Guest Blog - Potassi-Yum

Your friendly neighborhood guest blogger is back to share all the amazing and tasty facts about Potassium.

Ah Potassium, a micronutrient, a mineral actually, that is crucial to life as we know it. At least life within our bodies as we know it. Much like magnesium, the power of potassium reaches even the smallest parts of our bodies, including our cells. Potassium is not only present in all body tissues, our cells required it to function. Yeah, big deal, I know.

Really though, it’s about the relationship of potassium to sodium in your body. Potassium and sodium are like the odd couple – they have the complete opposite effect on the cellular level, but together, they balance each other. AWWWWWW. And speaking of love, more specifically, the heart, both of these essential nutrients are linked to chronic cardiovascular disease. High salt (sodium) intake can lead to increases in blood pressure, while the balancing power of potassium relaxes blood vessels and helps the kidneys excrete sodium, often leading to decreasing blood pressure, especially for those individuals that already have hypertension.

The relationship may be equitable, but it’s diffidently not equal, as we need far more potassium than sodium each day, but many of us actually have a diet that is the complete opposite. Americans average about 3,300 milligrams of sodium per day, about 75% of which comes from processed foods, while only getting about 2,900 milligrams of potassium each day. A study conducted by Potassium doesn’t just keep cardiovascular disease at bay, it can also be instrumental in preventing kidney stones by balancing calcium secretion levels in your urine, and can be an important nutrient for promoting alkalinity within the blood and body.

Fairly recently, The National Academies updated their recommended potassium intakes to at least 2,600 milligrams per day and adult males should consume at least 3,400 milligrams per day.  Although there is no upper limit for potassium intake, toxicity can occur for anyone with kidney disease, and can pose some issues for those with diabetes, and for those on blood pressure medication. For those with normal kidney function however, it becomes important to get at least the recommended amounts, if not more. WHO recommends an increase in potassium intake from food to reduce blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and coronary heart disease in adults, suggesting a potassium intake of at least 90 mmol/day (3510 mg/day) for adults. Increasing our potassium intake helps our beautiful bodies regulate body fluids, muscle contractions, and nerve signals.

At this point you say, ok, I’m on board, let’s do this, let’s get pumped and make sure we are getting our daily potassium intake (somewhere around 2,900 – 4,000 mg per day). I was on board too after starting to track my macro and micro nutrients. Things I discovered is that I lie to myself about my carbohydrate intake and also my ability to get enough potassium daily. It is actually hard work, even on a fairly steady caloric goal (meaning I’m not restricting my calories regularly). Potassium is “apparently” found in a variety of plant, meats, poultry, fish, milk, yogurt, and nuts. In addition, coffee, tea, other nonalcoholic beverages contain significant amounts of potassium, as well as potatoes (with their skins).

So it would seem that a person such as I, eating a load of veggies per day, and even consume berries and fruits, nuts, and all the healthy potassium-rich foods mentioned above, would easily achieve that 2,600 mg mark, but that hasn’t actually been the case. Today, I was able to get to 2,527 mg, just below the recommended amount, and that was thanks to supplements. Again, I’ll say that it can be extremely difficult to eat an “all natural’ diet without having some deficiencies. I’m also trying to eat fewer carbs, currently, so I lack the potassium intake from whole wheat sources – as such, I am finding I need to supplement. That doesn’t mean I won’t be focusing on a diet health of potassium-rich foods, but I am planning on adding a little something extra for those days where a fourth banana is just too many carbs for the day. In dietary supplements, potassium is often present as potassium chloride, citrate, phosphate, aspartate, bicarbonate, and gluconate. Citrate is probably the most digestible, but bicarbonate works well. There is a small caveat here, and that is manufacturers and distributors limit the amount of potassium in their products to 99 mg (which is only about 2% of the daily recommended amount) because the FDA has ruled that some oral drug products that contain potassium chloride and provide more than 99 mg potassium are not safe because they have been associated with small-bowel lesions and the FDA requires some potassium salts containing more than 99 mg potassium per tablet to be labeled with a warning about the reports of small-bowel lesions.

There is some good news here, especially because potassium citrate can be taken in higher amounts for shorter periods of time, and you also try potassium bicarbonate, although it can be a little rougher on your tummy. Fun fact I just picked up from our amazing Sam, cream of tartar is another edible supplement form of potassium (bitartrate) and comes at a whopping 495mg of potassium per teaspoon. You have to be careful though because it is also a natural laxative.

Another great source of potassium that is a little less on the supplement side is prune juice, yes, you heard me, prune juice. I think it’s time for me to admit that my grandma was right all along, and that I should have more prune in my life – oh joy.