Building Muscle On A Ketogenic Diet, Little-Known Keto Mistakes, The Best Supplements For A Ketogen

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet, from seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan, Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Well, hello. Today's episode is for all of you people who think carbohydrates are the devil. I've got my guest Thomas DeLauer on the show. He's going to talk about all the mistakes folks make on a ketogenic diet. How some of the modern bastardized version of a high fat diet can come back to bite you when it comes to chronic inflammation. But it's not all bad news because we also get into some cool things about, for example, how to build muscle and enhance performance on a ketogenic diet and some of the ways that you can increase your brain health and a whole lot of other really kind of cool things I haven't talked about much before in the realm of keto. Not necessarily that I want to paint myself as a keto evangelist, but there are some advantages to that dietary approach if done right. And you'll learn how in today's show, which is brought to you by Kion. Kion is my company where I formulate. Think of it this way, it's kind of like my playground for all things health and wellness. I created it to scratch my own itch, to take all these different supplements and formulations and early herbs and spices and modern nutrients and all the things that I've discovered to be able to formulate new supplements and to be able to give you really good, research backed, real world tested supplements and foods. We've got the purest coffee that exists. We've tested against over 45 different coffees on the market. It tests out as the highest, most antioxidant, rich, mold free, purest stuff you can get. We have an amazing clean food energy bar in a delicious chocolate coconut flavor. We have our recovery bar bundle which is a bundle of some really, really good joint support compounds. The best fish oil in my opinion that exists, period. Along with Essential amino acids. It's all there. Tons of different bundles along with discounts if you use this code, which is available to all my podcast guests. BGF10 saves you 10% off site wide. You just go to getkeon.com that's getk I O N.com this podcast is also brought to you by my friends at Organifi. I have a nice piping hot cup full of Organifi gold just about every night. It's like a golden milk latte that heals your body and puts you in a nice relaxing state. For sleep, they've added turkey tail, this ultra powerful medicinal mushroom that promotes a healthy immune system. They've got lemon balm in there, which is wonderful, especially if you deal with insomnia and racing thoughts before you go to bed. Reishi mushroom, which is the king of mushrooms used in Japan for youthfulness and longevity, but also to relax sore muscles or tense muscles. They've got ginger in there to help out your joints and your gut. Pretty much everything that they've squeezed into this stuff without actually making it taste like ass. It actually tastes pretty good. It tastes really good, actually. I blend it with coconut milk or hemp milk or almond milk. You get 20% off this stuff. It's called Gold Organifi Gold. You just go to Organifi.com Ben and use code BEN that's Organifi with an I.com BEN and use code BEN to get that 20% discount. Oh, and one last thing before we jump into today's episode, I want to tell you about this really cool high end wellness retreat that I am going to be teaching at. There's only 14 slots in this thing. It's very high end. It occurs in Napa Valley. But both this September and this October, it's called Runga. And you get to spend four glorious days with me and my wife and a house full of some of the best body workers and health experts on the planet. Eating amazing food, doing Kundalini yoga, doing breath work, doing cold immersion, personalized fitness instruction, deep tissue therapy, movement coaching. Did I mention the five star homemade organic meals? My wife Jess will be there teaching food prep courses. I'll be there doing Q&As and just basically being with you, answering your questions, living in a very kind of like, kind of like an intimate scenario where we're all in this mansion together in Napa Valley. This luxurious mansion in Napa Valley. So there's one in September, there's one in October. And to get in you simply need to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com runga that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com R U N G A Share this with someone you know who likes to own nice things. It's not an inexpensive immersion, but it is one of those once in a lifetime chances to go to one of the most luxurious retreats that you'll ever experience in your life, along with me and a group of homies that you get to hang with. It's going to be one of the highlights of your year, I promise. So check it out. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Runga.

Well, there are a lot of nasty little secrets about the ketogenic diet that I think too many people are completely unaware of. For example, it can cause a buildup of a pretty wide variety of nutritional deficits. It can cause chronic inflammation, which a lot of people aren't aware of. It can create an imbalance in some of your Omega fatty acids. It can exhaust your body's glycogen stores if you go about doing it the right way. And I wanted to get for today's podcast episode a guy who knows ketosis inside and out and who has also been on this podcast before. He's been on this podcast actually three other times. His name is Thomas DeLauer and he is really one of the world's leading experts in terms of nutrition formulating or nutrition product formulating, chronic inflammation and the response of the human body to a low carb diet. He is actually most well noted for his personal transformation from being a 280 pound overweight corporate executive to being on the COVID of health and fitness magazines. You may have seen him on the COVID of Ironman magazine or Muscle and Performance or Natural Muscle or Icon or Platform. And while his background is in sports psychology, he has branched out big time and he's really a wealth of knowledge on all things nutritional science, which is why I've had him on the podcast multiple times. He originally appeared on an episode about quelling inflammation where we talked about curcumin and ginger oil and fish oil. He was on an episode about alcohol where he talked about whether alcohol makes you fat and what kind of alcohol is the healthiest and hidden ingredients in alcohol. Kind of like the ultimate alcohol damage mitigation guide. And then he was in the recent podcast episode about magnesium supplementation. Pretty much everything you need to know about dosing magnesium and timing magnesium and forms of magnesium. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link to all of our previous podcasts which are all very popular and very informative. Over in the show notes for this episode. You can grab the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ketomistakes that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com ketoMistakes Thomas, welcome back to the show, man.

Ben, it's awesome to be here, man. Literally my favorite podcast to always be on, man.

Aw. Well, thank you.

You wrote me an email a couple of weeks ago and you were telling me some of these things about a ketogenic diet. I don't want to start all with the bad news. I do want to delve into some of the mist in today's show, but you were actually filling me in on some interesting things regarding a ketogenic diet that I think people would really dig hearing about. And one of the first things you brought up was this idea of muscle building or at least muscle sparing on keto. Because that's like one of the big concerns for people is I'm going to lose all my muscle. I'm not going to have enough glycogen. I'm not able to stay, whatever, stay fit into my welcome to the gun show T shirt when I'm only eating coconut oil and butter. So how does the ketogenic diet kind of pair with muscle building or muscle sparing? And you can feel free to define muscle sparing as well as you go.

Yeah, I mean, this is a question that it was coming up to me a lot because obviously I'm a fairly heavily muscled guy that follows a ketogenic diet.

And I've built muscle while on the ketogenic diet. So it's. People always ask me, it's one of these things like, okay, well, whenever I go low carb, I tend to lose muscle. And it's like, so that's why I can't do it, et cetera, et cetera. So the first thing that I want to just completely just get out in the open that if someone is a newbie to the ketogenic diet, let me first off say that you're probably not losing muscle. What's probably happening is you're probably losing intracellular water. And that's just simply because when you don't have a whole lot of insulin or you're producing lower levels of insulin because you're on a ketogenic diet, the kidneys expel more water. I mean, that's just straightforward. They just expel more water and sodium. So therefore intracellular water goes down. So your muscle volume looks like it's less. You didn't actually lose muscle, you didn't actually catabolize, but you've lost water volume. So it's set anywhere from 2.5 all the way up to 3.7 grams of water for every 1 gram of glycogen that's stored. So if you start draining glycogen at the beginning of a ketogenic diet, which we'll get into this a little bit later, but at the beginning of a keto diet, you do tend to drop a lot of glycogen and then as you become keto adapted, you store it again. So you lose a lot of carbs, you lose a lot of water, so you kind of feel like it deflated a little bit. So for someone that's new to the ketogenic diet, they do keto for a month and they freak out because they feel like they've lost all their gains. And then the second they go back on carbs, they're strong again and they have the muscle again and they go up. That keto diet, I just lost a bunch of muscle and as soon as I'm back on carbs, I got it all back.

Yeah, and it happens fast by the way, because when I was a bodybuilder, I mean you'd show up for your morning weigh ins and your morning posing and you're of course drained of water, drained of carbohydrates, and you do that morning pose and like your fricking ass cheeks are in a full cramp because any muscle you contract just goes into a cramp because you've been whatever, taking dandelion root extract and avoiding water for the past three days to weigh in. And then, you know, you walk away from that morning show and eight hours later you're posing on stage. But in those eight hours, you know, I'd eat pancakes and ice cream and bananas and red wine and dark chocolate and everything I could do to refill my glycogen levels. And I mean you're, you can see yourself fill back out within like eight hours.

Oh, dude, it's incredible. I mean, it's like we're talking like literally, like I kid you not, I mean you can put on 20 pounds like in a 24 hour period just by carving back up and properly proper sodium loading and water loading and I mean, it's unbelievable depending on how much muscle mass you already have. So that's just like the first out in the open thing that this, if someone starts the keto diet, like, yeah, okay, you probably will feel like you lost some muscle, but it Takes a pretty serious deficit to lose muscle. And you as.

Someone that does all kinds of obstacle racing and everything like that, you know that you put your body through the wringer and you still maintain a pretty darn muscular physique bend. So I mean, I know that you're not just constantly wasting muscle. So it's a lot harder to burn up muscle than people typically think.

Yeah, but I carb refeed. Like I eat a good 100 to 200 grams of carbohydrates in the evening, which honestly, compared to the, you know, the typical recommendations for athletes is still far below the, you know, the 50 to 60% carbohydrate they often see recommended. But like I'm, I am refeeding.

Yeah, you're still, yeah, you're refeeding at a much lower level than most people would say. But anyhow, the point, point is, is that as someone that puts their body through the wringer like it' sit takes a lot more to burn up muscle than people generally think. There's a lot of these things that kind of happen minute by minute. But the long story short is with the ketogenic diet, there have been studies that have shown that just the presence of the ketone bodies alone decrease leucine oxidation by quite a bit and they actually end up promoting protein synthesis within the process. So what's really wild is they found that when you have beta hydroxybutyrate, which is the main ketone body in your blood, that there is a marked decrease in urinary nitrogen excretion compared to someone that's just on a regular carb rich diet. Now that's pretty cool right there. I mean, so basically just by having ketones present, your body is not excreting as much nitrogen and you're not having nearly as much leucine oxidation. Now, leucine oxidation, that's the main thing that you really want to be focused on. I know. Ben, obviously you're a big fan of the EAAs and stuff. Leucine is of course very popular, very important, and because it is so, so imperative just to overall protein synthesis, but also just muscle sparing. So it's pretty cool. You actually find that, that this essential amino acid is really just preserved. And this particular study found that leucine oxidation ended up decreasing between 18 and 41%. And what was really cool is that the incorporation of that leucine into actual skeletal muscle protein increased between 5 and 17%.

Okay, so to interrupt real quick, what you're saying is that when your beta hydroxybutyrate levels go up without being the major ketone body that you're going to see increase from either ketone ingestion or mct, oil ingestion or carbohydrate limitation or all three, leucine gets oxidized more slowly and that then promotes protein synthesis or muscle sparing.

Correct?

Okay, correct.

Yep. So that's, I mean, that's really what we're focusing on, you know, that's what's, that's what a big goal is. So then if you have more leucine coming in, you know, whether it be through EAAS or whether it be through, you know, actual protein consumption while on a ketogenic diet, you have the ability to potentially keep protein synthesis elevated. Now, of course, as you well know, I mean, you know a lot about the whole MTOR pathway. That's, you're someone that I actually look up to in that world because you've spoken on it and it just fascinates me. And the rabbit holes that you can go down that are just far beyond my knowledge based on it. But of course there's other factors. But when you couple that with your MTOR activation at the right time, by being in still being able to be in a calorie deficit, yet activating mtor but still also having beta hydroxybutyrate present, it leads you to believe, based on the data and based on my own testing that I've done with myself, that you can actually be in somewhat of a deficit and actually still get leaner and somehow build muscle. It's pretty wild. I mean, if you kind of add up the studies now, that's going out on a limb. I mean, the basics are like, if you have BHB present, then sure, losing oxidation is going to decrease, which means that you actually lend yourself better to being able to be in a calorie deficit and not burn up your muscles. So.

The trick is like with bodybuilders, a lot of times what they'll do is they'll go low carb and they don't necessarily go keto. They drop all their carbs out of the equation, they eat a bunch of protein, they eat super lean. And then they always complain about why they're losing a bunch of muscle in the process during their cutting cycles. Well, if they actually focused a little bit more towards actually getting the fats higher and not being as worried about such an extreme calorie deficit and gave themselves a little bit more time, they preserve a heck of a lot more muscle.

One of the things that I think should be Emphasized here, though, and correct me if I'm wrong on these studies, is that if you're going to be on a ketogenic diet, or kind of a close corollary, fasting, and you want to get the muscle sparing effect, you still must have enough amino acids and also, preferably an anabolic stimulus such as weight training, to be able to really take full advantage of that decrease in leucine oxidation. Because otherwise you still gonna see some oxidation of amino acids, but it's gonna come from your own skeletal muscle mass.

Precisely.

So I think that that's probably. Ayou know, I know we're gonna delve into mistakes later on, but that's probably a mistake, right? There is. People get on a ketogenic diet, they hear about this magical thing called gluconeogenesis that you might get from protein getting converted into sugars. They're concerned that might raise their blood sugar or rip them out of a ketogenic diet. And they see that muscle loss occur when and in fact, what you should be doing is limiting carbohydrate consumption, weight training, and then also introducing enough amino acids and enough protein to be able to take full advantage of that protein sparing or that muscle sparing effect of a ketogenic diet.

Precisely. You nailed it. That stimulus of weight training is so critical to the ketogenic diet, and I can't overemphasize that enough. That's the stimulus that you need because a decrease in leucine oxidation is all fine and dandy, but it doesn't do you a whole lot of good unless you have a stimulus that's going to help preserve muscle through another pathway too. We certainly are speaking to a little bit more of an athletic crowd in this particular instance, people that are moderately muscled or heavily muscled that are concerned with doing the keto diet because they feel like they're going to lose muscle. The trick is, like I've always said, is while you're on a ketogenic diet, like utilize the creatine phosphate system in your body, which isn't really operating on carbs, for lack of a better way of saying it. You know, it's more just a flat out chemical process. So you can lift heavy. You know, you might not have as much rep range or strength within that 8 to 12 rep range, but you can still lift heavy and activate the different pathways that are going to really take advantage of that extra protein synthesis and that decrease in leucine oxidation.

Yeah, and I know a lot of people ask this, and so I want to comment on this, people say, well, how much protein will enhance that muscle sparing effect or even allow one to build muscle on a ketogenic diet? From the literature that I've seen, it comes out to somewhere in the range of, if you were going to do the math, about 0.55 grams per pound minimum. And I think that for the, at least the muscle building effect, you want to get up closer to like the 0.8 grams per pound.

Range for your protein intake.

There's no real reason to go above that unless there's serious training demand that warrants it.

Okay, so when it comes to the next thing that you had mentioned in your email to me, you talked about the metabolic rate and there is, I think, some suspicion out there that by lowering carbohydrate consumption to a certain threshold, you might see inadequate conversion of T4 to T3 hormone or you might see some resetting of the metabolic set point that would lower your resting metabolic rate. Is there any data out there about the link between a ketogenic diet and metabolic rate and does the metabolic rate actually decrease based on what you've seen?

Well, there's actually been, there have been studies that have shown that the metabolic rate decreases in a calorie deficit. Period. Right. So when you're talking about long term.

Calorie deficit, like four plus weeks.

Exactly. Because that's again, we can go down the different rabbit hole of like, what defines a calorie deficit? You know, I'm not eating at this very point in time, Ben, so am I technically in a calorie deficit? Yeah. So it's like, it's, you know. Yeah. How long do you look at it? What space and time do you look at it? But yeah, well, for long term we're talking usually three weeks up. But yeah, so there's been studies that have shown that. So we know, sure, that there can be a decline, but it's not really, it's correlated directly with the weight loss generally, you know, so that's your resting metabolic rate. When you lose weight, you're not going to magically just incinerate as many calories as you did at £200, at £150.

That's not going to happen. I mean, there are ways that that could happen, but your body is smaller, like the thermic effect. Everything is just, it's just less. You just don't need as much.

Yeah. And by the way, to comment on that, sorry to interrupt. When I ran a physiology lab, the people who came in with the highest metabolic rates were the most obese or overweight people because their bodies were actually having to work to sustain that mass, to breathe against that mass, and to sustain a NORMA metabolism against that mass. And so I think a lot of people think, well, you get fat because your metabolic rate is low and it's not that common.

No, it's really not. And the T3, T4 thing is pretty interesting too because there's been a few studies that have shown that while you're on a ketogenic diet, you usually see a small decline in T3 but no change in T4 and generally no change in thyroid stimulating hormone. So it's kind of interesting. Now here's what's really wild and I just found this out a couple weeks ago, man. So what's interesting is that, did you know that the metabolism of glucose itself takes a significant amount of T3.

That'S allocated specifically just for glucose metabolism?

Really?

Yeah. So this is cool stuff. So now it's actually connecting the dots where it's like, okay, so we definitely did see a small decline, not huge, but a small decline in T3 and people that are on the ketogenic diet, but no change in T4, no change in TSH. So this is kind of implying that there's nothing really going on other than decreased levels of T3 at that point in time. So then when they start finding that, oh well, glucose metabolism itself requires T3 and there's a portion of our T3 that is specifically allocated to glucose metabolism and nothing else. So when glucose metabolism is less because you're on the ketogenic diet, then of course it would make sense that your overall T3 levels that are measured are going to be less. So that just kind of like, ah, okay, big aha moment for the ketogenic community was like, that explains, explains this crazy thing because there's a lot of women in particular that were very concerned about that. I think a lot of our mainstream medical really instills a lot of fear surrounding the thyroid, particularly women, because I think that's usually an angle for them. So I would get a lot of women that would come to me and hit my contact form. Patients say, I'm afraid of the keto diet because I don't want my thyroid to crash. But that's kind of neither here nor there. That's just an interesting thing because you mentioned thyroid. But what's interesting with the, the ketogenic diet, the simplest way to explain it is like I said earlier, if you have a 200 pound person that reduces their weight down to 150 pounds. Their metabolism is going to adjust at a relative level to the fact that they're £150, not £200 now. So what was wild is this particular study, probably one of my favorite ones to reference. So there's a group of 20 obese patients and they had them go throughout just a low calorie keto diet to instill weight loss. They wanted to induce weight loss. So they were having like a 600, 800 calorie deficit. They had them lose approximately 45 pounds over the course of like four and a half months. What they found is that those that lost weight on the ketogenic diet didn't have any significant differences in their overall resting metabolic rate, whereas those that lost weight without the ketogenic diet did have a slowdown in their resting metabolic rate. So now this doesn't mean that it's going, it's not the gospel, doesn't mean it's going to work be that way for everybody or it's going to be that way long term. But over four or five months, this is pretty fascinating to see that when you lose weight via a keto ketogenic diet, you actually end up keeping roughly the same metabolism that you did, at least up to this 45 pound mark. Now that's pretty cool because that just means that, okay, you can keep your metabolism a little bit more elevated. Now I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say that probably has something to do with the elevation of uncoupling protein 1 and the migration of some of the white fat over to brown fat just by getting fat adapted. That's probably the case. You're probably just generating more brown fat which is generating a little bit more heat and at some point that's going to stop. But still pretty cool for the short term weight loss that you can lose a pretty large amount of weight in a short amount of time and not have a huge effect on your metabolism.

Yeah, and it should be noted too on some of these energy expenditure studies on carbohydrate limitation or even ketosis, they're not only using, I've seen some studies where they're not only using a resting metabolic rate analysis where you go into a lab and you put on a mass that measures how much carbon dioxide you're breathing out and how much oxygen that you're breathing in to analyze something called your rq, your respiratory quotient. But they also have used a relatively new state of the art technology that is called doubly labeled water and Even those studies, there's a couple of them you can find on PubMed. If you're listening in and you just want to go to PubMed and do a search for ketogenic diet metabolic rate, you'll note that there's some pretty robust technology that they've used to measure this. And it's shown over and over again that, yeah, long term calorie restriction can decrease metabolic rate, but the simple presence of a high, high fat, low carb or a ketogenic diet does not appear even with body fat loss and like overweight or obese people to decrease the metabolic rate. So I think the trick here is to of course make sure that as we saw in like the famous Biggest Loser phenomenon, not to pair calorie restriction and, or carbohydrate restriction with very excessive levels of physical activity for long periods of time without refeeds. I think that's kind of where people paint themselves into a corner and kind of decrease their metabolic rate.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. And there's starting to open up a can of worms with the ketogenic diet and the leptin response. It's all uncharted territory right now because people are now just getting interested. But I mean, exactly what you're alluding to is like, even on a ketogenic diet, we could probably do a whole separate topic on this alone. But, but there is very solid warrant for refeeds, whether they be carbohydrate refeeds or just high calorie refeeds within the ketogenic realm. It's very important because leptin response, all that still has a very important factor in this.

Yeah. Most of the athletes are very active individuals I work with. They, like me, will eat 100 to 200 grams of carbohydrates with their evening meal. And even the more sedentary, less active folks who I train who have got on, on like a low carb, high fat protocol, they've still got one day of the week where they're either eating ad libitum or they have like a big refeed meal. So it's something that I certainly incorporate whenever I'm making nutrition recommendations. Another question related to carbohydrate is this thing about glycogen, right? Like people get concerned that especially athletes, right. They're going to exhaust their glycogen storage, they're going to run out of that storage carbohydrate that they might need for intense activity. What's the story right now with ketosis and glycogen storage when you are first.

Getting started on a ketogenic diet. Your body will tap into its glycogen stores. But for all intents and purposes, the old analogy that's put out there to make things really simple for people is actually quite wrong. A lot of times people will say you'll go through your blood glucose, you'll burn through that, and then the next thing, you burn through your glycogen. And then once you're burned through your glycogen, your body starts tapping into fat. And that's kind of true when you first start the ketogenic diet. But once your body is what's called fat adapted, which is a buzz term right now, and it drives me crazy because it really is a real thing, but it gets thrown around way too much. But when you do become more fat adapted, where basically your mitochondria just become efficient at utilizing the fat or the ketones, then what ends up happening is your body actually preferentially uses those ketones. So what ends up happening is you, you still have a lot of glycogen stored in your muscle. Now, this happens two ways. The simplest way is the fact that you are still having small amounts of carbohydrates come in your body throughout the course of the day. And they're still going to come in, they're still going to come in from your veggies, they're still going to come in from little bits of starches, they're going to come in from fiber, things like that, they're still going to come in and eventually they're going to trickle over and they're going to store and they're going to aggregate and they're going to build up in your muscles and your liver. Now, your body is now wanting to use fats. It's its main fuel source. And that's mainly what you're priming it. So that glucose that you're consuming, those small amounts, some of it's getting used by the brain, but the rest of it is still going and getting stored. So over time, you still build up muscle glycogen. But the cool thing is now you go and you work out. Well, your body is still using fats for the most part, depending on the situation, which means that your muscle glycogen is actually still staying retained. So you reserve basically this glycogen to be used when needed. Now, the other way that this happens is through gluconeogenesis, which is people jump on the bandwagon of being like, gluconeogenesis is bad. We'll talk about this later, Ben, but I know we definitely will because you had mentioned you want to talk about it for sure. But gluconeogenesis, basically the conversion of protein into glucose, very, very good thing. It's a very good thing, very natural process. And it's always happening, and it's always, always happening. And it's going to end up putting the carbohydrates that are created from protein into the muscle. So we actually still store glycogen from our protein just as we would from carbohydrates. So what's really cool is if I were to go out and I were to go for a run right now at maybe 60% of my max heart rate, I would probably, for the most part, be using fatty acids or ketones and some glucose because I'm pretty keto adapted. But as soon as I hit a hill and I have to tap into the anaerobic system, general theory would have it that I would fall on my face, I wouldn't have any energy because I wouldn't have the carbohydrates to pull from. But the fact is, is I've become what's called dual fueled. Means my body, when in the presence of these ketones, will operate on. But when I have to tap into my glucose, it will have that readily available, and the mitochondria will be just totally jazzed and ready to rock and roll with it. And it's simply because I still do have a lot of glycogen available because of gluconeogenesis and because of the fact that the ketosis process in itself is very glycogen sparing. I know that's a wraparound way of saying it, but it basically means that when you're in keto, you still have a bunch of glycogen and you can still tap into it when you ask for it.

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Yeah, no, exactly. And the Cori cycle is just such a fascinating thing. I mean, the ability to take that, basically a byproduct of our, our activity. It's like, I mean, it's like basically describing almost a turbo, a hybrid motor combined with a turbo. I mean, it's like, it's really interesting. It's like we're able to take our own energy byproduct and force it back into another energy substrate.

I think that study that you were talking about, that's the Jeff, probably the Jeff Volek one, which is a pretty popular one, pretty well known, and that's like, yeah, it's so awesome. And they actually found that like ended up being like 88% versus 56% in terms 88% with the low carb group, 56% in the non low carb group in terms of the contribution of fat during exercise. To make matters even better with that study with that, what they looked at was not only was glycogen replenished more, but adipose tissue and fatty acid oxidation ended up being utilized or fatty acids ended up being utilized a lot more than the other group. So you actually have the potential of having a body composition change too, in addition to that.

That, yeah, dirty little secret. I was actually in that study. I was one of the fat adapted people. And I remember quite notably because I was ketogenic, but I was also eating a shit ton of calories. I was still taking in a lot of coconut oil and organ meats and fatty fish. And I walked into the lab on the first day and they gave me kind of my pre workout meal for dinner the night before the workout, which was a three hour run on a treadmill. And it was like one strawberry in a small cup of heavy cream with I think they had a little bit of whey protein in there. A paltry, paltry meal. And I remember being laying in bed that night knowing I had to run on a treadmill for three hours the next day and just worrying about total calorie input, total. So not only did we see a pretty significant glycogen sparing effect, but we were not eating that much before that workout. So we didn't have a lot on board to start with. Like, it was, it was literally like one strawberry in a bunch of heavy cream with a little bit of protein. So it was not a fun, not a, not a fun run. Staring at the white wall of Jeff Volock's lab at, you know, that didn't have a tv. They had like needles coming out of your arms all the time. You're wearing this big clunky mask. I, I don't, at the time I, I did not have much money and I was, I knew, I think I was getting paid something like, like $500 stipend and getting flown out there. And for me that was big money. So I did it. But I don't think I would repeat that test. It was not pleasant.

I was just gonna say, man, the toughest part of that is just thinking of being on a treadmill for three hours.

Oh yeah, yeah. Hey, I want to talk about keto mistakes and the top ketogenic mistakes that people made. Now that we've cleared up the air that you can build muscle on a ketogenic diet, you can store glycogen on a ketogenic diet or at least spare glycogen. Glycogen, you can be able to create glycogen as well. And the resting metabolic rate does not decrease as much as a lot of people think it does. But then people jump into this diet and they make mistakes. So I'll let you take this one away as far as the first mistake that you want to talk about. But what are some of the most common mistakes people make on a ketogenic diet?

Well, one that we started talking about a little bit before, which I think is a big one, is being concerned with too much protein. I mean, to a degree there is such thing as consuming too much and having it get stored as fat. But this whole thing of protein is going to kick me out of keto thing. People have just taken it too far. And I have to fall on the sword here and say that There was a period of time where I thought this too, until I started really diving into the research more and started connecting my own dots and realizing that, wait a minute, this gluconeogenesis thing, it's demand driven. It's not supply like we talked about a little bit with gluconeogenesis. I mean, it's a very, very simple problem. Well, it's actually a very complex process, but simple things happening in our body. I mean, it's just, it's demand driven, meaning we're going to have gluconeogenesis or the conversion of protein into glucose whenever the body needs it, whether we are in keto or not. And you know, there's studies that show that there's some tissues that use ketones and some that don't. And what's really wild, and I try to instill this in everybody that is interested in going keto or is just curious is that no matter what, your body will always run on glucose to some degree. Like you will always have a glucose demand. You will always need carbohydrates. When you go keto, you don't just like carbs just don't exist in your body. Okay? And carbs are just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. Like they're just, they're made up of things and they're going to exist and your body's going to find a way to make them. Them. Because up until now, I mean, I shouldn't say up until now, but I mean, there isn't anything showing that the brain can run on pure ketones. Like the brain still needs glucose. Some parts of it can run on ketones, some parts of it run very well on ketones. But that is like, so the wild wild west. Like we don't even know the tip of the iceberg there. We just know that the body, when in a ketogenic state or in a calorie deprived or carb deprived state, it allocates specific sugars just for brain activity. And most of those sugars are going to be coming from either the Cori cycle or gluconeogenesis. So don't be afraid of protein and overeating protein, because if you overeat on the protein, the worst thing that's going to happen is you overdo your calories. It's not going to necessarily kick you out of keto. And if it does kick you out of keto, it's going to be very, very temporary because the gluconeogenesis process is a relatively slow process anyway. So it's not like you're, you're going to eat a chicken breast or overeat your chicken breast and it's going to immediately kick you out of keto. Your body has time to break it down, convert those proteins into sugars, do what they need to do, or put them through the process of actually repairing tissue.

Yeah. And your body is using.

Your own building blocks to create this new glucose. It's like when you drink a cup of coffee, people. When I posted my recent continuous blood glucose monitor results, I think I tweeted them and showed that my morning cup of coffee spikes my blood glucose significantly, like above 110. And people said, well, it turns out a cup of coffee takes you out of a fasted state. I'm like, no, no, no. My body is taking compounds. And this is how gluconeogenesis works, like lactate or amino acids or glycerol to manufacture glucose when there aren't any carbs around. And this glucose is coming from my own body, not from a bunch of blood glucose that already existed in my bloodstream. That would be hampering my own fatty acid oxidation. So when you're using gluconeogenesis during a state of ketosis, all you're doing is creating new glucose from your own tissues, which assists with sparing muscle, which prevents hypoglycemia, which fuels tissues. You know, you mentioned that the brain needs some glucose to survive. So do red blood cells. Right. So do the parts of the kidney, the testicles, like the Leydig cells. And the testes, those need some amount of glucose. So, you know, it's about, I think somewhere around like 70 to 80% of what your body needs that ketones can provide. But it's perfectly natural for your body to engage in gluconeogenesis. But what you would ideally not want, especially if you're trying to, to spare protein like we talked about earlier, spare muscle like we talked about earlier. What you don't want ideally is for those amino acids that might be used for gluconeogenesis to come from your own muscle. Right. And so by consuming protein, by exercising and creating lactic acid, by loading the muscle and by consuming a high fat, low carb diet, that gluconeogenesis, it's vital for energy. It's not, I don't know how it got, got vilified so much. This idea of people fearing gluconeogenesis.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And through my research in this, what I've also found is that, and you've probably heard some of this, but now they're saying that.

Once you get very, very fat adapted, the body, skeletal muscle specifically actually has the ability to shortcut and not even go through the ketone production process. Process where free fatty acids can actually be utilized in the skeletal muscle. So this is the next, it kind of leads into the next, the next mistake. But basically people worry about their glucose and then they also worry about their ketone levels being too low. And the fact is, once you start getting fat adapted, your body doesn't need to create as much in the way of ketones either. Because your body actually becomes so efficient that skeletal muscle actually starts being able to break down free fatty acids for fuel. Fuel. Leaving ketones only to function. What need ketones and leaving glucose only to function. What specifically needs glucose? You become hyper efficient. So that's why a lot of times when you're testing blood glucose and ketones, there's a lot of different variables. And you'll see people that, they go on keto and then they're in keto for six months and they're like, I can't get my blood ketone levels super, super high unless I go do extreme exercise or fast for a long period of time. Like, well, that's kind of normal. Like, if you don't need to produce an abundance or an overabundance of ketones, why would your body, like, you're pretty efficient at utilizing them. Like, why would your body create extra. It's not trying to be inefficient, it's doing what it can to adapt and be efficient. The same thing with glucose. So it's like a lot of times when you, when this is a common misconception too, is like flat out like. I mean, your listeners are pretty savvy and they probably get it. But a lot of times when you're talking with people that are new to this, this, they have this common misconception that you go on keto and your blood glucose just goes away. Your blood glucose just goes to zero. It's like, guys, blood glucose is still there. And I think that's a very common, very embryonic thing, but it needs to be put out there. You go on keto, you're going to have instance of what's called ketonemia. You're going to have ketones and glucose in the blood. It's not like you have one or the other. And your glucose does not go to zero. So you should do what you can to support a natural, a nice stable, moderate glucose level. I mean, you want it low, you don't want it super low. But one thing that I respect about you, Ben, is you always talk about keeping. I think I saw something of yours and you talked about the main thing for you throughout the day and throughout the morning is keeping blood sugar stable, period. That's like, you don't eat things that would instill any kind of blood sugar response.

It restricts glycemic variability. And that's important because so like you mentioned, you need trace amounts of glucose. But hyperinsulinemia, returning to this idea of muscles utilizing free fatty acids, when you're in a ketogenic state, the one thing that can shut down the ability for that to occur is high insulin. And high insulin is going to occur in response to high amounts of glycemic variability. So the interesting thing is that gluconeogenesis, right, this idea returning once again to that horse, not to kick it to death, but the ability of your body to be able to generate its own glucose does not rely upon these large fluctuations in insulin. So if you're avoiding hyperinsuline anemia, your body can still provide some amount of glucose. You keep trace amounts also coming in from the diet that will allow for muscles to be able to use these free fatty acids. And like you mentioned, they don't even need to use ketones as much. They can use the free fatty acids. You know, the brain can use some of the ketones. And so, you know, it just works out. You know, the cells that need glucose get glucose. The cells that need ketones get ketones. The muscles that need fatty acids get fatty acids. And you know, this of course relates to, I don't know if you're familiar with Dave Feldman, who runs the website cholesterolcode.com but he's shown that, that in many cases, you know, there are people who are, who are, they have high, high triglycerides when they're on like a ketogenic diet. Well, in many cases that's not related to cardiovascular disease potential. That's just your body shuttling all these free fatty acids around or having high triglycerides available for some of that muscle utilization of these fatty acids.

Yeah, no, that's, that's wild stuff. And I'm not real familiar with him, but obviously I've seen some of his stuff or the, some of, some people alluding to it and I've obviously heard of that site, but I mean, it's so wild. And then the fact is that a lot of that gluconeogenesis process goes into just restoring muscle glycogen too. You mentioned that briefly, but we talked about it earlier. So it's like if you're training at a high intensity, like heavy resistance training, the cool thing is that that excess protein is actually just going to restore glycogen and actually make it so that you can still get a pump and still get, you know, if that's what you're after. So we shouldn't be shaming it, we should be embracing it. It's an amazing process. The body can, can even do that. So.

Yeah, yeah. And, and we also know that if you include something like the ingestion of ketones, like ketone salts or ketone esters or even MCT oil, you can actually enhance MTOR signaling and you can, you can enhance proteins. So again, if you want to build muscle on a ketogenic diet, you get, on a ketogenic diet, you do some of these refeeds when they make. Makes sense and then you introduce ketones or MCTs, then you get the MTOR signaling up. And in my opinion, if you also introduce, and full disclosure, my company sells essential amino acids, but I use them every single day, 20 to 40 grams, to maintain muscle. And I'm in a muscle building phase right now. But man, I think if you get the right oils, like an MCT oil or a ketone salt or a ketone ester, you get the amino acids, you lift, you do some refeed. I mean, you can build some significant muscle and definitely spare muscle. On a ketogenic diet.

Yeah, no, you're dead on and I don't want to drag this on too much with this particular thing, but you mentioned mct and I got to go rabbit hole really quick because I don't know if you knew this. This is so cool. I don't know if MCTs are shown to have a heavy catecholamine response that has been shown to actually trigger the metabolism to increase. So basically you're having a small adrenaline epinephrine response when you consume mcts because they absorb so fast. So they absorb. So why I think that's cool is because it's activating MTOR signaling or triggering MTOR signaling at the same time as also triggering a catecholamine response, which is pretty cool because you're having a fat loss thing occur at the same time as having an anabolic thing occur. And that's just really cool. So when you start looking at mcts, you can do some really interesting things that are far beyond the scope of what a lot of just the marketing surrounding mcts talks about different story for a different day. But yeah, look into that when you get some time. It's pretty cool. They saw like a 5 overall 5% increase in just resting energy expenditure by adding 15 to 20 grams of MCT oil throughout the course of the day.

Now, not to stray too much from this idea of mistakes because I want to get back to a of couple mistakes, but the last time I talked to you, you were talking about liposomal delivery mechanisms for things like curcumin for example, I think is one thing that we talked about when it comes to things like medium chain triglycerides, is there a way to make those more bioavailable? Can you do the same thing with an mct?

So they are already by default pretty bioavailable. But if you can. So they don't require MCTs, don't require micelles for absorption. However, what's interesting is that they still can be micellized. So what that means is that if you. So if you have something that's pre micelized and ready to go, it's going to absorb faster than an MCT oil would. That doesn't require micelles, because micelles just have preferential delivery above anything else in terms of the world of fat metabolism because they're already prepackaged, ready to go. So normally you consume something that goes through the mycelation process, bile sales, all that, yada yada. So if you take MCTs which have different responses, MCTs are unique in two ways. They're unique in the way that they Actually, they don't require mycelization, they don't require that breakdown. They don't require to be encapsulated in a micelle or emulsified in a micelle to get through the small intestine. But then they also have other responses. They also can penetrate through the mitochondrial a lot easier, too. So they can actually be used as an energy source a lot quicker. So they trigger a catecholamine kind of adrenergic response in two different ways, mainly because of how it responds within the mitochondria. So if you can take mcts and still put it in a mycelized form, it's going to absorb through the small intestine even faster and with more efficiency. And then once it's through the small intestine, then it's allowed to do its thing where it's still going to just be normal MCT oil. So it's pretty interesting stuff. So, yeah, it's can be done and it's pretty wild. Again, it's kind of the wild west with that stuff, but it's a lot of fun looking doctor.

All right, got it. Yeah. I know you've been working on some new formulations as well, and hopefully we have time to dig into some of that. But another thing that I wanted to ask you about ketosis and when it comes to ketone mistakes was how people go about getting into ketosis. Like, I've joked before about how the wrong way to do it is to just eat tablespoons of coconut oil and put butter into every cup of coffee. But what are some of the other mistakes when it comes to particularly the type of. Of fats that people might be using to get into ketosis?

So I'll preface this with saying I admire and appreciate anybody that's making a conscious decision to improve their health. So I want to make sure that that's out there, because I know a lot of the people that are doing the ketogenic diet, unfortunately, they're just grasping for straws and they're looking for something that's going to work for them and something that's going to help them get that extra weight off. So I appreciate and respect the heck out of anyone with that. But the problem is that because of the ketogenic diet becoming so mainstream now and becoming so popular, everyone's just hopping on the heavy, heavy dairy bandwagon and the heavy, you know, it's just so much in the way of Omega 6s, so much in the way of the wrong kinds of fats. And I'm not talking about saturated fats, and I'm talking more about, I mean, there's still prevalence of trans fats, but the trans fats are not as much of a problem as just heavy Omega 6s. So you're putting yourself into a pretty inflammatory state. And there's something that I call the ketogenic wall. You hear about plateaus, you hear about the keto flu, but I sort of coined the term the keto wall. And what I found, and this is with working personally, coaching hundreds of people on this, but seeing tens of thousands of people experience this, was they would start the ketogenic diet and then 90, 120 days into it, they'd start feeling like dog crap. Like they'd just feel, feel terrible. And I noticed the attrition rate was pretty high at about 90 days where people would have good results and then they would just. The results would still be there, but they would just throw in the towel because they started feeling crappy. They started being like, oh, my skin feels oily, I feel inflamed, my joints hurt. I feel like the common thing that I would hear, I feel like when I'm working out, I'm training my joints and not training the muscles anymore and I just feel it in my joints. I don't even feel like I'm getting a pump. I don't feel like anything. And they're thinking that it's this glycogen issue. I'm like, it's not a glycogen issue.

Yeah, that's very common.

Yeah. And what's going on is it usually takes 60 to 90 days in a shift of the diet to start seeing A, nutrient deficiencies and micronutrient deficiencies and B, any kind of crazy inflammatory response that's going to occur is going to really rear its ugly head after like 60, 90 days. Sure, on blood and blood work, on paper, you'll see it almost immediately. But for the layperson, they're going to start noticing it at 60, 90 days when they're actually going to notice a difference in how they feel. So when you start loading up with high omega 6 dairy and crazy amounts of cheese and crazy amounts of really low quality meat because it's cheap. And everyone's preaching the keto diet and how to do it cheap. Well, yeah, that's what's going to happen. You're going to have the initial results. Because keto in and of itself is inflammation modulating. It's definitely going to modulate inflammation. There's multiple studies to back that up. But you're only going to have those pathways of modulating inflammation for so long before the Omega 6 values are so out of whack that the spike in Omega 6 and the spike in inflammation from that far supersedes any anti inflammatory effect that you would get from the ketogenic diet just as a whole.

Okay, so what it comes down to then, and it sounds to me like is paying attention to the inflammatory level of the fatty acids.

Yeah, paying attention to the inflammatory level of the fatty acids and really working with fats that are not going to be. I mean, well, when you say inflammatory level, I mean that obviously includes like the Omega 6s so you know, focusing more on the Omega 9s. Focusing more on like the oleic acids and focusing on the omega 3s. The oleic acids make omega 3s more readily available. So what I always like to say is this is one of just kind of my hacks is try to consume on a ketogenic diet actually relatively lean cuts of meat, especially if you have to keep it within a budget and you can't afford organic or anything like that. Eat leaner cuts of meat and add your fats from a plethora of different plant sources or other fat sources that you trust.

Now why would you do that if the way that nutrition nature has packaged fats, you know, if I had a big fatty cut of ribeye, are you saying that that's improperly packaged by nature and I should have chosen a more lean cut?

No, not by nature, but it's just a matter of what's in 90% of the meat that we're consuming these days.

So if it's grass fed, grass finished, I've I'm getting, and I know this to be true, lower omega 6 fatty acid content in organic or grass? Well, not organic, but grass fed meat.

Precisely, precisely. So in which just getting harder and harder to come by and you obviously being in the industry, you know where to go and I'm sure a lot of your viewers and listeners know where to go. But the hard part is, is that there's so much marketing propaganda and labeling nonsense that comes along with like grass fed and grass finished. Like now in these days and age, like it can say grass fed if it ever ate one blade of grass. You know, it has to be official. You have to look on the label, has to say grass finished. It's so easy. And again, you know, talking to, just educating the masses on this, it can be really difficult because 80% of the people are just going to go for grass fed and they're not going to spend the extra money on the grass. Finished. And that adds up because this is now your primary fuel source. It's not like this is just a small part of your diet anymore. This is what you're trying to get your body to run on. So it's like this just went up in priority. Your attention to detail when it comes down to the fats just went way up in importance.

Okay, now, some people may have wondered what you meant when you said Omega 9s, but you're referring to, like, the oleic acids, like olive oil, macadamia oil, a lot of the monounsaturated fats that would be common in say, like a Mediterranean diet, for example.

Yep, exactly. And the cool thing about oleic acids and like Omega 9s is they increase the availability of Omega 3s. So what I mean by that is they actually help the process. They help the body metabolize and utilize omega 3s more. So, like, if you have so you can get by with eating less Omega 3s and be able to utilize more of it, because I don't expect people to just be eating tons and tons of salmon and high omega 3 foods and things like that. It's just not always practical. But if you at least get those omega 9s in, they're sort of a net neutral fat if they're not oxidized and they're stored properly and used properly.

Yeah. Two quick things I want to note before we move on to any other mistakes that you want to bring up are that a, you may want to get genetically tested. Because, like, I have been genetically tested. I have the APO.

And that dictates that I actually have an inflammatory response to high saturated fat intake. So despite me eating a relatively ketogenic diet, my ketogenic diet is it's basically a Mediterranean low carb diet where I'm eating very little of the coconut oil, the butter, the coconut manna, et cetera, a lot of these popular foods on a ketogenic diet. And I'm instead doing a lot of olive oil, a lot of these Omega 9s, a lot of, a lot of sardines and cold water, fish and herring and mackerel and anchovies, a lot of olive oil, olives, et cetera. And so that's an example of how you could go about doing this the right way. And then the other thing I should note is that as I discussed in my podcast with Ann Louise Gittleman, don't stop eating Omega 6s. Don't stop taking in hemp seeds and chia seeds and flax seeds and a little bit of nut butter and, and you know, some of the Omega 6s that you're going to get from meat, for example, because you do need some amount. Right. Just the ratios. Because we talked in that podcast about cardiolipin, a component of the mitochondria, and how if you strip too many Omega 6s out of your diet or too many of these so called parent essential oils like say borage seed oil or pumpkin seed oil, or many of the seeds and nuts related to those, you can actually create an omega 6 fatty acid deficit that could be just as deleterious for your mitochondria as an omega 3 omega 6 ratio issue. So, you know, never, never get too dogmatic or myopic with this stuff.

Yeah, precisely.

Yeah. Okay. So a few other things that I wanted to get into. One is, you know, speaking of omega 3s, your thoughts on fish oil. Now I know that fish oil is pretty popular with a lot of people on a ketogenic diet. I, I'm a big fan. You know, I take about 5 to 10 grams of fish oil a day. But I'm, I'm curious how you tackle the fish oil issue.

Yeah, so it's getting harder and harder with fish oil because a. I mean it's a lot easier for anybody to bring a product to market these days. So you're seeing a lot of just like kind of nonsensical, just low quality fish oils. And of course there's the heavy metal issue. Of course there's, you know, the EPA DHA ratio and like what you're after there and all depends on. Right. Personally, I'm a big fan of. I love dha. I love a highly skewed DHA to EPA level just because personally like with the ketogenic diet, I feel that the DHA just provides a great sense of mental clarity and not saying that EPA is bad by any means. So you've got docosahexaoic acid and Eica tenthenoic acid. EPA is much more shown to modulate inflammation throughout the entirety of the body, whereas DHA is a little bit more brain focused. It's all early research to be completely honest now. But I'm a big fan of algal oil. I love algal oil because it's getting.

Ready algal from algae. Like a L gal.

Yup. When you get it. So that's the thing is fish aren't magically born with just Omega 3s. I mean they get it through what they eat and phytoplankton and plankton and everything goes up the chain. Now fish, when you get into fish oil, you have a fermentation process that naturally occurs that allows DHA to actually turn into epa. So that's why you have like, if you look on the label of a fish oil pill, sometimes like the more low quality ones, I shouldn't say all low quality ones, but a lot of like you went to Walmart, you picked a random one off the shelf, you'd see it would probably have like 1000mg EPA and like 50-100mg DHA. You want to be a little bit more even than that. Usually a one to one or so depending on what your goal is. The reason that I like algal oil is it's heavy on the dha, but it hasn't been a adulterated. It doesn't, you know, every time like you're going right to the source and you're allowing the body to do its own fermentation process. And there's a lot of interesting things that are going on with the sort of artificial fermentation of DHA over dpa. That's just intriguing science to begin with, but I think we're a long ways away from really doing it right. So algal oil is a very clean, it's a non contaminated way to get, and it's vegan. I mean if that matters to anybody that's listening. You know, if you're focused on that, then it's a really great way to get Omega 3 skewed more towards the DHA, which I think lends itself well to the keto diet though.

Okay. Yeah. The DHA is incredibly poignant, especially if you're doing a ketogenic diet for something like TBI or concussion. It's incredibly helpful for that. You got to use it pretty high end. Is there a way to. Very similar to some of our past discussions about curcumin to make DHA more bioavailable?

Yeah. So that's the hard part is DHA is fragile, right? DHA is very fragile. It's kind of like if you were to have fish on the counter and just leave it out for half an hour, it's going to start to stink. It doesn't take long. So DHA is fragile. So yeah, I mean using kind of the same technology that we've done with curcumin and that we've done even with glutathione and that we've done with things like that, we're able to mycelize it so it's protected so that it actually gets absorbed a lot faster. So you're talking the mycelization of MCT, but also the mycelation of Omega 3s in a way where, oh, we don't have to sit there and worry if the body's actually going to uptake this. It's actually, we're essentially, for lack of a better way of saying it, guaranteed it's going to get through the small intestine a lot more so than just taking an ordinary fish oil. So using that same technology that nanoparticulated sort of phosphatidyl chloride bond vitamin E and also what's called receptor cell mediated endocytosis, able to mycellize algal oil so that you're getting a better absorption rate of it.

Yeah, I've seen a lot more companies these days using like those liposomal delivery technologies, strategies to increase bioavailability. I'm a huge fan. The form of glutathione that I take is like that. I've used some of the supplements you've designed, like that curcumin that we talked about in the last podcast. And I like it because it tastes like an orange creamsicle too. So it's kind of cool how you can make some of these things in terms of putting them into a liposomal delivery mechanism. And it's almost like kind of this tasty little gel that you just kind of put into your mouth with some of these compounds. Like, I'm a big fan of liposomal delivery technology. I see more and more supplements going that way and kind of straying away from capsules for certain compounds that need that enhanced bioavailability.

Definitely. And that's interesting. We wanted to take it one step further. We knew that liposomal was popular and big. We're like, okay, well, liposomal's great. There's some really cool evidence behind that. But how do we take it one step further? So we take what we've done is take a liposome and then inside that liposome we've put a micelle. So liposome protects it through the hostile gut biome and through the stomach and the volatility there.

But after that, you're still kind of left. You're still kind of hoping that it's going to absorb and liposomal works and definitely improves availability. But then what happens is with fats specifically is they get mycelized, they get basically emulsified into what's called a micelle, mixing with bile salts and things like that. And that's how fat, fats never fully digest. They just break down into really small microscopic droplets. And basically what you. And then they get into this little capsule that we'll call it a capsule for this case. But a micelle basically encapsulated in a micelle. So what we've managed to do is we managed to take algal oil, MCT and collagen, put it inside a micelle and put that micelle inside a liposome. So it's like the way that I describe it is it's like express delivery with delivery confirmation because it's like you're getting the express delivery of the liposomal effect effect, getting it through the stomach and into the small intestine. But then you're getting the micelle that's ensuring that it's delivering through the small intestine.

So the micelles are these tiny, tiny like nano sized molecules and you're basically enveloping those into a liposome, which is basically just like a healthy fat cell. The liposome is protecting the micelle from primarily the acidic environment of the human gut. And then as it travels through the gut and the micelle becomes dissolved or kind of peels away off that liposome, then what's in the liposome becomes actually bioavailable.

Correct? Yep, correct. That's how it absorbs. So when you actually do that with algal oil, with that algae oil, that omega 3, that's a much more stable way because we, it's a fragile oil. So it gets, a lot of it gets broken up just in your gut biome to begin with. So it's, you know, you're getting that with the Omega 3, but then of course the MCTS as well, which we talked about. So we can still envelop those MCTs in a micelle, doesn't improve the absorption a ton because mcts already absorbed. But I mean we're already doing it with the collagen, we're already doing it with the algae oil. So we might as well rope that into the mix too. And then of course you have the collagen, which the reason that we do collagen, and here's. I want to touch on this for a second because there's so many collagen products out there. And I wanted to make a solid point. Collagen was not like the reason we created this product. The whole reason behind it was, was how do we actually get these omega 3s? That was the issue, the collagen. It just turns out that a lot of the Protein amino acids end up getting utilized the most. And where people do become deficient usually is in the proline, glycine and arginine areas. So it ends up making sense on a ketogenic diet to, okay, let's go ahead and give the collagen so we can be nice and have these amino acids that sometimes get stripped because a lot of times, like a body will start breaking down some connective tissue in order for gluconeogenic. So if there is going to be a deficit, it's going to likely pull from collagen stores. Although in the grand scheme of things, it's going to pull from the aggregate. It's going to pull from wherever you have an abundance. So collagen is there. Just sort of round out the compound.

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Now, how are you, how are you measuring ketones these days? I'm always curious when people who are into like the low carb, high fat diet, how they're, how they're quantifying.

I'm blood meter all the way. I mean, you have to use a blood meter. Yeah, I'm a fan. I use it. I mean, I love the keto mojo meter just because it's easy. Those are good guys. So, I mean, I always keep that thing with me.

The keto mojo is the one where a company came out with a way to make the actual blood strips, like highly affordable. Like a dollar a pop or something like that.

Yeah. Which is so hard to come by.

It's still outrageously expensive compared to blood glucose strips. But compared to, I think it used to be like three or four bucks to measure blood ketones one time.

Yeah, exactly. Now it's significantly cheaper. And, you know, so there's three ways. There's measuring acetoacetate through the urine, there's measuring your blood by measuring beta hydroxybutyrate, and there's measuring acetone through the breath. Now, the hard part is that acetoacetate you measure on the urine strips. The hard part with that is that as you get deeper and deeper into ketosis, you're not producing excess ketones. Those urine strips are measuring excess ketones. Ketones. So once you're deep in keto and your body's efficient, you're not producing excess ketones. You're going to find you're not even registering on the urine strip anymore. So everyone freaks out. They're like, I'm not in keto. Like, no, you're just not producing extra acetoacetate anymore. And then the issue with using acetone breath meters is that acetone is actually sort of a randomized self destruction of acetoacetate. It's a ketone body that doesn't really have a whole lot of use. So there's huge genetic variance on what your acetone levels are going to be if you're in keto because we don't really know why. But acetoacetate will randomly self destruct and turn into acetone and it also gets created by the liver, but for the most part it's a byproduct and it's still considered a ketone body because technically by definition it is. But it doesn't really do a whole lot within the body. Like the cells aren't running on it, the cells are running on beta hydroxybutyrate and the cells aren't really using the acetoacetate, the acetoacetate is just extra. So as you get into keto more deeper and deeper, you produce less acetylcholine. Acetoacetate also less acetone. Beta hydroxybutyrate is what you need to be measuring and the safest, cleanest way to do that is through your blood.

Okay, got it.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there's some corollary for people who don't want to prick their finger between breath. You know, there are devices, I've got them scattered in my office here behind me like the Keto K E Y T O or the levl, which is levl and they give you a decentralized approximation. I mean they're quick. It's kind of like heart rate variability, right? Like to get the most accurate heart rate variability possible, you gotta put on an actual Bluetooth enabled heart rate strap like the Viva or the Polar H6. That's actually feeding that data straight into an app. But you can get a decent corollary from something like a fingertip measurement using, using like the oura ring or a wrist band band using something like the whoop. But yeah, I mean there are, there are certain, there, there are certain things that you sacrifice for convenience and quickness. And I agree gold standard is blood, but I think a lot of people can kind of keep their finger on the pulse, so to speak of their, their ketones with a breath, if it's convenient.

For sure, definitely.

Yeah. Well, I know we're running up against time. One thing I wanted to mention is that you, you mentioned multiple times about, you know, some of these salt supplements that you create. And I'll link to the previous podcasts that I've done with you on like the Curcumin that you've created and the magnesium and some of these other things. And then for the enhanced ketosis, some of the ingredients we've talked about on today's show, I know they're in this keto balance supplement that you developed that has like the vegan algae oil. It's got the mcts in there. You've got like a hydrolyzed collagen in there. And you've kind of taken. Taken a lot of these common mistakes you've seen on a ketogenic diet and at least woven together some of the fixes into this supplement. You sent me a few bottles. They're actually up in my fridge right now, and they're addictively good. They taste like chocolate gel. So I've been squirting probably too much. I think the serving is supposed to be like a teaspoon. I'm probably just kind of munching on that right before my morning smoothie. I'm probably taking in like a tablespoon or a couple tablespoons. People always ask me, ben, how many supplements can you take? But then bastards like you, Thomas, will ship me stuff. And I'm just. I happen to be using this keto balance right now because you sent some to me, and I actually like it. It's good. It's a. Seems like a well formulated supplement. So I will put a link to that in the show notes and I know that everybody listening in. You get a 15% discount just automatically if you click on my link in the show notes, which I'll put over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ketomistakes that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ketomistakes where I'll link to Thomas's website, all the podcasts that we've done before, some of the studies that we discussed, my article on how to track your ketones. And then, yeah, pretty much everything we talk about I'll put into some pretty robust show notes. Thomas, anything else you want to throw in there before I let you go?

No, man, we covered a lot of ground. I know there's a lot of stuff we could talk about on the world, but I think this covers some of the myths, some of the mistakes, some of the outlying questions that have been out there.

Yeah, cool, man, cool. Well, thanks for coming on again for A four, Pete. And again for those of you listening in. Shownotes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ketomistakes and until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield with Thomas DeLauer signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.