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VentouxThree-BidonCould this be the end of carb-loading for endurance?
Coming to a supermarket shelf near you soon? Scientists have discovered that rather than sugary or fatty energy drinks, those containing ketones provide the most benefits to competitive cyclists.
Over the course of a half-hour ride, high level athletes were fed these fuels, most usually produced by the body when the liver is forced to break down fat stores for energy.
Lead author Pete J. Cox of the University of Oxford said that their production was "a natural response to energy crisis and is of vital importance to us as it allows us to survive 'insults' such as starvation and even the first few hours after birth when fuel levels are low.”
The athletes, who included former Olympians, who were given the drink with ketones in, were able to use the energy as muscle fuel. Additional benefits included less muscle soreness from lactate.
After the ketone drink, the cyclists traveled an average of 411 meters further in the half-hour time trial than after the carbohydrate drink, as reported in Cell Metabolism.
“It’s really interesting: with a single drink of nutritional ketone you can do the same exercise with completely different metabolism,” said Dr Cox.
“Given the findings of this study, that challenge our fundamental understanding of human physiology, it will be tempting for many to focus on pursuing the endurance and sport-related avenues, but it would be a great shame if the metabolic basis of this work was not further explored.”
The idea to develop a ketone food group came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research branch of the United States army, who put out a $10 million call for the development of the most efficient food for soldiers to take onto a battlefield.
One of the people to answer this call was University of Oxford biochemist, Professor Kieran Clarke. With Dr Richard Veech at the National Institutes of Health, she assembled a team who invented the ketone ester drink, and this is the first efficacy study to show that the taking ketone can improve performance for certain types of activities. Safety studies have already been conducted and the drink does not have any adverse effects.
“Hopefully this finding will help many athletes realize that optimum fueling for sport is not simply to ingest as much carbohydrate as possible - before, during and after exercise,” said Timothy Noakes of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who was not part of the new study, but advocates a low carbohydrate diet for health and weight loss.
“Currently the drink is not commercially available, and is difficult to make even in a laboratory (patent protected), meaning it may be some time before this drink, or ones like it can be made readily available to the public,” he told Reuters via email.
A University of Oxford spinout company, T∆S® Ltd, will now develop and commercialise the ketone drink.
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Pretty much anything over a few minutes counts as endurance.
Am I missing something here? Surely 30 minutes of cycling cannot be described as endurance?
In my eyes a half hour ride does not equal endurance.
But what does it taste like?
Can't find the reference right now, but I discussed this a few weeks back with Misha Sakharoff, who is an expert on Keto-adaption. Basically, this will not work. It's a marginal gain even for high-performance athletes, the idea that you could knock out 300km by drinking a few litres of this stuff is pure and utter nonsense. There are no free lunches when it comes to riding a long way.
When I completed the 300km Mighty Corinthian ride a month or so back it took three weeks of Keto-adaption as well as a good level of base fitness, to manage to finish in an even remotely acceptable time and feeling okay. Carb-loading in and of itself is pretty much debunked these days. You can only carry about 2000 cal of glycogen on your person at any one time, however pretty much everyone is carrying at least 20 to 40,000 cal worth of fat. Unlocking access to that is the key to riding a long way without filling yourself up with sugary crap and ending up a bloated, gastro-distressed mess. And that unlocking process does not happen by taking a swig of some super drink. It takes weeks of adapting your body to a very high fat - like >70% of your total calories - diet.
"Over the course of a half-hour ride, high level athletes were fed these fuels, most usually produced by the body when the liver is forced to break down fat stores for energy." A bit like Lucozade really helps high level athletes but does sod all for Joe Ordinary on his weekly ride out. What a waste of an article.
you must be gutted with all the money you pay towards the running of the site
Oh yes, I am
"Over the course of a half-hour ride, high level athletes were fed these fuels, most usually produced by the body when the liver is forced to break down fat stores for energy." A bit like Lucozade really helps high level athletes but does sod all for Joe Ordinary on his weekly ride out. What a waste of an article.
Drink acetone?
Ok so ketone based drinks have been used for at least 2 years in pro teams and has been refrenced in several studies. It is or has been very cost prohibitive to the amature athalete to date.
I wish this kind of article was writen with even a smidgen of background research or understanding. I would also love to be shown a "fatty" energy drink.
What would be interesting to know is if the energy pathway for ketone is seperate to that of sugars or carbohydrates (of which there are 2, fructose and glucose ) which provide up to about 90g per hour to the body combined.
The problem being that at high intenisty you can't get energy in to the system as quick as you use it.
Fatty energy drinks are those such as 33Shake chia energy gel as used by Bradley Wiggins cycling team. They are expensive but their profit margins will be a lot smaller than the energy gel manufacturers who's market driven products are full of super cheap ingredients dressed up in colourful wrappers. Personally I make my own for long rides with water melon juice, mint and chia.
To Joe Bloggs this probably makes zero difference. Chris Froome, maybe.
Aye, the supplement industry has manufactured mountains of the stuff for dieters and now wants to find a way to flog it off to other markets. Fund a few dodgy studies to get the ball rolling.
And there appears to be a lack of evidance that it works for dieters, or at least it hasn't been studied very effectively. Here's one interesting article on the subject.
https://authoritynutrition.com/do-raspberry-ketones-work/
However, keeping an open mind, it will be interesting to see more info on the Oxford Uni study.