Matt Galt

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world

[Matt Galt @WhoIsMattGalt]

A building has integrity, just like a man

The key idea was that energy and structure are interdependent, at every level

There is only one side of the market and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side

There are only 2 measurements of intensity: 0% and 100%

[Moosa @questmoosa]

Few people know this

Vitamin E was initially discovered in 1938 as a “fertility factor”.

vitamin E is an antioxidant, it lowers oxidative stress (caused by free radicals) and therefore impacts hormones (T3 and T4) levels positively, by protecting them.

studies have also shown it to prevent and lessen the effect of lipid peroxidation of PUFA, and therefore protect the body from the oxidative damage that would otherwise ensue

powerful stuff (great for looksmaxxing too)

[Bryce Hanna @photobiogenesis]

Potassium and protons are inseparable in mitochondrial function

When carboxyl groups liberate protons it's positively charged ions like potassium that buffer the COO- groups that are left behind

Potassium has a low charge to size ratio allowing it to actually reduce water structuring to keep proteins soluble and viscosity minimized

Beyond that potassium even accumulates in the intermembrane space of mitochondria the same way that protons do

In fact what powers this potassium flow is not ATP but rather the proton gradient itself via the KHE

This is because just like protons, potassium itself can also flow through the ATPase and power ATP synthesis, and the abundance of potassium relative to protons means that the ATPase accepts more than 2x as many K+ ions vs H+ despite its lower affinity

This is why the KHE dissipates the proton gradient in favor of creating a potassium gradient, it's trading up its energetic potential under conditions of abundance

[Handre @Handre]

Andrew Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States in 1836, delivering the single greatest blow to financial tyranny in American history. You won't hear this story told correctly in any economics textbook, because it reveals how central banking works: as a government-sponsored cartel that redistributes wealth from productive citizens to politically connected bankers.

The Second Bank held a 20-year federal charter starting in 1816. It controlled the money supply, issued currency, and held government deposits. Sound familiar? Nicholas Biddle, the bank's president, wielded more economic power than any elected official. He could trigger financial panics at will by restricting credit. He bought newspapers and bribed congressmen. When Jackson opposed recharter in 1832, Biddle deliberately crashed the economy to punish him.

Jackson called it "a hydra of corruption" and he was right. The bank created artificial booms through credit expansion, then triggered busts when politically convenient. Biddle openly bragged about manipulating markets. Free market economists and Jackson both recognized the core insight: this was legalized counterfeiting with government backing, not free market banking.

The political establishment united against Jackson. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and the entire Whig Party defended the bank. Biddle spent millions buying influence. The press attacked Jackson as an economic ignoramus. Every "respectable" voice supported recharter. Jackson stood alone with the American people.

After Jackson killed the bank, the country experienced the strongest economic growth in its history. From 1837 to 1862, America operated without a central bank. Industry flourished. Wages rose. Innovation exploded. This wasn't coincidence. When you stop subsidizing financial speculation and let productive capital find its natural home, prosperity follows.

Central banks don't stabilize economies: they destabilize them for private gain.

[Danny Roddy @dannyroddy]

György Csaba's concept of hormonal imprinting suggests that the environment shapes the organism, and the shaping is inherited. For example, in protozoa, Csaba found that a single trace exposure to insulin could be observed 1000 generations later.

Georgi Dinkov: Do you think preference for idealistic theories may be indicative of some sort of prenatal stress while the person was still in the womb, and then that imprinted them for life?

Ray Peat: I think that's part of the imprinting process. Starting with prenatal inflammation and stress, it goes with the quality of breastfeeding. The baby detects the mother's anxiety or happiness and pleasure, and if the mother is not comfortable and pleased to be feeding the baby, the baby starts assimilating those ideas and it starts seeing things instead of the mother as a source of everything living and good. It starts seeing objects as threats. Objects begin to be closed, self-contained, like Nietzschean units, no windows, windowless monads. This develops into the preference for things that aren't wiggly and changeable, and so it wants timeless objects and looks for the ultimate, unchanging basis of matter, which turns out to be logical atoms or quanta or digits.

— Generative Energy #32: Hormonal Imprinting | Fake History | Aristotelian Philosophy | Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Lysenko with Ray Peat (2020)

"The effect of imprinting is durable: it can be observed after 1000 generations..." PMID: 32476998

[Bryce Hanna @photobiogenesis]

Quinones like CoQ10 and vitamin K not only facilitate electron transfer down the electron transport chain, they also have the ability to translocate protons across the inner mitochondrial membrane

Electron/proton acceptor sites are shown in blue, while the donor site is in red

[Danny Roddy @dannyroddy]

GLP-1 agonists turn on nitric oxide.

In 1998, McCann hypothesized that the amount of nitric oxide a tissue produces "may be the most important factor in the aging of these structures."

[thedeafrow @theDeafRow]

Ray Peat on progesterone hormone therapy:

When you get the right amount of [progesterone], your thyroid, skin, and gonads everything gets back on the track to produce enough of your own progesterone. So it isn't a hormone replacement matter, but a stress correction process.

[N'Golo⚡Wizard.Talk @NgoloTesla]

I advocate for a charge-based morality, where anything maximizing the negative charge around us (air, life, lakes etc) and locking away or pushing positive charges (heavy metals, plastics, toxins) downwards is noble.

Doing the opposite, pollution, EMF, bad vibes, etc is evil. This aligns very well with what people believe and feel already; I am not making something new, I am rediscovering why we have these beliefs from first principles.

There are some interesting implications, which feel surprisingly true imo. My favorite one is that thin garbage bags are objectively evil.

[Matt Galt @WhoIsMattGalt]

@BigolWave Hair are non-essential

[Master Metabolism @lowmegatron]

Ray Peat explained that the relationship between ADHD and hypothyroidism likely has to do with decreased oxidative metabolism in the brain, lowering ATP/energy, and CO2.

Increasing CO2 may also improve ADHD, as seen in rodent experiments and case reports.

Acetazolamide blocks a type of carbonic anhydrase, the enzyme that converts CO₂ into bicarbonate so it can be carried to the lungs and exhaled. With the enzyme blocked, CO₂ can't be cleared as fast, so it increases slightly in the brain.

Note that arterial blood CO₂ usually doesn't rise much as the lungs can compensate by increasing ventilation, which blows off CO₂ and keeps arterial PCO₂ roughly normal or even slightly lowered.

In a case report, acetazolamide resulted in subjective improvement in the child's ADHD symptoms (inattention, irritability, hyperactivity) and improved performance in school. Unfortunately, a repeat ADHD assessment was declined by caregivers.

“... (after acetazolamide) the parents reported significant subjective improvement in the child's behavioral symptoms, including inattention, irritability, and hyperactivity. They also reported that the child's teachers had observed similar improvements. Her scholastic performance also improved following initiation of acetazolamide therapy.”

In rats, acetazolamide reduces ADHD-linked behavior.

The researchers used three behavioral tests as indicators of ADHD:
1] Open-field locomotor test. This measured hyperactivity (total/central/peripheral activity counts and rearing).
2] Electro-foot shock aversive water drinking test. This measured impulsivity (number of shocked drinking events).
3] Morris water maze test. This measured spatial learning/memory (escape latency, swim distance, swim speed).

Aectazolamide reduced ADHD-linked activity.

“Current ADHD drugs still have limited efficacy, and some patients with ADHD cannot tolerate the adverse effects. This is the first preclinical animal study which demonstrated that carbonic ahnydrase inhibitors (which increase CO2) are strain-specifically effective to antagonize the hyperactivity and the impulsivity of (ADHD rats), and this is what inspires us to carry on the clinical trial of carbonic ahnydrase inhibitors in patients with ADHD.”

“strain-specifically effective” means that they reduced the behaviors in mice with high expression but had no effect on those behaviors in “normal” mice.

Back to oxidative metabolism...

Oxidative metabolism is when mitochondria break down fuel ✧using oxygen✧ to produce ATP (energy), mainly through the mitochondria via the citric acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation.

Glucose is the brain's primary fuel. It's broken down (glycolysis) into pyruvate, which enters the mitochondria and is fully oxidized to CO₂ and water, generating most of the brain's ATP. Fatty acids and ketones are also oxidized (at much lower concentrations in normal circumstances) and produce less CO2 per unit of oxygen consumed.

The active thyroid hormone T3 regulates the rate of oxidative metabolism by stimulating mitochondrial activity and the genes/enzymes involved in energy production, effectively setting the brain's metabolic tempo. Adequate T3 keeps oxidation efficient; too little slows it down, leading to lower CO2 production and ATP.

[Matt Galt @WhoIsMattGalt]

@exfatloss So your argument for sustainability is just inefficiency?

[Georgi D. @haidut]

Btw, prolactin is produced not only in pituitary, but peripherally as well. Especially in skin/fat tissue. Same story as with estrogen. That could explain why some people using dopaminergic (acting centrally) drugs don't improve despite lowering their serum prolactin. It also potentially implies that estrogen and serotonin (the main drivers of prolactin synthesis in any tissue) blockers can be used for hair loss, instead of those exotic and untested prolactin receptor antagonist drugs. There is already a study showing administration of the estrogen antagonist fulvestrant also regrew hair. If that is the case, then it could also explain the findings of some studies that balding scalp has higher DHT levels. If estrogen is high in the balding scalp (which increases local prolactin synthesis), it makes perfect sense for the body to increase scalp levels of DHT - the main anti-estrogen in males - adaptively, as a protective mechanism against the high estrogen there.

[El @el7_77]

Magnesium maxxing seems like a good idea. It seems to be required to stabilize all the triphosphate molecules (ATP, GTP, TTP, etc.) which keep the cell in the low entropy resting state

All biological functions come from, and require this low entropy state for development

[Master Metabolism @lowmegatron]

“Thyroid promotes the formation of progesterone, which in turn promotes the secretion of thyroid hormones. Estrogen blocks their release from the thyroid gland, causing the gland to enlarge.” — Ray Peat

“At 12 weeks on progesterone, TSH levels tended to be lower... FreeT4 levels were higher... FreeT3 was unchanged throughout... Progesterone caused a significant FreeT4 increase that was discovered during this randomized controlled VMS trial.”

“Goiter (increased thyroid gland size) is more prevalent in women than men, even in areas where iodine levels in the diet are sufficient. We investigated a possible role of estrogen on thyroid follicular cell growth using rat FRTL-5 thyroid follicular cells as a model. Estrogen receptor-alpha (ERalpha) messenger RNA was present in FRTL-5 cells using a RT-PCR assay and was confirmed by Western blot analysis. An estrogen-responsive reporter gene was transfected into FRTL-5 cells to test the functionality of the endogenous ERs. Estradiol increased the activity of the reporter gene, and the antagonist, ICI182780, inhibited ER-dependent transcription. To extend this analysis, we examined the effect of estradiol on FRTL-5 cell growth. Estradiol increased FRTL-5 cell growth in a time- and concentration-dependent manner in either the absence or presence of TSH. Because iodine is known to inhibit thyroid cell growth, the effect of estradiol on the expression of the sodium/iodide symporter (NIS) was assessed as a potential target of estrogen action. Estradiol blocked TSH-induced NIS expression, and treatment of cells with estradiol and ICI182780 restored TSH-induced NIS expression to normal levels. These data demonstrate that FRTL-5 cells contain functional ERs that enhance cell growth and inhibit expression of the NIS. The demonstration of a direct effect of estradiol on thyroid follicular cells raises the possibility that it may play a role in the sexually dimorphic prevalence of goiter.”

Ref:
Progesterone therapy increases free thyroxine levels--data from a randomized placebo-controlled 12-week hot flush trial
Estradiol increases proliferation and down-regulates the sodium/iodide symporter gene in FRTL-5 cells

[Master Metabolism @lowmegatron]

Butter slows alcoholic liver disease.

1980s research linked polyunsaturated fat (seed oil) to cirrhosis—and saturated fat to lower risk.

40 years later, we have a RCT testing causality.

It found that people with alcoholic liver disease were ~3x more likely to die on soybean oil than on equal amounts of butter (over 2 months), as part of their diet.

“Two months of saturated fat as a therapeutic intervention, improved survival in severe alcoholic hepatiti patients compared with unsaturated fat. This could be related to promotion of the growth of commensal bacteria which attenuated inflammation, disease severity and improved liver disease indices... Patients in both arms received 35 kcal and 1.2‐1.5g protein/ kg /day (55‐60% carbohydrate, 20% protein, 30‐35% fat) for 60 days.”

It confirms the results of a lot of rodent research over the years.

The mechanisms are well understood, too. Polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) is easily peroxidizable, leading to → toxic aldehydes → cell death + fibrosis + leaky gut and interference with thyroid hormones. SAT is not peroxidizable, and it reduces the peroxidation of PUFA, reduces inflammation, and tightens the gut barrier. The gut barrier is key because the other major component is bacterial endotoxin produced in the gut.

Ref:
Dietary Factors and Alcoholic Cirrhosis
SATURATED FAT FAVORABLY ALTERS THE GUT MICROBIOTA AND IMPROVES SURVIVAL IN PATIENTS WITH SEVERE ALCOHOLIC HEPATITIS: a RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL (conference abstract)

[Matt Galt @WhoIsMattGalt]

@Captainchaossss @TOzgokmen You dont know what inflation is

[Master Metabolism @lowmegatron]

2g of baking soda lowers inflammation and may help with some inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

It works by shifting the balance of macrophages (immune cells) from M1 (inflammatory) to M2 (anti-inflammatory).

Higher M1:M2 drives inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis and IBD.

"You are not really turning anything off or on, you are just pushing it toward one side by giving an anti-inflammatory stimulus," he says, in this case, away from harmful inflammation. "It's potentially a really safe way to treat inflammatory disease."

In the human part of the research, they used 2 g of baking soda dissolved in 250 ml of bottled water. This resulted in significant decreases in inflammatory M1, increases in anti-inflammatory M2, and decreases in the inflammatory TNF-α.

“We tested the hypothesis that oral NaHCO3 intake stimulates splenic anti-inflammatory pathways. Following oral NaHCO3 loading, macrophage polarization was shifted from predominantly M1 (inflammatory) to M2 (regulatory) phenotypes, and FOXP3+CD4+ T-lymphocytes increased in the spleen, blood, and kidneys of rats. Similar anti-inflammatory changes in macrophage polarization were observed in the blood of human subjects following NaHCO3 ingestion... Our data indicate that oral NaHCO3 activates a splenic anti-inflammatory pathway and provides evidence that the signals that mediate this response are transmitted to the spleen via a novel neuronal-like function of mesothelial cells.”

Ref:
Drinking baking soda could be an inexpensive, safe way to combat autoimmune disease
Oral NaHCO3 Activates a Splenic Anti-Inflammatory Pathway: Evidence That Cholinergic Signals Are Transmitted via Mesothelial Cells

[Hitchslap @Hitchslap1]

Women given testosterone made significantly fairer offers leading to less conflict.

Women who believed they got testosterone (placebo effect) acted more selfishly and aggressively.

[Bryce Hanna @photobiogenesis]

The Truth About ATP

In most biology research ATP is referred to as the main energy currency in living organisms, but this actually isn't quite true

In this thread I'll break down ATP's deeper functions, and the impact it has on human biology

THREAD //