Skip to main content

If you can sell potato chips...

If you can sell a bag of potato chips, why can't you sell 1000mg potassium pills?

I've finally found an answer to my cravings and heart palpitations, and unfortunately, it's potato chips. It's not that I've jumped on the safe starch bandwagon, it's just that it suits my current needs:


  • I tend to get low on salt and potassium. The chips have a lot of both, making my heart and energy level feel normal.
  • I'm too wound up about moving to be very hungry. Therefore, I can eat half a bag at a time because I'm not eating much else. I've turned into one of those people who's lost weight eating potatoes.
  • My stomach hasn't been normal since those three courses of antibiotics from my root canal. The chips feel good on my stomach if I don't eat too many.


Downsides:

  • Acne, gas, a bit of reflux, and probably a lack of certain nutrients. 


Potassium isn't one of those nutrients, though. An eight-ounce bag of potato chips has 3727 mg of potassium; a potassium tablet has 99. No wonder I had to pop the potassium pills like candy pre-chips. If I could just get a pill with 4000mg of potassium and chase it with something salt-encrusted, I could get all the relevant nutrients without the acne and other problems.

Potato chips are generally considered junk food, but they do have quite a lot of nutrients, and I usually get the kind cooked in coconut or avocado oil. If a person was carb-agnostic and ate potatoes, what would be wrong with eating the potatoes in the form of chips cooked in natural oils?

Be that as it may, I need to do something other than eat chips. I got a bottle of potassium pills and some probiotics, which helped immediately after my root canal; maybe I need to continue taking them to help absorb nutrients. I'd like to get back to eating normally because I feel better physically and mentally--it's just that  my normal food now sounds like something that would give me a stomach ache. I haven't even been able to look at a fish in months. That, and I have to keep the kitchen clean for potential house buyers to look at. I've been eating lots of take-out.

My plan is to have some eggs or sausage in the morning, a low-carb lunch, dinner if I feel like it, and potassium pills with all of it. Probiotics as directed, and avoid skipping the vitamins.
Labels:

Comments

Galina L. said…
If potatoes give you pimples and reflux, you may try something else with potassium. There are other foods high in potassium besides potatoes like pumpkins, fish, avocados. One avocado, for example, contains more than 1000 mg of potassium. Sometimes I like to blend together avocado with tomatoes, onion and red pepper, it is like a vegetable smoothy, you can add a lot of salt there and all spices and garlic you fancy, vinegar if you like, and liquid things are easy to consume when not hungry. Well, you may consume it with your chips - it is even more potassium, and you would need less potato chips.Vegetables like a squash are rich in magnesium, mushrooms too. I just thought about making a gallon of soup with a mix of dried(dried mushrooms are easy to re-hydrate in a microwave in a container with water) and fresh mushrooms, with added shredded squash and even some potatoes, and freezing it in portion-size containers. I like containers, it is easy to de-frost in a bowl of water - faster, than in a microwave.
October 20, 2015
valerie said…
Have you tried salt substitute? It is pure potassium chloride. Seems like it would be easier (and probably cheaper) than those 99mg pills.

Here in Canada, I can find it in any grocery store, right next to spices and regular salt. They call it "NoSalt." There is also "HalfSalt" which is a mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride.
October 20, 2015
Galina L. said…
If potatoes give you pimples and reflux, you may try something else with potassium. There are other foods high in potassium besides potatoes like pumpkins, fish, avocados. One avocado, for example, contains more than 1000 mg of potassium. Sometimes I like to blend together avocado with tomatoes, onion and red pepper, it is like a vegetable smoothy, you can add a lot of salt there and all spices and garlic you fancy, vinegar if you like, and liquid things are easy to consume when not hungry. Well, you may consume it with your chips - it is even more potassium, and you would need less potato chips.Vegetables like a squash are rich in magnesium, mushrooms too. I just thought about making a gallon of soup with a mix of dried(dried mushrooms are easy to re-hydrate in a microwave in a container with water) and fresh mushrooms, with added shredded squash and even some potatoes, and freezing it in portion-size containers. I like containers, it is easy to de-frost in a bowl of water - faster, than in a microwave.
October 22, 2015
Larcana said…
That's tough! I couldn't eat them because of the reflux I get from too much salt.
Best of luck with it.
October 24, 2015
Val said…
Very late catching up on blog-reading, but sorry to hear of your troubles post root canal, Lori!
Hope things have gotten back on an even keel.
I myself have been teetering on my plateau for MONTHS, so it's certainly time to shit or get off the pot. It may be that this is my New Normal since I seem disinclined to buckle down & do the work necessary to "Get On Down" - in which case I need to make the best of it (insert platitudes here). All the best, Val
December 02, 2015
Lori Miller said…
Sorry, everyone, for the delay in posting comments. They never showed up in my email and I didn't check blogger.
December 04, 2015
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here .  * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...
1 comment
Read more

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...
2 comments
Read more

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE
Post a Comment
Read more

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...
6 comments
Read more