Low Potassium: Symptoms, Signs, Diet, Causes, and Treatment

Let’s talk about low potassium. Why? Because potassium is probably the number one deficiency with most people, but it is the hardest to detect. Because when you take a blood test, most of the potassium, 98% of your potassium is inside the cell, not outside the cell. So, when they do a blood test, it’s not going to show up unless it’s really extreme, so the type of testing you would have to do would be an intracellular test. It is very sophisticated. People don’t really ask for it, doctors probably don’t know about it, but there is a test that you can do. But I like to go by symptoms.

Symptoms of potassium deficiency

Below are some of the symptoms of low potassium.  K+ is a chemical symbol of potassium. When there is low potassium:

1. The blood pressure will increase. Why? Because potassium is a physiological relaxer. It’s a tranquilizer. It calms things down.
2. Muscle cramps. Because potassium is an electrolyte.
3. Sugar cravings. Why? Because potassium helps you store sugar, and it will help you to get rid of sugar cravings, because the storage of glucose needs potassium.
4. Constipation. That is another symptom of low potassium. And then, high insulin. There’s a relationship between sugar, blood sugars, diabetes and potassium. In fact, when you have enough potassium, the need for insulin goes down, so I always recommend potassium for diabetic clients.
5. Muscle weakness, this is another one. You could have this unexplainable muscle weakness and not know why. Why? Because the electrolytes are needed to help the muscles contract. And that’s why there may be abnormal heartbeat. Because the heart is a muscle (learn more about the Top Remedies for Your Heart). These abnormal heartbeats, for example, like atrial fibrillation, arrhythmias, that’s a combination of a deficiency of potassium and/or magnesium (learn more about 9 Unexpected Benefits of Magnesium).
6. Anxiety and sleeping problems because potassium is something to calm you down. If you are doing something that doesn’t involve diet, something that doesn’t involve enough potassium, you can start manifesting a lot of these symptoms.

Now, what causes low potassium? Well, if you are sick and you vomit or are a bulimic, that can cause that. Or maybe you are just not eating enough in your diet.

Now, you might say, “Well, I eat bananas, right?” Well, bananas only have 300 mg. You need 4,700 mg per day to hit your regular amount that you need. You would have to consume 12-11 bananas. You don’t want all that sugar.

How to get potassium in your diet?

So what you want to do is to consume potassium from vegetables, from salad. And you are going to need about 7 to 10 cups. It is not that hard. You just have a couple of big salads. If you don’t like salad, take kale, maybe a little bit of berry, blend it with water, and drink your salad.

That will get the potassium in there. So you want to start to increase that. And that is how you increase it from the diet. You are going to feel a lot better, too. Because if you are doing an Atkins diet, high protein, you are going to need potassium. You are going to start feeling weakness because you don’t have enough potassium.

Modifying keto diet

Ketosis is the state of fat-burning when you are eating more fat, no carbohydrates, and you can become deficient in potassium from that, too. That is why people always modify the ketosis diet, and make sure that they have enough greens and vegetables to help balance that.

Also, potassium is necessary for the digestion and breakdown and buildup of protein. People that are losing their hair, for example, and they are eating just protein thinking that they are going to get their hair back, without potassium, sorry, it doesn’t work.

We have got diuretics. For exemple, you are out of blood pressure medication. You are going to deplete your potassium and keep the blood pressure there. Interesting. That is the diuretic. That is one of the side effects.
So you better make sure that your diuretic is not pulling out potassium and you’re not putting it back in.

Why stress depletes potassium?

High cortisol. That’s stress. Stress can also deplete potassium. In fact, specialists had people do advanced testing on their potassium levels, and they are eating a tremendous amount of potassium, but because they’re under a tremendous amount of stress, their potassium stays low. Because with the adrenal, it’s almost like you have a hole in the bucket, and the potassium goes right through.

Again, when you are under stress, you need even more potassium. Anyway, this potassium is important. High insulin will cause a low potassium, and that’s sugar. So let’s just add that to the list. Consuming sugar will deplete your potassium. And you can even feel it in your heartbeat. It starts to go fast. A strong heartbeat, you can hear it in your inner ear. That is a sign of low potassium because you just ate a lot of sugar, and you need to start consuming more salad to put that back.

Last one is drinking too much water. This goes against what everyone says, that you have to drink when you’re. By the time you drink, it might be too late. Sometimes you don’t know when you’re thirsty. So that’s just a myth. When you drink too much water, you create a condition called hyponatremia, which is a dilution of all your electrolytes, and then your heart starts going out of balance and you can have a heart attack by drinking too much water.

So you want to drink when you’re thirsty so you don’t flush out all your electrolytes. Because you’re drinking water, but you’re peeing out electrolytes. You are not putting in electrolytes. You may hydrate your water with lemon, a little bit of apple cider vinegar, maybe a little Stevia if it’s carbonated. You can also drink Pellegrino or filtered water.

This is just an overall of this very common deficiency that people have and the symptoms so you can start thinking with it. And if you start having any of these, then you know it could be connected with that, and then you know the cause of that.