> One of the symptoms was extreme craving to the point that
I have a kidney disorder that causes me to waste potassium. Without a supplement, I can't get enough in my natural diet without eating like 10-20 avocados a day, or 6 cups of spinach.
A fun side effect of hypokalemia is that your muscles get really sore, like you just did a full body workout. So, you can literally feel when your potassium is low.
The low salt coincides with some of the most intense food cravings I've ever experienced. I don't crave foods high in potassium, however; just foods with a lot of regular NaCl. So, my body does its best to tell me I need to eat something, triggering a psychological compulsion to get it, but the compulsion is to eat the wrong thing.
I'm just one data point, but I think this might extrapolate out to more people than just me. If you're compelled to overeat, you might be missing some key nutrient that just isn't present in abundance in your current diet. The trick is finding out what it is.
Random related thought - awhile back there was a series of blog posts that got pretty popular (I can't remember the blog's name) trying to investigate the root cause of obesity. They settled on some odd conclusions, but one of the things they noted in their meta-analysis of extant obesity research is that places with lower obesity have more of a particular dissolved mineral (they asserted lithium was the root cause, but I didn't find their conclusions convincing) in their drinking water.
It could be that there are trace elements that, if you don't have mineral-rich drinking water, are otherwise hard to get from a standard diet that drive this craving behavior that I've experienced.
I am not sure but I think my body couldn't generate enough of a specific hormone and then the body's reaction was as if I was starving because that hormone is controlling the metabolism inside the organes. So, probably nothing was missing in my food but because my metabolism was low it was like I was starving but I wasn't.
I have a kidney disorder that causes me to waste potassium. Without a supplement, I can't get enough in my natural diet without eating like 10-20 avocados a day, or 6 cups of spinach.
A fun side effect of hypokalemia is that your muscles get really sore, like you just did a full body workout. So, you can literally feel when your potassium is low.
The low salt coincides with some of the most intense food cravings I've ever experienced. I don't crave foods high in potassium, however; just foods with a lot of regular NaCl. So, my body does its best to tell me I need to eat something, triggering a psychological compulsion to get it, but the compulsion is to eat the wrong thing.
I'm just one data point, but I think this might extrapolate out to more people than just me. If you're compelled to overeat, you might be missing some key nutrient that just isn't present in abundance in your current diet. The trick is finding out what it is.
Random related thought - awhile back there was a series of blog posts that got pretty popular (I can't remember the blog's name) trying to investigate the root cause of obesity. They settled on some odd conclusions, but one of the things they noted in their meta-analysis of extant obesity research is that places with lower obesity have more of a particular dissolved mineral (they asserted lithium was the root cause, but I didn't find their conclusions convincing) in their drinking water.
It could be that there are trace elements that, if you don't have mineral-rich drinking water, are otherwise hard to get from a standard diet that drive this craving behavior that I've experienced.