On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness
podcast. It does look like that a lot of the longevity reasons why people do intermittent fasting are doubled down through exotic just ketones they seem to have some central nervous system effect. That isn't yet studied in the academic or the clinic just yet when you have ketones stacked with availability of protein and carbohydrate, that's where you see the Divergence between and dodging.
Ketosis and exhaustion has ketosis kind of
performance nutrition longevity ancestral living biohacking and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.
Our Aikido freaks or people who want to know more about ketones ketones Esters Ketone salts got Geoffrey. Whoo on the podcast today. This cat is super smart. We had a ton of fun geeking out on all things Kito. Now as a part of of course the the fat loss in the metabolic efficiency that can often accompany a ketogenic diet another real cool trick is cold. Thermogenesis called thermogenesis and
Just so happens conveniently enough that on August 3rd, which is coming up very soon. We are starting a cold thermogenesis challenge at Kion. We're providing you with all of the support exclusive content on how to setup cold exposure practices no matter where you live access to a bunch of video content from cold. Thermogenesis experts a chance to enter an epic giveaway with premium called thermogenesis gear your learn everything. You need to know about cold showers cold bass cold soak. How long how
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Well folks it is Quito time. Sceeto time on today's show and not just keto time. But a real dive into a lot more of some of the the concepts around ketosis that involve these Ketone Esters and ketones salts and a lot of them were kind of advanced things people are doing with exogenous ketones for recovery for performance some of the latest studies some of the latest research on
All things ketosis because a lot has happened since the last episode that I've really devoted to ketosis and ketones. So I figured that it was high time. We visited this topic in detail. So I decide to bring on a guy who is a real wizard in the realm of all things ketones and ketosis. His name is Jeffrey. Whoo. He actually has a podcast
Himself, the H VM n podcast and is the co-founder and CEO of H VM n which stands for health via modern nutrition. You may have seen these little like pinkish red bottles for sale online or elsewhere chock-full of this this Ketone Ester and he's responsible for bringing that to Market and therefore has looked into followed up on and studied a lot of what's
Going on in the realm of ketones. He himself is a pretty avid self experimenter to he does things like 7-Day Waters only fasts and he just had CrossFit Murph for 45 days in a row, which I'm very curious about and he has a background in computer science, but really has been immersed in the whole biohacking sector for a while and I respect Jeffrey because he doesn't just, you know, sit behind his computer and blog about this stuff. He's out there trying things out himself and
Doing a lot of voracious self-experimentation so to speak so Jeffrey, first of all, welcome to the show. And of course second of all, I got to hear about doing Murph 45 frickin days in a row because that sounds like a recipe for Rhabdomyolysis. So so
fill me in man. First of all, thank you so much for the kind where it says too generous. I mean, it's just been a wild insane time for everyone. I know that just catching up a little bit poorly call sounds like
been able to focus and be heads down and just now but just over the last two three months really so the Murph story over the last few years gotten to know a number of folks in the Navy SEAL community and always heard super highly of this Murph thing is named after Lieutenant Mike Murphy who won the Medal of Honor and fell in fell in combat in Afghanistan and it's just exercise which is a one-mile Run 100 pull-ups 200 push-ups
up three hundred squats wrapped up by a mile run and I think the first second week of shelter in place of quarantine. I think that first week I was like, I think many of us just confused what the hell is happening the world where we all going to die of covid in the next two months, but quickly just got back on my horse in terms of being more proactive in setting the tone of what I wanted to live my life like over the next at a time foreseeable future decided to get down do my
First murder that you know, one of the things that I wanted to do at some point and each of those individual activities have done all those never did it together and kind of made it a challenge to our community to say. Hey, let's be proactive run covid. Let's do a challenge. It's probably reasonable to do some exercise and not just sit on our couch watching Netflix and eat a bunch of junk
and and honestly Murph Murph kind of fits into the equation pretty well because you don't need that much equipment for it aside.
From you know a weighted vest if you choose to use one which you I mean some people who are more entry-level don't and then some running shoes and a pull-up bar and and maybe some callous cream or hand cream for 45 days in a row My Buddy Hunter McIntyre actually has been doing doing very similar Murph training. He actually went for the world record and I think he got it. He did this was last week at the time of recording this and I believe you did something like 34 minutes and change and I guess
I know how you and I promised folks for those you listening and we won't spend the whole time talking about forking push-ups and squats and pull-ups, but he I think did the three hundred squats 200 push-ups and a hundred pull-ups all in a row, meaning all three hundred squats all 200 push-ups all 100 pull-ups sandwich in between the run, but you can break it up. You could do like 30 20 10 10 times through and then do the run, right?
Yeah. So that's what I did. I started with 10 20 30
I pull push Squat and then I wrapped it up two sets of 50 75 100. I think it just depends on what your permutation is. I think yeah, I definitely want to be rotating your muscle groups. But yeah, I mean, I think it was one of those things where we challenge community and I felt like once I put it out there I gotta just keep doing it until the end of the the challenge here. So ended up doing 45 of those Smurfs in a row jeez, which is pretty brutal. I mean my times
Range from 45 minutes some days when it was just feeling crappy. You know our plus it wasn't necessarily for time was just wanting to be consistent and I think the plus side of it was just getting back a routine. I think that's what has been helpful for a lot of folks in the community that we're kind of inspired by this challenge, which is that once shelter-in-place happened. A lot of people didn't have to go in an office. They can go to their gym. They didn't have their you know,
CrossFit or Peloton or whatever class that they had to go to and just like reinstalling one anchor totem practice a day seems to be helpful at least for myself and a bunch of folks did their own versions of the the challenge, you know, not everyone could do a mer fer wanted to do a Murph but everyone at least it's some sort of exercise that was a good anchor for their day. So yeah overall. I think it's a good idea for folks considering something like that.
Okay, and this this begs the question and is a perfect segue.
Into the topic at hand and that is did you implement the use of Ketone Esters or any other you know of the type of Bio hacks that you're immersed in as your pre post during workout nutrition or four as a recovery protocol or anything like
that. Yeah. So in general I eat pretty low carb fairly carnivorous on the side of low carb, and I think that's generally
I think we kind of like the larger discussion of what a normal healthy diet kind of looks like I think that's like a default decent state but I would say that I'm not dogmatic or religious like some folks are in the nutrition Twitter Community where carbs are evil proteins are good faster for Great Are faster evil. It's gonna give you a heart attack. I think it's really context-specific and act application-specific. So as I was doing that third fourth fifth Murph in a row, I realized that you're doing pretty anaerobic movements.
Right, like doing a bunch of pull-ups push-ups and mile run is not a big endurance run. I felt like I needed additional
carbohydrate right there. There's there's some there's some definite glycolytic throughput and even more when you're doing it for 45 days sequentially or you're looking at some some Hefty needs for for liver and muscle glycogen depletion. If you if you actually want to not be out there for two hours
Yeah a hundred percent. So I started adding carbohydrates pre and post and then I would have either
turkey tone Esters or other exondia's ketones like MCT oil powder or something along those lines to increase kind of the Ketone plus protein carbohydrate recovery benefits that some of the eggs some of the more recent literature has shown to be effective. So I was mainly using key a key topic approach for the recovery side rather than a performance side because one this was not for an acute one time maximal effort. This was a marathon if you will.
Right, right. And and by the way, the simultaneous elevation of blood ketones and blood glucose is something I experimented with a few times when I was doing obstacle course racing and it is like Rocket Fuel, you know, it is admittedly from an evolutionary or ancestral standpoint. Probably not a physiologic condition. And I don't know if you agree with me on this that humans would have frequently experienced, you know elevated levels of ketones, which normally would be
Elicited by carbohydrate restriction and physical activity and fasting but instead, you know are brought on by the ingestion of something like Ketone Esters or ketones salts, which are then combined, you know, in the case of the way that I was doing it with either a dextrose based fuel or a maltodextrine and fructose based fuel. So you've got an incredible amount of glucose uptake based on the the high glycemic index of the dextrose or the multiple glucose Transporters being
By the combination of maltodextrine fructose, you essentially are kind of like hyperglycemic and Hyper ketotic and it's like rocket fuel for for exercising but I in no way would argue that it that is a that it's you know from an ancestral standpoint a physiological Norm as far as a place for the human body to be
in that is correct. It is not a physiologically normal or typical State and that's because if you think about how YK
A Genesis exist. It's really sort of a backup metabolic process in carbohydrate restricted States. So in a typical metabolism, you either have high availability of glucose. Therefore not carbohydrate restriction. So there's a lack of Need for up regulated lipolysis and up regulated ketogenesis. So I the interesting thing with ketones Esters are exotic ketones in general is it really was conceptualized?
As a research tool and I think a lot of the discussion about ketogenic diets or ketosis has always been conflated around a high fat low carb diet and with Exotics ketones, you can finally have a tool that does not require a high fat low carb diet to induce ketosis. So I think one of the refrains that you hear different researchers talk about is that ketones can be thought of as a fourth macronutrient so as
Opposed to looking at ketones as a 10-point to reach to our ketosis as endpoint to reach to one can now start thinking about ketones as almost equivalent to carbohydrate or protein or MCT or fat as a starting point in terms of nutrition and input into metabolism. So I think that's where the paradigm shift is interesting from a research perspective and exactly in terms of in applications perspective. I think what you're referencing has been a very interesting last couple years.
Is a lot of uses in the top levels of sport and Military where you just unlock this novel physiological state that does not occur in
nature. Right? Right. Exactly. Now, I want to I want to quickly visit something that you mentioned when you were talking about your 45 days of Murph and then by the way, for those of you listening in who might be somewhat new to ketones and ketones Esters and in ketosis in general, we're not going to spend a lot of time on ketosis 101, but I will in the show notes.
Put links to a lot of previous podcast. I've done kind of walking you through the basics of ketosis. And so if you want that as as a foundation just go to Ben Greenfield fitness.com. Whoo as in wo which is Jeff's last name and it Ben Greenfield fitness.com. Whoo, all linked to other podcasts that I've done on ketosis. If you need to kind of get a refresher, you know, folks like Jason Fong and Jimmy Moore and Dominique D'Agostino and a host of other people. I've interviewed on the basics of ketosis.
Because we're really going to delve into some more specialty areas on today's show, but you mentioned Jeffrey the use of ketones Esters or ketosis in general for recovery and some of the new literature around that it's not really a topic. I've talked about much, you know versus say performance or cognition. So what role do ketones play when it comes to recovery.
I would say that a lot of the early research, but early is in sort of mid-2010. So 2016-2018.
18 has been focused on acute performance benefit. So using ketones Esters or exogenous ketones as a pre fuel do a time trial. Usually a lot of these studies are done on cyclists or Runners because these are very simple quantitative sports, right? It's much easier to measure the performance of someone on a bike versus someone playing soccer where there's a lot more technique and strategy involved in winning in 2018 2019 2020 research group based in Belgium KU Lavon by Professor. Peter has bull who's also
Interesting enough a consultant some of the Belgian Tour de France teams started looking at the application and dosing protocols for Ketone Esters. So there's been a lot of anecdotal hate the way you used to work anecdotal but I will say that the craft of sports performance. I think this is something that you I think been like know a lot about which is that the practitioners often times are the leading signals or the experimenters are the leading signals for academic research or the randomized clinical trials. So one of the observations in some of the early
order Frances was that people felt better recovery or fresher legs quote-unquote. If there are using ketones more for the recovery aspect of versus the pre-performance acute pre-bout use cases. So has bull did a great study that was published in 2019 summer right ahead of the 2013 Tour de France showing that when people mimicked or cyclists mimicked a Tour de France style training protocol, which is
On 13 hours of training a week, which had two workouts per day over that week period and using ketones Esters plus protein and carbohydrate versus a calorie equivalent protein and carbohydrate Drink Alone after a three-week training period of that regimen folks that had the key to an ester plus intervention had a 15% increase in overall training volume and at the last 30 minute time trial a 5%
Increase in performance. So it is this is one of those interesting study points where the anecdote or the practitioners who were actual athletes experimenting pushing. What was possible actually informed what the academics did in the clinic? That's an interesting point. I think there's a lot of speculation of why ketones what do this and one of the interesting mechanisms that I really like from that study or was informed by a previous Peter has will study was that
Ketones plus protein and carbohydrate actually upregulates em, twerk one so mtor which is kind of the muscle synthesis protein synthesis pathway that has been interesting in some of the lungs. So there's their up regulating an anabolic pathway. Exactly. Exactly. So I think that's one of the interesting things with ketones where you can talk about them in terms of anabolism or anti catabolism, which does make sense from an evolutionary perspective because when would the end
Sexual human go into ketosis. Well, they would go into killed us in a starvation state. So having anti catabolic effects is consistent from evolutionary
perspective. Okay. Got it. Is it now now that's interesting because you know in the past what what one of the benefits that has been highlighted in terms of being in a ketogenic state is the blockage of mtor via the increased activity of amp K. Meaning that when amp K is is increased then
and it would be a signal that that that ATP stores would be in a state of depletion and you'd see an inhibition of things like uncontrolled cell growth or proliferation or oxidative stress there for a lot of people would associate ketosis with a non-eligible anabolic state if it blocks mtor, so what was different in this in this study or what's occurring from a pathway standpoint that this would actually activate mtor because even studies on
PubMed that that's say that Akita ketogenic diet would inhibit
mtor, that's exactly the right question. I think that's something that I've been really focused on which is there's application-specific in context specific use cases for something that is like a macronutrient. So the difference here is that yes in an incest really consistent state of a ketogenic diet or fasting you will not have the presence of carbohydrate and protein. So when there are ketones through a ketogenic
It is exactly correct that you would expect to see mtor being down regulated and ampk being down regulated as well because there's kind of that lower available energy substrates from glycolysis. And then you see up regulation of lipogenesis lipolysis and fat mobilization, but the difference with Exotics ketones is that now you can have exotic has ketones plus external subjects of protein and carbohydrate. So that's where that's it.
Interesting piece of research or a new field where when you have ketones stacked with availability of protein and carbohydrate. That's where you see the Divergence between indigence ketosis and exhaustion has ketosis. I think that's a understudied area or area that will be a major field of study. I would say in the next two five ten years.
Okay, so sort of clarify for folks then what you're saying is that if you were interested in using a ketogenic state for recovery.
you would actually want to do is have adequate nutrient availability with adequate calorie intake and arguably even you know, enough carbohydrate to allow for liver and muscle glycogen levels to be full and you would achieve that via feeding as you normally would but then including Ketone Esters and that would induce an anabolic pathway, that would be over and above what you'd see in the
the absence of the same approach without Ketone Esters. However, if you wanted to instead trigger Pathways of otology enhance fasting or decrease mtor, then what you would do is use a similar approach but instead use nutritional ketosis and or the use of Ketone Esters, but in the presence of a lower amount of carbohydrate and overall calorie availability, so there's kind of like two different ways that you could use
ketosis.
A hundred percent. I think it's a nice summary. Okay, and I think that opens up an interesting many topic around why calorie restriction works and how a topology is triggered and I think the consensus is that ketosis or the Ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate self met at least partially mediate that response. So I think there's an open research question does beta-hydroxybutyrate itself be the signaling molecule that triggers hdac inhibitor Shannon Fox.
So three some of these longevity Pathways or is it the calorie restriction itself? That's an open field of study. So basically the way this study this is that if you just have an exotic eaten without calorie restriction how much of the calorie restriction benefits to you. See that is
in question. Okay. Got it. So we know though thus far that especially based on this recent study in cyclist that if you throw Ketone Esters into a recovery fueling based equation, you're going to see enhance recovery up regulation.
Of mtor and activation of anabolic Pathways over and above what you'd see in the in the absence of Ketone us. There's correct. Okay. Got it. Now kind of back pedaling just a little bit here. Let's talk about the difference between what's happening in the body. If and we kind of talked a little bit about this but I like a little bit more thorough explanation if someone were to achieve ketosis via what might be called, you know endogenous ketosis.
You know carbohydrate restriction calorie restriction fasting Etc versus entering into ketosis simply via the use of what many people call cheating or the use of exogenous ketones. Like what's the difference there? As far as Pros vs. Cons of
each I'll just start up what's happening physiologically so endogenous ketosis necessarily, there's some sort of carbohydrate restriction which could be calorie restricted or not.
Pitching diet is not calorie restricted, but there is definitely a carbohydrate restriction. So what happens there is that the brain senses, especially the brain but us other tissues also care about energy sensitivity. There's it starts detecting like a lowered ampk because there's a lack of glucose. So what happens the body responds by increasing lipolysis increasing fat mobilization and interesting thing about the brain is it is that there's a blood-brain barrier that prevents fat directly entering the
brain to provide fuel or substrate for neurons. So what do animals in a number of animals have this metabolism metabolic pathway of ketose what happens? Well, they evolve this pathway of ketogenesis or ketosis where it converts fat into Ketone bodies and Ketone bodies are small molecules. Like do cross the blood-brain barrier. So what's this? What's a tldr the summary they're usually in in Dodge has ketosis you see an increase in free fatty acids because you mobilize more fat you see
Fat burning lipolysis and this is why a lot of people in the weight loss or Weight Management feel talk about Quito. Is this fat burning State? Because that yes that is true. You have an energy deficit in from carbohydrate restriction. You start mobilizing more fat. So that's what's happening physiologically what happens when you have exondia's ketones You're simply eating calories in the form of ketones. So again, I think the macronutrient analogy works really well here you can eat calories.
The form of fat protein carbohydrate you can also eat calories in the form of ketones. So what happens there is yes, exodia's ketones. Will Elevate beta-hydroxybutyrate very very aggressively. So ketones Esters can make you look like you been fasting for 7 days and 30 minutes other exotic ketones do some spectrum of that but the difference is that you actually inhibit or block fat burning you actually inhibit lipolysis and you actually see free fatty acids go down and you actually see glucose go down and that makes
Again from a homeostatic perspective because our bodies are essentially energy balancing machines and you have energy from the form of ketones that you consumed directly. It makes sense the body starts blunting other sources that are stored. So that's what's happening physiologically and I would say that the two interesting implications of that is ketones can then be used as the metabolic fuel meaning that they can be used as a precursor into the Krebs cycle. So being used directly
and what I think is the more interesting research area, which is ketones can be used as a signaling metabolites. How does ketones in your blood signal things like mtor ampk sirtuins NAD ratios and all the things that are buzzwords in the longevity Health span research areas today.
So a question for you based on this then so what you would say and I'm curious to hear your take on this especially for people who might be trying to say lose weight or
Increased metabolic efficiency by training their bodies how to burn fatty acids more efficiently with the use of exogenous ketones since since you are if you consume exogenous ketones as you've just stated going to decrease the amount of free fatty acids that you would burn would you actually blunt some amounts of your own adipose tissue conversion into fatty acids for use as energy if you were supplementing with exogenous ketones.
Yes, so it's like this is actually very interesting so
So intramuscular triglycerides are upregulated. So the use of the fat within muscle tissue is increased but lipolysis of Adipose tissues is actually inhibited but I think the broader question of how this plays is that there's been studies showing that ketones directly mediate ghrelin or the appetite hormone. So that would be the mechanism. That's also consistent with a lot of the again anecdotal kind of community discussion around
Feeling more full on a ketogenic diet and perhaps that's because ketones signal ghrelin which signals satiety. So the more interesting question is our Ketone Esters are exogenous ketones these magic drinks that make you melt fat off your body and the answer is no these are calorie containing substances. If you have energy Surplus or a calorie Surplus ketones aren't some magic thing that breaks the second law of Thermodynamics that that's about that like disappears calories.
But that doesn't say that there aren't appetite controlling effects that are second order from just the calories themselves. I guess like that's just like a bit maybe a little bit of a complicated nuanced answer to there's multiple ways these things work if I were to use ketones for a weight loss protocol, I would think about using them as a way to make fasting easier
right as an appetite suppressant strategy and I see where you're going here. Basically even though you might be burning
Fewer of your own fatty acids as a fuel when you acutely ingest these Ketone Esters the long-term effects of appetite suppression and the subsequent decrease in calorie intake that's likely going to occur as a response to that is probably going to support fat loss and may actually, you know, the fat loss that you're supporting May exceed any blunting of fatty acid burning that you might experience by using exogenous.
Ketones as a dietary strategy to for example suppress appetite enhance fasting and increase fat loss
exactly. So that's on the community side is how a lot of folks have been using exotic students who aren't necessarily Navy SEALS or Elite athletes. Hey, I want
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Yeah.
That's been my own personal experience, you know, like we were chatting about even before we began recording my wife and boys are out of town for five days. And I told my wife when she left him, like don't go grocery shopping don't leave anything in the refrigerator. I got some rib eye steaks that I'm going to have a little bit of liver pate that I make and and some homemade sprouts for dinner every night and sometimes I'll throw a little bit of like organic pumpkin mash and then I'm just planning on jamming through breakfast and lunch.
Ketones MCTS and liquid calories in little bit of bone broth because you know, my wife's out of town. I'm I go into hyper productive, you know work 14 to 16 hours a day and that works very well. I like I don't get hungry at all when I'm doing that even you know, and you can see. Oh, well, you're burning few of your own fats been and actually I'm probably burning more of my own fats because I'm once I added up at the end of the day probably consuming fewer calories than I would normally consume. So I would not necessarily throw out the idea of
Not using or not throw out the idea of using exogenous ketones. If you're trying to lose weight. I think the pros outweigh the cons in that respect. Now you you've mentioned, you know Ketone Esters, and I know that's the particular flavor or form of ketones that you guys specialize in implementing in your hvm end product and just briefly and again, I've unpacked this in detail on previous podcast you
Need to spend too much time on this because again, I'll link to everything we discuss you guys at Ben Greenfield fitness.com. / woo. Wo but the these Ketone Esters that using are remarkably different than Ketone salts. And a I wonder if you can just briefly describe the difference between the two and then in terms of your product H VM n how you're using Ketone Astros, like what form of ketones Esters and
why yeah, it's interesting history.
And I've been spending a lot of time talking to the principles the folks who've been part of this area of research for the last 40 50 years. So to answer the easy part, which is what is the key to insult versus what our Ketone Esters? Well, they're really describe two classes of exodia's ketones. And then you have things like MCT butanediol where kitchen agents are pitching precursors things that readily convert into beta-hydroxybutyrate or ketones in your in your system, but aren't actually
Ketones. Okay. So what is a ketone salt? It's simply beta-hydroxybutyrate bound to a mineral assault. So a lot of common Ketone salts are sodium magnesium calcium the pros and cons there Pros relatively cheap relatively available. The potential cons is that if you actually look at the percentage of salt versus beta-hydroxybutyrate you're eating a lot of mineral when you're eating a key to insult product. So if you look at the label often times, you're seeing like a hundred two hundred percent your daily.
The recommended value for salt not necessarily a bad thing. But something that is just part of the molecular construction of a ketone salt. So what are ketones Esters in general? There's also a whole family of compounds that are Esther forms of ketones. What is an Esther and Esther is just an organic molecule that has oxygen double bond in between different components. So there's mono Esters with one Ester Bond. There's die Asters with to Ester bonds, and there's a whole swath of folks looking.
Ketones Esters in different types of ketones Esters, which I think we can talk a little bit about it later, which is that I think in the future there will be a whole family of potential exondia's ketones just like there's a whole family of carbohydrates from dextrose to maltodextrine two starches just like there's omega-3 and omega-6 fats. I think in the future how you see this industry will evolve or this notion of nutrition involves is that there will be a whole family of exondia's Ketone variance with pros and
Cons, but the talk about what is focused on today and something that we focus on H VM N is a specific Ketone mono Esther that is beta-hydroxybutyrate esterified with R-13 butanediol, which is as I referenced before a ketogenic agent that readily converts into beta hydroxy butyrate in your liver. Why does this matter? Well, it's pretty cool that a ketone Esther basically delivers a hundred percent BHP equivalent versus something like
Heat on salt which delivers over half of its molecular weight and minerals. There's another Ketone Esther that Dom D'Agostino has done a lot of work around which is an acetoacetate diaster and that's acetoacetate which is a derivative form of beta-hydroxybutyrate bound to butanediol and there's two acetoacetate say to that so a little bit of different
configuration. Okay. Now I was looking at the H VM n Ketone bottle
And on there it says Delta G as the active ingredient in the Ketone Ester and then it says invented by Oxford and NIH scientists as part of the DARPA metabolic dominance program. So a lot to detail there, but what is Delta G and and what is this Ketone Esther that was invented as part of the DARPA
program. It's a fascinating story. So back in the 60s and 70s. There was a general name in there.
The populace of that's been referenced a lot. I think we've talked about this fasting study where they starved Harvard Divinity students for over a year and that study was actually convert conducted by a Harvard Medical School Professor by the name of George Cahill, and he was friends with dr. Richard Veatch who I know you will also spoken to and he I would say was one of the earliest folks looking at ketones and understanding the metabolic implications of ketones and I think in the early nineteen hundreds
1950s post a ketogenic diet. I think a lot of people thought of ketones as metabolic waste product for type 1 diabetics, but people didn't realize the broader implications as of fuel substrate as well as a signaling metabolites. So as people realize that beta-hydroxybutyrate could be a useful molecule. There was a lot of research around. Okay. Can we do exondia's ketones and different formulations. So there's a lot of studies on intravenous ketones salts other earlier versions.
Of ketones Esters, but what happened was in the early 2000s. There was a DARPA program stood up by. Dr. Joseph beletsky. He actually before his DARPA program management spot was actually the chief veterinarian officer for NASA. So very interesting guy with an interesting career. He had the pervy to set up a program to enhance the human factors side of warfighting. So there's a number of different research.
Projects that were looking at things like quercetin, which I think is interesting given the covid recent conversation. There were also had things like the cooling glove that came out of Stanford which should enhance recovery was also part of that program. And of course ketones Esters was also a part of that program. So, dr. Veatch recruited and brought onboard Oxford Professor who is a specialist in cardiac metabolism by the name of Professor Kern.
Clark quite work closely with on the commercialization side of ketones Esters and they kicked off a research program this the size and scale up Delta G which is the trade name or the or the commercial name for the key to a mono Ester, which is that beta-hydroxybutyrate butanediol mono Esther long story short, he had to prove out the human safety Could you actually feed this stuff to people and does it actually work does it actually Elevate Ketone levels effectively and then I would
say within the last four or five years with one a lot of the publication's came out for the ergogenic or performance-enhancing aspects of ketones and it's been an interesting kind of Journey being a part of the ecosystem that's working a lot with the scientist for therapeutic use cases for performance enhancement use cases as well as working a lot with the end users which are professional athletes military applications.
Well, as folks are experimenting using this for weight management or longevity or potential therapeutic use cases. So it's a very fast growing evolving field, but it really interesting historical story with how everything came together and I think that just the way I see it is that we're all Standing On Top of the shoulders of giants and think Veatch had a cool story where he actually studied under Hans Krebs who the Krebs cycle is named after and I think a lot of that training with metabolism understanding
All the intermediates all the ratios, I think informed him of why ketones are interesting from a fueling perspective.
Yeah, and I know that you actually on your own podcast had an interview with Joseph lietzke the chief program manager that oversaw that decade-long Ketone Esther development as part of this metabolic dominance program that was initiated by DARPA to basically, you know, enable Superior physical and physiological Warfighter performance by
Controlling energy metabolism on demand. Now that was a that was a fascinating podcast that you did. I think a couple of years ago and I'll link to that in the show notes for those of you who who want to hear that. And so the these ketones Esters you've developed them and you guys have H to H VM n have kind of package them in a liquid form as a couple other companies on the market have done, you know, these liquid Ketone Esters which admittedly and of course, I know this isn't news to you are not considered to be the tastiest.
Supplement that exists because it is very difficult to get Ketone Esters which have a little bit of a bitterness to them to actually be palatable and and you know, I haven't really found much of a way around that me can add a little Stevia and you know, put them in some coconut water or you know, or toss them in a smoothie. I found they impart a mild kind of like acidic taste even when added to a smoothie but you know for me it is what it is. I'm so used to testing supplements and formulating supplements and getting random powder.
To my house that I must just you know dumpster into my mouth and taste that I may have killed awesome taste buds. And so for me, I I could be jaded and I have no problem just just drinking the stuff and and continuing on throughout the day but these these liquid Ketone Esters that one would drink when it comes to actual dosage. What's kind of like the gold standard scenario in terms of how the typical person is using these throughout the day and I'm fine if you break this out into the person who might be using it for
The executive using it for cognition versus The Athlete using a performance during event, but what's kind of the the general gold standard use case for these type of things in terms of dosage and frequency.
Yeah. That's a good question. And yeah The Taste is the taste. I think we've all seen yet your conversations as well as folks have written blog posts in the early early days eating sort of like the rocket fuel versions of ketones Esters. Yeah, they are not the most Pleasant thing but I like to say it tastes like it works. So I'll start with what's been studied.
In clinical academic research. So typically the dosage is if you want to be very very precise based on body weight. So the clinical gold standard is around 600 milligrams per body weight kilogram for acute performance use cases. So if that's a 70 kilogram man hundred fifty four pounds, that's 42 ish grams of Ketone Ester, which is almost two bottles of the hmm Ketone Esther.
Addict so you actually need pretty high doses for acute pre-bout pre-exercise use
cases and would the what I mean because I you know, I began to use ketones back in 2013 for Ironman Triathlon. And obviously there's a big difference between Iron Man and let's say, you know, whatever a 45-minute Murph. So what kind of what kind of level of exercise are we talking about here? We're taking two full bottles of this stuff in terms of you know volume.
This is primarily geared towards Tour de
Athletes, okay, very high volume.
Yeah. So so these are pretty serious athletes that will be doing two full bottles of something like ketones Esters prior to Performance.
Exactly. So there's been a number of studies on a number of different applications. Right? Like you've seen studies where Ketone salts either no difference some Ketone Esther study showing some different some soaring not and I sounds like the really the threshold is one byte body weight or to which I think is actually more applicable. You need to hit a threshold of beta-hydroxybutyrate in your
blood and it looks like that number is that you want to at least have 2.0 millimole beta-hydroxybutyrate and some of the best performing studies people are showing blood levels of 325 millimole as you're going into the most critical parts of their race or
competition, right, which is very it's surprisingly difficult. Unless you've been fasting or consuming low carbohydrate or ketogenic diet for quite some time to achieve that level of blood millimolar least in my own personal experience.
Without the use of ketones Esters and yet someone who is who is not even fat adapted who can be eating 70 to 80% carbohydrate can achieve that level acutely upon consumption of these Esters and I know for me being relatively fat adapted in Quito adapted, you know, if I were to do two bottles, I would be up around 7 millimolar easily for Ketone values.
Yeah. I think that's something that I think is again, like I think a lot of people just entering the keto Community are just chasing ketones and I
Think you're exactly right. There's a lot of adaptation. Where as you get more acute adapted your body's this more efficient. You just never want extra substrate floating around. So yeah, when you're dumping that much exotic ketones in your system, I would expect something that like that high if you if you see a lot of athletes we've seen people up take Ketone so quickly that even if you're dumping ketones Esters in their blood levels, correct, very very quickly. So it's interesting to see again the application of the context where some athletes who are very variable.
Will uptake very very quickly. So to answer your initial question for acute use cases or application. I would Target like the most professional customers blood BHP is the most important thing to dial in and that depends on your body weight and also your personal metabolism and it how fat or keto adapted you might be. What
do you use to measure your own state of ketosis and and you know, this could lead to a deeper discussion and Ketone measurement technology. So if you want you could finish that thought I just interrupted you I realized
now and then then I'd love to touch briefly on how to actually measure these values you're talking
about. Yeah hundred percent and just wanted to follow up the last out which is the more casual use cases. A lot of people will use ketones for cognitive use cases and there's been some early studies relating to military as well as relating to sports decision making in terms of preservation of cognitive function in stressful or extreme environments and that's an exciting area where it looks like there's some early
Signals showing that brains that are filled by ketones preserve cognitive function or cut preserve that executive bility better than on Placebo. So again, some of the anecdotal consumer use cases are using this for jet lag using this for focus and I think the mechanisms aren't super Define or super clear super, you know, I think it's not necessarily solid thing. But I think what we do know is that ketones do cross the blood-brain barrier and ketones have a very different
Metabolic pathway than glucose feeling the brain there just seems to be something there and it's been interesting to hear folks on Olympic weightlifting teams using Ketone Esters. I think partly for the weight loss or the weight cutting because it's a weight cutting sport. But also they seem to have some central nervous system effect. That isn't yet studied in the academic or the clinic just yet a lot of experimentation to be honest on different protocols again, some of the other interesting use cases using ketones Esters ahead of
Lasts that basically takes art or fasting routine or helping transition into a kid drink diet where it sometimes there's like that that keto flu which essentially is you have low carbs and locations at the same time and you feel really bad because you just have low energy. Can you bridge that with Exotics ketones?
Right? And and so I think in summary a few things to bear in mind here would be for very Hefty amounts of performance such as you know Ironman triathlete or a marathon or a Spartan athlete or serious CrossFit or
someone like that listening in you maybe up to two bottles prior to a really hard workout, but ideally for this and any of these other use cases you should just test and we'll get to that momentarily and kind of try to shoot for three plus millimolar to really feel the performance enhancing effects of ketones. If you're using this for cognitive through pit on on a demanding day that might be mentally demanding but not as physically demanding you could probably get by on a
Less than that yet. If you test and you can get your levels and kind of determine how many ketones you need to get your levels at 3 millimolar above that's kind of the sweet spot where you're really going to feel a hefty cognitive effect. And then if you are for example wanting to go into a fast or you are shifting into carbohydrate mitigation shifting a low-carb diet or ketogenic diet then using these for several days even as little as a bottle, but perhaps two bottles a day.
Going into that fast or going into that shift to a low-carb diet that would significantly ease the transition that would that would be kind of like a few use cases for something like this.
It's a good summer. Yep. Got it. And it's answer that second part, which is what do I use to measure simple finger stick, you know freestyle Neo or you know, some of those things where you have a little strip finger-prick get a little bit of blood and get to go. I think there's been some folks looking at breath meters as just acetone or urine.
Stick I prefer blood because that's what academics use in the clinic and it just the most consistent.
Yeah. Yeah, and and are you doing any type of urinary measurements or anything like that?
I've done in the past but I think what you've seen I think I would suppose that this is what you see is that as people get very very cute adapted. You don't excrete as much ketones because it's basically your body is adapting to holding onto beta-hydroxybutyrate acetoacetate as fuel substrates.
So as you get more efficient at utilizing and producing ketones you excrete less of it. So I think that's like one of the subtle things around urine test that it needs to be captured.
Yeah. So so basically you're going to wind up with with fewer ketones in your urine as you become more efficient at using Ketone bodies. Therefore as your testing with urine, you could be in a pretty good state of ketosis yet. Your urine is not showing that you're increasing in ketosis because you're simply
Becoming more efficient using the Ketone bodies now, I want to talk about some of these more sexy areas of research, but there was there's one other probably more basic question that I want to make sure that I address and that is you know it for someone who is say intermittent fasting for the purposes of autophagy or longevity or someone who is concerned about glycemic variability or insulin resistance. What's the state of ketones when it comes to any research on whether or not
they are insulin agentic and any appreciable way or whether they you know, quote break a fast unquote since I'm asked if gum breaks a fast if coffee breaks a fast if meditating breaks a fast it to ketones break a fast.
Yeah, that's a interesting discussion the Met maybe another way to phrase the question is what is the purpose or what is the goal of the fast and which metabolic pathways do we care about ketones themselves are not insulin. Genacore Molly insulin day at best if you're eating.
A lot of ketones but the interesting thing is that does it directly trigger mtor node. Is it directly trigger some of the pathways that we think are antithetical to a fast not that we know of but the benefits of what keep where you just you just said earlier that
it did trigger the mtor pathway
though when you stack it with protein and
carbohydrates. Okay when you start yeah, that's
right. Then you then he up regulated Beyond just normal
level. That's right. But but but by themselves, of course if you're in a fasted State, thanks for correcting me at a they actually would down.
That
pathway. Yes, exactly. So I think kind of interesting research questions now is there is more data showing that ketones are hdac Inhibitors which control the unfolding and expression of different proteins or genes. And one of the popular Pathways to Target is foxo 3, which is associated fasting beta-hydroxybutyrate also shifts the nad+ and nadh ratios. So I think there's been a lot of discussion on NAD precursors and I think that's half the equation.
You need to have enough NAD substrate, of course, but I think another interesting important part of that conversation is what is nadh? It's it's coenzyme as part of the Krebs cycle and that balance of NAD H. And nad+ is actually affected by the subject going in. So the nad+ nadh ratio is different if it's being fueled by glucose if it's different when it's filled by beta oxidation are fat and it's different when it's filled by ketosis or ketones.
They all produce acetyl-coa and go into the Krebs cycle, but the actual the equilibrium of those coenzymes are different. So it looks like ketosis actually shifts the nad+ nadh ratio in a way that's beneficial for sirtuin Activation. That's kind of the interesting areas that is converging a lot of the research on the longevity Health span side around sirtuins nad+ act boosters mtor and it's like folding into how we understand ketosis to work. So
These are very powerful multifaceted targets ketosis fasting specifically, I think ketones have an interesting research role for how these longevity benefits are mediated. So like the quick tldr on that is that it does look like that a lot of the longevity reasons why people do intermittent fasting are doubled down through exotic just ketones.
Okay. Got it tldr by the way. That is it. Does that mean too long to was it?
Too long to
read. Yeah too long didn't read too long. Didn't
read. That's right. That's right. It was a newer phrase to be couple of months ago. I did look it up. Yeah too long didn't really love that. Okay, so we know that we can manipulate histones for longevity and in gene expression particularly in a favorable way and it appears that that ketones are actually able to affect histone and and histone acetylation in a manner that is favorable to longevity.
And the my understanding, you know, there's some pretty recent research on lactic acid being able to do something similar when it comes to something called lack delation actually also somehow enhancing the expression of some of these longevity or or anti-aging genes it is that true like where does the lactate fit into the picture here?
Yeah. I think it's a interesting and good point which is that typically when we think about controlling of gene expression.
Session we hear a lot about methylation and asset Elation, right? These are just methyl groups or acetyl groups tying to histones. And those are kind of like literally physical molecules that block and the unfolding and folding of your DNA. So interestingly in this is like literally hap being discovered in the last year or two. It looks like better hydroxybutyrate can actually bind the histones through a process called beta-hydroxybutyrate Elation and the same thing can actually happen with lactate. So you have actually
Lactic buying the histones controlling the folding and unfolding of DNA which then controls protein expression. So I think lactates one of those in it reminds me of very similarly this story of ketones, which is that lactate was thought of as this metabolic waste product and George Brooks over at UC Berkeley has been doing a lot of work around lactate showing how it's actually potentially not just a metabolic waste product.
I think the key concept that I've realized in been thinking a lot about is biology For Better or For Worse has been a study of snapshots. Meaning that when I take a finger prick of my beta-hydroxybutyrate where I take a finger prick of my glucose you get a snapshot in one time of what my metabolic C looks like but what's actually happening is that there's a flux or a turnover of all these metabolic side plates happening all at the same time, and we just don't have the technical measurement tools.
To actually measure flux really easily. So we have to use a simpler mathematical understanding to model out what's going on, but I think what was done really interesting by George Brooks is that lactic acid when you're exercising does build up right? That's why you see lactate going up and that's why people say they get sore but the interesting thing is that there's a ton of turnover. It's not just lactate sitting there. It's actually getting recycled and used as fuel. So while the end snapshot looks like it's building up all that lactate.
Being turned over again and again and again and if you look at lactate it also crosses the blood-brain barrier and the the Berkeley group has shown that lactic like ketones could be useful for concussion TBI and it is a reminds me of a lot of the same characteristics of why people think he knows our interesting there seems to be a similar story at play with lactate.
Well, I I agree and I have a couple of thoughts on that. First of all, I have measured my level of
Moses after a difficult workout, but it difficult workout that was not performed in a fasted State per se like a for p.m. Workout that occurred after having had a breakfast and a lunch and despite not being in a state of appreciable ketosis anywhere near that three millimolar Mark. I have suppress appetite and a feeling of mental superiority that I sense is due to the availability of lactate as a substrate for
ons and and I think I think that there's some some definite benefits to lactate that are similar to what one might experience with ketones. And so, you know, I haven't experimented too much with how that might be Amplified if I throw Ketone Esters into the mix, but I would imagine it could it could probably enhance that process even more and you briefly touched on lactic acid and soreness and that that's just an annoying old-school theory that that drives me nuts when I hear
People say oh this this supplement or this tactic is going to reduce lactic acid. Therefore make you less sore when in fact as you just alluded to lactate turnover, you know, specifically the something called the Cori cycle allows for lactate to be converted back into glucose or to do things like enter the brain for use as a fuel and you you don't have much lactate hanging around in your body post-workout and by the next day none there at all dictating that it's definitely not lactic acid. That's making you sore and
And in fact, it's more likely that it is that it's a release of intracellular calcium that is contributing to to soreness more than anything else and that, you know along with just, you know, micro trauma to muscles the influx of white blood cells and other inflammatory markers and the subsequent swelling and even pressure against nerves and pressure against muscles that would occur as a result of that and not lactic acid lactic acid really is barely even around the next day. That's not what making
Not what makes you you stiffen and sore so to speak so that's that's interesting regarding lactate and anything else. We should know about the parallels between lactate and ketones.
I would say that the interesting things to me are that lactate and ketones are not insulin mediated. So I think they're interesting substrates for metabolic health, and I think that's kind of goes down that whole trajectory of insulin resistance insulin sensitivity all that whole story and I think on the other side on the performance side, there's
Been some work on lactate supplementation and on the cognitive TBI side of house,
right the amusing like a magnesium or calcium lactate pre-workout to enhance the activity of lactic acid buffering enzymes, you know before like a really anaerobic workout to allow you to get less burned pre-workout the same way you let you might use like sodium bicarbonate loading pre-workout.
Yeah. So yeah sodium buffering is yeah. It's like bicarbonate or buffering is an interesting topic and I think that us actually actually ties into
You use of exotic ketones for a cute workout. There's actually a really really recent study just published around looking at potentially the flow of electrolytes winner in ketosis versus not right and I think this might make sense to people that done a lot of fasting or kids like Diet where as insulin reduces you excrete a lot more sodium. Do you know actually need more sodium for example, so there's also an interesting parallel to how you actually use that in conjunction of ketones Esters. For example, the last point I wanted to touch on was the
The interest and I think an important area of research which is cognitive impairment or TBI is what happens when the brain has a TBI or traumatic brain injury or concussion is that there's a catecholamine release a lot of adrenaline. Everything dumps. You have a hypermetabolic state for all the sugar is used up and then one important enzyme pyruvate pyruvate dehydrogenase, which is the enzyme that converts glucose in the pdh OR pyruvate and pyruvate goes into acetyl-coa as a crepes.
That enzyme that's a the gating factor of glucose uptake in the brain is actually inhibited through all that oxidative stress and an area that I'm excited about is what happens in that post traumatic brain injury brain State obvious that cute damage is there you can't repair things are just shattered. But what happens is that if you actually look at the brain after TBI, there's very very and low energy because no glucose can be utilized in the brain. So you actually look at the
TBI brain versus the pre TBI brain is literally like huge fractions of difference between the amount of energy being consumed in the brain. So it's interesting. Can you go around pdh? Can you go around the glucose Pathway to feed these starving neurons with other substrates like ketones like lactate and again, they work in kind of similar ways where they're not pdh limited and that also has interesting implications for neurological conditions like
No, Alzheimer's dementia. I know that there's you know, there's researchers like Stephen cunnane and Canada been looking at kid genic agents for this use case as well as efforts at the NIH looking at this application as well. So very interesting early but promising research the
reg. Yeah. I have a few little anecdotes to to throw in there. I can definitely attest to the fact that in terms of not just management of TBI, but overall clear-headedness on a
a busy day, you know, I've been experimenting quite a bit with hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a matter of fact during this this coronavirus quarantine. I have been in my own little soft shell hyperbaric chamber every single day and I have experiment with dosing with ketones Esters prior and you come out of the hyperbaric chamber with a great deal of clear-headedness compared to what you would achieve with doing HBO T in the absence of ketones Esters and
Clear-headedness then what you get from? The Ketone Esther is used by themselves. So some definite interplay between this hyperbaric oxygen therapy and the use of Ketone Esters dictating that I would imagine the two would be a pretty useful combination for management of something like TBI, even though neither of us are Physicians and no one should Miss construe this as medical advice. The other interesting thing just to close the loop on the lactic acid piece is that we touch briefly on the use of the
These these lactate supplements pre-workout and I should note that the prevailing amount of research shows that they do indeed not seem to work for for buffering to an extent where an athlete is able to perform better with high-intensity bursts of exercise. However, sodium bicarbonate or baking soda still stands out as the best way to buffer lactate. Now that being said, I know that there is good evidence out there that the
Station of ketones Esters lowers blood lactic acid and so what I'm curious about based on this then Jeff is have you come across anyone who has done something like stat sodium bicarbonate and ketones Esters
pre-workout. You're a smart man been people are exploring that and I would say that some people consider that kind of trade secret or proprietary. This is how we, you know have an advantage to our competitors. What I will say is that
You're exactly right. There's actually an interesting effect of ketones Esters on blood pH blood acidity and it's we'll see if there's published research coming in the next couple months that describe that but but but exactly thinking of the right way, you're controlling a system ketones Esters offer a novel tool into that system. There's pros and cons. But can you using something like bicarbonate balance out some of the acidity when you have high Keaton's in your
Yeah, well, I like will start seeing published literature on that very very shortly.
Yeah, and just so you guys know that the problem that researchers always run into when using sodium bicarbonate as something that you would dose with pre-workout is that it can cause a steep intake of fluid volume into the bowels and result in in diarrhea and diaper pants pre-workout and so the trick and this is what most people have found through experimentation.
And is now being used in some research studies is you do little micro doses it. Let's say you plan on doing a workout at 6 p.m. It's be a tough workout. Maybe you're like Jeff nearing go, you know Crush Murph or you've just got some super intense coming up or even a race or competition. What you do is for the two hours leading up to that competition every 20 minutes or so, like have a little bit of water, you know, like 4 ounces or so of water and just put like the tip of a teaspoon of baking soda into each glass of water. You know, we're taught that it probably comes out to somewhere.
Stu a gram or so and that actually mitigates a lot of those effects of doing like a large bolus of baking soda like, you know, 20 to 30 minutes pre-workout. So that's a strategy that seems to work and I would imagine that combining that with you know, like a dose of ketones Esters then you know, 20 to 30 minutes prior to that workout as part of that scenario would actually be a pretty good lactate buffering strategy. The only thing I could think of throwing in if we're going to stack these type of things would be there's a lot of evidence now on.
Our nursing and karna scenes lactate buffering effects and there are companies like lack to go is one that comes to mind that are now producing really absorbable transdermal carnosine applications that you would put on the arms or the legs. And so this could be like a pre you know sufferfest type of workout stack would be Ketone Esters sodium bicarbonate micro dosing and then like the topical application of carnosine and this would be something that for you you super competitive athletes out there.
I would probably serve you well and be kind of like a tool in your in your back pocket for for lactate buffering. Now. There's actually one other thing kind of a fun topic. I wanted to ask you about Jeff fun for some people I suppose and I would be that you know, there's this Rumble in the bio hacker Community about using ketones as an alternative to alcohol in cocktails, particularly one.
Known known as 1/3 butanediol as a way to kind of get an alcoholic Buzz without the you know, the toxic acetaldehyde that would normally be produced by by ethanol metabolism. And you would actually just used used ketones in a cocktail that would normally call for gin or vodka or anything like that and you'd use you know, a small amount like, you know, 10 to 20 milliliters of something like 1/3 butanediol or or a ketone Esther in a cocktail. Do you have any experience with that or have you looked into that?
At
all. Yeah, I mean he got to experiment right like I think that's like one of the things that again just being in the space and the interesting position one foot on the practitioner athlete side of house who are really just actually on the front lines with personal experience developing up signal and on the research side, which is very kind of cut and dry and we got to do everything rcts. This has been like a fun area to play around with can you stack ketones with
Other fun compounds I know there's been you know, you know, we've experimented mixing this with actual alcohol. Can you do ethanol plus ketones? Yeah. I think it's been one of those fun things where yeah, I can imagine a world where you have ketones replace ethanol as a fun going out to drink there's definitely a cognitive impact, right? And I think it's still being unpacked exactly how the brain is impacted with ketones, but there seems to be an anxiety attack effect or an anti
Body effect primarily demonstrated in animal models. We haven't yet seen a replicated that in humans just yet, but I will say from a mechanistic approach just like ethanol or alcohol reduces anxiety ketones seem to do the same thing. And in terms of like a bitter flavoring elements ketones and ethanol. I'm sure that a ketone after drink doesn't taste as bad as ever clearer or something. So I think going to be good spot for you mixing a cocktail.
Alright I've experimented with it.
Quite a bit as a matter of fact, probably three to four times a week now because I love to have a cocktail with dinner. I'm using ketones instead of alcohol and I find it to be pretty Pleasant. You know, I mix it with a little lemon juice. I'll throw some Stevia in there all you know, if I'm going to make you know, let's say, you know, like a Moscow Mule I'll do like lime juice some of the Z via is zero carbohydrate ginger beer some ketones. Usually a pinch of sea salt on model some mint in there sometimes and it's actually not too bad.
And the only warning I should give people is that you know, the combination of these butane dials with alcohol is not advisable at all. And as a matter of fact can simulate something very similar to to GHB which is you know, commonly known as a date-rape drug because butanediol can get converted into gamma hydroxybutyrate, which is GHB, especially one for butanediol, so I wouldn't I wouldn't go near one for butanediol for this.
Three butanediol seems to be a little bit more safe and I have I've taken that on its own, you know it instead of something like, you know, like the HV man Ketone Esther to add to a cocktail as a substitute for alcohol and it works pretty well. I have also tried combining something like 1/3 butanediol or Ketone Ester with the alcohol and you're pretty much just like face down in your plate. And so I do not recommend combining.
With alcohol, but as a substitute for alcohol, you know, my own experimentation actually seems to seems to work pretty well. And and again, you don't see any of the Sleep disruption or any other issues that you would get with alcohol. So it's actually a pretty cool act. If you want to going to have a nice cocktail and use ketones not in addition to the alcohol but as a substitute for it, you know, especially this one 3 butanediol. It seems to work pretty pretty impressively.
Yeah, I think one thing to add is that I've been experimenting with CBD and ketones and that's been an interesting.
Combination where CBD is not necessarily supposed to be psychoactive, but some people report definitely kind of a feeling of relaxation. So I think there's definitely angular 2 compounds whether adaptogens and whatnot that I think stacking with ketones will be a fun place to experiment on the biohacker the hobbyist set of house. I think it's still very early in terms of what kind of these combinations could kind of look like. And yeah, you're exactly right the GHB gamma hydroxybutyrate very very different molecule than beta-hydroxybutyrate one for butanediol is
Different from 1-3 butanediol but yes don't accidentally date rape yourself with GHB or 1/4 butanediol.
Exactly. Exactly. Well, I feel like we could talk for a really long time about all this stuff and I did want to know if there's you want to see what Jeff looks like in a fun little flick. I watch this on an airplane coming back from Japan a few months ago. And there's this movie called smart drugs and Jeff is in that and so it was actually a really good movie. I thought or documentary on Smart drugs, which is another
other topic that Jeff specializes in that we didn't get a chance to visit much today, but there's little movie smart drugs actually a fun flick and you can see Jeff featured in that movie. So congratulations on being a big Hollywood star
Jeff. I haven't yet watched myself still too embarrassed, but it's raining.
Yeah. I know it's not bad really and I'll link to that. I'll link to everything we talked about Jeff's hvm and ketones his own company's formulation. They're given all of us a
10% discount over their website just use code been over there and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Or you could just go to go dot h VM n.com forward slash been that's Godot. Hvm. N.com forward slash been and get yourself some exogenous ketones Esters if you want experiment with them and see what they feel like, that should be a little bit easier on your pocketbook with that 10% discount. And again, I'll link to everything at Ben Greenfield fitness.com. / whoo.
And Jeff thanks for coming on. The comment has been there's been a ton of fun geeking out with
you. Yeah. Now this is great. Thanks so much
pain. All right, folks one been greed foot along with Jeffrey. Woo of hvm in and H if I can spit it out H VM n signing out from Ben Greenfield fitness.com and have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to Today's show. You can grab all the show notes the resources pretty much everything that I mentioned over at Ben Greenfield fitness.com all
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