10 Alarming Signs Your Body Needs Minerals & Electrolytes

Hello, hello, champions. Today we're going to talk about 10 important signs that you need minerals and electrolytes. But first of all, what are minerals? People talk so much about it, but we have to understand what they are and what they're doing in the body. So first of all, they are an element or a chemical compound, meaning they're made from a single atom in the periodic table of elements, or it's a combination of different chemical atoms. Secondly, they're usually in a crystalline structure, so they form crystals spontaneously. And third, they were formed by geological events. So in the formation of the planet, basically in the crust of the earth, that's where you find minerals, that what the crust of the earth is made up of. And there's over 5,500 different kinds of minerals, but we're mostly interested in the ones that somehow make themselves into the human body or into plants that we can consume, because those are the ones that are essential to human health. In the process of making that way into the ecosystem, into all different aspects of the ecosystem, they're basically either in animals, plants, or minerals. Everything that we talk about is basically an animal plant or mineral. So when I say that humans are part of the ecosystem that we are animals, a lot of people get offended and say, "Oh, I'm not an animal at all." Then you'd better take a close look and determine if you are not an animal, then you have to be a plant or a mineral, because you're pretty much one of the three. So, metals is a form of mineral. Basically, all metals, except mercury, because it's a liquid, are minerals, but not all minerals are metals. So a lot of the ones that we're going to talk about, electrolytes, especially, are going to be metals. We're also going to distinguish between electrolytes and trace minerals, both of which are minerals, but they are slightly different in function. First of all, electrolytes, the four main ones are sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. Then there is also chloride, phosphate, and bicarbonate. So there are others as well, like citrate, for example, but these are the main ones that we measure on blood tests. These are the main ones that we have in very large quantities. The first four are all metals. When they form a compound with something, they become positively charged. They let go of an electron. So now you have a positive ion. This is important because now they can participate in processes that conduct electricity, such as virtually all the signaling in the body. And these are things that we need in relatively large quantities. We need hundreds or thousands of milligrams of these every day, which is oftentimes hundreds or thousand times more than the trace minerals that we're going to talk about. Now the stuff at the bottom here, the chloride, phosphate, and bicarbonate, these are sort of the opposite of the metals up top here. So these form negative ions, they try to gain an electron. So the stuff on the top combines with the stuff on the bottom. So sodium and chloride, for example, which of course is table salt, but you could also have potassium chloride or you could have sodium bicarbonate and so on. So that's just the way that they are attracted. That's the way we consume them. And that's also very often how they go together in the body. So usually when you get sodium, you also get chloride. And when the body gets rid of sodium, for the most part, it's going to get rid of some chloride as well. And just how important electrolytes are, we might get an idea if we understand that they're involved in everything that has to do with fluid balance and signaling in the body. So fluid balance, that's the kidneys filtering out 200 liters of water every day. And with that water follows all these electrolytes, all these minerals up top and at the bottom. And then the body filters it out, but it reabsorbs oftentimes anywhere from 80 to 99.5% of these. And so it keeps some, it gets rid of some and that's how it regulates fluid. And that alone takes 10% of your total basal metabolic rate. And then of course signaling, which is the brain and nervous system, that's sodium and potassium flowing across membranes. And when the charges cross membranes, that creates signals, which is how the body communicates with the different parts. And that's usually 20% or more of all your calories. So already here, we are accounting for about a third of all your calorie expenditure at the basal metabolic rate. So I would say that's pretty darn important that nothing really happens without these electrolytes participating. And then we have the trace minerals, which just like the name says trace, we need them in very small amounts, but they're equally important. They're kind of catalysts that participate in enzymatic reaction. So any time that the body puts something together or takes something apart, we need enzymes to do that. And all of these different minerals, these trace minerals, I'm not going to name them all, we're going to talk about a few, they participate as cofactors to these enzymes. So the enzymes are kind of tools that put things together and these are accessories to the tools. Now I do want to mention a few, which is calcium. If you notice calcium was also on the list of electrolytes, which participates in signaling and fluid balance through its charge. But it is also a cofactor in enzymatic reactions. It's kind of the one that mostly has a double function there. And then I want to talk about copper and iron because while they are essential, meaning you need them to live necessary for life, they can also become toxic. And these are the two that are the most commonly toxic and copper. It's, there's a genetic disease, which is called Wilson's disease. It's fortunately pretty rare. It's one in 30,000, where you don't process, you don't get rid of copper properly. So these people build up toxic levels and then you absolutely do not want to take a multivitamin or a supplement of some sort that provides more copper. And iron is much more common, that's one in 300, it's about a hundred times more common, that you have a genetic variant of hemochromatosis, which is iron overload. Now that's strictly the genetic version, where you have the full-blown genetic version. But if you just read the blood work and you look at how many people accumulate too much iron, have an iron overload, I find that it is probably somewhere around one in five or maybe as many as one in three that have too much iron, especially if they're male and especially if they're post menopause. They're not losing blood through their period. So if you have too much copper or iron, you certainly don't want to supplement. So make sure if you take a vitamin or some supplement that has that that you really need it. And the other one I want to mention is manganese and zinc. Manganese is essential for biosynthesis. So when we make different body parts, different tissues, manganese are absolutely necessary. And it is also necessary for carbohydrate and sugar metabolism. So a lot of people watching this are going to be interested in metabolic health and type 2 diabetes and so forth. And manganese is necessary to produce insulin, but also to regulate blood sugar. It's involved in the production of energy from carbohydrate. And zinc deserves its own special mention because it's basically involved in everything. Almost every time that you see one of the others mentioned, then zinc is going to tag along and be mentioned together with it because it participates in hundreds and hundreds of different reactions. The first symptom to be aware of is dizziness and light headiness. And now that we understand the mechanisms a little bit and what electrolytes and trace minerals are, we can talk about this. If you get dizzy especially while you're standing up quickly, then it could be. It's not the only reason, but it could be that you have lost some sodium. Because sodium follows water, if you lose sodium, you lose water, which means your blood volume is lower. And if you have a lot of blood, you can get a lot of blood. have high-potention, your blood pressure could be too low, and you don't have enough fluid volume enough blood volume to pump it up to the head, and then when you stand up you could get dizzy or lightheaded. The other reason that you might have this sensation is if your adrenals are exhausted, if your adrenals don't kick in fast enough, then that's the other reason that the blood wouldn't get up to the head. And this happens more than people realize with dehydration that you also lose sodium, and we have heard forever on every food label we heard how evil salt is, but despite that there's actually probably more people who are low in sodium that are deficient in sodium than those who have too much. So when we talk about evil white crystals, I think they have definitely overemphasized the warnings for salt, and they haven't emphasized enough the warnings for sugar. Scented number two are heart arrhythmias, which means that you either have a pounding, fast racing heart, or you notice that the heart skips a beat, it's just irregular. And minerals are super important, especially potassium and magnesium in regulating the heart rhythm and producing that muscle contraction. So electrical signaling in the heart especially depends on potassium and magnesium. And when it comes to potassium, that's something that the monitor very closely in diabetics and in heart patients and kidney patients, because very high or very low levels could not just disturb with rhythm, but it could actually stop the heart beat altogether. You could go into cardiac arrest from having a very high or very low level. Now fortunately that doesn't happen to the average guy. It's not enough that you supplement with potassium. You also have to have a kidney problem where you can't filter those things properly. Number three is muscle cramps, and this is probably something everyone has experienced sometime. And a lot of athletes will know that after a hard workout where you lost a lot of fluids and electrolytes, then you get more muscle cramps. And there could be multiple minerals involved, multiple electrolytes, but it's primarily due to magnesium and calcium if you lose those. Because both of those are cofactors for the enzymes that make muscles contract, but also that make muscles relax. Because if you lose these, then the muscle might contract and then not let go. And that's what a muscle cramp is. And that explanation also covers number four, which is headaches. Because headaches are usually, especially the vascular ones, are due to tight muscles. And blood vessels have muscles in them. So when you regulate blood flow, there is vasoconstriction. There's muscles in the blood vessel contracting, causing constriction and relaxing, causing dilation. So if you have imbalances or losses of magnesium and calcium, that's also going to affect the blood vessels and the blood flow. So especially migraines, but there are other types of headaches as well. Number five is numbness and tingling. And here we have the three big ones, calcium, sodium, and potassium. Because these are the main ones that we use for muscle contraction, but also for nerve signals. So as you have numbness and tingling, what that means is the signal transmission from your peripheral nerve. So if your foot is talking to your brain, it needs to travel along a nerve path. And if we don't have the proper electrolytes, then that signal could get distorted along the way and you have these sensations of numbness and tingling. Symptom number six is mood swings and irritability. And I know that's just something so rare, so obscure. I'm sure you don't know anyone who has an issue with that, right? Well that could be due to magnesium. And you may have heard that magnesium is a calming mineral. And that's true to degree. It's not the only reason, but it can help. And what it does is it helps stabilize the voltage across neuronal membrane. So every nerve cell has a membrane and across that membrane on the inside to outside, there's a voltage. And if that voltage is unstable, then the brain cells can get unstable and kind of jittery. Magnesium helps stabilize and calm that down. So it doesn't fire so much when it's not supposed to. And magnesium is also critical for the function of neurotransmitters, so our feeling molecules like serotonin, for example, they couldn't function and fit the receptors and release and so forth without magnesium. So I was going to do 10 of these signs and symptoms, but there were a couple of more that I just had to include, so you're going to get two bonuses at the end. Make sure you stay tuned for that. And I bet a lot of people are wondering, how do we know who really needs more? I'm one of those people. So you could take some minerals just as insurance, but here are some facts for you that more than 90% of people are deficient in one or usually many electrolytes and minerals. And one reason is soil depletion due to mass farming and synthetic fertilizers. So how does that work? When you plant a crop, these plants are going to absorb minerals out of the soil and bind it into the plant. And there's over 50 different minerals that a typical plant will absorb and bind. And then you harvest the crop and you ship it away to some remote location like we do today. And now those minerals are never coming back to that soil. So the next crop is not going to be able to absorb and fix as much minerals. So then what they do with synthetic fertilizers is they take out 50 minerals and they put back three. So every crop you put enough in to get a bloated, tasteless vegetable like a tomato, but it looks like a tomato, however, it doesn't have the nutrients that tomatoes used to have. And this goes for a lot of different produce. And this goes for both the trace minerals and the electrolytes that we can eat, the best food available and it's still not maybe as good as it used to be. And some of the most deficient electrolytes are ionizable calcium. So a lot of people will eat calcium, but they'll eat the wrong form. They'll eat calcium carbonate. And what we need is something that can be quickly converted into a liquid, usable, ionized form, meaning it has a plus sign on it. So calcium lactate is the best form of dietary supplemental calcium because this is only one step away from the calcium bicarbonate that the body uses, not calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is chalk and unfortunately it's the most common form in different supplements. But it's very difficult for the body to turn that into ionizable. So when you get a supplement, make sure that it is an absorbable, usable form like calcium lactate. Another one that I find on probably more than half of the people, we run this on every blood work we do. And I would say more than half the people are significantly low on magnesium. And one we mentioned also before that has become very popular lately because of its immune function, but it participates in almost everything is zinc. So because people are missing these and what happened was people brought in different powders and supplements to my clinic and I muscle tested and unfortunately most of them were junk. They just did not pass muscle testing. So I developed one for those of you are interested in kind of supplementing and happening something safe. I created something called you light and we'll put some information down below where you can find a way to get that. And it's really like a three in one supplement. You get a lot for your money. It has some sodium chloride, some pink salt. It doesn't have enough and the reason is that most people get salt from their diets. So it's not intended to have all the salt you need, but it pretty much intended to have all the other minerals and trace minerals that you need in addition to food of course. So potassium citrate, magnesium citrate and calcium lactate which again is the usable form. And then you also get the other 72 trace minerals. So the first supplement part is like the electrolytes and then the second part are the trace minerals. And then the last part is I add. added in a couple of bonuses on that, which is zinc-el-carnacene, which has been shown to be more bioavailable, like three to four times more bioavailable than regular dietary zinc. And it is critical in gut healing. So if you have digestive issues or all immune diseases, then zinc-el-carnacene could make a difference. And manganese bisglisonate, again, manganese is important for insulin synthesis, but also for carbohydrate metabolism, turning that into energy. So it's really like three in one that you're not gonna find with another electric-like product. And again, we'll put some information down below for you. Number seven is digestive issues and constipation. So here, magnesium and calcium. They are cofactors for digestive enzymes, so for you to break down food, but also magnesium, calcium, and potassium are required for muscle contraction. So when you move through, when you move food through the digestive tract, there's something called peristalsis, which is muscle contractions that are kind of pushing the food along. And that can't happen without those three elements. Number eight is poor immunity. So with the recent COVID epidemic, we have seen a lot of talk about immunity and almost every discussion, zinc shows up, but people don't realize it's how important calcium is. We only talk about calcium in terms of bone and teeth, but calcium is one of the most critical elements in the body. So white blood cells, when you get an infection, then the white blood cells need energy to multiply, to grow and make replicas. And calcium, the ionizable form of calcium, is what activates that process of energy so that we allow the white blood cells to multiply. And one reason for fever, I've looked for validation of this, I haven't found it, but one reason for fever is that it can pull more ionizable calcium from the bone. And in doing that, the fever activates the white blood cells. It's not that the fever will reduce the replication of bacteria, it's that it will increase the white blood cells for your defenses. And like I said, I haven't found validation, but if you wanna try this, especially in kids next time, your kids have a fever, give them some calcium lactate and watch how the fever will typically drop just as effectively as if you gave them an aspirin or some other medication. And then like we said, zinc shows up everywhere, zinc and selenium are both co-factors for enzymes that regulate immunity. Number nine is slow wound healing. So this could have to do with diabetes, high blood sugar and neuropathy, which is very common, but it could also be a deficiency in zinc and copper. So the zinc shows up again, because they're required for collagen synthesis. So collagen is a material you find in connective tissue, including skin, of course. So zinc and copper are critical for that. Sinon number 10 is dry, flaky skin. And this could be zinc, but also on a throw-in essential fatty acids, which of course is not a mineral, but it's one of the most common reasons for dry and flaky skin. And both zinc is a coenzyme for cell regeneration, but the essential fatty acids, they actually make up the cell membranes when you make new cells. And if everything is working properly with making these membranes, then they also act as a moisture barrier. And if you don't have enough of these healthy cells, or if you don't have the right type of fatty acids, that can affect that moisture barrier, so your skin dries out. So now we're getting to the bonuses here. So the first one is general fatigue. And don't jump to conclusions and say, oh my god, I have general fatigue. I must be short on minerals. Again, there's hundreds of different things, and that's why we need to understand these mechanisms, so we can put two and two together and narrow down the possibilities. So one thing that can cause that is anemia. Anemia means that you have not enough red blood cells, not enough hemoglobin in the red blood cells that carry oxygen. If you can't carry oxygen, you can't make energy, and you would have general fatigue. But of course, there are other things that could cause that. Now, anemia could be most commonly that you're low in iron, because iron is part of hemoglobin that carries oxygen. But it's not the only thing. Some people have tons of iron and still don't make enough hemoglobin. So what you want to look at on your blood work that most people don't realize is you need to look at the number of red blood cells. You need to look at the MCV, which is the size of the red blood cells. And if either of those are low, then you're probably low on iron. If your hemoglobin is low, your chances are you low on iron. But the best marker for your reserves is ferritin. It's hardly ever measured. And you want to measure total iron binding capacity. That's a protein that goes looking for iron. So if your body is super hungry for iron, you're gonna have tons of TIBC. So ferritin is low and TIBC is high. Now you know that you need some iron. But most people, unfortunately, they just get their blood work and they look at serum iron, which is pretty much a useless marker because that's less than 1% of the iron in your body. It really tells you nothing because it fluctuates a lot. And it could be high or low, regardless of what these others are doing. So I talk a lot more about this in my blood work course for those of you who want to really understand the big picture and really take charge of what's going on. So you could also be anemic because you don't mature your red blood cells properly. So you could have enough iron, but you may not have enough B vitamins. So especially folic acid, but also B12 are critical for that maturation of red blood cells. So if you don't have enough B12 and folate, then they don't know when to shut off their growth cycle and they end up too big. If the blood, it's a red blood cell is small, it's usually iron deficiency because the body doesn't have enough good stuff to put into the red blood cell and then it gets super tiny. But also to make these blood cells, you also need zinc and copper. See how often zinc comes back there. And you don't want to jump to conclusions. You want to understand that whole picture so you don't take iron if you don't need it, but you take the stuff that you actually need. In general fatigue, like we said, could have lots of causes. So some more are dehydration and lack of normal proper signaling. And now we're talking about virtually any of the electrolytes that we've talked about before, like sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, zinc, they're all involved in dehydration and signaling. Bonus number two, if you're deficient in electrolytes and trace minerals, you could have trouble with blood sugar regulation. So one of those minerals is chromium. And it is important because it assists the insulin at the binding of insulin at the target cell. So when the insulin locks onto a cell to open up that gate, it also needs chromium involved in that process. So chromium can help with insulin sensitivity. And if you already have enough chromium then taking more is not going to do anything. But if you're deficient, then it could be very, very significant. And like we mentioned before, manganese is also critical, very undervalued trace mineral. It is required for biosynthesis, for any formation of connective tissue. But it also is involved the biosynthesis of insulin. So not just all kinds of tissues, but insulin itself depends on manganese. And furthermore, it can also contribute indirectly to insulin sensitivity because it's a co-factor for the enzymes that convert carbohydrates into energy. So if you're short on magnesium, you can't really convert them properly. And then you become even more insulin resistant. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.