Dr. Ben Bikman

But increasingly, I will vigorously defend ketones as very beneficial, viable signaling molecules in the body.

So even when it comes to controlling the metabolic response, you're probably going to eat less because ketones have a very satiating effect.

um, more so than say glucose does.

Um, but then they also will impact, uh, mitochondrial uncoupling and help the body burn through that glucose faster.

It's restrictive.

And so- Well, this is where exogenous ketones, I think, become so helpful.

Where if you have someone who just says, I just don't wanna do the ketogenic diet, but I still would like some of the benefits,

there are so many good options nowadays that I think it becomes a viable approach for someone to say, I want the ketones, but I don't want ketogenic, so I'm just going to drink them.

So what's interesting, actually, even earlier in our discussion, I mentioned on one of my many tangents, Dr. George Cahill's work.

And he was really one of the more famous, prominent, what they called at the time starvation scientists, we would call fasting scientists.

But that same study I mentioned where

It made you wonder, why was it that these patients who got down to 20 milligrams per deciliter of glucose, many people will say that's lethal, like it'll kill you.

And yet they not only didn't die, they had no cognitive deficit whatsoever.

The speculation, I don't know whether it was him or maybe Richard Veach in a sort of follow-up commentary, a ketone scientist who's also passed away now, where...

If the brain has adapted to ketones, it may be more resilient to tolerate a low glucose.

But most people, one, haven't adapted to ketones and two, don't even have any ketones.

That's the problem is because the same intervention for the most part that's going to drop the glucose in someone, like someone who eats a really sugary meal or drinks it, their glucose is going to come up.

And the higher it goes, usually the lower it's going to go at the end where you have a rebound hypoglycemia.

You would say, well, I should be able to weather that drop because I have ketones.

No, because the same thing that's helping you reverse your glucose, the high insulin, is going to inhibit ketogenesis.