Potassium Deficiency: Widespread and often Neglected

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Health

Nutritionists tell us that with RDAs, deficiencies are a thing of the past, but is that really the truth? RDAs or Recommended Dietary Allowances are the absolute minimum of a vital nutrient, without which we will get ill and die from a deficiency disease. In a recent article I have cited evidence that RDAs are insufficient to assure optimal health.

Vitamin C is an example. Unlike almost all animals, humans do not manufacture several grams of vitamin C per day in their livers and are thus completely dependent on dietary intake. 60 milligrams of the vitamin as recommended are sufficient to prevent the end-stage deficiency called scurvy, but are woefully inadequate to assure cardiovascular health or proper immune function. An optimal daily intake of Vitamin C of 3000 milligrams (3 grams) has recently been suggested by the National Health Federation in a submission to the Codex Alimentarius Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, based on an evaluation of numerous studies.

Remember those 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables the nutritionists recommend we eat each day? The mineral we generally find in fruits and vegetables together with vitamin C is potassium, and what do you know - we may be routinely deficient not only of vitamin C but of potassium as well! Ironically, there is no RDA for this vital mineral, although it is arguably the most important of them all, and potassium dosage in supplements has been limited by the FDA to 100 milligrams per tablet or capsule, although the "population reference" intake set by the EU in 1992 is 3.1 grams per day.

I have personally been supplementing both vitamin C and potassium for years and would say that these two substances are possibly the most important single elements that we should add to our food. Joe Vialls, who is an investigator, has experienced a severe potassium shortage himself and has researched and written an excellent article that I suggest you read:

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POTASSIUM DEFICIENCY SCAM KILLS AND MAIMS MILLIONS
Deliberately restricting your potassium intake makes you very ill, and
thus vulnerable to hundreds of highly profitable medical "cures"

Copyright Joe Vialls, 30 January 2004

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The title immediately suggests to the reader that a giant pharmaceutical atrocity has been inflicted on the poor natives of some far off third-world country, by a predictably greedy drug multinational, but this is simply not the case. By far the largest number of deaths and permanent crippling disabilities from potassium deficiency occur in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several other western nations.

How this horrific state of affairs came into being and was perpetuated thereafter, is a very long and frequently confusing story, meaning that we must start at the very beginning if we are to have any real chance of understanding the lethal implications. We first need to understand what potassium is, how much our bodies need on a daily basis to stay healthy, and what happens to us when our body's critical store of potassium is inadvertently or deliberately depleted.

Unlike toxic sodium [table salt], potassium is essential to our health. Potassium is present in all cells and is critical to cardiovascular and nerve function, regulating the transfer of nutrients into cells and facilitating muscle energy. This wonder mineral also regulates water balance, assists recuperative powers, and aids rheumatic or arthritic conditions by causing acids to leave the joints, thereby easing stiffness. At the same time potassium is vital for the elimination of wastes, is a natural pain desensitizer, helps control convulsions, headaches and migraines, and promotes faster healing of cuts, bruises and other injuries.

Because of its very high electrochemical activity, potassium is on the move all the time, and we need vast quantities to replenish that lost every day. When we exercise and sweat, we lose potassium through urine. When we are under extreme stress for a variety of other reasons, potassium loss can treble instantly. But as renowned nutritionist Adelle Davis points out, it is toxic sodium that causes the greatest problems. "Persons eating [sodium] salt as they wished excreted nine times more potassium than when their salt intake was limited, and human volunteers kept on diets deficient in potassium retained so much salt that they developed high blood pressure."

If Mother Nature was to deprive you of potassium completely, hard scientific evidence proves you would be dead in less than three weeks. But in many ways this would be a merciful release when compared with the infinitely more painful and far slower death caused by slow potassium deprivation, the preferred method of the FDA and AMA. Proper scientists agree the daily potassium requirements of an average adult lie between 3,200 and 4,100 milligrams, but the average potassium intake of Americans through the food chain is only 1,500 to 2,100 milligrams per day, representing an overall average shortfall of 1,850 milligrams.

Obviously humans can survive at these savagely depleted levels, because Americans manage to eke out about 70 years each, before this basic potassium deficiency overwhelms them and they finally die, sometimes in great pain from a number of directly related illnesses including arthritis, osteoporosis, hypertension [high blood pressure], angina, strokes and so on. It is scientifically beyond question that all would live longer and suffer less pain if they received the necessary quantity of potassium each day, which is where the American Food & Drug Administration [FDA] should do a John Wayne job, and ride gallantly to the rescue.

Alas, the Food and Drug Administration has not and will not do so, because of sustained lobby pressure by the pharmaceutical multinationals. Despite having full and unrestricted access to the real scientific data providing hard proof of widespread potassium deficiency bordering on a pandemic, the FDA has deliberately avoided specifying a "Recommended Dietary Allowance" [RDA], while simultaneously passing a law restricting the potassium content of all alternative medicines to a mere 100 milligrams.

This is your first clue to understanding how it is that we get so ill, and then willingly swallow billions of dollars worth of useless 'patent medicines'. Remember, just to keep up with the average shortfall of 1,850 milligrams of potassium per day, you would need to swallow at least 19 pills from your local health food shop, and no ordinary person could possibly afford that in the long term.

In order to keep their medical doctors in line, both the FDA and AMA have circulated a number of truly frightening stories about potassium. Most common among them is that the potassium will 'react' with one of a wide range of synthetic pharmaceutical medicines, frequently resulting in death. This is actually true, but it is the poisonous synthetic medicine which causes the lethal cross reaction that kills you, not the natural potassium so essential to your health. Then there is the even scarier rumor that 'too much' potassium will kill you by stopping your heart from beating, as in the case of a lethal injection execution.

Too much of almost anything will kill you, including simple water and air, especially if applied too quickly or by the incorrect route. When Timothy McVeigh was strapped to a gurney and put to death, the third chemical injected directly into his vein was a 'chaser' containing 50 milliliters of concentrated potassium chloride, which finally stopped his heart. If you are stupid enough to try this at home, you will die just as quickly, and in order to put this deliberate FDA and AMA scare mongering into the proper perspective, it is necessary to explain why.

The normal route for potassium to enter the body is by way of the mouth, either in the form of food, or sometimes as a solution made up of 100% water soluble potassium chloride dissolved in fruit juice. As the potassium passes through the digestive tract, the cells extract what they need and any excess is then passed out of the body, partly as solid waste, but mostly through the kidneys as urine. It is a perfectly normal biochemical process that the body itself knows how to handle very well, without any outside help from medical doctors. However, if you inject the potassium directly into a vein, you bypass the body's biochemical safety processes and stop the heart.

Exactly the same can be said of concentrated hydrochloric acid, always present in our stomachs in order to digest food, but incapable of harming us because of the body's sophisticated biochemical defenses. However, if you injected this same concentrated hydrochloric acid from the stomach directly into a vein, you would die even more quickly than you would from injecting potassium.

You can only be scared by a medical doctor if you allow yourself to be scared, and you will no doubt gain added confidence where potassium is concerned later in this report, when we examine the extraordinary case of the Yanomami Indians of South America. The Yanomami were fortunate enough to escape the attention of western medical 'science' for thousands of years, and still shun it now. These fascinating people receive virtually no sodium [table salt] at all, but every adult consumes around 8,500 milligrams of potassium every day. They are incredibly fit and have no history whatever of arthritis, osteoporosis, hypertension [high blood pressure], angina or stroke. We will return to the Yanomami a little later on.

Far too many of the 'illnesses' we suffer today can be laid at the door of potassium deficiency, though hordes of pharmaceutical and medical apologists will probably reject this, claiming that medical 'research' proved long ago that simple deficiency cannot cause life-threatening conditions. Sadly the apologists will be defeated by historical fact, chronicled long before your local pharmaceutical multinational decided to use your body as a private playground for the benefit of its shareholders.

Scurvy is caused solely by Vitamin C deficiency, and is thus predictably cured quickly by large quantities of Vitamin C. There are thousands of documented cases, especially in the British Royal Navy, where sailors became known as "Limeys" because of the vast amounts of citrus fruit provided free by The Admiralty. Rickets is less well known, but is caused by a deficienc