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Thread: Potassium?

  1. #1

    Potassium?

    So been suffering with more and more ectopic beats lately, feeling generally tired, ECGS and other heart tests have always come back fine, however I came across a hospital letter from 2 years ago after a little hospital stay noting my potassium level was 3.2, obviously looking into this more of seen this could be a problem. My diet hasn't changed much since then as I didn't realise there was anything wrong, does anyone know if it's possible for something like this to correct its self? Obviously I'm now worrying my level may have got lower since then which is why I may be experiencing these ectopic beats more and more, I know my doctors the first person to ask but seems strange that no one ever mention it.

    Just seeing if anyone knows much about this sort of thing?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2016
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    55

    Re: Potassium?

    Could be. Either way it is not something you can't fix rather easily.

    Stress and specially anxiety can burn your nutritional resources. I mean, all that tachycardia, sweating, fast breathing, muscle tension, jumpiness has to get energy from somewhere to occur. Anxiety and stress has been known to burn B complex, magnesium, some iron and etc from your body because in an anxious state your body consumes more energy than normal, so even if your diet hasn't changed, you can still suffer from dehydration and lack of nutrition because your anxiety starts to pile it up. The anxious digestive symptoms doesn't help much either (fast stools, yellow stools, frequent urination, nausea, lack of appetite and so on).

    Once, in a panic state, I went to the ER because I was feeling really tired (more than usual), very dizzy and my tongue was swollen (but not painful). They did some tests and could only conclude I was dehydrated (swollen tongue can be a symptom of nutrition deficiency), so they gave me some vitamins and B Complex on IV and I felt fine again. I did had some ectopic beats the day before that, at night. Skipping heart followed by serious coughing.

    After this experience I got careful on my eating patterns when in anxiety. Here's some tips:

    If you're already experiencing symptoms of dehydration and lack of nutrition, trying to balance your nutrition with vitamin pills or solid food alone is too slow. The best way to counter some electrolytic imbalance is with liquids. When you're too anxious and stressed it's very likely your intestines aren't digesting food all that well because of stress, so instead of eating a very nutritional food, drinking a very nutrient dense liquid is better, the absorption is faster and complete, as your body soaks it all up. What I usually do a simply shake of:

    Milk
    Peeled Bananas
    Oatmeal

    Put all that on a blender and turn it up. You will end up with a very disgusting milk beverage that despite being horrible for your tastes are pretty good for the rest of your body: plenty of calcium and potassium, plenty natural fats, plenty micronutrients and all that.

    If milk isn't for you then a juice of kale and carrots it's also very nutritious. Same process:

    Water
    Kale
    Carrots

    Put it all on a blender and turn it up. You can try putting some lemon drops on it so it doesn't taste like grass. It's still horrible though.

    You could try to create your own recipe with different ingredients that have the nutrients you are searching for, but the point still stands: it needs to be taken in liquid form so your body doesn't have the option of not absorbing the stuff.

    On me, both of these could very quickly fight some dehydration and lack of nutrition on the short term basis. They have stopped ectopics on me at least.

    On the long term you need to improve your absorption of food. And as anxious person the best way to that is by improving the fauna in your gut, Probiotics. You see, humans, even though being omnivorous, can't actually digest tons of stuff. Vegetables are almost impossible for us to digest completely for example (compared to meat at least). You know when your stools have corn beans or leaves on them? You know why? Because our intestines can't break cellulose all that well, so many vegetables can pass straight through the intestines and not be digested or absorbed.

    How do we absorb nutrient from vegetables then? Using the bacteria in our intestines. It's they who thrive and love to break down vegetables, they eat the stuff and when they do, then we can absorb the nutrients from these vegetables. And not just vegetables either, they also help on some meat digesting as well, that is why it's so important to have a healthy gut flora and fauna so that you can absorb your food better, even if you are stressed.

    How to get a good flora in your gut? Eating probiotics. Not just the pharmaceutical stuff, actually it's better to just do it naturally. Drink more yogurt, drink some fermented milk from time to time, and specially, really really important, something that you should try to have on all meals: leafy green vegetables! Leafy salads. It doesn't matter what leaf, it can be kale, collards, chards, spinach, it doesn't really matter, it only matters that it's a solid leaf and that you eat it, because that is the food your gut bacteria needs to thrive, if you're not eating leafy salads regularly your gut bacteria are weak and your food absorption will suffer from it. Left unchecked, it could cause some dehydration and denutrition.

    Try to correct your diet and thrive on nutrient dense foods. Then stay relaxed and, very importantly, sleep well. Because lack of sleep, dehydration, denutrition and stress are all known causes of ectopics, actually, even posture can cause ectopics. If the ectopics continue after all that, then it could be a real condition, but not before that.
    Last edited by Bearinmind; 08-07-16 at 16:16.

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