The Peter Attia Drive - Qualy #120 - What is the difference between ketone salts and esters?

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Today's episode of The Qualys is from podcast #05 – Dom D’Agostino, Ph.D.: ketosis, n=1, exogenous ketones, HBOT, seizures, and cancer.   The Qualys is a subscriber-exclusive podcast, released Tuesday through Friday, and published exclusively on our private, subscriber-only podcast feed. Qualys is short-hand for “qualifying round,” which are typically the fastest laps driven in a race car—done before the race to determine starting position on the grid for race day. The Qualys are short (i.e., “fast”), typically less than ten minutes, and highlight the best questions, topics, and tactics discussed on The Drive. Occasionally, we will also release an episode on the main podcast feed for non-subscribers, which is what you are listening to now. Learn more: https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/qualys/   Subscribe to receive access to all episodes of The Qualys (and other exclusive subscriber-only content): https://peterattiamd.com/subscribe/  Connect with Peter on Facebook.com/PeterAttiaMD | Twitter.com/PeterAttiaMD | Instagram.com/PeterAttiaMD 

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Peter Atia Qualies, a member exclusive podcast. The Qualies is just a shorthand slang for Qualification Round, which is something you do prior to the race, just much quicker. The Qualies highlight the best of the questions, topics and tactics that are discussed in previous episodes of the drive. So if you enjoy the quality you can access dozens more of them through our membership program. Without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's quality. Maybe explain for people what the difference is between a salt and an ester. So we'll leave a cito acetate out of that for a moment.

Yeah, but if you talk about beta hydroxybutyrate, but you can have a cito acetate salt too, so I can mention that. I didn't know that. I thought it was only a diester. So that's we'll definitely want to hear about that. So on the BHB front, people are sort of inundated with ketone salts, ketone esters, and then a whole bunch of complete weird stuff, like raspberry ketones and stuff. But let's just leave the nonsense off the table.

But if you just talk about comparing a BHB ester to a BHB salt, what's the chemical difference? Yeah. So a salt is just an ionic bond between the ketone molecule and beta hydroxybutyrate, a monovalent or a divalent cation, or anine amino acid like arginine, citralline, histidine, lysine. So you can literally, ionically bond beta hydroxybutyrate to a number of different things. The easiest thing to do is to bond it with sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium. Now, calcium and magnesium have two positive charges.

You could put two BHBs on them. Oh. That's the advantage, sort of an advantage. This advantage, I guess, with magnesium BHB, which is actually is very bioavailable magnesium. I measured my magnesium after taking it. It went up quite high. This advantage is that your GI tolerability to something like magnesium beta hydroxybutyrate

may be only somewhere between one to three grams, you know, three grams max produce. Wow. So not that much. One gram three times a day, at least for me, had no issues. I could probably tolerate two or three grams per day. So it's nice. I mean, it's something that's contributing. But ideally, what you want to do with a ketone salt is because salt has a stigma, I call them ketone electrolyte formulations is to spread the beta hydroxybutyrie out across monovalant and divalent cations and they're the four that have the most utility. And then an ester, of course, is a covalent bond, not an a ionic bond, right? Yeah.

So you can take one, three, butane dial and you could create a mono ester with beta hydroxybutyrate, right? And just add it, do a trans esterification reaction and combine that beta hydroxybutyrate to one, three, butane dial or acetoacetate, you can combine with one, three, butane. Or you could take glycerol. So with glycerol, you can come up with a triester of glycerol, which we have. Basically, you're creating a triglyceride that is instead of three fatty acids, you put three BHBs. It's pretty cool molecule, yeah. So we have some experience using, you think that?

I told a story like many, many years ago, probably four or five years ago on Tim Ferris' podcast about how I drank this jet fuel and almost thought I was gonna go blind. Of course, what I may or may not have omitted from that story was that you gave it to me. And so the ketones today taste a heck of a lot better than that earlier Jen stuff. And even when I told you that I just took the 50 ML

vial you sent and chugged it in one sitting, even you were sort of horrified. You're like, wait, wait, wait, you didn't read the note I told you that I just took the 50 ml vial you sent and chugged it in one sitting. Even you were horrified. You're like, wait, wait, wait. You didn't read the note I wrote you explaining how to dilute it and mix it. We had talked about it. We had assuredly talked about it. You were very enthusiastic about getting started.

Yeah, I couldn't resist. I was too. That stuff's unbearably bad. Yeah. So, what? I mean, whereas the ketone salts actually don't taste bad, they're obviously strong, but they're awesome. Yeah, yeah.

So why does the ester, is there an obvious reason from an olfactory slash taste perspective why they are so staggeringly horrible? Yeah, at least they were. I mean, I'm told they're better today. Yeah, I would say the ketogenic potency is inversely proportional to taste. So it just seems like, you know, the more the more potent these compounds get, even the triester beta hydroxybutyrate, you know, is pretty nasty stuff.

Meaning that glycerol, triglyceride that? Yeah, it's a great molecule. I mean, it has like lots of, you know, tremendous utility. Well, making a ketone ester with one three-butane dial is really cool because the one three-butane dial is more substrate. Broken down, yeah. So that goes into another question, the whole enantimer. So if you use the R beta hydroxybuter H with the R one three-butane dial, then you can

really get ketone levels up pretty high. And that would be sort of the delta G or the human, you know, ketone ester that's out there. Hope you enjoyed today's special bonus episode of the quality. New episodes of the qualities are released Tuesday through Friday each week and are published exclusively on our private member only podcast fee. If you're interested in hearing more, as well as receiving all of the other member-exclusive benefits, you can visit peteratia-md.com forward slash subscribe. This podcast is for general informational purposes only, does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and

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