Ketones for Runners: Can they boost performance and enhance recovery?

My name is brian McMahon and you're listening to the run to the top podcast. Hello fellow runners, I'm your host, Finn Melanson and this is the run to the top podcast, the podcast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode we are created and produced by the expert team of coaches at runners connect dot net where you can find the best running information on the internet as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. What are your thoughts on exogenous ketones? Are you familiar? Are you wondering what they have to do with running well in this episode you are in for a treat brian McMahon runner and chief strategy officer at Delta G. A company that produces exogenous ketones joins this episode of run to the top to talk about what ketones are. The diff between the options out there on the market for runners, particularly the difference between ketone esters and ketones salts their benefits for running performance, running recovery and even day to day life as well as recommended programs for usage and much, much more if you're curious to learn more about ways that you can sustainably and optimally fuel your body during prolonged running in tough training blocks.

This episode is for you in addition to the science of ketones brian and I do a deep dive into the history of its development and usage in both military and endurance sports environments. We also talk a bit about what the next few years could look like for its adoption in the running community if you've struggled with stomach issues in training or racing or frequently get sick when training hard, adding a high quality probiotic supplement could be the key to relieving both issues. I'll explain more later in the episode and how you can save 10% at P 30. M. Dot com backslash run to the top. If you're looking for better and safer headphones while you run, then you need to check out the dance there. Open ear design delivers premium sound while still allowing you to hear your surroundings to stay safe. I'll tell you more about them later in this episode, but if you're looking for a great christmas or New Year's gift for the runner in your family, head to Ola dance dot com backslash.

T. O. P brian McMahon, Welcome to the run to the top podcast. It's great to have you here today. It's great to be here. Super excited. Thanks for having me. I was talking with one of my friends in the trail and ultra running community earlier this year and he believes that 2023 could be quote the year of the exogenous ketone in our sport and that's just trail and ultra running. But there are a lot of uh listeners to this show that also um you know, they're they're super into like the five K 10-K marathon road running scene and I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, but I've listened to a couple episodes you've been on where you think that like in a couple of years everyone's gonna be taking ketones. So um before we kind of dive into the science everything. What are your thoughts there? I love it, I love the enthusiasm. Um I hope that's the case. Um But yeah, from from my perspective and I guess the company's perspective, Delta G. Um it would make a lot of sense for every, almost every single person to be in ketosis for just some part of their day even.

Um and this is outside of performance. Um It's just, we can get into this later, but it's just having that metabolic flexibility at your fingertips without having to go through all the processes that are involved in producing your own ketones. Um can make it really easy and can have a really massive impact on your health long term. Right on. Well, I'm so stoked to get into all of this. I think we should set the table with some background before we get into it though. Um talk a bit about how you got into this industry, how you became interested in exogenous ketones and uh and what your role is at Delta G. Yeah, perfect. So pretty rare when it comes to this industry. Um I don't have a biochemistry background or anything, but um I have always been interested in human performance to a degree. Um as we were discussing before, started recording, um I did play football at Amherst College. Um so I always had that in my background a bit, then I went to finance, I was on an interest rate derivative desk at morgan Stanley for around seven years and I decided um that wasn't a great long term career for me personally, and I wanted to pursue human performance or health and wellness investing or entrepreneurship.

So then I went and got my MBA at warden, where I just graduated in May, and during my first year, during the winter I wanted to write investment thesis in my in my spare time to show that I could do um venture capital investing. And after a lot of thoughts, I decided to write it on ketones and exogenous ketones and I was speaking to a lot of the founders in this space and I did a lot of, of course a lot of research and I spoke to a lot of researchers who were very friendly and open to speaking and I got to be very close with the president of Delta G. Sebastian Pritchard, who um I always joked that made a mistake when they chose their mascot because he should have been. He's he's incredibly interesting smart guy and former Navy Seal. Um So it's a really good guy, good guy, He's been a great leader for us. And after I think four or five hour long conversations, he asked me to join Delta G to help them with a few initiatives. Um So I came on to help them with one specific initiative, um but it kind of just kept expanding and expanding.

Um and now I'm Chief Strategy Officer there, um but it's really just a catch. All we have a very small team, so we wear a lot of hats, which is, which is a lot of fun. And you're also, you're one of us. I I've heard you say that you're you're a runner now too, and can you talk a bit about how you got into it, what you're training looks like and in the distance is you're interested of course, and uh as you know, going from, let's say football to endurance training, it's a lot different, you know, you've really not only physically but also mentally, you've really changed a lot. So um I would say I started my running journey when I was probably probably five years ago, six years ago, um I've slowly gotten increased my distances. I'm not a, I would never call myself a runner because I speak with ultra marathoners and Ironman athletes every day, so I feel embarrassed if if I said that, but I run probably 35 a week. Um and I still have that um let's call it Meathead in me that still wants to be lifting weights.

So um it's it's hard to do a ton when you, when you also want to strength train to a certain degree and and One of my goals um over the last year has been to, and this is, you might laugh at this, but I've been trying to train towards running a half marathon in under seven minutes splits while during the same week benching 225-10 times. So they are working a bit at cross purposes, you know, because one or the other would be relatively straightforward with how to do that or how to accomplish that. But training towards both makes it a lot more difficult. Um and without, I think some people like Nick Bear or Cameron Hanes or David Goggins, I would think it may not be that feasible, but those guys still lift weights, they still run a lot. So it's kind of giving me some inspiration. I was just gonna name drop nick because I think he did the same thing for the Leadville 100.

He was trying to run that and I don't know, maybe under 24 hours and also bench pressing, you know, I didn't know that. Yeah, he was probably doing it more than I'm trying to do it. But yeah, you know, I, I think in, and not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but I think um I think that the football background actually serves you to a strong degree because we're having this renaissance in the running community where a lot of people are coming around to the benefits of strength training when it comes to injury prevention, um running economy and just long term durability in the sport. And I feel like if you have that football background that practices already ingrained in you and it never really leaves you. Yeah. No I totally agree. And I think I don't think I'd be able to be running 1820 22 mi um on a weekly basis if I didn't have dead lift background or any kind of strength training especially for your legs to to strengthen them enough to be able to handle longer workloads and longer runs like like 18 or 20 or 22 consistently.

You know. So yeah I totally agree. Maybe I'll ask your opinion here because there's there's so much education I believe left to be done and you're doing a lot of the good work but just educating the running community about about the benefits of this supplement and also sort of how it came to market. And do you think we should get into the science first or should we talk about the back story of like the Department of Defense's research and stuff like that? I think it always helps to hear about the history of Delta G. Um As as a starter and because the history of delta G really is the history of exogenous ketones. Um so I'll dive into that. Our ceo yeah professor Karen Clark she's been a professor of physiological biochemistry at Oxford for around 30 years um in the early nineties. She was a cardiac metabolism specialist at Harvard. She was approached by Dr Richard veech, who is more or less the father of ketones. Um He was at the NIH.

He approached her with a beta hydroxybutyrate molecule, beta hydroxybutyrate. As we'll get into is the main ketone body in your, in your body that you're going to use uh for for energy. She tested it on the heart and she was just completely blown away, blown away enough to dedicate her research time to ketones to studying ketones all throughout the 90s with with Dr. Beach. They heard in the early two thousand's about a program at DARPA, which is the Defense Advanced Research Projects agency, basically the venture capital arm of the Department of Defense. So they invested in drones, the Internet gps, all these things that could have helped um, the United States from a defense perspective, They had a program in the early 2000's called metabolic dominance. They were looking for a fuel source, which is such a cool name. But yeah, it's really badass. And they were looking for a fuel source for soldiers who were on the battlefield for extended periods of time.

Uh these soldiers were losing a lot of their cognitive acuity and physical performance and physical capabilities. So veach and Clark presented their research on ketones to this program. And DARPA was so blown away that they granted the pair $10 million to create what is now Delta G. Um and I think that was the largest and maybe still is the largest human performance grant ever from DARPA to create this exogenous ski town. Um what went into that? It took them around two years with of course a lot of funding to test everything under the sun to create a ketone that could get your blood ketone levels high enough to make a difference um physically and cognitively and we'll get into that a bit later. But um so to around two years. Um and then from there they had to figure out the manufacturing um super expensive manufacturing process. Um and to to to put it into context.

I think even just seven years ago A shot of Delta G was around $3,000. So really expensive to make. And we've gotten that down, Of course a lot. But um and I'll say this probably many times throughout the podcast, but they found the molecule um let's say the compound that can safely and effectively increase your blood ketone levels to whatever level you would want safely and effectively. And there's no other body, there's no other molecule that can I can say that I think just for the sake of further education and I've heard you talk about ketones as this new nutritional category, it's the fourth macro nutrient after proteins, carbs and fats. Just so that listeners can follow along what is your late term definition for a ketone. Um I think that's that's a great place to start because it helps people understand that a ketone isn't gonna have fat and it's not gonna have sugar in it. If you look at one of our pure Esther nutritional panels, it's just gonna be zeroed out and then you're just gonna have ketones, how many grams of delta G.

Are in the product? Um And if you look and think about what the body uses as energy substrates, you're gonna have fatty acids, fatty acid molecule, a glucose molecule and then ketone molecule which is gonna be completely separate. So it is this separate category and that's why we are classified by the FDA as a food because we are a separate macro nutrient that people can eat or drink. Yeah. Can you also talk and I know I'm I want to make sure we cover this too because there's other there's other versions of this, whether it looks like, can you talk about the difference between esters and salts, ketone esters and ketones salts of course. Um Our our molecule or keep saying molecule our compound is beta hydroxybutyrate, ketone body that I mentioned earlier and beta hydroxy computer. It is an acid. So you have to buffer it in some way. It would be very difficult to take on its own would be really hard in the stomach. It would like tear the lining of your stomach, basically, you have to buffer it with something to help with the acidity.

We buffer it with an ester bond which is an oxygen bond that you can bind different molecules to each other. We bind beta hydroxybutyrate to our 13 butane dial which is a ketogenic precursor. So our 1 3 beauty and dial turns into ketones in the liver. Um Not a ton but it's good to think of that as like a high powered M. C. T. Oil ketone salts are still using beta hydroxybutyrate. The ketone but they're binding it in a much cheaper way to a salt which would be sodium, magnesium, calcium or potassium. Now both of these compounds the molecular weight of both of them With the beta hydroxybutyrate in with assault. Or the 1 3 butane dial are going to be one for one more or less. So when you're drinking ours you're getting one part PHP. One part in a butane dial with the ketone salt.

Cos you're getting one part PHP one part salt issue assault is let's say you want to take five g of beta hydroxybutyrate. You're gonna be taking five g of assault which is a lot. That's 5000 mg of sodium let's say yeah and five g of BHP isn't very much. You would never use that low of an amount for endurance performance let's say or recover. So it's just that is that why does that latter form exist on the market then it seems like it's a totally inferior solution. Very much so it's very cheap and easy to make taste good. So people can say, hey, you're, I'm giving you exogenous ketones. Um and and you can notice this by the way, a lot of the ketone cell companies market a lot of them or if not most of them talk about weight loss because they say that it can curb your hunger. They never talk very few of them talk about it for performance or some talk about it for cognition.

But at least most of them are honest enough to say that it's not gonna help with those things. It's just gonna help with weight loss and it's going to curb your appetite. Gotcha, Gotcha. Um I think when a lot of people think of ketones, the folks that do have some level of education, they think about sort of the laborious process, you have to go through to get the ketosis to create that byproduct. And I'm wondering is is the solution that you're putting in a bottle with exogenous ketones, does it create the same outcomes or similar outcomes to what you would get going through that dietary process of ketosis? Yeah. So it's important now to for people to understand that there is a difference because of delta G between keto genesis and ketosis keto genesis is the production of your own ketone bodies. Um and ketosis is when you're in a state where you have enough ketones in your bloodstream to use as a primary energy source usually before delta G.

Those were intertwined, you would need ketogenic sis to achieve ketosis. But now with delta G, you can achieve ketosis without having to go through pedogenesis. But to answer your question directly, yes, Delta G does offer the bio identical version that your body would produce. Endogenous li of the ketone body. So that's why it's it's really easy for people who are trying. There's no loading, there's no tolerance. You take it and your body will know exactly what to do with it because it's the as I mentioned, it's very recognizable for your, for your body to to use and break down this energy. I want to get to the benefits of exogenous ketones in a second. And especially like applique ability to endurance athletes. But is there anything else um important to note in the science for the audience that we should cover before we get into that? Yeah, I think it's important to understand why ketones exist. Um So ketones are this emergency fuel source that are super clean, super efficient to use as energy.

You may ask why, why, why do they exist? Why, why do we need them 50,000 years ago? Let's say what would happen quite often is and this is whether we don't have access to glucose or if we didn't eat for a few days we would deplete our liver glycogen, which is our last store of glucose. Once that happens, your body aggressively mobilizes fat in the form of fatty acids. Those fatty acids get transported to the liver to be converted into ketones to be sent to the brain primarily? And that's because the brain can only use glucose and ketones. So ketones are an emergency fuel source kind of mechanism within our body to keep the brain alive. So they don't require insulin. As I mentioned, they're super clean and efficient. They actually sidestep a lot of the processes that glucose takes to get broken down and uses energy and the reason that they can help a lot with cognition. Um and physical performance is let's say you haven't eaten for two days and we're still in this 50,000 years ago example you're gonna need your cognitive acuity and physical capabilities to find more food, right?

So you need something that's going to help you do that. And ketones are nature's super fuel as they're often called to help you do that. You just mentioned the cognitive acuity and the physical performance um sort of in that last mile effort to to kill the deer, kill the moose, get the food back in our hunter gatherer days. I love it. Um If we if we put it into like three buckets like maybe recovery performance and like a sports environment and maybe like what we're doing here just having a conversation like our day to day lives. Um Are you able to talk about the benefits of exogenous ketone supplementation in each of those areas. Like is there a role to play for the supplementation in recovery as well as performance for example. Yeah, without a doubt. And it's actually a funny it's actually kind of a difficult problem for us to solve because ketones can be so many things to so many people, as I mentioned earlier, I think everyone will be taking ketones every day and hopefully the near future and um so it's important understanding what your goals would be with them while also overlaying that on top of what the benefits are or what the benefits could be.

But I'll talk about maybe performance, physical performance first. Um the research right now and this is kind of how we separate our products. We really have two buckets, we have physical performance and recovery and then we have two products that fall into the bucket of metabolic health, brain, health cognition, glucose control etcetera. And that's really just based on the prevailing research research as it stands today, points to the fact that you need higher blood ketone concentrations to assist in physical performance and recovery. So you need to be taking more delta G. To assist in physical performance and recovery. Um And physical performance from just from a science perspective in a simple way everything operates more efficiently when ketones are in the equation your heart, your brain um you actually use glucose more effectively when ketones are in the equation. Um That's because they increased glucose uptake glycogen synthesis? Um and you are actually satiating a lot of your brain's energy needs through ketones.

So the body can can thus use more glucose. Um And then as far as the recovery point goes it relates to physical performance from the glycogen re synthesis perspective. So what happens when you have a very hard training session of our event is you get a rush of fatty acids. When you have Russia fatty acids it's difficult for your body to let's say take in glucose and restore glycogen. But when you take ketones that inhibits that rush of fatty acids which then will increase glucose uptake and glycogen re synthesis. So it's very good for restoring glycogen. That's why a lot of the tour de France teams if not most use our product. Um A lot of them for recovery because of these multi day races where you really need to focus on restoring your glycogen and the other. The other side of of recovery which is interesting is um M Tour within the cell. It's kind of like the control panel of the cell let's say.

So when M. Two is up regulated, certain things happen um Certain things like tissue regeneration um and protein synthesis. There was a study that got released I think a few years ago that used Delta G. And they combined it with protein and carbohydrates and M. Tour was up regulated which meant that protein synthesis and tissue regeneration were also up regulated. So it can really help with restoring like I said protein and helping with with with muscle regeneration. So those are the two aspects of recovery that I think are really important for people to understand. Um And also ketones are actually, nature's one of nature's most potent antioxidants. So what they're doing is they're actually scavenging free radicals. Glucose is a super messy fuel. We sometimes refer to it as like a diesel engine, it's gonna leave a lot of waste um versus ketones which are more like an electronic engine.

Um They're super clean, they don't leave a lot of waste and in fact they actually clean up a lot of the waste that's left behind from glucose, glucose leaves a lot of free radicals around while ketones can actually scavenger those free radicals. So from that perspective as well, very anti inflammatory for recovery. I know I kind of just threw a lot at you but no, no this is great, this is great. Uh You know you mentioned the Tour de France earlier and this also probably extends the triathlon as well. But I feel like a lot of uh there's a lot of innovation that happens in those two sports when it comes to testing the latest and greatest uh nutrition breakthroughs, recovery protocols, stuff like that. Has there been, I don't mean to put you on the spot. But like has there been any interesting feedback you've gotten from pro athletes on the tour scene about how this has helped their performance because like, that is one of the most grueling events in all of endurance sports. I'm curious if they've if you've got any interesting feedback there.

Yeah, a lot. I mean we work directly with a lot of the teams um and the anecdotal feedback we get is that they have more, let's say more left in the tank near the end of a ride or they just feel a lot better, especially from let's say their legs feel a lot better the next day after they're even when they're just fueling with ketones and not taking it necessarily for recovery, they still feel a lot better the next day. Um and and lastly, and this is the part that I think is less disputed from a scientific standpoint. Um Their focus is a lot better throughout the race and that intuitively it makes sense because you are giving your brain this energy that it wouldn't have otherwise. One of the most exciting frontiers in athletic performance researches on the population of good bacteria in your stomach. Often called probiotics. For those that are unfamiliar. Probiotics are a combination of live beneficial bacteria and or yeasts that naturally live in your body and that can be used to change or re establish the intestinal flora and improve your health Even more exciting for runners is that a lot of recent research has shown supplementing with probiotics can have a dramatic impact on performance specifically.

Probiotics have been shown to help reduce the risk of getting sick during tough training blocks by almost 50% and they can also help prevent gastrointestinal problems like cramping, bloating and diarrhea, both during training and racing. If you've struggled with stomach issues in training or racing or frequently get sick when training hard, adding a high quality probiotic supplement could be the key to relieving both issues. As always the quality and type of probiotic supplement you take can have a huge impact on its effectiveness and that's why we P. 30. M. Probiotics. P. 30. M. Is a patented probiotic that uses the most effective strain of probiotic and also at the highest recommended effective dosages. This strain is also prodi elliptic, meaning that it is maintainable in the human digestive system and it doesn't require refrigeration. It's a secret weapon for upgrading your immunity and protection against bad bacteria. If you're interested in trying it out, you can get 10% off P 30. M. Right now by going to P 30 M. Dot com backslash.

Run to the top and typing in coupon code run 10. Check out and if you order it and it's not everything you hoped for their support team will give you all your money back. No questions asked. Just visit P 30. M dot com backslash run to the top to get a 10% discount at checkout with coupon code run 10 when you're running outdoors. Hearing your surroundings like traffic and other runners around you is critical to staying safe and healthy. But listening to your favorite podcast or music can also be essential to staying motivated, enjoying those long miles. That's why we're excited to partner with old audience premium headphones designed specifically with runners in mind. The unique design of their headphones allows you to listen to your favorite music and podcast while running yet still hear everything around you so you can stay safe. But my favorite part is that they're open ear design means your ears will never get tired or fatigued even after two hours or more of listening.

That makes them perfect for those super long runs. Plus their dynamic driver is three times bigger than most headphones, which allows them to deliver superior sound while still being comfortable If you're looking for better and safer headphones while you run, there's no better choice than old guidance to help you out. We've locked in a special deal with the dance for runners, connect listeners just visit Ola dance dot com backslash T O P and use the code T O P to save 20% on your purchase. That's O L A D A N C E dot com backslash T O P to save 20%. Yeah. And I, I had a friend who was running a 100 mile race down in Arizona back in late October, I believe he was using some of your products and his, Again, anecdotal experience was like, it made it so that at mile 60, 70 80 of the race, I wasn't forgetting to eat, which is super important late in the race. I wasn't tripping on my feet, I was making smarter steps.

Um and I was just in it still like competitive, like that mindset to like wanna, you know, do my best was still there as opposed to just like merely surviving. So I think similar anecdotal experiences in the trail and ultra running world as well. Yeah, and it's it's it's cool because this is definitely from a physical performance standpoint, this is going to be an endurance athlete nutritional tool. It's not necessarily going to be an anaerobic sport tool? From a physical performance standpoint. But we still have a lot of anaerobic athletes using our product and that's because it does mitigate mental fatigue when you are exhausted. So we have some NFL players using it. Pro soccer players using it. Um and they use it almost exclusively because it keeps their focus in the latter parts of the game or event. I think almost all of the benefits that you've described so far, like directly apply to the running population. But if we talk about the research just for a second, are there any specific studies that you're aware of that have looked like specifically at the running populations use of exogenous ketones, not runners.

Um and that's because I think clinically it's difficult. It's a little bit more difficult to test versus cycling. Um, researchers for endurance testing love cyclists because you can measure a lot more things um, runners are a bit more anecdotal um versus you can measure wattage, let's say um with cycling where it's a little bit more difficult with runners to measure them on a treadmill um but not running specifically, but I think when it comes to energy, substrate utilization, um they should be one and the same. Um were very, very similar with with cyclists. Another thing I've always been curious about and I think it applies to something at least new to the average runner like myself, exogenous ketones, What is the threshold in your opinion for saying that the science is quote unquote there to to finally support the mainstream use of something like this. Like where do you draw the line saying like, okay, there's there's enough body of research out there showing that like, this is this is interesting.

It's good to go good to use. It's without a doubt safety use. Um and we've proven that in clinical. Um but I would say now and and I know that may sound like a biased answer, but um if you go on our website, I think we have and this these aren't all endurance studies, but I think we have 50 published clinical studies now. Um I think we have around 20 ongoing. So it's definitely a safe thing to be using even daily. Um but as far as performance goes, there is still some dispute in the research community and I I understand it and and there are going to be a lot of variables, variables within these clinic, als that are could cause mixed results. Um but I think I think we've had some pretty seminal studies that have come out using delta G. That that do show there is something really impactful when you're using ketones. Um I think it comes down to the difficulty of creating a very, very, let's say, concrete and foolproof clinical with people who are riding bikes and them using energy and using a bit of anecdotes, anecdotes and and anecdotal feelings to determine the outcome.

You mentioned safety. There, are there any indicators out there that there are any possible negative side effects with exogenous ketone usage or do you see this as a firmly safe product? Definitely firmly safe product. The only area I guess that you can get into choppy waters is if you have diabetes one. Um if you have diabetes one and you're taking a lot of delta G. Your risk of ketoacidosis is very much increased, which is a very dangerous state to be in. Which means you have, you have your ketone levels are running wild and like I said, it is an acid so it can, it can really mess you up. But um as far as anyone else goes, as long as you're taking the amount that we tell you and and don't take five bottles at one time. Um then it's it's a totally safe product. Yeah, this next question is probably like a six parter, but I'm fast and I think that it's probably important for the audience as well. Is there any initial recommended program for usage by endurance athletes?

Like is there a loading phase that we should be cognizant of as we're starting usage of this product? No, no loading phase. Um As I mentioned, your body will know exactly what to do with the ketone bodies when presented with them from Delta G. Um Our gold standard, let's say protocol. Um and this is really just from our research, but also just from feedback from our professional athletes were using. It is half a bottle of one of our main performance products every hour with your carbohydrates is really the best place to start. And what we try to emphasize a delta G is really test your blood ketones. Um, don't use urine, don't use breath, use blood. We actually sell what's called the keto mojo on our website. Um, and when you're doing that, you can actually dial in how much delta G. You should be taking you personally because everyone's going to be a bit different. Um and the range that you're shooting for that you want to try to be in as long as possible is 1.5 to 3 mm um it's just a super, it's a pretty wide range, Super important though, because if you're getting too low, then you're not gonna probably have the performance benefits that you want.

And if you're getting too high, then it's just wasted ketones, in our opinion, it's more is not better. Um So that's just something that's really important to keep in mind. But yeah, we always just kind of pound the table and say test test test. That's the best way to understand how much you should be taking personally. Is tolerance, development or dependence? Any issues to look out for? Like, I think about caffeine usage and like maybe a cup of coffee doesn't doesn't quite do it. Like it used to, for me, is that an issue to look out for here? No, I don't think so. I mean, um We've had people using it for 15 years that don't require that don't develop any kind of tolerance. Um and the question I get a lot is if I take your product every day for five months, will that inhibit my own ability to produce key times? Um again, yeah, cause that's, I get that, but that would be like if I'm eating a sandwich every day that has 80 g of carbohydrates, would I not be able to produce my own glucose through glucose.

Nia genesis it's like, no, that wouldn't, that wouldn't happen. And if I can just give you an end of one study, I've probably taken more delta G than anybody in the world in the past year and a half, right? But um and every friday I do fast for for I think around 20 hours and I am addicted to testing my blood ketones because I think it's kind of interesting to see different parts of the day, but I still produce my own ketones very well. I do a lot of faster training and um yeah, without taking delta G on Fridays, I'm still at 1.5 to Himmler. So um didn't affect me at all. You mentioned being a power user of the product, which is awesome. Does in the rare occasions where it's removed from your day to day diet, does that make you appreciate the benefits? Like, can you talk about what it feels like to not be on the product after being on it for, you know, consecutive days or weeks? Yeah. I always joke that you're gonna feel better or I'd hope you'd feel better when taking the product.

But um if you take it long enough, you're really gonna notice when you're not taking it because you feel a lot less productive and productivity is kind of this funny word, which doesn't doesn't really mean much um it's very vague, but when I speak with people about their use of delta G, especially for for work for cognition and energy levels, not necessarily from a performance perspective, whenever I bring up the word productivity, they always just kind of like, like yes, I feel way more productive. Um and that probably means that they have a lot less brain fog, a lot better energy. The glucose is much more controlled. Um things like that that you'd want to to help with your productivity. Um But um yeah, I think those are the things that you should be feeling when you are on the product, especially when you're taking it, like I mentioned for for more daily for more daily tasks like work or or energy levels or anything like that.

Mhm. I love that you're also a runner because you can relate to the audience. I think there are some people out there, you know, they're getting ready for a five K or they're trying to get their boston marathon qualifier, can you speak to how you might use the product or how you do use the product pre run during run post run? Yeah, of course. Um and maybe it'll help um giving my entire protocol during the week of how I used because I I really try to cover every base with with the benefits of taking delta G. Um I because I have all the clinical and I understand all the benefits, so I'm like, you know what, I wanna try to maximize my benefits, let's say. So every morning I'll take just five g in my espresso um and then I'll usually do some faster training, whether it be endurance or strength and then I would say a few times during the week in the afternoons when you'd feel pretty lethargic or when I would feel lethargic.

And I have a lot of work to do. It's been four hours since lunch, I'll have 10 g of delta G. Which really just gives me the energy I need. I don't have to snack. Um And it's just a really good energy that you'll feel. It's not this spike and crash that you'll get from caffeine or glucose. And then on Thursdays and then the weekend when I do heavier load of endurance training, I will take half a bottle to a full bottle of one of our performance products. Um and let's say, I'm let's say I'm running for 2.5 hours, I'll take half a bottle around 20 minutes before I start and then another half bottle with my carbohydrates halfway through. And that's the workout that I really want to perform well on that. I'll do that because it is an expensive product, I get a nice hefty discount because I work at the company. But um it is an expensive product to be using that much. But um if you really want to perform well during a training session, then I think it's it's a good way to do it by using it half bottles every hour and it's a really good place to start.

You mentioned mixing with your carbohydrate drink. So that's totally kosher. That's totally possible. The product you can mix and match with your other fuel sources during. Yeah. Yeah we actually recommend it. You seem to utilize both energy substrates more effectively Ketone to and glucose when you combine them. Um and one thing that's important to keep in mind is number one it does help as I mentioned with restoring your glycogen. Um And that's even during your run into run. So when you're taking them together you can help restore your glycogen. Um And also heathens have an interesting dynamic with blood glucose. So when you're taking them it does help stabilize your blood glucose. But let's say I'm on a the I'm in the eighth hour of an iron man. I haven't taken any glucose. Um If I take a bunch of delta G. It's going to lower my blood glucose pretty significantly. So that wouldn't be a good thing. So you wanna be pairing it with with your glucose to help keep that stable blood glucose.

Um Because we've done a lot of testing with C. G. M's with our athletes and let's say they're taking something that's very fructose forward. Like a martingale or something. Um Well watch their C. G. M. And they'll get this big big spike and then the subsequent crash. But when they're taking the same gel with delta G. The peaks and troughs are are heavily mitigated. So it's just way more consistent. Which as an endurance athlete I think ideally you'd want as consistent of energy as possible throughout a race. So that's that's very promising as well when you think in terms of the leverage of using this product and endurance training, like like how much of a boost it can provide to, you know, running a faster time or just feeling like more durable through a training block. Are you able to put like a percentage change benefit on it, like ball parking that or you just see it more as like a core part of being like a healthy well rounded athlete in terms of like your nutrition. I think more the latter, it's tough to put a number on it because everyone's different and everyone, It's funny because everybody, or a lot of people have different experiences with it, especially from a positive standpoint.

A lot of people love the cognitive aspect of it where it's my 18th mile of marathon and I still have that that cognitive energy and I don't have that mental fatigue that I would have otherwise. And others are like, I was able to run my fastest splits I've ever run in my life, you know? So there are different, I think um measuring sticks for different people. Um but we've gotten as high as 25% increase and we've gotten as low as a 3% increase, you know? Um so it's tough to put a number on it and I would never want to guarantee a number. Um I think it's important for everybody to try it themselves and really understand what they're putting in their body, which is hopefully what I'm doing here today to help explain what it's doing to your body. But um, it's important to just experiment with as much as possible and see where you, what value you derive from it and where you want to continue to use it. There's actually one more question that I want to ask you, um before we talk about the future and delta G products and it goes back to the research, are there any, are there any age or gender related differences in product usage that listeners should be aware of?

No. Um the only, the only reason that gender might be, um there might be a difference with gender is just based on weight. So if you're a lot lighter, you'll need less delta G. And if you're a lot heavier, you'll need more delta G. To achieve those ketone levels that I mentioned earlier. Cool, well earlier you talked about how at one point in time in the not so distant past it was very expensive to consume one of these bottles of delta G. And I think now you've got it to the point where it's like the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee, like three or four bucks. Do you think that that number is gonna continue to decrease at the rate it has been and it will get to the point where like the average joe like myself can reasonably afford these products. Um without a doubt, I think we are continuing to innovate on the manufacturing side. It's just a manufacturing problem and it's also an economies of scale problem a bit. Um but it's also an innovative problem from an R. And D. Perspective. But um yeah, I think, I think as we continue to grow, we've only been selling the product for a year and a half to the public.

So as we continue to grow, I think with economies of scale and with as I mentioned R. And D, we will continue to push the price down. Um The good thing I think for people to understand is right now is the most expensive it will ever be. So we're going to continue to try to make it cheaper and and we know that to make the type of impact that we want on the metabolic health of the world, we're gonna have to make it a lot cheaper. And that's what we're trying to do for anybody out there that is skeptical of exogenous ketones or they may want to point to this or that study that would uh suggest different opinions. Are there any key talking points from let's call them the opponents of this supplement that you would wanna dispel on this podcast for listeners out there. Yeah, I think it's important to understand that not all ketones are created equal. So of course there have been some studies that used ketone salts, for instance, that didn't have good results. There have been studies using 1, 3 butane dial that didn't have great results.

And then there are other studies that actually used delta G. But when they were testing the participants, their blood ketone levels weren't high enough. So they noticed no change. Um I think, and I swear I'm not trying to explain away any kind of not amazing results from a clinical, but um there are usually with with most clinical there's gonna be issues um with them and parts that they couldn't account for because you can't account for everything. But um a lot of the studies that were, we have on our website, um you can read them and you can see that the participants are achieving the levels that we wanted, that we would set, that we would want people to get. Um and they had really good results. So if you have enough really good results from clinical and then there are a few clinical that don't have great results. That's just science, I think, you know, that's that's I don't think any, Anything anybody's ever taken has had 100% good results from clinical.

You know, they're always gonna be some clinical that.2 different things. Right on. I do want to make sure we talk a bit about the variety of products at delta G and what listeners can choose from. So can you just give us sort of a high level overview of what you offer, what the differences are and um what the roles are for each of the products as well. Yeah so we as I mentioned have those two buckets physical performance recovery and then more daily metabolic health cognition, things like that. And we have two products in each bucket. Um So starting with the metabolic health cognition bucket, we have our delta gold product which we launched this product for for two reasons. Number one we still have some R. And D. At Oxford. Um And we we do our own internal testing as well. But we noticed a co potential eating relationship between delta G. And caffeine. You actually spike into a deeper ketosis with less delta G. When you combine it with caffeine.

Really interesting. From an energetic perspective. Yeah so and and number two, we wanted to create a product that you could use daily that wasn't as cost prohibitive as our other products. So I think if you subscribe to Delta gold, that's like $4.5 a day. Um and you just put in your coffee. Um So that is pure delta G. No flavorings, no additives, just pure ketones. So if you are interested in fasting won't break a fast, put in your black coffee and you're good to go. Um And then moving up and really our products are based on basically a ladder, it's how much Delta She is in each serving. So next you have delta H. Which is a flavored product, It tastes kind of like a strong gatorade. It has double the amount of delta G. Per serving as delta gold. So what does that mean? You're gonna get a deeper, longer ketosis, the more you increase delta G. So delta H. Is great for, as I mentioned in my schedule um during the afternoon when I don't want to snack, I want a really good energy level.

Um And I have a lot of work to do. I'll take a delta H. It's it's really convenient. It's it's just a little shot glass. You just take the whole bottle and you're good to go. You can travel with it, you don't have to pour it into anything. Mix it into anything, it's already premixed. Next. And this is going into the performance and recovery bucket. We have our delta G. Performance product which is really our flagship product um that the company started with, that's who are the, I think most of the Tour de France teams by this product and that's because it's it's convenient from a um intake perspective, it's flavored um And and I keep saying flavored and raw because the raw ketone ester has a very very bitter taste. So it's pretty rough taste. Um So this Delta G. Product, it has 2.5 times the amount of delta G. Is delta H. So it has 25 g. This will get you into very deep levels of ketosis levels that are needed for performance and recovery. Um and you can just take the take the ball straight.

It tastes, it's like a blueberry extract, stevia, monk fruit. Um so it's pretty easy to take on its own. And then lastly we have our tactical product that's gonna have a bit more delta G in it. Um and it's our raw compound as well. So it's gonna just be pure ketones. What a lot of endurance athletes do with this product is to pour it into their carbohydrate, 16 ounce drink so that you're still getting that dual fuel of ketones and carbohydrates. Um while also helping with the taste of the raw Esther and I think there's pros and cons to tactical. I think the con is the taste if you're taking it out on its own, but the pros, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to default to the pure form of a compound, especially as a serious, let's say, endurance athlete. Um you want to try to control the things you can control. And if you just want straight ketones and, and tactical is definitely your product very cool. Well brian, this has been an awesome conversation.

I've personally learned a lot. I know our listeners will have a lot of takeaways as well before we go. Um do you have any final thoughts and or calls to action that you'd like to leave the listeners with? Of course. So because education is so important with this, it's it's a very confusing market and it's a very new technology and a lot of people which I understand have a hard time understanding why you would ever want to take ketones and what they are. We're trying our best to educate people on the website and through let's say, podcasts and advertising. But on our website we actually offer a free 15 minute consultation with me actually. So you can book a time on my calendar and we can have a 15 minute conversation about the products. But also the point of us doing that is not necessarily to sell the product is to educate people on on what ketones are and how they can be beneficial to your life. And we firmly believe that if enough people understand the benefits of ketones then they'll reach for our product.

Because as I mentioned, it's the safest and most effective product on the market. Mm awesome. O'brien. Thanks again. We'll make sure to link to all of that in the show notes, appreciate what you do. And uh we'll chat soon. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks so much for having me. This is a blast. What did you think about that conversation? I thought from a positioning standpoint it was really interesting for brian to frame ketones as the fourth macronutrients alongside proteins, carbohydrates and fats. I had some familiarity with ketones before this episode but had never thought to contextualize it just like that. I will say that I am very excited to take a bottle of these into the field on one of my next long runs to see the difference. It might make um you know this idea of just being more attentive on the run, making less mistakes from a footing standpoint, not forgetting to eat all of these things are challenges that runners often face on the long run in particular and uh I am no different. So I'm very excited to see how that plays out but I'm very curious to hear what you think I'd love to hear from you.

Have you had any experience supplementing with exogenous ketones and if so what's your verdict if you haven't? Are you more curious after this episode to give them a try regardless, leave a comment on facebook or instagram truly, I would love to hear from you. Thanks for listening to the run to the top podcast. I'm your host Finn Melanson and as always our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on instagram at Wasatch Finn and the rest of our team at Runners connect. Also consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple podcast players. And lastly if you love the show and want bonus content behind the scenes experiences with our guests and premier access to contests and giveaways and subscribe to our newsletter by going to runners connect dot net back slash podcast until next time. Happy Training.