Potassium & Blood Pressure: MUST WATCH!

Potassium & Blood Pressure: MUST WATCH!


Hi, guys. Dr. Berg here. In this video we’re going to talk about insulin
resistance, potassium, and blood pressure. Out of all the nutrients that you need, potassium
is something needed in very large quantities. You need 4700 mg of potassium every single
day. What does that mean with food? It means that hardly anyone is getting their
potassium, because you would need 7 – 10 cup of vegetables every single day. How many cups of vegetables do you consume
in given day? Maybe five? Maybe less? I do it because I feel so much different. Here’s the thing. We need four times as much potassium as we
do sodium. Most people consume four times as much sodium
as they do potassium and they have a lot of fluid retention. So, they both work together in relationship
to fluids and hydration. If you look at vegetable content, it’s always
heavy on the potassium and very low on the sodium, but if you’re doing chips and salty
things, that’s going to throw this whole thing off. What happens when you have low potassium is
you get high blood pressure. Potassium is a physiological relaxer. It calms the nervous system. It actually softens the arteries. It actually can prevent strokes. It’s very, very healthy. Healthy mineral. It can also prevent constipation. It also can prevent leg cramps. It’s involved in nerve conductivity and muscle
contraction and relaxation. With a problem with potassium you can have
a lot of cramps, tightness, and tension in your body and you can also have a lot of electrical
problems with your heart. Arrhythmias, atrial fib, that’s all potassium
deficiency because people don’t consume enough. Let’s pretend you have high blood pressure
and you have to take a diuretic thiazide. Well, what that does is it gets rid of fluid. Well, it also gets rid of potassium, so what
happens when you take this diuretic to fix your high blood pressure, you lose more potassium
raising the blood pressure more. So, now you need another medication. And then you’re told to drink more water,
which dilutes the electrolytes more, especially potassium, and your blood pressure goes higher,
because more water is not going to hydrate you. It’s going to get rid of the electrolytes
that you have, potassium specifically, and you don’t get the hydration you once had. So the whole myth of drinking more water to
hydrate you is not quite true. You need the minerals, specifically potassium. That’s the one you need in the most amount. Even magnesium, you need about 420 mg, but
potassium you need 4700. Also, if you’re salt sensitive, especially
with your blood pressure, what that really means is you’re potassium deficient. The way to fix people that are salt sensitive
is just increase the potassium and they’ll do fine. Instead of restricting salt, why don’t we
just increase potassium? It’s a better strategy because you need potassium
for other things. 98% of all the potassium in your body is inside
the cell, not outside the cell. When you get tested from your blood or whatever
testing you do, it’s very difficult to test a potassium deficiency because it’s all inside
the cell. You might think you have normal levels, but
you really don’t because you never did an intracellular test for potassium. The other interesting thing about potassium
is it takes insulin to control and absorb potassium. If you don’t have enough insulin, you can’t
pull potassium in the cells. Insulin regulates potassium. How does that relate to a pre-diabetic, someone
has insulin resistance or diabetic? Well, if they have insulin resistance, the
cells are going to block insulin. So guess what’s going to happen to the potassium? They’re not going to have enough potassium. A lot of times when you have a pre-diabetic
or even a diabetic state, they have a huge, huge deficiency of potassium. One of the things I make sure that they do
is greatly increase the vegetable content to increase the potassium to help balance
this thing out because they’re going to have so many side effects from that. If you actually add more potassium you can
decrease the need for insulin. That’s a really cool relationship. I just wanted to touch on the relationship
between these three items right here. If you have blood pressure start increasing
your vegetables and if you like this kind of information, if you like learning about
nutrition, if you find it interesting I have a health coaching training program that you
might be interested in learning about where we teach you a lot more about nutrition and
how the body works. If you want to apply to the scholarship that
I have, click the link below, check it out, study it, and maybe you can be a health coach
as well. Thanks for watching.