Remember some of the big questions on exogenous ketones are these: Do they help
you lose weight?
This is the second - I think second, maybe third - in a series on
exogenous ketones. Remember some of the big questions on exogenous ketones are
these: No. 1 - Do they help you lose weight? And I think most people might
agree that - not if you're continuing to eat a lot of carbs with them but that's
just one concept. There's really more debate around the concept of - Do
exogenous ketones actually prepare your metabolism - your mitochondria to burn
ketones; to burn fat? Do they help your body make that transition from carb
burning to fat-burning? So, this is a video that really doesn't speak too
deeply to either of those but it does speak to the some of the general
metabolism of ketones and it looks - looks at a couple of things: Esters versus
salts; ketone esters versus ketone salts; the ability of ketones to create ketosis -
meaning elevated blood levels; whether or not you just pee it all out; which is
a good question and this touches on that. The impact of a high
carb meal beforetaking exogenous ketones; and can you get a long-term
elevation of your blood ketones? They actually compared nasogastric tube
versus multiple doses. So let's take a look: It's Frontiers in Physiology 2017
"On the Metabolism of Exogenous Ketones in Humans" so there's a lot of interest
in human ketone metabolism due to a recently reported benefits. Ketosis
has traditionally been achieved by the ketogenic diet or a low-carb diet but
adherence is difficult and an alternative way would be to give
exogenous ketone drinks is what we're talking about here. So, ketone cells
were found to contain 50% of the L-beta hydroxy isoform (L & D is like - D means
right hand and L means left hand; and that's exactly what they are) You say,
well, these two hands look exactly alike but you know they're different - they're
mirror images of each other. That's what a D and an L
isoform are. Why is that important? Because ketone esters result in the D
isoform whereas ketone salts result (I believe) in the the isoform; I
hope I didn't get that backwards. Now, here's an interesting point about - do you
pee it out? Urinary excretion of both D and L was less than 1.5 percent of the
total Beta-hydroxybutyrate ingested and was in proportion to the
blood concentration. So you hear that a lot of people that are skeptics say "Well,
yeah, you can elevate your blood levels but you're just peeing it out. It's going
into the toilet." Hmm... This certainly would not indicate that that's the case. Okay.
Food lowered the dextro beta-hydroxybutyrate by 33% but did not
alter the the other one. All ketone drinks lowered blood glucose, which is
very interesting. It lowered free fatty acid and triglyceride concentrations as
well. So, it - and it also had similar effects on blood electrolytes. So, it's
very interesting. Also, you could give three drinks over nine hours and they
had the same continuous - the same basic blood impact as a continuous nasogastric
infusion. So their conclusion was "We conclude that exogenous ketone drinks are
a practical, efficacious way to achieve ketosis." Now, I could go into a lot more
detail on this - as you see, I've marked up other components. I am NOT going to right
now because those results basically covered the issue. I will just tell you
- you may be asking. So what was this study? It was called a crossover design. You
give one group, one type; the other group, the other type; and then you cross over
and compare the results that you see on each time beta versus the - I mean the
salts versus the esters. The nasogastric, the other, etc. Now, these were - this
was a small study. There were - what? 15, 16, and 14 people in the study. These were
young people (23 to 30 year olds), then BMI in the level of in the low twenties -
2/3 male; 1/3 female and, again, you saw - this is the nasogastric
versus three drinks over the nine hour period; and there you go.
What does - does that answer the question of whether it makes you healthy?
Well, not really. But it does tell you - yes, you can't achieve ketosis. That is
ketones in your blood. You can't achieve lasting ketosis, again, with ketones in
your blood. Are you peeing it all out? This would not indicate. So, are there
differences between esters and salts? Yes. What does that mean? Don't know yet. And
the - again, that big question: Does it train your mitochondria? Does it train
your body metabolism to be able to make that switch over to fat burning? I don't
think this tells you that either. In fact - I mean it's clear it doesn't - but if
you've made it this far, anyway, thanks. By the way, if you're interested, check out
our website. We're going to have an event at University of Louisville Conference
Center, where you can get your CIMT and all your labs; and we'll have a two day
bootcamp experience going over all of that.