# Glucose

Category: Foods & Substances

Also known as: dextrose, blood sugar

Glucose is the fundamental sugar of energy metabolism, and Ray Peat argued that it is a crucial, protective substance when supplied in the right metabolic context, directly aiding in the regeneration of the pancreas. He identified polyunsaturated fats as the primary dietary…

9 passages · 1 author · 1991–2021 · Most-cited: [Ray Peat](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/voices/ray-peat/index.md)

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

## Synthesis

**Glucose** is the fundamental sugar of energy metabolism, and Ray Peat argued that it is a crucial, protective substance when supplied in the right metabolic context, directly aiding in the regeneration of the pancreas. [Source 1] He identified **polyunsaturated fats** as the primary dietary factor that misdirects glucose metabolism, creating the epidemic of diabetes, obesity, and degenerative diseases, rather than the sugar itself. [Source 1] The body's need for glucose is so absolute that on a pure meat diet, it will break down protein to produce it, a process that can disrupt physiology. [Source 2]

The primary regulator of stable blood sugar is the liver's ability to store glucose, a function that is fundamentally dependent on **thyroid hormone**. [Source 2] Adequate thyroid function allows tissues to oxidize glucose efficiently, making high levels of insulin unnecessary and suppressing the liver's stress-driven glucose production. [Source 3] When glucose oxidation is impaired, the body initiates a stress response. The *first reaction* to insufficient glucose is a surge of **adrenaline** to mobilize stored glycogen. [Source 4] If glycogen is depleted, the body resorts to the *deadlier arm* of the stress response, releasing **cortisol**, which breaks down tissue protein to manufacture glucose, leading to a loss of function and strength. [Source 4] Peat noted that simply tripling the amount of glucose in the bloodstream can prevent even deadly anaphylactic shock by overcoming the need for the inflammatory stress response. [Source 4]

Peat distinguished between sources of glucose, cautioning that the dextrinization of starches through harsh cooking creates mutagenic and carcinogenic compounds via the browning reaction with amino groups. [Source 5] He consistently recommended obtaining sugar from fruit rather than grains and starchy vegetables, partly because poorly cooked starches support bacterial growth and **endotoxin** production, which synergizes with other pro-inflammatory factors. [Source 7] In therapeutic contexts, Peat observed that simple sugars like honey or white sugar can be powerfully restorative, citing cases of rapid weight regain and the cessation of hair loss upon adding sugar to the diet. [Source 7] He also noted that sugar itself can act as a *mucolytic*, quieting inflammation in the lungs by activating taste receptors on the involved tissues. [Source 9]

The chronic elevation of stress hormones to maintain blood sugar is a central mechanism of aging and degeneration. [Source 8] Peat described how drinking milk or orange juice to raise blood sugar was sufficient to lower adrenaline and cortisol, allowing him to return to sleep. [Source 8] He experimented with substances that sustain blood sugar through the night, such as antihistamines, to decrease the need for the catabolic stress response. [Source 8] While injected dextrose has been used in prolotherapy to strengthen connective tissue by inducing inflammation, Peat argued that the underlying weakness is typically caused by low thyroid and high estrogen, and that correcting thyroid function and supplementing **pregnenolone** or **DHEA** is a more natural way to strengthen ligaments and tendons. [Source 6]

## People also ask

### How does thyroid function affect glucose metabolism?

Peat argued that the liver's ability to store glucose depends on thyroid hormone, which allows tissues to oxidize glucose efficiently, making high insulin unnecessary and suppressing stress-driven glucose production.

### Why did Peat recommend fruit over starches as a sugar source?

The corpus describes that harshly cooked starches can form carcinogenic compounds, and poorly cooked starches may promote bacterial growth and endotoxin production, whereas fruit sugar avoids these risks.

### What stress hormones are released when glucose is insufficient?

According to the entry, the first reaction to low glucose is an adrenaline surge to mobilize glycogen, and if glycogen is depleted, cortisol is released to break down tissue protein for glucose.

## Related concepts

- [Multiple Sclerosis](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/multiple-sclerosis/index.md)
- [Fructose](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/fructose/index.md)
- [Acne](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/acne/index.md)
- [Adrenaline](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/adrenaline/index.md)
- [Albumin](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/albumin/index.md)
- [Diabetes](https://bioenergeticoracle.com/md/concepts/diabetes/index.md)

## Cited passages

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

### Source 1 — Sugar Myths Part 2

Ray Peat · Interview · 2011

> **Herb Doctor:** Thank you for your call.
>
> **Herb Doctor:** What do you think of dextrose, Dr Peat?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Well glucose, it's just the other word for glucose, and starch turns into that and it is great stuff in itself when it's in the right balance with other things including a little bit of fructose always, and saturated fat and minerals and vitamins. The dextrose or glucose itself is a factor in helping the pancreas to regenerate; it's the polyunsaturated fats, which misdirect the metabolism of glucose and fructose. And the polyunsaturated fats that are creating the epidemic of diabetes and obesity and later all of the degenerative diseases, cancer and Alzheimer's and so on. Engineer: I have a question. Do they call it dextrose when it's being used industrially as a food or how do they call it dextrose instead of glucose?
>
> **Ray Peat:** It has to do with the optical rotation of it. It's just a different chemical history of the way they name the molecules. Say Fructose was called levulose because it turns the light to the left.
>
> **Herb Doctor:** OK, so basically dextrose just gets broken down into glucose. **Herb Doctors/Ray Peat**: It IS glucose.
>
> **Herb Doctor:** OK. So there's another caller on the air, so let's take this next caller.

### Source 2 — One Radio Network: Health & Diet

Ray Peat · Interview · Dec 4, 2013 · http://l-i-g-h-t.com/files/one-radio-network-patrick-timpone-dr-peat-answers-questions-regarding-health-diet-and-nutrition-part-1.mp4

> **Ray Peat:** The main thing that keeps blood sugar stable is the ability of your liver to store sugar, wherever it got it, it needs Thyroid hormone to store sugar, it also makes you use your sugar more sparingly, producing many more times of ATP molecules per unit of food, you get if you metabolise it into lactic acid which you do when you don’t have enough Thyroid. Thyroid makes you spare your glucose, not waste it, and store it in the liver, so it’s the basic thing for stabilizing your blood sugar. If you have cholesterol, which is only produced if the liver is in good condition, low cholesterol is behind serious adrenal failure, because raw cholesterol is raw material all of Pregnenolone, progesterone, DHEA, and cortisol. If your cholesterol is low and thyroid is low, you can’t make any of these. If you don’t make enough of these other steroids, then you will turn any trace of cholesterol into Adrenaline or Cortisol and get ecess cortisol, so you can get either adrenal failure or adrenal over activity, as a result of having a sick liver or any underactive thyroid.

### Source 3 — KMUD - October 15, 2021

Ray Peat · Interview · Oct 17, 2021

> **Caller:** I understand that insulin is necessary to get the sugar out of your blood and, I guess, into your fat bank is basically where it goes. And so with a high blood sugar, in my case, I can't get my fat back because insulin also holds fat on your body. So the idea was to come down in blood sugar and then insulin would come down with it and then let the fat come from your fat bank and be metabolized and maintain a weight, a better weight. So I've managed to get pretty thin over the years because I've worked hard to keep my blood sugar down. and I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates, but I'm really curious about recommending that people have a high blood sugar. Is that what's happened to people, or do normal people keep a low blood sugar even though they're eating a lot of glucose?
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah, if you're able to keep your cortisol and other stress hormones low, that's what lets your tissues... use the glucose so you can turn off the liver's gluconeogenesis and stop pushing your blood sugar up to overcome the inability to oxidize it.
>
> **Caller:** I understand the gluconeogenesis, but that doesn't happen in my understanding until blood sugar comes down. Your liver's inactive when you have a

### Source 4 — Weight Loss, Macros, Prolactin, Cancer, Cold Therapy & More, Q&A

Ray Peat · Interview · Oct 11, 2020 · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK8qhzo4w9s

> **Ray Peat:** No. Usually, if your adrenals respond by making... cortisol that keeps the adrenaline down and the first reaction when you don't get enough glucose into your system first reaction is to increase your adrenaline to mobilize stored glycogen release it in the form of glucose and if you run out of glycogen then adrenaline can't do that, and that's when ACTH rises. But normally, adequate glucose or carbohydrate will keep down both adrenaline Yeah, so when I read his question, that's what I was wondering too. I was thinking, well, I think it's the other way around. It's the high adrenaline that actually leads to the high ACTH, right? Yeah. It's the body's first reaction, and then if it doesn't produce enough sugar, then the body brings in the deadlier arm. cortisol and the reason that that's a restrained reaction is that the way cortisol and ACTH produce the glucose is by breaking down tissue protein and we don't have any protein storage so when cortisol goes up it means some part of our with loss of function and strength of connective tissue, for example. So a surge of adrenaline is a good warning that you should either improve your efficient sugar metabolism or increase the amount of carbohydrate in your diet.

### Source 5 — Ask the Herb Doctor: Food

Ray Peat · Interview · Dec 16, 2016

> ## Carbohydrates, Dextrinization, and Cooking
>
> **Andrew Murray:** I had a couple of questions based on sugars. One was: Does dextrinization and protein coagulation change complex carbs into simple sugars? Do you know much about this dextrinization?
>
> **Ray Peat:** It is a process that has been used for about 200 years. The first form of it was basically what they used to make Karo syrup or corn syrup—boiling cornstarch with sulfuric acid. It makes a pale, almost clear syrup. But the longer you cook it, and the harsher the acidic or basic conditions are, the browner it gets. They know that the brown stuff in molasses is mutagenic and carcinogenic, just like any charred carbohydrate, starch, or sugar. When you sort out the corn starch from the germ, you're still getting enzymes and amino groups spread throughout the starch. Those amino groups participate in the classical browning reaction that makes these mutagenic carcinogens. So, the dextrinization produces some dextrose and simple sugars, but the gumminess depends on how far you carry the breakdown reaction. On average, dextrins are considered to have groups of glucose molecules that are around 5 to 15 molecules long.

### Source 6 — Politics & Science: Two Hour Fundraiser II

Ray Peat · Interview · Feb 22, 2012 · http://l-i-g-h-t.com/files/politics-science-two-hour-fundraiser-2.mp4

> ## Prolotherapy
>
> **John Barkhausen:** Lilia asks: "Do you have any thoughts on the efficacy of prolotherapy, in which a solution containing sugar in the form of dextrose is injected into tendons or ligaments to strengthen weakened connective tissue?"
>
> **Ray Peat:** My father had it done. I think they used vegetable oil in the 1950s—a combination of novocaine and vegetable oil. It causes an inflammatory reaction and toughening up of the ligaments. It can cure some back problems without anything very invasive. So it's proven to work, but I think there are better things. It's usually a low DHEA production from low thyroid, high estrogen, and stress hormones that cause the ligaments and tendons to get weak. Correcting the thyroid function and maybe taking a DHEA or pregnenolone supplement would be the natural way to strengthen the ligaments and tendons, and it helps the bones at the same time.

### Source 7 — Politics Science Autoimmune Diseases and Movement Disorders

Ray Peat · Interview · 2012

> **John Barkhausen:** And you mentioned how important it is to keep your blood sugar up to handle stresses. How should one do that? I have a feeling that a lot of problems today, at least in some people, is that they are avoiding sugar, because it's gotten such a bad rap.
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah. Every day I hear at least one or two people saying what happened when they started eating sugar. One guy this morning said his hair stopped falling out a couple of days after he started eating sugar. A kid was having seizures and dropped down to 112 pounds in just two or three weeks was back up to his normal weight for keeping something like 8 or 9 ounces of sugar added to his other foods. In crisis, sugar in itself, just a simple kind of honey or sugar, can be very therapeutic. But, in general, you want to shift your diet towards fruit, rather than grains and starchy vegetables.
>
> **John Barkhausen:** Just to finish up, you were saying that starches were a bad way to get sugar, like wheat is bad and...
>
> **Ray Peat:** Yeah, partly because of the other things they are associated with, but they...one of the things they do harmfully, is to support bacterial growth. The poorly cooked starches or the more undercooked vegetables and the complex forms of starch support bacterial growth and the bacteria produce endotoxin and endotoxin works with these other pro-inflammatory things. Some of the structural changes of the degenerative proteins are very similar to the structure that is defensive against endotoxin so some of them might be provoked by the presence of endotoxin as a defensive reaction. It's well known that the polyunsaturated fats activate the prion formation and so on but the unsaturated fats are probably biologically analogous to the endotoxin produced by the bacteria.

### Source 8 — Solving Some of the Problems of Aging

Ray Peat · Newsletter · Jan 1991

> The cortisol (an adrenalin) secreted in darkness, or other stress, has the important function of maintaining the blood sugar level. The fact that cortisol causes the destruction of tissue to convert to glucose is the reason that stress and hypoglycemia are destructive. In 1971 I found that none of the sexually mature hamsters in our lab had any detectable thymus glands during the winter, though they all had them in the summer. Since estrogen and testosterone, the other thymus-shrinking hormones, are lower in the winter, I inferred that it was cortisone which caused their loss of thymus in the winter.
>
> The main inhibitory transmitter substance in the brain is GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), which is closely related to aspartic and succinic acids. GABA has many anti-stress effects, besides the direct brain-quieting action. For example, it causes a sequestration of insulin, keeping some sugar from being turned into fat, and it promotes progesterone formation, which protects many systems from damaging hyperactivity.
>
> Succinic acid was found by Szent-Györgyi to stimulate tissue respiration. Others found that it promotes the production of protective steroids, and more recently it was found to be the best material for chelating and removing aluminum from mitochondria. Succinic acid was identified as a major component of Vladimir Filatov's biogenic stimulators of tissue regeneration. Finding food sources rich in this material (especially in combination with the closely related butyric acid) would be desirable.
>
> I experimented with various herbs known to have antihistamine and anticholinergic action, with the thought that they would help to sustain blood sugar through the night. (For example, insulin secretion is stimulated by acetylcholine from cholinergic nerves, and lowering its action during the night would decrease the need for adrenalin and cortisol.) My best results so far have been with a combination of the mildly sedative Jimson weed and the stimulant Ephedra; in combination, it seems that their antihistamine and glucose sustaining effects predominate, allowing comfortable sleep without the dry-mouth effect of their anticholinergic action.
>
> It is now clear that both stress and an excess of the glucocorticoid hormones cause brain damage (as well as damage to all other organs).

### Source 9 — Ask the Herb Doctor: November 2020 KMUD

Ray Peat · Interview · Nov 20, 2020

> ## Mucolytics and Expectorants
>
> **Ray Peat:** The tissues that are most involved in inflammation happen to have taste receptors. Bitter herbs and sweet things like licorice have signaling effects to activate some of the anti-inflammatory mechanisms. I think that's how licorice can act on our system to inhibit histamine and serotonin. However, in large amounts, it increases the tendency towards hypertension. The steroid inhibits an enzyme that prevents the accumulation of too much mineralocorticoid, such as aldosterone. Aldosterone itself is a major promoter of degenerative inflammation. That's one of the reasons that I think progesterone is a better anti-inflammatory, except maybe for one or two days of acute lung inflammation where dexamethasone is probably quicker. For prolonged use, progesterone supports the cortisol-like anti-inflammatory effect but has a powerful anti-aldosterone effect, preventing the increase of blood pressure and blocking the fibrosis-producing effects of aldosterone.
>
> **Sarah Murray:** So something like our thyme and licorice syrup is not something we'd want people to be on at high doses for a long time, but in an acute situation for a short period to get over a chest infection, it is anti-inflammatory enough to help?

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