Ray Peat on estrogen

"Estrogen strongly affects the metabolism of tryptophan, increasing its conversion to serotonin at the expense of niacinamide, which accounts for the symptoms of pellagra when the diet lacks tryptophan. When there’s enough protein in the diet, promotion of serotonin synthesis won’t result in a niacinamide deficiency, but conditions that increase the influence of estrogen will also increase the malfunctions involving serotonin."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogen increases the formation of serotonin, and both of these substances increase the formation of prolactin, and activate the renin-angiotensin system, and increase secretion of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin, all of which synergize with estrogen in promoting water retention. Serotonin increases the formation of estrogen, so a vicious circle can easily develop when the organism is under stress."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Serotonin, along with estrogen, is the major promoter of prolactin secretion, and it also promotes TSH, ACTH, FSH, LH, GH, MSH, POMC, vasopressin, and oxytocin--all the pituitary hormones."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Under the influence of excess estrogen, your body retains extra water, and it is your appetite center which should balance that water by making you crave extra salt. If you learn to avoid salty foods at those times (or if you take a diuretic), your blood cant carry as much water as when it has enough salt, and so the salt stays in the tissues, rather than being carried to the kidneys."

- Nutrition For Women

"men produce estrogen, especially under stress such as starvation or alcoholism or liver damage. In a famine, men may even lactate."

- Nutrition For Women

"The primary male hormone, testosterone, has chemical and functional properties of both estrogen and progesterone; this combined function gives males a short-term stability (fewer goiters, migraines, etc.) but a lack of adaptiveness in the longer range (higher mortality in infancy and old age)."

- Nutrition For Women

"Estrogen is the hormone for beginnings, a sort of biochemical eraser which can eliminate recently recorded information, restoring the underlying primitive capacity for growth. When we are threatened, by injury or aging, we need the capacity for renewal of cells."

- Nutrition For Women

"Estrogen promotes production of prolactin, a protein hormone, and its close analog, growth hormone. Ionizing radiation, aging, and oxygen deprivation all cause biochemical changes similar to those produced by estrogen."

- 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

"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

"Stress will cause a rise in estrogen and a loss of anti estrogens such as thyroid, progesterone, and (in men) testosterone. Male apes who are bullied have decreased levels of testosterone, and this effect persists long after their environment has improved. The stress of subjugation seems to lead to an adaptation of passivity. Their passivity prevents further injury, but we dont know how stressful their continuing submission is."

- Nutrition For Women

"Hans Selye found that the adrenals are a major component of our adaptive system. In the first phase of stress, there is a shock reaction (with changes resembling those of estrogen dominance), with injury to various tissues. In the second phase, the adrenals protect the animal, and this protection continues until something is exhausted. By exposing rats to a preliminary stress, Selye found that he could induce adaptation to other, later stresses — a kind of immunization to stress."

- Nutrition For Women

"Energetically, the estrogen-dominated metabolic state is less efficient than the oxidative state which is dominated by thyroid and progesterone (or testosterone). The estrogen state, like the rats state of learned helplessness, is parasympathetic, in the sense that many chemical balances have moved away from the mobilized sympathetic or adrenergic state. The estrogen state, for example, depresses blood sugar, while the mobilized state spares glucose by oxidizing fat."

- Nutrition For Women

"the hormonal conditions for easy subjugation are alterable, within the individual, from generation to generation and that better social conditions can improve our physiologies. High estrogen traits can be both acquired and passed on to offspring, as discovered by L.C. Strong in his mice, and as confirmed recently in rats that were stressed during pregnancy."

- Nutrition For Women

"Controlled scientific studies dont play much of a role in the practice of medicine. This widespread use of estrogen is not only unsupported by such valid studies, but is in opposition to most of the real data that exist."

- Nutrition For Women

"Womens livers are known to be more sluggish than mens in removing chemicals from the body. When the liver doesnt remove estrogen from the body rapidly enough, estrogen accumulates in the body — this is why male alcoholics often grow breasts. Estrogen pills and tranquilizers add to the livers burden. Poor nutrition makes it impossible for the liver to function properly."

- Nutrition For Women

"Lipschuts (Steroids and Tumors, 1950) reported that protein is crucial for estrogen removal."

- Nutrition For Women

"Progesterone is a direct antagonist of estrogen; Lipschuts (and Korenchevsky) have shown that progesterone causes regression of tumors induced by estrogen."

- Nutrition For Women

"Thyroid hormone and Vitamin A promote protein metabolism and antagonize some of estrogens effects. In fact, hyperthyroidism is known to be able to cause estrogen levels to fall below normal."

- Nutrition For Women

"Its well known that taking estrogen can cause the blood to clot too easily. Other effects include anemia, low blood sugar, and slow functioning of the liver."

- Nutrition For Women

"Normally, the liver treats estrogen like a poison, removing it immediately from the body. If the liver gets sluggish from malnutrition or too much estrogen (or other damage), it can allow the hormone to build up to very high levels. Since estrogen is metabolically antagonistic to progesterone and testosterone, i think the pill might decrease libido by coun teracting these other hormones."

- Nutrition For Women

"Copper seems to be synergic with estrogen, and could have a similar effect"

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin E does several things biochemically which are exactly the opposite of what estrogen does, so it has been called the anti-estrogenic vitamin."

- Nutrition For Women

"Estrogen seems to increase the bodys need for vitamin E, as it does for many other nutrients. Pregnancy, which can leave the woman with an elevated estrogen level, seems to raise the amount of vitamin E needed to sustain the following pregnancy, if we can generalize from animal experiments."

- Nutrition For Women

"I suspect that estrogen acts largely through its effect on oxygen metabolism — a sort of biochemical breath-holding. For certain nerve systems, both taking vitamin E and having an orgasm might be compared to taking a good deep breath."

- Nutrition For Women

"The idea of physiological compensation is sometimes overlooked in interpreting endocrine interactions, with confusing results. The brain-pituitary system (not just the hypothalamus, since the whole brain and sensory system participates as reflex setter) is probably the main regulatory or compensating system. If estrogen is injected into an animal, the level of thyroid stimulating hormone rises (Brown-Grant, J. Endocr. 35, 263, 1966). This should be taken as a hint that the peripheral effect of estrogen can be compensated for by thyroxin. If thyroid functioning is borderline, it would also suggest that elevated estrogen might be uncompensated peripherally. There are many known examples of metabolic or functional opposition of estrogen and thyroid."

- Nutrition For Women

"Apparently thymolysis is blocked by thyroxine, and promoted by estrogen (stress, radiation and starvation also cause thymus shrinkage)."

- Nutrition For Women

"Iodine, protein and electrolyte balance should be given special attention in women who may have an estrogen imbalance."

- Nutrition For Women

"infertility in mice is also associated with an increased ratio of estrogen to progesterone. My research showed that the probable mechanism by which estrogen excess causes infertility is through limiting the availability of oxygen."

- 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

"Estrogen causes hypoxia at every imaginable site, from lung, through vascular fibrin and extracellular collagen and edema, to intracellular metabolism."

- Nutrition For Women

"This polar opposition of estrogen and progesterone also involves the polar antagonism of cyclic AMP and cyclic GMP, and to some extent a related antagonism of various prostaglandins (it has been suggested that this involves different populations of lysosomes, but I suspect it has to do with the superoxide dismutase enzyme system, and its inhibition or activation, since one of my assays to determine the action of estrogen turns out to be an inverse indicator of S.O.D. activity)."

- Nutrition For Women

"While progesterone might seem to cure almost everything, we should be careful to use it only when the biochemical mechanism is fairly evident. A progesterone deficiency can be misdiagnosed, as (for example) epilepsy, Brights disease, multiple sclerosis, or even estrogen deficiency (as in menopause). It can affect susceptibility to many conditions including herpes infections, dizziness, dysperception, varicose veins, mastitis, fibroma, and endometriosis. Cyclic edema, depression, and migraine are, in my experience, always stopped by progesterone."

- Nutrition For Women

"An excessive estrogen/progesterone ratio is more generally involved than either a simple excess of estrogen or a deficiency of progesterone, but even this ratio is conditioned by other factors, including age, diet, other steroids, thyroid, and other hormones."

- Nutrition For Women

"Excess stress (by elevating estrogen and/or depleting progesterone, etc.) may bring on symptoms in someone who never had them. Spending a summer in Alaska, with an unusually long day, may relieve the symptoms of a chronic sufferer. Dark cloudy winters in England or the Pacific Northwest are powerful stressors, and cause lower progesterone in women and testosterone in men."

- Nutrition For Women

"A very common cause of an estrogen excess is a dietary protein deficiency - the liver simply cannot detoxify estrogen when it is undernourished"

- 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

"Tension resulting from too much copper or estrogen can be relieved nutritionally. Usually a zinc supplement is necessary — about 20 mg. a day; about 30 mg. of vitamin B6 has been recommended for this problem, but the amount varies with the individual. The other B vitamins, and vitamins E and A should also be used."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress inhibits the thyroid, and can lower progesterone (and/or testosterone) while raising estrogen. Recent work by Siiteri and his group shows a hormonal involvement in various autoimmune diseases. Females are much more susceptible to these sicknesses than are males."

- Nutrition For Women

"Katharina Dalton has found that premenstrual symptoms, which result from a relative estrogen surplus and a progesterone deficiency, often continue during the menopause"

- Nutrition For Women

"Siiteri and his group have discovered that one of the steroids (androstenedione, usually associated with the male hormones) is converted to a form of estrogen at an increasing rate as a person gets older, at all ages they studied, from 20 to 80, in both men and women"

- Nutrition For Women

"Strickler found that only 10% of his patients with menopausal symptoms such as flushing, could feel and benefit from estrogen when it was alternated with a placebo. These studies, and a few dozen others, have convinced me that the symptoms of menopause result mainly from a progesterone deficiency, relative to the estrogens. The 10% who really feel better from estrogen possibly have an estrogen deficiency, but this has not been determined, and several other things could account for the lift they feel for example, a healthy thyroid gland will respond to elevated estrogen with an increased output of thyroxin, which at least would make the person feel different, and might raise blood sugar, increase alertness, etc."

- Nutrition For Women

"Besides the nutrients needed to regulate the estrogen level (protein and B vitamins) and nutrients needed by the thyroid (e.g., iodine, manganese, and cobalt), special attention should be given to the anti-stress vitamins which are involved in progesterone synthesis (vitamin A, pantothenic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E) and to the nutrients that are known to be wasted by excess estrogen: folic acid, zinc, and vitamin B6, particularly."

- Nutrition For Women

"Excess estrogen is known to cause hypertrophy of the adrenal cortex. Since estrogen stimulates insulin release and lowers blood sugar, the hypertrophy may be to compensate by raising blood sugar."

- Nutrition For Women

"Women, like cows, will puff up with water and fat under the influence of estrogen, and wrinkles will naturally be smoothed out, but the skin itself is actually losing its elasticity faster when estrogen is used"

- Nutrition For Women

"estrogen causes, rather than cures, heart attacks. It causes a magnesium deficiency, which promotes clotting"

- Nutrition For Women

"onstance Martin, in her Textbook of Endocrine Physiology, (1976), says that estrogens are not useful if administered over long periods of time.... M.R. Urist (in Biochem. and Physiol. of Bone, vol.2, G.H. Bourne, 1972 ed.) says that estrogen doesnt restore bone mass to a degree demonstrable by roentgenography, that excessive growth hormone may aggravate the disorder, and that estrogen stimulates the release of growth hormone."

- Nutrition For Women

"The argument for using estrogen to cure or prevent osteoporosis is based on the fact that estrogen causes diminished urinary excretion of calcium. A vitamin E deficiency (and estrogen is known to increase the need for vitamin E) causes calcium to be retained by muscles. Any toxin, in fact, causes calcium retention in the soft tissues for example, when the heart is deprived of oxygen, it absorbs calcium. Since no skeletal improvement can be demonstrated by x-rays, I suspect that the improved calcium retention is merely a toxic effect of estrogen"

- 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

"Another effect of estrogen is to inhibit a proteolytic enzyme in the blood, which normally dissolves clots. This is why birth control pills can cause blood clotting, strokes and other circulatory problems."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin E promotes oxidation in many ways, and seems to specifically oppose many of the effects of excess estrogen. For example, it can help protect the liver against damage by toxins (all the nutrients are needed by the liver though). It opposes the tendency of estrogen to create age pigment. It activates the blood protease, and so speeds clot removal and prevents clot formation inside blood vessels, but there is also evidence that it promotes normal clotting in wounds."

- Nutrition For Women

"Magnesium acts against calcium (and estrogen) in the clotting system, can prevent spasms of blood vessels, and can spare oxygen."

- Nutrition For Women

"Low protein diets definitely interfere with the livers ability to detoxify estrogen and other stressors."

- Nutrition For Women

"For several years I had suspected a connection between estrogen and low blood pressure, just from noticing that women with seemingly high estrogen tended to have lower than average blood pressure"

- Nutrition For Women

"Since aging and x-rays have some biochemical effects similar to those of estrogen, they might also antagonize thyroxin; this suggests that large doses of thyroxin might be used in senility, radiation sickness, and cancer."

- Nutrition For Women

"A zinc deficiency is often associated with a deficiency of vitamin B6 and an excess of copper; since estrogen is associated with zinc loss, other nutrients including vitamin E and folic acid should be considered when the nails have white marks."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin E, vitamin A, and magnesium are other nutrients that help to maintain blood sugar. Vitamin B12 is needed to use vitamin A. Folic acid, vitamin B6, and zinc are depleted by elevated estrogen and are especially important for healthy pregnancy. Too much copper can lower blood sugar; too much iron can destroy vitamin E, and vitamin E deficiency can lead to jaundice, which can affect the babys brain."

- Nutrition For Women

"Estrogen is regulated centrally or crucially — by the liver. Estrogen, progesterone, iodine, sugar and stress are closely linked with each other,"

- Nutrition For Women

"Any drug alters your nutritional needs. Tobacco, iron, aspirin, estrogen, tranquilizers and diuretics must be taken into account. There are special diets for special needs."

- Nutrition For Women

"In rat studies, within a week of removing their ovaries, their serum estrogen level has returned to normal, because all parts of the body produce estrogen."

- 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

"Part of the basic cellular defense reaction involves enzymes that process toxins in ways that improve the immediate situation, but that can create new problems for the organism if they become chronic. For example, stressed tissues produce carbon monoxide and estrogen, which prevent apoptosis and promote autophagy, with short-term survival value. Surviving in the stressed condition under the influence of CO and estrogen, the cells produce cytokines that affect the sensitivity of surrounding cells to stress and inflammation, and progressively undergo epigenetic changes, tending to become cells of a different type,"

- November 2017 - 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

"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

"Injury to the ovaries, or systemic stress, tends to decrease the production of progesterone, while the body’s production of estrogen is increased."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the free fatty acids promote the effects of estrogen, and increase the formation of the inflammatory prostaglandins, which activate aromatase. Since estrogen increases lipolysis and elevates free fatty acids, and promotes their conversion to prostaglandins, this process initiated by stress easily becomes a selfsustaining vicious circle."

- November 2016 - 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

"Progesterone and its neuroactive metabolites including tetrahydroprogesterone or allopregnanolone, are very effective calcium channel blockers (Todorovic, et al., 2004; Pathirathna, et al., 2005; Hu, et al., 2007). A major function of progesterone is the inactivation of the estrogen receptor; estrogen and its receptor are powerful activators of cellular calcium uptake"

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Drug company manipulation of information about estrogen has been more extreme than its treatment of serotonin. Activated by stress, along with serotonin, it is one of the major activators of the corticotropin release hormone, CRH, which activates the pituitary and adrenal glands, and promotes inflammation, and is a major factor in PPD (Glynn and Sandman, 29014, HahnHolbrook, 2016), as well as in other types of depression, and aging, and Alzheimer’s disease."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"CRH activates aromatase, creating a potential vicious circle, but progesterone can prevent that effect (Roy, et al., 1999). CRH inhibits progesterone production, while increasing estrogen"

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogen increases the brain’s capacity to synthesize serotonin"

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If it weren’t for the advertising culture, it would probably be generally recognized that both estrogen and serotonin have important roles in causing depression, migraine, and Alzheimer’s disease, all of which occur much more often in women than in men."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A.V. Everitt reviewed studies in rabbits showing that the endogenous estrogen of pregnancy increased the stiffness of their connective tissues, but that the continuing increased production of progesterone between litters reversed that effect. They found that the connective tissues of animals that had borne many litters seemed to be younger than the tissues of animals of the same age that had never been mated."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Prenatally, an excess of estrogen inhibits cell growth, resulting in a smaller brain at birth, with a thinner cortex. In mature animals, it can cause seizures and excitotoxic cell death."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"With insufficient cholesterol, the normally high postpartum concentration of progesterone isn’t likely to be maintained, and instead of brain restoration, the various pro-inflammatory effects of serotonin and estrogen will predominate, with effects such as depression, joint pain, anxiety, and brain edema."

- May 2019 - 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

"In connection with my dissertation work, I found that the water in uterine tissue was affected both by estrogen and by aging."

- 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

"Small particles of silica or other inorganic or organic material (such as plastics), can, like radiation, oxygen deprivation, sepsis, or estrogen, increase the production of lactic acid, and this lactate promotes various features of inflammation, including edema, collagen synthesis, and the growth and movement of cells."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Ionizing radiation, particulate matter, and estrogen excess interfere with the system in different ways, but all produce reductive stress, inflammation, collagen synthesis, and loss of differentiated cellular functions."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Men’s testosterone declines with stress and aging, and its conversion to estrogen is increased by stress and inflammation. Endotoxin specifically increases the conversion of testosterone to estrogen"

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"With aging, iron and the polyunsaturated fats accumulate in the brain. Estrogen slows the removal of dopamine, increasing its opportunity to react toxically with iron and highly unsaturated fats, especially arachidonic acid and DHA; it also tends to increase the formation of prostaglandins and nitric oxide. Progesterone’s opposite effects probably account for the lower prevalence of Parkinson’s disease in women than in men."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Treatment with dihydrotestosterone (which can’t be converted to estrogen) might be more effective than with ordinary testosterone, considering the increased activity of aromatase with age, stress, and inflammation, and the probable role of estrogen in the excitatory degenerative process."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"things that are likely to be protective in Parkinson’s disease are broadly protective against estrogen and the inflammatorydegenerative processes: Progesterone, minocycline and other anti-inflammatory antibiotics, agmatine, aspirin, coffee, niacinamide, citrus flavonoids, vitamin D, ACE inhibitors, fibrous-antiseptic foods."

- March 2017 - 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

"If something (such as smoking, or very high oxygen concentration, or a hormonal imbalance) inhibits the activity of MAO, the high local activity of serotonin can cause lung edema, decreased blood oxygenation, lung fibrosis and pulmonary arterial hypertension. Estrogen is an important inhibitor of MAO in the vascular endothelium; progesterone has the opposite effect, increasing the activity of MAO ("

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The ideology around stress physiology, falsifying the meaning of serotonin, estrogen, unsaturated fats, sugar, lactate, carbon dioxide, and various other biological molecules, has hidden the simple remedies for most of the inflammatory and degenerative diseases."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The estrogen so-called receptor can act, without the presence of estrogen, when the cell is stressed by hypoxia, ionizing radiation, or inflammation, allowing things that damage the cell to supplement whatever estrogen is present."

- July 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aspirin, vitamin E, and progesterone protect against a broad spectrum of harmful factors, besides their various antagonistic effects on the estrogen system itself. One of progesterone’s major effects is to suppress or degrade the estrogen receptor."

- July 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Besides ammonia and lactate, other stress related substances can also increase the drive to breathe more, depleting the essential CO2—endotoxin, acetylcholine, serotonin, hydrogen sulfide, nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, angiotensin, and estrogen, for example."

- 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

"Among the common inhibitors of carbonic anhydrase are the mildly oxidizing flavonoids such as apigenin and fisetin, some polyphenols, vitamin B1, vitamin D (Mras, et al., 2012), progesterone (partly by blocking the activation by estrogen and aldosterone), and emodin."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The active thyroid hormone, T3, is destroyed locally by a specific deiodinase, prostaglandins are produced by cyclooxygenase, estrogen by aromatase, and nitric oxide by its synthase. These enzymes are activated by chemical reduction of their disulfide groups, converting them to thiols,"

- 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

"The active thyroid hormone was observed to almost instantly increase cells’ oxygen consumption, and estrogen as quickly increases cells’ uptake of sugar and water. These changes are far too quick to be the result of communication with the cell nucleus leading to the synthesis of new proteins."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Evidence for a catalytic function of estrogen was produced by a group at the University of Chicago (Talalay, et al., 1958) who showed that it acts in a transhydrogenase"

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Besides being metabolized in the uterus and other target tissues, estrogen and other hormones are now well known to be able to modify the activity of enzymes, without directly participating in the reaction as a catalyst, and without acting first in the nucleus."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The effects of estrogen can be produced in a variety of ways, without the estrogen molecule itself. An excess of intracellular water, similar to the water that cells take up immediately when stimulated by estrogen, is enough to imitate its effects. In oxygen deprivation, cells take up water, and the estrogen receptors behave as though they had been stimulated by estrogen, but without the estrogen molecule."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many different factors—x-rays, hypoglycemia, excess alkalinity, cyanide, cholera toxin—synergize with estrogen; they obviously aren’t acting just upon the estrogen receptors."

- 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

"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 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

"A substance such as estrogen is able to interrupt oxidative metabolism to initiate reproduction of the organism, or to stimulate tissue repair, in response to a local injury."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"One of the anti-respiratory substances produced by estrogen is carbon monoxide (Tschugguel, et al., 2001). Another inhibitor of mitochondrial oxidation, hydrogen sulfide, is also increased by estrogen (Lechuga, et al., 2015)."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In all of these conditions of stress adaptation, epigenetic modifications of DNA are involved, with nitric oxide participating, with estrogen and other hormones, in methylation of DNA and modification of histones, and a variety of other biochemical lingering modifications."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Progesterone also allows the thyroid gland to secrete its hormones, especially when the thyroid function has been inhibited by estrogen"

- 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

"Since DHEA can be easily metabolized into testosterone (by the skin, for example), and into estrogen, I dont think it should ever be administered alone, without an approximately natural balance of pregnenolone and progesterone."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Estrogen and prolactin do many things to interfere with respiration."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"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

"In my experiments, I found that both aging and estrogen stimulation caused a great increase in the availability of reactive electrons, which I measured by their reaction with a dye. These electrons come from an interactive system that involves the proteins (cysteine) and glutathione, and the various cofactor-catalysts such as ascorbic acid and NADH"

- 2001 - February

"In the 1950s, several endocrinologists gathered evidence to show that estrogen can function as a catalyst in the oxidation and reduction of the pyridine nucleotides, NADPH and NADH. But in the 1960s, the doctrine that estrogens effects were mediated exclusively by the estrogen receptor began replacing all other ideas about estrogen chemistry and physiology."

- 2001 - February

"J. G. Liehr, and a few others, are still demonstrating that estrogen can function as a catalyst in redox cycling (alternate reduction and oxidation), which generates toxic free radicals, and can potentially serve as a drain on the NADH systems. In functioning as a redox catalyst, estrogen oscillates between an oxidized and a reduced molecular form. In this context, the ratio of the different forms of estrogen takes on an entirely different meaning than simply their different effects on the so-called estrogen receptors."

- 2001 - February

"Protein bound estrogen is an active form of estrogen, and the estrogen bound to albumin probably accounts for most of estrogens activity. Free fatty acids, which compete with estrogen for binding to the steroid-binding globulin, probably modify the properties of the more abundant albumin so that it binds more estrogen in its active form, causing estrogen to move from other proteins, lipoproteins, and red blood cells onto the activated albumin. The presence of fats bound to the albumin makes the albumin more lipophilic, fat-loving, and molecules are taken up into cells--especially brain cells--according to their solubility in fats. For fatty molecules, there is no blood brain barrier."

- 2001 - February

"The actual level of estrogen rises all through the reproductive years, and at menopause, the reduction in antiestrogenic factors, such as progesterone, thyroid, and DHEA, leads to increased effects of estrogen."

- 2001 - February

"Estrogen and PUFA create insulin resistance, and the resulting state of diabetes and stress de-energizes tissues,"

- 2001 - February

"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

"Although estradiol is the most potent estrogen, estrone is the main estrogen in the circulation in terms of its quantity, and womens mental performance was found to be lower when the estrone was higher"

- 2001 - February

"Estrogen’s action on many tissues increases the tissue’s ability to bind estrogen; estrogen induces its own receptor, in a_ self-stimulating, self-destabilizing process. This is unlike the behavior of other receptors, such as the adrenalin receptor, which is inactivated by increased exposure to adrenalin. This unusual interaction between tissue and hormone requires careful examination."

- 2000 - March

"By reducing the cell’s ability to bind estrogen, progesterone acts an estrogen repellant."

- 2000 - March

"Does the specific outcome of stimulation take its direction from estrogen, or rather from the ways in which estrogen is neutralized and detoxified?"

- 2000 - March

"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

"All of the information that has accumulated about estrogen in the last century leads to the view that it is the organism’s means of producing a momentary and localized imbalance, goading cells into activity. An important factor in the integration of this momentary imbalance into the life of the organism is the manner in which destabilizing excitation and the restoration of stability, e.g., estrogen and progesterone production, relate to each other. Estrogen stimulates the formation of progesterone, and progesterone lowers the concentration of estrogen."

- 2000 - March

"An increase of free fatty acids suppresses the oxidation of glucose. (This is called the Randle effect, glucose-fatty acid cycle, substrate-competition cycle, etc.) Women, with higher estrogen and growth hormone, usually have more free fatty acids than men, and during exercise oxidize a higher proportion of fatty acids than men do. This fatty acid exposure decreases glucose tolerance, and undoubtedly explains womens  higher incidence of diabetes."

- 2000 - July

"Adrenalin mobilizes free fatty acids from tissues, including fat and muscle tissues. Estrogen itself produces elevated free fatty acids. When the free fatty acids are unsaturated, they cause edema, by making blood vessels leaky,"

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogen excess suppresses the liver’s ability to synthesize albumin, and when this is combined with the leakage of albumin into the tissues (where it is slowly destroyed) and into the urine, the blood loses its ability to retain sodium, much of which is associated with albumin."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since a hypotonic solution imitates the effects of estrogen, and things that cause tissue leakiness, such as cholera toxin, act like estrogen in the uterus, the edema itself produced by estrogen seems to be a central of its normal physiological action."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Histamine and serotonin and other inflammatory factors released by estrogen are known to contribute to its ability to produce edema. The excess nitric oxide produced under the influence of estrogen probably contributes to some edematous, inflammatory, and degenerative conditions."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since these effects of estrogen on tissue water are considered to be nongenomic, and independent to some extent of the normal estrogen receptors and response elements, any tissue 1s probably susceptible to estrogen-induced swelling, as well as to the swelling produced by unsaturated fats and carbon dioxide deficiency."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If estrogen can cause edema in any tissue, then antiestrogens, such as progesterone, can probably protect against stress in any tissue."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In any inflamed tissue, the enzyme beta glucuronidase is activated, and this enzyme releases estrogen within the irritated cell, activating another sequence of neurotoxic processes."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"It was also recognized decades ago that estrogen rises in men during old age (Pirke and Doerr, 1975), as it rises in stress, disease, malnutrition, and hypothyroidism (which are also associated with old age)."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogen is produced in fat (Stiterti and MacDonald, 1973, Vermeulen, 1976) which tends to increase with age, when thyroid and progesterone are deficient."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The conversion of testosterone to estrogen occurs in the testicle itself, but this conversion is also inhibited by the favorable hormonal environment of youth."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The antagonism between estrogen and vitamin A in controlling epithelial proliferation (and possibly other cell types: Boettger-Tong and Stancel, 1995) is clear wherever it has been tested; vitamin A restrains epithelial proliferation."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Environmental estrogens are clearly responsible for genital deformities and sterility in many species of wild animals, but when the causal link is made between estrogens and human abnormalities, the estrogen industry sends its shills in to create controversy and confusion."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Even the effects of estrogens in sewage, known for decades, are treated as State Secrets: There had been reports of hermaphroditic fishes in one or two rivers, and government investigators had been studying them since the late 1970s. But no one had been aware of the work because it was classifiec. (Lutz, 1996.)"

- 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

"By the age of 50, men often show an excess of both prolactin and estrogen, and a deficiency of thyroid and testosterone. This is the age at which enlargement of the prostate often becomes noticeable."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogens cause elevation of free fatty acids, and there are many interactions between the unsaturated fatty acids and estrogen, including their metabolism to prostaglandins, and their peroxidation."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The unsaturated fatty acids, but not the saturated fatty acids, free estrogen from the serum proteins that bind it, and increase its availability and activity in tissue cells."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The heme group (of hemoglobin and the respiratory enzymes, for example) is the iron-binding oily molecule that interacts with oxygen, and it is called a porphyrin. There is a long history of investigating the interactions of porphyrin metabolism with estrogen"

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogens are known to cause porphyria (R. D. Levere, Blood 28, 569-572, 1966), and to exacerbate the symptoms and biochemical disturbances in people with subclinical porphyria. Sometimes symptoms occur premenstrually, during the time of increased estrogen production--the term ovulocyclic porphyria has been in use for a long time."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"At a certain point, the continued production of red blood cells can make the blood so viscous that this viscosity impairs circulation through capillaries, and creates a vicious circle, stimulating the formation of more red blood cells. Men are more likely than women to have polycythemia rubra vera, possibly-because testosterone is anabolic to the bone marrow, and estrogen tends to slow blood cell formation"

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Oxygen deprivation causes tissues to retain  calcium (and iron), as does estrogen in many  cases, being similar to aging in promoting cellular  uptake of calcium. Since the porphyrins strongly bind metals, it has been suggested that they may have a role in mediating the deposition of metals in stressed tissues."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Polezhaevs work in regeneration has suggested that the fatty residue left from degenerating cells stimulates the formation of new cells. Linoleic acid, like phorbol esters and estrogen, activates protein kinase C, and the cell growth system."

- 1995 - September Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Even people who like to say that the ovaries don’t fail at menopause describe a theory in which menopause and its consequences are the result of the disappearance of eggs from the ovary. That theory is so simple it can be described in three short sentences, none of which is true: (1) ovary runs out of eggs; (2) ovulation produces hormones, so you can tell when ovulation stops because the ovaries stop producing hormones; (3) menstruation stops because ovulation has stopped. Those principles are surrounded by various corollaries. Estrogen is the female hormone. Estrogen deficiency accelerates aging. Treatment with estrogen makes you more feminine. Progesterone deficiency is the result of anovulatary cycles."

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

"I found that old animals had too little oxygen in their uterus to keep the embryo alive at the time it would normally be ready to implant itself in the uterus. Giving estrogen to a young animal causes a similar lack of oxygen in the uterus, and prevents implantation of the embryo."

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

"It is now established that aging animals, at the time they become infertile, are deficient in progesterone, but still produce estrogen. Even in young individuals, when stress occurs around the time of ovulation, interference with progesterone production will prevent implantation. If progesterone becomes deficient after the embryo has become implanted, miscarriage occurs."

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

"estrogen exhausts the cells which inhibit the pituitary gonadotropins, with the result that even abnormally high levels of estrogen are unable to turn off the pituitary secretion of the hormones that drive the ovary."

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

"Stress, especially when augmented by estrogen, leads to injury, exhaustion, and aging. The uterus and ovaries participate in the response to stress, but (as Zeilmaker and Wise have shown) the brain proves to be more directly involved in menopause than the ovaries or uterus. Coordination turns out to be crucial for complex processes such as ovulation, fertilization, and implantation. The destruction of the nerve cells that regulate the pituitary makes coordination impossible."

- 1995 - August.September - 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

"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

"At menopause, estrogen excess can promote the production of androgens, in the absence of progesterone, which tends ta defeminize the woman. This is often a result of stress, and sometimes is a consequence of hypothyroidism. In situations of this sort, estrogen is seen not to be a feminizing hormone; it is unable to neutralize the male hormones the body produces in response to the estrogen excess."

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

"Males often have as much estrogen as females, especially when they are tired or sick."

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

"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

"Around the time these factors in the formation of age pigment were being investigated, the Shutes were investigating the antagonism between estrogen and vitamin E. Essentially, their antagonism consists of the fact that vitamin E spares oxygen, and that estrogen wastes oxygen."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When | found, around 1970, that the pressure of oxygen was low in old animals and in animals that had been treated with estrogen, I tried to determine the reason for the oxygen deficiency in each case. | found that in old individuals (hamsters or humans) the blood was only about 50% oxygenated as it passed through the lungs, as if diffusion into the capillaries was impaired. Estrogen treatment (rats and humans) does the same, apparently by causing a sort of edema that thickens the lung tissue through which the oxygen has to diffuse."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The consistency with which oxygen becomes deficient in aging, stress, and estrogen excess suggests that a basic coordination mechanism may be involved, jn which there is a shift toward the conditions which will activate the expression of certain genes - possibly the hypoglycernia-stress-heat-shock proteins, or possibly simply the proteins of cell division and growth."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Vitamin A regulates Iysosomes, and so a deficiency might promote the accumulation of intracellular debris. It is an antioxidant, and so a deficiency might tend to induce the stress-hypoxia proteins, and it is used massively in the synthesis of steroids (for example, progesterone supplementation spares vitamin A). But possibly most important is the de-differentiation that occurs in many cells in a vitamin A deficiency. In the skin and mucous membranes, a vitamin A deficiency acts like an excess of estrogen, to promote the formation of keratin."

- 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

"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

"As I studied estrogen in other situations, two features of its action stood out - it interferes with respiration, and it causes cells to take up water. Its other effects seem to follow from these."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"large number of biochemical similarities in aging and in the state of estrogen dominance, and the absence of any detectable biochemical differences between the states, except their history.? For example, in both states the oxygen tension is relatively low, and as a result, unsaturated lipids are rapidly changed into age pigment or lipofuscin through lipid peroxidation."

- 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)

"Forty-five years ago the Shutes found that estrogen promotes the clotting of blood. At the same time, Knisely was studying the phenomenon of blood sludging, which occurs under many types of stress. At that time it was recognized that there is an equilibrium between clot formation and clot removal (fibrinolysis)."

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"There are many ways that estrogen can contribute to a hypercoagulable state (leading to cardiovascular disease). Some of these involve altered liver function, including disturbed production or metabolism of 8 different coagulation controlling factors"

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although Im not sure what clinical perceptions led the Shutes to study estrogen’s affect on clotting, pregnancy and lactation are notoriously associated with hypercoagulability (eclampsia and thromboembolism, for example) produced by the body’s high estrogen production at those times."

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Clotting too easily is just one of the problems that can be caused by an excess of estrogen, and I don’t mean to give it too much emphasis, since [ consider its toxic effects on the brain, and its acceleration of brain aging to be its worst effects"

- 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

"I found that the uterine endometrium of old animals often consumed oxygen at a high rate, and showed other signs of being under the influence of excessive estrogen. As I tried to understand this, I saw that several things could contribute to a high rate of oxygen consumption. Either too much estrogen, or too little progesterone could have the same effect, since it is the ratio between these hormones which controls their effects. A vitamin E deficiency increases oxygen consumption, and too much unsaturated fat has the same effect."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The way in which estrogen prevents or terminates pregnancy seems to be by causing the uterus to consume oxygen at such a high rate that there is no oxygen available for the embryo, which has a high requirement for oxygen beginning on the day that it normally implants."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The chronic or cumulative effects of estrogen, leading toformation of lipofuscin, happen to actin the same direction as estrogen itself, causing oxygen tobe reduced, especiallyin the uterus, but in all other tissues, too."

- 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

"Hans Selye pointed out that estrogen treatment mimics the first, shock phase of the stress reaction. An excess of estrogen (or any stressor) causes the pituitary to secrete prolactin and ACTH, and both of these hormones act on the ovaries to stop progesterone production,"

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The removal of the pituitary obviously isn’t a practical way to delay senescence, but protection against the death hormones can be achieved to some extent by altering the diet to minimize the effects of estrogen and cortisol."

- 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

"optimal treatment of leukoplakia would involve a program to lower the chronic background level  of estrogen, while promoting progesterone synthesis. It happens that the body spontaneously moves in that direction, if given the right support. With adequate protein (eggs, milk, cheese, shellfish, liver, etc.), the liver removes estrogen from the blood entirely on its first passage through the liver, in an otherwise healthy organism."

- 1988 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"While the thyroid hormone promotes the elimination of estrogen, it happens to be essential for the production of progesterone. Vitamin A (with cholesterol) is consumed at a high rate by the corpus luteum, when there is adequate thyroid hormone."

- 1988 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In rapid cell division, and in estrogen excess, folic acid and other B vitamins are used rapidly, so a supplement might be useful. I have usually suggested a dose of one to ten milligrams of folic acid daily for a few weeks, with liver two or three times a week for the other vitamins."

- 1988 - January - 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