j. said:Rayser said:For a little while they experience a raise of body temperature. They feel as if their thyroid gland was working. It comes at a cost and they don't know that. That's what I object to.
I'm not sure that's true. I posted an e-mail from Peat where he says that if your fats are not polyunsaturated, you're likely to recover quickly from the stress from exercise, even long distance running, and not become hypothyroid.
j. - you write it yourself: "likely to recover quickly from the stress from exercise"
Yes, if you are healthy you will recover more quickly from any kind of stress. That's not the point. The point is: You will not get healthier through endurance sports. Something you have to recover from is by definition not healthy for you.
And who doesn't have polyunsaturated fats? I have been trying to avoid them for more than four years and still have some stored in my tissues. It takes years and a strict PUFA-avoidance to get to the state you mention.
Even then you should ask yourself which kinds of sports you want to do and if you want to risk the stress of long distance running.
I don't. But I do concentric exercise every day. On the one hand because it repairs DNA on the other because of course jaketthomas has a point: I don't feel good if I think I look bad. And I feel and look better with some muscles. As long as it doesn't harm me I want to maintain them.
There will always be stress in your life. It comes from living. Why not avoid the unnecessary stress?
Most endurance sports are stress. They are not healthy. You have to recover from them as you write yourself.
But most people who exercise this way don't know that. They think sports are healthy. And that's untrue.
That doesn't mean I think one shouldn't do any sports. I am just saying: Do it if it improves your life. But don't force yourself to run a few miles every morning because you don't want to get cancer or a heart attack.
I didn't say sports would make you "hypothyroid". I said that doing endurance sports comes at a cost.
Ray Peat wrote in many e-mails and said in many interviews that the immediate effect of endurance sports can be experiencing symptoms of hyperthyroidism (like rapid heart beat and raise of body temperature).
He said it would be healthier and have the same effect to take a hot bath.
But of course endurance sports will after a while cause or at least increase hypothyroidism. As it will increase estrogen, cortisol, lactic acid, endotoxins, triglycerides and serotonin ... and by that aging and degeneration.
Mary Shomon: You feel that excessive aerobic exercise can be a cause of hypothyroidism. Can you explain this further? How much is too much?
Dr. Ray Peat: I'm not sure who introduced the term "aerobic" to describe the state of anaerobic metabolism that develops during stressful exercise, but it has had many harmful repercussions. In experiments, T3 production is stopped very quickly by even "sub-aerobic" exercise, probably becaue of the combination of a decrease of blood glucose and an increase in free fatty acids. In a healthy person, rest will tend to restore the normal level of T3, but there is evidence that even very good athletes remain in a hypothyroid state even at rest. A chronic increase of lactic acid and cortisol indicates that something is wrong. The "slender muscles" of endurance runners are signs of a catabolic state, that has been demonstrated even in the heart muscle. A slow heart beat very strongly suggests hypothyroidism. Hypothyroid people, who are likely to produce lactic acid even at rest, are especially susceptible to the harmful effects of "aerobic" exercise. The good effect some people feel from exercise is probably the result of raising the body temperature; a warm bath will do the same for people with low body temperature.
RP: "The HDL lipoprotein is one of these, which protects against inflammation by binding bacterial endotoxins that have reached the bloodstream. (Things that increase absorption of endotoxin--exercise, estrogen, ethanol--cause HDL to rise.) Chylomicrons and VLDL also absorb, bind, and help to eliminate endotoxins. All sorts of stress and malnutrition increase the tendency of endotoxin to leak into the bloodstream. Thyroid hormone, by increasing the turnover of cholesterol and its conversion into the protective steroids, is a major factor in keeping the inflammatory processes under control."
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/ch ... vity.shtml
RP: "Stress, exercise, and toxins cause a rapid increase in estrogen. Males often have as much estrogen as females, especially when they are tired or sick."
http://raypeat.com/articles/hormones/h1.shtml
RP: "Stress, exercise, and darkness, increase the release of free fatty acids, and so promote the liberation of tryptophan and formation of serotonin."
http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/trypt ... ging.shtml
RP: "Mental stress, exercise, estrogen, and serotonin activate both the formation and dissolution of clots."
"Even exercise, mental stress, and aging can increase the tendency of capillaries to leak."
"Blood becomes more concentrated during strenuous exercise, during the night, and in the winter, increasing the viscosity, and increasing the risk of strokes and other thrombotic problems."
RP: "Exercise physiologists, without mentioning functional systems, have recently discovered some principles that extend the discoveries of Meerson and Anokhin. They found that "concentric" contraction, that is, causing the muscle to contract against resistance, improves the muscle's function, without injuring it. (Walking up a mountain causes concentric contractions to dominate in the leg muscles. Walking down the mountain injures the muscles, by stretching them, forcing them to elongate while bearing a load; they call that eccentric contraction.) Old people, who had extensively damaged mitochondrial DNA, were given a program of concentric exercise, and as their muscles adapted to the new activity, their mitochondrial DNA was found to have become normal.
There are probably the equivalents of constructive "concentric" activity and destructively stressful "eccentric" activity in the brain. For example, "rote learning" is analogous to eccentric muscle contraction, and learning by asking questions is "concentric." "No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings." Any activity that seems "programmed" probably stifles cellular energy and cellular intelligence."
http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/bleed ... ncer.shtml
RP: "The idea of the “oxygen debt” produced by exercise or stress as being equivalent to the accumulation of lactic acid is far from accurate, but it’s true that activity increases the need for oxygen, and also increases the tendency to accumulate lactic acid, which can then be disposed of over an extended time, with the consumption of oxygen."
http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/altit ... lity.shtml