Unless pregnant or nursing, I’d be leery of supplementing calcium as an adult. Without ensuring minimal inflammation (highly insulin-sensitive rather than resistant) and sufficient D3 + K2, the dietary calcium we get is more than enough.
Excess calcium cannot make its way into teeth and bones and - in the face of inflammation - calcifies arteries.
I don’t have the book handy but I believe one of the functions of salt is actually to lower potassium levels? Although essential, Potassium can be toxic. Like Selenium. I’m not sure of anything here, but that’s how my memory recalls it.
Oh, yes, definitely not taking a pill! Just adding an oz of daily cheese since Chronometer said I average less than 400mg/day.
Interesting. Does anyone have an idea why this works?
I have had to get some pickles, as I’m having a bit of a cramp. The problem with cramps is that they could be caused by electrolytes, or by exercise, or by both. I went on a 2.x mile jog yesterday morning with my pup for the first time in weeks, as the roads are finally ice-free. These cramps are from exercising, I think.
I still think we need the Star Trek Tricorder or whatever it is, to provide some type of measure of what we need.
I was taking magnesium daily, alternating days of sodium chloride & potassium chloride to try & avoid cramps & restless legs, but have had several spells of palpitations, so cut the supplements down… trying to get the right balance to stop cramps coming back!
The higher the ketones, the faster water flushes through. Breath acetone meter tells me that for sure. It’s a thirst plain water can never quench, but too much salt makes even worse…
My theory is that the extra carbs helps me hold onto water so I therefore hold onto my electrolytes.
I think you are more likely to get exercise cramps if your electrolytes are low. The balance might be enough to keep you from getting cramps if you are sedentary, but add in some exercise and then the extra activity can push you over the edge to cramps.
Keto 5 years here. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the kidneys. They’re responsible for retaining salts (K, Na, Mg, Ca etc, they’re all ‘salts’) if you’re low or dumping them if you’re high. You have more than double the amount of kidney power you need (unless you have high hemoglobin A1c for years or have given away a kidney). If your kidneys are healthy, taking even double the amount of salts that you need is no problem at all. If you’re not taking enough, though, you’re kidneys can’t retain what isn’t there. I think it’s better to overdo the salts than take only small amounts.
Here’s my solution. I take Mg citrate or glycinate (not oxide) pills daily and add a lot of salt to my meals. If I’m having food that doesn’t go with salt, I occasionally drink water with 1/4 tsp table salt and a dash of potassium chloride. As a woman, they say we need more calcium then men, particularly when we’re post menopausal. So I also take calcium every other day and multivitamins every other day. I don’t know if it’s helping, but it’s not hurting and if I’m taking too much, my kidneys can deal with it. You’d have to take very large amounts of calcium to get kidney stones unless you have some type of metabolic difference from the run of the mill human.
I also drink a LOT of water during the first half of the day. (It’s a pain if I’m doing errands and I know where all the restrooms are at the stores I go to!). If you don’t drink a lot of water, you’re kidneys don’t have anything to work with. By 3pm, I stop drinking and only drink after that if I look back and see I haven’t managed to drink enough water that day. At that point (4-7pm) it’s thirst that prompts me to look back. About half the nights I get up at 5am to pee and the other half I don’t need to get up at all.
I haven’t had nighttime leg cramps since I started the magnesium pills. I heard that taking your Mg at night helps with sleep. I don’t know if it’s made any difference, but I take the Mg before bedtime.
Bottom line, I take 1.5 to 2x more of the salts than you think you need with extra water in the mornings and let the kidneys do the fine tuning. That’s my n=1 solution to the electrolyte problem.
P.S. Early physicists called them electrolytes because with them, water conducts electricity and early chemists called them salts and later realized that they were talking about the exact same thing. For some reason, medicine chose to use the term electrolytes instead of salts. There’s LOTS of them, but only K, Mg, Na, Ca are important enough for us to focus on.
Interesting to read the comments so far.
I’m not carnivore, more like long term heavy meat based keto, close to 10 years now. I kinda remember of lots more thought towards electrolytes early on. But over the years, I’ve pretty much just eaten food and enjoyed life, very little of any supplementation of any kind.
I wonder how many others are kinda like that? Or how many really do have to work at the electrolytes long term?
…maybe those few carbs from veg are what’s keeping your electrolytes so effortlessly balanced? I can’t handle many carbs, but maybe none is too far.
The Salt Fix said similarly - Na rules the K, Mg, Ca, so make sure you have enough Na for your kidneys to work with. I forgot my usual 1/4 tsp salt in water this morning and vision went gray when I stood up too quick. More salt!
Good to know! Mag glycinate in 3 doses is doing the trick just fine.
Excellent write up Susan. I was just thinking about my friend who just gave a kidney to his sister … I wonder how this might effect his salts?
The first step is to be eating enough salt. Many carnivores find that their need for added salt decreases, but many still need to salt their meat (I am one of the latter). Keeping sodium in balance helps the body regulate calcium, magnesium, and potassium. The regulatory mechanisms are similar and inter-related. A carnivore diet provides all the minerals we need, especially if we crack the bones for their marrow and drink home-made bone broth.
The kidneys are good at extracting needed minerals from the urine. On a low-carbohydrate diet, the need for dietary salt increases, because the kidneys excrete sodium more readily. But that’s because they can–sodium is highly available in meat and in the environment. Water retention is higher on a high-carbohydrate diet, both because of sodium retention and the fact that glucose attracts water molecules. On a carnivore diet, the standard recommendations by sport drink manufacturers for high fluid intakes make no sense. As Dr. Tim Noakes, the marathoner and nutrition scientist, says, drinking to thirst is sufficient. Runners have landed in hospital and even died from over-hydration.
I doubt it.
By the way, gabapentin can have deleterious effects on brain function, especially as we age. I’m glad you are off it.
Mostly by letting the body do its thing. Over the course of human evolution, the body has evolved effective mechanisms to deal with almost every situation. The exception is our modern high-carbohydrate diet, which wasn’t even possible till the invention of agriculture twelve thousand years ago. That’s 0.6% of our evolutionary history. Another exception, of course, is that some people have problems balancing one or another of the minerals, and they, of course, should take supplements.
Another point on who needs what supplements - plants vary in the amount of Mg they have based on how much is in the soil. The soil where I am is known to be low in Mg (I haven’t tested my garden, but neighbors have.). I’ve got a big vegetable garden and eat mostly from our (keto) garden, so I supplement with Mg. I didn’t find out about the low local soil levels of Mg are until I got let cramps at night and started to ask around. Dr. Phinney also recommends Mg supplementation, along with bone broth and salting your food to taste.
Perhaps I take too much Mg (one pill a day), but as my leg cramps proved, it’s easier to give the kidneys something to work with and excrete excess Mg than not have enough in your diet.
I wouldn’t begin to guess on that one. She has a nephrologist if she only has one kidney and they would be the one to answer that if they understand keto. If not, mention Dr. Jason Fung to them. He’s a neprologist and one of the keto luminaries. Your friend has to be much more careful about salt and fluid levels than we do. I admire her for her sacrifice. She can still be prefectly healthy with one kidney, but I’m not sure how much extra kidney function she has and how closely she has to follow things.
True, however, there’s been a steady decline in global mg content in food since the 70s. "No til " gardening, beneficial fungus, epsom salt added to compost, help elevate this.
Big ag, just like big pharma, has gone sideways for decades.
Noted. Maybe being pregnant/nursing for most of the past 4 years, I just ran out of something.
I have started to weigh my salt intake to see if I feel better with more or less. I accidentally under-ate for a while, maybe something similar is happening with salt since I haven’t tracked.
Salt is the one thing I’m quite confident I can “listen to my body” and hear what it’s saying! Some days I simply can’t make my food too salty, I’m adding a little more with every few bites. Other days I taste and it’s appealing to me with no further seasoning. Once I learned to stop feeling uneasy or embarrassed about grabbing the salt shaker rather than “being healthy and good” and shoveling in bland food, I started enjoying my meals more, and feeling better, too.
Been there. Am there. I get eyeballs every time I eat steak in front of ppl.
However I will add that sea salt has half the sodium of processed salt.
Which explains why I add half a cup of sea salt to my chili that has 5 pounds* of meat.
*2.3 kilos
