What Is Potassium For In The Body – ? We didn’t think so. You, like many other people, probably tragically underestimate the importance of potassium. When dissolved in water, this mineral becomes highly reactive and produces positively charged ions. Potassium is classified as one of the five essential electrolytes due to its special ability to conduct electricity, which is essential for a range of body functions.

Studies have linked increased intake of foods high in potassium to a variety of impressive health benefits. We’ll cover what potassium is, why we need potassium, how potassium works in the body, and common symptoms of potassium deficiency. We will also share a list of 15 foods rich in potassium.

What Is Potassium For In The Body

Potassium is the third most abundant mineral in the human body. Tests show that the majority of the potassium in your body (about 98%) can be found in your cells. Your muscle cells claim 80% of these potassium stores, while the remaining 20% ​​is shared between your bones, liver, and red blood cells.

Potassium Health Benefits

Potassium acts as an electrolyte inside your body. When dissolved in water or another liquid, it dissociates into positive ions that transmit electrical signals. Your body uses these signals to control a number of important processes.

Potassium is responsible for three basic functions: balancing fluid levels, transmitting nerve signals, and regulating muscle contractions. When potassium levels get too low or too high, the consequences can be quite serious.

As adults, water makes up about 60% of our body weight. Water is found both inside and outside our cells: The 40% inside our cells is called intracellular fluid (ICF), and the 60% outside our cells in places like blood, spinal fluid, and the space between cells is called extracellular fluid (ECF). ).

Electrolytes (especially sodium and potassium) strongly affect the amount of water in both your ICF and ECF. Potassium is the main electrolyte found in your ICF and determines how much water is inside your cells at any given time. Sodium plays the same role when it comes to your ECF.

How To Get Enough Potassium In Your Diet

When everything is going well, you have equal concentrations of electrolytes and a constant amount of water inside and outside your cells. The technical term for the ratio between electrolytes and fluid is osmolality. The goal is to maintain equal osmolality between your ICF and ECF.

When osmolality is unequal, water from the side with less electrolyte shifts to the side with more to balance electrolyte levels. As water moves into or out of your cells, it can cause those cells to swell or shrink. In some cases, your cells may even explode.

Regulation of fluid balance is a central health problem. As we discussed above, changes in cell volume can have a particularly detrimental effect on brain cells. When ECF volume decreases, blood flow to organs, including your heart, can be negatively affected.

Eating a potassium-rich diet is a crucial part of maintaining balanced fluid levels, as well as ensuring you drink enough water to stay properly hydrated.

The Importance Of Potassium

Your nervous system manages communication between your brain and body. This communication is transmitted in the form of nerve signals that regulate muscle contractions, heart rhythm, reflexes, and many other functions.

Potassium plays a leading role in the nerve signal transmission process. When potassium enters the nerve cell, it initiates a sodium-potassium exchange that produces the electrical charge necessary to transmit a signal. And when it exits a nerve cell, it repolarizes it and allows the nerve signal to be processed.

The range of healthy blood potassium levels is 3.6 to 5.0 mmol/L. Dropping the potassium level in your blood by as little as 1% can cause a serious imbalance. This can disrupt the transmission of nerve signals throughout your body.

It is important to meet your body’s minimum recommended dietary allowance of potassium to maintain healthy nervous system function.

Urine Potassium (k+) 24 Hour Or Random Sample

As we mentioned above, muscle contractions are one of the functions that control nerve signals. Changing potassium levels negatively affect nerve signals that signal muscle contractions, including your heartbeat.

Potassium is so important for muscle health that we add 12 milligrams of potassium to our athletic performance blend to help increase endurance and reduce post-workout soreness.

Hypokalemia occurs when potassium levels drop too low. Hyperkalemia occurs when they go too high. Both can be dangerous.

The biggest danger associated with changes in potassium levels is changes in your heart rhythm. Low potassium levels can cause arrhythmias, irregular heartbeats that may require medical treatment or even surgery. High potassium levels can cause the heart to weaken and over-enlarge, which can lead to arrhythmias. When your heart fails to beat properly, blood circulation to your brain, muscles, and other organs also fails.

Potassium & Your Ckd Diet

According to an article published in the journal Experimental and Clinical Cardiology, “Hypokalemia is associated with an increased risk of arrhythmias in patients with cardiovascular disease, as well as an up to 10-fold increase in all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and heart failure mortality.” In other words, if you have underlying heart problems, low potassium levels make those problems 10 times more likely to be fatal.

Hyperkalemia is strongly associated with a higher risk of death in patients with heart disease as well as those with kidney disease, according to a 2017 study.

I hope you now understand how important it is to maintain your body’s potassium levels.

However, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that less than 2% of adults living in the United States meet dietary guidelines for potassium intake. While this is certainly not ideal, it is unlikely to cause potassium deficiency.

Potassium: Deficiency Signs And What To Do About It

Potassium deficiencies in most cases occur when the body rapidly loses large amounts of potassium. Typical causes include prolonged vomiting, prolonged diarrhea, or other health conditions or conditions that cause large amounts of fluid loss.

As the NHANES data may have clued you in, it’s highly unusual for someone to get too much potassium. There is no convincing evidence to show that it is possible to get too much potassium from dietary sources alone, although you can achieve this by taking excessive amounts of potassium supplements. There have been cases where people took higher doses of potassium than their kidneys could handle, sometimes with fatal results.

Research shows that in most cases, excessively high levels of potassium in the blood occur when the body attempts to eliminate the mineral through urine. Therefore, dangerously high potassium is more likely to affect individuals with impaired kidney function. Some populations are at increased risk of developing hyperkalemia (related to high potassium levels); these include:

Luckily, when it comes to finding potassium in foods, you have many options beyond the most famous: bananas. In fact, bananas aren’t even the most potassium-rich food on our list! Many legumes, nuts, vegetables, fruits and fish contain high levels of potassium.

Everything Is K: Here’s Why You Need To Include Potassium In Your Diet

How much potassium should you aim for daily? The World Health Organization (WHO) strongly recommends that adults consume at least 3,510 milligrams of potassium from food daily.

Based on information provided by SELF Nutrition Data, we’ve listed the amount of potassium provided by a 100-gram serving of 15 potassium-rich foods. For some foods, we also identified the method of preparation as it changes the potassium content.

In almost all cases, it’s much better to get your potassium from whole food sources rather than over-the-counter (OTC) supplements. As we mentioned above, it is possible to overdose on potassium supplements. For this reason, regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limit potassium supplements to less than 100 milligrams. As you can see, this is less than half the amount you’d get from a single serving of the foods listed above.

But for people with true potassium deficiency, doctors may prescribe high-dose supplements. Never take these types of medications unless prescribed for you and always follow your doctor’s instructions.

Dietary Potassium And Sodium Levels: What You Should Know

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Surprising Reasons Why Potassium Is Important For Athletes

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