Ray Peat on iron

"The age pigment, ceroid or lipofuscin, that’s derived largely from PUFA and associated with the macrophage foam cells in the plaque, accumulates iron (Lee, et al, 1998), and by catalyzing oxidation, creates local hypoxia, leading to lactic acid production, contributing to an inflammatory process. The products of lipid peroxidation, such as azelaic acid (Riad, et al., 2018), along with lactate, lead to the calcification of tissue."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Hans Selye sometimes used an injected metal, such as iron salts, to experimentally sensitize animals to stress, making it easier to produce arthritis. He found that vitamin E could offset this effect of iron."

- Nutrition For Women

"The high levels of copper, iron and lead which are found in many people with mental problems may be secondary to a hormone disturbance."

- 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

"It is known that excess iron accumulates in the liver, since there is no mechanism for excreting it."

- Nutrition For Women

"In tests in vitro, iron damages the capacity of antibodies to destroy germs. In the body, iron appears to be hidden away during infections, because of this effect on the immune system."

- Nutrition For Women

"bout 1940, laboratory animals being fed a commercially manufactured diet started showing signs of vitamin E deficiency, dying of softening of the brain. The manufacturers knew they had added vitamin E to the mixture, but when they tested it they found that it contained none at all. It turned out that the iron salts which were added to the food destroyed the vitamin E."

- Nutrition For Women

"Natural sources of iron, such as red meat, wheat bran, wheat germ, or molasses, dont seem to have this destructive effect on vitamin E, so if an iron supplement is needed during pregnancy these foods would seem likely to lower the risk of a vitamin E deficiency and of dangers such as a miscarriage."

- Nutrition For Women

"In a vitamin E deficiency, red blood cells become fragile and break. This type of hemolytic anemia is fairly common in premature babies, and is now treated with vitamin E. But anemia is too often treated in adults with the routine iron pills, without considering whether the anemia involves fragility of the red blood cells that might be made worse by iron pills that destroy vitamin E."

- Nutrition For Women

"‘When carbon monoxide is produced in stress, the breakdown of the heme molecule also releases iron, and biliverdin, which is quickly turned into bilibrubin. Increases of bilirubin and carbon monoxide in the body fluids or breath can be seen in many chronic conditions, along with changes in tissue iron content."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The accumulation of iron in the tissues during stress and aging makes them progressively more likely to experience serious damage during moments of oxygen deprivation, as the iron atoms catalyze reactions such as lipid peroxidation"

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When stress causes metabolism to shift in the direction of reduction, with lactic acid formation, iron atoms react cyclically with oxygen and the reductants, producing hydroxyl radicals and other very reactive toxins."

- 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

"The most important source of hydroxyl radicals during stress is the ferrous ion, a reduced form of iron, for example the iron released when heme oxygenous degrades heme and produces carbon monoxide."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"hen the cell is in a reduced state, vitamin C is one of the reductants reacting with iron to produce hydroxyl radicals"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I think oxygen wastage is a central event in aging. Just as a cut potato requires oxygen to make melanin, so do our tissues. Iron tends to keep accumulating in our tissues with aging, and iron appears to be a factor in wasting oxygen (especially in age pigment)."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Vitamin C in excess can contribute to the toxicity of iron, but in the right amount, vitamin C is metabolically linked with vitamin E in protecting against the toxic free radicals produced by iron. Vitamin A also functions as an anti-oxidant, when the amount of oxygen present is very low--which is when iron toxicity is at its worst."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Two clear differences have been found between old blood and young blood. The albumin in old blood is in a more oxidized state. (I think it was the famous gerontologist, Verzar, who first reported this.) Although, at least in aging humans, there is much less oxygen in the blood, something causes the albumin to be in a more oxidized state in older blood. The other distinct feature of older blood might also seem paradoxical at first: the red blood cells are younger. That is, in an old individual, the red blood cells are more fragile-possibly from being more quickly damaged from oxidation-and are replaced sooner, and so, on average, they are many weeks younger than the cells in a healthy young individual. Neither of these features is paradoxical. Poor oxygenation is a stress, and causes the waste of glucose and compensatory mobilization of fat from storage, and the relatively reducing environment in the cytoplasm causes the mobilization of iron from storage, in the toxic reduced (ferrous) form. Products of the peroxidative interaction of iron with unsaturated fats are evident in the blood (and other tissues) during stress, and especially so in older animals."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

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

- 2001 - February

"Iron and calcium both tend to accumulate with aging or stress, and both promote excitatory damage; bicarbonate contributes to keeping iron in its inactive state, and probably has a similar effect against a broad spectrum of excitatory substances."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Maria de Sousa’s work on thymus derived cells and their relation to the bodys iron economy has made people aware of the possibility that iron fortified flour and other foods might be contributing to the incidence of leukemia and other cancers, and to immunodeficiency resulting from maldistribution of lymphocytes."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"iron can have rapid and deadly immunosuppressive effects, though it had long been suspected that an increase in the iron burden was a factor in the immunosuppressive action of blood transfusions."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"My interest in the toxicity of iron was aroused by the published discovery that, when added to animal food, iron destroys the vitamin E which was also added 10 the food. Subsequently, it was found to destroy other vitamins, too."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the Interaction of iron with vitamin C (and other reductants) and unsaturated fats, to produce lipid peroxidation, has been the dominant Issue in research on the toxic effects of iron."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Reperfusion injury, any stress causing oxygen deplation and an excessively reduced (electron-rich) cellutar state, the importance of lipid peroxidation and iron in aging, and the role of iron in damaging steroid synthesis in steroidogenic tissues, have been important lines of study lately."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Early in the century, the tendency of calcium and iron to be deposited together in damaged tissues was noted, but the exact reason for this association still isnt known. I think irons role in age pigment, lipofuscin, is an important part of the mechanism."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The other factors besides iron overload and oxygen deprivation which cause premature loading of the tissues with age pigment are a diet low in vitamin E and/or high in unsaturated fats, and an excess of estrogen."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"various studies* show that cellular oxidative stress promotes iron retention, which would be logical, since iron is essential for respiration, and calls struggling to respire would tend to use evolved mechanisms for retaining the iron needed to form new respiratory enzymes."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Milk is remarkably deficient in iron, and it seems obvious that this is an adaptive feature, allowing the child to grow into the large amount of iron stored in its tissues at birth."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In degenerative diseases, the stress and age - induced accumulation of iron and other mitochondria-toxic material (e.g., calcium, aluminum, and lipid peroxidation products including age pigment) and the failure of detoxifying systems make therapy with ordinary nutritional supplements fairly ineffective. Direct supplementation of the various natural protective substances (or their analogues) in addition to the protective vitamins (especially E) and minerals (especially magnesium) is more appropriate."

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

"The accumulation of iron and other heavy metals, and of unsaturated fats, and the progressive loss of copper under the influence of the stress of darkness, are probably the central events in the process of aging."

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

"low oxygen concentration is what causes the iron to become active in peroxidation,"

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Copper is an essential component of cytochrome oxidase, which has the crucial last position in the mitochondrial respiratory system. Copper is a component of the cytoplasmic SOD enzyme, which decreases with age. Ceruloplasmin, a major copper-containing protein, helps to keep iron in its safe oxidized form. Copper is involvedin the production of melanin (itself an antioxidant) and elastin. The loss of melanin, elastin, andrespiratory capacity, which s so characteristic of senescence, is also produced by excessive exposure to cortisol."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The replacement of the copper by iron (and the loss of the copper-enzymes which protect against iron catalyzed free radicals) probably accounts for the increased formation of lipofuscin during aging."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Some of the factors that I have given attention to, in working with ordinary (i.e., complex, traditional) immunodeficiency — viz., a deficiency of the anti-glucocorticoid hormones, a dietary excess of iron and unsaturated fats, a nutritional deficiency of vitamin A, folic acid, copper, and protein, an exposure to pediculocides and other chlorinated hydrocarbons including dioxins, etc. —"

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The close association between immunity and the balance of iron and copper suggests that the iron/copper ratio should be studied in AIDS."

- 1988 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although the suppressive effect of iron on the immune system is well-known, it is generally ignored, probably because of our society’s obsessive belief that iron is good for you."

- 1988 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter