I’m using http://recaptcha.net/ ; the captchas help them to scan books. One of the words is known, which use to verify that you are a human. The other one is unknown and they use your input to decipher it.

Since they can’t filter unknown words, it might explain the weird words you and Erik noticed.

“Human Physiology\ by Silverthorn is very understandable; it is long, but then you just pick the chapter you’re interested in. The other ones I have a dreadful to read :p

(also, what kind of captcha is 26-year-old oregano??)

Do you have any medical text books that are well written and not too long?

I find this sort of stuff interesting, but I’m not generally worried about it.

As for potassium: it is important for everybody, but the groups and people on that site are specifically mentioned because they are at a much higher risk of ending up with a skewed level due to their circumstances; if you were to go out and bike for an hour in this weather and rehydrate with pure water, adding a banana as a snack might be a good idea.

Though really, don’t become obsessed. Just pay a little extra attention when the weather is warm and you’re sweating.

If you find this really interesting you’re welcome to come borrow some of my medical textbooks if you’d like.

Potassium (=Kalium?): there’s no daily target listed, so I guess the only way to know is to watch for signs of trouble:
http://www.cure.co.za/salt.htm
“a potassium deficiency will produce great fatigue and muscle weakness”. Not a very useful indicator.

It continues to say that it’s especially important for “elderly, athletes, and people with high blood pressure”, which I’m not.

Magnesium: if I look at http://www.healthandfood.be/html/nl/micro/micro74_magnesium_functies.htm
it seems pretty hard to reach the daily target: I’d have to eat a kilo of broccoli or 24 slices of wholewheat bread per day.

Lot’s of bad stuff seems to happen when you don’t get enough magnesium, but nothing very specific.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the skin color
of a particular finger would change to indicate a shortage….

I don’t think I can be bothered to count every single food item and look for potential shortages that way.

What I could do is – keeping most other things constant – try some supplements for a month and see if anything interesting happens.

However, the only “interesting” effect I’d like to see is somehow needing less sleep. That’s probably achieved with more exercise, which I will automatically get once I stop working from home.

So should I worry about this and add salt too my food?