Qualy #120 - What is the difference between ketone salts and esters？
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Summary
In this bonus episode, we discuss beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) and ketone esters, and why they are different from BHB salts. We also talk about ketone salts, and how to get them into your body.
Transcript
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Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Peter Atiyah Qualies, a member exclusive podcast.
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The Qualies is just a shorthand slang for qualification round, which is something you
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So if you enjoy the Qualies, you can access dozens more of them through our membership
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program. Without further delay, I hope you enjoy today's Qualies.
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Maybe explain for people what the difference is between a salt and an ester. So we'll leave
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acetoacetate out of that for a moment. But if you talk about beta-hydroxybutyrate...
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But you can have acetoacetate salt too, so I can mention that.
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I didn't know that. I thought it was only a diester. So we'll definitely want to hear about that. So
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on the BHB front, people are sort of inundated with ketone salts, ketone esters, and then a whole
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bunch of complete weird stuff like raspberry ketones and stuff. But let's just leave the
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nonsense off the table. Yeah. But if you just talk about comparing a ketone, a BHB ester to a BHB salt,
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Yeah. So a salt is just an ionic bond, right, between the ketone molecule, beta-hydroxybutyrate,
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a monovalent or a divalent cation, or an alkaline amino acid like arginine, citrulline, histidine,
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lysine. So you can literally ionically bond beta-hydroxybutyrate to a number of different
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things. The easiest thing to do is to bond it with sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium.
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Now, calcium and magnesium have two positive charges.
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Yeah. That's the advantage, sort of an advantage. A disadvantage, I guess, with magnesium BHB,
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which is actually is very bioavailable magnesium. I measured my magnesium after taking it. It went
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up quite, quite high. Disadvantage is that your GI tolerability to something like magnesium beta-hydroxybutyrate
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may be only somewhere between one to three grams, you know, three grams max per dose.
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One gram, three times a day, at least for me, has no issues. I could probably tolerate two or
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three grams per day. So it's nice. I mean, it's something that's contributing, but ideally what
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you want to do with a ketone salt is, because salt has a stigma, I call them ketone electrolyte
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formulations, is to spread the beta-hydroxybutyrate out across monovalent and divalent cations. And
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they're the four that have the most utility. And then an ester, of course, is a covalent bond,
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Yeah. So you can take one, three butane diol and you could create a monoester with
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beta-hydroxybutyrate, right? And just add it, do a trans esterification reaction and combine that
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beta-hydroxybutyrate to one, three butane diol or acetoacetate. You can combine with one, three butane,
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or you could take glycerol. So with glycerol, you can come up with a triester of glycerol,
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Basically, you're creating a triglyceride that is, instead of three fatty acids, you put three
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It's a pretty cool molecule, yeah. So we have some experience using that.
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I told a story many, many years ago, probably four or five years ago on Tim Ferriss' podcast about how
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I drank this jet fuel and almost thought I was going to go blind. Of course, what I may or may
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not have omitted from that story was that you gave it to me. And so the ketones today taste a heck
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of a lot better than that earlier gen stuff. And even when I told you that I just took the 50 ml
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vial you sent and chugged it in one sitting, even you were sort of horrified. You're like,
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wait, wait, wait. You didn't read the note I wrote you explaining how to dilute it and mix it.
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I know you're very enthusiastic about getting started.
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So what, I mean, whereas the ketone salts actually don't taste bad. They're obviously
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Yeah. Yeah. So why does the ester, is there an obvious reason from an olfactory slash taste
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perspective why they are so staggeringly horrible? Yeah. Or at least they were. And I mean, I'm told
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Yeah. I would say the ketogenic potency is inversely proportional to taste. So it just seems like,
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you know, the more, the more potent these compounds get, even the, the triester beta
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hydroxybutyrate, uh, you know, is pretty nasty stuff.
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Yeah. It's a great molecule. I mean, it has like lots of, you know, tremendous utility.
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Well, making a ketone ester with one, three butane diol is really cool because the one,
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three butane diol itself gets more substrate broken down. Yeah. So that goes into another question,
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the whole enantiomer. So if you use the R beta hydroxybutyrate with the R one, three butane
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diol, then you can really get ketone levels up pretty high. And that would be sort of the Delta
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G or the human, you know, ketone ester that's out there.
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