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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.