The number one mineral deficiency in high blood pressure. Do you realize that over 120 million Americans have high blood pressure? And that's nearly half of all adults in the U.S. And the treatment is usually always the same. It's like cut your salt, take a pill. Well, there's a problem with that because 90% of hypertension is called essential. What does that mean essential? It means unknown cause. And it's just bizarre because over 50 years, billions of dollars and they still don't know the cause of hypertension. Really? Today we're going to talk about what really is causing this. It's super important to know this, especially if you're trying to get rid of your hypertension by reducing salt because that could be the opposite thing you want to be doing. It's a great business model because you can keep people on blood pressure medication and then in Wikipedia you can just write in there, well, we still don't know the cause. We need to do more research. Someday maybe we'll find out there's no motivation to do research on this. Okay? It's not going to happen. Why would any company, especially the drug companies, ever invest even a dime into trying to find the root cause of hypertension? It's a business model. They're not going to do it. In fact, if you actually come up with a cure, you're going to be attacked. So today I'm not going to mention care, but I'm going to give you some data that might help resolve your high blood pressure. So you go to the doctor and they're going to recommend you reduce sodium. Now that's not untrue, but there's more to that story. Harvard researchers track over 10,000 adults across six major studies. They measured both sodium and potassium against cardiovascular outcomes and here's what they found. This is actually very interesting. For every thousand milligrams of potassium that was given to a person every single day, there was a reduction by 18% in the cardiovascular risk. And for every addition of a thousand milligrams of sodium, there was an increase of 18% cardiovascular risk. Completely symmetrical, equal, but opposite. But here's the part that almost never makes it to the doctor's office. The people with the highest sodium and the lowest potassium ratio double the heart attack death risk compared to people with the lowest ratio. The problem is the ratio, the relative ratio between sodium and potassium. You have to look at them together, not separately in the U.S. An average person consumes 3400 milligrams, not potassium, sodium, and only 2500 milligrams of potassium. You need at least 4700 milligrams of potassium. Rarely does anyone even come close to that and you roughly need about 2400 milligrams of sodium, but you can actually tolerate more if you have more potassium, but that's in another video. So a lot of people ask me, what supplements do I recommend? Now, of course, I'm not biased of my own high quality supplement line, but if you go to Amazon and type Dr. Berg supplements, you'll find more information. And if you look in the past, the Paleolithic ancestors consumed an estimated 11,000 to 15,000 milligrams of potassium every single day. Okay, they had a lot more than 4700. Our bodies were developed for much higher amounts of potassium. It was actually very rare to find enough sodium. And this probably is why we have this epidemic of hypertension, because even like when I was in practice, if someone came in with hypertension, I would always encourage them to increase their potassium and man, their blood pressure would start coming down. How does it work? Well, there's four mechanisms with potassium. Number one, potassium relaxes blood vessels. Okay, so if you look at blood pressure, there's certain control mechanisms. Potassium is the one that causes vasodilation, relaxation. Potassium acts on the smooth muscle of the artery wall. When the potassium is lower, we retain this constriction in the arteries, and even the artery wall has become stiffened. So potassium actually keeps the elasticity in the arteries. And of course, when you have this lack of elasticity and more contraction, you get high blood pressure. All right, number two, potassium lowers adrenaline. A person can go into fight or flight mode without potassium. So potassium is a super important mineral in supporting rest and digest. I mean, they have beta blockers. Those are blood pressure drugs that reduce or block adrenaline. Well, potassium is a natural beta blocker. Potassium can support the sympathetic nervous system that helps it calm down. Potassium protects the inside of the artery. That's called the endothelial layer. It increases something called nitric oxide, which improves vasodilation and circulation. And number four, potassium supports insulin sensitivity. Potassium directly keeps the insulin receptors sensitive and protects them from downgrading and becoming resistant to insulin. So potassium is really good for a diabetic and also for all the side effects of a diabetic. If you have low potassium, you have a greater chance of developing insulin resistance and insulin problems, which directly correlate to high blood pressure. In fact, insulin resistance is one of the primary drivers of hypertension. And I talked about this in other videos. Potassium supports the cells that make insulin. They help regulate insulin in the pancreas. And so potassium is necessary for insulin to work correctly, but also insulin is necessary for potassium to work as well. And when you have insulin resistance, we actually have a dysfunctional problem with insulin that actually inhibits potassium from working. Now, one of the most common hypertension classes of drugs is the diuretics. And one primary side effect of those medications that help you with hypertension is a loss of potassium. Why? Because they cause the body to get rid of excess fluid. And with that excess fluid going out, you lose potassium and other electrolytes. So here we have a drug that lowers blood pressure that also gets rid of the thing that you need to correct blood pressure. And this is why they also give you a prescription, additional drugs called potassium chloride, which can be called a drug, but it also is a natural thing. You could actually buy it over the counter. So this is an additional thing that has a code that you can get reimbursement for because they have to give it to you because you're creating a deficiency of potassium. And that can create other problems. My question is, what would happen if you took enough potassium initially? Would you lower blood pressure? And then you would need the diuretic or the potassium prescription. Now, just as a side note, they also have another hypertension drug called ACE inhibitors, which retain potassium. ACE inhibitors are one of the most effective drugs at handling hypertension. I wonder if it's really the retention of potassium. If you go buy a potassium supplement, it'll come in 99 milligram tablets. Why is that? When the RDAs for potassium are 4,700. Well, it came from a few studies back in the 60s and 70s that had to do with taking too much potassium, creating ulcers in the intestine. And so it was called a GI lesion, okay, using potassium chloride. So it's not a law that you can't take more, but it's just something that manufacturing companies have stuck with over the years. So my question is, why would you ever get an ulcer or a lesion from potassium? Because potassium doesn't cause lesions. Now, this pill that the gay people was potassium chloride, and it was enteric. In other words, it kind of was encapsulated to go through the stomach and end up in the intestines. And then there's certain theories that, oh, the concentrated amount of potassium in the small intestine could actually create an irritation. But when you look at the studies, they didn't just give people potassium chloride. What they did in the study was attach the potassium chloride to the diuretic medication. And there's other studies that show that when you take this diuretic, that has been known to create lesions in the GI system. So how is anyone going to determine it's the potassium and not the medication? Also, these studies were done on people with cardiac problems that were also taking aspirin and NSAID drugs at the same time, which have been known to cause ulcers in the GI system. My viewpoint is potassium got the blame, but it was never the root cause, because there's never been any independent study where someone just took potassium. And we're talking like 99 milligrams, which is basically a fraction of what we need. So this is why when you go to the store, you'll see the 99 milligram pills for potassium. It's all based on the studies back in the 60s, never been tested after that to really determine if this was a true thing or not. This is a $28 billion industry, right? So I think there's not a lot of motivation to encourage people to take more potassium, because I talk about this in other videos, the relationship between magnesium and hypertension. And I want to explain that right now, because magnesium is not just for your muscles, it's not just for reducing cortisol, magnesium is to help you make energy in the mitochondria. So with blood pressure problems, I really believe you not only need potassium, you need magnesium as well. So now that you understand the mechanism of hypertension, the obvious question is what do I eat to get my potassium? And this is where I want to share some extra information, because all the conventional answers for what you should be eating to get more potassium are things that you should not be eating for a certain reason. I created an entire video on this right here. You should check it out right now.
