https://thinkersplayground.com/understanding-my-bioenergeti…

Over the past few years, an alternative movement has been gaining momentum in the world of health and nutrition. This movement has centred largely around the writings of Dr Raymond Peat PhD, a former professor of physiology and endocrinology.
I first stumbled across Ray Peat’s website in 2011 while researching caprylic acid (a fat found in coconut oil with some remarkable properties). But some of Peat’s main ideas ran contrary to other sources I was reading at the time (for example, that fish oil is not a sensible health supplement) and it wasn’t enough to convince me away from my preexisting biases.
Over time, however, the name Ray Peat would crop up again and again in various places online, and I decided to go back and revisit Dr. Peat’s articles in 2014. Once I started reading Peat’s articles in greater depth, and began linking the common threads that are woven throughout them, my own understanding of human biology, health, and nutrition were changed substantively.
The key idea was that energy and structure are interdependent, at every level.
—Ray Peat
Peat presents a bioenergetic lens through which health, ageing, and disease can be understood as functions of energy metabolism—of the biological energy that’s available for use in our bodies. Energy isn’t just required for us to function, but for the organism as a whole to maintain its own integrity.
His articles describe how nutrition, hormones, and other environmental factors influence the availability of energy and impact health. These ideas are backed strongly by empirical research and validated by some of the most notable names in western science from the last century, including many Nobel Prize winners.
Despite this, many of the claims Peat makes run contrary to mainstream contemporary health advice and common cultural clichés.
This deviation from mainstream information, as well as the breadth and inherently technical nature of his articles, can mean Ray Peat’s work is often initially difficult to read.
I d…