5 Signs of a Potassium Deficiency & HOW to Fix

Please hit that red SUBSCRIBE button!

Discovering that you’re deficient in potassium really just comes down to knowing what it feels like and what it looks like so we’re going to give you the breakdown of what a potassium deficiency looks like particularly on a low carb protocol and then i’ll give you some solutions to be able to kind of rectify that a little bit so let’s go ahead and dive in potassium

Is like a slingshot within your nervous system okay so when you send what is called an action potential when you send like the potential to move from your brain to any part of your body okay it is a relationship between sodium and potassium that allows this to happen okay sodium enters into a cell and then what happens is the potassium pulls it back out and kind

Of releases it again that’s the simplest way to explain it’s like a slingshot without potassium sodium doesn’t ever get really reset okay so what happens is things can remain in a locked position whereas potassium allows them to unlock a little bit so cramping all that kind of general stuff before i get into the symptoms so to speak there’s one really quick way

That you can test and that’s literally by like when you’re feeling a certain way when you’re feeling fatigued or when you’re feeling stiff or when you’re feeling like crampy if you consume some electrolytes you should feel it within about 30 seconds getting a pretty big mental lift okay the reason that i say this is not to be generic but it’s because remember where

Most of the nerve activity is happening within our body in our brain right so if you’re feeling a little bit like kind of down and maybe just tired and just general melees like you’re gonna feel electrolytes playing a role within your brain almost immediately so it just allows you like say your legs are cramping a little bit but you also feel a little bit run down

If you have electrolytes you’re not going to feel your leg not cramp instantaneously that’s going to take some time but you will feel it within your brain relatively quick so i just kind of say you can always test it that way and give yourself a little bit of an indicator and you can do that with straight potassium you can do it with pure salt whatever okay let’s

Get into this stuff though the first indicator especially on a lower carb protocol is if you are deficient in potassium you start getting really sensitive to salt okay remember salt and potassium work together okay so they also kind of oppose each other so if you are deficient in potassium what’s happening is you don’t have enough to counterbalance sodium so

All of a sudden you start getting more sensitive to sodium you get edema you end up with some facial bloating you feel just kind of foggy because that’s exactly what’s happening like you have this over stimulation from sodium without the actual reset of the potassium so pretty interesting that you would actually feel it in that way so you might notice like hey

I’m doing keto but every time i eat even a little bit of salt i feel like i get super puffy well you can add some potassium into the mix and there’s certain reasons why some people deplete their potassium stores more than sodium stores but it’s a pretty complex situation the next one i want to talk about is one that is very common on keto and that is sort of a

Chronic muscle stiffness okay so we have two things that are happening here for one the blood vessels will stay somewhat contracted okay they’re staying like in their tense form because potassium isn’t there to sort of allow the release a little bit so you end up with very like constricted vessels which means limited blood flow to a specific muscle cell okay well

What that can do is that causes the muscle cell to potentially rupture a little bit and leak because it’s starved of oxygen now in extreme cases like you’ve probably heard of something called rhabdomyolysis before which is like where people work out so hard that their muscles break down to the point and it leaks basically components of itself into the bloodstream

So much that the the kidneys can’t tolerate i’m not talking about that extreme talking about having at a small scale where the muscle cells are kind of rupturing and they’re just getting really stiff this is a pretty common issue and it has to do again with potassium but also just the overall dehydration effect okay but then there’s another piece that’s a little

Less scary and what that is is when we consume electrolytes like salt and potassium okay it triggers this gradient that travels down you know our nerve the action potential travels down a nerve to trigger a muscle to move but before it triggers the muscle to move it goes through what’s called a calcium channel and after this calcium channel the process starts over

Again where sodium potassium are needed if we’re mildly deficient in potassium we don’t have enough potassium to trigger that second effect of the actual muscle contracting properly and relaxing properly so the general rule of thumb is if you are cramping or getting stiff during a workout it is more than likely a potassium issue if you are cramping or getting

Stiff uh hours after a workout it ends up being a magnesium issue which is kind of a story for a different day by the way i’m going to continue on with this and give you some additional kind of like things that you can consume but my recommended electrolytes i put them down below because people always ask me it’s called element lmnt my personal favorite flavor

Is the mango chili that flavor is amazing but anyway they have a whole bunch of different flavors you can try eight sample packs of element you just pay a couple bucks for shipping so this is a special promotion just for people that watch my channel and because element is a big support of this channel they extend some of the savings out to you so literally you

Just pay for shipping so there’s a link down below you go to drink lmnt drink element drink lmnt.com thomas okay or just use that link down below that way you just pay shipping and get a sample pack to try them for yourselves the other symptom that rears its ugly head when you’re deficient in potassium is actually a little bit of numbness this has to do with

Purely the neurological piece okay we feel the whole sodium potassium imbalancing a lot in our nerves we’re just not always in touch with it so like a numbness or tingling specifically when you are dehydrated right so when you are feeling like first thing in the morning you’re a little bit numb or tingly that’s usually a good indicator and the first thing that

People do is they usually eat drink some water when they get up well that’s great except that’s diluting your electrolytes even more and i’m all for water but in that case you may want to add a little bit of electrolytes or even just some sodium to your water because sodium is going to help you out in the large grand scheme of things because sodium is going to

Allow you to retain water it sounds bad but it’s going to allow you to retain water which therefore allows you to retain the other minerals too so sodium is kind of the the root of all of this and allows us to retain the other minerals which is so important on keto then we have the mental fatigue and the mood swing aspect which isn’t heavily documented but it’s

A lot more evident with people in keto simply because the undulations and dehydration and electrolyte imbalances can be so extreme just because insulin levels are low and we’re excreting a lot and it comes down to a lot of times what’s called network stability okay if you look at fmri scans of the brain a lot of times when we’re adjusting to keto and things like

That we can have a reduction in what is called brain energy it’s literally the amount of energy that is floating through the brain between different regions of the brain and one of the best ways to potentially combat this is a get deeper into ketosis because more ketones are going to actually provide your brain with more fuel but that’s easier said than done you

Can’t just magically do that if you’re a beginner right one of the other things is there’s an interesting study that demonstrated that mct oil might this is a hypothesis might change brain energetics independent of ketone production what that means is having some electrolytes and having some mct oil might just give your brain a little bit of that quote-unquote

Network stability and brain energy that it needs to possibly change those kind of shifting ways that you feel now one that kind of coincides with all these too is insomnia okay we forget that any kind of electrolyte imbalance particularly magnesium and potassium can have a huge effect on your sleep okay remember anytime an alarm kind of goes off in your body

Electrolytes being low whatever it’s going to cause you to wake up it’s an alarm system for your body and it’s happening kind of a micro level so that’s something to think about too like a lot of times people think insomnia and they start like trying to piecemeal things together in reality is sometimes as simple as having a little bit of salt before bed not to

Mention a little bit of salt or a little bit of potassium or kind of getting those electrolytes before bed in the first place that can also help you retain water a tiny bit more so you don’t just necessarily urinate a bunch in the middle of the night and have to get up and pee twice right that’s my problem wakes me up all the time and just to kind of give you a

Few foods that you can eat when you’re on keto i know it’s not the purpose of this video but i want to give you something pragmatic of course using electrolyte powders are great like i suggested the element down below which is just a fun and good tasting way but then avocados okay brussels sprouts which are one of my personal favorites beet greens have like 25

To 30 percent of your daily value in just a serving so like the greens from a beet we have coconut water but you don’t want to do a lot of it you want to make sure it doesn’t have sugar added to it coconut water is a nice balanced electrolyte drink it’s just again a lot of sugar if you drink one that you’re not paying attention to clams are an interesting one so

Clams mussels things like that if you mix those up into like a dish or you just add them those are a tremendous tremendous source of potassium and anytime you can get it in a bioavailable fashion like that i highly recommend it and then one of the seeds that people really like to consume that i’m a big fan of is pumpkin seeds and you don’t need much of it also very

Rich in zinc okay which has some of course benefits as well we’ll just kind of lean into those in a different videos so of course you can really combine all these things avocados are probably my personal favorite when it comes down to just being able to have just versatility but at the end of the day you have to see when you need them because it’s a water-soluble

Mineral and it’s going to have an effect pretty quick so eating three avocados yesterday doesn’t necessarily constitute established potassium levels today so as always keep it locked here on my channel thank you again element for the support don’t forget to check them out down below and i’ll see you tomorrow

Transcribed from video
5 Signs of a Potassium Deficiency & HOW to Fix By Thomas DeLauer