 Stop worrying about potassium. One of the first questions people ask after starting a ketogenic diet or carnivore diet is, where do I get my potassium? Where were you getting your potassium on a standard American diet? Do people not understand that carbohydrate intake requires potassium? You actually need potassium to process carbohydrates and sugars. Once you go on a lower carbohydrate diet, the demand for potassium is much lower. And where has this idea that we need so much potassium came from? The same people that are telling you that is bad for you, cholesterol clogs your arteries, eat your fruits, veggies and whole grains? How can you adapt a completely new lifestyle belief like the ketogenic or carnivore diet but still maintain some of those old ideas? We are taking all of this stuff for granted, but if we look at the amount of electrolytes the body stores, how much electrolytes occur in meat, as well as the recommended dietary allowances, none of this adds up. The recommended dietary allowances are what the government essentially tells us we need to meet every day as a minimum requirement, but the vast majority of nutrients don't actually have a recommended daily allowance. Most of them only have an adequate intake. So the USDA, these regulatory bodies, aren't really telling you how much sodium and potassium to consume. On paper that's not what this means. This is just a hypothetical suggested adequate intake with no real basis. If you actually took their recommended adequate intake of 4700 mg of potassium and 1500 mg of sodium, you would get immediate potassium overdose, tingling, you would start smelling weird things, you'd get low blood pressure, heart palpitations. This is because this ratio, 4700 to 1500, is far different than our indigenous ancestors. Hunter-gatherers used to have a 2 to 1 ratio of potassium to sodium in their diet and most humans right now store 0.2% of their body weight as potassium and 0.4% of their body weight as sodium. This reflects the dietary intake. So we're speculating that hunter-gatherers had a 2 to 1 ratio. This is what the RDA is telling us. This is what we have in our bodies now and this is the amount that occurs in something like meat. He has 1300 mg of potassium per pound and 200 mg of sodium per pound. So all I have to say is this is really confusing and I understand why everyone is lost on this. We have to consider that the body loses electrolytes when it sweats, particularly sodium. And with the amount of sodium that occurs naturally in food and comparing that to our hunter-gatherer diet ratios, they were obtaining higher amounts of salt than what naturally occurs in food. So we certainly need to add salt to our food. It's just not as much as we're doing and people actually get far less potassium than you're getting on a carnivore diet. If you're eating 2 pounds of meat a day, you're getting 2600 mg of potassium. But there's no carbohydrate metabolism required on a carnivore or ketogenic diet. We have to consider bioavailability when discussing animal foods. If you're getting 1300 mg of potassium from spinach on a high carbohydrate diet, that is drastically different than getting 1300 mg of potassium from meat on a low carbohydrate diet. A carnivore diet or ketogenic diet lowers the body's requirement for potassium drastically and even magnesium, all these other vitamins, every single nutrient is more available in animal foods than in plant foods. And since plant foods aren't stressing certain metabolic processes, we don't need as many of these nutrients in the first place. The main reason we can't use potassium supplements is because of the same reason we can't use other mineral supplements, electrolyte, balance, mineral balance. Every nutrient you put in your body is synergistic and antagonistic. You consume a lot of sodium, your body requires more potassium. You consume a lot of potassium. Your body flushes out sodium, same thing with magnesium, same thing with calcium. And each of these minerals and elements has issues to address on their own, but potassium in particular gets absorbed very quickly in its powder form. Normally a high potassium food has a very slow absorption rate, so your body is taking potassium as it needs from the digestive system. This results in the only plausible way to supplementing potassium to really be to consume normal foods. So if you're having potassium or electrolyte imbalance, your best solution is not to increase your potassium intake, it's to reduce your sodium intake to rebalance your electrolytes. Magnesium is not as much of an issue to supplement with because magnesium bioavailability is much lower, usually less than 25%, whereas these potassium supplements have a very high and quick digestion rate in the stomach, in the small intestine, upwards of 90%. So if you take 300 milligrams of magnesium, your actual bioavailable magnesium is far less than 75%. If you're taking 1,500 milligrams, 3,400 milligrams of potassium, that's nearly 100% availability. But does this mean we have to salt our food? Everyone has an individual tolerance for salt, for water, depending on their kidney function, depending on their digestive system, their genetics, you have a lot of factors at play here. Some people need water, some people don't have to drink a lot of water, some people can salt their food heavily, some people don't want to salt their food at all. As with many issues in our modern diet, the simple solution is increase the amount of quality animal foods, salt your food accordingly, maybe one day don't salt your food, the next day try salting your food, experiment with different types of salt, see what amount you feel best on. But playing around with electrolyte powders and mixing those solutions has never amounted to anything positive. I might do a video on a mineral wheel, let me know if you guys would like to see that. It basically goes over the antagonistic and synergistic properties of minerals, so what happens if you take sodium, potassium does this, then it messes with manganese and iron and phosphorus and then magnesium gets messed up and it basically goes in a vicious cycle until you get all of your electrolytes and the only source of all the electrolytes and balance them out is animal foods. So thank you guys for joining me today. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon and share the video if you can. Definitely check out frankiesfreerangemeet.com providing you with high quality nutrient dense animal foods at the most affordable price. Also go to frankiesnaturals.com to get minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. Thanks so much for joining me today guys and enjoy the rest of your day.