Printable page in A4 size Dr Brianna Stubbs
Late in 2017, a San Francisco startup company HVMN brought one of the new commercial ketone esters to market. Brianna Stubbs is a scientist and world-class athlete who has spent the past year helping develop and rollout HVMN Ketone, an FDA-approved drink that promises increased athletic ability as well as heightened focus and energy.
Dr. Brianna Stubbs earned her D.Phil in biochemical physiology from Oxford University in 2016 where she researched the effects of ketone drinks on elite athletes. During Brianna’s collegiate athletic career, she won two gold medals while representing Great Britain at the World Rowing Championships. She has also won the Women's boat race for the Oxford crew twice. She first made international news when as a 12-year-old she became the youngest person ever to row across the British Channel.
While at Oxford, she worked alongside 
Dr. Kieran Clarke to develop a novel ketone monoester that has been shown to improve exercise performance in endurance athletes.
"I got invited to take part in a study that was looking at the effect of ketone esters on performance. My task was to row on a rowing machine, and they would pay me £50. Being paid for training, ideal. I became interested in the project, and talked a lot to the research team."
"To complete my third year in medical school, I needed to do a research project, and I asked this group if I could do something in their lab. They accepted and I started to work under Dr Kieran Clarke. After a few months, as my third year ended, Dr Clarke offered me a job as a research assistant, and she later suggested that I start a PhD. under her supervision."
"It was a hectic time, training early every morning, arriving in the lab at noon and working until late at night."
"I started off doing basic studies about how the body responded to the ketone ester. I fed people both before a meal and after a meal, we did repeated trials to test the reliability of our measurements. The ketone I was working with is 3-hydroxybutyrate diol, which in the liver produces one molecule of β-hydroxybutyrate and one of butane-diol. Butane-diol itself gets converted into β-hydroxybutyrate in a second process. This makes it possible to build a high level of the ketone β-hydroxybutyrate in the blood stream quite quickly, regardless of your previous diet."
We also tested some ketone salts, attaching a hydroxybutyrate molecule to an iron. Salts are not as effective as esters, they deliver slowly and don't elevate the level of ketones so much.
"Brianna Stubbs talks about ketone esters and their application in sport"
Stem Talk Podcast: Episode 54 (December 2017)
The Use of Exogenous Ketones in Athletic Performance
Ketones offer you an alternative high-grade fuel, like using higher octane petrol. If there is β-hydroxybutyrate available for your muscles or your brain, the body prefers to burn those ketones and preserve the available glycogen. In a racing situation after some time, all your glycogen reserves are still good to go, they have been conserved.
Ketones seem to be particularly good when the performance effort is between 30 minutes and one hour. Marathon runners, road cyclists, endurance athletes are going to make extensive use of this technology. If there is a high level of ketones glycolysis is inhibited, but as the ketones are burnt, glycolysis returns.
Performance improvements for elite athletes are in the order of 2%. For serious amateurs, it's more variable, perhaps up to 5% or 6%.
There is ready uptake of β-hydroxybutyrate, both into the cells and into the mitochondria. The uptake of both glucose and fatty-acids are regulated by hormones. In the mitochondria the redox potential of the ketone is greater than the redox potential of glucose. Most athletes are metabolically biased either towards burning glucose or fats. To produce your own ketones at any usable level you have to restrict carbs and eat a high fat diet. There may be advantages in that.
If you take exogenous ketones, like the HVMN Ketone Ester, the body doesn't care what you previous diet was, it will simply use the ketones.
We think the LCHF diets are beneficial in training, and that ketone esters can aid recovery and prevent muscle breakdown.
"Dr Brianna Stubbs: How Exogenous Ketone Supplements Work"
Biohackers Lab: Published on 25 May 2017
β-Hydroxybutyrate has two forms
In chemistry several chemicals have left-handed and right-handed versions. This is characteristic is called recemic. There are D-forms and L-forms. When β-Hydroxybutyrate is made in the laboratory equal quantities of the D-Hydroxybutyrate and L-Hydroxybutyrate are made. In the body only D-Hydroxybutyrate, is used for energy production. The HVMN Ketone Ester produces 100% D-Hydroxybutyrate in the body, it's pure.
The jury is out on what L-Hydroxybutyrate does. It seems to be involved in signaling. Investigating that costs money.
Brianna moved to the United States in June of 2017, to work at HVMN and help bring the company's ketone ester to market.
