I wanted to share a few videos I posted to Instagram awhile back where I explain the value of having sufficient electrolytes if you get migraine, and go into some of the mineral dynamics involved in electrolyte balance and how I approach electrolyte balancing using a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis.
Transcript
So I’m going to make myself some tea and while the water is boiling, talk to you about electrolytes because I recently had someone ask me, “What are your favorite supplements? Like what are the top supplements that you recommend?” And of course, you know, doing Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, this is highly individual what people need, right? But there are some things that I could mention that are kind of universally true for people as far as minerals that they need.
So in Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, the first category of minerals that I look at in a person’s profile I call Level 1 minerals. So in the Repattern Migraine Coursework in the Micro section, which is the section where we’re looking at your minerals, I teach you how to understand your lab. And we look at the minerals that affect cellular metabolism in terms of three categories: Level 1, 2, and 3 minerals.
So the first level of minerals that we look at, Level 1 Minerals, is the category of the major electrolytes. These are the first minerals that show up on the lab: calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium. And one reason we start here is because we need a lot more of the major electrolytes than we do the micronutrients like copper, iron, zinc. So we also are less likely to be able to cause serious harm by dabbling around with these minerals, since we need so much of them. So since you need like 4,000 milligrams of potassium a day, there’s a wide range of error. If you take 500 milligrams more, you’re not as likely to cause issues in your body compared to taking other minerals, because your body needs a lot of electrolytes to function properly. Whereas if you were to take 4,000 milligrams of copper, you would really screw up your body.
So the safe and easy way to start mineral balancing is to balance your major electrolytes. And this is not just a matter of getting more of them, although certainly, you’ll be low in all the major electrolytes if you’re not eating sufficient amounts of them. The levels that I see on the labs are a reflection of how much of that nutrient you’re getting in your food, how well you’re basically breaking down that food with your stomach acid and able to assimilate it.
And then also there’s this relationship between the adrenal glands and the kidneys. So if the adrenal glands are weak, they won’t be able to signal to the kidneys how and to what extent to get rid of excess minerals or retain and recirculate minerals to maintain homeostasis in the body. So when that system is weakened, a lot of mineral wasting occurs.
So there are a lot of factors that go into why someone’s levels will show up a certain way on the lab. For example, men tend to have higher cortisol levels and maybe because they are protectors, their stress response is higher, their adrenaline is higher, and they will show generally higher levels of sodium. This is because the adrenal glands are associated with sodium because of how the adrenal hormone aldosterone regulates sodium.
So I rarely see really, really low levels of sodium in a man, although there are exceptions. Men who have migraines tend to have lower sodium levels. And women, it’s funny because like high blood pressure and hypertension and that high stress response that is associated with high sodium levels that’s very common in our culture, we tend to always be looking at high blood pressure as being an issue. And this really reveals the bias that we have in our medical literature, with a focus on issues that affect men more than women. So women tend to be more on the low blood pressure side of the spectrum, especially people who have hypothyroidism or who have migraine.
So it’s very, very common for me to see low sodium levels on an HTMAs, especially with people who have migraine, as sodium has such a big impact on blood pressure levels. And this is a reflection of how well the adrenal glands are working. So the adrenal glands produce a hormone called aldosterone, and that’s what helps regulate our sodium for us.
So when I look at an HTMA and I see the major electrolytes, it’s not just a reflection of what you’re eating, whether you’re getting enough salt, whether you’re getting enough potassium or magnesium – it’s a reflection of your neuroendocrine function.
So that’s what’s so cool about this lab. So basically, the main minerals that most people will need more of are magnesium and potassium in this category of Level 1 minerals. Most people are low in magnesium or potassium, or are not even absorbing it, even if they’re taking those as supplements.
So you need to eat lots of fruits and vegetables. These are naturally high in magnesium and potassium, as well as a lot of antioxidants and polyphenols and fiber and all kinds of other good things. Fruit is especially important as it is a great source of potassium and magnesium.These are also very alkalizing minerals. They’re also solvent minerals. Well, potassium and sodium are solvent minerals, so they help break down metabolic waste in the body.
So sodium and potassium are really important for just moving out gunk out of the system, whereas calcium and magnesium are more building minerals, they build bone. So I would say magnesium and potassium are the two most important minerals that I see deficient in the most people, and magnesium is also needed to make potassium bioavailable.
And then there are other minerals that help us retain magnesium, like boron is a really important mineral that helps us retain magnesium. So yeah, focus on eating lots of fruits and vegetables. You can get that from food. Those little electrolyte drops that you get from like Trace Elements, I think is the brand, a few droppers of those, that’s not really going to be enough.
So there are tips that I give in the Repattern Migraine Coursework about how to do that. The point being, eat your fruits and vegetables, no matter how much people are like, you know, talking about this carnivore diet and all that, I mean, you know, do what’s best for you. But I never demonize vegetable foods. I mean, we need fiber and especially fruit. Fruit is so cool because fruit contains citric acid, especially the citrus fruits. Fruits are also extremely valuable for cleaning out our lymphatic system although citric fruits can be triggering for some people with migraine. But for those who can tolerate it, that citric acid is a precursor to sodium bicarbonate. So your pancreas and your kidney makes sodium bicarbonate out of citric acid.
If you want to know more about how to get replete in these minerals and also absorb them and utilize them better, that’s all available in the Repattern Migraine Coursework.
For calcium, definitely you want to have your lab results before supplementing with calcium, because some people have really high calcium levels. Other people have really low calcium levels. This can be a reflection of parathyroid function. So I don’t recommend supplementing with calcium, especially without knowing your status.
And then again, sodium is more a reflection of how your adrenal glands are doing. So you could be eating a lot of salt. If you crave salt, definitely let yourself eat a lot of salt. But it’s more like we need to support those organ systems, right? And what’s so interesting about mineral balancing that I’ve learned is that a lot of times these mineral levels, they’re not really necessarily a reflection of whether or not you’re eating enough of those nutrients in your food, but they also reflect your hormone status.
So when I see low potassium, I think low progesterone. I found a research study that was really fascinating about how transgender people who take supplemental progesterone therapy as part of their gender transition, they can end up with excess potassium, elevated potassium. So that indicates to me that also when we see low potassium levels, this could go hand in hand with people who have low progesterone levels, which is totally consistent with hypothyroidism. So all the pieces of that puzzle kind of match up nicely.
So if you have low levels of those electrolytes or minerals, it can tell us more about your hormonal status and point to other deeper issues that are going on probably with your thyroid system, probably because of all the fluoride that’s in our environment and many medications.
I hope that was interesting. Thanks for watching as always. Take care.
Here is the second video.
Transcript
Hey, beautiful people. I did share a video, two videos ago, about electrolytes.
I did want to add to what I said in the last video about the relationship between magnesium and sodium. Because I was mentioning that most people with migraine will benefit from taking more magnesium and potassium. But I do want to mention that there’s a relationship between magnesium and potassium and sodium, and magnesium and potassium and calcium. So we’re talking about these four major electrolytes. One thing I failed to mention is that, you know how I said, sodium is a good reflection of your adrenal status.
You’ll know if you have low sodium if you just check your blood pressure. If you have really low blood pressure and you have hypotension, you probably will benefit from salt. You can even notice that if you take your blood pressure before eating some salt and after, after eating salt, your blood pressure will go up a little bit. This is one reason why taking a little salt can be helpful for people with migraine when they have a headache. It may not be enough to get you out of a migraine, but it can definitely take the edge off.
But because magnesium calms the adrenal glands and lowers sodium, if you’re already low in sodium and you take a ton of magnesium, that could cause issues. So people with high sodium need lots and lots of magnesium to help lower that sodium. While people with low magnesium and low sodium need to take magnesium and sodium together so that by taking magnesium, they don’t deplete their sodium even further.
And this is one reason why Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis and coaching is really valuable, because I can analyze all this for you. But I mean, it’s not that hard to tell, right? If you’re someone who craves salt and you have low blood pressure, you will know that if you eat a whole bunch of magnesium and potassium-containing fruits and vegetables or supplement with magnesium, that you will probably want to take some sodium with that to keep those in balance.
A lot of vegetables and fruits also have naturally-occurring sodium in them. Celery has a ton of sodium in it. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that.
I wanted to mention the relationship between magnesium and potassium and calcium. So magnesium helps calcium to become ionized, and both potassium and magnesium help to lower calcium. So people with really, really high calcium will need more magnesium and more potassium, similar to how people with high sodium will need more magnesium and potassium. So there are some people who have really low levels of something because they have too high of levels of the mineral that it’s in dynamic relationship with, and then there’s other people who just have low of everything, which means if they start taking more of something to get out of a deficiency state, since that mineral has a dynamic relationship with the other electrolytes, you could end up further lowering some of the other minerals it’s antagonistic to by taking too much of something.
Again, this is one example for why the HTMA lab is really, really helpful.
Okay, I’ve only been talking for three minutes. It’s not ten minutes like last time. I lose track of time when I talk about minerals.
One reason why electrolytes are so valuable, especially the alkalizing electrolytes, is because our bodies need voltage. Obviously, we do better and we feel better when we have voltage, more energy and electricity in our bodies, but also because voltage is a reflection of pain in the body.
I’ve mentioned this in previous videos, but I want to reemphasize it again, because if you start to alkalize your body with alkalizing electrolytes, especially the solvent-based ones that help move crap and stagnation out, a lot of that crap and stagnation is acid. It’s a metabolic waste, an acidic waste built up in the lymphatic system. If you clean that out with these minerals and you alkalize your body in the process, you’re going to have a lot less pain because pain is a result of voltage. In other words, it’s a result of the degree to which your tissues are oxygenated or acidic. So the measure of voltage, of pH, is a measure of oxygen saturation or lack thereof. We know migraine pain is an issue of hypoxia or low-tissue oxygen (acidosis).
You can learn more about this in the Repattern Migraine Masterclass. I learned about this from Dr. Jerry Tennant, in his book called Healing is Voltage. And you can also read a blog post of mine that I wrote summarizing his thoughts on this. But the point is pain occurs anywhere in the body where there’s low oxygen, in other words, where the tissues are overly acidic. And this is because cells need electricity and voltage in order to regenerate. And when they don’t have that, we experience pain. And alkalizing electrolyte minerals help with all that.
Thanks for listening.