The #1 Mineral Deficiency Behind Swollen Feet & Ankles

Are your feet and ankles swelling every evening? Discover why your ankles swell at night and how to relieve edema in the legs and feet naturally by addressing the root cause.

Let’s talk about why your feet and ankles swell every single evening and exactly how to fix it. I had this problem for a decade. I didn’t really know what it was back then, but back then, even in my early 30s, I would press into my lower part of my leg and it would leave a dent. That’s called pitting edema. So, today I’m going to show you exactly what’s behind that and how to fix it.

It’s so easy. When you do a search on edema in your lower extremities, sometimes you’re going to see varicose veins, you’re going to see a lot of other terminology, which is very confusing. So, let me just explain what the veins are. Veins are the other half of the circulation. So, you have arteries that go from the heart that push your blood down to your feet and your fingers and up to your head.

Then it crosses over through these little capillaries into the Venus system. And the Venus system returns the blood up to the heart. And when you have a problem with the Venus system, you can get a pooling effect of fluid. There’s other causes of edema as well, like your liver, for example, can be damaged. And your liver makes certain proteins that help hold the blood in your arteries.

And when you don’t have the protein in your arteries, you actually have certain parts of the blood that can ooze out through the circulation into the tissues. And when the kidney’s damaged, you can also lose protein and create that same thing. So, a lot of people ask me, “What supplements do I recommend? ” Now, of course, I’m not biased of my own high-quality supplement line, but if you go to Amazon and type Dr. Berg supplements, you’ll find more information.

And a lot of people blame fluid retention on standing too much or sitting too much, but that doesn’t really explain edema because certain people stand for many, many hours at work and they never get edema. Certain people sit in a chair in front of a computer for many hours and they don’t always have edema. Some people do and some people don’t. When a patient goes to the doctor with this condition, they’re told they have venous insufficiency and they’re put on a diuretic to push the fluid out. They’re also told to go on a low-salt diet.

Both of these treat the symptom. There’s something else going on at a root cause level. And that is something called a metabolic sponge, okay? When you have too much insulin that builds up in your blood supply, your body starts to retain sodium. And anytime you retain sodium, you’re also going to retain fluid.

So, in other words, the thing that triggers insulin is carbs. And what you need to know is carbs hold water. For every one unit of carb, you’re going to hold three units of water. So, basically, a high-carb diet causes a metabolic sponge in your body that shows up in your feet and your ankles. Especially if you take your socks off at night and you see that indentation where the sock is, that is purely this situation right here.

And I can totally recommend that you go out and walk more and you exercise more and you also do more calf exercises, which basically are like a second heart. When you activate your calf, even if you’re sitting in front of your desk, you’re activating your veins, okay? Helping you push the blood. But, if this metabolic sponge is not handled, you’re not going to see many results with more exercise. And as soon as you stop taking your diuretic pills, it’s going to come right back because the root cause is not identified.

The other thing that’s involved with eating sugar and refined carbs is the severe lack of potassium. Now, if we take a look at sodium and potassium, we need a certain ratio. We need a lot more potassium than we do sodium. The average person doesn’t even come close to getting half of the amount of required potassium that we need, which is 4,700 mg, okay? And even if a patient goes to the health food store and buys potassium, it comes in 99 mg pills, right?

How many pills of 99 mg would you have to take to get 4,700? That would be a lot. That would be like taking almost half the bottle. But, it’s very important to put this potassium thing on your radar because even if you’re on a diuretic pill, guess what’s going to happen? It actually depletes potassium.

And even doctors will prescribe potassium pills with the diuretic to give you a little more potassium, but you need a lot more than what is in those pills. So, going on a low-salt diet does not correct the insulin problem, the carb problem, the lack of potassium. But, if you were to do three things, lower your insulin by getting rid of your carbs and sugar, going on what’s called the ketogenic diet, and then decreasing the frequency of eating, that’s called intermittent fasting, you would instantly lower insulin and you would stop retaining sodium and you would lose a tremendous amount of excess fluid that you have building up in your body. This is why in the first 1 to 2 weeks going on the low-carb diet, a person will lose between 7 and 11 lb of fluid. And they’re losing it from this metabolic sponge that’s holding it in there and it’s locked in there with insulin.

But, the key to this whole thing to make it work out is the addition of potassium. Taking more potassium. Why? Because that’s going to balance out the sodium. That’s also going to indirectly help you lower insulin and make insulin more sensitive and it’s going to effectively help you push out a lot of excess fluid that you’re holding on to and help you maintain that.

But, not only that, you need potassium desperately for the sodium-potassium pump. This is a pump that’s in all of your cells that helps activate the fluid out of your body. But, more importantly, the sodium-potassium pump is a pump that can’t work without sufficient potassium. Now that you understand the root cause of swelling, the next most important thing for you to wrap your wits around is this potassium right here. There’s a lot more to know about it and I put all this information in this video right here.

Check it out.