Written by Christopher Kelly
July 2, 2015
[0:00:00]
Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by the chemist and creator of KetoForce, Patrick Arnold. Hi, Patrick.
Patrick: Hi, Christopher.
Christopher: Thanks for coming on. I'm really excited to have you on. KetoForce is a supplement I've been using with great success for over a year now. I wonder maybe a good place to start is to ask you how you got interested in chemistry and producing supplements.
Patrick: Well, if you want to go all the way back to--
Christopher: Yes.
Patrick: -- when I got interested in Chemistry, I guess, in high school. I love to play around, sometimes just casually, make little, mix little things together and watch them catch on fire and things like that, just things as a kid. And then in my Science classes in high school, I took to the Chemistry very well. I seem to have affinity for it. I can understand the words a lot better than other people cared or just seemed to be my language or something.
And then I decided I'd major in Chemistry. And I did and I got a bachelors degree. And then I went to work for a company in New Jersey. I worked there for about four years. During that time, I had a very boring job. I was making polymers for cosmetic industry, stuff that goes into hair gels and conditioners and whatnot. And I also had a Chemistry library on my floor. My job is so boring that I would spend a lot of time in that Chemistry library reading up on stuff that would have to do with fitness or anything that's a personal interest of mine.
At that time, I was getting into body building. There was a magazine called Muscle Media that just come out and this guy named Dan Duchaine. Some of your listeners may have heard of him. He was called the guru back them. He wrote the first book that told people all about steroids in a practical manner. And he had a certain personality to him. I spent a lot of time in that library learning how to make stuff and I would make stuff on the sides.
Some of the stuff I would make are steroid-related type stuff and other stuff that was fitness related that wasn't steroids, some supplements. I don't know what I made. I can't even remember back then. There's stuff called 6-methyluracil. It's just anything, clenbuterols, good stuff like that. But then I later on went back to take graduate courses and I went to graduate school full time. I was going for organic synthesis, which basically means learning how to make organic molecules which basically mean carbon-based chemicals.
Organic has different meanings in different fields. But in chemistry, it basically means carbon-based chemistry, which entails a lot of natural products and which entails a lot of drugs too. So at that time, I got to meet Dan Duchaine via the internet. He was considered a big deal. I wanted to get into the field of the nutritional supplement field because I had some ideas for products that could be sold under certain legal conditions at that time and I thought would be very popular.
I just wanted to get into the business and I thought this is a good time so I got hooked up -- It's a long story but I got hooked up with someone in California who had me come out here to Illinois and I started coming up with ways to make certain things. One of the first things that I came up that really launched me was Androstenedione also known as Andro, which was made famous by Mark Maguire, the homerun hitter, because he had been taking it and they found it in his locker and they called it steroids and whatnot. That was around 1998.
And then I continued on and did this prohormone business and whatnot. We sold some in bulk, and it was legal. We're doing pretty good with it and stuff.
[0:05:01]
And also at the same time, I was also getting involved with some people in competitive sports that had recognized my unique abilities and my knowledge of steroid chemistry and steroid synthesis. I was getting a lot of people calling me up or referrals to like, "Hey, I'm a coach, I'm a trainer. I have new athletes. Do you know of anything we can take that they won't get caught taking?" And I was thinking to myself, "Well, do I really want to get into this?" Because I know things that I can make easily that could do that.
And I finally did take the bait with one guy and it just turned into other people and other people and then this guy, Victor Conte, from a company called BALCO got a hold of me and he just sort of took it through a whole new level. The whole thing ended up with a big legal crisis. He got caught. The whole thing had to do with an investigation that was initially against Barry Bonds and they ran into they found out about Victor and they found out about this whole undetectable steroid thing.
Yeah, I got in trouble for that. That was around 2003. Well, I got in trouble in 2005. Victor got in trouble 2003. But essentially, I went through all that. And then about 2007, I was back to just making stuff that won't get me in trouble. At one point in time, I got a call or email message from Dominic D'agostino, who I know that you have interviewed before. That's what got me into this whole ketone stuff.
Christopher: Okay. It's a fascinating story. So my first question is: Am I going to get into trouble taking KetoForce? Do you think at some point that's going to be a banned substance?
Patrick: It's a good question. No. I can't see how it could possibly be a banned substance. I mean, BHB is present in many foods, be it in small levels. BHB is naturally occurring in your body. It's a actual energy substrate. It's an actual nutrient. I mean, it's right there along with protein, carbs and fats.
Christopher: Right.
Patrick: I think it's about as close as you can get to the legal definition of a nutritional supplement.
Christopher: Right, right. I don't think we need to do a full introduction into ketosis but for people that are listening that maybe have never heard of KetoForce, it's an exogenous source of ketones. Ketones can be utilized to produce energy in the same way that carbohydrates and fat and protein can. Up until now, the only way that you could get to the point where your body was using ketones for energy would be to either starve yourself or to eat a very high fat diet. KetoForce is a supplement which you can drink that will provide this extra source of energy in the form of ketones. Now, there's lots of different types of exogenous or supplemental forms of ketone supplements available. So my next question: What is KetoForce?
Patrick: Well, I'll preface this by saying that your body has two main ketones -- acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate. Acetone is considered a ketone too but it's more or less a breakdown product of acetoacetate. And, yes, there are many forms of exogenous ketones. I guess, to tell the story, the best way to tell the story is to tell the story of Dominic and myself and how he got me into this. At that time, I was familiar with the ketogenic diet and I knew what ketones were.
I didn't know almost anything about how your body processes them to make ATP or anything like that. I learned that later. But Dominic had known this. Dominic was into weight lifting and bodybuilding stuff. I had run into him into message boards where people discuss body building nutrition and whatnot.
[0:10:01]
And he knew I was a chemist. I don't know if I got a call or email from him. He was saying, "Patrick, I'm a professor and researcher at the University of South Florida. I'm doing research into ketosis and various applications of ketosis for things such as CNS toxicity and whatnot, oxygen toxicity. But I need someone to make the acetone for me." And he says he couldn't find anyone that wanted to take it on and the people that wanted to take it on would only do so a ridiculous cost.
I immediately found this very interesting. I thought to myself ketones are pretty cool and if you can actually make a form of them that you can ingest. I had thoughts of future supplement applications maybe not of this ketone ester but derivatives. My mind was just racing. I said, "Yeah, I'll do this." Basically, what he wanted me to make was what's known as acetoacetate diester 1,3 butanediol di acetoacetate ester. It's an oil product. I had to do some work that really get the process down. But it's an oily, really nasty tasting product.
It provides a very concentrated amount of ketones. It breaks down into two parts, acetoacetate and one part 1,3-butanediol, which your body can then convert using the same enzymes that it used as a breakdown ethanol. It converts it to BHB and acetoacetate. They got sort of like three parts of ketones in one molecule. That was pretty cool. So I made that for him. He did some studies with rats. He put them in his hyperbaric chambers and waited until it had seizures.
The ones that he gave this di-acetoacetate ester, they didn't seized for way, way much, much longer time than the ones that were given placebo, even ones that were given other forms of exogenous ketones. Just to elaborate than that, there is like a competing ester, ketone ester which is a BHB diester and that's made by this named Richard Veech and clinical work has been done over at Oxford by this woman named Kieran Clark, I think. They have a product that they never really launched called Delta-G. They've given it to some elite rowers and whatnot. They're trying to market it as a nutritional supplement but they haven't really gotten anywhere with that. I hoping it can't get too complicated for you.
Christopher: No. This is really interesting. You gave me lots of things to go on. I had not heard a bunch of that stuff so I'll go on and look that stuff up afterwards. The product that you originally made for Dominic, that's not what KetoForce is. Am I right in thinking that?
Patrick: No. That's right. That's a synthetic product. That's an ester. Esters are basically combinations of alcohols with acids. It could be broken apart in your body by enzymes called esterases. So that's why when you ingest the ketone ester, your body quickly cleaves it into its constituent parts and you got your ketones in your blood.
Christopher: Okay. So why was that not the product that went on to be KetoForce?
Patrick: Two reasons. It's extraordinarily expensive. It's completely unpalatable. You'd have to take like ten grams at a time and I can't even put one drop in my tongue without gagging. I would either to have made liquid capsules out of it that would have cost like $10 a capsule. And not only that, it's a synthetic product. It would really not conform to the dietary supplement laws in the US.
[0:14:58]
But then I got the idea. Okay, so I can't make its ester but I can take BHB. I can make salts out of BHB. I mean, it's been done before. I mean, it's actually were commercially available. You could buy from research sites sodium beta-hydroxybutyrate. However, I looked for the pricing on it on anyone that would sell it in kilogram quantities and the pricing was just astronomical. I had to hit the drawing board and scratched my head a little and say, "I think maybe I can find a way to make this stuff cheaply enough so that it could be sold as a supplement."
I could make salts out of it. I could make a sodium salt, which was the first most obvious one. I wanted to make a potassium salt. I wanted to make a calcium salt. I wanted to make a magnesium salt. It turned out that the easiest one to make was a sodium salt. However, I wanted to counterbalance the sodium load that the product would have by also making a 50-50 blend of sodium and potassium BHB. What I found is that you cannot turn potassium BHB into a solid for very long. It will sit there and you'll come back in an hour and you'll have a puddle of water.
It's so extremely hydroscopic. It means it picks up moisture from the air. It's actually called, the term is, I think, deliquescent, which means it picks up so much moisture from the air that it actually just dissolves itself with atmospheric moisture. So what I decided to do is then make a concentrated liquid solution. That's what became KetoForce, basically 50% concentrate of water and sodium and potassium beta-hydroxybutyrate.
Christopher: Excellent. So who did you have in mind when you produced the supplement? What sort of person? Who's it for?
Patrick: Well, that's a good question because -- I had a lot of discussions with Dominic about so many applications for this stuff, and a lot of them medical. As a supplement, I can't market for medical reasons. It's simply against the law. Another application might be to ease people that are starting a ketogenic diet, to sort of provide an exogenous source of ketones so that the switch from burning glucose to making and burning ketones is not as uncomfortable. Because usually, the keto-adaptation phase is pretty miserable for most people. They just suffer from a lack of energy because their body is not using glucose and it doesn't really know how to really burn the fats to make ketones. They just have no energy.
But I finally kind of settled on the application of having it used as a supplement to be taken before or during exercise specifically endurance exercise. Because ketones are remarkable energy substrates. Hold on a second. Basically, you get more ATP per unit oxygen consumed than you can get with fats or carbs and any other macronutrient calorie source. This guy, Peter Attia, I don't know if you know who he is, he actually did some experimentation on it himself and he pretty much found that that was exactly what the product did for him. There's also stuff in the literature showing that the ketones in the in vitro model, if you profuse a heart muscle with ketones, it's 28% more efficient in producing energy than with glucose.
Christopher: Right. I'll link to that article that the experiment that Peter did in the show notes. That was kind of, I think, maybe the thing that spurred me to try this stuff although I'd been eating a high fat ketogenic diet for a while.
[0:20:05]
One question that arose from that article was the work he was doing there was very much sub-threshold. For someone that's competing in a race where they might be going much, much harder, do you think you would still see the advantage that kind of more, the same amount of energy produced for less oxygen even when you're going really hard?
Patrick: I have a lot of anecdotal feedback that suggest that it does. I mean, no one has done these experiments under controlled conditions or whatnot. But I don't see any reason why you wouldn't get the same advantages under extreme efforts that you would in the 70% effort or whatever that Peter did in his experiment. Have you only used KetoForce? Are you aware that we have another product called KetoCaNa?
Christopher: Yeah. I wasn't particularly aware of it. KetoForce is quite expensive. Was it like $75 or something now?
Patrick: Yeah.
Christopher: I've only been using it for races. It's like a little bit out of my price range to be using it on a daily basis. I've been mixing it with MCT oil. I've got a recipe actually from a ketogenic diet chef who sadly passed away. She was suffering from breast cancer and she was using KetoForce. She told me to mix it with 500 milliliters of water and then half a lime and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. Hopefully there's nothing in there that conflicts or is going to cause some problems. But it actually makes quite a palatable drink. So I'll do that before a bike race. And then I also use some MCT oil and maybe some UCAN SuperStarch as I go along in the race.
Patrick: Sure.
Christopher: I find that the way that it suppresses my appetite is really quite extraordinary. I don't really know, there's no way of me testing whether my performance has improved by taking KetoForce but certainly the -- I'm sort of the kind of a hungry guy all the time. I'm the sort of person that could eat at any time and always have been. And I've never known appetite suppression like with KetoForce. It's really quite extraordinary.
Patrick: Yeah, it's very well documented that ketones suppress the appetite. I mean, I think that's one of their functions in the body to help you through periods of food deprivation, starvation. During starvation, your ketone levels go way, way up. And for someone that's fasting, for instance, for long period of time, they'll go through a period where they're super hungry and then they get into this full ketosis. And then the hunger is somewhat subdued. They're able to not be obsessed with food in a great discomfort. It must be some effect on the brain to some extent.
Christopher: It's actually really useful. I have a history of having what I described as a fucked up gut. Part of that problem is created by doing a ton of endurance exercise which I'm sure removes the blood supply from the gut once you're working out. That's probably worst of all when you race. Not being hungry, like the second I see people at the end of the race and they got a burrito in their hands 15 seconds after they finish, they cross the finish line, you're just dumping a whole bunch of food in there, into an organ that just had its blood supply removed, I'm not sure how well that works. It certainly didn't work well for me.
Being able to be okay with not eating for an hour after a race, even that is an advantage worth having. But something I wonder about, I think that beta-hydroxybutyrate can inhibit hormone sensitive lipase, which allows the breakdown of fat for use as energy. And I wonder, sort of anecdotally, I guess, it doesn't make sense because I've not taken enough. I'm only doing 30 milliliters, three caps full of the KetoForce. That's only what, 60 calories or something. That's not very much energy.
There's only a tiny amount of energy in the UCAN SuperStarch. If I'm racing for six hours, I simply must be using fat. Do you think if anyone has got a fat loss goal, do you think KetoForce is a bad idea because beta-hydroxybutyrate can inhibit hormone sensitive lipase?
Patrick: Yeah. I would never--
[0:25:00]
I would say that when you do ingest exogenous ketones, your body is going to inhibit its own breakdown of fat through a feedback mechanism that probably involves partially hormone-sensitive lipase. However, at the same time, serving of KetoForce or a serving of KetoCaNa can suppress your appetite to such an extent that if you're an overeater, you can get by with eating significantly less calories and have plenty of energy. It's sort of a balance of the two.
Christopher: Okay. And so tell me about the new product then? Is it better? Should I be using that one instead of KetoForce now?
Patrick: Okay. So KetoForce is kind of a crude first generation product and we still sell a lot of it. Unfortunately, it's a liquid and it's got a relatively high PH. To drink it, you have to mix it vinegar, apple cider vinegar, lemon or whatever to actually bring the PH down so it doesn't have that caustic taste.
Christopher: Oh my god, just listening to the -- I'll link to the Superhuman Radio podcast that I was listening to just before we started recording this interview. I don't know that the interviewer's name but he just put it straight into his mouth and eat, oh my god.
Patrick: Well, he was talking about this new one, KetoCaNa. Now, this KetoCaNa is a combination of calcium BHB and sodium BHB. That could be made into a powder. So we started making that and we added flavoring, natural flavoring and Stevia and some citric acid there to bring the PH down and it actually tastes quite good. You take a scoop, you mix it with water, drink it down, you get the same amount of BHB per serving that you get with the KetoForce. But you don't have to go through all that mixing it with lemons or all that stuff.
Christopher: Yeah. It does make it -- That's the main reason I don't use it during an event. It's because I don't want to -- My appetite is already shut down to zero already and I find that's also true of thirst as well. I just don't want to put -- I think Dominic described it in that interview quite well. It's just like, you just don't want to even think. Just the very thought of food is kind of not good. That's true of water too. I wonder, maybe the new product, the powdered drink, I could put into my water bottle and still be able to get those down without really gagging.
Patrick: Yeah. That's what I suggest to people that are into endurance sports that take more than hour or several hours to finish. Drink a little right before you race and have it in your water bottle and continue to sip it in a dilute form throughout your race and you'll have a constant level of ketones in your body. You'll be sparing glycogen. You won't have to burn as much glycogen because your body will be using the ketones.
You'll be able to -- And you'll also, mentally, you won't get that brain kind of fatigue and loss of concentration because your brain uses ketones very efficiently. A lot of people say that they have less perceived effort. None of that, "Oh, this is so hard." You know what I mean?
Christopher: Right. I know exactly what you mean.
Patrick: And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that your brain is not, glucose levels aren't dropping and your brain is maintaining its energy and your, I don't know, the endorphins and everything are being produced. After this, I'll send you out a bottle of KetoCaNa. I think you'll like it. You'll probably throw your KetoForce away.
Christopher: Oh, no. I still have an unopened bottle in the fridge. Don't say that.
Patrick: No, no. You can combine the both of them. I mean, it's fine. But it's just so much more convenient and it tastes good.
Christopher: Yeah, it's definitely an advantage especially I do mostly mountain bike racing.
[0:30:00]
Certainly, I mean, never mind being in ketosis, just not being on a sugar rollercoaster is a huge advantage. I used to crash a lot more. I mean, I'm not saying I never crash. And now that I said that I probably just jinxed myself. But certainly I used to crash a lot in mountain bike races and it's just the sugar highs and lows. You get one of those gels and you're like, "Yes, I'm killing it," and then ten minutes or 20 or 30 minutes later, you see the other side of that curve and that's when the crash happens.
Patrick: And you're using the UCAN also?
Christopher: Yeah, exactly. The UCAN is almost equally unpalatable. I used the plain stuff. It doesn't really form a solution unfortunately, like any forms of sort of suspension and so you have to shake the hell out of it.
Patrick: Keep shaking it.
Christopher: Yeah. And the MCT oil. I mix that with MCT oil. That helps a little bit actually. It forms a slightly better solution when you mix the oil in there. It sort of holds it all together. That seems to be working quite well. But what definitely doesn't work is mixing UCAN with KetoForce. Maybe it also got hot as well or something but it started forming these weird sort of clumps.
Patrick: Yeah. Because KetoForce, we adjust it to a PH between ten and 11. I don't know what that might be doing to the starch, the bonds of the starch or to its inter-molecular properties. It may cause it to form, you know, these globular things or something. So we wouldn't have that problem with the KetoCaNa because it's actually somewhat acidic because we added citric acid. As far as taking MCT oil, I hope you don't take too much because my experience and things I've read and heard is that that being a fat and everything can sit in your stomach and cause some gastric disturbance, which would be disadvantageous during a race. But, I mean, if it doesn't bother you, and you're taking a low amount, I don't think there's any problem with it.
Christopher: I know what you mean. I mean, I should probably say that I'm really well adapted to MCT oil at this point. I probably, if I'm honest, consume about five tablespoons a day of MCT oil. So, yeah, I'm pretty used to it. But you're right. I think it does slow gastric emptying. But I'm just using so little during the race. Probably I just have six hour event and I use two scoops of UCAN for the entire event and I think there was maybe one or two tablespoons of MCT oil in there. I didn't notice anything at all.
Patrick: So you have this water based drink and you got MCT oil? I mean, doesn't the oil just float to the top? I mean, I guess, you just shake it?
Christopher: I use this -- I can't remember the name. It's called Hydro Flask and they have, I think the container is called SF500. And basically, imagine a tube of toothpaste, like that kind of thing. And it's made out of some sort of like polythene. It's malleable, it's what I'm saying. I can shake it and I can also manipulate it in my hand and really get it well shaken off if it starts to clump in the bottom of the container or anything. And that seems to work really well.
Patrick: Okay.
Christopher: Yeah, I don't really know. I guess, you do have a point. The MCT oil could just be smeared all over the inside of the container and not much is actually getting out of the container. That's entirely possible.
Patrick: Well, I mean, if you didn't shake it all and you took a sip, you'd probably be drinking pure MCT because that's what would be on top.
Christopher: Right. Yeah. Over the rough terrain, everything kind of get shaken up a little bit. Something I've always wondered about is I didn't use the exogenous ketones like a support aid when I was getting into ketosis. I'd been in ketosis for probably a couple of years now. Do you think the benefits are the same for people that are not in ketosis? So they're use to eating a much higher carbohydrate diet. Do you need to be adapted to the ketones before you can benefit from them, from an exogenous source?
Patrick: No, you don't. However, people that are keto-adapted are probably be able to utilize them more efficiently. However, research has shown, annual research or whatnot, that even someone on a standard diet, eating plenty of carbohydrates or whatnot, if you add some exogenous ketones, they will still enter the TCA cycle and go on to produce ATP.
[0:35:20]
Actually, I don't really do a whole lot of endurance exercise but I go to the gym and I do some cardio and whatnot. I lift weights. My drink that I make, I take to the gym is actually -- I use the KetoForce and the KetoCaNa. I use an amino acid blend, essential amino acid blend. I also use maltodextrin. The way I figure it is that I'm just stacking the deck with sources of energy. I got some glucose in there from the maltodextrin. I got the ketones and whatnot. And what I find is I don't get tired at the end of my workout. I still have plenty of energy compared to if I had just made a drink with maltodextrin and the amino acids. So the ketones, they kind of keep you going after your body has exhausted its ability to use the glucose.
Christopher: And tell me about the amino acids. This is just an essential -- It's not branched chain. It's just a complete blend of amino acid. Why do you take those?
Patrick: Well, there are eight or nine essential amino acids, three of them are the branched chain amino acids. I take them basically because so many studies have shown that the ingestion of free form amino acids, the essential amino acids especially in combination with carbohydrate prevents muscle breakdown during exercise activity. Because your body is going to start breaking down muscle protein to make more sugar through gluconeogenesis. And if your body, if you're taking in all the amino acids then your body won't feel the need to break down your protein tissue to form the amino acids you're ingesting.
You're saving basically your muscles from being broken down. Over all, your net protein, an increase in net protein synthesis. So if you're interested in getting the most bang out of your buck when it comes to work out and having your muscles grow as opposed to having them be soft and maybe you have a lot more to overcome before they recover. The amino acids are a great idea. I'm not sure for endurance athletes. I don't know if endurance athletes take amino acids. I think a lot of them are starting to incorporate the branched chain amino acids into their drinks, is that right?
Christopher: Yes. So I'd been using just a complete blend. It might even be the same product. It's been Master Amino Acid Pattern. That's, I think, 12 amino acids. But the branched chain amino acids are the first three ingredients. I don't truly know what the ratio is but anecdotally I notice and a lot of friends have been turned on to the same idea that I feel less delayed muscle soreness after endurance exercise.
Obviously, if I go lift weight or do some kettlebell swings or something then I'll notice my glutes are sore the next day and that probably means I achieve something. I think if you're feeding that soreness after endurance exercise, I'm not sure that's a good thing. And then I would typically notice it in my legs which would make sense because that's the muscles, the main muscle is always exercising. But I wonder whether it was just like whole body metabolism and I'm just noticing it in my legs because you just kind of use those when you go up the stairs and you think, "Oh, that doesn't feel good."
That definitely went away when I started using the amino. And I just stuff them down my throat like five tablets, five grams per hour as I'm exercising. I do that even in training and I find it, like I say, really helps with the muscle soreness.
[0:40:00]
Patrick: Yeah. Muscle soreness is basically an inflammatory response to muscle damage. And if the branched chain amino acid, they resist because they help your muscle resist being broken down during an exercise. So you're going to get less damage and less inflammation and you won't feel sore.
Christopher: Right. I do kind of wonder as well whether would it better to take branched chain amino acids because they're ketogenic, right? If the goal is to produce ketone bodies then the branched chain amino acid are better at doing that than some of others which are also gluconeogenic. I don't know whether you have any thoughts on that.
Patrick: I forgot which ones.
Christopher: I've forgotten too. Not all of them are. There's only two, isn't it?
Patrick: Yeah. One of them is neutral, I think, [0:40:58] [Indiscernible] or something. One of them is ketogenic. I don't know if ingesting the ketogenic amino acid really leads to any significant increase in ketones. But theoretically, yes, your body can metabolize them to ketone bodies.
Christopher: And then the other thing I found to be useful and I've seen some good sort of research shows that there's a plausible mechanism is that some of the amino acids like the large neutral amino acids compete for access across the blood brain barrier. And so some will go on to become catecholamines which are helpful in a race. So things like tyrosine is really helpful to me in general, just for making me more sort of goal seeking motivated person. 500 milligrams of tyrosine before a bike race gives me -- I don't know. It gets more excited about the race and more into it in a way that I'm probably going to achieve with caffeine but with the caffeine comes kind of jitters and sort of weird other side effects that are less desirable.
Patrick: Well, yeah. I mean, your body basically makes norepinephrine and dopamine from tyrosine, I think, maybe phenylalanine too. But I'm not entirely sure if by taking those you really get an increase of neurotransmitters in your brain unless that's the limiting factor of your body, of your brain making those neurotransmitters. I've never been completely convinced but I would assume it couldn't hurt, you know.
Christopher: Right, right. I hate the fact that it's all kind of [0:42:57] [Indiscernible] anecdotal and stuff and you're never really sure of the cause and effect. But there are some plausible mechanisms there.
Patrick: Yeah. Well, I'm like that. I say if the stuff is cheap and it's not going to hurt me and it might help me, why not just throw it in the mix?
Christopher: I like that attitude. I do know why, so blood glucose level is dropped so much when you take these exogenous sources of ketones?
Patrick: One theory is that it activates this enzyme called pyruvate dehydrogenase and when you activate that, the secondary effect is increased insulin mediated glucose uptake by the muscles. Basically, you're causing the glucose that's coursing through your bloodstream to be taken into the muscles through form glycogen. There may be effects on the live as well, maybe inhibits gluconeogenesis in the liver. But there's definitely an effect. I mean, some people notice it more than others.
It's not a negative thing necessarily because even though your blood glucose is dropping quite a bit you don't feel any symptoms of hypoglycemia because your body is using those ketones and your ATP levels are not dropping at all. So really ATP is the end result, the energy currency. So as long as that's maintained, you're not going to experience any hypoglycemic type symptoms.
Christopher: So I wondered then whether anyone was kind of looking at these exogenous ketones as a way to treat type II diabetes?
[0:45:05]
Patrick: Well, the thing is it's a sort of a transient effect. That's an interesting question. I mean, you'd have to take the stuff throughout the day, I suppose.
Christopher: That's easy, right?
Patrick: Or perhaps it could be taken before a meal or during a meal so that your -- Usually diabetics, they get a postprandial spike in blood glucose levels. So let's say you took some KetoCaNa or KetoForce and then ate your meal. It would be sort of like taking a shot at insulin or hypoglycemic agent but you're actually taking a natural product that your body is using and enjoys using.
Christopher: Okay. So my final question is: What do you think the future of exogenous ketone supplementation is? Do you think KetoCaNa is as good as it's ever going to get or is there something else down the road for these supplements?
Patrick: Well, there's a lot of big things in the works right now. I don't want to get too far into it. We ultimately are going to be a raw material supplier of ketone salts, BHB salts in large quantities. I mean, we want to sell this stuff by the ton to other companies and whatnot. And we already have at least one company that's placing very large orders. They're in that area of multilevel marketing though so they're kind of doing their own thing.
But the KetoSports brand was just sort of our way of while we were ramping up to learn how to make this stuff in huge quantities, we wanted to play around with it. We wanted to sell ourselves too and get people used to it and make some money. We are really the best marketers in the world. You're not going to see us turning it into a brand where you open up a magazine and there's ads for it everywhere unless someone buys the brand and they decide to do that.
But for now, our KetoCaNa and ourKetoForce are sold direct to consumers under this Prototype Nutrition site, prototypenutrition.com. We might add a couple of other products that are related to ketosis in the near future. But to really answer your question, down the line, I would like to see BHB salts kind of be in the same class as like creatine is for body builders, sort of one of the big commodity items that everyone wants to put in their product. I would love to see CrossFit athletes, triathletes, mountain bikers like yourself, road cyclists, ultra marathoners, swimmers and anyone that's more of an endurance related athletics to really learn about this stuff. And for companies that market supplements to these people, I'd really like them to learn about it and find. Someday maybe we could work with them and could help them formulate some products that can be a benefit.
Christopher: It's going to join the long list of things I don't understand in the ingredients of many products. That's kind of how I came to this sort of endpoint with the high fat low carb and ketosis, was using some of the simple maltodextrin products got me into all sorts of problems with pre diabetes and stuff. I didn't really see it coming. Yeah, it would make sense. I wonder if the ketone salts were to turn up in some of those powdered products whether it would stop people from turning into like -- You get back from a bike ride and you knock your kid out of the way to get into the refrigerator sort of thing. It could be helpful. Sorry?
Patrick: I also see a lot of benefit for cognitive, just cognitive enhancement.
[0:50:00]
I mean, just say you go to work in the morning and you drink a drink of this and you feel your brain has plenty of energy. You're not hungry. You have a good feeling. That alone is an enormous benefit. I'd love to get into some of the companies that sell to life extension, for the life extension.
Christopher: That's funny. You just don't even think about afterwards. When I was in that pre diabetic era, my ability to concentrate was zero. Like I would look at a small paragraph of text and I would sort of amp myself up to read it. And I probably would switch browser tabs three times before I got through it. It was really bad. Yesterday, I just spent the whole day programming and I didn't really look away from the screen, which I'm not saying is a good thing, but you just forget that once your concentration, once it's back and it's fixed, it's like something you don't really think about again.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. I see ketones as maybe a really important part of why I'm able to concentrate like that now. You don't need to be a pro mountain biker to benefit from that. How many people for a living now have to concentrate in front of a computer for eight hours? It's like a lot of people.
Patrick: Ketones have such a wide variety of applications. I mean, medical applications beyond just the supplement world and whatnot. What we found is that initially there is a pretty big hurdle to cross to explain to people what these are because a lot of people don't understand that you can actually -- You take a product that contains ketones, they think ketones are something that only your body makes and they don't understand that ketones are itself a fuel. They think it's just an indicator that you're losing fat.
But once people get it and understand it and start reading about it, there's like, "Holy Moly, this is really something that's untapped." And it's just beginning to catch on with the athletes and whatnot. And this time [0:52:37] [Indiscernible] company is trying to get it more mainstream. And eventually, I think there's going to be a critical point where everyone is going to be like a hot new thing.
Christopher: Yeah. At the moment certainly, I turn up to a bike race and I look at 600 people and I wonder how many of them are using exogenous ketones as a nutrition supplement. It's pretty easy question to answer. It's me, that's it. Just one person.
Patrick: Don't keep it a secret. I want to sell product.
Christopher: Yeah, I know. You want to sell products and I want to keep doing when I'm bike racing so I'm not sure I should be doing this podcast. But this has been fantastic. So people can find you -- Of course, I will link to the two products we have been talking about at prototypenutrition.com. And then you also blog over at patrickarnold.com. But it's been a while. When are you going to get back into blogging?
Patrick: Yeah, they keep bothering me about that. I just got to come up with something to blog about. I'm very particular in my blogs. I just don't want to write about the same thing that everyone else is writing about. A lot of times I wait around until I run into something that I don't think anyone else has written about. And I also have a guy [0:53:53] [Indiscernible]. He comes on there and he guest blogs once in a while. But, yeah, they were just getting on my nerves yesterday about that because that blog does drive a lot of traffic to the Prototype site and me blogging would probably help us quite a bit. I should be blogging more.
Christopher: Good. I'm glad to hear it. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It's very much appreciated. It's a really exciting product and you're doing a fantastic work and I'm really grateful for it. Thank you.
Patrick: Thanks, Chris. Thanks for the opportunity.
Christopher: Okay, cheers.
[0:54:28] End of Audio
© 2013-2024 nourishbalancethrive