This is a YouTube video titled "Why MCT Oil Boosts Your Ketones: Dr. Bikman Explains" featuring Dr. Benjamin Bikman discussing the physiological and biochemical reasons why medium chain triglycerides (MCT) raise ketone levels in the body. The content is an educational explanation by Dr. Bikman about fat absorption, metabolism, and ketone production, recorded in June 2024.
Pam, I use MCT and it is not an exogenous ketone, but it does raise my ketone level. How does this happen? Oh, what a great question. So normally this. I like this question because it allows me to speak as both a physiologist and a biochemist, which is something those are. Those are topics I like to bridge and dance between. So let's start with the physiology point, which is starting in the guts. The shorter a fat gets, the more direct it is absorbed. So a long chain fat gets broken apart and rebuilt into what's called a chylomicron as it moves into the body, and then it moves through the lymph circulation, and then it comes back into the bloodstream up near the heart. And then that chylomicron will be depositing fats and eventually make its way to the liver. The shorter the fat gets. Including medium chain fats. Not, of course, that includes short chain fats. Now it just gets directly absorbed into the bloodstream. And when things get direct, directly absorbed into the bloodstream from the guts, it goes to the liver first. The liver is right at the front lines of getting everything from the guts, filtering it, if you will, handling it, and then letting it go into the blood. For the most part, there's some bypassing of the liver, but for the most part, it's all going to the liver. And so when the liver gets inundated with a lot of fat because of all those medium chain fatty acids, the also the shorter the fat gets, the less a cell is capable of storing that fat. Once you get to about 12 carbons, which is one of the primary medium chain fats, you can't store it, you have to burn it. There's no storage capacity for fats that short, and so you have to burn it. And the more you're burning fat, the more you're making ketones. So MCT and shorter are all very ketogenic fats.
