Note: consult with your physician before trying this.
Magical formula
First of all, exogenous means ‘coming from outside’. Ketones are the molecules produced by the liver from free fatty acids (fat).
So, exogenous ketones are the molecules that were produced in a lab. And you can take them in a form of salt, such as ketones salts of potassium, calcium, magnesium or sodium (K, Ca, Mg, Na) or in a liquid for, such as MCT oil (medium chain triglycerides) or ketone esters.
So far, I’ve tried ketones salts of the D-BHB type and MCT oil and the combination of both as in a fasted so in a fed state.
What I can report that I find ketones salts more interesting to experiment with. While MCT oil is the cheapest option, it comes with the cons of easily being able to disturb digestive tract, especially, if you take at once 30 ml of it or more. If you take 15 ml of MCT oil with water it is tolerated well, but the ketones’ level will be no more than 0.3 mmol/l (which is a concentration of ketones in the blood).
In contrast, ketones’ salts can be taken up to 12 or more grams at once and they do not cause, usually, digestive issues, but may result in high minerals intake, since these salts contain a mineral molecule bound to Beta-Hydroxybutyrate (BHB) ketone molecule.
So, if you want to try ketones salts check what is a daily intake of calcium, magnesium and potassium that you can safely tolerate in a day. Also, consult with your physicians before embarking on a exogenous ketones journey.
How does it feel like?
How does it feel like to be in ketosis if you don’t want to try a ketogenic diet, prolonged fasting of 24 to 48 hours long or exercise for more than 2 hours in a row?
Well, if you want to know then you can try exogenous ketones instead.
An athlete
If you are an athlete, then research shows that taking ketones may increase performance. Also, It helps with the recovery.
An older person
If you are an older person, then exogenous and endogenous (natively produced by the body) ketones were shown to improve cognitive function in healthy people, but also in people with onset of dementia and early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Overweight or obese
If you are an overweight or obese person, the research has shown that taking exogenous ketones lowers glucose level, but unfortunately, it also blocks lipolysis (fat burning). So, taking exogenous ketones won’t help you with weight loss. But going on an insulin lowering diets, such as low-carb or ketogenic diets, and/or fasting can put you in a state of endogenous (natural) ketosis. In this case lipolysis is actually increased and fat is used for energy.
Overall healthy and curious person
Well, if you overall healthy and want to just experiment with new stuff, then taking exogenous ketones can be fun. Research shows that they can improve cognitive function, for example.
When I took 6.3 to 10 grams of exogenous D-BHB ketones salt of potassium it put me within an hour into a state of ketosis having about 0.4 – 0.5 mmol/l of ketones as was measured by digital ketone breath meter (it measures Acetone in breath).
While in exogenous ketosis I felt a light high akin to drinking a low alcohol beer. Also, I felt an acidic taste in mouth (due to Acetone ketones excreted in a breath) and tingling in lips. By the way I did 48 and 67 hours fasts and natural ketosis didn’t feel like this at all.
I am not sure that I felt improvement in mental activity, but anecdotally, I can report better ability to focus on a task at hand.
So there you have it. Exogenous ketones may be an interesting thing to try if you are in a need for new experiences and potential health benefits.
After overnight fasting of about 10 hours insulin level in the blood is very low. It means that body is using free fatty acids mobilized from adipocytes (fat cells) for energy to power skeletal muscles, liver, heart.
So to induce recreational ketosis I decided to take Potassium BHB ketones salt to do just that.
16/8 fast won’t help you to go into ketosis
Did you know that based on reading the scientific literature and my own experience measuring ketones level in breath while fasting I see that there is no ketosis even after 21 hours of the fast.
It’s concerning, and it means that doing 16/8 fast works only by using free fatty acids as an energy source, since there is no ketosis at this state. Also for ketosis to start not only insulin should be low, there is a need for the glycogen reserves in the liver to be depleted. Liver has about 100-150 grams of glycogen which varies in people.
There is this assumption that taking MCT oil or ketone salts can speed up the start of endogenous (natural) ketosis. I’ve experimented with both of them and haven’t seen this effect. One caveat, though I didn’t measure BHB ketones in blood (which is the most precise measurement you can do at home), instead I used digital ketones breath meter.
Acetone the ketone excreted in breath correlates well with the level of BHB ketones in blood.
Experiment of N = 1
Anyway, I took about 6300 mg (6.3 g) of Potassium BHB ketones salt in 250 ml of sparkling water to induce exogenous ketosis since I find it fun. Even though it’s possible to induce exogenous ketosis while eating it’s more effective in a fasted state.
Based on the papers I’ve read it should induce ketosis within one hour with the concentration of BHB ketones in blood of about 0.5 – 0.6 mmol/l. I do measure after an hour a concentration of Acetone ketones in breath of 0.2 mmol/l.
Canada Post AddressComplete API allows a user to search for an address within Canada and other countries. Within Canada results can be in both English and French languages. There are two ways to invoke Canada Post API:
To embed css and JavaScript flies that can be copy and pasted from the Canada Post website
To directly call Canada Post API
API setup prerequisites
To be able to call Canada Post AddressComplete API there is a need to setup an account with Canada Post which will provide you with an API Key and also allow you to configure particular URLs to be able to issue search requests using that API Key.
This API Key is for all intents and purposes public, since it can be easily discovered by looking at the API calls in the Network tab in a browser’s developer tools. What prevents this API Key from being used by 3rd parties is assigning it to particular URLs that it can be called from and adding rate limiting and other options as discussed here.
Embedded css and JavaScript files
One way to integrate with Canada Post API is to add the following three tags in the head tag of the index.html page of the project.
Where the css link provides the styling for the Canada Post API script added in the script tag and the second script provides the mapping from the form fields in which you want to use Address Search to the existing fields in the Canada Post API script. More details about how the mapping is done can be found here.
Direct call to Canada Post API
It is also possible to integrate directly with the Canada Post API using their official documentation by using two Find and Retrieve endpoints they expose. More details about each endpoint will be provide below.
Address Lookup Flow
There can be a number of possible scenarios while using Canada Post AddressCompleet API to search for an address. For example, issuing a Find request will return a list of addresses that are similar to the search term used by a user.
Also, what is important each address in that list contains a Next field which can have one of two options: Find or Retrieve. This field is important when one of the search results is a street that has a number of houses or an apartment building with a number of apartments. In this case such an address will have Next field with Find value.
Possible search flow scenarios
Scenario
First endpoint call
Next Action (call)
Result
Notes
1
Look up of a single existing address
Find
Retrieve
Detailed address returned by the Retrieve request
2
Look up of a street or an apartment building address
Find
Find with LastId value from the first call
List of houses/apartments
In this case there is a need to issue additional Retrieve request to get a detailed address.
3
Look up of a specific address by ID from Find request result
Find request endpoint is described in this official page. Its purpose is to look up addresses similar to the search term provided by the user. This endpoint has the following parameters
NAME
Mandatory
TYPE
DEFAULT
DESCRIPTION
Notes
Key
Yes
String
API Key
SearchTerm
Yes
String
The search term to find. If the LastId is provided, the SearchTerm searches within the results from the LastId.
URL encoded
LastId
No
String
The Id from a previous Find or FindByPosition.
URL encoded
Country
No
String
CAN
The name or ISO 2 or 3 character code for the country to search in. Most country names will be recognised but the use of the ISO country code is recommended for clarity.
LanguagePreference
No
String
en
The 2 or 4 character language preference identifier e.g. (en, en-gb, en-us etc).
MaxSuggestions
No
Integer
7
The maximum number of autocomplete suggestions to return.
It is possible to submit request to this endpoint for free using Canada Post website.
Example request:
https://ws1.postescanada-canadapost.ca/AddressComplete/Interactive/Find/v2.10/json3.ws?Key=<your< API Key comes here>&SearchTerm=390&Country=CAN
Response body
The response consists of Items list with addresses as elements.
Pay attention, as described in the possible flows above, if returned address element contains Next field with the value Find it means that to get detailed address there is a need to issue additional Find request with the LastId set with the Id value from that address element.
For example,
First Find request with Search Term: 234 Drinkwater St
The response from the web service is a table containing the elements below. Where no items are found, the response will be empty list (although all endpoints specify the columns). If an error occurs, the response will be an error table instead.
NAME
TYPE
DESCRIPTION
VALUES
EXAMPLE
Id
String
The Id to be used as the LastId with the Find method.
CAN|PR|X247361852|E|0|0
Text
String
The found item.
2701 Riverside Dr, Ottawa, ON
Highlight
String
A list of number ranges identifying the characters to highlight in the Text response (zero-based start position and end).
0-2,6-4
Cursor
Integer
A zero-based position in the Text response indicating the suggested position of the cursor if this item is selected. A -1 response indicates no suggestion is available.
0
Description
String
Descriptive information about the found item, typically if it’s a container.
Since we are talking about web service here the errors that it returns are returned with 200 response while the error itself is contained in the body of the response. Details about all possible errors can be found on Canda Post website.
Example of an error response
For example, the general error below is shown when the API Key is not assigned to get requests from a particular URL.
{
"Items": [
{
"Error": "5",
"Description": "Request not allowed from this URL",
"Cause": "The request was disallowed from the URL.",
"Resolution": "Check the security settings on the key first. If they look fine, please contact
support as it may be from a URL on our blacklist."
}
]
}
Retrieve endpoint returns the full address details based on the Id, which is returned as a result of the Find request.
As was mentioned in the possible flows section above, initial Find request returns a list of addresses that closely match the search term used by the user. Each address contains an Id field. This Id should be used to issue Retrieve request. You can try the request for free on Canada Post website.
Parameters
Each request to the web service requires the following parameters. You can create any number of keys, each of which can be reported on individually and have specific security settings.
NAME
TYPE
Mandatory
DESCRIPTION
DEFAULT
EXAMPLE
Notes
Key
String
Yes
The key to use to authenticate to the service.
AA11-AA11-AA11-AA11
Id
String
Yes
The Id from a Find method to retrieve the details for.
The response consists of Items list with two elements: first element is the address in English, second element is the address in French.
Response Fields
The response from the web service is a table containing the elements below. Where no items are found, the response will be empty list (although all endpoints specify the columns). If an error occurs, the response will be an error table instead.
Below are the errors specific to this web service. If an error occurs, an error table like the one below (but containing a single row) will be returned. (Developers should test for a 4-column table with columns “Error”, “Description”, “Cause” and “Resolution”.)
ERROR
DESCRIPTION
CAUSE
RESOLUTION
1001
Id Invalid
The Id parameter supplied was invalid.
Try again, using only IDs from the Find services.
1002
Not Available
This record contains data that is not available on your account.
Please contact support to upgrade your account.
Example of an error response
For example, the general error below is shown when the account has no money balance to allow for queries.
{
"Items": [
{
"Error": "3",
"Description": "Account out of credit",
"Cause": "Your account is either out of credit or has insufficient credit to service this request.",
"Resolution": "Please check your account balance and top it up if necessary."
}
]
}
References
This is a github repository containing React with classes implementation of two possible ways to integrate with Canada Post AddressComplete API as was explained before. Pay attention that to install the dependencies there is a need to use yarn.
You’ve probably heard that brain cells need glucose and that’s why you need to eat high carb foods. Well, it’s true, but not completely correct.
If you eat standard western diet high in carbohydrates, and eat on average 6 or more times a day, indeed your body will use glucose for energy most of the time, excluding periods of overnight fasting. It means that your brain cells almost most of the time use glucose for energy.
But if you are on a low-carb, ketogenic diets and/or doing intermittent fasting, then there are periods in a day, and in case of keto it can be throughout the day, that you brain cells will switch to using ketones for energy plus using glucose too.
If your doing prolonged fasts longer than 24 hours, say 48 hours or more or strict ketogenic diet, then brain cells will switch to using ketones as the main energy source.
In his lecture prof. Stephen Cunnane described an interesting finding that brain cells consumption of glucose is independent of the level of glucose in blood. He calls this glucose pull. It means that brain will use more glucose for energy only when brain cells are more active, say you are thinking hard on a particular task, like playing chess.
It means that even if you consume a lot of sugar, energy drinks, fruits etc., it won’t help your brain metabolism, unless your brain works harder.
On the other hand, if there are ketones in your blood, then brain will try to use them as a fuel preferentially as much as possible. It means that when the level of ketones increases in the blood, brain cells will use more of them. Prof. Stephen Cunnane call this push of ketones.
Takeaway
To summarize, brain cells do need glucose, but glucose neither most efficient nor preferred brain fuel.
The use of both glucose and ketones as the brain’s two main fuels is governed by five principles: First, two distinctly different strategies regulate the use of glucose and ketones by the brain, a concept we call ’Push-Pull’ (Cunnane et al., 2016a, b). Brain glucose uptake is controlled by brain cell activity. Glucose is transported into the brain via glucose transporters in response to brain cell activation (Pull), so it is largely independent of blood glucose concentration. In contrast, ketones are transported into the brain via monocarboxylic acid transporters directly in response to plasma ketone concentration (Push), not brain activity. Hence, when ketones rise in the blood, they are immediately transported into the brain, an effect not seen with glucose.
If you struggle to lose weight following various diets and training regimens then there could be a couple of issues with your approach. But the most import thing to understand about weight loss is that you need to really know the root cause behind weight gain and what to do about it.
Blindly trying diets, without understanding how they work if at all, and going to the gym may cause a slight weight loss. But, most probably, you’ll gain weight back as soon as you stop following a diet, which happens to most of the people.
So what is the root cause you may ask?
Well, if you don’t have a rare genetic condition, then, most probably you are overweight, obese, pre-diabetic or even having type 2 diabetes due to excessive consumption of carbohydrates that causes Insulin level in the blood to be high throughout the day. This causes Insulin resistance in the long run in two ways: glucose in food you eat causes high level of insulin in the blood and fructose in food you eat causes high level of uric acid that causes insulin resistance indirectly.
As soon as insulin hormone is high in the blood it causes excess glucose in the blood to be stored as fat, and also prevents utilization of the fat that you already have as energy for the body.
Also, when insulin level is low, when you don’t eat for a period of time, due to fasting or after overnight fast this allows the body to use fat deposits that you have as energy for the body, hence weight loss.
Now, that we know that weight gain in most cases is caused by frequent consumption of foods rich in glucose and fructose, the solution is quite straightforward – there is a need to lower carbohydrates intake in any possible way. It can be a low-carb diet, it can be a ketogenic diet, it can be intermittent fasting alone or in combination with low-carb or keto. That’s it.
There is no need to be on a regular caloric restriction diets which cause you to be always hungry and have lower metabolism. There is no need to buy an expensive gym membership or any other sport equipment.
What you may find useful when you start losing weight is that you become more energetic and may find walking, which is free and affordable, enjoyable.
Personally, having been overweight for more than 10 years since my 30’s until 40’s, I wasn’t able to lose weight doing sport exercises or following a diet.
What helped me, was starting Intermittent Fasting regimen almost 2 years ago. Since then, I was able to lose 22 pounds (10 kg) and maintain this weight.
Yep, you’ve heard it right. It has been almost two years of quite effortless weight maintenance.
These Beta-Hydroxybutyrate (BHB) ketone salts work.
I’ve noticed people complaining that they took these pills as prescribed on the bottle and saw no results:
3 pills taken 3 times a day, which is 9 pills. The package information says that 1 pill contains about 0.542 grams of BHB salts.
Well, there is a big problem with such prescription. And the issue is as follows.
Scientific studies that are available at PubMed Central (PMC) show that the smallest does that was shown to induce exogenous ketosis was 3.75 grams at once taken twice daily.
Taking into consideration that 1 pill contains only 0.542 gram it means that to get 3.75 grams of BHB salt to induce mild ketosis (0.7 mmol/L after 15 minutes as was in the paper below) [ref #1], one needs to take:
So, it means you need to take at least 7 pills at once, while the bottle has only 90 pills in total.
Now, you can see why you see no results after taking 3 or even 6 pills at once.
What can you do?
1. If you usually practice Intermittent Fasting for at least 16 hours, then your body, most probably, is already got used to producing ketones. Then, possibly, you don’t need to take more than 6 pills at once to induce ketosis on the last hours of your fast. Pay attention, studies show that BHB salts are much more effective taken in a fasted state [ref #2].
2. If you practice ketogenic diets or very low carb diets, then too, you possibly can induce exogenous ketosis between meals with 6 to 9 pills taken at once.
3. If you do intensive exercises like cycling, spinning or weight training for at least 60 minutes or more, then, again, in a resting period between meals taking 6-9 pills at once may help you induce ketosis.
In other cases, studies show that regular people who don’t practice one of the above need at least 3.75 grams of BHB salts taken at once! [ref #1]
Moreover, the dosage in various studies was 3.75 grams, 7 grams, 12.75 grams, 22.1 grams, 42.2 in one sitting! [ref #3].
So there you have it, taking 3 pills, 3 times a day won’t work for most of regular people.
Today in the morning on approximately 10th hour of the fast my weight was 81.5 kg (179.7 lb).
After walking 6.24 km (3.87 mi) at 0 degrees Celsius temperature outside in a fasted state my weight went down to 80.7 kg (177.9 lb). It’s a delta of 0.8 kg (1.76 lb) within 1:10 hour, which is impressive to say the least!
Limitations of my experiment:
Some of the weight loss is due to poop just before walking
Some of the weight loss is due to perspiration (sweat).
But, there was for sure loss of glycogen and fat!
So there you have it.
Walking is free, affordable and easy to do, unless you have severe hip or knee joint issues. In the case of joint issues you may resort to spinning and swimming, which requires equipment or a pool.
Well, extended or prolonged fasting which is fasting for more than 24 hours is not your lovely 16/8. It’s more challenging and I should say it’s another level of fasting altogether.
First, it requires more dedication since unlike short fasts you still need to live in an environment where people continue to eat and you have to deal with food preparation for them and feel all the smells and looks of the food.
So if you can, do extended fasting when there is no one around, so not to be distracted.
Second, prolonged fasts are less comfortable than 16/8. After about 24 hours into a fast you start feeling a feeling of emptiness in the stomach that is a little bit annoying, but bearable. And at 8:00 PM as it also happens during regular fast you’ll feel hungry due to high levels of ghrelin hormone.
The good news is that in the morning of the second day of fasting if you do 42 hours for example, you don’t want to eat at all. Which is the same thing I feel during short fasts too.
Third, when you do prolonged fast you may feel coldness and low energy even though after about 24-36 hours (depending on the amount of glycogen in the liver) body should switch to using fat as main source of energy. Also, you may feel like going to sleep very early. Which is the case for me today, as usual when doing 42 hours fast.
Benefits of extended fasting
But, don’t forget that this is not in vain:
During prolonged fasts you lose fat really fast.
You have more time since you do not need to buy, cook or prepare food, unless you have kids. Then it sucks.
You have an opportunity to look at your usual life from outside and see how our life is food-centric most of the time.
Autophagy is in full swing only during prolonged fasts starting after 24 hours into fasting. I am not sure that 16/8 turns on autophagy at all (I’ll check this point in scientific papers later).
So there you have it
Extended fasting is challenging, but it comes with some benefits. If you don’t do it too frequently it can be even fun, when you do it with a partner, and kids are sent to spend time with grandpas and grandmas. And you use free time for walking, reading and sleeping.
When you understand this simple thing then you can do three things below:
You can change what you eat to lessen or completely remove sugary and starchy foods and drinks from food you eat. This approach is also known as Insulin lowering diet (aka low-carb and Ketogenic diets)
Or you can go on an Intermittent Fasting lane and strive to do 16 hours long fast and 8 hours long eating window. It’s flexible and you can start from 12 hours fast, which means skipping your breakfast. It’s simple as that.
Or you can combine both of the above approaches.
3. Then if you feel like it you can start walking. As soon as you start losing weight (at first water) after stopping eating ultra processed food and sugar, you may find yourself more energetic and walking is a good thing to engage in.
4. At last, if you want to you can start doing resistance training using your own body (push-ups), resistance bands or dumbbells (these can be expensive to buy new, but you can find used ones at FB marketplace for example).
To summarize
For most of the people, it possible to lose weight without using drugs, surgeries and going to the gym by understanding that excessive amount of Insulin hormone is what is driving weight gain.
When you stop eating sugary and starchy foods, drinking sugary drinks all of which is called Ultra Processed food there is nothing that can prevent you from being healthier.
You can do it!
References:
The people that theirs advice I listen very carefully are:
Benjamin Bikman, PhD – “Why We Get Sick”
Jason Fung, MD – “The Obesity Code”
Gary Taubes, investigative journalist – “Why We Get Fat”
Mark Mattson, PhD – “Intermittent Fasting Revolution”
I’ve long being intrigued by meditation, but I never tried it myself. I’ve heard it was useful to calm you down. It was said it provided some health benefits etc. What caused me at last to change my mind about it was the talk that Lex Fridman had with the historian Yuval Noah Harari in which Yuval mentioned that he meditated for two hours a day and had a one month long meditation retreat once a year.
One additional motivating factor for me was that I, as I think most of the people on Earth, can’t get no satisfaction as The Rolling Stones famously sang. And indeed it’s the case, if you think carefully about it. In this information age we are bombarded with lots of things that cause us to want to buy that thing or the other. Subscribe to that service, like Netflix or the other etc. It seems like a never ending story of addiction that gets worse from day to day. Then, what can be a way out of it you may ask? Well, one of them, apparently, is meditation.
It turns out that thinking about meditation as a tool to relax and get calm is not exactly what meditation is meant for. Though, it definitely can make you calm it’s a by product of meditation, but not the main purpose of doing it.
Since Yuval mentioned meditation in that talk I googled the best books on meditation and got a list of a number of books. Among them were two books in particular that resonated with me.
The first one was 10% Happier book by former ABC News journalist Dan Harris in which he described his path to meditation and how it played out for him. I bought a used copy of that book and found it interesting and useful.
The second book in that search list was the How To Meditate book by Pema Chodron a Tibetan Buddhist nun who is a teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada. That book was unlike the 10% Happier and it had much more profound impact on me in comparison to Dan Harris’ book. If you’ll read it and it will resonate with you, then I think you’ll understand what I mean by profound impact.
Since then, I read a number of other books that Pema Chodron wrote and each one of them is a treasure chest of wisdom and provides practical advice on how to mediate, what meditation is all about and what meditation can do for you and for all humanity if we practice it wholeheartedly.
ScienceAppliedForGood 