Peat Archive

For Ray Peat, metabolism was not simply about 'burning calories' but about the fundamental processes of energy production that determine the health or disease of every cell. He drew heavily on the work of Albert Szent-Györgyi, Otto Warburg, and others who understood life as an energetic process. Healthy metabolism, in Peat's view, means efficient mitochondrial oxidation of fuel (primarily glucose) to produce CO2 and water, with high ATP output.

Peat argued that many modern diseases are fundamentally metabolic — the result of cells shifting from efficient oxidative metabolism to inefficient stress metabolism (glycolysis and fat oxidation). Factors that suppress metabolism include polyunsaturated fats, excess estrogen, endotoxin, serotonin, and darkness. Factors that support it include thyroid hormone, adequate glucose, saturated fats, light, warmth, and carbon dioxide.