Ketone drinks

[samhocking]

Given the marketing from SIS and Sky after it, I remember it being SIS Beta Fuel. At least in Giro. Not sure about Tour this year though?

 

[The Hitch]

No it isn't. The biochemistry of ketosis has been known for decades.

First clause of that same sentence said "the concept of ketosis is not new..."
Second clause could have been better-phrased, thank you.
What it was getting at is
- they have shown this cellular pathway could be useful for proverbial 'marginal-gains' in short-duration cycling events, on the order of less than an hour.
- They haven't demonstrated efficacy at longer durations, and it seems doubtful that it would make a difference in performance in a single stage of a GT event, let alone in an overall multi-stage tour race
- Concur with those doubts, raised in other comments, on the thread above

I have a degree in biomedical research, including human pharmacology and physiology, and and would be glad to discuss particular approaches to the subject. It's interesting, isn't it ?

I know your post is from 2 years ago, but wanted to ask your opinion since I do find the subject interesting too. I do multi day fasts occasionally. While I don't do it, for ketosis, it does of course involve getting into ketosis, for a few days. What is your opinion of using glycogen stores vs using ketones?

 

[The Hitch]

Re:

if we're interested in anecdotes, I've tried a wide variety of dietary strategies (for weeks-months at a time):
- pescatarian
- ketogenic
- carb back-loading
- various IF protocols
- free-for-all

My cholesterol got better when I switched out carbs for dietary fat, but as far as athletic performance, body composition, or subjective feelings, no diet really made much difference. I've concluded that humans are incredibly adaptable and pretty much any diet will do the trick. Kind of puts paid to the adage of "you are what you eat" --- I'd instead say that "you are what you are, despite what you eat".

I don't agree with that entirely. Free for all surely can't be just as good as diets which focus on healthy living.

Sure a lot of the diets are fads. But that doesn't mean that the science is wrong when it shows that sugar is bad or that fast food high fat with high carb may be bad or that too much alcohol is bad or that some vitamins are important.

I used to eat anything that tasted good and now I focus on foods with vitamins and micros and protein etc. I'm not going to claim I necessarily feel better, I was healthy then and am healthy now. But in the long term, surely its better to give the body food it actually needs to be efficient and cut down on the stuff that it doesn't need and has to figure out what to do with.

 

[F_Cance]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1440938410173153281

View: https://twitter.com/james_witts/status/1440938410173153281

 

[fmk_RoI]

UCI preparing to ban ketones?

Despite the absence of scientific proof of performance enhancement from ketones, and as part of the UCI’s commitment to an honest and credible sport, the UCI Management Committee – like the Professional Cycling Council at its meeting on 20 September - requested that an additional scientific study be launched to clarify the question. While waiting for the results of the study, the UCI recommends riders to refrain from using this substance.

Even as a stop-gap solution ahead of a ban, advocating abstinence as a policy sounds a lot like those couldn't-find-Rome-on-a-roadmap American Christians who take the fun out of fundamentalism: mental.

 

[King Boonen]

UCI preparing to ban ketones?Even as a stop-gap solution ahead of a ban, advocating abstinence as a policy sounds a lot like those couldn't-find-Rome-on-a-roadmap American Christians who take the fun out of fundamentalism: mental.

It's nonsense. I'm also unsure where this ends. Banning creatine and other supplements?

 

[Rackham]

Let's just ban energy bars, sugar, coke & whatever else.

Give the riders a diet of bread & water & force them to live in a field prison facility during a GT to keep an eye on everyone.

 

[fmk_RoI]

It's nonsense. I'm also unsure where this ends. Banning creatine and other supplements?

Personally, I think ketones should only be banned if they fit the fundamental reason for anti-doping: they put too much of a risk on the health of the individual.

But I think the key word in the UCI's statement is credible ("the UCI’s commitment to an honest and credible sport"). Thing is, some people are more credulous than others, which make credibility a complex metric.

 

[King Boonen]

Personally, I think ketones should only be banned if they fit the fundamental reason for anti-doping: they put too much of a risk on the health of the individual.

But I think the key word in the UCI's statement is credible ("the UCI’s commitment to an honest and credible sport"). Thing is, some people are more credulous than others, which make credibility a complex metric.

Unfortunately the original reason for anti-doping seems to have been lost a long time ago.

I interpreted that as an allusion to cost. From what I remember, the drinks are really expensive. Expensive enough that if they do work, only a few teams would be able to actually afford to use them properly, and this would impact the credibility of the races as the assumption is it's still the rider themselves that matter. I'm not convinced that's been the case for a long time now with diversified training, more camps, improved equipment etc. (and obviously doping) but that's what I thought it was getting at.

 

[fmk_RoI]

I interpreted that as an allusion to cost.

Could be cost, true, and that would be a valid point.

I'm taking credible as believable partly on the back of recent comments in his Direct Velo interview (in French, salient passages posted on relevant threads) where he was engaging with issues like motor doping, talking about testing riders three times in a day in order to catch drugs with ultra-low glow times, and invoking unprompted the ghost of 1998. He seems to be engaging with concerns over current performance levels on a broad basis, not singling out a single cause as many hereabouts like to do (and not doing as previous UCI heads have done and dismiss out of hand such concerns). Costs also fit the frame here (a lesson learned from F1).

 

[stephenm]

Expensive, but not excessively so within the budget of a WT team.
Scarce, they have never really fully commercialised.
There has never been a body of work that shows a real performance benefit, in fact the studies that show a negative effect are numerous.
We weren’t able to show a benefit in our lab tests.
My view is there was a wave of Nocebo effect in the peloton, where riders who didn’t have them felt like they were missing out.
This has been around for a long time now and isn’t commercial and there is no knockout proof It works.
I respected DSM’s stance. Why risk the health of riders when the potential long term effects aren’t known?

 

[myrideissteelerthanyours]

Dumoulin has never been as good as he was when he had diarrhea sh*tting himself on the bike

Jokes aside if you can convince fans that a ketone product makes you fit it might not do anything for a pro athlete but it can generate a lot of sponsor revenue and maybe lots of the fans really can use the stuff (for weight loss).

 

[King Boonen]

Dumoulin has never been as good as he was when he had diarrhea sh*tting himself on the bike

Jokes aside if you can convince fans that a ketone product makes you fit it might not do anything for a pro athlete but it can generate a lot of sponsor revenue and maybe lots of the fans really can use the stuff (for weight loss).

I mean, marketing has somehow managed to convince people that berries literally grown in a bog should be highly prized, so I can see how that could be the case...

 

[King Boonen]

Expensive, but not excessively so within the budget of a WT team.
Scarce, they have never really fully commercialised.
There has never been a body of work that shows a real performance benefit, in fact the studies that show a negative effect are numerous.
We weren’t able to show a benefit in our lab tests.
My view is there was a wave of Nocebo effect in the peloton, where riders who didn’t have them felt like they were missing out.
This has been around for a long time now and isn’t commercial and there is no knockout proof It works.
I respected DSM’s stance. Why risk the health of riders when the potential long term effects aren’t known?

There's a couple of fairly recent reviews I keep meaning to read but other things have been getting in the way recently. I'm assuming that they say pretty much what the previous work does, which is that there's not enough evidence either way to be conclusive?

 

[fmk_RoI]

There's a couple of fairly recent reviews I keep meaning to read but other things have been getting in the way recently. I'm assuming that they say pretty much what the previous work does, which is that there's not enough evidence either way to be conclusive?

There appears to be one new review referenced just a dozen posts back that seems to claim the ketones do work. (NB: that came up at a conference in Leuven a couple of weeks ago and the slide in that Tweet bears the name of DQS's daddy-moneybags Zdeněk Bakala's sports science academy.

 

[King Boonen]

There appears to be one new review referenced just a dozen posts back that seems to claim the ketones do work. (NB: that came up at a conference in Leuven a couple of weeks ago and the slide in that Tweet bears the name of DQS's daddy-moneybags Zdeněk Bakala's sports science academy.

A conference presentation isn’t a review, it even says “unpublished observations” on the slide so I’ll be taking it with a massive dose of salt.

 

[samhocking]

When British Cycling were using them, Freeman stated that Ketones were working more as a placebo than a measurable performance enhancer. He said they were not noticing any performance gains in those that did have the stomach to use them without throwing up or digestive issues, but the riders who were convinced they made a difference ultimately thought they couldn't win without them. For that reason alone, they continued to use them with those riders. Ultimately BC & Sky abandoned them at a strategic nutritional level and instead of focused on carbohydrate-based nutrition and science instead.

 

[fmk_RoI]

A conference presentation isn’t a review, it even says “unpublished observations” on the slide so I’ll be taking it with a massive dose of salt.

I think that that Bakala presentation may be this paper.

 

[fmk_RoI]

The drugs don't work.

And don't call them drugs.

UCI medical director Xavier Bigard has said there is no scientific evidence that ketones improve performance, though the governing body currently recommends against their use pending further study.

In an interview with L’Équipe, he also acknowledged that it would be "complicated" for ketones to be added to the list of prohibited substances.

 

[pastronef]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1678818529468903425

View: https://twitter.com/soudalquickstep/status/1678818529468903425


Soudal posting this and tagging the ketone producer. some twitter antidopers took the bait eheh