Yep, any time I tried to get that much I ended up with low blood pressure and/or swelling in my face, headaches, palpitations etc. Likely they recommend that much based on a carb-rich environment where sodium is retained more by the kidneys. It’s a correct sodium-potassium balance that’s required for proper cellular function, not an RDA number.
P.S. tired symptoms can be lack of sodium or B-vitamins, not eating enough… do you have cold hands or feet for no reason?
Actually, on a SAD it’s pretty easy to get that much potassium. Typical SAD meal day…
large coffee and bagel with cream cheese on way to work= 370
medium banana 425 and a bran muffin at break 500 and another coffee 50
burger 300 to 600 and large fries 900 and glass of cola for lunch 3
bag of chips while working for the afternoon 340 orange juice 500
roast beef 8 oz for dinner 700 gravy 60 one cup of mashed potato 700 half cup broccoli 140 and a small ceasar salad 400
half a dozen cookies while watching tv before bed 200
eh voila! you are on your way to 6000 mg here
On keto though, I also struggle to get my RDA of potassium. That’s probably my biggest challenge nutritionally/micronutrient wise.
I take a potassium/magnesium/calcium supplement and call it good. Well, actually I also add pink Himalayan salt to my coffee (yum), and suck on a small amount once or twice a day. I feel good, and never had keto flu, probably because of that.
I would never have thought of needing magnesium and potassium if not for this forum.
In the past I’ve read some stuff about requiring more of certain nutrients when your diet is different. I believe, given historical foods, it’s entirely possible for humans to not get that much potassium per day – and yet, to not be eating modern crappy unfood either – and be fine. So it’s possible that in addition to the RDA being insanely LOW in many areas, that it’s also very HIGH in areas which, as an absolutely amazing and unrelated coincidence, also mean you would almost have to eat lots of produce to get it.
It is possible that too many years of reading on this topic has made me a little cynical alas.
That level is well into nutritional ketosis, as defined by Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek. They set the lower limit at 0.5 mmol/dL, because that was where they generally began to see the benefits of circulating ketones, but as Dr. Phinney admitted at Ketofest this year, that limit is somewhat nebulous. People have been known to be fat-adapted at lower levels than that (mostly elite fat-adapted athletes). Higher levels of 1.2 don’t necessarily mean that you are “more in ketosis,” because the measurement is of how much β-hydroxybutyrate is circulating in your blood, not how much is being produced, or how much your brain, heart, and other organs are using.
The simplest way to determine whether you are producing ketone bodies or not, is to ask yourself two questions: (1) am I eating less than 20 g/day of carbohydrate? (2) am I breathing in and out? If the answer to both questions is Yes, then you are in ketosis.
The matter of fat adaptation is different. Whereas we enter ketosis as soon as our blood sugar level drops sufficiently, fat adaptations takes around two months, and for some people much longer. This is because of the need for healing and re-adaptation at the cellular level, process with take time. During the adaptation phase, you should experience a drop in energy, since your muscles prefer to burn fatty acids but have to make do with ketones until they finish adapting.
If you experience flu-like symptoms, however, that is caused by a lack of sodium and can be cured by increasing your salt intake. The kidneys excrete sodium more readily on the proper human diet, whereas carbohydrate and the resulting high insulin level impede their ability to excrete sodium. The return to a normal excretion rate needs to be compensated for.