“The FDA may see ketones as a drug. I see them as a fourth macronutrient. You have fats, proteins, and carbs. Ketones are an energy-containing molecule.” – Dom D’Agostino
Dr. Dominic “Dom” D’Agostino (@DominicDAgosti2) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine, and a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC).
He has also deadlifted 500 pounds for 10 reps after a seven-day fast.
He’s a beast and — no big surprise — he’s a good buddy of Dr. Peter Attia, my MD friend who drinks “jet fuel” in search of optimal athletic performance.
The primary focus of Dom’s laboratory is developing and testing metabolic therapies, including ketogenic diets, ketone esters and ketone supplements to induce nutritional/therapeutic ketosis. D’Agostino’s laboratory uses in vivo and in vitro techniques to understand the physiological, cellular and molecular mechanism of metabolic therapies and nutritional strategies for peak performance and resilience. His research is supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Department of Defense (DoD), private organizations and foundations.
You can find the transcript of this episode here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.
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Want to hear another podcast discussing ketosis from a world class scientist? — Listen to my conversation with Dr. Peter Attia. In this episode, we discuss life-extension, drinking jet fuel, ultra-endurance, human foie gras, and more (stream below or right-click here to download):
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QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What questions do you have about ketogenic diets that we didn’t discuss in this podcast? Please let me know in the comments.
Scroll below for links and show notes…
Selected Links from the Episode
- Dom’s go-to resource for questions about the ketogenic diet
- Learn more about Institutional Review Boards
- Learn more about the modified Atkins Diet and Erik Kosoff at John Hopkins
- Learn more about HDAC inhibitors
- Pick up your own Abbott Precision Xtra Glucose Monitor
- Dom D’ Agostino’s favorite BCAA (branched chain amino acid) product Xtend
- Cancer as a Metabolic Disease by Thomas Seyfried
- Learn more about De Novo Nutrition and Utopian
- See Dom’s website, KetoNutrition.org
- Dom’s favorite options for canned sardines: kingoscar.com and wildplanetfoods.com
- Canned oysters
- Personal Power by Tony Robbins
- The Language of God by Francis Collins
- Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis
- One of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while (intro’d to me by Dom) — KetoPet Sanctuary
- Learn more about The Origin (and Future) of the Ketogenic Diet
- Tripping over the Truth by Travis Christofferson
Connect with Dom D’Agostino:
Facebook | Twitter | University of South Florida
Show Notes
- How Dom D’Agostino responds when someone asks him, “what do you do?” [5:28]
- Describing the Institutional Review Board (IRB) [9:53]
- Research on advanced lifters in a state of ketosis [12:13]
- Thoughts on getting big (hypertrophy) and strong while in a state of ketosis [15:53]
- Defining ketones and ketosis [20:48]
- The implications of fasting, nutritional ketosis and/or exogenous ketones for preventing/mitigating the onset of neurodegenerative diseases [28:23]
- Defining cachexia, sarcopenia, anabolism, and catabolism [30:48]
- Thoughts on the use of anabolic agents in cancer patients [34:48]
- The advantage of SARMS instead of pre-existing low androgenic anabolic therapies [38:53]
- To what extent is it possible to mimic the benefits of pre-chemo therapy fasting with exogenous ketones? [43:23]
- How to accelerate the induction of ketone projection through use of exogenous ketones[49:18]
- Ketone esters [56:13]
- The benefits of eating exogenous ketones while in a carbohydrate attractive environment (for example, when traveling in Italy) [1:16:08]
- What a traveling ketogenic breakfast looks like [1:20:43]
- Reasons for using glutamine [1:25:08]
- Thoughts on being considered a “nutritionist” [1:32:18]
- The impact of Metformin on the survival rates of animals that have metastatic cancer [1:41:38]
- If Dom D’Agostino learned that he had advanced cancer, what tools would he use to fight it? [1:46:18]
- Thoughts on therapeutic fasting [2:03:03]
- Observations of people who experiment with fasting [2:08:23]
- Describing the risks and toxicities of consuming a cocktail of exogenous ketones [2:14:33]
- Unusual foods or beverages that spike ketone levels [2:22:45]
- Top resources for those seeking to learn about a ketogenic diet [2:41:33]
- Most gifted books [2:43:13]
- How to approach fighting Lyme Disease with the ketogenic diet [2:50:18]
- The effect of ketosis on mitochondria [2:53:18]
- Healing from use of antibiotics [2:55:53]