Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today we are joined by Geoffrey Woo. Geoffrey works closely with researchers at Oxford University and professional athletes to further our understanding of ketosis and human performance. A former computer scientist, he applies a systems engineering mindset to nutrition & performance you don't often see in the space. He's been in Forbes 30 under 30, he has sold Silicon Valley company at age 23, he is author of 2 US Patents, he has published various scientific papers, and much more.

I wanted to have Geoffrey on the show because we've talked about ketosis, fasting, and other things like that, but we've never talked about the extremes. For example, exogenous ketones, what happens in the body during ketosis, or whether you should be going into ketosis if you are just the average human being.

So, I wanted to dive deeper and really get a feel for whether or not this is applicable to real humans. I think I got some really good answers, I certainly learned a lot about ketosis and fasting, and it really doubled down my motivation to fast more, both intermittently and in extended fasts, and to try out some new things.

I really enjoyed this episode, and I'm sure you will as well!

-Jonathan Levi

This episode is brought to you by Ambronite's AmbroGreens! Click here to grab your exclusive 5-Day AmbroGreens pack now, and treat your body to a full serving of the most powerful greens, veggies and berries nature has to offer.

This episode is brought to you by BluBlox. Click here to save 15% on their amazing blue-blocking glasses, for all orders placed on their website, by adding coupon code SUPERHUMAN at checkout!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Who is Geoffrey Woo, what does he do, and how did he get here? [5:10]
• What is Geoffrey working on right now? [8:20]
• What is fasting, and why is it important? [9:20]
• Why would someone want to go into ketosis, and what is ketosis exactly? [15:10]
• How relevant is ketosis to an average person? [23:10]
• The necessity of being able to fast [27:40]
• Are exogenous ketones something that an average person should think about utilizing? [32:20]
• A conversation on MCT [36:50]
• What are the things Geoffery Woo is most excited about right now? [39:10]
• Where can you learn more about Geoffrey Woo? [45:00]
• Geoffrey Woo's final takeaway message [45:45]

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• HVMN
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Geoffrey Woo's Instagram and Twitter

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Award-Winning SuperHuman Academy Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to give you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible and now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Before we get started, I want to ask you a question. Do you think that you are getting enough whole foods and nutrients in your diet? Chances are you probably aren't, look, it's not your fault. First off, it is expensive and time-consuming and it's a huge hassle to do all the cooking and all the preparation.

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Greeting SuperFriends and awesome, welcome, welcome to this week's episode, which was lovingly crafted, thanks to Alverez 300 who left a review entitled “really loved this show.” five stars. Jonathan is an outstanding interviewer and a master of his craft. I've listened to his show for a while now and there is so much that he brings to his listeners. I also had a blast as a guest on his show, and I'm looking forward to bringing him onto mine in the near future. So I'm not actually sure who that is. Alvarez 300, but thank you very much, Alvarez, 300. And, uh, I'm really glad that you enjoyed being a guest on this show and whether or not you've been a guest on the show. I would love if you left a review, I only have one more to read out before I run out of reviews. So please hop on to iTunes and fix that. Otherwise, it will be a sad, sad day in SuperHuman land.

On to today's episode, you guys today, I am joined by Geoffrey Woo. Someone who works closely with researchers at Oxford university and professional athletes to further our understanding of drum roll, please, ketosis and human performance. He is a former computer scientist who now applies systems and engineering mindset to nutrition and performance. He's been in the Forbes 30, under 30. He sold a Silicon valley company at age 23. He's the author of two US patents, all kinds of scientific papers, and many, many more accomplishments that we talk about on the show. Reason I wanted to have Jeff on the show, is we have talked about ketosis. We've talked about all different kinds of fasting and things like that, but we've never talked about kind of the extremes, right? Exogenous ketones. What actually happens in the body during ketosis. Should you be going into ketosis if you're just the average human being? So I wanted to dive deeper and really get a feel for whether or not this is applicable to real humans. I think I got some really, really good answers. I certainly learned a lot about ketosis.

I learned more about fasting and it really doubled down my motivation to fast more, both intermittently and for extended fast and, uh, really to try out some new things. I am excited that, uh, products are on the way to me that Geoffrey recommended and I'm really looking forward to experimenting with them.

So. Without any further ado, my episode with Geoffrey woo,

Mr. Geoffrey Woo. How are you, my friend?

Geoffrey Woo: Doing super well, thanks for having me on the program.

Jonathan Levi: I'm really excited about it. You know, I've become more and more passionate, uh, both about low and no-carb diets and about intermittent fasting, uh, over the last year. So I'm really excited to talk to someone who geeks out as much as I do and, uh, and knows the research cause I'm excited to pick your brain.

Geoffrey Woo: Absolutely. I mean, it's been an interesting long journey, so. I would say over the last year, it's really started breaking into the mainstream of mainstream consciousness. You have celebrities talking about intermittent fasting and ketogenic diets, but when I first ventured into this space almost four years ago, at this point, um, very different public perception around intermittent fasting. ketogenic diets, is this going to kill you? Is this an eating disorder? All of that. So it's been fascinating to see the, uh, the culture, the discussion follow up with the science.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a bit about how you got down this rabbit hole. I mean, you come from a computer engineering background, right?

Geoffrey Woo: Yeah. So it's, uh, interesting. It is a syncretic story here. So I studied computer science at Stanford. Uh, started an app company, right during my senior year of undergrad and got funded by some investors, and actually sold my first company a year and a half out of college. So it was a very, uh, quick kind of Silicon Valley, almost trope where you have these computer science nerds, starting companies, only the company.

Um, but how I got interested in human performance, uh, really came from a personal desire to focus, my initial self-interest of being smarter, more productive, more efficient, um, and having that first startup sale under my belt, I have a little bit of more time and a platform to explore some of these ideas and as research into the early, early uh, discussion forums of biohacking and nootropics, which are cognitive enhancers. This is circa 2013, 2014. Some of the claims seem too good to be true right? And as an engineer, I presume most people today just given the influx of information and fake news and whatnot, and this information out there, I think it's very smart to be skeptical and I very much came into the space of biohacking and human preference skeptical because it didn't seem really quantitative, didn't seem that there was really great literature in the space and if something was so powerful by didn't people use it, right. There's kind of this, uh, if it's working, why aren't more people of using a type of, uh, type of, uh, thinking, you know, someone that's curious, someone that's kind of a self-experimenter, uh, side of the play around with different nootropics, cognitive enhancers, sort of diving into the public, uh, peer-reviewed research Corpus and started realizing there was definitely some mechanistic pathways that were fairly promising and had decent, if not really, really robust human data and that gravitated me towards going from this as a hobby to something that I would build my career over the last 5 6, 7 years on where, uh, I really see myself as an interesting position taking a systems engineering approach or a very quantitative approach towards human performance and from that initial insight or starting point, you really have dove deep in what I think are the most interesting, most validated most evidence-based cause that, uh, I think are the cutting edge. You can report into nutrition today, which relates to intermittent fasting, ketogenic diet, uh, exogenous ketones, like our ketone Ester, which originated from a DARPA program to enhance soldier performance and we're commercializing that for athletes and consumers.

So, uh, a very kind of non-standard journey from a computer scientist and entrepreneur into the human performance space.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. And what are you doing in the space today?

Geoffrey Woo: So I'm the CEO of a company called HVMN, which stands for Health Via Modern Nutrition and we make products that help people live a ketogenic, healthy lifestyle our main flagship product is our ketone ester. Which as I referenced, originated from a DARPA program and was invented out of Oxford and NIH to enhance social performance originally and in the recent year or two years, that's been out on markets. Uh, we've worked with virtually all the top of the tort of France cycling teams, uh, the lead athletes from ultra, uh, Ironman triathlons, triathletes to team sports, to individual sports so, um, So, I guess, you know, work with a lot of elite performers as well as the broader community around the kitchen lifestyle.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. So break it down for me a little bit. I mean, I know we talk a little bit about intermittent fasting on the show. We've talked a little bit about, um, ketones and ketosis, but I'd love to hear the landscape from your perspective. I mean, where do you see it all fitting together right? So I know intermittent fasting is a way to get into ketosis. Uh, obviously the keto diet is a way to get into ketosis. Give me a kind of a lay of the land and, and maybe for folks who haven't heard our past episodes on ketosis, you know, why would someone want to do something like taking exogenous ketones?

Geoffrey Woo: Absolutely. Yeah, I think it would be good to just set some landmarks and definitions here. Um, so I'm just taking a step back and looking at just cultural context today. I think, uh, if you look at the direction of human health today, uh, more and more uploads of three-quarters of us, especially in America are overweight and obese and metabolic syndrome, which relates to diabetes, obesity, uh, can actually cardiovascular disease risks. These are literally the top killers of modern forceful people today, along with mental health but we'll put that aside, um, and there's more and more evidence to suggest that our nutrition is a very important driver of these poor medical outcomes, especially in the context where we have more availability of resources than ever.

Um, so one of the interesting research threads is looking at the standard Western diet standard American diet and I think if you look at disordered eating. You could almost claim or make the strong argument that the standard Western diet today, essentially the worst form of disordered eating, it's literally engineered to make you obese. You have super high fat and super high sugar content and very, very processed, packaged delivery forms that are essentially addictive, designed for you to snack all the time and that's causing giant firestorms and really, I think it's a slow-burning epidemic for human health. Uh, that we've been trying to tackle on the healthcare side with more pharmaceuticals going to doctor visits, going to the hospital.

Um, so one of the big research streams, and I would say a more grassroots community perspective, is that okay how do we front-run all these bad chronic diseases that you accrue as you have decades of consuming a standard Western diet? And one of the leading interventions is imminent fasting. It's, it's a very simple concept, uh, as opposed to concept consumption. What if you had a thoughtful pause and consumption of food and a lot of popular ways to do that is just thinking about having a time window of when you eat in a time window of when you don't eat. So very popularly, a lot of people do what's called a 16, eight, or an 18, six fast meeting, 16 or 18 hours of not eating in six to eight hours of eating.

And that's actually not that crazy to think about it. That's literally just kind of skipping breakfast. Uh, having a late lunch, early dinner, or if you want to earlier eating window, having that breakfast, but having a very, very early dinner.

Jonathan Levi: Right.

Geoffrey Woo: Um, and the data behind that is pretty compelling because why does this work? Well, one of the underlying mechanisms of why constant consumption is potentially risky is because as you consume carbohydrates, especially you trigger an insulin response and insulin is the hormone that is the signal is a signaling hormone that brings glucose or carbohydrate into your cells and stuff. It's a storage form. Once it's an anabolic hormone, it basically tells your body to store fat, right? It's energy coming in and got to store it and if you're constantly eating, you're constantly triggering insulin. So your insulin is always triggered, but it's always high and the thing about the human body, is it's always trying to maintain balance or homeostasis.

So as you have more and more at a patient to high insulin, you get what's called insulin resistance. You'd have more and more insulin for the same response and that downstream leads the perpetually high insulin and potentially prenup perpetually high blood sugar, and high blood sugar is called type two diabetes.

Um, so by compressing the time you're eating, you were deuce the overall insulin load on your system. You reduce the carbohydrate load on your system. So you can go back to a more typical balanced homeostatic state. So all intermittent fasting really to me is trying to mimic a more normal ancestral eating pattern.

Again, if you look at our caveman ancestors and hunter-gatherers, they did not have seven meals a day plus snacks. They didn't have readily accessible, uh, packaged food that are super high in fat and super high in sugar ready to go. So to me, intermittent fasting is almost a reversion back to uh, an ancestral state and it's being panned out in the literature, both in animal models and clinical trials, looking at weight control, insulin control, and biomarkers related to cardiovascular risks. So like blood lipids, LDL. HDL and triglycerides, uh, hemoglobin A1C. These are all blood panels that you go to when you get to go to your doctor. Uh, there's been a number of studies and I know there's a lot more studies coming down the pipeline, looking at intermittent fasting as a specific intervention at that front.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. Yeah. Now let's talk a bit about, uh, ketogenic dieting, which I guess is a similar way to achieve a similar feat, but also get the body into the state of ketosis where you're actually using ketones as fuel. Um, what drives me crazy is where I live in Israel. I don't know what part of the mass media has convinced people, but people always respond with, well, it's scientifically proven that the human body needs healthy carbohydrates too, you know, and when they say healthy carbohydrates, they mean like whole grain, pasta, and bread.

It's scientifically proven that the body can't survive without carbohydrates every single day. Which I immediately go. Okay. All right. You know, I just don't even know where to begin to argue with someone who's, who's convinced of that, but tell, tell me a bit about ketosis and ketones and where that all fits in.

Geoffrey Woo: You're absolutely right. Uh, and just for when you're making a claim like that, there are. Literally, tens of thousands of counterfactuals are counterpoints that debunk that theory. Uh, I know that a lot of my friends and committee members are doing carnivore diets, which is essentially a very, very extreme form of a ketogenic diet.

That's only eating animal products and they're absolutely not eating. A whole-wheat pasta and people have been doing this for years, not decades, and they're not dead yet. So this from like counterfactual perspective, I'm not making the argument that it's more optimal, but at least from a perspective of, can you not live without carbohydrates? That has been definitive, we've been proven false by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that are implementing the zero carbs today.

Jonathan Levi: And you have, you have indigenous populations like the Inuits and the Messiah that survived largely on animal products. Be it salmon, be it, uh, you know, beef products. There are entire native communities that survive with very, very little in the way of vegetation um, seasonally.

Geoffrey Woo: Yep. Exactly. I mean, think about it in any way, uh, uh, regions right there in the Arctic and they're not growing anything up there. Yeah. If anything, yellow dig up some tubers or some fun guy.

It's a very low part of their overall diet. But going back to the original question, what is a ketogenic diet? Um, and I think we let's define what it is and then I want to tie that into inner infesting and why there uh, in, in my eyes, it was very much two tactics for the same overall metabolic strategy.

So let's just find a ketogenic diet. So classically, uh, I think there's, well, I would say there's two ways to describe a ketogenic diet. Let's just break down the word ketogenic. It means genic is production, so the production of ketones. So ketogenic diet that very literal, the monetary perspective is the diet that allows your body to produce ketones.

Okay. Uh, uh, more advice-driven definition of a ketogenic diet is restricting carbohydrate intake to less than typically 58 grams of net carbohydrates a day and that in turn likely induces the ketogenic state. Now it probably makes sense to define what ketones are ketones can be thought of as a molecule that your body uses to create energy and energy is defined as P2P.

Uh, that's the energy currency of, of the cell is it's B that is produced in the power plant of the Silicon, the mitochondria. Um, so sugar, for example, uh, glucose is a substrate that your mitochondria convert into ATP is a substrate that your body converts into ATP protein, which is if you look at fat and carbohydrate as two macronutrients, protein is thought of as a third macronutrient protein converts actually into sugar.

Uh, if it's being utilized for fuel, Uh, otherwise it's being used for lean muscle tissue for protein. It breaks down into sugar, which also turns to energy. So ketones are this fourth substrate that also goes into the mitochondria that can be converted into ATP. So ketones are really just an alternate fuel substrate that, uh, that occurs when your body doesn't have any carbohydrate to burn. It starts shifting into a ketosis or fat-burning state and what that means is that you're primarily being burning fat and ketones as a primary fuel source versus carbon fat-burning state, which is typically more of a standard Western diet and if you're not quite unhealthy, you're not burning any fat, you're burning primarily glucose.

And that's why people aren't able to shut off weight. Uh, that's a kind of a simple way to think about it. So. Being in a state of ketosis is very interesting because, uh, it triggers a lot of interesting molecular pathways that might be beneficial for longevity and performance. So when you are in a state of ketosis, because there's no carbohydrate intake or very low carbohydrate intake, we talked about insulin. There's no insulin response. So naturally, your insulin goes down, uh, when your ketones are up, it triggers, uh, Uh, longevity pathways, uh, that, uh, when, for example, a longevity path we're called FOXO three, which has been associated with extended lifespan in animal models. Uh, and ketones are very efficient, efficient energy substrates. So that's why a lot of people talking about, uh, increased athletic performance or in dance, uh, potential potentially improved cognitive performance. So a lot of this, the research around the performance benefits of ketosis are really at the cutting edge. Some are animal data, some more in, uh, in human data, but that hopefully describes a landscape of why kids make diets are interesting clinically and why that's related to animal fasting because the way to tie these two things together is that when intermittent fasting you're essentially restricting carbohydrate by not eating anything. By eating a ketogenic diet, you're restricting carbohydrates by getting a lot more fat and poaching content and, and states of both end up pushing your body to a state where your body needs to produce its own ketones to replace, uh, the sugar or the carbohydrate that's no longer in the diet.

So in that lens, you're really having two different strategies to put shoot instead of ketosis. So how is that useful? Practically? So for me personally, I do a combination of both. I do intermittent fasting on top of a kid drink diet, uh, to, to really synergize how these two tactics end up really putting my body into the same overall strategy of having reduced insulin reduced reliance on glucose, and more in the ketogenic next state.

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All right, let's get back to the episode.

Right. I was going to ask you, Geoffrey I mean, I know you work with a lot of very elite athletes. I know a ketogenic diet is recommended for people who are either diabetic or are insulin resistant and trying to turn that around. I know it also seems to be a miracle cure for people with forms of epilepsy, but I wanted to ask, you know, how relevant is this for everyday people, you know, go to the gym a few times a week. Uh, maybe have like a family history of diabetes, but aren't showing signs. I mean, is this something everyone should experiment with?

Geoffrey Woo: That's a good question. Um, I think if I had a good broad, general guidance, I think it's, non-controversial to say that if if you're consuming refined carbohydrate in the form of soda, cookies, and whatnot, uh, try to reduce that.

Jonathan Levi: Um, yeah, that's pretty good.

Geoffrey Woo: Yeah. That is not going to be controversial. I think what is interesting is should everyone be on a ketogenic diet? Uh, my response to that is. I think one should be thoughtful about your diets and one should be thoughtful about what is your starting baseline, whether you have a genetic disposition to diabetes or you are overweight, or you have a relatively healthy and what is your end goal state? So for me, I'm not a professional athlete, um, but I want to maximize my healthspan, my longevity, and the reason why. I use a ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting is, uh, to follow the latest literature on how pediatric diets and cyclical, ketogenic diets are extending maximizing health span. So instead of that data and implementing the kitchen diet, uh, and, and in particular, I do it in a cyclical fashion.

There was a recent paper coming out of the buck Institute last year that showed that cyclical ketogenic diets and kitchen guides had similar outcomes for health stem improvements beyond a standard Western diet. I'll be it. This is an animal model in a rat model.

Jonathan Levi: Almost like carb cycling, right? Where if you're going to have an intense workout, once a week, you load up carbohydrates a day or two before then, but then you're on a reduced carbohydrate diet, the rest of the week.

Geoffrey Woo: Yes, essentially. Uh, that's one way to do it for me. I tend to do longer blocks. I do four to eight weeks of very, very strict keto and then four to eight-week blocks of more relaxed, low carbohydrates, so more close to a paleo. Um, and the notion there is that it actually kind of fits my, uh, daily rhythms.

And I think this is kind of partly just inspired by how elite performers actually implement training blocks. So if you look at elite athletes, especially for specific people, peeking for specific events, the paradise or cycle the training up to the peak for a specific event. So for example, you might increase if you're, if you're an endurance athlete and you do.

Uh, you build your world at the base for the first few weeks. Uh, you might do a lot of facet training to do that. So you do a lot of aerobic activity without any carbohydrate or any fuel coming in. Then you do more strength-building then you've increased volume and then for a few weeks, and then you taper down and try to peak for the event.

And I would say the most cutting edge of outfits are also periodizing undernutrition to match the training load right? So there's this notion of how do you, when do you use fast, the training when you use field training and to me, I'm borrowing and getting inspired from how the most awful of people are pure dicing their training and nutrition to someone that's a lot more casual, a lot more just normal in terms of a lifestyle, but interested in maximizing longevity and performance.

So that's so, so, so to me, it's looking at the clinical data around ketogenic diet and fasting, looking quite promising for healthspan. If not lifespan expansion and then being inspired by some of the data from the cyclical ketogenic data, and then looking up top performance athletes, uh, do, uh, training blocks, uh, to make it something that quite fits quite nicely into, uh, my lifestyle.

Jonathan Levi: I totally agree with you and I'd go even further and I would say I think every human being, unless they have some kind of medical condition, of course conduct your conduct and, and consult your doctor first but I think every human being, every modern human being should be capable of fasting, even if it's only for 18 hours. I mean, personally, I'll do a fast, at least once a year where I'll go three days. And, uh, and, and the reason I'm an advocate for that one, it's going to show you what ketosis is all about and, and, and why people care so much and why people are so enthusiastic about it but also it's completely going to change your dynamic around food and give you options and give you freedom and, and get you to a point where you'll go, well, if all the options are bad, I just won't eat and that's okay and I will decide to fast for 18 or 24 or 36 or 48 hours till I get to whatever my destination is and have healthy options and I think that's a deeply empowering thing to know that you can do.

Geoffrey Woo: Yeah. I mean, it's quite apt for the title of this podcast, being SuperHuman, having superpowers. I mean, I think you hit it on the.in terms of look, if you really can't survive that food for 20 hours, 24 hours, and you think you're going to die because you don't need something for 24 hours, do you're quite a brittle life form. I mean, our ancestors had survived much, much more extreme conditions and I think it's like, to me, when I first started fasting, it was just realizing, Hey, I could run up.

It's like, I would say on par of like running a first half marathon or running at first math, I was like, well, I can do something that I thought was very, very harder if not impossible, but my limits in terms of how I can challenge my metabolism, how I can use my stored fat to fuel myself and not have to eat a snack every three hours.

That gives you that confidence that self-awareness, that, Hey, you can really push the limits of your lifestyle and really take and construct a lifestyle that's beneficial for you as opposed to passively receiving some sort of lifestyle and just accepting it and not, and being a very passive participant of your life.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, it actually reminds me now, now that we talk about it, it reminds me of Siddhartha by Herman Hessey who says, uh, you know, I can think I can wait, I can fast. Like, I can't do anything else, but I can do these three things and because I can wait and I can fast like I can do things that other people cannot, I can patiently wait until the right time until the right opportunity, because I'm not afraid of going hungry and he, he obviously says it in a very different context in India a hundred years ago, but it gives them, him literally the superpower to be like, I'll just wait. You know, I don't need to, uh, to sell my soul and, and, and try to earn money because I can, uh, I can fast and I think we're obviously not in that position anymore.

We have an overabundance of calories, but it's, it's similar, right? Being able to think weight and fast allow you to make healthier decisions for sure.

Geoffrey Woo: Yeah. I think that's, uh, I liked how you broaden out the notion of fasting and tying into patients. I think if you just look at modern culture today, it's very hard for people to be patient because you've just weaponized having these like instant interruption devices that tap into every single corner of the known world at our fingertips and I think intermittent fasting is a good approach to one specific aspect of input into our human system. It's the nutrition or dietary consumption part of our life.

But I think it's interesting to see if you can apply some of these principles around confessing to information too. I know that you're in at different times to blue lights, for example. And I think, I think that's similar thinking goes, uh, it can apply to a lot of aspects of modern life and it could be helpful in my estimation, having that reminder of patients.

And calmness helps you just be much more clear, much more thoughtful or how you actually want to live. I feel like all of us, are so reactive and so automated and so prime to just be audit, audit, automate on it's really like we're just in our groups and we just respond to inputs and we never really think about, is this response, the one I really want to have, right? It's very, I would say that, you know, sounds like, you know, listening to this podcast are probably just a lot more self-aware or self introspective to think about the meadow systems that govern themselves rather than, uh, being more passive consumers of life.

Jonathan Levi: Well, I certainly hope so after 260 something episodes, right? I want to ask you, Geoffrey, I've never tried exogenous ketones. I've always had the impression that it is, you know, for, for the couple. Uh, what, what do they call it? I'm blanking on the term for those who are a couple of standards of deviation out from the meme in terms of, uh, biohacking in terms of performance, in terms of athleticism, is that the case, or is, is this something that everyday people are doing as well?

Geoffrey Woo: Uh, popular use case a day is for elite endurance performers, but there's more and more emerging literature and research being done on how exotic is ketones like our ketone ester can be used to control, uh, and be used as a part of a healthy diet. So there was a recent a couple of papers published on, uh, university of British Columbia, uh, led by Dr. Jonathan Little or Professor, John John Little, who showed that a ketone Ester drink before, uh, oral glucose tolerance test, which is basically 75 grams of sugar in a bolus. So let basically two cans of Coke worth of sugar. Um, A ketone Ester drink before that glucose challenge reduces like lysogenic response and improves insulin sensitivity.

So what that means is that your blood sugar spike is much more mellow with a ketone Ester compared to a placebo intervention. So that leads to potential application for ketone esters to be potentially part of a more metabolically balanced diet were as opposed to having X carbs, X, protein, X, fat, maybe you have Y amount of ketones as part of a healthy diet.

And that's what, how this, I think can expand much more beyond just fuel for elite performance. Um, but on the performance side, a lot of people use it for things like, uh, jet lag is a popular use case. A lot of people like using it before public speaking, they feel like it makes them more lucid and clear. Uh, there seems to be emerging data around the anxiety analytic or anti-anxiety anxiety effects of ketones on the brain. So there's a lot of these interesting areas that have either early human or uh, fairly robust animal data and it's a relatively new area of research. You know, our ketone Ester for example, has only been commercially available for about a year and a half so researchers are just starting to do larger studies. Uh, to validate with higher-end sizes and wrote more rigorous experiments to really prove out and validate some of these exciting use cases.

Jonathan Levi: Very interesting and, and if I understand correctly, the idea behind kind of doing the exogenous ketones is you get all the benefits of ketones without having to wait potentially more than, you know, 18 hours to get into it or without having to be super, super strict about your diet to avoid, uh, shifting out of ketosis.

Geoffrey Woo: Yeah, I think that's, I mean, you come to think that's like the, one of the obvious use cases. I, I just omitted, I mean, a lot of people like thinking about it as bridging in the Ketos and things into ketosis, or like as a crutch or a cheat, literally, if you drink a ketone Ester drink it will spike your ketone levels to looking like you've been fasting for five to seven days. So it's a very, very quick way to get into deep ketosis. Uh, but I do want to cover it. It doesn't replace fasting. Fasting does more than just increase your ketone levels. So I think part of the upcoming research is understanding what part of the fast is due to the ketones themselves and what part of the benefits of fasting is due to overall the elimination of calories. And that's an interesting research question. My suspicion is that, uh, some of the benefits of fasting that comes through the ketones directly and some are more of overall color restriction or the elimination of calories.

Uh, and we'll see exactly the percentages and the breakdowns of what parts of the benefits of the fast, comfortable, which part of mechanisms.

Jonathan Levi: Really cool. Now I also want to ask you, cause I am browsing around website and I can tell that you're a Silicon Valley guy, because the branding is like, so on point, it feels like I'm shopping for a Tesla when I go on your website, but, um, I want to ask about MCT because MCT is also a way to speed up the transition into, um, into ketosis right? If I understand it correctly.

Geoffrey Woo: Yes. So MCT stands for Medium Chain Triglyceride. So this is a fat fatty acid for our product. We, for MCT, we use what's called caprylic acid or C8, which is the fatty acid chain. Uh, eight carbon lengths and that's the fat that is most readily converted into ketones beta-hydroxybutyrate uh, so what does that mean?

So ketone ester is basically a direct way to eat ketones and then MCT c8 is a really efficient way to eat fat that really converts into ketones. So caprylic acid found in coconut, uh, typically, um, and in our product, we make it really, really purified into a form that maximizes the CA content in a really yummy form factor. But in terms of the actual use case, A lot of people like MCTs as a way to get an increase in ketone production without, as, as a bit of a crutch as well. So it's, it's the way I think about it is it's an easy way to add more healthy fats.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah and I love powdered MCT. Uh, I find it like the easiest way to just add in healthy fats and I actually years ago replaced, um, Any, I mean, I, I try not to consume any dairy products whatsoever, but even like replacing out the almond milk that you would put in your coffee or whatever, and replacing it with a powdered MCT oil. I know a lot of people like to put a liquid one in, cause that's kind of the Bulletproof recipe, but that can give you disaster pants as Tim Ferris used to say so I love the powder and stuff personally.

Geoffrey Woo: Yeah. We'll send you some, I mean, I, yeah, I think I've tried all of them. I think, you know, not to overly show here, but I think our tastes the best

Jonathan Levi: I would love to and I'm dying to try these exogenous ketones. So I will, uh, I'll give you my credit card as soon as we get off the air here. Um, cause that would be really cool. Geoffrey I would love to know what you're excited about not just in, in modern nutrition, but what are the biohacks that you're most excited about right now? What are the devices you're using the wearables, the apps, like, take me a little bit through your own personal SuperHuman routine?

Geoffrey Woo: We can talk about things like continuous glucose monitors, heart rate, variability, trackers, all that sort of techie stuff. But I would say that you have 20, 20, I've almost gone back to the basics.

You know, uh, I've been really just fascinated by the concept of the Lindy effect, things that have perpetuated and been successful through millennia seem to have much more staying power than things that are like the next big side and like things like keto, for example, You know, it's been around in various iterations through Atkins diet, and then it's been studied for, as you mentioned before, epilepsy in the early 1900's and different, uh, hunter-gatherer communities have been dating basically ketogenic.

Um, so the concept that I've been thinking a lot about is getting myself out of the human zoo. So, what I mean by that is like a couple of years ago, uh, the opportunity to go on a safari in Tanzania and sing just wildlife in nature. Um, next time I went to a zoo, it just really struck me that zoo animals are just depressed, sad, mimicry of their world, their wild counterparts.

Then I think about what human society looks like today. I presume you're in your, either your office studio, your home studio. I'm currently taping from my, uh, my home living room, and I spent a lot of my time here in this box. I spent a lot of time in my office box and I spent a little bit of time in my gym box.

And oftentimes I'm commuting between those three boxes in a little smaller box with a wheel on it and we're and, and, and we're just in this artificially lit box all the time and looking at other like others and looking at devices that shine lightens her eyes.

Jonathan Levi: What did you describe it that way? It almost sounds like a form of torture and we will protect ourselves.

Geoffrey Woo: Right and I don't think it's not a conscious twist. I don't think anyone designed tortured, uh, systems for all of culture today are all society today. But I think when I, when I think back around broader social-cultural problems today, again, I think folks listening to those podcasts are probably in the first role.

You're probably not faced with war or famine and we're really fortunate to do so, but even in that case, it feels like there's a lot of mental issues, depression, uh, of Malays. If you will, in terms of the PR people excited about what they're doing and about pushing the limits, I feel like a lot of people are, are trying to tap into amnesia or sedative or, uh, uh, painkillers or anesthetic to like numb their existence and I think my sense is that we just constructed and unknowingly constructed a very zoo-like environment for all of us to live in. So my thinking to counteract this is no, we're not going to be Luddites and then just go move to a national park and camp 24/7. Although that might be nice for some individuals.

I think it's about just incorporating, uh, more movement into my everyday workflow. So I like having, you know, wearing a weight vest out in a bat when I'm doing chores. I like having kettlebells around where in between calls or in between meetings, I can do a few kettlebell swings or do some, you know, we have a pull-up bar at our office do some pull-ups between, uh, different workstreams.

Um, just trying to integrate much more activity of what I would imagine. Uh, uh, more non-stationary wives so we'll look like, I think there's a lot of, I think, exploration to be done in that front. Um, some, you know, some more practical, more tactical things. I think a hot sauna in terms of elevating heat, shock proteins, eliminating growth hormone after heavy workout has been a very reliable thing I like to do after workouts and the data behind saunas is pretty compelling and there's more research, especially on a Finland, uh, around that topic. Um, yeah, diet obviously is a huge lever. I, and I think I have an interesting relationship with meditation or mindfulness. Um, I've never stuck to a meditation protocol, but talking with elite performers, elite athletes, I think that when they're in the flow state of really being peak performance, My sense is that that is a meditative state in of itself and my thinking around that is there's a lot of ways to get to a flow state or a peak meditative state, or that's through sitting on a couch or sitting in a dark corner for 30 minutes a day, or that's doing yeah, something that's really proficient at like you're running an ultra-marathon or you're being able to find God in your art or your work or your or I'm not even in the conversation, maybe. Um, so I've been, that's something that I've been kind of internal grappling with how to present grateful, mindful without necessarily being I guess, prescriptive of like, oh, listen to a meditation app for five minutes a day and that's not good. I don't, that, that, that seems very fake and even marketing speak to me.

Absolutely. Well, Geoffrey, we have officially run out of time and I feel like we could talk for another hour. Uh, I want to give you an opportunity to let people know where they can learn more about you getting contact, check out HVMN products, et cetera.

Yeah. Thanks. Uh, HVMN.com. Uh, uh, we have all the social channels at, HVMN.

Uh, all the company stuff is there. Uh, we're we're very easily find-able. And then just want to click more with you personally. I love, I love talking to. Uh, folks. So, um, on Instagram and Twitter, primarily @geoffreywoo. You can find me there.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Well, Geoffrey this has been an absolute pleasure. I definitely learned a lot. I know our audience did too. Last question. I always ask before I let people go. If people take away one big message from this episode and they carry it with them for the rest of their lives, what would you hope for that to be?

Geoffrey Woo: I think it would be look at intermittent fasting as a thoughtful way to understand and be proactive of how you want to consume and eat food and then apply that principle to everything else in their life.

Once you have that notion or idea that yes, you can not just take the world and culture as is, and you can actually be proactive and thoughtful around changing your lifestyle to fit what your goals are, that unlocks, I think a magic superpower or superhuman ability to apply that same principle to every aspect of your life, whether that's through your career, personal life or fitness, uh, everything else.

Jonathan Levi: Amazing. Geoffrey Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Geoffrey Woo: Thanks, Jonathan.

Closing: Thanks for tuning into the award-winning SuperHuman Academy Podcast for more great skills and strategies or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit superhuman.blog while you're at it please take a moment to share this episode with a friend and a review on iTunes. We'll see you next week.