Ketones

No summary available for this substance.

Ketones

Ketones are types of chemicals that your liver produces when it breaks down fats. Your body, primarily your brain, can use ketones as an alternative energy source when glucose is not available. Ketone supplements, often known as exogenous ketones, are commonly used to achieve a state of ketosis without following a strict ketogenic diet.

Category
Bioactive Compound
Molecular Formula
C4H8O
Mechanism of Action
Ketones provide an alternative fuel source for the brain and other tissues in the body during periods of low carbohydrate intake or prolonged exercise. They cross the blood-brain barrier and are used by the brain as an energy source.
Evidence Grade
B

Other Names

  • Ketone bodies
  • Exogenous ketones
  • Beta-hydroxybutyrate
  • Acetoacetate
  • Acetone

Primary Benefits

  • Enhanced physical performance
  • Improved cognitive function
  • Weight loss support

Recommended Dosage

Standard Varies depending on the individual and purpose of use. For general wellness, one serving of exogenous ketone supplement per day is typically recommended.

Side Effects

  • Gastrointestinal discomfort
  • Electrolyte imbalance
  • Bad breath

Precautions

  • Not recommended for individuals with type 1 diabetes
  • May cause electrolyte imbalance if not properly managed
  • Not recommended for individuals with kidney disease

Interactions

  • May interact with diabetes medications
  • May affect absorption of some medications due to changes in stomach acidity

Key References

  • Stubbs, BJ et al. (2017). On the Metabolism of Exogenous Ketones in Humans. Front. Physiol. 8:848.
  • Cox, PJ et al. (2016). Nutritional Ketosis Alters Fuel Preference and Thereby Endurance Performance in Athletes. Cell Metab. 24, 256–268.
Dr. Eric Verdin on Ketogenic Diet Longevity, Beta-Hydroxybutyrate, HDAC Inhibitors & NAD+
Enhancing Health and Longevity Through Diet, Exercise, and Fasting 8:43 0
“The third one is induction of ketosis, which is a small nutrient which is generated by your liver during the fasting process, and all works indicates that just ketosis and a ketogenic diet might have beneficial effect all by itself.”

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The Intermittent FASTING MISTAKES That Make You GAIN WEIGHT! | Dave Asprey
Optimizing Health Through Fasting: Strategies, Benefits, and Considerations 36:24 0
“there are two reasons that spiritual fasting works and i actually reference a bunch of different fasting practices from around the world in the book that are all spiritual traditions one of them is that when the neurons in your brain get ketones from fasting you actually think better you have more energy for thinking and for awareness”

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How To REVERSE YOUR AGE In 40 Days With WATER FASTING | Dr. Alan Goldhamer
Optimize health and reverse aging with fasting and nutrition tips 23:36 0
“the brain being a bi-fuel brain had to be that way because otherwise humans when spring came late because we burned so much glucose in our brain we wouldn't have been able to make it and this is the mechanism by which fasting mimicking diets and keto diets play.”

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How To REVERSE YOUR AGE In 40 Days With WATER FASTING | Dr. Alan Goldhamer
Optimize health and reverse aging with fasting and nutrition tips 23:51 0
“if you go on a very high fat diet or a high fat high protein diet which some people do and you don't eat carbohydrates this fasting mechanism kicks in so your brain changes over to burning ketones you go into ketosis and it has a hunger blunting effect.”

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The Secret Power of Fasting for Longevity and Healing | Dr. Valter Longo
Unlocking the Connection Between Nutrition, Fasting, and Lifespan Benefits 50:34 0
“you know when brains are damaged with Alzheimer's that basically it's like type 3 diabetes in the brain and it can't utilize glucose or sugar as well but it can utilize fat or ketones”

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The Keto Psychiatrist: What Keto Is Really Doing To Your Body! Can It Cure 43% Of Mental Illness?
Keto Diet Impact on Mental Health, Metabolism, and Physiology 45:35 0
“because a ketogenic diet it because the definition of a ketogenic diet is any way of eating that lowers insulin levels enough to turn on fat burning and generate ketones in the blood because because it's about insulin it the it's not a food list so you can you can it's not about plants and animals it's not even about fat or carbohydrate it's about understanding how to lower your insulin levels which you can do with a vegan dietary pattern with a vegetarian dietary pattern uh with an omnivore dietary pattern um uh with or even with a carnivore dietary pattern.”

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The Keto Psychiatrist: What Keto Is Really Doing To Your Body! Can It Cure 43% Of Mental Illness?
Keto Diet Impact on Mental Health, Metabolism, and Physiology 49:27 0
“when you get above 0.5 a lot of metabolic magic starts to happen because there are lots of Pathways in the body and brain that uh are not very active unless you're in ketosis and those are the healing Pathways the recycling and maintenance and cleanup Pathways the recovery Pathways”

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The Keto Psychiatrist: What Keto Is Really Doing To Your Body! Can It Cure 43% Of Mental Illness?
Keto Diet Impact on Mental Health, Metabolism, and Physiology 49:53 0
“there are many people unfortunately or fortunately there are many people who discover with mental health issues that they need to be in ketosis long term in order to be well”

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The Keto Psychiatrist: What Keto Is Really Doing To Your Body! Can It Cure 43% Of Mental Illness?
Keto Diet Impact on Mental Health, Metabolism, and Physiology 1:17:44 0
“Switched to a carnivore diet 3 to four pounds of fatty meat per day mostly pork and beef this was dairy free no plants and uh he checked his ketones using urine testing.”

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The Cancer Expert: “This Common Food Is Making Cancer Worse!”
Cancer Prevention Through Lifestyle Changes and Metabolic Health Strategies 18:20 0
“we as a species evolved to be in nutritional ketosis for the majority of our existence as a species.”

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The Cancer Expert: “This Common Food Is Making Cancer Worse!”
Cancer Prevention Through Lifestyle Changes and Metabolic Health Strategies 19:31 0
“ketones are water soluble breakdown products of fatty acids.”

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The Cancer Expert: “This Common Food Is Making Cancer Worse!”
Cancer Prevention Through Lifestyle Changes and Metabolic Health Strategies 20:40 0
“the mitochondria Burns these ketones okay but they ener remember I was talking about how energy efficient the mitochondria become when they burn ketones they become even more energy efficient.”

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The Cancer Expert: “This Common Food Is Making Cancer Worse!”
Cancer Prevention Through Lifestyle Changes and Metabolic Health Strategies 24:42 0
“exercise lowers blood sugar you know you and and also lowers glutamine so uh the two fuels that are driving uh now we can't completely remove glutamine by exercise that's for sure um but we my my late good friend George kahill published some papers on showing how exercise could actually lower uh glutamine availability so it's a it's a little bit of a push but you're also when you exercise you're burning and you're not eating a lot of carbs your mitochondria burning ketones and the oxygenation from all the exercise is keeping those mitochondria super healthy at their highest level of Energy Efficiency so exercise you're building muscle as well aren't you yeah you're building well you can build muscle but you're certainly getting aerobic exercise to oxygen is coming in and you're burning ketones which I already told you is a super fuel so your body is super healthy”

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The Cancer Expert: “This Common Food Is Making Cancer Worse!”
Cancer Prevention Through Lifestyle Changes and Metabolic Health Strategies 51:05 0
“Should I be on a keto diet then here's what we did okay uh we developed the glucose Ketone index calculator at Boston College all right my students and I because we were trying to uh work with cancer patients blood sugar and ketones.”

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The Cancer Expert: “This Common Food Is Making Cancer Worse!”
Cancer Prevention Through Lifestyle Changes and Metabolic Health Strategies 1:19:09 0
“burn when you burn 79:09 K I said in the brain when your brain 79:11 starts shifting to ketones your energy 79:13 uh the bang for the buck for each 79:15 calorie that comes in from a ketone body 79:17 increases the efficiency of oxidative 79:19 phosphorilation so you more focused 79:22 massively”

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Cognitive decline is NOT inevitable: Dale Bredesen, M.D.
Prevent Cognitive Decline: Empower with Brain-Boosting Strategies & Tips 21:18 0
“Other people will notice it with things like taking some exogenous ketones or some coconut oil or something like that or some MCT oil or they will notice it with taking creatine that's another common one or ALCAR.”

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Dr. Robert Lustig: How Sugar & Processed Foods Impact Your Health
Understanding the Complex Relationship Between Nutrition and Metabolic Health 18:34 0
“carbohydrates I think most of our audience will be familiar with the so-called macronutrients so we talked about fat in this case almonds there's some Fiber in there probably a little bit of carbohydrate a little bit little bit talked about the Porter House with butter right making me hungry already that's protein and fat MH very little of any carbohydrate it should be zero essentially maybe one zero zero yep um and then now we're talking about carbohydrates and we're going to subdivide that into glucose and fructose right galactose basically becomes glucose in the liver so we we can dispense with that unless you have a disease called galactosemia which is about one in 20,000 um and causes neonatal menitis and you know it's a disease as a pediatric endocrinologist I would take care of but we can dispense with that for the moment all right so glucose fructose glucose is the energy of life every cell on the planet Burns glucose for energy glucose is so damn important that if you don't consume it your body makes it so it will take an amino acid and turn it into glucose that's gluconeogenesis glucogenesis that's right it will…”

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Dr. Casey Means: Transform Your Health by Improving Metabolism, Hormone & Blood Sugar Regulation
Transform health by improving metabolism, hormone regulation, blood sugar control. 2:36:03 0
“Abbot which is one of the three main manufacturers of cgms has announced that they're they have a new product called the lingo which is going to actually be able to measure ketones lactate and alcohol um continuously which is pretty interesting from like a metabolic comprehensive metabolic standpoint.”

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The Insulin & Glucose Doctor: This Will Strip Your Fat Faster Than Anything!
Optimal Health Through Balanced Diet: Managing Insulin for Better Outcomes 1:15:30 0
“What happens if you were to put someone, allow them to eat calories but the calories are such that their insulin is staying low and they're making ketones, in other words a ketogenic diet.”

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The Insulin & Glucose Doctor: This Will Strip Your Fat Faster Than Anything!
Optimal Health Through Balanced Diet: Managing Insulin for Better Outcomes 1:34:00 0
“ketones are nothing more than a product of a lot of fat burning and anyone who even fasts for 24 hours you wake up that next morning you're in some degree of ketosis lest anyone think it's an extreme thing people are going in and out of ketosis ideally often”

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The Insulin & Glucose Doctor: This Will Strip Your Fat Faster Than Anything!
Optimal Health Through Balanced Diet: Managing Insulin for Better Outcomes 1:35:50 0
“my lab published a report finding that when humans were in ketosis which is just a term term for ketones being elevated we pulled out small pieces of belly fat and measured the metabolic rate of that belly fat and we found that in ketosis the metabolic rate of that belly fat was three times higher than when the people were not in ketosis”

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The Insulin & Glucose Doctor: This Will Strip Your Fat Faster Than Anything!
Optimal Health Through Balanced Diet: Managing Insulin for Better Outcomes 1:37:18 0
“when we incubated the muscle cells with ketones they were much more resistant to injury”

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The Insulin & Glucose Doctor: This Will Strip Your Fat Faster Than Anything!
Optimal Health Through Balanced Diet: Managing Insulin for Better Outcomes 1:50:27 0
“I would say anyone would benefit from having some modest period of time of elevated ketones at least in some portion of the day.”

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The Insulin & Glucose Doctor: This Will Strip Your Fat Faster Than Anything!
Optimal Health Through Balanced Diet: Managing Insulin for Better Outcomes 1:53:23 0
“if you don't have enough fat to burn to make enough ketones and the brain is saying all right well I wanted to switch to ketones so that I could spare the glucose but I can't there's not enough ketones here so I have to rely 100% on glucose but if you're not eating glucose now the body has to start stripping the protein from muscle and it sends those amino acids to the liver then the liver is so capable it will turn those Amino acids into glucose so it turns my muscle into glucose to feed the brain”

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The Insulin & Glucose Doctor: This Will Strip Your Fat Faster Than Anything!
Optimal Health Through Balanced Diet: Managing Insulin for Better Outcomes 1:55:39 0
“ketones are further anti-inflammatory like they directly reduce inflammation in the body by inhibiting inflammatory processes and they also improve antioxidant defenses so it helps reduce oxidative stress”

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Dr. Peter Attia: Improve Vitality, Emotional & Physical Health & Lifespan | Huberman Lab Podcast
Improving Healthspan Through Lifestyle Choices and Preventive Health Measures 6:04 0
“I found that by taking Ketone IQ which we know increases blood ketones I can achieve much better focus for longer periods of time for any kind of cognitive work and much greater energy levels for exercise especially if I'm going into that exercise fasted and find myself a little bit hungry when I start that exercise.”

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