it's estimated that only two percent of people meet their recommended daily intake of potassium
and that's not a good thing considering potassium is the most important electrolyte in your body
hey wellness warrior it's dr zyrowski and today we're talking about potassium this mineral is
very important for conducting electricity within your body you have to remember that your body is
an electrical system so if our nervous system is going to function appropriately then we have
to make sure that we have adequate amounts of potassium so we're going to talk about a lot
in this video we're going to talk about the deficiency how it happens we'll talk about
different things such as the symptoms that you'll face how you can actually replenish potassium
amounts in your body and then the things that can go wrong if you don't have adequate amounts of
potassium long term and lastly what happens if you get too much potassium in your body so we have a
lot to cover so let's dive in now the first thing that we want to look at is why does this happen
you know when i see patients one of the big things that people always ask me is dr zyrowski why
why is this happening to me sometimes it's kind of difficult to know why you may run into different
health issues but other times it can be cut and dry so let's go ahead and talk about some of the
symptoms and let's see if you can relate to any of these and of course i'll talk to you about
how i actually put myself into a massive potassium deficiency and it caused me a lot of health
problems so let's dive in so the first thing that we want to look at as a potential cause of a
potassium deficiency is if you're doing something very healthy and that is following the ketogenic
diet okay so if you're following the ketogenic diet this is a good way to fall into a potassium
deficiency and it's not that the ketogenic diet is bad it's a very healthy diet by pretty much
all standards but the fact is is that it actually can lead to that potassium deficiency and if you
are following the ketogenic diet that's why it's more important to make sure that you're eating
lots and lots of fresh green vegetables now let's talk about diet in general because it's not just
the ketogenic diet if you're following healthy low carb you can still fall into this category
so just be aware of that other thing that we want to look at is sugar if you're consuming excessive
amounts of sugar i mean we talk about how the average american consumes over 125 pounds of sugar
per day like that or per year i'm sorry but that's really insane so that it can be a reason
that you can have a potassium deficiency the next is vomiting or diarrhea if you maybe been sick or
maybe you have a stomach issue and you find yourself having lots of balance of diarrhea
then this is a reason for that deficiency insulin resistance think about this over a
hundred million people in the united states have pre-diabetes and they have it unknowingly so this
is certainly a reason that many people would run into this surgery or stress on your body so if you
have excessive stress it's certainly a reason for this using diuretics consuming too little sodium
or too much sodium can also be a cause alcohol intake excessive alcohol intake and then using
antibiotics okay this is something where there's literally hundreds of thousands
of people taking antibiotics consistently daily and they think that it has no recourse
on their overall health well one of the things it can actually do is cause a potassium deficiency
and so the last thing that we want to look at here as far as a major cause is a magnesium deficiency
and one of the things that you'll realize about these minerals that's really important is that
they need all of the different minerals in order to synergistically and appropriately function
within your body right so we have a lot of people go well if i have a potassium deficiency i'll
take a potassium pill right and they just think that that's a solution or taking high doses of a
powder of potassium or something along those lines but the fact is is that if your magnesium's
imbalance do you have a deficiency there or your sodium is off or or maybe you don't have proper
amounts of calcium what's going to happen is you're going to get imbalances anyway so it's
important to make sure that you're using multiple minerals all at once and we'll get to more of that
in just a moment and now how i put myself into a potassium deficiency issue is through excessive
sweating so i specifically was training for multiple very difficult races like spartan races
where i would go out in about three times a week i would exercise out in the heat for about two hours
and that would include running about seven miles that would include a lot of heavy
lifting and carrying things and i put myself into a huge potassium deficiency and it caused a lot of
symptoms let's talk about some of those symptoms because i experienced like literally all of these
and i didn't know what was going on at the time because when i was doing all this training like
i really wasn't as familiar with these issues as i am now well one of the things was extreme fatigue
okay so if you find yourself in a position where it's like oh my gosh like i wake up and i feel
like i'm walking through water all the time the fatigue is just awful that's probably a potassium
deficiency certainly want to start focusing on electrolytes there if you're noticing that
fatigue issue and even if you're getting the fatigue factor throughout the afternoon that
is a huge sign of an electrolyte problem okay we want to make sure that our body has proper
energy and we only get proper energy if we have balanced electrolytes muscle spasms is a big
one okay if you get a lot of cramping or muscle spasms you definitely want to start considering
electrolytes and potassium weakness overall so if you just feel your strength is down
maybe you're somebody who's in the gym and you're like ah just feels so weak it could be potassium
cramping which i mentioned irregular heartbeat okay this is where it actually gets a little bit
scary because you can start getting irregular heartbeats and arrhythmias and to be honest i
actually got this right i would have like these like palpitations these arrhythmias and i didn't
know what was going on well here's the thing that you have to realize is your heart is a muscle
right and your muscles don't function properly if you don't have adequate amounts of potassium
which we just mentioned so therefore it can cause some serious problems that could actually even be
fatal believe it or not so we got to be careful there when you see like you know extreme athletes
and they have massive heart attacks sometimes it is related to a potassium and mineral issue
vomiting is another one okay and then constipation and nausea okay so those are other symptoms that
can happen and the nausea one i think i i think i remember that i was feeling a little bit of nausea
here and there so those are things we all want to work to avoid and we do this by making sure that
we have adequate amounts of potassium which leads me to the sponsor of this video and the sponsor of
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and the thing is that's so important about proper hydration is not just about taking piles of sodium
or potassium or calcium it's making sure that you have the right amount of each one of them and it's
making sure that your body is actually able to utilize them appropriately so this month you're
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20 off link in the description below and i'm a big fan of using a hydration drink like this now of
course you can get it from your food as well now i specifically want to get it from both sources
because i find that to be very very useful so let's now take a look at food right so we talked
about using a hydration powder with potassium and sodium and all the things that are necessary
but let's take a look at what you can eat in order to increase your hydration as well
now the first thing that is loaded with potassium is going to be beet greens okay
problem is is that most people who hear this are going to go first of all what are beet greens
and second of all why would i eat those right most people don't even understand what they are so this
is why sometimes using like a hydration powder a electrolyte formula is really powerful okay
so beet greens yams is another huge source pinto beans white potatoes and now you're understanding
why those who follow low carb diet or even the ketogenic diet start to have more potassium issues
look at the sources right beet greens is obviously going to be more keto approved but when you look
at yams and pinto beans and white potatoes i mean not so much portobello mushrooms are a
great source of potassium avocados and then sweet potatoes okay now these are all good sources of
potassium that you can include into your diet so that you don't have these deficiency issues okay
now we're going to take a look real quick at some of the benefits of improving your
levels of potassium how it actually impacts your body first of all there's plenty of studies that
show that it reduces blood pressure okay it's estimated that one in three americans have high
blood pressure and this is an enormous problem so we want to make sure anything we can do to
counteract that we're actually implementing so potassium is a good option lots of good research
on that so we can reduce our blood pressure by improving our potassium intake also it reduces
water retention okay so if you're somebody who feels that you're just in a position where you're
holding water all the time it could be because of a potassium deficiency and so what happens is that
when you consume more potassium remember only two percent of people are meeting their daily intake
requirements for potassium so there's a good chance that you could be facing this so you
increase your urine production when you have adequate amounts of potassium and then you also
decrease your sodium levels as well and that's what's been shown to happen is that actually when
you have decreased potassium you actually get a sodium buildup in the body that becomes unhealthy
because your body is not able to clear it out well so you want to get potassium up the next thing is
going to happen is we can actually regulate muscle contraction much better when we have adequate
amounts of potassium and you might ask yourself well okay what does that mean so first of all
avoiding all the muscle weakness we mentioned avoiding the cramping in the muscle spasms
also making sure that we are able to have a well-functioning heart because your heart is
a muscle so if we want to avoid arrhythmias and regular heartbeats then potassium is
really important so that's what we want to look for then it is very important for our nervous
system function okay so we mentioned earlier that as we look at our nervous system it is an
electrical system and it conducts nerve impulses basically electricity within the body so therefore
if it can't do this correctly you can start getting all kinds of weird symptoms associated
with a potassium and electrolyte deficiency where you're getting like numbness and tingling
in certain areas or shooting pains so we want to keep that up okay now next on our list is
going to be it will help our digestion people who get potassium deficiencies can have all kinds of
digestive issues in the way of like constipation and so we want to make sure that for our digestion
to function properly we're getting adequate amounts of potassium and then the other one is ph
balance okay so ph balance is really important because our body has all these different phs
in it and our body uses ph as a mechanism to operate correctly okay so for instance in our gut
it's very important to have proper ph because what it does is it makes sure that bacteria within the
gut doesn't enter into areas it shouldn't be and cause infections it's very important to make sure
you have proper peach in your stomach so you can break down food and keep out viruses and bacteria
from getting into your system so ph is very important well potassium helps balance ph in our
system so we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to keep potassium balanced out
now a big question is going to be well how much do i need a day so it's estimated that you should be
somewhere right around 4 000 to 4 700 milligrams of potassium per day as far as intake goes and as
we mentioned only two percent of people meet these requirements okay so what we want to do is we want
to make sure that we increase the amount of food that we're consuming that's rich in potassium but
we also can even use some of these powders like electrolyte powders like the one i mentioned today
which you can get twenty percent off by using using code juicy 20 using powders like this
in order to make sure that we have adequate amounts of potassium within our system but
here's the thing is that we don't want excessive amounts right so usually when people hear stuff
like this they go well if you know too little is bad then a lot must be good the problem is is that
you can have hyperkalemia which is not necessarily going to be healthy for you either so we want to
make sure that we do not take too much potassium because that overdose is very hard on the kidneys
and when we look at some of these different powders or pills where people are consuming them
and these powders might have four 000 milligrams of potassium in them hard on the kidneys and if
you overdo it you're going to have issues just the same you know just like anything with our health
we don't want to go overboard but we also want to make sure that we're not finding ourselves in a
deficient state so balance is the key here when it comes to anything to do with your health i
hope you enjoyed this video and if you like this one i think you'll really like this video next