There is a nutrient that 97% of people who are watching this video do not get enough of in their diet. And we’re gonna fix that in the next few minutes. Hey everybody, I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey. I’m a nutritional psychiatrist. So I’m very focused on what you eat and how it affects your mental health and your brain health and what we can do at every meal to really upgrade and optimize our mental fitness. In this video, we’re going to get into why potassium is so important.
Was that surprising? You didn’t think I was going to say potassium did you? Potassium is a really critical, vital, important nutrient. Do you know that your cells have 50 times more potassium than the amount that’s in your blood? Are every single nerve impulse, everything that’s happening right now, everything I’m saying, everything that you’re receiving, all of the nerves working there, they depend on potassium. Every heartbeat you have depends on potassium.
As you get older, one of the things you’ll see if your potassium is low is atrial fibrillation. I’m going to read you a quote from Eat Complete. This is a book that’s all about brain nutrition. It was my first nutritional psychiatry cookbook.
The Institute of Medicine Food and Nutrition Board said it really clearly, “With the advent of the Western diet, the potassium sodium ratio has become reversed.” Now, what does that mean? Well, it means that as we eat more and more calories from ultra processed foods, that almost always means we’re getting more and more sodium. And at the same time, we eat fewer and fewer natural foods. Our kidneys have evolved to excrete potassium. We usually eat so much of it that we’ve got to get rid of it but as the Food and Nutrition board says, that’s gotten reversed by how we’re living today. So in a lot of ways this video and a lot of the work in nutritional psychiatry and what you’ll see in my books is asking you to really invert this and get back to being an eater who’s getting lots and lots of natural sources of potassium and not getting the things from processed foods like sodium and all the other bad stuff that is driving part of our health epidemic and impacting your mental health.
So let’s get into the potassium foods that I find really compelling and exciting. You can find this information in Eat Complete where I go over the 21 most important nutrients for brain health and then I think most importantly, what foods do we find this in? And this really gets to the heart of this issue and what this video is all about. A lot of times when I’m out speaking to the general public or to clinicians or psychiatrists, I find we all know which nutrients are important such as omega-3 fats, magnesium, potassium, but we don’t know what foods to find them in. That really sets us up to feel anxious that we’re not getting enough of them. When we don’t know where to get them, we often take a supplement. I’ve really always been interested in the idea that we can get the nutrients we need for our brain health and our mental health from picking the right foods. So let’s talk about the top foods for potassium because so often people have a banana and nothing else and we want to have a long list of foods that we know are great. I’ve got them right here. This is actually the core data we used in writing some of my books.
Let’s start with number one, because it’s going to surprise you. A baked potato has twice as much potassium as a banana. Can you believe that? We’re going to talk more about potatoes and why they’re great for you in another video. But potassium is one of those nutrients you get a lot of in a potato. In fact, you get 20 percent of your daily recommended allowance, 926 mg of potassium. Now, as you’re doing the math there, that’s a lot of potassium. You need 4,700 mg of potassium every day. A banana has just 422 milligrams. That’s just giving you 9% of your daily needs. Meaning you’d need more than 10 bananas to get your daily potassium needs.
So where else are we going to find it? Other top sources are spinach and black beans. There’s little way that I remember these: beans and greens. You’re always going to hear in my videos, “seafood, greens, nuts and beans, a little dark chocolate.” You can see that magnesium and potassium in particular are in these core food categories that are so important for nutritional psychiatry.
Another favorite that every brain foodie loves, and is throughout my books and always on my Instagram is an avocado. Avocadoes are incredible. It’s got 708 mg of potassium dialing in about 15% of your recommended daily allowance.
One of my favorites is white beans. White beans are incredible when it comes to potassium, almost as much as a potato. So if you’re looking at a meal and you’ve got some potatoes, you’ve got some white beans, and you’ve got some spinach, it is super charged with potassium. I hope this video helps you get more potassium from the whole foods in your diet. I hope it helps you make some of these great choices and think about this important nutrient because every thought, every heartbeat depends on it. So make sure that you’re getting it in your diet.
Check out Eat Complete if you’re looking for recipes that are packed with potassium and the 21 top nutrients for mental health.
