The MOST Serious Symptom of Potassium Deficiency

Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

Dr. Eric Berg

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this podcast, we’ll discuss the causes and symptoms of potassium deficiency. We need a lot of potassium—around 4700 mg per day! Most people eat a lot of junk food or processed foods high in salt and not enough potassium, which throws off the sodium-potassium ratio. Your body needs a 2:1 ratio of potassium to sodium.

Every cell in the body has a sodium-potassium pump that helps to generate electrical current around the cell, which powers the nervous and muscular systems.

Potassium is also important for the health of your blood vessels. Low potassium is one of the leading causes of high blood pressure; however, it isn’t often used in conventional medicine as a treatment. Over 90% of high blood pressure is essential hypertension, which means the cause is “unknown.”

Here are some signs of potassium deficiency:

•Fatigue

•Muscular issues

•Constipation

•Tremors

•Abnormal heart rhythm

•Mental issues (delirium, hallucinations, psychosis, depression)

•Headaches

•Low back pain

•Dizziness

•Nocturia

•Edema

•Increased pulse rate

•Increased risk of stroke

The most serious symptom of a potassium deficiency is sudden cardiac death. If you have low potassium, your risk for sudden cardiac death increases by 10x.

You could end up with low potassium if you’re not consuming enough potassium-rich foods like leafy greens, squash, nuts, shellfish, bone broth, avocado, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds.

Other potassium deficiency causes include the following:

•Consuming refined sugar, refined starches, and refined grains

•Stress

•Steroids

•Gut inflammation

•Alcohol consumption

DATA:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/f...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/artic...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

Transcript

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0:00.0	So there are a lot of different symptoms that can occur with a potassium deficiency.
0:04.0	Today we're going to talk about the most serious symptom that you need to know about.
0:09.0	What's unique about potassium compared to other minerals is that potassium is needed in very large
0:16.6	amounts. We need 4,700 milligrams every single day, but if we compound that with high amounts of sodium from salt, we can create a really bad situation because
0:29.0	sodium and potassium work as kind of a teeter-totter. And a lot of people are eating a lot of junk food high in salt but they're not eating enough
0:36.8	potassium foods and so this ratio is way off it's backwards. Normally you should have at least a 2 to 1 ratio, 2 times as
0:45.2	much potassium as sodium. So even if you are low in potassium and you have the right ratios with sodium it's more protective to your heart.
0:56.5	98 to 99% of all the potassium is located inside your cell, not in the blood. And this also relates to magnesium. Most of our
1:05.6	magnesium is inside our cells, not in the blood. So you could check the blood all
1:09.3	you want. It just doesn't give you a lot of good information about nutrient deficiencies. Now why do we need
1:15.3	so much potassium? Well there's a pump that is in every cell in the body and this pump is called
1:22.2	a sodium potassium pump and what it does is it
1:26.6	helps to generate electrical current around the cell to power the nervous system and the muscular system.
1:36.3	Kind of like if you go to a dam and you see the water being let out and so this is why
1:41.7	it's so important to have the right amounts and concentrations and ratios of potassium and sodium to be able to generate this charge.
1:51.0	And so many of the things we're going to talk about today are related to a lack of that
1:56.0	electrical charge to power both the nervous system and the muscular system. So we have nerves, muscles, and the control over your blood vessels as well.
2:07.0	I'm talking about vasoconstriction and vasodilation.
2:11.0	Basically the vascular tone of your arteries are highly influenced by
2:16.5	potassium and this is one of the main causes of high blood pressure is low
2:20.2	potassium but you're probably not going to see that promoted because of the money involved
2:24.8	in high blood pressure medications. But what you will see is that 90% of all hypertension is what's called essential.
	...

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