Robert Lustig explains how ketones bypass insulin to fuel the brain. The liver produces beta-hydroxybutyrate, which enters brain cells and feeds neuronal metabolism through the Krebs cycle without needing insulin. This may explain why ketogenic diets help when mitochondrial dysfunction impairs brain function.
When your mitochondria.
Don'T work right, you're going to have problems with synaptic plasticity, neurite outgrowth, ATP production, apoptosis, calcium, stersis, okay? Which are all going to have behavioral effects. Now, remember, the ketones.
Get into the.
Brain without insulin.
So here's the liver.
Making ketones, beta.
Hydroxybutyrate.
Right here and entering the brain right here, okay? And basically going to both the astrocyte and the neuron. The beta hydroxybutyrate ends up going from the astrocyte, feeding the neuron, and you.
End up into the.
Krebs cycle so that you can burn it, but you.
Don'T need insulin to do that.
Whereas every other.
Cell, you know, if.
It'S glucose, you do need insulin to do that, right? So that's one of the reasons why the ketogenic diet might work, is because you don't need insulin.