How I meet my potassium goals: Autumn Edition

How I meet my potassium goals daily: Autumn Edition 🍂🍁🎃

I’ve done a post like this before (on March 29), but that was when summer fruit was in season. Now that we are shifting our food intake to match the seasons (as we should be - see my post from September 13), it’s time to shift how we’re getting our potassium.

Now that I’ve been running HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) labs for all my clients for about 6 months, all I see over & over is that we are CHRONICALLY deficient in potassium as a society.

We need ~4800mg of potassium daily to thrive, but most of my clients and anyone who is unintentional about hitting their potassium goals usually ends up around ~1000-1500 daily. YIKES.

In HTMA terms, the ideal level of potassium is a 10. Most of my clients are at a 1 or a 2, and the highest potassium level I’ve seen is a 5 (in normal HTMA patterns). That means most of us are getting only 1/5 or 1/10 of the potassium we should be getting. This is an issue, people!

Here’s the problem with that: low potassium → slows thyroid function → slows metabolism → slows digestion → leads to dysbiosis and unwanted bacterial/fungal overgrowth.

So basically, the whole cascade of low potassium is a doozy. It’s not hard to get enough potassium, we just need to make sure we’re being intentional about it, and this post is designed to show you how.

Here’s a couple of pro-tips:

1️⃣ I get my aloe juice in bulk from Natural Grocers, Whole Foods, or Trader Joe’s. My favorite brand is Lily of the Desert (do NOT drink aloe juice if you are pregnant).

2️⃣ I order my red raspberry leaf tea and nettle tea powders from Starwest Botanicals on amazon. THIS SAVES SO MUCH MONEY. 1 box of Traditional Medicinals red raspberry leaf tea at the store is $5, and a 1lb bag of red raspberry leaf tea from Starwest Botanicals is $15 on amazon.

3️⃣ Since fresh fruit isn’t in season anymore, I opt for either dried fruit, honey, maple syrup, or jams made from dry fruit

4️⃣ I make one batch of mineral broth per week (see my post from March 24 for the recipe), and reheat it and drink it throughout the week

*Not medical advice and the mineral amounts are NOT perfect, close estimates from Cronometer*