What causes low blood sugar and low potassium?
Does potassium deficiency cause diabetes?
Let’s talk about the relationship between potassium and diabetes. Did you realize that a potassium deficiency could actually trigger a new onset of diabetes if you have diabetes or pre-diabetes or insulin resistance? In fact, one of the common drugs, the first line of defense against high blood pressure is these diuretics called thiazide diuretics.
And it’s well known that they give you a risk of developing diabetes. Now, you think that would discourage doctors from using it, but it’s one of the big side effects. These diuretics are used for hypertension, so that’s why they use them. On the flip side, there’s another drug called an Ace inhibitor which actually protects against diabetes.
It actually lowers your risk of getting diabetes, which is interesting, and it, too, is used for blood pressure. Now, my question is, what’s going on here? Why would one increase the risk and yet the other one decrease the risk? And I believe it has everything to do with what these two drugs do to potassium. First of all, the thiazide diuretic depletes your potassium.
If you are consuming a diet that is very low on potassium, like most people, and you’re taking this drug on top of that, chances are you can end up with very low levels of potassium. And without enough potassium, insulin can’t be released too well. So we have a lessened amount for the production of insulin when we have low potassium. Now, what’s going to happen when we don’t have enough insulin?
We’re going to have higher levels of glucose in the blood. What’s the name of that? Diabetes. Now, with the Ace inhibitor, it just so happens that one of the things that it does is increases potassium by helping you prevent the loss of potassium. So there’s a certain Ace enzyme that’s basically increasing blood pressure. It also helps you hold sodium, and it releases potassium.
And so they develop these Ace inhibitors to inhibit that enzyme to help you lower the blood pressure. And one of the mechanisms that work is basically by helping you hold potassium. But my question is this if potassium not only helps you lower your blood pressure but also if potassium is deficient, your blood pressure is going to go up in the first place.
So if the way this Ace inhibitor is working, is by increasing your potassium levels to bring your blood pressure down, then why not just start consuming foods in potassium or take potassium? Why do we need to take a drug to increase our potassium? You have to realize how important potassium is for your whole body. It protects the kidney against kidney disease.
It protects your heart against all sorts of issues. It keeps the arteries flexible. It helps prevent a stroke. And apparently, it also helps you protect against diabetes because it helps to increase the normal amounts of insulin that you need to regulate this blood sugar. So we have these interesting drugs used for various symptoms, but I don’t understand why they just don’t look beyond that.
And what’s really underneath this problem? There are so many people that get rid of their blood pressure problem by taking potassium, and there are also a lot of people that improve their blood sugars by taking potassium. So as far as metabolic syndrome, where you have both blood pressure problems and glucose, potassium is probably one of the most important minerals to take, especially since the majority of the population just does not get enough.
The requirements for potassium are extremely high, and you might not realize this. So one banana will give you, like, 300 milligrams of potassium. You need 4700. Okay. Banana, 300. Requirement 4700. Potatoes are high in potassium. Leafy greens are the best source of potassium. Big salads avocado is really good. You can also get potassium from electrolyte powders because a lot of times, the pills only come in 99 milligrams.
Again, you need 4700 milligrams. Okay? So you’d have to have a lot of pills to achieve that daily recommended amount. Our bodies also need potassium for the sodium-potassium pump, which is in every single cell in your body to help power the nervous system in connection with the muscles. And this is why I feel low, and potassium may feel kind of tired.
Potassium also helps to regulate sodium, and you need this balance of at least twice as much potassium as you do sodium. In fact, if you have a salt sensitivity, which means an intolerance for salt, what that really means is you just need more potassium. And if you’re eating a lot of carbs and sugar, it takes potassium to store this sugar.
So a good amount of potassium in the body gets locked up in this sugar. This is why when you go on a low-carb diet, you get rid of so much fluid because you’re getting rid of all this excess glucose that’s stored as glycogen. Some people can lose up to £11 of fluid just by getting rid of this excess of glucose that’s stored.
But in the process, you’re going to lose potassium, too, because it’s locked up into the glucose. This is why it’s really important to take potassium or get enough from the diet when you’re doing the ketogenic diet or a low-carb diet. But then again, if you’re on a high-carb diet, you need it even more. One last point about this interesting relationship between potassium and insulin. When someone’s a type one diabetic, right, and they forget to take their insulin, they can start generating massive amounts of ketones way higher than you could if they didn’t have the problem, and that’s called diabetic ketoacidosis.
One of the big treatments for this is to take potassium, which will not only help alkalize the body because it’s alkaline, but it can definitely help protect against this condition. Why? Because potassium is needed to make this insulin, to increase the production of insulin. So it’s my belief if you have enough potassium as a diabetic type one, you probably would not develop ketoacidosis. But of course, that’s just my opinion.