Vanadyl and ALA help cells absorb glucose from blood, yes. There are quite a few papers you can find on Medline on this. Personally for me they never helped getting into ketosis faster, but ALA in particular helped during the carbup - minimizes water retention and fills the muscles better. However, it took me quite a bit of it to see that effect - circa 2 g/day split into 400-500mg dosages 30-min before meals. Also note that at the time I was carbing with all sorts of rubbish and now I seem to do just as well without ALA on better carbs (dextrose).

I'm very interested to see if you find any differences in how quickly you get into ketosis by using Ripped Fuel Extreme. The added ingredient is forskolin, and apparently helps inducing ketosis if all other conditions are right (i.e., no liver glycogen, etc). I have a very hard time getting into ketosis to any detectable degree, but a dose of RFE can make them show up. It may very well be that it's just a false reaction of the sticks to forskolin or it's metabolite, but anyways, interesting stuff...