Processing the change. Moving forward….

[Jamsey]

I was initially attracted to this forum because of the heavily science and study based approach to the discussions and posts. It was amazing to read many of the old threads and look at the complexity of arguments being had. People weren’t just saying things like other forums, but backing them with evidence to support their statements. I was exposed to so much knowledge that I hadn’t or couldn’t encounter anywhere else. Almost everyday I could log on and find a new study being posted that expanded my perspective. Ray and the people on this forum gave me hope and helped drag me out of the worst health of my life. It’s a little sad to see how things have changed, as it seems like for me this uniqueness has been lost. Now we have people saying “the science gods came crumbling down”, posting Twitter testimonials as evidence and arguing that their experience is indicative of everyones, instead of just sharing knowledge and trying things out. The forum just seems more orthorexic and angry than ever and I don’t see how this facilitates progress in people still struggling.

 

[Peatful]

I was hoping for something more specific. I read all of Ray Peat's articles in 2006. Thank you for your effort.

Sure

But it seems so rudimentary

Anything Peat said that was an about face from western medicine
Every single word helped me
Because he was right

To be clear
I never ever thought he recommended a diet or even certain foods

I read it as to how the body responds to no pufa, good calcium and salt intake, lowering serotonin and lactic acid etc etc etc
The big ideas

I had so much to learn
I had so much food fear and orthorexia


Click on my name
Go to threads created by me
You can easily find my story

But Peat told the truth
In a world of lies

I had to put my puzzle together myself

Hope this helps

 

[Peatress]

I wouldn't say he said don't do it, just that he would have wanted everyone to get in enough nutrition. And I thought I could cover my bases with milk, meat, and juice, but apparently not. It didn't seem to matter how much milk or OJ I drank. It didn't ever feel nourishing. Well maybe a little, sometimes it felt like I was a baby again and needing to warm up my milk every hour or I'd die lol.

Ray was clear about not using coffee like a drug and not under eating. You were nursing, you should have been eating in abundance. I’ve heard Peat say well cooked potatoes and well cooked rice are fine if tolerated. Yes, he was not a big fan of starch but many people were still eating starch. I’ve been eating rice and oat bran for about a year and a half but only because I don’t have access to good quality fruits. Mind you before I discovered Dr Peat I was starch free but I was also insomniac and even more annoying than I am now.

 

[Peatful]

I was initially attracted to this forum because of the heavily science and study based approach to the discussions and posts. It was amazing to read many of the old threads and look at the complexity of arguments being had. People weren’t just saying things like other forums, but backing them with evidence to support their statements. I was exposed to so much knowledge that I hadn’t or couldn’t encounter anywhere else. Almost everyday I could log on and find a new study being posted that expanded my perspective. Ray and the people on this forum gave me hope and helped drag me out of the worst health of my life. It’s a little sad to see how things have changed, as it seems like for me this uniqueness has been lost. Now we have people saying “the science gods came crumbling down”, posting Twitter testimonials as evidence and arguing that their experience is indicative of everyones, instead of just sharing knowledge and trying things out. The forum just seems more orthorexic and angry than ever and I don’t see how this facilitates progress in people still struggling.

Thank you for your reply
Well stated and great observations

 

[InChristAlone]

Ray was clear about not using coffee like a drug and not under eating. You were nursing, you should have been eating in abundance. I’ve heard Peat say well cooked potatoes and well cooked rice are fine if tolerated. Yes, he was not a big fan of starch but many people were still eating starch. I’ve been eating rice and oat bran for about a year and a half but only because I don’t have access to good quality fruits. Mind you before I discovered Dr Peat I was starch free but I was also insomniac and even more annoying than I am now.

Are you saying starch free caused the insomnia???

 

[Peatress]

Are you saying starch free caused the insomnia???

No

 

[charlie]

I was initially attracted to this forum because of the heavily science and study based approach to the discussions and posts. It was amazing to read many of the old threads and look at the complexity of arguments being had. People weren’t just saying things like other forums, but backing them with evidence to support their statements. I was exposed to so much knowledge that I hadn’t or couldn’t encounter anywhere else. Almost everyday I could log on and find a new study being posted that expanded my perspective. Ray and the people on this forum gave me hope and helped drag me out of the worst health of my life. It’s a little sad to see how things have changed, as it seems like for me this uniqueness has been lost. Now we have people saying “the science gods came crumbling down”, posting Twitter testimonials as evidence and arguing that their experience is indicative of everyones, instead of just sharing knowledge and trying things out. The forum just seems more orthorexic and angry than ever and I don’t see how this facilitates progress in people still struggling.

The science has not worked for many of us. Like you, I was dragged out of a very bad place with Rays work but once the the toxicities built up all hell broke loose. There is person after person showing up in the low A groups with the same story, something is terribly wrong. The Rockefeller science told us vitamin A is a vitamin. Many of us from our own experience are getting better and better every day by leaving it out.

And whether you want to believe it or not, there is more hope on this forum then ever before. People are seeing that there is be a better way, true Regeneration is now possible and the results that will start showing up around here will speak for themselves.

Would you have us throw out real peoples experiences? Are we to negate the impressive healing taking place? Would you rather throw out peoples real world experience over some science paper that someone wrote to make sure they still have a science job working under the beast system and having to toe the line? I will be focusing on the people and their real experiences instead. .

 

[Jamsey]

The science has not worked for many of us. Like you, I was dragged out of a very bad place with Rays work but once the the toxicities built up all hell broke loose. There is person after person showing up in the low A groups with the same story, something is terribly wrong. The Rockefeller science told us vitamin A is a vitamin. Many of us from our own experience are getting better and better every day by leaving it out.

And whether you want to believe it or not, there is more hope on this forum then ever before. People are seeing that there is be a better way, true Regeneration is now possible and the results that will start showing up around here will speak for themselves.

Would you have us throw out real peoples experiences? Are we to negate the impressive healing taking place? Would you rather throw out peoples real world experience over some science paper that someone wrote to make sure they still have a science job working under the beast system and having to toe the line? I will be focusing on the people and their real experiences instead. .

Hey Charlie.

I don’t want to discuss vitamin a, as my experience and views on it are clearly different. However, I will respond to the rest.

I think trying to discard scientific literature in our pursuit of health is the wrong path. For you, it is likely that rays analysis of the literature on polyunsaturates and high carbohydrate diets influenced how you eat today. It is also likely that grants analysis of the literature on vitamin a influenced your perspective on it today. I understand anger towards the analysis of certain literature and how you might feel it lead you astray. But to say that science itself has failed you seems misleading or inflammatory, as there are many aspects of your life currently that seem to be influenced directly by analysis of scientific literature(taking niacin for example). Even Ray, who’s views were almost always the opposite of establishment views, extensively cited sources and evidence for his conclusions. It is not necessary to villainize scientific literature in your pursuit of truth.

As for real people’s experience, I am all for people telling their or their loved ones / friends stories on this forum. Many of these experiences were instrumental in helping me or giving me hope on my journey back to health. However, I don’t believe that the experiences of people we don’t even know should be passed off as truth. If, as you say, the regeneration is happening, there will be plenty of testimonials that will appear organically from members(or their friends/loved ones) trying out this diet. It is my perspective that these testimonials have much more value than reposting unknown people from the internet.

In general, I believe that this forum has taken on a negative atmosphere lately. I see a lot of people blaming others for decisions they made, instead of taking responsibility for their own actions. I would like to get back to the old spirit of the forum, with people sharing knowledge, trying new things, posting insane threads, throwing studies at each other and generally just having a lighter feel to the place.

Just my 2c

 

[InChristAlone]

Hey Charlie.

I don’t want to discuss vitamin a, as our experience is clearly different. However, I will respond to the rest.

I think trying to discard scientific literature in our pursuit of health is the wrong path. For you, it is likely that rays analysis of the literature on polyunsaturates and high carbohydrate diets influenced how you eat today. It is also likely that grants analysis of the literature on vitamin a influenced your perspective on it today. I understand anger towards the analysis of certain literature and how you might feel it lead you astray. But to say that science itself has failed you seems misleading or inflammatory, as there are many aspects of your life currently that seem to be influenced directly by analysis of scientific literature(taking niacin for example). Even Ray, who’s views were almost always the opposite of establishment views, extensively cited sources and evidence for his conclusions. It is not necessary to villainize scientific literature in your pursuit of truth.

As for real people’s experience, I am all for people telling their or their loved ones / friends stories on this forum. Many of these experiences were instrumental in helping me or giving me hope on my journey back to health. However, I don’t believe that the experiences of people we don’t even know should be passed off as truth. If, as you say, the regeneration is happening, there will be plenty of testimonials that will appear organically from members(or their friends/loved ones) trying out this diet. It is my perspective that these testimonials have much more value than reposting unknown people from the internet.

In general, I believe that this forum has taken on a negative atmosphere lately. I see a lot of people blaming others for decisions they made, instead of taking responsibility for their own actions. I would like to get back to the old spirit of the forum, with people sharing knowledge, trying new things, posting insane threads, throwing studies at each other and generally just having a lighter feel to the place.

Just my 2c

I can see you may be referring to me in that comment about blaming others and not taking responsibility. You are right it was me who decided to do what I did. And I can't blame anyone for that. I don't even blame Ray. He was just reporting his research and what worked for him.

I do think I got caught up in group think.

I actually greatly respect Ray for saying things like don't try to steer a person.

*edited because I don't need to defend myself. I was very vulnerable when I was a part of the Peat groups. Particularly on facebook.

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

I can understand why you must feel resentful for being mislead. But you were not mislead by Dr.Peat. Like I said in my post to you yesterday you were doing a lot of things that he said not to do.

I am with you on this one Peatress, people make up their own diets and then blame Ray when it goes wrong. What an eighty year old man eats should look a bit different than a thirty year old, even he said that. I am following Ray Peat’s advice, trying not to eat white sugar, but honey and fruit instead, meat once a week, shellfish one a week, and the liver I am going to do better at, because that two to three ounces of it looked good on me. I am loving those less starchy new potatoes he recommended, and I did as he recommended and dropped all of my supplements. My sleep is better than it has ever been in all of my sixty years, just by leaving a small light on, preparing my liver for the night with raw honey and eating my proteins in the day as he suggested. I even boiled a head of kale today as he suggested for my K1, and strained off the leaves and froze the green water into readily available ice cubes. It took a little while to realize that eating all that ice cream was my idea not his, but I am in the best health of my life thanks to his life saving recommendations. I am not changing a thing!

 

[Nick]

In general, I believe that this forum has taken on a negative atmosphere lately. I see a lot of people blaming others for decisions they made, instead of taking responsibility for their own actions. I would like to get back to the old spirit of the forum, with people sharing knowledge, trying new things, posting insane threads, throwing studies at each other and generally just having a lighter feel to the place.

I truly mean this with love and respect, and not to invalidate your perspective. You might consider if part of the negative atmosphere you perceive is a form of projection of your own inner struggle with paradigm-challenging ideas. Change cannot always be harmonious. Perfect harmony leads to perfect crystallization, order, and pure YIN. Conflict and struggle are necessary for the expression of the divine spark, YANG.

The Peat diet is highly Yin promoting and the antidote is to reintroduce Yang.

 

[Jamsey]

I truly mean this with love and respect, and not to invalidate your perspective. You might consider if part of the negative atmosphere you perceive is a form of projection of your own inner struggle with paradigm-challenging ideas. Change cannot always be harmonious. Perfect harmony leads to perfect crystallization, order, and pure YIN. Conflict and struggle are necessary for the expression of the divine spark, YANG.

The Peat diet is highly Yin promoting and the antidote is to reintroduce Yang.

No, I’m comfortable in my disagreement. The purpose of a forum is not alignment in perspective, but the discussion of ideas. And as for the atmosphere, I think it is fairly clear from this thread and others that I’m not alone in this view.

 

[charlie]

No, I’m comfortable in my disagreement. The purpose of a forum is not alignment in perspective, but the discussion of ideas. And as for the atmosphere, I think it is fairly clear from this thread and others that I’m not alone in this view.

Well that is odd....because soon as I started mentioning "vitamin A" is a toxin people were trying to run me out of here and then started harassing my family and place of business and they are also starting to attack Dr. Smith. Does not seem like they were interested in a "discussion of ideas".

 

[Jamsey]

Well that is odd....because soon as I started mentioning "vitamin A" is a toxin people were trying to run me out of here and then started harassing my family and place of business and they are also starting to attack Dr. Smith. Does not seem like they were interested in a "discussion of ideas".

I’m sorry that happened. I cannot speak for them, but since the grant thread has been around for since 2018(and is also the longest thread), I don’t really believe it had to do with the concept but the rhetoric and/or delivery of the message. Nevertheless, I do not agree with their actions and would never have done that myself. I think there are many of us that disagree and do not fall into that group.

 

[Mr Joe]

Well that is odd....because soon as I started mentioning "vitamin A" is a toxin people were trying to run me out of here and then started harassing my family and place of business and they are also starting to attack Dr. Smith. Does not seem like they were interested in a "discussion of ideas".

Smith and Grant are a doing their things since years. They never had any problem, maybe some like ray got some, grant got some, part of the game when you preach something. But since a year a small quantity of people outside of the forum came to a "RayPeatForum" and started to preech severe ideas anti-Peat. That's not fair at all. Almost nobody is interrested in your posts redarging "toxic bile theory" expect things execept few people. Remember : It was a Ray Peat forum. The most honorable thing you could have done is to create a parallel forum called "GarretSmithforum" and then you could all go there and discuss how vit A is causing most disease in the world.

 

[Blossom]

Anything Peat said that was an about face from western medicine
Every single word helped me

Great thread @Peatful. This was pivotal for me as well. I also learned to really think for myself, consider my context and trust my inner guidance for the first time thanks to Ray. Here’s part of something I wrote this elsewhere today.
“I could never bring myself to dislike the man regardless of what he got wrong. I freely chose to read his material and apply it so that’s on me. I take full responsibility for my choices. He did help me get rid of a breast lump when mainstream doctors just wanted to cut, poison & torture me. Ray was a pretty genuine and selfless man imo.”
As many here already know I chose reluctantly to go on a low dose bio identical estradiol patch years ago to avoid surgery for a pretty significant pelvic organ prolapse. I’ve also been mostly low a since 2018. I don’t think that we have to have a certain lifestyle or diet to carry on with helping ourselves and one another as we are able. He really wanted to teach and empower people and he was very successful at it. His spirit lives on. I’ll always love Ray.

 

[Caro]

It’s a welcomed change on the forum to be able to comment on difficulties one may be having with RP dietary recommendations without being attacked or reprimanded for deviating from RP ideas. If people are having problems with a RP inspired diet, the forum is an ideal place to discuss them, to help/warn others and get assistance in troubleshooting.

In my opinion, it’s a positive development that we’re reassessing the need for Vitamin A (thank you Charlie and the many others for pushing forward, despite the resistance). So far, I’ve been actively reading the relevant discussions here, as well as on GG’s website (plus his books) (haven’t got to the GS material yet). On GG’s website, I’ve noticed RP influenced people are a major category of those having problems (as mentioned by others here), which should be an indication to us that there really is (until now) an under-addressed issue. So far, I have the impression that GG could be hypothyroid (eg based on his blog, 1500 calories/day and steadily gaining weight, although recently he appears to have stabilised). If so, any amount of Vitamin A may be toxic for him, as little is being used. However, his cholesterol is very low, so he probably can’t take thyroid medication. Yet, the improvements to his health are impressive.

But it isn’t just Vitamin A. I’m also having to dramatically change my intake of calcium (even from food sources), iodine, phytoestrogens, NO, due to a recent health challenge. I could be a strange outlier.

That said, some RP recommendations have been helpful, eg raising protein intake, lowering PUFAs (although I’ve added back some from whole foods), and of course his philosophy, experimentation and willingness to change, as needed. And the discussions here on the forum have been invaluable for research — I’ve been reading some threads going way back to around 2014.

(Yes, I know I haven’t given many specifics for all of the above, for the sake of brevity, and staying on track with the topic.)

 

[ilovethesea]

May I ask, why keep this forum going in Ray’s name? The ethical thing to do would be to either rename it or to sell it to someone else and start a new forum.

 

[Peatful]

May I ask, why keep this forum going in Ray’s name? The ethical thing to do would be to either rename it or to sell it to someone else and start a new forum.

Ive spent more time on the forum yesterday than I have in months and months

And I see the infiltration

This is a valid question

@charlie may point us to his recently posted header
But
With that
Maybe he will also let us know of his long term goals and vision for the forum

Then we know what we are dealing with
And decide, settle in or adjust accordingly

 

[InChristAlone]

So last night I went to sleep feeling like many people on this forum have a lot of toxic shame. They project that on people when they claim something is doing them harm. It's literally the same thing as victim blaming.

Ya'll need to step outside and see the number of people who have abandoned many of the recommendations. I have seen a number of old time Ray Peat supporters following the toxic bile theory.

Let's just get past that. We don't live in a vacuum. We are all influenced by the people we trust. Especially when we are sick and vulnerable.

It'd be like blaming the patient when the doctor harms them. Saying you should have known better! No the doctor should have known better not to take advantage of a sick person.

I was taken advantage of by a prominent Ray Peat practitioner. Someone who a lot of people respected and trusted. He went against some things Ray taught but it was only slighted twisted. Deception has a slight twist. And being in a sick vulnerable state I didn't have much executive functioning. He also took advantage of me sexually. (And many others).

Same thing when I was raped in my own bedroom by a family member's friend at 16. I froze. I blamed myself for 'allowing it'. But now that society is trauma informed no one blames a woman for the sins of a man who takes advantage of the vulnerability of women (or men for that matter as men can be raped too).

We need to stop shaming people. When we are sick we don't always know what path to take. Many ideas were circulating that were harmful. We are changing course and helping people out of the rut they got in. And I still think Ray got some key things wrong, doesn't mean we go against all of his teachings, but we are free to speak about what was going wrong.

Healing is multi-faceted and we need to be free to talk about all aspects of healing whether it conflicts with a teaching from Ray or not.