Brain
The brain is the highest energy organ per mass. It needs steady glucose, thyroid-driven respiration, CO2, and protective steroids (progesterone, pregnenolone). When energy fails, excitotoxicity, swelling, and functional loss follow.
Fuel and protection
[edit]The brain makes a large share of the body's CO2. Stress that raises lactic acid and free fatty acids injures neurons. Serotonin, excess estrogen, and high unsaturated free fats amplify that injury; progesterone and good oxidation oppose it.[1][2]
See CO2, Progesterone, Glucose, Thyroid, Serotonin, PUFA.
The brain's glucose dependence isn't just a modern fact, it may be what shaped it: at roughly 2% of adult body weight, the brain uses about 20% of resting metabolic rate in adults and 66% in a 5-year-old, and a 2026 modeling study across 4 million years of hominin evolution argues fruit and honey sugars, not meat, supplied the glucose that drove brain growth. See Human evolution.[3]
Structural plasticity
[edit]Learning changes brain structure directly, not just brain activity.
If you simply change your mind, the limits of what is possible become undefined and very open. Changing your mind is the essence of living matter. Biology is changed by every experience. The brain is constantly in development, and that involves what you're learning. So what you learn changes your structure, and therefore your mind has changed. You're changing your past every time you learn something because you become a different organism.
— Ray Peat
In a cross-sectional study of 47 healthy 3-to-5-year-olds, higher screen-time exposure (via the ScreenQ composite score, based on American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines) was associated with lower white-matter integrity on diffusion tensor imaging in tracts supporting language, literacy, and executive function, along with lower expressive-language and literacy scores. Cross-sectional data like this can't establish that screen exposure caused the white-matter differences.[5]
Practice
[edit]Keep blood sugar stable with regular carbohydrate. Support thyroid and sleep. Lower seed oils. Use light by day.
See Aging, Alzheimer's disease, Light, Red light, Stress.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ↑ Ray Peat, "Protective CO2 and aging," raypeat.com.
- ↑ Ray Peat, "Progesterone, pregnenolone, and DHEA," raypeat.com.
- ↑ Brand-Miller J, Hardy K, Raubenheimer D, Copeland L, "A central role for dietary sugars in human evolution," Science. 2026;373(6811). PMID 42561068.
- ↑ Ray Peat, "Butter Living Podcast: A Casual Conversation with Ray Peat", Butter Living Podcast, 14:17
- ↑ Hutton JS, Dudley J, Horowitz-Kraus T, Dewitt T, Holland SK, "Associations Between Screen-Based Media Use and Brain White Matter Integrity in Preschool-Aged Children," JAMA Pediatr. 2020;174(1):e193869. PMID 31682712.