The TRUTH About Seed Oils & Are Ketone Esters A Diet Hack? w/ Mike T Nelson (SSOF Ep 78)

Mike T Nelson2:15

So again, it's to the extreme. Most of this is, well, if you have any amount, it's going to kill you now, right? And we'll get into amount and dose and everything else. But it just seems like it's the next big thing that people should avoid.

I'm sure there's popular books that'll be written about it. And it's, I mean, just the way the industry goes. You have to have an evil thing, and it can't be a context nuance discussion. It has to be just horrible for you and you must avoid this if you don't, you're going to die. And that's just the way it goes.

James de Lacey3:16

Yeah, well, that's marketing 101, right? Have a common villain to go against. And seed oils is that one.

So, are you—actually, you sent me a whole spreadsheet breaking down some of this research. I've kind of gone through it, but do you want to maybe start with, okay, seed oil: what do we—what are we talking about when we're talking about seed oils regarding, because obviously people might understand fat as saturated, unsaturated, polyunsaturated, omega-3, 6, 9, etc. Just dive into a little bit of that, and then we'll get into this.

Mike T Nelson4:10

Yeah, and that's one of the things that makes it very confusing, because again, you're talking about a seed oil, right? So you're getting oil from something that was a seed.

I still think one of the best books ever written on this was by Udo Erasmus, Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill. It's a very—it's an older book now—but he breaks down years ago the whole process of creation of oils.

And if you go down your grocery store aisle and you're looking at corn oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, most of the oils that have to hang out in the grocery store aisle do have a lot of pretty horrible things done to them. They have different extractions, they may have other compounds that are used—solvent extractions, usually high heat. But those are also very different from a quote-unquote cold-processed type of oil.

So you have what is the oil made from, and you have how is it processed, and you have, well, what amounts are you consuming. So usually when people are talking about seed oils, I think the best starting point is probably to differentiate omega-3 versus omega-6. Those are kind of two different types of oils.

Omega-3, both of them are essential, so we do need some amount of both. In general, U.S. Western diets are much lower in omega-3. So if people have heard of fish oil, fish oil EPA and DHA, fish oil is something your body can convert from omega-3.

So one of the highest sources of omega-3 is probably flax seed oil, but the hard part is your body generally doesn't convert at a high rate into EPA and DHA, which is why in a lot of studies you'll see supplements or looking at fish consumption, trying to figure out how much EPA and DHA are there. So EPA and DHA are essential fatty acids; you 100% need both of those.

On the omega-6 side, you do need some omega-6. U.S. populations tend to be very high in omega-6 and low in omega-3 at a general population place.

The confusing part then is, well, if we eliminate all omega-6, that's not going to be good. And then in the studies, if we change the ratios, there's one way we could look at it. So one of the things I've done for, got, probably 10-plus years now, is something from the Omega-3 Test Kit company. Little piece of paper, you send out, you prick your finger, you bleed on the paper, send it in, and they'll actually run a lipid analysis of every single lipid, every fat that's in your blood.

And they'll look at EPA, so fish oil and DHA, and they'll even look at what's called an omega-3 index. So cellular membrane incorporation rate: how much EPA and DHA can you shove into the cell membrane itself?

And looking at, oh God, probably hundreds of those over the last 10 years, most people are a little bit too high in omega-6. Most people are still low in omega-3. So you can give them fish as a supplement, reduce some omega-6, and they're probably going to be better off.

So on one hand, the seed oil people do kind of have an argument that, yeah, if you're using a lot of these heavily processed seed oils that are stable at room temperature in the grocery store aisle, which show up in a lot of baked foods and fried foods and everything else, and your intake of omega-3 is very low, probably not going to be very good.

But the fact that we're trying to eliminate all of it to zero, I think, is probably goes a little bit too far on the spectrum.

James de Lacey7:51

Okay, interesting. So if we were going to say rank the different seed oils—I know obviously we don't want to say something is completely bad and something is completely good; obviously it's context-specific—but typically, I mean, you mentioned some like the corn oils, peanut oils and stuff.

What are the oils that would be considered high in omega-6 that you find in the supermarket that you would typically look to avoid if you were high in omega-6 already and you weren't consuming enough omega-3?

Mike T Nelson8:19

Yeah, for most people, the recommendation I give people—and I have this in the Flex Diet Cert too—is if you're in the grocery aisle and it is not in the refrigerated section, and you're looking at oils that are not solid at room temperature, probably avoid most of those with the exception of olive oil, and you're going to be pretty good.

So your peanut oil, your corn oil, your safflower oil or canola oil, just eliminate most of those and you're going to be pretty good. Now, most people are not really buying those and just sticking them on food per se. So then you want to look at salad dressings, food that's processed food, those types of things.

But if you're eating mostly a real food diet, I don't need to worry. That has some health benefits to it. Even butter is not really that bad. Again, that's going to be a saturated, it's going to be solid at room temperature.

So in general, avoiding ones that are liquid at room temperature, just kind of hanging out, with the exception of olive oil, and you're going to be probably pretty good.

James de Lacey9:20

Another thing—I think I must have heard this from the late great John Meadows, and I've been doing it ever since—and that is avoiding to buy oils in see-through plastic containers that see sunlight or light that could potentially make it quote-unquote rancid. Is that something that you would also recommend? You look for a dark glass bottle over something that is in plastic and see-through?

Mike T Nelson9:50

Yeah, so a lot of the peanut oils and soy oils, those type of things, they have to go through a lot of different processing to make them shelf-stable, and they're in plastic, and they're in places where they get a—

A lot of like the peanut oils and soy oils, those types of things, they have to go through a lot of different processing to make them shelf stable and they're in plastic and they're in places where they get a lot of UV light. So they have to do things to the oil that doesn't make them very healthy in order for them to be stable. So you've kind of traded health for shelf stability.

Whereas even olive oil generally comes in a darker container. If you look at some of, you can get some different seed oils, like I know I don't have any relation to it, but Udo's makes a mixed kind of seed oil that has omega-3 and omega-6. But that's generally a cooler process, it's not subjected to high heat, they don't use any solvents, and then it's in a cardboard box in a dark container in the refrigerated section.

So those, in my opinion, while they're still technically seed oils and you probably don't need a huge amount of omega-6, some people may need a little bit more in their diet. But if you're going to go that route and you do need more omega-6, I agree something like that is going to be quite different from the canola oil that's just hanging out on the store shelf.

James de Lacey11:15

I've never actually seen oil in the fridge section. What's usually there?

Mike T Nelson11:15

It's usually by like the probiotic area, yogurt. You'll find it in there. You can find it in most stores now, but a lot of health food stores will have like kind of a separate little refrigerated section. Some of the probiotics that need refrigeration will kind of be in the same area too.

James de Lacey11:15

Interesting, okay. And is that mainly olive oils and things like that, or is that something, is it completely different oils, different processing, etc.?

Mike T Nelson11:49

You can get all sorts of different ones. I mean, you can get like a hemp oil, you can get like your, like a more of an omega-3 would be like a flax seed oil. So flax seed oil is high in omega-3, so that's generally going to be a cooler processed, it's generally going to be refrigerated just to keep it shelf stable.

I think the Udo mix uses like everything from pumpkin seed oil to hemp oil to other ones. So again, you're looking at different ratios of omega-3 to omega-6. In general, most people need less omega-6, more omega-3. But again, the problem with just consuming flax seed oil itself, which is high in omega-3, the conversion to EPA and DHA, or the conversion to fish oil, generally isn't real good. It's like single digit percentage. So just consuming fish oil itself as a supplement is probably going to be more effective there.

James de Lacey12:13

I also wanted to dive into some of the ideas around, people talk about seed oils or having too much omega-6 is you're promoting inflammation in the body. But no one actually comes out and defines what inflammation actually is. Are you able to dive into that, what one of these issues that can potentially happen if you are consuming a lot of omega-6 and have that ratio out of whack, and is inflammation something that is promoted?

Mike T Nelson12:44

I mean, at any level you could blame almost anything on inflammation. And like all things, we do need some inflammation for the body just to work. It's just the byproduct of being upright, not pushing up daisies. But if inflammation gets way too high, then it's going to start running amok and it's going to cause a whole bunch of other issues.

And at some level, tons of things affect inflammation, from sleep, training, nutrition, stress, all that stuff. I mean, if you want a very rough gauge of inflammation, although it has some caveats, you can look at like a high-sensitivity CRP on blood work is probably one of the better ways to look at it.

But yeah, it's like its own little rabbit hole of stuff because everything can be blamed on inflammation. And other people rightly say, well, if we didn't have inflammation, muscle growth wouldn't happen, we have all these other body processes, which is also correct. So it's like most things, you need a balance. You don't want to have zero, but you don't want it running amok and doing everything in your body either.

James de Lacey13:44

And another thing regarding oils is people often talk about smoke points. So cooking with certain oils, is it the seed oils that are higher in omega-6 and I see unsaturated fatty acids, they're the ones with the highest smoke points? Is that an issue, for example, cooking with those kinds of oils on relatively high heat, and something that people should generally avoid?

Mike T Nelson14:14

Probably. So the smoke point is kind of a rough point where if you heat an oil, you'll see smoke coming off. The theory there is you're building up more kind of unwanted compounds within the oil itself.

Real simple rule of thumb is generally saturated fat is going to be much better at high heat. So for cooking, if you're adding a little bit to the bottom of your frying pan, I generally just use coconut oil. You can use butter. Butter will scorch a little bit easier than coconut oil in my experience. Coconut oil will also melt at a very low point also. So you don't really, a little bit of oil to your pan, I just use a little bit of coconut oil.

James de Lacey14:45

Nice. That's perfect, actionable for anyone listening. And some of this research, as well, I wonder if you could just dive into some of the things I can see. Like, some of the, I guess, main findings around, for example, omega-6 levels being positively associated with [expletive] cholesterol, I think triglycerides in here, cardiovascular disease is in here. Maybe just dive into some of the things. Okay, is there, what kind of risk factors are we looking at regarding high omega-6 and high omega-6 intake, potentially?

Mike T Nelson15:13

Yeah, so if you look at the research, this is where it gets to be a complete mess. Because you could have high omega-6, you could have high omega-6 in the face of low omega-3, or you could have high omega-6 and high omega-3. And then you have to look at, okay, well what source did they come from? Did they do a nutrition analysis? What was the outcome? Are we looking at cardiovascular health? Are we looking at cognition? Are we looking at diseases, cancer, whatever? Yeah, those are all going to be different because it's a different context.

And then if you look at how the studies were done, some of the ones I sent you were like meta-analyses of multiple different studies. Some of them were not necessarily always positive outcomes either. Some of them showed omega-6 didn't make any difference. Some showed that if it was lower, it was better.

So you have a population which, if you're a general sort of Western population, most people are not super metabolically healthy at rest, which is going to be different than a population who's also metabolically healthy. If you're metabolically healthy, you can handle kind of more insults acutely from higher amounts of omega-6, not that you'd want to have a ton of it in your diet.

And then if we look at how do they actually run the study, so let's say the study is looking at omega-6, let's say they are looking at omega-3, and let's just say it's for cardiovascular health. Are we going to run the study long enough to see a mortality difference, or what's called a hard endpoint, like you're either dead or alive at the end of the study? Good part is it's easy to determine. The hard part is those studies take a long time and they have a whole bunch of other factors that you have to consider.

And then if you get into, well, what if we're supplementing with EPA and DHA? Okay, a lot of the studies, so if you back up and you're like, oh well, we need a randomized placebo-controlled crossover study, the, you know, perfect kind of golden setup for all of this research. Yeah, so one of the issues is when we look at the different studies is, you kind of want the gold criteria, is you randomize, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

James de Lacey17:29

And so if we set that up and let's say we're doing this as a supplement using fish oil, right?

Mike T Nelson17:29

So fish oil is omega-3. We know it's essential. We know that generally it's, you know, I'll air quote here, kind of anti-inflammatory, has some other benefits with it. Let's say hypothetically we have 500 people. So in a perfect world, you would then split the people to 50 per group.

And one of the group, let's say we give them 800 milligrams of fish oil. The other group we don't. Then we look at some outcome, maybe like cardiac mortality. So they're either alive at the end of the study or they're not. The downside is that looks great on paper, but if you're looking at mortality as a hard endpoint, either upright or you're not at the end of the study, it's good because it's easy to determine. The hard part is you're probably going to have to run the study for quite a while, and you have other confounding factors.

If we look at the dose, 800 milligrams of fish oil, in my opinion, is probably not going to be enough to potentially move the needle all that much. But it's easy to do in a study because, well, the one group got the fish oil and the other group didn't get the fish oil. But you probably want to know, well, how much omega-3 or how much fish oil did they have per person? Because you're taking everyone, some people may have a fair amount, some people may not have a little, and your intervention was just to add more to everybody else.

So even though it's randomized, it's double-blind, it's placebo-controlled, for things that have kind of what I call like a working biologic value, vitamin D studies fall in this area too. My biased opinion is you probably are better off running a blood test on everyone, saying, okay, we want to get you to X level of EPA plus DHA, or just EPA or DHA, or whatever the supplement that you're going.

To take is open-ended, meaning we're going to get you to hypothetically two grams per day. Now that may mean some people may get more of a supplement, some people may not. The other group maybe we're just going to give them a placebo and we're just going to leave them at a baseline, or we're only going to supplement them to one gram or something like that.

To me, it's harder, it's more expensive, it is more of a pain in the ass. It's not technically double blind, placebo controlled per se, randomized crossover, all that kind of stuff. But to me the study design makes more sense because now we can get you to a certain biologic level and see what happens at that point.

Again, you could argue, well, maybe that level wasn't high enough, but it's more clean depending upon what you're trying to look at and you have a better idea of what's going on. So same thing if you're doing a vitamin D study, let's get you to US units of 50 and then let's look at outcomes instead of I don't know, just take a few IUs of vitamin D a day and see what happens. But a lot of the studies are not necessarily set up that way either.

So you may see the conclusion of fish oil doesn't do anything for cardiac mortality, but then you have to sit down and actually read the study. What do they look at? What were their outcome markers? What population was it? Are these metabolically healthy people? Are these unhealthy people? And the reality is it just gets to be really hard, even doing meta analyses of all these studies, to figure out what's going on.

And my bias is that if you have omega-3 status that's pretty good and your omega-6 is relatively low or moderate, I think that's probably going to be best. There's a whole bunch of other data to support that. I think it was Alberts et al. 1991 did a study looking at omega-3 levels and I think it was risk of MI and saw a huge reduction if you were towards the higher end.

There's been studies that have looked at different countries. Countries who consume more fish have higher omega-3 levels, they have much less cardiovascular risk. So at least in terms of cardiovascular risk, I haven't looked at everything from cancer and cognition and everything else, probably going to be better off. Metabolism side, there's a fair amount of stuff showing that fish oil is beneficial.

But again, you probably have to look at what levels are we looking at, because you'll find other studies that maybe in healthy people who eat fish all the time, supplement may not be that beneficial, but they may be at a high enough level already. And so if you looked at just a conclusion, it would say, oh, Mediterranean study number 465, fish oil supplementation was not beneficial.

If their levels were all really high to begin with, okay, that kind of makes sense. That doesn't mean that it's ineffective. And so that's the hard part is you actually have to read the particular study to see what's actually going on.

James de Lacey22:49

I hope you're enjoying the chat so far. Before we get back to that, I just want to let you know that Sweet Science of Fighting is more than just a podcast. We have a full training app with strength conditioning programs for strikers, grapplers, and MMA athletes, so you don't have to think about what you're doing and you're getting access to the latest scientific methods to improve combat sports performance.

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And if someone isn't going to get their blood tested for whatever reason and they don't eat fish in their diet, is there you recommend fish oils just as a catch-all kind of daily insurance? And do you typically prescribe a certain amount in that instance, or is it someone really needs to get their stuff checked to be able to do that accurately?

Mike T Nelson24:36

Yeah, so there you're looking at what is the risk reward. Obviously I'm a PhD, so I'm not really prescribing anything, but in terms of potential recommendations based on the research, I think most people are probably fine with two to four grams of fish oil per day. Four grams probably being on the high side if you're really deficient. If you're not, yeah, two grams of combined EPA DHA, I think you're going to be fine.

There isn't really many risks that we know of. There's a lot of theoretical risks that people throw out, but in terms of the published literature, the risks are very, very tiny. The only one that keeps coming up is that you may have some bleeding risk. But if you look at those, I think there's only two studies done on that. Basically their INR, which is this little measurement, International Normalization Ratio, that tells you how fast are your blood clots, that will change a little bit, but it probably doesn't make a huge difference.

And even looking at case reports of patient bled out due to taking too much fish oil before hip replacement or back surgery or whatever, those are almost non-existent. So we're not really seeing a lot of case reports showing that it's an issue. There's been well more than enough fish oil supplementation now that we would have seen more of those.

So again, before you have a procedure, probably a good idea not to consume any of those things just to be on the safe side. But super high doses, you may blend inflammation a little bit too much. You might run into some other issues, but again, I think you have to be at a really high dose for quite a while.

Although I would not recommend this, myself and another guy tried to take a lot of fish oil, like five to eight grams a day possibly for a couple months. Again, this is not recommended. And it appears, at least on a red blood cell level, you will just kind of saturate out at the top end. Like there appears to be a saturation point where you can't force any more into the cell membrane.

Again, could you in theory have some immune issue and some other things that may happen during that time? Potentially. So I don't think you probably need very high doses. Last part too is that it's going to be conserved in the cell membranes itself, so it's not something you have to worry about taking every day or if you miss a day.

The washout period for it is going to be many, many, many weeks on the other end, even if you just stopped altogether. So it's kind of a slow buildup in the tissue and it's a slow downside. We also don't have very good data on a lot of other tissues because they require a biopsy, at least in humans. Good luck trying to get a cardiac biopsy to look at red blood cell membrane content. So most of the data we have is off of just red blood cell content because it's easy to get.

James de Lacey27:26

So how does someone go about choosing a quality fish oil? Because obviously you can find a lot of different ones on the market, sourced from different places, krill or fish, different ratios of EPA DHA compared to the actual size of the pill. So how does someone choose the fish oil to take?

Mike T Nelson27:26

I like going with any company that have reputation. The reality is it's more of an issue if they're not up to standards. If it's some fly-by fish oil R Us company you've never heard of, they put out not the greatest stuff, yeah, they disappear to Fiji, never hear from them again, not really much of a concern to them, unfortunately.

The other part is you can ask them what do they source from. Most of them, you're sourcing from smaller fish are going to be a little bit more environmentally sustainable. They tend to be a cleaner source. Again, most fish oil is going to be what they call molecular processed, so they're going to do a molecular distillation to get rid of any heavy metals, but you'd want to ask to make sure that's actually tested for.

You could ask to see something called their COA, certificate of analysis. Those would be kind of the general things I would look at. Cost is kind of a concern. If it's really, really cheap, it kind of makes me wonder a little bit.

Outside of that, there's a whole bunch of debate about, oh, it's processed with high heat and we don't want that, and that's going to destroy and it's going to oxidize the fish oil. And maybe there's some truth to that, but we still see tons of positives in studies with fish oil that is all different qualities. So maybe, I don't know.

Dosage-wise, if you're not doing direct testing, it's hard to know. I would say anything that's EPA DHA and a...

One to one-ish, you're probably going to be fine. There's some instances where you might want higher DHA—it's a little bit more for brain, EPA is a little bit more for body. Again, that's an over-generalization, but anything that's relatively close to that, if you don't have testing, you'll be fine.

There is some debate about retro-conversion: can you move between EPA and DHA back and forth? I've lost track of the literature on that, to be perfectly honest. We didn't think it was possible, now we think it is possible. My bet is that a healthy person is probably going to be able to convert back and forth. I think the data on that is split, maybe, at this point. So just getting some EPA and DHA, you're going to be fine.

I do wonder sometimes about people who are using it as a prescription through their physician. You'd want to check what prescription you're using. Some of them, like the early ones, were EPA only. It's an EPA modification. So that does make me wonder a little bit. Does it work for what they were doing? Yes. But having somewhat of a balance—which is what we normally see in nature—that would be more of my preference.

So you may consider, if you're just using a high, high EPA, you can get some more DHA. They tend to be more algae-based supplements to maybe not really balance it out entirely, but to just add a little bit more to kind of hedge your bets.

James de Lacey31:04

Are you ever looking at the EPA-DHA total amount compared to, say, the total capsule size? So, for example, you get the 1,000 milligram capsule with 300 milligrams of EPA-DHA. Do you have a general rule of thumb you follow regarding that?

Mike T Nelson31:04

I tell people just look at the actual EPA-DHA on the side of the bottle. It's gotten pretty good now. Most of the ones are relatively high concentrate—that wasn't really true five, eight years ago. But yeah, you want to look at the side of the label, look for EPA and DHA, not just total omega-3, as total omega-3 could be who knows what breakdown.

So, for example, if it's 300 and 200, great, you're at 500 milligrams, say per two capsules, and you can figure out your dose. There's some data to show if you split it out over the course of a day, that might be a little bit better. I'd say not a huge amount of data. Number one would be just get it in when you can.

It is probably absorbed better with a meal. So if you have it with a meal with a little bit of fat, you are going to increase a little bit of absorption from that. In terms of format, there's different basically forms of fish oil you can get—like the format in a krill oil. I'm not convinced that there's going to be any real big difference, to be honest. Maybe that gets absorbed a little bit better, but per dose it's going to be quite a bit more expensive. So I'm not convinced you would need to necessarily go that route.

James de Lacey32:27

Okay, fair enough. Perfect. Hopefully we don't run into any more technical issues, so I'm going to jump on to ketone esters quickly to run this out. So ketones—obviously they actually exploded on the market maybe four or five years ago and then they stuck around for a year, they kind of died out. And obviously now, sounds like you're doing some research with it. So what's the deal with ketones? Is there something there? Is this the future of sports performance?

Mike T Nelson32:54

It's something I've been fascinated with for—God, since they ever came out. I mean, there's pros and cons to a ketogenic diet, but using a supplement to basically put you in a state of ketosis, to me I just find super fascinating. Because you can do that in a diet that has higher amounts of carbohydrates also. So it's independent of what your background diet is.

So normally, if you were to try to get to high levels of ketones—let's say two millimolar or above—if we would stick your finger and measure blood, in the U.S. you'd probably need to do a hard ketogenic diet for two, three, four, five, six days, maybe longer, depending on an individual. Which is going to be higher fat, low to moderate protein, probably less than 50 grams of carbohydrates per day. So depending on your sport, that may not necessarily be best for your sport.

With the ketone supplement, whether it's a salt or an ester, you literally consume it as a supplement and you can see ketones in the bloodstream within 20 to 30 minutes. There are some ketone salts on the market. They will bind the main ketone, which is BHB (beta-hydroxybutyrate). Right now they'll generally do a quad salt, so they'll split it across four different ions like calcium, magnesium, sodium, etc. And they do that so you can get more absorption across the gut.

But what you'll find is, even combining them with like a C8 oil, you can't get really high levels in the blood. You'll generally be doing the Wilford Brimley two-step in the bathroom if you go too high on it. Because it—I may have tested that a few times in the past—it's not real fun. Not dangerous, but just not real fun.

With an ester, now they're going to take BHB or other like-minded molecules, they're going to bind it to another compound, and this allows you to get high levels in the blood. Some of the ones I've tested, you can get two, three millimolar within 20 minutes, which is pretty crazy. Now that opens up a whole bunch of different things you could do, because now you could do this while you're fasting, you could do this while having stored glycogen in terms of muscle stored glycogen in the liver.

And then it gets in the question of, well, what are they good for? Initially, early on, I was thinking they may be beneficial as an alternate fuel during exercise. And there is some data to show that that may be possible. For all-out speed and power, we've got enough data now showing that even high levels of ketones probably not going to be super beneficial.

Now, if we combine ketones with carbohydrates—Cox did this in a study published in Cell in high-level endurance bike riders—they showed a pretty big improvement, like still single digit, but for Advanced athletes, pretty significant. Not everyone has been able to reproduce that. So combined with carbohydrates, maybe. The last Tour de France, again by self-report data, almost all the top teams were using some form of ketone with their riders. How much, to what varying degrees, for what reason? Who knows, no one's really sure.

I've heard everything from 'fall off their bike and hit their head, we want ketones on board to potentially mitigate the risk of a concussion'—there's some data to support that—to potentially being used as a fuel, to potentially having better cognition, decision-making under high levels of fatigue. So no one's entirely sure as to why, and even if they did know, they're probably not going to tell the public anyway, even just in private conversations, that type of thing.

My bias right now, if you said, 'Hey, these ketones are potentially good for...' there is some interesting data that the BHB molecule itself may be anti-catabolic. It may break down some muscle tissue—again, we don't have a ton of studies on that. There's a couple that have been out that have looked at that. And that would make sense. If you think about starvation conditions is when ketone levels were normally pretty high, you do want to try to preserve as much muscle as you can, because that is your bank for amino acids that other parts of your body need.

And we know from some other data that if amino acid levels get really low—the nitrogen hypothesis—that that actually determines how long you're going to be upright in a pure starvation condition. Most people have more than enough energy to support themselves for a long period of time, even lean people. So one of the theories is that it's amino acid levels that are the limiter. If your body is producing more ketones during starvation, maybe that's a little bit of a brake to try to not lose a whole bunch.

They have some interesting appetite suppression effects. So if you're doing lower caloric diets, it might be useful there. Obviously, they do have some calories, but the calorie content is pretty low. And if I were to bet, I would say that there may be significant benefits to cognition under high levels of fatigue.

Brandon Egan has done some of this work, my buddy Dr. Hunter Waldman—they're just publishing a new study. Buddy Andrew and Dom D'Agostino, Brandon—a bunch of people looking at cognition during high-intensity exercise. At the end of exercise, or towards the end of a game when fatigue levels are high, you still have to make decisions, you have to make them relatively fast. So the person who can do that better is going to have a competitive advantage.

There's some early data showing that with ketones on board, your cognitive fatigue under these high-stress conditions appears to be a little bit less. And if I were to bet on positive results or more data that would agree right now, that's where I would hedge my bets.

James de Lacey39:09

Hey guys, it's me again. I just want to let you know that I also have Sweet Science of Fighting rash guards and shorts, so you can represent Sweet Science of Fighting on the mats and within competition. We have the classic—just like the shirt I'm wearing—rash guard, Sweet Science of Fighting on the front, and we have the logos on the sleeves, and then X Marsh...

On the back we also have that in a shorts variation, same thing with the Sweet Arts of Fighting writing on one leg and we have the logo on the other. But my personal favorite, this is my personal favorite far, we have this in black and white and it is the Taniwha protector guardian version of the Sweet Science of Fighting with the logo on the back. This is designed by a Maori designer back in New Zealand, so a bit of my heritage on this jersey. It represents the acknowledgement of battle and war, it also represents strength and stability, and also has the New Zealand silver fern.

But even if you're not a kiwi, cop this. This is an awesome design, it is a custom-made design, you will not find it anywhere else. So check that, that'll also be down in the description with a discount code. But back to the podcast.

Interesting. That's very interesting stuff. So are ketone esters readily available to buy on the market currently?

Mike T Nelson40:05

Yeah, they've been out for quite a while. There's different forms, so the main form was kind of from Dr. V's lab in the UK, so that's one form, or kind of what they call monoester. HVMN in California, they purchased the rights to use that original ester. So when they're original product, which I've used testing through the Carrick Institute a fair amount, that was the same ester.

HVMN is now switched because I don't think this is public knowledge, but I don't think they renewed their contract because they didn't own the patent on it. So obviously they would have had to pay in order to use it. So they've switched to using what they call a ketone diol, which is a butanediol, which does get converted to ketones in the liver.

There's some debate about can you consume enough of it to get high levels of ketone because the conversion is it potentially toxic at higher levels. Data would say probably. Both of them taste horrible. They tried to reformulate it to taste a little bit better. I think it tastes pretty bad.

There's a couple other smaller companies that have other kind of ketone esters. The one from Tecton, which again like I said, I'm helping them with their studies, so I'm probably biased towards it. They took the BHB molecule and bonded it to glycerol. So glycerol, as you know, is the backbone of fats. So you have a triglyceride, a triglyceride is a glycerol backbone and then three fatty acids that come off.

In order to use the fats for fuel, you have an enzyme that goes in that cleaves off the fat from the glycerol backbone. Glycerol backbone goes to the liver generally, and you've got free fatty acids that can be used.

So the glycerol in the Tecton ketone is bonded to BHB, so beta-hydroxybutyrate. So both of them are relatively known to the body. The pharmacokinetics of it appear to be a little bit different, but you can get pretty high levels. You can easily get up above 2 millimolar relatively fast. They've got some pretty impressive safety data. It doesn't appear to be capped so much by dose like you can escalate the dose for a higher response.

That comes right now in a canned beverage which has about 10 grams of it, and it tastes pretty decent. I mean, I wouldn't say it is like the best thing I've ever had in my life, but it's pretty good. Which, if you've tried any other ketone esters, they are not tasty at all. They are really bad.

The only issue with the Tecton ester right now is that it's very expensive as a downside. So it's taken them almost, I think, seven years to get it to this point in terms of production. They're hoping to get the cost down in the future, and then possibly potentially other forms, maybe a powder or different forms like that. Yeah, so it's pretty interesting, and I think there'll be a lot more with that in the future.

And then I did a whole program, educational program for the Carrick Institute, looking at the effects of ketones and ketogenic diets related to concussion and traumatic brain injury. I think there's very interesting data on that because the short version is if you take a big hit to the head, the couple things that happen: one, your glucose metabolism goes completely offline. It just gets a monkey wrench thrown in it. You could have the blood-brain barrier open up. If that opens up, now you've got a whole bunch of compounds that are running amok in your brain again causing high amounts of neural inflammation.

Ketone esters, or even ketones themselves, ketones will pinch hit for energy in the brain. So even a concussed brain can still use ketones for energy. So now you've got an energy source that can kind of mitigate some of that energy crisis from glucose metabolism getting messed up. They do have anti-inflammatory properties. We do know that they can cross into the brain.

So we don't have a ton of human studies on it so far, but again you're back to looking at what is a risk-reward profile. So for me, again, this is just me personally, if I'm going out doing some kiteboarding stuff and hopefully I don't get dropped 20 feet out of the sky on my head, but if I do, for me personally I would use a lot of ketone esters for a while to potentially try to mitigate some of those downstream effects.

James de Lacey44:43

Interesting. Yeah, it sounds like a really interesting piece of research to keep an eye on. But I might wrap this up here just in case we run into any more technical difficulties, Mike. But people find you and follow what you're doing?

Mike T Nelson45:13

Yeah, so last part too, if you work with martial artists, right, what do you have to do during a mixed martial arts fight? You have to be very cognitively aware under a high level of fatigue, and maybe it was something that might help if you actually get knocked in the head. Again, something to think about with that. Or during a weight cut scenario where obviously you're cutting down, that type of thing too, you still want some energy to train.

But yeah, people can find me, main website is MikeTNelson.com. And getting on the newsletter is where most of the information goes out. You can go to MikeTNelson.com/newsletter and you can get on there. I also have the podcast, which is the Flex Diet Podcast, and then the Flex Diet Certification and the Physiologic Flexibility Certification.

James de Lacey46:07

Perfect. I'll link those in the description for everyone listening, but thanks for coming on, appreciate it.

Mike T Nelson46:07

Yeah, thank you so much, appreciate it.