Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 338 - Dom D'Agostino

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Dr. Dominic D’Agostino is the “King of Keto”. As the world’s leading expert on the Ketogenic diet, nutritional and supplemental ketosis, Dr. D'Agostino has worked with the United States military and NASA to help enhance the performance of war fighters and astronauts, is a professor at the University of South Florida and the Morsani College of Medicine, as well as a certified aquanaut. On top of that, he deadlifted 500lbs after fasting for 7-days straight. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT10" at checkout for $10 off $40 or more! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

And good. What is happening, y'all? Hey there. Today is a low-carb day. Oh. You know, it's that low-carb lifestyle. We got Dr. Dominic D'Agostino on the podcast today, and I'm excited for that. You know, it's been a long time coming. We've been talking about getting him here, and we haven't been able to arrange that, so we're just going to have him via satellite today. Mm-hmm. via satellite today. But, you know, one way to like stay on these low carb diets is to try to come up with a plan and try to have, you know, some foods that taste delicious that you can rely on, you know, in your times of cravings and also, you know, maybe get some nutrients in your

body that help you to keep your calories moderate, you know, and some of the products from Perfect Keto do that. We've been utilizing the MCT oil powders in our coffee. They have the chocolate. They have sea salt, salted caramel, rather, and then they have the vanilla. So they have a bunch of different flavors that you can try. In addition to that, they have whey protein. They have a nootropic prop product.

That's really good. They have electrolyte products. They got all kinds of different stuff. I really liked the bars when craving something, you know, people ask me all the time, how do you, you know,

cure the sweet tooth? I don't know if you ever cure it, but you can, you know, hit it a little bit by, you know, eating a perfect keto bar. You can combat it,

as they say. Combat it. To be satisfied. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The perfect keto bar. You can combat it as they say. Combat it. Satisfied. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The thing that I was having a hard time with being satisfied. Anyways, if you guys want to get satisfied, head over to perfectketo.com slash power project at checkout, enter promo code power project 10 for $10 off any order of 40 or more.

Or if you go big and you hit the century mark, $100 use promo code power project bundle to save $25 off. Do you remember when we were in Florida and there was like an active shooter when we were hanging out with Dom D'Agostino? Yeah, that was crazy. I couldn't even tell Stephanie about it because I was like, man, she's going to be so worried

that there was an active shoot. It was scary. It was interesting, yeah. Yeah, it didn't make any sense. We were like, what's going on? Luckily, it was just a false alarm and we were we were okay oh yeah it was amazing to talk to him he's a wealth of knowledge he knows the keto diet inside and out because he's you know the they'll say uh oh you know the studies show this the studies show that or they said this they said that when they When they say they, they're talking about him. They're talking about Dom pretty much. I believe he's one of the reasons why BHB exists in the first place,

beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is a ketone. I think he came up with the concept with another researcher or scientist. And he's just incredible's incredible the information that he has and then the from what i've heard that he like stayed underwater for like 10 days straight or something like that 10 days he's like an aquanaut i don't understand how do you what do you do the keto must be the keto but i'm super excited to talk to don because he's big and he's jacked and he follows keto so like like i like I think all these things are cool, but I really like hearing from people who are applying it and they're also performing really well. I hate to say it, but when someone's telling me and giving me diet advice and they look frail and just it makes like I'll listen.

But in the back of my head, I'm just like, why are you not exercising? Why do you look the way you do? Like, I'll listen, but in the back of my head, I'm just like, why are you not exercising? Why do you look the way you do? So Dom is just like, he's super strong. He performs well. So this is going to be fun. I think a lot of times the researchers, you know, the real scientists, you know, like they're in the lab. They are scientific. They are, they go to like universities, you they they they're in school for a long period of

time and then they don't get out much you know they don't they don't get they don't train you know they don't lift and and dom isn't one of those people you know and we got other people like uh like guys like lane norton who are actually lifting like a silver medalist in um in the ipf like it like that's that's nothing to sneeze at that's a big deal that's huge and it's great to see these like high level performers that actually know the information too so we're fired up to talk to him i think he did a 500 pound deadlift for like 10 reps after fasting for multiple days i think he deadlifts over 600 pounds uh speaking of lane norton lane norton told me that uh dom was just like kicking his ass when they were training together um i think they've had the opportunity to train together i think they live in a similar

area so because they were on rogan together right yeah they had a debate on there that was pretty cool but yeah i'm with you and sema like i always think when somebody is so you know knowledgeable and she's like well why don't you practice what you preach yeah i don't you know it makes me sound like such a dick i don't want to take away like you can have a lot of knowledge i don't want to take away from anybody that like you know has that but i really really really care about application and seeing that application work if i can't see it work when it's applied that i'm just like it's cool you know i think i think the problem is it's like they don't place that much value on their own knowledge right it's like it's like you don't place that much value on their own knowledge. Right?

It's like you understand all this, but then you're not placing value on it because you're not making it matter that much to you and you're not performing it. And you're just like, eh. Kind of leaves you disappointed. You're like, I want more. I want to see these guys be smart and jacked and tan. Speaking of. There he is. Here we go. What's going on, Dominic?

Hey, Mark. How you doing? We're doing great. You hear me okay? Yeah, absolutely. We're excited to have you on the show. I know that you're always busy doing something, researching and everything else. So it's great to have you on the show today.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So is this a true or false statement here? BHB wouldn't exist without Dominic D'Agostino. You mean on the commercial market? Right. You know what? I think ketone esters definitely would at least one product, but I think I'm probably responsible for bringing it to the attention of the general public. I think it was sort of in the realm of government research. And I understood sort of the potential and maybe more broad implications.

And kind of working with Patrick Arnold, he might be a good guy to have on your show too. Absolutely. So I would have to say, not me specifically, but working with Patrick, this idea of ketone salts sort of got advanced. Let's just kind of start out with like, what is a ketone? And maybe like,

what are some advantages of even having ketones in your body? Yeah. Well, ketones historically were thought of as kind of metabolic poison, I would say. And they had a kind of a bad rap. wrap, but as our knowledge advanced on brain energy metabolism, I would say that the work from Dr. George Cahill, the late Dr. George Cahill, and now the late Dr. Richard Veach, who were pioneers in the field, they established that ketone bodies were alternative energy substrates for the brain. And some of the work suggested that it was a superior fuel so that the brain and the heart could actually function more efficiently on ketones.

And now the last five to 10 years, we know that ketones are sort of like a signaling molecule, even with hormone like effects. What does that mean to be a signaling molecule? What do you mean when you say that? Well, now we understand that all metabolites in the body, I would say like, you know, even acetyl-CoA and all the different intermediates of what's called the Krebs cycle, the energy cycle, those intermediates probably even's called the Krebs cycle the energy cycle the those intermediates probably even have signaling properties but when it comes specifically to beta hydroxybutyrate and we also study acetoacetate we know that beta hydroxybutyrate for example can suppress an inflammatory molecule or complex that's an inflammasome, the NLRP3 inflammasome,

actually. And that's actually the activation of that inflammasome is associated with age-related chronic diseases, also autoimmune diseases. And beta-hydroxybutyrate is a ketone, and it's doing that through a metabolic independent mechanism. So it's functioning outside of the realm of what we understand as classical metabolic pathways, and suppressing a pathway that when it's chronically activated can really be very harmful and implicated in a number of etiologies. So that's one example, but there's also like a ketone receptor. There's epigenetic effects of ketones, perhaps influencing the expression of genes that could be helpful and boosting our defense mechanisms against oxidative stress, for example. And so it's functioning independent and outside of its function as an energy molecule. It's having

sort of signaling effects. And that's probably the biggest, the hottest topic of ketone research right now. Coming off of the Metabolic Health Summit, which we had in LA, a lot of the top tier researchers are really redirecting their focus on ketones as a signaling molecule. So like, even if you were to eat carbohydrates, are we, is our body still producing ketones? And if so, is it in a decent enough amount? Like, let's just say you're on the standard American diet. Is there any situation where someone who's just on your average, ordinary American diet, where they're producing ketones that would be signaling some of these things that could

have really positive impacts on our metabolism? Only under the condition of calorie restriction would that happen. And so ketones are more or less by not byproducts. They are a consequence of we used to call them byproducts, but they're really a consequence of accelerated fat metabolism. So as our body liberates our own fat stores, if we're on like a standard American diet, we'd have to reduce calories by like 50% and probably increase activity. Whereas the ketogenic diet is unique in that you can have a eucaloric state, giving your body all the calories it needs, but it ramps up fat metabolism so much and accelerates fat metabolism in the liver.

And that accelerated fat metabolism in the liver contributes to ketogenesis, which is the ketone bodies are essentially water-soluble fat molecules that can cross the blood brain barrier and also be used more efficiently. And I think I would say more easily than glucose. So there's less, there's less sort of, it's easier for ketones to cross the membrane and be used by the mitochondria as a source of energy. And that's sort of one of their therapeutic functions when there's situations where glucose metabolism is impaired. And we have like even things like traumatic brain injury or Alzheimer's disease or glucose transporter deficiency.

So ketones kind of come to the rescue and can restore and re-energize energetically demanding organs, especially the brain and the heart. So that's kind of like their function. And it's a byproduct of fat metabolism. So sorry to get off on a tangent, but it's really ketone production will be proportional to fat metabolism in the liver. And that really only happens under starvation, intermittent fasting, only happens under starvation, intermittent fasting, ketogenic diets to a lesser degree, low carb diets. And if it's standard American diet, it's possible to produce ketones, but only if you're significantly calorie restricted on the order of about 50% of calories. I'll just give you a sec. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. of calories. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, okay. I thought you were about to say something else.

You were mentioning all those other diets. I know that Mark over here, he's doing the carnivore diet and he's a big proponent of that. How does, does that play in, in terms of like also the effects that you were talking about? Yeah. You know, there's not a whole lot of research on the carnivore diet, although a group in Hungary, paleo medicina has, they have a high fat carnivore diet that they have been researching and it's sort of like they're almost a traditional diet, just devoid of any kind of fruits or vegetables or anything. And they have amassed an incredible amount of clinical data supporting the use of this carnivore diet. It's just higher in fat. So I guess you call it like a keto carnivore diet. So a carnivore diet, you'd have to look at the macronutrient ratios, but typically if you're above, say, 30% or 40% of the calories from protein,

that may inhibit, depending on the total calories you're consuming, if you're getting in surplus amount of calories with that amount of protein, you may not be producing ketones. Some people may. I mean, there's some individual variability. Our lab tends to kind of favor this idea that if your ketones are moderately elevated, that those ketones in your bloodstream are having therapeutic effects. We know this because most of the studies that we do actually are done with animals on a standard diet where we give exogenous ketones. Most of our work has been with ketone esters, but we also study the ketone salts and MCTs too, which are like ketogenic

fats. And we see pretty remarkable therapeutic effects from a wide range of things from seizures to, you know, behavioral responses, glucose regulation, anti-cancer effects. So a keto carnivore diet may be producing all the effects of the keto diet, but it really depends on how you set that up. If you're eating fatty cups of meat, if you are getting like beef tallow, if you're eating, you know, I had, I'll make an omelet out of egg yolks and give the whites to my dog, you know, things like that. Like an egg yolk is almost like a perfect ketogenic ratio and you can eat fatty fish and things like that. Uh, or you could have lean cuts of meat and be completely not even entering a state of ketosis just because your protein is so high. What is the, um, like, you know, when, if you're, um, if you're,

if you're not really producing ketones, but you're taking them through supplementation, If you're not really producing ketones, but you're taking them through supplementation, you guys have seen benefit from that as well, even if somebody's eating some carbohydrates? Yeah, this idea was kind of hard for me to grasp when I first started studying this in 2008. There wasn't a lot of buzz about the ketogenic diet, to be honest. And I was actually surprised when I stumbled across jeff olick's work and steven finney that they were using it for performance and exercise i didn't really have a favorable view of the ketogenic diet when i first got into this well over a decade ago

but the more i studied it uh the more i realized that there was a lot of, you know, potential therapeutic benefits. And I, my understanding when I first started studying it, that the benefits were really due to the adaptive response of the metabolism over time. And that the ketones were sort of just like a byproduct and not really contributing to therapeutic effects. But then I connected with Dr. Richard Veach and other people in the field

and quite a bit of literature suggesting that these ketone bodies were therapeutic, that they were energy molecules, and then they could restore, perhaps enhance brain energy metabolism. So we pursued this idea to develop ketogenic agents in the form of ketone esters at first, and then maybe a year later, developing various types of ketone salt products and MCT products. developing various types of ketone salt products and MCT products. And the military at the time didn't really like this idea of using a high-fat ketogenic diet in a warfighter, in an ABCL. And they liked the idea of delivering a ketogenic agent, you know, an hour or so before a mission, and it would elevate ketone bodies to a level that, that would be predictive of anti-seizure neuroprotective effects, because we studied

these oxygen toxicity seizures, using the seals use a closed circuit rebreather. And we wanted something that would work fast and not have to have the adaptive process. And when we did the initial studies in the lab, well, the first couple ketone esters didn't work, but then we, we applied an agent that was remarkably effective, even more so than drugs. And the animals were not adapted to a ketogenic diet. They're eating a high carbohydrate diet all the way up to the point where we gave them an intragastric gavage of the ketogenic agent. And within a half hour, it was producing a level of ketones that would be similar to you or I fasting for like five days. So it was very quick and very high level of ketones.

And it demonstrated to be very neuroprotective. So that kind of changed my mind, this idea that you had to follow a ketogenic diet and shift your metabolism to get the benefits of the diet. We understood that ketogenic agents can have therapeutic effects. Do you personally eat any carbohydrates? Yeah, I do pretty much every day. Occasionally, some days I'll do just like a meat only diet or fish or eggs if I'm traveling. But on any given day, I usually have broccoli, mushrooms, maybe a salad, chocolate, coffee, right? That's like a plant. And yeah, so blueberries, broccoli, dark chocolate, almost every day.

Coffee, if you consider that, you know, something. All right. Dark chocolate is like a salad. But the total amount of carbohydrates are probably less than digestible carbohydrates, probably less than 50 grams a day. The type of chocolate that you're eating. I'm sure that this is everybody's question. The type of chocolate that you're eating. Is it like some chocolate that has like a sugar alcohol in it or monk fruit or something like that? Or is it just kind of like regular dark chocolate that's like 70% or high or

something like that? Yeah. You know, the things like sugar alcohols, monk fruit and some of the stuff that they put into the keto chocolate, like inulin, it doesn't, man, I get bloated, especially if I eat it at night, it'll disrupt my sleep and stuff like, so I will test products that people send me, but i just go for like the real good stuff like 80 70 to like 90 dark chocolate like lind brand something like that and i just have like a couple of

something like that like i don't i don't kind of mess around with chocolate and then i like the test products that people send me. Eating like half a thing of it or something like that. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah, like a third to a half. I mean, if I was really active that day, I would take in a half. But yeah, all my carbs come from basically chocolate, broccoli, and blueberries. And I have that pretty much every day that I'm home, at least.

When I'm traveling, I will do almost completely carnivore diet when I'm traveling. Really? Yeah. Why is that? Well, you know, if you want to avoid any kind of foodborne illness, you're kind of best to, like raw vegetables and plants and things like that. I mean, I used to have salads. I think anytime over the last five years, maybe I got, uh, a foodborne illness, maybe three times, but we do a lot of international travel to places like, you know, Thailand, Philippines, Cambodia, like, you know, places in Asia where, uh, and looking back, you know, those are the places or Mexico, it's kind of where I got, where I got sick. So I'm less likely to, uh, you know, get, get an illness, I think. And I just kind of like to do it as a change,

you know, just, uh, but usually I can buy fish or some kind of chicken or beef or something like that. And you know, and that, that kind of works for me. And I travel, I have a lot of travel foods that I bring with me like sardines and nuts, but I can't get, I think I have a mild nut allergy. So I kind of limit the amount of nuts that I have on any given day. I'm curious about this. Cause like, I don't think we've had a guest talk about exogenous ketones

as much as you have so far. Is there a, if someone isn't following a ketogenic diet, is there a benefit to them whether it's an athletic context, performance context in terms of taking exogenous ketones? If there's someone who eats

moderate amounts of carbohydrates and then also if an individual is on the ketogenic diet is there a cohesive benefit in adding in exogenous ketones with their ketogenic diets as far as performance is concerned yeah the short answer is that the jury's still out on that, I think. But that was a topic of a great presentation at the metabolic health summit by Brendan Egan and Brianna Stubbs, who Brianna actually did her PhD dissertation at Oxford on a ketone ester. And she is an elite Olympic rowing athlete. And she has done quite a bit of research on the performance effects of it. And there's a lot, there's more research than ever going on right now, looking at, uh, exogenous ketones in the context of athletes following a standard diet,

you know, with carbohydrates. Uh, I am not completely convinced that I think there's a little bit of a benefit, but I don't think the benefit is really robust. What we study is not just performance, and even safety, like extreme environments that are hypoxic or hyperbaric or hyperoxic. In that context, that's what I study. In that context, being in a state of ketosis offers significant advantages for preserving normal brain function, reaction time, things like that. I mean, we see that in animal models and we're doing research at Duke university right now that is, you know, that studies are not done yet,

but it tends to mimic what we see in the lab, I believe, at least some of the preliminary pilot work. So to answer your question, I think there's probably a benefit to exogenous ketones on performance, physical performance, probably cognitive performance, but I think it's really small and it's within the noise and it's not probably as great as some of the marketing behind some of the products. But from the context of extreme environments, someone's at a deficit. And now everything that I'm talking about is giving the ketogenic agent acutely before the exercise stimulus. agent acutely before the exercise stimulus. So what has not been studied is continual administration of ketogenic agents and the effects on recovery. So I think that needs to be studied

because I think there are benefits to consuming and being in a state of mild ketosis on recovery as it pertains to sparing glycogen, reducing inflammation, maybe recovery of the nervous system. These studies have not been done yet. And I would think that being in a mild state of ketosis would enhance recovery to the extent that performance would increase later on. But that means those studies need to be done. Those studies are going on right now. You mentioned earlier. It's not.

It's not. It's like a training aid. You know, you could take caffeine and you get an acute effect, but you could take a performance-enhancing drug like a steroid, and that's a training. So I think of exogenous ketones as a training aid and not so much as an acutely administered performance enhancing compound i think of them as more something that you incorporate into your training over time

yeah because it could even help with sleep and then if it helps with sleep then it helps with everything right you mentioned you mentioned mentioned earlier 50% reduction for someone who's on a standard American diet to maybe like, you know, grab a hold of, get control over their weight and maybe impossibly lose weight. Have you seen any difference in a ketogenic diet? Like, can people eat more on a ketogenic diet? I think I've heard that you could eat a little bit more, but I don't, I don't know what's true. So we'll ask the doctor here. What do you think? Yeah, that that's a, you know, there's a big controversy right now and a big debate on obesity and weight loss and things like that. With this hypothesis that spiking insulin, that gaining weight and, you know, and conversely,

losing weight is really dependent upon insulin sensitivity, suppressing insulin. But it really does come down to calories. So there, I think Atkins really promoted the ketogenic diet as a metabolic advantage, because what he was advocating was that being in a state of ketosis would allow you to consume more calories. Some calories would be lost in the form of ketone bodies, which you can measure in urine. Right. But I think even for a large individual on a ketogenic diet, you might be losing 100, maybe 100 calories a day. It's not really I mean, I mean, 100 calories, 100 calories, but that would be a heavy state of ketosis. But the bottom line is really that ketogenic diets work for weight loss, primarily because they have an appetite suppressing

effect. Also, when you're on a ketogenic diet, the types of foods are restricted such that you are less likely to overeat foods that are not hyperpalatable. Right. Hyperpalatable, meaning high sugar and the combination of sugar and fat together creates hyperpalatability that can probably dysregulate centers of brain that control feeding behavior and things like that. So our auto regulatory mechanisms kind of go out the window. Whereas, and that's, I mean, I don't want to talk down the cage. I think it's an incredible tool for weight loss, not because there's a metabolic advantage, but because it has a remarkable effect at controlling your appetite or preventing your appetite from controlling you. So you, if you look at the blood glucose and insulin response to meals, the glucose and insulin response are attenuated, if not abolished, you know, if you eat a standard American diet, you're getting like three meals a a day three spikes in glucose and insulin per day whereas a ketogenic diet or

even a a low low carb diet you have very little uh increase in glucose and insulin and i and it tends to moderate our energy levels it tends to moderate, prevent cravings. And over time, I think as our palate adapts to this over time, so the more you do it, the metabolic shift that we have when we follow it and sustain it provides benefits over time. And I think when people initiate this, it might be difficult at first, and they might even have some side effects. But over time, I think when people initiate this, it might be difficult at first and they might even have some side effects, but over time I think it gets easier and you derive more benefits from it. Do you think it's necessary, like for someone who's trying to apply the ketogenic diet to their lifestyle right now, let's say they want to start, a lot of people go all in where they

get like the pea strips and they do all these things to make sure that they're in ketosis. But if a person now is just wanting, I want to start the ketogenic diet. A lot of individuals pay attention to the amount of protein they intake along with the ratios of fat. You kind of alluded to that earlier when we were talking about this. So how does one simply, you know, make sure that they are doing this diet correctly while also, I guess, not taking in too much protein, which would, I guess, not have them in ketosis. Yeah. I think that, you know, everybody's different. It depends on food preference, but the easiest thing to do is to set up your macro nutrients, uh, to be, you know, a clinical ketogenic diet. You have to understand, is really low protein, like 10%, 15% for pediatric epilepsy. What people are following are really a modified version of a ketogenic diet, which is upwards of 20% to 30% protein.

So, uh, so develop a meal plan that has a macronutrient ratio of say 60 to 75% fat and, you know, 20 to maybe 30% protein for people, assuming people watching this are strength athletes. I think they need a little bit more. The average person probably do fine with 15% protein, maybe 15 to 20. And monitor your ketones. So you could use something like the Keto Mojo device, which I have here. It measures glucose and ketones. On a daily basis when I'm sitting at my office here, I'm testing things all the time. Here's a device by Biosense. It's a breath ketone meter, breath acetone meter. So I've been correlating my blood glucose or blood ketones and blood glucose with breath ketones.

And if you're afraid of blood and you don't like to stick yourself, this is probably the only meter that correlates pretty tightly, especially in a fasted state with your blood ketone, this breath ketone analyzer. So you could do that. And I think that's really important to do initially. I don't think you have to do it. I mean, I've been doing this diet for like a decade, and I don't have to do this,

but I can almost predict like my level of ketosis based upon what I eat and how I feel. Yeah. But when you're starting this out and you want to realize, you know, if it's working or not, uh, and you mentioned the urine strips and I think the urine acetoacetate is a good way to determine whether you're in ketosis or not. And then they're cheap. They're like 10, 25 cents a strip. Right. And then you can maybe invest in different technologies like this,

uh, to really dial in. And probably most important is that the resolution of these things are quite, quite high, uh, relative to the, the relative amounts of, of acetoacetate that are predicted by the strip with just a color change. This actually gives you a number, an objective number. And you can dial in

the types of meals, the amount of food that you're eating. And you might realize that certain foods, And you might realize that certain foods, which meals could be ketogenic, but people tell me, some people have shown that if they add dairy in, it's kicking them out of ketosis. But if they have the same macronutrients and they eliminate dairy from their meal plans, that their ketone levels get higher. And some people the opposite. But these are just some things that I think, you know, these are tools that can help you optimize the ketogenic diet. Thinking about the same type of person that's about to get started, do you advise people to add in more fat to their meals? Like I know like cooking with butter is definitely a good thing, but as far as like MCT oil powders and kind of getting lost in the not uh, not even

exogenous ketones, but just like supplements like that. Yeah. I mean, you, you might want to start out with just a general low carb meal plan and then add fat to that, right? You could do it in the form of butter. You could, uh, if you have salad dressing, you can make your salad dressing out of MCT. Like if I have two things in salad dressing, I'll kind of wait till they get halfway down and fill the rest of the bottle up with MCT oil and shake it up. So I'm getting ketogenic fats. But yeah, you can kind of just add fat. And that might be the hard part for some people just to add fat to their normal diet. So, um, the, the way that I get my fat in is typically like sour cream. I have a lot of sour

cream. I've kind of capped my total amount of dairy, but sour cream, nut butters, MCT oil, uh, egg yolks are great. Butter from when I'm cooking is pretty good. Beef tallow too. I have some beef tallow from US Wellness Meats. I've gotten some products from them. And for example, they have like ground up heart. You can make burgers out of it and the fat content is really high.

Yeah, stuff's delicious too it's really good yeah it might not sound great but it tastes really good yeah it tastes very very good yeah and my wife uh is hungarian she eats a lot of oregon meat so she got me eating uh more liver and and sort of hearts and things like that so something i didn't i didn't actually do for quite a while, but, uh, it's part of the foods issues eating traditionally. So. What have you seen in terms of sleep? Have you seen any like proof that it helps with sleep or even just some evidence with people that you work with or even yourself, uh,

taking a dosage of ketones and, or just being, you know, on a ketogenic diet for a while? Have we seen improvements in sleep? Yeah, I think those studies need to be done. But we know that when people get their type two diabetes under control, when people's metabolic health improves, and their insulin sensitivity improves, their sleep improves. And I know that if I follow, if I have a high carbohydrate meal, I haven't in a while, but the few times that I had like at nighttime, what will typically happen is I'll wake up a few hours earlier. And I'll just be hungry, because if I eat some carbs at night, my body may dump insulin. And then I'll go into a mild state of hypoglycemia, maybe in the middle of the night.

And without ketones being present in the blood, you'll have sort of a reactive hypoglycemic response. And that can activate like your sympathetic nerve system. And it kind of brings your body into a waking state. And it can disrupt, um, you know, your, your REM sleep too. So I found that I use different monitors for sleep. My wife uses the, uh, motive ring. I use the aura ring and we've, we've also used, uh, the polar B 800, uh, chest strap to look at things. But mostly night i use or i've been using that for years and you know eating too much calories at night eating uh alcohol at night uh a high carb meal

in particular sugar uh chocolate and things like that and caffeine will have the same effect as like alcohol or like just too much stimulation you know screens and things like that uh but i think that if your body once your body gets adapted to ketosis you i've been able to get more deep sleep so uh there's particular periods of time where i had to adjust my diet to be very strict when I was doing different experiments. Actually, when I was on the NASA NEEMO mission, which is like a space analog training mission, I was particularly strict with my diet. And during that time, I was getting less sleep. But the amount of deep sleep that I got was two hours plus every night.

And typically, I get about 90 minutes of deep sleep a night, 90 minutes, sometimes two hours. So the more strict I am with my diet and the more I can maintain a moderate level of ketosis, it seems like the better my sleep is. And there's some theories that when your ketones are elevated, part of sleep is to restore your brain levels of glycogen. And so I do eat a little bit of carbohydrates at night. If I have carbohydrates at night, I usually have that low glycemic carbohydrates. So when I'm sleeping, I can restore glycogen a little bit more, but it's also to rebuild your neurotransmitters. So when you're sleeping,

the ketones may be contributing to replenishing neurotransmitters that got depleted during the day. And that's part of it too. And there's also what we call the glymphatic system. So different, you have like a lymphatic system in your brain, and part of it is to clear out the waste that accumulates during the day. And when we sleep, that lymphatic system becomes much more active, and you start to wash out a lot of the waste products that your brain produces during the day. And I think that being in a state of ketosis, we know alters different things like adenosine. And adenosine causes vasodilation. And you have an increase in blood flow to the heart and the brain. So I think when you're in a mild state of ketosis, that the lymphatic system might be activated more,

and that can be beneficial to enhance the restorative effects of sleep. So this is just like a theory. We haven't tested it yet, but it has been tested that, for example, when you're on a ketogenic diet, adenosine goes up, adenosine signaling goes up, there's a vasodilation effect. So it makes sense that the restorative effects of sleep on the brain would be enhanced if you're in a state of mild ketosis. How do we encourage the body to burn fat? Do you have any information on what we burn or what you burn or some of the people that you help with a ketogenic with a ketogenic diet do you know if they're burning because you could still be burning glucose um i just didn't don't even know if it matters but have you you have any evidence or have you seen

anything like this on like what we burn when we train i have a friend that uh he tests all the people in his gym on i forget what he what device he uses, but he measures to see if they're burning glucose or if they're burning, I can't remember if it's glucose or ketones or if it's glucose or fat. But anyway, he has noticed a lot of- You're not on a cart. Yeah, a lot- You're doing respiratory quotient, looking at- Right.

CO2 consumption, CO2 production will give you the respiratory quotient. And a lot of what he's seen, it has been the heavier people have been burning more sugar even when they're placed on a ketogenic diet. So I wonder what some of your thoughts are on that and what's your perspective on it? Yeah. So glycolytic activity, total glycogen stores and your carbohydrate tolerance all that will be much higher

in individuals like yourself because you have carb tolerance is directly proportional to skeletal muscle mass right and when you work out uh you're breaking down muscle glycogen that goes to some extent, uh, lactate through the core recycle, you make a glucose from the lactate. Uh, so glycolytic demands are higher in athletes, particularly athletes that have a lot of skeletal muscle and, uh, the, the glucose demands are higher. Glucose recycling is higher glycolytic activity is generally higher so that kind of makes sense that if you put them on metabolic heart uh so so the implications are like there's a lot a lot of interesting ketogenic diets in in athletes and but they are the particular phenotype that would be most carb tolerant. So the people that really need

ketogenic diets are maybe people who don't have a lot of muscle mass are insulin resistant are obese to begin with. But that doesn't mean you can't get benefits from it. For sure. I mean, I didn't, I haven't really seen that the ketogenic diet in Paris, my strength, the performance, if you take protein into account. But to answer your question, you know, I don't, I think, I think it's, that makes sense that individuals that this guy measured in the gym or whatever, they might have a higher respiratory quotient, but it, what we eat will really reflect our respiratory quotient. So if you change the macronutrient of your diet, that directly

impacts the respiratory quotient. But maybe what you're talking about is a response to exercise. So when you exercise, you may be burning proportionally more glucose, perhaps just because you have more glycogen stores available in the muscle. Along with that, I want to ask you about when we're thinking of using the ketogenic diet, like as athletes, I think I heard Peter Atiyah say once that when he was cycling a lot, he was eating an upwards of 700 carbohydrates a day, but he was still in ketosis. Now, if an athlete has much more activity, let's say that they do a martial art or they do a lot of cardiovascular work, how is it possible that they can still be in potential ketosis while intaking quite an amount of carbohydrates? And would it still be beneficial for them to take ketones exogenously in that case? Yeah. So the first question, a person can consume hundreds of grams of carbohydrates and still be in a state of ketosis if their activity level is high. And I know at certain points in time, Peter Atiyah had a tremendous output in regards to, you know, work in the gym.

I remember years ago when I stayed with him, stayed at his house one time, we went to the gym and he was just like swimming for hours. And I was like, I do my three or four sets and I'm done. And he was, he was in there for a while. I think he was going back later in the day to the workout. Uh, I don't think he does that now. I don't think it's time to do that now, but, uh, but the state of the metabolic state of ketosis will be dependent upon liver glycogen stores. So if you are running a calorie deficit, if you have a calorie deficit, your glycogen stores, and it's not an on or off kind of thing, right,

but will become gradually depleted and there'll be a shift away from glycolysis and more towards fat oxidation and reduce glycogen stores in the liver will promote beta oxidation of fatty acids in the liver. And that will start to contribute to ketone production, which spills into, uh, the blood. And you can measure that over time. Uh, and someone could be on a pretty high carb diet, but if their output is high and they have, you know, pretty robust metabolic demands, they could be, there's something called post-exercise ketosis that's well defined in the literature. And these are in athletes who do not follow ketogenic diets. So they, you know, cyclists,

elite athletes in particular, especially after usually about four to six hours of really demanding aerobic activity and astronomically high carbohydrate consumption, they enter the state of post-exercise ketosis that's hours after their post-exercise elevation in metabolism. And at the end of exercise, their ketones are elevated. And even once they start eating, it takes a while to bring that down. Just, you know, depending upon liver glycogen. Got it. What has been your involvement with NASA? And then also like, when I visited you, you were showing us like these tanks and stuff that you'd have people submerge themselves in. They're like underwater and stuff like that. How in the hell did you get involved in some of that stuff? And like, what does it, how does the ketogenic diet benefit some of these people that are

diving and maybe potentially astronauts and things of that nature? Yeah. So you visit the hyperbaric biomedical research lab. Yeah, that was a few years ago uh you showed me a picture by the way where you were like 270 pounds you were a big boy oh yeah and in good shape yeah i was not on a ketogenic diet actually a year or two after that picture was taken i said you looked good though you're big but he was like you were 270 and you were in good shape uh I was pretty lean.

Whoa. Damn. Yeah, you were a big boy. You're still big. Yeah, he's still jacked. I was just like shoveling food in my mouth every few hours or whatever. But yeah, now I think I weigh myself. I was like 221 this morning, so about 50 pounds lighter.

But I feel a lot better at this weight too. But I got into this uh i did my phd in neuroscience and physiology on hypoxia and then i chose to work in a lab that was funded by the military looking at uh military divers and understanding oxygen toxicity seizures which limit maybe CO operations. So we developed different technologies, some of which I showed you in the lab, which are like microscopes inside chambers, electrophysiology, confocal microscopy, telemetry, where we can do heart rate, EEG, diaphragmatic EMG, heart rate variability, stuff like that. EEG, diaphragmatic EMG, heart rate variability, stuff like that.

So we do that in the lab at USF. And then we do human studies at Duke University where they have environmental chambers. And then I was also a crew member on NASA's Extreme Environment Mission Operations, NEMO. And my wife was a crew member last year. So I I was crew member in 2017 and she was 2019 where we are submerged underwater for 10 days and we live in saturation. So our bodies are acclimated to that level of pressure.

If we were to shoot up from the, to the top of the water, we would die a very painful death from decompression sickness, right? So we have to do like a stage decompression to get out of that environment. But when we're living living in this environment i chose to stay in a state of ketosis which is pretty high and i took a lot of measurements on myself including sleep measurements like using the aura ring uh understanding that with all the animal work we did that ketones were very neuroprotective in this environment this extreme environment and

uh so the work that we do with nasa on these space analog missions and these are like deep space missions analogs that are like to vet out different technologies procedures that and it's also part of astronaut training for Mars missions, right? So we're, you know, vetting out different procedures and things like that. And one of it is sort of nutrition and metabolism and physiological changes to these extreme environments. So like over 10 years ago, the only countermeasure against these extreme environments for oxygen toxicity were anti-seizure drugs. And I found out that the ketogenic diet was the standard of care for drug refractory epilepsy. So it made sense to use a ketogenic approach diet and then working to develop these ketone esters and things like that.

And then working to develop these ketone esters and things like that. So I had been studying that for a number of years before. And that was military research before being kind of asked to do this NASA mission and being a scientist on that mission. So we've incorporated, you know, I follow the ketogenic diet because that was my baseline. But right now we're collecting baseline information, uh, in crews that are in this extreme environment. And I had to be on a ketogenic diet because I, that was my baseline. So we're just, you know, we're analyzing all the data still. And, uh, once we get more data from other missions, we'll write that up. But we think that, think that from an operational standpoint, being in a state of ketosis offers a lot of

advantages for safety, cognitive performance, and performance resilience in that environment. And that could be the undersea environment, and that could be potentially the space environment. The jury's still out on what's the best way, what's the best method to be in ketosis, whether it's a modified version of a ketogenic diet, ketone salts, ketone esters, we have a lot of work to do, but we're at the cusp of understanding that when you fundamentally change your metabolic physiology, that offers very real performance resilience advantages, but also logistical advantages too, right? Because you don't have to feed as frequently. If the meal is higher in fat, you could reduce meal frequency. That's more time that the operator

can be working and get his work done it doesn't have to stop because of hunger so there and also the energy density of the ketogenic diet is like 50 percent higher right so it's like ten thousand dollars a pound to send something to space but if we develop and developing a meal plan for you know three to six people and all that food going to Mars, that's a lot of weight. We cut that by 50%. I had some engineers do some numbers, and it was astronomically cost-saving. It was a huge cost-saving. Logistically, it kind of makes sense.

There are effects in space like radiation that affects our brains, inflammation from what we call galactic cosmic radiation. It's like a kind of a strange type of radiation. We could study it here at the Brookhaven lab, but it's kind of difficult to study. But the implications are that being in a state of ketosis may be neuroprotective from the stuff that we experience on a deep space mission. And we also think that psychologically, it may moderate our behavior in a way that increases what we call team cognition. So if you put a bunch of people together, behavioral neuroscientists like my wife, they study how that group interacts. And we kind of believe that if you put people on the right

kind of diet, it may, it can optimize their behavioral characteristics in a way that optimizes team cognition. And so these are like aspects that are being studied by like DARPA and by other military groups, not only from a warfighter perspective, but also from an astronaut perspective. And that's some work that we'll be doing in the high seas mission in Hawaii. We think coming up in future

sort of space analog missions that we'll be working with NASA on. Maybe people are a little more rational with the with that style of diet, like, who knows, right? Yeah, yeah, I can't, you know, I think it's harder for women, honestly, to do the diet. But I also think it's harder for them to initiate it and get adapted. But I think women's physiology are a little bit more reactive to low blood glucose levels. The last Nemo crew was all female, and my crew was all male. So it was kind of interesting. A lot of the guys were like, yeah, I could do that diet. And that would work for me. But I think for females may need a little bit of a more of a longer latency to really adapt into the diet, because their physiology is such that I think

it's any change in in glucose and insulin can alter their hormones in different ways. So that's something that we have to understand. And that's why we're doing so many measurements on things like metabolism and cognitive function, stuff like that. Have you ever pushed your own research like on yourself too far? Like, have you ever been like, man, that was really not a good idea. Like, I think it's something like you fasted for like a week and deadlifted 500 for 10 reps. You ever gotten yourself a little bit of trouble where you've like passed out or, you know, you, uh, went to test your blood and things were screwed up. Have you ever done anything like that?

Yeah. I, you know, over the years I've, uh, when we develop different agents, um, I'll test them on myself without really probably went a little bit too far on some things. And I was really inspired and kind of fascinated with this idea that because it had, it had very significant clinical implications, this idea that if you elevate your blood ketone levels, that it would protect you from hypoglycemia. So this had major implications for people with type one diabetes, but also like insulin shock. And also, you know, when people enter the ICU, for various conditions, where their brain energy is compromised.

So over the years, I think I started from extended fast, and I did did maybe things I won't mention, but I did things to progressively lower my glucose levels to the point where like meters like this would not register. It was just blinking low and it wouldn't, I think it got down to 20, 20 something, 25, under 25, and it just doesn't register at all so i basically spent a whole day where my glucose was not even like possible to measure how did you feel i felt okay uh probably because i was using uh a ketone ester that you know know, Patrick Arnold actually helped me develop at the time. And I sort of, you know, it was kind of scary to me because I did, I couldn't measure my glucose. It was so low, but I was able to keep it that low and elevate my ketones in millimolar concentrations. When you have millimolar levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate, that represents a lot of potential energy that the brain can use. So it was like insurance for the brain.

And I still believe I would like to get a project funded that actually looks at this, the effects of exogenous ketones for insulin shock and hypoglycemia, things like that, because I think it has very remarkable therapeutic effects, probably life-saving effects. So I validated on myself, I think getting an IRB approved to do something like I've done or that I would like to do probably not be possible. So, but I think we'd probably, you know, recapitulate some of this stuff in animal models. And I think the implications are pretty significant. So like jumping to a real world scenario, when you go and you diet, you know, to diet and lose weight, no matter what you hear, you need to have a calorie deficit to do that. And that basically means your blood glucose is going to go low, right? And we, our brains don't like low blood glucose. So if we have ketones elevated, it becomes more feasible and more comfortable, less of a dysphoria to

maintain low blood levels of glucose if our ketones are elevated. And that would make weight loss not only achievable, but sustainable over time. If, if our food preferences are such, and I'm, I'm perfectly fine with the meal plans on the ketogenic diet. If one can adapt their palate to eating the ketogenic diet, then not only will it allow them not only as an amazingly effective tool to lose weight, but I think it's probably one of the most effective tools for sustaining that weight loss over time. And that, I think that needs to be part of the conversation because, you know, people say, well, the ketogenic diet, you know, you can lose weight on it, but it's not sustainable. And I think, no, it is sustainable. And if you adapt, if you have the

meal, if you set up the meal plans correctly, and you have a well formulated ketogenic diet, I think, especially for people who find it difficult to keep the weight off, I think it's probably one of the only strategies that can do it in a feasible way over time. So that's the implications, you know, I mean, going back to just doing crazy things, lowering blood glucose. crazy things, lowering blood glucose. If my ketones were not elevated, I probably would have had a ravenous appetite and probably, but I didn't even have, I wasn't even hungry. So with the glucose level, that was not even like measurable. So that's sort of some of the real world practical implications of maybe some of the crazy stuff that I do. No, like currently, like you're very, very strong and you're still very big. And one of the main fears of a lot of individuals that like, let's say athletes that want to do a ketogenic diet, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm going to lose so much muscle. Or they start doing it and maybe they're doing some incorrect things.

They're like, wow, I am losing a lot of muscle. So in your case, I know that like, obviously, when you look at application of this, you're looking at application, you're not focused on athletics, but when athletes do want to do this, what kind of safeguards can they do to make sure that they're maintaining a good amount of strength, they're maintaining muscularity, et cetera? Yeah, I think, you know, no matter what diet you follow, high carb diet or ketogenic diet, if a strength athlete is not going to do well on a ketogenic diet that's low in protein. So regular ketogenic diet is like 8 to 12% protein. You need to double that. You know, athletes really need to be somewhere around 20 strength athletes maybe 30 protein and if they're following that kind of macronutrient ratio with the balance being fat and they they take in enough calories that they're not at a calorie deficit i don't see any reason. This is, it's efficacious for, the ketogenic diet is very effective for losing weight

and what we call a recomp, but I don't know if it's optimal for putting on size and strength, right? It likely isn't because a little bit of carbohydrates can go a long way and it doesn't have to be, I don't think there's a major advantage of 500 grams of carbs over 200 grams of carbs when it comes to anabolic effects, right? Maybe in extreme athletes it does. But I think that people can build size and strength and they can undoubtedly maintain their size and strength on a ketogenic diet. But when it comes to if they're a young athlete in particular and they're looking to gain as much size and strength as possible, the ketogenic diet is probably not for them.

if someone's already at a high level of performance and they need to make a weight category or they want to just shed uh excess fat to look better i think a ketogenic diet is an effective tool for that if they are willing to if they like the foods you know associated with a ketogenic diet but it's just there's a number of ways you can do it uh and ketogenic diet is is one way can do it. Uh, and ketogenic diet is, is one way to do it. It may not be optimal for size and strength, but, uh, I think people need to experiment too, because some people do really, really well on a carbohydrate based diet. And for those people, they might not even want to experiment with a ketogenic diet, you know? So I don't push it on anyone. Uh, but I encourage people just based upon the research that it's something that maybe they should try. I'm shifting gears a little bit. How can a ketogenic diet, uh, help fight against, uh, some disease where we've mentioned

a little bit of that. Um, I've heard that it can help, um, help you avoid cancer. It can even help patients that already have cancer. I know Ron Penna had the Keto Pet Sanctuary where a lot of the pets were in remission of cancer. How could it impact disease? Yeah, this area really grew a lot from our initial studies back over 10 years ago now i think we started um well the ketogenic diet does a number of things metabolically and biochemically that i think are are very favorable when it comes to treating cancer and preventing cancer. And the main thing being that by shifting your metabolism away from glycolysis and more towards fatty acids and ketones, we're also limiting glucose availability to the tumor.

Most cancers have accelerated rates of sugar metabolism, 80%, maybe even upwards of 90%, present in what we call a Warburg phenotype, which means that if we were to use an imaging technology like PET, the intensity of the tumor would be far greater than the surrounding tissue. So the tumor is out competing the surrounding tissue for glucose and really dependent on that glucose, not only for energy, but also for biosynthetic needs. So the ketogenic diet not only lowers glucose availability, but probably more importantly, it suppresses the hormone insulin. Insulin, IGF-1, the whole PI3 kinase pathway can be remarkably suppressed with ketogenic diet and further suppressed with a calorie-restricted ketogenic diet. So at the very least, you're taking the foot off the gas pedal of cancer growth. And glycolysis causes an upregulation of antioxidant pathways in the tumor. And so if you decrease that, it weakens the cancer's ability to protect itself from other

therapies like radiation and chemo. So it cripples and weakens the cancer and makes it a vulnerable target for therapeutic modalities that kill cancer through an oxidative stress pathway, which essentially is most forms of chemo and radiation. So you have sort of that going on too. And the ketogenic diet, I got into the ketogenic diet actually because brain cancers cause seizures. And a lot of these brain cancer patients had to be on anti-seizure drugs and

things like dexamethasone, which really screws up your metabolism can elevate your blood glucose. And the ketogenic was just about to give us the cure for cancer. Pretty much. Okay. I'll try to reconnect with him. Yeah. He got froze. Somebody wants us to have cancer really bad.

As far as typical companies, they're listening in. They're like, we need to shut down this power project right now. Big Pharma. Big Pharma is listening. Pulled the plug. I do think you're right, though. I do think the government stepped in because we were talking about nasa going to mars right yeah i mean saving money kind of sounded like he wanted to start a meal prep company for mars that's kind of what i got from this podcast so far i'm really curious because like he he

mentioned the amount like curious how much money was being saved. It's got to be hundreds of millions of dollars. Hey, can you hear me? There he is. You're just about to give us the recipe to cure cancer and to save the world from everything. That might have been my internet just got kicked off or something. It was a little bit windy here. Yeah, I thought I was given a long-winded answer. I thought this was kind of like the get the hook thing.

given a long-winded answer i thought this was like uh kind of like the get the hook thing so yeah so what i was saying is that so a ketogenic diet lowers glucose availability suppresses insulin signaling uh control seizures and also inflammation and uh and all these things are beneficial and for the management of cancer and also for the prevention of cancer. Right. So if we, if we lower blood glucose and insulin in people who don't even have cancer and we do that over decades, then we're going to have a lot less cancer. I mean, this is clear from the literature. I don't think any oncologist would argue that. And diet is a, is a tool for that. So I think it can be a tool for prevention. So when I got into this research, there may have been two studies, clinical registered clinical trials on the ketogenic diet. And now there's like 39 or

something like that. So there were, there were also no cancer metabolism conferences, and now there's like a half dozen every year. And these are the same sort of people that were promoting sort of the genetically targeting with gene therapy cancer. So the field has actually shifted towards targeting metabolism. And there's this interplay between metabolism and genetics. So the expression of certain genes, oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes are linked to metabolism. And we can profoundly alter that, our epigenetic regulation with diet.

Does fasting help improve things as well in terms of like fighting disease, other than the simple fact that there could be a caloric reduction? Yeah. Being in a fasted state makes, probably enhances the efficacy of chemo and radiation. There's publications and studies that have already been published on that. chemo and radiation. There's publications and studies that have already been published on that. Uh, Walter Longo has published some work on that and, uh, and that's independent of sort of the diet. So just being in a fasted state and not necessarily on a ketogenic diet, uh, has, has benefits. Uh, so there's some additional research you know going on on the fasting mimicking diet that he has developed uh volter longo has um so that's an emerging area of

research and what was there's a another part to your question maybe um also yeah how how has um you know ketogenic diet how has it also affected like like type 1 and type 2 diabetes, if it's helped at all? Yeah, with type 2 diabetes, Virta Health is doing a lot of research on that front. And if you go to their website, they list all the different publications there. The main focus there is type 2 diabetes is completely out of control. And from the perspective of healthcare providers needing to pay a significant amount of money for not only the medication, but the comorbidities associated with type 2 diabetes is draining the healthcare system. I mean, it's going to be the, the projected numbers are pretty staggering, the healthcare costs. So using it's type two diabetes, probably safe to say it is a

dietary disease. So it doesn't make sense to use drugs to treat a dietary disease by changing our diet, following a carbohydrate restrictedrestricted ketogenic diet, also paying attention to total calories is a way to manage this disease and get people off medication that is very costly and also giving the patient more control of managing their disease instead of relying on being dependent on drugs to manage it. So it's empowering the patient. And I think that's really important. Not all patients are going to embrace this way to manage their disease. organizations like Virta Health are actually starting to change policies of healthcare providers where they are actually supporting, insurance companies are supporting the use of this app, this technology. providers can give type two diabetes patients a monthly stipend, and they can use that stipend to buy pre-packaged ketogenic meal plans. And they could usually, they could use that

instead of giving them money for drugs, they can give them money to use food as drugs. And I think that creates the opportunity for companies to develop whole food, prepackaged ketogenic diet meals. And I've been kind of working, hoping to work on that front to create. And if there are savvy entrepreneurs out there, they'll create whole food ketogenic meal plans that can be used. And they might be able to be paid by the insurance companies for patients. And that's a pretty, I got a guy for you. That's a big, big section of the population. So what about for a type one diabetes? Can a ketogenic diet help with that as well? There's evidence that a carbohydrate restricted diet can definitely help. And I know

a number of people are doing a ketogenic diet. And one of my students also, you know, pretty, pretty active power lifter, athletic guy, big guy, follows a carbohydrate restricted diet. And at certain points in time, it was a pretty well-balanced ketogenic diet. And I believe his numbers improved dramatically. I mean, I've seen his numbers before and after following a carbohydrate-restricted diet. And there's a group called Type 1 Grit on Facebook. And they're following more like the Bernstein method of carbohydrate restriction. And the bottom line is that they're far less variability in their blood glucose levels throughout the day.

And they can use significantly less insulin. And I think any endocrinologist would have to agree that if a type 1 diabetes patient is using less insulin and also getting better numbers, they should probably not be advising the patient to do anything else, anything other than what they're doing. If that's a dietary approach that was not fully embraced by them, but I know this community is very kind of forward thinking in applying nutrition to manage their disease instead of managing it with insulin. And I really think that's the future. The prices of insulin are skyrocketing. So again, the healthcare industry, healthcare providers are going to go bankrupt if the trend is, I mean, because insulin is also used to manage type 2 diabetes too.

You can pretty rapidly get someone off insulin with a ketogenic diet, a type 2 diabetic with insulin. But type 1 diabetes is kind of like the next frontier. And there's quite a bit of work being done in that area. You know, you mentioned the benefits of fasting as far as when it comes to going to chemo fasted, right? Are there any other, because I mean, I know that you've messed with a lot of fasting. So are there any other benefits in terms of utilizing time-restricted feeding or long-term fasts as far as other health is concerned? Yeah. Well, and do you still utilize fasting all the rage now i i there are a lot of benefits of fasting and i think uh the benefits are primarily due to fasting as a means of calorie restriction right so if you fast but you're not restricting calories uh if you have surplus amount of calories, but you're doing intermittent fasting every day, I don't think you're going to get any benefits from that. It may even be hard on your body to get in blood glucose, to reduce inflammation. I think these are all very,

this is, it's a viable strategy for that and a feasible strategy for a lot of people, because sometimes when people just start eating during the day, it's, they could, some people, it's a lot easier for them to do intermittent fasting than it is to do the ketogenic diet, right? Because they could easily skip breakfast and then just have you know uh a very late breakfast or like a just have their first meal at like one or two in the afternoon and then do a 16-8 and inadvertently they will calorie restrict and that will give them benefits. Uh, a lot, all the benefits that we hear about with calorie restriction. Got it. Yeah. It can be a lifestyle. Like I do it. I didn't do it today, but yesterday and the day before, uh, I had my first meal around two,

2 PM in the afternoon. Uh, I tend to do it when I need to be as sharp as possible. Uh, I didn't do it today, but, uh, like if I need to give a big talk possible. I didn't do it today, but like if I need to give a big talk, if I have to work on a grant, if I'm writing, intermittent fasting is an incredible tool for me. If I'm debating my wife on some kind of issue, I need to be sharp because she's pretty smart.

So like go into it fast. So yeah, I use it as a tool, but I don't use it every day because the body responds. It's like you can kind of habituate to it, right? Like the more you do it, then that becomes your new norm, right? But I tend to do it. I did it yesterday because I had a news interview like downtown, but I tend to do it about two times a week, sometimes three times a week. And I think if I did it all the time, I don't feel I would get the same benefits from it if I did it for a particular event. Does that make sense?

It makes sense. So I don't do it every day. And if I did it every day, I wouldn't be able to get in enough calories to maintain my weight. I had to get, uh, uh, life insurance and my life insurance premium would have been a lot higher if I, if my BMI was like 20, I forget it was like borderline obese or whatever. So I kind of fasted a little bit and did intermittent fasting almost every day for two weeks and then fasted like, like three days into my, uh, my health screening for my, uh, for my life insurance. And I was able to bring my body weight down to like

one 99. So, and, and that was about, I don't know, about six weeks ago. So now I'm back at two 20. So I've added gradually, you know, added the weight back. But so I use it as a tool for that. So I did it. I was doing intermittent fasting. It wasn't really messing up my workouts that much or routine, but it allowed me to achieve a particular goal, which was a lower premium. And then it just kind of gradually added the calories back in. And then it just kind of gradually added the calories back in.

Anything new going on with ketones that you're excited or pumped about? And, you know, anything kind of new on the supplement side of things? Because you were mentioning you study ketones. Then you mentioned another, I forgot what the other thing was that you study as well. But is there some sort of like byproduct of ketones that, you know, that might be a supplementation possibility or, or, you know, like what's kind of new and exciting on the ketone front? Yeah, well, I think the big frontier, all these, all the publications so far, and even the clinical trials are testing one thing in isolation acutely. So I think where the future is, is we have a whole library of ketogenic compounds and it will be formulating them specifically for,

for different, for different things, whether that's athletic performance, uh, we're putting a lot of time and effort into like looking at the protein sparing anti-catabolic effects. So I think that that is something we'll be looking at. And then the cognitive effects, too. So a lot of what we're kind of studying right now is optimizing the formula. So what kind of what ratios of ketone salts to ketone esters to even ketogenic fats would be optimal and doing that kind of testing. So I think that's a big part of kind of what we're doing. We're also looking at the signaling effects and we're studying a disease that's a genetic disease and looking at the

epigenetic regulation of ketones and how it can alter gene expression. So that's a big, uh, sort of the next frontier. And, uh, and I'm really, I mean, it's supplements, um, kind of focused on that, but also pretty excited about, uh, uh, various ketogenic foods, how you can create a line of ketogenic foods and maybe incorporate some of the ketogenic compounds into those foods. And I think that could be really helpful on sort of the therapeutic front. You know, earlier you actually mentioned Alzheimer's as a, when, as far as keep the ketogenic diet, it comes along with it now is when you mentioned the Alzheimer's, is it prevention or is it when an individual has Alzheimer's that the ketogenic diet is also beneficial for them in terms of mitigating the effects of the disease?

Yeah. So with Alzheimer's disease, it's more or less like a hallmark characteristic is glucose hypometabolism so if you do a PET scan pretty much even age-related dementia is not only Alzheimer's disease but cognitive decline is associated with insulin resistance in the brain and also you know brain glucose hypometabolism and as we age the ability of our brains to use glucose over time, you know, decreases with age. And that, that does not happen to the same degree with ketones. So as we age, our brain's ability to use ketones does not significantly change from my understanding from some of the new research uh looking at that so we don't know if the glucose hypometabolism is contributing to alzheimer's disease but the the toxic plaques that form like the beta amyloid and the tau plaques they form because

the energetic it's it's an energy dependent process to clear those toxic proteins from the brain. And if energy levels in the brain are low, and that could be due to a number of factors, maybe chronic inflammation, neuroinflammation tends to impair glucose metabolism. And that glucose hypometabolism can contribute to a faster accumulation of toxic proteins like amyloid beta and beta amyloid and tau proteins. So if we do an early intervention and we enhance brain energy metabolism by supplying ketones and also suppress systemic inflammation, And we can monitor things like HSCRP, high sensitivity C-reactive protein, and we keep that as low as possible. So systemic

inflammation will lead to neuroinflammation and neuroinflammation has been implicated in the etiology of age-related chronic diseases and Alzheimer's's disease so get your metabolic health in check keep uh inflammation as low as possible systemic inflammation and uh you know give our brain this alternative energy fuel and i think that's a good strategy for prevention but also managing the disease process once it started too and in some cases it can reverse, maybe not reverse the disease process and animal models, I think it has, but reverse some of the cognitive deficits associated with the disease process. So, and I don't know of any other drugs that can do that. And I think being in a state of nutritional ketosis has been documented at least small pilot studies and some case reports to do that. How's your lifting going nowadays?

Okay, it's going pretty well. I'm doing a little bit of a deload this week just because I felt like I needed it. But like yesterday, we went and took the dogs for a walk on the property. I'm looking at the property now. I'm watching an alligator. Irma's got two ducks I've been watching. And it was a really close call as I was talking to you guys, but we did a walk around the property and I wasn't going to lift, but, uh, I stopped in the barn where my weights are. And I did like a, a little workout routine. So sometimes I always got

the bug to lift. I took about a year off and because I was just lifting stuff on the farm and it was pretty demanding, some of the labor that we're doing, but I always did like chin ups and dips and things like that. So I'm having fun with it. Uh, my wife and I, we used to go to the gym, but we really just don't have time or just don't want to make the time. So I'm building, building a gym in the barn and I'm just enjoying home workouts. There's nothing like a home gym. That's great. So I'm enjoying getting back into it again. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. We know you got you, you got a lot of cool stuff that you're working on.

Where can people find you? We have a website at ketonutrition.org, all one word ketonutrition.org and uh we put uh like we'll put this podcast on there i got my rogan and tim ferris podcasts on there i got consulting a lot of people ask me about products a lot of people think i have a ketone salt product or something i don't i don't sell any products i don't product, but I do, I do test products and the products that I like, uh, that actually meet the criteria for me. I put them on the keto nutrition, uh, website and, uh, and some of the companies will give me an affiliate links. And we actually use that affiliate money to go back into our company,

ketone technologies, and that directly from research so all 100 of those funds will support research on a few of the products we have uh affiliate links for so um yeah so that's a one-stop shop and a lot of people ask me about consulting and doctors and nutritional you know dietitians that can help them out. I have a list of them on the website. And I think they do everything from athletic performance to seizures to assisting patients with cancer. So ketonutrition.org. Awesome. Thank you again for your time. We really appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day. cool wow the the dude honestly the alzheimer's thing uh is uh gigantic really i'm really happy about that because like i forgot what he said well we can copy and see his notes i'm kidding yeah but like no it's really exciting just because it's like yeah i do eat way less carbs than i

used to in the past i mean i'm i'm probing ketosis a exciting just because it's like, yeah, I do eat way less carbs than I used to in the past. I mean, I'm probing ketosis a lot just because of my activity level. So like Alzheimer's to me is very frightening. Like it's for me, I think it's like the most frightening disease just because like being not able to remember. Sounds a lot scarier than dying. Yeah. Because it's like you kind of die. The person who you were doesn't

really exist anymore right you can't remember shit and that's yeah that's really sad and i think i think the saddest part is like you know maybe you you become i guess if you forget enough stuff then you uh don't remember any of it so maybe it's not that painful but it's painful to everybody around you you know it's brutal for everybody around you that's that's where it really gets to be uh you know gut-wrenching you know yeah yeah it's it's tough that's how uh my towards the end my grandmother has she had dementia alzheimer's it was it's tough man it's it's the worst thing yeah you know yeah but it is great to know that we have i mean we don't have total control but we have something we can do just purely through our food that can potentially mitigate or stop the process from happening.

Yeah. Maybe like a little bit preventative or even just push it off till later. You know. And then maybe you have that for the last, you know, month of your life or something rather than the last six years or something. Yeah. I just think it's more motivation for people to really focus on their nutrition. Because people that smoke cigarettes are like, oh, we're all going to die one day. But it's like, hey, have you looked at somebody who's knocking on the door after smoking for X amount of years? It's not like, and go.

It's not like, and go, you know, it's, it's not like instant. The same thing with diet. It's like, man, if, if implementing this stuff that we learned today can help prevent or push back that experience for you and your family, why wouldn't you, you know, start thinking about it or, you know, taking it serious? It's just like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to share this stuff with my mom because she's going to, yeah, it was really hard on her. So, I mean, it was hard on all of us, but, you know, to see the person that raised you not know who you are is, ugh. Again, too, you know, I don't want people to take away the wrong message.

You don't necessarily have to be on a ketogenic diet if you were listening to what he was saying. It did appear that lower carbohydrates can help specifically with certain things, but really what it kept boiling down to is figuring out a way to eat less food. You know, so, because even when you eat less food, he mentioned that you are producing ketones.

So, you know, I don't even like to even use the word like calorie restriction because sometimes I think that people are like, man, I don't want to like be so hungry. But like, I don't know, can you, like, what could you do? You know, could you eat a little less food on like Tuesday and Thursday every week? You know, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday or something like that. You got three days a week where you just try to eat a little bit less. Maybe on those days, you say, I'm going to only eat, I'm going to eat less than a hundred carbs on those days or something like that. And maybe it's not even carb restriction, but it's just like, I'm just going to utilize a little bit of the fasting that he mentioned. And just, you could just start that way. You don't have to make a lot of other changes.

That's a decent way to start. Maybe you start walking. Maybe you start, you know, working on a couple of things. But if you did want to try a ketogenic diet, you know, it's pretty simple. You're just trying to – what Dominic said I thought was a great explanation of kind of how to get going on it. explanation of kind of how to get going on it because i think a lot of people they just want to like dump in tons of fat and and uh it really wreaks havoc on their stomach and stuff like that so you know start it out slow just try to have it be lower carb than what you're used to uh over a period of time you can start to shift out more uh carbohydrates keep yourself like a month or so to

kind of get your footing and get your stride with it. Any meats are pretty much fair game. As he was mentioning, you might want to try to go for higher fat content. You might want to try to add a little bit of fat to your meals, but really just start out with like kind of low carb or lower what you're used to, carbohydrate intake. Protein is kind of like moderate. carbohydrate intake. Protein is kind of like moderate. You want to try to jack the fat calories up, but just do it gradually over time because all of a sudden you just start eating tons of fat and protein. Your stomach will probably not feel so good. You can have some vegetables and you can just go from there. It can be pretty simple. I always loved the ketogenic diet. And when he's mentioning it, I'm like, Oh man, I kind of excited to, to go back to it, you know? And, and that happens when we have different people here,

we have Jay Cutler here and I'm like, Oh man, I want to do bodybuilding workouts, you know? And it makes you kind of like, you know, jump back and forth between the different stuff. But, um, I always did like the ketogenic diet and it will be something that I'll probably mess around with coming up again soon. Yeah. I'm excited for my mom, man. She's been doing keto for like the past, it's been three, four months now.

She's, it's not like she's been super unhealthy or anything, but she's feeling so much better than she has in a very long time. She even lost some weight without even trying. Like just weight came off without her trying to lose weight. It's just like, that's awesome. She feels amazing.

And she's, uh, 62. 62. And, and is it feeling difficult for her? see that's the best part when you find something that's not when someone's like hey like i lost weight i feel better and it's not that hard for me you're like oh shit like that's the magic right there yeah if it's hard if it's too difficult if it's difficult in the beginning it's kind of understandable but you know and it's going to have some difficulty to it.

But if you've been doing a diet for two months or so and you look back at how you started it and you've already lost five pounds or ten pounds, then you're like, you know, it's not really that hard. It's not really that bad. That's how you know you're on the right track. What you got over there, Andrew? Just, just, uh, again, huge shout out and thank you to perfect keto. Um,

again, all the links and everything that we pretty much always talk about on almost every episode, whether it be, um, you know, sponsors, uh,

our Instagram, where you can find the podcast, all that. Everything's always in the show notes and, or the YouTube description. And Mark, are you flexing on me? Mm-hmm.

Trying to get pumped up. Your stomach was going crazy during that episode, bro. Did you hear that? I know. I tried to kind of go over here, but I should have just taken the microphone and been like... Next time you got to do that. Yeah, play into it.

Yeah. Anyway, my stomach heard the ketone diet and it's like, we need to jack the fats Next time you got to do that. Yeah, play into it. Yeah. Anyway. My stomach heard the ketone diet and it's like, we need to jack the fats back up again. This guy's totally right. It's pretty crazy. Like he just had like device after device of like the ketone testers and stuff. And I just remember back in the day there was one and it was like that weird one that your brother used to have all the time. It had like lit up.

It looked like a lightsaber type thing. Oh, he had like one that you breathe into or something yeah yeah that thing was nuts ketones where can people find you and sema and sema in yang on instagram and youtube and sema yin yang on tiktok and twitter andrew uh at i am andrew z please make sure you follow the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter and thank you again everybody that's been rating and reviewing the podcast that does a whole heap of help for us

Mark where you at I'm at Mark Smelly Bell YouTube Instagram TikTok all over the damn place strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch y'all later. Yo, yo, Balls Deep Jr.

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