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The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet that can be great for weight loss, energy, focus, and more. Keto has become increasingly popular in the last few years, and while it’s not for everyone—there are plenty of folks who thrive while eating carbs—a lot of people love the way they feel on a low-carb diet.
Eating low-carb changes a lot of things in your body. You’re teaching your metabolism to burn fat for fuel instead of sugar, and that metabolic shift comes with new nutrient needs.
When you’re on a keto diet, your cells use certain minerals at a faster rate. If you don’t replenish those mineral stores, you may run into issues like fatigue, brain fog, disrupted sleep, and sugar cravings.
On the other hand, keeping the right minerals topped up will give your newly ketogenic cells access to tons of energy, supercharging your metabolism and focus.
Here’s why getting more minerals is essential on keto, and how the right mineral supplement can make a keto diet even more effective.
Your Mineral Needs Change on Keto
If you’ve ever tried the keto diet, you’re probably familiar with keto flu: the week or so of flu-like symptoms you get when you first go low-carb. Fatigue, headaches, and trouble concentrating are all common, although they usually resolve in a few days.
You may also have heard that minerals can stop the effects of keto flu. That’s true: your body is burning through your remaining glycogen (sugar) stores, and it’s also excreting the water attached to the glycogen molecules. As you lose all that water (sometimes up to ten pounds in the first week!), you also lose a ton of electrolytes. Replenishing your calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium can help you beat the keto flu and feel your best.
That’s great, and it’s a good reason to supplement with minerals when you first start keto. What people rarely talk about is your mineral needs after the keto flu. You don’t just go back to normal after your first week of low-carb.
On a low-carb diet, your insulin levels stay stable and low pretty much all the time. That low, steady insulin is great for preventing hunger cravings and encouraging weight loss. However, low insulin also sends signals to your kidneys, telling them to constantly expel electrolytes instead of retaining them, like they do on a higher-carb diet.
If you’ve ever craved salty foods on keto, this explains why. Your kidneys are flushing minerals (including sodium) out of your system, and you crave salt to replenish your stores. This also means you can eat more salt on low-carb and it won’t raise your blood pressure, because your body doesn’t hold on to it—so if you like salty, fatty food, keto may be a good diet for you.
But if you don’t increase your mineral intake to account for this shift in mineral demands, eating low-carb will wear down your mineral stores fairly quickly. You can end up with fatigue, headaches, and dehydration—three common complaints from people who eat low-carb long-term.
In other words, if you’re doing keto, it’s essential that you take a good mineral supplement to keep your mineral levels high. You’ll feel much better over time.
Minerals Help Your Cells Produce More Energy on Keto
A lot of people eat keto for increased energy and mental focus. Fat is a more efficient fuel source than carbohydrates, and being in a ketogenic state allows your mitochondria—the power plants of your cells—to produce more energy than you would eating higher-carb.
That increased energy production translates to feeling great all the time. You don’t fatigue as easily, you can focus for hours on end, and you don’t fall into a mid-afternoon slump during the day—you have stable, constant energy, from morning to night.
However, your mitochondria use a wide variety of minerals to produce energy—magnesium, sodium, iron, copper, manganese, and zinc, to name a few. When your mitochondria are working overtime, constantly churning out energy so you feel your best, they use up more minerals in the process.
This is another way your mineral needs increase on keto. It’s not just your kidneys—your mitochondria are using up more minerals as well. If you give them plentiful raw ingredients, they’ll produce even more energy, and you’ll reach new heights of energy and focus.
But if you don’t refill your mineral stores, your mitochondria will start to run out of materials to produce energy, and they’ll slow down. You may feel this happen after a few weeks of eating low-carb—you’ll get fatigued and you won’t feel as sharp as you did when you first cut out carbs.
Fortunately, the solution is easy: top up your mineral reserves and you’ll be back to feeling your best in no time.
Choosing the Right Keto Mineral Source
You know you need a good mineral supplement while on keto. But what do you take?
We’re going to recommend our minerals, of course—but we have good reason to do so.
The most important thing in a mineral supplement is bioavailability. The majority of mineral supplements come in salt form—in other words, the mineral is stabilized by attaching it to another compound that neutralizes its ionic charge. You see this with almost every electrolyte and mineral supplement on the market: magnesium salts, potassium salts, iron salts, and so on.
The problem with salt-based mineral supplements is that they aren’t very bioavailable. Your body has to work to break down those salt bonds, and as a result, you don’t absorb a lot of what you take in.
For example, magnesium oxide and magnesium citrate are both magnesium salt. They’re cheap and fast to produce, which makes them popular with manufacturers who make magnesium supplements. However, both have suboptimal absorption. A recent study found that you only absorb about 4% of magnesium oxide, and only 60% of magnesium citrate. The rest is wasted.
At BEAM Minerals, we’ve focused on making mineral supplements that your body can actually use. We use plant-based minerals instead of mineral salts, which means the minerals stay in solution and get delivered right to your cells, almost immediately after you take them.
Our minerals have close to 100% bioavailability—they’re so potent that you’ll feel them working within minutes. Even better, our mineral solutions are comprehensive. You don’t have to stock a kitchen cabinet with ten different pill bottles. BEAM Minerals has everything you need in one place—just take it every morning and go about your day.
Try BEAM Minerals to Boost Your Keto Diet
If you’re following a keto or low-carb diet, we can help you keep your mineral stores high. You’ll feel the difference as soon as you start taking BEAM Minerals—fatigue and brain fog will disappear, replaced with more energy, better focus, and more joy for life.
Give BEAM Minerals a try. It’s one of the best ways to enhance a low-carb diet and feel amazing, every day.
