Neuro Athletes!
Welcome to a ✨ once-a-week-free-edition ✨ of the Neuro Athletics newsletter - your source of neuroscience in sports news!
If you are new, you can join our email list here.
Friends,
The beautiful part of good science is its self-correcting nature. The ugly part is this self-correcting nature often moves at a glacial pace—and it’s not linear. The topic of nutritional ketosis is one I have not delved into deeply until recently as my research and work has moved into the space of epilepsy and I am continuously bombarded with research around how a ketogenic diet has a profound impact on patients with epilepsy.
Like many variables in diet, health, cognitive performance and disease, it behooves us to look beyond the bumper sticker explanation. I want to highlight the recent interview I did with Dominic D'Agostino who is the foremost expert on nutritional ketosis to attempt to provide a little more nuance and understanding to the subject: “Ketosis- is a fat-fuelled brain a better performing brain”
This email is a short overview of the episode I did with Dom so if you are hungry for more information, please go and listen to the full episode here.
Dom’s team made the initial discovery that therapeutic ketosis delivered with a ketone ester is an extremely powerful countermeasure against CNS oxygen toxicity
THE HUNGRY ORGAN
The brain: whether you give it credit or not, the soft gelatinous mass floating in your skull is responsible for life as you know it. At this moment, your brain is simultaneously maintaining your breathing and heart rate, while turning these black squiggles on a screen into coherent words and thoughts.
The brain is a workhorse and a hungry one at that. While accounting for approximately 2% of the average adult’s weight, it accounts for 20% of its energy consumption, more than any other organ.
Go ahead and give your brain a mental compliment and then think about how meta that was.
Fascinated yet? You’re not alone. In fact, there are many arguments supporting the usefulness of maintaining a ketogenic diet but then there are also many arguments that vote against it.
"The ketones themselves are anti-catabolic for protein sparing. So if you're in a state of ketosis, you're protecting gluconeogenic amino acids and skeletal muscle from being degraded." Domonic D’Agostino.
KETOSIS- A SNAPSHOT
Ketosis is a metabolic state in which the liver produces small organic molecules called ketone bodies at “sufficient” levels. The body has elegant mechanisms that allow it to utilize non-carbohydrate substrates to generate glucose. Gluconeogenesis is a metabolic pathway in which the liver produces glucose from non-carbohydrate substrates including glucogenic amino acids (from protein) and glycerol (from lipids).
In athletes, skeletal muscle is constantly being remodeled and may serve as a source of glucogenic amino acids.
The term “ketone bodies” refers to 3 very specific molecules: acetone, acetoacetone (or acetoacetic acid), and beta-hydroxybutyrate (or beta-hydroxybutyric acid).
KETONES AND THE BRAIN
So the brain is happily deriving energy from ketones – sure, but why would this be protective against such a variety of brain diseases?
Despite their superficial differences, many neurological diseases share one major problem – deficient energy production. During metabolic stress, ketones serve as an alternative energy source to maintain normal brain cell metabolism…..
That’s it for this week! In the coming weeks we will be announcing our premium membership starting at $19/month which will include:
Well-researched and in-depth manuscripts that focus on the latest studies in neuroscience we found most interesting, with notes, comments and related links.
Access to the private Q&A Louisa does with her guests that are not published on the public podcast feed.
Hit me up if you have any stories, feedback, or insights to share. Otherwise, see you next week!
Thoughts?
Have you every been on a ketogenic diet? If so, what were the effects on your cognitive performance?
The fat-fueled brain: a better performing brain?