The Saturday Scalpel: Issue 16

From the Desk of Dr. Kevin, MD

“Short answer: No. Long Answer: Nope!”

In This Week’s Issue:

🍠 The One Damn Mineral Keeping You Alive (And You’re Probably Ignoring It)

🫀 How Your Gut Quietly Screws Your Heart

🩺 Dr. Max Now Evaluates Your Gut For Free. (I sh*t You Not.)

Welcome to another f*cked up session…

Kevin here. Unbothered AF…

So here’s the deal.

I’m writing these newsletters like future-you is gonna stumble back here in five years, whisper “holy sh*t, he was right,” and erect a tiny shrine in my honor.

I want you to think of The Saturday Scalpel as our unhinged, never inappropriate medical Bible… and we’re chipping away at it one savage, life-saving chapter at a time. 

And, you're not just reading. 

You’re building the damn thing with me…

#1 You’re Not Tired. You’re Potassium Deficient.

Listen!

If you’ve ever felt like a sack of fatigue wrapped in bloating, salt cravings, and emotional instability…

It might not be your boss, your situationship, or Mercury in Gatorade. It’s probably a chronic potassium deficiency.

Yes, that same potassium they told you is in bananas (spoiler: not enough at all). 

You need around 4,700 mg a day. And you’re probably getting less than half of that unless you’re a professional spinach eater or a sweet potato hoarder.

Now, potassium isn’t just some random-ass mineral. It runs the show:

• It powers the sodium-potassium pump, which basically keeps your cells alive.

• It lets your nerves talk, your muscles contract, and your blood pressure not explode.

• It’s the anti-salt. The yin to your sodium-slathered yang. (Oooh… I love my jokes.)

And yet, here we are, eating 4 bags of sodium with a side of beige sadness and wondering why our heart flutters like it’s falling in love during a stroke.

Signs you’re low on potassium:

• Random heart skips or thuds

• Puffy ankles

• Fatigue that defies 8 hours of sleep

• Constant need to pee or punch someone

• Feeling like your bones are mad at you

And here’s the kicker… 

Even if your blood test says potassium’s “normal,” that tells us nothing. 98% of your potassium lives inside your cells, not in your blood. 

By the time your lab says “low,” it’s already a medical emergency. So don’t wait until your eyeball twitches mid-Zoom call.

Wanna fix it?

Stop relying on bananas. You’d need 15 of them to hit the target. Instead, load up on:

• Spinach, kale, Swiss chard

• Sweet potatoes and regular potatoes

• Avocados (fresh, not oxidized oil garbage.. we talked about that last week)

• Beans, squash, lentils, salmon

• Coconut water if you're feeling bougie

Also, supplements won’t save you…  legally capped at 99 mg per pill in the US. You’d need to swallow 47 pills just to reach the minimum daily requirement. 

And, good luck with that and your bowel movement.

#2 How Your Gut Quietly Screws Your Heart

Here’s what your doctor probably didn’t tell you… because either they don’t know or they’re too busy coding your symptoms for insurance:

Your gut is sneakily setting your heart on fire.

Let me explain this mess:

Your gut lining is like a doorman. Keeps good stuff in, kicks bad stuff out.

But thanks to processed food, antibiotics, stress, and emulsifiers, it turns into a sloppy bouncer that lets every microbial thug through.

Now, when that barrier breaks down, LPS (bacterial toxins) slip into your bloodstream.

This is called metabolic endotoxemia, and it’s just as nasty as it sounds.

Those LPS particles bind to your LDL (bad cholesterol), creating small, dense, toxic little missiles that trigger inflammation and form artery-clogging foam cells.

Meanwhile, if your liver is marinating in fat (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, even if you’re skinny), it can’t clear this trash.

In fact, it joins the sabotage party and raises your heart attack risk even more.

So yes… your bloating, your carb sensitivity, your mild fatty liver, and your random chest tightness are all possibly connected by one leaky pipeline of doom.

Gut → liver → heart.

This is not woo. This is science your cardiologist is probably ignoring.

What helps:

• Soluble fiber (think oats, chia, psyllium, beans, bananas).

• Resistant starch (green bananas, cooked-then-cooled potatoes).

• Fasting (intermittent fasting or just stop snacking 19 times a day).

• Avoid emulsifiers (Polysorbate 80, carboxymethylcellulose… check your "healthy" snacks).

• Treat your SIBO (if you bloat after carbs, not always, this might be you).

• Reduce added sugar and eat actual food with a face or a root.

And before you ask… your labs might still be “normal” while this is all going down.

That’s why functional medicine exists.

You're not crazy. You're just being medically gaslit. 😑

#3 Fine… I’ll give Max some credit.

Turns out Dr. Max built an actual website where you can get a free gut evaluation and instantly receive a personalized report.

I know.

Shocking levels of effort for someone as busy as a squirrel at a rave.

I also checked it out. It’s 10 real questions, smart logic, and a breakdown of what’s actually going on in your insides.

If you’ve been feeling off, bloated, backed up, or just nosy about your gut, start here:

You’re welcome…

Alright, that’s your scalpel for today.

Go eat a damn sweet potato.

Stop blaming the moon for your bloating.

Until next time,

Dr. Kevin Cutthebull, MD (Physiologically advanced)

P.P.S. What did you think of today’s edition?

References:

• _{National Academies of Sciences, 2019 – Dietary reference intakes for sodium and potassium}

• _{NIH Office of Dietary Supplements – Potassium fact sheet}

• _{Skou JC, 1957 – Discovery of Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase (Nobel Prize)}

• _{AHA Journals, 2017 – Potassium intake and blood pressure}

• _{BMJ, 2011 – Meta-analysis: potassium intake and stroke risk}

• _{NEJM, 1986 – Potassium citrate and kidney stone formation}

• _{J Bone Miner Res, 2009 – Potassium and bone mineral density}

• _{Circulation, 2011 – Potassium and sudden cardiac death}

• _{Eaton & Konner, NEJM 1985 – Paleolithic diet estimates}

• _{Budoff et al., JACC 2018 – Coronary calcium score and risk}

• _{Targher et al., Hepatology 2010 – NAFLD and cardiovascular disease}

• _{Cani et al., Diabetes 2007 – Metabolic endotoxemia}

• _{Miele et al., Hepatology 2009 – NAFLD and intestinal permeability}

• _{Vlachos et al., Nutrients 2021 – Leaky gut and systemic inflammation}

• _{Erridge, Atherosclerosis 2011 – LPS and foam cell formation}

• _{Sima et al., Circulation 2018 – Endotoxin-LDL complexes}

• _{Pimentel et al., Am J Gastroenterol 2000 – SIBO and GI symptoms}

• _{Adams et al., Diabetes 2019 – SIBO prevalence in NAFLD}

• _{Delzenne et al., Nat Rev Endocrinol 2019 – Soluble fibers and gut barrier}