Question: "What are your top three non-nutrient factors that prevent someone from entering beta-oxidation or ketogenesis? I mean like sleep disruption."

Top three non-nutrient factors? Unless you are taking a drug that prevents lipolysis, then they aren't non-nutrient.

The overwhelming things that govern those are carbohydrate and fat intake. You eat more fat, you have more beta-oxidation. You eat less fat, you have less beta-oxidation. You eat less carbohydrate beyond a threshold.

==I don't think sleep disruption is going to do that. Sleep disruption is going to increase your stress hormones — so with sleep disruption, your cortisol is going to spike, and it's going to increase your appetite for junk food — so you're probably more likely to eat things that are anti-ketogenic when you're sleep-deprived because you're eating more junk food, which has more carbs. You probably are not going to have lower beta-oxidation. You're probably going to have higher oxidation because you're going to eat more fat.

But most people do not have impairments in beta-oxidation.

If you have a riboflavin deficiency, you can have an impairment in beta-oxidation, but even in disease states, beta-oxidation is higher. If you have a fatty liver, beta-oxidation is increased because your liver is trying to get rid of fat.

The overwhelming thing governing beta-oxidation is the relative balance of fat going into your tissues versus out. To the extent carbs displace the fat from being burned, carbohydrate is going to decrease beta-oxidation — but if you're eating carbohydrate, and you're eating more fat, versus less fat, you're going to have more beta-oxidation when you eat more fat.

So, yes, sleep disruption will disrupt the appropriate way of handling those things, but I don't think it's going to block ketogenesis or beta-oxidation, except by messing up your appetite.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here:https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/02/09/ask-anything-nutrition-feb-1-2019/

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Chris Masterjohn, PhD, is the Founder and Scientific Director of the mitochondria test Mitome.