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Ketone news
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: April 22, 2024
My coaching occupation involves more than just training endurance athletes, it also entails staying abreast of the many scientific hypes and truths surrounding their activities.
And a critical part of this staying abreast business involves a general understanding of those products that are used as ergogenic (performance enhancing) aids in the realm of endurance sports.
Yet every now and then I’ll suddenly find that I’ve somehow fallen a bit behind the knowledge curve on this substance or that.
Well, today’s topic––ketones as an ergogenic aid––is one such example of my falling behind.
And it wasn’t until quite recently, while watching a cycling video that featured an x-pro cyclist touting the efficacy of ketones that I noted my unfamiliarity with this supplement.
So let’s take a shallow fact-finding dive into the use of ketones as legal and legitimate performance enhancing supplements.
Now at this point you may be wondering just what the heck’s a ketone and how it applies to augmenting endurance activities.
Well, turns out that ketones are just one of numerous fuels the human body uses as an energy source.
Thus, when we talk about ketones as a fuel, we’ve got to begin with a process called ketosis.
This occurs naturally when the body is deprived of carbohydrate fuels and thus begins to break down fatty acids for fuels.
Ketones are a byproduct of this breakdown process and are thus used as that alternative fuel.
Now despite the fact that the body can do this naturally when there’s a lack of other fuel sources, ketone proponents claim that the oral ingestion of ketones during cardiorespiratory exercise can “alter” the utilization of other major fuels like carbohydrates and fats and thereby enhance an athlete’s endurance capabilities.
Makes sense right? Ketones plus carbohydrates equals better performance? Well, in theory it does, but notice that I put quotation marks around the word alter, because as far as I can surmise, that claim still resides in the realm of an unproven and speculative assertion.
Now there’s been a host of research studies over the past five or so years that have investigated the efficacy of orally ingesting ketones for the purpose of enhancing endurance capabilities.
Some of these studies have determined that ketones might...might...augment endurance performance, others found that it did augment endurance performance, and still others found no conclusive proof that it could or would augment endurance performance.
Thus, despite the scientific rationale to support the possible ergogenic effect of oral ketone supplementation, to date there’s been no clear-cut agreement amongst various research studies that this is actually the case.
And as a matter of fact, the last study I looked at, “Acute Ketone Monoester Supplementation Impairs 20-min Time-Trial Performance in Trained Cyclists: A Randomized, Crossover Trial,”published in the April 25, 2023 edition of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, determined that such supplementation worsened sport performance in 20-minute time trails efforts.
Now even amidst these mixed pronouncements there’s still ketone products out there marketed as cutting edge endurance enhancement supplements.
And some of these supplements currently sell at an eye-opening price - like $433 for 18, 27-gram bottles containing a foul tasting ketone cocktail?
Yet despite such exorbitant costs, bad tastes and speculative efficacies, this particular sport enhancement product still has scores of advocates.
So how do I, as a coach and consular, separate all that supplemental ballyhooing from the facts?
I defer to the ISSN’s (International Society of Sports Nutrition) guidelines for supplementation efficacy.
Those guidelines are: 1. Were results of the study presented at a reputable scientific meeting and/or published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal?
2. Do the studies report statistically significant results or are claims being made on non-significant means or trends?
3. Do the results of the cited studies match the claims made about the supplement or do they accurately portray the response of the supplement against an appropriate placebo or control group?
4. Have the research findings been replicated?
5. If so, have the results only been replicated at the same laboratory?
And as you can see, at this point in time the answers to those five questions indicate that the claim “ketones provide ergogenic benefits” is still wildly inconclusive which is exactly what I’ll be telling my clients when they want to know if they should be spending hundreds of dollars on an unproven sports enhancement supplement.