What is it about?
In work carried out since 2003, we developed a new food group, a ketone ester, to raise levels of ketones in blood. When added to the diet, the ketone ester increased the time that rats could run on a treadmill and also improved their cognitive function. The ketone ester increased energy levels in the heart at high workloads. Ketone bodies are normally produced by the liver from our body’s fat in response to starvation. They provide energy for the heart, brain, skeletal muscle in a highly efficient way. Because they are produced for energy in starvation, ketones are not present in our diet and, until now, the only way in which ketone levels could be elevated in normal people was by consuming high-fat/low-carbohydrate diets – “ketogenic” or “Atkins” diets. However, as we have shown previously in articles published in the FASEB Journal, diets with a high fat content worsen exercise performance and cognitive function in both rats and humans.
Featured Image
Perspectives
It has taken years, but we have finally invented a fourth food group to provide ketones that humans have normally have in their bodies and that are beneficial. People can fast or eat a high fat diet to produce ketones, but the ketone ester allows a healthy, balanced diet to be consumed at the same time.
Prof. Kieran Clarke
University of Oxford
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: On the pivotal role of PPAR in adaptation of the heart to hypoxia and why fat in the diet increases hypoxic injury, The FASEB Journal, April 2016, Federation of American Societies For Experimental Biology (FASEB),
DOI: 10.1096/fj.201500094r.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
