Ray Peat on cancer

"inflammation is seen to be intrinsic to the disease process itself, in an increasing number of the chronic and degenerative diseases—dementia, psychosis, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, cancer, for example."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aerobic glycolysis, the metabolism characteristic of cancer, in which lactic acid is produced from glucose despite the presence of oxygen, is promoted by serotonin"

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Phosphate, which predominates in grains, beans, nuts, meats, and fish, increases our production of parathyroid hormone, while calcium and magnesium inhibit its production. This hormone, which increases with age, suppresses immunity, and in excess it causes insomnia, seizures, dementia, psychosis, cancer, heart disease, respiratory distress and pulmonary hypertension, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, histamine release, inflammation and soft tissue calcification, and many other problems."

- 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

"Thyroid hormone is necessary for respiration on the cellular level, and makes possible all higher biological functions. Without the metabolic efficiency which is promoted by thyroid hormone, life couldnt get much beyond the single-cell stage. Without adequate thyroid, we become sluggish, clumsy, cold, anemic, and subject to infections, heart disease, headaches, cancer, and many other diseases, and seem to be prematurely aged, because none of our tissues can function normally."

- Nutrition For Women

"This anti-oxygen effect of estrogen suggests a convergence of reproductive aging research with Warburgs theory that damaged respiration is the primary defect in cancer, and also with Selyes observation that estrogens effect resembles the first, shock phase of the stress reaction."

- 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

"Cancer overstimulates the anti -stress adrenocortical hormones, and usually produces extreme wasting from mobilization of fat and protein; blood sugar and glycogen storage are disturbed. During or after cancer treatment the hypoglycemia diet seems desirable: frequent small feedings, liver (or similar nutrients), magnesium, potassium. Vitamins A, E, C, and pantothenic acid are particularly important in stress, but all nutrients are necessary."

- Nutrition For Women

"Cancer patients are typically unable to even produce a normal inflammation, as if they are powerfully dosed with the anti-stress cortisone-type hormones. The failure of the immune system, which can normally wipe out cancer cells as they develop, seems to be an essential feature of cancer"

- 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

"Vitamin A is being used experimentally to prevent cancer and to reverse precancerous conditions, especially in the cervix and the mouth."

- Nutrition For Women

"Warburg1 demonstrated that all cancers have defec tive respiration, by which he meant that glucose is consumed too rapidly. The excessive consumption of glucose in the presence of oxygen is called aerobic glycolysis, and is typical of cancer"

- Nutrition For Women

"thyroid therapy would be desirable in cancer, especially if there is cachexia. Gerson2 and Tallberg3 have reported good results from using th yroid as part of supportive therapy."

- Nutrition For Women

"Once we accept Warburgs thesis, that damaged respiration is the prime cause of cancer, the therapeutic use of thyroid in cancer seems obvious"

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin A is needed for proper differentiation of various types of cell, and has been used successfully in blocking cancer formation and in causing precancerous tissue to return to normal."

- Nutrition For Women

"During LSD research, it was noticed that people with chronic headaches, asthma, or psoriasis sometimes recovered completely during treatment with frequent doses of LSD. Another alkaloid derived from ergot, bromocriptine, is now being used to suppress lactation (such as is caused by prolactin-secreting pituitary tumor which develops after using oral contraceptives) and is used experimentally to treat Parkinsons disease. Both LSD and bromocriptine shift the ratio of two brain chemicals, DOPA and serotonin, towards DOPA dominance. Among the effects of this is an inhibition of prolactin secretion. Prolactin excess is involved in breast cancer and in other cell proliferation, probably including the rapid cell division in psoriasis."

- Nutrition For Women

"Caffeine, acting through nerves as well as directly, can increase immunity. Injected into an animals brain, it was found to slow the growth of cancer. It was recently discovered accidentally that a very small amount of caffeine mixed with the tars from cigarette smoke prevented that material from causing cancers."

- Nutrition For Women

"animals fed large amounts of cod liver oil nearly all died of cancer, but when they were fed the same amount of oil with a large vitamin E supplement, their cancer rate was normal."

- Nutrition For Women

"Recently, Dr. G.G. Costa and others at the Medical College of Virginia developed a test for cancer which probably involves this pregnancy metabolism. They feed the patient some radioactive fat, and a person with even a very small cancer will breathe out about three times as much radioactive carbon dioxide, showing that the metabolism shifts toward fat mobilization at an early stage of cancerization."

- Nutrition For Women

"Low serum cholesterol has been associated with depression, suicide, violence, and increased cancer mortality. Since statins enter the brain, and inhibit the synthesis of cholesterol there, decreased mitochondrial function is undoubtedly a factor in the mental side effects that they can produce."

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the proper function of heme oxygenase is to support progressive improvement in the organism’s phenotype, rather than the aging, inflammation, fibrosis, and cancer, that are now the eventual result of its activity. Heme oxygenase, and enzymes that make NO, HCN, and H2S, might simply need the guidance of an organism’s response to an enriched environment."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In both cancer and autoimmunity, the dominant theory has been that particular genes are causative, with varying roles ascribed to environmental factors such as viruses, toxins, and mutagens."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Almost as soon as purified estrogen was available for research in the 1930s its ability to produce inflammation, cancer, miscarriages, and convulsions was recognized,"

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"This effect of stimulants is probably also involved in their inhibition of cell division in cultured cancer cells (ephedrine and theophyllin, for example), and the ability of caffeine injected into the brain to retard tumor growth elsewhere in the body"

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Ignoring that 30 years of slightly elevated lactate might lead to cancer or other degenerative disease, those who taught physiological chemistry also had little interest in the idea of chronic metabolic hyperventilation—losing a little too much CO2 even at sea level."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The doctrine of genetic determinism has historically had several functions; an important one has been to justify the inability of medicine to cure diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and schizophrenia, but it’s also an ideology, with strong political and philosophical implications, including eugenics."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"The cellular theory of disease indicated that cancer consisted of bad cells, and the gene theory indicated that the badness of cells was irreversible, meaning that cancer could be cured only if every bad cell was killed."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"any tumors are transient, regressing spontaneously, and that the doctrine of preventing cancer death by early diagnosis was based on mistaken beliefs about the nature of cancer. It has been known for decades that nests of cancer cells exist in everyone after about the age of 50, but most of them are never noticed."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"There is a clear seasonality in the diagnosis (occurrence) of breast cancer, with a maximum in the spring and a minimum in the fall (Cohen, et al., 1983). The increased discovery in the spring coincides with rising gonadotropins (which are associated with breast and prostate cancer), and the decreased discovery in the fall coincides with higher vitamin D and lower stress hormones."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"In the tissues of the cancer field, inflammation and fibrosis are processes that precede and accompany carcinogenesis, so all of the knowledge that relates to the development and resolution of inflammation and fibrosis is relevant to understanding and controlling cancer."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The cholinergic dominance of the state of learned helplessness increases the formation of substance P, a small peptide molecule that produces the sensation of pain, and probably itching. Many types of cancer cell are known to produce substance P."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Y. Kuraishi (2015) said that noradrenaline inhibits pain by inhibiting the release of substance P and glutamate (the excitatory amino acid), and that the suppression of cancer pain results in the inhibition of tumor growth and lung metastasis..., apparently by inhibiting the release of substances from cancer cells (e.g., ATP, endothelin-1, and bradykinin). Things that activate and enliven the patient, and that at the same time decrease pain, seem to be therapeutically appropriate."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide had once been seen as a hormone, and it had been used medically for ulcers, arthritis, cancer, and mental problems, and Yandell Henderson’s work had led to its use as carbogen (5% CO2, 95% 02) for resuscitation, but by the middle of the century most therapeutic uses had been stopped, and hospitals had been taught to use pure oxygen instead of carbogen, and patients with brain swelling were being hyperventilated with oxygen to lower their blood carbon dioxide."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the 1960s, at the peak of the membrane craze, when Otto Warburg, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, and Gilbert Ling talked about the difference between health and cancer in terms of holistic metabolic energy-structure interactions, their ideas were ridiculed. Many of their basic discoveries are now individually accepted, but seen in terms of the mechanical membrane/pump/receptor doctrine, their meaning isn’t accessible."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Inflammation is involved in the chronic degenerative conditions, especially atrophy and cancer, and even in depression"

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The idea that cancer cells don’t have enough electrons™ encouraged people to use very inappropriate treatments."

- 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

"Direct use of carbon dioxide is likely to be helpful in all the situations that are known to be benefitted by acetazolamide, without the risk of allergy to that drug—traumatic brain edema, mountain sickness, osteoporosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, hyperactivity (ADHD), inflammation, polyps of the intestine, and arthritis. Diabetes, cardiomyopathy (Torella, et al., 2014), obesity (Arechederra, et al., 2013), cancer, dementia and psychosis are also likely to benefit."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"an important part of the cancer physiology is overexcitation of the brain, especially the hypothalamus,"

- 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

"When cancer metabolism increases the amount of lactate in the blood, increased breathing lowers the carbon dioxide in the blood (Gargaglioni, et al., 2003), and the loss of CO2 affects metabolism and physiology at all levels."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Anticholinergic drugs can alleviate some of the symptoms of cancer, as well as contributing to a restoration of normal metabolism."

- July 2016 - 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

"Some of the best known ideas of biology—including genes, membranes and receptors—have blocked, and continue to block, understanding of aging, cancer, stress, shock, epilepsy, regeneration, perception, and thinking."

- January 2019 - 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

"In 1927, German researchers reported that a fat-free diet prevented the occurrence of spontaneous cancers in rats. Since, a little later, other workers found that the elimination of unsaturated fats from the diet not only prevented cancer, but also caused a large increase in the metabolic rate, it might have been possible to conclude that it is not living which kills us, but something in the environment"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"aspirin makes you need more vitamin K, even when you arent using much. People who use aspirin for arthritis or cancer often take several grams a day."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"I think excess endorphins are often the problem, and the antagonist can sometimes be helpful. The endorphins differ in their effects on the two sides of the body, so when I knew two women (within the same year) who had been having mysterious one-sided symptoms for a few months before discovering that they had ovarian cancer (on the same side), I thought that the endorphins were probably involved, maybe to suppress pain on that side. Naloxone and naltrexone have some effects that arent directly related to the endorphins, on estrogen and histamine."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Cyproheptadine, 2 to 4 mg at bedtime, would help with his sleep as well as the cancer. It also has calcium blocking action, aldosterone antagonism, and antagonizes serotonins antidiuretic effect."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Calcium and iron tend to be deposited together, and the mitochondria are usually the starting points for their deposition. Iron overload has been implicated in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other degenerative diseases, including the brain diseases."

- 2001 - February

"when the Pasteur effect fails, as in cancer, there is glycolysis which is relatively independent of respiration, causing sugar to be consumed inefficiently. Embryonic tissues sometimes behave in this manner, leading to the suggestion that giycolysis is closely related to growth."

- 2000 - July (1)

"About 88 years ago, W. K. Koch (who is known for his cancer therapy) studied the parathyroid hormone and its relation to tetany (prolonged muscle contraction) and convulsions, and was able to demonstrate that the major minerals, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are to some extent interchangeable in alleviating the tetany and convulsions produced by removal of the parathyroid gland, though magnesium was the most effective."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"For both Koch and Szent-Gyorgyi, contraction, respiration, and cancer — were life processes that required understanding the interactions of water, electrons and proteins. Practically all other biologists ridiculed their interest in water and electrons."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Clonal selection has been proposed to explain everything that happens in the organism, from development to cancer, because this view is compatible with the doctrine that information flows only from the genes to the cell; the cells simply die if they dont contain the necessary information."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"When I discussed the cellular alkalintzing effect of lactic acid formation in my dissertation in 1972, it wasnt a matter of scientific dispute, and since then, the newer techniques of measurement have made the situation even clearer. But, even today, almost always when conclusions are drawn about muscle fatigue, cancer, radiation damage, etc., they are based to a large extent on the false assumption about lactic acid and cellular pH."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Under all conditions studied, the characteristic lactic acid metabolism of stress and cancer is suppressed at high altitude, as resptration is made more efficient. The Haldane effect shows that carbon dioxide retention 1s increased at high altitude."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Since it was known that estrogen treatment was dangerous for men, and that it increases blood clotting and vascular spasms, there ha to be some overriding belief that led to its general use in treating prostate cancer. That belief seems to be that estrogen, the female hormone, opposes testosterone, the male hormone which is responsible for the growth--and therefore for the cancerization—of the prostate gland. Everything is wrong with that sentence, but you can can find every part of the belief present and functioning in the medical literature."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Otto Warburg observed that all of the carcinogenic factors he studied caused tissue atrophy before cancer appeared."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Prostate cancer patients who had higher levels of LH and lower testosterone died most quickly. (Harper, et al., 1984.) Also, a high ratio of testosterone to estradiol or of testosterone to prolactin corresponded to better survival (Rannikko, et al, 1981.) Considered separately, patients with higher testosterone levels had a better prognosis than those with lower levels, and patients with lower growth hormone levels did better than those with higher growth hormone levels. (Wilson, et al., 1985.)"

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In human prostate slices, several hormones —~ (including insulin, and probably prolactin) stimulated cell division; testosterone did mot,, under these experimental conditions. (McKeehan, et al., 1984.) Contrary to the stereotyped ideas, there are suggestions that supplementary androgens could control prostate cancer (Umekita, et al., 1996), and that antagonists to prolactin and estrogen might be appropriately used in hormonal therapy"

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The prostaglandins were discovered in prostatic fluid, where they occur in significant concentrations. They are so deeply involved with the development of cancers of all sorts that aspirin and other prostaglandin inhibitors should be considered as a basic part of cancer therapy."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid supplementation, adequate animal protein, trace minerals, and vitamin A are the first things to consider in the prevention of prostate hypertrophy and cancer. Nutritional and endocrine support can be combined with rational anticancer treatments, since there is really no sharp line between different approaches that are aimed at achieving endocrine and immunological balance, without harming anything."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"porphyrin shortened the time required to induce tumors, and porphyrin derivatives have been proposed to be cancer hormones."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Two things can cause the pituitary to secrete excessive amounts of the gonadotropins: A deficiency of the steroids, and damage to the steroid sensing nerves that regulate the pituitary. When an ovary is moved (transplanted into the spleen) so that its hormones are destroyed before getting to the brain, there is hypersecretion of gonadotropic hormone,** and tumors develop in the ovary. The interpretation, that hypersecretion causes the tumors, is supported by other observations, e.g., that removal of one ovary increases the chance of developing a cancer in the other ovary and that prolonged use of estrogen (known to create the conditions for later hypersecretion of gonadotropin) increases the risk of ovarian cancer after menopause.’"

- 1995 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although pregnant women absorb iron from food very efficiently, they tend to give up their stored iron to the baby. This could account for the greater longevity associated with having more babies, and especially with the lower incidence of cancer in child-bearing women."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A low level of the hormone DHEA is associated with premature death from various causes, including cancer, heart disease,"

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Morphine has been known to be immunosuppressive for several decades, though this fact has been ignored in prescribing it for cancer patients. (Intravenous ethanol has a protective effect on the immune system, and is as effective as morphine in controlling the pain of cancer.)"

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the stigma attached to alcohol has prevented its adoption as a most useful drug/nutrient, even in terminal cancer patients, where its promotion of immunity could have great value."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Strong (who studied genetics with T.H. Morgan) was interested in the fact that sharks are not susceptible to cancer. As a geneticist, he saw this in relation to their genetic stability, that is, the fact that they havent developed beyond an early stage of evolution, and he believed that cancer is a result of genetic instability. He found that injections of an extract of shark’s liver prevented mice from developing breast cancer; however, similar extracts from other kinds of liver had similar effects on the mice. Since his mice had too much estrogen, | supposed that their livers were deficient in something needed to eliminate estrogen, since the liver normally is a powerful regulator of estrogen, using a certain system of detoxifying enzymes."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Sharks, besides being primitive and not suffering from cancer, are physiologically unique in another way: their body fluids are osmotically in balance with seawater, making them hypertonic to other animals’ body fluids. The mineral content of sharks blood is not very different from that of other animals. The osmotic difference is made up by a very high concentration of urea (and of trimethyl ammonium)."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Decades ago, unsaturated oils were found to lower cholesterol. However, studies showed that adding the polyunsaturated oils to the diet didnt prevent death from heart disease, but that it did increase cancer deaths."

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although I had investigated the association of estrogen with cancer, and knew from my own experience with migraines that stress, diet and hormones interacted in powerful ways, when I began to investigate the oxidative metabolism of the uterus I didn’t realize that it would involve a convergence of several of my main interests."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Several studies have found caffeine to have a protective effect against cancer. For example, Wiirzner, et al. found that tumor incidence in rats fed coffee went down as the caffeine content went up"

- 1990 - May - - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Caffeine has several effects which protect against cancer. It strongly protects against the cancers caused by chemical carcinogens (including those in smoke), and even against those caused by ultraviolet radiation. It stimulates the repair process which corrects mutations (in mammals, but not in bacteria), and it stimulates the immune system."

- 1990 - May - - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Otto Warburg and Dean Burk showed pretty decisively that defective respiration exist in all of the cancers studied."

- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"An acquaintance who died recently after several months of eating large amounts of linseed ol told me that it had been used by bot. W.F. Koch, M.D. and Max Gerson, M.D. I knew this wasnt true: For example, Gerson’s program evolved from a diet for migraine and tuberculosis into a cancer therapy, and involved the use of thyroid extract, liver, fresh juices, and a little butter, but over and over he said absolutely no oil."

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

"I am aware that linseed oil has been used by Mexican physicians to treat cancer at least since 1939, and that it can be toxic to cancer cells (though probably less toxic than to normal cells*), and that its laxative action is plausibly effective in treating constipated cancer patients."

- 1988 - May - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Koch soon constructed a theory of natural immunity against virus and cancer, based on his belief in the existence of biological free radicals, able to oxidize virus particles and carcinogenic molecules. Koch believed that allergies were an early sign of the failure of this free radical oxidation system.!"

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