What Is The Benefit Of Potassium In The Body – The periodic symbol for potassium is “K.” Why would that be? Were the inventors of the table too busy with their interesting discoveries to do a simple spell check?

It turns out that the English, starting hundreds of years ago, used to sprinkle wood ash on their garden beds, and saw the plants grow faster and healthier as a result.

What Is The Benefit Of Potassium In The Body

Over time, they learned that they could create something called “potash” when they soaked wood ashes in iron pots.

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Then, in 1807, a British chemist called Sir Humphry Davy isolated potassium from potash. He named the result “kalium,” which is the Latin word for potassium — and was “K” on the periodic table.

Although the English later named potassium after the potassium that led to its discovery, the “K” stuck, which proved very popular with phosphorus fans, who claim it to this day. the individual periodic table rights for the letter “P.”

In this article, we will explore the role of potassium in the body, how much you need, and the benefits of it for human health. And we will look at the best sources of potassium, so you can be sure to include them in your diet.

Plants require significant amounts of potassium to carry out vital biological functions. That’s why we often find plenty of this important, healthy mineral in fresh, plant-based foods.

The Top 5 Benefits Of Potassium For Heart Health

As well as being vital for healthy plant growth, potassium plays an extremely important role in the human body. It is one of several vital nutrients that make up the electrolyte family, including sodium, magnesium, calcium, and others. Potassium, like all electrolytes, plays a vital role in maintaining your body’s fluid balance and facilitating nerve signaling due to its exceptional capacity for ionic charge.

Potassium plays a vital role in many vital functions throughout the body, especially in the heart and kidneys.

Given the number of essential functions that potassium has, it is no wonder that it is considered an important nutrient. But what are the specific health benefits of potassium? Here are some reasons why it’s worth optimizing your intake.

When you eat too much sodium – usually from table salt or fatty foods – your body releases more water to dilute the excess sodium in your blood. The increased fluid puts pressure on your blood vessels, increasing the pressure, like too much water moving through a garden hose. High blood pressure is also known as hypertension, and is a significant factor in the development of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and kidney disease.

Low Potassium Diet For Kidney Disease

But it turns out that potassium can help moderate some of this impact—which is good news for your heart. In fact, a 2016 study in the journal Nutrients found that higher levels of potassium lower the overall risk of hypertension. And in the Framingham Extract Study, published in 2021, the researchers concluded that a higher intake of potassium is strongly associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Potassium is increasingly understood to be important in the management and prevention of cardiovascular disease and related events. A 2014 meta-analysis of more than 333,250 people and 10,659 stroke events found “a significant association between K intake and stroke.” The more potassium people consume, the less likely they are to suffer a stroke.

According to the CDC, there were more than 1.4 million new cases of diabetes in the US in 2019. It is much easier to prevent diabetes than to reverse the condition, and on that side, there is hope. Although low levels of potassium in the blood are correlated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, a 2016 article in Nutrients explains that increasing dietary potassium may help maintain healthy blood glucose control and limit the risk of developing diabetes. And even if you’ve already been diagnosed with prediabetes, research shows that increased potassium can stabilize fasting glucose levels.

Potassium is also healthy for your kidneys. Adequate potassium can not only help prevent kidney stones, but is a powerhouse in the prevention and management of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Many patients with CKD are advised to limit their potassium intake to reduce the risk of developing hyperkalemia (too much potassium in the body). However, a 2020 meta-analysis found that higher potassium intake in the early stages of the disease was actually protective and slowed progression. Results are more mixed for higher potassium diets during the later stages of CKD. (Be sure to check with your health care provider before loading up on potassium if you have kidney disease.) If you’re struggling with CKD, you can learn more about the best foods for kidney health in our comprehensive article .

The Amazing Benefits Of Potassium On The Brain

When we think of bone health, most of us don’t think of potassium first. But maybe we should! Research shows that potassium is strongly linked to higher bone mass density. And many studies tell us that positive effects on bone health are seen even with a minimum of 2, 300 mg of potassium per day, although some studies suggest that the aim is a daily intake of around 4, 700 mg.

Importantly, these recommendations may not be enough for many people. The Food and Nutrition Board encourages adults to get 4,700 mg per day – more than twice the NIH recommendation for adult women.

Perhaps more importantly, a 2013 research review on potassium and health explains that the ratio of potassium to sodium in the diet significantly affects many markers of health, even more than potassium alone. In other words, the more sodium you eat, the more potassium you need.

Potassium and sodium are two important electrolytes that work together to achieve some amazing things. They both help regulate nerve function – supporting muscle contraction and heart function. And they work together to maintain fluid balance throughout the cell walls. A healthy balance of these minerals is essential for their proper function.

Potassium Benefits And The Top Ranked Potassium Rich Foods

Harvard Health explains that early Paleolithic people likely received about 16 times more potassium than sodium, and that the typical modern industrial diet provides a potassium-to-sodium ratio of just 0.74 to 1. Meanwhile, the proportion Ideal potassium-to-sodium, according to the NIH, appears to be about 2:1. So most of us are getting less than half the potassium we need, at least when it comes to sodium in our diets. And when the balance is off, problems arise.

Sometimes, potassium levels in the body can fall outside the ideal range, be too high or too low. Potassium levels that are too low are more common than levels that are too high.

Not having enough potassium in your body is called hypokalemia. Although many people who develop a potassium deficiency may have no symptoms, the effects of low potassium can be devastating and even fatal. It is a serious concern that can lead to muscle weakness or paralysis and abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias). Hypokalemia is also associated with increased blood pressure, kidney stones, and osteoporosis.

Despite being more common than excessive potassium levels, cases of low potassium are usually mild and are often the result of another condition or a medication side effect.

Are You Getting Enough Potassium? Dosage, Benefits, And Side Effects

In contrast, potassium toxicity and the risks of excess potassium, hyperkalemia, are rare in healthy people because the kidneys effectively excrete excess potassium in the urine. However, people with certain conditions should be aware of the risks of consuming too much potassium. Mild hyperkalemia is usually asymptomatic, but high potassium levels can cause life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, muscle weakness, or paralysis. Most cases of hospitalization are for excess potassium due to medications and renal insufficiency.

Nutritional causes of hyperkalemia are rare, especially in people who are not at risk. If you are in a high-risk group, consult your healthcare provider to make sure you are consuming safe levels of potassium.

Plants are extremely efficient at pulling minerals from the soil, including potassium which is readily taken up by plant roots. In most traditional land practices, potassium is added to the soil as a fertilizer to help plants grow. In more traditional practices, potassium is returned to the soil when plants die or through composting or animal manure during grazing.

Potassium is found in many whole plant foods – including many of our favorite comfort foods, like potatoes! Beans and legumes, nuts, vegetables and fruit (including dried fruit) are good dietary sources of potassium. However, dried fruit will have even higher amounts of potassium because the water has been removed and all the nutrients are concentrated (although they also have an increased sugar content for the same reason).

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Here are some examples of the foods that are richest in potassium. (Remember, the NIH recommended minimum is at least 2,600 mg per day for women, and at least 3,400 mg per day for men—and you don’t need to get it all in one place.)

This list could be pages long, really. Potassium is contained in many different fruits and vegetables – even more so when they come from healthy, potassium-rich soil. These types of food are also:

Potassium is also found in abundance in dairy products and some fish, although these come with other health and ethical considerations. (For more information on dairy, see our article here, and for more information on fish, see our article here.)

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The Healthy Benefits Of Potassium

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