How To Get Into Ketosis In 60 Minutes Or Less (& Which Vitamins, Minerals, Nutrients & More To Fill In The Holes Of A Ketogenic Diet)

Hey, kid, you want to know how to get into ketosis in 60 minutes or less? Do I sound like a used car salesman? This is Ben Greenfield. No, actually, we do go into how to get into ketosis in an hour. And which vitamins and minerals and nutrients and more kind of fill in the holes of a ketogenic diet. On today's podcast with Gary Millet, which I think is funny because millet is a whole grain, and, well, you don't eat a lot of those when you're ketogenic. That's where my weird brain goes. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

One of the big myths that we kind of inherited when we first started this, which we've now seen exploded, is that glucose was the preferred fuel in the body. And now we know from science literature that actually ketones are the preferred fuel of the body.

What we're looking for is that sustainability. So we're not looking for a product that will take you up and then bring you right back down. We're looking, as Gary said, perfectly. We're looking for that product that will stay in your system and keep ketones in your body throughout the day.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement improvements get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in.

One place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, fellas, it's Ben Greenfield. And as you know, lots of folks are talking about ketosis these days. So I decided to get a couple of experts on the show who specifically have taken a pretty deep dive into ketosis and this whole idea of exogenous ketones, along with what kind of vitamins and minerals and nutrients that you might need in your diet to fill in some of the potential holes of a ketogenic diet or the use of exogenous ketones. And my guest today, actually, they operate a company called Kegenix Keygenics. K E G E N I X. And their names are Rob Rogers and Gary Millet. And Rob is a graduate of University of San Diego. He played professional baseball with the Cleveland Indians, and after his baseball career ended, became a serial entrepreneur, eventually meeting up with my former podcast guest Dominique d' Agostino to learn about Ketosis and ketones. And he and my other guest on the show, Gary Millett, have actually licensed the worldwide rights to Dominique d' Agostino's ketone technology. And now they're creating these exogenous ketone supplements based on Dr. D' Agostino's research. And Gary. Gary Millett is the co founder of Kegenix and actually one of the key authorities on their website for everything from keto eating to ketone supplementation to keto protocols to keto coaching. He's also the inventor of something we'll talk about today called their quad beta hydroxybutyrate salts. Pending patent. So we're gonna dive into a lot of ketone related stuff on today's show. So if you happen to be holding a baguette or sitting in an ital restaurant, you may want to shut this one off right now. Otherwise, if you like things like avocados and olive oil and Mediterranean cheeses and all that good stuff, then you'reyou'reyou'reyou're. In a good place. So welcome to the show, guys.

Pleasure, man.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. And Rob, fill me in on when you were playing professional baseball, were you into this stuff at all? I mean, were you back there when everybody else was eating sunflower seeds in the dugout, stuffing your face with coconut oil or how'd you get into it? This.

Yeah.

Sunflower seeds and chewing tobacco.

Yeah.

You know, no, it's kind of funny, Ben, as a. You know, I'm. I played baseball a million years ago. But no, I mean, that was what was so hard when, when we met with Dominic because everything he said went against what I was taught as a pro athlete, which was a carb.

Carb.

Carb. And honestly, I, I didn't even know how to spell ketones. So when he was talking to us, I had no idea what he was talking about.

So when, when you, when you actually met up with Dom, how'd that happen? Like, like, how'd you guys actually get to know each other?

Someday somebody probably write a book about it because it's, it's, it's a, it's been a five year journey with myself and, and Gary. You know how I met him was one night I was drinking. Part of what I wanted to do when I got out of baseball was to give back. So I started a softball organization primarily for my two daughters. So one night I was drinking with one of the parents and he said, hey, do you know who my brother is? And I didn't and his brother was good friends with Dominic. So we started talking and he started telling me about the work that Dominic was doing down in South Florida, University of South Florida. And I said, hey, can you introduce me to his brother? Which he did. And I talked to his brother, who subsequently introduced us to Dominic. So it was intriguing. I didn't understand it. Gary did. Gary has an extensive background in chemistry and biology. So I said, gary, let's go down and meet with this guy. And it was a chance to go down to Florida where it was nice and warm. So I said, let's go. So we went down there and Dominic, I mean, literally to this day is one of the most, you know, from a. Not just from ketones, but nutrition. One of the smartest guys I've ever met. So went down, he explained this thing about this technology he had. Very intriguing against. It went against everything I knew as an athlete, but it was interesting. So Gary and I came back from Florida and I said, gary, what do you think? I said, it's way above my head. But Gary said, you know, there's something here. And I truly believe this is where eventually, someday, this is where it's going to go. So we did license the worldwide rights for the technology from University South Florida. And then that's where the work began. Because at that point it was just an idea. It was, how do you turn this incredible idea one into a product and then how do you commoditize it?

Gary, what exactly did you guys license from University of South Florida?

It was really the technology that Dominic had come up with in the combining of beta hydroxybutyrate and mid chain triglycerides mct. And what we kind of looked at in terms of that research is what's the actual benefit of doing that? And so being able to connect the two dots. So a mid chain triglyceride, it responds differently in the body than does an exogenous ketone. So when you combine the two of those in kind of a tight blend in the right ratio, you tend to get a much and sustained level of ketones than you do with simply mid chain triglycerides alone or simply beta hydroxybutyrate alone. And so when you start looking at what his research was in being able to demonstrate that, we thought if we're going to commoditize this product, why not use a technology that is beyond the components? And so that's really the driver behind licensing those two, that patent.

So can you explain to people, either of you, what's going on when you combine Medium chain triglycerides, or these MCTs or MCT oil or MCT oil powder with something like an exogenous ketone, like beta hydroxybutyrate. Why is that better? What's actually going on from a physiological standpoint that makes that a superior fuel mix or something you guys would even want to patent.

What ends up happening in that type of process is that you see beta hydroxybutyrate really hits the bloodstream pretty quickly, and that's absorbed very rapidly through as it is, because once beta hydroxybutyrate hits the bloodstream, it doesn't do a lot of transformation, meaning it doesn't go back and forth between itself and acetoacetate. But however, the delivery of the beta hydroxybutyrate along with the mct, the MCC seems to travel that hepatic path and it essentially goes through the acetyl COA into acetoacetate. And then the body seems to determine what level of beta hydroxybutyrate it wants to make or retain as acetoacetate. But I think physiologically, I think what we have been working on and believe happens is that there's a certain ratio of ketones that the body monitors. So if it has all of one ketone and none of the other, so it has all beta hydroxybutyrate and none of the acetoacetate it has, we believe it signals such that the system says, oh, wait a minute, maybe I have too much of this and not enough of that. And I think it has a tendency to impair the endogenous ketone production. But the other thing about the mct, as you probably know, Ben, is it aids in endogenous ketone production. So now you've got two things going on. You've got the exogenous ketones of beta hydroxybutyrate going to the blood, and you have also the endogenous ketones being converted through acetyl COA through the liver.

And that acetyl COA that is allowing for ketone production through the liver, most of that is coming from the medium chain triglycerides.

Yeah, it is.

Okay.

Exactly.

Alright, got it. So it's not as much the exogenous beta hydroxybutyrate that's getting converted into, I think the pathway would be acetoacetate and then acetyl CoA. It's more the fact that the MCT oil is making acetyl CoA, the beta hydroxybutyrate is supplying it just basically as a direct mainline to the bloodstream. So between the two, you're Kind of getting a double whammy effect.

Exactly. And I think that's what Dominic's patent was so elegant in demonstrating, Ben, is that there's a synergistic relationship that allows for higher sustainability of ketones than simply either of those substrates taken alone.

Okay, interesting, interesting. So when I look at Dominique's patent that I think. Did he create that patent with Patrick Arnold? The guy who, who I think that was like the very first ketone supplement I ever tasted was Patrick Arnold's stuff. I mean, like, years and years ago when I was experimenting with this stuff for Iron man, it tasted like freaking, like acidic rocket fuel, but it worked. Yeah, so. So his patent on. On compositions and methods for producing elevated and sustained ketosis, which, I mean, you can, you can find this patent anywhere online and look at it. Basically, what it says that it's beta hydroxybutyrate mineral salts combined with medium chain fatty acids. That's the same as MCT oil, right?

Yes.

Okay. Or an ester thereof, such as medium chain triglycerides used to induce ketosis, achieving blood ketone levels of 2 to 7 millimolars with or without dietary restriction. And it says that that combination results in big improvements in metabolic biomarkers related to, like, insulin resistance and diabete and weight loss and physical performance, and a much higher elevation of blood ketones and lowering of blood glucose levels than you'd get if you didn't combine those two. One question that I have for you, though, is this whole idea of it working with or without dietary restriction. The reason I ask this question is a lot of people ask me this. They're like, is it even natural for us to be, like, eating ketones. Right. Versus getting there via calorie restriction or carbohydrate restriction? Like, could it potentially be, like a dangerous state for the body to be getting these external sources of ketones? Because potentially you wouldn't be in an energy restricted state when you're getting them. Right? So maybe you've had. You would have like, high blood glucose combined with high ketones, which, from what I understand, could potentially create like, almost like a diabetic esque ketoacidotic state where you have simultaneous high blood glucose and high ketones. Do you guys ever get concerned about or have you researched at all the potential negative implications of this stuff? I mean, is there any research on this?

Yeah, let me hit on that real quick, Ben. And then Gary can hitchhike on that. So as a company, you know, you hear a lot of people that say, can I take Ketones and keep eating unhealthy, you know, keep eating carbs and sugars. And the answer is no. I mean, the supplement is tremendous and combined with cutting back on your carbs and certainly sugars, you're going to see some effects. The hardest part when we got into this bend and where a lot of our money is now going is there's thousands of studies, Dominic, Jeff Bullock Finney that have done. There's thousands of studies out there on the benefits of being in a ketogenic state. But there have been very little if any studies done on exogenous ketones. And that's where we're putting a lot of our money. In fact, we just finished and we'll be releasing probably within the next two weeks, a study we did with 130 people taking an exogenous ketone and the results were amazing. But Gary, as far as Nel effects of what exogenous ketones can do, you can hit on that.

Yeah, thanks, Rob. I think, Ben, it's kind of an interesting question. I love the question because we do get asked that question. And what's very interesting is if you take a look at the liver's potential to produce endogenous ketones, it's about 130 to 150 grams of ketones a day at full tilt. So if you were like in starvation mode, the body has the ability to produce a lot of ketones and that's really. It comes down to producing maybe 7 to 9 grams of ketones per hour if you break it down into a 24 hour cycle. What's kind of interesting about that is that the exogenous ketones that that we're supplementing with over the course of a day really equates to about 20 grams. So you're so far under what the body's ability to accommodate in terms of ketones. But what's really exciting that one of the big myths that we kind of inherited when we first started this, which we've now seen exploded, is that glucose was the preferred fuel of the body. Now we know from science literature that actually ketones are the preferred fuel of the body. It's almost a perfect scenario where the body gets the ability to have endogenous ketones and it takes them in and it utilizes them very, very quickly and almost preferentially, of course, to glucose because of some of the qualities that ketones have and the mechanism by which ketones are actually transferred into the system.

One of the things this patent says is that this particular mix, these beta hydroxybutyrate mineral salts in combination with medium chain fatty acids. It says that it yields a significant elevation of blood ketones and a reduction of blood glucose levels. So does that mean that when ketones go up upon consumption of this mix, that blood glucose goes down?

Yeah, exactly.

Interesting. That's what happens, and that's just because of what you just explained. The body's gonna preferentially use ketones. So because it has no need for glucose, the glucose, where does the glucose go? Does it get taken up into liver and muscle or does it simply. I mean, I would imagine it's not gonna get burnt as a fuel if the ketones are getting burnt preferentially as a fuel. So do you have any clue, like how it's lowering the blood glucose?

Well, it's kind of interesting becauseand this is something that maybe we can talk about a little later in thein the podcast is this whole concept of utilizing two fuels at once, but unused glucose has tendency to become glycogen, as you probably know. And that's got, you got two reservoirs of that. You've got one reservoir that harbors itself in the liver, and you've got another reservoir, of course, that harbors itself in the muscles. Now, the muscle glucose doesn't have a chance to become released into the blood. It's only the liver glucose. So I think the first thing you start seeing is kind of a storage mechanism and you start to see a slowdown in actual glucose production. And so the real interesting thing about ketones, as you probably know this as well, is it suppresses insulin. So when you get a response of ketones in your system, it's almost like your body kind of stores, stores the glucose off to the side and says, hey, let's use these first and then we'll come back to that later. Likewise, if you're not really fully keto adapted, the body still consumes glucose through the muscle. And so you're, you're seeing an overall decrease in blood glucose, and that is usually comes from the hepatic system as opposed to coming from the muscle.

Okay, okay, got it. So basically a lot of this glucose then would be stored away as glycogen. That would be one of the main ways that when you consume exogenous ketones, blood glucose would get lowered.

Yeah. Or just consumed on the normal course of, you know, because the amount of exogenous ketones that you're putting in your body is not going to, is not going to provide all the fuel you need, so it's just going to be burned off as a Normal course of, of metabolism.

Right. And related to what you just said, you alluded to this idea of like somehow elevating blood ketones and elevating blood glucose simultaneously if one were to do. Because I've done that. I did that a few years ago, actually, in a few races, races that required both endurance as well as some glycolytic effects. What we in the endurance racing world called burning the match. Right. Where, for example, in one case, I did it during a tough mudder in Las Vegas, right. Where I'm running for long periods of time and trying to rely upon ketones for a somewhat aerobic running protocol. But then I'll have one to two minute periods of time where I'm burning massive amounts of glucose by clamoring up a wall, for example, or hauling a sandbag. And so what I did was I actually took ketones and combined them with, literally, I think it was like slamming like a Gatorade gel or something like that. And I had high blood glucose and high blood ketones, meaning that when I met and I actually measured this, I remember I did like a, I think I did like a Snapchat or an Instagram story on it, but my blood glucose levels were above 100 and my blood ketone levels were above 5. And so both were elevated. And there was a pretty significant, at least subjectively, a performance enhancing effect. It was like rocket fuel. Thankfully, no explosive diarrhea or any deleterious symptoms like that. But you, you also just mentioned that a few minutes ago that you, you had some thoughts on that. So what are your thoughts on, on elevating ketones and elevating glucose simultaneously in terms of using that for, for performance or any other effect?

That's a, you know, that's a topic that we're doing a lot of research on right now. And you know, Rob, he can probably talk about that. I, I fix up a few things in the lab for Rob and he's, he's like one of those guys who will take anything. And you are just the same way. And I'm the same way. We'll take just about anything and try it. But I did pretty much the same type of experiment with a little bit more paying attention to exactly what went into that mixture. And maybe, Rob, you can kind of explain what that resulted in, what you did.

Yeah, it's, you know, Gary made this product that had, that was a combination of everything we're talking about. And I took it about 30 minutes before I went in the gym. I did it about, for three or four Days and I've never had a workout like that. I mean, the third day when I left, I called Gary because I was going on the. Going to be on the road for about literally a month. And I said, Gary, make me up 30 packets immediately. I need this stuff. So what I felt was from a strength standpoint and from a cardio standpoint, I literally was in the gym the last day for three hours and felt like I wasn't even. I hadn't even been in there for 10 minutes. And so whatever this combination is, it had a dramatic impact from working out. And I know Gary, we've been working with it with some crossfitters in Miami and they've had the exact same results. So we seem to be onto something here.

Are you guys testing bloods, like seeing if it would cause an increase in. You know, not to harp on the bad effects, but you know, I've experienced the good effects. So I'm just curious, you know, if you're testing things like inflammation or elevated liver enzymes or other things that might happen if one were to have really high levels of glucose and ketones. Because again, it is kind of like a, a non natural state for the body to be in, at least in my opinion. Didn't probably see ancestral man walking around too much like fasted with high blood glucose levels. Unless they were maybe diabetic or insulin resistant.

No, we haven't got to that stage yet. I think the Ben, the fun part about my job in the company right now is coming up with some of these wild things and getting it to a point where we're satisfied with what it's doing for people. It's all about how do people feel and what you can make it do. And then from there you want to take it and do exactly. What you're talking about is, okay, now that we know we get this impact and we get this effect and people are really liking it. Now let's take that and further that and have that studied as to what are the biomarker implications of that. But so far right now we're not seeing any big changes in biomarkers. And it's really fascinating how the body works. And the more and more you are into this, the more and more respect you have for how incredible it functions and its ability to do things that you never thought it could do. And so we're just. This is kind of a brave new world, being able to experiment now with exogenous ketones. So now you have the option of multiple fuels. What could you do? And so we're just we're really on the cusp of, of doing some very interesting stuff with this, with exogenous ketones. And you know, I'm just happy Rob is such a willing guinea pig for this stuff.

Yeah. And one other thing that comes to mind. Not to kick this whole like exogenous ketone and blood glucose horse to death, but just playing devil's advocate, why can't people just fast and not eat that many carbohydrates to get into ketosis? Why would there be any advantage to taking exogenous ketones?

Oh, they can and we, you know, we tell them to. And when we first got into this, and you got to remember this was five years ago. So when we were doing this, everything about ketones was negative. And if you googled ketones, the only thing that came up was ketoacidosis. So we, when we first got into this, we had the only way we could get the benefit of ketones really, other than what Patrick had with his product, was to get into it via diet. And Gary literally started it probably within two to three months of meeting with Dominic and has been in a ketogenic state ever since. I personally go in and out of it, but we would love people to get into a ketogenic state. The hardest part is, as you know, Ben, because I know you've been in it, it's very difficult. So to take a person, you know, an average person in the US eats 300 grams of carbs a day and to get them to go down to say 50 or 75, it's incredibly difficult. So one, that's where the supplement comes in. It makes it easier to do that, get the benefit of the ketones without getting in a ketogenic state. But even those people that are keto adapted, Dominic, they still get benefits from taking ketones. And you know, Dominic himself probably takes our supplement two to three times a day, not every day. And he still gets benefits of it. You know, he's getting more energy, more appetite suppression.

Yeah, that's the main thing I've found is even lately, due to some gut issues specifically related to like fermentation of carbohydrates and the need for me to eat less bulk in my diet, I shifted back into it. It's been a while since I've done this, but I shifted back into almost like a full ketosis based diet. And back in the day when I used to do that, what you would call, I guess strict ketosis versus cyclic ketosis. Cyclic ketosis, meaning before I'd eat a Pretty large amount of carbohydrates in the evening, and then kind of get back into ketosis the next day and kind of stay there the full day until the next night. I quit doing that and just kind of went straight into ketosis. And normally I'd be chewing my fricking arm off and like, gnawing on the insides of my cheeks all day, but instead I've let, like, all I've been doing is just taking one of those little magic bullets, and I've got, just so I'm not constantly hyped up, a big French press full of decaf coffee that I make in the morning now. And whenever I'm hungry, I just go heat up that coffee on a pot on the stove, dump the piping hot coffee into the magic bullet. Then I'll toss, like, some cinnamon, some stevia, and some ketones in there, blend it up, and just sip on that. And I'm fine all day long. I mean, I can just go and go. I almost get nervous that I might not be getting in enough, like, micronutrients just because I'm literally just like, drinking coffee and ketones. But ultimately, you are correct. I mean, when it comes to appetite suppression, the ability to be able to almost, like, maintain that facet state more easily, it does render what seems to be almost like an unfair advantage. I did want to ask you guys, though, a little bit about, like, your specific patent and kind of like what you're doing with qgenics, for example. One of the things that I noted was the use of the term quad salts. Beta hydroxybutyrate quad salts. Is that important that it. That you use a quad salt? And what does that mean?

So let me. Let me take that, Ben. That's very, very important. I think one of the things I've seen on four or five of your podcasts is how important electrolytes are. And, you know, we're just one big electrical system. And so without electrolytes, you really just don't get those electrical impulses moving as well as they should. And when people go into a ketogenic state, what ends up happening is they lose a lot of electrolytes because a lot of water is flushed out of the system because glucose is very water intensive. And when you start to become more keto adapted, you're going to lose some of that water. So it's very, very important that you replace those electrolytes. And so what better way than to replace the electrolytes than to combine them with beta hydroxybutyrate as A carrier. So rather than using table salt, sodium chloride, because we all know the impact of free chloride, it's not all that good in your system. But can you imagine just transporting the free sodium ion along with the energy substrate directly into your body? What we've tried to do with quad salts, getting back to your question, is the body has kind of a natural balance of the four main electrolytes of calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, and there are certain published RDAs on those. Now in a ketogenic diet, those RDAs are probably need to be more elevated because of the need for electrolytes. But what we tried to do in our product is that we have actually engineered the product such that there's a balance between the calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium. So all four of those essential electrolytes have now been balanced and are attached to the beta hydroxybutyrate. And that's really where that quad salt concept comes for. And in fact, that's one of the patents that we have actually filed.

So you really wouldn't need to take a bunch of extra electrolytes if you were using a beta hydroxybutyrate quad salt, because you'd be covering a lot of your bases with these extra electrolytes.

Right on track.

Okay, cool. Well, that's kind of convenient. What about, like, trace minerals? You know, like, you'll, you'll use a lot of these trace liquid mineral supplements that will tell you they've got like 80 plus different minerals. Or, you know, I've even talked to folks whowho will combine like Celtic and Himalayan salts to get all of their little tiny micro minerals cover, you know, vanadium and chromium and a lot of these smaller minerals. Do you get worried about that at all or are you just trying to, like, cover the big guns with the four salts?

Well, in the main product, you're correct. We're really worried about mainly the electrolytes in our main prime product. But that launches into another topic, and you're dead on in terms of the need now for better micronutrition when somebody goes into more of a ketogenic fat adapted state. That's why we invented a product called Keto Essentials. What that did is it allows us, through a supplement, to engineer a vitamin supplement basically around ketogenic adaptation. That's how that product came about is recognizing exactly what you stated is, wow, there are certain trace minerals, such as you're looking at selenium and copper and magnesium and chromium that you do need to add back into the diet. That's why? We engineered keto essentials to blend in with what you want to do from exogenous ketone supplementation as well as what you want to do from endogenous ketone production. It's all kind of a system, if you will.

Okay, got it. Now, now you, you mentioned prime, that's actually the name of one of your guys products at qgenics, right?

Correct.

Okay, so it's called Keygenics Prime. And is that just basically just, just pretty much the this thing that you patented from, from Dominique, just, just a basic beta hydroxybutyrate quad salt with medium chain triglycerides?

It is. And you know there's the key to that is really having it in the ratios you want it in. That's going to give you the maximum equilibrium between what we think, what we believe is the acetoacetate beta hydroxybutyrate. And what we really are trying to accomplish in all this is extended ketone levels. The whole basis of Dominic's patent that makes it so brilliant is it's all based on sustainability. It doesn't really do you much good to go way up high and way down fast because a three hour window of ketones I'm not sure and not much literature is shown outside of athletic performance. What's that value? We believe the value, the best value that people can get into is more mimicking a ketogenic state, which means that you extend the ketone levels for a long period of time. So that's become really our driving force between the products that we're engineering right now.

And so you're saying that with this combination you could get into a ketogenic.

State a lot faster and sustain it a lot longer.

Like how fast and how long are we talking?

Well, we've done experiments, we know right now that we can get to pretty high levels, 2, 3 millimoles and we can sustain it with the dosing requirements up 8, 9 hours.

Oh wow. So that's not on one dose. That's kind of like redosing throughout the day.

It's through two doses.

Okay, got it. And those doses again are just beta hydroxybutyrate and mct?

Basically, yes.

Okay, so that's the prime. But then you also have this thing. I kinda like this. I actually tried some and it's really tasty. This chocolate. I think you have vanilla too, but it's called keto meal. Now how is keto meal different than just this beta hydroxybutyrate medium chain triglyceride blend you have in the keto prime? Stuff.

Well, keto meal is kind of an interesting animal because one of the things that when people go into ketosis, they're always complaining about is, oh, I've got to stop and I've got to fix dinner, or I've got to watch what I eat, whatever the case may be. And so we heard, we got a lot of feedback from our own customer base saying, boy, wouldn't it be convenient if you could actually create a meal replacement that actually had ketones? And so the backbone behind prime is the same backbone behind keto meal. But now what we have actually done is we've been able to combine the best parts of prime with protein and some carbs to make it a perfect keto balanced meal that somebody can just drop in their shaker, shake it up, chocolate or vanilla, and they have a complete meal replacement.

Now, when you say complete meal replacement, what do you mean?

It means that it has. It has all the amount of. It has all the amount of fat, protein, and carbs necessary to qualify as a complete meal replacement.

What about vitamins?

And it has the vitamins as well.

Okay. So it's almost like a multivitamin that you've then added. Well, what's, what's the source of the protein? Is that just like a whey protein you put in there?

It's a whey isolate protein.

Okay. So you have medium chain triglycerides, a whey isolate protein, your electrolytes, your beta hydroxybutyrate in those four different salts that you talked about, multivitamin and anything else like, what's it sweetened with?

It's sweetened with stevia.

Okay, got it. So you decided not to put Diet Coke in there, huh?

Well, you know, that was a. You know, Rob and I tossed that up and back and forth because everybody loves Diet Coke. But we did settle on stevia. Yeah.

Okay. No acid, sulfami or sucralose. I like it. And. And what about the vitamins? Is it. How did you choose the amount of the vitamins? You just go with the. With the rda or would you go with. As far as vitamin content added to this stuff?

Yeah, we did go with the RDA in keto meal, and that's because of the fact that we had produced keto essentials as an additional add on to.

That.

The vitamins that we have placed into keto meal gives us kind of a complement to the fact that it's ketogenic. And it also gives us, you know, right down the line of being an actual meal replacement. So that's why we could call it a meal replacement is we followed those guidelines pretty closely.

Okay, got it. Now, I interviewed Dr. Veach about his ketone esters. Dominique D' Agostino and I have talked a little bit about ketone esters as well. And there's even new companies popping up now with these really fancy, albeit expensive, ketone esters. Like, I think HVMN is one popular company that's doing it. Ketone Aid is another, you know, and they're seeing that, like, you know, DARPA and the Tour de France riders and all these folks using these ketone esters as, like, the ultimate way to get into ketosis is like, something that. That's supposedly far superior to something like a. A beta hydroxybutyrate salt. What's your guys's take on ketone esters? Why wouldn't you use something like that in keto meals? Just the fact that they're freaking, like a thousand bucks to make a small amount of them, or are there other reasons?

No. We've known about the esters from the very beginning. When we talked to Dominic, that was one of the things we were thinking of. Do we go with an ester or do we go with bhb? And at that time, as it is today, the ester is, you know, it's very expensive, and it's not the best tasting thing you've ever tasted. But, you know, the companies that have. That. Have. That you just mentioned, they've done a great job. Gary and I know them very well. But still today, you know, it's still the same challenge. The products are very expensive. They still aren't the best tasting things, and you're taking a lot of them. I mean, some of the product is. Minimum is 25 grams. It's up to as much as 75 grams. And it's really more of a performance product, which is great. We have kind of stayed away from that. You know, we. You know, what could happen if you took 75 grams of BHB? And so we have. We're looking at a bunch of different things. We've kind of stayed away from that. But from a performance standpoint, you know, there is. There might be a place for the ester, but again, what we're looking for is that sustainability. So we're not looking for a product that. That will take you up and then bring you right back down. We're looking, as Gary said, perfectly. We're looking for that product that will stay in your system and keep ketones in your body throughout the day.

Okay.

But that said, no, we're, we're still doing a lot of work in that area and we have some very creative ideas that we think we're gonna. That gonna. That are going to change this ketone space. And it could be a combination of a lot of things.

Now, what about this keto spray stuff that you guys have? What's that?

That's ignite. And what we've been able to do is put beta hydroxybutyrate with a couple of other key ingredients. We have alanine alpha ketoglutarate as one of those elements, and we have natural caffeine and we have beta hydroxybutyrate. And that kind of forms a real beautiful coupling that when you spray ignite underneath your tongue, you get more of a sublingual absorption as opposed to digestion, and it gives people that kind of kick. Let's say, for instance, that you're going along and you're struggling to stay in your diet and you need a little boost or you're doing this pre or post workout. Just something that allows us to provide additional ketones anytime you want them in a very convenient way to apply it.

How many ketones do you get when you spray this stuff into your mouth?

Well, it's maybe not as much as that. It's how much do you get absorbed? Because when you're absorbing the ketones under your tongue, you get a much different absorption rate, of course, as you know, than you do when you digest it. So overall, I think that we're getting, you're probably collectively in the milligram level, probably 150 milligrams.

Okay.

But it's certainly being absorbed in a much different way.

Now, thethe stuff that you've mixed it with, the arginine alpha ketoglutarate, I'm most familiar with that as like a pre workout, like almost like a cell volumizer. It's an amino acid for like pump or vascularity that you'd use pre workout. Why did you guys decide to put that in there and then combine caffeine into this spray along with glucuronolactone? Like, what's the idea behind this formula?

It really gives you almost a very. It gives you a very interesting nootropic effect. And when, you know, and ketones are very, what we would say, brain excitable. And so when you combine the three of those, you really get very, very interesting lift from a, let's just say a brain function standpoint. And you know as well as we know, is that, boy, I'll Tell you going into workout or even post workout or even, even a mood lift when you, when you can get the brain excited, you know, life is good.

Now, how much caffeine is in this? Cause I noticed it says proprietary blend on the side of it, but it doesn't really say how much caffeine. I'm just curious.

Under, under 50 milligrams. So it's minimal.

It's kind of a unique approach to like a pre workout because a lot of pre workouts, you know, it's caffeine used to be ephedra, of course, back in the day, you know, maltodextrin, fructose, bcaas, et cetera. This one's kinda interesting because you've obviously got ketones and then the small amount of caffeine, but then the aakg for the pump with the glucuronolactone and you've also got N acetyl l tyrosine in there, which from what I understand has an effect on neurotransmitters.

Right, it does. So you've hit it right on the head. That's a very, very good dissection of ignite in that. You can see that in the combination of those four elements. We are really, really targeted to igniting the brain. And it just, it goes in so many applications. It goes in terms of mood change, it goes in terms of helping people pre and post workout. It's really good. If you're kind of struggling in your ketogenic diet and maybe you have like a craving or something, it's really good because it, it affects the brain in such a really interesting way.

Yeah, it's a very interesting approach. I actually, I admittedly I've tried your keto meal, I've tried your qgenics prime, but I actually haven't tried this, this keto spray. I'll have to give it a go sometime to check out how it feels compared to my big ass cup of coffee.

And Rob, you may, you may want to talk about the fact that we have this positioned a little bit differently, say in the where we're selling this on Amazon, the kind of response we've been getting.

Yeah. So to that point we kind of broke out of this ketone space because even though, you know, the ketogenic space over the last 12 to 24 months is exploding, it's still such a very small community. In fact, if you go up and ask, you know, 10 people if they even know what a ketone is, you'll be lucky if you get one person that knows what ketone or ketogenesis is. So what we really focused ignite in was energy and we kind of stayed away from the ketone area just to see what would happen. And yeah, the response has been amazing.

Interesting. So when it comes toto this stuff or any of your other products, like, how often would you need to dose with ketones before you. I mean, what have you guys seen in terms of how long it takes for blood ketone values to kind of start to drop? Is it a few hours? Is it the whole day that something like this stays in the system? Or, you know, what's kind of the goal here as far as. Because I personally, you know, like I mentioned, I've been kind of like, you know, blending up these little blends throughout the day. And I'll do it like two or three times throughout the day. I'll drink a, you know, basically like a serving or two of these ketones. But I mean, is that normal or should it just be like, you know, once a day? And I'm a freak of nature because of my skinny 3500 calorie a day metabolism?

No, you're right on. Ben and Gary, this would be perfect to talk about what you and Dominic came up with with that continuous ketone supplement.

Yeah, this is such a great question, Ben. That's like. It's like a podcast in itself. But, you know, the more we learn, the more we don't know. And when we first started this, we didn't know anything really about it. And a lot of this has come through active experimentation and just trying things and seeing what the body does with it. So we've actually developed a very, very big appreciation for how unique every single person's body. Like you're saying, okay, maybe, maybe Ben's a freak of nature, and maybe there's mainstream, you know, people and then there's. But everybody has a different physiology. And the key to what we want to continue to develop and bring to people is a recognition of that unique physiology. So we developed a concept we call continuous ketone supplementation. And here's the. Here's the philosophy around that is that some people want to get into ketosis naturally. They want to just go ahead and be ketogenic the old fashioned way. We call it the old fashioned way. Other people, they would love to do nothing more than continue their diet and supplement themselves continuously and maintain a level of ketones in their body based on supplementation. You got the two extremes that we look at. Then you've got everybody else in the middle. The beauty of trying to build products that allow for what we call continuous ketone supplementation is it allows people to kind of to where they want to be. How much endogenous ketones do you want to make? How many exogenous ketones do you want to take? How much do you want to take if you're athletically performing? What if you have a sleep disorder? All of these kinds of questions really kind of comes down to allowing individual to kind of dial in to where it fits their needs the best. That's the concept we call continuous ketone supplementation. So what we want to provide is just what you mentioned is we want to provide a pathway that you can take one or two or three or four doses in whatever size you need to get where you want to get in your own personal regimen.

Got it.

That's where you want to continue to go. And this is kind of one of those things that is really personal physiology and personal biohacking and personal training is all about these days.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's pretty easy to measure these days, your actual ketone levels and just pay attention to how you feel. Like, I've been using this. Have you guys seen this level ketone monitor?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, that's the one I have in my office right now. It's like a, it's like a breath ketone monitor. How do you guys measure? Like, do you, do you, do you both follow like a ketotic based diet? And if so, like, what, what are you doing? Like blood measurements or breath measurements or what do you do?

Great question. When, when you get more and more keto adapted. The keto strips don't really work very well because your body is really taking everything your body's producing. So you can initially go from using a keto stick to seeing that in fact ketones are getting into your body. But the more and more you get keto adapted.

You mean like a urinary keto stick?

Yeah, exactly like the Bayer keto sticks. The more and more you get keto adaptive, the less and less those will register. In my case, I might register light pink, which basically says, hey, you know, you got ketones in your body, but not much. But if I measure myself on a blood meter, and the problem is the blood meter doesn't measure all the ketones either. It only measures the de enantiomer of beta hydroxybutyrate. So it doesn't measure acetoacetate and it doesn't measure the L version of the of BHB or acetone for that matter. So the device you're talking about, we are familiar with in that it is like, hey, I'm going to measure my acetone. I'm going to extrapolate how much acetoacetate and BHB I'm making. And to some degree that that could be accurate if you're doing endogenous ketone supplementation. But the question I've always had is how accurate are those when you're doing exogenous ketone supplementation? Because the beta hydroxybutyrate is already beta hydroxybutyrate. So it's not a conversion totally in total of acetyl CoA. And that's where the acetone, the breakdown of beta oxidation is breaking it down into acetoacetate and acetone. That's where you get the acetone. So measurement is tricky in our field. It's I, when I'm doing all the tests we're doing, I use blood.

Okay, got it. Yeah. I mean, like, I know that blood's kind of the gold standard, obviously, just not quite as easy to do. And sometimes I'm lazy and sometimes I don't want to bloody up my fingers.

My fingers are freaked out now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like the, it's like the right butt cheek of people who supplement with exogenous testosterone. It's just a little bit twitchy, you.

Know, it's like, what is that scar tissue on your index finger? Oh, that's, that's from 4,000 Neo needle pricks.

Exactly. You'll never be a professional typist. Well, this is really interesting, guys. I know that you, you, you've shared a discount code with our audience to try any of this stuff. So a few things if you're listening in. First of all, the shownotes for this podcast episode, they're over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Fastketosis that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com fastketosis and over there, I'm going to put a link to all of my previous podcast interviews that I've done with Dominique d' Agostino because we've done like four together as well as some other pretty interesting episodes I've done on ketones with Dr. Peter Attia and Mark Sisson and really a whole host of people. People. It's probably one of the topics, in addition to cancer that I've covered the most on this show. So. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Fast ketosis is where you can go to get that stuff. And then also I'll put a discount code over there for 10% discount on any of the stuff from Qgenics. But you can also just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.Comgenics just like it sounds with an X, K, E, G. And you can use discount code Greenfield. That'll save you 10% over there. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'. Am on their, spray on their prime, on their keto meal, anything you want. So it's, it's actually pretty, pretty tasty stuff. I have to say. If you haven't tried that chocolate keto meal, you're, you're missing out. Blend that stuff up with some ice. It's like a Wendy's frosty. So anyways, Gary and Rob, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man. I really appreciate it and I love the tasty, tasty stuff you guys are creating over there at Qgenics.

Dr.

Thanks, Ben.

Thanks, Ben.

Awesome. Well, for those of you listening in again, BenGreenfieldFitness.com Fastketosis or BenGreenfieldFitness.com Kegenics and use discount code GREENFIELD to save 10%. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Ben, Gary and Rob from Qgenics signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Hey folks, don't go yet because Gary just started to spell out for me this amazing smoothie recipe that he makes. So I hit record so you guys can listen in because we were chatting a little bit after the episode and Gary started to spill the beans on his secret recipe. So Gary, give us your secret recipe for, for using keto meal.

Yeah, my favorite, of course it's Ben's favorite too, is our chocolate keto meal. So the smoothie I make in the morning is I take some water, I put a couple scoops of the chocolate keto meal with a couple tablespoons of whole cream, the 40% that has no carbs. And then I put some powdered peanut butter, scoop of freeze dried coffee and a couple squirts of this new stevia caramel and it makes for an amazing shake. It's just, it's almost like a salted caramel peanut butter smoothie.

Okay, so it's, so it's, it's powdered peanut butter cream and like a liquid stevia and then the keto meal.

And the keto meal. And coffee.

And coffee. Okay, dude, I'm gonna do this. I'm out of keto meal. You guys send me some. I'll make this. And for those of you listening in. I will. I'll write down this recipe right now. As a matter of fact, Gary, if you have exact amounts and you email me the recipe, I'll put it in the show notes for people.

Yeah, I have exactly the recipe.

I can do this. All right.

I'll do it today for you.

So for those of you who actually decide to listen in for the end of this podcast, there you go. Boom. You got yourself a little bonus. So thanks for staying in until the end. All right, now we really are out of here. And Gary, Rob, I'll talk to you guys later. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.