I tried potassium supplementation. The very first thing I noticed is that a significant portion of hunger was immediately converted into thirst; to be specific, where normally at time X I would be hungry, instead at time X I was thirsty instead. There was an immediate and overall reduction of calories in.
This suggests to me that I had a slight potassium deficiency which my body was compensating for by increasing the amount of food I was consuming.
Cursory research suggests potassium content in fresh foods has declined ~20% over the past century—which is not particularly surprising, if you think about modern farming methodologies. Additionally, it appears that lithium consumption (tying into SMTM’s hypothesis) may deplete the body’s potassium reserves (which could conceivably be the mechanism by which lithium causes weight gain, in slight contradiction to SMTM’s hypothesis). Additionally additionally, and most importantly—low potassium content appears to be correlated with something like a 20% increase in caloric consumption, second only to protein deficiency in terms of increasing “natural” caloric intake. (All of this is cursory internet research, and should not be taken too seriously, but it is all pointing in a particular direction very suggestively).
I think the “sodium intake” is a red herring, sort of (if your body needs potassium, but can’t distinguish between potassium and sodium in food intake, it may result in people salting their food more—another change that occurred after I began supplementing potassium is that I didn’t need as much salt to make food taste like anything—so sodium intake may be a symptom of potassium deficiency).
Supposing we’re all slightly potassium deficient at a healthy level of food consumption, and we cover the potassium intake gap by simply eating more food (thus getting the necessary levels of potassium), then potassium supplementation could quite reasonably decrease caloric consumption without any effort. And if we’re substituting table salt for potassium, because our bodies struggle to tell the difference at intake, we might expect other health issues to arise from that.
If this was the case, then we should expect that all diets that work for most people who try them, while improving overall health, and without requiring exceptional willpower, should be high in potassium. Pondering this, I checked, and, indeed, meats are high in potassium. Ketogenic diets could, then, operate on the same principles as the potato diet.
(Indeed, I have done a combination ketogenic+rabbit starvation diet a few times, at 500 calories a day, with basically no carbohydrates or fats. A key component of this diet is very lean meat, and it required no willpower; I can run on this diet for months, and the only issue I run into is the monotony, which personally isn’t a big deal. It is actually personally easier to be on that diet that to try to maintain a “normal” diet while restraining my food consumption to a level that prevents weight gain—but my normal diet is relatively light on anything with high levels of potassium, including meat.)
I submit that potassium is indeed very important, and is, plausibly, given declining potassium food content, the answer to the question of modern obesity.
I tried potassium supplementation. The very first thing I noticed is that a significant portion of hunger was immediately converted into thirst; to be specific, where normally at time X I would be hungry, instead at time X I was thirsty instead. There was an immediate and overall reduction of calories in.
This suggests to me that I had a slight potassium deficiency which my body was compensating for by increasing the amount of food I was consuming.
Cursory research suggests potassium content in fresh foods has declined ~20% over the past century—which is not particularly surprising, if you think about modern farming methodologies. Additionally, it appears that lithium consumption (tying into SMTM’s hypothesis) may deplete the body’s potassium reserves (which could conceivably be the mechanism by which lithium causes weight gain, in slight contradiction to SMTM’s hypothesis). Additionally additionally, and most importantly—low potassium content appears to be correlated with something like a 20% increase in caloric consumption, second only to protein deficiency in terms of increasing “natural” caloric intake. (All of this is cursory internet research, and should not be taken too seriously, but it is all pointing in a particular direction very suggestively).
I think the “sodium intake” is a red herring, sort of (if your body needs potassium, but can’t distinguish between potassium and sodium in food intake, it may result in people salting their food more—another change that occurred after I began supplementing potassium is that I didn’t need as much salt to make food taste like anything—so sodium intake may be a symptom of potassium deficiency).
Supposing we’re all slightly potassium deficient at a healthy level of food consumption, and we cover the potassium intake gap by simply eating more food (thus getting the necessary levels of potassium), then potassium supplementation could quite reasonably decrease caloric consumption without any effort. And if we’re substituting table salt for potassium, because our bodies struggle to tell the difference at intake, we might expect other health issues to arise from that.
If this was the case, then we should expect that all diets that work for most people who try them, while improving overall health, and without requiring exceptional willpower, should be high in potassium. Pondering this, I checked, and, indeed, meats are high in potassium. Ketogenic diets could, then, operate on the same principles as the potato diet.
(Indeed, I have done a combination ketogenic+rabbit starvation diet a few times, at 500 calories a day, with basically no carbohydrates or fats. A key component of this diet is very lean meat, and it required no willpower; I can run on this diet for months, and the only issue I run into is the monotony, which personally isn’t a big deal. It is actually personally easier to be on that diet that to try to maintain a “normal” diet while restraining my food consumption to a level that prevents weight gain—but my normal diet is relatively light on anything with high levels of potassium, including meat.)
I submit that potassium is indeed very important, and is, plausibly, given declining potassium food content, the answer to the question of modern obesity.
Thanks for this info. Ya this really goes in the direction of what I think is happening.