Coming up on today's show.

It has been shown since the 1980s that insulin resistance, basically a problem with

glucose uptake in the brain, is a big problem for people with Alzheimer's disease.

And this is true from any other neurodegenerative disorders, insulin resistance is a big factor.

With Alzheimer's disease, they now know that the insulin resistance in the brain starts happening 10 to 20 years

before a person even begins to have symptoms. When you have depleted the glucose, mainly in the liver,

and then also in the muscle, you start releasing fatty acids. And fatty acids can fuel almost all the

organs in the body, but they're larger particles and they don't cross

that blood brain barrier. So the brain needs another source of fuel. Ketones are very tiny

molecules and they very easily cross the blood brain barrier and cells in the brain don't

require insulin to get ketones into the cell or into the mitochondria. I was a newborn intensive care specialist,

but I became interested in Alzheimer's because of my husband.

There's seven stages of Alzheimer's,

and he was between stage five and six when we started doing this,

and it took him back probably to stage three or four.

Why are ketones such a powerful alternative fuel for the brain? So, ketones are a very

primitive fuel. Glucose and ketones are basic fuels that can basically produce energy

and almost every cell in our body. And sometimes the effects of ketogenic diets and ketone supplements seem like a panacea

of so many possible applications.

But this is because it's such a basic fuel, I believe.

Okay, well, let's talk about regular metabolism, quote unquote, in somebody eating a mixed diet,

and then what goes in the brain through that, and then we'll get into when there's dysregulation.

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