Ray Peat on protein

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

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"The Blood Brain Barrier, BBB, has sometimes been treated as something unique, but it’s just a special case of the cellular resistance that exists everywhere. For example, after intense exercise that produces fatigue and damage to muscles, a unique brain protein, S100B, that is considered a crucial part of the BBB, can be found in the blood stream. The exchange of substances, even proteins and nucleic acids, between cells and their environment, increases during stress. The detection of substances such as S100B in the blood is now recognized as evidence of depression and brain damage"

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The stiffness of red blood cells in hypothyroidism increases the viscosity of the whole blood, and changes in blood proteins contribute to this."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the body, the adipose tissues with a high fat content maintain a much lower cholesterol content than the muscle tissues. This is partly because muscles produce more cholesterol than fat tissue does, but also because the structural proteins of cells have a high affinity for cholesterol. In effect, fat and proteins are mutually soluble."

- 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

"Combined with the unstable polyunsaturated fats, cholesterol can’t perform its normal functions. The unstable polyunsaturated fats inactivate the corrective (ABCA) protein that removes the damaged form of cholesterol"

- September 2018 - 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

"There is even evidence that sodium can spare protein, since, if there isnt enough sodium to excrete into the urine to balance acids, the kidneys will waste protein to produce ammonium as an ionic substitute for sodium."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Anything which produces tissue atrophy will tend to produce cancer. The important question is, what will induce differentiation and useful function in cancer cells? There are many substances which promote differentiation and oppose the effects of estrogen, and some of these have been found to be useful in cancer therapy. Among the substances opposing estrogen are dopamine and nickel, prolactin inhibitors; chalones, the tissue specific proteins which inhibit cell division (and possibly more ephemerally, the peptides of memory); the aprotic solvents, DMF and possibly DMSO; progesterone and testosterone; thyroxin and iodine; magnesium ATP, the stable form of the biological energy molecule; vitamin A, a protein-sparing nutrient which promotes differentiation, and vitamin E (and the closely related coenzyme Q, or ubiquinone)."

- Nutrition For Women

"These changes in the solvent, or the intracellular medium, will alter chemical reactions — by modifying enzymes and by sequestering classes of chemicals, much as the aprotic solvents, DMF and DMSO, speed and alter reactivity. Following these solvent changes, we should expect the chemical consequences to amplify or institutionalize those changes. For example, proteins could be modified to produce appropriate patterns of memory molecules and endorphins (protein fragments having actions similar to morphine) and chalones."

- Nutrition For Women

"Even in rich cultures, protein deficiency, inappropriate exercise, and emotional tension will contribute to premature aging of the individual, and damage to the offspring."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Cortisone stimulates the conversion of protein to sugar, and since there are no stored proteins (other than small amounts circulating in the blood) this means that cortisone starts the conversion of the organism into fuel for the problem area. In acute emergencies, the lymphoid tissues will shrink first, which is all right, since they can be restored after the animal recovers, and their function — immunity — is partly a matter of a longer time scale, days to weeks. But if these tissues are chronically depleted by stress or malnutrition, infection is more likely to be fatal, as in old age or in poor populations."

- Nutrition For Women

"Various nutritional, hormonal, or toxic states interfere with respiration in different ways: for example, vitamin E deficiency, estrogen excess, toxic thyroid, and DNP (the formerly popular cancer-causing reducing drug) cause oxygen to be consumed without producing the normal amount of useful energy. Vitamin B2 or copper deficiency can prevent consumption of oxygen. Cancer (contrary to a tenacious establishment doctrine) involves a respiratory defect, and causes a tendency toward hypoglycemia which is often compensated by the conversion of protein to sugar, leading to the terminal wasting state (cachexia)"

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"Cancer overstimulates the anti -stress adrenocortical hormones, and usually produces extreme wasting from mobilization of fat and protein; blood sugar and glycogen storage are disturbed. During or after cancer treatment the hypoglycemia diet seems desirable: frequent small feedings, liver (or similar nutrients), magnesium, potassium. Vitamins A, E, C, and pantothenic acid are particularly important in stress, but all nutrients are necessary."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress apparently increases a persons need for all nutrients including calories and protein. The vitamins most commonly used for resisting stress are A, C, E, and pantothenic acid. The minerals magnesium, calcium, potassium and zinc can help in the first stages of stress, and sodium supplements may be needed in the last extreme stage of stress when the adrenals have been exhausted."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin A offsets a protein deficiency, and a protein deficiency can damage immunity."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"You have to learn to know what your body needs at a particular time. This will be made easier if your basic diet is roughly like that described above moderately low calorie intake, fairly high protein intake, with high quality proteins such as eggs, milk, and leaves, and with fresh fruit or vegetables every day."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"Vitamin A, besides strengthening membranes, is necessary for protein synthesis, and so helps form the immune tissue"

- Nutrition For Women

"inc has similar general functions in protein antibody production, but also possibly has a direct viricidal capacity, as observed in vitro, which would account for its release (and loss) during viral infections."

- Nutrition For Women

"a niacin or protein deficiency can show up first in the gums as tenderness or bleeding."

- 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

"Many women with abnormal Pap smears, even with a biopsy showing the so-called carcinoma in situ, have returned to normal in just two months with a diet including the following: 90 grams of protein, 500 mg. of magnesium as the chloride, 100,000 units of vitamin A, 400 units of vitamin E, 5 mg. of folic acid, 100 mg. of pantothenic acid, 100 mg. of B6, 100 mg. of niacinamide, and 500 mg. of vitamin C, with thyroid and progesterone as needed. Liver should be eaten twice a week. Some of the women apply vitamin A directly to the cervix."

- Nutrition For Women

"Since dietary proteins can get into the blood, early feeding of non-human milk would seem most likely to promote the development of allergies."

- 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

"In a study of the nature of weight loss in a two week fast, it was found that about 95% of the lost weight was from protein rich tissues (muscles and glands), rather than fat. A low calorie diet produces a slower weight loss, but in this case most of the lost weight is fat."

- Nutrition For Women

"Chronic dieters can adapt to a low calorie intake (Lancet, April 5, 1975, Miller and Parsonage). This is probably partly from a loss of active protein tissue. Total nutrition is needed for replacing such tissues."

- Nutrition For Women

"Natural minerals are usually bound by special molecules, such as proteins or pigments (e.g., heme) and in this state do not seem to destroy vitamins, as do various water-soluble inorganic minerals."

- Nutrition For Women

"Eating extra amounts of liquid oil will increase your need for vitamin E, and extra carbohydrate will make you need more vitamin B1. Excess protein increases the amount of B6 needed."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Getting some protein, carbohydrate and fat in each meal or snack seems desirable for many hypoglycemics, but often changes have to be made such as increasing the calories and eating more often."

- Nutrition For Women

"Many dietitians claim that exercise doesnt increase the need for protein, but the Russians have found that a combination of exercise and increased protein intake can increase the muscle mass."

- Nutrition For Women

"When we eat a diet that is very low in a particular nutrient, such as protein, we lose many of the enzymes involved in handling that nutrient."

- Nutrition For Women

"Eat frequently, using protein, fat, and carbohydrate at the same time, e.g., an egg and an orange, or a carrot with cheese. Fruit is the best source of carbohydrate; avoid uncooked starches such as nuts."

- Nutrition For Women

"Heat degrades protein. Canned or powdered milk has lost significant amounts of lysine, an important component of protein."

- 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

"Nutritional thermogenic factors include sodium, calcium, vitamin D, carbohydrates, especially sugar, and protein, which interact with our endogenous energy regulating factors, especially thyroid and progesterone."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Cholesterol’s functions are similar in many ways to those of progesterone. In the pregnant uterus, for example, progesterone’s relaxing function is backed up by cholesterol (Smith, et al., 2005). In the brain, excitation of nerves by glutamic acid is controlled by the uptake protein which binds this transmitter, and this protein’s function depends on cholesterol; reduction of cholesterol prolongs nerve excitation"

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the activated state, nerve cells admit extracellular ions, such as sodium, but recovery of the exclusive state occurs instantaneously. The state of proteins momentarily resembles denatured proteins. With excessive stimulation, recovery is incomplete and, with the proteins and gel structure in a partly denatured state, foreign molecules (dyes) introduced experimentally can be observed inside the cells."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"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

"In a pharmacological approach, reduced expenditure of glycogen, ATP and creative phosphate (Dardymov, 1971) combined with increased protein synthesis (Rozin, 1971) and increased resistance of cells and organisms to stress, can be achieved with ginseng, eleutherococcus, and 2-benzylbenzimidazole"

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"The consequences of incorporating the spike protein of the virus into our genetic repertoire are hard to imagine. The mindless activation of our huge epigenetic system of retroelements, with no knowable benefits, should be stopped."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since Ling didn’t imagine that ATP bond energy was being consumed constantly to run membrane sodium pumps, he wasn’t concerned with any energy that might be released by hydrolyzing that bond. He, like Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, was aware that the ATP molecule adsorbs with considerable energy to protein molecules, and that its presence governs the shape of the protein molecule."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In a muscle cell, the presence of ATP stabilizes the muscle in its relaxed state, and in any cell, similar associations between ATP and proteins stabilize the cell in a basic resting condition in which it favors the presence of potassium over sodium."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The principle of induction, central to Ling’s view of cell structure and function, is something every student hears about early in the study of chemistry, the transmission of the electron withdrawing properties of various atoms and groups through connected atoms. Carbon dioxide, a Lewis acid, strongly withdraws electrons from the proteins on which it is adsorbed, increasing their acidity. This affects properties such as contraction and nerve activation, as well as oxygen binding and enzyme action."

- 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

"Stresses activate the enzyme carbonic anhydrase, which converts the gaseous CO2 (the form that binds to protein and favors structured surface or vicinal water) into the ionizable carbonic acid/bicarbonate, which leaves cells. Activating this enzyme raises the intracellular pH, tending to excite cells, and inhibiting it lowers the intracellular pH, quieting cells, saving energy."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"During the night, even with the quieting actions of sleep, breakdown of protein is much faster than synthesis, and calcium is lost from the bones."

- March 2018 - 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

"Reductive stress activates multiple layers of restorative processes (alternatives to the protective functions of carbon dioxide) to stimulate breathing, increase circulation, provide energy and materials for renewing cell structures. Prostaglandins, cytokines, estrogen, and nitric oxide are produced in coordinated ways, and cellular behaviors are changed defensively. The structures of the cell skeleton are modified, as the reductive chemistry changes protein disulfides to sulfhydryls, changing shapes and, most importantly, the solvent properties of the cell material."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"xidative damage, such as lipid peroxidation, is a seriously harmful phenomenon. Aspirin and the bioflavonoids are powerfully protective against lipid peroxidation and the DNA mutations and protein damage triggered by the most toxic free radical, the hydroxyl radical."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many of the new observations related to seeing cells as self-organizing coacervate systems are reminiscent of Gilbert Ling’s observations. For example, ATP increases the solubility of proteins (Patel, et al., 2017), and when energy is depleted, some proteins come out of solution, forming membrane-less organelles, filaments, and granules."

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A receptor is a way to imagine order being introduced into an otherwise supposedly random system of diffusing molecules. The behavior of the receptor proteins may be parallel to, and crucial for, some of the events in a cell, but even then, rather than explaining what’s happening in the cell, attention to the receptors is distracting attention from the real processes that should be understood."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The mechanist’s tendency is to see the life of a cell in terms of information, digital on-off signals, whether a protein receptor is phosphorylated or not, reduced or oxidized, etc., and to visualize it as atoms arranged in space. That imagined cell may perceive, but it perceives the way a logician thinks—without melody or aroma or erotic meaning."

- January 2019 - 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

"people with an abnormal lipoprotein, apoE4, are more likely to develop Alzheimers disease, and that abnormal protein is known to cause increased production of NO ("

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Before using a Cytomel (T3) supplement, it might be possible to solve the problem with diet alone. A piece of fruit or a glass of juice or milk between meals, and adequate animal protein (or potato protein) in the diet is sometimes enough to allow the liver to produce the hormone."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Besides fasting, or chronic protein deficiency, the common causes of hypothyroidism are excessive stress or aerobic (i.e., anaerobic) exercise, and diets containing beans, lentils, nuts, unsaturated fats (including carotene), and undercooked broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or mustard greens."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Often, a small physiological dose of natural hydrocortisone can help the patient meet the stress, without causing harmful side-effects. While treating the symptoms with cortisone for a short time, it is important to try to learn the basic cause of the problem, by checking for hypothyroidism, vitamin A deficiency, protein deficiency, a lack of sunlight, etc."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Adequate protein, glucose, and sodium to maintain blood volume will prevent most of these problems of later pregnancy, unless the hormonal imbalance is very bad"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

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

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"the brain is energetically a very expensive organ in terms of its energy requirements, and the liver has to be very efficient to meet its needs, so when there is a nutritional or hormonal problem, the problems can be especially intense. Nutritional needs for sugar, protein, vitamins, and minerals can be very high."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

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

- 2001 - February

"ntiendorphin, antiexcitotoxic, anticholinergic, antiserotonergic, antiprostaglandin, and antiglucocorticoid drugs have been used with good effect in various degenerative nervous diseases, but all the so-called anti drugs are imprecise antagonists, and have many side effects. The natural antagonists and nutrients are usually helpful. Protein, sodium, magnesium, carbon dioxide/bicarbonate, progesterone, thyroid, vitamins, etc., can be curative in many brain diseases,"

- 2001 - February

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

- 2000 - March

"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)

"Since I had become a sound sleeper as soon as I began taking thyroid, and had seen that thyroid alone would cure most people’s insomnia (sometimes, as one doctor described his experience, better than morphine) I began to understand that the adrenalin which disturbed sleep was an indicator of defective energy production, and that the things which restored sleep—thyroid, salt, sugar, protein, and progesterone, for example—were acting directly on the cells’ energy production."

- 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

"Carbon dioxide’s concentration affects the structural energy content of the protein water system, and this effect can nicely account for many of the mysteries of cellular heat production, including the negative heat observed_in certain stages of nerve and muscle activity."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"But the pump-proteins--calcium-ATP-ase, sodium/potassium ATPase, etc.—are proteins that really exist, though their functions are much more / interesting than pumping. An important context for thinking about these ATPases is that the contractile protein of muscle (myosin) is a calcium dependent ATPase."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"What we need, in order. to understand the way energy can be used in reestablishing the cells resting condition without releasing heat, might be the idea that physical processes (the change of protein conformation and water structure) are intimately integrated with chemical equilibria."

- 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

"Polanyis multilayer adsorption was considered impossible by the leading physicists of the time, but the simple idea of electronic resonance eventually made it possible for them to accept the facts. But Rothens adsorption of multilayers of immunologically specific proteins was just too much."

- 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

"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

"When the pH of blood is high, the ceils of blood vessels are excited into contraction. When the pH of the blood is low, nerve activity can be dulled to the point of coma, as in diabetic acidosis. I think these effects of pH, and the simpler effects of pH on protein charge, are closely related to each other, and to the phenomenon of the injury potential."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"When a cell has been damaged (as by radiation or toxins), its inefficiency creates a small localized distortion im the fields, which will stimulate processes of repair or removal and replacement, as far as the organisms resources allow. When a stress is great enough that the entire organism is exposed to lactic acid, the organism’s adaptive resources are being challenged, and potentially harmful responses are evoked. For example, a sluggish liver can allow the blood lactate concentration to mse during stress, and this can lead to secretion of endorphins and pituitary hormones (Elias, et al, 1997). The endorphins can increase histamine release, and growth hornone increases free fatty acids; increased permeability of blood vessels can allow proteins and fats to leave the blood stream with cumulatively harmful effects."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

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

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid supplementation, adequate animal protein, trace minerals, and vitamin A are the first things to consider in the prevention of prostate hypertrophy and cancer. Nutritional and endocrine support can be combined with rational anticancer treatments, since there is really no sharp line between different approaches that are aimed at achieving endocrine and immunological balance, without harming anything."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Increased protein catabolism or blockage of oxidative consumption of Krebs cycle fuel--for example by poisoning--makes these precursors available to enter the porphyrin pathway."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1995 - September Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It has been suggested that the tubercle develops and persists because the bodys proteolytic enzymes are inhibited by the unsaturated fats. (Even older ideas of fatty degeneration, going back to the very beginnings. of biochemistry, were based on the fact that proteins are deposited from solution at an interface, such as that formed by a drop of oil, forming a sort of proteinaceous skin around fat droplets.)"

- 1995 - September Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In size and over-all structure, keratin filaments are similar to the scrapie particles, and to the filaments that accumulate in Alzheimers disease. I think of keratin as a protein made by a cell which has lost the energy to make more functional proteins. Normally, keratinized cells are formed by rapid cell division at a body surface, where little energy is available. In chronic vitamin A deficiency, the keratin-forming cells divide more rapdily than normal."

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

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

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Other dietary practices can minimize our production of cortisol (e.g., combining fruits and protein, since protein foods lower blood sugar and stimulate the secretion of cortisol)."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid function is essential to all cell processes, including protein assimilation and synthesis, formation of growth hormone, etc. Without thyroid hormone to sustain respiration, inefficient glycolysis wastes energy; unoxidized lactate provokes catabolism of liver protein. Hypoglycemia stimulates secretion of glucocorticoids, which maintain blood sugar at the expense of rapid catabolism of protein."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1988 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Both vitamin A and carotene, like any unsaturated oil, will tend to inhibit the thyroid, so it is important to balance supplements of vitamin A and thyroid; a sluggish thyroid will more easily be suppressed by large doses of vitamin A, but a high level of thyroid activity causes vitamin A to be used more quickly. It is an interesting expression of this biological relationship that one blood protein carries both vitamin A and thyroid hormone."

- 1988 - January - 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

"Just as with the anesthetic substances which modify the physical state of the cell, retarding viral replication, the oxidative protective system has several points at which intervention is possible to support detoxification, and to promote protein turnover."

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