Ray Peat on the brain

"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

"Because it hasn’t been possible to provide evidence to support the idea that serotonin is a mood elevator happy hormone, the industry has looked for some way to explain the therapeutic benefit that they claim. They have generally settled on the idea that the SSRIs, after several weeks of use, increase the synthesis of the progesterone metabolite allopregnanolone, in the brain. That does happen, but the synthesis of those defensive steroids is also increased by any injury to the brain"

- September 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The healthy young brain contains a very large amount of cholesterol, almost all in the pure, non-esterified or free form—more than 99.5%, according to Orth and Bellosta (2012, citing Bjorkhem and Meaney, 2004). The aging, degenerating brain contains an increasing amount of esterified cholesterol,"

- September 2018 - 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

"nervous systems, like living systems in general, process substance meaningfully, not just information. Every nervous system, every bit of living stuff, exists as part of a bigger life supporting system, or ecosystem, and the larger system is shaped by the way its components process substance."

- 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

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Quantitatively, progesterone is the main female hormone, and progesterone improves brain structure and function."

- Nutrition For Women

"When our environment shrinks, when there isnt enough food, we can adapt, for example by replacing muscle with fat and by having small-brained babies (the brain is an expensive organ, energetically, though its efficiency increases with its expense). When our environment meets our needs our brains and muscles expand. The lower leg (like the brain) is a good indicator of environmental support: parents who grew up in a population which has atrophied-looking lower legs can have children with beautifully developed legs, when milk becomes abundantly available."

- Nutrition For Women

"The brain (and especially its frontal tissue) is like a window onto both present and past environments. It saves as much as it can of past environments, but particularly, it saves those aspects of the environment which seem favorable, which hint at abundance and possibility"

- Nutrition For Women

"if a shrinking environment doesnt interfere, the passage of time leads to a brain state which is both more energetic and more efficient."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"Behavior affects the hormones, and hormones influence behavior. Life in a rat-box society makes brains grow smaller, and makes people do the things that maintain the oppressive conditions. Nutritional and hormonal social intervention can change this."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"In a vitamin E deficiency, certain tissues lose enough ATP that they cant function normally. Muscles cramp, and eventually can harden and become dystrophic. Magnesium also helps to maintain ATP levels, and for example can be used to stop menstrual cramps. In an extreme case of vitamin E deficiency, reflexes become abnormal; in some animals, softening of the brain is the first symptom of a vitamin E deficiency."

- Nutrition For Women

"The highest part of the brain, in evolution, is the expec tancy/planning system in the frontal lobes. Delayed and appropriate response is impossible if these lobes dont function well. In a healthy animal, arousal means expectation: the longer arousal can be sustained without distraction, the higher the energy charge will be, and the more intense and satisfying the completion will be."

- Nutrition For Women

"The idea of physiological compensation is sometimes overlooked in interpreting endocrine interactions, with confusing results. The brain-pituitary system (not just the hypothalamus, since the whole brain and sensory system participates as reflex setter) is probably the main regulatory or compensating system. If estrogen is injected into an animal, the level of thyroid stimulating hormone rises (Brown-Grant, J. Endocr. 35, 263, 1966). This should be taken as a hint that the peripheral effect of estrogen can be compensated for by thyroxin. If thyroid functioning is borderline, it would also suggest that elevated estrogen might be uncompensated peripherally. There are many known examples of metabolic or functional opposition of estrogen and thyroid."

- Nutrition For Women

"It is well known that hypoxia damages the fetal brain, but probably less well known that hypoglycemia, either chronic or acute, can cause brain damage and retardation."

- Nutrition For Women

"The most urgent need for progesterone therapy, I think, is in preventing a continuing epidemic of brain damage. Beyond that, many studies have found that the use of natural progesterone increases the childs IQ, typically by around 35 points (though there are claims of consistent 200 IQs), and produces personalities that are more independent, individualistic, selfassured, self-sufficient, and sensitive"

- Nutrition For Women

"Hypoglycemia (which can result from any respiratory defect) can produce malfunction of any tissue, but brain dysfunction and immune dysfunction are very common effects."

- 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

"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

"Biotin is involved in the synthesis of fats in the nervous system, and so should probably be given special attention in the MS diet."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"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

"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

"bout 1940, laboratory animals being fed a commercially manufactured diet started showing signs of vitamin E deficiency, dying of softening of the brain. The manufacturers knew they had added vitamin E to the mixture, but when they tested it they found that it contained none at all. It turned out that the iron salts which were added to the food destroyed the vitamin E."

- Nutrition For Women

"Brain damaged animals are known to become aggressive; could poisoning be a cause of human aggressiveness?"

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"many forms of very weak radiation5 can lower the efficiency of metabolism, increasing its energy requirement, and brain tissue is the most sensitive tissue to at least some kinds of radiation"

- Nutrition For Women

"Coffee improves circulation to the brain; Benjamin Franklin and Goethe are said to have used 30 to 65 cups daily. This amount would be close to the maximum safe daily dosage of caffeine, 6 grams"

- Nutrition For Women

"Very small doses of caffeine have a paradoxical sedative effect, but this is a familiar effect of anything which raises the brains energy level."

- Nutrition For Women

"Caffeine (which doesnt necessarily have the same physiological effect as coffee) stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and raises the cellular level of cyclic AMP."

- Nutrition For Women

"Caffeine, acting through nerves as well as directly, can increase immunity. Injected into an animals brain, it was found to slow the growth of cancer. It was recently discovered accidentally that a very small amount of caffeine mixed with the tars from cigarette smoke prevented that material from causing cancers."

- Nutrition For Women

"Tyrosine metabolism, which is involved in brain function, is sensitive to vitamin C; also. vitamin C maintains tissue adrenaline levels, possibly by inhibiting its oxidation, and adrenaline is necessary for the chalones to exert their function of inhibiting cell division."

- Nutrition For Women

"Recent studies are showing that animal fats (saturated) are essential for proper brain development, and that unsaturated fats (as in typical formulas) can damage brain development."

- Nutrition For Women

"an active brain can burn about half of all the energy consumed by the body. If brain activity is depressed, a very large percentage of the food consumed becomes available for making fat."

- 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

"in Russia, physiologists always remember to include the brain in their calculations, and it turns out that a walk through interesting and pleasant surroundings consumes more energy than does harder but more boring exercise. An active brain consumes a tremendous amount of fuel."

- Nutrition For Women

"In the last century, Sechenov found that exercising one hand strengthens not only that hand, but also the other. Brain activity stimulates growth and alteration of tissues, such as the muscles."

- Nutrition For Women

"At first, this feminine brain superiority, if we generalize from the general mammalian meaning of the brain/body weight ration, seems to be a put-down of men. However, the view I am proposing attributes some virtue to the masculine imbalance itself."

- Nutrition For Women

"When the pure substance thyroxin became available and displaced the use of powdered thyroid gland to treat hypothyroidism, it led to two very important misconceptions that were incorporated deeply into the practice of medicine. It was decided that no more than 5% of the population was deficient in thyroid hormone, and experiments were used to argue that thermogenesis and increased metabolic rate and oxygen consumption weren’t important effects of the hormone, because the liver was the only organ that increased its oxygen consumption when thyroxin was added, and because added thyroxin decreased the brain’s oxygen consumption. The error was in defining thyroxin as the thyroid hormone. The liver is the main organ that converts thyroxin into the active thyroid hormone, triiodothyronine, T3, so it was able to respond metabolically to thyroxin."

- November 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Low serum cholesterol has been associated with depression, suicide, violence, and increased cancer mortality. Since statins enter the brain, and inhibit the synthesis of cholesterol there, decreased mitochondrial function is undoubtedly a factor in the mental side effects that they can produce."

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Excitatory transmission appears to contribute to the loss of cholesterol in the brain during aging; the amount of cholesterol in synapses decreases with aging (Sodero, et al., 2011). Although excitatory (glutamatergic) stimulation lowers brain cholesterol, environmental enrichment (meaningful experience) increases it (Levi, et al., 2005), and also reverses the age-related decline in the neurosteroids derived from cholesterol"

- November 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the brain, the accumulation of cholesterol esters (at the expense of free cholesterol) increases with age and contributes to neurodegeneration. Intervention to liberate cholesterol from the fatty acids has a nerve-protecting effect in a worm model of Parkinson’s disease"

- November 2018 - 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

"From a very early stage of development, the nervous system coordinates the interactions of tissues."

- November 2017 - 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

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

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"All of the body’s tissues, including the brain, are subject to revision and reconstruction."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"This effect of stimulants is probably also involved in their inhibition of cell division in cultured cancer cells (ephedrine and theophyllin, for example), and the ability of caffeine injected into the brain to retard tumor growth elsewhere in the body"

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Intestinal irritation can cause disturbances of the nervous system,6 and should be considered as a possibility in disorders of attention. Toxins produced by intestinal bacteria can affect the brain directly, but more often act by damaging the livers ability to regulate blood glucose."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

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

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Magnetic fields presumably act biologically by acting on the structure of water, and Kholodov has established that a continuous sinusoidal magnetic field has a sedative and inhibiting effect, modifying the EEG and raising the level of GABA in the brain (Speranskiy, 1973). The activity of oxygen increases in magnetically treated water (Speranskiy, 1973), so there might be a direct effect on energy production."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"ritis, poly-arteritis, and osteo-arthritis. The old tradition of Russian medicine, nervism, which reminded physicians that the brain must always be considered to have a role in sickness and recovery, has been enriched by the work of Pavlov and his successors. The traditions most valuable lesson for American medicine might be its optimism, based on the idea of plasticity,"

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"some of these treatments for neuropsychic diseases also promote regeneration, growth, and multiplication of nerve cells. Filatov, Polezhaev and others have clearly demonstrated regeneration of nerve tissue in the brain, cerebral cortex, and optic nerve."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Brain amines seem to support these ordered states--clarity of waking experience, as well as soundness of sleep, require sufficient amines. In rats that are made hypoxic, activity of monoamine oxidase decreases and respiratory effectiveness apparently increases adaptively (Khvatova, Rubanova, and Zhilina, Voprosy Meditsinskoy Khimii 19(1), 3-5, 1973. Administration of monoamine oxidase inhibitors improves resistance of mice to hypoxia (Piskarev, et al., Farmakologiy i Toksikologiya 36(1), 4854, 1973)."

- Mind And Tissue Russian Research Perspectives on the Human Brain

"Studies of progesterone’s effects on recovery of nerve function after traumatic brain damage have found that vitamin D increases its effectiveness. By improving calcium homeostasis, opposing the effects of the parathyroid hormone which activates calcium channels, vitamin D (25-hydroxycholecalciferol) is coming to be considered a neurosteroid (Groves, et al., 2014; Gezen-Ak and Dursun, 2019), as well as an essential factor in immunity"

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Taking progesterone reliably increases the brain content of allopregnanolone, with a small oral dose of progesterone tripling (196% increase) the concentration of allopregnanolone (Andréen, et al., 2006). Supplementing pregnenolone also increases allopregnanolone."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Estrogen increases the brain’s capacity to synthesize serotonin"

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In women, MRI images show (Hoekzema, et al., 2017) that the grey matter of the brain shrinks considerably during pregnancy, similar to the changes of advanced aging, and in some women these changes were still present after two years. However, another study has found a very rapid restoration of brain structure in the second postpartum month. In these healthy women, the brain restoration in that two month period was equivalent to five years of rejuvenation (Luders, et al., 2018)."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In healthy women, progesterone in the postpartum period is much higher than before pregnancy—seven times higher in the plasma, three times higher in the cerebrospinal fluid (Datta, et al., 1986). This corresponds to the time of brain restoration."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many studies over the last 60 years have shown the positive effects of progesterone on brain development—increasing the size of the brain, the thickness of the cortex, the resistance to injury, and the quality of functioning."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Prenatally, an excess of estrogen inhibits cell growth, resulting in a smaller brain at birth, with a thinner cortex. In mature animals, it can cause seizures and excitotoxic cell death."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"With insufficient cholesterol, the normally high postpartum concentration of progesterone isn’t likely to be maintained, and instead of brain restoration, the various pro-inflammatory effects of serotonin and estrogen will predominate, with effects such as depression, joint pain, anxiety, and brain edema."

- May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Frances Tustin wrote that There is persistent denial by American society of the causes of damage to millions of children who are thus traumatized and brain damaged as a consequence of cruel treatment by parents who are otherwise too busy to love and care for their babies. A study of adopted Romanian babies confirmed the observations of many people in previous decades that the impersonal treatment in orphanages damages many of the children."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"The brain has an extremely high metabolic rate, using energy to adapt to the constant inflow of sensory information from the body and its surroundings. To the extent that it lacks energy, it reduces and simplifies. With full energy, it builds a continuing model of itself and the things it interacts with, each of which is a process. In a state of deficient mental energy, things become categories rather than processes, and they don’t occupy a place in an ongoing life story."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"Antiexcitotoxic substances include progesterone, memantine, minocycline, and agmatine. A high ratio of CO2 to lactate, reducing intracellular pH, is important for preventing excessive excitability. Thyroid hormone, besides directly increasing energy and the CO2/lactate ratio, tends to increase the brain’s temperature, and to increase the ratio of progesterone to estrogen."

- May 2018 - Ray Peats Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide had once been seen as a hormone, and it had been used medically for ulcers, arthritis, cancer, and mental problems, and Yandell Henderson’s work had led to its use as carbogen (5% CO2, 95% 02) for resuscitation, but by the middle of the century most therapeutic uses had been stopped, and hospitals had been taught to use pure oxygen instead of carbogen, and patients with brain swelling were being hyperventilated with oxygen to lower their blood carbon dioxide."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"As recently as the 1950s urea was recognized as the most effective treatment for brain swelling, but the science based membrane theory reasoned that the removal of water from cells was always governed by osmosis, and since urea could remove water from cells, it must be osmotically active. As an osmolyte, it was added to distilled water for intravenous use, and the red blood cells behaved as they would in distilled water, dissolving. The report that urea causes hemolysis led to general discontinuation of its use for treating brain injury."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In the 1950s, Gilbert Ling noticed that in the presence of increased carbon dioxide, a given stimulus produces less contraction of a muscle than with a lower concentration of carbon dioxide. Around the same time, Russian physiologists found that the CO2 produced by active brain cells relaxes brain blood vessels, including capillaries, increasing the flow of blood in proportion to the increasing metabolic needs."

- March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Many things that are now considered nontoxic and noncarcinogenic are likely to be harmful when exposure is extended transgenerationally. Impaired infant brain development, allergy, and autoimmune diseases are known to result from a great variety of causes, ranging from radiation to mild chronic stress."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Our so-called immune system detects unfavorable changes in the structural-energetic system, and reacts quietly to restore the system, removing abnormal structures, and facilitating the restoration of function. When the organism’s situation isn’t good, instead of invisible restoration there is inflammation, a process in which crude provisional repairs are made, so that the damaged tissue doesn’t continue to demand resources that aren’t available. A scar is formed, a relatively inert fibrotic tissue replaces the fully functional tissue. This happens progressively with continued exposure to harmful factors, degrading the lungs, heart, blood vessels, gonads, liver, kidneys, brain ...."

- March 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"those who follow Norbert Wiener’s example, viewing the brain as a cybernetic control system, rather than as a logic machine, have a fruitful model that can represent the brain as it goes through various changes of state."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The whole organism sleeps, though the brain regulates the process. In some aspects of its metabolism, especially the turnover of phospholipids, the brain is very active during sleep, but its energy consumption decreases, and it causes the skeletal muscles to relax, reducing their consumption of glucose."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Groups of brain cells, removed from a brain and observed in vitro, interact in a way that’s analogous to resonance of electrons in molecules or of molecules in physical objects; their electrical activity gradually becomes coordinated, producing electrical signals resembling the EEG (electroencephalogram) signal of a brain in the state of slow wave (deep) sleep."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The electrical and metabolic properties of this high energy resting state of the brain can be seen in a healthy skeletal muscle, which has a high ATP content, and relaxes immediately after stimulation and contraction. If the ATP is depleted by prolonged intense stimulation, or if it isn’t replenished quickly enough, because of hypothyroidism, the relaxation is very slow, leading to cramping."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since thyroid hormone is needed for oxidative metabolism everywhere in the body, its deficiency makes brain cells slow to relax, delaying the onset of sleep, and can even prevent the deepest restorative sleep. Since all cells are regulated by excitatory and inhibitory processes, hypothyroidism can create a bias toward excitatory states, leading to abnormal secretion and proliferation, for example."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Optimizing mitochondrial function at the beginning of the night makes the brain’s inhibitory signals more effective, preserving glycogen stores and reducing noctural catabolism."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The rise of free fatty acids in the serum during the night coincides with a high rate of turnover of the brain’s phospholipids. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are preferentially liberated from fat stores, in proportion to their degree of unsaturation (Raclot, 2003; Conner, et al., 1996), so their interchange with the brain’s lipids means that each night the brain will become enriched with the highly unsaturated fats that are most susceptible to lipid peroxidation."

- March 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the bowels can influence the brain, and we have discovered a variety of things that damage the substantia nigra, producing the shaking palsy, and a few practices—drinking coffee or alcohol, smoking, using aspirin—that significantly reduce the risk. These observations suggest that there are effective ways to treat Parkinson’s disease with diet, laxatives, and anti-inflammatory substances."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The endotoxin, lipopolysaccharide, has a general excitatory effect effect that activates cell inflammatory processes and damages energy production, with the mediation of cell products such as nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, serotonin, histamine, prostaglandins, estrogens, and various cytokines (interleukins and tumor necrosis factor,TNF). Some of these substances enter the blood stream from the intestine, others are produced elsewhere in the body, but some are produced in the brain itself, when endotoxin is absorbed into the brain"

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"With aging, iron and the polyunsaturated fats accumulate in the brain. Estrogen slows the removal of dopamine, increasing its opportunity to react toxically with iron and highly unsaturated fats, especially arachidonic acid and DHA; it also tends to increase the formation of prostaglandins and nitric oxide. Progesterone’s opposite effects probably account for the lower prevalence of Parkinson’s disease in women than in men."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Animal studies since the 1950s have clearly showed progesterones protective, stabilizing, restorative effects on the brain, and the direct effects of progesterone on brain cells have been demonstrated in vitro."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"All of the organs affected by brain injury--kidneys, lungs, intestine, heart, liver, blood vessels, thymus, bones and bone marrow, endocrine glands--are protected by progesterone."

- March 2016 - 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

"free fatty acids, especially when they are polyunsaturated, are toxic to the brain, increasing inflammation and blocking energy metabolism."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Each person with a traumatic brain injury has unique needs that arent very compatible with the stereotyped treatments used in clinical studies, but there are common features of any brain injury, and those overlap with the features of the various kinds of shock, and of degenerative processes of particular organs."

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Progesterone (and its metabolites, including allopregnanolone) protect against the harmful changes caused by a brain injury,"

- March 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"50 years ago, urea was widely used to treat brain injuries, but a misunderstanding of its physical properties, and now the availability of the highly profitable vaptans, have displaced it."

- March 2016 - 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

"Almost everyone in the US has heard the claim that sugar’s ability to cause relaxation and sleepiness is because it causes tryptophan to enter the brain, but in fact it is hypoglycemia, which causes irritability and anxiety, that increases the brain’s uptake of tryptophan"

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The synthesis of serotonin in the brain depends on the activity of the enzyme, tryptophan hydroxylase, TPH, and this enzyme is activated by excitation of the cell, with increased intracellular calcium and reduced glutathione (GSH), and inactivated by oxidation of glutathione."

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The amount of serotonin in the urine, blood, and brain have been shown to be very closely associated"

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although its name, serotonin, is based on the fact that it constricts blood vessels, it also increases their leakiness. Both of these actions contribute to its role in fatigue and inflammation, and to the therapeutic effects of serotonin antagonists in a variety of problems including arthritis (Cloutier, et al.,, 2012) and traumatic brain injury"

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Stressful exercise, increasing serotonin, decreases the brain’s ability to exclude harmful substances, including small particles"

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"When large amounts of serotonin are released into the serum by endotoxin, the amount of serotonin in the brain isn’t necessarily increased. Endotoxin induces a tryptophan degrading enzyme, IDO, in the brain, producing substances that can be pro-inflammatory and immunosuppressive,"

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"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

"Direct use of carbon dioxide is likely to be helpful in all the situations that are known to be benefitted by acetazolamide, without the risk of allergy to that drug—traumatic brain edema, mountain sickness, osteoporosis, epilepsy, glaucoma, hyperactivity (ADHD), inflammation, polyps of the intestine, and arthritis. Diabetes, cardiomyopathy (Torella, et al., 2014), obesity (Arechederra, et al., 2013), cancer, dementia and psychosis are also likely to benefit."

- July 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"an important part of the cancer physiology is overexcitation of the brain, especially the hypothalamus,"

- 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

"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

"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

"progesterone is an essential factor for nerve growth, and since the 1990s the brain has been known to synthesize it, and to maintain a local concentration of progesterone which is higher than the concentration in the blood stream."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In animals generally, a larger brain is associated not only with higher intelligence, but with greater longevity"

- January 2018 - 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

"The cortex of the brain, especially the frontal lobes, is the part most sensitive to energy adequacy or deprivation."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A Russian approach to the nervous system typified by P.K. Anokhin had developed an understanding similar to Wiener’s; Anokhin pointed out physiological processes that were incompatible with the telegraphic all-or-none model of nerve function."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The reticular activating system of the brain stem, which is responsible for waking alertness and muscle relaxation, is central to the orienting reflex, and is responsive to progesterone"

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"It has been suggested (Sanford, et al., 1993) that the presence of these waves in REM sleep indicates that the brain is in a state of more-or-less continual orienting. When progesterone is given during sleep, it increases the amount of REM."

- 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

"the amount of glycogen in the tissues has a daily cycle, especially in the brain, where it decreases during the day, and is replenished during the night."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Having a large part of the day’s carbohydrate intake late in the day, or even during the night, can help to restore the brain’s glycogen with less need for cortisol, and helps to reduce the nocturnal rise of free fatty acids, and their excitatoryinflammatory effects."

- January 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The steroid hormones are involved in all aspects of animal physiology, and overlap with control functions of the nervous system, peptide hormones, metabolites, prostaglandins, cyclic nucleotides, etc"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Part of progesterones protective effect is a result of its quieting effect on cells. For example, it tends to prevent seizure activity in brain cells. During childbirth, its normal function is to act as an anesthetic."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

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

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"The skin and the brain are important sites of steroid synthesis, and they are usually ignored by endocrinologists investigating steroid hormones."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Sacher popularized the idea that a larger brain is associated with a longer life span, and others more recently have refined the idea in connection with body size, index of cephalization, and metabolic rate"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

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

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Progesterones effects are neotenous, in the sense of prolonging youthful traits. Women have several neotenous features relative to men, including a bigger ratio of brain to lean body mass, a smaller face-to-cranium ratio, differences in voice and body hair, less aggressiveness, and greater adaptability. (In spite of the people who teach assertiveness, I think high adaptability and low aggressiveness are characteristic human and primate traits, which are typical of infants, and are likely to represent our species future.)"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

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

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"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

"Thinking of several kinds of biological facts, including the intrinsic motility or irritability of the intestine and heart, and the regeneration of the hydra from small fragments, Julien de la Mettrie proposed a new kind of physiology, based on the idea of organization. He suggested that thought was as natural for an organ with the structure of the brain, as beating was for the heart. He considered thought to be perfectly compatible with organized matter,"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

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

- Email Response by Ray Peat

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

- Email Response by Ray Peat

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

- 2001 - February

"Calcium and iron tend to be deposited together, and the mitochondria are usually the starting points for their deposition. Iron overload has been implicated in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other degenerative diseases, including the brain diseases."

- 2001 - February

"Protein bound estrogen is an active form of estrogen, and the estrogen bound to albumin probably accounts for most of estrogens activity. Free fatty acids, which compete with estrogen for binding to the steroid-binding globulin, probably modify the properties of the more abundant albumin so that it binds more estrogen in its active form, causing estrogen to move from other proteins, lipoproteins, and red blood cells onto the activated albumin. The presence of fats bound to the albumin makes the albumin more lipophilic, fat-loving, and molecules are taken up into cells--especially brain cells--according to their solubility in fats. For fatty molecules, there is no blood brain barrier."

- 2001 - February

"Serotonin doesnt cure depression, and both serotonin and nitric oxide impair circulation and are toxic to brain cells. Both of them poison mitochondrial respiration."

- 2001 - February

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

- 2001 - February

"Besides being an antiestrogen, proge a neurosteroid, an antiexcitotoxin, an inhibitory modulator. But these effects in the nervous system have their parallels in the immune system, where it modulates the actions of many cells, protecting the thymus, restraining mast cell degranulation, inhibiting the shock reaction. It is an antitoxin, stabilizing cell structure and function. In the mitochondria, it preserves or restores respiratory efficiency."

- 2000 - March

"It is now well recognized that defective mitochondrial respiration is a central factor in diseases of muscles, brain, liver, kidneys, and other organs."

- 2000 - July

"In 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

"The loss of carbon dioxide reduces brain circulation, creating complex paresthesias and stroke symptoms. Hyperventilation is a relative term, and refers to the amount of carbon dioxide which is lost from the blood. Heavy, rapid breathing at high altitude or in the presence of a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, doesn’t necessarily constitute hyperventilation."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Carbon dioxide limits the electrical depolarization of nerves and muscles, a phenomenon first discovered by Gilbert Ling. This prevents the over-excitation and exhaustion of brain cells and muscle cells, including the heart. The presence of carbon dioxide limits the formation of lactic acid. This explains the lactate paradox of high altitude exertion"

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In Alzheimer’s disease, brain respiratory metabolism is inhibited, creating a carbon dioxide deficiency with an excess of lactic acid and ammonia."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Both Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis involve depressed brain metabolism combined with an inflammatory process."

- 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

"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

"In many situations, including brain hypoxia, carbon dioxide is the decisive protective factor."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"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

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

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

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

"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

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

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

"Two things can cause the pituitary to secrete excessive amounts of the gonadotropins: A deficiency of the steroids, and damage to the steroid sensing nerves that regulate the pituitary. When an ovary is moved (transplanted into the spleen) so that its hormones are destroyed before getting to the brain, there is hypersecretion of gonadotropic hormone,** and tumors develop in the ovary. The interpretation, that hypersecretion causes the tumors, is supported by other observations, e.g., that removal of one ovary increases the chance of developing a cancer in the other ovary and that prolonged use of estrogen (known to create the conditions for later hypersecretion of gonadotropin) increases the risk of ovarian cancer after menopause.’"

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

"Estrogen increases the brain’s susceptibility to epileptic seizures, and recent research shows that it (and cortisol) promote the effects of the excitotoxins, which are increasingly implicated in degenerative brain diseases."

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

"As Felix Meerson has shown, the brain is the preferred organ of adaptation, because adaptation on the level of learning has no biological costs, in the sense of limiting our structure and function."

- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since the 1960s, a stimulant, Ritalin (methylphenidate) has often been prescribed for hyperactive kids, because it made them able to quietly pay attention. This effect was called paradoxical, but for scientific physiology — there was nothing paradoxical about it. The frontal lobes of the brain, the most highly evolved part, give us the ability to plan and to understand complex things that require prolonged attention. Without this higher part of the brain which has a very high energy requirement, people and animals become hyperactive and unable to concentrate. Ritalin (or coffee) makes anyone, even the brightest students, more attentive and focussed. Caffeine and Ritalin temporarily raise the energy level of the brain."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Thyroid hormones are essential for providing the energy to keep the brain at a high energy level all the time. If these hormones are deficient, our nerves need stimulants to function normally, and our bodies ordinarily produce large amounts of adrenalin to keep us going. The result is that we gel tired and tense at the same time."

- 1994 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The brain is just like muscle, in having to restore its energy to relax. Many people have noticed that eating a lot of carbohydrate and/or salt makes them sleepy. Both salt and carbohydrate tend to lower adrenalin, and carbohydrate can also increase the activity of thyroid hormone, while restoring energy to the tissues."

- 1994 - April - 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

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

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Sleep is a generalized stress-limiting function of the brain."

- 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

"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

"With aging, pregnenolone and its derivatives, progesterone and DHEA, decline sharply. The brain, the organ with the highest concentration of those stabilizing substances, has many systems for adapting to their decreasing concentration, but the immune system is probably less able to compensate for those aging changes."

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

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

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

"Progesterone has the special status of being an essential nerve growth factor, and generally blocks the catabolic actions of the glucocorticoids and estrogen, thereby protecting all tissues, from brain cells to white blood cells."

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

"‘The availability of energy is central to our stable functioning, and the need for energy powerfully modifies our functioning. For example, as hunger increases, the brain’s interpretive system changes in a way that causes increasingly unfamiliar things to be considered as possible food. The spreading excitation that leads to this extended search probably occurs in relation to needs other than hunger, and could lead to experimentation with drugs and to other activities that give some indirect satisfaction. Obsessive and compulsive patterns can sometimes be resolved by assisting the brain’s energy metabolism, for example with a supplement of magnesium and thyroid."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"While many people think of thyroid as a kind of stimulant, because it can cure the coma or lethargy of myxedema, this is a very misleading idea. In hypothyroidism, the brain exciting hormones adrenalin, estrogen, and cortisol are usually elevated, and the nerve-muscle relaxant magnesium is low. Normal, deep sleep is rare in a hypothyroid person. The correct dose of trilodothyronine (the active thyroid hormone) with magnesium is a reliable treatment for insomnia, cramps, and anxiety, whether these symptoms are caused by fatigue, or aging, or alcohol withdrawal."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Until about 1940, the use of hypertonic solutions in therapy was fairly common. Books still mention the use of urea, USP, as a diuretic to treat brain swelling, but I haven’t heard that it is still used this way in the United States."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Some inhibitory cells in the brain (including those involved in the coma state of protective inhibition) secrete acetylcholine. The similarity of the effects of histamine and acetylcholine are such that many people used to think of histamine as the systemic cholinergic hormone equivalent to acetylcholine. As a result of their similarity, any chemical which interferes with one of these transmitter substances is likely to interfere with the other, though not necessarily in the same way."

- 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

"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

"Excessive cholinergic action in itself can cause brain damage. The anticholinergic drugs, amantadine (Symmetrel) and atropine (related to the substances in Jimson weed) have been used to treat Parkinson’s diseases. Atropine used to be listed as antidote for many poisons, probably because of its stabilizing effect on the nerves. It also promotes the formation of the protective hormone progesterone."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In young people, the brain contains a very high concentration of pregnenolone and its derivatives, DHEA and progesterone, all of which stabilize cells and protect against the effects of cortisol, but in old age these fall to about 5% of their normal concentration, leaving the brain exposed to the destructive action of cortisol."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since excessive excitation of cells (relative to the energy thats available) causes cells to die (in the brain, as elsewhere), it is important to consider as many of the natural means of inhibition as possible, while doing everything possible to sustain energy production."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The amino acids taurine and glycine are alsoco nsidered to be inhibitory transmitters in the brain."

- 1991 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the brain content of progesterone, pregnenolone and DHEA is normally 20 or 30 times higher than the serum concentration, and these hormones are protective against both estrogen and cortisone."

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Clotting too easily is just one of the problems that can be caused by an excess of estrogen, and I don’t mean to give it too much emphasis, since [ consider its toxic effects on the brain, and its acceleration of brain aging to be its worst effects"

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The main features of aging can be produced directly by administering excessive amounts of cortisol. These features include atrophy of skin, arteries, muscle, bone, immune system, and parts of the brain, loss of pigment (melanin), deposition of fat in certain areas, and slowed conduction velocity of nerves."

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If we can generalize from animal studies, delaying puberty could increase brain size and longevity, improve intelligence, decrease violence, and even make people physically more attractive"

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The body’s highest concentration of cholesterol exists in the brain. The level of cholesterol in the blood strongly influences the production of the protective hormones, such as progesterone."

- 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

"I wasinterestedin uging camphoric acid to transport copper, making it able toenter the brain and also causing it to be absorbed via the lymphatic system, by-passing the liver and thus allowing a large dose to be absorbed without injuring the liver."

- 1988 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since I mentioned the endorphins above in the context of resistance to infections, I should mention that these endogenous peptides are really a family of substances with very different properties; some activate the right side of the brain, others activate the left side.3 The two sides of the brain have different effects on the immune system. Opiates are powerful suppressors of immunity. I think it is clear that morphine and codeine should never be used when there is an immune deficiency."

- 1988 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

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

"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