Ray Peat on the liver

"When the diet lacks the polyunsaturated fatty acids, the liver synthesizes saturated fatty acids, and exports its cholesterol mainly in combination with palmitate, which doesn’t promote lipid peroxidation, or in the non-esterified free form."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"A lifetime of accumulating PUFA progressively degrades the liver’s protective functions, but those functions can gradually be restored by providing carbohydrates and saturated fats without the polyunsaturated fats, along with some of the factors that have been depleted along with free cholesterol, especially pregnenolone and progesterone."

- September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The blood and the liver act as a buffer between the intestine and the various specialized tissues and organs, with the serum albumin having a major function in binding and transporting a variety of nutrients and potential toxins."

- September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"While the use of coconut oil makes it possible to go longer without eating, because its pro-thyroid effect increases the livers ability to store glycogen, frequent snacks are still important for helping to lose weight, or to prevent weight-gain."

- Nutrition For Women

"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

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Womens livers are known to be more sluggish than mens in removing chemicals from the body. When the liver doesnt remove estrogen from the body rapidly enough, estrogen accumulates in the body — this is why male alcoholics often grow breasts. Estrogen pills and tranquilizers add to the livers burden. Poor nutrition makes it impossible for the liver to function properly."

- Nutrition For Women

"It has been known for several decades that many of the symptoms of hormone imbalance can be relieved with simple nutritional therapy. If doctors dont want to take the time to study the literature, they should at least be referred to one of the simply written articles, such as Biskinds on the liver and hormones in Vitamins and Hormones, 1946."

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamins C and E are also known to help the liver deal with toxins."

- 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

"Normally, the liver treats estrogen like a poison, removing it immediately from the body. If the liver gets sluggish from malnutrition or too much estrogen (or other damage), it can allow the hormone to build up to very high levels. Since estrogen is metabolically antagonistic to progesterone and testosterone, i think the pill might decrease libido by coun teracting these other hormones."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"When we eat large amounts of muscle meats or liver the high concentration of cysteine suppresses the thyroid. Heart, eggs, skin (gelatin) and milk are more favorable to the thyroid. Other anti-thyroid foods are peanuts, soybeans, raw cabbage, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, unsaturated oils (such as safflower, corn, cottonseed, and soy oils), and an excess of iodine."

- Nutrition For Women

"A very common cause of an estrogen excess is a dietary protein deficiency - the liver simply cannot detoxify estrogen when it is undernourished"

- 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

"Pantothenic acid is needed by the liver to destroy insulin (insulinase), so hyperinsulinism, causing hypoglycemia, can sometimes be remedied with this nutrient."

- 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

"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

"Since a healthy liver will produce cholesterol to make up for what is lacking in the diet, avoiding high cholesterol foods wont necessarily lower blood cholesterol."

- Nutrition For Women

"There are several dietary practices which will promote the formation of progesterone, but the most effective is to use liver once a week, to use eggs daily, and to avoid foods which inhibit the thyroid, such as raw cabbage and broccoli. Butter contains some progesterone."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"Vitamin E promotes oxidation in many ways, and seems to specifically oppose many of the effects of excess estrogen. For example, it can help protect the liver against damage by toxins (all the nutrients are needed by the liver though). It opposes the tendency of estrogen to create age pigment. It activates the blood protease, and so speeds clot removal and prevents clot formation inside blood vessels, but there is also evidence that it promotes normal clotting in wounds."

- Nutrition For Women

"Low protein diets definitely interfere with the livers ability to detoxify estrogen and other stressors."

- Nutrition For Women

"Eggs, for several reasons might actively protect against the formation of cholesterol deposits. One of the men who discovered insulin, Best, later showed that choline (a component of lecithin) can prevent fatty degeneration of the liver."

- 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

"Many women with abnormal Pap smears, even with a biopsy showing the so-called carcinoma in situ, have returned to normal in just two months with a diet including the following: 90 grams of protein, 500 mg. of magnesium as the chloride, 100,000 units of vitamin A, 400 units of vitamin E, 5 mg. of folic acid, 100 mg. of pantothenic acid, 100 mg. of B6, 100 mg. of niacinamide, and 500 mg. of vitamin C, with thyroid and progesterone as needed. Liver should be eaten twice a week. Some of the women apply vitamin A directly to the cervix."

- 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

"It is known that excess iron accumulates in the liver, since there is no mechanism for excreting it."

- Nutrition For Women

"A study was done about 30 years ago to see whether supplements given to exceedingly well-nourished tuberculosis patients would make a difference in their recovery. The supplement consisted of 600 milligrams of vitamin C, 75.000 to 150,000 units of vitamin A, 5000 units of vitamin D, about 4 grams of brewers yeast, and six grams of dried liver. The control. group received placebos, in double blind fashion. There was a distinct improvement in the group which got the supplement (see Williams Nutrition Against Disease, p. 223). So many similar studies have been done it is simply unscientific to say that supplements arent necessary when well balanced meals are eaten."

- Nutrition For Women

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

- Nutrition For Women

"animals fed large amounts of cod liver oil nearly all died of cancer, but when they were fed the same amount of oil with a large vitamin E supplement, their cancer rate was normal."

- Nutrition For Women

"Medium chain fatty acids, found in coconut oil, are effective in turning off fat synthesis in the liver."

- 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

"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

"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

"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

"Although the liver has a much larger capacity than the lungs for detoxifying serotonin, the lungs detoxify several times as much of the circulating serotonin as the liver does. The reason for this is that in the high oxygen environment of the lungs, carbon dioxide is lost from the blood, and carbon dioxide is needed for retention of serotonin by the platelets. With the loss of CO2, the platelets release their serotonin very quickly, to be immediately detoxified by the local MAO."

- July 2019 - 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

"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

"When the liver is the main cause of hypothyroidism, your temperature (and especially the temperature of your nose, hands and feet) will fall when you are hungry, and will rise when you eat carbohydrates."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Before using a Cytomel (T3) supplement, it might be possible to solve the problem with diet alone. A piece of fruit or a glass of juice or milk between meals, and adequate animal protein (or potato protein) in the diet is sometimes enough to allow the liver to produce the hormone."

- 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

"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

"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)

"Estrogen excess suppresses the liver’s ability to synthesize albumin, and when this is combined with the leakage of albumin into the tissues (where it is slowly destroyed) and into the urine, the blood loses its ability to retain sodium, much of which is associated with albumin."

- 2000 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Liver ATP is increased as a result of inreasing blood sodium. An increase of only about 15% in the blood sodium, for example, caused the cells ATP to nearly double."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

"When a cell has been damaged (as by radiation or toxins), its inefficiency creates a small localized distortion im the fields, which will stimulate processes of repair or removal and replacement, as far as the organisms resources allow. When a stress is great enough that the entire organism is exposed to lactic acid, the organism’s adaptive resources are being challenged, and potentially harmful responses are evoked. For example, a sluggish liver can allow the blood lactate concentration to mse during stress, and this can lead to secretion of endorphins and pituitary hormones (Elias, et al, 1997). The endorphins can increase histamine release, and growth hornone increases free fatty acids; increased permeability of blood vessels can allow proteins and fats to leave the blood stream with cumulatively harmful effects."

- 1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

"In a variety of tissues, it can be shown that the presence of mature cells inhibits the division of other cells. If part of the liver is removed, the remaining cells divide to replace the lost tissue. If the skin is cut, cells divide to help fill in the defect. If there is an adequate number of egg cells, this principle suggests that there is no need to produce more."

- 1995 - August.September - 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

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

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In thinking about Meerson’s achievements in protecting the heart against stress, it is important to remember that the heart ts our most stress-resistant organ, and that the things that protect the heart from deadly stress will also protect the other organs from the everyday stresses, which accumulate to cause the problems of general aging. Liver, lungs, pancreas and other essential organs are susceptible to the same kinds of damage as the heart, but under conditions that are relatively mild and ordinary."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

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

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Strong (who studied genetics with T.H. Morgan) was interested in the fact that sharks are not susceptible to cancer. As a geneticist, he saw this in relation to their genetic stability, that is, the fact that they havent developed beyond an early stage of evolution, and he believed that cancer is a result of genetic instability. He found that injections of an extract of shark’s liver prevented mice from developing breast cancer; however, similar extracts from other kinds of liver had similar effects on the mice. Since his mice had too much estrogen, | supposed that their livers were deficient in something needed to eliminate estrogen, since the liver normally is a powerful regulator of estrogen, using a certain system of detoxifying enzymes."

- 1991 - July - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"There are many ways that estrogen can contribute to a hypercoagulable state (leading to cardiovascular disease). Some of these involve altered liver function, including disturbed production or metabolism of 8 different coagulation controlling factors"

- 1991 - April - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Orotic acid was known to alter pyrimidine and ammonia metabolism, so I thought it wasn’t wise to use supplements that contained large amounts of it. A couple of years ago orotic acid was described as an excellent liver carcinogen, based on experiments with rats. h"

- 1990 - May - - 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

"Unopposed cortisol is immunosuppressive in several ways, including thymic hypoplasia,*°depression of the histaminolytic activity and monooxygenase activity of the liver, contributing to chronic allergies, and it can induce the expression of some types of retrovirus."

- 1989 - November - 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

"People studying lipid peroxidation in liver cell extracts noticed that carbon monoxide was being produced. Many people have observed that stressed cells emit ammonia."

- 1989 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"An acquaintance who died recently after several months of eating large amounts of linseed ol told me that it had been used by bot. W.F. Koch, M.D. and Max Gerson, M.D. I knew this wasnt true: For example, Gerson’s program evolved from a diet for migraine and tuberculosis into a cancer therapy, and involved the use of thyroid extract, liver, fresh juices, and a little butter, but over and over he said absolutely no oil."

- 1989 - February.March - 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

"optimal treatment of leukoplakia would involve a program to lower the chronic background level  of estrogen, while promoting progesterone synthesis. It happens that the body spontaneously moves in that direction, if given the right support. With adequate protein (eggs, milk, cheese, shellfish, liver, etc.), the liver removes estrogen from the blood entirely on its first passage through the liver, in an otherwise healthy organism."

- 1988 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In rapid cell division, and in estrogen excess, folic acid and other B vitamins are used rapidly, so a supplement might be useful. I have usually suggested a dose of one to ten milligrams of folic acid daily for a few weeks, with liver two or three times a week for the other vitamins."

- 1988 - January - Ray Peat's Newsletter