How to Use Biomedical Testing for Obstacle Course Racing Performance

The ketogenic diet has many promising applications including better management of type 1 diabetes and as an adjunct cancer therapy. Thirty-five thousand people signed up for the Keto Summit where we talked about other applications including neurological diseases, fat loss and improved athletic performance. If you adopted a high-fat paleo-type diet, you could be forgiven for thinking that if that was good, then ketosis should be better. I know I did. Unfortunately, that isn’t necessarily the case, and recently in our practice, we’ve seen several athletes eating a diet that failed to fuel their activity. Obstacle course racing appears to be one type of event where carbohydrates are mandatory.

My guest this week is client and software engineer Ryan Baxter. Ryan is a competitive obstacle course racer and an excellent example of what can go wrong when you fail to fuel for your activity. The reintroduction of carbs may have been the most important recommendation we made for Ryan. To be fair, Ryan also found overgrowths of opportunistic pathogens Candida albicans and Clostridium difficile and treating those with nutritional supplements will have also contributed to the resolution of his complaints: low libido, poor sleep, foul mood and food cravings.

You should listen to this interview to find out what it’s like to be part of our Elite Performance Program for athletes.

Here’s the outline of this interview with Ryan Baxter:

[00:00:43] Ryan is a software engineer working for Pivotal before that he worked for IBM.

[00:02:46] Spartan Obstacle Course Racing.

[00:05:05] Paleo and high-fat diet and then finally ketosis.

[00:07:07] Ben Greenfield and Primal Endurance: Escape chronic cardio and carbohydrate dependency and become a fat burning beast! by Mark Sisson.

[00:07:50] MAF training.

[00:08:32] MyFitnessPal.

[00:09:07] 13+ mile runs in a fasted state.

[00:09:30] Poor sleep.

[00:10:14] Low libido and foul mood.

[00:11:31] Looking for patterns, none to be found.

[00:11:53] Stress and mood.

[00:12:15] Vermont Beast race at Killington ski resort. Duration: 6-10 hours.

[00:15:12] What do people eat in an event like this?

[00:16:49] Experience with a primary care doctor.

[00:17:50] Endurance Planet podcast.

[00:18:13] DUTCH urinary hormones test.

[00:19:01] Family and work life.

[00:21:04] Saving energy for the rest of the day after training.

[00:22:33] Circadian rhythm.

[00:23:56] Cold thermogenesis.

[00:25:57] Eating more carbs.

[00:27:50] Masharani, U., et al. "Metabolic and physiologic effects from consuming a hunter-gatherer (Paleolithic)-type diet in type 2 diabetes." European journal of clinical nutrition 69.8 (2015): 944-948.

[00:28:14] Sweet potato, butternut squash, fruit, white rice.

[00:29:48] Backing off on the training.

[00:31:33] Burning fat whilst exercising.

[00:31:53] Podcast: Why You Should Skip Oxaloacetate Supplementation, Fueling for Your Activity and More!

[00:33:22] Fasting insulin, thyroid, MCV, low T.

[00:33:57] Gut testing.

[00:34:38] Candida and C. diff.

[00:36:18] Yeast metabolism and ethanol.

[00:37:10] Establishing a baseline.

[00:38:56] Retesting.

[00:40:03] Rebound yeast overgrowth.

[00:40:45] ŌURA Ring.

[00:41:38] Improvements in deep sleep.

[00:42:26] Doc Parsley’s Sleep Remedy.

[00:43:46] Coping better with stress.

[00:44:55] Headspace.

[00:46:23] Book a free consultation.