How to Get Enough Potassium on the Carnivore Diet - Dr. Berg

Get access to my FREE resources 👉 https://drbrg.co/4aRNkTW

can you really get enough pottassium if you’re doing carnivore well let’s go into it first I want to explain a little bit about how potassium Works potassium is not the most abundant mineral in the body calcium is because calcium is stored but potassium is the mineral that you need the most out of any nutrient as far as a daily amount you need like 4,700 milligrams a day that’s a lot so why do you need that much because potassium is involved in something called the sodium potassium pump and that’s in all of your cells it’s a pump that allows the contraction and relaxation of your nerves not to mention the fluid inside and outside the cells let’s talk about if you have too much potassium or too little potassium okay so too much potassium the word for that is called hyper calmia it’s too much potassium not enough potassium that’s called hypo cium so what you need to know about both is that it’s very very rare to have any symptoms even if you have low or high unless it’s like extreme most of potassium like 98% of it is inside the cell there’s a lot of factors that can uh make it even lower in the blood even though they’re measuring only 2% of it uh what are the symptoms for low potassium versus high if you have high potassium you can have diarrhea low potassium constipation so with HP potassium you have more muscle pain or muscle numbness but with low potassium you have more muscle cramps and just an overall tiredness so you can imagine like especially if you exercise like you need potassium to allow things to work it’s going to help your performance and if you don’t have enough you can feel kind of weak kind of tired and just as a side note one of the causes of low potassium is low magnesium because they work so closely together all right so what would cause a high level of potassium well mainly it’s going to be be kidney disease because the kidney can’t get rid of the potassium and so it just builds up in the body it’s extremely rare to develop too much potassium in the blood from dietary potassium or even taking supplements of certain blood pressure medications and it can also be a side effect of a an adrenal condition called Addison which is a condition where your adrenals just aren’t working and you have this hormonal problem where you’re retaining more pottassium and you’re losing a ton of salt this is why people with Addison’s disease need to take a lot of salt so in other words the more potassium you have the less ratios of sodium you’re going to have and so typically we need a 2: one ratio like two times as much potassium sodium we need both but we need the right ratios now what’s interesting is one of the side effects from taking too much potassium is diarrhea because it creates like a laxative effect diuretics are a common cause of low potassium steroids are another cause of low potassium another interesting cause is a crush injury so you have this injury we have trauma you you lose a lot of potassium from that hallucinations and depression are a common cause of low potassium in fact when you get a surgery the requirement for potassium goes up too now that you know a little bit about potassium and the need for potassium most people think that potassium only comes from Plants that’s not NE true but you do get a lot of pottassium from plants like for example beet leaves one cup has 1300 milligram beet leaves are loaded with oxalates as well and people don’t normally consume a lot of beet leaves um you also have swiss chard which also has oxalates that has like over 900 milligrams per cup then you have spinach also high in oxalates 840 milligrams of potassium avocados have between 500 and 700 milligram of potassium and actual beets have like 520 milligram per cup of potassium and then you have also just regular salad you can get a good amount of potassium it’s usually between 350 to 500 milligrams per cup so if you’re doing several cups you’re going to get a good amount of potassium and I don’t recommend getting your potassium from bananas because it’s high in sugar and you only get like 300 milligrams per banana so what about this carnivore diet where are you going to get your potassium well bone broth one cup of bone broth can give you 500 Mig of potassium that’s just one little cup 32 ounces of beef can give you 350 millgram of pottassium 3 and half ounces of octopus can give you like 650 milligrams of pottassium 3 ounces of salmon can give you 300 milligrams of potassium now realize you’re probably consuming more than 3 ounces or 3 and a half ounces of these animal products one large egg is about 63 Mig of potassium 3 oz of liver will give you about 125 milligram of potassium and even 3 oz of chicken can give you about a little over 300 milligrams of potassium and so I hope I sufficiently answer that question and since we’re on the topic of carnivore if you have not seen my video on the benefits of consuming beef you should check it out I put it up right here