Hey friends. This is Dr. Brenden Cochran at Interactive Health Clinic. Today I want to talk about electrolytes.
So what are electrolytes? Well, electrolytes are things like magnesium, calcium, potassium and sodium. These are the big electrolytes that we commonly think of now.
Why are they important? Well, salt’s important for your basically your electricity to function properly in your body. Now, most people get plenty of salt.
Why you get it from eating any processed foods, soups you get salt. Even if you’re on a water system that may add salt as a softener, you get more salt. So most people don’t have a deficiency of salt or sodium as the big one. A lot of these are connected to also chlorides as well. We’ll talk about chlorides a little bit.
So the next one is magnesium. Now, magnesium, most people don’t get, unless you’re really good at eating your vegetables, roots, your nuts, your whole foods. This is the number one. Number one deficient electrolyte in the entire world. People do not get enough of this. What ends up happening. If you don’t get enough magnesium, your detoxification pathways don’t work well. Your muscles are contracting and they’re more tense. You get muscle spasms, you may get mental fatigue. You may also have problems with detoxification. Magnesium is used in so many biochemical pathways in the body for you to be healthy. Most people do not have enough of it.
Next one is calcium. Now, despite popular belief, most people think calcium is comes from dairy products, milk, cheese, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of those dairy products are actually fortified with calcium. That is not very absorbable. And most of the calcium act actually get is from things like nuts seeds. And again, back to vegetables. In fact, one of the highest calcium foods is found in Tahini or sesame seeds that has a very high calcium content.
Why is calcium important? Well, calcium’s important in your muscle contractions. Calcium’s important in your heart. Calcium’s important in your ability to release neurotransmitters that make you feel more happy. For example, calcium is not only found in your bone, your bone’s actually the least important of the vital organs, where calcium is used. That’s why if you aren’t utilizing or getting calcium that is utilized your body pulls it out of your bone. And some of you may know osteoporosis. The problem is if we give oral calcium or, or too much calcium, we actually find the body sometimes doesn’t know where to put it. It puts it in your blood vessels and hardens your blood vessels versus putting it in your bone. So one of the safest ways to get calcium is actually from food. Now, for those of you that are worried about, well, if I’m not eating a lot of dairy, how do I get it? Well, I talked about tahini the other thing is if, if you are consuming dairy alternatives, those products, fortify calcium in them as well.
Final one. Well, the final few I should say is potassium. Potassium a lot of people are deficient in we run red blood cell tests. And why am I saying red blood cell versus just a serum. Most of your potassium, most of the magnesium are found inside your cells. They’re not found in the blood. So if you’re doing a blood test and it looks like potassium’s normal, that’s great that means you’re not really bad. However, if we run these tests, most of the time, what we find is people’s cell counts of potassium are very low, meaning you don’t have a lot in your cells. So the body has to pull it out into the serum. Potassium’s important in your muscles. It’s important in your nerve firing pathways. It’s also important in your heart. What potassium does is it’s generally very calming for the system overall. So, if you have anxiety, if you have heart palpitations, if you have muscle contractions, if you have insomnia it may be a potassium deficiency that’s going on.
The last one is chloride. Now chlorides usually found with potassium magnesium, or it could be found with sodium. Chloride’s generally very calming as well. It, it, downregulates the, the over stimulation of the nervous system. Now there’s ways that you get these from food. The other ways that we give them is intravenously. Now, why would I do intravenous in infusions with these versus food and what would be differentiating.
Potassium, for example, if you take it as a supplement causes a lot of GI distress, magnesium, if you take too much of it as a supplement, it also causes distress, so can calcium. The other reason is if your GI is not handling things very well, which a lot of people have GI problems because of the food they’re eating, because of the toxicity like glyphosates or Roundup or perchlorates that are found in the environment and in your food and water. They just inflame the gut. So it makes it very difficult to get things in orally, if you’re supplementing or from your nutrients such as your vegetables, etc. The other reason is you is most of our soils are depleted in these necessary electrolytes. When you do eat things like not seeds, vegetables, they’re actually lower than they used to be because of the way we do crops and crop rotations are not done as properly as they should be as they were in the past. So, soils are nutrient deficient.
So we can give things like calcium. We can give things like magnesium. We can give things like potassium in an infusion amongst other B vitamins. Some of these we can give also as an intermuscular injection this would be like magnesium. It can be given as a non-chloride form as an intermuscular injection. The other ones we typically don’t do because of their safer in an infusion than they are as an IM. So we don’t put them in our muscular injections? Fascinating thing. If you’re trying to detox or you’re trying to lose weight, there’s actually a lot of studies that show that people that are deficient in electrolytes, not only do they have more frequent urination, more frequent disease processes, more acidic conditions in their body, but they also consume more calories. So, if you’re trying to use something to help with weight loss or keeping your weight control, getting electrolytes into your body is crucial.
Hope this has been a very informative video. Please share this like this to learn more about our Interactive Health approach to personalized medicine, give us a call at (425) 361-7945 or visit our website at Interactivehealthclinic.com Join us in one of our happy hour IMS, or give us a call. If you want to join us in our IV lounge for one of our proprietary special infusions that we’ve customized. And for those of you that don’t know why we should choose us. Well, I have a background of teaching thousands of doctors amongest the world. So I’m one of the, a top leading IV therapists. And these formulas are extra special and customized for optimal results. We’ll see you soon.
