Transcription
Let's talk about how to get rid of swollen legs, ankles, and feet. Would you believe that I used to have pitting edema right on my ankles? I would remember pressing into my lower ankle and leaving a dent. I mean, I'm not that old; it was some years ago. But even in this picture, you could see my face was completely round. Anytime someone has a round face, what that means is they have blood sugar issues.
But the point is, I had a lot of health problems, and pitting edema was definitely one of them. Now, swollen legs are called edema. If you look this up, it'll say that it's a liver problem, a kidney problem, a heart problem, or maybe you're consuming too much sodium. But that's not always the case. There's something else way more common, and I'm going to share that with you today.
This is totally easy to fix. When you watch this video, if you just apply what I'm going to show you, you will fix this very fast without taking a blood thinner or some type of diuretic to push the fluid out. I mean, that comes with a package of side effects. When you have fluid retention, especially in your lower legs and ankles, this boils down to a problem with these little tiny pumps that are not working in your cells.
You have millions and millions of these little tiny pumps that push fluid in and out of the cell. The specific pump that's not working in this case is called the sodium-potassium pump. There are some really interesting things about this pump. It uses like 30 to 40% of all the energy that is given to that cell. But if that pump goes bad, like in our house in the basement when the pump went bad, we had about a foot of water in our basement.
If the pump goes bad in your body, you're going to have a lot of fluid that is not going to be in the cells; it's going to be outside the cells, and that's called interstitial fluid retention. So what's really going on in your lower ankles is you're getting a condition where your sugar in the blood is too high, and all that sugar is connected to the protein in the blood called hemoglobin.
So let's say we have a protein bar right here representing the protein, and then we have a marshmallow representing the sugar. What happens when this sugar connects to the protein in your blood? This is called glycation. This is a term that they use when you hear this test called A1C. The A1C test measures how much sugar is stuck to your blood protein, and it gives you an average of about three months because the red blood cell survives about three months.
When this sugar gets stuck to the blood protein, it doesn't come off; it's stuck there permanently until that blood cell dies. So when you eat more sugar, you get more sugar stuck to this protein, more sugar stuck to the protein, until this protein can't work anymore. The name for this is that the protein is glycated.
But the main takeaway for this is that when you eat sugar, you destroy the ability for the blood cell to carry nutrition to the body, to carry oxygen. This glycated protein molecule now plugs up your circulation. Then you get a lack of blood flow, and then you get this pooling that goes on in your lower part of your body, and this is that swelling.
Because it also destroys the inside of your arteries, it creates a leakiness outside the cell. The fluid that was supposed to be inside your vessels can now escape. The other thing that this does when you eat a lot of sugar is that it actually creates sodium retention. Not to mention, the other mineral called potassium gets locked up in the sugar. Wherever the sodium goes, the water goes.
Now, over time, this is going to affect the nerves at the bottom of the feet. You're going to get numbness and tingling; they call that peripheral neuropathy. Yes, when you look at a diabetic, you see a lot of fluid in the ankles and things. But even people that are not diabetic, and maybe they're not even pre-diabetic, they're going towards that area; they also have fluid retention, and that's what I had.
There is a very important vitamin to correct this, but there are two other minerals that you need to also get from the diet. Of course, the obvious one is potassium. The problem with potassium is that it's not easy to get from the diet because we need so, so much. An average person needs 4,700 milligrams.
Now think about what that means. If you were to eat one banana, that's like 300 milligrams. So how many times does 300 go into 4,700? Let's take a look. You would have to consume 15.6 bananas every day just to get your potassium. But the problem with that is that's going to be hard, and also that's a lot of sugar.
So instead of doing that, you might be better off eating avocados, more salad, and even more fruit like berries. You can get a lot of potassium from that. Now, the other mineral, magnesium, is behind something called ATP, which is the energy currency of the body. Yes, you're going to get cramps if you have magnesium problems, but also you're going to have a lack of energy.
To get magnesium, you probably need to consume more pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, as well as leafy greens. But you don't need 4,700 like potassium; you need about 420 milligrams of magnesium. You can also get both of these from a good electrolyte powder, but just make sure that the electrolyte powder is high quality and doesn't have hidden sugars.
All right, so that will fix the pump. But the very reason why the pump went bad is what we want to talk about next, and that is a deficiency of vitamin B1. So I want to show you in this little, very simple chart here—I'm being very sarcastic; it's a huge biochemical chart—you can see all this chemistry stuff going on right here.
When you eat sugar in the body, it starts here, and then it has to be broken down into a smaller sugar molecule called glucose. Then it has to enter the machine to be turned into energy. In order for it to go from this step to this step, this one little enzyme requires vitamin B1. If you don't have enough, then you will not be able to use that as energy.
The number one cause of a B1 deficiency is consuming too many carbohydrates in the refined form. For example, if you eat all this refined sugar without B1, now the body has to pull from its reserves. We have to pull it from different tissues, organs, and glands, and eventually, you're going to be deficient.
That B1 is also very important as an antioxidant to protect the nerves. This is why when you run out of B1, you get what's called peripheral neuropathy, which is tingling, numbness, and burning on the bottom of your feet. The point is that B1 is so important in carbohydrate metabolism and protecting you against a lot of carbohydrates.
When I say protection, I'm talking about the protection against this glycation, this sugar connecting to the protein. B1 keeps these apart so you don't destroy your blood cells, and you have good circulation. You have to realize, as soon as that connects to it, it's permanent. It's not coming off.
So magnesium, potassium, and B1 are the solution to swollen ankles. But you also have to get the sugar out of the diet because as soon as you go back to eating the refined carbohydrates, guess what? The swelling comes back.
All right, so now the question is, if I'm not going to eat carbs, what am I going to eat? For that information, you need to watch this video right here.