Mark Bell's Power Project - The Health Benefits Of The Ketogenic Diet - Thomas DeLauer & Dominic D'Agostino

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

In episode 1049, Thomas DeLauer, Dominic D'Agostino, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about the incredible health benefits of the ketogenic diet.   Follow Thomas on IG: https://www.instagram.com/thomasdelauer/ Follow Dominic on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dominic.dagostino.kt/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

People say there's nothing magical about the ketogenic diet, but then they'll say, well, it seems like the ketogenic diet does wonders for somebody that has epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, psychiatric diseases, Parkinson's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dozens of applications that the ketogenic diet is working as a legitimate medical therapy. We couldn't get pregnant. She went on the ketogenic diet and it was like, what about someone who has dementia? Improving mitochondrial health is a way to restore neurotransmitter balance. So you have a dietary intervention that could do it endogenously. If someone wants to go purchase exogenous ketones, what do they need to keep an eye on on the label? Has your views really

changed much on keto? So I would start having like 20, 30 grams of carbs intra-workout and I'd look at my CGM and it was just, and it was a turning point for me to start treating carbs as a tool in my toolbox. It's a lot cozier than your last place. Like we're a lot closer together. I know. Yeah. Wait, wait until the next one after this.

We'll be real close. You're like sitting on each other's laps. I did podcasts with you, but never at your studio. I guess we did them online. Well, one we did during COVID. Then you came to the lab one time. Yep. And then you had like an active shooter on the ground.

Which is not an uncommon thing in Tampa sometimes. I was like, what's going on? I don't know how to defend myself. I'm going to die. Just another one. That's all. That was pretty crazy. Thomas missed that.

You were mentioning some stuff a moment ago about like red light and people utilizing that maybe uh circadian rhythm like uh in the military and stuff like that i think that's yeah some pretty interesting stuff to maybe start out with a little bit of that oh yeah uh are we yeah yeah we're going live okay yeah they just jump right into it yeah yeah i think uh synchronizing circadian has become like a huge topic right because uh mostly shift workers what we know about shift shift workers are predisposed to basically everything. Everything from diabetes to cancer to neurological diseases to inflammation, immune suppression. So I think an effort has made at pretty much all levels of military, NASA, even space to synchronize the artificial lighting to be that of a natural circadian rhythm.

And that's blue light in the morning, getting that stimulation and taking that away and then tapering off at the end of the day and avoiding any kind of blue light at night. I mean, this is just like stuff that you knew for a long time you've been talking about. But I think government agencies are kind of focusing on that. And actually, there's quite a few like even calls for proposals for investigators to study the effects of this. I admit, I didn't know. I don't think I knew how critical it could be, at least for me in my own experimentation with, you know, trying to block out some of the blue light and getting more red light and just being more conscious of getting some sunlight and stuff like that, it's just really having a powerful impact on me. So I'm just trying to share it with other people.

You have some experience with some red light, especially recently. It seems like you've been testing it. And you have a unique situation where it sounds like you're utilizing the red light later in the day, which I haven't really heard many people talk about that. Yeah. I've been using the red light at night for like five or six years, but then I really started getting more deliberate with like putting it right over my freaking face, like right there, like one inch away, you know? And I noticed just a lot of, I guess you could say mental clarity that kind of comes out of it right out the gate. But I think that I could be placeboing myself into that a little bit. But I definitely notice a pattern when I do that, like 90 minutes, 120 minutes after that, I can barely keep my eyes open.

Like it's just like turns something off. I don't know if it's a, you know, is there a melatonin release that happens directly from blue light exposure or from red light exposure? Well, blue light crushes it, right? So you don't want to avoid that. But red light, no, I think it's pretty naive to just, you know, melatonin. So yeah, I put my head next to it. The red light, I think at the spectrum of like 700 or around that range, can penetrate up to like about two centimeters.

So it's even getting into your tissue. So there's relatively, I think after about two centimeters, there's about an 80% decrease like into two, but it's actually penetrating that much. I use it for hair growth. I put my head next to it. But yeah,

it's also stimulating blood flow, increasing nitric oxide. Yo, I got the juve system. So I do like red light and infrared at the same time so i activate both wavelengths and infrareds uh pretty interesting too if you went down that that rabbit hole as far as mitochondrial stimulation for context sake because there might be some people that are listening to like what is blue light why are these guys saying that blue light is bad blue

light isn't necessarily bad but there are times that you want to avoid blue light correct so one of the times that people maybe want to minimize or avoid blue light and what exactly is it for those who don't even know? And blue light can be stimulating. It plays a role in cortisol release and basically activates. It's kind of like the go signal when you wake up in the morning, light in general. But blue light can also just synchronize your circadian if you get it outside of the normal spectrum. So we want to mimic sort of the natural spectrum of sunlight, right? But it has a lot of, you know, beneficial effects as far as synthesizing, you know, vitamin D, you know, your hormone, really important to get outside, but too much blue light, I mean,

ultraviolet light can damage your skin. So you have to, it's basically like you talk about creating a sun callus, right? So early exposure in the morning can actually, uh, enhance your protection later in the day. So getting an early sun exposure could actually even set you up to being more tolerant to sun later in the day. And even in accordance, like the months. So if you start getting a little sun exposure now, when it's cold over time, as it becomes warmer and warmer, you will gradually kind of work with the sun over a period of time. There's literature to support that too. Yep, exactly.

You've been reading the papers? Oh, yeah. I've been reading up a lot on this stuff. Just to talk a little bit more about blue light. Blue light is just like almost a little bit like junk food is the way that I kind of look at it. And it's the natural – it's the – not natural light. It's the non-natural light that we get from just lighting up our house. And you can get it from your phone. You can get it from your television.

You can get it from your computer screen. You can get it just from the regular like LED lights that you have in your house. Some people go as far to like buy red light bulbs, not necessarily red light therapy, but they buy red light bulbs to put in their home to get away from the blue light. Because as I understand it, you have a high production of melatonin in the morning if you are getting some sunlight, if you are doing some red light therapy. But it doesn't get released. The melatonin doesn't get released if you're consuming blue light at night. And so that is where the blue light is like, quote unquote, dangerous. I don't know if the blue light by itself really does anything that crazy

other than mainly just blocking the release of melatonin that you worked for in the morning by getting some of that sunlight. So that's kind of just the way I've been looking at it lately. Is there like a stimulatory effect to blue light independent of just blocking melatonin? Like is there actually like, can it amp you up? Yeah. I mean, dopamine, all your neurotransmitters are stimulated by it. I mean, the skin senses it. I mean, it has definitely a neuroendocrine effect and, um, but you know, too much blue light can dimerize your thymines. You create like TT dimers and it could cause genetic, you know, uh, damage to, uh, over time, uh, that, um, and if you were acutely exposed to it and you haven't built up that, um, kind of callous as you've kind of termed over time, then that can

actually activate, well, cause damage to your skin, but also can stimulate almost like an allergy to the sun, can stimulate autoimmune issues and stuff too. So people that are looking to like block it out, you can buy, you know, certain types of light bulbs. If you really care about this that much, you can just basically buy old school light bulbs. I forget the name. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this correctly, but I think they're called iridescent lights. And they're just the lights that we used to have, but we don't allow for those anymore here in the United States. But you can still order those off Amazon. So I've done some of that just to try to eliminate some of the blue light that I'm getting. Another strategy that I utilize, I'll just wear blue light blocking glasses. Just,

those are just the red glasses that you wear. I'll wear those at night and those seem like they are helping me with my sleep. And then in addition to that, I'll also sometimes just use light from another room. So that way I'm just not like nuking myself with a ton of blue light, just utilizing some light from like a different room. So it's not as bright in that one room that I'm in. So when you mentioned there was a, I'm not sure if we're talking about the same paper here, but I just read one that was really interesting. Essentially they took college girls in this particular case and they exposed them to different levels of just just room light at night right so it was starting from like i think 6 p.m and i might butcher it a

little bit but this is just 6 p.m i think until midnight and they did various exposures of light have you seen this paper before no they found that if they expose them to a little bit of light at like 5 p.m., 6 p.m., it would actually protect them from some of the damage that would occur from a melatonin perspective later in the evening. So if they had enough light coming in before sundown, even if it was in the evening time, it protected them from having too much light, say at 11 PM, which would ordinarily have affected their sleep significantly. So it was like a protective effect that happens as long as it's like kind of during what would be quote unquote daylight hours still, even if it's towards the end of it, has a, I guess you could call it a protective effect. Yeah. I saw studies where early light exposure in the morning can protect you even from damage from ultraviolet radiation, like later in the day too.

But no, I didn't, I didn't see that, but it makes sense. Cool question for both of you guys. For practicality's sake, what are your evening practices? So that like if somebody like Mark mentioned some of the things that he does, do you guys do anything similar? Is there anything that you do just to make sure that first off your sleep is ideal and that you're the, what you get exposed to as far as light is the ideal. A lot of sex. Okay. No, but that's, that's, sex is helpful.

That puts me to sleep. This time it knocks you right out. Yeah, seriously. Oxytocin. All right. So guys and ladies find somebody to fuck. You know, for me, I have actually found that the less I obsess over it and keep my routine simple, the better. Because I'm wired in such a way where like it was starting to become this laundry list of things for my sleep hygiene to the point where I was stressing out about it.

And then I wasn't sleeping because I was stressed out about my sleep hygiene. So I've actually gone to the point of just making it really simple now. So it's the red light pretty much. I'd say two or three days a week, I do some contrast hot-cold at night, which I used to be a morning person for my cold therapy. But then I'm like, my cortisol levels are pretty high in the morning and I train in the morning. So my like this anticipatory like cortisol spike that I get, the last thing I need is to be jumping in a cold tub too. So, but what I've found is if I, and I don't go long in the cold tub, like I used to try to, you know, tough guy it out. Now I just, I go for 90 seconds or two minutes and just,

it feels great. And that's just enough to like get me out of some like pain and discomfort. I mean, and then I'll go and I'll, um, sit in the sauna for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, just really, just to get the chill off and to maybe break a little sweat. And that's, I mean, that's like two or three days a week, but pretty much every day of the week, I'm doing the red light for 15 to 30 minutes while either doing breath work of some kind and not some fancy schmancy breath work. For me, it's usually just some kind of box breathing or something simple. I found that the more simple and sustainable that I can make it, the better. Otherwise, it just turns into this monstrosity.

Okay. Yeah, I do early dinner and then walk with the dogs. Yeah. How early is the dinner? In comparison to your sleep. Five or six. Yeah, we were eating dinner, you know, when I was really buried with work, like seven or eight, and that was disrupting my sleep.

But yeah, five or six dinner. And, um, I try to train before that if, if I am training that day and then we walk with the dogs, I try to get in about 10,000 to 20,000 steps per day, uh, pretty fast walk. And, uh, after that I keep the lights as dim as possible just so I can see. And then we do pretty much a hot tub every night, which is like equivalent, I think just as good or better than sauna. Uh, and I have a protocol where if I measure my body temperature, like with a thermometer, I get it up to one Oh two and I keep it there for 15 minutes and I just figure it out. I was just going to say, well, I don't mix them up a meat probe you know i don't think it's a great idea to superheat the head like in a sauna so i think uh i know where you were thinking with that dom's questioning his choice in coming here

i'm trying to think of um i had a conversation with a couple of different people about the potential negative effects of like superheating your head, like in the sauna, but the hot tub, I like it because like, there's a little bit of a differential, like your head's not out, but you, you jump in the hot tub and you feel the warm rush of warm blood to your head and you get that like head rush. Uh, but I figured out it's the hypo, the hyperthermia and creating that mild, almost like a fever response. And then that activates all the heat shock proteins and all the beneficial effects from that. And I do that for 15, 20 minutes. And it's like time with, you know, my wife. So we do that and then she doesn't do it,

but I jump into the pool this time of year. It's like in the upper fifties or sixties. So about a 40, 50 degree contrast. And, um, that's the pool this time of year. It's like in the upper 50s or 60s, so about a 40, 50-degree contrast. And that's the routine. And usually I just watch a little bit, like 30 minutes of Netflix or something with blue light glasses, blocker glasses. And just try to get to bed by like 10 o'clock or between 10 or 10.30. And I think early, a long time ago, I used to stay up to midnight or 1 AM. And that's, I just, my, my, the depth of my sleep and the quality of sleep. If I wear an aura ring, I like max it out at a hundred sometimes back when I was just using this.

All right. So you said, sorry, you said you would watch like Netflix and stuff. And there's a lot of people that say, I can't sleep unless the TV's on or there's some noise or something, but it's typically the TV. But as far as what we're understanding, there's some blue light coming from that. So can that be detrimental to them? Uh, if you're wearing blue blocking glasses, I don't think so, but I think it's the content that you're watching. If you're playing games or just watching something that's like, I mean, we just watch stuff that just is very light you know we're not watching uh true detective yeah yeah yeah so i think that's key and um yeah and just keeping the lights as low as possible something that we've always kind of done so my wife and i every day for the last

shit probably six seven eight years we watch blue planet as we fall asleep the same episode so now it's like it's not like we're just trying to watch something intriguing we just turn it on and it's kind of like our nightlight on a sleep timer because okay i know by the time it gets to the angler fish if i'm not asleep you know something's fucked up so it's like we always put it on the deep sea episode you know and we're like okay if it gets to you know oh something's fucked up. So it's like, we always put it on the deep sea episode, you know, and we're like, okay, if it gets to, you know, oh, there's barrel eye, the one, you know, yeah, you know, barrel eye, the weird one with the, uh, but it's, it's like this peaceful thing. And it's like, there's probably something to it. You might be able to answer it, but

something about the routine. It's a, it's kind of like our kids. They have a bedtime song and it's like they hear that song and it's like. It's a relaxation trigger. It's a trigger. And Blue Planet has become David Attenborough's voice. Yeah. It's just. Soothing. Yeah.

That's weird. Maybe he was my, you know, dad in another lifetime or something. So I wanted to ask. So because my son's three years old and, you know, same thing, like I'm trying to get rid of all the blue lights in the house. I've changed over almost all the light bulbs. So I'm tripping over stuff all night long. Cause I can't see anything. It's a little bit too dim for me. Everyone else can see, but at first for some reason I can't, but I've actually put, um, they're called CTO gels. They're just these gels right here on all the lights. I've like double layered all of the tvs so that way they're like orangey and so

they're not as blue um but is something like that like an like actual thing that people can do to minimize the blue light and i'm just saying like on a very elementary level it is less blue therefore does that mean less blue light is getting through yeah you can get filter for your phone like yeah yeah you can get a filter for your tv too yeah just thinking of practical things that people can do because like sometimes it's like well shoot my kids want to watch tv i can't just get rid of the tv i really want to but something like that is something that people can do yeah yeah and i think i think that's important but also the content that you're watching is not you know like social media and things like that like i just cut off all work

work is like a hyper stimulus to me i could see it on my CGM. I could see it on my blood pressure. And I just cut all that off by five before dinner. That's like something that I've the last five years been doing unless, you know, there's a huge deadline or something like that. I also take melatonin. So I have a chewable form of melatonin that I chew, keep under my tongue. And my sleep latency is like almost non-existent. It's almost like as soon as I hit the bed, I fall asleep. And I think that's, I mean, people have mixed opinions about oral melatonin, but I've researched it for years, published on melatonin. And I think it has amazing benefits outside of its sleep-ind inducing effects, but it has neuroprotective benefits too. Uh, when do you take it?

Uh, about 30 minutes before, usually right before we watch like a little bit of Netflix or something, I chew it, keep it under my tongue. And then I feel it kicking in at about 30 minutes and then we just go to bed from there. So you don't need to increase your dose. You've stated the same dose for a long period of time. Yeah. I buy the five or 10 milligrams and I cut it in like halves or quarters and I do that. And I've also done, got off of melatonin and actually looked at my endogenous production of melatonin

because I thought there might've been a feedback loop to shut it down. And I think that's an, I was curious about that because there's like really no literature on that. There is literature. And I think Andrew Huberman talked about that. And this is true in hamsters and in gerbils that are unique, but not in, for example, like a deer or sheep. It can suppress luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone. So, and actually, you know, create like a hypogonadal effect, which he saw, I think. And I went down the rabbit hole of that literature. But it's kind of very species specific.

So I did some experiments where I took 10 milligrams of melatonin and then measured my FSH and LH the next morning in blood work. And it was completely normal. I've also done – I've gotten off of melatonin and I can sleep fine, go to sleep, no problem. And then looked at my endogenous production and basically, at least in my body, exogenous melatonin does not suppress my own body's production of melatonin. Probably because the first thing I do when I wake up is just, I walk outside barefoot in the wet grass, let out the cows.

The sun's coming up. It's blinding me as I'm walking to like the pasture. And I just get a lot of sun right in the morning. And I get that big burst of sun. And I think melatonin production in the morning. Interesting. Yeah, I've noticed when I take oral melatonin, I'm kind of depressed the next morning. Like I actually feel like. Oh oh i can get groggy

if i take i mean groggy is not even the word like i'm actually still okay with my level of wakefulness but uh like a doom and gloom feeling like it's it's really like i don't like it what's the amount you take is it one to three one or three gram yeah milligrams yeah okay yeah grams yeah well i'm in touch with people that are taking grams like five grams i was talking to mark about this cancer patients yeah tell us more about that yeah so uh i'm in touch with a number of cancer patients because there is good data on melatonin and for example like breast cancer and different forms of cancer seems to be like anti-cancer right well melatonin's made in the mitochondria it's the most most powerful lipophilic antioxidant that the body

makes. It's incredibly powerful. If you take it orally, it crosses the blood-brain barrier. It has remarkable antioxidant properties. It not only has direct antioxidant properties, but it stimulates the production of superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione. It stimulates and dodges antioxidant production too. And it has anti-cancer effects that we're just starting to learn about. And there are cancer patients that, and one I was in touch with, that was taking 3,000 milligrams and 5,000 milligrams. So three to five grams per day. And at this point,

you're just saturating. There's three melatonin receptors, I believe, and they're in different parts of the brain and in tissues. So it made them feel more relaxed. It made them feel like they were on a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. It did not make them feel sleepy. It made them feel great. So I'd never been actually talked with. I never even tried to think about taking it in gram amounts, but they buy the bulk powder and use it as part of cancer therapy, as part of a comprehensive. There's suppositories with that too, right? I know a lot of people with, yeah.

Yeah, like 200 milligrams suppositories. It's orally available. I mean, you can just consume it. And I've measured my melatonin with different kits and stuff and done like one, even one milligram puts you off the charts in melatonin if you measure your melatonin the next day, if you measure blood levels. So just keep that in mind that when you're taking melatonin, you are saturating the receptors and going above and beyond what your body makes endogenously. But then again, melatonin

is synthesized in plants, it's in bananas, it's in many different foods that we eat. So you can have a very high elevation of melatonin simply by eating various foods that have melatonin. Plants use it to protect them from oxidative stress. So from an evolutionary perspective, melatonin is synthesized and it protects us from the oxidative environment. And that's why I actually studied it for CNS oxygen toxicity. And if I took hippocampal brain slices that I would cut essentially like a piece of bread and put them into a solution and record electrically from them or look at the production of superoxide and I put melatonin in there equivalent to taking about 10 milligrams of melatonin, it significantly blocked superoxide production in response to graded levels of oxygen, including hyperbaric oxygen. So it blocked the

production of free radicals. And that kind of convinced me. I had been taking it since the mid-90s, but it has remarkable kind of neuroprotective effects. So if we produce a fraction of a milligram naturally, what does it potentially take to saturate all of our receptors? Is that unknown? Is it bio-individual? If you're taking three grams and your body naturally produces a quarter milligram, I mean, production is one thing, but what does it take to saturate the receptors? Yeah. So there's three G-protein coupled melatonin receptors, and they all have different affinities for melatonin in the nanogram, nanomolar range. So generally speaking, yeah, those receptors are pretty much maxed out even with like probably 300 micrograms of melatonin.

So this sounds like it could be potentially problematic. But if you just look at the human data and all the research behind melatonin, there does not seem to be excluding hamsters and certain species of animals that mate within like a compressed circadian timeframe or something like that. So there's different, but different species of animals like giving melatonin or high melatonin will have the inverse effect. It'll actually increase LH and FSH. But I know for hamsters and other like different models that we use in the lab, giving a large dose of melatonin can basically decrease libido by suppressing LH and FSH. But that does not appear to be the case for humans. I don't know if someone knows of randomized controlled trials or human data to show that there's hormone suppression with melatonin. I'm not. Maybe a few case reports here

and there. But I mean, if I'm an N of one and I've studied melatonin myself I'm not, maybe a few case reports here and there, but I mean, if I'm an N of one and I've studied melatonin on myself, it didn't seem to impact hormones. You've been studying ketogenic diets for a long time and actual ketones. And you're part of the reason why some of these supplemental ketones exist. I just tried your supplement that you have here, the coffee ketones, and it actually tastes really good. I threw it in with a cold brew coffee, so it's giving me a little bit of a zip to it. Has there been any advancements in ketones or the ketogenic diet and its service to somebody having a disease? Because I find it really interesting that you'll hear so many people say there's nothing magical about the ketogenic diet, but then they'll say,

well, it seems like the ketogenic diet does wonders for somebody that has epilepsy. And it seems like it has some efficacy around, in some cases, people that have cancer. And it seems like it can be something that can assist with some really life-threatening and life-altering diseases. What have you seen and what's kind of new? Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of people ask me the question, does the ketogenic diet work? So we have to talk about this. Context is very important, right? So the ketogenic diet has been around for more than 100 years as a medical therapy. Even prior to that for like type 1 diabetes, ketogenic diets were used to keep people with type 1 diabetes alive before insulin was invented, right?

So and even prior to that, I mean, it was used for weight loss and in different literature, you'll find it. But about a hundred years, more than 105 years ago, almost, the ketogenic diet was developed at Mayo Clinic and it was used for epilepsy or different seizure disorders. So it has a great track record. And there have been, I think as of now, 13 randomized controlled trials. People always say like, where are the RCTs? So there are like 13 randomized controlled trials, I believe with ketogenic diets, most of it for epilepsy and now other disorders. So, and people talk about the ketogenic diet being a fad. It was like, we heard about it and now we don't hear much about the ketogenic diet. I'm not sure

what drives the Google algorithm, but probably like podcasts and people mentioning it. But my sort of go-to for the ketogenic diet legitimacy is PubMed. And if you search ketogenic diet on PubMed, you'll find last year, 2022, I think there was 600 peer-reviewed publications. And now there's about 730 peer-reviewed publications on ketogenic diet research. I would say 80 to 90% is outside of its proven application in epilepsy. And another interesting, as far as emerging research on the ketogenic diet, if you go to clinicaltrials.gov, there are something like, you know, there's hundreds of ketogenic, I think something like, if you just put in ketogenic diet in clinicaltrials.gov, there are hundreds, 400, maybe 460 clinical trials. But if you actually dig and look into those clinical trials,

about 30% of them are using a ketone supplement. So this is just the keyword ketogenic diet comes up. And that ketone supplement could be a ketone ester So this just the keyword ketogenic diet comes up and that ketone supplement could be a ketone ester. It could be medium chain triglyceride MCT, or it could be the ketone salts. So there is huge amount of, and there's dozens of applications. So we're talking Alzheimer's disease, cancer, psychiatric diseases, even like anorexia, which the psychiatric disease that kills more people than any other psychiatric disease is actually anorexia. There's a study on the ketogenic diet coupled with ketamine actually for, I mean, inborn errors of metabolism, obviously that can play a big role,ose transporter deficiency, some of the things that we study.

Parkinson's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. There's dozens of applications right now that the ketogenic diet is working as a legitimate medical therapy. The research is ongoing. I would encourage people to, you know, if they have a particular disorder and they have a hunch that the ketogenic diet could help, go to, you know, PubMed. That's always the go-to website. Search the particular disorder and you'll find there's often a lot, even in the domain of cancer, which is really interesting as far as we got interested in advanced metastatic cancer and glioblastoma, where the standard of care really does not work. And brain cancer interested me because with brain cancer, you have seizures. So a ketogenic diet could be used to treat the seizures for that, but it also targets glucose availability,

IGF-1 and insulin signaling, mTOR, and the elevation of ketones can have anti-cancer effects. So for certain types of cancer, not all. But another interesting aspect of the ketogenic diet is that it increases adaptive immunity. So there are various drugs that are being used, for example, immune modulating drugs like PD-1 inhibitors. And there's good scientific rationale, at least in preclinical models, that the use of a ketogenic diet can further augment the therapeutic efficacy of different forms of therapy, including chemotherapy, radiation, but also immune-based therapies. So that's another avenue that our lab is super interested in exploring. But I think we unanimously agree

that ketogenic diets are very powerful for neurological diseases that cause seizures, but also psychiatric disorders and a whole host of things, autoimmune disorders. So, I mean, you could talk for hours about each one of these things. able to appreciate that it is a ketogenic diet as it's clinically formulated is a prescription medical therapy. There's like internet keto, and then there's the ketogenic diet as it's used as a medical intervention, which I call the prescription strength ketogenic diet. And that would be the four to one ratio, four parts fat, one part protein. And then there's four to one, three to one, and then a modified Atkins. And mathematically, it ends up being about one gram of protein to one gram of fat. Yeah, in grams. So that would be a one to one. So a four to one ketogenic diet would be about

87% fat, right? And that's used for pediatric epilepsy. For adult epilepsy, a more liberal version of the ketogenic diet is used, the modified Atkins diet, which is, I think, we benefit tremendously by including more protein in the ketogenic diet because the early ketogenic diet studies showed growth restriction in kids and some problems that I think were associated from like, you know, being like six or 8% protein, you know, very low protein. So especially in the pediatric population, especially in the age, if you're using it for in an age population that already has anabolic resistance, you want to amp up the protein to 1.2 to 1.6 and maybe even 1.8 grams per kilogram of protein. And that's way outside the early

ketogenic diet interventions. For clarity with this, because I think this is where people get confused. When you say four to one or three to one, you're talking grams, not calories, right? Because a lot of people kind of think that they'll be like, okay, it's a four to one. It's four to one calories from fat to one gram or one calorie protein, but it's grams. So you're talking, that's a significantly lower amount of protein. I mean, that's very low for most people. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point because that often it's a point of contention. Even when I started studying, I was like four

to one. Okay. That's doable. Okay. We know four to one in grams. So the caloric density of fat is, you know, nine calories per gram as opposed to, so that, you know, the math works out to being, like I said, almost 90% of fat for prescription strength four to one ketogenic diet that was sort of has been used for a century now. What the hell are you eating at that point? Like ribeye and keto bricks? Whale blubber pretty much. Dairy, like a lot of these are heavily dairy based. a lot of these are heavily dairy based. And now, I mean, there's some indication that certain diets, a dairy free ketogenic diet, casein free, you know, in particular can be

very efficacious even for things like autism. So autism really is characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction. And I think we know it's a mitochondrial disease. And I think there are many disorders that... Do you think all diseases stem from that? I would say, you know, a hallmark characteristic of neurodegenerative or neurological diseases is impaired glucose metabolism in the brain. And this could be due to a number of different reasons, pyruvate dehydrogenase, you know, glucose transporter deficiency and things like that, inflammation. Nonetheless, I think, you know, if we change our diet to put ourselves into therapeutic ketosis,

that changes our metabolic physiology. And by changing our metabolic physiology, that changes the fuel that we're running on. So, you know, we'll be primarily burning fatty acids and ketones on a ketogenic diet. Then those ketones become a source of fuel for the brain. Glucose really does not change because there's powerful homeostatic mechanisms that maintain normal blood glucose. So it's not when you go on a ketogenic diet, like the brain is only going and using ketones as an energy source. So glucose typically stays around three, four millimolar, but the ketones can get up to three, two to three millimolar, and that becomes available energy for the brain that not only increases and helps to normalize brain energy metabolism, because ketones can metabolize as energy easier than glucose, because there's many different

bottlenecks that glucose has to kind of go through to be used as an energy source. And then I think most importantly is that the elevation and sustainment of ketones is changing the neuropharmacology of our brain. So it's actually increasing GABA relative to glutamate. So GABA being more of a brain stabilizing, calming neurotransmitter. Glutamate goes down because more of it is converted to GABA. It's also increasing adenosine, which is a vasodilator. So you get greater blood flow to the brain. It's suppressing the NLRP3 inflammasome, which when activated increases inflammatory cytokines.

So it lowers inflammation. Systemic inflammation will lead to neuroinflammation. So it lowers inflammation and it changes. I mean, it has gene expression changes. So a big part of what we're doing in the lab is looking at how beta-hydroxybutyrate can be an epigenetic regulator. We call that the metabolic control of epigenetic regulation. And this probably happens with lactate and other metabolites, that when we change our

body's metabolism, various metabolites are elevated and these can impact, can have favorable changes in gene expression that are associated with longevity, nerve protection, you know, a whole host of things. It's only anything. I mean, you're talking like histone decitalase inhibition kind of effect. So HDAC, but specifically it's a big term, but we study beta-hydroxybutyrolation. So, and actually the paper came out on lactylation. So lactate is also, I was deadlifting last week and my lactate went up to almost 10 millimolar. That's available energy. It crosses the MCT transporter, not to be confused with the medium chain.

So the lactate freely crosses over to the brain and that can become brain fuel, but lactate too can impact gene expression. So beta-hydroxybutyrolation is a scenario where beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is found in like ketostartan, so this metabolite can directly interact with the histone and impact gene expression changes. So it's a new form of epigenetic regulation that we're studying in the context of different diseases like Kabuki syndrome, which was studied at Johns Hopkins. And we have this Kabuki syndrome model where the beta-hydroxybutyrate rescued this particular genetic disorder. So even in the presence of a persistent molecular pathology, elevating this metabolite could silence, essentially silence that genetic disorder and lead to a normal neurological outcome.

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Does it seem that a ketone supplement without necessarily a ketogenic diet could help? Yeah, well, I was first turned on to this by Dr. Mary Newport. And she observed that giving her husband coconut oil and MCT oil and the combination of those two, look up Dr. Mary Newport and ketones. And she has a great website, compiled a lot of literature on this. So her husband significantly improved his cognitive scores in the mini mental status exam and also the clock test, which is actually used to assess Alzheimer's patients. And then there was a study that was done that was published by Henderson, which looked at a

compound called AC-1202. And Dr. Newport, Mary, actually looked at the patent and saw that the active ingredient of AC-1202, which had an impact on improving cognition in age-related dementia or mild cognitive impairment. She saw that the active ingredient was caprylic triglyceride. Caprylic triglyceride is the C8 MCT. So she went out and purchased, she was giving her husband coconut oil and saw this effect, but then realized that you could go and buy MCT at the store. So formulated MCT and I connected with Mary Newport in 2009 and she became, she was a guest

speaker at the University of South Florida at an aging class. And then Steve, her husband, he was alive at the time. We went out to dinner after and I saw him do a shot of coconut oil and MCT, a high concentration, and his tremors stopped. What a rowdy bunch. And he became more animated. Hey, slow down. Yeah, shots of MCT. Literally, she would prepare these shots.

That's awesome. So that was my sort of introduction to this idea that you could elevate ketones independent of carbohydrate restriction simply by, so if you consume medium chain triglycerides, even independent of carbohydrate restriction, that can elevate beta-hydroxybutyrate. But unlike long chain fatty acids, medium chain triglycerides can cross the blood-brain barrier and be used by the brain as a source of energy. So you have the dual effect of about 20% of that MCT gets converted to ketones. And then C8, caprylic triglyceride and capric triglyceride can, once in circulation, it can cross the blood-brain barrier and becomes a source of energy for the brain.

So what about that pretty interesting paper a while back on MCT, uh, well ketones, but MCT specifically affecting a network stability and actually in the brain and actually, uh, you know, I mean, you could probably explain it much better than I can, but network stability has always been explained to me. And I've always kind of articulated as like, if you've got a bunch of screaming regions of the brain that are screaming at each other, it's very hard to decipher what's actually happening. But if they're actually calmly talking to each other, that would be a good explanation of network stability. Is that an accurate way to put it? So then if someone that's maybe not consuming or is consuming carbohydrates and they were to consume MCT oil

and get this network stability effect, is that, I mean, can they have the same kind of calming effect as if they were in a ketogenic state or? We think so. Yeah. That was work done by Lily at Stony Brook and it was published in PNAS. Some people say it PNAS, PNAS. So that, that journal was a pretty high impact journal. And that when that came out, I was aware of it before it was published actually. And she gave a fantastic talk at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition prior to that being published. But yeah, so acute ketosis, not even like long-term ketosis, acute ketosis that could be stimulated with exogenous ketones can enhance network stability in a way that, I guess the best way to describe it is that you're kind of synchronizing your brain in a way that I guess the best way to describe it is that you're kind of synchronizing your brain

in a way to use more of it in a way that sort of correlates to better cognitive flow, decision making, things like that. And I think that the effect is more robust with things like mild cognitive impairment, or if you have a neurodegenerative phenotype. But I think an interesting aspect of the work that she's doing is that this increase in network stability was also improved in normal healthy subjects too. So I want to know this because we were talking earlier and I won't say the specific product, but when we talk about like quality of ketones, you guys have seen prime, right? That energy drink and people are drinking Prime for electrolytes, but it has barely any electrolytes in it. It's literally sugar water, but it tastes

good. So people are like, okay, this is doing something for me. There are a lot of ketone products out there that are similar to Prime that are being sold as these are exogenous ketones, but as we were talking before, they're not doing what people expect them to do. So if someone wants to go purchase exogenous ketones, what do they need to keep an eye on on the label to make sure that they're getting the benefit that they're looking for and not just taking a product that's not truthful? Yeah, good question. So there are many different types of exogenous ketones. And so we're talking about molecules that can elevate ketones independent of calorie restriction, independent of carbohydrate restriction. So there are – I guess the best way to kind of introduce this topic is medium chain triglyceride is an eight-carbon chain.

So if we take caprylic triglyceride, it's actually on clinicaltrials.gov as an exogenous ketone, but it's actually a ketogenic fat. We can consume it and then the ketones can be elevated. So you have different categories of exogenous ketones and loosely maybe MCT could be like, it's just a ketogenic fat. It's really not an exogenous ketone. So you have MCT oil at the lowest end. And then you have the exogenous ketones would be the ketone esters. And then you have the ketone electrolyte salts. And then you have another molecule that is being sold as exogenous ketones would be 1,3-butanediol. So 1,3-butanediol is a glycol-like molecule. It's technically a dye alcohol. And it has many similarities to alcohol in that it gets broken down via alcohol dehydrogenase and forms an aldehyde, which could

be maybe mildly toxic. But the liver has to break 1,3-butanediol down to produce beta-hydroxybutyrate. So in and of itself, it's not an exogenous ketone, but I believe it's being sold as that. It has some interesting properties. We've published quite a few reports. It has anti-cancer effects if it's formulated into even a standard diet. And then I guess the two categories that are truly exogenous ketones would be the ketone esters. And many ketone esters are formed with a backbone of 1,3-butanediol, which does get metabolized to beta-hydroxybutyrate. So you have 1,3-butanediol, beta-hydroxybutyrate, monoester. And when you ingest that, it quickly liberates the beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is a ketone, the primary ketone in circulation.

And then to get a quick spike up in ketones and beta-hydroxybutyrate. And then the 1,3-butanediol is more slowly broken down into the liver to liberate the beta-hydroxybutyrate. And then a molecule that we worked with was 1,3- butanediol acetoacetate diester, which is the ketone bodies are beta-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, and acetone, which has some interesting properties, but we blow off in our breath. The ketone esters are a very unique class because they're almost drug-like in their ability to elevate and sustain ketosis. And I think most of what we've published actually has been on ketone esters.

And I think there's a lot of potential. And then actually you can use glycerol too. You can have glycerol triester beta-hydroxybutyrate or a glycerol triester of acetoacetate. And I mean, we have a library of like 60 different potential molecules in the lab. Some of them are feasible and some of them are not as far as development. But a lot of consumers have the option to buy 1,3-butanediol, which has some interesting effects and will give you a buzz, but it doesn't

really have any performance or cognitive enhancing effects. Although it could be a good supplement to take if you're trying to get off alcohol, because it is technically like a dye alcohol, has some very similar properties. Although it can increase liver enzymes too, if you consume it at a dose that it would serve in that function. So I think, you know, there's probably the most research has done on the beta-hydroxybutyrate monoester, which there are some studies to show maybe an enhancement of cognitive function or an enhancement of athletic performance. But this is typically in the context of an extreme environment or the context of, um, being fatigued, uh, or in the context of like insulin resistance, I think the ketones kind of can shine in that way.

And then you have the ketone salts, which could simply take beta hydroxybutyrate combined to sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, uh, similar to an electrolyte supplement. So instead of sodium chloride, you could have sodium beta to an electrolyte supplement. So instead of sodium chloride, you could have sodium beta-hydroxybutyrate. You consume it, you're giving your body electrolytes, which is great. And then it's liberating the beta-hydroxybutyrate. It's kind of more of a natural sort of exogenous ketone. And that's what I kind of choose myself to use, even after studying and publishing mostly on ketone esters. And there's different reasons for that. So if you consume a ketone ester and you get your ketone levels

and the delta is increased two millimolar, that can trigger a counter-regulatory effect, meaning that if you quickly amp up ketones to two millimolar, you may start to feel an enhancement of energy and maybe even performance, but that quick elevation of ketones will release insulin. And characteristically, you see a drop in blood glucose when that's inversely correlated with the elevation of ketones. That's due to a number of different effects, gluconeogenesis, but also maybe an enhancement of insulin sensitivity. But that's how we regulate our own ketone production. When we get on a ketogenic diet,

But that's how we regulate our own ketone production. When we get on a ketogenic diet, there's ketoneuria. But as ketones rise, that causes the insulin to be released from the pancreas and that decreases beta oxidation of fats. And it kind of turns down ketosis, kind of like a rheostat, not like an all or none. But this is what's happening when you take a large dose of exogenous ketones. You're getting an unfavorable, in my mind, in my opinion, counter-regulatory effect when you jack up ketones up to two millimolar because you're hyperketotic and then glucose goes down. And after two or three hours, you're hypoketotic and hypoglycemic. And then for me, if I take a large dose of the ketone ester,

like on a, and I'm doing this going back to like even 15 years ago, I feel great. I kind of even feel euphoric, but about two or three hours later, I start to get a headache. And that's because the ketones have cleared, you release some insulin and that facilitated glucose disposal. And you're kind of, your brain goes through an energetic crisis because you're hypoketotic and hypoglycemic too on top of that. So I think a more nuanced approach should be appreciated where you could formulate a ketone ester or what I do is kind of take a ketone salt. When you consume a ketone salt, you can get your ketones elevated one or two millimolar, and that's not going to trigger a counter-regulatory release in insulin, which I think is important if you're just using it as

sort of a lifestyle thing, giving your body electrolytes too. And you could also combine it with, for example, MCT. So the combination of ketone salts and MCT would stimulate endogenous ketone production, and that would decrease endogenous ketone production and that would decrease gastric emptying. That would delay gastric emptying because the salts actually decrease gastric emptying. So you have a slower release of ketones. We call that a pharmacokinetic shift to the right. So there's just a more gradual rise in ketones and decreasing ketones over time without the abrupt increase. It's that rate of rise that could be a trigger for insulin that you need to avoid. And I think that's important for

ketone esters especially, and not so much an issue with ketone salts because the salts seem to delay gastric absorption in a way that doesn't trigger the counter-regulatory insulin response. And these ketone esters can be helpful, especially like when you're fasting or something like that, right? I think so, yeah. So you can, a lot of people's bodies, maybe they don't produce ketones right off the bat. But the more you fast,

the more your body's ability to produce ketones. So the more you do it, the easier it gets and the greater ability you have to burn fat in the liver and to convert that to ketones. So there's like an adaptation kind of effect. And there's ketolytic enzymes that are upregulated. There's transporters that can increase like in rat models up to a 50% increase in the MCT transporter after about two weeks. So the word keto adaptation gets thrown around a lot without a lot of context to it. But you do have a robust increase in fatty acid oxidation enzymes,

ketolytic enzymes, ketone transporters. So all this happens. In animal models, we've studied it, but not so much in humans yet. Now, in kind of two parts, with the fasting portion, in theory, it would make more sense to use a salt than an ester because of the insulinogenic nature of a ketone ester and when a lot of people are fasting a lot of purpose is kind of to keep insulin as low as possible so i've always been in the school of thought of if you're going to take ketones during a fast assault is going to be

yeah preferable yeah um a place where like could you combat the counter-regulatory effect if you took a monoester co-administered with a fairly sufficient amount of carbohydrates during say intense exercise? Because if you look at like the Tour de France, you look at that, they're administering with like a hundred plus grams of glucose a lot of times too. So it's like, you know, for you and me that are super low carb, it wouldn't make a ton of sense to be popping a monoester. But if we were already consuming 300 grams of carbs and were, then does that offset the counter-regulatory effect? Good question. So I think that context changes significantly If you're an athlete in the middle of an event,

just think of it as another fuel. So you could throw in ketone esters, you can throw in MCT, you know, if you can tolerate it. And I don't think, I mean, everything changes, you know, when you're exercising, but the insulin response would probably be minimal during exercise. So, and a lot of the studies now, and I've reviewed quite a few, they co-administer ketone esters with carbohydrates. So there's just like another fuel. I ended up in the hospital, in the emergency room, from what we're talking about right here. I took some ketones before a run.

And I thought that my blood sugar was low because I got kind of cold and kind of hot at the same time. I was in the middle of a workout. I was doing some like intervals and stuff like that. And so I was like, well, let me see if I can still finish out my workout. You know, that's what you do as an athlete, right? You try to push. And then I went to run again and my legs were just super heavy.

And I was like, ah, that doesn't feel right. I tried one more time and I kind of started getting a little dizzy. My eyes were kind of going and I was like, this is not good. I'm like, whatever's going on here is not good. I did have carbohydrates with the ketones that I took. And then because I thought my blood sugar was low, I proceeded to have like orange juice and a bunch of other juices and stuff. And it just jacked my, it jacked my glucose up so high that my body, I was trembling so much that I couldn't even bring a cup that had a straw to my lips. And I, when the emergency people came, they immediately checked, you know, they pricked my finger and they're like, your blood glucose is 530 or something like that. And then by the time they got me in the emergency car or whatever, my-

It's called an ambulance. Ambulance, there we go. I was like, couldn't figure out what the hell it was called. An ambulance. When I went in the ambulance, they checked my blood glucose again. It was like 400 something. So I was like, oh, thank God. It's just like a waiting game.

You know, I'm going to feel like shit for a while, but at least it's trending down. After the OJ, yeah. What can happen with 1,3-butanediol or other, you know, 1,3-butanediol-based compounds is that, so there's something, it's analogous to alcoholic ketoacidosis. So like on Mardi Gras, like a lot of patients are hospitalized in the ER because if you

drink too much alcohol, what it does essentially is de-energize the liver. And gluconeogenesis is a tremendously energy dependent process that the liver has to do, right? So when you drink alcohol, it basically sucks up all the ATP from the liver because you're trying to detoxify the alcohol. Ketogenic agents that have 1,3-butanediol can shift the redox state of the liver in a way that it's de-energized.

And when you do that, similar to alcoholic ketoacidosis, where alcohol can dramatically decrease your blood glucose simply by inhibiting that process. And I think that process can, I've, it takes a large dose, but I've done it myself where a large dose of like one, three butanediol or ketone ester can cause a dramatic D I mean, glucose levels down in the twenties and glucose levels so low that the meter just flashes low. Dude. So we have like, I mean, this is what's scary. It doesn't happen with ketone salts though.

You've got ketone brands out there that are basically pumping or peddling straight up 1,3-butaned dial and also pushing it for athletes in crazy high amounts where you're going to be intoxicated, potentially, and having this metabolic effect that could be legitimately dangerous like we just say what some of these red flag flag brands are because i feel like we're telling people look for this ingredient scares the shit out of it like let's just mention what brand should people stay away from for now maybe and i i maybe you guys don't want to but what should people be careful i like to preface it by saying it's a dose dependent thing for sure and then uh yeah also i'd also like to say that we have studied one three butane dial had no effect on like preventing seizures or other things but it does have a nice glucose

lowering effect uh even at moderate doses that would technically not toxic and when you combine one three butane dial with a standard carbohydrate diet, we published a study in the International Journal of Cancer that it reduced metastatic growth of cancer. So there's a lot of potential therapeutic applications, but in the context of performance enhancement, 1,3-butanediol would not be my go-to agent. Well, and it's being marketed as the superior ketone, and 1,3-butanediol is essentially less than half of a ketone by the time it's actually broken down. And then, like, when you look at a monoester, you've got the ketone and you've got 1,3-butanediol. You've got the beta-hydroxybutyrate. So, like, that beta-hydroxybutyrate is immediately liberated. And you're pretty much getting a little bit of a rise in ketones, good, bad, or ugly, whatever.

And then you've got the butanediol that's going to the liver. And it's, what what maybe half by the time it's like it also goes in the area under the curve brain like for actual amount of money spent for the amount of ketone elevation you get with potential okay asterisk side effect like for the cost it actually makes more sense to either do if you know what you're doing a monoester or if you're just regular life, a salt. Monoesters, I feel like are still, could be dangerous, maybe not dangerous, but just not as useful if you don't know what you're doing.

And a lot of people are looking at it in the context of performance. A lot of people that listen to the show are training in the gym or they're athletes. So when they're looking to buy something like this, it's typically within that context. Yeah. And acute elevation of ketones, ketones have an acidic nature to them. So they actually impact your blood pH. So your body has to actually dump a lot of bicarb to buffer the pH change, the lowering of pH. When you take a ketone salt, it's already buffered with a monovalent or divalent cation. So you're delivering the electrolytes, you're buffering the acid and delivering the ketones at the same time. And I think higher is not always better. So with the salt, you can get one or two millimolar and that can produce an effect.

However, in the context of like traumatic brain injury or CNS oxygen toxicity seizures or other medical scenarios, an ester may be beneficial, But I do think of that as like the prescription strength ketone, whereas the salts, and even when you deliver an ester, it's not buffered because it's releasing ketones, but there's no buffer to it. But with a ketone salt, and that opens up the possibility of formulation. So a lot of what we have published is showing that many of these agents, actually the ketone salts and the ketone esters work better when you combine it with MCT. And I remember the late Dr. Richard Veach, who was really the key pioneer in all of this.

I remember trying to get his ketone monoester for our studies, which we did and we tried it. But I remember thinking, well, Dr. Veach, can I just use 1,3-butanediol? And he like yelled at me or something. He was like, it was, uh, it's kind of a character, but he was like, no, you'll get drunk stupid. So because the one, three butaned dial had this narcotic effect and it was sort of like an alcohol. I was like, well, why wouldn't you get drunk with a ketone ester that also delivers one, three butaned dial?

But he's like, well, it's a dose dependent thing. And you do, but it's very, you know, well, it's a dose dependent thing and you do, but it's very, you know, it's more of a dose dependent effect, but nonetheless with the ketone ester, it's not buffered. So you do, we've measured blood pH in animals and it, and it really goes down. I mean, it becomes pretty acidic and the body has to compensate for that. And then you get the insulin release too, but it is very dose dependent. And if you don't know what you're doing, you don't want to, yeah, it can backfire. Like, I think it sounded like, you know, backfired for you and it has

backfired for me when I was messing with these things 15, 20 years ago and just dosing and just thinking higher is better, you know, I'll become, but higher ketones basically leads to like energy toxicity. It's like, you know, we're not trying to jack up our glucose and get higher glucose, right? And we're not. So I think it's really important to understand that a one millimolar increase in ketones is more than anyone in the population is going to achieve. It's exponentially higher than what we normally achieve, you know, eating a standard diet. So if you get ketones into that one to two millimolar range, that's even in experimental cell models and tissues, like you're getting physiological effects from that, even epigenetic effects. What will it do for you? Like, you know,

keto supplements aside, just being on a ketogenic diet, like what has it done for you? Because you have some impressive numbers when it comes to what you've done in the gym. And a lot of people, it seems like have shifted gears maybe away from some keto stuff. diet, there's no magic. I'll agree with many other people out there that said there's nothing magical about a ketogenic diet in regards to performance enhancement, but it doesn't impair performance. So if the ketogenic diet for me, it's logistically advantageous to eat a diet that I could have a meal twice a day and have stable blood glucose measuring with a CGM and can see that there's a world of a difference if I get my calories from carbohydrates or a ketogenic diet. And the cognitive effects of it, the stable energy and the benefits of just having mildly elevated circulating ketones, I think are very beneficial for me from a logistical point of view. And I think from pretty much every biomarker of metabolic health has improved on a ketogenic diet. So the LDL is another topic that I'm kind of interested in because a lot of people do have an elevation of LDL and ApoB on a ketogenic diet. And that's another conversation in the context. Maybe you'll have

that with Dr. Nick Norwitz soon, hopefully. But in regards to strength, I think there was a dip in strength for about two or three months when I started a ketogenic diet. I think people should sort of appreciate that that could happen. But once your body adapts to it and you equate for protein, and maybe you want to amp up your calories a little bit when you start ketogenic diet and transition into it. If you're going to use it more of a lifestyle thing. Power Project Family Foot Health is something that we talked about all the time on the podcast. And that's why we love Vivo Barefoot Shoes, but we love them not just because they are flat, flexible and wide, but also they don't look bad. They look actually really, really good.

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have either one of you guys have your views changed especially you thomas has your views really changed much on keto it seems like you're still very low carb. it was a little easier for me to recover if my running volume was at 60 miles per week plus lifting. So if I had, I don't know, maybe 70 to 100 grams of carbs per day. But when I was doing that, I still wasn't even measuring ketones. And then a couple of months ago, I was eating probably like 110 maybe grams of carbs coming from fruit and sweet potatoes just throughout the day. And I used my Keto Mojo and I was still at 0.8 ketones. You know, I'm just like, I guess I'm active enough that... So I found that when I am very active, if I follow sort of the quintessential like ketogenic diet that's out there by specific

numbers and keep it under 50 grams of carbs, my recovery is just a little bit down. It takes me a little bit longer, but I also don't think that I was eating enough, you know? So when I would say, okay, let me sprinkle in some more carbs and add this here. Um, it was also getting very, very, I mean, this is a positive side effect that a lot of people will be like, I was getting too lean, you know, I was getting down to like 4% and it was just like, this is not actually where I want to be. I'd rather be like between six and eight and be able to perform. Um, so I started adding some carbs into the mix, but lo and behold, it barely kicks me out of ketosis. So even when I'm on a high carb day, I'm usually still pumping out ketones. Where my views have changed is I sort of

removed myself from the keto crowd because as Dom kind of mentioned, there became this internet, the internet keto group. And I'm just like, I can't associate with them because what they're putting out there is just BS. It's not real. And, um, I shouldn't say it's BS, but there's just a lot of just things are, it's getting touted as magical and I can't be associated with that in a professional way. Um, so people think that I like pivoted on keto. I'm like, I'm still look at my diet.

Like it's, um, but you know, for me, I'm indebted to it. Like my wife, and, you know, I'm careful saying this because I never want to make crazy claims, but like we couldn't get pregnant. My wife has a myriad of autoimmune conditions and we couldn't get pregnant. And she went on the ketogenic diet for a year and a half and it was like, ba-boom, you know, like easy. Do you have any theories as to why that happened? She had PCOS as one thing too. And there's some evidence there between PCOS, insulin resistance. She was mildly insulin resistant. So that could have played a role there. A lot of evidence actually on the fertility piece with that. role there. A lot of evidence actually on the fertility piece with that. So, but that's like the tip of the iceberg, right? I think the PCOS is usually like, that's like the canary in the coal mine for a lot of things. So who knows what else could have been going on? I'm not an expert

in autoimmune conditions, but I know that a lot of times when people have one, they have many. And, you know, it started with Hashimoto for her and, you know, all these other kinds of things that, you know, endometriosis and all these other things. So because of that, we didn't think that we would ever be able to have kids. And that was a big bummer for us. And I had lost weight using the ketogenic diet and I knew enough to be kind of dangerous at that point in time and knew enough people in that world to be like, okay, I consider myself enough of an expert that I could maybe have my wife do it. It changed her life. So yes, it changed my life because I lost weight, but like where I really became sort of obsessed with it is what it did to my wife. And then I became a devout keto person

when I actually got, you know, my beautiful son as a result of it. Right. So it was like, keto gave me my child. People can like say whatever they want. And that's why I kind of got to this point where it's like, then you've got people that are just taking it and marketing the hell out of it and spinning it in a weird way for clicks and views. And it's just, it was a little frustrating because I really tried to take a little more scientific rigor with how I approached it. Um, where my perspective has changed per se is I went through a period of time where I was afraid of carbohydrates. You know, I was like, okay, if I do this, I'm going to spike my insulin. I kind of started to drink the Kool-Aid a little bit there.

And then I started realizing that, wow, you know, and actually I can have a little bit of this and it's fine. And I can actually treat it like a tool or treat carbohydrates almost like a drug in a way. It was almost an exogenous additional fuel that I could use. So I sort of started adding them in intra-workout. And it was actually because of you, because you taught me about the, you know, glucose dependent or independent glucose uptake during a workout.

So I was like, you know what, this is going to be my time to be able to have some carbs. So I would start having like 20, 30 grams of carbs, like maybe some watermelon intra-workout. And I'd look at my CGM and it was just like, meaning like you get for some free carbohydrate intake during a workout. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, glucose, uh, you know, or independent glucose, what is it? Insulin independent glucose. So basically because I think there's a mechanical aspect to it. It's almost like you took a shot of insulin. Yeah. Right. Pretty much. I mean, it's just like the glucose uptake is just happening independent of insulin. And that was a moment for me where I realized like, okay, it's not about the carb per se. Like, you know, like I can manipulate this in a way where I might be able to have a little

bit of a half my cake and eat it too, no pun intended. And it was a turning point for me to start treating carbs as a tool in my toolbox that I could occasionally use as almost an ergogenic aid in different settings, even though I didn't need them. And I, so it gave me this confidence where I'm like, okay, I know I don't need these, but occasionally in different circumstances, I can use them and they're a nice aid. It could even be psychological, right? Because actually there is some evidence on that, right? Isn't there like with like swishing maltodextrin around in your mouth, there's an impact?

Have you seen that? Like the cephalic effect? Yeah, like swishing a mouthwash with maltodextrin where people were, there was an ergogenic effect. Like you were actually getting this ergogenic aid effect. Yeah, so like you were actually getting a performance effect without even ingesting it. Which leads me to believe that maybe there is like some of this. Isn't it Tim Noakes that has kind of talked about this too, where he feels, I mean, you can say what we want about Tim. He's awesome, but he's talked about, what is it

specifically? Like the ingestion of carbohydrates is almost like this mental piece for us more than physiological. We don't need it obviously because we're creating glucose through other pathways. But just the thought of it's so amazing. Yeah. Right. It really is. I think it comes down to like carb management and like Thomas is so metabolically flexible as is, as are most athletes. Right. So, and I think the general person like watching this just needs to understand their metabolic response to carbohydrate ingestion. And the easiest way to do that is just to buy a glucometer, measure your fasting glucose, and measure your glucose response in response to carbohydrates. And if you're shooting up to 200, 300 glucose monitor to understand using it as a behavioral tool. how stress is impacting glycemic control, how a night of sleep is impacting glycemic control.

These will all sort of influence your response to carbohydrates. But I don't think not everybody needs... You could get so much advantage just by tapering and titrating your carbohydrates to your threshold to ensure that you're metabolizing fat and metabolizing carbohydrates for the general person. And then going ketogenic is a whole nother level of burning fat where you're also burning so much fat, you're elevating ketones. And I think that's therapeutically can have a lot of advantages. So I'm not trying to sell the ketogenic diet for everybody. I don't do that. I mean, we study in the context of disease models, but I follow it myself and I realized that there are a lot of benefits as a lifestyle. So both you guys are incredibly lean. And if you're doing a ketogenic diet and you're burning

fat, I assume that you're consuming a good amount of fat being on a keto diet and producing ketones. So that would lead me to think that you're burning dietary fat. How does somebody burn, in addition to dietary fat, how do they burn body fat? Caloric restriction. So calories in, calories out. I mean, there's a lot of truth to that. It's not the only thing, but I think it's the main- Lane Norton sunk his teeth into you, didn't he? That's all right, Andrew. I'll wrap it up. I'm a huge fan.

I think we agree on 95% of everything. But I think one needs to appreciate when you're on, like I had a keto brick, a half of a keto brick and a can of sardines. And I don't know, I mean, maybe six, eight hours went by. I love keto bricks. Yeah. The Bell's brownie batter. That's super good. I think the best. And also the nootropic one with the keto greens. It love keto bricks. Yeah. The Bell's brownie batter. That's super good. I think the best. And also the nootropic one with the keto greens. It's really good. So I had half of one

of them and a can of sardines. And the last thing I'm thinking about is food right now. So the ketogenic diet is, some people say, you know, hypo-palatable, that it's not really going to induce overconsumption of calories, but it's also hypersatiating. And I think it impacts brain energy metabolism. So it basically energizes your brain. It gives your brain enough energy. So your brain is not going through an energetic crisis, which would trigger disordered eating. When you're eating carbohydrates, especially if you get a huge bolus of glucose, insulin goes up, it facilitates glucose disposal, glucose goes down, hypoglycemic, and that triggers disordered eating because of the energetic crisis that your brain is feeding. So you just want more carbohydrates. So I think a ketogenic diet is a restrictive diet,

but it prevents overeating just by virtue of it maybe not being hyperpalatable, but also with it being hypersatiating, especially when the protein is pretty high along with the fat. And I think that's the simple and it just basically is a means you inadvertently eat less calories because of the nature of the diet, because of the food choices, but also the hypersatiating effect that it has on your brain. And also, I think there's a lot that we need to unpack in regards to mitochondrial health that we could talk about, but also balancing certain neurotransmitter

systems that would otherwise, and that could be dopamine, which you probably get a pretty big hit if you're eating processed carbohydrates that are hyperpalatable. So there's so many different, it's not a magic bullet like a magic shotgun. So there's many different mechanisms working in synergy to prevent overeating, but it's also working therapeutically. Do you think we're running into a problem with, I would agree that if someone ate a whole food ketogenic diet, it would be hypopalatable. But with the advent of so many delicious keto things, do you think we're kind of in sketchy territory because you've got some calorically dense, hyper palatable keto foods? And that's where I think a lot of people run into problems. Do you forecast that being kind of an issue or do you think there's a somewhat of a regulatory kind of self-governing response when you're in ketosis? Cause I, I could see both sides. Cause honestly, when I am deep in ketosis, even if I'm indulging in some keto treats, like most legendary pop tarts or something like that, like I don't feel the need to overeat. Um, but I also do see a lot of people just chowing down on keto treats. Yeah. Like a legendary tasty pastry. And I've compared that with my CGM to a Pop-Tart,

right? Because it's kind of like a replacement. You feel different after eating a Pop-Tart, right? So I ate a Pop-Tart, looked at my CGM, went for a walk. And then during my walk, I started getting shaky because it shot me up to 220 milligrams per deciliter. And then it, it crashed down because of the insulin response. Whereas, you know, a tasty pastry is a flatline and you just, but I think so, yeah. So keto, keto snack foods, everybody has a different personal relationship with food. And I think for different reasons, and that could be psychological where, you know, you put a bag of cashews and they'll eat the whole thing and they'll just eat it till it's gone, right? So I think people need to be careful with different types of keto foods that are on the market. I, you know, with a CGM,

that allows you to test different things. And I think I got some kind of keto cereal from Walmart or something and tested them and they were shooting my glucose way up. So there's not, I think about 90% of the keto products that I test are not, are actually having a glycemic response. And I think that's important.

Dude, I got a crazier response. I get a crazier response from Catalina Crunch. Oh, I was going to mention Catalina. I didn't want to mention names, but yeah. So Catalina Crunch sent me through the roof and Three Wishes, you know, Three Wishes cereal, which isn't even considered a low carb cereal. Catalina Crunch spiked me more than Three Wishes. Yeah. I did Catalina Crunch. And then the next day I did Magic Spoon, which was pretty flat actually. They use allulose, which is very interesting. And one of the, I guess, snack foods that I really indulge in is RX Sugar has these swelthy snacks. Yeah, those are incredible. I think you guys tried them.

Oh yeah. Those are so good. So, I mean, allulose is kind of interesting, especially incorporated into food like the RX sugar chocolate bars, because you eat one and it's not that big, but you're just like completely satisfied from that. And the science behind allulose is very interesting. Not only is there, it's essentially non-glycemic and little if any insulin response, but if you look at the human data or if you look at the animal data and there was a nature communications paper published in a rat model where they gave allulose and the human equivalence to that, if you do the calculation, would be about 20 to 30 grams. It caused a 500% increase in GLP-1, a release of GLP-1.

So you have a natural sugar that's found in different fruits in small amounts that could be an amazing replacement for sugar. And that also has an interesting GLP-1 effect and similar to eating like a large steak. I mean, yeah, if you're on a carnivore diet, you're increasing GLP-1. If you're on a keto diet, you're increasing GLP-1. But it's interesting that we have a natural sugar that could be incorporated into foods that has a hypersatiating effect through GLP-1 and some interesting metabolic effects. So it also is transported via the GLUT5 transporter and also blocks fructose transport. via the GLUT5 transporter and also blocks fructose transport. And we're interested in the context of studying that for cancer and different models.

And help you regulate blood sugar as well, right? If you do have carbohydrates with it, right? That's, yeah. So that's a key thing. So if, and one of the studies that I did or personal experiments is that I ate a sweet potato without allulose. And then I had allulose 20 grams, two arc sugar bars and ate the sweet potato and mimicked some studies that have already been published. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was about a 500 or no, a 50% decrease, 40 to 50% decrease

in the glycemic response and even the area under the curb. So that begs the question, like, where's the glucose going? So there's some data that's coming out that will be published soon that I'm not going to talk too much about it, but it seems, allulose seems to increase glycogen synthesis in the liver, but also probably decreasing gluconeogenesis to some extent, and that's kind of how metformin works. But also facilitating glucose uptake into tissues via maybe the GLUT4 transporter. So I think there's multiple mechanisms of action to explain how the sugar can be eaten with carbohydrates and decrease the glycemic response. Could it potentially, I know you don't want to talk too much about it, I mean, increase AMPK phosphorylation? Yes, it does that. We've published research on that. Yeah. That's wild. So, I mean, it activates, it's an AMPK activator.

So, it's actually like in a very colloquial way of putting it, kind of putting you into a deficit? Yeah. Yeah. It's actually, it's classified in one publication as like a calorie restriction memetic. And I think in that umbrella of longevity drugs. Negative calories, like a thing of celery. With a bunch of peanut butter on it. Oh yeah, does that work too? Yeah, as long as the celery's there. So when people dive into a ketogenic diet, and I apologize if this isn't even a thing anymore.

But with some of the stuff that Nsema was talking about with some of these companies, they will be like, here's the supplement and pee on this stick. Look, you're in ketosis. It's working. Is there any beneficial information from peeing on a stick anymore? Well, when you enter the ketogenic diet, your body ramps up ketone production. and part of regulating our body's ketosis in circulation is ketoneuria. So we excrete ketones and the keto stick measures acetoacetate. And as we adapt to the ketosis over time, less is excreted and more is actually being used as a source of energy. less is excreted and more is actually being used as a source of energy. So you'll be, you know, all things equal,

you'll show less ketone production on a keto stick, a urine keto stick over time, generally speaking. Although I talked to different neurologists and registered dietitians and they've treated kids for years and they continue to use the urine ketone strips as a viable means to – because kids don't like to get their fingers pricked or whatever. But so that's the acetoacetate. Yeah, so I mean it is showing that ketosis is defined by the elevation of urine, blood, or breath ketones. So you're technically in ketosis. ketosis. And then, you know, I guess a lot of questions come out is, is exogenous ketosis or acute ketosis, ketosis with supplements, is that equivalent to a ketogenic diet? Can it get

benefits of that? I think there's overlapping benefits, but they have their own independent benefits. The ketogenic diet has benefits because it's depleting liver glycogen, accelerating fat oxidation in the liver, and lowering blood glucose. So all these things. However, with exogenous ketones, that also seems to lower blood glucose. If you take a lot of it, that could increase insulin. But generally speaking, insulin could actually go down. With a rat study, they kept all things equal and fed exogenous ketones. And then the fasting insulin went down 30% by enhancing insulin sensitivity.

So they're really interesting. And I think they're not mutually exclusive, just like fasting ketosis, dietary ketosis, and exogenous ketones can be used together. ketosis and exogenous ketones can be used together. And my thing with exogenous ketones is that I think they're an incredibly important tool for further enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of a ketogenic diet that most people simply can't stick to from a therapeutic content where they're going to have days where they're going to go off the diet, where they can, if they go on a therapeutic ketogenic diet and they're like 0.8 millimolar, they could bump that up to 1.8 millimolar and get more therapeutic benefits from that diet simply by incorporating, it could be just MCT or exogenous ketones. metabolically unhealthy and you were to try to give them glucose or they just ate a normal standard American diet, let's just, for the sake of this conversation, it's probably not scientifically accurate. Let's say they utilize a small percentage of that glucose because they're

insulin resistant and it's just an inefficient process. If you give them exogenous ketones, could the ketones have such a sort of glucose sparing effect where you've now given the cell, the mitochondria, a fuel that it can use, giving it a break from glucose, getting hammered by glucose constantly, that it potentially has the ability to get a little bit more sensitive and improve glucose tolerance so that when you remove the exogenous ketones at some point down the line, theoretically, the glucose could be sucked up easier in that person. There's a theoretical basis for what you just said, but I'm not sure if it has unambiguously been published on.

So yeah, if you take sort of a metabolically compromised person, give them exogenous ketones over time, their insulin sensitivity will improve. And that could be by virtue of simply enhancing mitochondrial function. And everything improves if you enhance mitochondrial function over time. So the mitochondria are obviously the energy producers of the cell, but also they're powerful signaling molecules. So by enhancing energetic flow and ATP production in the mitochondria, it's also improving many different downstream signaling pathways that could conceivably enhance insulin sensitivity down the road. And I think that explains some of the preclinical animal model work showing that

even independent of calories or whatever, if your weight's stable, you give exogenous ketones, that the insulin level comes down with even a given amount of carbohydrate. So the processing of those carbohydrates seems to be enhanced. Interesting. What we burned, how much does that matter? in terms of somebody kind of burning more carbohydrate on sort of a standard diet? Let's just say the person's not necessarily overweight versus somebody who's on more of a ketogenic diet who typically burns more fat who, again, is not overweight.

Is there a real difference that we've seen? Is there any studied information on whether the person that burns more carbohydrates maybe has a potential for dementia or any, any concerns. Or the respiratory quotient, does it play into that at all? I mean, all things being equal, it depends on the type of carbohydrates, you know, energy in, energy out kind of thing. If they're weight stable, if you take two given diets, carb-based and ketogenic diet and follow people and just there are weight stable.

And you're probably going to not find a whole lot of differences, to be honest, in the biomarkers, right? Although I think you would, for me, actually, I went on a carb-based diet for a couple of weeks and then measured insulin and it actually didn't change at all. But what I did notice in my blood work is that my high sensitivity C-reactive protein, which I always measure, is always like 0.1 or non-detectable when I'm on a well-formulated ketogenic diet. So I kept all things equal, added carbohydrates back in, in the form of some popcorn and sweet potatoes and maybe a few other things, like two or 300 grams a day for two or three weeks, I think, and then did repeated blood work.

And then my insulin, nothing really changed, but a couple of the things that did change, I remember, was that my HSCRP went to 1.1. And I think maybe there's some immune things going on when I reintroduce carbohydrates back in. Same exact thing with me. Yeah. Okay. 0.1 went to 0.8. Yep.

It's almost like ketosis is suppressing inflammation. And how it's doing that, I don't know. But that can also be the case just for you guys because maybe you've been on these diets for a long time. And then when you converted back over to having the carbohydrates, maybe there was some short-term inflammation or something. It's sustained though for me. So if my carbohydrates are higher, if I go through, because I follow more cyclical now, so I'll go through periods where I'm like 60 to 80 grams of carbs and then maybe 80 to 120 or whatever. So if I'm doing that for two or three months, I'll get repeated blood work and my high sensitivity CRP will be between 0.6 and 0.9 if I am not on keto.

If I am going stricter keto, it's usually not detectable. So there's something there that is sustained, not just an acute, you know, because it's like for me, if I am really, really strict keto and then I go a few weeks of having carbohydrates, I have sort of a temporary glucose intolerance that kind of occurs too, where I'm like the peripheral insulin resistance is still kind of there while I'm simmering down. So I would have expected high sensitivity CRP to kind of act like that too at first. Cause I'm like, okay, maybe this is just like a counter response where I'm having a spike in inflammation from coming off of being in ketosis. But no, it's sustained.

So I don't really have an explanation for it. I actually was pretty methodical about it and actually kept my calories the same and monitored my weight so I didn't go up. Actually, I might have lost a little bit. But my insulin did not go up, actually. When I added carbs back in, it stayed at 3.3, I think. But yeah, what trended up, and I've done this mini experiment many times, was my HSCRP. And I have to say that I didn't feel any kind of inflammation or anything, but it just showed up in my blood work. But when I go back to how I felt, especially when training heavy and stuff, more of a carb, I was always pretty much stored.

Delayed onset muscle soreness would carry over a lot. And being in nutritional ketosis, I don't have any inflammation in any of my joints or anything. There's like no signs of inflammation at all. And I think that could be beneficial for people who are sort of bad. I don't feel like I have any kind of autoimmune issues or anything, but my systemic inflammation is significantly depressed off. And I've seen, I mean, occasionally some people will have, when you initiate and start a ketogenic diet, it actually becomes, you get like a burst of reactive oxygen species.

And it's actually like a hormetic stress where people's CRP may increase initially. And then that hormetic stress can actually activate something called NRF2. And then that can kick on a series, a cascade of events that can further enhance antioxidant systems and then reduce inflammation later on. This is kind of an area that we're really interested in. So the initiation of a ketogenic diet can cause an initial increase in oxidative stress

and maybe inflammation. cause an initial increase in oxidative stress and maybe inflammation. But after you've adapted to it, inflammation generally goes down as do important inflammatory markers that are objective markers of inflammation. We're talking metabolic purgatory for just a second. As I call it metabolic purgatory when you're carb-fed, ketogenic, and then there's this gray area where you're not low enough carb to be producing ketones, but you're not high enough carbohydrate to really be glycolytic and kind of thriving that way. So you're in this, like I call it metabolic gray area. It's like,

it's the, the low carb sense without being actually ketogenic. That is an area for me that I hate being in. That is like a performance shithole. Like it's just like where it's like, I'm not producing, you know, I'm not getting the benefit of ketones being present, but I'm not getting the benefit of enough carbohydrates either. And I'm just like, I find in that phase, and I have a question for you, like in that phase, is it harder to replenish glycogen? You know, because if you're deep in ketosis, and this is my theory on it, if you're deep in ketosis, you're replenishing glycogen? You know, because if you're deep in ketosis, and this is my theory on it, if you're deep in ketosis,

you're replenishing glycogen via other pathways, via glycerol backbone and whatever, you know, gluconeogenesis. If I'm high carb, then obviously I'm replenishing glycogen that way. But if I'm low carb and I'm not glucose sparing, so I'm not actually activating GNG and these other things to store glycogen that way,

I'm just dependent on the carbohydrates that I'm consuming, which is just enough to get by, but not enough to replenish. Is that, am I accurate in that thinking? Or am I placeboing myself into feeling like shit in that low carb state? That's not full-blown keto. Yeah, I don't know.

It's, you know, I think it's very kind of a personal thing, like in kind of, you're describing like a metabolic limbo kind of state. I don't, I think you're still, you have incredible metabolic flexibility that your body could just, you know, just because you've been on it for a while, favor being in that nutritional ketosis. And in that metabolic limbo, what's probably happening is that you're hypoketotic. hypoketotic. So, I mean, evolutionarily speaking, I think we're always in a state of ketosis with limited food availability and also limited carbohydrate availability to the food that we had. So by suppressing ketosis, that's almost like an unnatural state and could be like an unnatural state for you. It's almost like your body is craving ketones and you're not giving enough

carbohydrates where you're probably so insulin sensitive that you're disposing of the carbohydrates so quick. So it's like you're hypoketotic, but then your glucose is probably, you're just kind of always riding that fine line of limited glucose availability to your central nervous system, right? So, because you're not really ramping up ketones a lot. So I think it's a very unique kind of state. And I think the, I think the idea is to transition like doing low carb, but doing intermittent fasting, maybe on that could, uh, could sort of circumvent that. And that could be maybe the way for most people to do it. Cause most people simply are not going to follow a ketogenic diet, but you could get the benefits of ketosis simply by eating within a compressed timeframe. And I mean, working in academia, it's logistically favorable to just

kind of eat within a compressed timeframe and be able to work and not get hungry. And, you know, so I think that could be maybe an advantage, you know, but it would be interesting to look at your glucose data, your CGM data, and actually see what was going on during that time. Yeah. You said a very quick response with any carbohydrates. It's a spike and done, you know, it's, it's in a pretty, pretty distinct secondary spike. It's like, boom, you know, and then done. So I definitely dispose of it pretty quick. A question that a lot of people are probably going to have that I'm kind of curious on

because I know the answer from my own anecdotal experience. I can essentially eat unlimited protein on a ketogenic diet and not have any problem. I can still be producing a decent amount of ketones. When I say unlimited, it's within reason. I'm not like purposely trying to get 600 grams in, but I mean, I can eat 300 grams and I will still be producing ketones. Maybe it's because I'm active and purposely trying to get 600 grams in. But I mean, I can eat 300 grams and I will still be producing ketones.

Maybe it's because I'm active and there's a demand. In a sitting or like just- No, okay. Yeah, okay. I've done that. I mean, it's like two pounds of meat. I mean, you're pushing. Yeah, I guess I probably have.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm just, the common concern, okay, well, too much protein's gonna kick me out of keto. And obviously, I think we know that gluconeogenesis is demand-driven, not supply-driven. So, you know, by consuming extra protein, you're not going to just like produce this glucose spike that's going to magically kick you out of ketosis. But if I were to go completely ham, could I? Because I've never pushed it that far. And someone had called me out online i don't it

was no one of any significance but they god damn no it's okay scratch that no keep it it's funny that's hilarious that's all i used to i said that before on something and uh my wife called me out on it and it was just like it's so bad to say anyway yeah you're fine you're fine they're not important you guys know who he's talking about no no it was a polite it's a polite way of saying they were an asshole like they were they were just uh making making an asshole comment so they were of no no significance but um they did call me out and saying like, hey, because it was on a comment about something where someone was concerned with, oh, they mentioned something about, I mentioned how much protein I was eating. And their comment, this kind person that was just wanting an answer first said, oh, so have you changed your stance on ketosis

since like you're talking about having high protein? And I had replied to them and said, I've always been a fan of pretty high protein ketogenic diet because I don't do a therapeutic ketogenic diet. I do it for me, for how I feel in performance. And someone, this person that was insignificant comes in and kind of flexes their mental muscles and tries to explain that, you know, protein is going to blunt ketogenesis and, uh, this and that. And on one hand, like, yes, they're right. But if someone is really active and where does that come into play?

Where is the line? Cause there is a line with it. I'm assuming. Yeah. I mean, if you were managing epilepsy, I would say this was a problem. Yeah. But given like your activity level and your ability to process assimilate and put protein into muscle and, you know, your body is when you eat that amount of protein, it's not like all of it's liberated into the bloodstream. Your liver is pretty greedy and actually stores a lot of those amino acids.

And then, you know, it's titrated out through the next day and maybe the day after that. But I would just do a combination of subjectively how you feel. And if these super high protein diets, like the carnivore diet, I know you're doing like, and you're eating, you know, four or five ribeyes a day or whatever. And your, your cardiometabolic biomarkers and your blood work and your blood pressure and everything is good and you feel good by virtue of objective biomarkers and subjectively how you feel and how you're performing in the gym then i would say go with that diet you know if you enjoy eating it but uh i've never found any drawback i mean basically the more protein i eat the bigger i get you know what i mean i mean i can go back to my teenage years or whatever, early 20s, where I was eating 500 grams of protein a day.

I remember two or three pounds of London broil and washing it down. Back in the day, there was Metrix with HMB. I was using it and I would just wash down a two-pound London broil. I mean, and I never saw anything. My liver enzymes always trended high, like in the 50s, with super high protein. And now they're in the 20s so drinking metrics with a protein with a with a steak is very impressive like metrics will break the original metrics will like break your blender i remember so i was using metrics when i was playing high school football when it came i don't know if you all know you guys i'm

like the oldest guy here by far i'm like almost 50, but it came in the base and the plus. And you would mix the base and the plus together. And I would throw in Cytomax, which had alpha L-polylactate, which was, I got interested in lactate before the ketones. But yeah, I knew metrics even before it came in like the little, it was base and the plus. Do you remember that? Scott Connelly, I remember. Oh, yeah. So it had an activator?

Is that what you're saying? Well, it had a base and then the plus, I believe, might have been the whey protein isolate. And I think the base might have been the concentrate. And they never told you what the base was like. Dr. Scott Connelly was amazing. I don't even think there was whey protein yet. I think that was like calcium because it was a casein protein, I think. Because I think designer whey brought out whey protein and Dan Duchesne and all protein, I think. Yeah. Because I think designer whey brought out whey protein

and Dan Duchesne and all that, I think. And it kind of, well, it had no taste, but it kind of tasted really, it was creamy. It was good. The literature that came with it, I used to subscribe to Muscle Media 2000. This is like predates you guys or whatever. But the literature that came with it

was written by Dr. Scott Connolly. And that guy could make a glass of water sound like a technological innovation. Like, I mean, like he described, like, I was just so excited to use this. It was a huge placebo effect when I started taking this because I was like one of the first users of metrics, like back in the day. And I believe that that product was superior to the products that came out. I don't know if there's other products at that time that had something similar, but there was clearly like some gums, you know,

gum type thing. They use gar. So what I used to do when metrics powder came out every night, I would dump two packets of metrics in a bowl and put water in it with like, I would cut up a banana and I would stir it. So it would be like a pudding. It reminded me of that stuff that they would use in school to like clean up someone's puke you know they would like throw that paint shit on like someone's barf or whatever and then it

would just like turn it into like a solid that's what the original metrics were like guard gum yeah so that was a soluble fiber that they added to it so when you added water it would kind of gel up so yeah yeah so which it's good soluble fiber actually that's amazing so thomas uh using i guess as a as a meter it's kind of not fair but using your youtube channel as a meter are people still interested in the ketogenic diet meaning is it still as popular as it was maybe a couple years ago it's hard to tell because it's hard to tell what drives the algorithm right it's uh is the algorithm being driven by discussion or are there favorable mediums for the algorithm that you want to talk about? I would definitely say that there is significantly less interest as

far as what happens algorithmically. If you put a video, but at the risk of sounding conspiracy-ish, I don't know. It also seems like it's weirdly suppressed, but I don't know if that is just, hey, there's this less interest. So it seems that way, but there did seem to be a pretty sharp drop off. Who knows?

I mean, I'm not saying that it is any nefarious acts going on, but it does seem weird that all of a sudden it just kind of got weird. I don't know. But it's also gauging on what I see in comments and what I see in that. I feel like sometimes the ketogenic community lost some of the battle to the really loud people in the room that were just always fighting it and always candidly kind of pulling stuff out of the side of their mouth that wasn't really accurate about the ketogenic diet. And I feel like we were such a loud minority, but we just couldn't, we can't outdo that. Like there's just, it was coming from all angles. And a lot of people, you know, in the scientific community and also just integrity driven keto people, like I wouldn't consider myself in the scientific community per se. I'm not a scientist, but I had a pretty good scientific head on my shoulders about it.

You feel defeated because it's just like, how many times can I say this before? Like, I just have to stop saying this because you're just getting bombarded from every which angle. And then you realize, you know, I kind of came to the school of thought that like the cream is going to rise to the top. Like if you just keep it high level and you talk about that stuff. So now, I mean, the people that want to hear about it, find it. There was a while there where it was actually hard to find keto content. It was getting kind of weird.

Like it would post a keto video and then it wouldn't show up on search or something. So it was like, this is bizarre. So it's hard to tell if there's less interest or if maybe there's still some interest there. It's just other things have gotten louder. And you've probably seen online, there's like a really big movement to just going to Whole Foods. Not like literally walking, going to shop at Whole Foods, but like eating Whole Foods. And I feel like a lot of people have just resigned to that. Although I fully respect and condone eating Whole Foods, I feel like people have resigned to that because they got so burnt out on the back and forth of low carb, high carb, this, that. They're just like, well, what's something we, even subconsciously, what's something we can all agree on? Whole foods, right?

But now we still manage to fucking fight about that too. There's no shame in wanting to have great sex. And there's no shame for wanting your member to perform the way it should be. A lot of us sometimes have some issue with blood flow, but that's where joy mode comes in. Let me read you these ingredients because it's not going to be very long.

Vitamin C, L-citrulline, arginine nitrate, and panic skin sing. The cool thing about the ingredients in this is that they're all natural and that they're going to help you increase your blood flow, not just everywhere. So you could use this as a pre-workout. You will increase blood flow when it counts to where you need it. So if you know you're going to have a good time a little bit later, 60 minutes beforehand, put some Joy Mode in some water, drink it. And then when it comes time to perform, and you know what I mean by perform, you're going to be ready because you're going to be flowing. Joy Mode is going to help you do that.

Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at usejoymode.com slash powerproject. And at checkout, enter promo code powerpro power project to save 20 off your entire order again use joy mode dot com slash power project promo code power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes people love to eat stuff that's like made or produced you know that's not natural so i think a ketogenic diet maybe just a few years ago was like really enticing to people because they had stuff at Costco for it. They got keto bread. None of these diets – there has never been any diet intervention that we've had in this country where we added processed foods and that was a net benefit.

It is nice to have options. It's great to have some options, but we saw that with the low-fat movement. They made a lot of low-fat products, and that didn't really work really well because they were ultra-processed foods that you're still going to overeat. And then they did it in the keto community. They did it with gluten, and this just keeps happening over and over again. With keto, it's been hard because you get to the cholesterol discussion really fast. And that's just sketchy territory for people to talk about. And I don't know if the algorithms like it either, because you just get into this territory where with keto, specifically talking about fats, alarms start going off for people that are just naive to it. They don't know how that works.

And you end up in a really sketchy discussion really fast for most people that don't have the scientific background to really hold it up. So like with low fat and this and that, it's a little bit easier of a discussion. With vegan, they can kind of skirt that really quick. There's people that talk about it with keto, it's right there in your face. Oh, you're telling me to eat cheese? Well, what's that going to do? And then you're there, right? So I think that's where I just noticed that people were having a hard time trying to fight that fight online. And they finally just kind of threw in the towel. I don't know if you've noticed that too. Well, the education outreach needs to be more nuanced and context dependent, right? So I think a big driver, I'm looking at this metabolic psychiatry roadmap, which was a conference that attended in Santa Barbara.

And it's a movement essentially driven by Jan and David Buzuki. So this whole field of metabolic psychiatry has really taken off. of metabolic psychiatry has really taken off. And I think that's probably contributing to the algorithmic, if that's a term, drive of the ketogenic diet, because Chris Palmer's book, for example, being on all the major news networks and this idea that food impacts mood, right? Who would have thought that, right? So a big, I mean, his book, Brain Energy is an amazing book that really talks about our mitochondrial health. Chris Palmer's at Harvard, and there's many other academics that are spearheading this movement of metabolic psychiatry that enhancing brain energy metabolism by virtue of improving metabolic health is going to be

probably one of the biggest topics right now with the ketogenic diet. So I think that's important because not only for people with bipolar, schizophrenia, anxiety, or even anorexia, but for the general population that just are not in a good state of mind. And that includes a large chunk of the population that this idea that we could follow a ketogenic diet and that it could change, you know, not only brain energy metabolism, but change the neuropharmacology of our brain to balance our neurotransmitters more into homeostasis. And that's what really being into ketosis is all about, I think, and like the major academics that you talk to, like every neurodegenerative disease is pathophysiologically linked to energy dysregulation and dysregulation

of neurotransmitters. And what the ketogenic diet does in seizure disorders is that it restores that independent of the etiology of what's causing the seizures. So you could have an inborn error metabolism, like glut one deficiency, you could have Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, you could have temporal lobe epilepsy. It improves brain energy metabolism and neurotransmitters such that it metabolically manages the seizures. So with bipolar, what do you do with bipolar? You give them anti-seizure drugs. That's how you manage it. So you have a disorder that's used, you know, that's treated with anti-seizure drugs because of the energy dysregulation, because of the dysregulated neurotransmitter systems.

But that's a much bigger chunk of the population and discussion that needs to happen because there needs to be a very professional nuanced approach in getting someone off of anti-convulsant or anti-convulsant drugs, but also anti-psychotic drugs, which are used for that. So the transition of someone who has a psychiatric disorder onto a ketogenic diet and the maintenance of that ketogenic diet in a very tricky demographic, I think is an important area. Here's where I think some of these diets can be really- Everybody has anxiety too, right? I mean, everybody's basically self-medicating with over-caffeinating and taking Adderall. And I think many of these drugs that are being used in young kids and now adults too are using a lot of these essentially amphetamines. And I

think we're ramped up on stimulants and then that's contributing to anxiety and contribute to a mild level of psychosis that I think could be effectively treated with a dietary intervention that something simple as a modified ketogenic diet. I want to ask a question in a second, maybe write it down. I don't know, but I want to circle back to modafinil in a second because you might be able to answer some questions I've got on that. But if I'm hearing you correctly. That's another one too that a lot of people are using. Yeah. I do think that when the ketogenic diet became a diet that was just the fat loss components of it were eclipsing the other effects is when we started having a problem online.

Like is that's when it started becoming less about like, hey, the effectiveness of this diet for all kinds of therapeutic use cases and clinical use cases. Sure, there's fat loss effects. sure there's fat loss effects but the moment that that eclipsed everything else that's that's the beginning of the end because that's when it gets labeled a fat diet that's when so whenever else one else runs with it with that that's what actually got frustrating to me too it's like all right we can stop talking about this because at the end of the day like thermodynamics still apply this is still important. We still need to talk about these other things. We still need to talk about, you know, polymorphisms. We still need to talk about all these other things that are associated with

obesity. And we can't just like lean into the ketogenic diet as the sole reason, you know, sole way for people to combat obesity. So when it just became a fad diet because of that, that's when it was a problem because it's not a fad diet. But it certainly made it look like one. Well, the history of it is incredible. It's remarkable. But I do think maybe the low-hanging fruit now is understanding this idea that our mood and our behavior and our state of psychological being is intimately tied to our metabolic health, which is intimately tied to brain energy metabolism and our neurotransmitter

systems. You know, even people don't realize this, but like the neurotransmitters that we have in our brain are made by the mitochondria. Like for example, monoamine oxidase is an enzyme that's made in the mitochondria and that improving mitochondrial health is a way to restore neurotransmitter balance. And a lot of psychiatrists will say diet and metabolism have nothing to do with psychiatric illnesses because it's tied to dysregulated neurotransmitters. But that's the mitochondria are what you're targeting on a metabolic intervention. And then that is intimately tied to healthy levels of neurotransmitters, our mitochondrial function. And that's kind of the whole basis behind Chris Palmer's book, which I think is really

putting himself out there as someone who practices. And I mean, we've actually known this for a while though in the field of epilepsy in that you're changing fundamentally how the brain is fueled. And by virtue of doing that, you have the Krebs cycle and the mitochondria and many different processes.

That's actually the source of the neurotransmitters. So the mitochondrial function and the Krebs cycle intermediates, many of these things like alpha-ketoglutarate, for example, and glutamate and GABA. And even when you follow a ketogenic diet, and we've actually showed with exogenous ketones, it can increase glutamic acid decarboxylase and GAD-65 and 67. So this is an enzyme that takes an excitatory neurotransmitter linked to seizures and linked to psychiatric illnesses, which would be glutamate. So people who have these disorders

have too high glutamate and it stimulates the production of an enzyme, glutamic acid decarboxylase, that converts that excitatory neurotransmitter into GABA, which is a brain-stabilizing, calming neurotransmitter. And many anti-seizure drugs work through their GABAergic function, Vigabatrin, for example. So you have a dietary intervention that could do it endogenously and put neurotransmitters back into balance. And I think just by doing that, of course it can control seizures, but I mean, for anxiety, depression, and many other psychiatric illnesses and neurodegenerative diseases are pathophysiologically linked to this energy dysregulation and neurotransmitter balance. And I think we're now

starting to appreciate, and I think that's going to maybe drive the algorithm too, because people are going to want to feel better, right? Because people have anxiety, people have their psychiatric illnesses in your family. So I'm excited about that area of research with the ketogenic diet, probably more than anything else and on the cancer front too. Could, I'm just curious, if somebody isn't able to sustainably go low, like go keto, but instead they go very, very low carbohydrate, would they be able to sustainably go low like go keto but instead they go very very low carbohydrate would they be able to yield some of the sim like some similar psychiatric benefits just because one thing that i that i just see that people have a problem with keto is sticking to it

sticking to actual keto but low carbohydrate does seem to be something that more people are able to handle that could move the needle needle. I think processed food, overconsumption of processed food and our metabolic health, insulin resistance, diabetes, those things are contributors to psychiatric illnesses. So just improving our food quality

is probably the first step. And then a ketogenic diet is like a prescription diet intervention. And I'm in contact with numerous people that they're on a low carb diet, they've cleaned up their diet, they've done paleo whole 30 or whatever, and they've ate a very clean diet,

but only in the state of therapeutic ketosis when their ketones are elevated and sustained, could they manage, for example, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. So in that context, I think it becomes super important. But the first step, yeah, is just like kind of getting the crap out of your diet and cleaning up your diet. And then with a registered dietitian or someone knowledgeable that can coach you onto inducing ketosis. So when you induce ketosis in someone with a psychiatric illness, so there could be, you know, uh,

mania associated with that because you're abruptly changing a lot of systems at once. And it's kind of like a stress initially. So it needs to be, basically we need to create, uh, a whole field of metabolic psychiatry practitioners and associated dietitians that could implement and do this therapy for them. And I think that's a huge need right now. And we can't forget that fasting. Fasting and keto, they sort of mimic each other a little bit. So with a little bit of fasting, maybe with a little bit of ketones from a supplement,

maybe with a little bit of MCT and you're just like low carb, but maybe you're not super hardcore about it, You might start to feel some really good benefits. We were visited a few years back by Dr. Sean Baker and he's been a reoccurring guest and everybody knows he, you know, shares the ideas of the carnivore diet. But when he came out here, I had breakfast with him, my brother and my cousin. And my cousin is probably about 185, 190 pounds now. And at the time, I think he was like 240. And he's a shorter guy. So he weighed way too much for his height.

And so he was able to lose a lot of weight via the carnivore diet. But the interesting thing is how deep and how far things can go, because not only did it help him, because it helped him, it also helped his son. And his son was suffering with just crippling anxiety. His son went to college after he graduated high school and tried to move just a few hours away from home and just couldn't, he was not able to do it. And even when he was in high school, something that seems fairly easy to us or we don't even think about, just going to school was very challenging for him. So getting a job and just – you name it, it was very difficult and challenging for this young man at that time. And over a period of time, he started to kind of see what his dad was doing. He started to ask some questions and his dad's like, I really think, you know, we've talked

about it before. I really think this diet could really help you because it's helping me. It's helping me manage my life, helping me manage my weight. I think it could be beneficial. And so he started to utilize the diet and now, you know, he has a job, he's got a girlfriend, like things are going smooth and things are going good. And my brother just interviewed him because my brother's working on another film. And my brother was like, did you ever think that food would have this big of an impact? And he's like, if I thought that or knew that, he's like, I would have done it right away. But he's like, I just had no idea. I just didn't think that that was possible for it to change my life like this.

And he lost weight and probably improved body composition. He looks like a completely different person. When I saw him, when I saw my cousin's cousin, which is kind of, he's almost like my nephew, I guess you'd say. When I saw him a few years back, he looked like he aged significantly. And then I saw him maybe about a year or two ago and he looked amazing. He looked like a young guy again. And I was like, holy shit. This impact is absolutely mind boggling. People listening to this may say that any

dietary intervention that dramatically changes body composition, has these body composition alterations and probably improving, if you did blood work, all these metabolic biomarkers is going to improve mental health. Like you look better, you feel better, and that could potentially be done with any diet, calorie restriction. Yeah, in this case, he didn't really lose a lot of weight. So I don't think he was really all that calorie restricted. Lost a little bit. There are cases where, yeah, people are independent of changes in weight.

They can go into remission with a dietary intervention. And that could be epilepsy, psychiatric disorders and, and other things. So that's like important to understand. But yeah, that's incredible. And I think, yeah, so the father was really sort of set the, and it's so important for the family to, especially with kids, like the parents really need to step up and just clean out the house. I mean, because if it's junk food, it's in the house is going to be eaten by somebody. And they just, it starts with grocery shopping, right? You'd have to kind of, uh, not buy things. It's becomes exclusion in the beginning, but, um, yeah, that's a pretty cool story. I was just, uh, in Scottsdale last

week, I was interviewing, uh, Michaela Petersonela Peterson. And I mean, she literally only eats strip steak. That's it. That's it. And I, when I sat down with her, I was expecting this sort of potentially dogmatic view, right? I was pleasantly surprised that she's just like, no, I'm like, if I didn't have to eat this diet, I actually wouldn't. And she's like, I know. I like, if I didn't have to eat this diet, I actually wouldn't. And I'm like, she's like, I know. I mean, I love food. She's like, this is the only thing that keeps my mental condition in check. And she kind of talked to me about, you know, her mental issues. And then she

goes, you know, my dad, we suffer the same psychiatric issues. And she kind of explained how, you know, Jordan Peterson has these psychiatric issues and that that's why he adopted that diet too. It was not that he really wants to. And this point is, I love that kind of diet. I like that kind of food, but there's people out there that would actually prefer not to.

But the point is, is that like, that's how they manage this genetic psychiatric issue that they have. She didn't go into a lot of detail with what it was, but she basically, I mean, she's, so she was a nightmare before this diet. And also a myriad of different autoimmune conditions as well. And I know Jordan's talked about it. I think he talked about it on Rogan. I think he talked a little bit about his,

you know, it's just so wild because these are people, I guess why I asked him, I was like, how's your dad, you know, digging the diet right now? He's like, ah, you know, he doesn't like, like it, but it's the best he's ever felt. And my mom's on it now too. And same kind of thing is the best she's ever felt. So, I mean, it just goes to say like, it's not always just this tribalistic view that people think it is like, oh, it's like, you only want to eat meat. Oh, well, that's just, you're, that's just this narrow minded view. No, for a lot of people, like they're, I don't know whether it's the fact that you're eliminating other things or if it's something additive that's coming from ketone formation or whatever. Like, no matter what the case is, there's a number of people that really just, like, they are in a lot of pain and a lot of misery until they adopt something like that.

I think it really quiets the mind in a way, at least for me, and allowed me to focus and get done what I needed to get done in academia, like starting a tenure track position. My productivity was higher. So one thing I wanted to mention because I don't know the whole story, but I think Jordan Peterson may have had some substance abuse problems. I think he did in the past, yeah. Okay. So I was just on a PhD dissertation and it just came to mind of the use of the ketogenic diet for alcohol use disorder and also benzodiazepine withdrawal. And I think that alcohol and benzodiazepine drugs are a huge problem. And people looking to get off these drugs may find it very beneficial. I mean, the preclinical animal model work and some of the clinical trials that are being done now, and I've had like a little bit of a window into some of that preliminary data,

suggests that being in a state of therapeutic ketosis can tremendously, actually when you're on alcohol, the brain is kind of fueled off acetate and then the beta-hydroxybutyrate acetoacetate can kind of replace that from an energetic standpoint. So, and some of the neuropharmacology that I've seen associated with the ketogenic diet suggests that this could be a very viable option for people wanting to break addiction from, in this case, alcohol use disorder, but also benzodiazepine withdrawal, especially with like the elevation of GABA that you get in a ketogenic diet. Like even we're talking about a twofold

or threefold increase, at least we've seen in animal models. So, and I know your brother had problems with substance abuse too. And I think it's just a problem that we're not really talking about. And not only the opioids were a problem, but I think benzodiazepine drugs,

from my understanding, is probably maybe even a bigger problem for some people. And let's face it, alcohol is a problem too. Oh, alcohol, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's, and it's, when I had Chris Palmer in my office a little while back, he was, we were talking about the same thing. And it came to mind, you know, we all know those people that are functioning alcoholics, where they actually don't feel normal unless they're drinking. alcoholics where they actually don't feel normal unless they're drinking. And Chris and I were talking about that and how there's almost this metabolic insufficiency like that they, when they drink the alcohol, they get that acetate and it gets them that they actually, their brain actually

feels more normal on alcohol. So giving them ketones can essentially do that for them minus the alcohol. Yeah. So it's like gives them that effect of, I need to be functional. So I need to drink alcohol. Okay. I need to be functional, but if I can elevate ketones, then I can satisfy that itch a little bit. Yeah. And this is like one of the emerging applications. Like if you go to clinical trials.gov on a registered clinical trials, there are several trials on using ketogenic interventions for alcohol withdrawal syndrome. So it's just like, you know, 10 years ago, you would never think something like this,

like a diet would be used for that. So yeah, it's, I think we're starting to gain an appreciation and all this, there's a lot of research being done now that'll hit PubMed in the next five to 10 years. And I think it's just going to add more credibility of the ketogenic diet as at least as a medical intervention. So I think it's always going to be debated as a lifestyle intervention in regards to, you know, if it's superior for performance or fat loss or weight loss or whatever. But I don't think that'll ever die.

It's sort of hard to, like if you haven't ever done a ketogenic diet, it's kind of hard to understand how good it feels to get into ketosis. Most people speaking against it have never truly done it. Right, right. And it also – like there's probably a reason why it takes – it can take a couple weeks sometimes for somebody to even achieve like I guess clinical ketosis you would call it, right? like I guess clinical ketosis you would call it right um and once you're in it though it seems to be like easier to stay on it once you're in it because of the benefits and then you're like I don't really like screw that other food I don't really care for that you are in the mood most of

the time for these fattier cuts of meat and these fattier foods and you're encouraged to kind of continue onward with it and staying on the diet and uh doing your disciplines gets to be easier and you were mentioning a story where you were trying to like just eat more and more because somebody told you like you know hey just eat as much as you can until like you you gain some body fat dr tommy wood you know yeah i mean he's been a metabolic health summit just spoke last year yeah in a practice like that well it will it will draw it will drive a lot of the behaviors that you have. You'll find yourself walking a little bit more.

You'll find yourself lifting a little bit more. We know that there's more non-exercise activity, thermogenesis going on. So there's a nice bump in all these different things when we have extra energy coming in. And I think a ketogenic diet is kind of perfect for that because it keeps you sort of locked into this very particular way of eating. And when I just went to Iceland, that's why when I went there a couple of days prior, I was like, oh, I'm just going to kind of switch to, I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates anyway. So I'm just going to do a little bit more of a keto style diet. And when I went there,

I brought some keto bricks with me and I brought some carnivore crisps with me and they have fatty fish. So it was pretty easy to do, ate some eggs and stuff like that. And a friend of mine asked me, they're like, why are you doing this? You know, like why, like, why don't you just relax when you go on vacation? I'm like, no, I am relaxed. This, I actually like to eat this way. This is comfortable for me. And I love the brain impact of it. And my daughter got sick. My wife felt like crap with the food she was eating, even though she did pretty good food-wise. My son was drinking the entire time.

And I felt good. I felt good the whole time. Did you train while you were there? A little bit. Yeah, a little bit of training just like body weight stuff and just some walking and stuff like that but yeah it looked amazing yeah yeah it was fun when you're i mean traveling there's nothing easier than keto when you're traveling like for me it's like when are you gonna find like if you're trying to find clean carbs you

know when was the last time you saw a sweet potato in a vending machine you know it's like but i like that was a big selling point for me because at the time I got into, I was traveling to a lot of conferences and talks and stuff like that. And I was like, man, this is so easy. I just, I just remember the days of getting hungry after eating like rice and fish and like two hours. I mean, you'd be hard. I lost weight though. So I would like to add like, you know, when I started keto and even by Dexa confirmed, but that was probably just more of a calorie restriction thing and just doing way too much intermittent fasting because I got so excited about how I felt. Yeah, I probably just restricted a little bit too much. But, you know, over the last 15 years, maybe like 18 pounds of lean body mass, you know, I lost.

But then that's like aging too. I mean, that happens. Yeah, it's just so easy to find a burger patty anywhere. I mean, I have never, and I mean, never been in a situation following a ketogenic diet where I haven't been able to find something that I could eat that fits what I'm supposed to eat. Like every other dietary intervention I've done, I've run into roadblocks when i'm traveling uh okay do you put oil in your rice okay i can't do the rice um okay you have steamed veggies now they're drenched in butter i shouldn't do that but a keto it's just like no matter where i go

i can find a burger patty even if it's a crap burger patty you can bring canned fish and canned meats and keto crisp and keto bars yeah this keto bars. Yeah. That's what Sardines is this morning, right? Yeah. Keto bar and canned mackerel or sardines. Yeah. I want to finish this podcast up with this kind of last topic. And then we'll take a break and we'll roll into another one because I think we should do two with you guys. So it'll be a little bit of a long day.

But I want to kind of finish on this note with this monkey chow. day, but I want to kind of finish on this note with this monkey chow, the study that was done where they had the monkeys and the calorie deficit. I know that you know about it. I'm sure that you've heard some stuff about this. Bethesda, Maryland, Madison, Wisconsin. I think it's pretty interesting to bring up. So if you guys can kind of take it away. I recently posted a video about it because I had interviewed Paul Saladino and Peter Attia on different situations, on different occasions. And they both talked about this same study and they both agreed on the same exact things. And they were both, and I wanted to post it as an interesting thing to be like, look at these people that people like, these two people that people tend to say like,

oh, I can't stand Paul Saladino or I like peter attia or vice versa my you guys at the end of the day like a lot of us are after the same damn thing and like you got these two i don't want to call them polar opposites because they're really not polar opposites but different opinions and they're both talking about this same you know i think it was journal nutrients uh was it institute of age our national institute of aging or something like that but yeah um anyway so yeah it was the bethesda maryland monkeys that consume that science paper came out in like 2008 or 9 yeah i mean it's an older study and it's like so herculean it'll never ever be replicated because they spent so much money and so much

into it maybe not with this new what is 190 billion what is it what's the new study that's coming out i don't want to go off on a tangent, but like $90 billion or million dollar. Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about that later, but that might eclipse it. But anyway, yeah, they took monkeys, rhesus monkeys, Madison, Wisconsin, that ate traditional monkey chow and then Bethesda, Maryland, rhesus monkeys that consumed a diet that was a little bit more like what they would eat in the wild. It was just a more balanced kind

of whole food diet. I think they gave them some nuts and some fruits and things like that. They put them both in a deficit. And essentially, I mean, the bottom line is that the monkeys that were on the whole food diet, the deficit did not really improve their lifespan. But the monkeys that ate crap, the deficit did. And I think what it highlighted is that nutrient quality, at least in rhesus monkeys, definitely mattered. There's obviously a lot of nuance with that study because you got to ask all kinds of different questions, like were they exposed to illnesses and things like that? They wouldn't be in the wild or whatever. But yeah, I mean, it's, I don't know.

So you mean the processed food diet, calorically restricted? So I think both were calorically restricted. Yeah, yeah. It's just the processed food diet, that was the only diet in which caloric restriction actually increased lifespan. Yeah. So essentially the monkeys that were eating more whole food approach

caloric restriction didn't increase their lifespan not and up until now that anything any am i am i incorrect almost every diet that has caloric restriction shows an increase in lifespan yeah somewhere. Somewhere. Yeah, but the caloric restriction made a pretty significant impact when it was just kind of the monkey chow, kind of lower quality diet. What it kind of begs the question is, okay, does obviously caloric restriction matters.

And there was still an impact with the sort of, it's called the whole food group, right? But it wasn't nearly as significant as with the low quality diet. Is that going to be translatable to humans? I don't know. Because the existing low quality diet,

I'm trying to remember the details, resulted, so their baseline was different. Are you saying that's like part of it too? So I can't remember if calorie, I think calories were matched as much as like, right? So it was, but that's just what was interesting was basically when their diet was not a nutrient dense diet when they're essentially feeding them garbage caloric deficit made a big impact oh yeah yeah but it didn't make as much of an impact when their diet was high quality yeah yeah so it's like

being in a deficit seems to matter more the worse your diet is. So it's like if you were just eating processed food, perhaps a caloric deficit would impact you a lot more than me eating nothing but whole foods and going into caloric deficit. Yeah. So the benefits of caloric restriction are kind of, yeah, much more pronounced, but given the baseline diet. Correct. Yeah, that was a big takeaway from that. I remember now that. And yeah, I think that's an important takeaway too.

I mean, people following the standard American diet, if they can simply calorie restrict, they're going to get a lot of benefits, right? But it's kind of hard to do it in the context. But if you go from a standard American diet and you calorie restrict with a ketogenic diet, then I think in my mind, then those benefits are going to be greatly amplified. Of course. Right? And I think that's a bigger kind of like, that would be an interesting study. Yeah. And also probably easier to calorie restrict on a ketogenic diet. Can you eat a little bit more on a ketogenic diet? Like, isn't there some like flux of calories, but I don't know how significant it is. Yeah. So this is quite a debate right now that's going on.

And I think the effect, I would say, yes, you can eat more calories, slightly more on a ketogenic diet, but I think it's kind of negligible. Like 2% or something? Yeah. I mean, even if you look at ketones, so if you're in a state of ketosis and you're peeing, then you could actually have a hundred calories of ketones in the course of a day if you're in a high state of ketosis. So there's that. And then depending upon the macronutrient ratio, if the ketogenic diet is higher in protein, then you have the specific dynamic action or thermic effect of food. And then that takes 20% to 30% of the actual energy of the food for the enzymatic mechanical

digestion associated with it. So I think that a high protein ketogenic diet, you have a lot of things going for you. You have the high satiating effect. You have the situation where it's not hyperpalatable. You're not going to overeat it. And then the thermic effect of the high protein and then the mild sort of calorie loss that you get with that sustained nutritional ketosis. So you have many, and then the therapeutic effects on that too, by balancing brain energy, basically telling your brain you have enough energy because of the ketones can energize the brain. And once your brain

goes into an energetic crisis that can stimulate eating, right? A dip in blood glucose. So all these things are kind of mitigated and in your favor if you're on a low carb ketogenic diet. However, some people may say the randomized controlled trials don't kind of spot, but I think, and I think there's some truth to that, but I think a well-formulated ketogenic diet just has so many things going for it so many things going for it that I think it's going to win overall as the optimal way to lose weight fast and to sustain that weight. I think people can do it if they don't take things too out of control in regards to being overly what you would call orthorexic about it and measuring things. Where can people find your product and where can they find out more about you, Dom? Well, that's not my product, but it's the product that I use.

It's Audacious Nutrition Keto Start, exogenous ketones that I use. I love Keto Brick, as you do too. Bell's Brownie Batter is like one of the best. Keto Brains is what I put in my coffee every morning. Website is ketonutrition.org. And yeah, Metabolic Health Summit too. I'd like to plug that because I'm a co-organizer for the Metabolic Health Summit,

which basically talks about many of the things that we are discussing today. Ketogenic diets, metabolic interventions for neurological disorders, cancer, metabolic psychiatry, and human optimization, which we had some fantastic speakers. Kyle Gillette, I don't know if you've talked to him. Absolutely. Amazing guy. Yeah. Andy Galpin, Tommy Wood. So yeah, go to metabolichealthsummit.com. We have some great content and ketonutrition.org. You intentionally kept yourself separate from a lot of these companies, right? To be able to

kind of provide the science that you're researching without it being skewed. Is that right? Yeah. I like to be kind of agnostic to different companies. But I like to work with companies that develop products that have ingredients that we've used for our research. And I think that's a big theme of what we're doing. I think that's a big theme of what we're doing. Actually, RX Sugar is like one of those companies in that I became very interested in allulose after going to the literature. So we're doing some very interesting studies with allulose.

And a scientific advisor for that should disclose that. I'm excited about the entrepreneurs that are entering this space create various technologies, whether it be an app like the Levels Health app or exogenous ketones or different things that will make compliance and sustainment of ketogenic diets easier. And I think we should embrace the entrepreneurial spirit of people entering this field and support them as much as possible because they're helping to advance the science and the application of these ketogenic interventions where can people find you thomas uh i would highly recommend that they don't um no just uh type in my name kind of pops up everywhere and you probably have a harder time avoiding me than you do fighting me once you watch one

video all your videos i noticed that yeah that's it you don't want to be peppered you can't you can't avoid me i just don't strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later bye