As much as you try to follow a well formulated diet sometimes supplementation with taking different vitamins and minerals is necessary in order to stay healthy even on a keto diet. Some people get into a rut and they eat the same things over and over again and so you’re not getting all the nutritional benefits of eating a wide range of foods, same with a carnivore diet too. If you’re eating a keto carnivore or just a strict carnivore diet, if you’re not eating organ meats, you’re not really getting all of the vitamins and minerals that your body needs.
So we will share with you some of the supplements that might be necessary for you on the keto diet. Disclaimer, we are not your pharmacist or your doctor, so make sure before you start any of these supplements that you do consult either your pharmacist, or your doctor to make sure that they’re right for you, because some of these things might interact with either other medications that you’re taking, or health conditions that you do have.
Collagen
Most of you guys have already heard about the health benefits of collagen, and you might even already take a collagen supplement. It’s actually great for joint health, it’s anti-aging because it helps support your hair, and your skin, and your nails too, it also helps with wound healing.
There’s many different types of collagen supplements out there, there’s some that are in powder form which are great because you can mix it in your morning coffee or tea or into a smoothie.
Sodium
You always hear how important it is to get extra salt on the keto diet, but did you ever wonder why? We’re going to explain it to you. It’s really quite fascinating plus you’ll understand why sodium is so important for biological functions and it’s something that you shouldn’t be scared of, especially if you use it correctly and you eat the proper foods.
If someone is eating a high carbohydrate diet, where there’s lots of insulin being released, the insulin actually tells the kidney to reabsorb that extra salt, and then instead of excreting it water tends to follow it too. So not only are you retaining salt, but you start to retain water too. That’s actually why a lot of people that are pre diabetic or diabetic have high blood pressure, because of retaining all of this fluid, which increases their blood pressure.
It’s also the reason why one of the first line therapies for high blood pressure is a diuretic, so you can get rid of that excess water to lower your blood pressure. Now on a keto diet, which is a low insulin releasing diet, you’re not signaling to the body to hold on to salt, so that gets excreted and then so does the water. So that’s why it’s important to make sure that you’re getting an extra sodium, since you’re not reabsorbing it, along with extra water too, so that you stay hydrated.
Often when people first start the keto diet they go through what’s called the keto flu, so they start to get tired and dizzy, nauseous, they have a headache, they just don’t feel good. These are all symptoms of having too low of electrolytes, specifically sodium, but sometimes potassium and magnesium. So if you want to prevent the keto flu, it’s important that you have extra supplementation, especially in the beginning with sodium.
Potassium
So nerves control muscle contractions, and all has to do with potassium and sodium too. But in a nutshell, nerve impulses travel from the brain to the muscle via a series of action potentials opening and closing sodium and potassium gates. When the nerve signal gets to the muscle, if there’s not sufficient potassium around the nerve, the muscle will actually keep firing and you get a spasm.
Muscle spasms are also another symptom of the keto flu, so to prevent them you want to make sure that you’re getting enough potassium in your diet. Some foods that are high in potassium are avocado, broccoli, spinach and also animal protein, but you can also supplement too. This is especially important if you don’t have a balanced diet or if you’re first starting out on the keto diet and you don’t want to get the keto flu.
So the one that’s over the counter is potassium gluconate. You do want to consult a doctor before adding on any additional potassium and especially potassium supplement, just because it can interact with certain medications that you might be on, or it can cause heart problems, if you have underlying arrhythmia issues. Some symptoms of a low potassium are diarrhea, low energy, heavy feeling of the legs and dizziness.
Magnesium
It’s another very important supplement that you should consider taking and you’ve probably already heard that a lot of people are actually deficient in magnesium. Long ago it used to be in our water sources, so our ancestors never had to worry about magnesium deficiency, but that’s not the case anymore. Now we mostly get it from our foods and a lot of those vegetables that are grown conventionally have a lot of nutrients ripped from it, because it’s not in the soil anymore.
That’s when it’s important to supplement. Magnesium is used for a lot of different cellular processes like nerve conduction and muscle contraction, it is also needed to help burn glucose. A lot of people that consume a higher carbohydrate diet are at real risk of having magnesium deficiency. Magnesium is also needed to regulate potassium too.
There are many different forms of magnesium out there. Our favorite form is magnesium glycinate, because it has a better absorption, so your body’s going to use it as opposed to magnesium oxide or magnesium citrate that don’t get absorbed into the body quite as well. And those ones tend to cause more diarrhea, which is good if you’re trying to combat constipation.
Vitamin K2
Vitamin K2 is another necessary supplement to have if you’re on the keto diet or even just any sort of diet. Vitamin K2 is not the same thing as regular vitamin K that you’re used to hearing about that’s in kale and all these green leafy vegetables. Iit was first discovered by a dentist. When he traveled the world in the early 20th century looking at diet and diseases and teeth health in different populations, he found that people that ate non industrial diets and had oral health hygiene, actually had really good teeth and he believed it was a mystery nutrient called activator X that was responsible for protecting them against tooth decay and disease.
With later research it’s been discovered that this nutrient is actually vitamin K2. Vitamin K has different forms. One of the main forms is vitamin K1, which is found in our leafy greens and plants. The other one is vitamin K2, which is found in animal foods and fermented foods too. Vitamin K2 is important because it plays a role in shuffling calcium, so it can help shuffle calcium into your bones and so that’s going to help prevent osteoporosis.
Vitamin K2 can remove calcium deposits so it’s really good at clearing out your arteries of any sort of calcifications. A lot of us on the keto diet are actually already consuming a lot of vitamin K2, because it’s in our grass fed butter, so make sure that you’re eating butter from grass fed sources. But if you want to make sure that you’re getting an optimal protection you do want to supplement.
Minerals
Just like vitamins, minerals are very important for cellular functions and processes. They help to detoxify you, they help to prevent you against diseases, they help slow down aging, they help with free radical scavenging.
We’ve already talked about the major ones like sodium and potassium and magnesium, but there’s a lot of other micronutrients out there that are necessary and you need, and these are called trace minerals. There’s chloride, which is needed for stomach acid production. Calcium, which is needed for muscle contraction and bones, heart contractions. There’s also other ones like selenium, sulfur, copper, manganese. All different types of trace minerals that are needed for day-to-day functions.
