Ray Peat on cortisol

"Stresses of different sorts increase the formation of serotonin and the various pituitary hormones, leading to adaptive changes in the organism, but at the cost of causing inflammation and degeneration. Studies of several of the pituitary hormones have shown age-accelerating effects, leading to edema, inflammation, fibrosis, and decreased longevity. W.D. Denckla’s experiments showing the great life extending effect of removing the pituitary gland, while supplementing thyroid and glucocorticoid hormones, suggest the possibilities inherent in finding ways to prevent the over-production of serotonin and its associated hormones and cytokines."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Cysteine, an amino acid which is abundant in muscle and liver, happens to block synthesis of the thyroid hormone. When we are starving or under stress, cortisone causes these protein- rich tissues to be consumed. If metabolism continued at a normal rate, stress or hunger would quickly destroy us. The cysteine which is released from muscle, though, inhibits the thyroid, so metabolism is slowed."

- Nutrition For Women

"Cortisone also inhibits the thyroid. Any stress, including heavy exercise, will cause this protective slowing of metabolism. The slow heart beat of runners is largely the result of this adaptive hypothyroidism."

- Nutrition For Women

"Although progesterone and cortisone both raise blood sugar and stabilize lysosomes, their effect on the brain is very different: in large doses, progesterone is sedative and anesthetic, while cortisone is stimulating, and cortisone causes changes in the brain which resemble aging."

- Nutrition For Women

"When the organism detects the inflammation or other stress (possibly by sensing changes in blood sugar, lactic acid, or carbon dioxide, or all of them) its adrenal glands will secrete anti-stress hormones, including adrenalin and cortisone (assuming these glands are not exhausted or starved). Both adrenalin and cortisone can raise blood sugar to meet the increased need."

- Nutrition For Women

"Cortisone stimulates the conversion of protein to sugar, and since there are no stored proteins (other than small amounts circulating in the blood) this means that cortisone starts the conversion of the organism into fuel for the problem area. In acute emergencies, the lymphoid tissues will shrink first, which is all right, since they can be restored after the animal recovers, and their function — immunity — is partly a matter of a longer time scale, days to weeks. But if these tissues are chronically depleted by stress or malnutrition, infection is more likely to be fatal, as in old age or in poor populations."

- Nutrition For Women

"Selye classifies steroids into anti- and proinflammatory. Inflammation is a relatively non-specific, and hopefully local, reaction, serving to isolate the problem if it is a toxin or infection. Cortisol is a typical antiinflammatory hormone;"

- Nutrition For Women

"Pantothenic acid in very large doses was recently found to protect against stress even when an animals adrenals were removed. Since the nutrient is needed to destroy insulin, I think part of its anti-stress effect comes from minimizing hypoglycemia, and so reducing the amount of cortisone needed."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin A can apparently help offset immunosuppression by cortisone."

- Nutrition For Women

"Osteoporosis and diabetes are frequently part of Cushings syndrome, and are also more common after the menopause. Cortisone therapy (even when used on the skin) can cause mineral loss"

- Nutrition For Women

"In animal experiments, it has been found that cortisone can produce diabetes, apparently by damaging the pancreas, and it has been suspected that chronic stress (which can be brought on by low blood sugar) can be a factor in producing diabetes."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress diseases typically have a dominant allergic aspect, and respond to steroids. Cortisone is used medically, but has side effects which could be avoided by using progesterone (though medical progesterone usually contains allergenic solvents and preservatives such as phenol). Niacin, vitamin A, vitamin C, etc., help to produce progesterone, and so often help in stress diseases, though the manufactured substances are themselves somewhat allergenic."

- Nutrition For Women

"The relevant effects of thyroid (especially with progesterone, to promote tissue response to thyroid, and to block cortisone production) however, are stimulation of protein synthesis and the prevention of lactate formation - or the stimula tion of its oxidation, either by the tumor itself or by other tissues, to prevent its entry into the Cori cycle, for gluconeogenesis."

- Nutrition For Women

"if the exercise produces too much stress and not enough muscle action, muscles will atrophy as a result of cortisones shifting amino acid metabolism into glucose production."

- Nutrition For Women

"Athletic training is known to slow the pulse. Cortisone, produced by stress, inhibits the thyroid gland. (When the thyroid is low, less oxygen is needed, so this is a useful adaptation for increasing endurance.) These hormonal changes are now known to produce sterility in both men and women"

- Nutrition For Women

"Starting suddenly around the time of menopause, cortisol is higher, probably as compensation for the lost stabilizing effects of progesterone, and the increased inflammatory processes resulting from lower body temperature."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aromatase, the enzyme that produces estrogen, is present in muscles, fat, blood vessels, and many other tissues, and its activity is increased by cortisol, and decreased by progesterone. The changed activity of these two steroids at menopause can account for the sudden increase in the degenerative diseases, inflammation, depression, etc."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Respiratory and circulatory problems increase with menopause, corresponding to increases in inflammatory cytokines and cortisol, and decreases in progesterone and thyroid hormone. Both thyroid and progesterone are thermogenic, and lower estrogen levels."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Some of the factors that cause atrophy of the thymus gland include cortisol and other glucocorticoid hormones, estrogen, prostaglandins, polyunsaturated fatty acids, lipid peroxidation, nitric oxide, endotoxin, hypoglycemia, and ionizing radiation. Progesterone and thyroid hormone support restoration of the thymus gland, providing protection by opposing all of those agents of atrophy. An increase of sugar in the diet can correct some of the metabolic changes of aging"

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The stimulation of CRH production by histamine, serotonin, endorphins, IL-1, nitric oxide, and/or estrogen in good health leads to the activation of complex and appropriate antistress reactions. When stress is very intense or prolonged, or if nutrition hasn’t been adequate, all of the activating signals, CRH itself, and the antistress glucocorticoids, can produce effects that aren’t integrated into the organism’s functions as it confronts its problems, and that produce symptoms and, eventually, degenerative processes and aging. That failure of integration is almost always the result of insufficient metabolic energy."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the most important factors that can be optimized with existing resources. Healthier pregnancies will result in healthier and happier postpartum life. Some of these factors would be sunlight, vitamin D, milk, cheese, eggs, fruits and well cooked vegetables, fibrous foods, and optimizing thyroid function and pregnenolone and progesterone (which support mitochondrial function, protecting against aldosterone, parathyroid hormone, excess serotonin, CRK, and cortisol, besides increasing allopregnanolone), and using the safest antiinflammatory and antiserotonin drugs, such as aspirin and cyproheptadine, when they are needed."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the stress of darkness creates an inefficient catabolic state, in which cortisol breaks down tissues to provide glucose, and that sleep, to some extent, reduces the stress."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Serotonin activates the stress hormones, and the cortisol produced as a result can have the protective effect of inhibiting the enzyme that makes serotonin, as well as activating the MAO that removes it (Clark and Russo, 1997; Ou, et al., 2006; Popova, et al., 1989). Estrogen increases serotonin synthesis, decreases its binding, and inhibits its degradation"

- July 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

"oth estrogen and the stress-induced glucocorticoids are reduced by environmental enrichment, allowing progesterone to function with less interference"

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The unsaturated fatty acids increase activation of the pituitary and adrenal cortex, increasing the production of ACTH and the glucocorticoids"

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When there isn’t enough stored glycogen in the liver, muscles, and other tissues, to provide the brain’s nocturnal glucose requirement, cortisol rises, breaking down tissue proteins to provide amino acids and glucose, but free fatty acids are also increased by this nocturnal stress."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Having a large part of the day’s carbohydrate intake late in the day, or even during the night, can help to restore the brain’s glycogen with less need for cortisol, and helps to reduce the nocturnal rise of free fatty acids, and their excitatoryinflammatory effects."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The fact that progesterone (and probably pregnenolone) stimulates its own synthesis means that taking it does not suppress the bodys ability to synthesize it, as happens with cortisol. Sometimes, one dose or a few doses can restore the bodys ability to produce enough of its own."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Progesterone and DHEA are the precursors for the other more specialized steroid hormones, including cortisol, aldosterone (sodium-retaining hormone), estrogen, and testosterone."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Meersons work has revealed in a detailed way how the usually beneficial hormone of adaptation, cortisone, can cause so many other harmful effects when its action is too prolonged or too intense."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"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

"According to Meerson, heart attacks are provoked and aggravated by the cortisone produced during stress. (Meerson and his colleagues have demonstrated that the progress of a heart attack can be halted by a treatment including natural substances such as vitamin E and magnesium.)"

- 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

"Often, a small physiological dose of natural hydrocortisone can help the patient meet the stress, without causing harmful side-effects. While treating the symptoms with cortisone for a short time, it is important to try to learn the basic cause of the problem, by checking for hypothyroidism, vitamin A deficiency, protein deficiency, a lack of sunlight, etc."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Stress-induced cortisone deficiency is thought to be a factor in a great variety of unpleasant conditions, from allergies to ulcerative colitis, and in many forms of arthritis."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"The stress which can cause a cortisone deficiency is even more likely to disturb formation of progesterone and thyroid hormone, so the fact that cortisone can relieve symptoms does not mean that it has corrected the problem."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Although cortisone supplementation can help in a great variety of stress-related diseases, no cure will take place unless the basic cause is discovered. Besides the thyroid, the other class of adaptive hormones which are often out of balance in the diseases of stress, is the group of hormones produced mainly by the gonads: the reproductive hormones."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Too much carotene, too little vitamin A, not enough magnesium or sodium, and too much cortisol are commonly overlooked factors in infertility."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"I suspect that reproductive maturity appears at a time when the organism is experiencing a generalized, lifethreatening metabolic stress--namely, aging--and that the metabolic slowing which begins at puberty signals the appropriateness of reproduction, and makes the organism more dependent on the glucocorticoids"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Rather than a programmed or random continuous loss of cells, when atrophy of the brain occurs, it seems to be caused by specific conditions, such as stress with prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Pregnenolone isnt a hormone, but it normalizes the steroid hormones, preventing excess cortisol and helping to normalize aldosterone, so it should be helpful for any stress including surgery. P"

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Increased cortisol is a normal response to the cell-damaging effects of stress or inflammation, but cortisol itself causes the death of nerve cells and immune cells through excitotoxicity, by blocking glucose metabolism. Estrogen increases cortisol production in a variety of ways, acting both through the pituitary and directly on the adrenal glands."

- 2001 - February

"Increased adrenaline, like increased cortisol, is a feature of depression, stress, and inflammation; mobilizing fats, it can become part of a vicious circle, in which free fatty acids cause insulin resistance, activating the stress reactions."

- 2001 - February

"Estrogen increases the brain’s susceptibility to epileptic seizures, and recent research shows that it (and cortisol) promote the effects of the excitotoxins, which are increasingly implicated in degenerative brain diseases."

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

"The glucocorticoid hormones of stress play the important catabolic role of mobilizing substances from the idle organs to support the working organs."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The many ways in which the heart is able to resist stress, and even to thrive on it can be generalized to develop ways to protect other organs, and the whole body, from the chronic and cumulative stresses that lead to generalized atrophy, declining function, and aging. During stress, the heart and other working organs become resistant to the glucocorticoid hormones. When a person is given radioactive testosterone, it can be seen to reach the highest concentration in the heart. It is testosterone’s antiglucocorticoid effect which causes it to enlarge skeletal muscles, when exercise is moderate."

- 1992 - June - 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

"Often, the idea of auto-immune disease serves as an excuse for the use of immunosuppressive treatments, such as glucocorticoids or methotrexate, so |usually avoid the word and the concept."

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"GABA-related metabolites, such as GHB, butyric acid, succinic acid, and the butyrobetaines, have multiple protective functions, including promotion of respiration and pregnenolone synthesis, regulating gene expression, and reducing damage from glucocorticoids."

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

"Progesterone has the special status of being an essential nerve growth factor, and generally blocks the catabolic actions of the glucocorticoids and estrogen, thereby protecting all tissues, from brain cells to white blood cells."

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

"While many people think of thyroid as a kind of stimulant, because it can cure the coma or lethargy of myxedema, this is a very misleading idea. In hypothyroidism, the brain exciting hormones adrenalin, estrogen, and cortisol are usually elevated, and the nerve-muscle relaxant magnesium is low. Normal, deep sleep is rare in a hypothyroid person. The correct dose of trilodothyronine (the active thyroid hormone) with magnesium is a reliable treatment for insomnia, cramps, and anxiety, whether these symptoms are caused by fatigue, or aging, or alcohol withdrawal."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Another kind of fish, the salmon, which return to fresh water for reproducing, show the other extreme of adaptation to an osmotic problem. After living isotonically in the hypertonic ocean environment, keeping their mineral content and osmolarity lower than sea-water’s, they suddenly have to readapt to the extremely hypotonic fresh water. The secretion of prolactin and glucocorticoid steroids seems to facilitate this sudden adaptation, but those hormones also seem to produce an explosively rapid kind of aging. I think their condition is similar to the Cushingeid symptoms that frequently appear in middle-aged people."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since I had already spent years investigating the effects of light on hormones and health, I began to see that the existing knowledge regarding the involvement of stress and glucocorticoid hormones in the aging process meshed perfectly with my concept of winter-sickness"

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"People who are awake in the dark have higher levels of cortisol than when they are asleep in the dark, that is, sleep is a partial defense against the stress of darkness. The cortisol (an adrenalin) secreted in darkness, or other stress, has the important function of maintaining the blood sugar level."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It is now clear that both stress and an excess of the glucocorticoid hormones cause brain damage (as well as damage to all other organs). Marion Diamond’s work with rats (confined or free) showed that stress causes very general brain damage, including to the cortex, and others have shown specific damage to the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, and other brain areas."

- 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

"In young people, the brain contains a very high concentration of pregnenolone and its derivatives, DHEA and progesterone, all of which stabilize cells and protect against the effects of cortisol, but in old age these fall to about 5% of their normal concentration, leaving the brain exposed to the destructive action of cortisol."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Besides endotoxin, I think the charcoal might protect against microbial estrogen and glucocorticoids, carbon monoxide, cyanide, and unsaturated oils. Absorption of heavy metals is probably [ decreased by all types of fiber."

- 1991 - February.March - Ray Peat's Newsletter (1)

"In the mid-1970s when I pointed out that menopause resembles Cushing’s syndrome I hadn’t investigated that disease of cortisol-excess enough to know the full extent of the parallel: for example, hot flushes, night sweats, and insomnia, such common menopausal symptoms, are also common symptoms in Cushing’s syndrome. Estrogen’s tendency to increase cortisol production should be considered in connection with the brain-aging effects of both estrogen and cortisol"

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Both estrogen and cortisol weaken the structural components of tissue, and the bruising which is so commonly associated with the premenstrual syndrome seems to involve the unopposed action of both of these hormones."

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the brain content of progesterone, pregnenolone and DHEA is normally 20 or 30 times higher than the serum concentration, and these hormones are protective against both estrogen and cortisone."

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The main features of aging can be produced directly by administering excessive amounts of cortisol. These features include atrophy of skin, arteries, muscle, bone, immune system, and parts of the brain, loss of pigment (melanin), deposition of fat in certain areas, and slowed conduction velocity of nerves."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many degenerative diseases develop under the influence of excessive estrogen and cortisone (and as a result of the many metabolie changes which follow exposure to those hormones). Many of these diseases, especially those which appear after puberty and are more frequent in women, can be treated very effectively with the anti-estrogen and anti-stress hormones, such as progesterone."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Other dietary practices can minimize our production of cortisol (e.g., combining fruits and protein, since protein foods lower blood sugar and stimulate the secretion of cortisol)."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogen-induced thyroid hypofunction can be compensated to some degree by various hormonal adjustments; elevated secretion of adrenalin and cortisol are common. When the compensation is inadequate, there will often be hypoglycemia and a tendency to form too much histamine. Too much adrenalin will cause cold hands and feet, too little will cause orthostatic hypotension (blacking out when you stand up too quickly) and bowel spasms,"

- 1990 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Unopposed cortisol is immunosuppressive in several ways, including thymic hypoplasia,*°depression of the histaminolytic activity and monooxygenase activity of the liver, contributing to chronic allergies, and it can induce the expression of some types of retrovirus."

- 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 very high levels of cortisone destroy the detoxifying cytochrome enzymes, the use of thiosulfate —to restore any of the remaining cytochromes which might be blocked by cyanide — would seem to be appropriate as part of an anti-stress | approach to disease."

- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The anesthetic steroids, especially progesterone, normally reduce the need for secretion of cortisol, but also act as a protective buffer against the damaging effects of cortisol."

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

"Although a physiologically balanced amount of cortisol induces enzymes of detoxification, for example in the intestine, an unopposed excess causes destruction of these enzymes, eliminating much of the intestine’s barrier function, and leading to allergies.? This action of cortisol against the thymus and against the bowel’s detoxifying enzymes very likely accounts for the common association of allergies with virus infections. Since cortisol has a destabilizing, pro-convulsant effect on the nervous system, there are likely to be psychological symptoms — anything from compulsive behavior to depression or seizures — associated with the other chronic conditions."

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

"In the last century, it was observed that digitoxin (a natural steroid derivative) lowered the fever caused by enteritis.! This is probably another example of a catatoxic function, a protective function common to many steroids, and probably worked by way of stabilizing the detoxifying enzymes and preventing the absorption of endotoxin.* Endotoxin is known to destabilize and inactivate the bowel’s detoxifying enzymes, just as an overdose of cortisol does.!"

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

"Although it is important to be aware of the deadly effects of chronic, unopposed exposure to cortisol (and estrogen and prolactin), these hormones which cause atrophy and loss of function in various tissues also have a creative function. I have elsewhere called them the biological erasers, the hormones of new beginnings.!® In the case of cortisol, it might be useful to compare its effects on tissue cells to the process of winnowing wheat, in which the chaff is blown away while the grain is retained. I think there is a mechanism, as proposed by Meerson, in which a functional load preserves the cells and systems which are needed in the present environment, while idle cells are eliminated or reduced by cortisol’s"

- 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