Ray Peat on metabolism

"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

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

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Several people in the 1930s and *40s showed that hypothyroidism caused atherosclerosis, and that thyroid supplementation corrected it. In people whose thyroid gland was removed, their serum cholesterol increased as their rate of metabolism slowed, and when they were given desiccated thyroid to normalize their metabolic rate, their serum cholesterol was immediately correspondingly normalized."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Our bodies are constantly having experiences, and generalizing from them in the way they respond; these generalized responses can limit or expand our vitality. These generalizations are expressed in our anatomy, physiology, and ecosystems, with changes in immunity, metabolism, gene expression, and behavior."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Hair loss, like obesity or hypertension, should be taken seriously, as an indication of a systemic metabolic problem. The metabolism of the hair follicle contains clues to aging, tissue regeneration, and cancer."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Vital stains show that these energetic changes go with structural changes in the cytoplasm, such that high energy efficient metabolism occurs when the cytoplasm has affinity for oily dyes. When water is at a surface it is ordered or structured so that it loses much of its wetness; a bug can walk on it; it contains more heat"

- 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

"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

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Contrary to popular ideas about thyroid, the gland will resume its functioning after stopping the use of a supplement even if it has been suppressed, and sometimes taking thyroid will increase the glands function to normal. Taking thyroid will sometimes help thin people gain weight, by improving protein metabolism, and it often helps people to sleep more soundly."

- 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

"Sugar can be used to produce energy with or without oxygen, but oxidative metabolism is about 15 times more efficient than the non-oxidative glycolytic or fermentive metabolism; higher organisms depend on this high efficiency oxidation for maintaining integration and normal functioning:"

- Nutrition For Women

"But a large inflammation, or profound exhaustion, will lower the blood sugar systemically, and will deliver large amounts of lactic acid to the liver. The liver synthesizes glucose from the lactic acid, but at the expense of about 6 times more energy than is obtained from the inefficient metabolism — so that organismically, that tissue becomes 90 times less efficient than its original state. Besides this, an idle destruction of energy molecules (ATP or creatine phosphate) will increase the wastefulness even more."

- Nutrition For Women

"Several of the known biochemical effects of lithium are similar to those of progesterone, including antagonism to aldosterone, modification of serotonin metabolism, elevation of nerve thresholds, and facilitated disposition of ammonia."

- Nutrition For Women

"The adrenal hormones and mineral metabolism are disturbed in stress, whether the cause is a disorganized style of life, or the injury of surgery. The diet should include about 90 grams of protein (in frequent feedings), eggs as a source of sulfur (needed to synthesize joint lubricants, for example), and should keep the ratio of magnesium to calcium high (as with vegetables, bran, fruit), and the phosphate intake low (this would include using green leaves in place of some meat, as well as using cheese). Vitamins C, E, and pantothenic acid are needed in especially large amount in stress. Vitamins A and B2 are also essential for production of the anti-stress hormones. Inositol is known to protect biological materials from many kinds of damage, and might have this effect in arthritis, but I dont know of any research in this particular application."

- Nutrition For Women

"On the cellular level, stress lowers the energy charge. Systemically, stress inhibits oxidative metabolism. Both of these observations indicate that the basic anti-stress hormone would be thyroid."

- Nutrition For Women

"magnesium deficiency also promotes abnormal fat metabolism, contributing to heart disease."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress, the immune system, and lipid metabolism have complex interactions. For example, a fat, triolein, is known to stimulate phagocytosis, as does magnesium;"

- Nutrition For Women

"pregnant women should make a special effort to get perfect nutrition every day, and to avoid poisons, including drugs, fumes and smoke. Even drugs which dont enter the fetus directly can affect its health by disturbing the mothers metabolism."

- Nutrition For Women

"many forms of very weak radiation5 can lower the efficiency of metabolism, increasing its energy requirement, and brain tissue is the most sensitive tissue to at least some kinds of radiation"

- Nutrition For Women

"Since fat has a very low rate of metabolism, people who lose muscle by fasting are going to have increasing difficulty in losing weight, since they will have less active tissue to consume fat. Building up muscle and lymph tissue for optimum health — even if it initially causes a slight weight gain will make reducing easier by increasing the mass of metabolically active tissue."

- Nutrition For Women

"Tyrosine metabolism, which is involved in brain function, is sensitive to vitamin C; also. vitamin C maintains tissue adrenaline levels, possibly by inhibiting its oxidation, and adrenaline is necessary for the chalones to exert their function of inhibiting cell division."

- Nutrition For Women

"The idea that a calorie is a calorie, or a simple calorie counting approach fails to recognize not only the specific dynamic action of proteins (the action of oils is usually called uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation), but also fails to recognize events at the organismic level, such as insulin secretion, which form a link between the form in which food is taken (composition and timing) and the behavior, appetite, and metabolism."

- Nutrition For Women

"Many reducing clinics are using injections of the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, for the purpose of making reducing diets easier and possibly improving fat distribution. This hormone shifts energy metabolism toward the use of fat rather than sugar, and so allows the blood sugar level to rise. This suppresses appetite. The hormone is produced by the placenta to make sugar available for the growing fetus."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Bright lights also stimulate hormone production and energy metabolism, and increase muscle tone."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"John Speakman and Martin Brand have published various examples in which basal metabolic rate is proportional to life span (e.g., Speakman, et al., 2004). They showed that a higher rate of oxidative metabolism reduced the formation of harmful random oxidation, as well as being associated with longer life."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the cholinergic parasympathetic system tending to reduce glucose oxidation. Exaggerated activation of this system produces shock, with extreme inhibition of respiratory metabolism, but in normal circumstances, this system’s activity increases during the night and decreases during the day."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"he field, the organism’s integrity, is sustained by organized respiratory metabolism, and it can be interrupted by mechanical trauma, excessive stimulation, poisons, etc., or by the absence of oxygen, of glucose, or of substances that specifically neutralize the inflammatory signals."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If injury effectively means hypoxia with activation of estrogenic processes, then we can see that, in outline, the healing recovery process will involve various means for restoring tissue oxidative metabolism."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I dont know whether ATP has ever been used therapeutically for psychosis, but since it is one of the central points in both energy metabolism and structure, its use is definitely suggested by the theory."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"A failure of energy metabolism limits the ability of cells to return from an excited active state fo a stable resting state."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's 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

"the effects of the locally disturbed metabolism create imbalances between stimuli and the ability to respond, so that even healthy cells in the tumor become unable to normalize the organization."

- May 2016 - 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

"The membrane theory says that the process of concentrating a substance against its gradient is active transport, and requires the use of ATP. Experiments by Ling and others showed that the energy metabolism of cells could be poisoned so that no ATP was being produced, but that cells were able to maintain their ionic gradient, although sodium was free to diffuse into the cell, through the membrane. All the ATP has to do is to be present, passively occupying its place in the cell."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"For several decades high altitude physiologists have been perplexed by what they call the lactate paradox, the fact that exercise at high altitude, with less oxygen, produces less increase in lactic acid in the blood than it does at sea level, allowing quicker recovery, since it is understood that it is oxidative metabolism that prevents the formation of lactic acid—the lower oxygen availability should lead to a higher lactate content at high altitude, and slower recovery."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Everything that associates with a protein, such as potassium or ammonium, has an inductive effect on the protein’s structure and interactions with its surroundings, and substances that adsorb powerfully, especially ATP and steroids, have powerful influences on the properties of the system. Molecules that bind powerfully to proteins change the ways the proteins influence the properties of water, and the properties of water govern cells’ metabolism and their interactions with each other and with the environment. Ling called these influential binding molecules cardinal adsorbents."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The whole organism sleeps, though the brain regulates the process. In some aspects of its metabolism, especially the turnover of phospholipids, the brain is very active during sleep, but its energy consumption decreases, and it causes the skeletal muscles to relax, reducing their consumption of glucose."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although free fatty acids normally increase during the night, their increase is much greater when sleep is inadequate, and a diabetes-like metabolism appears, with a shift toward the oxidation of fat rather than glucose."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since thyroid hormone is needed for oxidative metabolism everywhere in the body, its deficiency makes brain cells slow to relax, delaying the onset of sleep, and can even prevent the deepest restorative sleep. Since all cells are regulated by excitatory and inhibitory processes, hypothyroidism can create a bias toward excitatory states, leading to abnormal secretion and proliferation, for example."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The intensity of lipolysis during the night is decreased during the most restorative deep sleep, but the free fatty acids themselves, by blocking oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide, tend to increase lactate and to depress glucose metabolism, creating an inflammatory and excitatory state that interferes with deep sleep."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Every organ has its particular pattern of metabolism, so that it is susceptible to particular variations in the person’s history of interactions with the environment."

- March 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

"free fatty acids, especially when they are polyunsaturated, are toxic to the brain, increasing inflammation and blocking energy metabolism."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Metabolism, an organized process of chemical changes, is always relevant, but the tradition of diagnosing illnesses has developed procedures of abstraction that too often omit the most relevant processes and patterns."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The organism’s metabolism is a single, integrated process, in which each part has to adapt to conditions in the other parts. Our nerves contain chemical receptors that detect changes in the metabolic chemicals in the blood, permitting the organism to make adaptive changes."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In hypothyroidism, with lowered oxidative metabolism, the organism is never far from stress and hyperventilation, with the chronic production of lactate and ammonia. The inefficient metabolism of diabetes has similar effects."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The weak oxidative metabolism in hypothyroidism makes it easy to enter a state of reductive stress, with a shift toward a higher concentration of NADH and lactate."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"There are several important mechanisms that are involved in perpetuating a pseudohypoxic state, and they can operate in a single tissue or organ, as well as in a generalized way throughout the organism. The thing that is often overlooked is the coherent overlapping interaction of the structural sulfhydryl redox system (-SH, -SS-), the redox regulation of gene expression, the glycolytic and oxidative energy metabolisms, regulation of pH and ionic selectivity, osmolarity, and solvent properties, especially the hydroephobic/hydrophilic balance."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) and carbonic anhydrase, have fundamental roles in shaping metabolism. Angiotensin II, the peptide produced by ACE, increases blood pressure and water retention and activates the pituitary and adrenal stress hormones, especially aldosterone. Both angiotensin and aldosterone activate carbonic anhydrase. It seems that any chemical that causes contraction of blood vessels also activates carbonic anhydrase"

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When the organism as a whole is overburdened, with stress physiology passing into the learned helplessness™ or shock states, its metabolism shifts in the direction of reductive, pseudohypoxic metabolism, in which the nervous system suppresses oxidative metabolism,"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Cellular starvation, beginning with the tumor focus of metabolic inefficiency, increases inflammation, shifting the fuel metabolism, creating pseudohypoxia, in a vicious progression."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aging itself involves a metabolic shift in the direction of cancer metabolism, with a relative inability to reduce energy expenditure in the basal, fasting state, and with increased fat oxidation, decreased glucose oxidation"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Inescapable cellular excitation shifts cells into the characteristic cancer-like metabolism,"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"estrogen is excitatory, analogous to excessively increasing temperature, and that it shifts energy production toward glycolysis, and shifts cell functions toward dedifferentiation and cancer metabolism, while progesterone has opposing effects: It reduces excitation, decreasing the need for energy, while shifting energy production away from inefficient glycolysis; it can restore normal differentiation while reversing features of cancer,"

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"t bedtime, a mild warm bath can compensate for low internal heat production, increasing the metabolic rate and helping to increase glycogen stores and increase progesterone level, making deep restorative sleep possible. But if the bath is too warm or too prolonged, or if estrogen’s influence is too great, the increased metabolic rate can intensify the inefficient metabolism further depleting energy stores, and leading to higher stress hormones. Having extra carbohydrate before and during the warm bath improves its therapeutic function, and decreases the risk of heat shock."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"One of my professors, Sidney Bernhard, simply counted molecules carefully, and found that the metabolism of glucose involved a direct passing of substrate molecules from one enzyme to the next—th"

- 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

"he experience of time governs the way we behave, and our metabolism governs the way we experience time. Progesterone, as a central neurosteroid, is a crucial part of our metabolism that shapes our consciousness as it projects itself into time"

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"if the representation of the world is developed in the flowing metabolism and physiology of an organism, the properties of the model will change as the condition of the organism changes. Norbert Wiener and P.K. Anokhin both considered some of the implications of fine-grain, continuous, modeling of reality."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In every circumstance, adaptive metabolism is occurring in an organism, and when the environment is unfavorable, the organism can defend itself by limiting its needs and its range, but when the environment is rich, satisfying needs easily, the organism will tend to expand its range and abilities."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The orienting or exploratory, curiosity reflex, a need to discover and understand, becomes powerful as the other needs are met. The opportunity to exercise the exploratory reflex expands not only the organism’s functional range, but that of the cells and tissues that are exercised in exploration and discovery, and their energetic metabolism. In discovering something about the world, the organism creates something new in itself."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Stress exists to the degree that cells are shifted into a reductive, pseudohypoxic state, by an imbalance between stimulation and the rate of restorative oxidative metabolism."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The use of lactate or beta-hydroxybutyrate as metabolic fuel shifts the balance in the reductive direction, the way ethanol metabolism does."

- January 2017 - 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

"1 interpreted estrogens role in reproduction and cell proliferation in terms of an idea that was discussed by Otto Warburg and others. In this view, multiplication is the basic, simplest function of any cell, and it is supported by inefficient non-oxidative metabolism, while the differentiation of cells to form part of a stable multicellular organism requires the highly efficient oxidativ"

- 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

"itric oxide blocks the ability to use sugar, but it slows metabolism, so it could serve to adjust the size of developing organs, to allow survival when fuel is less abundant."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"With aging, and during stress, animals metabolism shifts toward reduction, with a higher ratio of lactate to pyruvate, of NADH to NAD, of ascorbate to dehydroascorbate, etc., a state of reductive stress."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"One of the basic metabolic changes in aging is slowing of the rate of protein turn-over in cells, and it appears that dietary restriction enhances the protein turn-over rate in aging animals. I think it is likely that unsaturated fats and the amino acid, cysteine, both contribute to the agerelated retardation of protein metabolism"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"If we optimize the known factors which improve energy production (red light, short-chain and medium-chain saturated fats, and pregnenolone, for example), to the extent that our metabolism resembles that of a ten year old child, I dont think there is any reason to suppose that we wouldnt have the regenerative, healing abilities which are common at that age. I suspect that both brain growth and remodeling might proceed indefinitely."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"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

"Intense exercise damages cells in ways that cumulatively impair metabolism. There is clear evidence that glycolysis, producing lactic acid from glucose, has toxic effects, suppressing respiration and killing cells. Within_five minutes, exercise lowers the activity of enzymes that oxidize glucose. Diabetes, Alzheimers disease, and general aging involve increased lactic acid production and accumulated metabolic (mitochondrial) damage."

- 2000 - July

"Mitochondrial metabolism is now being seen as the basic problem in aging and several degenerative diseases."

- 2000 - July

"Carbon dioxide formation is the essence of oxidative metabolism, along with the formation of metabolic water, from the interactions of carbon fuel, electrons, and oxygen. Even before carbon dioxide has covalently reacted with water, to form carbonic acid, it has a great affinity for electrons. This affinity, which predisposes it to react with water and amines, governs its non-covalent  adsorptive properties, but these are passed over by Most physioiogists."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It is the subtle reactivity of the living system which maintains the adaptive organization of energy and structure, Part of the reactivity of the organism 1s the flexibly interactive metabolism, which adaptively distributes substance and energy. Ordinary metabolism, by adjusting the affinities of the cell substance, can account more rationally for the processes that are called homeostatic than the hypothetical apparatus of pumps and channels, which are biology’s deus ex machina, proposed whenever needed."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Calcium, which is released into the cytoplasm by the excitotoxins, triggers the release of fatty acids, the activation of nerve and muscle, and the release of a variety of transmitter substances, in a cascade of excitatory processes, but at the same time, it tends to impair mitochondrial metabolism, and progressively tends to accumulate in mitochondria, leading to their calcification death, which is also promoted by the antirespiratory effects of the unsaturated fatty acids and the lipid peroxidation they promote."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In Alzheimer’s disease, brain respiratory metabolism is inhibited, creating a carbon dioxide deficiency with an excess of lactic acid and ammonia."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Both Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis involve depressed brain metabolism combined with an inflammatory process."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If excess lactic acid in the brain tissue is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, then the lactate paradox suggests that a slightly higher retention of carbon dioxide in the brain of Kashmir residents would counteract chronic excitotoxic effects, suppressing the stress metabolism which leads to the degenerative brain diseases."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"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 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

"Many serious long-range consequences of excess heme/porphyrin production and metabolism are currently being investigated, suggesting that the criterion of twice the upper limit of normal excretion that was recently proposed by a government agency, for recognizing that a problem exists, could allow far more serious problems to develop over time, that on the surface might seem unrelated to porphyria."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although I tended to be hypermetabolic, and had been puzzled for years about the co-existence of signs of both hyper- and hypothyroidism, I finally tried taking thyroid. Immediately, I was able to sleep easily and deeply, and my need for food decreased. It was obvious that thyroid was having a quieting effect on my whole metabolism. I slept more efficiently, woke up refreshed, and had abundant energy during the daylight hours, and began looking for chores to do around the house, just for fun. Before taking thyroid, the first thing I did every morning was to drink two or three cups of coffee, but a few days after taking thyroid I noticed I didn’t think about coffee very often, and I drank about 90% less, without feeling any withdrawal symptoms."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Our brains are the newest and most powerful) organs of adaptation and resistance to stress, allowing the simpler systems of circulation and metabolism to orient themselves appropriately to achieve the most benefit with the least damage. Just as there are pro- and anti-catabolic hormones and circulatory patterns, the brain has stresspromoting and stress-limiting systema."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When stress is severe and prolonged, the liver loses enzymes of the detoxifying system, and also of the system that forms bile acids, causing a tendency toward abnormal lipid metabolism, including hypercholesterolemia."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"‘The availability of energy is central to our stable functioning, and the need for energy powerfully modifies our functioning. For example, as hunger increases, the brain’s interpretive system changes in a way that causes increasingly unfamiliar things to be considered as possible food. The spreading excitation that leads to this extended search probably occurs in relation to needs other than hunger, and could lead to experimentation with drugs and to other activities that give some indirect satisfaction. Obsessive and compulsive patterns can sometimes be resolved by assisting the brain’s energy metabolism, for example with a supplement of magnesium and thyroid."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"For several years, I have been interested in the biological effects of ammonia, and compounds that are metabolically close to it. There is clear evidence of ammonia’s antiviral effect, which stimulated extensive research by drug companies seeking patentable antiviral amines. Most simple substances have regulatory functions in themselves, besides participating in other systems. Besides viral immunity, I think ammonia is involved in regeneration and nerve modulation. Urea, inosine, GABA, the polyamines, and betaine derivatives (e.g., gamma-butyrobetaine) are closely related to ammonia metabolism, and combinations of them will probably have many useful biological effects."

- 1991 - July - 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 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

"Orotic acid was known to alter pyrimidine and ammonia metabolism, so I thought it wasn’t wise to use supplements that contained large amounts of it. A couple of years ago orotic acid was described as an excellent liver carcinogen, based on experiments with rats. h"

- 1990 - May - - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Anything that intensifies metabolism tends to be an immune stimulant, other things being equal."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the Achilles reflex test, slow relaxation of the calf muscle is used to demonstrate the low metabolism of hypothyroidism. In the high energy person, relaxation is instantaneous"

- 1986 - February