Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Part 1: Debunking Myths About Sodium – With Robb Wolf

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep99/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about electrolytes, sodium, and busting myths around sodium-electrolyte phobias. Robb Wolf is a former research biochemist and 2X New York Times/Wall Street Journal Best-selling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired To Eat. He and co-author Diana Rodgers recently released their book, Sacred Cow, which explains why well-raised meat is good for us and good for the planet. Robb has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world via his top-ranked iTunes podcast, books, and seminars. He's known for his direct approach and ability to distill and synthesize information to make the complicated stuff easier to understand. Please see our medical disclaimer. 

If one wants to eat low carb or just less refined food, we really need to address electrolytes in particular sodium. That just isn't something that's part of the common discussion within low carb arenas. And within fasting, I would say it borders on a dumpster fire. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders, and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels, and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of the Resetter podcast,

I bring you another brilliant mind. So you guys, who have been following me for a while, know that I love deep conversations with people. And this one provides an incredible depth to the topic of everything from electrolytes to amino acids, to how much protein do we need, to how do we change metabolic health for the world. This, who you're going to hear is Rob Wolf. And if you're not familiar with Rob Wolf, let me tell you a little bit about him. He is a biochemist, and he is a two-time New York Times bestselling author and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He has two books, The Paleo Solution and Sacred Cow.

They're both incredible books that I recommend and bring a depth to the topic of food and fasting and nutrients. So here's where I want to zone in on the nutrient part for you guys. We talk on all of my podcasts. we have spoken so much about everything from how to heal hormones to how to use nature to bring cortisol down. And what I really wanted to dive into with Rob is help me understand something as simple as sodium, potassium, and magnesium. How do these three electrolytes affect our brain health? How do they affect our moods?

How do they affect our energy? And he brings the biochemistry to explain it. and help you guys understand. The other thing I want to dive into, because he's a fan of protein, I wanted to know more, like how much protein, what type of protein, when should we eat protein? So we dove into amino acids. Does our microbiome make enough amino acids that we don't need as much protein as we've been taught?

These are all questions that we answered. Now, when you listen to Rob, one of the things that he is known for is being, controversial. He is going to offer a perspective that many people do not hear. And it was such a deep conversation that we actually are splitting it into two episodes. So please listen to them both. If you learn something from it, if it gives you a depth on how to think about nutrition at a whole new level that you did not have prior to listening to these episodes, please share them out into the world. One thing that Rob and I really agree upon is we want to help people think at a deeper level about their health and conversations like this can transform the way we approach

food and fasting. So this is part one. Enjoy Rob Wolf and stay tuned for part two. You guys are going to love this one. Here's my little first question for you is, why the heck do we need electrolytes so badly. I'm just, I'm blown away at watching so many people fast and watching so many people have like their hair fall out. They have heart palpitations. They hit walls with fasting. And what I've come to realize is that there is this imbalance of electrolytes in the human body right now. So explain why that, why we need it and why are so many people deficient? Yeah. And, you know, maybe, I will throw myself under the bus first before throwing you under the bus second. And so, you know, we're both fairly schfeldt, so we'll both fit under the bus.

But if somebody goes on a low carb ketogenic diet, usually there's a ton of focus on protein carbs fats and don't make, allow your carbs to go above this, this particular level and whatnot. And there is absolutely no discussion typically of electrolytes, specifically sodium. But if we are placed on a medically supervised ketogenic diet, you know, for like epilepsy or adjunctive cancer therapy or what have you, that doctor, that dietitian will make absolutely dead certain that the individual gets at least five grams of sodium a day, sometimes double that, because those folks are savvy to this concept called the nature resists of fasting, the loss of sodium, associated with fasting. And as individual, so within popular, you know, low carb diet lore, which I've been in that scene for like 23 years, I was never afraid of sodium. I had done my

research on. I'm like, that isn't the problem. Hyper insulinemia, refined carbohydrates, too many calories. Those are the problems. But I didn't fully appreciate how critical it was to, if one wants to eat low carb or just less refined food, we really need. We really need. need to address electrolytes in particular sodium. And so that just isn't something that's part of the common discussion within low carb arenas. And within fasting, I would say it borders on a dumpster fire, to be honest, because we have people who, it becomes this badge of honor, almost like sleep deprivation.

It's like, well, if you just try harder than the heart palpitations, the loss of hair, the disordered sleep and all the rest of this stuff will kind of sort itself out. And, you know, when when we think about what things are really important to be monitored from a physiological perspective, like if you or I ended up unconscious after being under the bus, you know, being pitched under the under the bus and we ended up in an emergency room, the emergency room physician would look at two things straight out of the gate. The first is pH and the other is electrolytes because those two are the two most tightly regulated things in our in our physiology and if our pH goes up or down too much for too long we will get sick or we

will die if our electrolytes get become disordered too much or for too long we will get sick and we will die and it doesn't take a whole lot to do that and the the loss of sodium associated with fasting is jaw dropping particularly if somebody is going from kind of a mixed standard American diet. And then they, they cut everything out and they're just doing water. And, and, you know,

three days into that experience, they are shedding water and sodium. And then like crazy. And we have to have a balance between sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and all these other electrolytes. And typically we have sodium and higher concentrations outside of cells, potassium and higher concentrations inside of cells,

when we start dumping sodium like crazy, then our body will start dumping potassium to try to maintain that balance. Because if we don't have the relative ratio correct, then every single nerve impulse in our body, every thought, every heartbeat, every muscle contraction stops. So our body starts then dumping potassium.

And this is where people end up in a downward spiral very, very quickly, and they can die from it. They will feel horrible beforehand, and usually they will do something to fix things, but occasionally folks are knuckleheads and they're like, well, I'm really going to muscle through this thing. And, and, you know, my guru told me I should do this and should do that. And I mean, I don't know if I fully addressed what, you know, the, the, the question there, but when individuals begin fasting, when they reduce carbohydrate intake, insulin levels drop. Insulin manages a hormone called aldosterone. Aldosterone causes us to retain sodium.

So under normal circumstances, we have this kind of homeostatic balance. Insulin, aldosterone, sodium are all kind of in a dynamic equilibrium and our blood pressure is normal. We go from seated to standing and we don't get dizzy. We don't have super high heart rate, you know, just trying to breathe and stuff like that. And then when we begin fasting, our insulin levels drop, aldosterone drops. And then we begin shedding sodium and water. And then eventually potassium and water.

and it embarks on this really terrible downward spiral, which can be life-threatening. Absolutely. Yeah. And I want to address that in one second. Let's go back to the potassium thing. So what I see a lot in fasters is restless legs. It's like the ache. And I hear a lot.

People will ask questions like, well, I can't sleep at night. My legs are aching. My low back is aching. I've seen some research connecting restless legs with low potassium. So a lot of muscle, not atrophy, but agitation and nerve pain can come from low potassium. Do you think that's why? Yeah. But the way that they got there is their sodium plummeted and then their body started dumping potassium to try to balance the sodium of potassium.

The most horrible thing that the person could do in that scenario is to start dosing on potassium. Oh, okay. Explain why. They will die from it. Like a lethal injection is a super concentrated solution of potassium because it causes the heart to cramp one last time. Okay. And without sodium and without calcium and whatnot to reverse that, then this thing is a, it's funny. It's a really difficult thing to unpack all this stuff because modern diets are really potassium deficient without a doubt.

but people are mainly eating prodigious amounts of processed foods. I think there was just a study that suggested greater than like 70% of the food consumed in the United States is now considered hyper processed. So it's, it's, you know, stuff that you would used to, you expect it only to see in like a 7-Eleven. And now this, this is like the basis of the diet. But these things are sodium rich typically in potassium depleted. So that's absolutely a problem.

But then when we flip around and we have people fasting and eating, you know, whole food based diets, then they're typically very potassium rich if we're eating real food, but then we're sodium depleted. But, you know, without a doubt, folks can get into a dangerous scenario in which they are potassium depleted, but it's potassium depletion on the heels of sodium depletion. And it's worth mentioning that people can overconsume a remarkable amount of, of sodium. And they may gain a little bit of water weight, but within 20 minutes to an hour, the kidneys are really adept at sorting out overconsumption of sodium. Overconsumption of

potassium, particularly in highly concentrated form, or if anybody knows someone who is on dialysis or something like that, you have to be remarkably careful about the amount of potassium that one consumes, because that will kill you. Overconsumption of sodium is much less dangerous and overconsumption of potassium. But I feel like an idiot saying that because almost nobody over consumes potassium in the modern world because they're eating super processed foods. But this is where we have to be very nuanced and compartmentalize this stuff really succinctly because what our neighbor who is eating a terrible little, you know, highly processed

diet and they are not fasting, what might be appropriate for that person is an avocado or banana. The person who is fasting and they are in a hyponatremic state, low sodium state, and they've dumped a bunch of potassium to boot, they need sodium first, not because once you start getting sodium, then the body will retain the potassium that it comes in contact with, and it will start rebuilding that equilibrium. So if you go from standard American diet or Western diet, I should probably call it now because it's everywhere. We've taken our horrible food everywhere. And now you move to a clean diet where you're eating like from farmer's markets and you're going back to nature's foods. Can you make that assumption that your sodium levels

have probably gone down and it would be smart to add in something like sea salt? Is it that simple of a shift? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure, for sure. I will say for a lot of people salting their food is not enough ultimately, and we can gauge that based off of symptoms like foggy-headedness, fatigue, cramping, things like that. But at a minimum when, when, and, you know, I can't remember the name of the YouTube channel, but it's this guy in Azerbaijan. And he lives in this beautiful area. And he cooks virtually all of his food outside. Like it's like the outdoor cook or something and it. It's just stunning stuff. But what you notice is this guy, it's like a lot of meat, a lot of like root vegetables because they live in this mountainous area. And it's salt on everything.

Like they salt the meat. They salt the vegetables. They salt their tea. When they're drinking tea, they put a little pinch of salt in their tea because they live at elevation. They have a, you know, they're not like low carb, but they're not eating any processed carbs. Right. And they just instinctively like really salt the heck out of their food, their tea, everything. I'll try to pull this thing down. One, it's just breathtaking cinematography. Oh, yeah, I'd love to know that. Beautiful.

But, you know, this is when you look at traditional cultures that if they can get access to a lot of salt, they typically put a lot of salt in their diet, traditional Japanese diets, Okinawan diets. Like, they typically have a lot of sodium in the mix of an otherwise whole food minimally processed diet. The real challenge starts emerging when we have a nutrient devoid, highly processed diet plus a lot of sodium. Okay. I think that's such a powerful explanation because, again, I'm going to say when I brought element to my fasters, the first question I got was, why is there so much sodium in it? And I want to point out that what I just heard from you is if you're going

from Western diet to a clean, whole foods diet, and then to fasting, you're probably not going to feel the effects of the electrolyte imbalance as much. This is my interpretation of what you said. Whereas if you go straight from Western diet, now I'm going to throw in some fasting and you don't take that intermittent step that that's where we may see more of these electrolytes go down. Would that be fair? You will feel it worse.

But I mean, this is the condition is the nature recess of fasting. When people begin fasting, they should. Got it. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. And, you know, sometimes people motor through and they get through it, you know, these extended water only fast, but one medically, I would argue, if one participates in a medically supervised fast, one is administered significant amounts of electrolytes, specifically sodium, so that we avoid all these problems.

I would say that people are playing with fire by, from a medical perspective, not addressing these basic, electrolyte issues. And, you know, I'm as as critical and cranky of kind of modern medicine as anybody you could find, but emergency medicine borders on the miraculous. You show up with pH imbalances, electrolyte imbalances, you've been shot, you've been run over by a bus, you know, whatever. It's miraculous in the acute phase. And so I think one would be really foolish to dismiss the way that, that like acute level fasting is managed in a medical, you know, setting. And they address those electrolytes because there's no downside to doing it. Like, you know, you feel better.

You don't feel so awful. You typically sleep better. Yeah, better energy levels. And the upside is that you don't die and you don't end up hospitalized for, you know, disordered electrolytes. So it seems like a real easy. you know, cost benefit analysis on that. Yeah. Okay. So I think this is super important because what I saw, so last week we did with our community a three-day water fast. And it was all on a public platform.

So these people are self-monitoring. You know, they're on. I show them what to do and they go and do it, but, you know, a lot of them don't have doctor supervision. And they did it really successfully. And the number one thing that I saw in hundreds of thousands of comments was, oh, my gosh, Element saved me. It was a thing that got me through. And so it was so ironic that I was talking to you today because that went down last week. And I'm like, why did that happen? And my next question to you, is it only in the longer fast that we need to add in these,

our electrolytes? Or what if I'm intermittent fasting 15 hours every day? day. What if I'm doing one meal a day? Like, where is it always? Should I be doing a packet a day? Like, how do I know how much is right for me? So the dosing question is ironically, like the most difficult question to answer. Are you a six foot six male who plays hockey? Are you a five foot two female who's a computer programmer and spends the bulk of the time indoors in a temperature controlled environment. Like there's just massive variation on that,

that side of things. We tend to bracket and we, we have some, some reasoning behind this, somewhere between five grams of sodium a day from all sources, dietary sources, supplemental sources, all the way up to 12 to 15 grams of sodium per day,

depending on the person. So we've done some work with strength and conditioning coaches that manage hockey. players, National Hockey League players. Big dudes, lots of activity, even though they're on ice, like that gear is very, very hot. These big guys will lose 10 pounds of water and 10 grams of sodium in a two-hour game and in a hard practice, just from their sweat, you know. We've seen small females that are competing in the CrossFit games type stuff that need 15 grams of sodium a day because they're super high motor output, their recovery is improved,

they're outside in direct sunlight, maybe a little bit of humidity. So we tend to recommend that most folks, so long as they're not hypertensive, they're not insulin resistant, that somewhere around five grams of sodium per day is like a bare minimum period, like across the board. And again, And we're not suggesting that you do that all from elements like olives, pickles, salami, sardines, you know, really aggressively salting your food as well. That can add a lot to things. 10, can Kalamata olives provide a gram of sodium. Like that's an easy way to tick one, you know, one fifth of your sodium box.

Yeah. It tastes delicious. They're full of polyphenols and all that. They're the hero. I've decided that the olive is the hero of the day. Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. The way better the avocados when you get right down to it.

Yeah, it has so much fat. It's like it has no calories. So like with like when we started doing fast mimicking, I was teaching fast mimicking for a little while. And it was like, oh my God, everybody was going to olives because it had no calories. It was all fat, had no carbs. And we just have learned in my household. Until I discovered element, I was like popping olives all the time just and it made me feel so good. So funny that you say that.

So yeah. So it's hard to give an exact number for people because it varies a lot. But somewhere between five and potentially as high as 15 grams. But the 15 grams is for like athletes or super high motor, people in a hot, humid environment. Altitude, if somebody's at significant altitude, like 8,000 feet or higher mountaineering or just hanging out, that really increases electrolyte needs. But it's difficult. I can't just, I can.

way more easily say, okay, you're a five foot four female, 130 pounds, you need this much protein carbs and fat. Like I can do that pretty quick and easy and be within five percent of being accurate. On the sodium and electrolyte side, there's much more variation because there's a lot more going on there. Okay. So if you are an athlete that's sweating a lot and then you're going to go fast, you probably are going to need more. If you're a larger man and you're going to fast, you're probably going to need more. So looking at your behavior and how much you're excreting these electrolytes would be a good indicator as to how much you would need going into a fast. Would that be accurate? And I acknowledge that it's self-serving for the guy who owns the electrolyte company

to say you need to think more. But that said, we, have a free home brew deal. So if people don't want to buy it, we have a home brew guide. So this much salt, this much no salt, this much magnesium citrate, some lemon juice, stevia, make it yourself. And the whole company was founded where we gave away this home brew guide. And within six months, we had a half million downloads of it. And then people started asking for basically what element is. But here's the thing. I am still surprised by how much sodium folks benefit from. Right. I am too. They feel better. Their performance is better. Their recovery is better. And so it,

and again, we'd like to see as much of that come from dietary sources as we can. But at the, at the end of the day, you know, something like a beverage, like I'm doing some coffee with a little bit of cream and then a chocolate salt element in here. And so I'll sip on that over the course of a couple hours and it tastes great and I feel much better with that. And then when I go to jiu-jitsu, I won't be dragging. You know, I'm kind of salt loading before doing jiu-jitsu later in the afternoon. Yeah. So explain the sodium myth of everybody, you know, the first reaction our community had when we

brought element to them was, whoa, like, isn't that going to raise my blood pressure? Like, I feel like we have this sodium myth that needs to be debunked. Why does sodium not raise blood pressure? You've talked a lot about why it's so good, but I just want for all the skeptics out there to understand there's more to the sodium story than they've been taught. The sodium can and does raise blood pressure, but we need context. If you are fasting and you're experiencing almost type of lemic shock when you go from seated to standing and you almost pass out, you need to raise your blood pressure a bit. If your heart is beating out of your chest, because of low blood volume and you're getting cardiac arrhythmia is because your,

your heart is working overtime just sitting, then you need elevated blood pressure. Like you're going to benefit from that. Where we need to be careful is if somebody is insulin resistant, borderline diabetic, and they're what's called a sodium sensitive hyper responder, they can get a significant increase in their blood pressure from a large bolus of sodium. Like they do a Mexican meal or a Chinese food meal or something that's got three grams, 3,000 milligrams of sodium in it and that, you know, that could be a problem. But the problem isn't really the sodium.

The problem is the food that the person is eating that is making them insulin resistant in the first place. One of the key benefits of both fasting and any type of a lower carb diet or a, you know, a lower processed carb diet is that people lose a bunch of water weight. That water weight is. water weight is their high blood pressure. They're literally peeing their high blood pressure away. And it's worth mentioning in this story. There've been a lot of very well conducted studies where they will put hypertensive individuals, folks with high blood pressure, on low or no sodium diets. And their blood pressure barely comes down at all. So low sodium diets don't necessarily fix the

problem, low carb diets. And interestingly, fasting, like, that is, low carb diets bring down blood pressure in most individuals with hypertension. Fasting brings down blood pressure in all hypertensive individuals every single time because of this thing called the nature recess fasting. Like, you know, it is the big hammer that will address this. Now, the thing is, people can't fast forever. Like, you do have to eat again and we have to establish some sort of reasonable eating

schedule around that. And for some people, it's OMAD, for other people, it's low carb or, you know, a constrain feeding window or whatever. But some degree of insulin management almost universally addresses that hypertensive problem. So sodium is a problem in certain circumstances. And it is absolutely the only solution in all these other circumstances. So again, it's really important to to recognize what we have going on there. And, you know, truth be told, there was a study released maybe six years ago that suggested that fewer than 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy. Right.

So it's not surprising that, you know, for a lot of people, it's like, well, we really should address your diet to, to, you know, get this thing going. But the interesting thing with that, people change their diet. They implement some fasting or some time restricted eating. They feel like garbage. and then they abandon the process. Part of the reason why they feel like garbage is that their sodium levels are too low. So it kind of circles back on that.

A great way to facilitate people staying on these programs. It's already hard to do these things. It's kind of socially isolating. It's a challenge anyway. But make someone feel horrible in the meantime, make them feel like they've had the worst hangover of their life and it's going on day after day after day. That's a really big ask for somebody to continue with that.

but if we just address those electrolytes, then typically things normally. And I guess the one final thought on that is if people are really concerned about blood pressure, get a $15 or $20 blood pressure cuff from a local pharmacy ordered off online and take your blood pressure intermittently throughout the day before taking something like element after taking it and just kind of see what your blood pressure is doing. It's a really easy process to document that. I was just thinking to myself, you know, If there's anything we learn from 2020 and 2021 is that humans can do hard things.

You know, who would have thought masking up and quarantine people that we could do that? So I agree with you that when going into these longer fast is hard. But again, this is why I love your product. And I love that you guys have a home recipe. I think that's great as well. But fasting, the research on fasting is so impressive as far as the metabolic. changes it can make. And when I look at the food industry and I go, gosh, that is a big beast to take down.

And they are going to keep putting garbage in our ingredients. But if I could get people to just take their garbage food and compress it into one eating window and elongate their fasting window, okay, now we were actually making some metabolic process. But I agree that the hurdle becomes, okay, what do we do when they feel? bad because, you know, I agree that we don't like to feel bad. But I mean, I've talked to so many fasters to get on the other side of that. And they're just like, this is the most incredible tool I've ever found. So, yeah. So one of the things I heard on sodium, I'm curious what,

and I think I heard this on what you were saying, is that if insulin is high and sodium is high, now we have a problem. Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah. And chronically elevated insulin, you know, which is is usually facilitated by a highly processed diet where, you know, and this is where like the macronutrient wars, like the low carb people say it's all carbs, the low fat people say it's all fat. The things that people tend to overeat are fat carb combos that are, you know, massaged and managed in such a way to be hyper-palatable. That's what my whole second book was about, was the neuroregulation of appetite, you know,

and just getting these really complex palate experiences. That is a guarantee of overeating. And then one of the things also that makes food taste better is sodium, you know. So, I mean, it's a key ingredient in processed food. So there's kind of a guilt by association thing there. But sodium makes whole, you know, like if you're doing some Brussels sprouts, you know, when you cook them in some olive oil and you put some balsamic, you know, vinegar in it and reduce it and caramelize it. That's going to be pretty good. But man, you threw some salt on top of that and now

it's magic. And it would have been, you know, totally blasé with, you know, without that sodium on it. So it improves good food and it improves highly processed food too. I'm going to quote you on that when I eat dinner next time. The salt container sits right by my, by my meal every time my son. and I, we pass it back and forth. And, you know, the chronic statement of any guests that's at our dinner table is like, wow, you guys eat a lot of salt. And my response is, yeah, you should, our blood pressure is great. Like, our health is awesome. Like, we're living examples that eating the right salt with the right diet combined with fasting is working for us. Right. So, but, but the belief is salt is still going to cause, uh, high blood pressure. So I appreciate the explanation.

Yeah, it is definitely not the cause. It is a factor in the story. But again, for individuals that are sodium sensitive hyper responders, they are typically insulin resistant. And even sodium restriction doesn't necessarily help that much. Now, eating a ton of salt on top of that doesn't make things better. But super severe sodium restriction also doesn't really change things all that much. Like you really have to fundamentally change the diet and circadian.

rhythm and all that type of stuff. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about magnesium. And thank you for the, for the sodium discussion, because again, we've been getting a lot of questions on that. I wanted to give people a resource for that. But let's talk about magnesium. That is the other one that I feel like you could give magnesium to every human on the planet, but especially women and especially menopausal women, you give them magnesium and their life changes. What is it that is so powerful about magnesium and why are we missing magnesium so much in our diet? magnesium gets complex. Again, not to overly beat the drum of sodium, but if we have adequate sodium, we tend to retain the magnesium we have.

If we are deficient in sodium, then we tend to excrete more magnesium. So this is another thing that we need to work in there. We need adequate levels of vitamin D. Everybody thinks about vitamin D as it relates to calcium, but vitamin D and magnesium metabolism is really important. And so it starts getting very holistic rather quickly. You need adequate stomach acid to absorb magnesium and calcium. So, you know, so there's lots of different layers where this stuff can kind of go sideways. What vitamin D levels?

Sorry to interrupt you. I just curious, what vitamin D levels do you feel are good for people? I'd like to refer folks to Chris Master John's work on this because he breaks it down by kind of ethnicity. You know, so if you're African American versus Asian versus Northern Indian, he has some data that makes the case that like Caucasians probably benefit from, you know, anywhere from like 65 to 75, you know, with that that level. African Americans may legitimately be at their optimum more in the 40 to 60. And so I really like referring. I know enough about that to recommend go check out Christmas.

Yeah, yeah. No, we'll put a link on that. Yeah, but I would say that that varies from person to person. I would and Chris makes this point too. It is critically important to get adequate K2 in addition to the D3. Vitamin D causes us to retain calcium. It doesn't necessarily tell it where to go. And if we have inadequate K2 in the diet, it could go into our vascular

endothelium and accelerate atherosclerosis could do all kinds of things that we would prefer it not to do. The K2 kind of tells the body where to partition it more in the bones and whatnot. But the magnesium deficiency is a big deal. Magnesium does this kind of interesting trick or facilitates ATP in the body because of the way it kind of coordinates the ATP molecule, the the magnesium is a two charged metal ion and just it associated with ATP in this way that kind of facilitates the enzymatic breakdown. So if people are low energy, if they're having kind of lethargy and fatigue, this inadequate magnesium can definitely be a factor there.

It's critical in muscle contractions. It's critical in a host of different enzyme systems. So it has really broad ranging applications. and diets in general are depleted of magnesium. People tend to have low stomach acid, consuming, you know, so like if you have a magnesium-rich meal, but you consume it with some dairy, sometimes like the dairy proteins or can associate with the magnesium and make it difficult to absorb. So that gets into all kinds of crazy food combining stuff, but, you know, it can be challenging

to get adequate magnesium for sure. But, you know, with Element, we looked at folks that were consuming about 300 people that were consuming a low carb, but minimally processed whole food diet. And what we found was that they got from our perspective adequate calcium, a little skinny on magnesium, pretty, you know, a little bit shorter on potassium and then really, really deficient in sodium. And so that's the way that we stratified out that a gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and then 60 milligrams of magnesium. So we just put a little pinch of the magnesium in there and we use the magnesium malate because it's much more absorbable than most of the other forms.

Yeah. Amazing. So I have to ask this question because I become a skeptic on any like one size fits all sort of approaches to anything, whether it's food, life of any kind. And I've been noticing with all the fasters that we have that women really need to fast differently. And that's been a large part of what I've been really educating people on. So do women need to do mineral electrolytes different? Do we need to look at how we approach element different?

Do we need to look at it different at different times of our cycle? Do we need more of these minerals, like, or electrolytes, like after our period? These are questions that I know women will ask me. And my honest answer is I don't know. I don't think that it's going to be that different male versus female in like the basic needs. Like I don't think that there's going to be an intersex difference that's significant that's any greater than me versus you. Right. You know, just human being versus human being. Now that said, women are much more rapid. in showing nutrient deficiency problems. So over, over aggressive calorie restriction, over aggressive,

well, really, really calorie restriction at the end of the day. But another interesting thing with that, when we look at all these things, kind of like adrenal fatigue, thyroid issues and whatnot, you could make a really strong case that inadequate sodium is likely a big driver in those stories. So like when we see women undergo ketogenic diet, some degree of fasting and whatnot, so long as his sodium is adequate, we really get a blunting of that kind of downward spiral where we see like hair loss and the person getting really cold and all that type of stuff.

But biology just has a much finer trigger for women because if we're in a nutrient deficient scenario, that's not a great time. be pregnant. That's not a great time to be, you know, potentially raising, uh, uh, your next offspring. So it, women will respond to that much more rapidly and profoundly than what we would see with men. Men may end up, you know, some low libido or something like that, but it's kind of like, I don't know, how, how do you even know that versus becoming a manoreic and, and, whatnot? Like, that's, that's clearly a much more profound change. So again, I don't know if I fully answer that question. I don't know to what degree it's going to vary, you know, based off of like what part of the cycle. Like I think day-to-day activity level and

temperature is going to be way more impactful than, say, like, cycle specifically. Yeah. I was, I had a really interesting conversation yesterday with Dr. Lara Bryden. She's, you know, I'm sure you know, you've crossed her path before. And she was talking, we were talking about perimenopause and how when the hormones, decline during the perimenopausal years, that the brain has to reboot itself and it has to get accustomed to the decline of hormones, which is why women going through perimenopause could be so irritable. We can have some anxiety. And she's like, what happens is once you get to the other side of menopause, that it has now recalibrated and it knows how to handle these low

hormones. So I asked her what nutrient would help a woman as she goes through. this recalibration process. And she said magnesium. Magnesium and Taurine were the two that she recommended. And again, I'm going to say, I feel like I could line up thousands of perimenopause and menopausal women and put them all on different forms of magnesium. And they'd come back and say, I feel better. So that's, so it's, to my brain, is there some hormone magnesium connection there for women. I just, maybe it's more coming from fluctuating hormones or to decline in hormones, but there's something there. I just haven't dove into the science. Yeah, I don't know. And I mean, there are folks that are pretty geeked out on the notion of, like, bioidentical hormones that they

will, they will try to replicate that, that more youthful hormonal profile, both for men and women. And I see some pretty remarkable benefits, you know, from, from that path. too, but I, you know, magnesium is just one of these, uh, uh, keystone nutrients. And it, it's very easy to have it depleted in the modern diet. So I, I think that is to some degree why it just pops up again and again and again. And when you think about its role in just energy production, if you want to make hormones, you have to manufacture ATP. If you want to go for a run, you have to manufacture ATP. If you want to write a book and think big thoughts, you have to manufacture ATP. So I mean, like, you know, if, uh, uh, you know, if you think about the operation

of a home, it's run off of electricity for, for the most part. If I want to run the blender and the power is bad, that's not really going to work well. If I want my pump to pump water into my holding tank, that's not going to work well. Um, and then if I can't pump water into my holding tank, then my toilets aren't going to flush and my shower won't work. You know, so energy production is, is really this major, it is, it is kind of what defines life from not life, you know, is the ability to, to take inorganic molecules and extract energy out of them and, and use them as substrates to drive the processes of life. So if you add something like magnesium that's a linchpin element in energy production and something is off with that, then everything's going

to be broken. You know, like if we have intermittent electricity in the house, everything is going to be screwy. And so if we have intermittent energy production in the body, and it may be something else. It may be related to something else, but I could make the case that just simply creating problems for energy production is enough for buggering everything else that a person has going on. So fascinating.

Again, I'm going back. If you ever get a chance, go on to my Instagram and read all the miracle. People were like, Element saved me, element saved me. And of course, my science brain was like, why? Why did it do? I mean, I love your guys product.

I was like, why did it do that so well? So it was pretty profound. And now this makes a lot of sense. So is there ever a time you need to think about not taking this amount of electrolytes? Like is there some, is there for anybody that you wouldn't want to pick up extra electrolytes? Yeah. The sodium sensitive hyper-responder, peri-diabetic insulin resistance.

individual would not benefit from sodium. They're retaining a ton of sodium already. What that person really needs to do, though, is modify their diet, circadian rhythm, exercise and all that stuff. But to date, that's about the only person I could think of. Someone on dialysis, they would definitely want to run it by their dock to make sure that they're okay. Usually potassium is the bigger mineral of concern relative to sodium.

but an element does have non-trivial amounts of potassium. So I would run that by dialysis. And then like the known hypertensive individual, like they know they have over high blood pressure. But again, they, the interesting thing is the person with high blood pressure is unlikely to have the type of symptoms that we typically see with the nature. rhesus of fasting. But as soon as they start fasting or low carbating or whatever, then they're going to need more sodium. But that's probably the only folks that I could think of that I would really

caution against using it. Hey, resetters. I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews. And those of you that have left me comments on iTunes, I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you're enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I've learned in just interacting with so many people is that we've really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the Resetter podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life, about mindset.

in a way that we may not be getting on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say, give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it's impacting your life. So please let us know if there's anything we can do to make this podcast more customized to you, to make it better. We are now officially in season two, and we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have, that mindset changes can give, and to really deliver you something that you're not able to get anywhere else.

So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you, and let's get healthy together.