Ray Peat on stress

"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 great majority of the body’s serotonin is produced in the intestine, where the tissue is constantly exposed to foreign material such as endotoxin, but all cells in the body can produce serotonin and histamine during stress, and the blood platelets are one of the body’s defenses against serotonin; they can sequester it and carry it to the lungs for destruction. The lungs have a great capacity to oxidize it."

- 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

"The fact that cholesterol strengthens cells, keeping them from disintegrating under stress, obviously has nothing to do with a lipid bilayer membrane. That membrane doctrine has made it seem paradoxical that the loss of cholesterol should make cells stiffer, while weakening them. Gilbert Ling has, for 65 years, pointed out the numerous paradoxes confronted by the advocates of the lipid boundary membrane, but the membrane doctrine continues to govern"

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Any food that provides simple nutrients, without causing inflammation and blocking enzymes, will support the animal’s normal development, without activating stress responses."

- 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

"One of the most important effects of sodium is that it tends to spare magnesium, which is likely to be lost during stress and hypothyroidism. If we eat salty foods when we crave them, we are able to retain our magnesium more easily."

- Nutrition For Women

"men produce estrogen, especially under stress such as starvation or alcoholism or liver damage. In a famine, men may even lactate."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress will cause a rise in estrogen and a loss of anti estrogens such as thyroid, progesterone, and (in men) testosterone. Male apes who are bullied have decreased levels of testosterone, and this effect persists long after their environment has improved. The stress of subjugation seems to lead to an adaptation of passivity. Their passivity prevents further injury, but we dont know how stressful their continuing submission is."

- Nutrition For Women

"Hans Selye found that the adrenals are a major component of our adaptive system. In the first phase of stress, there is a shock reaction (with changes resembling those of estrogen dominance), with injury to various tissues. In the second phase, the adrenals protect the animal, and this protection continues until something is exhausted. By exposing rats to a preliminary stress, Selye found that he could induce adaptation to other, later stresses — a kind of immunization to stress."

- Nutrition For Women

"The hormones of stress age various tissues, including the brain, and the collagen in connective tissue. Good nutrition, including the anti-stress substances found in certain foods, will simultaneously optimize intelligence and increase the healthy life-span."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"Many people whose thyroid gland is suppressed by stress cannot respond to synthetic thyroxine, T4, since the same stress can block its conversion to T3. Natural thyroid, USP, is the most generally effective,"

- Nutrition For Women

"This anti-oxygen effect of estrogen suggests a convergence of reproductive aging research with Warburgs theory that damaged respiration is the primary defect in cancer, and also with Selyes observation that estrogens effect resembles the first, shock phase of the stress reaction."

- Nutrition For Women

"Excess stress (by elevating estrogen and/or depleting progesterone, etc.) may bring on symptoms in someone who never had them. Spending a summer in Alaska, with an unusually long day, may relieve the symptoms of a chronic sufferer. Dark cloudy winters in England or the Pacific Northwest are powerful stressors, and cause lower progesterone in women and testosterone in men."

- 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

"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

"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

"Selye divides stress into three phases: alarm, resistance (or adaptation), and exhaustion. Three tissues are usually the first to show effects: thymolymphatic tissue shrinks, gastrointestinal tissue becomes inflamed and bleeds, and the adrenal cortex becomes enlarged."

- 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

"From my own experience, I am inclined to believe that blood sugar is an important integrating factor, and that the organism can probably sense small or rapid fluctuations that would be very hard to detect by the usual laboratory procedures. For example, males in particular are known to secrete adrenaline under the stress of having blood drawn, and this tends to raise the concentration of blood sugar."

- Nutrition For Women

"Hans Selye sometimes used an injected metal, such as iron salts, to experimentally sensitize animals to stress, making it easier to produce arthritis. He found that vitamin E could offset this effect of iron."

- 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

"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

"Stress inhibits the thyroid, and can lower progesterone (and/or testosterone) while raising estrogen. Recent work by Siiteri and his group shows a hormonal involvement in various autoimmune diseases. Females are much more susceptible to these sicknesses than are males."

- Nutrition For Women

"Any activity, if planned and completed according to plan without interruption, can reduce stress. Enforced inactivity, and inability to achieve what was intended, are powerful stressors."

- 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

"Pantothenic acid in very large doses was recently found to protect against stress even when an animals adrenals were removed. Since the nutrient is needed to destroy insulin, I think part of its anti-stress effect comes from minimizing hypoglycemia, and so reducing the amount of cortisone needed."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"In animal experiments, it has been found that cortisone can produce diabetes, apparently by damaging the pancreas, and it has been suspected that chronic stress (which can be brought on by low blood sugar) can be a factor in producing diabetes."

- Nutrition For Women

"Aging, stress, menopause, Cushings syndrome, and the premenstrual syndrome all overlap so much that each state can probably give us some insight into the others."

- Nutrition For Women

"All kinds of stress tend to make the liver sluggish. The liver normally removes toxins and excess hormones from the body. Estrogen can accumulate to high levels if the liver isnt fully active. One effect of estrogen is to promote oxidation of a type which doesnt provide energy, thus raising oxygen requirements."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress consumes steroids and produces the many degenerative diseases described by Hans Selye. The gastro-intestinal system becomes inflamed or ulcerated, and fibrous tissue may proliferate. Adrenal glands enlarge, and lymphoid tissue shrinks during the first stage of stress (and may enlarge later)."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress diseases typically have a dominant allergic aspect, and respond to steroids. Cortisone is used medically, but has side effects which could be avoided by using progesterone (though medical progesterone usually contains allergenic solvents and preservatives such as phenol). Niacin, vitamin A, vitamin C, etc., help to produce progesterone, and so often help in stress diseases, though the manufactured substances are themselves somewhat allergenic."

- 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

"Lactate is a sufficient stimulus to trigger the stress reaction"

- Nutrition For Women

"yourself time to get entirely well before getting pregnant. C. Brown-Sequard bred injured guinea pigs and found that the offspring had a high rate of epilepsy and birth defects. Sickness or trauma — including surgery — can bring on a chronic state of stress, which involves depletion of many nutrients. A few months of extra nutrition and avoidance of new stress can restore the bodys reserves."

- Nutrition For Women

"Estrogen is regulated centrally or crucially — by the liver. Estrogen, progesterone, iodine, sugar and stress are closely linked with each other,"

- 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

"Fasting and stress suppress the thyroid, and thus can aggravate many symptoms. Thyroid function isnt always restored when the fast ends."

- Nutrition For Women

"Individual peculiarities and stress can make it extremely difficult to stay healthy on a normal diet; however, if meals of liver, broccoli leaves and oysters and papaya can be considered normal, then supplements might generally be unnecessary."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress uses progesterone and can cause menstrual periods to stop."

- Nutrition For Women

"Athletic training is known to slow the pulse. Cortisone, produced by stress, inhibits the thyroid gland. (When the thyroid is low, less oxygen is needed, so this is a useful adaptation for increasing endurance.) These hormonal changes are now known to produce sterility in both men and women"

- 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 increased serum cholesterol in stress is an important protective adaptation."

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"n mediating adaptation, the brain orients the organism toward aspects of the environment that are most likely to satisfy its needs, and this involves making judgments of possible future situations. In the absence of good prospects, the brain concerns itself with defensive changes, increasing the stress hormones, the fight-or-flight mechanisms, and begins to convert some of its own tissues to energy and materials needed for the survival of its essential organs, the brain, lungs, and heart."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Part of the basic cellular defense reaction involves enzymes that process toxins in ways that improve the immediate situation, but that can create new problems for the organism if they become chronic. For example, stressed tissues produce carbon monoxide and estrogen, which prevent apoptosis and promote autophagy, with short-term survival value. Surviving in the stressed condition under the influence of CO and estrogen, the cells produce cytokines that affect the sensitivity of surrounding cells to stress and inflammation, and progressively undergo epigenetic changes, tending to become cells of a different type,"

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the accumulating PUFA function as amplifiers of the cellular stress reactions."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In experimental situations, the epigenetic changes produced by stress are reversible, but when the organism stays in the same sort of environment that started the process, reversals become less likely with increasing age."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Emotional stress is organized by the nervous system, changing hormones and cell functions that improve immediate survival."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"‘When carbon monoxide is produced in stress, the breakdown of the heme molecule also releases iron, and biliverdin, which is quickly turned into bilibrubin. Increases of bilirubin and carbon monoxide in the body fluids or breath can be seen in many chronic conditions, along with changes in tissue iron content."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The accumulation of iron in the tissues during stress and aging makes them progressively more likely to experience serious damage during moments of oxygen deprivation, as the iron atoms catalyze reactions such as lipid peroxidation"

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Injury to the ovaries, or systemic stress, tends to decrease the production of progesterone, while the body’s production of estrogen is increased."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Endotoxin absorbed from the intestine during stress promotes many inflammatory reactions, and activates aromatase"

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Because of the inefficient use of glucose in hypothyroidism, fatty acids are mobilized from the tissues, and these contribute to stress and inflammation. In the autoimmune diseases, free fatty acids are consistently high."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the free fatty acids promote the effects of estrogen, and increase the formation of the inflammatory prostaglandins, which activate aromatase. Since estrogen increases lipolysis and elevates free fatty acids, and promotes their conversion to prostaglandins, this process initiated by stress easily becomes a selfsustaining vicious circle."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The changes Meersons group has seen in high altitude therapy resemble the changes that occur during supplementation with thyroid and antioxidants. The lower concentration of oxygen in tissues at high elevation would increase the antioxidant reserves of the organism, making it more resistant to stress. Decreasing the use of dietary unsaturated fats similarly protects against oxidative stress."

- 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

"In a state of chronic stress, oxidative energy production is low, and mediators of inflammation are likely to be chronically increased; there is typically a chronically increased production of lactate, and/or decreased oxidation of it. I"

- 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

"Exosome production during stress is part of the body’s normal restorative function (Zhang, et al., 2017); it’s only when protective factors such as progesterone and carbon dioxide are lacking that their production becomes counter-productive."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The pharmaceutical myth about serotonin, the happy hormone, has led most people, even researchers, to ignore the fact that it increases inflammation and activates the stress system, while reducing the efficiency of energy production."

- May 2019 - 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

"Stress is experienced when processes that are normally adaptive begin to have maladaptive effects. That happens when the organism’s resources aren’t adequate to meet the demands of the situation."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The stimulation of CRH production by histamine, serotonin, endorphins, IL-1, nitric oxide, and/or estrogen in good health leads to the activation of complex and appropriate antistress reactions. When stress is very intense or prolonged, or if nutrition hasn’t been adequate, all of the activating signals, CRH itself, and the antistress glucocorticoids, can produce effects that aren’t integrated into the organism’s functions as it confronts its problems, and that produce symptoms and, eventually, degenerative processes and aging. That failure of integration is almost always the result of insufficient metabolic energy."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Things in the environment, or substances produced in reactions to environmental stress, that might cause autism, include prenatal and neonatal exposure to radiation, including isotopes from the power industry, bomb testing, Chernobyl, and Fukushima; exposure to air pollution, including nitrogen oxides, ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and particles (Jung, et al., 2013); aluminum (Mold, et al., 2018), lead, mercury, manganese, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, manganese, and nickel (Windham, et al, 2006); acetaminophen, infections, endotoxin, exogenous and endogenous estrogens, hypothyroidism, progesterone deficiency, agmatine deficiency, serotonin excess, endogenous nitric oxide (Sweeten, et al., 2004), and vitamin D deficiency."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"There is a clear seasonality in the diagnosis (occurrence) of breast cancer, with a maximum in the spring and a minimum in the fall (Cohen, et al., 1983). The increased discovery in the spring coincides with rising gonadotropins (which are associated with breast and prostate cancer), and the decreased discovery in the fall coincides with higher vitamin D and lower stress hormones."

- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the 1940s, Barbara McClintock discovered that plants under stress can move their genes around to improve adaptation by producing more variation in the offspring. Rather than admit that McClintock had discovered an aspect of the creativity of life, they felt that the adaptive flexibility she had discovered was intolerably alien to their mechanistic understanding of life."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Ionizing radiation, particulate matter, and estrogen excess interfere with the system in different ways, but all produce reductive stress, inflammation, collagen synthesis, and loss of differentiated cellular functions."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the stress of darkness creates an inefficient catabolic state, in which cortisol breaks down tissues to provide glucose, and that sleep, to some extent, reduces the stress."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The diastolic, relaxed phase of the heart contraction cycle commonly fails under stress or old age—even in fruit flies. The heart stiffens, and fails to fill completely, so it pumps less with each stroke."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Intense or prolonged stress injures the intestine, damaging its barrier function, and allowing bacterial toxins, especially endotoxin, to be absorbed into the blood stream. Glucose is the critical factor in protection of the intestinal epithelium during stress"

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Men’s testosterone declines with stress and aging, and its conversion to estrogen is increased by stress and inflammation. Endotoxin specifically increases the conversion of testosterone to estrogen"

- 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

"Treatment with dihydrotestosterone (which can’t be converted to estrogen) might be more effective than with ordinary testosterone, considering the increased activity of aromatase with age, stress, and inflammation, and the probable role of estrogen in the excitatory degenerative process."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"While the effects of stress on the intestine have been recognized since Hans Selye described the general adaptation syndrome (with intestinal bleeding as an early sign of stress), that hasnt been taken into account in any of the large brain trauma or stroke studies."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The inflammatory, degenerative processes in the brain take a few hours to develop, and during these few hours the stress signals from the brain are causing changes in the intestine that lead to a systemic inflammatory state"

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Giving progesterone orally would seem to be appropriate for any serious stress, since the intestine quickly becomes an amplifier of the inflammatory reactions."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Serotonin is often called a neurotransmitter, and considered to act on receptors to transmit information, which may be processed the way computers process digital information. I think it’s more useful to think of it in terms of fields and formative processes that shape the way the organism uses energy to adapt to stresses and possibilities. It is involved in the energetic and structural changes that occur during stress and adaptation."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Increased free tryptophan in the blood is the main factor determining the production of serotonin in the brain, and free fatty acids, produced by stress, cause bound tryptophan to be released from albumin in the blood."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Serotonin activates the stress hormones, and the cortisol produced as a result can have the protective effect of inhibiting the enzyme that makes serotonin, as well as activating the MAO that removes it (Clark and Russo, 1997; Ou, et al., 2006; Popova, et al., 1989). Estrogen increases serotonin synthesis, decreases its binding, and inhibits its degradation"

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The enzyme that degrades superoxide, superoxide dismutase (SOD), is sold as a health food supplement, following the cultural script that aging is caused by oxidative stress, and that antioxidants are protective. That view is being increasingly questioned, with the recognition of a reductive cellular state as a common factor in shock, stress, and degeneration."

- 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

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

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

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

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When the demands on a healthy organism are very intense or prolonged, stress hormones will block the thyroid action, causing this reductive shift to occur, activating the basic survival processes of cell renewal or reproduction."

- July 2017 - 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

"MRI can also directly measure the redox balance, NAD/NADH, of the brain, and it has been found that schizophrenics and manic depressives have lower ratios, that is, their cells are less well oxidized. Before any mental impairment develops, people who later develop Alzheimer’s disease, experience reductive stress"

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Stress modifies our breathing, causing a vicious cycle, in which the lactate and ammonia produced when stimulation exceeds our oxidative capacity stimulate more intense breathing, causing more carbon dioxide to be lost, reducing oxidative efficiency and increasing the formation of ammonia and lactate."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When a cell is stressed, stimulated beyond its ability to respond with increased respiration to produce the energy needed to return to its resting state, the stress itself is a relatively reducing state,"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The most important source of hydroxyl radicals during stress is the ferrous ion, a reduced form of iron, for example the iron released when heme oxygenous degrades heme and produces carbon monoxide."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In severe prolonged stress, the body’s stresslimiting parasympathetic nervous system can become counter-productive, promoting excitotoxicity, inflammation, and tumor growth."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In general, the changes that compensate for stress damage protect the organism, in the sense of ensuring survival, by desensitizing the organism to stimuli that could otherwise lead to increased energy expenditure."

- January 2021 - 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

"Some of the best known ideas of biology—including genes, membranes and receptors—have blocked, and continue to block, understanding of aging, cancer, stress, shock, epilepsy, regeneration, perception, and thinking."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Coacervates, formed by mixtures of polymers, spontaneously form structures; electron micrographs have shown that the separate phases contain fine-textured, fibrous internal structures. Stress granules, that form in the cytoplasm under stress, are now known to be coacervates, formed by the interaction of RNA and protein."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The biological changes associated with the shift of fuels from glucose to fatty acids and amino acids in stress, aging, and dementia, have been called the deprivation syndrome"

- 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

"Since the metabolic rate must be in balance with the availability of fuel, the thyroid hormone, which directly activates the respiratory enzymes, is especially important. Just as it wouldnt be possible for an animal to hibernate in a hyperthyroid state, a basic mechanism for dealing with stress in non-hibernators is to lower the production of thyroid hormone. Nitric oxide blocks the formation of thyroid hormone in response to thyroid stimulating hormone"

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Ordinarily, parasympathetic nerves produce relaxation, but in a situation of prolonged or inescapable stress, intensified parasympathetic action and accumulation of nitric oxide, the state of reductive stress, pseudohypoxia,"

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"A contemporary researcher, F. Z. Meerson, is putting together a picture of the biological processes involved in adapting to stress, including energy production, nutrition, hormones, and changes in cell structure."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"the basic signal which causes cortisone to be formed is a drop in the blood glucose level. The increased energy requirement of any stress tends to cause the blood sugar to fall slightly, but hypothyroidism itself tends to depress blood sugar."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"According to Meerson, heart attacks are provoked and aggravated by the cortisone produced during stress. (Meerson and his colleagues have demonstrated that the progress of a heart attack can be halted by a treatment including natural substances such as vitamin E and magnesium.)"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"While hypothyroidism makes the body require more cortisone to sustain blood sugar and energy production, it also limits the ability to produce cortisone, so in some cases stress produces symptoms resulting from a deficiency of cortisone, including various forms of arthritis and more generalized types of chronic inflammation."

- 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

"The stress which can cause a cortisone deficiency is even more likely to disturb formation of progesterone and thyroid hormone, so the fact that cortisone can relieve symptoms does not mean that it has corrected the problem."

- 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

"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

"Premature reproduction can be produced by stress, or to look at it from another angle, the conditions which prolong the growth state can be thought of as stress free conditions."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Rather than a programmed or random continuous loss of cells, when atrophy of the brain occurs, it seems to be caused by specific conditions, such as stress with prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones."

- 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

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

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Pregnenolone doesnt have the direct hormonal effects, but its the precursor, and by stopping exaggerated stress reactions it is likely to help"

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Pregnenolone isnt a hormone, but it normalizes the steroid hormones, preventing excess cortisol and helping to normalize aldosterone, so it should be helpful for any stress including surgery. P"

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Estrogen and PUFA create insulin resistance, and the resulting state of diabetes and stress de-energizes tissues,"

- 2001 - February

"Increased cortisol is a normal response to the cell-damaging effects of stress or inflammation, but cortisol itself causes the death of nerve cells and immune cells through excitotoxicity, by blocking glucose metabolism. Estrogen increases cortisol production in a variety of ways, acting both through the pituitary and directly on the adrenal glands."

- 2001 - February

"Increased adrenaline, like increased cortisol, is a feature of depression, stress, and inflammation; mobilizing fats, it can become part of a vicious circle, in which free fatty acids cause insulin resistance, activating the stress reactions."

- 2001 - February

"Because excitation or stress is a simple thing--it is any disturbance of the living state’s quiescence--radiation damage, asphyxia, nutritional deficiencies, various poisons, carcinogens, and irritants can imitate the actions of estrogen. Or, looking at estrogen’s meaning in evolution, we could say that estrogen imitates the natural menaces that Iife confronts, so that the processes of regeneration can be managed and integrated into the life plans of the organisms. This means that antiestrogenic strategies are appropriate under a great variety of conditions. Whatever the challenge, a successful response will restore the organism to a new, high energy state of readiness."

- 2000 - March

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

- 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

"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)

"Hypothyroidism suppresses respiration as a source of energy so little carbon dioxide is produced, and lactic acid is formed even when there is no noticeable stress. This in itself resembles hyperventilation, since loss of carbon dioxide is the defining feature of hyperventilation, but the presence of abnormally high adrenergic activity, and of free fatty acids, stimulates further hyperventilation, exacerbating the loss of carbon dioxide. Decreasing the carbon dioxide impairs respiration even more, leading to increased lactic acid production, and that stimulates more adrenergic activity, and so on, in a vicious circle."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If estrogen can cause edema in any tissue, then antiestrogens, such as progesterone, can probably protect against stress in any tissue."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Iron and calcium both tend to accumulate with aging or stress, and both promote excitatory damage; bicarbonate contributes to keeping iron in its inactive state, and probably has a similar effect against a broad spectrum of excitatory substances."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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 swelling of muscles during hypoxic stress probably represents the basic process, in which lactic acid and pH increase, while CO2is lost."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 3

"What we call inflammation offers a good conceptual link between the studies on excitotoxicity or cellular stress, and the newer approaches to the treatment of aging and degenerative diseases, based on ideas of regeneration and development. Controlling inflammation becomes part -of promoting regeneration."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

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

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Comparing very low altitude (Jordan valley, over 1000 feet below sea level) with moderate altitude (620 metérs above sea level), ACTH was increased tn runners after a race only at the low altitude, indicating that the stress reaction was prevented by a moderate increase of altitude."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"stress alters the physical nature of the cellular substance in a way that activates the cell, in which case it will either die from exhaustion, or grow into new cells. The replacement of injured cells means that mutations need not accumulate, and this renewal with elimination of mutant cells has been observed in sun-damaged skin. Among the many layers of form-generating and form-sustaining systems, the balance of electrical fields has a basic place."

- 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

"Sodium and carbon dioxide are essential for maintaining the normal fields, and these substances interact in ways that cause both of them to be lost during stress. In hypothyroidism, © sodium is persistently lost, as carbon dioxide is chronically replaced by lactic acid, Both sodium (Veech, et al.; Garrahan and Glynn) and carbon dtoxide--by stimulating the Krebs cycle, and keeping the respiratory enzymes active--help to maintain the normal level of ATP, protecting against stress and shock."

- 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

"It was also recognized decades ago that estrogen rises in men during old age (Pirke and Doerr, 1975), as it rises in stress, disease, malnutrition, and hypothyroidism (which are also associated with old age)."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The synthesis of heme/porphyrin, and the production of red blood cells, are stimulated by a lack | of oxygen, or by toxins such as arsenic and iron, which cause oxidative stress. Emphysema, high elevation, sluggish circulation,. and nocturnal breathing problems can cause enough oxygen deficiency to stimulate the formation of new red blood cells."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It is now established that aging animals, at the time they become infertile, are deficient in progesterone, but still produce estrogen. Even in young individuals, when stress occurs around the time of ovulation, interference with progesterone production will prevent implantation. If progesterone becomes deficient after the embryo has become implanted, miscarriage occurs."

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

"Stress, especially when augmented by estrogen, leads to injury, exhaustion, and aging. The uterus and ovaries participate in the response to stress, but (as Zeilmaker and Wise have shown) the brain proves to be more directly involved in menopause than the ovaries or uterus. Coordination turns out to be crucial for complex processes such as ovulation, fertilization, and implantation. The destruction of the nerve cells that regulate the pituitary makes coordination impossible."

- 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

"At menopause, estrogen excess can promote the production of androgens, in the absence of progesterone, which tends ta defeminize the woman. This is often a result of stress, and sometimes is a consequence of hypothyroidism. In situations of this sort, estrogen is seen not to be a feminizing hormone; it is unable to neutralize the male hormones the body produces in response to the estrogen excess."

- 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

"Meerson, the investigator of stress physiology, speaks of adaptive culture as the first level of protection against harmful conditions."

- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Reperfusion injury, any stress causing oxygen deplation and an excessively reduced (electron-rich) cellutar state, the importance of lipid peroxidation and iron in aging, and the role of iron in damaging steroid synthesis in steroidogenic tissues, have been important lines of study lately."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"various studies* show that cellular oxidative stress promotes iron retention, which would be logical, since iron is essential for respiration, and calls struggling to respire would tend to use evolved mechanisms for retaining the iron needed to form new respiratory enzymes."

- 1994 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The heart gives us some clues to our general resistance to stress, aging, disease, and death. The heart and the brain are the most stress-resistant organs, and while moderate stress and malnutrition can cause the skin and thymus gland to lose more than 90% of their substance, only the most prolonged and intense stress can cause the heart and brain to lose more than a fourth of their substance."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In fact, a moderate stress that causes the thymus to shrink by more than 90% can cause the heart to increase its mass by 80%."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When we are able to respond adequately and adaptively to stress, there is a transfer of substance from the lower-functioning organs (usually the skin and thymus) to the organs that are bearing the greatest burden, usually the heart and the brain."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The glucocorticoid hormones of stress play the important catabolic role of mobilizing substances from the idle organs to support the working organs."

- 1992 - June - 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

"Stress - a need for adaptation - can be seen as an information gap between the need and the possibility of meeting the need. Appropriate modification of the organism’s structure closes that information gap. The new structural trace, or memory, can develop as either a phenotypic or genotypic change. Mutations are important for bacteria) adaptation, and learning is important for mammalian adaptation."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When perception and onentation govern the stress reaction, the ability to suppress certain parts of the reaction permits fine coordination and high efficiency."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A single experience, an insight, has tremendous power to shape the way in which a rat deals with stress. Insights and ideas can be gained through practice, but they can also be passed on culturally. We can learn how to prepare ourselves to respond optimally to stress, while also trying to keep the environment from becoming too stressful."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Blue-collar workers have more heart attacks than do sedentary workers, and the biosocial stress of low status can be seen as a powerful factor in mortality from heart attacks. The helpless feeling of low status is analogous to capitulation stress."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When stress is strong enough and long enough to overcome the multiple protective systems of the heart, the heart fails in certain well-defined ways, both functionally and structurally. But before injury occurs, the stress-limiting self restraint systems of the heart, of the endocrine system, and of the brain, will have to fail."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In stress, even the respiratory center of the brain becomes under-active, tolerating the state of hypoxia. Since progesterone activates the respiratory center, the depressed respiration of stress is consistent with a deficiency of progesterone."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

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

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Excessive adrenalin and calcium also promote clotting, and ~ as the beta adrenergic receptors become desensitized - spasms in the coronary arteries. Altered blood vessel tone, which can be produced by serious stress, can cause venous pooling of blood, which synergizes with the impaired relaxation of the heart to cause cardiogenic shock."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Uridine, a co-factor in glycogen synthesis, can also prevent stress by improving glycogen storage."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Selye’s demonstration of corn oil’s toxicity to the heart is an important link | in the general picture of stress injury and adrenalin toxicity. The protective effects of saturated fats are not surprising when seen against the background of the toxic effects of adrenalin, causing the mobilization of fatty acids and the resulting lipid peroxdation."

- 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

"The resistance of the heart and liver can be compared in several ways. For example, DNA replication is more easily suppressed by stress in the liver, than in the heart, but DNA repair is not affected in the same way by stress. Hyperfunction of the heart stabilizes DNA against injury, so DNA repair is greater in the liver than in the heart, and is least in the brain."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Meerson’s laboratory has studied the anti-stress and anti-adrenalin effects of GABA and its metabolite, gamma-hydroxy butyrate, especially in the form of the lithium salt. (Lithium seems to have its own antj-stress effect, probably partly as a sodium agonist, and partly through its ability to complex with the ammonium which is produced in the brain in fatigue, which is exactly when the GABA system becomes active.) GHB is protective against stress damage to many tissues. It prevents stress-induced enzyme leakage from tissues, ulceration of the gastric mucosa, lipid peroxidation, epileptic seizure, damaged contractile function of the heart, and cardiac arrhythmias produced by stress or ischemia."

- 1992 - June - 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

"Antibodies against specific tissues are probably part of a normal process to take care of damaged cells. For example, simply twisting a piece of cartilage makes it antigenic. After talking to many people who had anti-thyroid antibodies which disappeared soon after their thyroids became normal from physiological therapies, |decided that autoimmune~ antibodies were useful to indicate which organ was under stress, but shouldnt be taken as a sign of an immunological disease."

- 1992 - December - 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

"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

"It is important to think concretely about the processes in recompensation or restoration of balance. Some of the processes we should consider in relation to addiction are: tissue energy charge, metabolic detoxication and elimination, permeability and barrier functions, excitation-inhibition, and poorly compensated stress reactions."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aging, stress, and heavy consumption of alcohol increase the permeability of the intestine, causing increased absorption of microbial toxins. Laxatives, carrot fiber (not carrot juice), activated charcoal, and a small amount of sodium thiosulfate decrease the formation and absorption of toxins, increasing the organism’s adaptive capacity. Belladonna can improve the bowel’s function if there ave spasms during drug withdrawal."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Around 1940, Hans Selye found that estrogen’s systemic effect mimics the shock phase of the stress reaction. In shock, deficient circulation of blood and thus deficient oxygenation of tissue are the main problem, and Selye considered the adrenal steroids to be crucial in resolving the problem, and creating adaptation to the stress."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Highly energized cells can resist the osmotic stress of too much water in their environment, and tired cells cant. Removing the stress, by making the surrounding fluid isotonic or slightly hypertonic, can protect the cells’ energy level, and give them a rest."

- 1991 - July - 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

"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

"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)

"Forty-five years ago the Shutes found that estrogen promotes the clotting of blood. At the same time, Knisely was studying the phenomenon of blood sludging, which occurs under many types of stress. At that time it was recognized that there is an equilibrium between clot formation and clot removal (fibrinolysis)."

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although I had investigated the association of estrogen with cancer, and knew from my own experience with migraines that stress, diet and hormones interacted in powerful ways, when I began to investigate the oxidative metabolism of the uterus I didn’t realize that it would involve a convergence of several of my main interests."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Hans Selye pointed out that estrogen treatment mimics the first, shock phase of the stress reaction. An excess of estrogen (or any stressor) causes the pituitary to secrete prolactin and ACTH, and both of these hormones act on the ovaries to stop progesterone production,"

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the winter and at night the respiratory energy producing system is damaged, and the protective hormones decline, and the harmful stress hormones increase. The immune system becomes less active,"

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The existence of a few systems of positive feedback (self stimulation), however, indicates that in our fundamental structure we are biased in an expansive, upward direction. Progesterone (and its precursors, pregnenolone and cholesterol) and thyroid hormones participate in some of the important positive feedback systems, involving energy production, stress resistance, and brain growth."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In a small percentage of hypothyroid people, treatment for a short time with thyroid supplementation can stimulate recovery of normal thyroid function, by activating the brain-pituitary system, raising blood sugar which activates the liver enzyme system that producesT3,and by lowering the anti-thyroid stress  hormones."

- 1990 - August.September - 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

"Magnesium is not retained well during stress or in hypothyroidism, so  supplement of several hundred milligrams daily is desirable;"

- 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

"Stress also leads to the production of intracellular toxins, including ammonia and carbon monoxide, which tend to perpetuate the blocked state."

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