Raymond Peat, Ph.D.

Alkalinity vs Acidity
3/16/2012, KMUD
Transcribed by treelady
Herb Doctor: ...This topic of alkalinity and acidity, generally summed up as pH.
There's lots of information on the internet and I know that most people that are
listening to the show now might be interested in the subject would appreciate the
kind of clarity which you'll bring to the reason that you understand the importance
of maintaining healthy pH and I think the main reference for cancer is that cancer
seems to predominate in acidic environments and that diets through poor proteins or
other protein based foods that we would eat - beans and seeds and some meats
produce acidic byproducts. So how do you look at some?
RP: These sort of traditional ideas about the acid base balance of food, they usually
lead to a pretty good diet. For example, the Indian diet - fruit, vegetables and milk
and cheese. That's a good example of the alkaline residue diet. And so I don't have
any disagreement with the dietary recommendations to eat lots of milk and cheese
and fruit and vegetables. But it's the small details that people use to argue for certain
refinements of that diet, for example the fear of milk. They talk about the loss of
calcium in the urine as indicating that maybe it's too much acid. Actually the residue
of milk is on the alkaline side because of the very large amount of potassium and
calcium in the milk, very similar to the vegetables that the cows eat to make the
milk. They accumulate a huge amount of alkaline in their milk.
Herb Doctor: Let's talk about that subject a little bit more. The residue you said
that's like what's left behind once the food source has been metabolized. That's what
actually dictates whether a food is alkaline or acidic.
RP: Yeah, and grains, nuts, beans and meat do have a very acidic residue or ash
after they're metabolized. And the biggest part of that in meat and nuts and grains is
phosphate. Proteins have a lot of sulfur that turns into sulfuric acid when it's
metabolized. And with those it is possible to do biological harm eating too much of
those and not enough of the potassium, sodium, magnesium and calcium.
Herb Doctor: Which are predominately found in fruits and vegetables.
RP: Yeah, fruits, vegetables, milk and cheese.
Herb Doctor: Ok. So would you be prepared to run through some of the more
commonly experienced acidic production processes in the body whether they're
respiratory, or in producing urine or other wastes and how the body will deal with
maintaining the pH balance in the body?
RP: I think it helps to look at the picture in the very biggest context which is that
mostly we're a huge lump of protein and protein is on average acidic and if you just
leave acid sitting around in the environment, it will accumulate the base that
neutralizes it. And so if we think of ourselves as a big piece of acidic protein, this
just spontaneously will associate alkaline material with it. Potassium, magnesium
for example will neutralize the acidity of the protein. But as we energize our
system, by burning carbohydrate and fat mostly, the carbohydrate in particular turns
into carbon dioxide. And the carbon dioxide has to constantly be leaving the
organism. What comes in as oxygen, the oxygen combines with the fuel carbon and
becomes carbon dioxide. So you have a neutral oxygen coming in. It's called

oxygen, meaning the acid former. The acid that it forms in this case is carbonic acid
and we're constantly metabolically producing this acid which is streaming out of our
cells and leaving through our lungs primarily. The kidneys hardly loose any carbon
dioxide or bicarbonate. It almost all leaves through the lungs. And as the carbon
dioxide is produced, combining with water, it turns into carbonic acid which
ionizes. And so you have the acidic carbonic acid leaving the cell as a charged
particle. It takes the oppositely charged sodium with it primarily. Sodium and
calcium are constantly being drawn out of the cell by the stream of carbonic acid
being produced inside the cell. And so the alkaline minerals reach the blood stream
in balance with the carbonic acid. Then the carbonic acid leaves the lungs as carbon
dioxide, leaving an alkaline trace in the blood. The cell basically was neutral until it
produced the acid. Then that neutralized protein gave up some of it's mineral
alkaline material which then shows up in the blood so the pH of the blood is above
neutral, about pH of 7.4.
Herb Doctor: Because of the carbonic acid?
RP: Yeah. The carbonic acid that's left in your lungs. The mineral gets pulled out of
the neutral cell, originally neutral, but as it's pulled out with the acid being
constantly formed. The cell re-chose it's basic protein acidity, so your respiring cell
is normally slightly on the acidic side. A good healthy cell with plenty of oxygen
will be around pH 6.8. And if you stress a cell that isn't getting enough carbon
dioxide, or stress it in any way - radiation, not enough oxygen, not enough of any of
the things that it needs - the cell becomes activated and shifts to the alkaline because
it can't make carbon dioxide to acidify itself and it begins producing lactic acid very
inefficiently. And the thing about lactic acid is that sugar instead of being oxidized
all the way to carbon dioxide comes to the point of pyruvic acid and instead of that
being oxidized, the cell reduces the pyruvic acid to lactic acid by taking some of the
energy substance that was produced in this metabolism, wasting it to get rid of the
electrons so that this NADH, NAD can go back and become reduced again and
produce more of the conversion of pyruvic to lactic acid. And in that process, the
lactic acid is taking protons out of the cell and is raising the pH of the cell as the
conversion of pyruvic acid to lactic acid increases the pH of the cell, just the
opposite of what the production of carbon dioxide is doing. So the stressed cell
becomes alkaline.
Herb Doctor: The popular theory is stated that cancer cells like an acidic
environment. It sounds like if a cell is stressed it likes an alkaline environment and
that sounds almost exactly the opposite.
RP: Well, it shifts internally to become alkaline when it's stressed but the produced
lactic acid accumulates in it's environment and that's where the acid is, in the
surroundings and then it shows up in the blood.
Herb Doctor: Right so that's when if you've stressed your muscle out too much, then
you're producing lactic acid and that makes your muscles sore.
RP: Yeah.
Herb Doctor: So that's a stressed cell. And does lactic acid play a big part in
cancer as well?
RP: Yeah. It not only acidifies the environment, which in itself could be actually
protective if it was acidified by carbon dioxide, but it happens that the lactic acid
acts as a signal to do all of the things associated with cancer, such as stimulating the
growth of new blood vessels so that the inflammation continues. It signals a lot of

inflammatory changes like vasodilation and formation of new blood vessels and the
release of carbon monoxide and nitric oxide, lots of things producing free radicals
and injury. So the lactic acid is functioning as a local poisoner and inflammatory
agent. The acidity that it produces is a sign that something is wrong but it isn't the
acidity in the tumor that's harmful because the tumor itself is internally alkaline.
Herb Doctor: So as a side point, what do you think of foods that are high in lactic
acid?
RP: Well, even when we make it ourselves, it has these pro-inflammatory, swelling
producing, tumor promoting functions. And when it's made my bacteria, it's
somewhat more toxic. And when the body receives it, either from a stressed muscle
or a tumor or from too much yogurt or some food that has been fermented, it goes to
the liver to get detoxified. So every time you eat something with lactic acid it's the
same as if you had been stressed physically. Your liver has to work extra to detoxify
it and it has to have a source of energy to detoxify the lactic acid, turning it back into
glucose. Glucose is right back where you started, so you've lost ground every time
your liver has to process lactic acid.
Herb Doctor: So would you consider any amount of lactic acid containing food to
be a stress to the liver or do you think there's some margin of benefit?
RP: A healthy liver doesn't notice an occasional dish of yogurt or sauerkraut or
something. How I got interested in it was a long time ago I discovered Kefir. It
tasted good and so I drank a little more than a cup of it each day for lunch but
everytime I did that I would get a migraine-like headache every afternoon. And that
started me looking up what happens to your blood sugar and inflammatory
mediators when you get more lactic acid than your liver likes.
Herb Doctor: Interesting. How do you think about people's lifestyles promoting an
acidic situation from stress and how that would negatively impact someone's health
in a scientific way that that's the reason why.
RP: The nervous system is in control of the metabolism to a great extent. You don't
have to run 5 miles to shift over into that stress metabolism if your nervous system,
emotional systems are very stressed. Just the thought of what you're doing... I
mentioned it before, that if you hang an animal by it's tail or put it in a tube where it
can't move, it will very quickly get an ulcer with lactic acid going into all of its
systems releasing histamine and other serotonin mediators of inflammation. But if
you give something for the animal to bite, even though in the same restrained
stressful situation, as long as it can defend itself by biting back, it doesn't get the
ulcer.
Herb Doctor: Do think this could possibly explain why people have said in the past,
well people that are angry as long as they let it out they generally don't get cancer.
It's the people that hold it in, that don't do anything about it that get cancer.
RP: The rat experiment really suggests it.
Herb Doctor: Do you think that if we can coin the term an acidic lifestyle - the
stressed businessman who is always trying to meet deadlines they are hard pushed
to make, and just missing the plane, or missing his appointments and being very
stressed out - there's a potential for a situation where cancer could arise because of
the acidity from stress?

RP: Well. it's actually the things like lactic acid and serotonin and the stress really is
doing it's damage by creating an intracellular alkaline condition. It's the alkalinity.
For example, when someone is under surgery they often get ulcers just from being
operated on somewhere else. And if they are respirating them at stress, it'll very
often give them lung inflammation and brain inflammation as well. And they've
found gradually, 60 or 70 years after the people originally discovered it, they found
that if they don't ventilate them very thoroughly and let them accumulate quite a bit
of carbon dioxide, their lungs and brain are protected and don't swell. So it's the
acidity from carbon dioxide that is extremely anti-stress and protective. It's the
alkalinity that goes with producing acid lactic acid in the first place I think.
Herb Doctor: I think just to explain that you're saying that the acidity is produced
by the production of hydrogen ions that are in the extracellular medium from the
cell. So the cell is alkaline.
RP: Yeah. Just shifts the protons out of the cell.
Herb Doctor: So that's why people get stomach ulcers if they're stressed because
instead of their cells in their stomach holding on to the acid, it's like releasing it
into the environment and then it damages the stomach lining. Can you look at it like
that?
RP: Yeah, it's really the serotonin and other inflammatory things in the stomach
rather than just an acid. The stomach is very good at holding extreme acidity safely
but when stress gives the wrong kind of signals, and you don't have continuing
respiration, then you get the damage.
Herb Doctor: So it's the presence of that acid in the stressed cell that is triggering
the inflammatory mediators. You can't actually just measure it because everyone's
stomach is acidic. But they say when you have stomach ulcers, you shouldn't have
this acidic food but it's not really down to the acid then you're saying. It's more
down to the other inflammatory mediators.
RP: Oh yeah.
Herb Doctor: There's a thing that they call the potential renal acid load of the food,
the PRAL, that I guess is a measure of how much ammonia or protons are within the
food when it's metabolized and that's the kind of ash value as it were, of the food.
How realistic do you think it is to consume alkalizing materials and how that would
affect the overall acid base balance when the stomach is so acidic.
RP: Well I think it's very safe to consume a great excess of the alkaline material.
The fruit and vegetable and milk people do. And the body can produce and change
protein, for example, into ammonia and if it doesn't have enough mineral, it will
waste protein turning it into the equivalent of the alkaline material and using the
ammonia as the cation equivalent of the sodium so it can save the sodium, and
calcium and so on.
Herb Doctor: Ok I always look to ammonia, as the NH4+, as being able to
dissociate into hydrogen protons but I probably missed the point somewhere along
the line. I know ammonia is a base, it's not an acid. I think I got it messed up in
closure...
RP: When it becomes the ammonia, that is the equivalent of sodium.

Herb Doctor: Right, that's the NH4+. Alright, how realistic do you think it is to
consume. Do you think that consuming things that have an excess of potassium,
magnesium and calcium can actively work to raise the pH of someone's
environment?
RP: I think the main function is sparing protein that you would use for the kidneys
to help to regulate the minerals. And for example, when a person's fasting for
several days, they will generally loose more protein than fat because the stress
hormones rise and they live on a pure meat diet when they're fasting as their tissues
break down. And if during that fast if you just drink minerals - salt water, baking
soda, potassium, magnesium and calcium - any of the alkaline minerals will
radically spare the amount of protein that you would be consuming and wasting. So
a fast is much less stressful and harmful if you're getting the alkaline minerals.
Herb Doctor: Ok, I know that you've mentioned sodium bicarbonate... I think we'll
take this caller first.
Caller: This is fascinating and thank you very much, yourself and Dr. P. The carbon
dioxide exchange that you spoke of, is that why it is so calming to rebreathe carbon
dioxide when you're in stress?
RP: Because that's the very thing that stress does, shifting to the alkaline and
making lactic acid, the cells are in danger of getting into a chronically activated
state. The panic attack is a typical thing where the body too easily shifts over into
making lactic acid instead of making carbon dioxide. And so the person feels that
they're suffocating but in the long run that same thing can lead to degenerative
diseases or cancer in which the cells are stuck in a panic attack condition. And if
you think of the original state of the cell as being the protein acid with fats and
minerals to neutralize the acid, you can restore that condition with carbon dioxide.
Just rebreathing it, getting your percentage of the acidic carbon dioxide dissolved in
the blood up where it should be, you can stop the production of lactic acid, reverse
the stress processes and restore the cell to its relaxed unpaniced condition.
Herb Doctor: And that's through like bag breathing.
RP: Yeah, and for example you can generally lower your blood pressure by just
breathing a minute or two in a paper bag a few times a day. I've seen people take
their blood pressure down 30 points in just a day or two that way.
Caller: Thank you so much.
Herb Doctor: So it really is a de-stressor not only for the mental state but for all the
other cellular states that are panicing.
RP: Yeah. Every cell or tissue that you look at, it's protected if you restore the
proper amount of carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide in the gaseous form. It's
easier if you think about the pH acid base balance of the organism. If you think of it
as being pushed by a few factors, one of which is the amount of dissolved or
gaseous carbon dioxide. So that breathing in a bag is one of the most powerful ways
to restore the proper balance. If you need more bicarbonate, the gaseous carbon
dioxide will allow you to make more bicarbonate and that will help you regulate
your minerals and even help you retain more of your alkaline minerals. It will help
correct your balance either in the acid or base direction. Taking sodium bicarbonate,
for example, will actually acidify cells that are in need of more carbon dioxide
because when the bicarbonate has been deficient and a cell is exposed to the

bicarbonate it will convert it into the acidic carbon dioxide and be able to lower its
pH even though you've taken the alkaline baking soda.
Herb Doctor: So is that why you recommend baking soda for athletes? Does that
help balance out that high lactic acid?
RP: Yeah. There've been experiments for example, in the marathon bicycle races in
Death Valley where the altitude is very low. They found that I think it was a
tablespoon of baking soda at the start of the race made them tolerate the stress much
better.
Herb Doctor: Let's take the next caller.
Caller: My question involves a study I heard this week on NPR about the cultures of
western civilizations. The mortality rate for Japan and they're the highest smoking
population of all western cultures, is actually much higher than here in America and
I'm wondering, does smoking increase their carbon dioxide that you're talking about
in the body to relax it or?
RP: Could you rephrase the question. What was higher in the other culture?
Herb Doctor: He said smoking and I think what he was trying to get at was smoking
an efficient way of raising your CO2 but it's monoxide I think.
RP: Yeah, the carbon monoxide is something we produce under stress. And it
lowers our ability to use oxygen and produce carbon dioxide.
Herb Doctor: Carbon monoxide is what you inhale as part of the cigarette smoking.
Right? It increases your carbon monoxide.
RP: Yeah
Herb Doctor: So the caller who called in, the carbon monoxide is pretty damaging
and it's not something that would improve your CO2.
Michael: Do you have any thoughts as to why the Japanese culture has such
longevity or lower mortality especially since they do consume a lot of tobacco?
RP: Well, much of that is propaganda. When you look at the actual details of the
population, it isn't as great as some of the articles have been saying. For example,
one of the articles if you look at the mortality figures, it suggests that the average
lifespan is 300 years. If you don't look at the whole structure of the population, it's
hard to get an idea of what the real age specific death rate is. You have to look at
how likely attrition is to die when they're is 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 years old rather
than looking at the mortality per population. And that's the trouble with the United
States since the turn of the century. They stopped publishing the actual raw figures.
They give an age adjusted mortality rate. So I don't think anyone outside the bureau
of statistics is sure what the longevity of Americans doing right now.
Herb Doctor: So back to what that caller's question was. You don't think that
smoking raises carbon dioxide in any way?
RP: It does but it raises the carbon monoxide so seriously that's the main effect
that's harmful.

Herb Doctor: So Dr. Peat, you mentioned sodium bicarbonate for the athletes in
Death Valley that were actually given a greater interval between getting stressed.
The potassium bicarbonate, that's something that could be used similarly as sodium
bicarbonate?
RP: Yeah. The average person is very good at getting rid of the sodium so the
sodium bicarbonate is something that most people can use without experiencing a
disturbance of blood pressure. But the potassium bicarbonate has a relaxing effect
on your blood vessels and so it can help to lower your blood pressure even more
than the sodium bicarbonate. But you have to be cautious because too much of it can
relax your heart.
Herb Doctor: And just for our listeners, in case people don't know what sodium
bicarbonate is, it's baking soda.
Herb Doctor: So what would your suggestions be, Dr. Peat, for the people out there
that have been thinking about acid and alkalinity and cancer problems with maybe
an acidic situation? What would be an idea lifestyle that you would suggest?
RP: The only foods I would suggest you eliminating would be the grains and beans
and most of the nuts. And probably reducing most meats. Gelatin happens to be the
part of the meat that doesn't have so many of the disturbing acidic pro-inflammatory
effects. In the news currently is the pink slime issue which is made from connective
tissues but seems to me that that might be the best part of the meat. (chuckle)
Herb Doctor: We do have another caller.
Caller: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Whenever I do rather short walks like a half
an hour, I get muscle soreness and it's for a couple days afterwards. So I'm
assuming I'm making too much lactic acid. So I started taking baking soda baths
and I wondered if taking these baths with about 2 pounds of baking soda per day is
safe.
Herb Doctor: Peat, did you hear that?
RP: Yeah. I think it's good. Salt. magnesium sulfate, epsom salts and baking soda
are all good. The baking soda helps you absorb magnesium if you have epsom salts
mixed with it.
Herb Doctor: So that's a good combo, one pound baking soda mixed with one
pound epsom salts?
RP: Yeah. And some experimenters in the naturally carbonated mineral springs
found that people were absorbing carbon dioxide through their skin. Even though
their body changed a lot of carbon dioxide, the body has such an affinity for it that it
will soak up the mineral water against the gradient as if we had pumps in our skin.
Herb Doctor: So it's going from a low concentration to a high concentration.
RP: Yeah. It's a matter of solubility. The enzymes turn from the bicarbonate into a
gaseous carbon dioxide form which dissolves in our fats and cells.
Herb Doctor: A person was talking about this and they were purporting the use of
ascorbate at the rate of up to 130 grams per day. And it was 9 parts ascorbate and 1
part ascorbate acid and it was supposed to be keeping certain types of cancer from
growing and actually causing some to regress. Did you know much about it,

because it's vitamin C but I understand the processing for these things is less than
desirable.
RP: They keep changing the technology. I don't know exactly what they're doing
now but as recently as about ten years ago, a free radical chemist dissolved a gram
of pure powdered ascorbic acid in a liter of distilled water and found that there were
enough heavy metals in that purified vitamin C to produce as many free radicals as a
killing dose of x-rays would have produced.
Herb Doctor: Oh my goodness. So it's citrus season and that's a great source of
vitamin C.
RP: All of our foods except grains and beans basically are very good sources of
vitamin C. The analytic methods have generally ignored it in meat and some of the
solid foods like that but it's present in meats at a very high concentration in the
oxidized state. All you have to do is metabolize and you turn the oxidized ascorbic
acid into the common ascorbic acid.
Herb Doctor: So is that the theory why a concentrated orange juice still has
absorbable vitamin C. It's just that it's just a slightly changed form when you boil?
RP: Yeah. And most of the tests don't really look at the molecule, they just look at
the reducing power. And in some vegetables and meats, for example, the tissue has
oxidized it partly into dehydroascorbic acid. But as soon as you eat it it turns back
into ordinary ascorbic acid.
Herb Doctor: Well they say in Britain it was the fish and chips that prevented the
British people from developing scurvy because potatoes have quite a lot of vitamin
C in them as well, don't they?
RP: Yeah, and fish.
Herb Doctor: And fish, right, and fish. (chuckle)
Herb Doctor: Alright so could we clarify a little what the people out there
unfortunately dealing with cancers who are reading things like the problems with
acidic states in the body and getting confused about how exactly to do anything
about it. What would be the best way of maintaining enough energy in the body to
deal with it in terms with not only making things acid but ...
RP: Wait. The so called alkaline ash diet, lots of fruits and vegetables and milk and
cheese, All those are things that will help to let the stressed cancer cell repair itself
as far as it can and things like breathing in a paper bag, increasing the carbon
dioxide are probably helpful. As long ago as 1910, the insurance companies knew
that people who lived at very high altitudes had a very low cancer mortality. And
that has been tested experimentally 50 years ago implanting tumors in rats and
leaving them near sea level. All of them quickly died. Taking them up to 17000 feet
altitude, half of them threw off the cancers and had no symptoms left just from the
carbon dioxide retention from the oxygen. The carbon dioxide, one of it's basic
functions is to assure the delivery of oxygen to the tissues. So heavy breathing,
hyperventilating, is a way to lower the oxygen in your tissues because you blow out
the carbon dioxide and you need a lot of carbon dioxide in your tissue to deliver the
oxygen, open up blood vessels, and let the oxygen circulate and be used.
Herb Doctor: What do you think about Gerson therapy and what he was putting
forth as a diet for anti-cancer?

RP: I happened to get a copy of his book just a few years after he died in the mid or
early 1960's. And I read it and was very impressed by his detailed studies. He
seemed to have read just about everything about cancer the first half of the 20th
century. And so I tried to figure out how it was working and the minerals are a very
important part of it. And in restoring the oxidative metabolism, he regularly gave
his people Armour thyroid. I think 2 grains was a very common dose for his
patients.
Michael: I have a question about thyroid. Say you took thyroxine and you took
Armour thyroid and you were suddenly without the ability to get Armour thyroid,
how much of a mammal's thyroid would you need to eat in order to get the dose you
needed?
RP: If the Armour product was standardized to imitate the fresh glandular weight,
and so they would de-fat the gland and powder it and then dilute it with glucose or
lactic acid or something to increase the weight and volume until it was similar to the
fresh piece of gland before dehydration. And so they called that the normal dilution
and the powder itself was called the 3X concentrate, meaning that the gland is 3
times more concentrated than the old Armour thyroid pills. And that means that 1
gram of the gland is equal to 15 grains of Armour thyroid.
Herb Doctor: So one gram of the fresh gland is equal to 15 grains of the Armour
thyroid.
RP: Yeah:
Herb Doctor: Ok we have another caller.
Caller: My question may sound slick but Dr. Peat I always listen to what you say
and try to put together what you're saying in a question that I really am intrigued
by. So I'll put it in these terms, What would a double latte expresso pink slime
milkshake with baking soda, a tablespoon on the side, do for do for an athletes
performance in the Death Valley race? Would it enhance their performance or
would it give deeper meaning to Death Valley?'
RP: You would need a lot of ice I think. (chuckle) The caffeine tends to enhance
performance in mysterious ways. No one has really figured out how it works. But
the gelatin has an anti-stress effect. That mixture seems like it would be pretty
good. Baking soda, gelatin content and you would need quite a bit of sugar with it,
preferably fructose.
Herb Doctor: That actually brings up another question I have for you Dr. Peat. I've
read that cancers feed on sugar and you've got to starve a cancer from sugar.
RP: Actually they feed on amino acids and turn the amino acids into sugar and then
turn some of the sugar back into fat and then they metabolize the fat. And with all
that silly chemistry they produce a lot of heat with no light or no function to speak
of. That's why they identify a cancer because it's so hot because it's burning protein,
turning it into amino acids, then into sugar, then into fat.
Herb Doctor: So is that why thermography is quite an accurate way of looking for
cancers in the body?
RP: Yeah. And so if you can feed it as much sugar as it wants then it won't eat your
protein, At least not so fast.

Herb Doctor: So it could prevent the wasting disease associated with the cancer
then.
RP: Yeah. And saturated fats aren't probably as good as sugar for quieting stressed
tissues but they do have specific anti-stress functions. So I would recommend
avoiding all of the polyunsaturated fats because those turn on the stress reactions,
increase your adrenal corticoids, adrenaline, pituitary hormones and so on and while
the saturated fats inhibit those same stress systems.
Herb Doctor: So just for our listeners in case you're not aware of what the PUFA or
the polyunsaturated fat is, it's the liquid vegetable oils not including olive oil. So
everything but olive oil. Coconut oil is a saturated fat and it's very very useful as
well as beef and lamb fat if is was from an organic animal. And butter and cream.
Herb Doctor: Ok. I have another quick question for you. Going back to the Gerson
diet. You mentioned one of the things about the diet I looked at and it kinda caught
my attention because I know you've always been a great advocate of consuming
liver from a vitamin point of view. What was with the injected liver extracts?
RP: Oh, that was a way to get all of the essential nutrients. And around the time I
read his book, I met B & L Strong who developed the cancer prone strains of mice
that developed spontaneous breast cancer. And he had been curing cancer just with
an extract of liver. And that was my first research project was to try to find out what
it was in the liver extract that would cure cancer.
Herb Doctor: He also wanted to eliminate salts from the diet too and that's a little
bit of a strange one for me to get my head around just because I know again you're
an advocate of salt. It's actually a very good product rather than what modern
dietary trends would have us think otherwise.
RP: Another person who studied cancer at the very basic level, was William
Frederick Kolk. He in working on the parathyroid hormone before he did his
famous cancer preparations, he found that the alkaline minerals to a tremendous
extent would substitute for each other. So you could, for example, cure... You can
take out the parathyroid glands which cause a calcium problem. But you could cure
that with sodium, potassium or magnesium.
Herb Doctor: So the salt could replace the calcium or the potassium or the
magnesium.
RP: Yeah. To a great extent any of those alkaline minerals can replace the others so
you don't have to worry about balance so much because having an excess your body
can sort them out.
Herb Doctor: Well that's a good fail-safe mechanism of the body. I think we have
another caller on the line.
Michael: Can you simulate being at a high altitude by eating a lot of baking soda?
RP: Yeah, that's what the bicycle racers were doing. When someone who lives at a
high altitude goes to sea level, they very often get sick.
Herb Doctor: And vise versa.
RP: Oxygen poisoning is really worse than deprivation.

Caller: I'm wondering is this diet stuff you're talking about specifically for people
with cancer or can regular people adjust their diet. I'm vegan and I'm looking for
different sources of protein.
RP: Well potatoes are the best vegetable protein known. They're better than eggs in
terms of quality.
Caller: What's the best protein?
Herb Doctor: Potatoes. Actually they have...
RP: 106% of the protein quality of egg yolk.
Herb Doctor: I think 8 ounces of potato has 8 grams of protein.
Caller: Oh, wow. I had no idea. I thought it was a starch.
RP: When you're eating the starch too, a liter of potato is like a liter of milk on
average.
Herb Doctor: Yeah if you make potato juice and don't drink the starch that settles
out.
RP: No, if you make the juice it's more like eating pure egg yolk.
Herb Doctor: And you can even make a scrambled egg-like preparation from potato
juice and it's quite tasty.
Caller: Wow and this would be healthy for the general public or only people with
cancer.
RP: I've seen it for people with mysterious ailments who seem to be dying. One or
two meals and they just popped out of it. No one really knew what was wrong with
them. I've seen it happen.
Herb Doctor: Ok so what about the raw potato juice? You'd recommend cooking it
right?
RP: Yeah. I think there's someone who is now testing the raw stuff and is going to
tell me whether eating is safe. My experience is in cooking it like scrambling an
egg.
Herb Doctor: Yeah. Let the starch settle out before you cook it.