Calling Time On Ray Peat

[aguilaroja]

...Ray did speak recently of human cells being "practically immortal", which I thought was a bit interesting. Not sure what he means by that. I thought immortality was just an a priori concept, like infinity.

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/stemcells.shtml
“In the 1940s, even children discussed the biological discoveries of the 1920s and 1930s, the work in regeneration and adaptation, parthenogenesis, and immortalization. The ideas of J. Loeb, T. Boveri, A. Gurwitsch, J. Needham, C.M. Child, A. Carrel, et al., had become part of the general culture.”

Alexis Carrel - Wikipedia
“Cellular senescence
Carrel was also interested in the phenomenon of senescence, or aging. He claimed that all cells continued to grow indefinitely, and this became a dominant view in the early 20th century.[17] Carrel started an experiment on January 17, 1912, where he placed tissue cultured from an embryonic chicken heart in a stoppered Pyrex flask of his own design.[18] He maintained the living culture for over 20 years with regular supplies of nutrient. This was longer than a chicken's normal lifespan. The experiment, which was conducted at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, attracted considerable popular and scientific attention.[19]
Carrel's experiment by some was never successfully replicated….”

And an opposing view:
What pushes scientists to lie? The disturbing but familiar story of Haruko Obokata
“The problem was, no one else could keep a cell culture alive indefinitely. Lab after lab tried and failed, decade after decade. Because Carrel was a giant in the field of cell research and a Nobel Prize winner, few dared to doubt him. Scientists blamed themselves when their cells died. They assumed that they lacked the master’s skill, that his lab had higher standards than they could reach, that they had somehow exposed their cells to infection or failed to keep them properly nourished. We now know that the reverse was true. Other researchers probably couldn’t duplicate Carrel’s results because they weren’t incompetent or dishonest enough.”

 

[Such_Saturation]

A lot of passionate words here. I'll respond to you because your message contains many of the same remarks made by others. Psychology, genetics, socio-cultural influences all play a role in health, wouldn't you say? I'm not trying to counter or contradict Peat or anyone's personal testimony, I'm actually on Ray Peat's side in terms of the general direction of his thought - I just don't see it holding together very well. He is keen on coherency, and so am I, yet his writings are disjointed and the ideas are incomplete. He did once say his goal was to "change the culture". I don't see him achieving that using the current amount of obscurantism that blurs the finer points. He would probably say in reply to me that he is non-systematic because he is anti-authoritarian and there are no truths, or something along those lines, but this is like a "get out of jail free card" - at some point you have to stand up and defend your own ideas and risk being vilified like I currently am on this thread.

Also, Ray did speak recently of human cells being "practically immortal", which I thought was a bit interesting. Not sure what he means by that. I thought immortality was just an a priori concept, like infinity.

[QUOT="Please clarify where he defers key reasoning to Ling,clarify what you feel is key? The only one using linguistic tricks here is you to offer an opinion under the illusion you have any idea about the cell physiology or biochem spoken about.
Yes Peat understands the current model(you dont) and uses the bags of water in jest to the past yet you use it to attack Peats argument,are you actually for real? Rofl!

Why bring Danny roddy into it and why do you care if roddy doesn’t understand Ling,roddy is studying it all so I’m sure it will take time,head over to Lings website where he discusses the consequences of his theory,also read Peats articles where he discuss it also. There a multitude of People who are using Lings theory,the hubris to state this sums you up,look into mri machines from the beginning as a start,Gerald Pollack and host more.[/ QUOTE]

Here is Peat quoting Ling - there are many - I'm not cherry-picking, but this is a good one: [I]"Gilbert Ling's biophysical calculations were useful to physical chemists, and were soon put to practical use for understanding ion exchange resins, such as water softeners. Many sorts of evidence showed their validity for cell physiology, but nearly all biologists rejected them, preferring to talk about membranes, pumps, and channels, despite the evidence showing that the properties ascribed to those are simply impossible. NMR imaging (MRI) was developed by Raymond Damadian specifically as an application of Ling's description of cell physiology."[/I]

Where he says, [I]"despite the evidence showing that the properties ascribed to those are simply impossible"[/I], he doesn't demonstrate what this evidence is. Unfortunately, as much as I want to take Ray's line of thinking on this matter, there are a global community of biologists and chemists who seem to agree membranes do exist. As I said, and some others tried to contradict me, there is NMR spectroscopy of the cell membrane, ion pumps, etc: [URL="http://www.jbc.org/content/291/8/3776.full"]A Unique Tool for Cellular Structural Biology: In-cell NMR[/URL]

Here's another quote that sides with Ling, but provides no evidence of why Ling is correct: "Ling has demonstrated in many ways that the ruling dogma of "cell membrane" function isn't coherently based on fact. He found that hormones such as progesterone regulate the energetic and structural stability of cells. Many people, unaware of his work, have felt that it was necessary to argue against the idea that there are anesthetic steroids with generalized protective functions, because of their commitment to a textbook dogma of "cell membrane" physiology."

Notice the phrases where adjectives are unnecessarily paired with nouns: "many ways", "ruling dogma", "coherently based". this is a known logic strategy known as "guarding your argument". I want to agree with Peat, but this is weak writing that wouldn't hold up in an academic context.

I asked Danny about Ling in a straightforward way, because he's obviously read and written a lot about Peat's ideas, and I thought he might have something to share that would help me. I was actually really surprised he didn't comprehend Ling very well at all, and had a poor understanding of the relationship between Ling and Peat.

I don't know how you made the leap that I am some hateful person pursuing attention - I'm just trying to appreciate what I've read, and obtain the constructive views of others - something that seems to be in scant supply on this forum sadly.

I'm "calling time" in the sense that I'm tired to trying to "wonder what Ray means" when he says "X and Y is good and A and B should be avoided". It's just a minefield of claims that I'm sure are partly right in some contexts, but I suspect the foundations are unstable. I also think someone with a PhD in Biology and Masters in Linguistics would have the training to present all of this great information in a really concise, easy to digest way. But for some reason, he's chosen to leave it all disjointed across tens of articles for the misinformed and undertrained to attempt to understand. I worry that if it was easier to understand, it would also be easier to debunk.

Should have went with synchronicity, brother...

 

[chispas]

Should have went with synchronicity, brother...

What has synchronicity done for you recently?

 

[burtlancast]

I'm "calling time" in the sense that I'm tired to trying to "wonder what Ray means" when he says "X and Y is good and A and B should be avoided". It's just a minefield of claims that I'm sure are partly right in some contexts, but I suspect the foundations are unstable.

Apparently, you've read Peat but didn't understood a thing.

What's "partly right" or "unstable foundations" when he explains PUFAS are actually non-essential? Ray cited studies where cells were growing perfectly fine in PUFA-free nourishing solutions.

What about his demonstration of the old 1930's Burr's studies being unscientific?
Estrogen being invariably deleterious outside reproduction ? The protective effects of progesterone and pregnenolone? Of CO2 ? etc...

Here is Peat quoting Ling - there are many - I'm not cherry-picking, but this is a good one: "Gilbert Ling's biophysical calculations were useful to physical chemists, and were soon put to practical use for understanding ion exchange resins, such as water softeners. Many sorts of evidence showed their validity for cell physiology, but nearly all biologists rejected them, preferring to talk about membranes, pumps, and channels, despite the evidence showing that the properties ascribed to those are simply impossible.

Where he says, "despite the evidence showing that the properties ascribed to those are simply impossible", he doesn't demonstrate what this evidence is.

Ling did; so he doesn't have to.

You say you've read Ling:

did you really?

Ling painfully demonstrates in carefully detailed experiment after experiment how the scientific evidence for the membrane pump theory is fraudulent.

It's unimpeachable and devastating.

What more do you need?

I already was against PUFA before I read Peat, because I was aware of the oil being rancid at room temperature. Any farmer involved in pressing the oil will tell you this. You don't need to defer to Ling and throw out the entire known physiology of the cell to explain why PUFA should not be consumed.

And unless you've been living in a cave the past 2 million years, you would notice there's a gigantic industry promoting flaxseed oil and omegas 3 sold in oxidation-free products.

Fresh, non-oxidized omegas 3 are the "state of the art" in being "healthy" nowadays.

The whole alternative health movement is gripped to the words of Sally Fallon and Chris Masterjohn promoting this claim.

Glad you managed to figure it out all on your own, apparently.

 

[chispas]

Ling did; so he doesn't have to.

Ling painfully demonstrates in carefully detailed experiment after experiment how the scientific evidence for the membrane pump theory is fraudulent.

It's unimpeachable and devastating.

What more do you need?

Not sure if you've ever written an essay, but you need references to back claims regardless of who has demonstrated what. If it's Peat's claim that Ling is sound, he has an obligation to reproduce the evidence. Otherwise it's a hollow claim. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

I suppose the first thing we all need, ideally, is for the international community of scientific researchers, in their various fields, to acknowledge some truth or utility to applying Ling's model. We still don't actually know what it's good for.

As for the charge that I haven't understood a thing, it's possible as well as moderately probable that there is nothing to understand. It all sounds plausibly good on paper though, when written by a person with a Masters in Linguistics.

 

[Xisca]

1- Apparently, you've read Peat but didn't understood a thing.
2- What's "partly right" or "unstable foundations" when he explains PUFAS are actually non-essential?
3- Ray cited studies where cells were growing perfectly fine in PUFA-free nourishing solutions.

1- Who does understand it all of what he says? Raise your hand if you do.
2- PUFAs are impossible to avoid in real life.
3- My cells are not in a dish and they do more than living: they connect.

In the Burr experiment, more than FA were missing, so what's about talking about cells in a nourishing solution? What is missing in the solution? More than in the Burr experiment.

RP discourse is meant for scientists. Then, there is life and you can see midday at your door. Midday is all the time somewhere but once per day. People are thriving or failing to thrive on many different diets. If you come here, and succeed after failing with a paleo diet, does this mean nobody will fail with a high sugar and dairy diet and have success on a paleo diet?
C'mon!

 

[Xisca]

The theory is never ending, and studies pile up... Life is something else...
Many things happen in my body, big as a universe. What I can see is the behavior. What I can feel is all I have to monitor myself on a daily basis = more often than labs.
I used to eat proteins for dinner. I started to eat them more during the day, but sugar and dairy for dinner gave me chest burn. Even fruits are a no for dinner, even bananas. For me.
I have used more sugar to reduce stress, but each time I have to eat more often, and feel a more variable energy.
I went up in fruits (healthy and ripe and local!) and also in progesterone. Also went up the flushing.

I stopped the flushing nearly overnight, let's say in 2 days...

 

[Xisca]

So, I do not have problems with the theory at all, and I do not have any problem with sb saying that beyond the theory, there is a problem in applying it.
Thanks Chispas.
I do have a problem with RP giving too little examples given for real life and for different people. More choices and examples gives you a broader range for trials. He speaks about fibers, like carrot, for the gut, saying that the juice does not work. Do you really think only carrot fiber can do this? Is liver the only offal that is good to eat?

I have read once that cows should come with 2 butts in order to match with the consummer demand!!! But should cows also come with 4 livers and no heart and no kidneys? And in the paleo world, they dream of cows having as many tails as shiva has arms!


Why don't we share any type of experimentations? The xylitol thread is a very good example of cooperation between members. A certain protocole and in particular xylitol looks good, then sb finds there can be a problem with the processing of the raw material to make this sugar alcool. Some people can swallow xylitol, others have bad cramping and can just mouth wash with it. Then comes a finish guy who shares his long time experience with this product that you can find in any shop there! Sb asks how you can do if you eat often and have to take xylitol often. etc. Perfect thread.

 

[burtlancast]

If it's Peat's claim that Ling is sound, he has an obligation to REPRODUCE the evidence.

Ray only has an obligation to REFERENCE the evidence, when this said evidence has not been uncovered by him and is extremely detailed and extensive.

I suppose the first thing we all need, ideally, is for the international community of scientific researchers, in their various fields, to acknowledge some truth or utility to applying Ling's model. We still don't actually know what it's good for.

Someone already cited the MRI invention by Ling's disciple, Raymond Damadian. It's been recently awarded a Nobel Prize (incidently, they managed to exclude Damadian himself from the laureates, as crass as this sounds).

 

[chispas]

Ray only has an obligation to REFERENCE the evidence, when this said evidence has not been uncovered by him and is extremely detailed and extensive.

He hasn't referenced it, that's what I'm saying. He says it's there, but he doesn't say what it is exactly. Just like you now using the words "detailed" and "extensive" - where is this detail you know so much about? And what do you find so extensive about this claim to detail? No one has paraphrased any actual primary source of Ling, so what the hell?

I'm not crazy to request this, this is a normal part of making argumentative claims in academic writing. It's first year uni stuff.

 

[yerrag]

1- Who does understand it all of what he says? Raise your hand if you do.
2- PUFAs are impossible to avoid in real life.
3- My cells are not in a dish and they do more than living: they connect.

In the Burr experiment, more than FA were missing, so what's about talking about cells in a nourishing solution? What is missing in the solution? More than in the Burr experiment.

RP discourse is meant for scientists. Then, there is life and you can see midday at your door. Midday is all the time somewhere but once per day. People are thriving or failing to thrive on many different diets. If you come here, and succeed after failing with a paleo diet, does this mean nobody will fail with a high sugar and dairy diet and have success on a paleo diet?
C'mon!

Seems you have a lot of bottled anger directed at Ray Peat. Does his writing style fail to be simple enough for everyone? When the subject matter is clouded by misrepresentation and propaganda, a lot of misunderstanding needs to be cleared away before we start to absorb information that is directed towards the dissemination and understanding of what is closer to truth, as studied, observed, applied, and verified. Peat is as close to plainspeak. We do not need to make Peat write in a way that would make him the author of "Human Physiology for Dummies." We need to internalize the ideas he speaks and writes of at our own pace.

And I fail to understand that PUFA being everywhere makes it any less evident that it isn't good for us.

 

[burtlancast]

He hasn't referenced it, that's what I'm saying. He says it's there, but he doesn't say what it is exactly. Just like you now using the words "detailed" and "extensive" - where is this detail you know so much about? .

14. Demand complete solutions

 

[chispas]

Someone already cited the MRI invention by Ling's disciple, Raymond Damadian. It's been recently awarded a Nobel Prize (incidently, they managed to exclude Damadian himself from the laureates, as crass as this sounds).

Damadian isn't a discipline of Ling. The guy is a Creationist that thinks the Earth is 5000 years old.

There's a 100km wide, 300km deep crater in the Gulf of Mexico where a 12km wide asteroid slammed into the Earth 66million years ago. It was traveling at 75,000km/h and was equal to 10 billion Hiroshima H-bombs. Pressure at the epicentre was greater than pressure at the centre of the Earth itself. It's an event documented by geologists around the world, and evidenced with 600m of actual rock dug out of the crater itself, which you can inspect in a museum. It killed 75% of life on Earth. It also makes the Biblical flood sound comparatively tame.

So this guy Ramadian, he's got some funny ideas for a pioneering scientist. I wouldn't be surprised if Ray is also a Creationist to be honest, because he seems to enjoy challenging notions of entropy. He is very pejorative of chaos and quantum theory, but they are just theories, so not sure what the big problem is.

 

[chispas]

14. Demand complete solutions

Is this relevant?

"There are half-truths, and one-and-a-half-truths, but no whole truths," Karl Krauss.

 

[Xisca]

Seems you have a lot of bottled anger directed at Ray Peat.

Not at all, but at people answering to newbys that they just have to drrink a lot of OJ and fatfree milk seems a shortcut to me. Nothing to do with what you say about understanding RP.

And I fail to understand that PUFA being everywhere makes it any less evident that it isn't good for us.

I knew before coming here pufas are not the best part of fats. But avoiding sunflower oil is different from becoming paranoid and avoiding raspberries because of their seeds. If pufas are everywhere, just eat plain food and avoid processed oils that increased pufas intake up to dangerous levels. Also see the good in the food and relativise the bad. I answered in the recent pufa thread: if people are even afraid of SATURATED fat sources because they also contain pufas, then there is a problem. Of course, as I am lean, I do not have the same focus.

For me, pufa being everywhere means we have to avoid the big recent sources, vegetable oils, but also that we have to find the way to not been damaged by the little pufa we will still have in our diet, how to not stock it, how to burn it safely etc. Or else, we come into what seems to be the only well-known aspect of the nervous system: learned helplessness. If you think that you have to deplete pufas totally, then not much food is left, and you have to calculate your pufa content in your food, use processed food that eliminate fat from it, and you have the risk to feel the prey of pufas whenever you eat, and then may fall into learned helplessness. OMG pufas are unavoidable and I will die one day! Life is not a dying process! Or it is much more!

Like Tara called for the cat's wisdom of Garfield, I will call for the dog's wisdom of Snoopy.
Charlie, pensively sitting, tells Snoopy "you know, we all have to die one day". And Snoopy answers "Yes right, but all the other days we do not."

¡Que tengan un buen día y que disfruten!

 

[Makrosky]

Yeah that is an interesting question. I am using betaine HCL. Not sure exactly how much the increased methylation and glycine are helping. I definitely felt some emotions and a bit of a roller-coaster when I first started using it. Glycine tends to get me sick from too much lowering my immune system, and TMG used to give me violent nausea, so something has changed since 5 years ago.

I do not know about refilling HCL stores. Gbold explains the theory better then I, but basically you have too high CO2, cells react with lowering their output of CO2 (decreased metabolism), and go into this alkalosis state. HCL being acidic somehow fixes this. I should have said in my first post, that I started with only 1/4 teaspoon at just breakfast, and then increased from there.

Interesting... I'll give it a try when I have a chance.

 

[yerrag]

I knew before coming here pufas are not the best part of fats. But avoiding sunflower oil is different from becoming paranoid and avoiding raspberries because of their seeds. If pufas are everywhere, just eat plain food and avoid processed oils that increased pufas intake up to dangerous levels. Also see the good in the food and relativise the bad. I answered in the recent pufa thread: if people are even afraid of SATURATED fat sources because they also contain pufas, then there is a problem. Of course, as I am lean, I do not have the same focus.

For me, pufa being everywhere means we have to avoid the big recent sources, vegetable oils, but also that we have to find the way to not been damaged by the little pufa we will still have in our diet, how to not stock it, how to burn it safely etc. Or else, we come into what seems to be the only well-known aspect of the nervous system: learned helplessness. If you think that you have to deplete pufas totally, then not much food is left, and you have to calculate your pufa content in your food, use processed food that eliminate fat from it, and you have the risk to feel the prey of pufas whenever you eat, and then may fall into learned helplessness. OMG pufas are unavoidable and I will die one day! Life is not a dying process! Or it is much more!

Like Tara called for the cat's wisdom of Garfield, I will call for the dog's wisdom of Snoopy.
Charlie, pensively sitting, tells Snoopy "you know, we all have to die one day". And Snoopy answers "Yes right, but all the other days we do not."

What you're saying isn't in dispute. It is a matter of practicality. It seems to me irrelevant to the topic of whether PUFAs is good or bad. Ray Peat saying that PUFA is harmful still stands. Snoopy's wisdom is just as good as saying "Eat everything in moderation (including the holly berry)."

 

[Wilfrid]

@chispas, it's a very interesting post.
When you said: "I mean, there is crystal spectrometry imaging of human cells that demonstrate reality aligning with the current model. " @Kyle M , who is also a biochemist, made a direct response that you didn't take time to address...
I would like to know more about it, since you seem pretty sure about that assertion and Kyle's not. A debate would be great since the " crystal spectrometry " thing seems to have definitively closed the Ling case, at least according to you.
I think that Ling and Pollack were not the only scientists to address the problem of the Na/K pump theory, in France, a scientist called Pascale Mentré also wrote a book about the subject.

 

[Xisca]

Ray Peat saying that PUFA is harmful still stands.

It isn't in dispute. But it does not tell you what to do in life, so all the rest I said is relevant.

Snoopy's wisdom is just as good as saying "Eat everything in moderation (including the holly berry)."

There is more depth... If being afraid of pufas leads to helplessness and a desperate try to deplete it without any other solution than depleting...

made a direct response that you didn't take time to address...

"If your hand is busy making flies go away, it has no time to pet the head of the dog."

 

[Wilfrid]

@Xisca,
As far as I know of , I wasn't the one to make that claim and I'm not a biochemist, this is why I outlined the fact that Kyle was.
And I'm truly interest about a debate.
But feel free to share your knowledge too, about the crystalliser thing of course.