Ketone drinks

[avanti]

A sports drink company plans to sell a ketone drink later this year called ΔG (or Delta-G). Preliminary tests indicate a two percent performance improvement to endurance athletes including cyclists and rowers. WADA said in 2011 they have no plans to prohibit this drink saying the body already produces ketone naturally.

Has anyone used it?

Is this old news?

 

[Benotti69]

A sports drink company plans to sell a ketone drink later this year called ΔG (or Delta-G). Preliminary tests indicate a two percent performance improvement to endurance athletes including cyclists and rowers. WADA said in 2011 they have no plans to prohibit this drink saying the body already produces ketone naturally.

Has anyone used it?

Is this old news?

Sky use it.

 

[proffate]

Expert view: Mark Tallon, PhD, managing director of UK firm, Legal Foods
“It’s a product purported to be used by elite athletes based on science primarily from rodent and unpublished human trials.

“If we look at basic biochemistry and the use of subjects following keto-adapted diets we see an increase in the use of fats as fuel. However, this effect should be placed in context as the effect occurs at intensities of less than 70% of maximum effort. Most endurance performance occurs above this level of intensity during stage endings such as the Tour de France I.e. Final 20-30mins. At this point the body needs carbohydrates.

The area of increasing fat utilisation is nothing new as we have had the high fat diets, low carb diets, use of Medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) and more recently 3-beta-hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate. However I am yet to see externally valid (race/event specific) data to convince me of their benefits especially when high intensity is involved.

There may be benefits in glycogen sparing but if current nutritional strategies (carb intake) address this - then we need to see data that ketones outstrip carbohydrates as a recovery aid. Over the distance and intensities of the Tour de France I am not a believer at this time based on the available data that supplemental ketones are more effective than carbs for recovery and or performance.”

 

[proffate]

Re: Re:

"I am not a believer at this time based on the available data that supplemental ketones are more effective than carbs for recovery and or performance.”

Agreed.
Because the human testing was for durations much shorter than a single stage of a multi-stage cycling tour.
Possibly useful for a time-trial.
Would make no difference overall in a GT, in my opinion

Luigi

I think that guy was actually saying the opposite. He says the important part of a GT stage (final climb) is only 20-30 minutes. These things would help you with much longer efforts. He doesn't address whether this might help people in a breakaway or running a marathon for example.


Granted, I also scooped this quote from an article that was written two years ago, before the recent human trial. That the trial was performed by Oxford is a positive sign for its legitimacy. That Oxford is creating a spin off to commercialize it, and that it's specifically targeted at cyclists, raises doubts in my mind.

 

[King Boonen]

A sports drink company plans to sell a ketone drink later this year called ΔG (or Delta-G). Preliminary tests indicate a two percent performance improvement to endurance athletes including cyclists and rowers.Has anyone used it?

Not I ... have heard about these drinks but would not be tempted to try them.

Is this old news?

Nutritional Ketosis Alters Fuel Preference and Thereby Endurance Performance in Athletes
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27475046

Looking at this subject, that study just came out last month. The authors are a collaboration effort between some heavyweight researchers at Oxford and Cambridge universities in the UK, and at the National Institute of Health (of the USA). So I would say, the ketosis concept is not new, but that paper is the most convincing proof yet of the cellular mechanism.

WADA said in 2011 they have no plans to prohibit this drink saying the body already produces ketone naturally

This is not because the drinks will be entirely ineffective, but because it would be impossible to test for.

Something so fundamental to cellular respiration that it can't properly be considered a "drug", and thus it is hard to argue that it is "doping". More like "supplementation", and therefore the athletes' own business, as to what they choose to eat and drink for fuel sources in nutrition.

And really, there can be no practical way to discern endogenous vs. exogenous. This stuff will remain legal

Luigi

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

 

[acoggan]

Trivia (and completely tangential to doping): there was a brief period around WWII during which ketones were thought to be a THE lipid fuel for exercising muscle. Then, in part to the use of radioactive isotopic tracers in the new "nuclear era", it was realized that the NEFA previously thought to simply be an artifact of blood sampling and processing were in fact an important fuel (far more important than ketones, at least under normal conditions).

More trivia: back in the early 1980s, Ed Coyle experimented with feeding subjects ketones, as a way of probing muscle physiology during exercise. As you might expect, though, ingesting significant amounts of such osmotically-active substances typically results in diarrhea (as is also true with medium chain FAs/MCTs).

 

[B_Ugli]

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 find this all very interesting. I stumbled upon the Mark Sisson (paleo website) when my Doctor said my cholesterol was a bit high - in essence he combines low carb high fat with an accompanying exercise regime. He has written two books "Primal Blueprint" and "Primal Endurance". The second book is fascinating insofar as it applies low carb to fitness/exercise.

The crux of Mark Sissons approach is that you make your body "fat adapted" which means it is using fat as its primary source of fuel. This is achieved by seriously minimising carb intake, carrying out most of your workouts below 75% of max hr (the level at which fat is mostly burnt) and experimenting with intermittent fasting. As an aside his view (becoming ever more popular) is that most chronic disease/illness is caused by chronic inflammation caused by high carb, high sugar diets and, yep you guessed it hours of what he caused chronic cardio (over 75% of max hr). He says that a lot of endurance athletes don't drop weight because they riding too hard, gorge on sugar and carbs and get sick.

The idea being is that over time (be patient folks) you become so efficient at fat burning that you increase your power at 75%.

In Primal Endurance he recalls a story about Mike Pigg (Ex-triathlete) who did a 60mile hilly training ride eyeballs out with a buddy in a certain time - they were physically wrecked after it. 2 years later (after following low carb eating and training) he did the same ride again, knocking 20 minutes off the old time with the whole ride within 75% of his max hr.

However a lot of the athletes he mentions in Primal Endurance are long distance runners, cyclists or cannoists who train themselves to race purely on fat. I struggle to see this working in race situations where you are having to respond and go deep into the red time after time.

But the next level on from fat burning seems to be ketosis on which limited short sharp efforts are possible and this along with intermittent fasting is where some exciting developments may show in the next few years. Ketosis I believe isn't new but its implications/application to endurance sports is.

The paleo slant on this is that humans evolved to burn and store fat and that their exercise would be long and slow with short bursts now and again. The human body simply wasn't designed to gorge carbs and sugars in such vast amounts.

 

[King Boonen]

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 need to read the paper, but Mark Tallon is talking about keto-adapted diets such as Atkins, Paleo etc. where ketosis is induced by limiting carbs so glycogen stores can't be replenished. I think the idea behind this is different as it's supplemental, so rather than forcing ketosis by limiting glycogen you are supplying a different fuel that requires removal, essentially forcing ketosis from the "opposite direction". If that's the case then the part on increased fat utilisation in his comment seems very weird, I doubt the body will release free fatty acids as that is done to produce the ketones in question. In fact, I would guess that extended use of ketone drinks may limit weight loss as you are supplying the fuel that weight loss usually does. I suppose they could try and measure that with a hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase assay (I think that is the only enzyme that is specific to ketogenesis, the HMG CoA synthase and lyase are both present in the mitochondrian for branched chain amino acid metabolism). A quick check of the figures shows they saw increased free carnitine which would also suggest a reduction in endogenous fatty acid metabolism. I would also have slight worries from the health side of anyone using these, although this is really not my area. Prolonged, large consumption is probably going to cause ketoacidosis isn't it? Also, if it does suppress the metabolism of dietary fat, could this then result in weight gain if used when not exercising sufficiently? Or is that way off base?

2% sounds very much in the realms of error margins I must admit. I'll be interested to see how they selected test subjects as you would need highly trained individuals.

It's certainly interesting, I know one of the authors and it popped up on an alert when it came out, that's also the reason I haven't said much.

 

[Archibald]

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 find this all very interesting. I stumbled upon the Mark Sisson (paleo website) when my Doctor said my cholesterol was a bit high - in essence he combines low carb high fat with an accompanying exercise regime. He has written two books "Primal Blueprint" and "Primal Endurance". The second book is fascinating insofar as it applies low carb to fitness/exercise.

The crux of Mark Sissons approach is that you make your body "fat adapted" which means it is using fat as its primary source of fuel. This is achieved by seriously minimising carb intake, carrying out most of your workouts below 75% of max hr (the level at which fat is mostly burnt) and experimenting with intermittent fasting. As an aside his view (becoming ever more popular) is that most chronic disease/illness is caused by chronic inflammation caused by high carb, high sugar diets and, yep you guessed it hours of what he caused chronic cardio (over 75% of max hr). He says that a lot of endurance athletes don't drop weight because they riding too hard, gorge on sugar and carbs and get sick.

The idea being is that over time (be patient folks) you become so efficient at fat burning that you increase your power at 75%.

In Primal Endurance he recalls a story about Mike Pigg (Ex-triathlete) who did a 60mile hilly training ride eyeballs out with a buddy in a certain time - they were physically wrecked after it. 2 years later (after following low carb eating and training) he did the same ride again, knocking 20 minutes off the old time with the whole ride within 75% of his max hr.

However a lot of the athletes he mentions in Primal Endurance are long distance runners, cyclists or cannoists who train themselves to race purely on fat. I struggle to see this working in race situations where you are having to respond and go deep into the red time after time.

But the next level on from fat burning seems to be ketosis on which limited short sharp efforts are possible and this along with intermittent fasting is where some exciting developments may show in the next few years. Ketosis I believe isn't new but its implications/application to endurance sports is.

The paleo slant on this is that humans evolved to burn and store fat and that their exercise would be long and slow with short bursts now and again. The human body simply wasn't designed to gorge carbs and sugars in such vast amounts.

I remember reading an article by Mark Allen back in the 80's about training this way to change your 'fuel supply' to fat. He only spoke of the HR levels and how to go about the training side - didn't mention diet at all though...

 

[WillemS]

I know people who religiously believe in the positive effects of Ketone supplementation for precisely the use Luigi is doubtful of. Now that doesn't mean anything, there are also people that religiously believe that stuff that's basically water will cure cancer, but it does mean that it's an interesting product for commercial parties. At the end, a bit of placebo effect, anecdotal evidence and maybe a pro testimony is all you need to skyrocket sales.

 

[More Strides than Rides]

It's be wrong to say the science of Ketones and exercise is pseudo science, but there is a lot of incomplete, and thus mis-, information out there. Because these findings and trends are being reported "live", in order to back up fad diets, social media, bro science, or whatever, it is too easy to jump to conclusions.

Diet is complicated. The scientific method, isolating one variable, is really hard to do with diet. Scientists need to narrow down exercise type (HIIT, VO2 max, typical endurance, or ultra-endurance), training type (elite, sub-elite, amateur, recreational, sedentary), metabolic type ("fat-adapted", traditional, western diet, high protein, high carb, etc.) on top of whatever diet intervention to be able to get a sense of what the role of ketone supplementation really means for performance. Studies only measure one factor at a time, but the peanut gallery will make inferences about all characteristics at once. Athletes meanwhile, figure out what is best even though they don't know why. Like East Africans who don't take any fuel during a marathon. How do they get past what the science behind glucose depletion says should happen in the last 10k? They're already metabolically efficient, often a result of less food availability, or the nature of training groups, which happen early in the morning, without breakfast, for easy, hard, or long sessions.

 

[B_Ugli]

Re:

It's be wrong to say the science of Ketones and exercise is pseudo science, but there is a lot of incomplete, and thus mis-, information out there. Because these findings and trends are being reported "live", in order to back up fad diets, social media, bro science, or whatever, it is too easy to jump to conclusions.

Diet is complicated. The scientific method, isolating one variable, is really hard to do with diet. Scientists need to narrow down exercise type (HIIT, VO2 max, typical endurance, or ultra-endurance), training type (elite, sub-elite, amateur, recreational, sedentary), metabolic type ("fat-adapted", traditional, western diet, high protein, high carb, etc.) on top of whatever diet intervention to be able to get a sense of what the role of ketone supplementation really means for performance. Studies only measure one factor at a time, but the peanut gallery will make inferences about all characteristics at once. Athletes meanwhile, figure out what is best even though they don't know why. Like East Africans who don't take any fuel during a marathon. How do they get past what the science behind glucose depletion says should happen in the last 10k? They're already metabolically efficient, often a result of less food availability, or the nature of training groups, which happen early in the morning, without breakfast, for easy, hard, or long sessions.

Its a fascinating area - particularly diet. I had a discussion with a mate who is Vegan regarding Vegan vs Paleo and he was talking about the usual meat being toxic etc etc. We came to the conclusion that neither of us would know if each were right until we were both 6 ft under (but this is from a longevity of health as opposed to athletic performance standpoint).

Not on commission here but would definitely recommend Primal Endurance for anyone interested in fat adaptation with real life examples of athletic feats achieved using this diet/training regime. He does go into Ketosis a bit and the exciting future of it from a fat adapted viewpoint.

One of the main things I noticed when staying within 75% of max hr (distinct from averaging within it) was that after long rides I wasn't ravenously hungry, wasted for the remainder of the day or having legs screaming with lactic acid.

 

[King Boonen]

You did less intense exercise and you weren't as tired?! Let me get Nature on the phone!!

 

[B_Ugli]

Re:

You did less intense exercise and you weren't as tired?! Let me get Nature on the phone!!

Nice one you just showed your total ignorance of what others are talking about in this thread and its context.

Well done King Stupid

 

[King Boonen]

Yep, that's right, not a clue...

Tell me more about your 1 Vs 1 anecdotal comparison with your vegan friend.

 

[B_Ugli]

Re:

Yep, that's right, not a clue...

Tell me more about your 1 Vs 1 anecdotal comparison with your vegan friend.

Sorry? What was that King genius??

 

[King Boonen]

Re: Re:

Yep, that's right, not a clue...

Tell me more about your 1 Vs 1 anecdotal comparison with your vegan friend.

Sorry? What was that King genius??

So nothing but insults?

The whole basis of the Paleo diet is completely flawed. Claims that we have hardly evolved in the last 10,000 odd years are clearly rubbish. I say this as a milk drinking, blue-eyed human. All mutations which have developed in that time frame. My work in infectious diseases and parasitology means that I know certain populations have developed genetic adaptations to malaria such as G6PD deficiency (actual, proper reading material: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1224522/ ) and that's not even to begin to go into how our gut flora has evolved over that time period.

It is a complete misunderstanding of how evolution works. If we could only thrive be reverting to similar diets consumed by our ancestors we would not have survived.

We could go on to how every single thing we eat is genetically different to what it was 10,000 years ago. Selective breeding of plants and animals for favourable traits has ensured that. This makes it impossible to eat what Palaeolithic humans ate.

This diet ignores many other things, like the fact that no matter how unhealthy certain populations are, our life expectancy is drastically longer than it was.Heart disease, commonly referred to as a "lifestyle" illness has been catalogued across about 4000 years of human civilisation (More actual reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23489753 ).

We don't even really know what our palaeolithic ancestors ate but what we do know is that diets varied massively based on geography as they do now. The idea that a single paleo diet could be applied across different populations is absurd at best. What we do know about the diets of people living in the Artic Circle compared to those living in Southern Africa is that they varied massively.

At best, the vast majority of modern "fad" diets get people to pay attention to what they are eating and as such, generally make people healthier.

This is massively off-topic, but as you saw the need to resort to insults to back your posts up I decided to answer you.


Now, I'm more than happy to back to the actual topic at hand, which is ketone supplementation drinks, which I remain sceptical of over both the short and long term for previous reasons that have been stated.

 

[yaco]

Professional athletes use any any kind of supplements, which often verge into shades of grey, and which are weird and wacky to gain an advantage - I doubt supplements have the same effects on each rider - So it's very much a walk into the wild.

 

[proffate]

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".

 

[pastronef]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2018/07/05/tour-de-france-riders-ready-fuel-ketones-mysterious-energy/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw


HVMN, a San Francisco-based company, was granted a commercial licence to manufacture the world’s first ketone ester drink, HVMN Ketone, back in April. And its chief executive Geoff Woo has told Telegraph Sport that “seven teams will be drinking ketones as part of their nutrition strategy” at this Tour.

 

[Benotti69]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2018/07/05/tour-de-france-riders-ready-fuel-ketones-mysterious-energy/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw


HVMN, a San Francisco-based company, was granted a commercial licence to manufacture the world’s first ketone ester drink, HVMN Ketone, back in April. And its chief executive Geoff Woo has told Telegraph Sport that “seven teams will be drinking ketones as part of their nutrition strategy” at this Tour.

Not Sky, no, they told us they dont know what keytones are. No Sky are purely bread and water with a drop of pinapple juice.

 

[samhocking]

There was an interesting article in Telegraph about it.They asked several teams and Team Sky, Mitchelton-Scott, Groupama-FDJ, Dimension Data and Sunweb all denied that their riders would be using synthetic ketones in Tour this year and only BMC declined to comment. Sky's nutritionist James Morton who was interviewed about then claimed Froome didn't use synthetic ketones and that they use nutrition, not ketone ester as the science isn't yet proven.

"There are a few studies out there which suggest that different forms of Ketones produce different results. The Ketone ester is very different to Ketone salts, for instance.
The evidence for using Ketone ester – which is this drink they’ve created – seems to be that it reduces the emphasis on carbohydrate metabolism. On the one hand, this could be a good thing as it may spare muscle glycogen use meaning you have more for later. On the other, if it surpasses the ability of muscle to use carbohydrate as a fuel then this could really be detrimental to performance. So, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing is too early to say."

 

[acoggan]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2018/07/05/tour-de-france-riders-ready-fuel-ketones-mysterious-energy/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw


HVMN, a San Francisco-based company, was granted a commercial licence to manufacture the world’s first ketone ester drink, HVMN Ketone, back in April. And its chief executive Geoff Woo has told Telegraph Sport that “seven teams will be drinking ketones as part of their nutrition strategy” at this Tour.

Not Sky, no, they told us they dont know what keytones are. No Sky are purely bread and water with a drop of pinapple juice.

That's not true. I have heard that some of their riders actually use - gasp! - synthetic multivitamins.

(Joking aside, this newfound focus on ketones as a fuel source and whether they are "natural" or synthetic is ridiculous.)

 

[samhocking]

By synthetic, they just mean are they using the ketone ester rather than the naturally-derived ketone salts and/or via ketogenic diet.

 

[LaFlorecita]

I thought Froome was seen downing a purple/pinkish bottle at the Giro which some sleuths identified as a ketone brand?