinking about a more basic view of what oestrogen does #42:32

JB: Go ahead #42:34

RP: The receptor wasn’t involved at all in that kind of thinking. #42:39

JB: OK. Maybe I could be misquoting Elwood Jensen but it sounds like as though he was involved in something to do with tamoxifen. But the thing I didn’t understand was that it has been know for a long time that progesterone does oppose oestrogen and does it so completely as you have pointed out. And so why were they even bothering look for something else that’s what puzzles me? #43:03

RP: I think you have to imagine the mentality of like the person who said, suggested the looking for how the oestrogen effects the tissues was Charles Huggins?. Huggins was, I think he founded the lab that Jensen was working in, and according to Jensen he gave him the idea. But I think you have to see what flakes they were even though it was the University of Chicago.#43:50

They were just totally unaware of the world of bio-chemistry as related to cancer. I don’t really know how it was possible to have a detailed biography of how what courses they were teaching and so on but Huggins is the guy that theorised things, no he read a text book in which a rooster drew it’s comb by giving testosterone and the classical thing #44:33

So they said since testosterone makes a man develop a prostate gland and oestrogen makes women develop breasts if you want to stop the growth of cancer in the breast you will either remove oestrogen or give testosterone that was his first suggestion I think #44:59

And for the prostate you would either castrate the man or give them an oestrogen or both because his feeble idea was that the female and male were opposites and so if you give the opposite hormone you’ll antagonise the growth promoting effect of their hormones. Basically a completely idiotic idea at the time he proposed it but no one was there to tell him so. #45:33

That immediately started doctors all over the country castrating men by the millions and for I guess forty-five - fifty years they were giving men oestrogen with or without castration to treat prostate cancer all on that very ignorant early twentieth century idea of the opposition of the hormones #45:59

JB: I had no idea that went on, about the castration #46:03

RP: Yeah and Huggins was the one who besides proposing castrating men to cure prostate cancer and to give them oestrogen. He first proposed removing the ovaries to stop the oestrogenic stimulation and then since some of them didn’t recover from that he took out their adrenal glands as another source of oestrogen and that was practised up right through the 1960’s I think till about 1970 and at one time Huggins even proposed treating breast cancer with oestrogen just didn’t make any sense but he had a sort of Frankenstein mentality lets tinker with things and maybe we will come up with something #47:04

JB: He saw everything just in black and white #47:06

RP: That’s the mentality of the gentleman that Jensen was working with. And he, you know I think it involved basically either incredibly bad science or deliberate fraud for him to say that oestrogen absolutely wasn’t being metabolised in the tissues where it was having an effect. And that was his proof of, that it acted only through the receptor. #47:42

JB: Well that reminds of H L Menkens? saying for every complex problem there is a simple concise answer that is absolutely spot on #47:52 And perhaps, we only have about ten minutes left I believe. It would be good for people to hear about how progesterone does work in combatting cancer. I don’t think we have actually talked too much about that we mostly have talked about anti-inflammatory effects. And maybe you could cite some of the uses that it actually has with success #48:15

RP: Well Alexander Lipschutz was the person who did most comprehensive work showing that where oestrogen causes fibrosis, fibroids first and eventually cancer it acts first on the uterus then on the breasts, then on the lungs, kidneys, brain it is just a matter of where oestrogen concentrates that it tends to cause fibromas and cancers. And in everyone of those situations progesterone was protective and now it is known that it has this, I think, it has about nine different mechanisms by which it eliminates the oestrogen problem #49:06

So the cause and effect outcome was defined by 1950 by Alexander Lipschutz and then more detailed stuff is still being developed. An Italian has done some very good work looking at the range of things progesterone does defensively. Someone named Mendleson has done a lot of work on the protective effects progesterone against oestrogen. #49:42

But the full reason of why progesterone is protective against cancer you have to look at the whole spectrum of what oestrogen is doing #49:58

The first thing oestrogen does is to cause the cell to take up water and the taking up water stimulates cell division and fat production and a lot of other enzyme activities. #50:12 These effects happen within minutes of the time of oestrogen exposure so anyone looking at simple tissue biological experiments way back eighty years as soon as they had a concentrated oestrogen like material. They could see that it instantaneously was causing the tissue to take up water and begin producing fats and other substances and divide so it takes at least several hours for genes to get activated and cause cellular changes. So obviously the receptor wasn’t involved in those instantaneous effects of oestrogen #51:02

And those are exactly what the essence of the cancer problem is if you start an inflammation that causes the cells keep taking up water in that stressed condition of activating cell chemistry they are using energy faster and the stimulation of cell division is tending to use up the supply of oxygen and sugar. #51:39

In my thesis research one of the things I did was show that adding oestrogen to a system such as the uterus #51:49 lowers the oxygen retention it just sucks the oxygen out of the system, and so it kills the embryo that is trying to implant if there is a little too much oestrogen or not enough progesterone so that stimulation creates an oxygen deficiency and as far as sugar is available the sugar will be glycolysed to produce emergency energy in the absence of enough oxygen to meet the stimulation #52:21

The glycolysis produces lactic acid, the production of lactic acid leaving the cell raises the pH inside the cell and that increased pH keeps the swelling going on, activates cell division and expends some energy. So it needs something from the outside to stop the production of lactic acid and deliver oxygen and so on.#52:50

Progesterone is one of the essential things for stopping that process. But once it starts under the influence of oestrogen you get the lactic acid production which creates the vicious cycle of cell activation and the lactic acid acts as, it increases the supply of blood and spreads the growth of blood vessels into the environment and it activates everything you need to produce a tumour #53:22

And all that is needed is the absence of an anti-inflammatory energy restoring substance such as aspirin or progesterone to stop this process. If you don’t have those available the lactic acid stimulates surrounding cells to change their physiology in ways that you have a progressive increase of the malignancy behaviour of the cells #53:58

In the simplest situation an injury causes the lactic acid to be produced which activates the energy changes and growth to heal the wound. #54:11 But at a certain point the system should come into the anti-inflammatory substances such as progesterone to finish off the healing. In the absence of healing #54:25 attempted healing usually goes on and creates the swelling and oxygen deficient situation and if you grow cells in a culture dish and deprive them of oxygen just by having them in a dish without good circulation they will eventually mutate and form other types of cell that causes derangement and alteration of the tissue type. #54:57

So all of the steps that have canceration can be seen structurally and metabolically in terms of wound healing that can’t be brought to completion #55:09

JB: Oh yeah that’s good I like that. #55:13 And I think Harry Reuben, you have pointed out, has basically proven that cancer is not from a gene gone bad but rather that the tissue itself has developed an unhealthy state. Could you be able in a couple of minutes maybe cover that briefly? #55:30

RP: He has just honestly summarised the real cancer research showing that the deranged metabolism and structure is what causes the chromosomal damage. So instead of genes causing the tumour, the tumour causes the genetic defects. #55:52

JB: Which is the opposite of what we hear basically every day in our popular culture when people talk about cancers #56:00

RP: Yeah and when oncologists or cathologists says, “Your tissue shows abnormal cell division and the wrong number of chromosomes and such.” If you .. they said, “That means we have to cut it out, irradiate the tissue and so on.” But if you look at the fate of those deranged cells they going to live maybe to the next attempt to divide then they don’t have the right number of chromosomes ?bad ones? dying. They are very short life once they get to that deranged state. The death of the cell contributes to the inflammation of the area and so stopping the inflammation and energy deficit is always the solution to the problem #56:49

When, it is now recognised by some oncologists that the reason that malignant cancer reforms after they have irradiated the area or cut out the cancer or both. The reason is that it reforms stem cells are called into the inflamed area that has been treated and even if you irradiate a healthy area it will call stem cells in to try to repair the wound and if the irradiation deranged the fibrous material in that area you will produce a cancer from the irradiation. So whenever you injure a tissue by removing a tumour you are just guaranteeing that the body will try to repair the wound by sending in new cells which then turn into cancer cells that is if the area is still sick #57:46

JB: So they way to actually heal or to stay healthy is to make sure your cellular environment is a healthy one #57:55

RP: Yeah

JB: So for anti-inflammatory substances that people can use, progesterone is one of them and aspirin is another # 58:02

RP: Anti-histamines, going way back fifty years people were seeing that anti-histamines would occasionally cure a cancer but that just didn’t catch on in the profession #58:15

Aspirin ten or fifteen years ago when I mentioned it to someone with cancer. They would like think, I was like the doctor saying, “Take an aspirin and call me later.” #58:28

JB: Call me from the next life. #58:29 (laughter)

So you are saying that progesterone and aspirin are actually viable cancer treatments? #58:37

RP: Yeah and some of the anti-histamines are definitely protective.#58:42

JB: Well all right if people want to read more about this they can find out lots of Ray Peat’s ideas at at raypeat.com That’s r-a-y-p-e-a-t,com. Where I think Ray you said you had seventy articles up there or so. #58:57

RP: Yeah I will be putting about a dozen more up in a couple of weeks I think #59:02

JB: That’s a beautiful web site by the way I love the sombrero and ice cream cone. #59:07

RP: Thanks. #59:05

JB: And we have been talking to Dr Raymond Peat who has a PhD in Biology from the University of Oregon and with a speciality in Physiology and also has done extensive research in endocrinology and science history. #59:23

As always it has been a real pleasure to talk to you Ray. Thanks so much for coming on #59:28

RP: OK Thank you OK. #59:30

JB: That wraps it up for “Politics and Science” this week. Please tune in again next week for another edition of “Politics and Science.”

Podcasts can be found at radio4all.net. #59:42

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