The Ketogenic Diet and Electrolytes

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so I want to talk about the importance of electrolytes on a ketogenic diet I’m not sure if you know this or not but it’s really the lack of electrolytes that are responsible for the keto flu constipation when you do Kido Kido fatigue cramping and heart flutter or a palpitation or even symptoms of heart arrhythmia let’s go through a few reasons why this might be well the first reason is this when you run your body on glucose 2. 7 grams of water is needed for one gram of glucose so when you’re storing glucose as glycogen you’re holding like three times the amount of water so glycogen or store glucose is really a fluid-filled sponge so when you lower your carbs and you get rid of the fluid you’re gonna then get rid of the total volume of fluid and the electrolytes at the same time because that’s where the electrolytes are stored in the fluid and guess what you may experience dizziness weakness tiredness lightheadedness and even cramps when you don’t have enough electrolytes so electrolytes would be like potassium magnesium calcium sodium phosphorus chloride these minerals like magnesium calcium sodium phosphorus are fairly stable for the most part in other words your body can pull them from the bone from the muscles very easily but potassium does not have a storage so potassium is a mineral that is needed in large quantities yet your body does not retain it that well but it definitely retains sodium an average person is holding or retaining 8,000 milligrams of extra sodium so when you’re doing a fast your body does become more conservative with minerals and vitamins so you’re not going to lose as much but if you’re already deficient and going into a fast those symptoms are magnified or if you’re doing prolonged fasting you’re going to definitely be deficient in some of these minerals and another point I want to talk about is when you’re doing keto which is low carb many times people do not consume a lot of vegetables because that’s carbs even though they’re very low sima carbs and there a lot of fiber and we count a net carbs not total carbs so if we’re subtracting all the fiber you’re not getting as many carbohydrates as you might think but we don’t get enough vegetables and you’re not taking electrolytes you’re not going to get enough potassium potassium is needed to lower insulin it’s needed to improve insulin resistance it’s also needed for your gut it’s also needed for the peristalsis or the pumping action of the colon because most of these electrolytes especially potassium are needed for muscle contraction so to have a normal bowel movement you need potassium magnesium and definitely sodium for a slightly different reason because if you’re getting rid of your fluid and you don’t have enough fluid in your tissues or in your colon that’s going to cause dehydration and you’re gonna get constipation so sometimes you need more potassium for constipation sometimes you need more sodium and even sometimes you might need magnesium now the second reason why electrolytes are important is that electrolytes improve insulin resistance and that is the goal of doing keto NIF in the first place is to improve and balance out your insulin levels and fix insulin resistance so you can improve this by lowering your carbohydrates not eating as frequently intermittent fasting and taking electrolytes so it speeds up the process without all the side effects and lastly you have the mitochondria you that’s where all the energy production is happening this is where your metabolism is located and when you switch from running your body and glucose to fat-burning guess what your metabolism goes up so the requirement for more electrolytes goes up too simply because the mitochondria needs certain electrolytes and minerals to run the Machine so in summary you have a couple options you can take electrolytes or you can consume foods with electrolytes and the main foods you want to focus on in addition to the moderate protein and higher fat are these things called vegetables so if you want more knowledge on how to create a healthy body subscribe now and get daily notifications