In stores and online there is a substantial amount of products related to ketones for sale, which is why nutraceutical merchant accounts and high risk merchant accounts are often sought after. But what are these ketones, anyway?

While many people are unaware of what ketones actually are (commonly misspelled keytones) these little substances that your body can produce are pretty important to know about. This is especially true if you or someone close to you is diabetic or following a strict low-carb or low calorie diet. People who fit this description are prone to ketones, which can be rather dangerous at high levels.

So what are ketones?
Ketones are acids that your body makes when it has to burn fat as a fuel source instead of carbohydrates. Most of the time, ketones come into the picture when there’s too little insulin in the body.

What about ketones and people who are diabetic?
In the case of someone who has diabetes, the amount of insulin in the body may not be enough in order to use sugar for energy. Because glucose can’t be burned off without insulin, the sugar builds up in the blood and isn’t used. Hence why ketones are produced to burn fat as a type of replacement fuel for the body.

How are strict dieters also affected by ketones?
In the same way, someone who is following a very restrictive diet could also be producing ketones and burning fat rather than carbs for fuel. As long as there isn’t enough insulin available, those ketones are going to start being created in the body.

While burning fat as an energy source may seem like a good thing for people who want to lose weight (and it can be ok a lot of the time), the thing is that, occasionally, big problems can arise when too much fat is broken down and the number of ketones inside a person keeps getting bigger and bigger.

What’s bad about ketones?
Ketones are bad when there are too many of them around. This is because high levels of ketones are actually quite toxic to the body. Yes, they are basically like poison when you accumulate too many since they change the balances of chemicals in your blood. And, if you do have a large number of ketones, doctors would say you have a condition called ketoacidosis.

If this condition is left undiagnosed and untreated it can be life threatening. For this reason, people who are diabetic, or are following very severe diets, should continually know their ketone levels as well as talk with their about what to do if their ketones levels are excessive. And so, regularly using urine tests to check for ketones is recommended for those are at risk.

Where can I get ketone tests?
Tests for checking your ketones are available online or in a number of health stores. Moreover, the businesses that sell them will need a high risk merchant account, or more specifically, a nutraceutical merchant account in order to process payments made with debit and credit cards. These accounts can be difficult to get, but Ultimate Merchant Providers does a considerably good job making it easy for the business, and ultimately, for the customers who need to buy health products.