In this post, we’re going to talk about low potassium. Why? Because potassium is probably the number one deficiency with most people, but it’s the hardest to detect. When you take a blood test, most of the potassium, 98% of your potassium is inside the cell, not outside the cell. So when they do a blood test, it’s not going to show up unless it’s really, really, really extreme. The type of testing you would have to do would be an intracellular test. It’s very sophisticated. People don’t really ask for it, doctors probably don’t even know about it, but there is a test that you can do. Here are some of the symptoms of low potassium.
Symptoms
Increases your blood pressure
When you’re low potassium, the blood pressure will increase. Why? Because potassium is a physiological relaxer. It’s a tranquilizer. It calms things down.
Muscle cramps
Because potassium is an electrolyte.
Sugar cravings
Because potassium helps you store sugar, and it will actually help you get rid of sugar cravings, because the storage of glucose needs potassium.
Constipation
Due to low potassium, your digestion system go lows and then constipation happens.
High insulin
That’s another symptom of low potassium. And then, high insulin. There’s a relationship between sugar, blood sugars, diabetes and potassium. In fact, when you have enough potassium, the need for insulin goes down. So we always recommend potassium for diabetic clients.
Muscle weakness
You could have this unexplainable muscle weakness. Why? Because the electrolytes are needed to help the muscles contract. And that’s why you have abnormal heartbeat. Because the heart is a muscle.
Abnormal heartbeats
These abnormal heartbeats, for example, like atrial fibrillation, arrhythmias, that’s a combination of a deficiency of potassium and/or magnesium.
Anxiety and sleeping problems
And sleeping problems, because potassium is something to calm you down. If you’re doing something that doesn’t involve a lot of Like, some diet that doesn’t involve enough potassium, you can start manifesting a lot of these symptoms.
What causes low Potassium
Well, if you are sick and you vomit or, let’s say, you’re a bulimic, that can cause that. Or maybe you’re just not eating enough in your diet.
Now, you might say, “Well, I eat bananas.” Right? Well, bananas only have 300 mg. You need 4,700 mg per day to hit your regular amount that you need. You would have to consume 12 bananas, 11 bananas. We don’t want all that sugar. So what we want to do is we want to consume our potassium from vegetables, from salad. And you’re going to need about seven to 10 cups.
You just have a couple big salads. If you don’t like salad, take kale, maybe a little bit of berry, blend it with water, and drink your salad.
That’ll get the potassium in there. So we want to start to increase that. And that’s how we increase it from the diet. You’re going to feel a lot better, too. Because if you’re doing like an Atkins diet, high protein, you’re going to definitely need potassium. You’re going to start feeling weakness, because you don’t have enough potassium.
Ketosis is the state of fat-burning when you’re eating more fat, no carbs, and you can become deficient in potassium from that, too. That’s why they always modify the ketosis diet, and we make sure that we have enough greens and vegetables to help balance that. Also, potassium is necessary for the digestion and breakdown and buildup of protein. People that are losing their hair, for example, and they’re eating just protein thinking that they’re going to get their hair back, without potassium, sorry, it doesn’t work.
So we’ve got diuretics. Say, you’re out of blood pressure medication. Well, you’re going to deplete your potassium and keep the blood pressure there.
Stress can also deplete potassium. In fact, I’ve had people do advanced testing on their potassium levels, and they are eating a tremendous amount of potassium, but because they’re under a tremendous amount of stress, their potassium stays low. Because with the adrenal, it’s almost like you have a hole in the bucket and the potassium goes right through. Again, when you’re under stress, you need even more potassium.
It’s also high insulin will cause a low potassium, and that’s sugar. Consuming sugar will deplete your potassium. And you can even feel it in your heartbeat. A strong heartbeat, you can hear it in your inner ear. That is a sign of low potassium because you just ate a lot of sugar, and you need to start consuming more salad to put that back.
Last one is drinking too much water. This goes against what everyone says, that you have to drink when you’re By the time you drink, it’s too late, because you don’t know when you’re thirsty and That’s just a myth. When you drink too much water, you create a condition called hyponatremia, which is a dilution of all your electrolytes, and then your heart starts going out of balance and you can have a heart attack by drinking too much water. So you want to drink when you’re thirsty so you don’t flush out all your electrolytes. Because you’re drinking water, but you’re peeing out electrolytes.
