The Potent Brain & Body Ketone Fuel You’ve Probably Never Heard Of: The Science Of R3HBG With Tecton’s Dr. Mike Chesne

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, some of these products were used for things that you wouldn't want to eat it if you knew what they were using it for. It's almost magic. It's almost magic. People sometimes think I talk about it like it's shit, but as you learn more about this molecule and what it does for the human bodies, it's hard not to. I mean, think about it. This is caveman fuel. This is what cavemen used to get to the next meal.

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Mike, a lot of people who are into ketones, they have some medical issue like a concussion or TBI, or some people will turn to it for something like cancer management. Some people see the ads on the internet, some people have a friend hand them a bottle. What got you interested in this whole field?

Well, the story's a little longer than just a quick intro. I was in the military for 25 years and I got a pretty significant brain injury while I was in Iraq. Ended up costing me my career, ended up having to be medically retired in 2010. So that is kind of the genesis of where this came from is learning that ketones were neuroprotective. And the idea was if we could get that to soldiers before they got injured, there's a high probability that it wouldn't go down that secondary neurometabolic cascade and cause additional damage later on. So that's the kind of the very beginning genesis of it. But then learning more about real ketone, exogenous ketone research got me started learning about it, studying about it, and in fact, what made me turn into a biochemist. So—

Yeah. So, originally, before the whole idea of exogenous ketone supplementation, which is kind of how you and I met, were you mostly trying out or utilizing or familiar with nutritional ketosis? Just basically extreme carb restriction, fasting, et cetera?

Yes. So where I, where I first learned about it was I was in a 4-month-long residential treatment facility in Houston for brain injury. So they had a very good program at TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston. It was a brain injury rehab center, the same one that Senator Gifford went to after she was shot. We were in the same cohort. That's where I learned that nutrition and what you put into your body has a lot to do with how well you heal and also whether or not you even get hurt seriously in the first place. And that's kind of where I learned about a ketogenic diet, tried it out a little bit back then, didn't really get serious into the keto diet until probably early 2020s. Did a lot of work on the ketone space, but I didn't, I didn't personally use the diet until later on.

Yeah, I, I kind of shifted to it pretty early on. I think it was around probably 2011, 2012 when I started experimenting with limiting carbohydrates for long-term aerobic endurance sports like Ironman. But back then, it's kind of like if you wanted to shift yourself even more into ketone production, you would use medium-chain triglyceride oil like MCT oil. Still a lot of people put that in their coffee, but man, the gastric side effects of using that for 10 hours in a row, during an Ironman triathlon caught up to me pretty quickly. And then, just because I wrote a book about low-carb dieting for athletes and started to do some podcasts and articles about ketosis, eventually I got my hands on some of the early versions of these exogenous ketones. They all just tasted horrific.

So, you were drinking diesel fuel mixed with the real peaty scotch.

Ben Greenfield: That's basically what it was like. I mean, I remember one of the first bottles I got was after I met a guy named Dominic D'Agostino at this tiny health event. I forget where we were at. It may have been the Ancestral Health Symposium. And he was doing a paper presentation on exogenous ketones. And every bottle I got, I think for a year from different manufacturers, it was just like unlabeled human research ketones. And Fast forward now and there's multiple options available on the market. And, I want to get into some of the differences between these drinkable ketones or ketone salts. But, for you, when it came to kind of the discovery that you could drink your way into ketosis, what happened that introduced you to that world?

I was working a different project. I was working with a gentleman, a former West Point graduate who was in the oncology space, and he had created his own protein drink for oncology patients. You know, people who are going through cancer don't eat well, their diet, their appetite is terrible. So he found or made a product that had high whey protein and a bunch of other ingredients in it, and he was looking for somebody to help him with his business plan. So started working with him, and during the, during the, the research to find the correct ingredients for him, I found the article on a DARPA project, which started in 2003 by Oxford University and the National Institute of Health, Dr. Kieran Clarke and Dr. Richard Veach. So I called and introduced myself to both of them. Long story there, I ended up flying to Oxford, met with Dr. Clarke, and I worked with her over about a 3-year period to try to get her particular ketone ester into the US market. Along the way though, I found out, figured out some things that I thought I could build a better mousetrap, tried to talk her into doing it. It wasn't what she wanted to do at the time. So we parted ways on, on great terms, obviously, and I just went a different path. So that's kind of where, how I get introduced to it by, was by this DARPA project and by meeting Dr. Clark and Dr. Veach, who has passed away just recently, but Yeah, that's how I got started with it.

Yeah, Dr. Veach is kind of one of the godfathers of ketone research. And, yeah, one of the guys whose original work I followed when I was getting into this in the first place. And, before we dive into the deep end of the pool biochemically speaking, because I would love to hear about what you've discovered as far as the different kinds of ketones out there. I think that's still confusing for a lot of people, right? They hear long terms like butanedial and beta-hydroxybutyrate, usually with some numbers before them. And, it gets a little confusing. But, before we do, just to start off with an easier question, do you actually, in your own diet, do you follow metabolic ketosis or carb restriction or anything like that? I'm just curious how you being immersed in the ketone field do it yourself.

So, what I do is I follow an intermittent fasting schedule. And I usually fast 3 to 4 days a week, minimum of 16 hours during that fast. And I do it, I extend those fasts out by using our product, which is a ketone ester. And what it does is it doesn't take me out of my fast and it increase and it extends that fast usually about 4 to 6 hours depending on when I use it and what I really want to use it for. But that's the one that I do. I followed a keto diet for about 2 years. It was really good, it was very helpful, but staying on that high-fat, low-carb, you know, medium amount of proteins— as much as I love butter and bacon, you can only eat so much of it. And, and it just got to be too much of a hassle, not just with me, and just be honest, with my, my wife, because my wife and I, we try to eat the same types of food, but She doesn't eat cauliflower and cauliflower is a big part of the keto diet and she doesn't eat— she likes at least a minimum amount of carbs and I was trying to restrict them completely and it just didn't work out. But, what has worked out for me is that intermittent fasting, using intermittent fasting to keep my weight down.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, I tried that kind of traditional form of a keto diet that I think a lot of people picture, take the buns off the burger at the fast food restaurant and eat lots of bacon and put butter in all your coffee and have the fattiest cuts of steak. Probably from just a gallbladder bile production, probably a little bit of just biochemical individuality, I do way, way better with just kind of a low-carb version of a Mediterranean diet.

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I still eat a lot of plants, a lot of vegetables, avocado, extra virgin olive oil, fish, meat, but a lot of times not the super fatty stuff. I cook it in avocado oil or extra virgin olive oil. And then, I use the cheat code. I start off every day pre-workout with a shot of drinkable ketones. In many cases, I'm having those again in the afternoon. And so, I kind of have this plant-forward version of a ketogenic diet. And then, in the evenings, because I'm just so active, I do a carb refeed. So, I'm intermittent fasting like you, 12 to 16 hours just about every day. And then, in the evening, I'll have sweet potato, some honey, a little bit of dark chocolate and yogurt. So, that kind of allows me— I think technically the term for that is cyclic ketosis where you're kind of restricting carbohydrates through the day. If, when I've tested, I've been in ketosis sometimes above 3 millimolar, which is pretty high. And then, you get the carb refeed at the end of the day, so you kind of have your cake and eat it too. That helps out with sleep later on. And, over years of trial and error, that's kind of what I've discovered works best for me.

It's a good plan. It's a real good and solid plan. And, I use exogenous ketones usually twice a day. At least once, I use it every morning for sure, and then sometimes in the afternoon I'll use them again. But, that's just my own personal thing. The same thing, carb limiting is more what you would call it. I still do the intermittent fasting, but I do try to limit the amount of carbs that I eat, try not to eat very much bread. Pasta is of course like my kryptonite because my favorite food in the world is spaghetti. And so, I try not to eat it but maybe every couple of weeks, but it's still hard for me not to go without it considering it's my absolute favorite food.

Yeah. I think mine would probably be dark chocolate. Possibly the only thing that tempts me is gnocchi. If I'm at a place that's got good gnocchi, I'll go for that, but I'm not twirling the noodles around the fork, has never been super tempting to me. So, I'm fortunate in that regard, I guess.

I was born and raised in Louisiana.

Yeah.

Our staple is rice and anything that makes gravy, you know, beef, pork, chicken, whatever it is that makes a gravy that you could put on rice, that's what we eat. That's kind of an everyday meal. So, for me to stop eating rice was a very hard thing because it was something I grew up culturally with. And also, you know, you kind of— that's what your comfort food is when that's what you learn to eat, which is the biggest problem that we have. We have literally learned to eat the absolute wrong way. And I know you understand exactly what I'm talking about. The food pyramid was upside down for, hell, half a century. So Now that we've kind of started to change that a little bit, hopefully it'll pick some impact back up. But the fact that base of our pyramid was carbohydrates doesn't make a lot of sense to anybody who understands nutrition in any way, shape, or form.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And what's worse is you can get away with a lot of times when you're young, you have a screaming high metabolism, you metabolize carbohydrates pretty efficiently, you're probably an athlete or at least a more extreme athlete in your earlier years. And then, once all that kind of subsides, that's when insulin sensitivity issues, triglyceride issues, adipose tissue formation, all the things that can happen with excess starches and sugars sets in. And so, like you and I have both kind of alluded to, one hack we've found is drinking our way into ketosis. Not with alcohol, not drinking alcohol even though there are some ketones that or kind of a form of alcohol, but with these ketones. And so, Mike, I know it's kind of a loaded question, but how do you differentiate between the different types of ketones on the market right now as far as educating people on what their options are?

First, that's a fabulous question and it is the question that confuses the most consumers out there, most people who are trying to get it. There are ketone salts, which are ketone bodies, usually beta-hydroxybutyrate, and it is bound to a mineral salt like sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, any one of those.

And I may throw in questions here, not meant to derail you, but just clarifications. Some people think salt and they think that would need to therefore be a powder. When you're talking about beta-hydroxybutyrate bound to like— I don't know, like a calcium salt or something like that. Is it a powder or can it be drinkable if it's a salt?

It can be either one. In fact, the powders, usually they mix and make it into a drinkable mix anyway. The one thing about the, the salts is that they are what's called a racemic mix. So it's, it's both the, the S or, or, or the L side of the, the, the molecule and the D. Mixed together, the D or the R, the right or dextro or the left or sinestro, the, the two different sides of the molecule, the enantiomer of the molecule. And the S side or the lema side, your body doesn't produce and it does not metabolize. So usually about 50% of the, the actual ketones that are in that salt mix are, are not bioavailable. Your body can't use them So you're still, even if you're taking 10 grams of BHB in, only 5 of those are bioavailable because they're the only ones that are the non-racemic R side of that mix. There's nothing wrong with ketone salts. They will put you into ketosis. The issue is how much do you have to take to get to a usable level? I hate to call it therapeutic or nutritious nutritional ketosis out there 'cause they're just numbers. But if you can get your BHB levels up above 0.5, and I would even caution you, try to keep them below 3 or somewhere in there. I mean, it's not going to hurt you because you are keto adapted and you use it all the time, but, you know, between 0.5 and 3 is this kind of the sweet spot for both performance, for cognition, for— and for all the other multitude of things that BHB, that ketones are good for.

I want to pause there and double-click on a couple of things with the L configuration. I mean, for those of you who took maybe a slightly more advanced high school or collegiate chemistry you have the handedness of a molecule like the right hand and the left hand. And, based on that so-called enantiomeric configuration, I believe would be the pronunciation, they're going to have different effects in the body. What you're saying is that the D-BHB configuration is great, it's going to elevate ketones, but is there actually nothing at all from L? Because I've seen chatter go back and forth on a lot of these ketone discussions about, well, maybe L to a certain extent could be used and it's more fast-acting perhaps or is metabolized to a certain extent but not so much as D. Are you saying L just has no utilization whatsoever?

Ben, I have read thousands, and that is no exaggeration, thousands of research reports on ketones, their uses, and I have not read one credible one that said that the limoside or the L side of the ketones is metabolized and used in the human body. Human beings do not produce L-BHB. They just don't. Your body produces the, the R side or the delta side that, you know, they— it produces this side, not this one. They look the same, but they're not. They don't— they can't be superimposed. And that's the hand thing you were talking about from the anatomy. They're identical in structure, but they, they don't work together. And there are many, many products that are out there, especially APIs, so pharmaceutical ingredients that have that same benefit, that have that same, the same racemic or non-racemic issue with them. One side works well, acetaminophen, let's say, the part that you use that, that lowers fever, reduces pain, that's one side of it. The other side is poison. So if you take it It, it literally can kill you, which is also why if you take too much acetaminophen, it overloads your, your hepatic system and, and your, your liver shuts down. But no, as, as far as I know and everything that I've read, the, the delta side of the R side, which is the one that your liver produces when you are fasting, is the one that your body can use now. Is there some way there's 0.1% or 1% of the L that may be broken down somewhere by some metabolite that we don't fully understand? Hell, I'm open to it. I think that there's possibilities, but everything that I've read in the thousands of research studies, I have not read anything credible that says the L side is bioavailable in a human being.

Okay.

And when we talk about measuring ketones, they're typically expressed in millimolar amounts. So, those would be the units. I believe it's millimolar per liter if I'm not mistaken of blood. When you're doing a blood finger prick test or perhaps a breath test that's trying to correlate to what might be in the blood, there are different opinions out there about what might constitute metabolic ketosis. I threw the number 3 out there. You're right, that is kind of high. Someone who's been eating low carb or using ketones for a long time wouldn't have as much trouble reaching 3. I know you start to see some significant acidosis once you get to 7 or above. You mentioned caution around 3. Is it because there's potential risk of metabolic acidosis or some other reason?

No, you are correct. When you're talking about metabolic acidosis or ketoacidosis, you're talking about something 7 to 10 and higher millimoles. You're perfectly safe, pretty much everything that I know and have read is between, you know, 0.5 and 5 is completely safe. But there are only, I mean, you may be one, there are a handful of extreme athletes out there who live on a ketogenic diet that they're, BHB levels, the blood levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate, will get up to that level even when you're supplementing with these exogenous ketones. The main reason for that is your— once your body saturates with the BHB, it just flushes it. So you can only take so much of it in, especially the one that we have. You can only take so much of it in before, you know, your body just kind of saturates with the BHB and it flushes the rest of it out.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. So basically, what you're saying is if you were getting to 3 millimolar or higher purely through the use of exogenous ketones, then you're going to get to a point where you're creating expensive pee or, and I don't know what you think about this, they're bound to a salt and that draws water via osmosis into the large intestine. And if you overdo it on exogenous ketones that are bound to a salt, you can get disaster pants.

Oh, absolutely. It can be it can be very detrimental to your health. And it— and that's with— look, you know as well as anybody, anything taken in moderation is, is fairly good for you. When you go crazy with it, that's where you have problems. Now, you asked about the different types of ketones. So there were ketone salts out there. Those are kind of the first ones that were available there. They've been used by lots of companies out there, and there's, there's a couple of companies that, that's their primary business. And you know what, they're good. People can use them and they get some benefit out of it. All the better for them. I'm not going to talk bad about it because it, it's a good usable product. There is then you have the, the ketone esters that are bound to the 1,3-butandiol, which you talked about earlier. That's not created in the human body. That is not a natural product. 1,3-butandiol is not something that is just found in nature normal. Now, can it be found? Of course. But that what we see in these products, that's created by a human being in a laboratory. In a chemistry lab. That's how it was started. And some of these products were used for things that, that, uh, you wouldn't want to eat it if you knew what they were using it for. Now, does 1,3-butandiol break down and turn into BHB and raise your, your, your blood ketone levels? Oh, absolutely it does. But it does it by going through the hepatic metabolic system. So your liver has to break down every part of that molecule. It has to break the 1,3-butandiol down, Then it has to help process the BHB that's in there, which the liver doesn't use BHB because it doesn't have the right enzymes to use it. But it does— your liver has to work really hard. And while it's doing that, it's burning up ATP and it's burning up NAD+. And your NAD+ pool, as you get older, gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And we can't afford to let your body be used up all of this. That's where what we've created has come in, is revolutionary. And I mean, I'm gonna brag a little bit about it, but what we did was we took the beta-hydroxybutyrate, which is the, the, the ketone body of the 3 ketone bodies that are out there. It's the one that your body utilizes the most. Your body produces the most of it, and therefore it utilizes it better. So we took that beta-hydroxybutyrate and we bound it to a glycerol molecule.

And you—

why glycerol? Your body produces glycerol naturally. It is something that your body produces and breaks down, and it is perfectly normal. And that breaks down into glucose. So you now, you have two different forms of fuel in one molecule, and it is perfectly safe. First, it doesn't go through your hepatic metabolism. So, your liver does not have to break this stuff down. As soon as you put it in your mouth, the enzymes in your mouth start to break it down. Then, when it gets into your stomach, another— your gastric lipases start to break it down there. And then, when it gets into the intestines, the pancreatic lipases come out and they break it down there. So, the liver has nothing to do with the metabolism of R-3-hydroxybutyrate glycerides, which is our product.

Can we abbreviate that? R3HBG.

R3HBG.

Okay, that's what it's called, R3HBG.

Okay, that's our trademark name, and it is basically— it's the, it's the molecule and what's in it, and we just trademark the name. But it is the, the same beta-hydroxybutyrate, the same one, bioidentical to the one that your liver produces, bound to a glycerol molecule. Now the, the beauty of what we've done is, is the biochemistry, is how we set that up. Now, this is not accurate, but I'm gonna try to do it in a way where people can understand it. Think of some, think of the molecule as a triangle. It's not really, but the triangle has 3 points on it. So, and each one of those positions is called an SN1, 2, or 3 position in this particular molecule, 'cause it has 3. As your body metabolizes it through the lipase system, it cleaves off preferentially usually the 1 position or the 3 position as it goes through the system. So the way that we design this is to try to keep as much BHB on that 2 position as possible. That way, when it enters in through the intestines, that beta-hydroxybutyrate gets pulled in whole through the system into the portal system and right into the bloodstream. So you get a bigger boost of it right up front and it lasts for a good long time. And then, the glycerol breaks down and becomes glucose. So, you get two different fuels out of one molecule. And, it can be altered based on the chemistry, but we don't. We've built it to where the majority of that DHB sits on that SN2 position.

Yeah. You sent me some bottles. One of my initial tests, I should pull up my blood glucose right now because I had a bottle this morning. Oh, it was based on wondering if the glycerol would increase blood glucose. My glucose right now, so I got as high as 95 after dinner last night. I'm at 71 right now. I was in the 70s most of last night. I had a bottle before dinner last night and then another bottle this morning of the Tekton, which is the R3-HBG you were just talking about. Is there any concern for anybody, or have you seen that the glycerol would increase glucose enough to where glycemic variability or glucose spikes would be an issue?

The amount of glycerol that's in this molecule is minuscule. It's a very small amount. It's just enough to bind the BHB2. And, the way that the molecule is designed, it's over 90%, usually somewhere around 96% pure of BHB, and then the rest is split between water and glycerol. So, the glycerol amount that's in a molecule is very, very small.

Ben Greenfield: And this question might be a little bit more involved, but it— well, kind of rewinding back to what you were saying about the utilization of one or butanediol versus beta-hydroxybutyrate in that liver pass. Dominic D'Agostino, who I mentioned earlier, he published this paper and I think it's created a little bit of a buzz in the whole ketone industry. Called "Divergent Hepatic Outcomes of Chronic Ketone Supplementation." And, he tested out— probably pull it up here. I don't know if you saw this one. He tested ketone ester, medium-chain triglycerides, the 1,3-butanediol, ketone salts, and then a ketone salt MCT combination. It was a 4-week trial. And, he did find that it seems like there is some amount of hepatic, almost like a concerning rise in liver enzymes and potential hepatic issues with especially higher doses of some of these ketones. Do you know or can you compare at all or predict where R3-HBG would fit into the equation when it comes to liver safety?

It's not even in the same ballpark. You're talking about apples and oranges. What I described to you earlier is R3-HBG is 100% metabolized by the lipases in your digestive system. So it starts with your oral lipases, gastric lipases, pancreatic lipases in the intestines. It never goes through the liver. It does not metabolize through the hepatic system.

Wait, is that, is that what it means when the bottle says liposomal?

No, liposomal just means that it's, it's, it's encapsulated in some way to make it more bioavailable. So there's two different ways that we use encapsulation. We have our own proprietary green nanoencapsulation, which we use, is 100% plant-based nanoencapsulation using green technology. And the other is just a microencapsulation process that's used at the manufacturer too. And what it does is it allows the BHB to get further into the gut before it— before it's broken down. It increases bioavailability and lengthens it. That's what the liposomal in our products is for.

Okay, got it. So at what location anatomically then is lipase breaking down this R3-HBG?

It starts in the— as soon as you put it in your mouth. So your oral lipases break down between 1 and 5% of the R3-HBG. Your gastric lipases then break down somewhere around 50 to 60%. And then as it goes through the gut, through the jejunum and the, and the duodenum, it, then the pancreatic lipases join into that mix and then they break down the rest of it. The BHB should not— ours should not get any further than the duodenum. 100% of it is taken up into your system.

All right, and you're not bound to a salt?

We are not. There are no salts. But now we put— now we put sodium, magnesium, calcium, uh, potassium, phosphorus in our products But we do that because everybody needs electrolytes, but it has nothing to do with the ketone molecule.

Yeah, especially if you're eating a low-carb diet. A lot of people don't realize your electrolyte needs go up when you're low carb. So, back to the, I think you said, nanoencapsulation. We went over that pretty quickly, but describe that whole liposomal delivery mechanism thing to me in a little bit more detail.

So, what we did is we worked through with the University of Missouri., and they're— they are the, the founders of green nanotechnology. They, they invented the process.

Are you, are you saying green nanotechnology?

Green. Green.

Okay.

So they're the founders of this green nanotechnology, and this is just me, the way that I say it. It's— this doesn't mean anything bad. The issue that I saw for our product was they use metal, metals to nanoencapsulate with. They use silver, gold, iron, you name it. They use metals for this nanoencapsulation. And they also use another product as a crosslinker, which is in higher doses not good for you. So when I went to them with the thesis or hypothesis, I said, can you take a plant protein and other plant crosslinkers and make this same process work? Well, it took us years to do it, but we were able to do it. So now we can use pea protein, soy protein, whey protein, okra, mangoes. I mean, you, you name it. If there's a protein out there that we can bind it to, we can bind it into the protein pocket and then cross-link it with the flavonoids from other cross-linkers like resveratrol or resveratrol and the upper other epicatechins, the different things that you can do, and then you get to benefit from that too. So it's— there's a lot. It's not complex science, but there's a lot to it. And there's a lot of different ways that we can utilize it. That's the beauty of what we've done is you can do it with all these different other plants that are out there and get the benefits from them. Grape seed, grape skins. So you get the resveratrol, mango peel, all of those things, all of those good free radicals as people will call them if you want to keep it kind of simple. All those things you can add to as part of the cross-linking system and then your body gets the benefit from those as well.

Okay, so this plant-based liposomal delivery mechanism is allowing you to deliver a certain load of antioxidants, but is it somehow increasing bioavailability or something like that?

It does by just simply by the way that it does it, the physical way that it does it. Encapsulates the— so let's just call it a BHB molecule. Now, we have encapsulated many small molecules: caffeine, theacrine, NAD, NR. We've encapsulated all of those things. So as part of our process, it's not just for the ketone. We designed it so any small molecule can be bound into the system to make it more bioavailable. That way, one of the things it does is it helps, you know, BHB does cross the blood-brain barrier, But when you nanoencapsulate, it makes it even smaller, so it makes it easier even to cross the blood-brain barrier.

So, it is a delivery and bioavailability upgrade basically.

Absolutely.

Okay, got it. Got it. Okay. So, this is going to be fun because when I first got a hand or my hands on a bottle of Tektone, I think it was just whatever your regular plain Jane Tektone is. And then, I realize you've got different versions. I would love to unpack what they are and what they do for my own understanding and for people who want to try these things out in terms of what you've got and the different times that people would strategize when to use what.

Okay. Well, I appreciate you asking the question. Currently, we have 4 products that are being marketed that are on the market. We had a beverage that was on the market before which had just our BHB built into it. That product is still available. We just haven't been producing it for the last year because we focused on these shots. We have 4 different ones. The, the one that, that you are talking about, what people would call the regular one, is our electrolyte version. So what it is, is it's our ketone with electrolytes added to it, and it's mainly built for athletes, for increasing your performance. Uh, it can help— obviously the BHB is going to help you with your clarity of thought and focus as well. But the formulation that we designed for that electrolyte one, and that's the berry flavor if you remember, I think I got one of them right here.

See, so that's basically like one, it's R3 HBG plus electrolytes in a shot. Correct.

That's exactly what this is.

Okay.

Then we have our cognition shot, which is designed for increasing focus, increasing your attention, and also helping you finish tasks. What I would, what I usually talk when I talk to somebody and ask what to use it for, this is what you as an executive, if you are having, you know, you have to finish a presentation, you need a little bit extra energy, but you don't want to crash from drinking a cup of coffee or taking a caffeine supplement, which is great. It makes you feel good. It helps you think a little quicker for a little while. But then after 30 minutes or so, you start— you just plummet. This hasn't— does not have that effect. You take these and you're going to get— your BHB level will reach that 0.5 level, which we talked about earlier, millimoles, between 15 and 30 minutes. And then you're going to maintain that above that 0.5 level depending on, you know, obviously we only put 10 grams of ketones in here. It's enough to get you into therapeutic ketosis and keep you there for anywhere 3 to 6 hours depending on your metabolism. If I'm outside running, it's not going to last 6 hours, it's going to last maybe 3. But, if I'm sitting here in my house and I'm working on my computer, I'm going to get those benefits for quite a long time.

Yeah. So, the brain one is basically R3HPG plus lion's mane.

Correct. And so, you get the benefits of the lion's mane as well, increased memory, increased focus, the same things that that Lion's Mane does for you. You get that as well, right?

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neuronal sprouting, kind of like Miracle-Gro for the brain effects. Yeah. Okay.

So that's, that's our cognition product. Then we have— we had a lot of athletes ask us to add caffeine to our product. I'm not a fan of adding anything that's not natural. So the caffeine we add is a green tea or green coffee bean caffeine, natural caffeine. We had 90 milligrams, which is just a little above what a cup of coffee has in it, and then 6 grams of ketones. So, and, and this is completely a business thing, it will give you enough ketones to get you into therapeutic ketosis for a short period of time, but it's the benefit of having both the caffeine and the, the, the ketones together that really increases that focus. And you don't crash from it like you would if you just took another caffeine supplement.

Yeah. So, that might be more like a quick-hit pre-workout caffeine aid with a lower amount of ketones.

And, to be straight with you, what I usually do if I'm going to do a workout or if I'm going to go on a long hike or a walk or something, I will take the electrolyte and the caffeine together. It gives me 16 grams of ketones plus the little bit of caffeine that really helps out. But, Again, I'm also the person, I get this at a significant discount compared to everybody else.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know a guy as they say. Well, 90 milligrams, I mean, technically depending on your caffeine metabolizing genetics, and this is how I've been using it, if I have in between lunch and dinner, typically I take a quick midday siesta and then I do a sauna and a cold plunge and I jump back into work. And, right before I get in the sauna, I've been throwing down that 90-mg caffeine version So, I get enough ketones to kind of tide me over until dinner and wake me up from the nap. But, 90 mgs, for me, that's at 3:30 PM. It's not an issue for me when my head hits the pillow at 10:00 PM.

That's kind of the beauty of not putting too much caffeine in it. You could use it at different times during the day, but everybody metabolizes caffeine differently. As you know, my wife is a prime example. She can't have any caffeine after about 2 o'clock in the afternoon or she doesn't sleep. My son drinks coffee right before he goes to bed. He's 34 years old. He's an attorney and he works all the time, so he's always up. He can drink it right before he goes to bed and lay down in the bed and go right to sleep.

Yeah.

Well, as I say about the slow metabolizers, more coffee for the rest of us. How about this one that's the— I think it's called like GLP.

That's a fabulous product. It is a GLP-1 activator is what we call it. The ketones themselves work as a GLP-1 agonist. It has some of the same effects that your GLP-1 shots would be the same. Now, I will tell you, I'm a huge fan of GLP-1.

Ben Greenfield: My understanding, by the way, Mike, from what I've looked into is it's kind of a dual agonist. You have triple agonists like retatrutide that act on GLP, ghrelin, and GIP. Ketones from what I've seen act on GLP and ghrelin, so they kind of hit two different pathways.

And leptin.

Yeah, that's a good point, leptin also. So, there's multiple satiation downstream effects.

Right. And, that's the beauty of it. It helps with the ghrelin so you don't feel hungry. Your stomach doesn't produce the ghrelin hormone so you don't feel hungry. Increases the leptin so you feel full. The satiety home.

Ben Greenfield: I remember kind of like I heard this about bone broth, but then I also heard about this stuff that it brings back the dead or something to that effect. Bone broth brings back the dead. So, I heard that also about this stuff called black seed oil. And it's like this mystery in the whole supplements industry, but it goes way back. I mean, it has a ton of just ancestral wisdom and modern research behind it. And what I didn't know about black seed oil that I recently found out is that it helps with cortisol management and stress based on recent research. So, there's this little capsule that has black seed in it. Some people don't like the taste of black seed oil. You can swallow this capsule, not even taste it, but it's called Thymoquin.

Thymoquin.

It's been clinically studied for its ability to support healthy cortisol levels and help your body adapt to everyday stress. And then, you just get the host of other benefits for the immune system, for antioxidation, et cetera, that you get from black seed oil because that's what Thymoquin has in it. Now, what sets this apart from other black seed oils is it's the only black seed oil product on the market that meets US Pharmacopeia guidelines, which is a significant differentiator in a category where quality varies dramatically. This stuff has been proven to have the exact high-quality, well-treated black seed oil that you're looking for to help out with sleep quality, with mood, energy, mental clarity, recovery, overall well-being. I'm actually doing a podcast on black seed oil too. I just think it's so interesting. I'm going to do my podcast with the same guy that makes this thymoquin stuff, Dr. Michael Murray, one of the most respected names in natural medicine. He spent 4 decades researching evidence-based approaches to health. He's written over 40 books, and he's a fan of this thymoquin also. So, if you want to check it out, you can go to his website, drmurraiy.com, D-O-C-T-O-R-M-U-R-R-A-Y.com/Ben, and use 25% off code BEN25 at checkout. That's drmurraiy.com/Ben and use code BEN25 at checkout. And the product is called Thymoquin. Let's talk about your hair. Hair health, hair health I should say, is one of those things that quietly reflects what's happening beneath the surface. Stress, recovery, inflammation, aging, all of it tends to show up there eventually. And instead of jumping straight to invasive treatments or complicated protocols, you can try light therapy. Now, I like those red light helmets, but they're hard to take on the go. Bon Charge has a red light hat. You heard me right, a red light hat, or as they call it, a cap. What makes this cap interesting is the technology in it. It uses targeted 650-nanometer red light designed specifically for scalp health and healthier, fuller-looking hair over time by delivering light energy directly to the follicles. And the big advantage is simplicity. This fits easily in my carry-on wherever I travel. I can use it for about 10 minutes a session, whatever, reading, sipping coffee, winding down at night, whatever I'm doing. No complicated setup, no invasive treatments, no interruptions to the daily routine. And the cap design is lightweight, is comfortable, Again, easy to travel with. So over time with use, you start noticing stronger looking, healthier looking hair, and overall better scalp health, which is ultimately what you want from the world's coolest cap. So Boncharge makes this whole experience easy. Worldwide shipping, free shipping on every red light cap, 12-month warranty, HSA/FSA eligibility. Go to boncharge.com and use code GREENFIELD to save 15%. That's Boncharge, B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com. Use code GREENFIELD to save 15%. Let me push the hair out of my eyes. There you go. Works so well.

Hormone, they call it. So, you get the GLP-1 effects from it, you get the ghrelin effects and the leptin effects. And then, we've added to that GLP-1 product, we've added two things. We added 5-HTP and we added acacia fiber. So, the acacia fiber is a very strong prebiotic, really good for your gut metabolism. And the 5-HTP converts to serotonin, helps with sleep, help regulate your cycle, helps with anxiety and depression. There's a lot of other small things that it helps with. So, it helps that serotonin boost also will help with the weight loss portion of the weight management portion of it.

Yeah. Either anecdotally or otherwise, have you seen any changes in sleep architecture when using that one pre-sleep?

For me, it's fine. My wife doesn't sleep well after she takes it. I'm— and I'm not sure— I know we talk, but I'm talking about my wife quite a bit. But, you know, the two of us are, you know, we're, we're a great, uh, team to, to, to use this on because her metabolism is completely different than mine. I can, you know, I can have caffeine later in the day and it doesn't truly bother me. She can't. She can't take a ketone ester after about 4 o'clock in the afternoon or she doesn't sleep. Me, I mean, it really just regulates my system and gets me right into, you know, just relaxes me and gets me right into that sleep mode.

Some people find it pretty stimulating. I have a hypothesis though, and I don't know if there's anything to be said for this. I think we need more studies on ketones and sleep architecture, but they do suppress the appetite. And for me, I tend to function on lower blood glucose with ketones present. For someone who might not have been in long-term sustained ketosis or limited carbs to a significant extent, I think using ketones in the evening naturally causes you to eat less. And I think that some people might experience a little bit of hypoglycemic impact on sleep architecture when they first start doing something like that because they're simply utilizing an alternative metabolic fuel. And I think that that has potential to impact sleep.

Yeah, I agree with Look, when it comes to research with ketones, one, I am thrilled that there are so many people out there, so many scientists out there looking at what the benefits of these ketones are and what they can do. My issue is everybody tries to compare ketones as apples to apples. You cannot compare ketone salts to a ketone ester. Or to the 1,3-butandiol. You just can't compare them. They're not the same thing. They don't even work the same ways. The only thing that's comparable is the amount of BHB that's in each one. So, if the scientific community could get together and say, "This is how we're going to look at it," then that would be great because we have— there's conflicting data out there all the time. And, I'm sure you've read some of this, especially when it comes to athletics and endurance. You know, there was a big study that came out years ago about, you know, these Tour de France bike riders were using ketones and they were working really well. And then they did a study on one and it, and it failed miserably. And as soon as I read it, I said, well, I know exactly why. They studied it on a sprint. This is not for sprinters. This, the only thing this does for sprinters is increase their recovery time. It is not going to make you— it's not going to make Usain Bolt run any faster in a 100-yard dash. Now, the guy who's running a marathon, it is 100% going to help you. It is going to lower your times, it's going to help you recover better, it's going to give you more endurance. But you have to compare them equally, and that's not been done. Because you mentioned, uh, about high doses, which Dom D'Agostino, who one, I wanna go ahead and give him a shout out. He is probably one of the top authorities on ketones in the world. I love Dom, I've met him several times, we've spoken on many occasions. He is a very good scientist. I respect what he does, I respect why he does it. He's also a big fan of the military. His first studies were on Navy divers. So, I mean, I really respect Dom. Dom's background was more, he's an acetoacetate guy. I don't, I don't know how else to, to differentiate. So he, he studies a lot with acetoacetate, which is a ketone, which is one of the other ketone bodies. Of course, it's the second highest one. The other is acetone. It really doesn't do anything, so, or acetate, so it doesn't really do anything for your body. Your body doesn't use it. But, um, in his studies, he showed that some of these, in order to get the benefits that they're asking you're taking a huge amount of the, the, the supplement itself, the, the— a lot of BHB, but it's not like we talked about earlier, it's not bioavailable. So if you're taking, let's say, 50 grams of BHB, which is not really a super high dose, it's a good dose, but if you're taking 50 grams of it— we take 50 grams of ours— you've got 50 grams of BHB and a few grams of glycerol. You take 50 grams of a ketone salt and you're— I mean, you might be 5 times the RDI of sodium or magnesium or calcium or whatever it's bound to. So you're taking so much of the—

back to the, the disaster pants discussion, right?

You're going right back to it. And the other side of it is about when you're talking about the products that are bound to 1,3-butandiol or the products who say they're ketone esters when truly they're just 1,3-butanediol. It's not an ester, it's a precursor to BHB. It is not an ester, and anybody that tells you that doesn't understand biochemistry. So 1,3-butanediol breaks down into BHB, but it does it through the liver. So it— your liver has to break it apart and then turn into BHB, and you can get some really high ketone blood levels with 1,3-butanediol. But what's the trade-off? And please don't think that I'm talking bad about these because I'm not. These products are in the market because people use them. They're effective for people. My caution is don't use so much of it that you're going to hurt yourself. And I will tell you, come to see us and you won't have to worry about that.

With 1,3-butandiol, I do agree we need to give some grace because the amounts used in the studies, you know, there are some some major brands out there, and I'm friends with some of these guys, you'd have to drink several bottles of the stuff on a daily basis. So, just as with anything in nutrition science, if you're listening, when you hear that something is bad for you, whether it's red meat or ketones or caffeine or whatever, go check the dosage used in the studies because that is important. And then, one other thing you mentioned, Mike, was recovery. I've seen some evidence that ketones may assist with recovery. Do you know anything about mechanism of action or have you seen anything regarding how they might actually help with something like that?

This is from everything that I have looked at and studied. The biggest thing that BHB does for you now, and I'm talking about BHB because it's the ketone that actually does something for you. It's what does something for you. So the BHB itself, beta-hydroxybutyrate, that molecule by itself, as it breaks down in your body, is preferential one to other fuel sources. And it's very, very clean. So as it breaks down, it takes 3, 4, depending on which model you looked at, 3 or 4 steps to break down., and in that process it uses no ADP, right? No ATP. And it turns into acetyl-CoA, which goes into the citric acid cycle. Same thing that happens with glucose, but at the end of the glucose chain it makes lactate and pyruvate, and then that gets broken down and then goes into the citric acid cycle as, as acetyl-CoA. That lactate portion right there is the key to it. As your body works, especially if you're in anaerobic metabolism, you're, you're doing cardio workouts, your body produces a lot of lactate by using the glucose, breaks down the glucose, and, and it overloads your body with lactate. So lactic acid, which is why you get the burn, you know, afterwards. If you are using ketones as a huge part of that fuel, it doesn't build up extra lactate. So again, my opinion, but it's, uh, it's, it's pretty informed. That lactate portion has a lot to do with how well you recover. So if you don't have that extra lactate acid built up in those muscles that make the muscles sore and all the other things that come from it, you can feel good about going out and working out the next day or working out every 2 days instead of every 3 days, you know, depending on what, you know, somebody—

that explanation makes sense. I wouldn't want to give people the wrong impression that lactic acid is what contributes to post-exercise muscle soreness, but I think what you're getting at, Mike, is there is buffering required for that acid. Now, some of it gets converted via the Cori cycle back into glucose to be utilized for energy. A lot of it does need to be buffered and that requires ions, minerals. You get calcium influx into tissue which can cause a little bit of a stiff rigor mortis-like reaction. So, there are definitely benefits, hormetic benefits to flooding the muscles with lactate during exercise, But less lactic acid because of an alternative fuel source would have recovery implications. So, I think you could be onto something with that theory.

Yep.

Yeah.

Interesting. Well, so 4 different kinds of ketones. Now, Tek Tone has discount codes for us. These things taste really good. They're in glass, which is great, which I love. So, you don't have the plastics issue. They're clean. And as hopefully you can tell from my chat here with Mike, Tektone's pretty dedicated to quality because I've been kind of vetting them behind the scenes for a couple of months and experimenting with Tektone in my own protocol, and I'm pretty happy with it. So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/TektonePodcast, that's T-E-C-T-O-N-E Podcast, is where you can check these out. We got discount code. You can ask me or Mike your questions, your comments, leave your feedback. Mike, I'm super glad I found you guys.

I'm glad you found us too, Ben. And, and look, the, the key to all of this is the molecule itself. It's that R3-hydroxybutyrate glyceride, the R3-HBG. That's, that's the hero ingredient. That's what this is all about. Each one of these other products, they're— you're getting the, the benefits that come from BHB, from the beta-hydroxybutyrate, and then the also the benefits of the other supplements that we're putting into there. That's, that's where we differentiate between the four. But each one of them has that R3-HBG as its backbone, and that's what gives you the most benefit, is that BHB. It's almost magic. It's almost magic. People sometimes think I talk a lot, talk about it like it's snake oil, but as you learn more about this molecule and what it does for the human body, it's, it's hard not to. I mean, think about it. This is caveman fuel. This is what cavemen used to get to the next meal, to get to their next animal that they harvest. The next— they produced it internally, but yeah, they produced it internally because they fasted, because they had no choice. They didn't have McDonald's, they didn't have Walmart, they didn't— couldn't eat 3 horrible meals every day, or 7 depending on how you eat. They had to force themselves to get up and move to the next place where they could get a meal. Well, that's why the super fuel that your body produces— that's, that's, that's why God gave it to us. He gave it to us so we could get to that next meal, and it increases your focus, increases your endurance.

Thanks to a little better living through science, you can drink your way into that state without necessarily foregoing the pasta altogether.

And that's the cheat code. I mean, you said it, this is a cheat code for the keto diet. You, you get the benefits of ketosis without having to have that strict diet.

So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/TekTonePodcast, T-E-C-T-O-N-E Podcast. I'll put those research studies and links as well. Alright, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield with Mike Chesney from TekTone Ketones signing out. Have an incredible week.

To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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