With the rise of the ketogenic diet in today’s health and fitness climate, it’s no surprise that a means to further monetize the trend has quickly sprouted. And in this world of fitness, not many other popular monetization exists outside of supplements.
In just the past few years, we have seen a substantial marketing surge of exogenous ketone supplements. But the big question is, are they actually useful and do they live up to their claims? The main claim of course, is that exogenous ketones will help you achieve ketosis.
Unequivocally, that is true, since both ketone salts and esters have shown to dramatically increase blood ketone levels. That’s great for those that want to transition into ketosis without necessarily eating a ketogenic diet.
But there are also other claims made by keto companies, like improving fat and weight loss, enhancing exercise performance, lowering fatigue, and improving recovery. So, let’s take a quick look at the current research to see how it stacks up.
First, fat loss. From our current understanding, it might actually be counterintuitive for fat loss to supplement ketones. The accelerated fat mobilization observed with the ketogenic diet relies on our body to convert our own stored fat into ketones.
If you’re just going to provide the body with ketones through supplements, then the body will avoid making more of its own ketones, thus inhibit that same conversion process to avoid the dangerous state of ketoacidosis.
As it stands now, there are no human trials in existence evaluating the effects of exogenous ketones on fat or weight loss. We can only go by our understanding of its mechanisms, which we’ve seen might actually be inhibitory.
Moving on to performance, current studies have really only looked into cycling ergometer trials. In said cycling trials, we have multiple studies using 11 to 12-minute time trial tests. In 2016, one of these tests noted a 2% performance improvement with ketone ester plus carb supplementation.
In a 2017 study, time trial performance and mean power output decreased by 2 and 3.7 percent respectively. A third time-trial study found that ketone salts resulted in a 6.5% performance reduction along with a 7% drop in average power output.
So, it seems that ketone supplements result in little to no performance improvement, with more data showing a slight decrease. Much of the same sentiment carried over in other performance studies. In 2016, with 4-minute cycling sprints, no differences in mean power were observed with ketone salts 90 minutes prior to exercise.
Again in 2018, in a 15-second interval protocol, no difference in mean and peak output was observed. Additionally, the ketone group actually reported that they felt more fatigued. The one spot that might be improved with ketone supplementation is that of recovery.
In events like long distance cycling or running, it’s common to deplete our glycogen, or our body’s stored form of the carbohydrate glucose, due to the activities’ heavy energy demand. Potentially improving recovery can come from an accelerated glycogen re-synthesis.
In some studies, exogenous ketone plus carbohydrate ingestion did lead to increased post-exercise glycogen levels. But we’re not entirely sure if this is due to an accelerated glycogen recovery or impaired glycogen use.
On top of that, there have also been studies finding no increase in glycogen levels with exogenous ketones. Needless to say, more studies will be needed for a clearer picture. With all this information we know so far, another question is, are exogenous ketones worth your money? For now, the research hasn’t been in favor of exogenous ketones.
Much the marketing claims from keto supplement companies fall short of any substantial evidence. But if you do have some spare change to spend and you participate in endurance-type activities, then giving it a shot might not hurt.
Bare in mind, it ain’t exactly cheap and multitudes more expensive than other proven supplements like caffeine, creatine, and beta-alanine. With that being said, for the majority of people that don’t have a lot of money to spend and don’t participate in lots of endurance exercises, you’re better off spending your money elsewhere.
I want to thank sci-fit.net for providing much of the information in this video via their article on the same topic. Come check sci-fit.net’s article in the description if you want a more in-depth look at exogenous ketones.
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