Ketones for Metabolic Health, Brain Function, & Fertility with Latt Mansor

Latt Mansor explores the multifaceted role of ketones, particularly their influence on brain health, fertility, memory, and focus. The re-release of an episode from 2023 delves into their impact on serotonin receptors, blood glucose regulation, and weight management. Mansor also highlights the potential therapeutic benefits of ketones for conditions such as sleep disturbances, infertility, depression, and Alzheimer's. If you want a balanced approach to health discussions, where scientific understanding encourages expanded knowledge and experience rather than limitations, this is the episode for you. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep296 Dr. Latt Mansor holds a Ph. D. in Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on the metabolism of type 2 diabetic heart in hypoxia. He also holds an M. A. (Columbia University) and a B. Sc. (Hons) (University of Nottingham) in Biotechnology. He is a world expert in physiology and metabolism and consults with elite sports, military, clinical and research organizations. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/. Please note our medical disclaimer https://drmindypelz.com/medical-disclaimer/.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Mindy Pelz?

  On this episode of the Resetter Podcast, I bring you Dr. Lat Mansor. Now, a couple of things to know about Dr. Lat and the conversation you're about to hear. For starters, we're going to dive deep into the concept of a ketone. So, Dr. Lat holds a PhD in Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics from the University of Oxford. So, he is brilliant and he has really mastered the use of ketones when it comes to performance. So, I loved this conversation on so many levels because A, it gave me some new insight into

• 0:45Mindy Pelz?

  how we might look at ketones and its effect on all aspects of our life, not just our health. But B, what Dr. Lat brings to us is what we call an exogenous ketone. And an exogenous ketone means that you actually are not producing it on the inside of your body, you're actually taking it from an outside source. Now, in full transparency, I want you to know that I have typically been against exogenous ketones. But Dr. Lat, he has changed my opinion based off the science that he is bringing us. So, if you've been one of those people who have messaged me, have wondered about exogenous

• 1:30Mindy Pelz?

  ketones, where they fit in, this is the conversation for you. There were a couple of my big takeaways on this, one of which is how we can use exogenous ketones in the fed state. So, this isn't in the fasted state. How do we eat a meal and then use an exogenous ketone to help stabilize blood sugar? That blew my mind. I also loved how he looks at ketones for recovery from exercise. And then, as I said, how can we lean into these exogenous ketones for just overall performance in our day-to-day activities? So Dr. Latt completely changed

• 2:14Mindy Pelz?

  my opinion of exogenous ketones, and you're about to hear why. Plus, for all you science nerds that want to know the research, Dr. Latt will bring it to you. So enjoy. This is definitely a conversation that was needed, and I'm so excited that I got to have this with Dr. Latt, because not only, as you will see, he's incredibly brilliant, but he also has a huge heart. He's on a mission like so many of us, and he is reinventing the way we all look at exogenous ketones. So with that, I will tell you, enjoy. This is an incredible episode.

• 2:57Mindy Pelz?

  Welcome to the Resetter Podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

• 3:21Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, Latt, one thing that's really emerging for me in the world that I've been in with launching Fast Like a Girl into the world is that we need conversations around the information. When we look at health, one of the challenges we have is we go black or white. You know, a ketone is good or it's not good. You know, it's very like, you want your numbers to be this, or you don't want it to be that. And The human body doesn't work like that.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't. Metabolism, I tell people all the time, metabolism is not a straight line.

• 3:51Mindy Pelz?

  No.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  It is a flux. It's always ongoing and you need to keep it in the Goldilocks zone. Is the optimal level of pH, optimal level of temperature, optimal level of amount of hormones that you're gonna be in, amount of enzymes and you're gonna be in. Just because something is good doesn't mean that more is better.

• 4:09Mindy Pelz?

  Exactly. And so to that point, I feel like one of the challenges we have in the biohacking world is we understand something new about our body. And this could be something as simple as like we just discovered our hormones, like testosterone. All of a sudden, we're like, I need as much of it as I possibly can get.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:27Mindy Pelz?

  No, no, you wanna always be bringing these things into balance and that's where the body really shines. So with that in mind, where I wanna start this conversation is, what is a ketone? Cause there's so many people chasing ketones that don't even know what it is.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  So ketone is the brain's super fuel. Okay. Why do I say it's a fuel? It's the same as every other form of fuel. You know, in the, in the human body, we know the fuels are carbohydrates, fats, protein to a, to a, to a certain extent. Of course, our body will always try to preserve protein till the last bit. So mostly we'll be using glucose or fats.

• 5:09Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Ketone works the same way. So ketones are broken down from fat, getting converted from fat in the liver and, and enter the Krebs cycle, the same way glucose and fatty acids would, and provide ATP, which is the energy currency for the cell.

• 5:25Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Then a lot of people ask, why do we have so many different forms of fuels? It's because.

• 5:31Mindy Pelz?

  A good question.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good question because different situations would require a different form of fuels. So when we use glucose, it's when we need fast. Fuel. Because glycolysis, the first part of glucose metabolism, you don't need oxygen to create that. So when you do intense exercise, when you go on anaerobic exercise, you will burn glucose first. For fats, fats account for twenty to forty thousand calories of storage in our body versus two thousand worth, two thousand calories worth of storage of glucose. So fats contain way more energy, but it's harder to burn. So when you go on endurance race, when you go on cardio zone two,

• 6:15Speaker 01

  that's when you tap into your fat storage.

• 6:18Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Now, I know you talk a lot about this on, on your, on your podcast. When you are on a carb restricted diet, i.e. a keto diet or when you're fasting, your body goes really low on carb storage and, and blood glucose.

• 6:33Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  But your brain needs glucose to function primarily.

• 6:38Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  But when you're low on glucose, what happens then? Like, your brain can't stop working, right? So that's when your body says, okay, I'm going to convert fat into ketones. Why can't fat just go up to the brain and get metabolized for energy? Because fats can't bypass the blood brain barrier. So it needs to be converted into a smaller sized molecule. Because fat has, you know, eighteen to twenty carbons, sort of long chain molecule, so it can't get passed because of the size of a molecule. So it needs to be converted to ketones.

• 7:11Mindy Pelz?

  So it needs like a surrogate.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Like a surrogate.

• 7:14Mindy Pelz?

  That's what I just heard.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Smaller, smaller sized molecule to get into your, your brain to be metabolized for energy. But then over the years, we have seen research that's shown that when ketones are present, the brain would preferentially take up ketones for energy. And in fact, I interviewed Dr. Tommy Wood, this, you know, brain health expert from, from Seattle. He said, when, you know, people go through brain injury or, or an infant trying to develop their brain, they actually use ketone preferentially.

• 7:50Mindy Pelz?

  Hmm.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  So this is super interesting because they are using ketones to resynthesize fatty acids that is used to repair the structural damage caused by the brain injury.

• 8:03Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, okay. Hold that thought for, because you just gave me a whole nother elevated thought.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:07Mindy Pelz?

  So. If we are not putting ourselves in, I'm just gonna say a fasted state. That's the door in I've always looked at for ketones. I think it's the best door in for ketones. If we're not, if we're eating fat, but we're not putting ourselves in a fasted state in order to signal to the body what to do with ketones, then is that fat more stored as fat? Do you see where I'm going with this? Like, there's, there's an environment inside the body that needs to happen in order for that to signal, hey, we need ketones, let's make ketones, let's use ketones.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:44Mindy Pelz?

  And if I'm, like, go on the ketogenic diet and I bring carbohydrates down, I'm like, oh, they told me to eat a bunch of fat. I eat a bunch of fat, but I haven't created the right environment in my body. Will that fat not turn into a ketone? Will it more likely turn into a fat molecule around my waist?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  That I would say, no, it wouldn't, unless you are having such an excess amount of calories that it forces your body to go into storage mode versus burning mode. Because if you are having a maintenance amount of calories, for example, just the right amount of calorie for you to just function

• 9:19Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  and maintain your weight, then inevitably, you will be turning that fat into ketones. Because either way, your brain will need that energy. And where is it gonna get the energy from? Not glucose, because you don't have any.

• 9:32Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  So it's going to, to really pull from the fat conversion into ketones.

• 9:38Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And then another interesting fact is that liver converts ketones into BHB, which is, the, uh, sorry, liver converts fat into ketones, which is BHB, beta hydroxybutyrate, the main form of ketone that our body uses.

• 9:51Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Uh, there are three forms, beta hydroxybutyrate, estoacetate, and acetone. But the main form that is getting circulated around and get metabolized by energy is beta hydroxybutyrate. And that's also why whenever you talk about blood ketone levels, when we test it, it's usually BHB level. The interesting fact is that even though the liver is a conversion organ that converts, converts fats into ketones, it does not metabolize ketone as well. It does not have that sort of, um... As much enzymes.

• 10:21Mindy Pelz?

  The liver doesn't.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  The liver doesn't.

• 10:22Mindy Pelz?

  So who else metabolizes it?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  So the heart, the brain, muscles. Um, we have seen in heart failure studies that the heart, the failing heart actually prefers ketones. Probably because it's more efficient being used as a fuel per molecule of oxygen used.

• 10:41Mindy Pelz?

  So there are different parts of our body that per- prefer ketones.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 10:45Mindy Pelz?

  Over glucose.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:46Mindy Pelz?

  It, is it like the brain is fifty fifty, right? Like.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  The brain, the brain primarily uses glucose when you have glucose present.

• 10:54Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  But then when ketones are present, even when glucose is present, it takes up the ketone re- independent of glucose uptake. So it doesn't even affect the other um substrates uptake.

• 11:07Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  So which means, you know, that the brain really wants it. And you're just basically providing extra energy for the brain to work.

• 11:15Mindy Pelz?

  So, so I, I always go back to our primal ancestors and how do they do this? And that actually makes perfect sense that the cardiovascular system would require it because the longer you go without food, the more focused you have to become to find food.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 11:31Mindy Pelz?

  So that's why the brain gobbles them up. But you're also probably running and chasing and going after hunting food, which is why it would go to the cardiovascular system.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yep. So you have two, two points there. One is the cognitive benefit and the other is the energy benefit when it comes to performance. And we can talk about that with regards to exogenous ketones. But most importantly, one study by uh Muji Kuperadi uh two years ago, they published a paper that showed keto diet and exogenous ketones and then placebo, three groups.

• 12:02Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Right? Keto diet for a week, exogenous ketones, one dose, and then placebo. And then they measured functional MRI. They looked at the interaction of the brain regions and they call it brain network stability. And this stability decreases as we age and that's when you increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases.

• 12:21Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  So what they have seen is that both keto diet for a week and one dose of exhaust on its ketones, they both increase the brain network stability.

• 12:31Mindy Pelz?

  That's crazy. Is there a part of the brain that it didn't activate?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  They just showed the increased interaction between the brain regions. So the activity, the brain activity increased.

• 12:41Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  So to your point, you know, you are increasing your cognitive abilities, your cognitive sort of focus, but also because it goes into your crap cycle and produce energy ATP, especially when you need the cardiovascular fitness and cardiovascular performance, you have it.

• 13:01Mindy Pelz?

  Okay. So now, now I'm going to go down this path with you. This is like, oh my God, this would be like what I do on a Friday night is having a conversation like this. It's very exciting to me.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  I know.

• 13:11Mindy Pelz?

  So is it the mitochondria? If we look at, we have the most amount of mitochondria, you know, in our brain, our heart, our eyes and our ovaries. Actually, our, in the female body, the eggs that live in our ovaries have the most amount of mitochondria compared to any other cell in our body. So my brain is thinking, okay, well, if they're the most dense amount of mitochondria there, they need the most amount of ketones.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yep. Most amount of energy needed.

• 13:40Mindy Pelz?

  That would make sense from our primal friends because our primal friends need to stay alive and the women need to stay alive and reproduce so that we all can be sitting here today. So do we have any information on what ketones would do for the eyes or for the ovaries?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  That would be an interesting study. I've never, I've never seen any studies specifically looking at that. But now that you mentioned the theory of it, I mean theoretically it would work. It would need a lot of mitochondria, it will need a lot of fuel to fuel those mitochondria. And therefore, the hypothesis would be like, if I'm providing ketones to the body, then I should be able to see the uptake of ketones in the eyes and ovaries at an exponential level. However, I think the feasibility of running those studies, I mean, because the heart, they've done it in, in animals where they measure the blood going in arterial blood versus venous blood, blood going out. And then that's how they

• 14:40Speaker 01

  measure the amount of uptake of different substrates.

• 14:43Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  How would you do that with the eyes? I guess you can. You can measure, yeah.

• 14:48Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, you can't be like put and die.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:50Mindy Pelz?

  Although my, um, my, my ophthalmologist, you know, dilates and puts stuff in my eyes. So maybe you could do it the same way.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:57Mindy Pelz?

  But I'm even thinking for, well, I'm thinking two things. One, um, is, you know, as I went through my forties, there, there's a moment that your eyesight goes. And you can't read up close. But the more I've been practicing a fasting lifestyle, the more ketones that I put into my body. I'm just seeing subtle shifts and one of them has been in my eyesight. Like, I'm not needing my reading glasses as much. And so the other day I was wondering, I was like, what am I doing in my life that is allowing that to happen? So it would be really interesting to see how it, how it works with, with as far as eyesight goes. But the bigger elephant in the ketone room would be fertility.

• 15:39Mindy Pelz?

  Especially women that are struggling, do we, and, and especially if we did, I mean, I know we're going to talk about like Alzheimer's and dementia, but is, do we have any way to measure if putting someone in a ketogenic state or using exogenous ketones over a certain period of time helped with fertility?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  That's, that's super interesting. I don't know per se, um, and I don't know, because I know for a fact that for keto diets, sort of ketogenic diet studies, female bodies react differently, slightly different compared to, to male bodies. And I think there is a paper that published the effect of keto diet on basal metabolic rate. Basically, the post-menopausal women would be similar to males.

• 16:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  But the pre-menopausal women behaves completely differently.

• 16:30Mindy Pelz?

  Right. I just had another thought, sorry.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 16:33Mindy Pelz?

  I have to get this out before, because you literally, I've studied this stuff and now, this is why I love talking to you. Like, my whole brain's going anew. Okay, so when we look at the women's menstrual cycle. When we look at day one all the way through ovulation, which is the follicular phase, first 15 days, what's happening is estrogen is coming in in order to release an egg. And estrogen needs glucose to be low and thrives when ketones are high. And I'm wondering if that's because that's what the eggs need, because they have so many mitochondria.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  And they're also actively dividing and really produce, yeah.

• 17:08Mindy Pelz?

  Whereas the back half, like the egg's already released. So it doesn't need that, which is why all of a sudden progesterone wants glucose to be high. So you actually don't want ketones in the back half of your cycle. But it may all be based off of the egg.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  This is, this is how we run a study together.

• 17:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yes. Do you know how to run a study?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  This is the conception of our, our collaboration to run a study.

• 17:32Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Because then we could look at something like, you know, exogenous ketones and we could say, okay, how do we use that in an effective way to facilitate a better menstrual cycle and potentially better ovulation for a woman? And, I mean, I have always thought of exogenous really helpful. I can see it for Alzheimer's and dementia. But now you got me really thinking that this, this could be a really powerful tool for fertility. And you also have me thinking, and I don't know if you all have thought of this, is that when we're looking at an exogenous ketone, it's probably best done in the front half of the cycle. And then the week before a woman's period, she would probably not use, she would cycle off of the exogenous ketone.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. And that way you can have that predictable, um, level of ketones in your body.

• 18:21Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Because when you use exogenous ketone, it's transient enough and the effects, the effect is acute enough for you to control when you need it to be on, when you need it to be off. Versus when you're on ketogenic diet, you have that adaptation period. And then even when you cycle off, you'll have that adaptation period as well.

• 18:37Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  So that gives you the flexibility to really switch on and off whenever you want to be in ketosis.

• 18:43Mindy Pelz?

  So one of the things that I that I did when I developed the fasting cycle in Fast Like a Girl is I tested it on a bunch of my team members that were struggling to get pregnant.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:54Mindy Pelz?

  And then like immedi- I I was like, let's try this cycle where we're gonna go high carb, low carb. And we're gonna do ketones in and out of ketosis over your menstrual cycle. Let's see what happens. I have a theory here.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:05Mindy Pelz?

  I'm like, I think it'll take us about ninety days to understand if this worked or not. Within thirty days, both of them got pregnant. And after after trying to get pregnant for years, like these women were struggling.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  So what was your theory then? When you when you ran that and you saw that result, what was your theory then?

• 19:20Mindy Pelz?

  The the theory was that estrogen wants glucose down and ketones up.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:24Mindy Pelz?

  And so when a woman is on day seven of her cycle, eating pizza and ice cream, she's actually making herself more infertile.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:33Mindy Pelz?

  And she doesn't really realize it. And then the back half, the opposite happens.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 19:37Mindy Pelz?

  And so you want glucose up and ketones down. And I hadn't thought of it in terms of the mitochondria.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  So now we're going back into the basic science and mechanism mechanism of action, and that could be why.

• 19:50Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So so that so then I was like, after I saw these two women get pregnant, I was like, oh, my God, okay, let me try it on my patients. So I tried it on my patients, same thing, everybody like thirty to sixty days, most of them thirty. So then I went to my YouTube world, and I'm like, let's try this. This was the birth of Fast Like a Girl. People were writing in, and you know, right now on Amazon, my reviews on the book, I love reading the ones that say, yep, I got pregnant in thirty days. But what do we do with your product? What do we do with exogenous ketones to facilitate that?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, like I said, you know, if you are going high and low, um, you know, manipulating glucose and and ketone intake.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  You can use this to really boost the ketone levels on a transient level.

• 20:36Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Because what happens when you drink exogenous ketone like Ketone IQ, for example, is that your blood ketone levels will go up to, you know, one to two point five millimolar over three to four hours. And it will stay above one hour, if you're sedentary, if you're not working out, it will stay above one millimolar after six hours. And it will it will start dropping down to baseline.

• 20:57Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  And then after that, either you have to top up or you just let it, you know, just flat out on on a baseline. That way you can measure, you can even like, you can really solidify your theory about the ketones.

• 21:10Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And glucose, and you can really pinpoint what exactly.

• 21:13Mindy Pelz?

  What number, yeah. But I'm wondering if it's the health of the mitochondria in the egg.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 21:18Mindy Pelz?

  So if you have an eggs that aren't viable, you let the root of that, you have mitochondria that are weak.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Dysfunction.

• 21:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, so and then every woman who's struggling with infertility is going to have a little bit of a different dysfunction.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:31Mindy Pelz?

  So where I might need on day ten to take in one bottle, another woman might need like three. So we I think that's where the N of one comes in, where you're going to have to figure out what that pattern is.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  And that's when it comes to sort of personalized medicine. And that's why I love talking to people like you.

• 21:48Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  You have the ex the the direct contact with people and you touch people's lives directly, whereas I'm coming from a basic scientist's point of view. And for you guys who don't know, basic scientist means like scientists who always um try to investigate the mechanism of action. We look at molecular biology, we look at animal models and really figure out what is actually happening inside mitochondria, what is actually happening with this particular molecule, whereas clinical scientists are scientists who run clinical trials and look at effects on humans.

• 22:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  So when we put one and one together, this world just, you know, we can start explaining.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  The science behind this.

• 22:31Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. It's so funny you say that because this has been my new cry to my, to people who are listening is like, science gets us in the ballpark. Now we have to figure out what seat we want to sit at. And it's, we have to take that and we have to apply it to ourself. But I fear that one of the things that we've done with science is we've held it up as the gold standard. And it's like, no, it's, it's just opening our minds. And to your point, we need each other in this conversation as the people listening, we need them as well to give us feedback so that we have some kind of understanding of how humans apply this.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, because one is proof of concept and the other is translate, the translation and application into humans' lives specifically. And as we know, metabolism is a beast.

• 23:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  When it comes to how to pinpoint and how to really fix, especially when you come up with um dysfunctional metabolism and there is level of severity and you don't know where that level was and then you need to get into the optimal level. Do you overshoot it? And when you overshoot it, it becomes another form of dysfunction.

• 23:39Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  It's just a very difficult beast to tackle.

• 23:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, agreed. So, okay, let's go to the brain because uh now that we've geeked out on the ovaries. Um, and, and you know, the sperm, I, I don't know the mitochondrial um makeup of sperm or testes. That would be interesting to know too, because this, you know, even though men don't have a cycle, um, you know, a monthly cycle, you guys have a daily cycle.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Right. I would assume um it will have high mitochondrial activity just because they're constantly being, you know, the DNA materials are being replicated and producing sperms. And therefore that activity would sort of be increased compared to the rest of your body, which is just, you know, as demand of sort of function, right?

• 24:26Mindy Pelz?

  Well, and the sperm need to be strong.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:29Mindy Pelz?

  Strong swimmers, right? So there's gotta be some mitochondria in there because that's the battery of everything of human life.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, a hundred percent, yeah.

• 24:36Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, interesting. Okay, so take me up to the brain. When we say that the brain gobbles up my ketones, do we know what part of the brain's gobbling the most?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  That I'm not entirely sure. Um, I do feel, I, I do know that.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Ketones does increase B D N F. So brain derived neurotropic factor. And exercise also increased B D N F, right? And B D N F has direct effect on hypo- uh hippocampus.

• 25:06Mindy Pelz?

  Ah, okay.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Hippocampus is also responsible for learning and memory.

• 25:12Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  So we know.

• 25:13Mindy Pelz?

  And mood.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  And yeah, and mood. And I, so I know that that region is very sensitive to ketone being unavailable.

• 25:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  And and that makes sense because in our six million dollar contract with the D O D. We are currently looking at an exogenous ketones in cognitive and physical performance in hypoxia. And in the study, we're wrapping up now, so we've got a lot of data already um that's gonna gonna be published. But we have seen when in hypoxia and in low oxygen levels. Ketones actually increase uh memory recall as well as accuracy and and reaction time. Because normally, when you're in low oxygen level, your cognitive function decrease. Because your brain is saying, hey, I've got less oxygen and therefore let's lower the ac- the activity. And therefore, that goes with the function.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  But we have seen the increase in in memory recall as well as, you know, reaction time and all of that. And with all these cognitive studies, it just comes to show that hippocampus, you know, when it's when it comes to like memory and learning and mood and all that. As well as mood, like I I recently gave a lecture at University of Malaya as a fellow uh last month. And I brought ketone I Q shots and gave it to the students. One of them actually said they they had they had struggled with anxiety for a long time. But ever since he took the shot.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Ten minutes after uh they took the shot, they stopped fiddling with their limbs. And they said, it actually works.

• 26:47Mindy Pelz?

  Well, that's because ketones, I don't know if you know that when ketones go up, GABA goes up.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, it works on the GABA pathway.

• 26:52Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  It's an enzymatic.

• 26:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, cuz I've told people that all the time, like just sit there when you if uh when you're in a fasted state, just tell yourself ketones are coming, ketones are coming.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:01Mindy Pelz?

  And once they come, you'll go from this like, I gotta eat, yeah, to, huh, I strangely feel calm right now.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  And this is the area I love to explain. I would love to hear your take on this. So ketones gets you into that relaxed state and calm state, right? But ketones also give you energy.

• 27:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  How do you explain that? I'll give you my take after you give yours.

• 27:22Mindy Pelz?

  I'll explain it by you have to, ketones were meant for your survival. You had to go hunt. And so you can't be all frazzled like, oh my God, I'm running out of food. I'm hungry. Ketones are like boom, they're like, they put you in your body. They give you focus so you can go and hunt, so you can eat, so you can stay alive. That's how they were developed in our body. And so that they had to bring GABA up. They had to bring dopamine up because dopamine is that motivation molecule is like, let's go get that food. That's all, to me, that's what we're all searching for. And once we click in that ketone, we're actually in a hunter state.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  So you have to be calm, collected, focused, laser focused.

• 28:03Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And at the same time, being able to really sprint out and, and use that physical prowess that you have in order to get that food. And the way I explain it is especially when it comes to exogenous ketones is that you need to stop thinking about it like a stimulant. It's not a caffeine. It's not a stimulant. So it's not actually giving you the extra boost by blocking a dinosine receptor and make you feel less fatigue, but still not give you energy. That's stimulant, right? It increases heart rate, it increases blood pressure, but it doesn't directly give you energy. You still need to pull that energy from somewhere.

• 28:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Ketones directly gives you energy, but also gives you the signaling effect of the calming, the anxiolytic effect.

• 28:47Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Via signaling. And therefore you don't need to be in that jittery like frazzle sort of moment, like you said. And, and that's why you can use in both physically demanding situation.

• 29:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  But also in, in a way to, to calm yourself down, especially if you have anxiety. And I think a lot of people now starting to realize one good use of, of exogenous ketones is when they want to go for exams.

• 29:14Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Interviews, podcasts, because they're calm.

• 29:19Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  But their brain is switched on so they can actually, you know, think better and really have the memory recall dialed in.

• 29:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  But at the same time, they're not having this nervous energy that is stopping them from thinking clearly.

• 29:33Mindy Pelz?

  That, the first time I learned about fasting and a ketone, I was experimenting it on myself. And I was try, I, I, we used to give these big presentations to my patient base and we would do a big one to hundreds of people every January to kind of set the, the year off. And so I wanted to bring fasting to them. We had just learned about Dr. Osumi's work. Walter Longo had come out with his three day water fast. So.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  That's a very interesting point. We're gonna get into that one as well.

• 30:00Mindy Pelz?

  So, so I was like, they're gonna think I'm crazy because I've been talking about nutrition and detox and now I'm gonna tell them that actually, all the supplements, all the food things I've told you pale in comparison to what I'm about to tell you. So I went on a five day water fast.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:14Mindy Pelz?

  And on the fifth day, I gave the presentation. So I hadn't eaten in five days. And I did it on purpose so that I could show the, my audi, my patient base, this is what it looks like to be on ketones. And so I give the whole lecture, it was a two hour lecture, and about ninety minutes in, I just said, and I know you probably think I'm crazy and I want you to know, like, do I look tired right now? And they're all like, looking at me, kind of funny.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Are you sure you fasted for five days?

• 30:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And then I ju, well, I did. And I just said to them, I was like, I haven't eaten in five days.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:45Mindy Pelz?

  And, and everybody was, was convinced at that point. And it was because I had ketones in me to, so to give a speech, to stay calm, I wasn't hungry, it, it, it was a performance moment.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59Mindy Pelz?

  And I think we lose sight of that because everybody comes to ketones thinking, oh, I wanna lose weight.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:04Mindy Pelz?

  But I always say, come, come in to lose weight and then I'm gonna ask you to stay for all the other benefits.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. The way I describe what is the use, I remember when we launched it early last year, we had a whole list of use cases and benefits of ketones, right?

• 31:19Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  You get the cognitive benefit, you get the performance, you get the, uh, recovery, and then you get the metabolic health. But then, after all of that, it sounds like a snake oil, right?

• 31:30Mindy Pelz?

  It sounds so.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  It sounds too good to be true. So, right now, my favorite way of describing what's the best use case and what's the best benefit of ketone, is that it will benefit you in any activity that you use your brain for.

• 31:44Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  So either you're using it for intellectual cognitive performance side of things. Or if you're using physical side of things, because even when you're doing physically demanding tasks, you still need your brain. People on long rides, on on long runs, they still need that focus. People on trail runs, they need their sort of um alertness and focus of their surrounding, their balance and everything. People who are doing anaerobic exercise, they still need to be in the zone to get the form right, to think of all everything, you know, the weights and all of that. So.

• 32:20Mindy Pelz?

  You're in your primal state.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  You're in your primal state.

• 32:23Mindy Pelz?

  So, okay, now I'm gonna really geek out on a part of the brain that I have been currently this week writing a whole chapter for my new book on.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Already? You're on a roll, Mindy. Like, you are always on on it. You're always on it.

• 32:35Mindy Pelz?

  Well, I I I love to solve problems that that our culture isn't solving. And one of the biggest problems that we see right now with with women going through menopause is that there's this massive brain change. And one of the pieces of the brain is a receptor site known as five H two A, which is a serotonin receptor site. And estradiol goes into that and activates serotonin, which helps with keeping us joyful. When estradiol goes away, we have this empty receptor site. So I've been looking at what else do we have that can go into this receptor site? Well, one study that I came across was that something as little as eight hours of fasting will activate the serotonin five H two A receptor site. And now in the in.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Regardless of what diet they are on.

• 33:21Mindy Pelz?

  Regardless of what diet, eight hours seems so minimal.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  You just sleep overnight.

• 33:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and it's in the hippocampus that it that because we have five two H two A receptors all over our brain. But it's in the hippocampus that it activates, which is why they actually think fasting isn't, it can act as an antidepressant. But I'm thinking it's because the ketone goes into that receptor site. So do you know any studies on that receptor site and ketone?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  I haven't, I haven't seen any, anything specific to that receptor side. Um, and I, I'm, I'm, and I know in terms of receptors, things are very specific, right?

• 34:00Mindy Pelz?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  It's very unlikely that a foreign molecule will bind to that receptor site. But then again, a lot of studies also shown that ketones have direct effect on DNA as a signaling molecule. They call it beta hydroxybutylylation, because we know methylation of a DNA and it causes, you know, difference in gene expression.

• 34:21Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  So they found out that beta hydroxybutylylation is a thing now, it's, it's a mouthful.

• 34:27Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it is a mouthful. You can just say BHB.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  BHB relation, uh, yeah.

• 34:31Mindy Pelz?

  I like to shorten things anyways.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  It does have effect by binding on sites that we didn't know that they bind. So I think the area is still very new and I, I spoke to my, my supervisor back in my PhD days in Oxford, um, a couple of months ago. And she's still in the research area and she's like, the next big thing now is metabolites as signaling molecules. Because we need to stop looking at all these metabolites just as energy fuels. We are looking at it as signaling molecules, like how glucose does not only provide you with energy, but it's going down this cascade of pathway that's, you know, working in tandem with insulin, glucagon, GLP

• 35:16Speaker 01

  in, in, in a different sort of setting and, and cause a whole different, um, phenomenon of inside your body.

• 35:25Mindy Pelz?

  Okay. So, yeah, oh my God, I could talk to you forever. Um, so thi- this is, leads me to the next question, which is, is there an environment in which an exogenous ketone is welcome in our body? And is there an environment when it's not welcome? Like when I first heard about taking an exogenous ketone, honestly, my first thought was, well, that's cheating. And I'm like a hardworking.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  There's so many people say that. There's so many people, why would I take exogenous ketones when I'm burning my own fat and turning it into ketones? And that's an easy question, right? If, let's say if you are going on a ketogenic diet. To lose weight, alright, the goal is for you to access your fat storage and turn it into ketones and also burn the fat directly.

• 36:13Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  As an energy fuel, uh, sorry, as an energy source. What are you eating mainly? Fats, right?

• 36:22Mindy Pelz?

  Your own fat.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Your own fat, the calories, right?

• 36:25Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I guess they are.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Exogenous ketones, they are source of calories, right? If you're on a ketogenic diet to get into ketosis, you're gonna get the source of calories anyway. Why not have a portion of that be a direct form of ketone?

• 36:40Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, so but what if my blood sugar, if I just ate a meal?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 36:44Mindy Pelz?

  My blood sugar went up, so now I've got all this glucose for the body to use. And then I toss down some exogenous ketones.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  That's another use case. So studies, a few papers have been published by Dr. Jonathan Little from University of British Columbia, Canada.

• 36:59Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  When you take exogenous ketones, across the board, they have seen lowering of blood glucose.

• 37:05Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, my god.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  This is acute and you can, you, I, you know, you can take my word for it because we've measured it ourselves. We've had people at KetoCon when I met you.

• 37:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  We've got people with continuous glucose coming up to us. We gave them a shot, we're like, come back in an hour and let's measure your glucose. And it, it dropped forty to fifty points.

• 37:25Mindy Pelz?

  It's like apple cider vinegar.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  It's like apple cider vinegar.

• 37:28Mindy Pelz?

  Everybody, by the way, just so you know, I, I do, I do all these science dense videos on YouTube and they, they do well. And then I do throw out apple cider vinegar and everybody goes crazy.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had my CGM a couple of days ago and um, I drink ketones before I go to bed. And then it start asking, the app asked me, it's like, what did you do? Your, your glucose was seventy when you go to bed, um, because I drank ketones. But at the same time, you don't feel the hypoglycemic effect.

• 37:57Mindy Pelz?

  No, I never thought to do it.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  So one hypothesis is that the scientist, that, that Dr. Jonathan Little sort of hypothesized is that when you take exogenous ketone, you are sending signal to the liver to lower gluconeogenesis. Gluconeogenesis is a process of making sugar from other sources like glutamate from, you know, fats and proteins and all that.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  That is especially true when you are on ketogenic diet or when you're fasting. Because either way, even when you're on low glucose, you measure your blood glucose, you'll still have a baseline. You'll still have about four or five millimolar.

• 38:35Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Right? Where does that glucose come from? You're not eating.

• 38:37Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Sugar. So it's from gluconeogenesis.

• 38:40Mindy Pelz?

  I was just gonna say.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So gluconeogenesis also happens at all times, even when you're eating sugar.

• 38:46Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  So your body balances it, right? It balances it by saying, okay, this is the external sugar. I'm gonna use it. But at the same time, it's it's a flux. It's a balance of you producing your own sugar. Same with fat. When you take in fat, it it does not just go into your muscles and get used, right? It gets repackage, it gets redistributed into the body and and churn it round, right?

• 39:09Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  So this is what they hypothesize. When you have exogenous ketones, you're lowering that glucose production in your liver. And therefore, it reduces the overall um blood glucose level. But that also shows that your body perceive ketones as a energy source, that you have plenty, that you don't need to produce the glucose anymore, right? So that's that's the main point here. Exogenous ketone and endogenous ketones, while it is a little bit different in nature because you're not producing itself, ultimately, the molecule is the same. So the your body will still recognize it as ketones.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  BHB is BHB, it's not a novel magic molecule that a pharmaceutical company whips up from a genetic modified organisms. It is literally the same exact molecule that your body would produce.

• 40:05Mindy Pelz?

  So a big challenge that I see with a lot of fasters is that when they eat dinner, they their glucose goes up and then they go to bed and somewhere around two to three in the morning, all of a sudden, the blood sugar dipped so much that it causes this, I mean, it's the dawn effect, right? The but the liver secretes a bunch of glucose into the system in order to be able to, you know, regulate itself. Um. They wake up at two or three in the morning, they get it the next, you know, it when they actually wake up and get out of bed in the morning, they look at their glucose and they're like, oh, my God, it's higher than it was before I went to bed. So if that theory you're talking about is right,

• 40:47Mindy Pelz?

  could we use exogenous ketones before we go to bed to stop that two to three wake up that the liver does? Because now the liver has a sensor that tells it you don't need to.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I can literally show you my glucose data right now. Like when I'm like asleep, like it it literally flattens out.

• 41:08Mindy Pelz?

  That's crazy. So, oh, so you don't even, when you're sleeping, it doesn't even have like spikes up and down like we typically see. Have you tested it on like your Oura ring?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Um, I, I have, yes. Um, it hasn't shown an improvement. I mean, we tried doing it in a study as well to look at HRV and all that. Sleep quality wise, we are still a bit far from from being able to test how effective it is. But in terms of blood glucose levels, yes, yes. We we know that it it flattens out when you sleep.

• 41:39Mindy Pelz?

  And so there's two new places that I've never ever thought to use ketones that you've really expanded. Well, I think I have more than two, but right now in this moment I have two, which is before bed for sleep, which I just want to tell you for menopausal women, that would be a game changer. Because as we lose progesterone, we also don't go into as deep of a sleep. And then after a meal.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  After a meal, yeah.

• 42:02Mindy Pelz?

  Bring down glucose.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:05Mindy Pelz?

  So then my brain goes to because I love.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  And then the interesting thing, another way you can check is when you work out, like halfway into the workout, into the end of the workout, you'll see your glucose go up a little bit because your body starts sending signals to say that, hey, you are doing something physically demanding, therefore creates more glucose, right? But when you have ketones as a pre-workout, you don't see that spike.

• 42:31Mindy Pelz?

  Oh.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  But you'll have energy.

• 42:33Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, so but as a pre-workout, um, if I've got ketones in there, I'm not going to get as much release of sugar out of the muscles. And maybe I want to like show more definition. So I kind of want the release of muscle, of of glucose, so that it like breaks down fat. Do we have any research on like what it does as far as muscle maintaining muscle as far as you know leaning muscle out?

• 42:59Speaker 01

  So there is a study that looked at another form of exogenous ketone, so as they diastate, they looked at cachexia. So muscle loss due to cancer.

• 43:10Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  And they shown that ketones actually help retain muscle. And we know that from a recovery point of view, there is a study that looked at having ketones together with protein and carbs after workout and they looked at it from a in vitro point of view, looking at biopsies of muscles. They actually upregulate the loose mediated amto activation. And that is essential for protein synthesis, which is also essential for recovery.

• 43:38Mindy Pelz?

  Wow. So if I'm going on a three day water fast and I don't want to lose a lot of muscle. Then taking some exogenous ketones is preserving that muscle.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Correct. And a lot of people ask the question, will I bring my fast because it contains seventy calories?

• 43:54Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And Cynthia Thello and myself, we talked about this on our podcast. Is that when you are fasting, when you go in a water fast, what kickstart the ketone, ketogenesis, right? The ketone production, it's when you're low on sugar, when you're low on insulin, right? And you you you're starving yourself and therefore your body kickstarts the ketogenesis. When you have seventy calories of ketones, it doesn't increase your glucose level, it doesn't increase your insulin level. There is no reason to believe that you won't kickstart your ketogenesis. But also this brings back to the conversation of Walter Longo.

• 44:30Mindy Pelz?

  I was just gonna say.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Walter Longo study.

• 44:33Mindy Pelz?

  Walter taught us some things there.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Fast mimicking diet, they are giving these participants five hundred to seven hundred fifty calories.

• 44:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Worth of food and they can still mimic the effect of water fast. So seventy calories is nothing.

• 44:47Mindy Pelz?

  You'd have to have ten of those in a day.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Ten of those and and also acutely what they have seen in animal models is that when you take exogenous ketones, you're upregulating all the transporters enzymes which are relevant to ketone metabolism. Which means when this is transient, after six hours it goes back down to baseline. You are now tapping back into your own endogenous ketones. You have upregulation of all these different enzymes that's needed for ketone metabolism.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  So you are primed and ready to burn more ketones from your own body.

• 45:24Mindy Pelz?

  Oh my god, now you have me thinking like, well, why would you fast without exogenous ketones? What like you you like it's next level.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  It's next level.

• 45:33Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, so then where would we where would we use this for like Alzheimer's dementia? I I hope everybody listening knows how I'm going at this from menopause and women now. And I hope people take this seriously and try it with like fertility and things like that. But let's talk about.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  I would love to find out more about that.

• 45:51Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  I that's not my area of expertise. And I know a lot of our audience are also women who are interested in metabolic health, especially, you know, as we are aging, we know that all these different risks. Um, and all these different foods that we're eating that putting us at risk, right? So I would love to hear more, uh, you know, we after you experiment with it.

• 46:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  And and really like real life examples, uh, real life.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Cases are what's gonna move the needle.

• 46:19Mindy Pelz?

  Gonna do it, yeah, well, we'll put the links to your products in there. So people listening, please go go try this and see because fertility is expensive.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:29Mindy Pelz?

  And it's it's, you know, breaks people's hearts. And and yet the the the body was meant to reproduce. So if there's an issue where the body's not able to reproduce, then we gotta fix that. And it's coming back to a molecule that's as innate in our body as our blood.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:47Mindy Pelz?

  Is is a ketone and yet the world, half the world is not even getting the ketones.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Disclaimer, though, it does not taste like soda. It does not taste like juice, right? We are working on the flavor.

• 46:58Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  But know this, the reason why we are surviving and thriving is because when people take it, they feel the subjective difference. And regardless of the taste that people are taking it for the benefit.

• 47:11Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  And what's very, very funny is that most people that have been taking it long term now, they're like, actually, I don't mind the taste.

• 47:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, you get used to it. Yeah, that I can totally see that. Yeah, you know what I always say when you like take a shot of something that's healthy? And you're like, oh, I hate that. I'm never gonna do that. I always think, well, what did you do?

• 47:29Mindy Pelz?

  College when you're at a bar and like they gave you like.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  You take it for the effect.

• 47:33Mindy Pelz?

  Like you didn't just, you didn't go, oh, I don't like that. You're like, give it to me. I want to feel good. I want the effect of it. So just look at it.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  That's a great example. That's a great analogy. It's like, what did you think when you were, you know, what were you thinking?

• 47:45Mindy Pelz?

  What would you tell your twenty one year old self?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  So now, now we're talking about therapeutic uses.

• 47:50Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, yes, thank you.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  You know, like, like what we're saying, everything that uses your brain, every activity that uses your brain. You can benefit from having ketones in your body. I don't care whether you get your ketones from ketogenic diet or fasting or exogenous ketones. As long as you have the molecule in your body.

• 48:07Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  You will, granted, you need to get at least above one millimolar.

• 48:12Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  In your blood for your blood.

• 48:14Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, wait, why? Because the the measurement people in my community geek out on. Zero point five.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:21Mindy Pelz?

  But everybody's like, well, more is better.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Okay, great, great conversation. Okay, so um the definition of ketosis is anything above zero point five, right? But for therapeutic users, a lot of studies shown around one millimolar. Anything above one, you start to see effect already.

• 48:39Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  For performance, we're looking at above two millimolar.

• 48:42Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, wow.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Okay, above two millimolar, but also not meant to subsidize or replace glucose. It's meant to be used together so that you you have the hybrid fuel system. And and I know you want to talk about this about high sugar, high, high ketone levels.

• 48:56Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  We can go into that later, but most importantly, when we talk about the threshold.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  We want to make sure that. It's in the optimal level, like I said before, right? Metabolism is in the Goldilocks zone.

• 49:13Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  And the reason why I tell you more is not better is that we have seen this in study and this I can say confidently. In the military study, we dose them via weight match dose. So we do zero point five grams per kilogram of body weight. Which means some of these guys are big. They're like eighty, ninety kilograms people.

• 49:33Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  So you are getting ketone esters, that that study we're using ketone esters, they're getting about forty, fifty grams of ketone esters.

• 49:41Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  And one disadvantage of ketone ester, the advantage of ketone ester is that it can spike your blood ketone levels. Between three to five millimolar, quite high, quite quickly. Ketone IQ is not ketone ester. Ketone ester is a BHB molecule bound with butyndiol in an ester form. So that's why it's called ketone ester. What we have found is that because it spikes it too high, it also increased blood acidity. It lowers blood pH.

• 50:09Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Because BHB is beta hydroxyl butyric acid and it does cause your blood to be acidic.

• 50:15Mindy Pelz?

  I wonder why the body does that.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  So, so over time, uh, when you spike it too quickly in the short amount of time, you increase your cardiorespiratory stress biomarkers, your heart rate, your breathing rate, because you're trying to expel the carbon dioxide to neutralize it. But most importantly, because half of it is butyndiol and half of it is BHB, the BHB goes straight into your blood, which means it's dose dependent. So the more you drink, the higher your BHB will go. So initially, we thought the more, the better, right? The higher, the better. No. So some of these people were having blood BHB of six, seven, eight millimolar and they start to not feel well. They just feel unwell in general, just wanting to puke and just your body trying to expel it because it's just too much.

• 50:58Mindy Pelz?

  Okay.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  And it's the same, it's the same when you overdose on glucose.

• 51:02Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  You're right, you have too high, you just don't feel well. It just generally you feel unwell. And I think this is the case with ketones as well. Even though it's good for you, even though it's an energy source, but if you're not using it, it's just sitting around, your body will try its best to balance it out in, in homeostasis and into this, this optimal zone.

• 51:21Mindy Pelz?

  So what, this actually leads me to a unique question that I've seen with just a handful of people, which they feel worse in ketosis than not in ketosis. And my brain was always like, okay, the ketones are going, they're going to repair something. So what needs to be repaired in the body?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:39Mindy Pelz?

  But what, based off of what you just said, even if somebody's at like point seven, point eight, is it possible that that could be too many ketones?

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Um, from what I have seen on the overdosing is usually five and above, right? If they're on around point eight, point seven and not feeling well, chances are, I think they are. Just doing it too quickly, the adaptation period, they're not used to it and therefore they're going through the keto flu. So it could be something to do with electrolytes, something to do with dehydration, because when they lose glycogen, when they first go on keto diet, they they shed all the glycogen off.

• 52:17Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  But with glycogen, it also comes with water storage.

• 52:20Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  So it could be that.

• 52:23Mindy Pelz?

  Do you find that, do you ever see the keto flu with exogenous ketones?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:27Mindy Pelz?

  Because I don't hear about the keto flu very much anymore. But I, like I said, I am seeing some unique cases where they go into ketosis and they, you know, my, my theory is you go in, you go out, you go in, you go out. And so in these cases, we're doing that for a very long period of time, but they're still not feeling well in the ketogenic state. So, but that would fall under the category, category of a keto flu. So if I gave that person, if I fed that person.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:54Mindy Pelz?

  Fed them breakfast.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  That's, that's one, yeah, go ahead, yeah.

• 52:57Mindy Pelz?

  Fed them breakfast and then gave them exogenous ketones so that they get the benefit. Would there be a different response?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  That's the perfect way to find out whether if this person is feeling unwell because they are, if it's too high ketone levels.

• 53:12Mindy Pelz?

  Ah.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Or if it's keto flu. Because with exogenous ketones, it's predictable. You know, you will get the ketone levels above one or close to one. If they're still feeling unwell, then it could be the ketones. But if they're feeling good, then the ketone is doing the work, but they're not going through any electrolyte, um, uh, problems.

• 53:35Mindy Pelz?

  Changes, okay. This leads me to my next question, which is, could you, and you know, I'm, I'm not advocating for not fasting, because I think there's so many therapeutic.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:45Mindy Pelz?

  But, but let's say that everybody decided, I don't want to fast anymore and they just wanted to eat again. Um, and we gave everybody a bunch of exogenous ketones. Are we getting the same benefit? When we take an exogenous ketone as compared to the endogenous ketone, are they, are they the same benefit?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  That's a great question, Mindy. And this is a question that I've been asked a lot because a lot of people are like, oh, that's cheating. You know, I'm not achieving what I'm trying to achieve with keto diet. So when you look at the molecule, like I said, it's going to be the same molecule. And therefore, if you're looking at any signaling effect or any energetics point of view, it's still going to be the same. You're still getting the energy from ketones. You're still getting the preferential treatment in different organs with ketones. And you're still getting all the signaling benefits from ketones. However, whenever you're doing keto diet for a specific reason,

• 54:43Speaker 01

  you may not be able to achieve that with exogenous ketones. And I'll tell you certain situations here. If you are specifically aiming for lowered glucose level and lowered insulin level.

• 54:55Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  You can't get that with exogenous ketones. Even though ketone, exogenous ketones can acutely decrease blood glucose level, it does not have any effect on insulin, right? So if you're still on a normal diet, you are still going to be regulating the blood glucose, the glucose you're getting from the carb intake as well as your insulin.

• 55:15Mindy Pelz?

  That's because the body, by the way, that's because the body is so smart.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:18Mindy Pelz?

  That the body is like, I don't need to make insulin.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:21Mindy Pelz?

  Because this came from the outside.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Right. And then you get epilepsy treatments with keto diet. I don't think exogenous ketones would be as efficient because you need to be, that's another thing in terms of prolonged period in ketosis. Because when you're on exogenous ketones, you need to top up regularly to be in the ketotic state in a, in a more consistent way. Whereas ketogenic diet, you don't need to think about it, don't need to worry about it. If you want to get into a deeper ketosis, you want to reach a higher blood ketone level.

• 55:55Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Then exogenous ketone could help augment that.

• 55:58Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  But it may not help you achieve whatever you're trying to achieve by getting on a keto diet or fasting. Because if you say fasting to lose weight, right? You are, I mean, you are, you are emphasizing on lowered calorie intake, lowered insulin and all of that. It's very unique to fasting. So I want people to think about ketones not just as a magic molecule. Think about it as a tool that's helping you to achieve what you want to achieve. If you're fasting to lose weight, but because ketones, exhaustant ketones have appetite suppression effect.

• 56:38Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  And it gives you the focus.

• 56:40Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  To augment your fast, go do it.

• 56:43Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Right? Don't, not fast, just because you can get the benefit briefly just from this.

• 56:48Mindy Pelz?

  You can't sit on your couch and eat a bunch of pizza and ice cream and drink ketones.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Correct. It's not a magic molecule, right? You still need to do that foundational work. You know, you want to lose weight, you still need to go exercise and all of that.

• 57:00Mindy Pelz?

  The way I look at it is that when the body makes endogenous ketones, it's making it because it's burning fat. So if you're trying to lose weight, to your point, you, just drinking a bottle of ketone IQ is not gonna be like, oh my god, now I'm all of a sudden losing weight.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And it is, it is calories.

• 57:19Mindy Pelz?

  It is calories, but what it is doing is it's killing hunger.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:23Mindy Pelz?

  And what it is doing, we just discovered, or I just discovered, is it's lowering blood sugar. So it is a part, like you said, of a tool to be able to put you on your weight loss journey. It is not the thing, it's not like the thing that's gonna make you lose weight.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  And just a sneak peek, currently I'm talking to a researcher from U B C as well, who looked at the blood sugar lowering effect. Uh, I'm talking to another researcher within the same university. We're looking at running a study specifically on appetite suppression, on hunger hormones, on ghrelin. And there was a study that showed that butyndiol specifically, which is the raw ingredient in ketone IQ, increased leptin sensitizing um uh uh effect in the brain, which means you feel more sati- uh uh you, you, you can have higher satiety compared to placebo.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  And we're looking at calorie intake as well. So when that study, you know, published, it's gonna be huge because then now people can confidently say, hey, I'm taking exhaustant ketones not as a replacement of my lifestyle, of my keto diet or of my fasting lifestyle, but I'm using it as a tool to really augment it, make my fast easier, because I don't have to think about food all the time. I get the focus I need, I, I get productive throughout the day. And same thing when I'm on ketogenic diet, I feel like, you know, I'm not getting in deep enough ketosis, so I'm augmenting with exhaustant ketone.

• 58:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Or I am um going through this this really difficult adaptation period. I'm taking ketone IQ so that I can upregulate the enzymes needed to prime my body

• 59:05Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  to be able to metabolize ketone better.

• 59:07Mindy Pelz?

  Well, I'll tell you, like, I'll use myself as an example. Yesterday, I had a really long day and I didn't get enough food in me. I woke up, I was a little hungry. I was like, OK, what are you gonna do? You know, I have interview here with you. I've got one in a couple of hours. I'm like, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna eat? Am I gonna not eat? And then we we took a shot of keto ketone IQ. I'm not hungry anymore.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  I don't even think about it. And now after this, Kelsey and I, we're gonna go work out and film some contents. And I'm definitely gonna take another shot, but I'm not hungry. I'm not thinking about food.

• 59:37Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, it's really cool because it does turn off that hunger hormone. So it's it's quite impressive.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  The interesting thing as well, I'm sorry to cut you off.

• 59:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, no.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Um, is that while it turns off the hunger um sensation and it keep keeps you satiated,

• 59:55Speaker 01

  in a study that looked at recovery, when people are exercising, they increase the calorie intake. The like the the participants, the cyclists were given food at libertum so they can eat whatever they want, however much they want. But because they're exercising, they are actually increasing their calorie intake. But also corresponding to that, they increase their performance by fifteen percent in terms of work output after three weeks, using after using ketones, carbs and protein as recovery.

• 1:00:27Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  So the way I like to describe ketone is an adaptive fuel.

• 1:00:31Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  It upregulates and downregulates certain things in your body depending on what you're doing.

• 1:00:37Mindy Pelz?

  Would you take it every day? Or you just?

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  I take it every day.

• 1:00:39Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and you would you do it intentionally? Like, I'm gonna go work out?

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct.

• 1:00:44Mindy Pelz?

  Or, hey, I'm gonna be on a podcast. So it's it's a performance enhancing tool.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Some people take it on a, just in the morning, just just as a ritual kind of thing. I prefer to take it on a very intentional, like, I'm going on a podcast, I'm gonna take this. I am going to bed, I'm gonna take this. I'm gonna go work out, I'm gonna take this.

• 1:01:00Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  So that for me has worked. But I also know a lot of people on our team themselves, they just take it one shot in the morning, just to keep themselves productive.

• 1:01:10Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Um, and that's why it's very interesting, because you can use it as pre-workout and before bed.

• 1:01:16Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So, okay, I gotta summarize this. Um, we've talked about it potentially helping with with infertility because of the denseness of the mitochondria in the egg. So everybody go try that. Um, we've talked about it for depression because of it's what it does in the hippocampus. We've talked about it for lowering blood sugar um, post-meal, so we can put weight loss, you know, gosh, weight loss is all over this conversation, whether people realize it or not. We've talked about it taking down hunger. We've talked about it helping with sleep so you don't create gluconeogenesis at two in the morning. Uh, performance when you are, when you're actually going to work out, upregulating these ketones. Anything I'm missing?

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Uh, brain health.

• 1:01:59Mindy Pelz?

  Brain health, okay.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  We talked about Alzheimer's, brain injury, have BDNF, and how ketones are actually taken up by the brain to create the fatty acids needed for structural that uh, structural repair

• 1:02:13Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  of the brain. Um, yeah, and then, and then that's very important for Alzheimer's, dementia, or all these neurodegenerative diseases. Um, those are the areas we talked about.

• 1:02:25Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, the cardiovascular system.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Cardiovascular.

• 1:02:27Mindy Pelz?

  That was new, you you taught me that today.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Mindy Pelz?

  So, and and what I love, and and I hope people are gathering this, and and this is my jam just in life, is bringing two people that are passionate about similar things together and going, hey, how does your work and my work come together so that humanity can win?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's change the world.

• 1:02:46Mindy Pelz?

  Yes, exactly. So, okay, I have to finish on this comment. These there are these questions. Um, this is my theme for the for the year is self-love.

• 1:02:55Mindy Pelz?

  So we're gonna take it away from ketones, although I do know that ketones are a form of self-love.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  So the challenge is for me to take it back into keto, right?

• 1:03:02Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, right. I'm just saying, you can't, you can answer this without the, the letter K.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Mindy Pelz?

  Coming out of your mouth.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Your audience should have a drinking game. Every time we say ketones, they have a shot. I'm sure they'll be floored by the end of this talk.

• 1:03:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, or they're gonna be like so like buzzing that they're not gonna, they're not, they didn't stick with the podcast. They probably went out, worked out.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Mindy Pelz?

  Do you have a self-love practice? And the second part of that question is, what do you think your superpower is that you bring to the world?

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. Okay, let's, let's go to the first part first. I think self-love. I always thought I, I have self-love, right? And I grew up, like I said, my family side has high prevalence of chronic diseases. So my mom's side has, has really high prevalence of obesity. And I grew up overweight all my life. And this is a story that I share a lot with Ben Azadi, because he has gone through.

• 1:03:58Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, he's got a very similar, yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  A huge, a huge weight loss journey.

• 1:04:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  So I used to hate how I looked. And I worked out and worked out and improved how I looked because I hated what I was or how I looked before. But now, it's just a simple switch of perspective. I work out and I want to be healthy because I love myself. Because I was given this body, this metabolism, this family, this genetic, and that's only one of me. So why not love myself enough to make a change? Why not love myself enough to do something good for my own body? And I think that's from a physical point of view.

• 1:04:46Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  And mentally.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  I always thought I love myself as well, but then I realised I didn't until two years ago. Because growing up in Asia, your self-worth is most often than not tied to materialistic stuff. Your parents would love you more if you go to a better university, if you get straight A's, if you become a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer. That's precious. Good paying job. And I'm sure a lot of people grew up in Asia, even here in America, you know, some families, they can relate to this. Right, the tiger mom, right? And I know my mom wants the best for me and my parents want the best for me. But at the same time, that became my foundation, right? So I.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Tie my self-worth to all of these things, but then I never love me for being me. So I started meditation um two years ago now, um although I could be more consistent with it nowadays. Um, and it really took me out of that. Inside view to a third person point of view, if you would. I'm able to zoom out and look at that and realise that. And just realising that, I think the first time I meditated, I cried. Because it was it was a guided meditation. It says, put your hand on your heart. Love yourself and be compassionate with yourself.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  And then that was when I realised I never did. I loved my accomplishments. I loved where I got in life. I loved what I am in terms of I'm a scientist, I'm an educator, I'm a science communicator. I never loved Lat Mansor, or I forgot about it. And that was when I realised, and that's when everything else does not matter. Not money, not fame, it's what I do, what I'm passionate about. And when I leave this world, I ask myself, I always ask myself, if I die tomorrow, will I have any regrets? And this, and the goal is always to say no, that you've done everything you could.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  And full of love for yourself and for people around you. So.

• 1:07:08Mindy Pelz?

  Oh my, that's the best. That was like the best answer I've been given all season. I mean, there's been some good answers. Okay.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Does this, does this fit for the inaugural in-person interview?

• 1:07:18Mindy Pelz?

  How you get, tell me what, now tell me what your superpower is. I think I just found.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  My superpower, I think, my superpower is something that I, I really cherish is the ability to connect with people.

• 1:07:32Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Because when I was overweight, I was always that friend that people can count on, but not that friend when, when people want to have fun with. Or when, when, you know, I'm that, that overweight friend who's like, oh, you know, Latt good with his homework. Let's talk to him when we need him academically, you know, because he's smarter. But when it's like, oh, he's not the cool friend, you know, he's not the cool guy. But that helped me develop my personality. That helped me to come out of my shell, be an extrovert. And that helped me really put an effort into how do I connect with people? How do I remember, first and, first and foremost, always remember the person's name.

• 1:08:16Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  People always appreciate that.

• 1:08:18Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  And then you think about what are the common things that you can connect with, that you can talk about? I'm always conscious of that and intentional when it comes to that. And then when you connect, everything else is magic.

• 1:08:32Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, agreed.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  I think that for the worse or for the better, that was not the most, you know, some of the experience were not the sweetest. But the lessons nonetheless was something that I can take with me for the rest of my life. And I will forever cherish it.

• 1:08:51Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. That was the most beautiful, it was literally the most beautiful answer that I've been given and, and is at the heart of why I do what I, I do. Because we have a culture that looks at skinny, beautiful and says, that's successful cars you drive, that's what we're all going for. And we lose sight of the mo, the bumps along the path and the internal conversations we have with ourselves and how we start to orchestrate a whole, our whole life around those internal conversations. So what I hope everybody gathers from what you just said is you had some really rough moments and you changed the internal conversation and that changed your life.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And no matter what.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Kind of experience you have, bad or good. It's still part of you and it's what makes you you now.

• 1:09:43Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  And what matters is now.

• 1:09:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Not the past, not the future. It's now, what you do now matters most.

• 1:09:51Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  So focus on you now.

• 1:09:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Whatever you can do now, just do it. For yourself, for your people that love you, for for people who are around you. And even for people who do not love you.

• 1:10:04Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Prove them wrong.

• 1:10:05Mindy Pelz?

  One of my favorite quotes, I'm a big quote fan is, don't, don't think about what the world needs. Think about what lights you up. Because what the world needs is more people that are lit up. And that's, that's, that's the goal to me. That's what we're working for.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 1:10:19Mindy Pelz?

  So, how do people find you, Lat? This was just incredible.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  People can find me at Latt Mansor, L A T T M A N S O R, on all social media platform. And also HVMM Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all, all podcast platforms, as well as YouTube. And yeah, send me messages. I, I do answer them and comments and happy to share.

• 1:10:43Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, and test everything we talked about out and then give us both feedback.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:48Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Appreciate it.

• 1:10:49Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you. That was incredible. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.