Potassium - Supplementation and importance on bodily functions

[Einszwei]

Hello everyone,
I would like to talk about the importance of potassium for our body and why I supplement my low oxalate diet with potassium. So, the big question is why potassium?

Potassium is the main intracellular ion for all types of cells, while having a major role in maintenance of fluid and electrolyte balance. The body maintains a tight concentration gradient between sodium and potassium. The sustained concentration gradient is crucial for physiological processes in many organs and has an ongoing role in stabilizing the resting membrane potential of the cell, regulating the cell volume, and cell signal transduction. It plays a crucial role on other physiological processes, such as maintenance of filtering waste products in the nephrons (kidneys), sperm motility, and production of the neuronal action potential(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537088/).
It is widely regarded as a fact, that most people do not consume enough potassium, while at the same time consuming too much sodium (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9237821/).

This in combination with a low concentration of potassium in my blood test led me to supplement with potassium citrate. I can now say that I am mostly symptom free. I tried to remove the potassium supplementation and felt the following effects:
- More tired
- My muscles felt sorer.
- A bit more difficult to breathe.
- More urination
- Thirstier
- More sensitive to oxalate rich foods. (more RLS symptoms)
- Worse sleep (even with no RLS symptoms)

I tried this multiple times voluntary and also involuntary when my pills ran out. I could always make these same observations, that got worse the longer I did not consume additional potassium. Does anyone else have similar stories regarding potassium, or is this just a ‘me’ thing?

I’m trying to find the link between a low oxalate diet, potassium and RLS. I looked at how our nervous system works and the balance between potassium and sodium is important for the proper function of all nerves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_potential. Any additional resources for further reading is very welcome.

Please feel free to share your experience with potassium and RLS and have a nice day.

[Rustsmith]

Be careful with potassium supplements unless you have a blood test that shows that you are low. Unlike too much sodium which can be tolerated well by most, too much potassium can be deadly. After all, the final step used in lethal injection to execute criminals is the injection of a large dose of potassium chloride to upset the nervous system to the heart.

My wife has MS and would consistently test low for potassium until she switched from using regular salt to a low sodium salt, which is actually potassium chloride (I think it tastes strange, but I usually have low sodium). She says that she can now sense when her potassium levels are getting too low because her feet get cold. However, if you have cold feet, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have low potassium.

[Einszwei]

Thank you for your concern Steve,

I am very aware of the consequences of too much potassium. I currently supplement 5g of potassium citrate (equates to 1900mg of potassium) split into a morning and evening dose. So with my regular diet i probably get to around 3500mg of potassium, which is around the daily recommended amount.

But lets calculate the consequence that one dose of 1000mg of potassium has on the concentration of potassium in your blood.

For this i assume a blood volume of 5l and perfect and instant Absorption from the gut to the blood. The blood would then contain 0.2g of potassium per liter of blood. To get the miliequivalents per liter we have to divide by the molar mass of potassium: 0.2g / 0.0391kg = 5.12mEq/L. Serious heart arythmia occurs at around 9 - 10 mEq/L and death is likely around 11+mEq/L.

If you add a high, but still normal concentration of potassium to the above calculation you land at 10 mEq/L which could be dangerous. Seeing as the absorption will never be instantaneous and never perfect i dont think there is potential danger in my current dosage. In any case, it is probably not a good idea to consume your total dosage in one sitting when it is a relatively large dosis.

[Frunobulax]

Usually the kidneys are pretty good at regulating potassium levels. An overdose is bad, just as you can die from too much salt.

But the problem is that it is much more likely that someone is potassium deficient, for 2 reasons: (a) Potassium tastes pretty bad, so we eliminated a lot of potassium rich foods from our diet and hardly anyone gets the NIH RDA (https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potas ... fessional/) of around 3 grams/day. (b) A low salt consumption leads to potassium deficiency (https://www.virtahealth.com/blog/sodium ... l-function), and my personal (but controversial) opinion is that the standing recommendations for a very low salt consumption are very questionable (see for example https://youtu.be/AWzaT5wJ20M?si=ofj9UQV_SZlSeyms and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9fBu-Lb--E).

I believe that hyperkalemia from supplementation is almost unheard of if you have healthy kidneys, 100% of case reports that I have seen over the last years are from patients with chronic kidney disease or other related severe comorbidities (like badly treated diabetes). Also there are a number of symptoms that you'll experience long before you get to potentially dangerous levels. So I'd argue that it's a good thing to take a bit of potassium to make sure you meet your RDA. (I wouldn't recommend taking high doses of potassium via IV however, this is potentially dangerous.)

Personally I take 4-5 grams of potassium citrate a day (for 5-6 years now), which is about 1.5 grams of potassium. I experience cramps if I quit my potassium supplements, usually after 3-4 days of stopping them. But I haven't observed a connection to my RLS unfortunately.