Have you ever thought that sitting in a sauna, could enhance the effect of your Ketogenic diet? No one would ever connect those dots, but when you start looking at the studies, you actually can. It’s affecting the same sort of metabolic genetic pathway. Here, let me explain. Okay, when you sit in a sauna, you have an adaptive response to the heat. Our bodies are always looking to adapt. The Ketogenic diet, they’re adapting to running on fats. With intermittent fasting, it’s adapting to running on less fuel. When we sit in a sauna, or we expose ourselves to extreme heat, we are adapting to the heat stress. Well what’s happening on a molecular level, is we are increasing the availability and the abundance of what is called, heat shock proteins. Okay, heat shock proteins protect the cell from the heat.
What Happens When We Expose Ourselves to Heat?
So when we expose ourselves to heat, eventually our body up-regulates these heat shock proteins to protect the cells. Now for a minute, if you go back to high school biology, you might remember your professor or your teacher talking about the folding and unfolding of proteins. And in case you don’t remember, it’s a basic process that occurs. Like whenever cells are dividing and things like that, proteins fold and unfold. And a lot of times when proteins fold improperly, it’s called misfolding, it can lead to a disease state.
Heat Stress Leads to Longevity
A perfect example is Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is associated with the misfolding of tau and amyloid proteins. Okay so, in essence, it can lead to disease states. So we don’t want proteins to misfold. Well when we’re exposed to heat, it would trigger those proteins to misfold, if we did not have heat shock proteins. Because those heat shock proteins are there, they act as sort of a layer, a buffer, to make sure those proteins don’t fold and unfold. Well, what does that have to do with ketosis? Well, I’m getting there. So, the “Journal of Experimental Biology” published a study that found that heat stress did, in fact, lead to heat shock proteins, and those heat shock proteins increased longevity by acting upon models in a histone deacetylase dependent manner. Okay, so what does that mean? It means that they affected the DNA. They affected the DNA and made it so that the DNA was more accessible.
Understanding the Histone Deacetylase Process
Now, where’s the link with ketones? Well, there are multiple studies that show that ketones affect the exact same thing. So ketones affect the histone deacetylase process. So what that means is that saunas and ketones somehow are affecting the exact same process within the cell, as far as our genetic blueprint goes. So that means if we are doing a ketogenic diet to help ourselves live to our genetic potential by activating our genetic library and accessing our genetic library, then sitting in a sauna, could only enhance that even more.
The Key to Longevity
Now, why is this so fascinating? Why am I so excited about this? Because this is the key to longevity if you ask me. If we could look at our genes, and we could look at how to access just dormant genes, if you want to call them that, then we could potentially be finding the key to living for a longer period of time. But more importantly, living a quality life for that period of time. So we already know that ketones have an effect there which is phenomenal. And now we know that saunas have an effect there. But since they’re acting upon the same system, then we know that if we combine them, we might just have an amazing metabolic, mitochondrial, histone deacetylase inhibition effect.
Importance of Keeping Your Ketones Moderately High
It is exciting stuff. Now with this, it is important that you keep your ketones moderately high. Now we’re talking like above 2 millimoles. Now the reason I say that is because to get this genetic effect, to get this HDAC effect, we need to have a high presence or at least a moderate presence of ketones within the blood. So if you’re wondering what your numbers are, that’s exactly where the Keto-Mojo meter comes in. Okay, it’s the gold standard when it comes down to blood ketone testing. So you can see exactly where your ketones are at. So leave the guesswork out of the equation. Leave the measuring to the meter, with the Keto-Mojo meter. As always, make sure you’re keeping it locked in here, for all the latest and greatest keto content. I’ll see you soon.
