2011, KMUD

(Transcribed by sueq)

Topic: Salt, inflammation and diuretics

Q: Please describe your professional and academic background.

RP: I studied biology and physiology at the University of Oregon and have taught various hormone and nutrition related courses as well as in other fields, psychology and philosophy included.

Q: So your main interests are around looking into hormones and much of your research has given you new insights into the treatment of many situations and conditions with hormones like progesterone and pregnenolone and others. I think we should start with modern diuretics. We come into contact with people who for one reason or another are using diuretics to decrease water retention whether it’s ankles, fingers or cardiac water retention. Are there any safe diuretics that are prescription medications in the way that they act?

RP: Yes there are some that are relatively safe but obviously it’s the whole theory behind why they exist that is the problem. Mercury compounds used to be used, basically they just kill the kidney cells and let stuff leak out and they were the common diuretics for a very long time until the 1950s. New compounds came on the market that had a variety of effects on the kidneys and it was really the promotion of those that created an ideology that diuretics are really key to treating heart disease and several other problems such as toxaemia of pregnancy. But really I think it’s just a marketing strategy to orient physiology around making the kidneys leak out more water. The real problem is what causes the water retention, and almost anything that seriously injures the organism causes water retention, like a problem following surgery very often is that the person stops forming urine, and shock, any very serious sicknesses are going to in many ways cause the reduced ability to form urine properly. And it’s sort of a plumber’s approach to physiology, to think of just opening up the kidneys and letting the liquid out faster.

Q: So from a herbal perspective, dandelion leaf, and the root is a little bit less effective than the dandelion leaf, but it works as a diuretic and that’s what I thought they had created furosemide from. Although I know with furosemide you have to have a prescription of potassium along with it and dandelion leaf or most green leaves have a lot of potassium so it works out that you don’t need to take potassium if you use dandelion leaf as a diuretic. But would you consider furosemide as a safe diuretic?

RP: It’s got a long history of use, and it probably does have an actual beneficial effect on survival, but with almost any leaf extract, the potassium and magnesium are going to have a diuretic effect that is probably safer than the actual function on the kidneys.

Q: So the inflammation in the first place is the main cause in many cases for the cessation of diuresis and the increase in water retention in the cells through damage. So you’re saying that it’s much more important to look at what’s causing that inflammation, trying to get to the root of the problem, rather than prescribe a diuretic?

RP: Yes, even before the inflammation, there’s the energy problem. And something as simple as drinking too much water in relation to the energy your body is producing, for example a low thyroid person who can’t produce much metabolic energy, is very susceptible to drinking too much water and getting a very general disruption of their physiology. A pint or so of water passing suddenly through your stomach to your intestine causes a surge of serotonin release, and that’s simply a model of stress or shock in general, anything that shocks you or stresses you tends to start the same process that just a surge of water hitting the intestine is enough to increase serotonin, which then stimulates the production of prolactin, and prolactin is associated with water retention. Serotonin itself is, in a direct way, and serotonin increases the production of aldosterone, which produces water retention and inflammation and sets off a chain of reactions that lead to such things as heart failure.

Q: And the unfortunate thing is when someone is low thyroid, they’re usually very thirsty all the time, anyway, so they crave that water and think they have to have that water, they say their body’s really craving it.

RP: Yes, it causes the tissues to retain water, even though it’s passing through them, through the kidneys mostly, and they’re not producing much evaporation through their lungs or skin, but it tends to leak out of their bloodstream, into the tissues and produce oedema, and oedema is harmful to all of the tissues in a direct way and it turns on a whole anabolic system, shifting away from oxidative metabolism, activating lipolysis, the release of fatty acids, shifting cell metabolism towards burning fat rather than sugar, imitating diabetes and aging. So it’s a generalized shock physiology that’s involved, when cells get waterlogged. It can start with low thyroid, but it repeats back and makes the low thyroid problem worse.

Q: So that’s why you said that any leaf extract or tea made from a leaf of a plant is going to have minerals to help prevent this from happening. And if you made a cup of tea you’d sip it slowly, you wouldn’t just drink it down like a pint of water.

RP: Yes, and the minerals, it isn’t essential that it be magnesium and potassium; calcium and sodium have many of the same functions even though each thing has its place in the mechanisms. If you’re in shock you can relieve the symptoms pretty much by taking more of any one of the alkaline minerals, potassium, sodium, magnesium or calcium. In heart failure and lung inflammation, many of the things that happen with shock or aging or any serious disease, the lungs and the heart tend to get waterlogged, and lose function. Just giving a very concentrated salt solution intravenously will relieve the symptoms very often. They’ve doubled the survival - cut the mortality rate in half by just giving extra sodium intravenously.

Q: Why is it so often that doctors tell people to avoid salt? Why is salt so maligned? Especially when here they are using it in surgery?

RP: It really I think got its big boost around 1950 when the diuretics came on the market. They found the diuretics took sodium out, at the same time they took water out, so they said, you should get the same effect by restricting the sodium intake and they applied that to pregnant women, and Tom Brewer, and some other people wrote about the horrible effects of sodium restriction in pregnancy, plus using diuretics, if you combine the two you get serious effects. After I had been reading of Tom Brewer’s work for a long time, I was seeing similarities between premenstrual syndrome and the toxaemia of pregnancy that he had worked on and I finally decided to suggest to young women who were having premenstrual water retention, and not having any good results simply by stopping their salt intake, I suggested that they follow Brewer’s prescription, to increase their salt intake when they were having oedema, water retention problems, and to go according to their craving for salt, rather than avoiding the craving. The first person who tried it, just had a total avoidance of premenstrual water retention the very first month she tried it.

Q: How much salt did she have?

RP: Quite a lot.

Q: What, like a teaspoon a couple of times a day?