Contrary to what you may have heard about salt, fewer than 20 percent of people with high blood pressure improve on a low-salt diet. The real problem with salt isn’t salt at all… it’s a lack of potassium.
Your body needs real salt, straight from the earth, and is well-equipped to handle it. But commercial salt producers remove all the good minerals (for sale to industry) and add several harmful chemicals (to bleach the salt white and keep it from caking).
Potassium neutralizes the negative effect of too much sodium. It also lowers your risk of heart attack and stroke. But we just don’t get enough potassium in our diets. The media loves to scare you into thinking that too much salt will cause all sorts of health problems – but the right amount of potassium keeps everything in check.
So where do you find potassium?
Despite what banana growers want you to think, bananas are not the best source. A typical banana gives you just 490 mg of potassium. You’d have to eat 10 bananas to get the 5,000 mg a day I recommend. And when you figure in the glycemic index (GI) of bananas, eating 10 a day would make you put on fat. Instead, try an avocado, which will give you 1,483 mg of potassium with a much lower GI. But your best source of this mineral is nuts. They are quite high in potassium and have a glycemic index of zero.
Learn more about potassium-rich foods, including their actual potassium content.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The Doctor's Heart Cure and 12 Secrets to Virility, is a leading authority on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]
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Greetings,
I am so grateful for your info on Potassium! THANK YOU! You may not yet heard about America’s FIRST GRAPE, I just learned about it…so I am passing it on to you dear folks. I am 70 in March, and my husband is 73. We both use quite a bit of Avacados and Almonds in our diet. I will make a whole meal out of an avacado and an apple. Or I will make a whole meal out of a summer melon and an avacado. We will continue to eat our avacados fruit and nuts. Please do check out our Muscadine Grape (NaturesPearlProducts) website. In all my 70 years of studying nutrition I have not yet found anything to TOP the Muscadine Grape.
I am certain you will find it powerful information as well.
Thank you again for your wonderful info on Potassium! I faithfully read your Early To Rise every day!!
Carol Williams Carson City, NV 775-885-8531