Ray Peat on sugar

"Aerobic glycolysis, the metabolism characteristic of cancer, in which lactic acid is produced from glucose despite the presence of oxygen, is promoted by serotonin"

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"-progesterone, glucose, or glycine which was converted into glucose (Zamenhof and Ahmad, 1979)—increased brain growth, by increasing either the supply of energy or the ability to use energy effectively"

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the liver provides about 70% of our active thyroid hormone, by converting thyroxine to T3, but it can provide this active hormone only when it has adequate glucose. Frequent snacks--for example, sipping a few ounces of orange juice about every hourkeeps the T3 level up by providing glucose to the liver."

- Nutrition For Women

"The accumulation of aspects of the environment in our tissue, modifying our tissues functioning and its affinity for various substances, is a short-time analog for the general upward drift of evolution, and it has presently known and distinct links with inheritance: hormonal influences pass both ways across the placenta, and maternal efficiency determines the supply of nutrients — e.g., sugar — to the fetus. Lingering modifications, transgenerational influences of the environment, are visible in a great variety of organisms and organs, but it is in the brain — the environmental organ — that these Lamarckian effects are so visible and so crucial."

- Nutrition For Women

"Energetically, the estrogen-dominated metabolic state is less efficient than the oxidative state which is dominated by thyroid and progesterone (or testosterone). The estrogen state, like the rats state of learned helplessness, is parasympathetic, in the sense that many chemical balances have moved away from the mobilized sympathetic or adrenergic state. The estrogen state, for example, depresses blood sugar, while the mobilized state spares glucose by oxidizing fat."

- Nutrition For Women

"Its well known that taking estrogen can cause the blood to clot too easily. Other effects include anemia, low blood sugar, and slow functioning of the liver."

- Nutrition For Women

"Although progesterone and cortisone both raise blood sugar and stabilize lysosomes, their effect on the brain is very different: in large doses, progesterone is sedative and anesthetic, while cortisone is stimulating, and cortisone causes changes in the brain which resemble aging."

- Nutrition For Women

"Pfeiffer has investigated the relationship of porphyria to certain forms of schizophrenia, but I dont think he has mentioned that a good dose of glucose, or of an anti-estrogen hormone, such as testosterone or progesterone, will make the symptoms go away,"

- Nutrition For Women

"Sugar can be used to produce energy with or without oxygen, but oxidative metabolism is about 15 times more efficient than the non-oxidative glycolytic or fermentive metabolism; higher organisms depend on this high efficiency oxidation for maintaining integration and normal functioning:"

- Nutrition For Women

"A response to stimulation is the production of more energy, with a proportional increase of oxygen and sugar consumption by the stimulated tissue; this produces more carbon dioxide, which enlarges the blood vessels in the area, providing more sugar and oxygen. If the irritation becomes destructive, efficiency is lost: oxygen is either consumed wastefully, causing blueness of the tissue (assuming circulation continues; blueness can aiso indicate bad circulation), or is not consumed, causing redness of the tissue. As more sugar is consumed in compensation, lactic acid also enlarges the blood vessels."

- Nutrition For Women

"But a large inflammation, or profound exhaustion, will lower the blood sugar systemically, and will deliver large amounts of lactic acid to the liver. The liver synthesizes glucose from the lactic acid, but at the expense of about 6 times more energy than is obtained from the inefficient metabolism — so that organismically, that tissue becomes 90 times less efficient than its original state. Besides this, an idle destruction of energy molecules (ATP or creatine phosphate) will increase the wastefulness even more."

- 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

"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

"Sugar wastage, leading to lactic acid production, can result from a vitamin B2 deficiency, and lactic acid appears to stimulate vascularization"

- 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

"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

"Fructose doesnt stimulate the pancreas as glucose does. It is gradually converted into glucose. In people with high blood lipids, however, it is utilized by liver and fat tissues several times faster than it is in normal people: it is as if the cellular doors were already open in these people, maybe as a result of high insulin levels, and the cells accept fructose more rapidly than normal."

- Nutrition For Women

"Potassium is necessary for utilization of sugar, and should probably always be tried as a supplement in the diabetic diet"

- Nutrition For Women

"Some B vitamins (B1 and B2 and probably niacin) are said to have similar effects on the utilization of sugar. Some forms of diabetes involve normal or high levels of insulin, others, a lack of insulin; both have been found to respond to nutrition, but especially the high insulin form."

- 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

"Just as veins in the forehead shrink immediately if a large amount of sugar is taken for a migraine, I have seen veins (back of hand) disappear with progesterone treatment, just when a suicidal depression is lifting. This suggests that there may be a migraine condition in the blood vessels of the limbic system of the brain, but there are also very rapid shifts in brain chemistry."

- 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

"Strickler found that only 10% of his patients with menopausal symptoms such as flushing, could feel and benefit from estrogen when it was alternated with a placebo. These studies, and a few dozen others, have convinced me that the symptoms of menopause result mainly from a progesterone deficiency, relative to the estrogens. The 10% who really feel better from estrogen possibly have an estrogen deficiency, but this has not been determined, and several other things could account for the lift they feel for example, a healthy thyroid gland will respond to elevated estrogen with an increased output of thyroxin, which at least would make the person feel different, and might raise blood sugar, increase alertness, etc."

- Nutrition For Women

"Excess estrogen is known to cause hypertrophy of the adrenal cortex. Since estrogen stimulates insulin release and lowers blood sugar, the hypertrophy may be to compensate by raising blood sugar."

- 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

"Vitamin C is now known to lower blood cholesterol. Eggs are rich in cholesterol, but they also contain lecithin, which appears to make the cholesterol useful, or at least less harmful. Niacin and vitamin E also help to regulate cholesterol. High insulin levels, caused by eating sugar, seem to be important in allowing cholesterol to damage the blood vessels."

- Nutrition For Women

"Zinc and vitamin A may also act through the blood sugar. It is well known that an emotional upset, spending too much time in the sun, working too long without eating, etc., can bring on an attack of herpes (cold sores, for example): low blood sugar probably precipitates the eruption."

- Nutrition For Women

"Two or three tablespoonfuls of honey in a glass of milk will provide some magnesium, as well as sugar to increase the livers stored glycogen"

- Nutrition For Women

"Since blood sugar is normally higher in the daytime, because of lights effect on various glands, some people with defective livers find it easier to sleep in the daytime."

- Nutrition For Women

"Warburg1 demonstrated that all cancers have defec tive respiration, by which he meant that glucose is consumed too rapidly. The excessive consumption of glucose in the presence of oxygen is called aerobic glycolysis, and is typical of cancer"

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Since insulin persists after disposing of excess sugar, it tends to keep blood sugar low and to intensify craving for carbohydrates. Pantothenic acid helps to destroy insulin; this is one way it helps to maintain adequate blood sugar levels."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin E, vitamin A, and magnesium are other nutrients that help to maintain blood sugar. Vitamin B12 is needed to use vitamin A. Folic acid, vitamin B6, and zinc are depleted by elevated estrogen and are especially important for healthy pregnancy. Too much copper can lower blood sugar; too much iron can destroy vitamin E, and vitamin E deficiency can lead to jaundice, which can affect the babys brain."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"About 1973, some Americans began discovering that human milk is good for human babies, and helps prevent diseases. It is not going to be so easy now to convince American women that the best nutrition for their babies comes from a formula, of cows milk, sugar, and vegetable oil."

- Nutrition For Women

"Low blood sugar usually causes an intense craving for something sweet. It is known that a vitamin A deficiency causes increased hunger — I suspect this acts through the mechanism of blood sugar."

- Nutrition For Women

"Since both caffeine and adrenalin raise the metabolic rate, fat is presumably being consumed more rapidly. Adrenalin is known to raise blood sugar, apparently by inhibiting the utilization of glucose and increasing the utilization of fat. Coffee normally raises blood sugar, by its adrenalin-like effect."

- Nutrition For Women

"Many reducing clinics are using injections of the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, for the purpose of making reducing diets easier and possibly improving fat distribution. This hormone shifts energy metabolism toward the use of fat rather than sugar, and so allows the blood sugar level to rise. This suppresses appetite. The hormone is produced by the placenta to make sugar available for the growing fetus."

- Nutrition For Women

"Amphetamines mimic the action of the alarm part of the nervous system (sympathetic) and so raise the level of blood sugar; this is probably the mechanism (or part of it) which suppresses appetite. Low blood sugar is associated with hyperactivity, and this is probably why the same drug is effective for the hundreds of thousands of crazy kids who get it so they will sit still in school; coffee works as well in hyperactivity, and might also help dieters."

- 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

"Lactic acid production (getting out of breath) is the main signal of the need to produce new glucose. Therefore, aerobic exercise is the most stressful."

- 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

"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

"Experiments over the last 60 years have shown that more or less glucose, carbon dioxide, warmth, and progesterone during embryonic and fetal development can affect the growth of the brain, and the brain’s way of guiding future development and adaptive ability."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the cholinergic parasympathetic system tending to reduce glucose oxidation. Exaggerated activation of this system produces shock, with extreme inhibition of respiratory metabolism, but in normal circumstances, this system’s activity increases during the night and decreases during the day."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"he field, the organism’s integrity, is sustained by organized respiratory metabolism, and it can be interrupted by mechanical trauma, excessive stimulation, poisons, etc., or by the absence of oxygen, of glucose, or of substances that specifically neutralize the inflammatory signals."

- 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

"Some of the factors that cause atrophy of the thymus gland include cortisol and other glucocorticoid hormones, estrogen, prostaglandins, polyunsaturated fatty acids, lipid peroxidation, nitric oxide, endotoxin, hypoglycemia, and ionizing radiation. Progesterone and thyroid hormone support restoration of the thymus gland, providing protection by opposing all of those agents of atrophy. An increase of sugar in the diet can correct some of the metabolic changes of aging"

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"At low altitude, when a tissue’s oxygen consumption increases beyond the blood’s ability to deliver oxygen, as in an intensely working muscle, the tissue activates the glycolytic process, converting glucose to lactic acid as a source of additional energy."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The healthy mother’s physiology, interacting with her environment, is constantly adjusting the intrauterine conditions, regulating temperature, providing oxygen and sugar, regulating carbon dioxide level and essential nutrients while excluding major toxins."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The premature baby, suddenly leaving its low oxygen, high CO2, sugar rich environment, and experiencing the extreme new environment of a hospital incubator, is an extreme example of the way that our normal adaptive reactions can become destructive when misdirected by an unfavorable environment."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In childhood and maturity, vigorous oxidative metabolism can maintain some of the essential protective factors of gestation, including adequate levels of glucose and carbon dioxide, good temperature regulation, and avoiding overproduction of superoxide and lactate. In these conditions, the cytokines can contribute to adaptation and continuing development."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It’s the oxidation of glucose (producing carbon dioxide), which is favored by warmth and the right amount of insulin, that can prevent inflammation"

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Simply keeping the body temperature up can provide those benefits of exercise (Hoekstra, et al., 2020), as long as the level of glucose is maintained."

- March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Interference with energy production is fundamental to inflammation. When cellular stimulation increases faster than oxygen can be delivered, there is a shift to glycolytic energy production, with the conversion of glucose and amino acids to lactic acid."

- 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 intensity of lipolysis during the night is decreased during the most restorative deep sleep, but the free fatty acids themselves, by blocking oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide, tend to increase lactate and to depress glucose metabolism, creating an inflammatory and excitatory state that interferes with deep sleep."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Salty snacks are especially helpful for bringing on sleep, probably by stabilizing blood glucose and lowering adrenalin. Ice cream, combining sugar, calcium, and some fat that prolongs the absorption of the sugar, is often effective for improving the quality of sleep."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid hormone, by promoting the oxidation of glucose, and increasing ATP, is extremely important for the ability to achieve and maintain the needed deep sleep."

- 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

"Nitric oxide, even in the presence of oxygen, causes a metabolic shift to glycolysis, wastefully producing lactate from glucose"

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Acetazolamide, agmatine, amantadine, aminoguanidine, antibiotics (minocycline, tetracycline, etc.), antihistamines, aspirin, bromocriptine, DCA, emodin, glucagon, glucose, memantine, methylene blue, niacinamide, T3 (triiodothyroinne), vitamin D, vitamin E."

- March 2016 - 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

"Since CO2 relaxes smooth muscle, cells that are working and consuming oxygen and glucose (producing CO2 in proportion to their activity) cause nearby blood vessels to relax and expand, delivering more oxygen and glucose in proportion to the increased need."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Diabetes and hypothyroidism are very closely related, since the use of glucose is required for the activation of the thyroid hormone, which is required for the efficient use of glucose."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since carbon dioxide has stabilizing effects in the brain, including the relaxation of blood vessels, the loss of carbon dioxide causes vasoconstriction, deficient delivery of oxygen and glucose to the brain, leading to a decreased metabolic rate."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Energy deprivation, caused by insufficient glucose or oxygen, causes immediate swelling of cells, and is associated with excitation; the ammonia associated with energy deprivation and excess excitation contributes to swelling"

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Glucose deprivation, by causing glutamine to be used as fuel, increases the formation of ammonia, and ammonia (through an excitatory effect on cells and direct activation of enzymes) promotes the glycolytic use of glucose, producing lactic acid even in the presence of oxygen and perpetuating the scarcity of glucose."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When cells are dangerously overstimulated, oxygen and glucose are depleted. In the absence of oxygen, or when the ability to use oxygen is blocked, glucose is converted to lactate, and when glucose is depleted, glutamine is converted to lactate."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"With a limited supply of oxygen but an unlimited supply of lactate, the cell’s metabolic reactions are shifted toward a reduced, electronrich, state. This state inhibits the oxidation of glucose by blocking the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase, supporting the formation of lactate. These are internal processes of stressed cells, that can be interrupted when the organism provides corrective factors to restore oxidation."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The cell-quieting effect of sugar oxidation probably involves the greater production of carbon dioxide with a shift of the electronic balance toward a more oxidized and coherent state."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Aging itself involves a metabolic shift in the direction of cancer metabolism, with a relative inability to reduce energy expenditure in the basal, fasting state, and with increased fat oxidation, decreased glucose oxidation"

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"‘When CO2 is increased, the redox balance of the cell is shifted in the direction of oxidation (Melnychuk, et al., 1977), the use of glucose for growth and fat synthesis is inhibited, and the Krebs cycle is activated (Melnychuk, et al., 1978)."

- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Loeb demonstrated that the specific biological stimulus of a sperm cell, interacting with a receptor in the egg, wasn’t needed to fertilize an egg; sea water, with added salt or sugar or urea, or acid or alkali, was enough"

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"One of my professors, Sidney Bernhard, simply counted molecules carefully, and found that the metabolism of glucose involved a direct passing of substrate molecules from one enzyme to the next—th"

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The active thyroid hormone was observed to almost instantly increase cells’ oxygen consumption, and estrogen as quickly increases cells’ uptake of sugar and water. These changes are far too quick to be the result of communication with the cell nucleus leading to the synthesis of new proteins."

- January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The reductive balance is an important cell organizing factor, for example governing the conversion of the relatively inactive estrone into the powerful estradiol. (This is where a vicious circle of excitation, fatigue, and degeneration often starts, that requires the intervention of stabilizing substances, such as carbon dioxide, thyroid hormone, sugar, and progesterone.)"

- 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

"Besides directly stabilizing the internal structures of the cell, progesterone increases the ATP concentration and oxygen consumption, decreases excitatory systems and numerous inflammation-related processes, decreases intracellular calcium concentration, and increases the use of glucose, leading to increased carbon dioxide production, as well as adjusting breathing and pH."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The brain consumes about 60% of the body’s glucose when a person is physically inactive, and because of its dependence on glucose, it’s easily damaged by even short periods of hypoglycemia."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"During adaptation, the functional load is shifted to the system that is meeting the new challenge, and a variety of stimuli, from nerves and hormones, activate the cells of that responsive system, and resources, such as amino acids, can be moved from less active systems to support the new level of functioning. The organism has to focus its stimulating factors accurately, and the resources, including glucose stored in the tissues as glycogen, have to be adequate. If stimulation is too intense or too widespread, and if too much fat is mobilized relative to glucose, self-defeating processes can occur."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A two day fast causes both diabetics’ and normal people’s glucose tolerance to deteriorate, and when diabetic men were put on a 75% carbohydrate diet their glucose tolerance was better than on a 44% carbohydrate diet (Anderson, 1977). The high carbohydrate diet improved the men’s insulin sensitivity, and fasting, similar to a high fat diet, impairs insulin sensitivity."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When fats are oxidized instead of glucose, more oxygen is needed to produce the same amount of energy, and less carbon dioxide is produced."

- 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

"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

"Other substances that protect against the effects of hypoglycemia or impaired glucose oxidation include progesterone, caffeine, certain anesthetics including xenon, niacinamide, agmatine, carbon dioxide,"

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"itric oxide blocks the ability to use sugar, but it slows metabolism, so it could serve to adjust the size of developing organs, to allow survival when fuel is less abundant."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"a diabetes-like state is created by nitric oxide damage, forcing the use of fatty acids instead of glucose for fuel."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The shift of metabolic fuel from glucose to fat causes the oxidation state of the organism to shift to the reduced side, away from the oxidized state which favors stable differentiated functioning."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When a particular cell or tissue becomes highly reduced, nitrate and nitrite can be converted to nitric oxide, leading to a vicious circle of blocked glucose oxidation and a more reductive condition."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When the oxidation of glucose is impaired, with fatty acids being oxidized for energy, there is usually a decrease in the overall metabolic rate, as well as a shift toward a more reductive biochemistry. A"

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"t an extreme, the reductive energy derived from aerobic glycolysis can be consumed by the synthesis of fat, permitting glycolysis to proceed, and this can lead to cancer cells that oxidize fatty acids for energy, while converting glucose to fats and lactic acid."

- January 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many hypothyroid people compensate with high adrenalin production (sometimes 40 times higher than normal), and this tends to keep the skin cool, especially on the hands, feet, and nose. The high adrenalin is the consequence of low blood glucose, so a feeding of carbohydrate, such as a glass of orange juice, will sometimes lower the pulse rate momentarily."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"The thyroid gland secretes about 3 parts of thyroxin to one part of triiodothyronine, and this allows the liver to regulate thyroid function, by converting more of the T4 to the active T3 when there is an abundance of energy. Glucose is essential for the conversion"

- 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

"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

"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

"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

"If the rest of your diet is good, the energy bursts from sugar should level off, and become a steady increased metabolic rate."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"When starch is well cooked, and eaten with some fat and the essential nutrients, its safe, except that its more likely than sugar to produce fat, and isnt as effective for mineral balance."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"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 teens and twenties, I needed about 8000 calories per day when I was physically active, about 4000 to 5000 when I was sedentary, but after I took thyroid, I needed only about half as many calories. Thyroid is the basic regulator of blood glucose, and it causes it to be fully oxidized for energy, so that it produces ATP efficiently, on relatively few calories."

- Email Response by Ray Peat

"Diabetes, or the inability to oxidize glucose vigorously, is simply a description of the metabolic aspect of cellular degeneration. The neurological impairment that is so commonly associated with officially diagnosed diabetes is simply one aspect of a general cellular malfunction that follows from chronic energy deprivation."

- 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

"Intense exercise damages cells in ways that cumulatively impair metabolism. There is clear evidence that glycolysis, producing lactic acid from glucose, has toxic effects, suppressing respiration and killing cells. Within_five minutes, exercise lowers the activity of enzymes that oxidize glucose. Diabetes, Alzheimers disease, and general aging involve increased lactic acid production and accumulated metabolic (mitochondrial) damage."

- 2000 - July

"Adaptation to hypoxia or increased carbon dioxide limits the formation of lactic acid. Muscles are 50% more efficient in the adapted state; glucose, which forms more carbon dioxide than fat does when oxidized,, is metabolized more efficiently than fats, requiring less oxygen."

- 2000 - July

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

- 2000 - July

"An increase of free fatty acids suppresses the oxidation of glucose. (This is called the Randle effect, glucose-fatty acid cycle, substrate-competition cycle, etc.) Women, with higher estrogen and growth hormone, usually have more free fatty acids than men, and during exercise oxidize a higher proportion of fatty acids than men do. This fatty acid exposure decreases glucose tolerance, and undoubtedly explains womens  higher incidence of diabetes."

- 2000 - July

"While most fatty acids inhibit the oxidation of glucose without immediately inhibiting glycolysis, palmitic acid is unusual, in its inhibition of glycolysis and lactate production without inhibiting oxidation. I assume that this largely has to do with its important function in cardiolipin and cytochrome oxidase."

- 2000 - July

"when the Pasteur effect fails, as in cancer, there is glycolysis which is relatively independent of respiration, causing sugar to be consumed inefficiently. Embryonic tissues sometimes behave in this manner, leading to the suggestion that giycolysis is closely related to growth."

- 2000 - July (1)

"Unlike the logical Pasteur effect, the Crabtree effect tends to lower cellular energy and adaptability. Looking at many situations in which increasing the glucose supply increases lactic ~acid production and suppresses respiration, leading to maladaptive decrease in cellular energy, I have begun thinking of lactic acid as a toxin."

- 2000 - July (1)

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

- 2000 - July (1)

"Therapeutically, even powerful toxins that block the glycolytic enzymes can improve functions in a varety of organic disturbances associated with (caused by) excessive production of lactic acid. Unfortunately, the toxin that has become standard treatment for lactic acidosis--dichloroacetic acid--is a carcinogen, and eventually produces liver damage and acidosis But several nontoxic therapies can do the same things: Palmitate (formed from sugar under the influence of thyroid hormone, and found in coconut oil), vitamin Bl, biotin, lipoic acid, carbon dioxide, thyroid, naloxone, acetazolamide, for example."

- 2000 - July (1)

"In hypothyroidism, the adrenergic nervous system tends to overactive, and adrenalin production is sustained at a high level even when there isn’t any external reason for it, since it is needed to maintain adequate blood sugar and energy, in the inefficient metabolic state of hypothyroidism."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"These excitatory receptors release calciuminto the cytoplasm, activating many cell processes, including the liberation of fatty acidsand the breakdown of proteins. When these receptors are activated, the cells’ energy requirement increases, and glucose is consumed more rapidly. Whenever these receptors are activated, magnesium will protect the cell from the toxic excitation. Effective antidotes to the excitotoxins have been based on their. blocking of these receptors."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I have written previously about several dramatically effective treatments for shock that were developed in the last fifty years--for example, intravenous ATP, concentrated solutions of sodium chloride or glucose, and the morphine/endorphinblocker, naloxone."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"I have recommended salty foods at bedtime to promote sleep, because of sodiums recognized anti-adrenalin effect. There are some complicated ways of thinking about its effect on adrenalin, as there are for explaining its thermogenic effect, but the simple fact that it is needed for absorbing glucose can explain its ability to lower adrenalin (since adrenalin rises when glucose is needed) and to increase heat production."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

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

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"The fact is that sodium energizes. It helps to remove calcium from the cell, to produce ATP, and to promote absorption of glucose and amino acids."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"Cellular excitation, exhaustion, and injury will affect the cells electrical fields in different ways depending on the availability of oxygen, glucose, salts, etc., but in each of those states, there is increased entry of calcium into the cytoplasm."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"Low blood sugar, most often caused by hypothyroidism, and diabetes--which involves poor absorption of sugar by cells--both tend to lower the respiratory quotient, the amount of carbon dioxide produced in relation to the amount of oxygen used."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The use of carbon dioxide inhalation in psychiatry has many metabolic justifications, one of which might be the importance of carbon dioxide in glucose regeneration. It is also essential for detoxifying ammonia."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In general, lactic acid in the blood can be taken as a sign of defective respiration, since the breakdown of glucose to lactic acid increases to make up for deficient oxidative energy production. Normal aging seems to involve a tendency toward excess lactic acid production, and age-pigment is known to activate the process."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It has been found that, during intense exercise (which always produces a lactic acid accumulation in the blood), a lower peak accumulation of lactate occurs at high altitude, and this seems to be caused by a reduction in the rate of glycolysis, or glucose consumption."

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Glucose depletion leads to adrenalin secretion, which causes fat mobilization, calcium-activated overstimulation of cells, with impairment of the energy production which is necessary for recovery (by way of muscle relaxation and calcium excretion, etc.)."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Low thyroid people compensate for the deficiency of energy and glucose (and of oxygen, for reasons similar to those mentioned above) by secreting an excess of adrenalin. Their 24-hour urine metabolites of adrenalin sometimes are 30 or 40 times normal."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Adequate glucose and oxygen are the most important anti-stress substances"

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The main inhibitory transmitter substance in the brain is GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), which is closely related to aspartic and succinic acids. GABA has many anti-stress effects, besides the direct brain quieting action. For example, it causes a sequestration of insulin, keeping some sugar from being turned into fat, and it promotes progesterone formation, which protects many systems from damaging hyperactivity."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"I experimented with various herbs known to have antihistamine and anticholinergic action, with the thought that they would help to sustain blood sugar through the night. (For example, insulin secretion is stimulated by acetylcholine from cholinergic nerves, and lowering its action during the night would decrease the need for adrenalin and cortisol.) My best results so far have been with a combination of the mildly sedative Jimson weed and the stimulant Ephedra;in combination, it seems that their antihistamine and glucose sustaining effects predominate, allowing comfortable sleep without the dry-mouth effect of their anticholinergic action."

- 1991 - January - 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

"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

"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

"Adequate energy, for example as available glucose, is protective against cortisol-induced catabolism. White blood cells can protect themselves by metabalizing cortisol in the presence of sufficient glucose}"

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

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

- 1986 - February