Imbalance – Electrolyte Deficiency

 

Avoid

– Avoid drinking too much water or being unconscious about water intake

This doesn’t mean you don’t need more water, you may. However, you need to qualify to drink more water. If you have a low amount of minerals in the system, drinking a lot of water will just wash away the small amount you do have. Work on correcting digestion and increasing your unrefined salt intake and then you can increase your water as your blood pressure comes up.

– Avoid drinking distilled water or tap water

Since distilled water contains no minerals, drinking it can wash minerals out without replenishing them. Chlorine and fluoride in tap water can also reduce minerals in the body since the body needs to use those minerals to help safely remove the chlorine and fluoride from the body.

– Avoid eating too many sugars and especially starchy carbohydrates

These foods can spike insulin levels and cause your blood sugar to drop too low, too quickly.

 

Implement

– Correctly digesting your food

– Eating food

This means eating breakfast.  Often because digestion is not functioning properly, understandably, many people skip breakfast.  After all, why eat protein for breakfast when it’s going to make you feel miserable for the next six hours?  But if the mineral level is low because of poor digestion, as digestion is repaired, something needs to be given to the body to digest.  Once the body sees that it has the ability to pull nutrients out of the food you’re eating, the body is going to want more of that.

– Tomatoes and/or tomato sauce

Tomatoes have the ability to thicken your blood, thereby raising your blood pressure.  If you like tomato sauce, using it is a great way to make just about any meal beneficial for an Electrolyte Deficiency Imbalance.

– Using an unrefined salt with your food

In my opinion, when it comes to food, unrefined salt can be the most important component to implement for an Electrolyte Deficiency Imbalance.  Yes, it is true that correcting any digestive issues takes center stage for this imbalance.  However, if you’re not getting enough chloride into your system, your body can’t begin to make its own HCL in the stomach.  This is often the missing factor when a person has digestive issues.

 

When I have clients with extremely low blood pressure and all the numbers are pointing to a severe Electrolyte Deficiency Imbalance, I like to see them load up the unrefined salt at every meal as much as they can.  I tell them that if they are eating lunch with a friend, the goal should be to use so much salt that their friend cries out, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

 

Obviously, you don’t want to make your food gross.  Don’t add so much salt that you can’t get through your meal without gagging.  But if you can add salt to your meal, take a bite and it still tastes okay, you might want to add a little more.  Just stop before it begins to taste like a salt lick.  If you don’t know what a salt lick is, google “salt lick” or “mineral lick.”  You will be intrigued by what you find.  People use salt licks with horses a lot.  It’s kind of funny to see that many horse owners don’t really understand why they give it to their horses.  They just hear that it’s beneficial so they do it.  Nature photographers use a salt lick to attract wildlife. Animals will come from far and wide to load up on needed minerals.  Yet, we humans still view salt as if it’s a bad thing.  Oops.

 

The word salary even comes from “salt.”  In Roman times, soldiers were paid in salt.  Would you go to work every day and fight for your life if you were being paid in salt?  Maybe you should.  Maybe your life would be better since you would probably use some of that salt.

 

I’m not positive, but I believe it was Mother Theresa who once said, “Salt ’em if ya got ’em.”

 

Imbalance – Electrolyte Excess

 

Avoid

– Avoid drinking tap water that is loaded with chlorine and/or fluoride

You may notice that I recommend avoiding some of the same things for opposite imbalances.  For example, I’ve listed avoiding tap water under Electrolyte Deficiency as well as Electrolyte Excess.  Logic might tell you that if an item is bad for one imbalance, it should be good for the opposite imbalance.  However, that is not always the case.  It can sometimes be beneficial to avoid a specific item from imbalance to imbalance, and for totally different reasons.

 

For an Electrolyte Deficiency Imbalance, it was recommended to avoid tap water containing chlorine or fluoride because drinking this water can strip the body of needed minerals.  With an Electrolyte Excess Imbalance, tap water should also be avoided but for different reasons.  If the body’s waste removal systems are not working optimally, chemicals from the tap water can build up, making the bloodstream thicker and harder to keep clean.  Remember, with an Electrolyte Excess Imbalance, the blood is often too thick so it doesn’t help to bring in more filth and muddy up the system.  Drinking adequate water is fundamental in helping the kidneys.  In this regard, intake of clean water can equate to changing the bag in the vacuum cleaners of the blood.

 

– Avoid eating too many sugars or starchy carbohydrates

Sugars and carbohydrates can thicken the blood; therefore, excessive consumption is not recommended with an Electrolyte Excess Imbalance.  Measuring blood sugar with a glucometer can be helpful.

– Avoid taking antacids

Antacids restrict proper digestion. Undigested foods become a waste product that the body has to deal with.

– Avoid eating polyunsaturated oils

This can include some salad dressings, margarine, mayonnaise and foods fried or cooked with vegetable oils.  Coconut oil, real butter and unheated virgin olive oil are all okay.

 

Implement

– Using an unrefined salt with your food

The initial thought for someone with an Electrolyte Excess Imbalance would be to avoid salt.  It is true that if you add salt with this imbalance, you will want to monitor your blood pressure and make sure it does not go up.  However, if adding unrefined salt can provide the body with the chloride needed to improve HCL production, higher HCL production can improve digestion, therefore, reducing the junk in the system that was created as a result of improper digestion.  Now, the body has one less burden and can focus on removing waste.  This can help the body reduce blood pressure.

– Correcting any digestive issues so you can properly break down your food

– Drinking more water

– Eating a lot of low-starch green vegetables

 

Imbalance – Anabolic

 

Avoid

– Avoid foods made with hydrogenated and polyunsaturated fatty acids: Canola, corn and soy oils

– Avoid ice cream

– Avoid butter

– Avoid cream

– Avoid cheese

– Avoid juices

– Avoid foods made with sugar

– Avoid coffee

– Avoid tea

– Avoid soda

– Avoid excessive fruit

– Avoid vinegar

– Avoid poached or soft-boiled eggs

 

Implement

– Non-starchy vegetables

– Fish (especially salmon)

– Unheated virgin olive oil

– Flax seed oil (in a pearl-type gel cap is best; do not heat flax seed oil)

– Ground flax seed (fresh ground whole seed)

– Lemon juice

– Citrus fruit

– Sardines

– Fried or omelet-style eggs in the morning (not Egg-Beaters or egg whites)

Even in a time crunch, if you make hard-boiled eggs, you can keep them in the fridge and grab one on the run in the morning.  When your digestion is working correctly, a hard-boiled or hard-cooked egg can be a powerful anti-anabolic meal and can even reduce your need for anti-anabolic supplements.

 

Powerful Anti-Anabolic Meal

 

There is a widely used recipe from the Budwig Diet that I feel to be very anti-anabolic inducing.  It’s basically cottage cheese and flax seed oil blended together with ground flax seed stirred in, but there are specifics that you have to follow for the science to work.

 

The reasons this recipe works are: First, it contains all the fatty acids to help push a person less anabolic, and second, when the sulfur proteins in the cottage cheese are blended at the molecular level with the fatty acids, a sulfur compound is created that can get into the cells where needed. Sulfur is a very strong anti-anabolic substance.

 

This is the recipe:

1. Take 3 Tbs of extra virgin olive oil.  (The Budwig Diet calls for cold-pressed flax seed oil, but it appears that most flax seed oil sold in stores is rancid before it leaves the shelves.  Freshly made flax seed oil would be acceptable, but it can be hard to find.  The extra virgin olive oil is an excellent replacement.)
2. Blend with 6 Tbs of cottage cheese.  Stirring them together will not work.  They need to be blended so that the molecules join together.  An immersion blender is the best way to do that because one serving is too small to put in a blender or food processor.  One of those hand held, single-blade immersion blenders is best, but a juice blender will do too.  Blend the first two ingredients for about a minute.  It will look like pudding.
3. Grind 2 Tbs of fresh flax seeds (a coffee grinder works well and will probably cost you about $30).  It’s important to grind them fresh because the lignans will lose their effectiveness after about 30 minutes.  For this reason, the ground flax seed from the store does not work the same.  Once ground, just stir it into the cottage cheese mixture with a spoon.

Optional:  Add broken up walnuts or Brazil nuts.  Make sure they are raw and not roasted.

 

If you’re super anabolic, eating this whenever you have time may be beneficial, but earlier in the day is more optimal than at night since people are meant to be more catabolic during the day.  Therefore, this dish is best eaten at breakfast or as a snack before lunch.

 

Imbalance – Catabolic

 

Avoid

– Avoid flax seed oil

– Avoid fish oils

– Avoid D.H.E.A. (a popular supplement)

– Avoid fried foods

– Avoid canned or processed meats and fish

– Avoid foods made with hydrogenated and polyunsaturated fatty acids: Canola, corn and soy oils

– If you eat fried or hard-boiled eggs, eat them only in the morning and limit them

 

Implement

– Poached or soft-boiled eggs, especially at night

– Non-starchy vegetables

– Real butter/cream/whipped cream (especially in the evening)

– Fresh cheeses such as cottage, mozzarella, and cream cheese (these are not aged cheeses)

– Coconut oil (or use my coconut yummy recipe found in chapter ten)

 

Imbalance – Carb Burner

 

Avoid

– Avoid sugar and similar items like corn syrup and honey

– Avoid fruit juices and large quantities of fruit

– Avoid coffee, tea, and alcohol

– Avoid eating polyunsaturated oils

This can include some salad dressings, margarine, mayonnaise and foods fried or cooked with vegetable oils.  Coconut oil, real butter and unheated virgin olive oil are all okay.

– Avoid meals consisting predominantly of sugars or starches

It could be beneficial for you to include at least a small serving of protein and appropriate fats in each meal.

 

Implement

– Eating non-starch vegetables

– Vegetables like zucchini, squash, broccoli and asparagus may be beneficial because they can provide carbs without such a high level of carbs that the meal spikes your insulin levels.

– Eating some carbs early in the day, but try to avoid meals made up predominantly of carbs.

– Keeping your glucometer on you at all times

– Knowing when your blood sugar is low (say, below 70) will allow you to manage your blood sugar instead of being at the mercy of it.

 

Imbalance – Fat Burner

 

While you are improving this imbalance, it is important to reduce your starch and sugar intake.  (Keep in mind that if you experience drops in your blood sugar and you need starches or sugars from time to time in order to continue functioning, small amounts of sugar will often bring a better result than starches will.  But for most people with this imbalance, limiting intake of both starches and sugars will be beneficial.)  When you reduce one type of nutrient, another type must be increased to fill in the gaps.  I like to increase fat intake with this imbalance since the body appears to be burning fat well.  However, it is important that bile is flowing properly so you can emulsify those fats.  If you increase fat intake, and bile is not flowing well, it could result in weight gain or breakouts caused by the body trying to push fats that have not been emulsified out of the body through the skin.

 

Avoid

– Avoid sugar and similar items like corn syrup and honey

– Avoid fruit juices and large quantities of fruit

– Avoid drinking alcohol and soda

– Avoid eating polyunsaturated oils

This can include some salad dressings, margarine, mayonnaise and foods fried or cooked with vegetable oils.  Coconut oil, real butter and unheated virgin olive oil are all okay.

– Avoid meals consisting predominantly of sugars or starches

It could be beneficial for you to include at least a small serving of protein and appropriate fats in each meal.

 

Implement

– Consuming appropriate fats

These can include coconut oil, real butter, unheated virgin olive oil, and those found in eggs (the whole egg) or animal proteins.

– Keep your glucometer on you for measuring when your blood sugar is high or low.  This will allow you to manage blood sugar instead of being at the mercy of it.