Ben Azadi explains how ketones signal your mitochondria to multiply and produce more energy than glucose does. Ketone metabolism yields 120-160 ATP per molecule versus 32-36 from glucose. He recommends cycling in and out of ketosis over months to restore metabolic flexibility without burning out.
Questions this video answers
32–36 ATP
120–160 ATP
2–3 months for some; ~6 months as a common rule of thumb; Ben mentions up to a year for severe metabolic damage (he prefers shorter).
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So let's start with what's the mitochondria?
The mitochondria are the key to getting healthy. I mean, pretty much every disease out there is linked to mitochondrial dysfunction. So the mitochondria has two roles, as you know, Wendy. There's a. It's an energy factor, if you want to call it that. It pumps out energy. ATP, adenosine triphosphate. But it's not a mindless energy factory, meaning there's a. There's a dual role to it. And Dr. Robert Navio has put out a lot of research on the intelligence of the mitochondria. How. How there's. It's kind of like a surveillance system that's looking for threats. And if it determines there's too much threat, too many threats, it goes into the cell danger response where it shuts down or, or lowers energy production, leading to chronic fatigue and all these symptoms people have. So when I say the word threats, I mean stress and threats. Same thing. When I say that there's three different areas of stress. There's mental, emotional stress, there's physical stress, and of course, your big thing, there's chemical stress. Any area of those three areas of stress that are too much, the mitochondria will see that and lower or shut down energy production for. As a survival mechanism. And that leads to a lot of symptoms and a lot of problems. All right, now, where does keto come into play here? Well, we have figured out that ketones are actually signaling molecules, meaning they communicate with your mitochondria to create more mitochondria. This mitogenesis process up regulating the system. Up regulate. Exactly. Helping the system run more efficiently up more ATP, more energy. That's why when you look at the electron transport chain and look at what glucose produces in terms of ATP versus what ketones produce, there's about a 400% increase in ATP production from ketones versus glucose because of the mitogenesis, the creation of new mitochondria. But that's just one thing that's happening.
Timeout.
Yeah.
Wait, can you repeat that? So basically, no, I'm going to repeat that. If, if you eat, if, if you're Getting energy from sugar versus getting energy from ketones. The energy you get from ketones because they cause the mitochondria to upregulate and make More Mitochondria is 400 times more than what you get from sugar. Did I get that right?
I actually have. I'm going to pull up the exact number for you. Cause I actually have it. So I know that it's 32 to 36 ATP from a molecule of glucose.
This is insane, Ben. Like, you know, I don't think people really think about. If you, if you go into a carb crash, you eat and you have a carb crash, you really are crashing versus when you have ketones, you're continually building more ATP and improving your energy.
Exactly. Yeah. So it's 120 to 160 ATP from ketones versus 32 to 36 ATP from glucose because of the creation of new mitochondria. That's because it's kind of like when you're in ketosis, it's kind of like a survival mode. Meaning. That's why I don't love it long term, but short term. Amazing.
Because what's short term to you, by the way?
Well, it'll depend, right. If somebody really has metabolic damage, maybe like they would go six months if somebody's fairly healthy, you know, two to three months of ketosis and then we start flexing. So it'll depend, but no more than a year for sure for mo. And most people do it for a year, which is unfortunate.
But what do you mean by flexing?
I mean intentionally eating healthy carbohydrates to get a healthy insulin spike, make hormonal conversions, including thyroid T4 to T3 and get out of ketosis. Like flex yourself out and then back in. The goal is metabolic flexibility. That's what I meant by flexing.
Okay. Yeah. I usually say to someone, you know, after six months you're going to want to take a break, ease off, ease back. It sounds like you're doing it a little stricter than I do it for people, but I'm like the 10,000 foot view, like don't do it longer than six months. Dialed in.
Very similar. Yeah, exactly. So that could be just a good rule of thumb for people like six months. And we've always changed up our diet and changed up our foods throughout entire human civilization. It's just the last 50 years that we started eating the same diet long term. But there's not one culture that followed the same diet long term. They always changed it, even with keto. So that it's a survival mechanism, really. When you're in ketosis, it's your, your mitochondria are creating more mitochondria and it's doing this uncoupling process. And this is really cool because you might think, all right, if you're creating more ATP, you might be creating more free radicals. Cause just like if I burn firewood in my room here, there's smoke. Similar when your cells create energy, there's cellular smoke, toxins, a reactive oxygen species. So you might think, okay, is that not a good thing? If you're producing more energy, there's more smoke. But here's the cool thing about keto, the mitochondrial uncoupling process that happens. And the analogy that I got from Dr. Steven Gundry, I think it's a brilliant analogy, is this pressure cooker. You're using a pressure cooker for dinner, all this steam gets built up in the pressure cooker and then you have that release valve to get rid of any excess steam. That's kind of what's happening at the mitochondrial level with this uncoupling process. It's actually lowering free radicals and producing more energy at the same time, which is super damn cool. So that's why one of the few reasons why I love keto. Yeah.
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