Haidut's Summary Of PUFA

[m_arch]

24-hour energy balance is still an immutable constraint, which I addressed in my posts in this thread -- Drinking Coke Freely Quadruples Calorie Intake WITHOUT Weight Gain

Also this section and the rest of the article -- PUFA, Birds, and Genetics

Any discussion of any macronutrient needs to take into account supply and demand for that macronutrient (except in the case of alcohol, which always takes priority). This is invariably affected by total energy needs.

I'll repeat the quote attributed to ItsTheWooooo -- "A 50% calorie restricted 50% carb diet is a ketogenic diet". Doesn't matter what you are eating, if you need to mobilise that much fat from stores, the excess fat will have to be mobilised (and "be lost"), and if there is enough oxaloacetate depletion, ketones are produced.

....

Hey Yew, interesting article as always.

My understanding is the summary of this article is "for longevity, we probably need to eat less pufa, but the degree of this is dependent on your ancestry. those with ancestry around the equator can probably eat closer to 0% pufa due to good internal synthesis genes, whereas those with ancestry outside this region probably need
to eat some".

this seems consistent with my experience - extremely dry eyes from a lack of vitamin A and a larger craving for fatty meals (rice diet no way), and my ancestry is away from the equator.

I have some questions;
your end comment was "we should probably just strive for around 10~15% body fat for a male" ... and there was also a comment about a faster metabolism not always being better.

(1) as i understand it, ray peat promotes an 'optimal' metabolism (defined by 37 degrees Celsius temperature and around 85 bpm pulse), and that under this is hypothyroid and over this is hyperthyroid. are you referring to a faster metabolism meaning hyper? otherwise it seems worthy of optimizing, because of all the associated benefits (better peripheral blood flow, heat-sensitive regenerative enzymes activated, etc)

(2) the 10-15% body fat for a male is achievable by endurance athletes, people with eating disorders or extreme anxiety. However this won't be achieved using an 'optimal' metabolism, but rather from stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline keeping the physiology at that weight, and hence you get all the negatively associated benefits with that. I think rarely will the pulse and temperature both be at 37 and 85 under this situation

what do you think about these factors? obviously your blog post was more pufa-oriented but the wholism of what type of metabolism (efficient thyroid hormone vs stress hormones) is running these conditions seems important - especially when ray thinks thyroid is suppressed by pufa. i'm getting the impression that you think bodyweight is more important than the type of metabolism running?

 

[tyw]

Hey Yew, interesting article as always.

My understanding is the summary of this article is "for longevity, we probably need to eat less pufa, but the degree of this is dependent on your ancestry. those with ancestry around the equator can probably eat closer to 0% pufa due to good internal synthesis genes, whereas those with ancestry outside this region probably need
to eat some".

this seems consistent with my experience - extremely dry eyes from a lack of vitamin A and a larger craving for fatty meals (rice diet no way), and my ancestry is away from the equator.

I have some questions;
your end comment was "we should probably just strive for around 10~15% body fat for a male" ... and there was also a comment about a faster metabolism not always being better.

(1) as i understand it, ray peat promotes an 'optimal' metabolism (defined by 37 degrees Celsius temperature and around 85 bpm pulse), and that under this is hypothyroid and over this is hyperthyroid. are you referring to a faster metabolism meaning hyper? otherwise it seems worthy of optimizing, because of all the associated benefits (better peripheral blood flow, heat-sensitive regenerative enzymes activated, etc)

(2) the 10-15% body fat for a male is achievable by endurance athletes, people with eating disorders or extreme anxiety. However this won't be achieved using an 'optimal' metabolism, but rather from stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline keeping the physiology at that weight, and hence you get all the negatively associated benefits with that. I think rarely will the pulse and temperature both be at 37 and 85 under this situation

what do you think about these factors? obviously your blog post was more pufa-oriented but the wholism of what type of metabolism (efficient thyroid hormone vs stress hormones) is running these conditions seems important - especially when ray thinks thyroid is suppressed by pufa. i'm getting the impression that you think bodyweight is more important than the type of metabolism running?

As usual, all that is written below is personal ranting, and no recommendations are made to the reader .

-----

I'm not going to bother posting all the studies right now, but one can search for a bunch of stuff regarding desaturase activity and the genetic factors that affect it. In general, the variance that you describe is correct, with Equatorial populations being more Eager in making PUFAs, with less and less eagerness as latitude increases (if I'm not wrong, even across regions like North vs South China).

"More eagerly makes PUFAs" means "less dietary PUFA requirement". Me hailing from people living at 20-23deg latitude, probably don't need that much dietary PUFAs, and can also get away with much lower fat intake (though that is a different discussion).

----

Regarding (Question-1), I do not believe that there is such a thing as a single optimal temperature. That article I wrote stresses the importance of "Efficiency", and efficiency means "matching supply to requirements as closely as possible".

"Running hot all the time" is wasteful, and if one is not built to safely waste energy (in the form of metabolic uncoupling and heat production, with no subsequent ROS), then there are clear downsides to running a fast metabolism.

Everything is conditionally useful. "Better peripheral blood flow" is good when excess heat needs to be dissipated, or if extra nutrients need to be delivered to tissues. "High metabolism" is good when fighting infection, not good when trying to sleep.

Again, "efficiency" is the name of the game. High metabolism cannot be discussed without both asking, "How much of that generated energy is being put to useful work?", and "How is excess energy being disposed?"

Failure to address efficiency gets you into the scenario of the Mouse, which has higher metabolism per unit bodyweight than Humans, but suffers membrane peroxidation (Sidenote: I discuss why mice may want higher metabolism in the my associated "PUFA and Birds" article).

Humans will have some degree of peroxidisable lipids in our membranes, and are forced to run forward flow electron transport most of the time, and maintain a relatively high body temperature all the time. We are neither blessed with the lower PUFA concentrations of Bats and Birds, nor the ability to uncouple metabolism like they do, nor the ability to modulate body temperature like they do (see my article, these animals routinely go from 40+C during activity, to 15C during sleep).

Therefore, any metabolic excess will lead to some degree of extra peroxidation. Cardiolipin in itself is unsaturated, and while not directly subject to ECT leak, will be affected if ROS production is high enough.

To counter this, we have repair mechanisms to deal with membrane peroxidation. The book I linked to, 'Human Longevity', will talk about various low level genetically determined mechanisms that make one person more or less able to deal with membrane peroxidation. Also, you know that I am a proponent of Guenther Albretch-Buehller's work on cell intelligence, and at the inter-cellular level, I do believe that the by-product of metabolism (red light) does enhance the ability of cells to collectively adapt to metabolism load.

How to determine any of this is completely unknown, but it is logical that there will be a cost-benefit curve here, whereby for some excess of metabolism, the "increase in cell intelligence" outweighs the potential damaging effects, and past that threshold, more metabolism just means more waste products that end up compromising the cell.

Again, this is a balance that will never be able to be measured in a laboratory. I have my esoteric methods, but they are out of reach of most, and even I wouldn't say if they are accurate or not.

But no, high metabolism is not good. Just like low metabolism is not good.

-----

And that goes to (Question-2) ..... if one is maintaining body mass, then we can say that one's energetic intake has been calibrated to match one's energetic requirements.

This is the state which I recommend that most shoot for, and I disagree with the notion of trying to push calories up above maintenance needs.

Proposition: All chronic energetic failures, and thus all chronic disease, are problems of communication, and not a problem of adequate supply.

The same nonsense about "we have enough food to feed the world, but we can't get past the politics and the logistics to bring that food to the world" holds true for the body. All the chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, alzheimer's, multiple scelrosis, etc .... all are fundamentally diseases of communication breakdown, and not of "not enough total energy".

Communication breakdown is what leads to breakdown in of regulatory pathways, lack of delivery of the logistics of energy production to where they need to go (be it minerals, co-factors for enzymes, actual substrate, etc ...), and is what precedes all chronic disease states.

Feeding the body more energy in this state is counterproductive . A little quip on the whole Fred Brooks idea of "Adding more Programmers to an already Late Project makes it even Later!" ...... in other words, in a dysregulated complex system like the body, feeding more energy only allows for energetic imbalances to get worse.

I have stated before that my philosophy on diet is "Avoid Harm", and that all a good diet is good for is:

(a) Supplying enough energy
(b) Supply enough essential building substrate
(c) Doing so without causing Harm

Point (c) is the hardest to get right of course, with so many variables like "food sensitivities", ability to tolerate varying levels of macronutrients, etc .... but essentially, all we are doing is trying to prevent harm.

ie: Diet is never the fix. A non-harmful Diet increases the probability of success for other interventions used to reset good communication in the body.

If one is not too sick, and if one is inherently strong enough, sometimes, making the diet non-harmful is enough for the body's inherent systems to take over. If you are under 50 years old, I find this to be more and more unlikely.

-----

The body fat percentages of 10-15% are very reasonable for a man. Note that this is referring to the older caliper methods of body fat testing, and not DXA, which as a rule, you should probably add 5% to, and thus will produce values more in the range of 15-20%. I will continue to refer to the caliper testing methodologies, since most of the literature is based off these values.

15% body fat really is not difficult to obtain, and is usually about where insulin sensitivity is going to be considered "good". Most men will be able to attain this simply by not eating too much. The genetically very insulin sensitive will be able to get to that 10% figure pretty easily, though not many people would fit that genetic profile.

This is not to say that higher body fat percentages are not manageable from a health perspective, but males at 15% body fat are definitely more metabolically flexible, and I see no downsides in this state. Sidenote: this is what 15% body fat would look like in someone who is active and knows how to move -- Instagram video by Mark McGrath • Oct 5, 2016 at 3:33am UTC

As a final aside: personally, I was a fatter kid when I was younger (90+kg at 185cm), maintained more or less anywhere from 80-84kg from ages 17 to 23, and then when I started tweaking macros to be much higher carb and much lower protein, body just decided to shed fat .

Current stats are 25 years old, 71kg, with 74cm waist, and skinfolds at [5,9,5] corresponding to [pec, ab, thigh] in millimeters. Pull that into any 3-site body fat estimate, and you'll get something like 5% body fat .

And yet health has been completely independent of body fat percentage, and has everything to do with existing infection status . (I've talked about this is previous posts before).

Again, this makes sense that everything related to health boils down to a problem of communication, and if said communication lines are good, then the organism is healthy. Infective agents directly disrupt communication between organ systems, and that is what causes problems.

.....

 

[Orion]

I've been on an ultra low fat (probably under 5 grams a day) diet for a year. I drink a gallon of fat free (skim) milk and a whole bunch of frozen fruit mashed up in it with my Nutribullet. Thats it. And I am healthier than Ive ever been. Now I assume skim milk does have some trace fat. I want to say 0.1 grams per cup. I drink 16 cups, so about 2 grams total fat. And by the way I simply dont crave fats at all anymore. Like none. I absolutely crave sugar. Both milk sugar and fruit sugar. Humans simply don't need dietary fat, PUFA or non PUFA. Thats what Ive learned over the past year and how well this has worked for me. All fats necessary can be created by your body using glucose.

I am two weeks into this and its clearing up alot of health issues, mainly acne for me. Planning on continuing this for awhile. I am at about ~5g per day.

Also RP mentions this alot; eat enough sugar and your body can produce its own healthy supply of saturated fat. PUFA is absolutely UN-essential.

 

[schultz]

I've been on an ultra low fat (probably under 5 grams a day) diet for a year. I drink a gallon of fat free (skim) milk and a whole bunch of frozen fruit mashed up in it with my Nutribullet. Thats it. And I am healthier than Ive ever been. Now I assume skim milk does have some trace fat. I want to say 0.1 grams per cup. I drink 16 cups, so about 2 grams total fat. And by the way I simply dont crave fats at all anymore. Like none. I absolutely crave sugar. Both milk sugar and fruit sugar. Humans simply don't need dietary fat, PUFA or non PUFA. Thats what Ive learned over the past year and how well this has worked for me. All fats necessary can be created by your body using glucose.

I tried a diet similar to this but didn't feel right on it personally. I tried it again a month or so after my first attempt, but with added HCO bringing my fat to about 20g-40g a day, and I felt great. It was very easy to follow and I felt great.

How do you get adequate fat soluble vitamins? Supplementation?

 

[chrismeyers]

I tried a diet similar to this but didn't feel right on it personally. I tried it again a month or so after my first attempt, but with added HCO bringing my fat to about 20g-40g a day, and I felt great. It was very easy to follow and I felt great.

How do you get adequate fat soluble vitamins? Supplementation?

I dont really supplement because skim milk in the US is required to be fortified with Vitamin A and D. So 10% RDA per cup of Vitamin A, and I drink 16 cups.. So its enough. Vitamin D is 25% per cup so more than enough. The only vitamins I would be deficient in with just skim milk would be vitamin C but I eat a lot of frozen mango, so no prob on that.

 

[TRIP C]

@tyw what have you found to be effective strategies for restoring cellular communication? I know eliminating infections would be an important one. And on that note, what do you think is the most effective way to detect and properly eliminate specific infections within the body that are disrupting communication? I know you've spoken previously in other threads about QRA, dowsing rod, etc. and I was wondering if your mentor used those techniques to diagnose your Listeria infection? I know you don't like making recommendations but I am interested in what you think would be viable options to determine infection status and deal with them. Obviously, I'm interested in doing so to see if that is the case with myself. Also interested in what other preferred support mechanisms you use to aid in restoring/maintaining proper communication. Thanks for the insight as always in your posts

 

[m_arch]

As usual, all that is written below is personal ranting, and no recommendations are made to the reader .

-----

I'm not going to bother posting all the studies right now, but one can search for a bunch of stuff regarding desaturase activity and the genetic factors that affect it. In general, the variance that you describe is correct, with Equatorial populations being more Eager in making PUFAs, with less and less eagerness as latitude increases (if I'm not wrong, even across regions like North vs South China).

"More eagerly makes PUFAs" means "less dietary PUFA requirement". Me hailing from people living at 20-23deg latitude, probably don't need that much dietary PUFAs, and can also get away with much lower fat intake (though that is a different discussion).

----

Regarding (Question-1), I do not believe that there is such a thing as a single optimal temperature. That article I wrote stresses the importance of "Efficiency", and efficiency means "matching supply to requirements as closely as possible".

"Running hot all the time" is wasteful, and if one is not built to safely waste energy (in the form of metabolic uncoupling and heat production, with no subsequent ROS), then there are clear downsides to running a fast metabolism.

Everything is conditionally useful. "Better peripheral blood flow" is good when excess heat needs to be dissipated, or if extra nutrients need to be delivered to tissues. "High metabolism" is good when fighting infection, not good when trying to sleep.

Again, "efficiency" is the name of the game. High metabolism cannot be discussed without both asking, "How much of that generated energy is being put to useful work?", and "How is excess energy being disposed?"

Failure to address efficiency gets you into the scenario of the Mouse, which has higher metabolism per unit bodyweight than Humans, but suffers membrane peroxidation (Sidenote: I discuss why mice may want higher metabolism in the my associated "PUFA and Birds" article).

Humans will have some degree of peroxidisable lipids in our membranes, and are forced to run forward flow electron transport most of the time, and maintain a relatively high body temperature all the time. We are neither blessed with the lower PUFA concentrations of Bats and Birds, nor the ability to uncouple metabolism like they do, nor the ability to modulate body temperature like they do (see my article, these animals routinely go from 40+C during activity, to 15C during sleep).

Therefore, any metabolic excess will lead to some degree of extra peroxidation. Cardiolipin in itself is unsaturated, and while not directly subject to ECT leak, will be affected if ROS production is high enough.

To counter this, we have repair mechanisms to deal with membrane peroxidation. The book I linked to, 'Human Longevity', will talk about various low level genetically determined mechanisms that make one person more or less able to deal with membrane peroxidation. Also, you know that I am a proponent of Guenther Albretch-Buehller's work on cell intelligence, and at the inter-cellular level, I do believe that the by-product of metabolism (red light) does enhance the ability of cells to collectively adapt to metabolism load.

How to determine any of this is completely unknown, but it is logical that there will be a cost-benefit curve here, whereby for some excess of metabolism, the "increase in cell intelligence" outweighs the potential damaging effects, and past that threshold, more metabolism just means more waste products that end up compromising the cell.

Again, this is a balance that will never be able to be measured in a laboratory. I have my esoteric methods, but they are out of reach of most, and even I wouldn't say if they are accurate or not.

But no, high metabolism is not good. Just like low metabolism is not good.

-----

And that goes to (Question-2) ..... if one is maintaining body mass, then we can say that one's energetic intake has been calibrated to match one's energetic requirements.

This is the state which I recommend that most shoot for, and I disagree with the notion of trying to push calories up above maintenance needs.

Proposition: All chronic energetic failures, and thus all chronic disease, are problems of communication, and not a problem of adequate supply.

The same nonsense about "we have enough food to feed the world, but we can't get past the politics and the logistics to bring that food to the world" holds true for the body. All the chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, alzheimer's, multiple scelrosis, etc .... all are fundamentally diseases of communication breakdown, and not of "not enough total energy".

Communication breakdown is what leads to breakdown in of regulatory pathways, lack of delivery of the logistics of energy production to where they need to go (be it minerals, co-factors for enzymes, actual substrate, etc ...), and is what precedes all chronic disease states.

Feeding the body more energy in this state is counterproductive . A little quip on the whole Fred Brooks idea of "Adding more Programmers to an already Late Project makes it even Later!" ...... in other words, in a dysregulated complex system like the body, feeding more energy only allows for energetic imbalances to get worse.

I have stated before that my philosophy on diet is "Avoid Harm", and that all a good diet is good for is:

(a) Supplying enough energy
(b) Supply enough essential building substrate
(c) Doing so without causing Harm

Point (c) is the hardest to get right of course, with so many variables like "food sensitivities", ability to tolerate varying levels of macronutrients, etc .... but essentially, all we are doing is trying to prevent harm.

ie: Diet is never the fix. A non-harmful Diet increases the probability of success for other interventions used to reset good communication in the body.

If one is not too sick, and if one is inherently strong enough, sometimes, making the diet non-harmful is enough for the body's inherent systems to take over. If you are under 50 years old, I find this to be more and more unlikely.

-----

The body fat percentages of 10-15% are very reasonable for a man. Note that this is referring to the older caliper methods of body fat testing, and not DXA, which as a rule, you should probably add 5% to, and thus will produce values more in the range of 15-20%. I will continue to refer to the caliper testing methodologies, since most of the literature is based off these values.

15% body fat really is not difficult to obtain, and is usually about where insulin sensitivity is going to be considered "good". Most men will be able to attain this simply by not eating too much. The genetically very insulin sensitive will be able to get to that 10% figure pretty easily, though not many people would fit that genetic profile.

This is not to say that higher body fat percentages are not manageable from a health perspective, but males at 15% body fat are definitely more metabolically flexible, and I see no downsides in this state. Sidenote: this is what 15% body fat would look like in someone who is active and knows how to move -- Instagram video by Mark McGrath • Oct 5, 2016 at 3:33am UTC

As a final aside: personally, I was a fatter kid when I was younger (90+kg at 185cm), maintained more or less anywhere from 80-84kg from ages 17 to 23, and then when I started tweaking macros to be much higher carb and much lower protein, body just decided to shed fat .

Current stats are 25 years old, 71kg, with 74cm waist, and skinfolds at [5,9,5] corresponding to [pec, ab, thigh] in millimeters. Pull that into any 3-site body fat estimate, and you'll get something like 5% body fat .

And yet health has been completely independent of body fat percentage, and has everything to do with existing infection status . (I've talked about this is previous posts before).

Again, this makes sense that everything related to health boils down to a problem of communication, and if said communication lines are good, then the organism is healthy. Infective agents directly disrupt communication between organ systems, and that is what causes problems.

.....

-->"matching supply to requirements"
is an important point and I agree, it seems to me that today people are over stressed and undernourished, obviously that's generalising and not always the case - but it seems to be the norm currently.


-->"Running hot all the time" is wasteful, and if one is not built to safely waste energy (in the form of metabolic uncoupling and heat production, with no subsequent ROS), then there are clear downsides to running a fast metabolism."
I guess the question here is, what do you think is 'running hot'? is 37 degrees Celsius running hot? Bronda Barnes talks about that being the optimal temperature (at least after breakfast, or depending on your cycle for a woman) - if this is 'optimal', then its not really hot nor cold, but juuuust right.

-->""Better peripheral blood flow" is good when excess heat needs to be dissipated, or if extra nutrients need to be delivered to tissues. "High metabolism" is good when fighting infection, not good when trying to sleep."
issues like joint pain in the extremities, skin conditions, hair loss, etc, seem to indicate the need for increased peripheral blood flow to get rid of waste and input more nutrients. I see it like, your core will always try to maintain a good temperature. So generally that is working OK - but your periphery might be lacking (hypothyroidism) while running off stress hormones. again, I guess it depends on the persons context and if they have any of these symptoms. N=1 but I came down with a fever a few months ago and slept about 15 hours a day while I had it

-->"I disagree with the notion of trying to push calories up above maintenance needs."
I guess this statement could be expanded on, if you're having 2000 calories but feel hypo at ~15% BF, then eat 3000 calories and shoot up to ~20% BF (not feeling hypo) but then realise you can have 600mg of caffeine a day with that 3000 calories and you end up levelling off at ~15% BF again, should you do it?

-->"Proposition: All chronic energetic failures, and thus all chronic disease, are problems of communication, and not a problem of adequate supply."
What about starvation experiments? I guess you're saying the organism goes down into hibernation if it has adequate communication, but communication can break down with the lack of red light generated from a good metabolism.

Its a very interesting take on it. I guess in this case we could just bathe in red light every day and not bother how much we eat (unless we need to resist stressors like work etc --> then we need a certain amount of metabolism to keep us from "hibernating and falling asleep at our desk".

I wonder what aside from red light can increase the communication of the bodies systems.

Always interesting talking to you Yew!!

I was probably around 10% BF on the ketogenic diet, but I feel stronger/healthier having gained about 10kg now. The electronic scales we have say I'm around 15% now, so I guess a fair bit of that would have been muscle / organ / bone weight.

 

[tyw]

Addressing points one by one:

-->"matching supply to requirements"
is an important point and I agree, it seems to me that today people are over stressed and undernourished, obviously that's generalising and not always the case - but it seems to be the norm currently.

"Undernourished" usually means lack of communication, and inability to transport and use nutrients to where they are needed, when they are needed.

It's pretty clear from levels of obesity in the world, that in nations where food is not scarce, over-nourishment is the problem, with under-utilisation (at least in terms of raw energetic value. We can debate the topic of micronutrients, which honestly, I find to be a secondary issue of lesser importance in the context of these food-rich countries).

-->"Running hot all the time" is wasteful, and if one is not built to safely waste energy (in the form of metabolic uncoupling and heat production, with no subsequent ROS), then there are clear downsides to running a fast metabolism."
I guess the question here is, what do you think is 'running hot'? is 37 degrees Celsius running hot? Bronda Barnes talks about that being the optimal temperature (at least after breakfast, or depending on your cycle for a woman) - if this is 'optimal', then its not really hot nor cold, but juuuust right.

The state of "Running Hot" / using more energy that is required cannot be determined by body temperature.

So many things will affect body temperature, that it becomes a useless metric for actual practical health outcomes. Some people will waste a lot of extra energy after exercise (EPOC), some people will not uncoupling in the face of cold stress, some people will produce more ATP instead of more Heat during times of nutrient excess, some people will simply store away the nutrients and not have body temp affected at all (for as many people who say that they "feel warm after protein", there are as many people who "feel cold after protein").

IMO, body temperature is a subjective tool that is not worth assigning too much importance to. At best, we can say that "low body temperature is bad", and "high body temperature (fever) is bad".

But what clinical hypotheses can we draw from this, in order to better treat the patients? ...... basically nothing. Body temperature is simply a statement of the patient's state, and doesn't provide hints for further intervention.

-->""Better peripheral blood flow" is good when excess heat needs to be dissipated, or if extra nutrients need to be delivered to tissues. "High metabolism" is good when fighting infection, not good when trying to sleep."
issues like joint pain in the extremities, skin conditions, hair loss, etc, seem to indicate the need for increased peripheral blood flow to get rid of waste and input more nutrients. I see it like, your core will always try to maintain a good temperature. So generally that is working OK - but your periphery might be lacking (hypothyroidism) while running off stress hormones. again, I guess it depends on the persons context and if they have any of these symptoms. N=1 but I came down with a fever a few months ago and slept about 15 hours a day while I had it

Issues like skin conditions, hair loss, etc .... are all internal issues. eg: Hair is just seen as an "extension of the brain" in Chinese Medicine, and "brain = kidneys" in that system. Correspondingly, we find poor kidney (and usually liver) function in all cases of hair loss, and a correction of said kidney function fixes the condition of hair loss.

Sidenote: If one is seeking traditional Chinese Remedies, this article is good -- Treatment of Alopecia with Chinese Herbs . Personally, I have my own testing system to work with such things.​

What leads to healing in any and all tissues, is the ability to maintain a large enough electrical potential across areas of "nutrient stores", to injured areas. This is the "injury potential", and has been traditionally been assigned to the Cathode (positive charge) of a circuit.

Note: This is discussed in detail in Robert Becker's work on Salamanders, who can regenerate their limbs precisely because they are able to generate a huge potential difference in injured tissues. The same can be artificially induced in humans, whereby Becker regenerated fingertips using strong magnetic fields.

In other words, the difference in electrical potential is the driver for nutrient delivery, and subsequent healing. I know that Peat is aware of this, and makes reference to the injury potential, especially in the cases of cancer (too much positive charge on the membrane surface).​

In humans, what is then needed to maintain the ability to establish such differential potentials, is the collagen network of the body -- everything from collagen meridians, to the fascia encasing the entire body.

Serum delivery of nutrients to the periphery is then dependent on, and secondary, to establishing these communication lines -- potential difference is nothing but a signal with a driving force to deliver required substrate to the region of lower charge (injured site).

Again, in almost all cases, the limitation is not metabolic rate, but rather, ensuring that communication channels stay open, and that the right substrate is present (eg: enough glycine, leucine, valine, and isoleucine for burns, and maybe some extra cysteine too for GSH synthesis).

-->"I disagree with the notion of trying to push calories up above maintenance needs."
I guess this statement could be expanded on, if you're having 2000 calories but feel hypo at ~15% BF, then eat 3000 calories and shoot up to ~20% BF (not feeling hypo) but then realise you can have 600mg of caffeine a day with that 3000 calories and you end up levelling off at ~15% BF again, should you do it?

-->"Proposition: All chronic energetic failures, and thus all chronic disease, are problems of communication, and not a problem of adequate supply."
What about starvation experiments? I guess you're saying the organism goes down into hibernation if it has adequate communication, but communication can break down with the lack of red light generated from a good metabolism.

Its a very interesting take on it. I guess in this case we could just bathe in red light every day and not bother how much we eat (unless we need to resist stressors like work etc --> then we need a certain amount of metabolism to keep us from "hibernating and falling asleep at our desk".

I wonder what aside from red light can increase the communication of the bodies systems.

Always interesting talking to you Yew!!

I was probably around 10% BF on the ketogenic diet, but I feel stronger/healthier having gained about 10kg now. The electronic scales we have say I'm around 15% now, so I guess a fair bit of that would have been muscle / organ / bone weight.

Red Light is a blunt tool . It's use and effective is dependent on many variables, and we have no idea how to quantity its effects.

Practitioners who use Red Light need to rely on actual real world data, and tweak their approach accordingly.

I will now excerpt an email conversation regarding "650nm light vs 850nm light vs Direct Electric Current Stimulation". There will be a repeat mention of Becker and his Salamanders (it is important information). The following just contains some of my generalised replies, minus all the profanity and lulzspeek.

Robert Becker's work with Salamanders is proof enough that any healing and growth mechanism is a direct result of the electric gradient across a set of cells.

It was very clear that in Salamanders, the initial regeneration stage was marked by a very large voltage difference between the injured tissues (which were "positively charged") and healthy tissues (which were "negatively charged").

From my perspective, the ideas of "positive" and "negative" do not need to be given associated objects. What matters is the charge gradient, which will then serve to accurately pinpoint where injury has occurred, while providing an automatic driver down the charge gradient for any and all "nutrients" to be driven towards the injured site.

NOTE: this is where I think Mathis' models is much more helpful, since anything-other-than-Mathis science would view "positive" as "only attracting negatively-charged objects". (or they invent weird "like-attracts-like" models of enclosed charged upon charge).

In Mathis' model, any gradient in relative charge abundance is a pressure to move any and other particles than can be bombarded by compounds towards the site of lesser charge.

DC stim forces localised high charge states along the paths of the electrodes (which need to be placed with respect of the energetic meridians of the body). I do believe that there will be a direct effect on he organ systems affected by the stimulus, and an overall systemic effect that decreases in intensity as the charge becomes more distal (wrt the meridians being charged up).

And of course, I know the both of you understand that this is still a high-energy state, and needs to be given at the right dose under the right conditions, both specifically tailored for the patient.

----

Regarding DC Stim vs Red light, they are different mechanisms IMO.

Different frequencies of red light will have different effects.

It seems the 550nm and 650nm ranges are what is responsible for allowing energetic stimulation of Cytochrome C Oxidase, and are thus "metabolism-stimulating frequencies".

800-900nm is likely the "direct communication frequency", which plays a supporting role to metabolism, but does not directly energise it.

This is band of frequencies as a communication band is supported by Guenter-Albretch Buehler's work on 3T3 Cells:

- A long-range attraction between aggregating 3T3 cells mediated by near-infrared light scattering
- http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a249795.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2289086/pdf/jc1143493.pdf


DC applications via electrodes are akin to a battery circuit, which Mathis talks about here -- http://milesmathis.com/seft.pdf . The main takeaway from that article is the section about Wireless data transfer, and how a "pre-signal" is needed to make initial communication coherent. Wires in a circuit allow for this pre-signal to always be present between the connected components, which the battery can then drive charge photons through.

The charge photons moving through any such circuit will be varied, but generally average around Infrared Energies -- http://milesmathis.com/photon3.pdf

Using the value in the previous paper: E = 2.47 x 10^-20 J for an average charge photon.

If we use the standard E = h * c / lambda formula to get the mainstream interpretation of wavelength (which Mathis disagrees with, which is why the lambda that Mathis calculates is different):

wavelength_avg_charge_photon = (1.98644568 * 10 ** -25) / (2.47 * 10 ** -20) = 8.04229020242915e-06 m =~ 8,040nm

you can find the value for hc here -- Planck constant - Wikipedia

ie: charge photons are Far Infrared photons, and these are what drives the DC current. Incidentally, this is probably also why DC current "feels hot".

-----

All of this is just to illustrate that we are working with different independent mechanisms, and all 3 can be used independently.

Personally, I think that there will be a synergistic effect between red light, subsequent nutrient delivery, and DC stim.

----

Not to say that the 850nm band isn't useful of course, since it does play some role in metabolism, and definitely plays a large role in communication.

Study on Bovine heart cyt c oxidase, but I will assume that this is functionally the same as human cyt c oxidase in the context of light therapy -- Re-evaluation of the near infrared spectra of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase: Implications for non invasive in vivo monitoring of tissues

Both Bovine and Human cyt c oxidase contain the same Copper and Iron centers, and the same 2 subunits, and that paper shows that:

(a) light emission from Cyt C Oxidase is a normal part of metabolism. Specifically, they detect 830nm pulses during respiration.

(b) See figure 1 -- Re-evaluation of the near infrared spectra of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase: Implications for non invasive in vivo monitoring of tissues

(b1) Fully Oxidised Cyt C Oxidase absorbs just around the 850nm band. Fully Oxidised means "able accept more electrons"

(b2) Fully Reduced Cyt C Oxidase absorbs just above the 610nm band. Fully Reduced means "unable to accept any more electrons"


The same is true of the Carbon Monoxide bound species.

Accordingly, 660nm light is all that is needed to further stimulate Rat Liver Mitochondria to work -- Photomodulation of oxidative metabolism and electron chain enzymes in rat liver mitochondria. - PubMed - NCBI

The mechanism seems simple enough: Red light in the 600+nm range brings Cyt C Oxidase back to the state where it can accept more electrons (the fully Oxidised State, where all electrons are lost).


It still remains clear that all frequencies in the 550nm to 1200nm band are used for metabolism and cell signalling -- Biological Effects of Low Level Laser Therapy

There may be a role for the 850nm band in dissociating Nitric Oxide from Cyt C Oxidase -- Cellular effects of low power laser therapy can be mediated by nitric oxide. - PubMed - NCBI


In any case, the base mechanism for "more ATP being produced" is the ability to "clear the path for more electrons" in Cyt C Oxidase at a fast rate.

This DOES NOT provide the substrate required to drive metabolism, and the required NADH and FADH still needs to be obtained via carbohydrate and/or fatty acids.

However, I will contend that the red light will provide the Intelligence to use said substrate, by coordinating enzyme complexes required to drive metabolism.


I can also foresee that if there is enough dysfunction down at the lower levels, eg: Not enough PDH or PDC to use glucose, CPT defects screwing up fatty acid metabolism, blockage of minerals by infectious agents, etc .... then Red Light is going to do nothing at all, unless the intelligence boost is OF EPIC GREATNESS to empower enough surrounding cells to deal with the nonsense in their backyard.

This remains to be seen, and I will guarantee that results will vary from person to person. NO DEFINITIVE ANSWERS (as usual :p)​

.....

 

[lollipop]

Addressing points one by one:



"Undernourished" usually means lack of communication, and inability to transport and use nutrients to where they are needed, when they are needed.

It's pretty clear from levels of obesity in the world, that in nations where food is not scarce, over-nourishment is the problem, with under-utilisation (at least in terms of raw energetic value. We can debate the topic of micronutrients, which honestly, I find to be a secondary issue of lesser importance in the context of these food-rich countries).



The state of "Running Hot" / using more energy that is required cannot be determined by body temperature.

So many things will affect body temperature, that it becomes a useless metric for actual practical health outcomes. Some people will waste a lot of extra energy after exercise (EPOC), some people will not uncoupling in the face of cold stress, some people will produce more ATP instead of more Heat during times of nutrient excess, some people will simply store away the nutrients and not have body temp affected at all (for as many people who say that they "feel warm after protein", there are as many people who "feel cold after protein").

IMO, body temperature is a subjective tool that is not worth assigning too much importance to. At best, we can say that "low body temperature is bad", and "high body temperature (fever) is bad".

But what clinical hypotheses can we draw from this, in order to better treat the patients? ...... basically nothing. Body temperature is simply a statement of the patient's state, and doesn't provide hints for further intervention.




Issues like skin conditions, hair loss, etc .... are all internal issues. eg: Hair is just seen as an "extension of the brain" in Chinese Medicine, and "brain = kidneys" in that system. Correspondingly, we find poor kidney (and usually liver) function in all cases of hair loss, and a correction of said kidney function fixes the condition of hair loss.

Sidenote: If one is seeking traditional Chinese Remedies, this article is good -- Treatment of Alopecia with Chinese Herbs . Personally, I have my own testing system to work with such things.​

What leads to healing in any and all tissues, is the ability to maintain a large enough electrical potential across areas of "nutrient stores", to injured areas. This is the "injury potential", and has been traditionally been assigned to the Cathode (positive charge) of a circuit.

Note: This is discussed in detail in Robert Becker's work on Salamanders, who can regenerate their limbs precisely because they are able to generate a huge potential difference in injured tissues. The same can be artificially induced in humans, whereby Becker regenerated fingertips using strong magnetic fields.

In other words, the difference in electrical potential is the driver for nutrient delivery, and subsequent healing. I know that Peat is aware of this, and makes reference to the injury potential, especially in the cases of cancer (too much positive charge on the membrane surface).​

In humans, what is then needed to maintain the ability to establish such differential potentials, is the collagen network of the body -- everything from collagen meridians, to the fascia encasing the entire body.

Serum delivery of nutrients to the periphery is then dependent on, and secondary, to establishing these communication lines -- potential difference is nothing but a signal with a driving force to deliver required substrate to the region of lower charge (injured site).

Again, in almost all cases, the limitation is not metabolic rate, but rather, ensuring that communication channels stay open, and that the right substrate is present (eg: enough glycine, leucine, valine, and isoleucine for burns, and maybe some extra cysteine too for GSH synthesis).




Red Light is a blunt tool . It's use and effective is dependent on many variables, and we have no idea how to quantity its effects.

Practitioners who use Red Light need to rely on actual real world data, and tweak their approach accordingly.

I will now excerpt an email conversation regarding "650nm light vs 850nm light vs Direct Electric Current Stimulation". There will be a repeat mention of Becker and his Salamanders (it is important information). The following just contains some of my generalised replies, minus all the profanity and lulzspeek.

Robert Becker's work with Salamanders is proof enough that any healing and growth mechanism is a direct result of the electric gradient across a set of cells.

It was very clear that in Salamanders, the initial regeneration stage was marked by a very large voltage difference between the injured tissues (which were "positively charged") and healthy tissues (which were "negatively charged").

From my perspective, the ideas of "positive" and "negative" do not need to be given associated objects. What matters is the charge gradient, which will then serve to accurately pinpoint where injury has occurred, while providing an automatic driver down the charge gradient for any and all "nutrients" to be driven towards the injured site.

NOTE: this is where I think Mathis' models is much more helpful, since anything-other-than-Mathis science would view "positive" as "only attracting negatively-charged objects". (or they invent weird "like-attracts-like" models of enclosed charged upon charge).

In Mathis' model, any gradient in relative charge abundance is a pressure to move any and other particles than can be bombarded by compounds towards the site of lesser charge.

DC stim forces localised high charge states along the paths of the electrodes (which need to be placed with respect of the energetic meridians of the body). I do believe that there will be a direct effect on he organ systems affected by the stimulus, and an overall systemic effect that decreases in intensity as the charge becomes more distal (wrt the meridians being charged up).

And of course, I know the both of you understand that this is still a high-energy state, and needs to be given at the right dose under the right conditions, both specifically tailored for the patient.

----

Regarding DC Stim vs Red light, they are different mechanisms IMO.

Different frequencies of red light will have different effects.

It seems the 550nm and 650nm ranges are what is responsible for allowing energetic stimulation of Cytochrome C Oxidase, and are thus "metabolism-stimulating frequencies".

800-900nm is likely the "direct communication frequency", which plays a supporting role to metabolism, but does not directly energise it.

This is band of frequencies as a communication band is supported by Guenter-Albretch Buehler's work on 3T3 Cells:

- A long-range attraction between aggregating 3T3 cells mediated by near-infrared light scattering
- http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a249795.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2289086/pdf/jc1143493.pdf


DC applications via electrodes are akin to a battery circuit, which Mathis talks about here -- http://milesmathis.com/seft.pdf . The main takeaway from that article is the section about Wireless data transfer, and how a "pre-signal" is needed to make initial communication coherent. Wires in a circuit allow for this pre-signal to always be present between the connected components, which the battery can then drive charge photons through.

The charge photons moving through any such circuit will be varied, but generally average around Infrared Energies -- http://milesmathis.com/photon3.pdf

Using the value in the previous paper: E = 2.47 x 10^-20 J for an average charge photon.

If we use the standard E = h * c / lambda formula to get the mainstream interpretation of wavelength (which Mathis disagrees with, which is why the lambda that Mathis calculates is different):

wavelength_avg_charge_photon = (1.98644568 * 10 ** -25) / (2.47 * 10 ** -20) = 8.04229020242915e-06 m =~ 8,040nm

you can find the value for hc here -- Planck constant - Wikipedia

ie: charge photons are Far Infrared photons, and these are what drives the DC current. Incidentally, this is probably also why DC current "feels hot".

-----

All of this is just to illustrate that we are working with different independent mechanisms, and all 3 can be used independently.

Personally, I think that there will be a synergistic effect between red light, subsequent nutrient delivery, and DC stim.

----

Not to say that the 850nm band isn't useful of course, since it does play some role in metabolism, and definitely plays a large role in communication.

Study on Bovine heart cyt c oxidase, but I will assume that this is functionally the same as human cyt c oxidase in the context of light therapy -- Re-evaluation of the near infrared spectra of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase: Implications for non invasive in vivo monitoring of tissues

Both Bovine and Human cyt c oxidase contain the same Copper and Iron centers, and the same 2 subunits, and that paper shows that:

(a) light emission from Cyt C Oxidase is a normal part of metabolism. Specifically, they detect 830nm pulses during respiration.

(b) See figure 1 -- Re-evaluation of the near infrared spectra of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase: Implications for non invasive in vivo monitoring of tissues

(b1) Fully Oxidised Cyt C Oxidase absorbs just around the 850nm band. Fully Oxidised means "able accept more electrons"

(b2) Fully Reduced Cyt C Oxidase absorbs just above the 610nm band. Fully Reduced means "unable to accept any more electrons"


The same is true of the Carbon Monoxide bound species.

Accordingly, 660nm light is all that is needed to further stimulate Rat Liver Mitochondria to work -- Photomodulation of oxidative metabolism and electron chain enzymes in rat liver mitochondria. - PubMed - NCBI

The mechanism seems simple enough: Red light in the 600+nm range brings Cyt C Oxidase back to the state where it can accept more electrons (the fully Oxidised State, where all electrons are lost).


It still remains clear that all frequencies in the 550nm to 1200nm band are used for metabolism and cell signalling -- Biological Effects of Low Level Laser Therapy

There may be a role for the 850nm band in dissociating Nitric Oxide from Cyt C Oxidase -- Cellular effects of low power laser therapy can be mediated by nitric oxide. - PubMed - NCBI


In any case, the base mechanism for "more ATP being produced" is the ability to "clear the path for more electrons" in Cyt C Oxidase at a fast rate.

This DOES NOT provide the substrate required to drive metabolism, and the required NADH and FADH still needs to be obtained via carbohydrate and/or fatty acids.

However, I will contend that the red light will provide the Intelligence to use said substrate, by coordinating enzyme complexes required to drive metabolism.


I can also foresee that if there is enough dysfunction down at the lower levels, eg: Not enough PDH or PDC to use glucose, CPT defects screwing up fatty acid metabolism, blockage of minerals by infectious agents, etc .... then Red Light is going to do nothing at all, unless the intelligence boost is OF EPIC GREATNESS to empower enough surrounding cells to deal with the nonsense in their backyard.

This remains to be seen, and I will guarantee that results will vary from person to person. NO DEFINITIVE ANSWERS (as usual :p)​

.....

"then Red Light is going to do nothing at all, unless the intelligence boost is OF EPIC GREATNESS to empower enough surrounding cells to deal with the nonsense in their backyard."

@tyw Fascinating. @Sucrates have you seen this discussion?

 

[Sucrates]

"then Red Light is going to do nothing at all, unless the intelligence boost is OF EPIC GREATNESS to empower enough surrounding cells to deal with the nonsense in their backyard."

@tyw Fascinating. @Sucrates have you seen this discussion?

I have now, but most of it is over my head.

 

[Strongbad]

@tyw you're the smartest guy in this forum. You always bring context out of research findings into real world situation. And you don't limit yourself by one school of thought only and aren't afraid to be critical to everything. I'm a huge fan of your posts

 

[m_arch]

Addressing points one by one:



"Undernourished" usually means lack of communication, and inability to transport and use nutrients to where they are needed, when they are needed.

It's pretty clear from levels of obesity in the world, that in nations where food is not scarce, over-nourishment is the problem, with under-utilisation (at least in terms of raw energetic value. We can debate the topic of micronutrients, which honestly, I find to be a secondary issue of lesser importance in the context of these food-rich countries).



The state of "Running Hot" / using more energy that is required cannot be determined by body temperature.

So many things will affect body temperature, that it becomes a useless metric for actual practical health outcomes. Some people will waste a lot of extra energy after exercise (EPOC), some people will not uncoupling in the face of cold stress, some people will produce more ATP instead of more Heat during times of nutrient excess, some people will simply store away the nutrients and not have body temp affected at all (for as many people who say that they "feel warm after protein", there are as many people who "feel cold after protein").

IMO, body temperature is a subjective tool that is not worth assigning too much importance to. At best, we can say that "low body temperature is bad", and "high body temperature (fever) is bad".

But what clinical hypotheses can we draw from this, in order to better treat the patients? ...... basically nothing. Body temperature is simply a statement of the patient's state, and doesn't provide hints for further intervention.




Issues like skin conditions, hair loss, etc .... are all internal issues. eg: Hair is just seen as an "extension of the brain" in Chinese Medicine, and "brain = kidneys" in that system. Correspondingly, we find poor kidney (and usually liver) function in all cases of hair loss, and a correction of said kidney function fixes the condition of hair loss.

Sidenote: If one is seeking traditional Chinese Remedies, this article is good -- Treatment of Alopecia with Chinese Herbs . Personally, I have my own testing system to work with such things.​

What leads to healing in any and all tissues, is the ability to maintain a large enough electrical potential across areas of "nutrient stores", to injured areas. This is the "injury potential", and has been traditionally been assigned to the Cathode (positive charge) of a circuit.

Note: This is discussed in detail in Robert Becker's work on Salamanders, who can regenerate their limbs precisely because they are able to generate a huge potential difference in injured tissues. The same can be artificially induced in humans, whereby Becker regenerated fingertips using strong magnetic fields.

In other words, the difference in electrical potential is the driver for nutrient delivery, and subsequent healing. I know that Peat is aware of this, and makes reference to the injury potential, especially in the cases of cancer (too much positive charge on the membrane surface).​

In humans, what is then needed to maintain the ability to establish such differential potentials, is the collagen network of the body -- everything from collagen meridians, to the fascia encasing the entire body.

Serum delivery of nutrients to the periphery is then dependent on, and secondary, to establishing these communication lines -- potential difference is nothing but a signal with a driving force to deliver required substrate to the region of lower charge (injured site).

Again, in almost all cases, the limitation is not metabolic rate, but rather, ensuring that communication channels stay open, and that the right substrate is present (eg: enough glycine, leucine, valine, and isoleucine for burns, and maybe some extra cysteine too for GSH synthesis).




Red Light is a blunt tool . It's use and effective is dependent on many variables, and we have no idea how to quantity its effects.

Practitioners who use Red Light need to rely on actual real world data, and tweak their approach accordingly.

I will now excerpt an email conversation regarding "650nm light vs 850nm light vs Direct Electric Current Stimulation". There will be a repeat mention of Becker and his Salamanders (it is important information). The following just contains some of my generalised replies, minus all the profanity and lulzspeek.

Robert Becker's work with Salamanders is proof enough that any healing and growth mechanism is a direct result of the electric gradient across a set of cells.

It was very clear that in Salamanders, the initial regeneration stage was marked by a very large voltage difference between the injured tissues (which were "positively charged") and healthy tissues (which were "negatively charged").

From my perspective, the ideas of "positive" and "negative" do not need to be given associated objects. What matters is the charge gradient, which will then serve to accurately pinpoint where injury has occurred, while providing an automatic driver down the charge gradient for any and all "nutrients" to be driven towards the injured site.

NOTE: this is where I think Mathis' models is much more helpful, since anything-other-than-Mathis science would view "positive" as "only attracting negatively-charged objects". (or they invent weird "like-attracts-like" models of enclosed charged upon charge).

In Mathis' model, any gradient in relative charge abundance is a pressure to move any and other particles than can be bombarded by compounds towards the site of lesser charge.

DC stim forces localised high charge states along the paths of the electrodes (which need to be placed with respect of the energetic meridians of the body). I do believe that there will be a direct effect on he organ systems affected by the stimulus, and an overall systemic effect that decreases in intensity as the charge becomes more distal (wrt the meridians being charged up).

And of course, I know the both of you understand that this is still a high-energy state, and needs to be given at the right dose under the right conditions, both specifically tailored for the patient.

----

Regarding DC Stim vs Red light, they are different mechanisms IMO.

Different frequencies of red light will have different effects.

It seems the 550nm and 650nm ranges are what is responsible for allowing energetic stimulation of Cytochrome C Oxidase, and are thus "metabolism-stimulating frequencies".

800-900nm is likely the "direct communication frequency", which plays a supporting role to metabolism, but does not directly energise it.

This is band of frequencies as a communication band is supported by Guenter-Albretch Buehler's work on 3T3 Cells:

- A long-range attraction between aggregating 3T3 cells mediated by near-infrared light scattering
- http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a249795.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2289086/pdf/jc1143493.pdf


DC applications via electrodes are akin to a battery circuit, which Mathis talks about here -- http://milesmathis.com/seft.pdf . The main takeaway from that article is the section about Wireless data transfer, and how a "pre-signal" is needed to make initial communication coherent. Wires in a circuit allow for this pre-signal to always be present between the connected components, which the battery can then drive charge photons through.

The charge photons moving through any such circuit will be varied, but generally average around Infrared Energies -- http://milesmathis.com/photon3.pdf

Using the value in the previous paper: E = 2.47 x 10^-20 J for an average charge photon.

If we use the standard E = h * c / lambda formula to get the mainstream interpretation of wavelength (which Mathis disagrees with, which is why the lambda that Mathis calculates is different):

wavelength_avg_charge_photon = (1.98644568 * 10 ** -25) / (2.47 * 10 ** -20) = 8.04229020242915e-06 m =~ 8,040nm

you can find the value for hc here -- Planck constant - Wikipedia

ie: charge photons are Far Infrared photons, and these are what drives the DC current. Incidentally, this is probably also why DC current "feels hot".

-----

All of this is just to illustrate that we are working with different independent mechanisms, and all 3 can be used independently.

Personally, I think that there will be a synergistic effect between red light, subsequent nutrient delivery, and DC stim.

----

Not to say that the 850nm band isn't useful of course, since it does play some role in metabolism, and definitely plays a large role in communication.

Study on Bovine heart cyt c oxidase, but I will assume that this is functionally the same as human cyt c oxidase in the context of light therapy -- Re-evaluation of the near infrared spectra of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase: Implications for non invasive in vivo monitoring of tissues

Both Bovine and Human cyt c oxidase contain the same Copper and Iron centers, and the same 2 subunits, and that paper shows that:

(a) light emission from Cyt C Oxidase is a normal part of metabolism. Specifically, they detect 830nm pulses during respiration.

(b) See figure 1 -- Re-evaluation of the near infrared spectra of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase: Implications for non invasive in vivo monitoring of tissues

(b1) Fully Oxidised Cyt C Oxidase absorbs just around the 850nm band. Fully Oxidised means "able accept more electrons"

(b2) Fully Reduced Cyt C Oxidase absorbs just above the 610nm band. Fully Reduced means "unable to accept any more electrons"


The same is true of the Carbon Monoxide bound species.

Accordingly, 660nm light is all that is needed to further stimulate Rat Liver Mitochondria to work -- Photomodulation of oxidative metabolism and electron chain enzymes in rat liver mitochondria. - PubMed - NCBI

The mechanism seems simple enough: Red light in the 600+nm range brings Cyt C Oxidase back to the state where it can accept more electrons (the fully Oxidised State, where all electrons are lost).


It still remains clear that all frequencies in the 550nm to 1200nm band are used for metabolism and cell signalling -- Biological Effects of Low Level Laser Therapy

There may be a role for the 850nm band in dissociating Nitric Oxide from Cyt C Oxidase -- Cellular effects of low power laser therapy can be mediated by nitric oxide. - PubMed - NCBI


In any case, the base mechanism for "more ATP being produced" is the ability to "clear the path for more electrons" in Cyt C Oxidase at a fast rate.

This DOES NOT provide the substrate required to drive metabolism, and the required NADH and FADH still needs to be obtained via carbohydrate and/or fatty acids.

However, I will contend that the red light will provide the Intelligence to use said substrate, by coordinating enzyme complexes required to drive metabolism.


I can also foresee that if there is enough dysfunction down at the lower levels, eg: Not enough PDH or PDC to use glucose, CPT defects screwing up fatty acid metabolism, blockage of minerals by infectious agents, etc .... then Red Light is going to do nothing at all, unless the intelligence boost is OF EPIC GREATNESS to empower enough surrounding cells to deal with the nonsense in their backyard.

This remains to be seen, and I will guarantee that results will vary from person to person. NO DEFINITIVE ANSWERS (as usual :p)​

.....

"
It's pretty clear from levels of obesity in the world, that in nations where food is not scarce, over-nourishment is the problem, with under-utilisation "
"The state of "Running Hot" / using more energy that is required cannot be determined by body temperature."

--> I guess this is my N=1 and not a very solid argument lol, but in my experience (low heart rate, slightly lower than 37c temp) when I can increase these even to like a 70 pulse and 37c I feel a lot more energetic and lively, the world seems richer so-to-speak.
So, at least in my experience, what seems to be happening is that I'm using more energy with the increased metabolism. I suspect that when I'm "energised", I naturally use more energy - thinking more, faster, clearer, moving more and better, regenerating more, etc. And I feel better equipped to 'face the stress of life'. I think in the case of thyroid it seems to make everything more efficient (perhaps really good at improving communication, which is what you're talking about), in a win-win type scenario; more energy, more retention of nutrients, and more restful sleep. This is also correlating strongly with the pulse and temp readings. Under this scenario, if you have more energy, I think you use it. At least in my case. Over nourishment and under utilisation seems to correlate more with screwed up metabolisms. What are you suggesting these people do to get back to a normal weight? Eat less? How will they deal with the stress of life?


Robert O Beckers stuff:
Damn I need to get this book.

So you're saying;
550nm light increases metabolism (in a safer way than consuming more calories)
850nm light activates the communication frequency (are you saying implications of this = the body can heal only while this light is on if there is a communication breakdown?)
DC Stimulation can 'charge' the meridians - enabling a healing of damaged communication breakdown (i.e. in the salamanders regenerating limbs)?

what is DC Stimulation and where do I get one? :P

 

[tyw]

@tyw Would you expand/explain bit more in detail please? Thanks.

If one eats 50% carbs with a 50% deficit, they will have to mobilise a lot of fatty acids in order to deal with that deficit.

Ketogenesis is directly a result of oxaloacetate depletion:

source: Ketosis- Part-1​

Any form of caloric restriction will already put downward pressure on oxaloacetate concentrations (reducing them).

Even if there are some carbohydrate in the diet, with severe caloric restriction,
- there will be significant periods where all of that carbohydrate will be oxidised,
- leaving greatly reduced oxaloacetate production,
- and increasing the likelihood of acetyl-CoA "spilling over" into ketones

Total energy needs drive the mechanism to produce ketones. The same reason why "exercise is ketogenic" -- acute increase in energetic demand depletes oxaloacetate enough to produce ketones.

Note that all of this is solely restricted to a discussion of Ketosis, and nothing else can be inferred from this. The simple mechanism is: not enough oxaloacetate => likelihood of ketone production increases

Probably the only good reason for framing the argument this way, is to critique all the Keto Zealots who are adamant that low carb is the only way to produce ketones, or that producing ketones is an inherent good.

@tyw you're the smartest guy in this forum. You always bring context out of research findings into real world situation. And you don't limit yourself by one school of thought only and aren't afraid to be critical to everything. I'm a huge fan of your posts

My rule of thumb is "EVERYTHING is WRONG", and then what is Not-yet Proven wrong is considered useful.

Also, I will tend to view things as Black and White binaries. ie: There is no grey .... there is only (1) black and white that is viewed with not enough granularity, and (2) rainbow coloured uncertainty.

"
It's pretty clear from levels of obesity in the world, that in nations where food is not scarce, over-nourishment is the problem, with under-utilisation "
"The state of "Running Hot" / using more energy that is required cannot be determined by body temperature."

--> I guess this is my N=1 and not a very solid argument lol, but in my experience (low heart rate, slightly lower than 37c temp) when I can increase these even to like a 70 pulse and 37c I feel a lot more energetic and lively, the world seems richer so-to-speak.
So, at least in my experience, what seems to be happening is that I'm using more energy with the increased metabolism. I suspect that when I'm "energised", I naturally use more energy - thinking more, faster, clearer, moving more and better, regenerating more, etc. And I feel better equipped to 'face the stress of life'. I think in the case of thyroid it seems to make everything more efficient (perhaps really good at improving communication, which is what you're talking about), in a win-win type scenario; more energy, more retention of nutrients, and more restful sleep. This is also correlating strongly with the pulse and temp readings. Under this scenario, if you have more energy, I think you use it. At least in my case. Over nourishment and under utilisation seems to correlate more with screwed up metabolisms. What are you suggesting these people do to get back to a normal weight? Eat less? How will they deal with the stress of life?


Robert O Beckers stuff:
Damn I need to get this book.

So you're saying;
550nm light increases metabolism (in a safer way than consuming more calories)
850nm light activates the communication frequency (are you saying implications of this = the body can heal only while this light is on if there is a communication breakdown?)
DC Stimulation can 'charge' the meridians - enabling a healing of damaged communication breakdown (i.e. in the salamanders regenerating limbs)?

what is DC Stimulation and where do I get one? :p

"The Body Electric" is where this is all described -- The Body Electric (book) - Wikipedia

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To be clear, 550nm - 650nm light allows Cyt C oxidase to accept electrons at a faster rate, by "freeing" it from the fully reduced state. This allows incoming electrons to be accepted and used for proton production, without those electrons leaking out of ECT (and forming Reactive Oxygen Species), and hopefully having those protons be used for ATP production.

This means that if there aren't that many electrons coming down the pipe in the first place, then this mechanism doesn't really come into play. eg: cellular insulin resistance through Reverse Electron Transport via FADH2 dominant metabolism (mostly fatty acids).

850nm cannot be said to activate anything, and the functions are basically unknown. We know that it is the 800-1200nm band is most used for cellular communication (based of Gunther Albretch Buehller's work), and we know that cells will be attracted to areas illuminated with this frequency, but we have no idea what the exact effects are.

Which is why I implied above and in my email exchange that any presence of such light is just going to give some generic intelligence boost -- more signals which cells can interpret. "What do the cells do with this signal?", "How do they do this?", ...... we do not know the answer to any of these questions. All we know is that cells use these frequencies communicate, and to perform better in their tasks over time. It is just as likely that this may mean slowing down metabolism, because cells are now smart enough to detect that metabolism is proceeding faster than is required.

Thus, I cannot confidently say that such light affects metabolism in any direct way. Very likely, but with no definitive mechanism like we see with the 650nm band.

And even this doesn't affect metabolism, it likely helps with many other processes that we do not yet understand.

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The only DC Stim device I have had a positive experience with is the ArpWave, which has a terrible sales process, a terrible website, and is terribly expensive (at least $6,000 for a good unit).

Most people selling DC Stim devices also over-prescribe the dose of DC current, and end up wrecking people ..... I needed so much extra hormones after a DC stim session ..... (like 100mg DHEA, and 300mg Pregnenolone).

This was a conversation with people who had possession of such devices, and are experimenting with their use, and is not meant as a recommendation to delve into DC stim. The example was given purely as a theoretical discussion of the body's endogenous current systems and the way that healing protocols work.

And no, TENS units do not produce anywhere near the level of current, nor use the frequencies that a good DC stim device will produce ... the real stuff hurts , and is thus a sharp tool that is both very useful and very dangerous.

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"More energised" is not exactly where one wants to be most of the time. Everything has costs, and putting out energy all the time comes with its inherent cost.

Some people are not designed to work certain professions. Otherwise, they must be willing and be prepared to pay the cost of such professions.

There is no generic answer here. eg: How can we generalise a solution for someone working as policeman in a crime-ridden area, and who is circadian-disrupted and on the guard all the time?

Answers to "how to deal with stress" extend far beyond simple nutrition and exogenous supplementation. It needs to be tailored to the person specifically, and while some people have tools to do that, this can only be done in a one-on-one fashion.

(And remember, most people seek answers as a substitute for the truth )​

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[Drareg]

As usual, all that is written below is personal ranting, and no recommendations are made to the reader .

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I'm not going to bother posting all the studies right now, but one can search for a bunch of stuff regarding desaturase activity and the genetic factors that affect it. In general, the variance that you describe is correct, with Equatorial populations being more Eager in making PUFAs, with less and less eagerness as latitude increases (if I'm not wrong, even across regions like North vs South China).

"More eagerly makes PUFAs" means "less dietary PUFA requirement". Me hailing from people living at 20-23deg latitude, probably don't need that much dietary PUFAs, and can also get away with much lower fat intake (though that is a different discussion).

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Regarding (Question-1), I do not believe that there is such a thing as a single optimal temperature. That article I wrote stresses the importance of "Efficiency", and efficiency means "matching supply to requirements as closely as possible".

"Running hot all the time" is wasteful, and if one is not built to safely waste energy (in the form of metabolic uncoupling and heat production, with no subsequent ROS), then there are clear downsides to running a fast metabolism.

Everything is conditionally useful. "Better peripheral blood flow" is good when excess heat needs to be dissipated, or if extra nutrients need to be delivered to tissues. "High metabolism" is good when fighting infection, not good when trying to sleep.

Again, "efficiency" is the name of the game. High metabolism cannot be discussed without both asking, "How much of that generated energy is being put to useful work?", and "How is excess energy being disposed?"

Failure to address efficiency gets you into the scenario of the Mouse, which has higher metabolism per unit bodyweight than Humans, but suffers membrane peroxidation (Sidenote: I discuss why mice may want higher metabolism in the my associated "PUFA and Birds" article).

Humans will have some degree of peroxidisable lipids in our membranes, and are forced to run forward flow electron transport most of the time, and maintain a relatively high body temperature all the time. We are neither blessed with the lower PUFA concentrations of Bats and Birds, nor the ability to uncouple metabolism like they do, nor the ability to modulate body temperature like they do (see my article, these animals routinely go from 40+C during activity, to 15C during sleep).

Therefore, any metabolic excess will lead to some degree of extra peroxidation. Cardiolipin in itself is unsaturated, and while not directly subject to ECT leak, will be affected if ROS production is high enough.

To counter this, we have repair mechanisms to deal with membrane peroxidation. The book I linked to, 'Human Longevity', will talk about various low level genetically determined mechanisms that make one person more or less able to deal with membrane peroxidation. Also, you know that I am a proponent of Guenther Albretch-Buehller's work on cell intelligence, and at the inter-cellular level, I do believe that the by-product of metabolism (red light) does enhance the ability of cells to collectively adapt to metabolism load.

How to determine any of this is completely unknown, but it is logical that there will be a cost-benefit curve here, whereby for some excess of metabolism, the "increase in cell intelligence" outweighs the potential damaging effects, and past that threshold, more metabolism just means more waste products that end up compromising the cell.

Again, this is a balance that will never be able to be measured in a laboratory. I have my esoteric methods, but they are out of reach of most, and even I wouldn't say if they are accurate or not.

But no, high metabolism is not good. Just like low metabolism is not good.

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And that goes to (Question-2) ..... if one is maintaining body mass, then we can say that one's energetic intake has been calibrated to match one's energetic requirements.

This is the state which I recommend that most shoot for, and I disagree with the notion of trying to push calories up above maintenance needs.

Proposition: All chronic energetic failures, and thus all chronic disease, are problems of communication, and not a problem of adequate supply.

The same nonsense about "we have enough food to feed the world, but we can't get past the politics and the logistics to bring that food to the world" holds true for the body. All the chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, alzheimer's, multiple scelrosis, etc .... all are fundamentally diseases of communication breakdown, and not of "not enough total energy".

Communication breakdown is what leads to breakdown in of regulatory pathways, lack of delivery of the logistics of energy production to where they need to go (be it minerals, co-factors for enzymes, actual substrate, etc ...), and is what precedes all chronic disease states.

Feeding the body more energy in this state is counterproductive . A little quip on the whole Fred Brooks idea of "Adding more Programmers to an already Late Project makes it even Later!" ...... in other words, in a dysregulated complex system like the body, feeding more energy only allows for energetic imbalances to get worse.

I have stated before that my philosophy on diet is "Avoid Harm", and that all a good diet is good for is:

(a) Supplying enough energy
(b) Supply enough essential building substrate
(c) Doing so without causing Harm

Point (c) is the hardest to get right of course, with so many variables like "food sensitivities", ability to tolerate varying levels of macronutrients, etc .... but essentially, all we are doing is trying to prevent harm.

ie: Diet is never the fix. A non-harmful Diet increases the probability of success for other interventions used to reset good communication in the body.

If one is not too sick, and if one is inherently strong enough, sometimes, making the diet non-harmful is enough for the body's inherent systems to take over. If you are under 50 years old, I find this to be more and more unlikely.

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The body fat percentages of 10-15% are very reasonable for a man. Note that this is referring to the older caliper methods of body fat testing, and not DXA, which as a rule, you should probably add 5% to, and thus will produce values more in the range of 15-20%. I will continue to refer to the caliper testing methodologies, since most of the literature is based off these values.

15% body fat really is not difficult to obtain, and is usually about where insulin sensitivity is going to be considered "good". Most men will be able to attain this simply by not eating too much. The genetically very insulin sensitive will be able to get to that 10% figure pretty easily, though not many people would fit that genetic profile.

This is not to say that higher body fat percentages are not manageable from a health perspective, but males at 15% body fat are definitely more metabolically flexible, and I see no downsides in this state. Sidenote: this is what 15% body fat would look like in someone who is active and knows how to move -- Instagram video by Mark McGrath • Oct 5, 2016 at 3:33am UTC

As a final aside: personally, I was a fatter kid when I was younger (90+kg at 185cm), maintained more or less anywhere from 80-84kg from ages 17 to 23, and then when I started tweaking macros to be much higher carb and much lower protein, body just decided to shed fat .

Current stats are 25 years old, 71kg, with 74cm waist, and skinfolds at [5,9,5] corresponding to [pec, ab, thigh] in millimeters. Pull that into any 3-site body fat estimate, and you'll get something like 5% body fat .

And yet health has been completely independent of body fat percentage, and has everything to do with existing infection status . (I've talked about this is previous posts before).

Again, this makes sense that everything related to health boils down to a problem of communication, and if said communication lines are good, then the organism is healthy. Infective agents directly disrupt communication between organ systems, and that is what causes problems.

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It might be a good idea to keep in mind you are 25 and youth protective hormones are still quite active.
Hormones are messengers,communication.

I posted some studies how cortisol for example is demethylating DNA in some cases of stress,I know this area is still very cloudy but it's all in the area of communication.

 

[Drareg]

Here is a device that looks quite good for red light.
http://www.warp-heals.com/warp-10/

 

[tyw]

It might be a good idea to keep in mind you are 25 and youth protective hormones are still quite active.
Hormones are messengers,communication.

I posted some studies how cortisol for example is demethylating DNA in some cases of stress,I know this area is still very cloudy but it's all in the area of communication.

Age is not the main factor in this regard. The creators of said device are "energetically coherent" (for lack of a better term). Meaning that DC current stimulus does not disrupt their system to a degree large enough for the body to decide to send out recovery messages.

I am not born a strong human by default (and there is nothing one can do to really change this). Running a "standard protocol" meant for strong people short circuited certain components, and required exogenous support to recover back to baseline.

On the other hand, I saw an 80+ year old take the same protocol with no problems whatsoever .....

(a) Some people are born stronger than others.
(b) If a weak link is over-stimulated, large chunks of the system can fail.

Point (b) is well known in acupuncture circles, and oftentimes one will see precautions when working with critical meridians like the Heart and Lungs, which practitioners claim "can lead to death" if overstimulated.

In my case, it was a simple acute failure of the gallbladder meridians, and this was me already going into it with good overall coherence to begin with. The fix was simple, and only slight skin breakdowns occurred, but again, shows that this is powerful stuff, not to be played around lightly.

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[jaa]

Also, I will tend to view things as Black and White binaries. ie: There is no grey .... there is only (1) black and white that is viewed with not enough granularity, and (2) rainbow coloured uncertainty.

I am having trouble deciphering this passage. Could you clarify?

I'm with you on (1). Ideas about the universe are right or wrong.

I think I agree with you on (2), but find your language puzzling. I would replace the rainbow of uncertainty with shades of grey (to follow the black and white metaphor) and apply it to all human ideas. There is no black or white when it comes to human (un)certainty, but there are shades of grey that get pretty damn close. Are you using the colour metaphor to emphasis the broad range of uncertainty because using grey can cause people to wrongly deduce that all uncertainties are the same? Or is there some other reason?

 

[lollipop]

Also, I will tend to view things as Black and White binaries. ie: There is no grey .... there is only (1) black and white that is viewed with not enough granularity, and (2) rainbow coloured uncertainty.

The brilliance of this is striking @tyw Such a pleasure to have this cross my path.

 

[kaybb]

@tyw what have you found to be effective strategies for restoring cellular communication? I know eliminating infections would be an important one. And on that note, what do you think is the most effective way to detect and properly eliminate specific infections within the body that are disrupting communication? I know you've spoken previously in other threads about QRA, dowsing rod, etc. and I was wondering if your mentor used those techniques to diagnose your Listeria infection? I know you don't like making recommendations but I am interested in what you think would be viable options to determine infection status and deal with them. Obviously, I'm interested in doing so to see if that is the case with myself. Also interested in what other preferred support mechanisms you use to aid in restoring/maintaining proper communication. Thanks for the insight as always in your posts

@tyw I have the same question. I have all over body pain (fibromyalgia) & migraine/vertigo. Continuously looking for answers/truth to help me heal.

 

[kaybb]

Here is a device that looks quite good for red light.
http://www.warp-heals.com/warp-10/

This is fascinating . Have you had personal experience with John Downing? Or this type of light therapy?