096: Latt Mansor Ph.D., Research Lead at H.V.M.N.:Ketones— Could They Revolutionize Your Sleep, Health, and Life?

Welcome to the Sleep is a Skill podcast. My name is Mollie McGlocklin, and I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology, accountability and behavioral change. Each week I'll be interviewing world class experts, ranging from doctors, innovators, and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper.

Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training.

Welcome to the Sleep As a Skilled podcast. My guest today is Dr. La Mansur, and we are gonna be speaking about all things ketones. And if you're not familiar with why you might wanna know about ketones as it relates to sleep, you are going to be in for a treat, but not only just sleep, but ways to really optimize your biology throughout the course of your day before.

Podcast. I actually had a dose of ketones from H V M N, and there's various sources that you can get for ketones. You can create your own as well if you abide by, um, or practice, things like going into ketosis and how you can create your own ketones. But if you're not going into ketosis on a regular basis, how you might be able to leverage ketones for your own personal use to up-level your performance throughout the day, but also how that might play a role.

Sleep, and I think you're gonna really enjoy this conversation. Beyond that, one of the things that we touch on that I'm really personally excited about is this concept of how ketones might be playing a role in our mental health. One area that's really of note is this concept of metabolic psychiatry or mitochondrial psychiatry.

Dr. Chris Palmer out of Harvard is helping to bring light to this area and understanding. Ketones might be able to play a role in kind of calming, uh, brain inflammation in a particular way that might help lead to alleviations of particular types of mental health symptoms. And when we talk about sleep, our mental health cannot be divorced from that conversation.

And that is just one piece of the puzzle. Now, anecdotally, many people report and will take in screenshots of their wearable data and show improvements in things like their deep sleep in particular, by virtue of playing with some of the dosage of ketones and supplementing with ketones. Now, again, this is anecdotal.

We need to have more and more studies and there are being more and more studies done. So we do touch on some of that in today's conversation. But I'm gonna let you hear what we actually discussed. I'm gonna, I'm gonna share a little bit about Dr. Laman, so, so you get real understanding of his breadth of knowledge.

So he holds a PhD in physiology, anatomy, and Genetics from the University of Oxford, where his research focus on the metabolism of type two diabetic heart inx. He also holds a master's from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Nottingham and Biotechnology. He's a world expert in physiology and metabolism and consults with elite sports, military clinical, and research organizations.

Couple things to note. He's a principal investigator of a $6 million military contract. On exogenous ketones is an interest in previous research and diabetes in cardiovascular disease and a personal health journey from smoking c succession to weight loss. So we're gonna touch on a lot of these topics in today's conversation.

So without further ado, let's jump in. And I almost forgot, H V M M did hook us up with a discount code. Always love that. You can go to H V M. Dot me slash sleep is a skill for a discount. Again, that is Hvm n Me slash Sleep is a skill. We will also include this in our show notes. Now, one other thing to mention, because I don't think I've mentioned it yet here, is that we finally have a store, which is exciting and.

So a couple things. One, we have a store. It's on sleep as a skill.com/store, and if you go there, one of the things that our aim is, is that you have a plethora of just products or solutions to problems that have been impeding your sleep. If you have things that have really made a difference with your sleep, your health, and well, And I'll relate back to this skillset of sleep, please let us know.

We are really committed to making this a robust place for people to go to have steps that they can take to improve their sleep. My goodness. So please check out ours. Store and let us know if there are things that are missing there. We're gonna be updating this dynamically, so continue to come back again and again as our aim to see the latest and greatest new gadgets and gizmos or things that can really support your journey with your sleep.

So I get a lot of questions around sleep supplements, and I'm very hesitant to just throw out a whole laundry list of possibilities. One, I don't think it's the most responsible thing to do. I really do believe in testing to see what types of supplements make sense for you. And two, because I really truly believe that most of the things that you can do to improve your sleep are behavioral, psychological, environmental in nature, and often don't cost a.

However, there is one supplement that I personally take every day and that I do feel quite comfortable with suggesting for most individuals to experiment with because of couple of reasons. It's high safety profile and high rates of deficiencies in our modern society. Some put the numbers as somewhere around 80% of the population being deficient in this one area, and that is magnesium.

So magnesium has been called the calming mineral, and some report that magnesium can increase gaba, which encourages relaxation on a cellular level, which is critical for sleep. Magnesium also plays a key role in regulating our body's stress response system. Those with magnesium deficiency usually have higher anxiety and stress levels, which negatively impacts sleep As.

Now before you go out and buy a magnesium supplement, it's important to understand that most magnesium products out there are either synthetic or they only have one to two forms of magnesium. When in reality, your body needs all seven forms of this essential sleep mineral. So that's why I recommend a product from my friends over at Bio Optimizers.

They have created something called the Magnesium Breakthrough, and taking this magnesium before bed helps you relax and wake up, refresh and energize. And while we don't recommend that you go two nuts on looking at all the sleep stage classifications on all your wearables. I will share anecdotally that many clients have reported improvements in their deep sleep trend numbers.

Again, I don't want you going nuts on the sleep stage classification numbers on your wearables, but I do wanna let you know about that because I know that many of you do reach out on questions of how to improve your deep sleep. So I also love that bio optimizers offers free shipping on select orders, and they offer a 365 day money back guarantee on all their products.

Plus they have a customer satisfaction rating of 99.3%. Very impressive, and you can get 10% off magnesium breakthrough. Again, this is the same magnesium that I use every single. And finally you can get 10% off magnesium breakthrough. Again, that's the magnesium supplement that I use every single night by going to www dot mag m a g.

So mag breakthrough.com/sleep as a skill, and be sure to use the code sleep as a skill for 10% off. And welcome to the Sleep is a Skill podcast. This is gonna be a good one for you all. We have a lot of topics to cover in a relatively short period of time, so it's gonna be action fact. Really, just thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

I really, really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Molly. Thank you for having me. Oh, this is gonna be awesome. I know you got a whole lineup of a lot of podcasts today, and you've got a lot of people that are interested in the work you're doing. So why don't just share a little bit about what is the work that you're doing and how in the world does it relate to sleep?

Oh God. Um, where do I start? Yeah, right, . So I am, I'm currently the research lead of H V M N Health, bio Modern Nutrition, and also the main. Of the H V M N podcast that you can, you know, listen on on Spotify, apple Podcast, YouTube. What I do at H V M N is I'm in charge of the overall research and development collaborations with institutions, with researchers, with professors around ketones, especially exhort ketones because we as a company, we sell Exogen Keto, which is Keto iq, as you can see, or around here, behind me, it is essentially our run rebooting dial.

and we want to use it as the most efficient and cost efficient way for you to elevate your blood PhD, B level. Essentially. Uh, my background is in medical science. It's in physiology, uh, anatomy and genetics. I got my PhD from Oxford. In, uh, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, looking at type two diabetic heart and the soft string metabolism in hypoxia.

So that's very, very specific as we know here. Know, PhD, you sort of go narrow, narrow down, um, master of one and, you know, , my master's was from Columbia University and New York. That was my first time in America, um, that was in biotechnology. . And before that I also did my undergrad in biotechnology from University of Nottingham.

That was more of a broad scale. You know, you learn everything from microbiology to genetics, to plant science, to animal physiology, you know, you name it. . And if you go before that, I'm born and bred in Malaysia. I'm haven't left my country until I was 20 and left to go to UK to start my undergrad. I did, uh, have a bit of working experience before coming to H V M N in health tech area.

Uh, so after my. PhD. I worked in a health tech diabetes management program in Singapore for a year and a half before coming out and starting my own company around health tech using chatbot to help people understand their blood test results. Mm-hmm. Uh, and that was in Malaysia. And then after a year and a half, H B M and found me and I started working for them.

Wow, that's amazing. I didn't realize that background. That's so cool that the chatbot too. Where did you say the chatbot was? That was in Malaysia. Can we still access that? Cause that would be useful over here, . I think my, my co-founder's still working on it. I don't think they've launched it yet. Um, definitely in a while.

I think he might have other distractions going on, but it's really sort of not really.  replacing the role of a doctor and interpreting your results. It's more around making people, just helping people understand what L D L is, what triglycerides are, what a S t L T, you know, your enzymes, uh, your liver enzymes are what, what significance.

that actually holds, I think that in and of itself is a lot of knowledge for people. Rather than spending just 15, 10, 15 minutes with your doctor and your doctor said everything is in range, like what does that even mean? I think that knowing more means that you can encourage people to go for more and of checkups.

People can be more cognizant of their health, biomarkers and therefore, Just being able to catch things earlier, you can sort of prevent so much chronic disease that that could potentially be harmful, harmful to you and, and as a result of lifestyle. Really cool. Okay, so some really cutting edge things that you've been a part of and now you've found yourself.

In the thick of it with H V M N, how in the world does this relate to sleep? Please help bridge that gap for people. So I think with H V M N, it's health, vitamin, and nutrition, right? Yeah. And what is health in general? So a lot of people, when they think of health, they think of fitness, they think of gym, right?

As I speak a lot about it on my podcast as well, it goes beyond that. It goes beyond just going for a run. It goes beyond just lifting weights. It has a lot to do with mental health. It's a lot to do with recovery. Yeah. And when you talk about recovery, you cannot talk about recovery without talking about sleep.

Yeah. So if you go train, train hard, you've got to also spend equally, you know, amount of effort to recover, to let your body really adapt to. Training because when you provide stimulus to increase, you know, either increase weight, uh, increase intensity, you are essentially introducing stress to your body.

And this is what we call sis, right? Mm-hmm.  the right amount of stress will train ourselves and train our bodies to adapt and then be stronger. So what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I, that is literally what it is. But at the same time, you need to, you. Have that, that amount of recovery and rest needed.

So in terms of exhort ketones, the role of exhort ketones in sleep per se, uh, we know Donda Augustino have published quite a few papers. Yeah. Uh, talking about the role of ketones in acting upon the gagic pathway on relaxation and how ketones could be analytic. So not only ketones can give the. That your brain needs or being the preferred fuel, at least in the brain and heart that we can definitely see in, in research, but it could also potentially be unrealistic and, and some people ask the question, how can you market a product?

That is supposed to give your brain boost, like mental clarity, but also at the same time relaxation. Yeah. And my answer to that is that don't look at keto as a stimulant. Yeah. It's not like caffeine where it stimulates that, that sort of, uh,  energy, it just provides, it's the substrate. It's the same as glucose.

It's the same as fat. It provides energy a t p to your brain. It is preferred because we have seen the uptake of keto is directly proportional to the availability of ketones in the brain. So the brain does like ketones and it metabolize it for energy, but it.  act on, you know, those pathway that, that stimulate you and make you, you know, go jittery and have heart palpitation and have vessel constriction.

So in that sense, you are providing energy, but because of the signaling effect on the GABA pathway, you can have a relaxed sort of state as well. So you are having an end sort of gentler version of energy or clean energy, however you want to put it. It's more of a subtle energy. So well said. And I love how you pointed out the.

The, the kind of paradoxical effect or paradoxical topics that we're introducing of both giving energy, but also being able to help us relax. And that can be a hard place for us to stand to understand how that can be both at the same time. And that's one of the things that we've seen people certainly, at least what some of the things I've seen from an anecdotal perspective of some things that people have noted from their sleep.

Have you been able to see things as far as clear studies that. To ketones, extras, and sleep. More of what I've been seeing has been kind of in conversation and, and, uh, kind of a hypothesis, but I'm curious if you've been able to locate anything there. We haven't. I've always been really interested to look ex Azure's ketones and HR V, for example, you know?

Yes. And sleep. I know that I've been speaking to Dr. Jonathan Weiser from Washington State University. Okay. In animals, they have shown that during sleep cycle, , the animals actually upregulate ke related metabolic pathways and metabolic hormones. . In other words, it seems to me that when they are asleep, these animals, the, either the brain or the body basically tells, tells the cells to, to upregulate ketones.

And it could be because you know, of the relaxation effect, but it could also be a complete, like different pathway that really helps with either recovery or signaling anything. Mm-hmm. , they don't know the. Mechanism as to why it upregulates ketones, right? But they have seen the pattern of upregulation, of keto hormones and enzymes, keto related, um, hormones and enzymes during sleep cycle.

So the whole idea came about. So we just submitted a grant with them to look at using exogenous ketones to. , improve the quality of sleep, but also decreasing that sleep cycle. Is it possible to reduce the amount of time where you sleep, but increase the quality so you still get the same sort of quality you need for recovery, for resting, and still be productive the next day?

And this is very important for military, right? If you are awake longer as productive, imagine how much. Things, you know, how much more you can do within that amount of time versus, you know, if you're fighting in the field with your, your enemies. Sure. Absolutely. And I'm wondering if you could share a little bit more about, um, your connection, what you've been seeing with the military, and how H V M N has, you know, kind of joined forces with on that topic.

Sure. So currently we have a 6 million grant, which is an S T T R phase two that H V M N is a prime contractor of. And I'm the principal investigator for this project. And we are looking at using exogenous ketones on cognitive and physical performance in hypoxia. So this is very relevant for people, for operators, and this is, you know, working with special operators in high alt.

So when we are at high altitude, you are experiencing hypoxia, which is low oxygen environment. And when you're experiencing hypoxia, you will get a decline of cognitive function because as we know, oxygen is super important for respiration. And respiration is super important to generate energy or an A T P, and when you have lack of oxygen, Obviously the generation HTB will get affected negatively and as a result, whatever brain function that you would normally have would get impacted negatively as well.

So what we have seen so far in phase one that has been published is that that cognitive decline got mitigated by ketones. And this study we are using Keto Nest and full transparency here. Yeah, we are using keto nesters because. Awarded to us in 2019, the phase two. And at that point we were still selling ketones nester, which we now called the Generation one ketones, nester and ketones.

Nester essentially is A B H, B bound to R three, but dial in an Esther bond, and that's the molecule, that's why it's called Keto nester. And BH B is, you know, one of the three main key bodies that our bodies produce. The other two being ATO acetate and acetone. So right now, keto iq, our current product is, R three Beauty Niles.

So currently pure R one three Beauty Knowledge. Basically half of what ketones Nester was because we found that it's just more cost effective to produce and to sell. So we drive the cost down. And on top of that, the taste of keto nester is very bitter. So one of the tasks of this project, so we have about seven.

Main base task with sub-tasks. So task one is actually improving the flavor. So we work with Mon, which is a sensory research center who are experts in flavoring, in sensory and receptors in your tongue and all of that. We worked with them to try and improve the flavor, and it's a flavor r and d essentially, however, no matter what,  sweetness that they use.

They have tried everything. They tried, yes. You know, sucroses equivalent to seven times in a can of Coke and SLOs. That's four times in a can of Diet Coke. And not only they didn't decrease the bitterness of ketones. Nester on the contrary, ketones nester actually masked the sweetness that comes from these sweeteners.

So in and I presented this, uh, result at the Metabolic Health Summit. This. In, um, Santa Barbara in May. So that was a very interesting point, just showing by nature that molecule is such a strong molecule in terms of taste that is so difficult to flavor. So, but using r Throughput in our, we have found.

Much better avenues to improve the taste. Now granted, I'm not gonna say that it tastes like soda. Yeah. Uh, it still tastes, you know, like how it, it tastes like it works, but it's certainly much better than, um, keto nester. So, you know, two main points, cost and taste as well as efficiency. You know, we are seeing elevation of blood BHP to, you know, a decent amount up to 1.52 millimolar, uh, depending on the dose.

why not? So that is what we did with the military and so far I can't share all of the results because Sure. You know, um, we haven't published yet and all that, but I can tell you that we have seen an improvement in oxygen saturation in high altitude. So we are looking at improved function in terms of cognition when they.

Fatigued and worked out already in a hypoxic chamber, and we saw an improvement in memory recall and vigilance in reaction time when they're on ketones. So cool. Okay, so, uh, a number of people listening are likely tracking or considering tracking they're health and very, in various regards, and certainly their sleep in this convers.

and we have heard many reports of people being frustrated when they go to altitude or at finding themselves at altitude, and then they see a drop in their H R V A rise up in their heart rate, et cetera, et cetera. So is there any sort of dosing recommendation? I mean, you know, this is just generalized of course, and I know you, uh, still publish and what have you, but is there, say if people are consistently taking keto nesters, like so for me, I can share that I'm taking keto nesters at different points to help support lowering of caffeine.

Routinely, and then I'll use them for, I, I just had some before this podcast and I really, really love to utilize them for cognitive performance and just, you know, that boost. And I also like it for kind of a state change alternative and, you know, granted different people of different preferences for these things.

But I love the idea of using those in lieu of alcohol or what have you, just like, you know, feeling really ready. And so if someone is like myself and they're consistently taking this, would you suggest taking more than normal at altitude or is it too early to say any call outs there? So one thing that we see in research is that most of these research are weight, body weight matched.

So you know, they are either, you know, they go between 0.3 to 0.5 gram per kilogram of body weight. Okay? So where I'm talking about the active ingredient, right? Either the keto or R three B 10 dial. So in that sense, you will always tend to dose higher than the recommended dose if you want to compare the results directly to these studies.

However, having said. Some people just want to use it for mental clarity or you know, in nomia, in it's on C level. Then single dose for our key to iq. I can speak for, I can't speak for other companies. Obviously one dose contains 10 grams of R rebuttal. Most people feel that that is more than enough for them to get that mental boost already.

if it's for working out, like usually we'll ask, we, we'll recommend people to take, you know, two doses or two and a half doses depending on your body weight. Some people feel better when they take more, especially when they go for performance, but for mental clarity, I think across the board, most people find one dose to be quite sufficient.

Great. Okay. Amazing. And so with that, would you say, you know, just jumping around on different topics as we relate to, as we bring it back to sleep, specifically while we're talking about dosing, have you found or heard of different things that people have been successful for, uh, with as they're taking it more closer to the evening?

A lot of people report improvements in, you know, Received or objective readouts of deep sleep. I'm always hesitant to say that just because we know that sleep staging, um, on a lot of these trackers are not the most accurate, but people will see a kind of a noteworthy shift in whatever algorithm each individual tracker is using.

So I'm just curious if you've, um, kind of landed on any kind of recommendations for that. That's a great question. I was literally talking about this bit right before our recording with my editor Chris. Yeah. We were literally talking about taking ketones, uh, to sleep because I told him that last night. I usually take ketones before bed, so I personally do it myself, and I find that it, it does improve my sleep quality and my recovery quite a bit.

But as far as research data goes, I don't have any, any data to pack it up as of now. But I am planning to get an aura ring and really measure before and after with or without ketones. If you wanna work with any of our people, by the way, cuz we have cohorts and everyone has to wear an aura ring. So we've got lots of people with lots of data.

Happy. Oh yeah, of course. Collaborate. Yeah. . Yeah. No, absolutely. Molly. Yeah. Let's follow up after this. I'm happy to send you some samples. Let them have it before bed. And what I find very useful is not to take like an hour before bed, like literally take it right before bed and then go to bed. It's because if you take it an hour, so the way I see ketones, it's like a, an adaptive.

if you would. Mm-hmm. . So instead, like, like glucose or, or fats, it's more adaptive to the stimulus that you provide your body. So let's say you take Heatons and you work out, it gives you energy to work out. If you take heatons and go on podcasts, it gives you the mental clarity and, and it really connects your brain to your mouth.

And if you take it and you relax, , it sort of helps you relax, but if you take it an hour before and then you watch TV and then you go, brain start, you know, all the gears start turning again. Yeah. Then it keeps you awake because your, your brain is now active because you already provided the energy. But if you take it right before and then you just relax or have meditation, I usually do that and we can talk about it at the end as well.

what I do for as a routine. Yeah, please. But I would definitely send some samples to you and, and have your cohorts really try it before bed and, and look at the data. We would love that. Oh my goodness. Although I have a slight suspicion that I feel that the anecdotal and subjective feedback may be more significant compared to objective measures.

I. The effect of ketones in relaxation and sleep doesn't move the objective measures so significantly unless you have a big cohort. But I know from an anecdotal point of view, a lot of people have reported to to sleep better on Oh yeah. . I've seen that many a times. Okay. So the other thing I was just curious about, and I know we're just talking about kind of, um, certain things that we're speculating on in particular regard.

We're still waiting for more and more research to be done, and thank you again for your work and spearheading some of this just amazing. I'm just curious, just. When you mention some of its effects in the realm of kind of GABA receptors and in that domain, one of the things that comes to mind for me are the many people that come our way that are discussing their, their difficulties, whether they've utilized or still utilizing or have gotten off of.

things like benzodiazepines and Z drugs. So you know, the Xanaxes, the ambience, all of these. And then they are dealing with some kind of dysregulation as it relates to gaba. And again, I know we're just kind of spitballing here, but I'm curious if you feel like there's a possibility that we might be able to explore that that might be helpful in the realm of psychiatry and looking at how that might be helpful for a lowering of an anxiety in particular.

That is really, really great topic to discuss because I actually finished writing a review paper on metabolic psychiatry on the role of ketones, both endogenous and exogenous, and possibly deal with psychiatry. And we focus on three main areas. One is major depressive disorder, two is anxiety, and third is schizophrenia.

And recently also, if you look at Andrew Huber, Podcast, Chris Palmer. He, he interviewed Chris Palmer. And guess what? Chris Palmer is also coming on H V M N podcast next month, so I will be interviewing him as well. Uh, so we have a lot to talk about in metabolic psychiatry because Chris talked about all these studies and all these research showing just ketogenic diet alone, improve the symptoms, but.

you know, managed to reduce all these medications and have better outcomes compared to existing standard treatments. And that in and of itself is so powerful, and I know it doesn't bode well with big farmers. It doesn't go well with all these drug companies that sell these drugs for, you know, a lot of money.

but let's focus for a second on the outcomes of these patients, right? If they have something that work for them, let's for a second, you know, put that ketogenic diet, like, uh, adherence and, and compliance aside. Just the fact that you can just use a diet, a metabolic intervention in a therapeutic way. It's so powerful.

So yes, I absolutely think that ketones have a big role to play in psychiatry because if you look. , all these psychiatric disorders, like for example, anxiety is just over expectation, right Of of certain pathways. And if you take into account the antic effect of ketones used in these patients, it's a no-brainer.

I mean, one is over excitation, the other one helps you relax. So, . I mean, it's the literal opposite. And you know, just run a study and, and we'll know. And we also in, in conversation with PIM as well, I dunno if you've heard from them. Yeah. So Zach Williams, Organization and I spoke to their chief medical officer and they have a large cohort looking at at psychiatric disorder and he's also interested in using running, you know, studies using Keto iq.

Fantastic. No, this is very near and dear. My heart and I think really can be really impactful for many listeners because we certainly cannot. The experience of our mental health and our results with our sleep, and they're so interconnected and we so often find that now the first line recommendation for sleep difficulties is to look at cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

So it's looking at the thoughts and from a psychological perspective. , but what if we were to combine all of these and look at the biology in a pro form a bidirectional relationship and what Chris Palmer is doing? So happy that you mentioned that, and I'm gonna be fascinated to listen to that podcast and I hope everyone else does too with you all.

I've listened to three of his podcasts just recently. It's really a big deal for me. I, I'm dealing with a very close family member that's going through some really profound psychiatric difficulties. They're dealing with things, schizoaffective, bipolar, and when we hear those things in some of the, the courses that they're being put on at the moment, uh, from the general approach, it's, it is the workable approach that we have on the books right now.

But some of the things that we're talking about in this conversation, I think are what could be next and very, very exciting. So, I, I'm so sorry to hear that about, about your family member as well. Thank you outta respect for them. I don't share their details too much, but it is so, you know, just so challenging to see and I'm so hopeful to see what's on the horizon for things like these topics of metabolic psychiatry, nutritional, psychiatry, different labels for, you know, this idea that we can actually make such a profound difference from a lifetime style perspective.

Absolutely. Like brain energetics, um, metabolism has been so,  when it comes to psychiatry and people think it's, it's something else. It's genetics and, and all of that. But now that we are starting to see more research around the deficiency and energy in all these patients, and the lack of interaction between the brain regions that can be improved using ketones.

It opens up a whole new avenue on on treatment options. And anecdotally, like I was on Lisa Tamar's podcast yesterday, she's from New Zealand, and her mom had aneurysm, stroke, brain tumor, and multiple concussions. And after taking keto an IQ. She can talk and her coordination is better and she can go for walks, and she just literally said it just night and day and it's like a switch turn on.

And that was such a gratifying feel for me. Yeah. As a researcher at H V M and just showing that. , our product actually works and actually helps people. One of our colleague, her mom, is going through Ms. Uh, multiple sclerosis, and she has seen significant improvement in cognition when given a keto iq, like taken twice a day.

So I can't wait to share that. , all these different research and, and currently we also have another ground in review with the Naval Health Research Center looking at traumatic brain injury because we know in traumatic brain injury, from a acute point of view, you get hypermetabolism glucose. It's either the brain is ticking in all the glucose.

To increase energy generation because of the damage and because of a certain blockage of substrate end. So you need more energy to compensate or some research show that they are taking in the the glucose and shove it into the pantos phosphate pathway to mitigates damage. Either way, there is an increase in glucose uptake.

And then long-term, then that's acute and over long-term, the brain slowly goes into hypo metabolism of glucose and show the deficiency in metabolizing glucose. Now, this is very interesting and how keto comes in is I imagine if at the. Event at the moment where T B I occurs and you provide ketones to help with the energy demand that it needs to either mitigate the damage or compensate with the energy deficiency, and then over long term, we are providing ketones also to really compensate that deficiency in metabolizing glucose.

And this we have also seen in Alzheimer's where they have. Almost like an insulin resistance in the brain because they can't metabolize glucose as efficiently. So this is the grant that we, we apply for. And fingers crossed if we get it, we'll, we'll look at, you know how this turns out in humans because t bs studies are a bit difficult in humans cuz you're not gonna.

Get these participants and hit them in the head and this is what happens, right? So, so we are looking at midterm to long-term effects of people who have already had TPIs and having difficulty either with their eye coordination or mortal sensors or these different difficulties or, or memory recall and will look at the effect if given Keto iq, what will.

Wow. So cool. Well, that is really exciting. I'm so excited to follow your work and what comes of these things. And just throwing out a couple quick things, I'm curious, as you were speaking, if any of these you think could have applicability. So as we speak about hypoxia, one of the things that comes to mind in the sleep realm being sleep apnea or difficulty with breathing, respiratory issues, upper airway resistance syndrome, or any realm of.

Struggle to breathe throughout the course of the night. Do you feel, and again, I know sometimes we're speaking in what we theories potentially, but do you feel like that is a possible line of, uh, thinking that would make sense that people that are dealing with those things might benefit from keto nesters?

Before we go there, actually I was gonna add something on the psychiatry and let's not forget the anti-inflammatory properties of keto as well. So in, in my paper that, that I'm, I'm, you know, currently reviewing and hopefully sending in for, for peer review. We talked about a lot of mechanism of action in terms of.

The effect of ketones on bdnf. The effect on lowering I L six, which is INKIN six, is the cytokines that is upregulated in during inflammation and even during workout. It's really upregulated and we have seen that in psychiatric disorders. It's a very high regulation of i L six, TNF alpha. That's another, uh, biomarker that is often being brought up.

It shows that. Ketogenic diet or ketones in general have a positive rate on, on these biomarkers. So just just to add that on that, and in terms breathing and sleep apnea and all that, I don't believe I've seen any research specifically to that. Mm-hmm.  as to theoretical, I, I don't know enough about. Sleep apnea to really comment on the link between keto metabolism and sleep apnea, because obviously we gotta be really careful here as well to not really say like keto will solve all problems.

Right? Keto is not a miracle drug, and I always tell people the first thing to do when it comes to lifestyle intervention is to really focus on the foundation. Your food, your nutrition diet, your sleep, your exercise, your physical activity, your mental wellbeing. You know, whether you, you go for a walk, whether you go see nature, whether you meditate, you went to yoga, all of that aspect that you spend majority of the hours of the day in fixed dose first, and then you bring in supplementation and keto supplementation.

Exor, keto is one of those supplementation that you can bring into, enhance, and further optimize that lifestyle. . But if you just hope that keto will miraculously fix your problems and chronic disease, that's going to be a problem in and of the cell. Because we are not trying to push a drug like a big pharma, for example.

We're trying to push a lifestyle and a healthy sort of practice, and for some people, keto IQ could compliment that life. Oh, so well said. And I really, I love your website too. How you speak to this as this isn't, you're not a keto diet company. There's an entire spectrum that you're speaking to, this health optimizer, the athlete, the, you know, knowledge.

Well, okay. Right, right. The people curious about, certainly it doesn't exclude keto, keto dieters as well, but you've got this, all of these different advantages that can come from ketones and, and you're speaking to. Fundamental pyramid of beginning in a holistic perspective and then seeing what this could do to kinda augment your results.

Really fantastic. And now I'm thinking we might be able to just, I love the, the deep thinking that we've clearly done in this area and beyond. So I'm curious what we can learn from how you're managing your own lifestyle, your own sleep as it were, and how that might show up with your management, with your ketones, Esther as well.

So we do ask everyone four questions, and the first one that we always ask is, what is your current nightly sleep routine looking like? So my current sleep machine, I talked about this for a bit as well and, and just to clarify, the exogenous keto that I use is Keto iq. That is not keto, that is R one through.

But now, so a lot of people can Oh, thank you. I keep saying that. No, no, no, no, that's fine cuz a lot of people, because keto I ke didn't mean to be fair, keto is the most established molecule that has been in research for sure. Almost, you know, of two decades I believe. And a lot of this reference, even us, you know, when we reference, we do say  like we have been very transparent, at least for.

I've been very transparent whenever a study refer to keto nester, I'll say keto nester, and there's a study on R run through beauty dial, which is Keto iq. I'll say that. So for me, what I, I do in terms of sleeping routine, I actually started meditation about. A couple of months ago now it's maybe around August, and I find that very, very helpful.

I, I never thought it would be as helpful as it did, but I would pair keto an IQ with, uh, YRN, which is a neutropic that we, we sell. It has altheine l glycine, magnesium glycinate.  and melatonin. Mm-hmm. . So very simple, you know, sort of ingredients. You can get it off the counter, but it just so happened that we have it.

So you know, I just take it. So I take that and it's very low melatonin as well. It's about one to two milligram. I pair that with Keto IQ and then I'll meditate for about 20 minutes. Guide it meditation. , and then that's my sleep routine. That's very simple. That usually really puts me in this relaxed state and just, you know, have a good night's sleep.

And then in the morning, I'll start with morning meditation. Admittedly, I, I should do it more consistently than I am doing right now because I've been traveling a lot in this few weeks for like, you know, company and podcasts. Last week I was just at University of North Georgia because we ran our first.

Ketones IQ clinical trial because we just launched Keystone iq. You know, in January. It's not the first ever R three Butin dial because R through Butin dial has been researched since 1960s. But Ketones iq specifically our product, we just ran first study and we show super amazing results because for the first time ever, we are looking at improvement in anaerobic exercise using Keto iq.

And all this while, whenever you talk about keto cell or exogenous ketones, it's always sy. With endurance exercise, with triathletes, with cyclists. So this time we are looking at power output, we're looking at fatigue levels and it's really interesting data. Can't share too much because we are in the middle of writing the manuscript to publish in February.

So look forward to it. And I will definitely host a podcast session with the professor who ran the study. Professor Parkery. Who got his PhD from Jeff Molik. So we all know who, you know, Jeff Molik is, you know, big name in Kitogenic diet sort of space, TER Health, you know, co-founder. So it's, it's a very, very interesting world.

Fantastic. Ooh, that's very exciting. Okay, so, and I'm glad that you're, now you've introduced this meditation, you're finding these benefits for yourself as you manage all of these things and the travel and what.  absolutely for me. And I brought, uh, Kek IQ along with me and different trips recently, and I find these things to be invaluable to help support me with all the things that typically happen when we travel, and the routines that get thrown on a whack and, you know, flights and all of that.

So my other question to you would be then what do we see in your morning sleep routine? And we make that argument that how you start your morning will impact your sleep. I know you mentioned meditation in your morning, um, which sounds fantastic. Is that the main crux of your morning routine? Any other call-outs there?

Yeah, that would be the main crux really. Okay. Um, sometimes I would have a shot of ketones, but I generally save my shot of ketones for before podcast, so I'll have it later in the day if I have a podcast. Okay. So that really helps me, and obviously I think exercise plays a big role in my sleep quality because once you are like tired, You sleep very much, much better.

I mean, that, that goes for not saying, I think everyone knows that. I mean, tell me something. I don't know. Right. But I appreciate you saying that because so many people forget and, you know, we've been living such sedentary, you know, lifestyles that this concept of sleep pressure gets forgotten often. And Oh yeah.

Oh, I do feel totally wiped from that really, you know, hard, uh, session at the gym and often that becomes more of the anomaly for people. So I appreciate you sharing. And the whole meditation process also really helped me zoom out and.  really differentiate between mental ex exhaustion and physical ex exhaustion because a lot of times I think, as you said, you know, we live this sedentary lifestyle and very stressful life.

Yeah. When we are like really hustling, bustling and trying to make it at work and like in our careers. So sometimes we just feel so mentally exhausted and we feel that. Sleeping is gonna fix that. And, and we can sleep well because we are mentally exhausted. But then do know that your body is like fully fueled and, and not exhausted at all.

And then there is that disconnect. But this meditation really helps me. Zoom out and tell myself, actually, yes, I am mentally exhausted, but I can still go to the gym. I can still get a good workout out because my body has got all these fuel and energy and I can still actually push myself. And when that, when I push myself, I am closing the gap between the disconnect between mental and physical exhaustion.

And that way I can, you know, by the time I go to bed, I am primed for recovery, both mentally and physic. Yes. Huge. Love that. And our next question there would be, so once you get to bed, uh, is there anything we would see on your nightstand or maybe proverbial nightstand if you're traveling or ambience, or gadgets or anything there?

I know some, you know, a lot of people, they like to have white noise or they have like raindrops or whatnot. I actually don't have anything. I, I, I'm very love it. I'm very simple. Um, when it comes to that, cuz I think probably because growing up I grew up in, um, I grew in Malaysia, obviously, and as I said earlier, but I also, uh, studied in a boarding school.

So I was in a dormitory with 15 other boys, so you can't imagine the noises and, and people tossing and turning, and I'm a light sleeper as well, but I have basically my body optimized itself to be able to sleep.  even with like noises around, even with people walking around. And I sleep very well during transit and a lot of my friends hate me for this because I sleep very well on planes.

I sleep very well, like when I'm traveling because my body sort of train itself to be able to fall asleep and rest whenever I get a chance because I've been traveling all my life, you know, going here, there and, and shifting my life around and moving different countries. . And I think for me, that ability and, and capacity to rest really helped me adapt to, to, um, new environments and, and, and hectic social schedules.

Huge. Yeah. Ugh, what a, uh, fantastic nature. Yeah, absolutely. And then our last question would be, what would you say has made the biggest change to your sleep game or maybe the biggest aha moment in managing your sleep? Deep breath. , as simple as that sounds deep breathing. Literally. Sometimes I, you know, the more I learn about breath work, the more I learn about how deep breathing can significantly not only lower your heart rate, but also like mentally like relaxes you as little as three deep breaths before I go to bed, it just wanders.

And sometimes when I'm like, have so many things bothering me during the day. . Even after meditation. Usually after meditation sort of like goes off and Yeah. And it reminds me everything is, IM permanent, everything is changing, and tomorrow is another day. No point worrying about it and stressing about it tonight.

There's nothing I can do about it tonight. Let it go. Usually meditation does that, but of obviously sometimes, you know, when you meditate, you still have that lingering thought after. Yeah. And those deep breaths basically like it. It forces your body to relax and it's really revolutionary for me. Oh, that's so great.

I love that. And more to the, the minimalism piece. You can bring that wherever you go with all your travels. You know, you got the, uh, control and inner locus of control to control your breath. So I love that. And control your nervous system as a result. That is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing those things and just checking in, just getting a sense.

When you are using your product, so whether it's Keto IQ or what have you, what does that dosing schedule typically look like? I know you mentioned that it sounds like usually before kind of performance in a particular way, so podcast, you really wanna be on 0.4 and then maybe in your evenings. Is that the usual lineup?

That's correct. So usually I'll have it before podcasts and then before I go to bed. Okay. And sometimes if I know I'm gonna lift heavy, I'll usually have, have, have a dose before workout as well. So I would classify or categorize the dose before sleep as a recovery dose. Because there is a study by hospital's group in Belgium that looked at recovery and over-training.

Mm-hmm.  and how ketones can help with, uh, recovery. In that study, they took it half an hour off the workout and half an hour before bed. Very cool. You're just making me think out loud of, have you been connected with, um, peak Brain Institute by any chance? No I haven't. Maybe we'll have to connect to you guys cuz um, I just had them on the podcast recently and they'll do remote q e g readouts and live too, like actually they're in LA Maybe you can swing on over there.

Yeah, please do. I mean, I would love to speak to, you know, more collaborators and partners. Yeah, I think there could be something there cuz. Um, What they can do is different baseline, Q E G readouts of the brain. And what they're finding is making me think of your work with TBI patients and what they've done a lot of work with TBI I, as well as finding correlations between people post covid, so long COVID in particular, and looking akin to TBI I from their readouts of their Q E G results.

And so I'm just curious if there could be some support for. Categories of people potentially with some of your products. So really, really cool stuff. Um, just, it's getting me thinking out loud and I'm sure other people are probably thinking out loud. So how in the world can they follow you? All of this work that you're doing and the company, what are the best ways to do that?

So you can find me at laman, so L A T T M A N S O R on all social media platform, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and at hvm n. So health by Modern Nutrition, HVM n at all. Social media platform as well. There is our website, hvm n.com, and you can get our products on Amazon as well. And we are also selling those little single surf shots in retail sprouts in Central Market.

Um, and hopefully, you know, many. Oh my god. I know. I'm so happy. I was just in LA a little bit ago and just this little tiny, cute place. , you know, just a little, um, breakfast spot happened to have your shots and, you know, I was a little rundown. I was like, yay. And I grabbed much of them. Uh, I'm just so excited to start to see those things infiltrating the mainstream and just being available and it's fantastic.

Fantastic, fantastic stuff and just really excited to follow what you're diving into and some of the, the far reaching application of this and the ethos around how to pair this with these lifestyle interventions that are often free, like, like the deep breaths. So thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate, thank you for taking the time and then hope to be connected in the future.

To further kind of follow up maybe on a part two down the. Absolutely. Pleasure is mine. Awesome. You've been listening to The Sleep Is A Skill Podcast, the number one podcast for people who wanna take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday, I send out something that I call Molly's Monday Obsessions containing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep.

Head on over to sleep as a skill.com to sign up.

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