What are ketones?
” A: Ketones are a by-product/or waste product when your body burns stored fat for energy. Ketones can be measured in the urine with a visually read strip, and in the blood by using the Precision Xtra® meter. Before I describe various situations in which a person might have ketones, let me provide a simple review of how the body works: • The foods you eat break down into glucose (sugar). Glucose travels in the blood and into your cells. Insulin is a hormone (or “key”) that “unlocks the doors of your cells” to allow glucose to enter your cells where it can be turned into energy. So without insulin, glucose wouldn’t be able to get into the cells. • Your brain (and the rest of your body) requires glucose to function. When you haven’t eaten for a while, or during the night when you’re asleep, your liver releases stored glucose to keep you supplied with energy. • If you don’t eat for several days, the stored glucose in the liver is depleted, and your body is in a starvation state. In this s
There is a back-up fuel that all of the tissues in our bodies can use, with two major exceptions. The fuel is a family of chemicals called ketones, and they are released by the breakdown of fat. The two tissues in our bodies that MUST have glucose as fuel are the brain and the heart muscle. All of the other tissues in our body can adapt to deriving their energy from using ketones as fuel. However, the process is a lot like trying to run your Italian sports car on regular gas. It will run, alright, but it won’t run the way Enzo had in mind. Endurance athletes know all about burning ketones for energy. They call the point at which their bodies shift from burning glucose for energy to burning ketones “THE WALL”. The rest of us have our own “WALL” that we encounter when we have a bout of the stomach flu or food poisoning.
There is a back-up fuel that all of the tissues in our bodies can use, with two major exceptions. The fuel is a family of chemicals called ketones, and they are released by the breakdown of fat. The two tissues in our bodies that MUST have glucose as fuel are the brain and the heart muscle. All of the other tissues in our body can adapt to deriving their energy from using ketones as fuel. However, the process is a lot like trying to run your Italian sports car on regular gas. It will run, alright, but it won’t run the way Enzo had in mind. Endurance athletes know all about burning ketones for energy. They call the point at which their bodies shift from burning glucose for energy to burning ketones “THE WALL”. The rest of us have our own “WALL” that we encounter when we have a bout of the stomach flu or food poisoning. Six or eight hours of interruption of adequate intake and accelerated losses due stress, vomiting and diarrhea is usually enough to exhaust the stored glucose and start t
