86Thousand400: Tools of Titans, Ketosis, Diets, Fasting

Dominic D'Agostino

- The Ketogenic Diet: Your brain and body begin to use ketones (derived from stored or ingested fat) for energy instead of blood sugar (glucose) - a state called ketosis

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Why consider Ketosis or Supplemental Ketones

- Fat loss and body recomposition

- Potent anti-cancer effects

- Better use of oxygen: You can derive more energy per oxygen molecule with ketone metabolism. Oxygen utilisation

- Maintain or increase strength: Consuming 75 to 80% of calories from fat (supplemented with MCT and coconut oils) and restricting carbohydrates to 22-25g per day. Ketones have an anti-catabolic protein-sparing and anti-inflammatory effect

- It produced a night and day difference: a x10 improvement in my mental performance and clarity. Dom suspects this relates to mitochondrial "rehab" and the anti-inflammatory effects of ketones

Why consider fasting?

- If you don't have cancer and you do a therapeutic fast 1 to 3 times per year, you could purge any precancerous cells that may be living in your body

- Fasts of 3 days or longer can effectively "reboot" your immune system via stem cell-based regeneration.

- Dom suggests a 5 day fast 2 to 3 times per year

- Dom aims for a 3 day fast once per month and 5 to 7 day fast once per quarter

- During the fast he adds Vitamin C and consumes roughly 1.5g of BCAAs upon waking and roughly 3G of BCAAs intra-workout

- He allowed trace amounts of BCAAs and 300 to 500 calories of pure fat per day on his "fast"

- He got into ketosis as quickly as possible to skip muscle wasting

Advice for the 3 day fast:

- Sleep in as late as possible

- Consume exogenous ketones or MCT oil upon waking and 2 more times throughout the day at 3 to 4 hour intervals. Dom uses KetoCaNa and caprolactam acid (C8), like brain octane

- On the first day (and second if needed), drink some caffeine and prepare to WALK. Cold litre oil water, add a dash of pure, unsweetened lemon juice to attenuate boredom, add a few pinches of salt to prevent misery/headaches/cramping and head out

- Constant hydration is key

- Brisk walking and tons of water for 3 to 4 hours (Golf..?!)

- Each day of fasting, feel free to consume exogenous ketones or fat (eg Coconut oil in tea or coffee). Dom will often reward himself at the end of each fasting afternoon with an iced coffee with a bit of coconut cream in it

- Break your fast on the third night and enjoy it

Once you're in Ketosis, how can you keep it going without fasting?

- The short answer is: Eat a boatload of fat (-1.5 to 2.5g per kilogram of body weight), next to no carbs, and moderate protein. (1 to 1.5g per kilogram of body weight)

- High protein and low fat doesn't work. Your liver will convert excess amino acids into glucose and shut down ketogenesis. Fat as 70 to 85% of calories is required

- This doesn't mean you always have to eat rib eye steaks. A chicken breast by itself will kick you out of ketosis, but a chicken breast cut up into a green leafy salad with a lot of olive oil, feta cheese, and some Bulletproof Coffee (for example) can keep you in ketosis

- Dom will both drink fat between meals (eg Coconut milk - not water - in coffee) and add in supplemental "ice cream"

- Dom noticed that dairy can cause lipid profile issues (eg can spike LDL) and has started to minimise things like cream and cheese. Consider coconut milk

Here's what Big Dom eats. He weighs roughly 100kg, so scale is needed:

Breakfast

- 4 eggs (cooked in a combo of butter and coconut oil)

- 1 can of sardines packed in olive oil

- Oysters

- Some asparagus or other vegetable

Travel with sardines, oysters and macadamia nuts

"Lunch"

- Instead of lunch, Dom will consume a lot of MCT throughout the day via Quest Nutrition MCT Oil Power. He will also make a thermos of coffee with half a stick of butter and 1 to 2 scoops of MCT powder, which he sips throughout the day, totalling about 3 cups of coffee

Dinner

- Trick Dom's learned is that before dinner - have a bowl of soup, usually broccoli cream

- After eating that, the amount of food that he wants to consume is cut in half

- Dom's dinner is always some kind of large salad:

- Mixed greens and spinach

- Extra virgin olive oil

- Artichokes

- Avocado

- MCT oil

- Parmesan or Feta cheese

- Moderate amounts (50g) of chicken, beef or fish. (Fattiest versions)

- In addition to the salad, Dom will make some other vegetable like Brussels sprouts, asparagus, collard greens etc cooked in butter and coconut oil. He views vegetables as "fat delivery systems"

Recipe for Keto Ice Cream

- Contains roughly 100g of fat, or 900kcal of keto goodness. It can save the day if your dinner is lacking fat (remember to hit 70 - 85% of total calories from fat!)

- 2 cups of sour cream or unsweetened coconut cream

- 1 tablespoon dark chocolate baking cocoa

- 1-2 pinches of sea salt

- 1-2 pinches of cinnamon

- Optional: 1/3-1/2 cup of blueberries

- Stir that into a thick mousse and stick it in the freezer

- Make whipped cream using heavy cream (nearly 100% fat)

- Drizzle on 1 tablespoon of heated coconut oil

- Keto diet callls for around 300g of fat per day

Tip for vegetarians - Coconut milk, avocado, MCT oil

Dom's go-to supplements

- Quest nutrition MCT Oil Powder and Quest Nutrition Coconut Oil Powder

- Kettle & Fire Bone Broth

- Idebenone as a version of coenzyme Q10. It's more absorbable and gets to the mitochondria easier. It's like a mitochondrial antioxidant

- Magnesium daily. "Magnesium citrate, magnesium chloride and magnesium glycinate. If he had one go to magnesium, it would be this magnesium citrate powder called Natural Calm

- Scivation XTEND Perform branched chain amino acids (BCAAs): leucine, isoleucine, and valine in a 2 to 1 to 1 combination, leucine being the predominant branch chain amino acid in the formula. "Leucine is a powerful activator of mTOR, which is a good thing; activating mTOR in skeletal muscle is really important in a short workout

- KetoCaNa and Ketoforce

- Pruitt KETO//OS - Creamy exogenous ketones

- Kegenix

More on fasting and cancer treatment

- "Fasting before chemotherapy is definitely something that should be implemented in our oncology wards"

- "Fasting essentially slows (sometimes stops) rapidly dividing cells and triggers an 'energetic crisis' that makes cancer cells selectively vulnerable to chemo and radiation

- Dom is also researching the use of BCAAs. He has had -50% increase in survival in cancerous rats by adding the branched chain amino acids to a ketogenic diet

5 things in case of late-stage emergency

- 5 things Dom would do if he were diagnosed with one of the worst case scenarios - late stage glioblastoma (GBM)

- Some of Dom's colleagues are opposed to the "standard of care" protocols like chemotherapy.

- "It makes little sense to treat cancer with something we know is a powerful carcinogen (chemotherapy)."

- Dom's 5 picks all appear to work through overlapping mechanisms. There is a synergy in using them together. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 1+1+1+1+1=10

- Ketogenic diet as base therapy. (Foundation)

- Intermittent fasting: 1 meal per day within a daily 4 hour window

- Ketone supplementation 2 to 4 times per day. Objective would be to elevate his BHB levels 1 to 2 mol above his baseline. The easiest options are KetoCaNa and/or Quest Nutrition MCT Oil Powder. Combining them, you're "approaching the potency of a ketone ester developed for military applications." The powdered MCT increases gut tolerability 2 to 3 times versus oil, so you can consume more of it

- Metaformin

- DCA (dicholoroacetic acid): DCA can kill cancer cells at dosages relatively non-toxic to normal cells. Dom would start with 10 mg per kilogram of body weight

"If I (meaning {name omitted}, freak of all time) had GBM I would do the following:

1. No radiation

2. Calorie restricted keto diet with support from exogenous BHB

3. Metaformin at 2 or 2.5g/day

4. DCA

5. Hyperbaric Oxygen

6. Rapamycin in modest, intermittent doses

7. Sequence the tumor to see if a checkpoint inhibitor (a type of immunotherapy) could be effective

"Not sure I could recommend this to anyone, though."

Peter Attia (Ultra Endurance Athlete)

Breakfast:

- Starts with nothing, little bit more nothing, top it off with a bit more nothing

- Rarely eats breakfast

- Intermittent fasting, ranging from one meal per day

- (I.e 23 hours of fasting per day) to more typical 16/8 and 18/6 patterns of eating (i.e 16 or 18 hours of fasting and only eating in an 8 or 6 hour window). Going 16 hours without eating generally provides the right balance of autophagy (look it up) and anabolism (muscle building)