Ray Peat on biological energy

"When metabolic energy is failing, as in hypothyroidism, muscles become easily fatigued, and take up excess water, and the barrier structure is loosened, allowing macromolecules and ATP and other metabolites to leak out, while extraneous substances enter. Typical muscle enzymes such as lactate dehydrogenase and creatine kinase appear in the bloodstream in typical hypothyroid myopathy, and heart proteins, including a particular form of lactic dehydrogenase and a muscle protein, troponin, appear in the blood after a heart stress or fatigue combined with hypothyroidism or systemic inflammation."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The actual physical stiffness of whole cells and their surroundings is very important. For example excitotoxicity (Fang, et al., 2014), and other forms of energy depletion can stiffen cells, and prolonged energy depletion and inflammation lead to degenerative changes—tissue calcification, fibrosis, and invasive, disorganized cell movement, for example. These stress related stiffenings of the cell substance and matrix have nothing directly to do with the local quantity of cholesterol."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Our bodies are constantly having experiences, and generalizing from them in the way they respond; these generalized responses can limit or expand our vitality. These generalizations are expressed in our anatomy, physiology, and ecosystems, with changes in immunity, metabolism, gene expression, and behavior."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"-progesterone, glucose, or glycine which was converted into glucose (Zamenhof and Ahmad, 1979)—increased brain growth, by increasing either the supply of energy or the ability to use energy effectively"

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The easily oxidized short and medium-chain saturated fatty acids of coconut oil provide a source of energy that protects our tissues against the toxic inhibitory effects of the unsaturated fatty acids, and reduces their anti-thyroid effects. The animal studies of the last 60 years suggest that these effects also provide protection against cancer, heart disease, and premature aging. Other effects that can be expected inclu de protection against excessive blood clotting, protection of the fetal brain, protection against various stress-induced problems including epilepsy, and some degree of protection against sun-damage of the skin."

- Nutrition For Women

"Anything which produces tissue atrophy will tend to produce cancer. The important question is, what will induce differentiation and useful function in cancer cells? There are many substances which promote differentiation and oppose the effects of estrogen, and some of these have been found to be useful in cancer therapy. Among the substances opposing estrogen are dopamine and nickel, prolactin inhibitors; chalones, the tissue specific proteins which inhibit cell division (and possibly more ephemerally, the peptides of memory); the aprotic solvents, DMF and possibly DMSO; progesterone and testosterone; thyroxin and iodine; magnesium ATP, the stable form of the biological energy molecule; vitamin A, a protein-sparing nutrient which promotes differentiation, and vitamin E (and the closely related coenzyme Q, or ubiquinone)."

- Nutrition For Women

"The individual with a defective mental energy storage system might dash around keeping his mind stimulated, or it might be that coffee or other nerve stimulants will raise the level of energy to the point that quiet integration becomes possible."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vital stains show that these energetic changes go with structural changes in the cytoplasm, such that high energy efficient metabolism occurs when the cytoplasm has affinity for oily dyes. When water is at a surface it is ordered or structured so that it loses much of its wetness; a bug can walk on it; it contains more heat"

- Nutrition For Women

"About 1957, psychologists noticed that a rat could learn helplessness: if they held a rat until it stopped struggling, it would then die much sooner than a normal rat does when put into a barrel of water. They also found that they could immunize their rats against learned helplessness, by previously allowing them to experience success in a similar situation. The short-term learned helplessness apparently does something to block the efficient use of energy, so that the animal dies of exhaustion very easily, i.e., it has depleted one source of energy without mobilizing another."

- Nutrition For Women

"it is now clear that Polanyis adsorption potential was a fact, and Einstein and Haber were dogmatically wrong in their ideas about inter-atomic forces. Seeing this, we should question the many consequences of the same mistaken atomistic view, including Einsteins theory of photoelectricity, which attributed a corpuscular quality to light, because he knew that matter was strictly particulate without any of the long-range energy properties that were later demonstrated by Polanyi."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin E preserves ATP; ATP is a source of biological energy, but it also stabilizes or relaxes tissue. This energized relaxation is the ready state."

- Nutrition For Women

"The highest part of the brain, in evolution, is the expec tancy/planning system in the frontal lobes. Delayed and appropriate response is impossible if these lobes dont function well. In a healthy animal, arousal means expectation: the longer arousal can be sustained without distraction, the higher the energy charge will be, and the more intense and satisfying the completion will be."

- Nutrition For Women

"Sugar can be used to produce energy with or without oxygen, but oxidative metabolism is about 15 times more efficient than the non-oxidative glycolytic or fermentive metabolism; higher organisms depend on this high efficiency oxidation for maintaining integration and normal functioning:"

- Nutrition For Women

"A response to stimulation is the production of more energy, with a proportional increase of oxygen and sugar consumption by the stimulated tissue; this produces more carbon dioxide, which enlarges the blood vessels in the area, providing more sugar and oxygen. If the irritation becomes destructive, efficiency is lost: oxygen is either consumed wastefully, causing blueness of the tissue (assuming circulation continues; blueness can aiso indicate bad circulation), or is not consumed, causing redness of the tissue. As more sugar is consumed in compensation, lactic acid also enlarges the blood vessels."

- Nutrition For Women

"But a large inflammation, or profound exhaustion, will lower the blood sugar systemically, and will deliver large amounts of lactic acid to the liver. The liver synthesizes glucose from the lactic acid, but at the expense of about 6 times more energy than is obtained from the inefficient metabolism — so that organismically, that tissue becomes 90 times less efficient than its original state. Besides this, an idle destruction of energy molecules (ATP or creatine phosphate) will increase the wastefulness even more."

- Nutrition For Women

"Various nutritional, hormonal, or toxic states interfere with respiration in different ways: for example, vitamin E deficiency, estrogen excess, toxic thyroid, and DNP (the formerly popular cancer-causing reducing drug) cause oxygen to be consumed without producing the normal amount of useful energy. Vitamin B2 or copper deficiency can prevent consumption of oxygen. Cancer (contrary to a tenacious establishment doctrine) involves a respiratory defect, and causes a tendency toward hypoglycemia which is often compensated by the conversion of protein to sugar, leading to the terminal wasting state (cachexia)"

- Nutrition For Women

"On the cellular level, stress lowers the energy charge. Systemically, stress inhibits oxidative metabolism. Both of these observations indicate that the basic anti-stress hormone would be thyroid."

- Nutrition For Women

"Magnesium carbonate is very useful for stabilizing nerves and muscles while raising the energy level: one gram a day of magnesium is a reasonable amount,"

- Nutrition For Women

"All kinds of stress tend to make the liver sluggish. The liver normally removes toxins and excess hormones from the body. Estrogen can accumulate to high levels if the liver isnt fully active. One effect of estrogen is to promote oxidation of a type which doesnt provide energy, thus raising oxygen requirements."

- Nutrition For Women

"Inside the cells, vitamin E inhibits destructive and wasteful oxidation (such as is involved in aging and cancer) and makes the normal oxidative process more efficient, providing more useful energy for a given amount of oxygen."

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"The various tissues of the body can function acceptably at different levels of nutrition. For example, the skin, with its low energy requirements, seems to remain alive for several hours after the death of the body in general. The brain, with its extremely high energy requirements, is usually the first to suffer from energy deprivation. At slight levels of deprivation, the brain will simply lose functional efficiency, but more serious or prolonged deprivation can produce lingering modification, or even structural damage which is relatively permanent (and may even have transgenerational effects.)"

- Nutrition For Women

"many forms of very weak radiation5 can lower the efficiency of metabolism, increasing its energy requirement, and brain tissue is the most sensitive tissue to at least some kinds of radiation"

- Nutrition For Women

"Very small doses of caffeine have a paradoxical sedative effect, but this is a familiar effect of anything which raises the brains energy level."

- Nutrition For Women

"E. Racker and other biochemists have pointed out that the unsaturated (liquid) fatty acids are able to uncouple the energy producing reactions from oxidation. This means that they will promote consumption of fuel without increasing fat synthesis. This is an effect similar to the specific dynamic action of proteins, and it is the biochemical explanation for the fact that all calories dont count the same as far as weight reduction goes. But this also means that all useful energy production is reduced in relation to heat production."

- Nutrition For Women

"an active brain can burn about half of all the energy consumed by the body. If brain activity is depressed, a very large percentage of the food consumed becomes available for making fat."

- Nutrition For Women

"Avoiding stimulation of the insulin-secreting beta cells in the pancreas will tend to make energy more continuously available for normal functions, including mental alertness, instead of storing it as fat."

- Nutrition For Women

"Many reducing clinics are using injections of the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, for the purpose of making reducing diets easier and possibly improving fat distribution. This hormone shifts energy metabolism toward the use of fat rather than sugar, and so allows the blood sugar level to rise. This suppresses appetite. The hormone is produced by the placenta to make sugar available for the growing fetus."

- Nutrition For Women

"in Russia, physiologists always remember to include the brain in their calculations, and it turns out that a walk through interesting and pleasant surroundings consumes more energy than does harder but more boring exercise. An active brain consumes a tremendous amount of fuel."

- Nutrition For Women

"Bright lights also stimulate hormone production and energy metabolism, and increase muscle tone."

- Nutrition For Women

"Although electronic energy is intimately involved in life, there are two chemicals that are involved in maintaining the energy charge of cells, and it is the energy charge which is most immediately related to biological function and structure. Creatine phosphate (CrP) is a kind of energy reservoir for muscle, and in a vitamin E deficiency creatine leaks out of the muscles. Aging also seems to involve defective creatine phosphate reserves (Verzar). Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is more directly involved in all kinds of life function, for example maintaining the resting state of nerves and muscles, and governing secretion, the retention of proteins, and the elimination of toxins."

- Nutrition For Women

"Change and adventure are important for our energy system, and the present authoritarian culture is opposed to fundamental change."

- Nutrition For Women

"Experience is stored in our tissues, and is passed on, but not as Darwinian gemmules. What is stored is flexibility, potential, and energy capacity."

- Nutrition For Women

"Emphasizing the uniqueness of individual needs should be seen in the context of looking for the most general principles: this can help us to perceive meaningful configur ations, making otherwise trivial things significant. I think a biophysical approach to the cytoplasm is one of the principles that will help in perceiving patterns. Other more specific and immediately useful ideas include stress, the use of sugar efficiently or wastefully. and the energy charge of cells."

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"Our body temperature is maintained by the rate of energy production, and that’s mainly the result of the oxidation of fuels by mitochondria."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Probably because of aspirin’s anti-fever effect, the medical culture tends to think of it as antithermogenic, despite its known stimulation of mitochondrial oxygen consumption. Like thyroid hormone, aspirin prevents stress-induced loss of sodium, which is an important part of our temperature and energy regulating system."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Nutritional thermogenic factors include sodium, calcium, vitamin D, carbohydrates, especially sugar, and protein, which interact with our endogenous energy regulating factors, especially thyroid and progesterone."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Things that decrease energy and body temperature increase some essential mediators of inflammation, and those changes are deeply associated with the processes of aging."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"if the organism lacks the necessary resources of substance and energy, the distortion of the field persists, potentially aggravating the deficiencies, leading to a state of chronic inflammation and degeneration. When there is no injury, the same signals guide the continuing processes of renewal."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Memory and attention are impaired by even a slight thyroid deficiency. The Russian paradigm, with its emphasis on energy and inhibition, suggests that thyroid function should be carefully examined in cases of hyperactivity."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"I dont know whether ATP has ever been used therapeutically for psychosis, but since it is one of the central points in both energy metabolism and structure, its use is definitely suggested by the theory."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"The electronic aspect of the cells energy charge suggests that cysteine or reduced glutathione might be desirable, especially if there is evidence that glutathione is being destroyed by something like adrenochrome. [Note by the commenter: This view is outdated and does not reflect Rays current thoughts.]"

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Optimizing the production and storage of energy will have the effect of tightening the control systems of the organism, improving mental, hormonal, and immunological functions."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"The oldest, most basic therapies, sleep and nutrition, have the same function of restoring energy reserves. Pavlov worked with the simplest stimulants and sedatives, for example caffeine and bromide, to restore normal nervous functions, and of course always considered sensory stimulation essential to maintaining and restoring normal functioning."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Magnetic fields presumably act biologically by acting on the structure of water, and Kholodov has established that a continuous sinusoidal magnetic field has a sedative and inhibiting effect, modifying the EEG and raising the level of GABA in the brain (Speranskiy, 1973). The activity of oxygen increases in magnetically treated water (Speranskiy, 1973), so there might be a direct effect on energy production."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"A failure of energy metabolism limits the ability of cells to return from an excited active state fo a stable resting state."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"treatment for a so-called coronavirus infection should be to reduce cellular excitation and inflammation and normalize energy production. It also implies that these treatments will have favorable effects on cell aging."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In a state of chronic stress, oxidative energy production is low, and mediators of inflammation are likely to be chronically increased; there is typically a chronically increased production of lactate, and/or decreased oxidation of it. I"

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The pharmaceutical myth about serotonin, the happy hormone, has led most people, even researchers, to ignore the fact that it increases inflammation and activates the stress system, while reducing the efficiency of energy production."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The importance of salt and calcium in pregnancy relates to their effects on the respiratory energy system, and the fact that these effects aren’t widely known has led most doctors to believe that a diet that supplies all the required nutrients is adequate for pregnancy and lactation. Despite the presence of all the required nutrients, that would be adequate for someone with a generally supportive environment, a good diet won’t necessarily be adequate for someone with a problematic environment, or a history of stressful experiences."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The levels of aldosterone and parathyroid hormone are increased by stress, with serotonin acting on the adrenal cortex and the parathyroid gland to increase their secretion. All three of those hormones act on the mitochondria to lower oxidative energy production."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Increasing the amount of sodium and calcium (and vitamin D, which also helps to lower parathyroid hormone and aldosterone) in the diet can lower the secretion of aldosterone and parathyroid hormone, with a resulting increasing in oxidative energy production."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"‘When energy is deficient, cells are susceptible to damage from normal levels of stimulation. Restraining excitatory reactions is at least protective, and it often improves functioning."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"Antiexcitotoxic substances include progesterone, memantine, minocycline, and agmatine. A high ratio of CO2 to lactate, reducing intracellular pH, is important for preventing excessive excitability. Thyroid hormone, besides directly increasing energy and the CO2/lactate ratio, tends to increase the brain’s temperature, and to increase the ratio of progesterone to estrogen."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"A failure of energy, caused by hypoglycemia or interference with the use of oxygen, stops the formative developmental processes, and the constructive actions of the cytokines can become destructive, causing inflammation, probably accounting for a large portion of birth defects"

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The membrane theory says that the process of concentrating a substance against its gradient is active transport, and requires the use of ATP. Experiments by Ling and others showed that the energy metabolism of cells could be poisoned so that no ATP was being produced, but that cells were able to maintain their ionic gradient, although sodium was free to diffuse into the cell, through the membrane. All the ATP has to do is to be present, passively occupying its place in the cell."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since Ling didn’t imagine that ATP bond energy was being consumed constantly to run membrane sodium pumps, he wasn’t concerned with any energy that might be released by hydrolyzing that bond. He, like Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, was aware that the ATP molecule adsorbs with considerable energy to protein molecules, and that its presence governs the shape of the protein molecule."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The oxidative processes that support purposive, creative functioning of the organism, optimize CO2 by inhibiting carbonic anhydrase; this enzyme is inhibited by thyroid hormone T3, progesterone, urea, caffeine, antipsychotic drugs, and aspirin. Agents that tend to cause reversion to the primitive anaerobic energy production activate the enzyme—serotonin, tryptophan, cysteine, histamine, estrogen, aldosterone, HIF, SSRIs, angiotensin, and parathyroid hormone, for example."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Every cause has effects, but those effects in organisms are constrained by the purposeful flow of energy. V.I. Vernadsky’s and Norbert Wiener’s work provides a context for a non-Weismannian approach to the problems of a toxic environment."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Interference with energy production is fundamental to inflammation. When cellular stimulation increases faster than oxygen can be delivered, there is a shift to glycolytic energy production, with the conversion of glucose and amino acids to lactic acid."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The living state isn’t an all-or-nothing matter; there are different degrees of vitality. The finely ordered structure of the living state is maintained by the flow of energy. That flow can be damaged not only by deprivation of metabolic fuel or oxygen, but also by things that distort the structure."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The process of inflaimmation and fibrosis is initiated in response to anything that blocks the adequate production of energy. Very different factors can have additive or synergistic effects leading to the same conditions of inflammation and fibrosis."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The ability to relax and to accumulate energy and substance for differentiation corresponds to the presence of oxidative, high efficiency energy production. The intensity of the metabolic cycle, alternating activity and quiescence, sustains the complexity and intensity of life."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The whole organism sleeps, though the brain regulates the process. In some aspects of its metabolism, especially the turnover of phospholipids, the brain is very active during sleep, but its energy consumption decreases, and it causes the skeletal muscles to relax, reducing their consumption of glucose."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although nerves and muscles are called excitable cells, they work best when they aren’t too excitable, and fatigue, or interference with their energy supply, makes them too excitabl"

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A deficiency of energy, from either hypoglycemia or hypoxia, makes nerves and muscles too excitable, producing seizures and vascular spasms."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When a nerve cell is using oxygen to produce energy, it becomes much more electrically charged than other cells, becoming an electron sink. That causes the head to have an electrically positive polarity, relative to other parts of the body."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The electrical and metabolic properties of this high energy resting state of the brain can be seen in a healthy skeletal muscle, which has a high ATP content, and relaxes immediately after stimulation and contraction. If the ATP is depleted by prolonged intense stimulation, or if it isn’t replenished quickly enough, because of hypothyroidism, the relaxation is very slow, leading to cramping."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The endotoxin, lipopolysaccharide, has a general excitatory effect effect that activates cell inflammatory processes and damages energy production, with the mediation of cell products such as nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, serotonin, histamine, prostaglandins, estrogens, and various cytokines (interleukins and tumor necrosis factor,TNF). Some of these substances enter the blood stream from the intestine, others are produced elsewhere in the body, but some are produced in the brain itself, when endotoxin is absorbed into the brain"

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Nitric oxide, like endotoxin and rotenone, is a powerful inhibitor of mitochondrial respiration. Endotoxin and other harmful stimuli can increase the formation of nitric oxide, but it’s also produced in the normal excitatory processes of nerves, and with an excess of excitation relative to energy production and inhibitory influences, it can become the central agent of excitotoxicity."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Hypoglycemia activates the excitatory glutamatergic system, leading to increased nitric oxide, which, in the presence of an energy deficit, produces excitotoxicity."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"a degenerative disease such as Parkinson’s disease involves a progressive inability to relax; energy continues to be spent faster than it can be restored."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"free fatty acids, especially when they are polyunsaturated, are toxic to the brain, increasing inflammation and blocking energy metabolism."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Energy deprivation, for example caused by hypoglycemia or hypoxia, causes platelets to release serotonin during stress."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The substitution of information for energy, the abstraction of the world, led to theories of aging and death of organisms as resulting from the inevitable, entropic, loss of information, the degradation of DNA through somatic mutations, produced by oxidative damage, and to a theory of the fate of the universe as an entropic heat death."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Between its formation and its exhalation, CO2 participates in many essential processes, including the stabilization of the energy producing system."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Reductive stress activates multiple layers of restorative processes (alternatives to the protective functions of carbon dioxide) to stimulate breathing, increase circulation, provide energy and materials for renewing cell structures. Prostaglandins, cytokines, estrogen, and nitric oxide are produced in coordinated ways, and cellular behaviors are changed defensively. The structures of the cell skeleton are modified, as the reductive chemistry changes protein disulfides to sulfhydryls, changing shapes and, most importantly, the solvent properties of the cell material."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Energy deprivation, caused by insufficient glucose or oxygen, causes immediate swelling of cells, and is associated with excitation; the ammonia associated with energy deprivation and excess excitation contributes to swelling"

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"There are several important mechanisms that are involved in perpetuating a pseudohypoxic state, and they can operate in a single tissue or organ, as well as in a generalized way throughout the organism. The thing that is often overlooked is the coherent overlapping interaction of the structural sulfhydryl redox system (-SH, -SS-), the redox regulation of gene expression, the glycolytic and oxidative energy metabolisms, regulation of pH and ionic selectivity, osmolarity, and solvent properties, especially the hydroephobic/hydrophilic balance."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The alkaline shift in pH (the shift that becomes chronic in cancer cells) increases the excitation and energy expenditure of any type of cell."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"These shifts toward pseudohypoxia, alkalinity, excitation, water retention, and inefficient energy production can be seen, either locally or systemically, in all of the chronic and degenerative conditions that are now known to involve inflammation."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"he explained that he saw cell structure as an integral conductive/semiconductive system, and cellular movement and other functions, as consequences of the flow of energy through that system."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The way energy flows through a system depends on the conductive and catalytic condition of the system, and the condition of the system depends on the flow of energy."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When a cell is stressed, stimulated beyond its ability to respond with increased respiration to produce the energy needed to return to its resting state, the stress itself is a relatively reducing state,"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The reduced state leads to increased production of lactate, which produces enough energy to keep the cell alive, but the lactate contributes to the stressed redox shift in the cell that produces it, as well as in the surrounding cells."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aging itself involves a metabolic shift in the direction of cancer metabolism, with a relative inability to reduce energy expenditure in the basal, fasting state, and with increased fat oxidation, decreased glucose oxidation"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many of the new observations related to seeing cells as self-organizing coacervate systems are reminiscent of Gilbert Ling’s observations. For example, ATP increases the solubility of proteins (Patel, et al., 2017), and when energy is depleted, some proteins come out of solution, forming membrane-less organelles, filaments, and granules."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Fertility requires the maintenance of the testes and ovaries at a temperature significantly lower than the body’s core temperature, allowing cellular order to exist with a minimum of energy expense."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Increasing temperature increases the rate of energy use, while lower temperature lowers the rate of energy use. When energy availability matches energy needs, there is no heat stress."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the early stages of forming an individual, starting with the parents’ biological well-being, and continuing through the embryological developments into adulthood, the quality of tissue energy supplies, cellular energy balances, and the resulting orderliness of the tissue substance, govern the nature of the outcome."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"estrogen is excitatory, analogous to excessively increasing temperature, and that it shifts energy production toward glycolysis, and shifts cell functions toward dedifferentiation and cancer metabolism, while progesterone has opposing effects: It reduces excitation, decreasing the need for energy, while shifting energy production away from inefficient glycolysis; it can restore normal differentiation while reversing features of cancer,"

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"t bedtime, a mild warm bath can compensate for low internal heat production, increasing the metabolic rate and helping to increase glycogen stores and increase progesterone level, making deep restorative sleep possible. But if the bath is too warm or too prolonged, or if estrogen’s influence is too great, the increased metabolic rate can intensify the inefficient metabolism further depleting energy stores, and leading to higher stress hormones. Having extra carbohydrate before and during the warm bath improves its therapeutic function, and decreases the risk of heat shock."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Self-organizing systems are maintained by the flow of energy and substance from the environment."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Keeping energy efficiency high, while reducing wasteful excitations, has a long history in health optimization. Avoiding excessive polyunsaturated fats and phosphate in the diet, and regularly getting the essential nutrients needed to maintain thyroid and progesterone production, is simple. Choosing foods that contain substances that protect against the many known pro-inflammatory, age-accelerating processes is relatively simple—citrus fruits, for example, contain a great variety of substances related to nobiletin, naringin, fisetin, and quercetin,"

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In general, the changes that compensate for stress damage protect the organism, in the sense of ensuring survival, by desensitizing the organism to stimuli that could otherwise lead to increased energy expenditure."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Reduced energy production in compensation for stress at the beginning of life determines the quality of gestation and the life trajectory of the developmental process, limiting brain size, ability to produce and to use energy, and longevity."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the present situation for vertebrate animals in the natural world is frustrating a developmental potential and intention, directing developmental potential into the dead end of defending against stresses, and away from the intrinsic neotenous or pedogenic path, in which the childish features of metabolic intensity, playfulness, flexibility, and imaginativeness are preserved beyond early childhood, avoiding indefinitely the degenerative processes of decreasing energy and increasing disorder."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Electromagnetic fields, affecting the charged materials, significantly affect cellular coacervates, whether the fields are internally or externally produced. The constant energy flow produced by oxidation and reduction is one of the cell’s important formative influences."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"progesterone’s effects are antagonistic to the effects of the other major steroid hormones, especially estrogen, cortisol, and aldosterone. Those hormones interfere with energy metabolism, specifically with the oxidation of glucose."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It seems likely that a basic part of progesterone’s ability to protect the brain against stress is its support for the high energy mitochondrial oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The cortex of the brain, especially the frontal lobes, is the part most sensitive to energy adequacy or deprivation."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"during constructive exploration, energy is abundant, and cells with the highest energy needs are protected by progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and other steroids."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Most of its energy is used for a constant restructuring process—it never stops its developmental processes, though their intensity decreases with age."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When fats are oxidized instead of glucose, more oxygen is needed to produce the same amount of energy, and less carbon dioxide is produced."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide is both a product of, and an activator of, oxidative energy production,"

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Only an extremely small minority of publications on the physiology of nitric oxide are concerned with the fact that it inhibits mitochondrial use of oxygen for energy production"

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The remarkable fact that both estrogen and nitric oxide are produced by practically any injury has seldom been mentioned, and their closely related effects on energy metabolism have been generally ignored."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"When the oxidation of glucose is impaired, with fatty acids being oxidized for energy, there is usually a decrease in the overall metabolic rate, as well as a shift toward a more reductive biochemistry. A"

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"t an extreme, the reductive energy derived from aerobic glycolysis can be consumed by the synthesis of fat, permitting glycolysis to proceed, and this can lead to cancer cells that oxidize fatty acids for energy, while converting glucose to fats and lactic acid."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Nitric oxide has an action on the heart that isnt directly related to the blood vessels. When the parasympathetic nerves act on the heart, slowing and weakening its contractions, they are releasing nitric oxide, which reduces the hearts oxygen consumption as well as its energy production."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"During aging and many stress-induced conditions, it can be therapeutic to use substances that block our energy-limiting systems, to permit restoration of full energy production."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The thyroid gland secretes about 3 parts of thyroxin to one part of triiodothyronine, and this allows the liver to regulate thyroid function, by converting more of the T4 to the active T3 when there is an abundance of energy. Glucose is essential for the conversion"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"By the 1930s, it was well established that the resistance of the organism depended on the energy produced by respiration under the influence of the thyroid gland, as well as on the adrenal hormones, and that the hormones of pregnancy (especially progesterone) could substitute for the adrenal hormones"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"A contemporary researcher, F. Z. Meerson, is putting together a picture of the biological processes involved in adapting to stress, including energy production, nutrition, hormones, and changes in cell structure."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"the basic signal which causes cortisone to be formed is a drop in the blood glucose level. The increased energy requirement of any stress tends to cause the blood sugar to fall slightly, but hypothyroidism itself tends to depress blood sugar."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"While hypothyroidism makes the body require more cortisone to sustain blood sugar and energy production, it also limits the ability to produce cortisone, so in some cases stress produces symptoms resulting from a deficiency of cortisone, including various forms of arthritis and more generalized types of chronic inflammation."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Knowing takes energy, and our experience is influenced by our biological state."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"oth plants and animals are able to adapt-phylogenetically and ontogenetically, i.e., through both transgenerational and developmental changes--to marginal conditions of energy and substance availability"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Upward adaptiveness, which is typical of large-brained animals and of plants with a high metabolic rate, allows the organisms to find more expansive niches by living at a higher energy level. This process obviously places great importance on an environment which can provide abundant energy and the necessary nutritional substances."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Producing energy abundantly, and using it efficiently: This seems to be an important effect of certain steroids."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"If we optimize the known factors which improve energy production (red light, short-chain and medium-chain saturated fats, and pregnenolone, for example), to the extent that our metabolism resembles that of a ten year old child, I dont think there is any reason to suppose that we wouldnt have the regenerative, healing abilities which are common at that age. I suspect that both brain growth and remodeling might proceed indefinitely."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Since the protective hormones depend on the ability of mitochondria to convert cholesterol into pregnenolone, it is clear that damage to mitochondria will affect our supply of protective hormones at the same time that our energy supply is failing, forcing us to shift to the atrophy-producing stress hormones, including cortisol."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"I think it is likely that our present knowledge of mitochondrial protection could give the average adult about a 50% increase in biological energy. To go beyond that level, it might be necessary to start at an earlier age, to allow body proportions to develop appropriately."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Since the DNA repair process is energy dependent, greater biological energy prevents mutations."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Szent-Gyorgyi, in discussing some of his experiments with heart muscle, said function builds structure, which increases the capacity for further function. The flow of energy through substance increases the order in that substance. More life and more energy can solve many of the basic problems of life."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"A persons vitality is drawn forward by meaningful work, that is, we grow to meet the demands of an important opportunity."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Some people put great energy and concentration into their hobbies, because they find the activity intrinsically interesting. Such intrinsic value and interest is what should be demanded of our work."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"When N. A. Kozyrev theorized that times asymmetry might itself be a source of stellar energy, he predicted that planets would also have a steady source of internal heat in proportion to their mass, and his prediction matched the known heat of the earth, but it also predicted that Jupiter would be almost star-like in its heat emission, and that even the moon would produce some internal heat. He measured hot lunar emissions in 1960, and later space exploration confirmed several other major predictions of his. I think Kozyrevs work should at least make people recognize that even local matter is cosmic"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Soddys, Dudleys, and Kozyrevs intuitions about the ways in which new energy and matter appear in the universe try to combine nearly imperceptible phenomena (time, neutrinos, background radiation) with very important processes (stellar energy, nuclear energy, cosmic rays, the creation of matter). Creation is at the heart of existence, they might say, but is too often overlooked."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"We might rephrase Le Chateliers principle, in the way V. I. Vernadsky did, to say that systems use the energy thats available, and that our perceptions and social understandings are supported by energy flowing into the whole system."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"If the rest of your diet is good, the energy bursts from sugar should level off, and become a steady increased metabolic rate."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"often ate more than 5000 calories, but when Im completely sedentary for more than ten hours daily, my energy requirement is much lower. The calorie intake should be balanced to your heat production and activity."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"the brain is energetically a very expensive organ in terms of its energy requirements, and the liver has to be very efficient to meet its needs, so when there is a nutritional or hormonal problem, the problems can be especially intense. Nutritional needs for sugar, protein, vitamins, and minerals can be very high."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"In my teens and twenties, I needed about 8000 calories per day when I was physically active, about 4000 to 5000 when I was sedentary, but after I took thyroid, I needed only about half as many calories. Thyroid is the basic regulator of blood glucose, and it causes it to be fully oxidized for energy, so that it produces ATP efficiently, on relatively few calories."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Diabetes, or the inability to oxidize glucose vigorously, is simply a description of the metabolic aspect of cellular degeneration. The neurological impairment that is so commonly associated with officially diagnosed diabetes is simply one aspect of a general cellular malfunction that follows from chronic energy deprivation."

- 2001 - February

"Because excitation or stress is a simple thing--it is any disturbance of the living state’s quiescence--radiation damage, asphyxia, nutritional deficiencies, various poisons, carcinogens, and irritants can imitate the actions of estrogen. Or, looking at estrogen’s meaning in evolution, we could say that estrogen imitates the natural menaces that Iife confronts, so that the processes of regeneration can be managed and integrated into the life plans of the organisms. This means that antiestrogenic strategies are appropriate under a great variety of conditions. Whatever the challenge, a successful response will restore the organism to a new, high energy state of readiness."

- 2000 - March

"In outline, a benign stimulation is one which can be met with adequate energy, with good humor, and with an adequate amount of progesterone and related chemical resources."

- 2000 - March

"Warburg believed that mitochondria supported specialized cell functions by concentrating themselves in the places where energy is needed."

- 2000 - July

"Providing energy, while reducing stress, seems to be all it takes to reverse the accumulated mitochondrial genetic damage."

- 2000 - July

"Glucose, and apparently glycolysis, are required for the production of nitric oxide, as for the accumulation of calcium, at least in some types of cell, and these coordinated changes, which lower energy production. could be produced by a reduction in carbon dioxide, in a physical change even more basic than the energy level represented by ATP The use of Krebs cycle substances in the synthesis of amino acids, and other products, would decrease the formation of CO2, creating a situation in which the system would have two possible states, one, the glycolytic stress state, and the other, the carbon dioxide producing energy-efficient state."

- 2000 - July

"Unlike the logical Pasteur effect, the Crabtree effect tends to lower cellular energy and adaptability. Looking at many situations in which increasing the glucose supply increases lactic ~acid production and suppresses respiration, leading to maladaptive decrease in cellular energy, I have begun thinking of lactic acid as a toxin."

- 2000 - July (1)

"The proteins, and the cells, will be electrically charged to a higher degree by respiration; nerve cells will show a voltage of about a tenth of a voJt, while red blood cells, that don’t produce energy by respiration, show an electrical potential of less than 1/400 of a volt."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In hypothyroidism, the adrenergic nervous system tends to overactive, and adrenalin production is sustained at a high level even when there isn’t any external reason for it, since it is needed to maintain adequate blood sugar and energy, in the inefficient metabolic state of hypothyroidism."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Hypothyroidism suppresses respiration as a source of energy so little carbon dioxide is produced, and lactic acid is formed even when there is no noticeable stress. This in itself resembles hyperventilation, since loss of carbon dioxide is the defining feature of hyperventilation, but the presence of abnormally high adrenergic activity, and of free fatty acids, stimulates further hyperventilation, exacerbating the loss of carbon dioxide. Decreasing the carbon dioxide impairs respiration even more, leading to increased lactic acid production, and that stimulates more adrenergic activity, and so on, in a vicious circle."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Part of the toxicity of unsaturated fats could be their requirement of energy to be oxidized (S. Clejan and H. Schulz, 1986), but they reduce the efficiency of energy production in a variety of other ways.."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since I had become a sound sleeper as soon as I began taking thyroid, and had seen that thyroid alone would cure most people’s insomnia (sometimes, as one doctor described his experience, better than morphine) I began to understand that the adrenalin which disturbed sleep was an indicator of defective energy production, and that the things which restored sleep—thyroid, salt, sugar, protein, and progesterone, for example—were acting directly on the cells’ energy production."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide’s concentration affects the structural energy content of the protein water system, and this effect can nicely account for many of the mysteries of cellular heat production, including the negative heat observed_in certain stages of nerve and muscle activity."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"These excitatory receptors release calciuminto the cytoplasm, activating many cell processes, including the liberation of fatty acidsand the breakdown of proteins. When these receptors are activated, the cells’ energy requirement increases, and glucose is consumed more rapidly. Whenever these receptors are activated, magnesium will protect the cell from the toxic excitation. Effective antidotes to the excitotoxins have been based on their. blocking of these receptors."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"From observing the retarded relaxation of }muscles in hypothyroidism,it is clear that low energy makes relaxation difficul"

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"What we need, in order. to understand the way energy can be used in reestablishing the cells resting condition without releasing heat, might be the idea that physical processes (the change of protein conformation and water structure) are intimately integrated with chemical equilibria."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"When ATP breaks down it absorbs water, and in a water-free environment, the equilibrium favors the formation of ATP. The chemical activity of water in cells is lower than it is in ordinary water. Given the right (anhydrous) environment, ATP will form spontaneously. As the reactants form ATP and give up water, energy is (at least theoretically) absorbed by the chemical bond. In the abstract, this shows that the formation of ATP and the absorption of energy could be caused by factors that control the activity or availability of water."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Carbon dioxide is powerfully involved in the regulation of both sodium and calcium, as well as in respiration and energy production. It tends to relax both nerves and muscles. It is apparently one of the essential factors in preventing edema."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"The elimination of water from the environment in which ATP is formed or decomposed favors its formation, and in this environment ATP doesnt contain its reputed high energy bonds, but it still has its strong affinity for binding to proteins."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Low-thyroid cells are also unable to retain magnesium efficiently, and a magnesium deficiency prevents muscle relaxation, wasting energy. Adequate sodium prevents urinary magnesium loss."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"the energy of respiration was causing an alignment of molecules, resulting in the polarization of charges. Any field of this sort will influence other charged particles, and so it is obvious that it will participate in the arrangement and organization of particles. The existence of such fields probably influences the alignments of particles within cells, and of cells within organs."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"When a state of excitement persists long enough for the cell to produce an excess of lactic acid, causing it to become more strongly charged electrically, nearby blood vessels and nerves will tend to grow into the area, restoring normal energy supply and integrated functioning,"

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"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

"Avoiding tissue atrophy is very closely related to promoting healthy regeneration. These processes require efficient energy production, and an appropnate balance between stimulation and resources."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When animals are fed a calorie-restricted diet, and live longer than their ad lib fed relatives, people like to say that their metabolic rate is depressed, but that isnt true: the under-fed animals are smaller than the ad lib eaters, but each gram of their tissue burns energy at a higher rate."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Optimizing respiration means increasing the uses of oxygen that provide energy and increase functional capacity, while decreasing the forms of oxidation that impair functioning and decrease the production of useful energy."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In general, lactic acid in the blood can be taken as a sign of defective respiration, since the breakdown of glucose to lactic acid increases to make up for deficient oxidative energy production. Normal aging seems to involve a tendency toward excess lactic acid production, and age-pigment is known to activate the process."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"The organization of life is maintained by the energy it uses, and the use of energy requires a specific organization. There are processes in cells that regulate the interactions of growth, division and other functions, but these processes are responsive to the cells environment--they arent just emitted by or unrolled from the cells repertoire of abilities."

- 1995 - September Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"| think some of ihe excess iron accumulates in the form of age-pigment, and that this material serves to keep glycolysis running as an emergency energy source. G"

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although I tended to be hypermetabolic, and had been puzzled for years about the co-existence of signs of both hyper- and hypothyroidism, I finally tried taking thyroid. Immediately, I was able to sleep easily and deeply, and my need for food decreased. It was obvious that thyroid was having a quieting effect on my whole metabolism. I slept more efficiently, woke up refreshed, and had abundant energy during the daylight hours, and began looking for chores to do around the house, just for fun. Before taking thyroid, the first thing I did every morning was to drink two or three cups of coffee, but a few days after taking thyroid I noticed I didn’t think about coffee very often, and I drank about 90% less, without feeling any withdrawal symptoms."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since the 1960s, a stimulant, Ritalin (methylphenidate) has often been prescribed for hyperactive kids, because it made them able to quietly pay attention. This effect was called paradoxical, but for scientific physiology — there was nothing paradoxical about it. The frontal lobes of the brain, the most highly evolved part, give us the ability to plan and to understand complex things that require prolonged attention. Without this higher part of the brain which has a very high energy requirement, people and animals become hyperactive and unable to concentrate. Ritalin (or coffee) makes anyone, even the brightest students, more attentive and focussed. Caffeine and Ritalin temporarily raise the energy level of the brain."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid hormones are essential for providing the energy to keep the brain at a high energy level all the time. If these hormones are deficient, our nerves need stimulants to function normally, and our bodies ordinarily produce large amounts of adrenalin to keep us going. The result is that we gel tired and tense at the same time."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The brain is just like muscle, in having to restore its energy to relax. Many people have noticed that eating a lot of carbohydrate and/or salt makes them sleepy. Both salt and carbohydrate tend to lower adrenalin, and carbohydrate can also increase the activity of thyroid hormone, while restoring energy to the tissues."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the last 20 years, | have seen almost everyone’s insomnia disappear when they correct their hypothyroidism, sometimes just with dietary changes, but more often with a thyroid supplement. Many times, people have told me that they get to sleep within a few minutes when they take a minimal dose of thyroid at bedtime. By increasing the rate of energy production,"

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When cells dont have enough energy — whether from inadequate fuel, overwork, lack of oxygen, or poisoning they take up water. Too much water tends to excite the cells, and can even stimulate cell division. The hyperaclive state of a muscle cell, cramping, causes energy to be spent. What is too often overlooked is that the cell needs more energy to get back into its resting state, and that an abundance of glucose or other fuel, oxygen, and thyroid are needed for the cell to produce energy fast enough to become quietly relaxed."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"itis a simple fact that nerve cells must have an abundance of energy if they are to be able to relax."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"a high energy state is needed for stable nervous relaxation."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When tissue oxygenation is inadequate, glucose is depleted quickly. In prolonged stress, the liver’s gluconeogenic response to the glucocorticoids is depressed, as is its ability to form and Store glycogen. As glucose is less available, the amount of adrenalin in the blood rises, and fat is mobilized from storage as a substitule source of energy. Free fatty acids, especially unsaturated fats, are toxic to the mitochondrial respiratory system, blocking both the ability to use oxygen and the ability to produce energy. The increased use of fats, instead of glucase, causes lipid peroxidation to increase,"

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Glucose depletion leads to adrenalin secretion, which causes fat mobilization, calcium-activated overstimulation of cells, with impairment of the energy production which is necessary for recovery (by way of muscle relaxation and calcium excretion, etc.)."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Low thyroid people compensate for the deficiency of energy and glucose (and of oxygen, for reasons similar to those mentioned above) by secreting an excess of adrenalin. Their 24-hour urine metabolites of adrenalin sometimes are 30 or 40 times normal."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Calcium is a universal activator, but excess calcium is the central link in most types of cell damage. Calcium uptake and retention are promoted by adrenalin, histamine, vasopressin, energy depletion, and lipid peroxidation and by the activity of phospholipases; since calcium can activate phospholipases and lipid peroxidation, and interferes with energy production, vicious circles can develop."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In general, the things that lower vitality and immunity interfere with our ability to produce the protective steroids."

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The energy available to the white cells, and the condition of the various tissue cells, govern the processes of phagocytosis, healing, and tissue remodeling. Thyroid hormone and body temperature are important factors governing the activity of white cells."

- 1992 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In size and over-all structure, keratin filaments are similar to the scrapie particles, and to the filaments that accumulate in Alzheimers disease. I think of keratin as a protein made by a cell which has lost the energy to make more functional proteins. Normally, keratinized cells are formed by rapid cell division at a body surface, where little energy is available. In chronic vitamin A deficiency, the keratin-forming cells divide more rapdily than normal."

- 1992 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Short and medium-chain saturated fatty acids provide a safe source of energy, as well as having hormone-like and adaptogenic effects. The short-chain saturated fatty acids are important in regulating bowel flora. Mechnikovs idea of altering the flora with cultured milk was on the right track, but much more needs to be done on bacterial nutrition and toxin formation."

- 1992 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It is important to think concretely about the processes in recompensation or restoration of balance. Some of the processes we should consider in relation to addiction are: tissue energy charge, metabolic detoxication and elimination, permeability and barrier functions, excitation-inhibition, and poorly compensated stress reactions."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"‘The availability of energy is central to our stable functioning, and the need for energy powerfully modifies our functioning. For example, as hunger increases, the brain’s interpretive system changes in a way that causes increasingly unfamiliar things to be considered as possible food. The spreading excitation that leads to this extended search probably occurs in relation to needs other than hunger, and could lead to experimentation with drugs and to other activities that give some indirect satisfaction. Obsessive and compulsive patterns can sometimes be resolved by assisting the brain’s energy metabolism, for example with a supplement of magnesium and thyroid."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The inability to cope with everyday problems often precedes experimentation with drugs. Low energy and high anxiety can lead a person to use either stimulants or sedatives, or both. Curing the initial problem should make withdrawal from many substances easier,"

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Both progesterone and triiodothyronine have the function of increasing the tissue’s energy supply, and in suitable doses can have a steadying ,calming effect."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Highly energized cells can resist the osmotic stress of too much water in their environment, and tired cells cant. Removing the stress, by making the surrounding fluid isotonic or slightly hypertonic, can protect the cells’ energy level, and give them a rest."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When various kinds of cells are deprived of energy (mast cells are often studied) they tend to produce (and secrete) histamine (among other substances). Unsaturated fats promote the release of histamine, while short chain saturated fats, and glucose, inhibit it. W"

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Efficient energy production keeps the body from moving either to the cholinergic extreme or to the glucocorticoid extreme."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since excessive excitation of cells (relative to the energy thats available) causes cells to die (in the brain, as elsewhere), it is important to consider as many of the natural means of inhibition as possible, while doing everything possible to sustain energy production."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The relation of energy to structure is, I think, the central question of biology."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When energy flows through matter, order accumulates (as a result of resonance and hysteresis, for example), but we hear so much about entropy, randomness, and symmetry that we forget mast of the formative processes in the material world."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Human (and ecological) health obviously should have the benefits of holistic science, but the actual situation is that biology and medicine have become very product-oriented, and holistic considerations are increasingly left to a variety of fringe occupations. Many of these alternative approaches are concerned with the idea of energy as the key to health, but in general they lack simple and effective methods for optimizing biological energy, and often use counter-productive methods."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the winter and at night the respiratory energy producing system is damaged, and the protective hormones decline, and the harmful stress hormones increase. The immune system becomes less active,"

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When copper-dependent mitochondrial respiration fails, lipofuscin has the ability to sustain energy production through glycolysis (by keeping the coenzyme NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, relatively oxidized), so it is possible that lipofuscin is a primitive sort of defense against stress."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"On the short time scale in which we think about the health of an individual, and on the transgenerational scale relating to having healthier, mare intelligent children, and on the evolutionary time scale, [ think we can see a tendency, not just to preserve homeostasis, but to move upward in energy and greater generality of structure and function. To provide more energy and scope for using it stimulates our ability to use energy meaningfully."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"There is considerable flexibility in living organisms, and in higher and lower levels of organization, and we can see some of the ways in which structures of different complexity accommodate themselves to the surrounding conditions of energy and structure."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Vicious circles of physiology often stabilize an organism on a low energy level, which may involve disease or rapid aging."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The existence of a few systems of positive feedback (self stimulation), however, indicates that in our fundamental structure we are biased in an expansive, upward direction. Progesterone (and its precursors, pregnenolone and cholesterol) and thyroid hormones participate in some of the important positive feedback systems, involving energy production, stress resistance, and brain growth."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In one line of thinking a variety of malfunctions of immunity can be created by a single factor, such as energy deficiency, acting within the organism’s special history or constitutional individuality. Allergies, auto-immune disorders, and chronic infections or skin-test anergy, can be seen as aspects or phases of a generally impaired reactivity of the organism, shaped by many trophic influences of nerves, hormones, nutrition, and by toxins, temperature, radiation,"

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid function is essential to all cell processes, including protein assimilation and synthesis, formation of growth hormone, etc. Without thyroid hormone to sustain respiration, inefficient glycolysis wastes energy; unoxidized lactate provokes catabolism of liver protein. Hypoglycemia stimulates secretion of glucocorticoids, which maintain blood sugar at the expense of rapid catabolism of protein."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since carbon monoxide binds to metal atoms, it might be held in a form which reacts easily with ammonia. Then during stress, which causes both lipid peroxidation and ammonia formation, rhodanese would be needed to protect the respiratory cytochromes from the cyanide, which would otherwise inhibit respiratory energy production, and other processes involving the cytochromes."

- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Within the mitochondria, a cytochrome P-450 converts cholesterol to pregnenolone. The loss of both energy and steroid hormones would have major consequences."

- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Research showing the toxic effects of unsaturated oils goes back more than 60 years. A 1985 article published in my newsletter cites some of the key references. These substances inhibit many enzymes (e.g., in digestion, in immunity, in clot removal, in thyroid function), they disrupt mitochondrial energy production, and they interfere with communication between cells. We hear very little about these toxic effects, and there is not much money available for more research in these areas."

- 1989 - February.March - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Albert Szent-Gybrgyi worked out some of Koch’s ideas, and in the process discovered vitamin C (which has a free radical state), and explored many other energy exchange processes, including free radical activation by biological pigments.?"

- 1988 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"‘The highest energy states of the cell tend to exclude water soluble substances, and to absorb oil soluble materials. The components of a virus have very specific affinities for water and oil, and they can beassembled only in a very special solvent environment."

- 1988 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Adequate energy, for example as available glucose, is protective against cortisol-induced catabolism. White blood cells can protect themselves by metabalizing cortisol in the presence of sufficient glucose}"

- 1988 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the Achilles reflex test, slow relaxation of the calf muscle is used to demonstrate the low metabolism of hypothyroidism. In the high energy person, relaxation is instantaneous"

- 1986 - February

"Epilepsy is an example of a very low energy state of brain cells. insomnia is a low energy state, and is usually cured by the right dose of thyroid hormone, with adequate glucose and other nutrients."

- 1986 - February

"Specific patterns of symptoms can be produced by reflexes, and these reflexes can be stuck in place by an energy deficiency."

- 1986 - February

"Focussed activity and an alert readiness corespond are prevented by a low energy state, which can cause us to get stuck in inappropriate activity, ranging from worry to ‘auto-immune™ conditions"

- 1986 - February