Ray Peat on pregnancy

"The retention of water by the living substance is a topic that reductionist biology has been reluctant to discuss. There are no pumps for biological water, and it took a long time for a water channel protein to be proposed. The structural molecules of a cell, its metabolites and water are mutually dissolved, and their affinity for each other is affected by the cell’s energetic relation to its environment. This mutual affinity is regulated by the balance of hormones and nutrients. ATP is a crucial factor in regulating the optimal state of water retention."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When metabolic energy is failing, as in hypothyroidism, muscles become easily fatigued, and take up excess water, and the barrier structure is loosened, allowing macromolecules and ATP and other metabolites to leak out, while extraneous substances enter. Typical muscle enzymes such as lactate dehydrogenase and creatine kinase appear in the bloodstream in typical hypothyroid myopathy, and heart proteins, including a particular form of lactic dehydrogenase and a muscle protein, troponin, appear in the blood after a heart stress or fatigue combined with hypothyroidism or systemic inflammation."

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Any disruption of normal cell or tissue structure is recognized by the organism as a problem to be corrected; the appearance of ATP outside cells is a basic sign of damage and danger. Special enzymes degrade extracellular ATP into ADP, AMP, adenosine, and other purines, and these contribute to the alarm-stress signals. Increased synthesis of serotonin is one of the most important responses to leaked ATP and adenosine, but serotonin can increase the disorder of the actin system, increasing leakiness, in a vicious circle;"

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The actual physical stiffness of whole cells and their surroundings is very important. For example excitotoxicity (Fang, et al., 2014), and other forms of energy depletion can stiffen cells, and prolonged energy depletion and inflammation lead to degenerative changes—tissue calcification, fibrosis, and invasive, disorganized cell movement, for example. These stress related stiffenings of the cell substance and matrix have nothing directly to do with the local quantity of cholesterol."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I think it’s correct to think of protoplasm as a complex kind of solution of proteins, water, cholesterol and other lipids, nucleic acids, ATP, and smaller amounts of other substances, with a viscosity that varies as small changes of solutes modify the balance of cohesive forces. Because of its molecular shape and hydrophobicity, cholesterol acts as both a lubricant and a stabilizer of this complex system. It decreases cell rigidity by increasing protein mobility"

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Lipid peroxidation was observed in atherosclerotic plaques, and the breakdown products of polyunsaturated fats such as hydroxynonenal, malondialdehyde, and acrolein (from EPA, arachidonic acid, and other highly unsaturated fats in the affected blood vessel are known to attract white blood cells such as macrophages, which accumulate in the plaques."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Phosphate, which predominates in grains, beans, nuts, meats, and fish, increases our production of parathyroid hormone, while calcium and magnesium inhibit its production. This hormone, which increases with age, suppresses immunity, and in excess it causes insomnia, seizures, dementia, psychosis, cancer, heart disease, respiratory distress and pulmonary hypertension, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, histamine release, inflammation and soft tissue calcification, and many other problems."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Leaves contain many substances that can be harmful and that interfere with the digestion of protein and other nutrients, for example tannins and polyunsaturated fatty acids."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Milk provides lactose, which is metabolized quickly into glucose, and small amounts of other substances, including progesterone and thyroid hormone, that favor its efficient use."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When vitamin D or calcium is deficient, or when phosphate is excessive, and in hypoglycemia and stress (Ljunghall, et al., 1984), parathyroid hormone increases. This can lead to softening of bones, and hardening of soft tissues, especially arteries, sometimes brain, skin and other organs. Parathyroid hormone increases blood pressure, even before the calcium stiffening is detected."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Following Brewers research, I saw that extra sodium should help in other situations involving circulatory inefficiency. Premenstrual edema, insomnia, and even high blood pressure often respond very well"

- Nutrition For Women

"The easily oxidized short and medium-chain saturated fatty acids of coconut oil provide a source of energy that protects our tissues against the toxic inhibitory effects of the unsaturated fatty acids, and reduces their anti-thyroid effects. The animal studies of the last 60 years suggest that these effects also provide protection against cancer, heart disease, and premature aging. Other effects that can be expected inclu de protection against excessive blood clotting, protection of the fetal brain, protection against various stress-induced problems including epilepsy, and some degree of protection against sun-damage of the skin."

- Nutrition For Women

"The individual with a defective mental energy storage system might dash around keeping his mind stimulated, or it might be that coffee or other nerve stimulants will raise the level of energy to the point that quiet integration becomes possible."

- Nutrition For Women

"Water is unusual in its capacity for internal structural modification, and for its heat capacity. During cell division, muscle contraction, and nerve stimulation, there is a release of heat (followed by an uptake of heat as the muscle or nerve recovers) which cannot be accounted for by any known chemical change. Its order decreases with increasing temperature, unless order is introduced by other substances. (The brain has used and exaggerated these properties of water.)"

- 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

"Additionally, when the mothers general health is so poor that nutrition just during pregnancy cant overcome the lifelong deprivation, the use of hormones could keep the mother in good health during pregnancy, and act as a buffer between the fetus and the mothers metabolic instability. In some areas, thyroid hormone would be crucial. In every area, for a large percentage of women, progesterone can improve gestation."

- Nutrition For Women

"It has been observed that the ratio of brain weight to body weight corresponds directly to longevity. The brain has a nourishing, trophic influence on other tissues. A stable, efficient brain is an anti-stress agent."

- Nutrition For Women

"Long-range order is a principle of biological thinking which brings us into a new phase of theory. Succeeding in biology, this principle can help us to re-evaluate other events in the history of ideas about physical state."

- 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

"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

"Thyroid hormone is necessary for respiration on the cellular level, and makes possible all higher biological functions. Without the metabolic efficiency which is promoted by thyroid hormone, life couldnt get much beyond the single-cell stage. Without adequate thyroid, we become sluggish, clumsy, cold, anemic, and subject to infections, heart disease, headaches, cancer, and many other diseases, and seem to be prematurely aged, because none of our tissues can function normally."

- Nutrition For Women

"In hypothyroidism there is little stomach acid, and other digestive juices (and even intestinal movement) are inadequate, so gas and constipation are common. Foods arent assimilated well, so even on a seemingly adequate diet there is internal malnutrition."

- Nutrition For Women

"When we eat large amounts of muscle meats or liver the high concentration of cysteine suppresses the thyroid. Heart, eggs, skin (gelatin) and milk are more favorable to the thyroid. Other anti-thyroid foods are peanuts, soybeans, raw cabbage, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, unsaturated oils (such as safflower, corn, cottonseed, and soy oils), and an excess of iodine."

- Nutrition For Women

"When a baby is being born, or when a person is experiencing other stress, such as an infection, or when a person gets old, the best known thyroid hormone, thyroxine, is not changed to the more highly active form, T3 (triiodothyronine) in the normal way. In these emergency conditions, reduced oxygen consumption is a useful adaptation,"

- Nutrition For Women

"diabetic mothers often have precocious children, if they arent damaged by drugs and irrational diets."

- Nutrition For Women

"The dopamineserotonin antagonism (e.g., in the control of prolactin secretion) can be modified by progesterone, thyroid, and other factors."

- Nutrition For Women

"Progesterone is the precursor (following acetate and cholesterol) for all of the other steroid hormones, so it can be used in men. It (or its precursor, pregnenolone) has been used for prostatitis, arthritis, and infertility in men. Large amounts, though, would probably suppress LH, and lower testosterone synthesis, but a smaller amount (especially in old men) seems to increase sperm count and motility. In male and female athletes who become infertile, it would seem to be the appropriate therapy, generally in combination with thyroid."

- 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

"Elevated blood lactic acid is one sign of tissue hypoxia. Edema, hypoglycemia, and lactic acidemia can also be produced by other respiratory defects, including hypothyroidism, in which the tissue does not use enough oxygen the skin will be bluer (in thin places, such as around the eyes) when hypoxia, rather than low oxygen consumption, is involved."

- Nutrition For Women

"When the organism detects the inflammation or other stress (possibly by sensing changes in blood sugar, lactic acid, or carbon dioxide, or all of them) its adrenal glands will secrete anti-stress hormones, including adrenalin and cortisone (assuming these glands are not exhausted or starved). Both adrenalin and cortisone can raise blood sugar to meet the increased need."

- Nutrition For Women

"In general, stress should be met first by correcting the defect, which may be environmental or nutritional. Increased nutritional needs usually include protein and fat; acute hypoglycemia may require a large amount of sugar, and this suggests that the adrenals may be depleted, in which case pantothenic acid, vitamin C, vitamin A, magnesium and potassium should be provided in addition to other nutrients."

- Nutrition For Women

"According to Hans Selye, activation or injury of tissue is the beginning of stress. The more cells involved, the greater is the stress. An injury to a leg connected only by blood vessels produces a stress reaction in the animal, so the signal of stress can be transmitted in the blood, though the nerves are normally also involved. Adenine nucleotides have been suspected as a cause of shock (because they are vasodilators, as are many other products of stress, including phosphate), but other possibilities are histamine, various polyamines, and low blood sugar."

- Nutrition For Women

"Injury and exertion have in common the need for more fuel. I think the blood sugar level is therefore useful at least for understanding stress, even if other substances are involved in the signaling or coordinating process."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress can cause sugar to appear in the urine, as can many other conditions, and this does not call for insulin treatment."

- 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

"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

"The distribution of fat is similar in aging and in Cushings syndrome. Vitamin E is known to shift enzyme activities in a way that would offset this distribution, and this might occur in cases caused by hormone disturbances other than mere aging."

- 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

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

- Nutrition For Women

"A diet high in animal protein with other nutrients, including an appropriate amount of desiccated thyroid if refined proteins are used, can cause an immediate im provement in many diseases which are specifically produced by stress"

- Nutrition For Women

"Folic acid, known for its ability to cure some anemias (red blood cell deficiency) also improves the function of white blood cells, improving antibody production. It is also possibly involved in a non- antibody process which allows white blood cells to destroy virus, fungi, and other parasites."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin C increases the structural strength of the mucous membranes connective tissue, in proportion to its intake, up to the megadoses recommended by Pauling (according to electron microscope evidence, J. Clin. Nutr., summer, 1974). It is also more concentrated in white blood cells than in any other tissue (about a 60 to one ratio between white blood cells and surrounding fluids), and their immune function depends on its presence in adequate amounts."

- 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

"The relevant effects of thyroid (especially with progesterone, to promote tissue response to thyroid, and to block cortisone production) however, are stimulation of protein synthesis and the prevention of lactate formation - or the stimula tion of its oxidation, either by the tumor itself or by other tissues, to prevent its entry into the Cori cycle, for gluconeogenesis."

- Nutrition For Women

"During LSD research, it was noticed that people with chronic headaches, asthma, or psoriasis sometimes recovered completely during treatment with frequent doses of LSD. Another alkaloid derived from ergot, bromocriptine, is now being used to suppress lactation (such as is caused by prolactin-secreting pituitary tumor which develops after using oral contraceptives) and is used experimentally to treat Parkinsons disease. Both LSD and bromocriptine shift the ratio of two brain chemicals, DOPA and serotonin, towards DOPA dominance. Among the effects of this is an inhibition of prolactin secretion. Prolactin excess is involved in breast cancer and in other cell proliferation, probably including the rapid cell division in psoriasis."

- Nutrition For Women

"Women are often encouraged to have their children while they are young, by the fear of having a Mongoloid baby (Downs syndrome), which happens more often in older mothers. But someone did a study that showed that Mongoloids are borne more often by women who have been married longer. Women who marry at 30 or 35, for example, were found to have fewer Mongoloid babies than women of the same age who had married younger. The investigator suggested that long-married couples so seldom made love that the chances were greater for the egg (or egg and sperm both) to deteriorate before being fertilized"

- Nutrition For Women

"Diabetic women are known to typically have large babies with big heads, who learn quickly. With each pregnancy, a woman tends to have less glucose tolerance, or to seem more diabetic. HCG, the hormone which helps sustain pregnancy, raises the blood sugar to meet the fetuss need for abundant sugar. So diabetes and pregnancy have much in common. And as a woman gets older she tends towards diabetes, and so tends to nourish the fetus better, especially its brain. Besides this natural tendency, a more mature woman is less likely to live on snack foods."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"During pregnancy the mothers body adapts to live increasingly on fat, so that most of the sugar which is available can be used by the baby. The brain uses most of the bodys glucose, so mental fatigue can easily affect the blood sugar level. The developing baby is extremely dependent on glucose for its energy supply, and its brain can be damaged by sugar starvation."

- Nutrition For Women

"Pregnancy itself resembles diabetes, in the adaptation to oxidizing fat rather than sugar, so that a slight tendency toward diabetes can be thought of as a support for pregnancy. Older women are more likely to have some degree of diabetes, or elevated blood sugar. With each pregnancy, there is a tendency for the blood sugar to be higher, and for the baby to be bigger and more precocious."

- 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

"On the average, each baby up to the 4th or 5th is bigger and healthier, but then there is a sharp decline in the average; it is at this point — which suggests that reserve nutrients have been depleted — that twinning and Downs syndrome become more likely."

- 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

"s. Among other animals, even momentary separation following birth damages social behavior."

- Nutrition For Women

"The front part of the brain, which is most uniquely human (and newest) but which doesnt have specific function, in the usual sense, is one of the most sensitive parts of the brain. It is a very large piece of tissue, and it seems to be involved in planning and choosing, in governing the other more specific functions. (This part of the brain, as well as the cerebal cortex in general, gives us the ability to disregard stimuli, to use Lendon Smiths term.)"

- Nutrition For Women

"Normally, appetite is probably a good indicator of specific needs for protein, fat, carbohydrate, vitamin C, salts, and possibly other nutrients."

- Nutrition For Women

"A current study (1975) is investigating the possibility that a balanced salt solution will prevent the destruction of muscle and other protein-rich tissues during fasting. I have noticed that such a solution relieves feelings of stress, so I think it will prove to prevent protein-wastage."

- Nutrition For Women

"Nearly all Americans have porous, weakened bones and teeth by the time they are 50, because of the large amount of meat eaten in relation to other foods. When excess phosphate (from meat or wheat germ, for example) is eaten, calcium and magnesium are removed from the teeth and bones to be excreted with the phosphate."

- Nutrition For Women

"E. Racker and other biochemists have pointed out that the unsaturated (liquid) fatty acids are able to uncouple the energy producing reactions from oxidation. This means that they will promote consumption of fuel without increasing fat synthesis. This is an effect similar to the specific dynamic action of proteins, and it is the biochemical explanation for the fact that all calories dont count the same as far as weight reduction goes. But this also means that all useful energy production is reduced in relation to heat production."

- 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

"Besides their content of the essential nutrients, all natural foods contain other materials, such as hormones."

- Nutrition For Women

"What is essential seems to be the carbon skeleton of the essential amino acids. If the diet supplies these along with other nutrients, then protein seems to be not so essential in the diet. If fruits and vegetables can be found which contain these substances, then the world food problem could be easily solved."

- Nutrition For Women

"Emphasizing the uniqueness of individual needs should be seen in the context of looking for the most general principles: this can help us to perceive meaningful configur ations, making otherwise trivial things significant. I think a biophysical approach to the cytoplasm is one of the principles that will help in perceiving patterns. Other more specific and immediately useful ideas include stress, the use of sugar efficiently or wastefully. and the energy charge of cells."

- Nutrition For Women

"The reaction against Broda Barnes’ use of temperature to diagnose hypothyroidism was partly motivated by the belief that a subnormal temperature is protective. This deep belief has probably contributed to the official preference for use of the relatively inactive thyroxin rather than the thermogenically active thyroid, USP, and T3, and to the lack of interest in the association between hypothermia and chronic infections, heart and circulatory problems, kidney disease, chronic inflammatory disease and other problems that increase with aging."

- 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

"Altitude and a milk based diet are obviously two important thermogenic factors that slow the accumulation of harmful adaptations, but there are many other controllable factors that could extend longevity even more. Reducing inflammatory factors is important, and personal choices can make a big difference, for example choosing easily digestible foods to reduce endotoxin, avoiding the polyunsaturated fatty acids that interfere with cell respiration and form inflammatory prostaglandins, avoiding antioxidant supplements that create a reductive excess, and choosing foods that contain antiinflammatory-thermogenic compounds, such as citrus fruits with their high content of flavonoids that support cell respiratory functions."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The maintenance of a non-random distribution of ions and other solutes, and the existence of an electric potential difference, were the reasons that some people had postulated the existence of a semi-permeable membrane around cells. The work of Bungenberg de Jong and his colleagues showed that no membrane was needed to explain those properties of living cells."

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Within the cell nucleus, there is a highly organized substance, the nuclear matrix, that interacts closely with the rest of the cytoskeleton, permitting DNA to be expressed according to the cell’s need as it responds to its environment. Cholesterol and other lipids are essential for the specific highly organized interactions between DNA and the rest of the cell"

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The estrogenprogesterone polarity of pregnancy exists in the adult tissues, as the polarity of growth and maturation, of inflammation and normalization."

- 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

"Other orthomolecules besides niacin would be potassium, vitamin E (improving oxygen supply, facilitating cell retention of proteins), inositol (stabilizer of cells and proteins against denaturing or dehydrating influences, Webb, 1965) the other B vitamins, vitamin C, anabolic steroids (for example, the androgens, and progesterone, ginseng, eleutherococcus) to promote protein synthesis and retention of potassium and creatine and ATP."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

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

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Extracts of glands and other tissues have been used for generations to treat nervous diseases (e.g., Filatov, 1945). Thyroid, with or without gonadal extracts, has been widely used to treat nervous and mental disease."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Neglecting the role of carbon dioxide in suppressing the formation of lactic acid, they also neglect all of its other essential metabolic effects, including its role as the factor whose absence results in the syndromes of altitude sickness,"

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Ignoring that 30 years of slightly elevated lactate might lead to cancer or other degenerative disease, those who taught physiological chemistry also had little interest in the idea of chronic metabolic hyperventilation—losing a little too much CO2 even at sea level."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Like acetazolamide, the other recognized treatment for altitude sickness, calcium channel blockers inhibit carbonic anhydrase, facilitating the body’s retention of CO2."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Reduction by stress and/or lactate activates the channels, tightening vascular smooth muscle, and activating a wide range of other cell activities, including inflammation, exosome secretion,"

- 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

"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

"Cholesterol is the precursor to pregnenolone, progesterone, and the other neurosteroids, and its own properties include stabilizing effects similar to progesterone’s."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In pregnancy, the placenta serves as a large antistress organ that increases the mother’s adaptability, but it and the growing fetus increase the mother’s nutritional needs."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The importance of salt and calcium in pregnancy relates to their effects on the respiratory energy system, and the fact that these effects aren’t widely known has led most doctors to believe that a diet that supplies all the required nutrients is adequate for pregnancy and lactation. Despite the presence of all the required nutrients, that would be adequate for someone with a generally supportive environment, a good diet won’t necessarily be adequate for someone with a problematic environment, or a history of stressful experiences."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"One of the ways that autism has been described is that it involves the lack of a theory of mind, that is, a recognition that other people have a separate consciousness and emotions. This is sometimes called mind blindness, or emotion blindness."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"In treating language scientifically, people like Boas and his contemporaries considered the language in relation to the consciousness and intentions of the speaking organism, and to the changing culture in which the communication is taking place. For them, the essence of language was communication, and communication is a matter of modifying the relations of individuals with each other and their surroundings."

- May 2017 - 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

"The abnormal and stressful conditions in a tumor increase the shedding of vesicles, which are probably involved in a tumor’s ability to recruit other cells into the abnormal structure,"

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Poor nutrition, aging, and other stresses weaken our antiinflammatory defenses, leading to chronic systemic inflammation,"

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The study of exosomes, the particles the size of small viruses, which transmit useful (or harmful) information between cells, has revealed their similarity to the particles of DNA that bacteria use to transfer new information, such as resistance to antibiotics, to other bacteria. The exosome particles can carry the DNA of mobile genetic elements, and as they leave the body in its secretions, including sweat and saliva, they can carry genetic information to other individuals of the same species, or to very different types of organism."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Prolonged exposure to environmental conditions that are far from the perfect conditions of healthy gestation results in a systemic inflammatory state, and this chronic inflammation leads to the degenerative processes of aging, with a failure of the tissue restorative processes."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"nearly all biologists that I have known have been unaware of the fact that CO2’s ability to form carbamino compounds with hemoglobin extends to other proteins, including those that are called specific receptors."

- 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 bystander effect that occurs when irradiation of one tissue causes similar damage in other tissues, or throughout the organism, is a general phenomenon that occurs with injuries other than ionizing radiation. When a lung is damaged with silica particles, cells removed from that lung, when cultured outside the organism, secrete into the culture fluid substances that produce similar injury, fibrosis, when cells from a different organism are exposed to that fluid."

- March 2019 - 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

"When a nerve cell is using oxygen to produce energy, it becomes much more electrically charged than other cells, becoming an electron sink. That causes the head to have an electrically positive polarity, relative to other parts of the body."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A small area of the brain can go into the sleep rhythm earlier than other areas, if it has been more strongly stimulated."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"sleep begins in the cortex, and spreads to other parts of the brain and body."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"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

"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

"The brain is a factor in any sickness or injury, and if the brain malfunctions, every other system is affected."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The amount of serotonin in the brain at a particular time is influenced by a variety of things that affect the balance between its synthesis and its sequestration or degradation. The so-called serotonin transporter binds and holds serotonin, reducing its interactions with other cell components, and the enzyme monoamine oxidase, MAO, degrades serotonin, turning it into the inactive 5-HIAA."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"events in the intestine, where most serotonin is produced, in the blood where it’s transported, and in the lung, where much of it is detoxified, will affect the brain. Toxins produced by intestinal bacteria cause serotonin to be released into the bloodstream, and if the platelets aren’t able to keep it tightly bound until the lungs can eliminate it, some of it will reach the brain, where it will interfere with sleep and other brain functions."

- 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

"Avoiding prolonged fasting and stressful exercise that increase free fatty acids, and combining sugars with proteins to keep free fatty acids low, and using aspirin, niacinamide, or cyproheptadine to reduce the formation of free fatty acids by unavoidable stress, avoiding an excess of phosphate relative to calcium in the diet, having milk and other antistress foods at bedtime or during the night, and being in a brightly lighted environment during the day, with regular sunlight exposure, can minimize the harmful effects of excessive serotonin and reduce the inflammation, fibrosis, and atrophy associated with it."

- July 2019 - 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

"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

"he explained that he saw cell structure as an integral conductive/semiconductive system, and cellular movement and other functions, as consequences of the flow of energy through that system."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The ability of glucose to reduce excitation in other situations probably involves the increased oxidative state;"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Reduced energy production in compensation for stress at the beginning of life determines the quality of gestation and the life trajectory of the developmental process, limiting brain size, ability to produce and to use energy, and longevity."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Highly purified vaccines have little immunizing effect (Petrovsky, 2015); traditionally, many substances have accidentally been included in the composition of vaccines—proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and other materials from the growth medium used to make the vaccine are known to be present in vaccines, and their roles in the immune reaction hasn’t been studied, except in the recognition that a clean, highly purified disease antigen is poorly immunogenic."

- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Responsiveness or sensitivity is a property of the living substance that needs to be explored without preconceptions, along with the other properties such as polarity and intentionality that guided the best research of the past."

- 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

"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

"during constructive exploration, energy is abundant, and cells with the highest energy needs are protected by progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and other steroids."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Unlike other needs, the appetite for exploration is self stimulating, as long as it’s satisfied, and it is dulled, rather than intensified, by frustration. The increased alertness of the orienting state intensifies learning and memory."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When hypoglycemia occurs during gestation or in infancy, when metabolic intensity is greatest, the adaptations can lead to life-long problems."

- January 2017 - 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

"When there isn’t enough stored glycogen in the liver, muscles, and other tissues, to provide the brain’s nocturnal glucose requirement, cortisol rises, breaking down tissue proteins to provide amino acids and glucose, but free fatty acids are also increased by this nocturnal stress."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"As the proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids increases with aging, some arachidonic acid becomes incorporated into the brain, and, especially during the night, the highly unsaturated fatty acids amplify the excitatory processes, including the formation of prostaglandins and other inflammation-producing compounds."

- January 2017 - 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

"In animals, cholesterol is the basic sterol molecule, which is massively converted into other substances, including the steroid hormones. Thyroid hormone and vitamin A are required for this conversion."

- 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

"During pregnancy, very large amounts of progesterone are made. It protects and stabilizes practically all functions of both the mother and the fetus."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"The brain contains much more pregnenolone, DHEA, and progesterone than do other organs or the blood, and these levels decrease progressively with age."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"I believe this stabilizing action is a general feature of these steroids, explaining other anti-toxic effects such as blocking hemolysis, and probably many features of growth and differentiation, including control of cell division and prevention of atrophy."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"By the 1930s, it was well established that the resistance of the organism depended on the energy produced by respiration under the influence of the thyroid gland, as well as on the adrenal hormones, and that the hormones of pregnancy (especially progesterone) could substitute for the adrenal hormones"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"In a sense, the thyroid hormone is the basic anti-stress hormone, since it is required for the production of the adrenal and pregnancy hormones."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Meersons work has revealed in a detailed way how the usually beneficial hormone of adaptation, cortisone, can cause so many other harmful effects when its action is too prolonged or too intense."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Although cortisone supplementation can help in a great variety of stress-related diseases, no cure will take place unless the basic cause is discovered. Besides the thyroid, the other class of adaptive hormones which are often out of balance in the diseases of stress, is the group of hormones produced mainly by the gonads: the reproductive hormones."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Some forms of arthritis are known to improve or even to disappear during pregnancy. As mentioned above, the hormones of pregnancy can make up for a lack of adrenal cortex hormones."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Pregnenolone is the material the body uses to form either progesterone or DHEA. Other natural hormones, including DHEA, havent been studied for so long, but the high levels which are normally present in healthy people would suggest that replacement doses, to restore those normal levels, would not be likely to produce toxic side effects."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"In 1927, German researchers reported that a fat-free diet prevented the occurrence of spontaneous cancers in rats. Since, a little later, other workers found that the elimination of unsaturated fats from the diet not only prevented cancer, but also caused a large increase in the metabolic rate, it might have been possible to conclude that it is not living which kills us, but something in the environment"

- 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

"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

"The accumulation of iron, unsaturated fats, and other toxins, I think, are major signals for puberty. (Specifically, factors which inhibit cytochrome oxidase.)"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

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

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"The skeletal changes (shrinkage, curving of the back, moving forward of the lower jaw) which are so characteristic of old age in humans, also occur in other animals in aging and under the influence of the stress hormones."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"When N. A. Kozyrev theorized that times asymmetry might itself be a source of stellar energy, he predicted that planets would also have a steady source of internal heat in proportion to their mass, and his prediction matched the known heat of the earth, but it also predicted that Jupiter would be almost star-like in its heat emission, and that even the moon would produce some internal heat. He measured hot lunar emissions in 1960, and later space exploration confirmed several other major predictions of his. I think Kozyrevs work should at least make people recognize that even local matter is cosmic"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Fred Hoyle and his colleagues have done some work which parallels that of Vernadsky, and which encourages a livelier way of thinking about cosmology. They have gathered spectroscopic evidence that cosmic dust (which makes up a significant part of the mass in the universe) more closely resembles bacteria than the other materials or particles which have been suggested (E. coli were used for spectroscopic comparison)."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Thyroid tends to lower cholesterol by converting it into pregnenolone and other steroids,"

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"The imbalances of endorphins, serotonin, catecholamines, and other nerve-regulators that have been seen in autism sometimes can be produced in adults by combined fatigue and poor nutrition, and when the livers glycogen is depleted, it can be hard to restore the balance. Prenatal influences of different types could damage connectivity, which permitting cells to survive. Normally, a large proportion of brain cells die before birth, because of limited availability of glucose."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"he senile brain accumulates a variety of mineral deposits, and the argument has been made that dietary aluminum is the cause of Alzheimers disease. It would be good to eliminate added aluminum from our public water systems and from our foods, but there is good evidence that other processes are behind the accumulation of aluminum and other minerals in our tissues."

- 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

"In my dissertation, I gave a few other arguments regarding the wasteful consumption of NADH. There is now good evidence for the existence of estrogen-stimulated extramitochondrial NADH oxidases, in addition to the NADH oxidase function of age pigment,"

- 2001 - February

"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

"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

"Excitotoxicity, epilepsy, movement disorders, and mania are other examples of what happens when negative (inhibitory) feedback fails"

- 2000 - March

"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

"estrogen’s immediate effect on a responsive tissue is to cause it to take up water, and to increase its ratio of sodium to potassium; these changes lead to depolarization-activation of nerve, muscle, and some glandular cells, and of initiation of growth and cell division in other cell types. If the stimulation to growth process continued unchecked, or even accelerated, it’s obvious that form and proportion and organization would quickly be lost."

- 2000 - March

"Thyroid, and other antiestrogens, also have a wide spectrum of protective actions, against radiation, asphyxia, carcinogens, etc."

- 2000 - March

"Heart failure, shock, and other problems involving excess lactic acid can be treated successfully by poisoning glycolysis with dichloroacetic acid, reducing the production of lactic acid, increasing the oxidation of glucose, and increasing cellular ATP concentration: Thyroid, vitamin B1, biotin, etc., do the same."

- 2000 - July

"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

"In ordinary nuclear chromosomal genes, DNA repair is well known. The other kind of repair, in which unmutated cells replace the. genetically damaged cells, has been commonly observed in the skin of the face: During intense sun exposure, mutant cells accumulate; but after a period in which the skin hasnt been exposed to the damaging radiation, the skin is made up of healthy young cells. In the way that the skin can be seen to recover from genetic damage, that had been considered to be permanent and cumulative, simply by avoiding the damaging factor, mitochondnal aging is coming to be seen as both avoidable and repairable."

- 2000 - July

"While the flow of carbon dioxide moves from the mitochondrion to the cytoplasm and beyond, tending to remove calcium from the mitochondrion and cell, the flow of lactate and other Organic ions into the mitochondrion can produce calcium accumulation in the mitochondrion, during conditions in which carbon dioxide synthesis, and consequently urea synthesis, are depressed, and other synthetic processes are changed."

- 2000 - July

"Glucose, and apparently glycolysis, are required for the production of nitric oxide, as for the accumulation of calcium, at least in some types of cell, and these coordinated changes, which lower energy production. could be produced by a reduction in carbon dioxide, in a physical change even more basic than the energy level represented by ATP The use of Krebs cycle substances in the synthesis of amino acids, and other products, would decrease the formation of CO2, creating a situation in which the system would have two possible states, one, the glycolytic stress state, and the other, the carbon dioxide producing energy-efficient state."

- 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)

"The adsorptive effects of carbon dioxide, and a great variety of other chemical effects, modulate the cell’s structure_and function so that it retains far more potassium than sodium, and is able to excrete calcium while binding magnesium."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"this simplified picture of carbon dioxide’s effects on minerals makes it possible to understand the fact that the blood’s pH is higher than the cell’s, and many other mysteries, Without resort to special hypothetical devices. The alkaline metals that have been mobilized from respiring cells in association with carbonic acid remain alone in the blood when carbonic acid turns into gaseous carbon dioxide and leaves the blood in the lungs. Protons, if we have to talk about them, are left in the cells, and subtracted from the blood, by the reactions of carbon dioxide, but the conventions for talking about the blood’s alkalinity relative to the cells omit the background conditons: The intrinsic acidity of the cell substance, and forces exerted by the cell substance on the dissolved substances."

- 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

"Part of the toxicity of unsaturated fats could be their requirement of energy to be oxidized (S. Clejan and H. Schulz, 1986), but they reduce the efficiency of energy production in a variety of other ways.."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Besides its ability to increase blood perfusion of the kidneys (and other organs), progesterone has an important role in mineral regulation, since it acts as a weak aldosterone, protecting against both a deficiency and an excess of that adrenal hormone."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"For both Koch and Szent-Gyorgyi, contraction, respiration, and cancer — were life processes that required understanding the interactions of water, electrons and proteins. Practically all other biologists ridiculed their interest in water and electrons."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the fetus and the newborn baby, sodium promotes growth. . Progesterone, sodium and glucose are often limiting factors in the growth of the babys brain; when they are deficient, cells die instead of growing."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"ATP and CO2 both bind to hemoglobin, regulating its affinity for oxygen. The way in which they bind to this protein indicates that they will bind to many other intracellular proteins, similarly regulating the functions of those proteins."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Carbonated water is such a common thing, chemists are embarrassed to talk about it. All the water in respiring organisms contains a considerable amount of carbon ‘dioxide. Carbon dioxide binds to proteins and to other amine-containing polymers, and dissolves in water, reducing the pH, so that the interactions of polymers and water are strongly affected by the concentration of CO2. Carbon dioxide modifies biological materials and structures in and around our cells."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"Rothen also showed that enzymes can act across the films. To me, the main importance of this would be to highlight the extent to which an archaic physical view has governed biochemical thinking. The action of an enzyme at a distance means that its catalytic region might be larger than previously supposed, but it also suggests that we cant generalize from the behavior of an enzyme dissolved in water, to its behavior in the cell, where it would be subject to the reciprocal effects of many other components of the complex system."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"This protein on one side of the [imaginary] cell membrane tugs on a protein on the other side, and then maybe the little homunculus who counts molecules will decide the time is right for him to carry a message to the correct gene to turn it on."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"Carbon dioxide reacts spontaneously with ammonia, and with other amines. The reaction of ammonia with carbon dioxide is the first step in the formation of urea, protecting against the potential toxicity of ammonia."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"The simplest way to visualize the effect of carbon dioxide on mucopolysaccharides is to think of its action as an expectorant, in which it decreases the viscosity of bronchial mucus, allowing it to be reabsorbed or expelled. Since 1odide also has a long history of use as an expectorant, we should compare the effects of carbon dioxide and carbonic acid with the effects of iodide in other situations."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"The waterlogged condition seen during shock or stress in blood vessels, lungs, and other organs, and the edema of the brain and cataracts of the lenses that follow metabolic impairments of various sorts, seem to involve the uptake of free water, at the same time that bound (unfreezable) water is lost. Carbon dioxide seems to promote the retention of bound water, and protects against the edematous conditions."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"the energy of respiration was causing an alignment of molecules, resulting in the polarization of charges. Any field of this sort will influence other charged particles, and so it is obvious that it will participate in the arrangement and organization of particles. The existence of such fields probably influences the alignments of particles within cells, and of cells within organs."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"In general, cell excitation or stimulation increases the intensity of cellular respiration, but when oxygen isnt available, the stressed or dying cell may become hyperactive. Epileptic seizures, for example, can be produced by hypoxia or hypoglycemia, as well as by other stimuli such as imbalances of salts and water."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"The overall charge on proteins and other macrolecules is, in general, a matter of the pH of their environment. Usually, cellular proteins have a negative charge above a pH of 5. The tonization of chemical groups such as hydroxyl, amino, and sulfhydryl are responsible for the overall charge. The degree of oxidation or reduction affects the number of sulfhydryl groups, and the structural state of the protein also influences the charge. At high pH the charge is high, and the number and arrangement of sulfhydryl groups can affect the charge. The presence of small tons, carbon dioxide, and oxygen also influence the charge of proteins. When the whole living system 1s involved, bioelectricity interacts with other electron-related phenomena, including oxidationreduction, pH, donor-acceptor and free radical reactions."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"CO2 has many other effects that act in the same protective direction, such as calcium removal, tron binding, and water binding, and these other effects are at least as important as the pH effect."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"he interlocking fundamental features of cell excitation/relaxation, electrical potential, lactic acid/carbon dioxide, water retention/water loss, salt regulation, pH and energy level, allow us to visualize in a coherent way the biological meaning of stress and adaptation. Interacting with these physical-chemical events, there are many layers of biochemical and physiological processes that reinforce or modify them, imcluding regulatory systems such as hormones and other biological signaling substances, nutritional adequacy, and the type of fuel used."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"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

"The pituitary hormones have diverse functons, including effects on epithelial tissues, other than their classical functions. Growth hormone, ACTH (Lostroh and Li, 1957), and ACTH with prolactin (Tullner, 1963) stimulate prostate growth. Prolactin--which is increased by estrogen--stimulates growth of the rats lateral prostate (Holland and Lee, 1980), and stimulates the growth of human prostate epithelial cells in vitro (Syms, et al., 1985)."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The prostaglandins were discovered in prostatic fluid, where they occur in significant concentrations. They are so deeply involved with the development of cancers of all sorts that aspirin and other prostaglandin inhibitors should be considered as a basic part of cancer therapy."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Under stressful conditions, people may exhale measurable amounts of pentane,. ethane, isoprene, pies monoxide, and other sub-| stances with potential toxicity."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Progesterone, thyroid, bromocriptine, and other things are available to normalize the pituitary, when that ts malfunctioning."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Roman Schmitt has proposed that, 66 million years ago when dinosaurs became extinct and mammals began their rapid evolution, at that time hydrothermal venting went wild, releasing huge volumes of carbon dioxide and other substances into the atmosphere."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A weakened ability to oxidatively produce energy can lead to the maladaptive over-productionof collagen, porphyrins, red blood cells, and other tissues and substances, which in turn can lead to many adaptive and maladaptive changes. I think skin and mucous membranes provide a good illustration of the way respiratory potential influences structure: Estrogen-increased keratinization is opposed by vitamin A, which increases the proportion of active, differentiated cells."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A naturally occurring combination of a fatty acid with ethanolamine, called anandamide, activates the marihuana receptor of cells. It prevents some types of cell activation. The Mead acid ethanolamide, like the arachidonic acid form, can be enzymatically formed in various human tissues, such as the hippocampus, but the two substances have slightly different effects. Marihuana’s anticonvulsant properties might be more effectively represented by the Mead acid derivative. The anti-excitatory effect might also be effective in preventing the loss of cells in the hippocampus, hypothalamus, and other bram regions, which (building on Olneys work 25 years ago) is increasingly understood to result from excitotoxicity."

- 1995 - September Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The organization of life is maintained by the energy it uses, and the use of energy requires a specific organization. There are processes in cells that regulate the interactions of growth, division and other functions, but these processes are responsive to the cells environment--they arent just emitted by or unrolled from the cells repertoire of abilities."

- 1995 - September Ray Peat's Newsletter

"About 30 years ago, researchers began to understand that reproductive aging was not caused by the lack of eggs, and the aged uterus was able to support pregnancy if it had the might hormonal support. Interest turned to the brain cells in the hypothalamus which regulate the pituitary."

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

"Two of America’s most productive researchers in reproductive physiology, Edgar Allen and Herbert M. Evans, made observations that they believed showed that the germinal epithelium of the ovary goes through a cycle of cell proliferation that produces a new generation of oocytes during each menstrual cycle. It is recognized that new egg cells appear in the ovaries of adult prosimian primates, and at puberty in cats and pigs. Observations of newly developed egg cells have been reported in some other species. But the dominant view prefers to see the number of egg cells declining from birth, or earlier, with absolutely no new egg cells being formed later."

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

"In a variety of tissues, it can be shown that the presence of mature cells inhibits the division of other cells. If part of the liver is removed, the remaining cells divide to replace the lost tissue. If the skin is cut, cells divide to help fill in the defect. If there is an adequate number of egg cells, this principle suggests that there is no need to produce more."

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

"The ovary doesn’t run out of eggs, and running out of eggs would have no great consequences if it did happen, because the main events in ovulation are produced by cells other than the eggs."

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

"The outer layer of cells in the adrenals can form the other two cell types, and since stress ACTH converts them to the other types, new ones must be formed. If the inner layers are removed, the whole adrenal cortex can regenerate from the outer layer Obviously, if stress causes cells to multiply and differentiate, cells are disappearing from the inner layers."

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

"In the ovary, waves of egg cell degeneration are constantly taking place in young women. Radioactive labelling that has been used to argue that egg cells arent being replaced seem to show that there is continual cell division in all the other ovarian cells. Interestingly, those researchers didnt seem to be interested in this apparent regeneration of the other parts of the ovary."

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

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

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

"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

"Psychologists have noticed that naming an object according to a certain function often limits the way people will be able to use it. This happens in science. If we know one function of a substance, and name it for that function, we will find it harder to think of its other possible roles."

- 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

"As soon as we submit to a cultural stereotype or a textbook answer, we give up our creative capacity to adapt mentally, and begin to avoid problems, questions, and mysteries, because adaptation at any level other than creative imagination is a bodily stress; the acceptance of authority commits a person to wielding any authority they have, or helplessly adapting to the authority of others."

- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The other potential future takes into account our health and happiness, and defines health as having the capacity for creative mental adaptation."

- 1994 - November - 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

"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

"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

"The fetus, a whole organism within an organism, has a special oxygen problem. Fetal hemoglobin, with a great affinity for oxygen, helps it survive in that situation, (I suspect! that fetal hemoglobin will reappear whenever there is prolonged hypoxia.) | believe it is the low oxygen environment which causes the fetus to be born with a great surplus of iron."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When cells dont have enough energy — whether from inadequate fuel, overwork, lack of oxygen, or poisoning they take up water. Too much water tends to excite the cells, and can even stimulate cell division. The hyperaclive state of a muscle cell, cramping, causes energy to be spent. What is too often overlooked is that the cell needs more energy to get back into its resting state, and that an abundance of glucose or other fuel, oxygen, and thyroid are needed for the cell to produce energy fast enough to become quietly relaxed."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The many ways in which the heart is able to resist stress, and even to thrive on it can be generalized to develop ways to protect other organs, and the whole body, from the chronic and cumulative stresses that lead to generalized atrophy, declining function, and aging. During stress, the heart and other working organs become resistant to the glucocorticoid hormones. When a person is given radioactive testosterone, it can be seen to reach the highest concentration in the heart. It is testosterone’s antiglucocorticoid effect which causes it to enlarge skeletal muscles, when exercise is moderate."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The other anti-catabolic steroids, pregnenolone, progesterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), are present in larger amounts, and are of more general importance, than testosterone, especially in the brain, where their concentration is very high."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Albert Szent-Gyorgyi showed that the heart responds to progesterone, and more recently other researchers have presented evidence that DHEA is our endogenous digitalis."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The electrical instability of the heart produced by excessive adrenergic stimulation can also make the sinus pacemaker more susceptible to vagal inhibition. (I think this effect can be observed in the skipped beats often experienced by hypothyroid people during stress or fatigue. In other situations, of long and intense stress, vagal! stimulation protects against fibrilJation.)"

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In thinking about Meerson’s achievements in protecting the heart against stress, it is important to remember that the heart ts our most stress-resistant organ, and that the things that protect the heart from deadly stress will also protect the other organs from the everyday stresses, which accumulate to cause the problems of general aging. Liver, lungs, pancreas and other essential organs are susceptible to the same kinds of damage as the heart, but under conditions that are relatively mild and ordinary."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Morphines directly suppressive effect on immunity isnt understood. but there is some suspicion that it relates to the stress induced immunosuppression (loss of natural Killer cell function, for example). acting in place of stress-induced endorphins. White blood cells, like nerve cells, have surface receptors™ for morphine, which normally would be acted on by the endorphins. As an abnormal material bound to the cell surface, it probably constitutes a hapten, something sensed by other white blood cells as foreign. It would be healthy to eliminate such abnormally modified cells, and even possibly to eliminate the cells that contain the natural endorphin molecule. But in a weakened organism, the formation of new cells might lag behind the elimination of modified cells."

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The combination of an extreme decrease in concentration of the protective steroids in the brain, and impaired function of the phagocytes, might account for some of the features of Alzheimer’s disease. In this disease, microtubules accumulate within nerve cells and other nerve cells die, leaving tangles of their axons, including microtubules. These cells are not removed, as dead cells normally are. Subnormal temperature and hypothyroidism probably contribute to the inertia of the phagocytes."

- 1992 - August.September - 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 supplementation of pregnenolone, etc., will allow dietary vitamin A to be spared for other purposes, including regulation of mitosis, differentation, and oxidation."

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

"Physiology compensates continuously to maintain balanced functioning in the presence of a great variety of drug-like substances in our diet. When the diet is changed suddenly, eliminating alcohol or caffeine or other biologically active substances, our compensatory counter<cyclic adjustment is revealed."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The fact that a taste of chocolate can provoke a wild lust for more chocolate, or that one cigarette renews the addiction, does not mean that the presence of chocolate or nicotine in the blood creates a craving. Rather, it is that an organism in an unstable state perceives the availability of something which promises to partially restore the desired stability. It is obvious that smoking cigarettes is not a good way to achieve the needed stability but this observation can’t be generalized to the craving for potato chips, or coffee, or the multitude of other things that people often crave."

- 1991 - 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

"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

"Sharks, besides being primitive and not suffering from cancer, are physiologically unique in another way: their body fluids are osmotically in balance with seawater, making them hypertonic to other animals’ body fluids. The mineral content of sharks blood is not very different from that of other animals. The osmotic difference is made up by a very high concentration of urea (and of trimethyl ammonium)."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Another kind of fish, the salmon, which return to fresh water for reproducing, show the other extreme of adaptation to an osmotic problem. After living isotonically in the hypertonic ocean environment, keeping their mineral content and osmolarity lower than sea-water’s, they suddenly have to readapt to the extremely hypotonic fresh water. The secretion of prolactin and glucocorticoid steroids seems to facilitate this sudden adaptation, but those hormones also seem to produce an explosively rapid kind of aging. I think their condition is similar to the Cushingeid symptoms that frequently appear in middle-aged people."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In PMS, edema is a common problem, and it used to be thought that edema of the brain was responsible for the irritability or depression or other nervous symptoms, and diuretics such es ammonium compounds and urea were commonly used. (Premenstrual salt cravings are the result of the estrogen-disturbed water balance, and salt-restriction for PMS is as inappropriate as it is for pre-eclampsia or toxemia of pregnancy.)"

- 1991 - July - 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

"Sodium chloride, giucose, and other substances can be used at high concentrations for their osmotie effects, but they also have chemijcal and metabolic effects that arent pecessarily desirable. Both osmotic and biochemical effects should be taken into account in a given therapy."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Besides looking for the precise ways in which light acts on us (such as by preserving the function of the essential respiratory enzyme, cytochrome c), [ also considered the dietary factors which might exacerbate the problem of light deficiency (such as an excess of unsaturated fats) and the possibility of other therapies, including drugs, that might be more practical and economical than hormone supplementation."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When various kinds of cells are deprived of energy (mast cells are often studied) they tend to produce (and secrete) histamine (among other substances). Unsaturated fats promote the release of histamine, while short chain saturated fats, and glucose, inhibit it. W"

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"People who are awake in the dark have higher levels of cortisol than when they are asleep in the dark, that is, sleep is a partial defense against the stress of darkness. The cortisol (an adrenalin) secreted in darkness, or other stress, has the important function of maintaining the blood sugar level."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It is now clear that both stress and an excess of the glucocorticoid hormones cause brain damage (as well as damage to all other organs). Marion Diamond’s work with rats (confined or free) showed that stress causes very general brain damage, including to the cortex, and others have shown specific damage to the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, and other brain areas."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"While Bogomoletz and Metchnikof saw the bowel toxins as the factor which drove the aging process, [ see bowel toxins rather as a relatively late-acting factor that accelerates a process which develops for other reasons. Once our detoxifying mechanisms begin to fail, bowel toxins pass the bowel with relative ease, and rapidly destroy the remaining systems of defense and detoxification."

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

"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)

"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

"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

"Progesterone’s effect in pregnancy is to assure the availability of oxygen and nutrients for the embryo, but it also has the general effect of inhibiting the formation of lipofuscin, and of other aging signs, by improving metabolic efficiency."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"At present, there isn’t enough knowledge about the safety of different ways of administering supplemental copper. It can be toxic, and it oxidizes other nutrients."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many other types of research in adsorption fields and long-range order make it clear that the interactions of atoms and molecules in cells neednt be governed by either direct contact or by random motion. When cell components are rearranged, they return to their normal position in relation to other components, revealing a great capacity for self-assembly or self-ordering."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"tissues subjected to stressful conditions formed substances which promoted healing and regeneration. (Succinic acid and other dicarboxylic acids were identified among the biogenic tissue stimulators.Succinate stimulates respiration and steroid formation, and protects against peroxidative damage. Filatov’s work is an important complement to that of Engelhardt and Szent-Gyorgyi and Polezhaev and Meerson.)"

- 1990 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Filatov tried sterilized tissue, and found that it was as effective in stimulating healing and regeneration, At this point he realized that tissue extracts would have the same effects, and he made and used extracts from & great variety of stressed tissues, including leaves. He published results showing that sterile extracts could stimulate regeneration of theoptic nerve, and of various other tissues."

- 1990 - August.September - 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

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

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"good results with their allergy patients when they gave them supplements of vitamin A, pantothenic acid, and vitemin C. Later, thyroid extract or triiodothyronine and magnesium were added to the other supplements for patients who had problems more serious then ordinary allergies."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Just as optimal nutrition must take age and other factors into account, an integrated therapy for immune deficiency must be sensitively designed for the needs of the individual."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since carbon monoxide binds to metal atoms, it might be held in a form which reacts easily with ammonia. Then during stress, which causes both lipid peroxidation and ammonia formation, rhodanese would be needed to protect the respiratory cytochromes from the cyanide, which would otherwise inhibit respiratory energy production, and other processes involving the cytochromes."

- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In 1981, before AIDS had been recognized, two German physicians, K. Dierig and U, Waldthaler, guessed that gonorthea) endocarditis might be causing apatient’s hot flashes, drastic weight loss, shortness of breath, and confusion, so they treated him with 40 million units of penicillin intravenously each day for three weeks. His symptoms disappeared, and later they found he tested positive for HIV, and a review of his 1981 laboratory tests showed abnormalities consistent with AIDS. Dierig and Waldthaler then used the same penicillin treatment on six other ARC and AIDS patients. All seven are now clinically asymptomatic."

- 1988 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"to a very great extent, progesterone could substitute for vitamin A, meaning that a very large fraction of the vitamin A used by the body is used up in making progesterone, from which the other steroid hormones are made."

- 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

"Albert Szent-Gybrgyi worked out some of Koch’s ideas, and in the process discovered vitamin C (which has a free radical state), and explored many other energy exchange processes, including free radical activation by biological pigments.?"

- 1988 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although a physiologically balanced amount of cortisol induces enzymes of detoxification, for example in the intestine, an unopposed excess causes destruction of these enzymes, eliminating much of the intestine’s barrier function, and leading to allergies.? This action of cortisol against the thymus and against the bowel’s detoxifying enzymes very likely accounts for the common association of allergies with virus infections. Since cortisol has a destabilizing, pro-convulsant effect on the nervous system, there are likely to be psychological symptoms — anything from compulsive behavior to depression or seizures — associated with the other chronic conditions."

- 1988 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Some of the consequences of stress are not catabolic. When the detoxifying enzymes have been lost, then bowel toxins block other basic enzyme systems, leading for example to slowed protein turnover and decreased activity of superoxide dismutase.’ The consequent increase of lipid peroxidation will decrease steroid synthesis.?®"

- 1988 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Epilepsy is an example of a very low energy state of brain cells. insomnia is a low energy state, and is usually cured by the right dose of thyroid hormone, with adequate glucose and other nutrients."

- 1986 - February