Ray Peat on the immune system

"Our bodies are constantly having experiences, and generalizing from them in the way they respond; these generalized responses can limit or expand our vitality. These generalizations are expressed in our anatomy, physiology, and ecosystems, with changes in immunity, metabolism, gene expression, and behavior."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Phosphate, which predominates in grains, beans, nuts, meats, and fish, increases our production of parathyroid hormone, while calcium and magnesium inhibit its production. This hormone, which increases with age, suppresses immunity, and in excess it causes insomnia, seizures, dementia, psychosis, cancer, heart disease, respiratory distress and pulmonary hypertension, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, histamine release, inflammation and soft tissue calcification, and many other problems."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Cancer patients are typically unable to even produce a normal inflammation, as if they are powerfully dosed with the anti-stress cortisone-type hormones. The failure of the immune system, which can normally wipe out cancer cells as they develop, seems to be an essential feature of cancer"

- Nutrition For Women

"Some of the changes of aging probably relate to autoimmune reactions, in which the body attacks itself; both testosterone and progesterone normalize the immune system, suppressing auto-immune problems."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress, the immune system, and lipid metabolism have complex interactions. For example, a fat, triolein, is known to stimulate phagocytosis, as does magnesium;"

- Nutrition For Women

"Polyunsaturated oils inhibit the immune system and so probably suppress symptoms. The steroids (e.g., progesterone) and thyroid hormones normalize the immune system when they are present in normal amounts."

- Nutrition For Women

"In tests in vitro, iron damages the capacity of antibodies to destroy germs. In the body, iron appears to be hidden away during infections, because of this effect on the immune system."

- Nutrition For Women

"The thymus gland, essential for immunity, shrinks during fasting. Chronic infections such as tuberculosis are more common in malnourished people. However, fasting has been used successfully in treating certain diseases. It can be useful in diagnosing food allergies, as in some types of schizophrenia."

- 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

"Looking at the larger culture of western civilization, mortification of the flesh for the good of the soul might be a relevant context for these persistent attitudes in medicine and biology. Athletes are told no pain, no gain, and many people are accepting the idea that suffering toughens you in general ways—fasting, cold showers, jogging, are said to improve immunity and delay aging."

- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The idea of autoimmune disease can be traced back to Paul Ehrlich’s theory of immunity, and his idea of a therapeutic magic bullet has dominated the medical approach to treating the autoimmune diseases."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The embryologist Elie Metchnikoff looked at immunity as an aspect of the organism’s maintenance of its own integrity."

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although the idea of a guiding organismic field that was held by most embryologists disappeared in the 1950s, in the 1990s a similar holistic view appeared in Matzinger’s danger theory and Cunliffe’s morphostasis or damage theory of immunity, in which destruction of pathogens isn’t the purpose of the immune system, but a side effect of maintaining organismic integrity"

- November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Focus on the induction of antibodies by vaccines to define immunity has led to a dangerous disregard for the basic facts of health."

- May 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The doctrine that inflammation is a necessary part of immunity, leading to destruction of the pathogen, affects the way diseases are treated."

- March 2021 - 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

"In the 1960s, when antibodies were being studied intensively, Metchnikoff’s approach was called innate immunity, something more primitive and undifferentiated than the evolutionarily more advanced adaptive immunity of the B and T cells, bone and thymus cells. At that time, however, an example of something like adaptive immunity, a learned response to a toxin, had already been demonstrated to exist in plants,"

- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Up until the beginning of this century, inflammation had usually been thought of as a simply constructive part of the local healing process, but it was starting to be recognized to have a universal role in pathology. Tissue injury was no longer seen as a merely local event. Research was being forced toward a reconsideration of Metchnikoff’s holistic, developmental view of immunity. Bystander effects, the emission by any injured cell of substances that induce a similar injury in other cells, even in remote parts of the body (Koturbash, 2007; Kovalchuk, 2016), and the persistent epigenetic changes they involve, are part of innate immunity. This system is activated by adjuvants, as well as the adaptive immune system that produces antibodies."

- January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"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

"Koch postulated, early in the century, that electrons and_free radicals were involved in the most important biological processes—respiration, movement, immunity, regeneration, etc. He was probably the first person to apply the subtleties of organic chemistry (such as the activation of chemical groups by nearby groups) to biology."

- 1999 - December- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The group of processes that we call the immune system is so deeply mntegrated with everything else in the organism that to talk about the reason for evolving It is as misleading as to talk about the reason for evolving certain pigmentations—black feathers, for example, are mechanically stronger than white ones, selection of foxes for domesticability changes their fur pigmentation and their voice, selection for egg laying somehow produces suppression of feather pigmentation, etc., yet people like to talk about protective coloration, because an easy connection can be made between that and genetic selection."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"For about 50 years, the concept psychosomatic has been trivialized to mean it’s just imaginary. But now, the studies of the physiology of helplessness show that a seemingly small difference in experience and attitude can cause a very great difference in the ability to mobilize biological energy and various aspects of immunity, such as Natural Killer cell activity. There is now genera) agreement on the distinction between the demobilized state of helplessness and the state of active adaptation."

- 1994 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In general, the things that lower vitality and immunity interfere with our ability to produce the protective steroids."

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"the immune system, like any system, can become ineffective or sick, and it is possible that a sick immune system could make some problems worse."

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Morphine has been known to be immunosuppressive for several decades, though this fact has been ignored in prescribing it for cancer patients. (Intravenous ethanol has a protective effect on the immune system, and is as effective as morphine in controlling the pain of cancer.)"

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Morphines directly suppressive effect on immunity isnt understood. but there is some suspicion that it relates to the stress induced immunosuppression (loss of natural Killer cell function, for example). acting in place of stress-induced endorphins. White blood cells, like nerve cells, have surface receptors™ for morphine, which normally would be acted on by the endorphins. As an abnormal material bound to the cell surface, it probably constitutes a hapten, something sensed by other white blood cells as foreign. It would be healthy to eliminate such abnormally modified cells, and even possibly to eliminate the cells that contain the natural endorphin molecule. But in a weakened organism, the formation of new cells might lag behind the elimination of modified cells."

- 1992 - December - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"If antibodies turn out to be part of the problem, we shouldnt think of searching for additional iImmunosuppressive drugs, because we already know of situations in which antibody production increases while immunity is being impaired, as if in compensation for a weakness in cell mediated immunity. Increasing the production of the cells that are deficient, and improving their functioning, should be the focus of attention."

- 1992 - December - 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 stigma attached to alcohol has prevented its adoption as a most useful drug/nutrient, even in terminal cancer patients, where its promotion of immunity could have great value."

- 1991 - June- Ray Peat's Newsletter

"For several years, I have been interested in the biological effects of ammonia, and compounds that are metabolically close to it. There is clear evidence of ammonia’s antiviral effect, which stimulated extensive research by drug companies seeking patentable antiviral amines. Most simple substances have regulatory functions in themselves, besides participating in other systems. Besides viral immunity, I think ammonia is involved in regeneration and nerve modulation. Urea, inosine, GABA, the polyamines, and betaine derivatives (e.g., gamma-butyrobetaine) are closely related to ammonia metabolism, and combinations of them will probably have many useful biological effects."

- 1991 - July - 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

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

- 1990 - October - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Caffeine has several effects which protect against cancer. It strongly protects against the cancers caused by chemical carcinogens (including those in smoke), and even against those caused by ultraviolet radiation. It stimulates the repair process which corrects mutations (in mammals, but not in bacteria), and it stimulates the immune system."

- 1990 - May - - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In one line of thinking a variety of malfunctions of immunity can be created by a single factor, such as energy deficiency, acting within the organism’s special history or constitutional individuality. Allergies, auto-immune disorders, and chronic infections or skin-test anergy, can be seen as aspects or phases of a generally impaired reactivity of the organism, shaped by many trophic influences of nerves, hormones, nutrition, and by toxins, temperature, radiation,"

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although one of the important functions of vitamin A is its involvement in the formation of the steroids pregnenolone and progesterone (both of which moderate the effects of cortisol), it also has some hormone like actions directly on the cells of the immune system, and it stimulates production of interleukin-2 and both inhibits generation of specific suppressor cells and limits the intensity of activation of suppressor cells."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"in therapy to strengthen immunity, individualization, alertness, and judgment are more appropriate. The complex nature of every patient should be recognized, in deciding what materials to use and how to use them."

- 1989 - November - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Research showing the toxic effects of unsaturated oils goes back more than 60 years. A 1985 article published in my newsletter cites some of the key references. These substances inhibit many enzymes (e.g., in digestion, in immunity, in clot removal, in thyroid function), they disrupt mitochondrial energy production, and they interfere with communication between cells. We hear very little about these toxic effects, and there is not much money available for more research in these areas."

- 1989 - February.March - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Leishman also describes the work of Salvatore Catapano, of Valley Stream, Long Island. Thirty years ago, Catapano learned that the Enterobacteriaceae stimulate immunity, and found that typhoid vaccine could stop the growth of tumors. When he saw patients with Kaposi’s sarcoma, he was reminded of syphilitic sores he had seen in the tropics. Catapano believes that the tropical spirochetal disease, yaws, shouldn’t be considered as a distinct disease. He advocates the use of typhoid vaccine to stimulate the immune system before treating AIDS patients with penicillin. Catapano also believes that syphilis infections can occur without the presence of & spirochete, possibly by a virus-like variant of the organism. This idea has been proposed many times, e.g., by Bergel, in Syphilis im Lichte neuer Untersuchungen, Jena, 1925."

- 1988 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The close association between immunity and the balance of iron and copper suggests that the iron/copper ratio should be studied in AIDS."

- 1988 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Although the suppressive effect of iron on the immune system is well-known, it is generally ignored, probably because of our society’s obsessive belief that iron is good for you."

- 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

"Koch soon constructed a theory of natural immunity against virus and cancer, based on his belief in the existence of biological free radicals, able to oxidize virus particles and carcinogenic molecules. Koch believed that allergies were an early sign of the failure of this free radical oxidation system.!"

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