Exogenous ketones

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.

References

Potassium BHB ketone salt I’ve used.