#114 Keto Adaptation in Sports Performance with Brianna Stubbs PhD

Brianna Stubbs (0:00)

I think people think that you have to eat carbs to replenish carbs, but actually through the process of gluconeogenesis, not only recycling, say, lactate that you produce within the body from carbohydrates and making that back into glycogen, but you can also make new glycogen from, for example, glycerol and proteins as well. If you did one or two weeks of ketosis every couple of months, or every month, for example, or even cyclical keto where you eat keto during the week and then not at the weekends, like what is the minimum dose threshold, let's just call it, the being in ketosis that's going to give you the adaptations that you're looking for. And I guess my answer to that would be, well, it depends what adaptations you're looking for.

Siim Land (0:39)

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SPEAKER_3 (0:41)

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Siim Land (0:46)

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Siim Land (0:51)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host, Siim Land, and our guest today is Brianna Stubbs. Brianna has a PhD in metabolic physiology from the University of Oxford, and she was a professional rower for the rowing team of Great Britain. She's a two-time champion at the World Rowing Championships. Currently, she's the leading researcher at HVM, which is a company that produces performance supplements for the kibbutznik diet.

Brianna, welcome to the show.

Brianna Stubbs (1:18)

Hi, it's a pleasure to be on the show.

Siim Land (1:20)

Yeah, it is, and we met at the Metabolic Health Summit as well a few weeks ago.

Brianna Stubbs (1:25)

Yeah, it's a great meeting. It's great to see people from basic science background, company backgrounds, and just so many people who have had great experiences doing a lot of self-experimentation with the ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting coming together. I've been to a lot of science meetings before, and the type of discussion at the Metabolic Health Summit was so different because there's this immediately obvious impact from the people there who have actually had their lives changed by following this kind of diet. So it was a really cool meeting and a cool link up there.

Siim Land (1:58)

Yeah, it is. You actually get to meet all these people who are doing these different things, who you wouldn't like in real life, you wouldn't actually meet on a daily basis.

Brianna Stubbs (2:09)

I get way more starstruck by scientists than I do by sports people.

Because I am reading their papers all the time and you spend a lot of time thinking, wow, these people are so clever. And then you get to meet them in person and ask them your questions. So I'd really recommend to anyone going to a meeting like that if they get a chance.

Siim Land (2:27)

Yeah, for sure. And speaking of interesting backgrounds, then your own background is also very interesting and very fascinating. So can you talk about how did you get into the field of performance enhancement?

Brianna Stubbs (2:38)

Yeah, sure. It was kind of random.

I grew up, my dad was in the British military. And so he was always doing sort of like crazy physical challenges. And so he was in the first ever Atlantic rowing race across from Tenerife, which is on the European side, over to Barbados, which is in the Caribbean. And that was when I was seven. So I always grew up around this kind of super adventurous and aspirational, I guess, background. And so when I was 12, my dad was flying for another ocean row. And he took me on one of his sort of practice weekends, which was across the English Channel. So when I was 12, I became the youngest person to be part of a crew that rode across from England over to France. And that really kind of set the tone for what I went on to do throughout my teens. I got into rowing, I'd moved up from being in the British under 16 team through into the junior team and then the under 23 team. So I was always training really hard, specifically in rowing, because I guess that's what I've grown up around.

Was also pretty academic and really into science. And I guess when you're in your teens and you're like, oh, I kind of like science and I like helping people, what am I going to do, I'll be a doctor. So I actually went to Oxford University in England to study medicine.

So I was doing my course there and I saw this like kind of paper ad up in one of our notice boards and it was advertising for rowers to come and do this performance trial. And I was doing these rowing machine tests every week anyway and I was like, well, I might as well go and do this study and get paid to do these tests and maybe like learn something new. And so that's how I first try ketone drinks. So yeah, by that point, I was interested in human physiology and what I could do to optimize my performance, but this was my first exposure to ketones directly.