What Made You Believe In Ray Peats Work?

[thomas00]

Yea Josh rubin charges $1000 for a consult and he's basically just using all of Rays ideas. Ugh.

Wow. That's rather shameless.

 

[DaveFoster]

He's right about pharmacology. Drugs that fall in align with his paradigm have the fewest and least severe side effects.

Also, if I take enough pregnenolone, I get high. If I just keep taking it, it always happens. I've tried this repeatedly. Sometimes gram's become necessary (and maybe some caffeine), but there's always the high.

Just looking around you see somewhat deformed, acne-riddled people with odd ideologies who giggle at everything (even men), and you just have to wonder if something's wrong hormonally. Larger, more attractive people have a noticeable "center," and this aligns with Dr. Peat as well. He has a noticeably deep voice despite never smoking.

He also proof-reads everything he writes. I've seen almost no typos in tens of thousands of words of his content.

Anyone called a "quack" gets my attention :)

This. I'm also skeptical of anyone promoted by our degenerate institutions.

 

[Ulysses]

Fundamentally, I began to trust him because he clearly exemplifies what I think a scientist should be. He is a generalist, not a specialist, and makes every attempt to integrate his work with a comprehensive vision of politics, human nature, and philosophy. In particular, I was impressed with his writings on William Blake, and decided to read more because I realized that he was the kind of man who would use his understanding of nutrition to support a life of the mind, which is exactly what I've always wanted to do.

I had been convinced a long time ago that attitudes toward food, and food preferences, were a kind of metaphysics, or even religion -- not at all arbitrary, but rather, implying specific attitudes about the nature of life itself. As a corollary, I thought food policy must be a form of social control, meaning that biological functioning of modern human beings had been deliberately compromised for political reasons. These were just intuitions; I had no theoretical understanding of what, in practice, this meant, and didn't even know where to begin thinking about it, because there was simply so much highly technical information to sort through, and so many competing, mutually exclusive theories about what optimal nutrition was. I had tried many of these diets with little to no success; finally, RP's brilliant work gave me the starting point I was looking for.

 

[lampofred]

First and foremost, results. Every other health thing I've tried has always said "no pain no gain" and "it gets worse before it gets better" except the "gain" and "better" never come.

Second, his personality: I have seen no trace of greed, crude jokes, belittling of others, arrogance, narrow-mindedness or anything of such a sort which seems to be so common among everyone else who gives health advice. He never has the audacity to call himself a "coach" or a "guru" and doesn't even refer to himself as "Dr." Having such a "saintly" (for lack of a better word), humble personality while still having enough confidence in his work to consistently defy the mainstream and get called a quack, and being shown to be correct by the mainstream (not that he needs mainstream approval) 20-30 years after he first suggested his ideas: all these traits are signs of extreme intelligence/genius who is decades ahead of the curve in my opinion. I actually kind of look up to him as a person, in addition to looking up to his work as a scientist.

 

[damngoodcoffee]

First and foremost, results. Every other health thing I've tried has always said "no pain no gain" and "it gets worse before it gets better" except the "gain" and "better" never come.

Second, his personality: I have seen no trace of greed, crude jokes, belittling of others, arrogance, narrow-mindedness or anything of such a sort which seems to be so common among everyone else who gives health advice. He never has the audacity to call himself a "coach" or a "guru" and doesn't even refer to himself as "Dr." Having such a "saintly" (for lack of a better word), humble personality while still having enough confidence in his work to consistently defy the mainstream and get called a quack, and being shown to be correct by the mainstream (not that he needs mainstream approval) 20-30 years after he first suggested his ideas: all these traits are signs of extreme intelligence/genius who is decades ahead of the curve in my opinion. I actually kind of look up to him as a person, in addition to looking up to his work as a scientist.

 

[lollipop]

I agree +1

 

[Jsaute21]

@theLaw @Stramonium @Soundios - come to think of it, neither I nor my husband have either since we started Ray Peat Inspired diet 2 1/2 yrs ago. I had totally forgotten until you guys mentioned it.

I love RP and he has improved my health mightedly but i still get colds at least once a year in Chicago.

 

[lollipop]

I love RP and he has improved my health mightedly but i still get colds at least once a year in Chicago.

Might be the difference of climate. We live in Dallas - basically nice weather all year round. Chicago seems extreme weather in comparison. If you are only getting one cold, I would consider that fantastic.

 

[Jsaute21]

Might be the difference of climate. We live in Dallas - basically nice weather all year round. Chicago seems extreme weather in comparison. If you are only getting one cold, I would consider that fantastic.

I agree. I get 1-2 typically and i know what the culprit was for me this past time. I have trouble controlling myself when i lift weights lol. I go too hard and have a tendency to push myself past the limit. My workouts have been too demanding and taxing lately. I could feel the cortisol rise, etc. Combine that with frigid conditions, not enough sunlight, some drinking saturday etc, and it becomes hard to blame Peat's brilliant views lol. You live and you learn.

 

[lollipop]

You live and you learn.

TOTALLY

 

[AretnaP]

mainly haidut and his rigorous posting of studies

 

[Sobieski]

Physical and mental issues that had plagued most of my adult life had finally started to erode even most basic functions. I barely had the energy to get out of bed. Trying to fix myself over 2-3 years with accepted 'healthy' dietary practices in various forms actually sped up the degenerative process. I'd tried a low-carb paleo approach in the past but that left me unable to form a coherent sentence, let alone perform any other higher functioning mental or arduous physical tasks. The difference was that back then some carbs would reverse that in a short space of time. When I found Peat (mid 2017) I was in a bad situation that I couldn't pull myself out of and was only getting worse.

Upon finding Peat, and in the worst physical (and in some ways mental) health of my life, the consistent basis of my lifestyle was:
Avoidance of sugar
Whole grains/complex carbs only
low saturated/high pufa intake
low coffee consumption
Lots of vegetables
low fructose
Less animal protein
High fiber
High Iron
Etc.

Basically doing everything 'right' from mainstream nutrition/medicine point of view.

Most people disregard Peat when they first read his stuff but it spoke to me in a very direct way because it described EXACTLY how and why, from a biochemical perspective, the foods I was consuming despite being 'health foods' were destroying me. To say it was an epiphany would almost be an understatement.

The fact that my health has massively improved is the confirmation that he's right in practice as well as in theory.

 

[wesheilman]

My health had been slowing breaking down since my teen years, and I began suffering deep fatigue and headaches about 2012. After trying various obvious attempts to solve the problem, then losing a couple jobs because of health issues, I broke down one day in front of my roommate. He had been researching Peat to address his own issues, and his previous attempt to get me to read Peat ended with me saying, "Don't even tell me about it. I don't want to hear about some guy you read on the internet who's telling you to eat more sugar. I don't want to get diabetes."

He graciously persisted when it became clear that I needed help, and I read some Peat, Broda Barnes, and Danny Roddy. I was surprised at how reasonable everyone seemed, and how everything they said made sense, and found that they described my symptoms exactly (especially Barnes). So I was willing to try some nutritional changes, which had immediate effect (and satisfied repressed cravings). It took a long time to get sustainable help, but I knew I was on the right track.

At the same time, I began studying other aspects of health and wellness, such as stress and psychology, and found that they all seemed to cohere well when seen from a bioenergetic perspective. So the balance helped strengthen my trust in the philosophy as well.

 

[Spokey]

His work is coherent. Nothing is unconnected to anything else, there are no paradoxes, and it is underpinned by studies/experiments. Contrast this with something like low carb dogmas where people say inherently contradictory things like, "Cortisol is anti-inflammatory, increases alertness and focus, and dissolves fat, but reduce your stress levels because high cortisol levels age you." The logic fallacies of correlation or inverting causation don't seem to be made (IE, the idea that sugar causes diabetes brought about by the observation that diabetics have trouble regulating blood sugar).

 

[stevrd]

I've been following Ray's work for about 7 years now. Before Ray, I tried dozens of diets and protocols to fix my hormonal problems. Being a skeptic, I was cautious with following Ray's interpretations of studies, etc... But when I began taking biochemistry and physiology courses in college, I quickly realized that much of what Ray was saying was accurate.

I'm still skeptical of some of Ray's conclusions (for example: whether all gut pesorption is bad or not) but for the most part he is correct. As Chris Masterjohn said, he does not take everything Ray says at face value, and he feels that some of Ray's interpretations of studies are off base. However, he said without Ray, he would have never found the interesting and compelling research from the early 1900s that described the history of how the EFA theory began and why PUFA is damaging. This is the same way I feel. Ray has so much knowledge of past and present research, that he presents ideas to us that we would have never thought of.

I am a Registered Dietitian and I work in a clinical setting. I believe that nutrition and lifestyle interventions have the capacity to provide more healing than most drugs do. Since I started in my career it always bothered me that my peers' pursuit for nutritional knowledge was always so limited. They never seemed to want to go deeper in the science. And the professors seem to not want us to question the status quo. It always seemed elementary to me, like the field of nutrition has not progressed much past the 1950s. When I took biochemistry and physiology courses, I realized that other sciences were decades ahead of nutrition courses in terms of what conclusions can be drawn about nutrition and physiology.

When I found Ray's work, a whole new world of ideas came to me. To quote Ray "we have only scratched the surface of what we know about nutrition." People like Chris Masterjohn have said similar in stating that we don't even yet know all the nutrients in food, let alone the synergy they have in food. This is why food beats supplements and drugs, hands down.

Ray opened me up to the destructive nature of PUFA, which I believe that the mounting evidence over the last 20 years or so show is indisputable. There are now hundreds of studies that show this to be true. Many of these studies, which are cited by researchers to prove that saturated fat is bad, actually show the opposite to be true. The problem is that for researchers to see the destruction PUFA creates, it takes a longitudinal study of about 8 years in humans.

There are many more reasons why I believe in Peats work, but one of the main ones is that he is standing on the shoulders of giants. Szent Giorgi, Otto Warburg, Phillip Randle, Gilbert Ling, and many other were geniuses and nearly nobody refutes their work. IMO it's not enough to read Ray's work to get the full grasp. When you read some of the work of others he often cites, you can see the big picture a little clearer.

 

[Peatful]

I've been following Ray's work for about 7 years now. Before Ray, I tried dozens of diets and protocols to fix my hormonal problems. Being a skeptic, I was cautious with following Ray's interpretations of studies, etc... But when I began taking biochemistry and physiology courses in college, I quickly realized that much of what Ray was saying was accurate.

I'm still skeptical of some of Ray's conclusions (for example: whether all gut pesorption is bad or not) but for the most part he is correct. As Chris Masterjohn said, he does not take everything Ray says at face value, and he feels that some of Ray's interpretations of studies are off base. However, he said without Ray, he would have never found the interesting and compelling research from the early 1900s that described the history of how the EFA theory began and why PUFA is damaging. This is the same way I feel. Ray has so much knowledge of past and present research, that he presents ideas to us that we would have never thought of.

I am a Registered Dietitian and I work in a clinical setting. I believe that nutrition and lifestyle interventions have the capacity to provide more healing than most drugs do. Since I started in my career it always bothered me that my peers' pursuit for nutritional knowledge was always so limited. They never seemed to want to go deeper in the science. And the professors seem to not want us to question the status quo. It always seemed elementary to me, like the field of nutrition has not progressed much past the 1950s. When I took biochemistry and physiology courses, I realized that other sciences were decades ahead of nutrition courses in terms of what conclusions can be drawn about nutrition and physiology.

When I found Ray's work, a whole new world of ideas came to me. To quote Ray "we have only scratched the surface of what we know about nutrition." People like Chris Masterjohn have said similar in stating that we don't even yet know all the nutrients in food, let alone the synergy they have in food. This is why food beats supplements and drugs, hands down.

Ray opened me up to the destructive nature of PUFA, which I believe that the mounting evidence over the last 20 years or so show is indisputable. There are now hundreds of studies that show this to be true. Many of these studies, which are cited by researchers to prove that saturated fat is bad, actually show the opposite to be true. The problem is that for researchers to see the destruction PUFA creates, it takes a longitudinal study of about 8 years in humans.

There are many more reasons why I believe in Peats work, but one of the main ones is that he is standing on the shoulders of giants. Szent Giorgi, Otto Warburg, Phillip Randle, Gilbert Ling, and many other were geniuses and nearly nobody refutes their work. IMO it's not enough to read Ray's work to get the full grasp. When you read some of the work of others he often cites, you can see the big picture a little clearer.

Excellent @Steven Smith and welcome.

 

[Integra]

Frustration. I was cutting salt not to get bloated. Cramps. Swelling. Pain.
Then I thought, what if this guy is right, what if the problem of too much (salt) was a problem of not enough?
And off we went to the land of milk and OJ. I grew a couple of centimeters in my mid/late twenties, hehe. Good times. He also taught me about what it means to be non-authoritarian. After reading his work, I use that as the first tell-tale of a person with competence.

 

[lvysaur]

His words on fish oil, PUFA, and lipofuscin matched my symptoms to a T.

I still don't think he's right about everything, but he's definitely very right about many things.

 

[Richard Jehl]

Hello to all,

this is my first post, and I will answer the question and present myself a bit by the same occasion.

I have been practising naturotherapy in France since 2003. My own observations lead me to think the official views and recommendations about lipids and EFAs/PUFAs were very wrong. I noticed how people using supplements of omégas 3 and 6, or simply eating a lot of PUFAs had more health issues than the others. By raising their intake of EFAs they followed classic recommendations, but most of the time the problems they wanted to solve did not disappear with such a diet, they got worse with time and other problems appeared.

I observed raising EFAs intake caused immunity problems (sinusitis etc), digestive issues such as intolerances, inflammatory tendancies becoming chronic, and fatigue and depression with time. Sometimes it even caused breathing insufficiency symptoms. These observations were so far from the claims that EFAs are anti-inflammatory, treat depression etc !

I myself used a lot of substances rich in PUFAs in my diet, and for many years, to try to get healthier. I had as a teenager some important health issues concerning the liver and the thyroid among others (caused by Hepatitis B vaccination mixed with Roaccutane treatments).

When I observed that EFAs were not giving any benefits around me, but were making health worse, I stopped using them for myself, and my health improved. I made then some research on the internet, and found a few opinions about the toxicity of the PUFAs. I was surprised and at the same time very happy to find Ray Peat articles on the subject. I took that as a confirmation to my sentiment about the classic recommendations being not logical, not safe and not wise at all.

I was forced to completely stop any EFA-rich food in 2010 when I almost died because of an experiment that made me accidentally ingest 1g of pure calcium in the form of EAP. For the year following this accident I could not eat the slightest dose of oil, even a macadamia nut, without feeling atroceous anxiety. The ONLY concentrated lipid that I could eat for one year was butter. Later I could reintroduce olive oil and oils that are at least 75% oleic acid (the safest oils). Oleic acid is the main lipidic acid in our bodies.

I don't agree with each one of Peat's declaration, but I value his views and opinions a lot, and find that they are always worth considering. For example, I found that vitamine E supplements have obvious side-effects, and I would not recommend them, even if it is a lipid-free form. I agree with studies claiming vitamin E supplementation causes problems and that we should avoid it. Anyway, we should never take any mono-vitamine, or mono-mineral supplement, because of the interdependances. This always leads to disorders and unbalances. The only exception is vitamin C because it does not depend on co-factors like the others. Some of Peat's recommendations are very extreme and not necessary to be or stay in good health, in my opinion. I had some mail exchange with him, and made french translation of the articles about fats, if anyone interested.

At the moment I rediscover the importance of eating enough saturated fats, and I may write a book about the PUFAs toxicity in order to have it published in France. I think this subject is the most critical and misunderstood in the diet world, and that it certainly deserves a book. Too many people have damaged their health or even died prematurely because they simply wanted to get healthy by following the official irresponsible recommendations.

Kind Regards
Richard Jehl

 

[lollipop]

Hello to all,

this is my first post, and I will answer the question and present myself a bit by the same occasion.

I have been practising naturotherapy in France since 2003. My own observations lead me to think the official views and recommendations about lipids and EFAs/PUFAs were very wrong. I noticed how people using supplements of omégas 3 and 6, or simply eating a lot of PUFAs had more health issues than the others. By raising their intake of EFAs they followed classic recommendations, but most of the time the problems they wanted to solve did not disappear with such a diet, they got worse with time and other problems appeared.

I observed raising EFAs intake caused immunity problems (sinusitis etc), digestive issues such as intolerances, inflammatory tendancies becoming chronic, and fatigue and depression with time. Sometimes it even caused breathing insufficiency symptoms. These observations were so far from the claims the EFAs are anti-inflammatory, treat depression etc !

I myself used a lot of substances rich in PUFAs in my diet, and for many years, to try to get healthier. I had during my adolescence some important health issues concerning the liver and the thyroid among others (caused by Hepatitis B vaccination mixed with Roaccutane treatments).

When I observed that EFAs were not giving any benefits around me, but were making health worse, I stopped using them for myself, and my health improved. I made then some research on the internet, and found a few opinions about the toxicity of the PUFAs. I was surprised and at the same time very happy to find Ray Peat articles on the subject. I took that as a confirmation to my sentiment about the classic recommendations being not logical, not safe and not wise at all.

I was forced to completely stop any EFA-rich food in 2010 when I almost died because of an experiment that made me accidentally ingest 1g of pure calcium in the form of EAP. For the year following this accident I could not eat the slightest dose of oil, even a macadamia nut, without feeling atroceous anxiety. The ONLY concentrated lipid that I could eat for one year was butter. Later I could reintroduce olive oil and oils that are at least 75% oleic acid (the safest oils). Oleic acid is the main lipidic acid in our bodies.

I don't agree with each one of Peat's declaration, but I value his views and opinions a lot, and find that they are always worth considering. For example, I found that vitamine E supplements have obvious side-effects, and I would not recommend them, even if it is a lipid-free form. I agree with studies claiming vitamin E supplementation causes problems and that we should avoid it. Anyway, we should never take any mono-vitamine, or mono-mineral supplement, because of the interdependances. This always leads to disorders and unbalances. The only exception is vitamin C because it does not depend on co-factors like others. Some of Peat's recommendations are very extreme and not necessary to be or stay in good health, in my opinion. I had some mail exchange with him, and made french translation of the articles about fats, if anyone interested.

At the moment I rediscover the importance of eating enough saturated fats, and I may write a book about the PUFAs toxicity in order to have it published in France. I think this subject is the most critical and misunderstood in the diet world, and that it certainly deserves a book. Too many people have damaged their health or even died prematurely because they simply wanted to get healthy by following the official irresponsible recommendations.

Kind Regards
Richard Jehl

Thank you for this post. I also feel informing people about PUFA and not demonizing fructose are a few important contributions from Ray.