Are ketone esters dangerous?

Back in 1995 Veech was looking at a ketone mixture as physiologically equivalent to insulin/glucose. In order to limit his variables the isolated rat myocardia used in the study were perfused with Krebs-Henseleit buffer containing the metabolic milieu of interest. The buffer has no free fatty acids so takes the provision of acetyl CoA from beta oxidation right out of the equation. It also eliminates any uncoupling from free fatty acids in the perfusate. It took me a while to twig that this was potentially a very long way from the situation under fasting or ketogenic diet conditions where free fatty acids might well be at the maximal physiological levels whenever ketones hit 5.0mmol/l.

The idea was certainly in mind when the group published this, in 2004:

“Current ketogenic diets are all characterized by elevations of free fatty acids, which may lead to metabolic inefficiency by activation of the PPAR system and its associated uncoupling mitochondrial uncoupling proteins. New diets comprised of ketone bodies themselves or their esters may obviate this present difficulty.”

By 2012 the problem with ketogenic diets had been reduced to one of impossible compliance, rather than metabolic inefficiency of free fatty acid metabolism:

"Further, to achieve effective ketosis with KG diets, almost complete avoidance of carbohydrates is required to keep blood insulin levels low to maintain adipose tissue lipolysis. Such high-fat, no-carbohydrate diets are unpalatable, leading to poor patient compliance."

You notice the uncoupling, previously a potential problem, is now in the title of the paper. Ketones in real life, even from ketone esters, work in a milieu of free fatty acids. If you flood the mitochondria with ATP-generating ketones, which generate no ATP in the cytoplasm, you just might expect to open that uncoupling pore and allow a few FFAs to translocate some protons, to limit over production of ATP within the mitochondria.

Currently, in 2014, the delectable savour-the-flavour of ketone esters allows this:

“…the ester can be taken as an oral supplement without changing the habitual diet.”


I watch this stuff with some degree of amazement. There is a suspicion that AD incidence is increasing rather faster than an ageing population would explain. The suggestion is that it has  an environmental component. Now, many potential explanations are possible but I would like to think it is the saturophobic, cholesterophobic, fructophilic low fat based dietary advice from the American Heart Association which is the prime driver. Seems likely.

If AD (also known as type 3 diabetes) is a dietary disease, much as type 2 diabetes is largely a dietary disease, providing a crutch which will allow you to cling to the diet which got you in to AD in the first place strikes me as the biggest risk from ketone esters.

Excepting the stale urine/sweaty socks yummy aroma of course. Bring on the egg yolks fried in butter as an alternative, please.

A ketogenic diet features several things in addition to ketones. There is the chronic normoglycaemia which is anathema to the Crabtree effect. There is the physiological rock bottom basement insulin levels in a system where insulin signalling is f*cked. There are the elevated free fatty acids. These are the best.

Those free fatty acids are taken up by astroglial cells and used to generate in-situ ketone bodies. What sort of levels do they supply in vivo? That's an unknown (as far as I can tell), but I'm willing to bet that FFA supply under true ketogenic eating is both high and consistent, irrespective of fed/fasted state.

This is not quite the case if you are on the old MCT kick or mainlining sweaty socks while munching crapinabag.

Peter

A little background about Dr and Mr Newport and ketones which triggered this post off:

I have been unable to tease out, from Dr Newport's original article, that of Emily Deans or from the abstract of the case report above, quite what level of carbohydrate Mr Newport consumed in the original MCT phase, during the drug trial or while on ketone esters. I suspect it might have been more than a banana a day.

Oh, and another addendum. I, personally, clearly have issues with faking a ketogenic diet. This is true. But let me not decry ketones or their esters per se. If MCT oil or ketone esters get you out of bed and let you get dressed without needing assistance, that's great. They sure as hell knock spots off of anything which Big Pharma has to offer for AD management. The fact that I have yet to die as a direct result of eating less than one banana a day means that I hope never to need ketone esters. I feel a ketogenic diet should be high on the agenda for those with neurodegenerative diseases, with ketone esters or MCTs as a fall back. But then I would, wouldn't I...