Darkness & Light & Madness

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"Three years before Prozac received approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in late 1987, the German BGA, that country's FDA equivalent, had such serious reservations about Prozac's safety that it refused to approve the antidepressant based on Lilly's studies showing that previously nonsuicidal patients who took the drug had a fivefold higher rate of suicides and suicide attempts than those on older antidepressants, and a threefold higher rate than those taking placebos.

Using figures on Prozac both from Lilly and independent research, however, Dr. David Healy, an expert on the brain's serotonin system and director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales, estimated that "probably 50,000 people have committed suicide on Prozac since its launch, over and above the number who would have done so if left untreated."
The Boston Globe, 2000. -Ray Peat quoting study in his Article: Serotonin, depression, and aggression: The problem of brain energy
 
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"One of the many actions of the "SSRI" (such as fluoxetine, Prozac), which aren’t related to their effect on serotonin, is to increase the concentration of allopregnanolone in the brain, imitating the action of increased progesterone. Following this discovery, Lilly got Prozac approved as a treatment for premenstrual syndrome. Since the production of allopregnanolone and progesterone depends on the availability of pregnenolone and cholesterol, a low cholesterol level would be one of the factors making this an inappropriate way to treat PMS." -Ray Peat
 
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"Serotonin research is relatively new, but it rivals estrogen research for the level of incompetence and apparent fraudulent intent that can be found in professional publications. This is partly because of the involvement of the drug industry, but the U.S. government also played a role in setting a pattern of confused and perverse interpretation of serotonin physiology, by its policy of denigrating and incriminating LSD, a powerful serotonin (approximate) antagonist, by any means possible, for example claiming that it causes genetic damage and provokes homicidal or suicidal violence. The issue of genetic damage was already disproved in the 1960s, but this was never publicly acknowledged by the National Institutes of Mental Health or other government agency. The government’s irresponsible actions helped to create the drug culture, in which health warnings about drugs were widely disregarded, because the government had been caught in blatant fraud. In more recent years, government warnings about tryptophan supplements have been widely dismissed, because the government has so often lied. Even when the public health agencies try to do something right, they fail, because they have done so much wrong." -Ray Peat
 
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“In a young person, good food, sunlight, and a high altitude can often overcome severe and progressive inflammatory conditions. In an older person, whose tissues contain larger amounts of polyunsaturated fats and their breakdown products, it takes more environmental support to get out of the inflammatory pattern.” -Ray Peat
 
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"When I moved from Mexico, first to Montana and then to Oregon in 1966, I became very conscious of how light affects the hormones and the health. (For example, in Montana I experienced an interesting springtime shedding of body hair.) Many people who came to cloudy Eugene to study, and who often lived in cheap basement apartments, would develop chronic health problems within a few months. Women who had been healthy when they arrived would often develop premenstrual syndrome or arthritis or colitis during their first winter in Eugene.

The absence of bright light would create a progesterone deficiency, and would leave estrogen and prolactin unopposed. Beginning in 1966, I started calling the syndrome “winter sickness,” but over the next few years, because of the prominence of the premenstrual syndrome and fertility problems in these seasonally exacerbated disorders, I began calling it the pathology of estrogen dominance. In the endocrinology classes I taught at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine, I emphasized the importance of light, and suggested that medicine could be reorganized around these estrogen-related processes. If the sparrows of Times Square mated in the winter because of the bright lights, it seemed clear that bright artificial light would be helpful in regulating human hormones." -Ray Peat
 
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"All of the stress-related hormones increase during the night. One of the ways these hormones of darkness act is to increase the sensitivity to light, in a process that is an important adaptation for organisms in dim light. In the night, our ability to see (and respond to) dim light is increased. But dark-adapted eyes are very sensitive to injury by bright light. Light that ordinarily wouldn’t harm the eyes, will do serious damage when the eyes are dark adapted." -Ray Peat


"In the retina, melatonin increases the sensitivity of the cells to dim light. It, along with prolactin, another nocturnal hormone, helps to produce dark adaptation of the eyes." -Ray Peat
 
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"Light and stress, especially with excess iron, damage the retina when the cells contain too much PUFA, since these fats react with light and free radicals. The nocturnal/stress hormones, especially prolactin and melatonin, make the retina more sensitive to light, and more easily damaged. (It's too much darkness that sets up the problem, since the eyes will adapt to excess light, but darkness increases their sensitivity.)" -Ray Peat
 
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"Other Possible Signs/Symptoms of Mercury Toxicity Include:
Disturbances of the Central Nervous System:

Irritability
Anxiety/nervousness, often with difficulty breathing
Restlessness
Exaggerated response to stimulation
Fearfulness
Emotional instability
Lack of self-control
Fits of anger with violent, irrational behavior
Loss of self-confidence
Indecision
Shyness or timidity, easily embarrassed
Loss of memory
Inability to concentrate
Lethargy/drowsiness
Insomnia
Mental depression, despondency
Withdrawal
Suicidal tendencies
Manic depression
Numbness and tingling of hands, feet, fingers, toes, or lips
Muscle weakness, progressing to paralysis
Ataxia
Tremors/trembling of hands, feet, lips, eyelids, or tongue
Incoordination
Myasthenia gravis
Graves disease
Multiple sclerosis"

 
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"Most people are slightly demented now and then, when they are very sleepy or tired, or sick, or drunk, or having a hormone imbalance or extreme anxiety state. Sometimes physicians have described people as demented, implying that the condition would never improve, when the person was depressed or hypothyroid. If the person has a history of epilepsy, or is very old, the physician is more likely to diagnose dementia than if the same loss of mental function occurs in a younger person without a history of a nervous disorder. Even people with less education are at increased risk of being diagnosed as "demented." -Ray Peat
 
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"Darkness and hypothyroidism both reduce the activity of cytochrome oxidase, making cells more susceptible to stress. A promoter of excitotoxicity, ouabain, or a lack of salt, can function as the equivalent of darkness, in resetting the biological rhythms (Zatz, 1989, 1991)." -Ray Peat
 
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"If we learn to see problems in terms of a general disorder of energy metabolism, we can begin to solve them." —Ray Peat
 
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Coffe posted this sun chart, on another thread, for how much vitamin D we need and how much skin needs to be exposed to get it.
 

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"The fatigue produced by “over-training” is probably produced by a tryptophan and serotonin overload, resulting from catabolism of muscle proteins and stress-induced increases in serotonin. Muscle catabolism also releases a large amount of cysteine, and cysteine, methionine, and tryptophan suppress thyroid function (Carvalho, et al., 2000). Stress also liberates free fatty acids from storage, and these fatty acids increase the uptake of tryptophan into the brain, increasing the formation of serotonin. Since serotonin increases ACTH and cortisol secretion, the catabolic state tends to be self-perpetuating. This process is probably a factor influencing the rate of aging, and contributing to the physiological peculiarities of aging and depression." -Ray Peat
 

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is darkness relating to all over the body - if so am I jeopardizing my health by sitting under blankets?
 

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