Putting aside the proposal to insert adamantane at 3α, what does everyone think of @davedavidson's claim that oral androsterone (or DHT) is "torching the liver"?

Respecting that people's responses to androsterone seem to vary markedly, I share @davedavidson's appreciation for androsterone and DHT's psychological effects.

I've seen the hepatoxicity concerns raised numerous times about oral androsterone on RPF/LTF (e.g. on the androsterone mega thread). What does everyone think about oral androsterone at 4 to 8 drops daily? Would that be "torching the liver"?

Have we seen studies documenting such problems at these (or higher) doses?

I also have not been able to find old threads (without recent comments) using this site's search function or the command-line searches in web browsers that @yerrag mentioned (having tried 30+ times). Thanks for raising this issue.

@brad : I appreciate your work creating and managing this site very much and am benefitting from frequently reading posts on bioenergetic forum. Like yerag, I'm also have trouble searching the site. Might there be scope to add a plug-in search function similar to LTF's?

I'd be interested to hear any suggestions about how people are searching and browsing this forum. I typically look only at the "Unread" tab rather than the menu of categories. Is there a better way?

@Peatful I, too, think this is an interesting topic very much related to Peat-inspired bioenergetics. Did Peat ever say anything about fear of dying or how he thought about mortality?

I think even achieving most of what i was hoping for in the way of increasing basal metabolic rate, shifting perspective toward nearly unconditional (low-PUFA) food-positivity, reducing inflammation, etc. (i.e. adopting the most obvious Peat-inspired practices), I continued to fear death intensely just as when I had been running on stress hormones for a decade on a carb-restricted diet. Although significant biophysical improvements had some noticeably positive effects on mindset, on this topic in particular, I would say I remained rather avoidant--not as much reality testing as I would have liked--thinking about death. Eventually (in the last two years maybe), my fear of death has reduced. I don't know if it was just getting older or Peat-inspired practice. It would be nice to have clearer guidance/reflection on this topic from people who:
(i) stopped fearing death before Peating
(ii) shifted perspective on death after Peating
(iii) shifted perspective on death due to practices unrelated to Peating (to help tease apart where bioenergetics and mindset toward death may be related and where they are not).

@DavidPS Thanks for posting. It's nice to see which products you and others are using. Cheers!

@LucH said in Thymus health:

M2 mode

What does "M2 mode" refer to?

@DavidPS Any recommended source for turpentine?

@gentlepotato Epic post regarding the Itaconate Shunt + GentlePotato Hypothesis as to why glucose-only has specific action stopping the Itaconate Shunt and thus improving (in Peat's words from the radio transcription you provided) both the "capacity" and "efficiency" of glucose oxidation.

The links to GABA and type-1-diabetes/autoimmune antibodies in the quote from the Peat interview were noteworthy, too.

Some random observations (expressing enthusiasm for GentlePotato's hypothesized mechanisms): In my own case, I respond to anti-excitatory supplements that are specifically GABA agonists (androsterone, kava) or operating directly on GABA receptors (progesterone). My subjective experience of plain sugar (sucrose) is similar. The mechanism(s) you mention and the overlap of our symptoms (those of us experimenting with and, at least at times, responding well to high-dose sugar or glucose as a supplement) makes me want to try glucose-only to compare. I think I do best with sucrose when I'm already uninflamed, good energetic capacity, i.e. oxidizing glucose well (which also would be contingent on having the enzymes or un-shunted baseline to be able to break sucrose down into glucose). According to your theory, glucose-only would be especially helpful when the sucrose-to-glucose pathway isn't working well and/or some stressor (e.g., TBI) has caused an Itaconate Shunt process to begin.

Upthread mentions of derangements in circadian rhythm are also interesting. Peating for several years and feeling like I'd made bioenergetic quantum leaps toward health (interpreted as "deeper capacity for" and "more efficient" glucose oxidation, specifically in brain tissue [although without a "CGM-like device" to measure such things directly, this is obviously a speculative interpretation])...only then did I want to wake up in the morning. After lifelong night-owl/sleep-deprivation/irregular-sleep patterns, I started to want to sleep "normal hours" and work/concentrate in the morning in the last six years or so. Type-1 diabetic here, btw.

Please speculate more when you've got more thoughts on the mechanisms in play explaining why sucrose-only might make a difference.

@sharko @yerrag @Peatful @Kvirion
I would like to use this tech if it returned links/citations back to source material. I think it's a cool experiment and fine to ask to be paid for the archival value-add that the LLM (might) provide.

I guess, @sharko, you are not a quant stats modeler who understands the "stochastic parrot" comment by @Kvirion and paper he linked to or valid concerns raised by @Peatful

The prompts you posted telling your LLM to "invest 100 times more" and do something "even more surprising" to Peat, etc., reveals, to me that you're unaware how those prompts are parsed and what's happening under the hood (in the code). The code will assemble a ranked list of word associations and return the top-ranked test composition by some very limited likelihood criterion in its very "small-world" model space. When you tell it to "come up with an idea" (it cannot!...it can only assemble combinations it was trained on!)...it simply returns #2 on the ranked list or does a re-ranking with a final check to give you something else on its list of guesses/synthetic text assemblages.

The idea that "AI" is "getting smarter" or graduating from high-school- to PhD-level "thinking" is absurd. This tech can be a tremendous aid for constructing text or computer code or many other useful applications, where the training dataset is sufficient in some sense to satisfy the task at hand. Thus, as an archive tool that can spot likely interconnections in the literature or sources you trained it on, I agree there is a real value-add.

When it comes to synthesizing new ideas as in your last few posts, any claim of "synthesizing new ideas" falls flat and does become (borderline?) dishonest. It would be dishonest, for example, to claim that what is returned by your LLM represents a "likely" Ray Peat take on a new topic he never wrote about.

Keep in mind that the training dataset is a binding constraint. The archival value-add is genuine. Claiming that the LLM comes up with "new insights" in any way associated with Ray Peat is dishonest in my view. Better to say explicitly "new insights generated by an LLM trained on a specialized training set comprised of..." and the list precisely which sources were included in the training set. Ray Peat's, Broda Barnes' oeuvres. Some filtered pub-med content you've evidently included. That specificity would match the archival value-add claim. I recommend strongly against selling the LLM with the repeated prompts you gave upthread, which, to anyone working in this space is unlikely to impress.

@Lothric Good post! After first encountering Peat's work 10 years ago, I tried to write (for myself) what an ideally designed work environment might look like, "optimized" in some sense to minimize chronic stressors or maximize opportunities to confront "peak challenge" with creativity and then "productively" adapt (hormesis). It eventually occurred to me that perhaps my question wasn't the right one, because, like you said, it assumed objective was more efficient/productive work output (using Peat-inspired principles to "work-max" or "productivity-max"). Finding experiences that provide opportunities for "wonder" is another important Peat-inspired piece of this, acknowledging how challenging it may be to find wonder in many work situations.

I don't think Peaty productivity-maxing is a bad question. Some forms of productivity (facing up to a challenge and getting things done) are good self-care and can be fulfilling in deeper ways, consistent with bioenergetic principles. The deeper consideration of leisure and self-development @Lothric mentioned is on-point: not treating leisure as recharge to make work more productive but as an end in itself (deeper structuring of one's self, including yet exceeding the domain of work).

My conclusion? Peat-inspired principles to improve work productivity can be a valuable/valid/healing/bioenergetic objective. @Lothric's point is deeper and worthwhile to consider if one can afford to. Given the high-stress work environments and socially/aesthetically-depleted environments many of us find ourselves in, a few clever Peat-inspired inventions to manage stress and increase energy can be a godsend and even more than enough to adapt and "thrive in place" (metabolically speaking, assuming some tough and unwanted constraints). If one can afford to allocate more and more energy/resources on self development beyond work, that would be a privilege and could be a life-changing opportunity toward self-possession and fulfilment on the deepest levels. Meantime, a few Peat-inspired changes in perspective/behavior/diet/activity can make a massively positive difference even when constrained to "staying stuck" in an environment one wishes they could change but can't. Cope? Maybe. Worthwhile/life-saving/meaningful although imperfect? Yes.

@short_hope I drink 1.5+ liters of whole milk, orange juice, grape juice, lots of coffee w/ milk (throughout the day), occasional coconut water, fizzy drinks with sucrose/glucose.

Fluid content in the foods we eat (whole fruit, etc.) is often not included as it should be (or not easy to quantify) when people think about their fluid intake.

I grew up with parents very interested in health food and maintaining good hydration. And I raised my children pushing frequent water consumption on them, which I now regret (before reading Ray Peat on 'salt to taste' and dangers of excess water intake). I think excessive worry about dehydration and excess water intake worked against my health objectives. I'm now feeling like good metabolic health has been finally achieved (last 5-8 years) after stopping water drinking. Of course still using water to cook soup/broth, boil potatoes, etc.