BioHack 3: Ashley Warren

 Ashley caught COVID-19 in November and was hospitalized. She was never intubated but had serious respiratory issues.  Even after returning home, she has had to have oxygen and even then is not able to keep her saturation high enough to even do simple household chores.  

After returning home Ashley researched diet options and decided to try a fairly strict ketogenic diet due to it's reported benefits for being anti-inflammatory, boosting the immune system, and losing weight.  She used ketone strips to test if she was in ketosis and also included ketone salts. Her diet is high fat and low carb already and she's taking Vitamin C & D supplements.

Ketone salts are not as fast-acting or concentrated as ketone esters.

Ashley got a small bottle of KE4 ketone esters from KetoneAid.com. She already has a spirometer and before taking the esters demonstrated what she was able to blow, which has been stable for weeks. After taking the ketone esters any benefit was very slight.  Her respiratory volume appeared to be a few milliliters higher but negligible when compared to the total volume of around 2000 ml. Her biohack was done in the morning in a fasted state.

Ashley's experience goes to confirm my experience and also of those I've seen try ketone esters who were already on a ketogenic diet.  There appears to be only a slight benefit and may not be noticeable. So far nobody has seen any ill effects.  

Ketone esters appear to be the most beneficial as a booster for those not already in ketosis. 

Side note on testing this theory

Many endurance athletes are beginning to supplement with ketone esters to help boost their performance. This is something I can test on myself since I run and follow a ketogenic diet.  I've been running regularly using a heart rate monitor and following the MAF method to improve my aerobic base.  I try to keep my heart rate under 130 beats per minute.  I've run/walk up to 6 hours in a completely fasted state so am burning lots of calories in the form of fat/ketones. I've been doing this for 2 months and seeing my heart rate gradually lower for the same effort. Once this stabilizes, likely in the next one to four months, I'll do a series of runs with and without ketone esters to see if there is any improvement. My suspicion is that any benefit to me will be very slight if any.

There is some speculation that supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids like from fish oils could be beneficial in healing.  We tend to get too many omega-6 in the modern diet which can cause inflamation and could retard healing.