“Serotonin, melatonin, estrogen, and polyunsaturated fats all tend to lower body temperature. Since estrogen and the unsaturated fats are cellular excitants, the actual decrease in body temperature helps to offset their excitatory effects.”
Reader Mail: "What are your thoughts on Dr. Jack Kruse? He speaks about a lot of the hormones Peat does."
Dr. Jack Kruse is a neurosurgeon who practices in Tennessee. I am a community college dropout who sneaks into a nearby University to write articles about Ray Peat. If you understand both of these things, please continue reading.
To be honest, I haven't read much of his work. I've listened to both of his interviews with Jimmy Moore and I've read his leptin prescription and the FAQ that followed it.
What did catch my eye were some of his posts on Paleohacks. Especially the one suggestion that lower body temperature was better, or temporarily better. Bolds are mine:
PaleoHacks Poster: I Weigh 190, lost 40 pounds before LR [leptin reset] and need to lose 50 more. I have been doing the Leptin reset for 3 weeks faithfully. I am very happy with it except I feel cold all the time, even under lots of blankets at night. Am also taking fish oil, PQQ, vitamin C, and several other vitamins. Any suggestions?
Dr. Jack Kruse: good sign......cold is what you want.
Bad-ass mother fucker Eveleyn (aka: Carbsane) chimes in with her thoughts:
"I don't know about anyone else here, but there is no more uncomfortable feeling for me than feeling cold and unable to warm up. This has happened to me periodically all my life -- lean, obese, high carb, low carb, etc. The absolute last thing I would do would be to continue some way of eating that made me feel this way.
Jack says "good" you want to feel cold. Does that sound right to anyone? Not me."
A reader of mine echoes Evelyn's thoughts about the misery of feeling cold all the time:
"I do feel much better since following your program. I am finally warm for the first time in over 10 years so I know that is having a positive affect in my life. Before I started your program my morning underarm temps were 96. I haven't tested it since I started your program. All I know I am much warmer! It is wonderful. I used to be freezing cold even when sitting outside on a hot California day. The chills felt like they were coming from deep inside of me. My doctor just shrugged her shoulders and told me I was starting menopause and some women were cold, some where hot. But I don't think she knew what she was talking about and I couldn't get her to understand how miserable I was."
On the Peat-a-tarian side of things a lower temperature, besides making you feel like shit, is indicitive of inefficient metabolism ruled by stress hormones. Dr. Peat explains:
"When the tissues are saturated with those antithyroid fats, metabolism slows, especially when any stress, such as cold or hunger, increases the concentration of free fatty acids in the blood stream."
"Serotonin, melatonin, estrogen, and polyunsaturated fats all tend to lower body temperature. Since estrogen and the unsaturated fats are cellular excitants, the actual decrease in body temperature helps to offset their excitatory effects."
"Protein, salt, thyroid, and progesterone happen to be thermogenic, increasing heat production and stabilizing body temperature at a higher level. Prolactin and estrogen lower the temperature set-point."
Body temperature as the "be-all-end-all in health" is a straw-man argument—no one believes this. Like pulse and basic lab work, it can be utilized in a battery of diagnostics to figure out where to go in your health journey.
While leptin is all the rage these days I can't help but think that some would get farther with some simple self-diagnostics than pontificating about their sensitivity to a hormone that is never measured.
Everyone knows how I feel about low-carb, but someone suggesting that coldness is, "what you want" in any capacity, really leaves me scratching my head.
