Ketones for long covid & acute respiratory issues


There is lots of anecdotal evidence that ketones help lungs function better and promote healing.  Your body will produce its own ketones during fasting or when on a very low carbohydrate diet. A shortcut is using ketone esters. 

We were able to improve my wife's oxygen levels in the ICU.  After fasting she went from requiring 85% oxygen down to 55%.  You can read more details here. I wish I'd of known about ketone esters as that can go into effect within half an hour vs 18 to 72 hours of fasting.

My sister suffered for months from respiratory issues and other symptoms after having COVID-19.  After trying a strict low carb high fat ketogenic diet, within 2 days felt much better.  She's since added some intermittent fasting to help lose weight and added ketone esters. Her lungs are doing great and other symptoms are gradually now dissipating.  Others are having similar experiences.

Unfortunately, there are no completed clinical trials on humans.  However, you can make your own dietary changes.  You can also use ketone esters to quickly get your body burning ketones.  Ketone esters are essentially a food supplement or performance drink. Personal experiments of this type are sometimes called "dietary biohacking". 

Let's start gathering evidence of whether ketones help with respiratory issues or not.  There's not much money for the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession to study ketosis, so let's gather evidence that will help spur more professional peer-reviewed science.

Let's do some dietary biohacking!  

Option 1 - Northern Utah

If you live in Northern Utah and want to give it a try, email me at david@scholes.us with a subject line starting with "BIOHACK".  

Let's record the following steps to share with others.  Previous tests have indicated this is most effective on an empty stomach. Ideally the experiment would be done about 2 hours after waking.

  • Spirometry test
  • Take 20ml of ketone esters (average size adult)
  • Wait half an hour and perform a second spirometry test.
  • Compare results
  • Share video on this blog post

Option 2 - Zoom

For those too far away to do this in person or would rather try this remote, there is a simple spirometer / lung exerciser available and you can also get single bottles of KE4 ketone esters off Amazon. Order what you need and then we can do a zoom session like above to share your experience.  One bottle of KE4 should be enough for at least 3 doses.

Volumetric Exerciser

KE4 ketone esters - 1 bottle

Option 3 - Ketogenic diet & fasting

If you want to try dietary alone and share your results, let me know and we can schedule a zoom session.

You can also share in our FB Group

Disclaimer

I am not a medical doctor, medical professional, or dietician.  This is not a cure. I make no guarantee. We are just voluntarily participating in a biohacking N-of-1 experiment. There is only anecdotal evidence that ketones can temporarily improve lung function as compared to glucose.  Trying anything new can impose some risk, so please research this in advance. There have only been studies on small mammals and no peer-reviewed clinical trials on humans.  Hopefully sharing your results will help spur eventual clinical trials and help others.

Spirometry testing is NOT recommended for people who have:

  • recently suffered a heart attack 
  • a collapsed lung
  • recently had eye surgery
  • recently had a head injury or stroke
  • recently undergone chest surgery
  • a blood clot(s) in their lungs (known as pulmonary emboli)
  • excessive nose bleeds
  • an active communicable disease (Tuberculosis, HIV, Hepatitis B)
  • presence of an acute illness or symptoms (i.e. nausea, vomiting)
  • thoracic, abdominal or cerebral aneurysms
  • unstable cardiovascular status (angina, blood pressure)

If you do feel relief after taking the ketone esters, you may want to try making dietary changes so your body will create it's own ketones.  The ketone esters I am using are KE4 "Performance Enhancing Drink" from KetoneAid.

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