What are your top three non-nutrient factors that prevent beta-oxidation or ketogenesis? | Masterjohn Q&A Files #25

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/ If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which includes access to these live Zoom sessions, premium features on all my content, and hundreds of dollars of exclusive discounts. You can sign up with a 10% lifetime discount here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/q&a Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here . Chris Masterjohn, PhD, is the Founder and Scientific Director of the mitochondria test Mitome .