Ketone Salts May Slow Down Athletic Performance: Study

Have you been thinking of increasing your athletic performance by consuming additional nutritional salts? You might have to think again. According to the research published in the Journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism, ketone salts may inhibit, rather than improve athletic performance during high intensity exercises like running 10 kilometres or cycling up a hill. Ketone salts are supplements that consist of beta hydroxybutyrate combined with mineral salts like sodium, calcium, potassium or magnesium in order to improve the absorption rate of the body.

“It turns out that ketone salt supplements actually impair high-intensity exercise performance,” said Jonathan Little, Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The study showed that the ketone salts work by artificially elevating blood kerotene levels and forces the body to rely on burning fat as a fuel.

Burning fat is a more effective long-term fuel but is more complex to process and is not as readily accessible for quick bursts of muscle activity as is a fuel like glucose. “Elevated blood ketones seem to inhibit the body’s use of glycogen, the stored form of glucose, and favours burning fat instead,” Little noted. “That means that the body’s quick-burning fuel cannot be accessed during high-intensity bursts of activity and athletic performance is dropping off as a result,” the researcher mentioned.

The researchers studied over two groups of male athletes with similar body mass indices. The first group was asked to consume ketone salts while the second group consumed a tablet of similar flavour and then engaged in a cycling time trial. The results of the group which consumed ketone salts were seven percent lower in comparison to the second group that consumed the flavoured the tablet.

With Inputs from IANS