Ray Peat on science

Discovery of oxidation impurities in commercial cholesterol

"About 40 years ago, someone noticed that the commercial cholesterol used for research was contaminated by oxidation and that pure cholesterol did not cause the same toxic effects."

September 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Denial of objective generalization in science through reductionism

"The prevailing reductionist philosophy of science denies that generalization is an objective process and has vehemently attacked the idea that intention or purpose controls biological, biochemical, and genetic changes."

September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Criticism of the scientific approach to organismic adaptation

"By defining the organism and the environment in accordance with its ideology of mechanistic reductionism, official science has fundamentally misrepresented the nature of organismic adaptation."

September 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

The role of sodium in circulatory weakness and various ailments

“Building on Brewer’s research, I realized that additional sodium should also help in other situations where the circulatory system is working inefficiently. Premenstrual water retention, insomnia, and even high blood pressure often respond very well to it.”

Nutrition For Women

Association between estrogen dominance and infertility in mice due to restricted oxygen availability

"Infertility in mice is also associated with an increased estrogen-to-progesterone ratio. My research showed that the likely mechanism by which excess estrogen causes infertility is to limit the availability of oxygen."

Nutrition For Women

Estrogen, reproductive aging, and cancer theories

"This oxygen-inhibiting effect of estrogen suggests that research on reproductive aging is converging with Warburg's theory that impaired respiration is the primary defect in cancer – and also with Selye's observation that the effect of estrogen is similar to the first, shock phase of the stress response."

Nutrition For Women

Nutritional and nutrient recommendations for coping with stress-related mineral imbalances

"Under stress, adrenal hormones and mineral metabolism become unbalanced—regardless of whether the cause is an unstructured lifestyle or a surgical injury. The diet should include about 90 grams of protein (in frequent meals), eggs as a source of sulfur (which is needed, for example, for the synthesis of joint lubricants), and maintain a high magnesium-to-calcium ratio (as with vegetables, bran, and fruit), while keeping phosphate intake low (this includes replacing some meat portions with leafy greens and also including cheese). Vitamins C, E, and pantothenic acid are needed in particularly large quantities under stress. Vitamins A and B2 are also essential for the production of anti-stress hormones. Inositol is known to protect biological material from many types of damage and could have this effect in arthritis, but I am unaware of any research on this specific application."

Nutrition For Women

Vitamin E research by Shutes shows benefits in heart disease

"The Shutes have conducted extensive research on the use of vitamin E in heart disease and have found that pharmacological doses of 400 mg per day or more are beneficial. They have also recommended it for the prevention of thrombosis in other parts of the vascular system."

Nutrition For Women

Psychoactive substances and their effects on chronic diseases

“During LSD research, it was observed that people with chronic headaches, asthma, or psoriasis sometimes fully recovered during treatment with frequent doses of LSD. Another alkaloid derived from ergot, bromocriptine, is now used to suppress lactation (such as that caused by a prolactin-secreting pituitary tumor that develops after the use of oral contraceptives) and is being used experimentally to treat Parkinson's disease. Both LSD and bromocriptine shift the ratio of two brain chemicals, DOPA and serotonin, toward DOPA dominance. One consequence of this is the inhibition of prolactin secretion. Excess prolactin is implicated in breast cancer and other cell proliferation, and probably also in the rapid cell division seen in psoriasis.”

Nutrition For Women

Urgency to adopt a holistic approach to understand development processes

"The holistic view of the organism and its adaptive potential, as advocated by Hippocrates and Aristotle, has been rejected by the new science of recent centuries. Reclaiming this view and using it creatively has become urgent if we want to understand the processes of development – ​​including aging and degenerative diseases."

November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Early research on the harmful effects of estrogen

"Almost as soon as purified estrogen became available for research in the 1930s, its ability to trigger inflammation, cancer, miscarriages and seizures was recognized."

November 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Improving the quality of basic science education

"It is true that pathophysiological conclusions based on basic scientific knowledge have very often been wrong. But the solution is to improve the quality of basic science education, rather than abandoning active thinking and passively following guidelines set by companies that have an interest in the most profitable treatments."

May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Medical reductionism and the interests of the pharmaceutical industry

"The basic assumption of medical reductionism is that the parts of a system can be understood and defined, and that these definitions can be trusted as a basis for pathophysiological thinking. To the extent that the interests of the pharmaceutical industry have guided research, publication, and education, the facts—the basic sciences—must be reconsidered."

May 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Post-World War II shift: Control of science passes to funders

"Immediately after the Second World War, governments, companies, and foundations began to take an increasing interest in science. As research funding grew, control over science shifted from the researchers themselves to the funding institutions."

May 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Pentagon funding: Chomsky's linguistics for military precision

"Funded by the Pentagon, Chomsky's linguistic research was seen as a way to improve military command and control – with computers programmed to use language with great precision."

May 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Suppression of McClintock's insight into stress-induced genetic adaptability through dogma

"McClintock's finding that stress can trigger genetic adaptability was completely unacceptable to the dogmatic genetic determinism that had a firm grip on research institutions. Therefore, it remained virtually invisible for almost 30 years – until the genetic engineering industry resumed its work."

March 2021 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Evaluation of science in Ling's time

"I don't think you can think about Gilbert Ling's work (which began in the 1940s) without assessing how the science industry operated during that time – at least in the US and England. Science has its rules, but they don't apply when the prevailing ideology or paradigm is challenged."

March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Science culture and The Truman Show

"The situation in our scientific culture is similar to the Jim Carrey film The Truman Show – except that very few of those involved understand that it is a constructed illusion."

March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Ling's "Living State" challenges conventions.

"For many years, the scientific culture in the USA has at times condemned holism, intentionality, consciousness, epigenetics, self-organization, and self-regulation—along with vitalism—as unscientific and superstitious. In the 1960s, Gilbert Ling's idea of ​​a 'living state' had echoes of holism and self-regulation, but one of the most offensive things about it was that it proposed explaining all biological processes using known laws of physics and principles of physical chemistry."

March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Ling's critique of the sodium pump theory

"While biologists claimed to be defending mechanistic-materialistic science against vitalism, they were in fact rarely able to think in physicochemical categories – and that was precisely the core of Ling's work. His critique of the sodium pump in the cell membrane made it clear that this pump was merely the 'ghost in the machine' needed to animate the conventional theory of the living cell."

March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Spirit art and contemporary science

“In 1960, the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros said that the Rockefellers and the US government had created a ghost art—abstract expressionism—to destroy the consciousness of society. A large part of contemporary science was a ghost science: a mental obstacle imposed on society that limits our ability to perceive the nature of our problems and possibilities.”

March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

The decline of urea in the treatment of brain injuries

"As recently as the 1950s, urea was considered the most effective treatment for cerebral swelling. However, the membrane theory-based logic of the science at that time assumed that the removal of water from cells was always controlled 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 administration, and the red blood cells behaved as they would in distilled water: they dissolved. The report that urea caused hemolysis led to its use in treating brain injuries being generally discontinued."

March 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Criticism of the receptor doctrine

"The receptor doctrine is part of an ideological attitude towards life – an attitude that wants things to be clearly definable and uncomplicated. The fact that hormones and neurotransmitters can interact critically with things that are not their receptors has mostly been ignored, if not denied. The professionalization of science over the last 150 years has created a culture in which authoritative claims can be accepted for decades without any supporting evidence whatsoever."

July 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Depersonalization in academic writing as a propaganda technique

"The writing style in scientific journals is explicitly designed to depersonalize language in order to convey an impression of objectivity. This is a propaganda technique that contributes nothing to scientific objectivity."

July 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Misinterpreted studies on the effects of vitamin E in JAMA

"Around 1980, a friend showed me an article in JAMA that warned of the dangers of vitamin E and cited many research papers. Most of the articles that the author cited as evidence of harmful effects of vitamin E actually reported on biological changes that the researchers considered beneficial."

July 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Development of immunological research

"Refinements of Ehrlich's idea of ​​specific neutralizing antibodies dominated immunological research and were awarded several Nobel Prizes between 1960 and 1996. Public thinking about vaccination theory has not progressed beyond these ideas."

January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

The role of inflammation in universal pathology

"Until the beginning of this century, inflammation was mostly viewed as a simply constructive part of the local healing process, but it began to be recognized that it plays a universal role in pathology. Tissue damage was no longer seen as a purely local event. Research was pushed toward a re-evaluation of Metchnikoff's holistic, developmental view of immunity. Bystander effects—the release of substances by any injured cell that trigger similar damage in other cells, even in distant parts of the body (Koturbash, 2007; Kovalchuk, 2016)—and the associated persistent epigenetic changes are part of innate immunity. This system is activated by adjuvants, as is the adaptive immune system, which produces antibodies."

January 2020 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Bias in scientific journal publications

"Major scientific journals avoid publishing things that are not compatible with the current belief system. Therefore, the facts that support the principles taught at universities are undeniably selectively picked out – first by editors and then by professors."

January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Official science as opposed to experience-based approaches

“Mainstream science – the official science, massively funded by state and industry – has developed an ideology based on a metaphysical view of matter as something known a priori. Another, experience-based science, which does not subscribe to any particular doctrine about the nature of matter, has barely managed to survive into this century – in the work of a few scattered individuals.”

January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Ehrlich's view: Biology beyond physical chemistry

"Ehrlich believed* that physical chemistry was not applicable to biology, and this view – promoted by the pharmaceutical industry – has persisted in official science to this day. Physics and chemistry had become state sciences by the end of the 18th century, and with Ehrlich, biology became a commercial science."

January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Unbiased investigation of the properties of living matter

"Reactivity or sensitivity is a property of living matter that must be explored without preconceptions – along with other properties such as polarity and intentionality, which have guided the best research of the past."

January 2019 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Understanding of time: Mainstream science vs. anti-reductionist perspectives

"The understanding of time is the point where the most radical difference lies between the prevailing philosophy of science and the anti-reductionist dissidents."

January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Insights from decades of research into cell physiology

"In 1968 or 1969 I had read the previous 50 years of research on cell physiology, and I saw that for over 20 years Gilbert Ling had been almost alone in offering a view of the cell that was physically possible at all."

1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 4

Criticism of today's scientific culture in cell studies

“I have seen articles in major scientific journals that draw important conclusions from the non-existent positive charge supposedly present on the outside of cells. Such things have slipped past editors and reviewers because these notions are so prevalent in our scientific culture. Less obvious, but equally wrong, other ideas are even more widespread. The use of various microelectrode techniques has provided a wealth of information about cellular electrical responses, but—with the exception of the work of Gilbert Ling and a few others—the significance of the data is obscured by a vast culture of fanciful theories.”

1998 - Ray Peat's Newsletter - 2

The limits of function-based naming in science and psychology

"Psychologists have found that naming an object after a specific function often limits the way people can use it. This also happens in science. If we know one function of a substance and name it after that function, it becomes harder for us to think about its other possible roles."

August-September 1995 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

The role of estrogen and cortisol in epileptic seizures and brain diseases

"Estrogen increases the brain's susceptibility to epileptic seizures, and recent research shows that it (and cortisol) enhances the effects of excitotoxins, which are increasingly associated with degenerative brain diseases."

August-September 1995 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Interaction of iron with vitamin C and lipid peroxidation

"The interaction of iron with vitamin C (and other reducing agents) and unsaturated fats, leading to lipid peroxidation, has been the dominant theme in research on the toxic effects of iron."

June 1994 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

The role of ATP in shock treatment and the limits of science

"An intravenous injection of ATP cures shock, restores normal blood flow and tissue function – but once again the idea of ​​membranes and their pumps has kept mainstream science on its relatively sterile track."

April 1994 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Salt supplements to normalize pregnancy-related high blood pressure

"Two research projects showed that very high salt supplements reliably normalized high blood pressure in women with pregnancy toxemia."

June 1992 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Ammonia and its metabolic relatives in biological regulation

“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 for the antiviral activity of ammonia, which has spurred extensive research by pharmaceutical companies seeking patentable antiviral amines. Most of the simpler substances have regulatory functions in themselves, in addition to their involvement 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 these are likely to have many beneficial biological effects.”

July 1991 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

The role of holistic science for human and ecological health

"Human (and ecological) health should obviously benefit from the advantages of holistic science. However, the actual situation is that biology and medicine have become very product-oriented, and holistic considerations are increasingly left to a variety of fringe professions. Many of these alternative approaches deal with the idea of ​​energy as the key to health, but in general they lack simple and effective methods for optimizing biological energy, and they often use counterproductive methods."

October 1990 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Physics and the underestimated complexity of matter

"Physics provides a much richer picture of the properties and possibilities of the material world than geneticists recognize. Even many physicists do not realize how much richness lies in the totality of experimental results in their field."

October 1990 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Cell interactions beyond contact: Self-assembly in cells

“Many other research directions on adsorption fields and long-range order make it clear that the interactions of atoms and molecules in cells are not necessarily determined by direct contact or random movement. When cell components are rearranged, they return to their normal position in relation to other components – demonstrating a great capacity for self-assembly or self-ordering.”

October 1990 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Toxic effects of unsaturated oils on health and metabolism

"Research demonstrating the toxic effects of unsaturated oils dates back more than 60 years. An article published in my newsletter in 1985 cites some of the most important sources. These substances inhibit many enzymes (e.g., in digestion, immunity, clot breakdown, and thyroid function), disrupt mitochondrial energy production, and impair communication between cells. We hear very little about these toxic effects, and there isn't much funding for further research in these areas."

February/March 1989 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

Back to blog

Supplements according to Ray Peat

1 4