Ray Peat on development

"Any food that provides simple nutrients, without causing inflammation and blocking enzymes, will support the animal’s normal development, without activating stress responses."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When the organism is free from threats and stresses, with a permissive milieu interieur, and is able to just be itself, what does it do? The integral nature of the animal involves a defining field, a shaping influence, and it’s this field that organizes developmental and transgenerational changes in form and function"

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Tom Brewer demonstrated the importance of eating enough salt during pregnancy, to maintain adequate blood volume. When salt is restricted during pregnancy, the inadequate blood volume doesnt carry enough oxygen and food to the uterus to allow full development of the baby, and the kidneys secrete a hormone to increase the circulation, creating a tendency toward high blood pressure."

- Nutrition For Women

"Patterns of excitation become stabilized as knowledge, and as developmental modifications of tissue: growth and aging and their ramifications. An excess of estrogen, or other factors interfering with proteolysis, could block the capacity to experience. The difficulty of recalling dreams probably relates to this synthetic (non-proteolytic) parasympathetic dominance during sleep."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin B2 deficiency is also known to affect the adrenal glands, and has been suspected of contributing to the development of Addisons disease."

- Nutrition For Women

"better nutrition before and during pregnancy and nursing makes a great difference in the babys mental and physical development. Young women who are pregnant should be especially careful to avoid low blood sugar. Older women will probably require a little more vitamin E, and should be especially sure that they arent getting a toxic amount of copper from their water supply or utensils."

- Nutrition For Women

"Since dietary proteins can get into the blood, early feeding of non-human milk would seem most likely to promote the development of allergies."

- Nutrition For Women

"Extensive studies (such as that done recently by J.W. Prescott) show that pleasurable skin stimulation is extremely important for proper psychological development"

- Nutrition For Women

"Recent studies are showing that animal fats (saturated) are essential for proper brain development, and that unsaturated fats (as in typical formulas) can damage brain development."

- Nutrition For Women

"The holistic view of the organism and its adaptive potentials, advocated by Hippocrates and Aristotle, was rejected by the new science of the last few centuries. Recovering that view, and using it creatively, has become urgent, if we want to understand the processes of development, including aging and the degenerative diseases"

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Experiments over the last 60 years have shown that more or less glucose, carbon dioxide, warmth, and progesterone during embryonic and fetal development can affect the growth of the brain, and the brain’s way of guiding future development and adaptive ability."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"From a very early stage of development, the nervous system coordinates the interactions of tissues."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A positively beneficial environment supports constructive, and reconstructive, processes in the body that can correct much of the damage done by bad aspects of the environment, at any previous stage of development"

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Temporal thinking is the faculty that’s engaged by an enriched environment, but it’s wrong to call it thinking, because it’s simply the way organisms exist, when their development hasn’t been blocked, physically or culturally."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Each organism in its development is constantly making decisions as it interacts with the world, and these decisions affect its structure, and constitute its uniqueness."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the early embryo, where there are no pathogens, TNF and interferon are present, acting as regulators of cell development and differentiation (Li, et al., 2014). Estrogen participates in the embryonic definition of the dorso-ventral polarity (Carroll, et al.,, 2014). In the absence of pathogens, these signals of inflammation are morphogens, links in the organismic field."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"there are hints in the Russian paradigm that small amounts of radiation can have a catalytic or chain-reaction type of effect in materials other than the genes, and that the effects of radiation on cell water might have important consequences for development, enzyme activity, and nerve function."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Genetic determinists have been arguing that the twin effect is an effect of genes, but for that to be a valid argument, it would be necessary to show that sharing a placenta does not constitute having a very similar environment during the development"

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"Experimental embryology made it clear that development is an intentional process. An embryo can survive extreme disturbances, by adjusting its structures and metabolism, but those adjustments to difficult intrauterine conditions can sometimes make adaptations during childhood problematic."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"At each moment of an embryo’s development, it is absorbing nutrients and becoming something more than it had been. Its needs will vary depending on what it becomes. If the materials aren’t in balance, some of the constructive processes will slow, and proportions change."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"From the moment of conception, and before, adversity leaves impressions in the form of DNA methylation and histone acetylation; the organism revises itself based on experience, anticipating that the future might be similarly stressful. These processes of revision are continuous, from the parents’ gametes through fetal development and childhood into maturity. At any stage, an abundance of resources can restore a more expansive trajectory of development."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"Ashley Montagu, in his book Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, argued that the newborn’s skin contact with the mother was an essential factor in the development of the mind and body."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"Experience, as the source of knowledge, is also the basis for criticizing false beliefs, which is necessary for knowledge to continue its development."

- May 2017 - 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

"The idea of field cancerization is very old, and has been based on simple microscopic observation of a tumor in its natural setting, noticing that there are changes in the way the cells are organized, and that there are less extreme changes in the non-cancerous adjoining tissues. The original observations preceded the development of the gene doctrine."

- 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

"I think the resilience factor probably involves a developmental predominance of the sympathetic/adrenergic ~ system, over the parasympathetic/cholinergic ~ system."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A simple shift of perspective can solve some old puzzles, such as how millions of species of viruses came to exist, since viruses can’t reproduce themselves without the organisms they infect, and why our cells would retain such an immense amount of useless or harmful DNA, if our DNA has evolved by the elimination of the parts that didn’t contribute to fitness. McClintock’s work has led to an answer to those questions, as well as a basis for understanding the intelligence of epigenetics and the inheritance of adaptations. The dark DNA functions during embryonic development, mediating effects of the intrauterine environment"

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"In childhood and maturity, vigorous oxidative metabolism can maintain some of the essential protective factors of gestation, including adequate levels of glucose and carbon dioxide, good temperature regulation, and avoiding overproduction of superoxide and lactate. In these conditions, the cytokines can contribute to adaptation and continuing development."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"There have been, since the development of good microscopes, occasional descriptions of microscopic food-derived particles in the blood and urine of people and animals"

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Biologists have occasionally noticed that something they do to an individual organism, that doesn’t immediately cause major changes in its development and functions, will produce serious effects in its offspring,"

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many things that are now considered nontoxic and noncarcinogenic are likely to be harmful when exposure is extended transgenerationally. Impaired infant brain development, allergy, and autoimmune diseases are known to result from a great variety of causes, ranging from radiation to mild chronic stress."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Present knowledge of prenatal influence on the development of autistic traits, in people and in experimental animals, is consistent with Pavlov’s observation that some animals were overwhelmed by stimulation that other animals could adapt to easily."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Education has been associated with freedom for a long time. In ancient Greece, liberal arts referred to the knowledge that was appropriate for the full development of free citizens; technical training provided the useful knowledge needed by slaves."

- July 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The ideas of both John Dewey and Jean Piaget regarding the nature of human development incorporated Hegel’s idea of movement toward a final, mature, completed state, rather than developing a continually stronger and stronger ability to intentionally transform the self and its interactions with its surroundings."

- July 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The development of physics, beginning with calculations of the trajectory of cannonballs and the production of heat in boring cannons, has been guided by militarism. The development of genetics had ulterior motives, from Darwin’s assertion of the hereditary superiority of English people, plants, and animals, and Mendel’s denial of the mutability of traits, through Konrad Lorenz’s explanation of the need to exterminate inferior races."

- July 2019 - 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

"The understanding of the coherence of life, and its coacervate-like qualities, in which environmental influences can affect the way the organism uses its genes in a continuous process of development, makes it clear that time is very relevant to the organism—its present structure and properties reflect its previous states, and project its future tendencies and possibilities, its trajectory in life."

- 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

"Metchnikoff recognized that phagocytes in parts of the body remote from the inflammatory stimulus were attracted to the damaged area, and he investigated their role in tissue repair and the development of the embryo."

- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Up until the beginning of this century, inflammation had usually been thought of as a simply constructive part of the local healing process, but it was starting to be recognized to have a universal role in pathology. Tissue injury was no longer seen as a merely local event. Research was being forced toward a reconsideration of Metchnikoff’s holistic, developmental view of immunity. Bystander effects, the emission by any injured cell of substances that induce a similar injury in other cells, even in remote parts of the body (Koturbash, 2007; Kovalchuk, 2016), and the persistent epigenetic changes they involve, are part of innate immunity. This system is activated by adjuvants, as well as the adaptive immune system that produces antibodies."

- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The embryologists who thought in biophysical terms opened the way to the idea of morphogenetic fields and the epigenetic nature of development. Biophysical thinking led them to think in terms of biological fields, and their lock and key opponents dismissed them as vitalists."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The possibility of extending the period of development, delaying or eliminating aging and restoring normal differentiation to cancerous tissue, grew out of the work of the experimental embryologists who saw the importance of investigating the physical-chemical properties of the living substance itself."

- January 2019 - 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

"Marion Diamond, who studied the effects of stimulation on rats brain development, found that pregnancy or progesterone treatment--like freedom and stimulation--caused the brain to grow, and estrogen--like stress--caused it to shrink."

- 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

"Since I have a view of how cells came to exist, under conditions that exist on earth, I should consider whether that view doesnt also reasonably account for their various components. Sidney Foxs proteinoid microspheres provide a good model for the spontaneous formation of primitive cells: variations of that idea can account for the formation of organelles (such as mitochondna and nuclei within cells, and chromosomes withm nuclei. The value of this idea, of a self-stimulating process in mitochondrial generation, is that it suggests many ways to test the idea experimentally, and it suggests explanations for developmental and pathological processes that otherwise would have no coherent explanation."

- 2000 - July

"Koch found that the convulsions produced by removal of the parathyroid glands were associated with the development of nephritis and the appearance of the toxic substances, guanidine and miethylguanidine. These compounds, and ammonia, are now known to produce convulsions by acting on the excitatory amino acid receptors"

- 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

"that hypothyroidism, leading to a substitution of lactic acid for carbon dioxide, might contribute to the development of glaucoma by increasing the viscosity of the aqueous humor."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"What we call inflammation offers a good conceptual link between the studies on excitotoxicity or cellular stress, and the newer approaches to the treatment of aging and degenerative diseases, based on ideas of regeneration and development. Controlling inflammation becomes part -of promoting regeneration."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"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

"In times of lower atmospheric carbon dioxide, our Krebs cycle still produces it internally, and the rapid development of the brain during gestation takes advantage of the high concentration of carbon dioxide in the uterus."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"gonadotropins participate in the development, maintenance, and functioning of the ovaries, and their effects depend on their timing, their balance with each other and with the steroids produced by the ovaries in response to their stimulation, and their actions are modified by many other factors, ovarian, nervous, pituitary, uterine, and immunological. During youth, the system functions in a coordinated way, with ovulation as a consequence. During aging, the crucial changes appear to be a decreased ability of the ovary and the brain to produce progesterone."

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

"Progesterone is an anti-androgen, and blocks testosterone’s effects. When testosterone is given to newborn or very young rats, it sets up a male pattern of hormone development, but if progesterone is given at the same time, that doesnt happen. Progesterone prevents the differentiation away from the basic female path into the male specialization."

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

"Estrogen promotes cell division, and is involved in essentially every tissue, in both males and females. If it is to be called a female hormone, maybe it also has to be called a male hormone. It does have to be present for breast development, though it is just one of many factors. In this instance, it is contributing to feminization. In other instances, it seems to contribute to virilization."

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

"The physiological age of the parts of an organism depends in some way on the developmental stage of the whole organism"

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I would expect an increase in the temperature of the earth, and increased use of artificial light (or migration) to lead to a prolongation of youth and the development of better brains."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Vitamin A, thyroid, progesterone, and the related steroid, dehydroepiandrosterone, all oppose estrogen, which has several immunosuppressive effects, including a cortisol-like thymic atrophy, hypoactivity of T cells, and reduced production of gamma-interferon and interleukin-2, reduced natural killer cell activity, and it probably has a role in the development of some auto-immune diseases."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter