A healthy metabolism and how metabolism works is an essential function of the human body that everybody should comprehend and emulate in their daily lives. From professional sports athletes to everyday people, we all want to understand our metabolism and how it affects our lives. This is also important for our military members around the world. Our military is tasked with protecting U.S. interests and providing protection against a threat to our constitution and our allies. If you didn’t think about the power of a person’s metabolism in national security, think again. For our military troops, national and physical activity focused on optimizing metabolism is a large part of military life. Metabolism is how the body’s cells change with the food we eat and how that is transformed into the energy we need to breathe, move, think, and protect a nation. 

We can all agree that military life is a grind that is unmatched and not found in civilian life. Our military members eat, sleep and breathe to maintain optimum health standards. For our military, there is much focus on achieving a metabolic state of nutritional ketosis. Researchers today are focused on findings that the very-low-carbohydrate/high-fat ketogenic diet, which converts fat into ketones used by cells in the body and brain as an alternative to glucose, does not drive-up saturated fat in the blood, can help endurance athletes burn fat and holds promise at keeping soldiers fit for service. 

As the body breaks down fat, it produces ketones. The ketones become the body and brain’s primary energy source. Ketones come from diet or the body’s stored fat. A ketogenic diet is the best way to enter ketosis. This involves limiting carbs to approximately 20 to 50 grams daily and eating more fats, such as meat, fish, eggs, nuts, and healthy oils.

Optimizing ketone delivery strategies is aimed at all military branches and even before soldiers reach the recruitment office. Many of today’s military-aged individuals are affected by poor metabolic health, which complicates recruitment, lowers soldier readiness, and can harm the post-service quality of life. 

When thinking about how metabolism works and the types of food that active nutritional ketosis, try fish and seafood, meat and poultry, non-starchy vegetables like bell peppers, broccoli, and zucchini, avocados, berries, nuts and seeds, eggs, high-fat dairy products, olive oil and other oils, and high-cocoa chocolate. It is important to remember that while focused on nutritional ketones for metabolism optimization, you must focus on the balancing act metabolism goes through simultaneously: anabolism and catabolism. Anabolism is a constructive metabolism process designed to build, store and support the growth of new cells for future use. In anabolism, small molecules transform into more complex molecules of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.

Alternatively, catabolism is destructive metabolism. To release energy, cells break down large molecules. This enables the muscles to contract and the body to move. Each metabolic pathway consists of a series of biochemical responses connected by their intermediates: the products of one reaction are the substrates for subsequent reactions, and so on.

For our military to achieve metabolic dominance and remain optimized for protecting an entire nation, ketones must be incorporated at every level, including D-β-hydroxybutyrate (D-BHB. The focus on ketones derived from studying ancestral metabolism when the human body was subject to periods of starvation, challenging the metabolism. With today’s environment of industrialized, over-consumed food sources, this is a concept lost on everyday humans and one that the military incorporates back into the frontlines.

It is critical that our military remains at top performance body, mind, and spirit. This is how they stay the safest, achieve goals and come home to civilian life. The lessons employed by the military can be duplicated for civilians as well, especially those willing to take the time to learn more about metabolism and how metabolism work.