# Anxiety

Category: Conditions

Also known as: anxiety disorder

Anxiety is most often a symptom of low thyroid and high estrogen, a physiological state bordering on shock in which energy production fails and compensatory stress hormones dominate. Peat observed that low thyroid people chronically have anxiety because when energy production…

10 passages · 2 authors · 2014–2024 · Most-cited: [Ray Peat](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/voices/ray-peat/index.md)

Canonical page: https://bioenergeticoracle.com/concepts/anxiety

## Synthesis

**Anxiety** is most often a symptom of **low thyroid** and **high estrogen**, a physiological state bordering on shock in which energy production fails and compensatory stress hormones dominate. [Source 2, 4] Peat observed that low thyroid people chronically have anxiety because when energy production goes down, the body compensates with increased *adrenaline and cortisol*, and some individuals function with several times the normal amount of adrenaline production. [Source 8] This hormonal pattern is characteristically marked by the substitution of *lactic acid for carbon dioxide*, creating a vicious circle where an anxious episode increases lactic acid, which prolongs the anxiety and drives hyperventilation. [Source 4, 7]

The metabolic disruption of anxiety directly impairs intestinal barrier function. When a person thinks of something anxiety-provoking, adrenaline and the sympathetic nervous system shut down circulation to the intestine, and if this persists, it weakens the cells, allowing **endotoxin** from the gut to enter the bloodstream. [Source 3] This circulating endotoxin fatigues the liver and increases the brain's concentration of **tryptophan** and **serotonin**, both highly inflammatory mediators that reinforce the stress state. [Source 3] Peat noted that anything which stresses an organism and lowers blood sugar is likely to release histamine and serotonin improperly, and that coffee and the antihistamine cyproheptadine can protect against this cascade. [Source 3]

Carbon dioxide functions as the body's natural nerve stabilizer and anti-anxiety molecule. When anxiety triggers hyperventilation, carbon dioxide is lost, platelets release more serotonin, and a process begins that slows thinking and induces retreat. [Source 5] Peat recommended practices that increase carbon dioxide retention, such as breathing into a paper bag until it feels uncomfortable, swimming underwater, or absorbing CO₂ through the skin in a sealed bag, which he reported could lower blood pressure significantly. [Source 4, 7] Thyroid, **progesterone**, and **pregnenolone** all act as anti-stress agents that help cells retain carbon dioxide and magnesium, shifting the balance away from lactic acid production. [Source 5, 7]

Nutritional factors are tightly coupled to the anxiety state. Peat identified **vitamin B6** as essential for regulating neurotransmitters, noting that it is wasted by estrogen. [Source 1] He also suspected that increased **aldosterone** could account for anxiety and panic, and warned that extra magnesium, potassium, or phosphate could worsen the condition, while sodium, calcium, and vitamin D would tend to lower it. [Source 6] The flavonoids, by promoting natural mitochondrial respiration and carbon dioxide production, suppress the inflammation and lactic acid production that sustain anxiety. [Source 7]

Dinkov has extended this framework by implicating **serotonin (5-HT)** as a direct causal agent in anxiety disorders, noting that 5-HT antagonists are potent and rapid relievers of anxiety without the receptor downregulation problems of benzodiazepines. [Source 10] He cited animal research showing that chronically stressed mice and rats with high anxiety immediately adopt a *subordination behavioral profile*, surrendering to intruders they would otherwise fight off, a phenomenon mirrored by even slight serotonin elevations removing dominant status in alpha male baboons. [Source 9] Dinkov also pointed to the possibility that the current epidemic of generalized anxiety disorder may be iatrogenic, caused by serotonin-elevating drugs such as SSRIs. [Source 10]

## People also ask

### What hormonal pattern does Ray Peat link to chronic anxiety?

Peat argued that low thyroid function leads to high adrenaline and cortisol, creating a state where energy production fails and stress hormones dominate, often with several times the normal amount of adrenaline.

### How does anxiety affect the gut and brain according to this view?

The entry describes how anxiety-driven adrenaline shuts down intestinal circulation, weakening the gut barrier so endotoxin enters the blood, which then fatigues the liver and raises brain tryptophan and serotonin, reinforcing the stress state.

### Why is carbon dioxide considered an anti-anxiety molecule in this framework?

Peat described carbon dioxide as a natural nerve stabilizer; anxiety-induced hyperventilation depletes it, triggering serotonin release and mental slowing, while practices like bag breathing help retain CO₂ and calm the system.

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## Cited passages

Passage numbers match the `[Source N]` markers in the synthesis above.

### Source 1 — Ray Peat Email Advice Depository — Post 585

Ray Peat · Email · Apr 20, 2020

> **Question:** You've said that a requirement for vitamin B6 is often implicated in anxiety, along with hyperventilation. Why is this specific nutrient so closely connected to that condition?
>
> **Ray Peat:** It’s essential for regulating neurotransmitters, and is wasted by estrogen.

### Source 2 — Ray Peat Email Advice Depository — Post 373

Ray Peat · Email · May 20, 2017

> **Question:** What are your thoughts on hypercondria versus reasonable concern into health?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Having a distinct symptom that is uncomfortable is a reason for looking for the cause; if a symptom is frequent and disabling to any extent, then it’s appropriate to invest some time and effort in figuring it out. When anxiety is the problem, people sometimes interpret insignificant sensations as danger signals instead of attending to the causes of the anxiety.
>
> **Question:** What did you mean by the causes of anxiety?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Often it’s some simple thing, such as hypothyroidism. A chronic external stress (such as crocodiles or secret police) can lead to an internal change, such as thyroid failure.

### Source 3 — KMUD Herb Doctors — April 18, 2014 (partial recording)

Ray Peat · Interview · Apr 18, 2014

> **Ray Peat:** yeah under mild stress A person often reduces their circulation to their intestine. If you listen to your belly with a stethoscope, when you're having relaxed, happy thoughts, you can hear a constant churning sound. But if you think of something anxiety-provoking, things go quiet. And that's because adrenaline or the sympathetic nervous system shuts things down. and it even shuts down the circulation to some extent. And if that persists for very long, it starts weakening the cells, and there's always some endotoxin turning around in the food-bacterium mixture. And if the intestine becomes weakened for some reason, it could be... traumatic injury or it could just be chronic anxiety decreasing the energy of your intestine to form a barrier so as as the barrier is weakened then it gets in your first it passes into the liver and tends to fatigue the liver deplete energy but there's often some of it circulating chronically In the bloodstream, chronic anxiety people, fat people in particular, tend to have an elevated chronic level circulating.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** Okay, so how... I read that from an article that the endotoxin... Stress and endotoxin induced an increase in the brain's concentration of tryptophan and serotonin. Now, both of these I know from what we've talked about over these shows. Tryptophan and serotonin are both very inflammatory and not something that you would want to promote in any way. And we've talked about things that block tryptophan and serotonin.

### Source 4 — One Radio Network: Ray Peat with Patrick Timpone — February 21, 2022

Ray Peat · Interview · Feb 21, 2022

> **Patrick Timpone:** So that would be more like anxiety, would be a faster heart rate, but it's weaker.
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah. It's weaker. Anxiety borders on the shock state to some degree, like panic disorder.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** Panic attacks. Is that then estrogenic? High estrogen causes that? And why?
>
> **Ray Peat:** It's a whole range of physiological things that are analogous to estrogen. Lactic acid is the characteristic thing in panic attacks. And the estrogen anti-steroides action or pro-shock action involves the substitution of lactic acid for carbon dioxide. So carbon dioxide helps you to relax and restore your structures that guarantee performance.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** That's why breathing into a bag or not over-breathing helps with anxiety or panic attacks, right?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah, yeah. And if you practice something like swimming, As far as you can underwater, that gradually builds up the effect of retaining more carbon dioxide and having less anxiety.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** So anxiety is tied, though, with, it could be, as you say, a multitude of factors to be the causative for anxiety or fast heart rate or something. Thinking emotions could all be tied in together with even high estrogen, dietary-wise?

### Source 5 — Memory, Cognition & Nutrition

Ray Peat · Interview · 2014

> **Andrew Murray:** Okay - so what I am getting from is that anxiety is probably one of the main things to avoid in terms of having, you know, a competent memory and a competent cognition - that the whole physiological effect of stress and anxiety are all working against having that kind of stillness that would enable one to recapitulate events or to remember even simple facts.
>
> **Ray Peat:** And hyperventilation, for example, when you are feeling anxious, it’s common to breathe harder and deeper and lose carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide seems to be a nerve stabilizer and protects nerves against many types of stress and inflammation and as the carbon dioxide goes down your platelets released more serotonin and probably other inflammatory things. And so just hyperventilating is enough to trigger a process that tends to slow you down, make you retreat and not think very clearly. So interestingly, anything that will increases your ability to retain carbon dioxide tends to help you think calmly and clearly.
>
> **Andrew Murray:** And you say that thyroid does that - it helps you to retain CO2?

### Source 6 — Ray Peat Email Advice Depository — Post 408

Ray Peat · Email · Aug 27, 2017

> **Question:** Anxiety/panic, taking frequent magnesium baths/chloride topically doesn't seem to help. Low vit D known.
>
> **Ray Peat:** For the present, I think having sodium chloride or baking soda in your bath might be more helpful than the magnesium, though they could be combined. I suspect that increased aldosterone could account for the anxiety/panic, and extra magnesium, potassium, or phosphate could make it worse; sodium, calcium, and vitamin D would tend to lower it. [references]

### Source 7 — One Radio Network: Ray Peat with Patrick Timpone — June 21, 2021

Ray Peat · Interview · Jun 21, 2021

> **Patrick Timpone:** Yeah.
>
> **Ray Peat:** And that produces lactic acid, which creates anxiety, and it's a vicious circle, an episode of something that makes you anxious. will increase your lactic acid and tend to prolong the anxiety and over-breathing. And so breathing in a paper bag is the quick and easy way to do it.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** To retain more carbon dioxide.
>
> **Ray Peat:** Re-breathe until it feels like you're suffocating and then breathe normally for a while and then repeat the bag breathing. It takes a minute or two. of bag breathing to reach that state. But I've seen people just bag breathing three or four times a day lower their blood pressure by 10 or 20 points.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** Is that right? Really? Just by breathing into a paper bag until you feel like you just can't do it any longer?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah. When it's very uncomfortable, you stop and breathe fresh air.
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** And it's carbon dioxide that's whole stain in the body
>
> **Ray Peat:** uh yeah and you can absorb carbon dioxide through the skin so if you fill a tub or a big plastic bag with carbon dioxide and get into it you've if you're measuring it with a closed bag for example the bag deflates after about half an hour showing that you've absorbed lots and lots of CO2 through your skin.

### Source 8 — One Radio Network: Milk

Ray Peat · Interview · Jul 18, 2019

> ## Anxiety and Stress Hormones
>
> **Patrick Timpone:** It's fair to say that stress and angst change a lot of things in the body?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Low thyroid people chronically have anxiety. When energy production goes down—which happens to everyone during the night—the body compensates with increased adrenaline and cortisol. When your thyroid is chronically low, you run around in the daytime with elevated adrenaline and cortisol. I've seen people with several times the normal amount of adrenaline production. Some people can function normally with four times as much adrenaline as normal, but that's why some low thyroid people tend to get anxious or have atrial fibrillation. Especially at sunset, when stress hormones normally rise, a low thyroid person can go into a very anxious, worrying state.

### Source 9 — #12: Panic Attacks, DHT, Prostate Cancer, Receptors, Pollution, and Estrogen with Georgi Dinkov

Georgi Dinkov · Interview · Oct 5, 2019 · https://open.spotify.com/episode/2G9j9CaRidu2Eu75ADcbDl

> **Georgi Dinkov:** immediately the study will be attacked with like, maybe it was the drugs that caused it, or maybe these people, you know, were taking the wrong drug. Well, guess what? They weren't taking any drugs. And strikingly, all the people with these disorders had the exact same expression profile of the genes as the mice that was susceptible to stress and developed these disorders as well. And perhaps worst of all, they only tested it in mice, but rats and mice that have high anxiety and or panic due to stress, immediately develop a subordination behavioral profile. In other words, when they're met with a new rat or a new mouse, which typically triggers, like in the colonies, it triggers a fight, like the intruder is being fought, right? But these mice that were stressed and the rats that were stressed and they had anxiety, they immediately surrender. They basically assume the subordinated stance. And the intruder was allowed to do whatever the intruder wants to do, even if the intruder was thought to be less physically capable than the mice or rat that were with the anxiety. In other words, if these mice and rats were in good health, they would have probably fought off the intruder, right? As they usually do because they're bigger, they're stronger, et cetera. Not so when they had the anxiety disorder due to chronic stress. They immediately became servile. And I thought to myself, well, given the – there was another study which was done on monkeys, and it showed that even a slight elevation in serotonin removes the dominant status of the alpha male in the pack, or I guess group would be a group. Not group, but what do you call – it's not a pack of baboons. I think the study was done with baboons.

### Source 10 — Serotonin (5-HT) causes anxiety, LSD and its derivatives may treat it

Georgi Dinkov · Article · Feb 20, 2024 · https://haidut.me/?p=2441

> The so-called generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is perhaps the most commonly diagnosed mental health condition. Ergo, the drugs to treat GAD – the benzodiazepine (GABA agonist) class – are perhaps the most widely prescribed mental health drugs globally. Unfortunately, chronic use of such drugs leads to diminished effectiveness over time due to downregulated GABA receptor sensitivity. Such decreased sensitivity may trigger an “addiction” due to the patient feeling they need more of the drug to achieve the same results and also make it next to impossible to withdraw from the drug due to severely downregulated GABA receptor sensitivity, which can lead to seizures and even death if withdrawal is done cold-turkey. Don’t believe my horror-stories? Just search YouTube for “Klonopin withdrawal” or “benzo withdrawal” (no quotes when you search). It is beyond scary.
>
> Now, it has been known for decades that 5-HT antagonists are potent and rapid relievers of anxiety. In addition, they do not suffer from the same receptor downregulation issues like the benzo drugs. These repeated findings, over many decades, obviously implicate 5-HT in the pathogenesis of anxiety. Not only is this a taboo topic in psychiatry but it is also quite dangerous legally since it may lead to people (and their lawyers) questioning whether the current epidemic of GAD is not actually iatrogenic – i.e. caused by serotonin-elevating drugs such as the widely-prescribed SSRI class. So, in order to circumvent this touchy issue, medicine is now reaching for drugs that are mixed agonists/antagonists on the 5-HT receptor family. This way, Big Pharma and mainstream medicine can even claim that 5-HT alleviates anxiety since this or that drug with mixed agonist/antagonist profile is effective for GAD. This is exactly what the study below demonstrates. Namely, that a non-hallucinogenic LSD derivative was highly effective at relieving GAD. The study even explicitly points out the ability of the drug to (weakly) activate 5-HT2A as a possible mechanism of action. The fact that the drug is an antagonist of 5-HT2C (as well as most of the other 5-HT receptors) – a receptor whose blocking has repeatedly been shown to alleviate anxiety – is, of course, never mentioned.

_Generated 2026-07-20 from the Bioenergetic Oracle corpus._