Ray Peat on mitochondria

"n old age, the walls of blood vessels tend to become hardened with calcium. In at least some tissues, it is known that calcification begins in degenerating mitochondria, and mitochondria tend to deteriorate in aging tissue. Nutrients such as iodine, vitamin E, magnesium and vitamin B2 are especially important for maintaining the function of the mitochondria, which produce most of our energy."

- Nutrition For Women

"A high rate of mitochondrial oxygen consumption produces heat that allows the organism to maintain an optimal body temperature. When the body temperature is lowered, reactive oxygen species such as superoxide increase; mitochondrial production of superoxide increases slightly, elimination decreases greatly"

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Our body temperature is maintained by the rate of energy production, and that’s mainly the result of the oxidation of fuels by mitochondria."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Probably because of aspirin’s anti-fever effect, the medical culture tends to think of it as antithermogenic, despite its known stimulation of mitochondrial oxygen consumption. Like thyroid hormone, aspirin prevents stress-induced loss of sodium, which is an important part of our temperature and energy regulating system."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Low serum cholesterol has been associated with depression, suicide, violence, and increased cancer mortality. Since statins enter the brain, and inhibit the synthesis of cholesterol there, decreased mitochondrial function is undoubtedly a factor in the mental side effects that they can produce."

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The levels of aldosterone and parathyroid hormone are increased by stress, with serotonin acting on the adrenal cortex and the parathyroid gland to increase their secretion. All three of those hormones act on the mitochondria to lower oxidative energy production."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"human cells of different types are able to communicate with each other by passing proteins, nucleic acids, and even mitochondria. Microvesicles, containing these macromolecules, shed from cells in various organs can travel through the body fluids,"

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"‘When cells are respiring vigorously, all of the oxygen reaching the mitochondria is immediately used, so the oxygen concentration near the respiratory enzymes is close to zero. If something interferes with the mitochondrial oxygen consumption (for example lack of thyroid hormone or the presence of too much polyunsaturated fat, or nitric oxide, or carbon monoxide), the local oxygen concentration increases, because it isn’t being used."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In animal experiments, it was found that their mitochondria progressively deteriorated during the hours of darkness."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Optimizing mitochondrial function at the beginning of the night makes the brain’s inhibitory signals more effective, preserving glycogen stores and reducing noctural catabolism."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Nitric oxide, like endotoxin and rotenone, is a powerful inhibitor of mitochondrial respiration. Endotoxin and other harmful stimuli can increase the formation of nitric oxide, but it’s also produced in the normal excitatory processes of nerves, and with an excess of excitation relative to energy production and inhibitory influences, it can become the central agent of excitotoxicity."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Despite its toxicity, L-DOPA continues to be the main medical treatment for Parkinson’s disease, though the more appropriate drugs bromocriptine, amantadine, and memantine are also widely used. Anticholinergics, similar to the hyoscyamine and belladonna that Charcot used, are sometimes used to control excessive salivation. Amantadine and memantine happen to protect against nitric oxide, serotonin, inflammation, and endotoxin, and to protect mitochondria."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It seems likely that a basic part of progesterone’s ability to protect the brain against stress is its support for the high energy mitochondrial oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The NMDA receptor (like many other regulatory proteins, e.g, COX, TLR, NOS, aromatase) is activated by reduction of its thiol groups. The reductive state, which activates this excitatory system, can be produced by an actual oxygen deficiency, but also by inhibiting mitochondrial function, creating a state of pseudohypoxia."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"he reductive state, resulting from starvation or hypoglycemia, or an excess of lactate or fat, or oxygen deprivation, activates the release of glutamate, and the excitation produced by that can shut off mitochondrial oxidation, reinforcing the state of pseudohypoxia. Nitric oxide synthesis, activated by reductive stress, is a major factor in the suppression of mitochondrial oxidation."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Only an extremely small minority of publications on the physiology of nitric oxide are concerned with the fact that it inhibits mitochondrial use of oxygen for energy production"

- 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

"The avoidance of oxidatively toxic heavy metals, and the maintenance of respiration, with an absence of the highly peroxidizable unsaturated fats in the diet (and a lower level of them in the storage tissues) would probably make the animals tolerate stress better (EFA deficient mitochondria are more resistant to oxidative injury, and vitamin E prevents many stress-associated problems), and might inhibit the age-related oxidative changes in serum albumin, red blood cells, and other tissues"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Since the protective hormones depend on the ability of mitochondria to convert cholesterol into pregnenolone, it is clear that damage to mitochondria will affect our supply of protective hormones at the same time that our energy supply is failing, forcing us to shift to the atrophy-producing stress hormones, including cortisol."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Simple factors which protect the mitochondria are known to have profound therapeutic effects. At a certain point, I think we will understand mitochondrial protection well enough to prevent and cure the basic pathologies of aging."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"I think it is likely that our present knowledge of mitochondrial protection could give the average adult about a 50% increase in biological energy. To go beyond that level, it might be necessary to start at an earlier age, to allow body proportions to develop appropriately."

- 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

"Serotonin doesnt cure depression, and both serotonin and nitric oxide impair circulation and are toxic to brain cells. Both of them poison mitochondrial respiration."

- 2001 - February

"I think the only way to approach the general nature of cellular excitation is to see it in terms of the basic properties of the living material. Only something as general and basic as the cell’s state of hydration, its wetness, can account for the coherent way in which cells are activated, with related processes happening at all levels, from chromosomes, to mitochondria and enzymes, the structural protein meshwork of the cytoskeleton, and sensory functions."

- 2000 - March

"Besides being an antiestrogen, proge a neurosteroid, an antiexcitotoxin, an inhibitory modulator. But these effects in the nervous system have their parallels in the immune system, where it modulates the actions of many cells, protecting the thymus, restraining mast cell degranulation, inhibiting the shock reaction. It is an antitoxin, stabilizing cell structure and function. In the mitochondria, it preserves or restores respiratory efficiency."

- 2000 - March

"It is now well recognized that defective mitochondrial respiration is a central factor in diseases of muscles, brain, liver, kidneys, and other organs."

- 2000 - July

"Warburg believed that mitochondria supported specialized cell functions by concentrating themselves in the places where energy is needed."

- 2000 - July

"Could carbon dioxide, a major product of mitochondria, help to call mitochondna into existence? My answer to this is yes,"

- 2000 - July

"Although I have no hesitancy in accepting that organelles can be exchanged between species, and that it is conceivable that mutochondria might have been derived from symbiotic bacteria, | am reluctant to believe that something happens just because it could happen."

- 2000 - July

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

- 2000 - July

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

- 2000 - July

"Providing energy, while reducing stress, seems to be all it takes to reverse the accumulated mitochondrial genetic damage."

- 2000 - July

"In the way that carbon dioxide alters the shapes and electrical affinities of hemoglobin and other proteins, I propose that it increases the stability of the mitochondrial coacervate, causing it to recruit additional proteins from its external environment, as well as from its own synthetic machinery, to enlarge both its structure and its functions."

- 2000 - July (1)

"In the relative absence of carbon dioxide, or excess of alternative solutes and adsorbents, such as lactic acid, the stability of the mitochondrial phase would be decreased, and the mitochondria would be degraded in both structure and function. As the back side of the idea that carbon dioxide stabilizes and activates mitochondria, the idea that lactic acid is involved in the degrading of mitochondria can also be tested experimentally, and it is already supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence."

- 2000 - July (1)

"Light promotes glucose oxidation, and is known to activate the key respiratory enzyme. Winter sickness {including lethargy and weight gain), and night stress, have to be included within the idea of the respiratory defect, shifting to the antirespiratory production of lactic acid, and damaging the mitochondria"

- 2000 - July (1)

"Thyroid, protein, sodium, and magnesium will correct most edemas. Progesterone, acting on mitochondria to increase respiratory efficiency, and on structural proteins to change their ionic affinities, synergizes with the other natural factors to correct permeability and water regulation."

- 2000 - January - 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

"Sodium binds water to itself, and it is this feature that leads to its exclusion from the normal cell. CO2, when it is in water, especially with the carbonic anhydrase enzymes, combines with water. As it is formed in the mitochondria, this means that it will carry water (as well as calcium and sodium) out into the cytoplasm, and out of the cell."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Men who have had a diagnosis of scleroderma have told me that with the use of thyroid and magnesium supplements, epsom salts baths, and topical progesterone and vitamin E, their symptoms regressed. I suspect that carbon dioxide produced in mitochondria is the main factor in removing calcium from them."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"thyroid and magnesium are often the factors needed to normalize mitochondria and prevent calcification. In general, fatigued cells take up calcium and lose magnesium."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Age pigment consists mainly of lipid peroxidation products, with heme and iron. It has the adaptive function of keeping NADH oxidized in a low-oxygen environment, in which mitochondrial respiration is inadequate, allowing NADH to keep the glycolytic sequence operating."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When tissue oxygenation is inadequate, glucose is depleted quickly. In prolonged stress, the liver’s gluconeogenic response to the glucocorticoids is depressed, as is its ability to form and Store glycogen. As glucose is less available, the amount of adrenalin in the blood rises, and fat is mobilized from storage as a substitule source of energy. Free fatty acids, especially unsaturated fats, are toxic to the mitochondrial respiratory system, blocking both the ability to use oxygen and the ability to produce energy. The increased use of fats, instead of glucase, causes lipid peroxidation to increase,"

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Bacterial endotoxin inhibits mitochondrial respiration, and this respiration is needed for the intramitochondrial conversion of cholesterol into pregnenolone."

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

"Succinic acid was found by Szent Gyorgyi to stimulate tissue respiration. Others found that it promotes the production of protective steroids, and more recently it was found to be the best material for chelating and removing aluminum from mitochondria. Succinic acid was identified as a major component of Vladimir Filatov’s biogenic stimulators of tissue regeneration. Finding food sources rich in this material (especially in combination with the closely related butyric acid) would be desirable."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When the mitochondria are damaged, the protective steroid pregnenolone (which is made in the mitochondria from cholesterol) can’t be produced."

- 1991 - January - 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

"When copper-dependent mitochondrial respiration fails, lipofuscin has the ability to sustain energy production through glycolysis (by keeping the coenzyme NAD, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, relatively oxidized), so it is possible that lipofuscin is a primitive sort of defense against stress."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Within the mitochondria, a cytochrome P-450 converts cholesterol to pregnenolone. The loss of both energy and steroid hormones would have major consequences."

- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Research showing the toxic effects of unsaturated oils goes back more than 60 years. A 1985 article published in my newsletter cites some of the key references. These substances inhibit many enzymes (e.g., in digestion, in immunity, in clot removal, in thyroid function), they disrupt mitochondrial energy production, and they interfere with communication between cells. We hear very little about these toxic effects, and there is not much money available for more research in these areas."

- 1989 - February.March - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since long-wave infra-red and longer wavelength microwaves can penetrate walls to some extent, it could be that the absence of that kind of radiation during the winter is the stressor which causes these changes, and the mitochondrial damage which occurs in the winter It could be that some of the therapeutic effects of natural hot springs are caused by gently appropnate radiation from the large masses of hot earth In the vicinity. I think these longer waves might also have an anti-free radical effect, possibly by acting on solvated electrons"

- 1986 - February