Ray Peat on adaptation
"Stresses of different sorts increase the formation of serotonin and the various pituitary hormones, leading to adaptive changes in the organism, but at the cost of causing inflammation and degeneration. Studies of several of the pituitary hormones have shown age-accelerating effects, leading to edema, inflammation, fibrosis, and decreased longevity. W.D. Denckla’s experiments showing the great life extending effect of removing the pituitary gland, while supplementing thyroid and glucocorticoid hormones, suggest the possibilities inherent in finding ways to prevent the over-production of serotonin and its associated hormones and cytokines."
- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Defining the organism and the environment in accord with its ideology of mechanistic reductionism, official science has radically misrepresented the nature of organismic adaptation."
- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"When our environment shrinks, when there isnt enough food, we can adapt, for example by replacing muscle with fat and by having small-brained babies (the brain is an expensive organ, energetically, though its efficiency increases with its expense). When our environment meets our needs our brains and muscles expand. The lower leg (like the brain) is a good indicator of environmental support: parents who grew up in a population which has atrophied-looking lower legs can have children with beautifully developed legs, when milk becomes abundantly available."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Stress will cause a rise in estrogen and a loss of anti estrogens such as thyroid, progesterone, and (in men) testosterone. Male apes who are bullied have decreased levels of testosterone, and this effect persists long after their environment has improved. The stress of subjugation seems to lead to an adaptation of passivity. Their passivity prevents further injury, but we dont know how stressful their continuing submission is."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Hans Selye found that the adrenals are a major component of our adaptive system. In the first phase of stress, there is a shock reaction (with changes resembling those of estrogen dominance), with injury to various tissues. In the second phase, the adrenals protect the animal, and this protection continues until something is exhausted. By exposing rats to a preliminary stress, Selye found that he could induce adaptation to other, later stresses — a kind of immunization to stress."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Cortisone also inhibits the thyroid. Any stress, including heavy exercise, will cause this protective slowing of metabolism. The slow heart beat of runners is largely the result of this adaptive hypothyroidism."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"When a baby is being born, or when a person is experiencing other stress, such as an infection, or when a person gets old, the best known thyroid hormone, thyroxine, is not changed to the more highly active form, T3 (triiodothyronine) in the normal way. In these emergency conditions, reduced oxygen consumption is a useful adaptation,"
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Selye divides stress into three phases: alarm, resistance (or adaptation), and exhaustion. Three tissues are usually the first to show effects: thymolymphatic tissue shrinks, gastrointestinal tissue becomes inflamed and bleeds, and the adrenal cortex becomes enlarged."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"During pregnancy the mothers body adapts to live increasingly on fat, so that most of the sugar which is available can be used by the baby. The brain uses most of the bodys glucose, so mental fatigue can easily affect the blood sugar level. The developing baby is extremely dependent on glucose for its energy supply, and its brain can be damaged by sugar starvation."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Pregnancy itself resembles diabetes, in the adaptation to oxidizing fat rather than sugar, so that a slight tendency toward diabetes can be thought of as a support for pregnancy. Older women are more likely to have some degree of diabetes, or elevated blood sugar. With each pregnancy, there is a tendency for the blood sugar to be higher, and for the baby to be bigger and more precocious."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Chronic dieters can adapt to a low calorie intake (Lancet, April 5, 1975, Miller and Parsonage). This is probably partly from a loss of active protein tissue. Total nutrition is needed for replacing such tissues."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Changing to any new diet, or ending a fast, should be done gradually, allowing at least several days for enzyme adaptation."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Athletic training is known to slow the pulse. Cortisone, produced by stress, inhibits the thyroid gland. (When the thyroid is low, less oxygen is needed, so this is a useful adaptation for increasing endurance.) These hormonal changes are now known to produce sterility in both men and women"
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"the greater the demand, the smaller will be the reserve capacity for a future adaptation. Therefore, part of our physiology is the adjustment of our environment so that it more closely suits our needs."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"when the organism is seen as a constant process of adaptation, rather than as a machine that has to get along with the parts that were formed in early youth, metabolic energy is recognized to be a constructive thing, and things that reduce our energy—such as a decrease of body temperature—are seen as threats to life and successful adaptation."
- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Inflammation is a kind of adaptive response, but it leaves behind some fibrotic changes and atrophy of functional cells, along with an increased tendency to resort to the inflammatory response."
- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"If longevity is shortened as a result of the accumulation of changes resulting from inflammatory adaptations, then living in different environments, requiring different kinds of adaptation, will cause major changes in lifespan."
- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Altitude and a milk based diet are obviously two important thermogenic factors that slow the accumulation of harmful adaptations, but there are many other controllable factors that could extend longevity even more. Reducing inflammatory factors is important, and personal choices can make a big difference, for example choosing easily digestible foods to reduce endotoxin, avoiding the polyunsaturated fatty acids that interfere with cell respiration and form inflammatory prostaglandins, avoiding antioxidant supplements that create a reductive excess, and choosing foods that contain antiinflammatory-thermogenic compounds, such as citrus fruits with their high content of flavonoids that support cell respiratory functions."
- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The increased serum cholesterol in stress is an important protective adaptation."
- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The holistic view of the organism and its adaptive potentials, advocated by Hippocrates and Aristotle, was rejected by the new science of the last few centuries. Recovering that view, and using it creatively, has become urgent, if we want to understand the processes of development, including aging and the degenerative diseases"
- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"in reality each adaptive situation in which there is a response to a single substance or stimulus involves the whole organism, not simply a single receptor substance. The reason that an organism’s response to a particular stimulus increases or decreases depends on the history and condition of the organism, as well as on the nature and intensity of the stimulus. Different aspects of the organism are affected by different substances or forces, and by different quantities of those substances or forces."
- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Experiments over the last 60 years have shown that more or less glucose, carbon dioxide, warmth, and progesterone during embryonic and fetal development can affect the growth of the brain, and the brain’s way of guiding future development and adaptive ability."
- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"n mediating adaptation, the brain orients the organism toward aspects of the environment that are most likely to satisfy its needs, and this involves making judgments of possible future situations. In the absence of good prospects, the brain concerns itself with defensive changes, increasing the stress hormones, the fight-or-flight mechanisms, and begins to convert some of its own tissues to energy and materials needed for the survival of its essential organs, the brain, lungs, and heart."
- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The conditions that produce inflammation activate the adaptive exosome system, a retrotransposon system involving a massive block of our DNA, which overlaps with the virus production mechanism."
- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"we are not defined somas produced once by our DNA, but rather adaptive, epigenetic, ongoing creative beings."
- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The basic principles of respiration, the Bohr and Haldane effects, describe the physical equilibria of oxygen and CO2 in people who have adapted to living at different altitudes. The Haldane effect describes the fact that increased oxygen pressure decreases the amount of carbon dioxide retained by hemoglobin, and decreased oxygen pressure increases the amount of CO2 retained. A steady increase of retained CO2 with increasing altitude occurs in those who adapt. People who fail to adapt experience a loss of CO2, with an increase of lactate."
- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Now that the protective and adaptive functions of exosomes and retrotransposons have been clarified, the more obvious inference might be that we are the ancestor of retroviruses,"
- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Stress is experienced when processes that are normally adaptive begin to have maladaptive effects. That happens when the organism’s resources aren’t adequate to meet the demands of the situation."
- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Experimental embryology made it clear that development is an intentional process. An embryo can survive extreme disturbances, by adjusting its structures and metabolism, but those adjustments to difficult intrauterine conditions can sometimes make adaptations during childhood problematic."
- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter
0 upvotes"The brain has an extremely high metabolic rate, using energy to adapt to the constant inflow of sensory information from the body and its surroundings. To the extent that it lacks energy, it reduces and simplifies. With full energy, it builds a continuing model of itself and the things it interacts with, each of which is a process. In a state of deficient mental energy, things become categories rather than processes, and they don’t occupy a place in an ongoing life story."
- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter
0 upvotes"If cancer is seen as an event in the body’s developmental and adaptive processes, the important issue is to understand the process so that the reaction can be changed, reducing harmful factors and supporting the adaptive and corrective factors."
- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"To approach a specific person’s specific problem, we need the best knowledge about how an organism’s history and present situation affect its ability to adapt to new situations, as well as knowledge of the therapeutic resources that are available,"
- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"In the 1940s, Barbara McClintock discovered that plants under stress can move their genes around to improve adaptation by producing more variation in the offspring. Rather than admit that McClintock had discovered an aspect of the creativity of life, they felt that the adaptive flexibility she had discovered was intolerably alien to their mechanistic understanding of life."
- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"A simple shift of perspective can solve some old puzzles, such as how millions of species of viruses came to exist, since viruses can’t reproduce themselves without the organisms they infect, and why our cells would retain such an immense amount of useless or harmful DNA, if our DNA has evolved by the elimination of the parts that didn’t contribute to fitness. McClintock’s work has led to an answer to those questions, as well as a basis for understanding the intelligence of epigenetics and the inheritance of adaptations. The dark DNA functions during embryonic development, mediating effects of the intrauterine environment"
- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"James Shapiro’s work with bacteria shows that they—supposedly one of the simplest organisms—have a read-write genome, and by understanding their situation, are able to modify their genes to adapt to problem situations. It’s increasingly obvious that we have abilities similar to bacteria, with the dark DNA being part of this adaptive system."
- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The premature baby, suddenly leaving its low oxygen, high CO2, sugar rich environment, and experiencing the extreme new environment of a hospital incubator, is an extreme example of the way that our normal adaptive reactions can become destructive when misdirected by an unfavorable environment."
- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The normal person, living many years in an environment with limited amounts of the most supportive factors, and varying amounts of many harmful factors, experiences a gradual accumulation of the tissue changes that are produced by the misdirected adaptive factors."
- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"In childhood and maturity, vigorous oxidative metabolism can maintain some of the essential protective factors of gestation, including adequate levels of glucose and carbon dioxide, good temperature regulation, and avoiding overproduction of superoxide and lactate. In these conditions, the cytokines can contribute to adaptation and continuing development."
- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Life is adaptation, every adaptation involves epigenetic modifications of the state of differentiation, and every epigenetic change has transgenerational repercussions."
- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Our organisms are undergoing continuous processes of adaptive changes in response to our pro-inflammatory environments, involving epigenetic changes that limit our potentials and that threaten to have cumulative effects in following generations."
- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Present knowledge of prenatal influence on the development of autistic traits, in people and in experimental animals, is consistent with Pavlov’s observation that some animals were overwhelmed by stimulation that other animals could adapt to easily."
- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The idea of metabolism—change of substance, adaptive interaction—implicitly includes the interactions of cells with the organism in its environment."
- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"While the effects of stress on the intestine have been recognized since Hans Selye described the general adaptation syndrome (with intestinal bleeding as an early sign of stress), that hasnt been taken into account in any of the large brain trauma or stroke studies."
- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Serotonin is often called a neurotransmitter, and considered to act on receptors to transmit information, which may be processed the way computers process digital information. I think it’s more useful to think of it in terms of fields and formative processes that shape the way the organism uses energy to adapt to stresses and possibilities. It is involved in the energetic and structural changes that occur during stress and adaptation."
- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Adaptive physiology (dismissing the doctrine of timeless traits) is concerned with where we are going, what we are becoming, and what our possibilities are. The subject that it investigates requires attention to context and temporal processes."
- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The organism’s metabolism is a single, integrated process, in which each part has to adapt to conditions in the other parts. Our nerves contain chemical receptors that detect changes in the metabolic chemicals in the blood, permitting the organism to make adaptive changes."
- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"When environmental conditions are too bad for active adaptation, many organisms are able to reduce their needs drastically;"
- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"In the 1960s, when antibodies were being studied intensively, Metchnikoff’s approach was called innate immunity, something more primitive and undifferentiated than the evolutionarily more advanced adaptive immunity of the B and T cells, bone and thymus cells. At that time, however, an example of something like adaptive immunity, a learned response to a toxin, had already been demonstrated to exist in plants,"
- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Up until the beginning of this century, inflammation had usually been thought of as a simply constructive part of the local healing process, but it was starting to be recognized to have a universal role in pathology. Tissue injury was no longer seen as a merely local event. Research was being forced toward a reconsideration of Metchnikoff’s holistic, developmental view of immunity. Bystander effects, the emission by any injured cell of substances that induce a similar injury in other cells, even in remote parts of the body (Koturbash, 2007; Kovalchuk, 2016), and the persistent epigenetic changes they involve, are part of innate immunity. This system is activated by adjuvants, as well as the adaptive immune system that produces antibodies."
- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"In every circumstance, adaptive metabolism is occurring in an organism, and when the environment is unfavorable, the organism can defend itself by limiting its needs and its range, but when the environment is rich, satisfying needs easily, the organism will tend to expand its range and abilities."
- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"When hypoglycemia occurs during gestation or in infancy, when metabolic intensity is greatest, the adaptations can lead to life-long problems."
- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"During adaptation, the functional load is shifted to the system that is meeting the new challenge, and a variety of stimuli, from nerves and hormones, activate the cells of that responsive system, and resources, such as amino acids, can be moved from less active systems to support the new level of functioning. The organism has to focus its stimulating factors accurately, and the resources, including glucose stored in the tissues as glycogen, have to be adequate. If stimulation is too intense or too widespread, and if too much fat is mobilized relative to glucose, self-defeating processes can occur."
- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The stresses of a harsh environment that make early reproduction advantageous, or that require accelerated tissue renewal, also favor epigenetic adaptations that reduce energy demands."
- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Estrogens increase of nitric oxide and/or hydrogen sulfide is adaptive for a hibernating animal, reducing its body temperature and metabolic rate"
- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"In all of these conditions of stress adaptation, epigenetic modifications of DNA are involved, with nitric oxide participating, with estrogen and other hormones, in methylation of DNA and modification of histones, and a variety of other biochemical lingering modifications."
- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Although a primitive adaptive mechanism such as nitric oxide can be useful for a species, it can be harmful for individuals."
- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Meersons work has revealed in a detailed way how the usually beneficial hormone of adaptation, cortisone, can cause so many other harmful effects when its action is too prolonged or too intense."
- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life
0 upvotes"Although cortisone supplementation can help in a great variety of stress-related diseases, no cure will take place unless the basic cause is discovered. Besides the thyroid, the other class of adaptive hormones which are often out of balance in the diseases of stress, is the group of hormones produced mainly by the gonads: the reproductive hormones."
- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life
0 upvotes"Thyroid is the main regulatory and adaptive substance for respiration."
- Email Response by Ray Peat
0 upvotes"Adaptation to hypoxia or increased carbon dioxide limits the formation of lactic acid. Muscles are 50% more efficient in the adapted state; glucose, which forms more carbon dioxide than fat does when oxidized,, is metabolized more efficiently than fats, requiring less oxygen."
- 2000 - July
0 upvotes"It is the subtle reactivity of the living system which maintains the adaptive organization of energy and structure, Part of the reactivity of the organism 1s the flexibly interactive metabolism, which adaptively distributes substance and energy. Ordinary metabolism, by adjusting the affinities of the cell substance, can account more rationally for the processes that are called homeostatic than the hypothetical apparatus of pumps and channels, which are biology’s deus ex machina, proposed whenever needed."
- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Shock, inflammation, aging and death have been proposed to have survival value, because of this totalitarian view of genetics. Couldnt it be that organisms simply arent perfect, and that some things are just systematically screwed up? That ts, an organism has a certain strength, resistance, or adaptive capacity, but if it finds itself in conditions that are too difficult, then processes that never did anything to aid survival might develop, as several individually valid defensive maneuvers ‘start to interfere with each other."
- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4
0 upvotes"Respiration is essential for the existence of higher organisms, making it possible to maintain complex and adaptive structures, containing appropriately differentiated cells."
- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3
0 upvotes"Oxygen, producing carbon dioxide, acidifies the cell, and carbon dioxide influences the cells handling of water. Carbonic anhydrase inhibitors are commonly used to regulate conditions involving edema, including adaptation to high altitudes."
- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2
0 upvotes"When a cell has been damaged (as by radiation or toxins), its inefficiency creates a small localized distortion im the fields, which will stimulate processes of repair or removal and replacement, as far as the organisms resources allow. When a stress is great enough that the entire organism is exposed to lactic acid, the organism’s adaptive resources are being challenged, and potentially harmful responses are evoked. For example, a sluggish liver can allow the blood lactate concentration to mse during stress, and this can lead to secretion of endorphins and pituitary hormones (Elias, et al, 1997). The endorphins can increase histamine release, and growth hornone increases free fatty acids; increased permeability of blood vessels can allow proteins and fats to leave the blood stream with cumulatively harmful effects."
- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2
0 upvotes"he interlocking fundamental features of cell excitation/relaxation, electrical potential, lactic acid/carbon dioxide, water retention/water loss, salt regulation, pH and energy level, allow us to visualize in a coherent way the biological meaning of stress and adaptation. Interacting with these physical-chemical events, there are many layers of biochemical and physiological processes that reinforce or modify them, imcluding regulatory systems such as hormones and other biological signaling substances, nutritional adequacy, and the type of fuel used."
- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2
0 upvotes"A weakened ability to oxidatively produce energy can lead to the maladaptive over-productionof collagen, porphyrins, red blood cells, and other tissues and substances, which in turn can lead to many adaptive and maladaptive changes. I think skin and mucous membranes provide a good illustration of the way respiratory potential influences structure: Estrogen-increased keratinization is opposed by vitamin A, which increases the proportion of active, differentiated cells."
- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"As Felix Meerson has shown, the brain is the preferred organ of adaptation, because adaptation on the level of learning has no biological costs, in the sense of limiting our structure and function."
- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"As soon as we submit to a cultural stereotype or a textbook answer, we give up our creative capacity to adapt mentally, and begin to avoid problems, questions, and mysteries, because adaptation at any level other than creative imagination is a bodily stress; the acceptance of authority commits a person to wielding any authority they have, or helplessly adapting to the authority of others."
- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"If people become aware of their potential for creative adaptation and problem solving, the whole direction of the economy must change, because status and style dependent consumption derive their importance from the absence of intrinsic interest in many of our activities."
- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Meerson, the investigator of stress physiology, speaks of adaptive culture as the first level of protection against harmful conditions."
- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"For about 50 years, the concept psychosomatic has been trivialized to mean it’s just imaginary. But now, the studies of the physiology of helplessness show that a seemingly small difference in experience and attitude can cause a very great difference in the ability to mobilize biological energy and various aspects of immunity, such as Natural Killer cell activity. There is now genera) agreement on the distinction between the demobilized state of helplessness and the state of active adaptation."
- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The other potential future takes into account our health and happiness, and defines health as having the capacity for creative mental adaptation."
- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Age pigment consists mainly of lipid peroxidation products, with heme and iron. It has the adaptive function of keeping NADH oxidized in a low-oxygen environment, in which mitochondrial respiration is inadequate, allowing NADH to keep the glycolytic sequence operating."
- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Milk is remarkably deficient in iron, and it seems obvious that this is an adaptive feature, allowing the child to grow into the large amount of iron stored in its tissues at birth."
- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Stress - a need for adaptation - can be seen as an information gap between the need and the possibility of meeting the need. Appropriate modification of the organism’s structure closes that information gap. The new structural trace, or memory, can develop as either a phenotypic or genotypic change. Mutations are important for bacteria) adaptation, and learning is important for mammalian adaptation."
- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Our brains are the newest and most powerful) organs of adaptation and resistance to stress, allowing the simpler systems of circulation and metabolism to orient themselves appropriately to achieve the most benefit with the least damage. Just as there are pro- and anti-catabolic hormones and circulatory patterns, the brain has stresspromoting and stress-limiting systema."
- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"A complete list of protective nutritional chemicals and natural drugs or analogs to our endogenous protective factors would be very long, but we should give special thought to certain ones, including succinic acid, which stimulates respiration and protective steroid synthesis; thyroid and vitamin E, which promote normal oxidation while preventing abnormal oxidation; magnesium; sodium and lithium, which help us to retain magnesium; tropical fruits, which contain GHB; coconut oil, which protects against cardiac necrosis, lipid peroxidation, hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, and histamine damage; valium agonists, natural anti-histamines; adenosine and uridine. Visits to higher elevations, and exposure to bright, long-wave light, can cause the body to optimize its own antistress chemistry. Avoiding the sense of being trapped is a high-level adaptive factor."
- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The life-span of cel] organelles, DNA, and essential enzymes, is extended by adaptation. The cellular (membrane phospholipid) composition adjusts toward a lower content of unsaturated fatty acids."
- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Aging, stress, and heavy consumption of alcohol increase the permeability of the intestine, causing increased absorption of microbial toxins. Laxatives, carrot fiber (not carrot juice), activated charcoal, and a small amount of sodium thiosulfate decrease the formation and absorption of toxins, increasing the organism’s adaptive capacity. Belladonna can improve the bowel’s function if there ave spasms during drug withdrawal."
- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Around 1940, Hans Selye found that estrogen’s systemic effect mimics the shock phase of the stress reaction. In shock, deficient circulation of blood and thus deficient oxygenation of tissue are the main problem, and Selye considered the adrenal steroids to be crucial in resolving the problem, and creating adaptation to the stress."
- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"Another kind of fish, the salmon, which return to fresh water for reproducing, show the other extreme of adaptation to an osmotic problem. After living isotonically in the hypertonic ocean environment, keeping their mineral content and osmolarity lower than sea-water’s, they suddenly have to readapt to the extremely hypotonic fresh water. The secretion of prolactin and glucocorticoid steroids seems to facilitate this sudden adaptation, but those hormones also seem to produce an explosively rapid kind of aging. I think their condition is similar to the Cushingeid symptoms that frequently appear in middle-aged people."
- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The idea of many factors acting in the same direction, and tending to have a cumulative effect, seemed to me to have a general biological significance. It seemed to be part of the answer to the question of what it is which is lost, or accumulated, during aging, which accounts for the decreased ability to adapt to the changing environment."
- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"What if the respiratory defect that was so carefully documented by Warburg and Burk js the result of damage to the detoxifying rhodanese enzyme? If cyanide is a general threat to respiration, a deficiency of rhodanese would allow it to damage respiration, and this, according ‘to Warburg, should lead either to cell death or, if the cell can adapt adequately, to the production of cancer."
- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes