In this video I'll uncover the alarming symptoms of a potassium deficiency.
Vitamins and minerals play a critical role in our overall health
and when deficient in these vitamins and minerals
we have a lot of symptoms that present. Unfortunately what happens is a lot of people aren't familiar
with these symptoms and then they go to their doctor and their doctor puts them on some
sort of medication in order to cover those symptoms up. Of course the unfortunate part
here is that they actually didn't get to the root cause. They actually just went got some
sort of medication and so that's why it's very important to understand this stuff and
understand that there's certain vitamins and minerals that are more commonly deficient
people than others.
One of those is going to be potassium and that's why we're going to talk about the symptoms
of a potassium deficiency. We're going to talk about what potassium is. The benefit
it offers to the body, and the symptoms as I mentioned, where you can actually get a
good source of potassium for your diet and of course alarming symptoms of having too
much potassium in your diet as well.
So stick around to the end of this video but before we get started I'm Dr. Zyrowski and
welcome to the channel. If you're new to the channel it's a pleasure to have you here.
Hit the notification bell and join our notification community and I'm gonna be able to help you
excel your health and your life. So let's go ahead and talk about potassium first. I
just want to talk about a brief overview as to what potassium is so that you understand
the importance of it. It is the third most abundant mineral in the body.
So first most abundant mineral is going to be calcium, second is gonna be phosphorus
and third is going to be potassium. Now this is of course one of the reasons that potassium
is very important for our overall function of the body. Plays so many roles in many vital
processes within the human body. Now looking at the potassium 80% of it is found in the
muscle and this is why you're gonna find that when we look at potassium it plays a huge
role in overall muscle function and a lot of the symptoms associated with a potassium
deficiency play a role as to how your muscles are functioning as well.
Now it's considered an electrolyte. This is something that's important because a lot of
people get confused or are like well there's this mineral potassium and then of course
there's the electrolyte potassium it's the same thing. A lot of people refer to it as
a mineral outside the body if you were to buy a supplement or something and then when
it enters the body a lot of people refer to it as a electrolyte. Okay now it's problematic
when it's high or low.
So a lot of people think of well if potassium is good for you right they read in some online
blog thing that seems good for you you should take more of it. Well the problem is too much
of a good thing isn't necessarily a good thing and what I see happen a lot of times is people
will have symptoms of having too much which we'll get to in just a moment but you'll also
have symptoms of having too little. So we got to be careful about that. The recommended
daily allowance is going to be 3500 to 4700 milligrams per day.
Now it's important understand that if you're just living a normal lifestyle let's say you
don't really exercise a whole lot. Let's say that you're just eating a good healthy whole
food diet. You're probably going to be somewhere around 3500 per day. Now if you're someone
who's following a ketogenic diet, low carb diet, you're doing a lot of exercise with
a lot of sweating you're going to be up towards this higher value. You're gonna have to be
in order to actually feel good because as you'll see in just a moment there's reasons
associated with some particulars lifestyles that will cause you to dump a lot of electrolytes
from your body.
Now let's go ahead and talk about the causes of the potassium deficiency because you know,
let me tell you if you have a potassium deficiency you'll feel pretty awful. We'll talk about
the symptoms in just a moment but it's not a good feeling. So when people have this issue
they wonder why in the world did it happen and one of the top reasons is going to be
soil depletion. This basically means that due to overfarming that a lot of the soil
is depleted which in turn we're not going to get as much minerals in our food and we're
not all were also not going to get as many vitamins in our food.
So due to the lack of vitamins and minerals in our food intake we can have this depletion
in our body. Exercise is another big reason. Okay this is one of the reasons I had a potassium
and just an overall electrolyte deficiency in general. I was training for Spartan races
a couple years ago and I was doing really intense exercise in the hot sun for about
two hours and so of course I was profusely sweating during this time and of course at
this time I was also following a low-carb diet.
So put those two together and that is a great way to get a potassium deficiency and that's
what happened to me. Now if you're someone who's exercising there's a good chance you're
going to need more potassium in your system. If you're if you're sweating quite a bit because
you'll dump a lot of the potassium that way and then low carb diet as well because what
happens with the low carb diet a lot of sodium leaves the body and then the potassium follows.
So as a result you will have a deficiency in alot of cases and so that's why I mentioned
before that if you're someone who's doing exercise low-carb you're gonna want to be
at that higher end of the recommended daily allowance there. Next is gonna be poor quality
diet. Okay for just eating junk all the time there's a good chance you can have one. Chronic
diarrhea is a reason, medications there's a lot of different medications out there I'm
not going to go through them all. Just know that if you're on a medication you could have
a potassium deficiency.
It's they're highly correlated medications and electrolyte problems it happens quite
a bit. Just talk to your doctor about that if you think it's an issue and you're having
a lot of these symptoms. Kidney disease is a reason and adrenal dysfunction as well.
People who are under chronic stress and they have chronic fatigue and they're having adrenal
dysfunction. This is a reason that you can have electrolyte imbalances as well. What
happens is your cortisol is going to be all over the place and when cortisol is high it's
causing your potassium to be low.
In many cases what happens to in the problem of adrenal dysfunction is a lot of people
say you know I'm drinking water all the time drinking, lots of water but it's just what
can happen it's just the way that these electrolytes function in the body. It can really cause
a problem with how the the electrolytes are entering the cell and how they're functioning
and the balance and as a result of that you can feel pretty terrible.
So understand that and I've seen a lot of people have electrolyte imbalances as a result
of just chronic fatigue and adrenal disorders. Now let's talk about potassium deficiency
symptoms. This is important okay because if you have a potassium deficiency you want to
know the different things you have to look for.
First of all is going to be cramping. Remember at the beginning I said 80% of its found in
the muscle. So you're going to have a lot of muscular problems if you have a potassium
deficiency and you're also going to have a lot of muscle pain as well. Now this muscle
pain is going to just be like random pain throughout the body not because you exercise
very hard or whatever. It's just you're getting random aches and pains that don't necessarily
make sense in the muscles.
Weakness and fatigue, one of the best ways I can describe a potassium deficiency from
what I experienced was it's like walking through water on a daily basis. I mean you just have
this this feeling of something holding your body back and every movement you make it just
seems like it takes so much effort and weakness and fatigue is a big one, discomfort, irregular
heartbeat. Now this is of course where it starts to get a little bit more serious. A
little bit more alarming because people can have electrode or electrolyte imbalance. Potassium
deficiencies and have an irregular heartbeat they run to their doctor and
of course you know spend hundreds of dollars on testing and it just turns out that they
had a problem with Potassium.
Now of course if you think that your heart in your cardiovascular health is an issue
you should go to your doctor and get checked it's very important to but understand that
this issue right here it can cause an irregular heartbeat. I experienced that as well when
I had my potassium deficiency. Fluid balance you can actually start to retain a lot of
fluid and so you know we want to make sure that if you're retaining a lot of fluid you
think about that too.
High blood pressure is another reason. It's one of those reasons I talked about when people
start to run to their doctor and then they get medications where they actually you know
are covering up the symptom but they actually avoided identifying the root cause of the
problem. The blood pressure being high. When I had a potassium deficiency I would notice
throughout the day just based on certain things that I did as soon as I got done like doing
heavy exercise or if I was to do a sauna session or something of that nature what happens ismy
blood pressure would actually start to go high and so you know potassium deficiencies
can cause.
That is a very common symptoms, mood changes and irritability. There's actually a depression
that is linked to potassium deficiency. So consider that as well. Now let's talk about
how to get them because it's very important understand that most of the potassium is going
to come from your food. A lot of people think that your electrolytes or all your minerals
is going to come from water. Anytime I ever talked about drinking distilled water because
it's a very pure form of water a lot of people freak out and go you're gonna cause an electrolyte
deficiency but you have to understand electrolytes. You have to understand that most of them are
not going to come from your water in the first place.
Now I personally live out in the country. I have a well we have pretty bad water so
as a result we go and we filter all of it and if you ever had electrolytes in there
in the first place it's going to take them all out if you're getting a good filtration
system. Many people live in the city and they filter their water because it has fluoride
and a lot of other chemicals pharmaceuticals that kind of stuff in it and so as a result
if you go through a heavy filtration process in order to get out all the impurities you
take the electrolytes out.
So there's a good chance you're not getting them from your water unless you're specifically
drinking a spring water or you're buying an electrolyte infused water. So here's some
foods that are really good in order to get some go to potassium in your system. Beet
greens 1300 mg per cup not the tastiest things unless you cook them just right but they have
a lot of potassium in there. White beans 830 milligrams per cup, avocados a great source
800 milligrams.
A lot of people think that if you want to get good potassium you got to eat the bananas.
Avocados is a better source of that 800 milligrams. Coconut water is also a great source you know
recently I had a you know, massive headache and I figured that it was actually due to
electrolyte imbalance and even deficiency due to heavy exercise, sauna that sort of
thing and what I did have available to me was coconut water.
Excellent source and so for a lot of athletes who are trying to hydrate this is a better
option than utilizing Gatorade there or something it has a lot of sugar in it or even utilizing
a lot of the electrolyte drinks that have zero sugar but artificial sweeteners like
sucralose in them. And so coconut water is great butternut squash 582 milligrams per
cup, great source. Spinach is a great source and also sweet potatoes have 541 milligrams
per cup. They are also great source. White potatoes even have more but a lot of people
who follow my work we try to stay away from white potatoes to a certain degree.
So sweet potatoes are the better option there. Now let's talk about what happens when you
have too much potassium also known as hyperkalemia and this is important because I find that
a lot of people go out and they're going to stores and they're buying electrolyte powders
or maybe they read a blog online that you know, it's talking about electrolyte powder.
So they start just pouring on these super high dose electrolyte powders and they don't
even know why they're doing it or understand the purpose behind it.
They just heard it was good for them. So you know too much of a good thing right well as
I mentioned before too much of a good thing is not necessarily a good thing. Because a
lot of the same symptoms you have with too little potassium you have with too much potassium.
Tired and weakness, numbness, and tingling, nausea and vomiting and then trouble breathing.
This is where I actually had a patient who ran into this issue.
One of the things that they were doing you know, they basically didn't tell me that they
were adding in a ton of electrolytes because they thought that it was a very insignificant
thing to mention they're drinking a ton of electrolyte infused water. As a result their
care just started to go off the rails. I like what's going on a hard time breathing, heart
palpitations, irregular heartbeat. Well you know a month and a half after you know doing
all these different tests and going down a very insignificant road when it came to her
health.
It all came back down to she was drinking only a electrolyte infused water as a result
her electrolytes were far too high and a lot of people go and they get these different
powders because like I said I think that you know the more the better and then as a result
they drive their electrolytes to a high end of their body. So we have to be very careful
with that stuff. Chest pain is another thing that you can have happen as well. This particular
individual had all of these right here and it was very disruptive to their overall health.
They were getting heart test, they were getting tests for asthma, they were getting so many
different tests and it was too much potassium.
So we have to be careful with that. Put in the comments section below some of the experiences
you've had with too much or too little potassium. Share this video with your friends and then
check out this video over here that talks about all the electrolytes we talked about
potassium but what about magnesium? What about calcium? What about phosphorus?
All these other ones we mentioned this one's going to talk about deficiencies and the importance
of all of them. Check it out.