﻿-Ketones. Ketones have hit the headlines in recent years.
There's been lots of talk about professional cycling teams using them
in the Tour de France to gain a performance advantage.
Jumbo-Visma is one such team that's openly admitted
to taking ketones as has Vittoria Bussi while setting
the Women's World hour record.
That said, we should point out that they are perfectly legal
to take, at the time of making this video, at any rate.
The molecules contained within
ketone drinks are also naturally produced by the body,
but we wanted to find out what all the fuss was about.
Is there a significant advantage when you take them?
We're going to drink some ketones.
We're going to go for a ride on our bikes,
and then we're going to see what happens.
In this video, we're going to smell ketones.
-That is genuinely horrendous.
-We're going to explain the science behind them.
3 millimoles or 5 millimoles?
We're going to taste ketones.
Oh, god. Test our ketone levels.
-Here we go. She's starting to flow now.
-Do a race, well, a power test. Let's get it over and done with.
Before we do our experiment, here is a quick recap of the science
behind ketones.
This is something that I previously shot for the GCN show.
Ketones, or to be specific, ketone bodies are produced
naturally inside the body and a form of fuel that the body can utilize.
They consist of three molecules, acetone, acetoacetic acid,
and beta-hydroxybutyrate.
Although technically speaking, only the first two are ketones.
The third is the conjugate base of beta-hydroxybutyric acid.
It's technically a carboxylic acid,
but you don't need to worry about that.
[snoring]
These compounds are created by the body
by breaking down fatty acids in the liver.
This occurs when you have low levels
of carbohydrate or an absence of carbohydrate.
Examples of this situation would be if you were bonking on the bike,
if you are engaging in a ketogenic diet which is low carb, high fat,
or if you are fasting or starving.
It's the body's natural coping mechanism for when
you don't have much carbohydrate, which is its primary fuel source.
Got that?
[snoring]
Rather than waiting for the body to start making
this alternative fuel, these ketone bodies.
The idea behind ketone drinks
is to just give you the ketones straight away.
It's called exogenous ketones.
In the same way that technically speaking,
when you take a gel or some carbohydrate and eat that on a ride,
that's technically called exogenous carbohydrates.
The theory is that you can provide an additional fuel source to the body
in addition to the carbohydrate.
Now, the difference is that the body will burn carbohydrate
in the really intense parts of the race, so attacking, the final climb,
sprinting, but a typical stage of the Tour de France is not always
super intense for the pro riders. If they're on the flat and they're
sat in the bunch, it's a quieter moment in the race,
they can often only be doing around 100 watts.
At this intensity, the body will happily tick along
on ketones, meaning that when they get to that crucial,
important moment of the race,
they've been able to save their carbs or glycogen stores to use then.
Think of it like a hybrid car where you've got an electric motor paired
with a petrol motor, gasoline if you're American.
Now, if we take for example a Toyota Prius,
then you use the electric motor when you want to make the car more
efficient, and at lower intensities when you're just ticking along,
but if you need to step on it, and put that hammer down,
then the petrol motor kicks in to help you accelerate.
Now, I have to stress that this is a gross oversimplification of what's
actually believed to be happening, but hopefully, you get the idea.
-We're going to do some experiments.
-A quick disclaimer first, I mean this isn't a rigorous clinical trial.
There's only a sample size of, well, two of us,
but we're both very experienced road cyclists,
and we've gone on many rides where we've experienced the effects
of low blood sugar or glycogen.
-Yes, bonking.
-Yes, Hank. We're both very experienced at bonking.
-Oh, and another thing, this isn't a paid promotion by the ketones drink.
No, we just wanted to find out what all the fuss was about for ourselves.
-Yes, so we're going to do a time trial.
The reason why we're going to do this is because H.V.M.N.
who make the ketone drink, cite a study that was carried out.
at the University of Oxford and published
in the Journal of Cell Metabolism in 2016.
In this study, participants took the ketone drink and then
traveled an extra 400 meters on average in a 30-minute time trial.
-Yes. That time trial is taking place on Alpe du Zwift.
-Well, it is for us. It wasn't for them.
-No.
-Yes, it's going to be slightly longer than 30 minutes because neither of us
are Marco Pantani, but we're going to see if taking the ketone drink
helps us boost our performance.
We're going to do that by comparing previous times and powers we've done
at Alpe du Zwift, and we both have gone pretty hard up there in the past.
Here we go. Can we get a PV with ketones?
-Let's take them.
-Before taking the ketone drink, we're going to measure our baseline
ketone body levels in our blood using this glucometer.
Then after 30 minutes
after ingestion, we're going to measure them again and see where we're at.
That's the point at which we will do our time trial.
So, are you ready, Hank?
-I'm ready.
-So the ketones in my blood before taking the drink is 0.1
millimoles per liter.
This is normal for someone who's not in ketosis, who's just had breakfast,
and well, I shouldn't have high ketone levels in my body.
Interestingly, if it goes up
to sort of 3 millimoles or 5 millimoles per liter,
that is the kind of level you'd expect from someone who'd be fasting
or someone who's on a ketogenic diet.
All right, Hank, your turn.
-Here we go. It's starting to flow now.
-Oh.
-0.2
-You've got more ketones than me going.
-Slightly more. I've scored 0.2 on my ketones levels.
-Double me. Now we're going to try the drink.
See what it tastes like.
See, after 30 minutes, it should boost our ketone body levels.
Let's do it.
-What's your first impressions of that?
-It smells a bit fruity.
-It still smells quite clinical though, doesn't it?
-Yes, chemically but fruity.
-Chemical, yes.
-Fruity chemical smell. Oh, God. Ugh.
-That's horrendous. The aftertaste is worse. That is genuinely horrendous.
[laughs] Guys, I have shivers down my spine.
-Tell you what, it tastes like ketones.
[laughs]
Grandma's pants.
I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed.
It felt like a bit of an anti-climax drinking that drink,
because I was kind of in my head, I built it up.
I was imagining it's going to be like when Popeye
eats some spinach and then all of a sudden it's like, right.
It seems like--
-He's heading into the hall.
-Yes, just-- Yes.
-No, you're still a normal average man, oy.
-Thanks.
[music]
-All right, 30 minutes later, we've got a nice warm-up in.
Now, we're going to check our ketone levels and see where they're at now.
All right, good amount of blood, 4.0
-4 millimoles per liter,
so that is like being in a state of
ketosis, or if you'd like fasted for 48 hours.
That's pretty amazing.
-You bit worse.
-Oh.
-3.7.
-3.7
-Not bad.
-Yours was four.
That basically when you beat me at Alpe du Zwift, that's why.
-It's not going to happen.
-Because you've got more ketones than me.
Right. We're just coming up to the start.
The Alpe du Zwift climb in the beginning of our time trial effort [?].
Why are we doing this?
-I don't know why you talked me into this.
-Silly idea. Anyway, let's get it over and done with.
[music]
I've done it. I don't know how,
but somehow I managed to beat Hank the Tank.
Tell you what, no one can accuse us for not trying there.
I'm not good an actor.
Oh, mate. Good work.
-You're looking strong.
-Savvy. I can't believe I beat you there.
-Your training is doing something good mate. You're flying.
-I'm going to cling on to this.
This is probably the only time I've ever beat you at anything
-Don't tell it about me.
-How did you feel?
-I got to say, I did better than I expected
because my current fitness was debatable, let's say.
-It might be a placebo, but I felt good during that effort.
I think what we'll have to do now is have a cooldown then
we'll have a look at the actual numbers and see what the power numbers say?
I've now had time to digest the results and it's
definitely giving me some food for thought.
Sorry.
Anyhow, I managed to ascend the Alpe du Zwift with a PR time.
A PR is always nice.
In a time of 44 minutes and 35 seconds.
I did that with an average power of 300 watts, average cadence, 94 RPM
and a heart rate of a 168 beats per minute.
As many of you have seen, I managed to beat Hank.
I know, I can't quite believe that either.
He must be having a bad day.
Hank's time was 45:05 with an average
power of 293 Watts, a cadence of 79
and a heart rate of 174 beats per minute.
When this gets really interesting is when we compare it to previous
efforts we've done on Alpe du Zwift in the past without ketones.
Now, a week prior to doing the test with ketones,
with similar levels of fitness,
I went up Alpe du Zwift and averaged 277 Watts.
I didn't feel as good while riding up the Alpe that day
and having taken the ketones, it put me in a positive mindset.
I felt really ready and that I was really up for it,
and also being able to race against Hank gave me motivation as well.
Having spoken to Hank, he too says that
having taken the ketones, he felt very
positive and that his body was ready to perform.
When he rode up Alpe du Zwift without ketones,
he didn't do anywhere near as well and was two minutes slower
than his time he achieved while racing me, but he also agreed that
having me as a character chase definitely
helped spur him on, on this occasion, but I'm
well aware that this all could have been
a placebo effect because if we look at my all-time best
at Alpe du Zwift without ketones, it's only four seconds slower.
I did that last year.
I also did that on the same power, 300 watts on the same
Wahoo KICKR indoor trainer.
If we take that result and look at that, it suggests that
ketones certainly aren't offering any magic bullet.
Ketones should in theory, give more of an advantage on longer
endurance events, things that lasts several hours, where you're really
depleting your glycogen stores.
However, there are also other
potential benefits to taking ketones which are difficult for us to test.
Studies have shown that taking ketones can improve and enhance recovery.
This could be really important if you're riding an event
like the Tour de France.
One such study in the Journal of Sports Medicine from 2017, demonstrated
that drinking a ketone ester increased
post-exercise muscle glycogen synthesis in humans.
What this means is that
your body is better at topping up those glycogen stores
back into the cells after you've depleted them from doing hard exercise.
This is an essential component of recovery,
and helps you perform better day after day, or the next day,
as when you're doing hard efforts
your body is using and burning these fuel stores of glycogen in your cells.
To achieve recovery benefits, is going to require regular supplementation.
When you consider the three pack such as this, costs $89.
That's not going to be cheap.
I hope you found this video on ketones interesting.
Although, they may not be a magic bullet, perhaps they allow
you to have more bullets in your magazine, and allow you to
reload your magazine quicker. Weird analogy.
Sorry about that, but if you have found it interesting
then please share it with your friends.
Let us know in the comments and on social media what you think about
cyclists taking ketones. Should it be allowed?
I'll put a poll in the app as well that you can vote on.
In the meantime, I'll see you later.