Ema
Senior Member
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- Midwest USA
- Potassium off the shelf - Usually sold as Potassium Citrate/Gluconate/Asparate, and limited to 99mg. This is the what most people here buy, and this is also the one that is dangerous to start taking half a dozen at a time because it concentrates the dose. This is NOT a slow release tablet.
- Potassium via doctors prescription - This comes under many brand names. Let's take Klotrix
as an example. This is a potassium cholride in a special film-coated wax-matrix tablet....specially designed for slow release purposes. This is "safer" however take note of this precaution on the label EVEN though it's slow release. "BECAUSE OF REPORTS OF INTESTINAL AND GASTRIC ULCERATION AND BLEEDING WITH CONTROLLED-RELEASE POTASSIUM CHLORIDE PREPARATIONS, THESE DRUGS SHOULD BE RESERVED.... " http://www.drugs.com/pro/klotrix.html
You can easily get enough potassium from your diet, you just have to structure your diet and eat the appropriate potassium rich content food.
I think you've misread my posts. I'll try to be clearer.
I would never suggest taking 99 mg OTC potassium tablets to correct a potassium deficiency. Personally, for me, I don't feel that they work well and the dose required is too hard to dole out in a slow fashion in order to avoid getting too much at once. This method makes it hard to bypass the feedback mechanism and actually raise the potassium level. I've never disagreed with that as you say I have.
However, I do not think that one can get enough potassium from the diet in many cases (especially when potassium wasting drugs are involved) and many will need supplementation with slow release potassium supplements. These are OTC in many countries as well and are considerably safer than trying to take large doses of the 99 mg variety in the opinion of every doctor I've ever queried on the topic when appropriate labs are done regularly.
Your last statement may be true for you, but it is not true for me and many others.
I've also queried doctors, pharmacists and other forum groups and never found a single person that has suffered gastric ulceration or bleeding from slow release potassium. That isn't to say that it has never happened but that it is not uncommon for labeling to have more to do with legal reasons than actual risk to patients. There are many cases of labeling that fit this description describing risks that are more theoretical than applicable in real life.