Ray Peat on red light

"it is now clear that Polanyis adsorption potential was a fact, and Einstein and Haber were dogmatically wrong in their ideas about inter-atomic forces. Seeing this, we should question the many consequences of the same mistaken atomistic view, including Einsteins theory of photoelectricity, which attributed a corpuscular quality to light, because he knew that matter was strictly particulate without any of the long-range energy properties that were later demonstrated by Polanyi."

- Nutrition For Women

"Bright lights for 18 hours per day can correct some hormone-mood problems."

- Nutrition For Women

"Light deprivation can be remedied artificially, but the necessary brightness is usually underestimated."

- 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

"The various tissues of the body can function acceptably at different levels of nutrition. For example, the skin, with its low energy requirements, seems to remain alive for several hours after the death of the body in general. The brain, with its extremely high energy requirements, is usually the first to suffer from energy deprivation. At slight levels of deprivation, the brain will simply lose functional efficiency, but more serious or prolonged deprivation can produce lingering modification, or even structural damage which is relatively permanent (and may even have transgenerational effects.)"

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Lower room temperature and brighter lights will stimulate the thyroid."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Ling, D.N. Nasonov, A.S. Troshin, and others showed not only that the postulated regulatory cell membrane was unnecessary, but that it was impossible. The surface of a cell is the boundary between phases, and within a cell there are slight variations in phase, but (except in the case of vacuoles) there is no place for the watery solution supposedly enclosed by a barrier membrane."

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It’s important to minimize low level stressors and injuries, and to optimize the protective factors, such as light, carbohydrate, thyroid hormone, carbon dioxide, and a sense of a meaningful future."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Memory and attention are impaired by even a slight thyroid deficiency. The Russian paradigm, with its emphasis on energy and inhibition, suggests that thyroid function should be carefully examined in cases of hyperactivity."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Since the normal person has sharp diurnal cycles of brain activity (reflecting a proper concentration of the brain amines) and many psychotics have flattened cycles, involving disturbed sleep as well as disturbed waking consciousness, cyclic light stimulation of skin and head might be desirable to support regular cyclic activity of the pineal gland and brain."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Other things that should be taken into account in any therapy are the light environment and the intestinal flora (endotoxin activates HIF), the cycles of sleep and activity, and the quality of environmental stimulation."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Thyroid hormone, palmitic acid, and light activate a crucial respiratory enzyme, suppressing the formation of lactic acid. Palmitic acid occurs in coconut oil, and is formed naturally in animal tissues. Unsaturated oils have the opposite effect."

- 2000 - July

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

- 2000 - July (1)

"Otto Warburg showed that the respiratory enzyme, containing the heme group, is inhibited by carbon monoxide, which binds to that enzyme, as it does to hemoglobin. Warburg also showed that visible light restores the activity of the respiratory enzyme by dissociating it from the car-_ bon monoxide."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A complete list of protective nutritional chemicals and natural drugs or analogs to our endogenous protective factors would be very long, but we should give special thought to certain ones, including succinic acid, which stimulates respiration and protective steroid synthesis; thyroid and vitamin E, which promote normal oxidation while preventing abnormal oxidation; magnesium; sodium and lithium, which help us to retain magnesium; tropical fruits, which contain GHB; coconut oil, which protects against cardiac necrosis, lipid peroxidation, hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, and histamine damage; valium agonists, natural anti-histamines; adenosine and uridine. Visits to higher elevations, and exposure to bright, long-wave light, can cause the body to optimize its own antistress chemistry. Avoiding the sense of being trapped is a high-level adaptive factor."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since I had already spent years investigating the effects of light on hormones and health, I began to see that the existing knowledge regarding the involvement of stress and glucocorticoid hormones in the aging process meshed perfectly with my concept of winter-sickness"

- 1991 - January - 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

"ordinary visible light has several beneficial effects in animals. One effect is the regeneration of the enzyme SOD (superoxide dismutase), by causing its copper atom to be re-attached to the protein."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Light also increases the activity of normal respiratory enzymes, and tends to normalize (or maximize) the production of hormones, including progesterone and thyroid."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I would expect an increase in the temperature of the earth, and increased use of artificial light (or migration) to lead to a prolongation of youth and the development of better brains."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Plenty of bright light helps to maintain progesterone synthesis."

- 1988 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter