How I Met Ray Peat - His General Theory Of "antiage-itivity"

visionofstrength said:

The first article I ever read by Peat was his "Resveratrol is a Scam" article. The article was pirated on another website, without attribution, and so it was that when I searched google for the author of the article, it led me for the first time to raypeat.com. That was a good day for me.

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Just noticed that Peat's original resveratrol article I first read was not published on raypeat.com, it seems. Instead, it's posted here: http://doctorsaredangerous.com/articles ... l_scam.htm

At the time, I was learning about the ability of brown adipose tissue (BAT) to increase body temperature. This article was the first time I had seen Peat (or anyone else) explain the phenomenon in this way:

Ray Peat said:

The cells in each organ and tissue of the body are arranged in ways that allow them to make their contribution to the function of the organism, while receiving oxygen, glucose, and regulatory substances in the blood, and maintaining and renewing themselves. Except for the skin, their situation amid other cells assures that they will live in a high concentration of carbon dioxide.

There are proteins (uncoupling proteins, UCP) that cause the mitochondria to increase their consumption of oxygen without increasing their synthesis of ATP. The synthesis of ATP is usually thought of as the main reason for the consumption of oxygen, so the UCP have been assumed to exist to increase heat production. The formation of carbon dioxide is usually thought of as just an unavoidable consequence. UCP proteins, however, exist in situations in which heat production doesn’t seem appropriate (Borecký & Vercesi, 2005; Aguilera, et al., 2005; Gnanalingham, et al., 2005). For example, fasting or calorie restriction increases UCP, tending to cause tissues to consume energy more rapidly. Stress and hypoxia also can increase UCP, suggesting that these enzymes have protective functions.

Increasing the formation of carbon dioxide seems to me to be the essential function of the UCP. Thyroid hormone (T3) increases UCP, and UCP increases the formation of new mitochondria. Increased activity of the UCP is closely associated with increased lifespan. A decreased amount of T3 in tissues during aging corresponds to decreasing mitochondrial function.

Increased CO2 inhibits the formation of lactate, decreases the lipolytic effect of adrenaline, and the lowered energy charge produced by the UCP would prevent the diversion of glucose into other uses.

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To me, it seems that if Peat is right about this, all aging or anti-aging mechanisms in animals, whether from diet or C60 fullerenes or living at altitude, can be explained in one general theory of "anti-age-itivity", which might be as simple as: the rate of anti-aging (aa) is related to the mass of the body and the concentration of CO2 in the tissues. What might such a formula be?

[spoil][tab=30]aa = mco[sub]2[/sub]

A corollary to this might be a kind of relativity in which anti-aging is the context for an animal's sense of time?? For example, this might explain why when we are hyperventilating, and the CO2 concentration is lower, time seems to "speed up"; while when we are relaxed and the CO2 concentration is higher, time seems to "stand still". When CO2 concentration is higher, since we are aging more slowly (anti-aging is greater) during those moments, time is (relatively) slowing down.

What do you think?[/spoil]

Re: How I met Ray Peat - his general theory of "antiage-itiv

Albeit being a bit far fetched I find that interesting. The older you get the faster time flies by; the scientific explanations for that phenomenon are not very convincing so far. The best theory is that we perceive time relative to the timespan one has already lived through, and since that ratio gets smaller and smaller perception speeds up. Do you have any other hints at a connection to metabolism and/or health?

Re: How I met Ray Peat - his general theory of "antiage-itiv

nograde said:

Albeit being a bit far fetched I find that interesting. The older you get the faster time flies by; the scientific explanations for that phenomenon are not very convincing so far. The best theory is that we perceive time relative to the timespan one has already lived through, and since that ratio gets smaller and smaller perception speeds up. Do you have any other hints at a connection to metabolism and/or health?

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I'd never considered the idea until now. The nice thing is the idea may be easy to test. Take n subjects and measure their CO2 concentrations. I use exhaled CO2 for that. The sensor is affordable and it displays in real time on a PC. Test to see how they estimate time. Goal: To design a test, and test the test itself to show that you were indeed testing something, reliably, preferably without the subjects' knowledge (so as to permit controls).

For example, you might increase their CO2 concentrations, by letting them breathe more CO2; or decrease the concentration of CO2, by letting them breathe more O2 (via the Haldane effect). Keep increasing or decreasing and testing. To a point, it would seem this could be done without the subject knowing, although the breathing rate and volume would be affected.

One could also test at different times of the day, such as when lactic acid is high and CO2 is correspondingly low (such as when waking up, or after chronic stressful exercise).

One might look for an individual's threshold, or a range, a margin of error. One might also look at the wisdom of crowds here: does the entire group on average estimate time to go slower or quicker, when their CO2 concentrations increase or decrease.

I typically track cerebral brain flow and its effects on problem solving, and the results are impressive if not surprising, given how important cerebral brain flow is. Here, the ability to estimate time may be a correlation to overall cerebral blood flow, like other problem solving is. This correlation may be difficult to control for (if you wanted to), unless perhaps the ability to estimate time showed a greater correlation to CO2 across more individuals, than other types of problem solving.

Or unless, as one might hope, there is a difference between estimating time accurately, which may be a kind of problem-solving ability -- and estimating time to go slower or quicker, which results from the metaphysics of consciousness in Peatian metabolism.

Re: How I met Ray Peat - his general theory of "antiage-itiv

That's nice! Do you work with this? A carbon dioxide meter would be quite handy for me.

Re: How I met Ray Peat - his general theory of "antiage-itiv

Such_Saturation said:

That's nice! Do you work with this? A carbon dioxide meter would be quite handy for me.

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Yes, I work with this often. The whole setup including sensor and filters is less than US$400, and the PC software for displaying data is a free download. It displays data in realtime, once a second or more. PM me if anyone is interested in the specs that I use for the setup.