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Potassium and Supplement

Mya Symons

Mya Symons
Messages
1,029
Location
Washington
I have low potassium levels. I can't find a supplement that states it is gentle on the stomach. I am taking potassium and sodium bicarbonate as a PH balancer and lactic acid remover. However, by my blood tests, it is looking like i need a lot more.

Does anybody know a good bio available form of potassium supplement (without a prescription) with lower risk
of stomach upset? How about albion chelated potassium? Has anyone ever tried this and has it caused anyone problems?
 
Last edited:

AndyPandy

Making the most of it
Messages
1,928
Location
Australia
My gut is pretty sensitive. I have been taking NOW brand potassium gluconate powder 1/4 teaspoon twice a day dissolved in water for a few months now without reacting to it.
 

Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,334
Location
Southern California
I have low potassium levels. I can't find a supplement that states it is gentle on the stomach. I am taking potassium and sodium bicarbonate as a PH balancer and lactic acid remover. However, by my blood tests, it is looking like i need a lot more.

Does anybody know a good bio available form of potassium supplement (without a prescription) with lower risk
of stomach upset? How about albion chelated potassium? Has anyone ever tried this and has it caused anyone problems?

I take 1000 - 1200 mg. potassium gluconate (in divided doses) with no problem. A banana just doesn't do it for me - I'd have to eat 4 or 5 a day and that's way too much sugar.

Also, an 8 oz. glass of low-sodium V8 has 900 mg. of potassium, so I often have a glass of that as well. Regular V8 has roughly 500 mg. per glass.
 

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
So you take Potassium through water on your feet? Did I get that right or is that the name of a brand of Potassium?
Correct. I use NOW K+ gluconate. I tried NOW K+ chloride, the form that's used as salt substitute. but it wasn't any better financially, and is impossible to take orally, as it's so strong. Gluconate I can take orally, and when in the midst of correcting methylation, often had to during the night.
 

Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
How many bananas do you think I would have to eat a day? If I am low on potassium would it be More than 2?

I think a banana is about 400mg K.

But to be honest I think everyone is probably wasting their time eating extra potassium. In most situations where serum potassium is low it will be low because the body's homeostatic mechanisms have set it low. The only situations where this does not apply are likely to be acute deprivation of potassium through eating a very abnormal diet or forced potassium loss from diuretic tablets. Chronically low potassium is unlikely to be helped by eating potassium. You will just pee it out in the urine every day. If there is an important medical reason for the low potassium such as a Cushing's disease then that should be diagnosed and teated. If you just run a low potassium level because that is the way your body does it then eating potassium is a waste of time.

So the question really is whether you need to take any at all, not how much, I think. From what I know it would be extraordinarily unlikely that you would become potassium deficient if you ate a banana a day. The body is very good at conserving small amounts of intake.
 

Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
Another small point is that I am pretty sure that you cannot absorb potassium through your feet. If it was possible to absorb metal cations through our skin eveyone who went to bathe in the Dead Sea would be dead by lunchtime. And there would be absolutely no way of knowing how much came in through a footbath so I am sure that is a waste of time.
 

Mya Symons

Mya Symons
Messages
1,029
Location
Washington
I think a banana is about 400mg K.

But to be honest I think everyone is probably wasting their time eating extra potassium. In most situations where serum potassium is low it will be low because the body's homeostatic mechanisms have set it low. The only situations where this does not apply are likely to be acute deprivation of potassium through eating a very abnormal diet or forced potassium loss from diuretic tablets. Chronically low potassium is unlikely to be helped by eating potassium. You will just pee it out in the urine every day. If there is an important medical reason for the low potassium such as a Cushing's disease then that should be diagnosed and teated. If you just run a low potassium level because that is the way your body does it then eating potassium is a waste of time.

So the question really is whether you need to take any at all, not how much, I think. From what I know it would be extraordinarily unlikely that you would become potassium deficient if you ate a banana a day. The body is very good at conserving small amounts of intake.

Okay. This is good to know. I have tried Potassium supplements before and they always make me nauseous. I'm also glad to know that Dead Sea Mud won't kill me. I use it sometimes on my face.:) I'm curious, though. My mother suffered from congestive heart problems and she was required to take these huge potassium pills that smelled like bananas by her doctor as a treatment. It was always an argument with her to get her to take them because they also made her feel nauseous. Do you know why a doctor would prescribe potassium for a heart problem such as congestive heart failure?
 

Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
Okay. This is good to know. I have tried Potassium supplements before and they always make me nauseous. I'm also glad to know that Dead Sea Mud won't kill me. I use it sometimes on my face.:) I'm curious, though. My mother suffered from congestive heart problems and she was required to take these huge potassium pills that smelled like bananas by her doctor as a treatment. It was always an argument with her to get her to take them because they also made her feel nauseous. Do you know why a doctor would prescribe potassium for a heart problem such as congestive heart failure?

Your mother will have been taking potassium pills to counteract the potassium losing effect of diuretics. Diuretics reduce the build up of excessive blood volume in heart failure by blocking the body's mistaken attempts to retain water and sodium in the kidney. As a result they make you pee out the salt water that forms the extra blood volume. Unfortunately, the mechanism that i blocked also handles potassium so you pee out potassium as well. So this is a situation where the low potassium is not due to your body regulation but to a drug blocking the body's regulation. SO you need to top up potassium every day.

In simple terms in heart failure the potassium is to compensate for the loss due to a drug. In most other situations there is no loss due to a drug, the blood level is just set low by the body's own regulatory system and so nothing is lost each day and nothing needs to be topped up.
 

WillowJ

คภภเє ɠรค๓թєl
Messages
4,940
Location
WA, USA
In most situations where serum potassium is low it will be low because the body's homeostatic mechanisms have set it low.
Many PWME have this. Is it possible it's related to the disease or is it likely to be a coincidence?

Just a note for the thread, there are other medications that waste potassium and your doctor and pharmacist will not necessarily tell you. My migraine medication wastes potassium and Vit B, and no one told me for several years.

I get less weak, and less extremity tingling, when I use the Rx potassium but it can be rough on my stomach, as well as hard to swallow. I take it with a meal. Sometimes I have to cut it (though the current one is extended release, so I am not sure that this is ok... I think my doc forgot that when he told me I could cut it).

For some inexplicable reason, bananas joined the 3/4 of the other foods i cannot eat. I am sure my struggle to maintain serum potassium even with Rx is related to my peculiar diet. But if i cheat I lose bicarbonate, and then all is lost by way of electrolyte balance anyway. Lose, lose.
 

Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
Many PWME have this. Is it possible it's related to the disease or is it likely to be a coincidence?

I would like to see a proper study on this. I have not seen any published data showing PWME have low potassium more often than normal people. The problem with all these normal ranges is that for any random sampling one person in twenty will be below range, even in a normal population. If you repeat the test then even more people will be low from time to time.

I doubt PWME need to take potassium unless they have some other condition as well.
 

WillowJ

คภภเє ɠรค๓թєl
Messages
4,940
Location
WA, USA
I would like to see a proper study on this. I have not seen any published data showing PWME have low potassium more often than normal people. The problem with all these normal ranges is that for any random sampling one person in twenty will be below range, even in a normal population. If you repeat the test then even more people will be low from time to time.

OK, thanks.

That's 5% normally? I got the impression from a CFS doc that it was a greater percentage of their patients than this, but yes, a formal study would be better. I don't even know what researcher might want to look at that, but maybe other things could be more important, though. I guess if it's true, it would come out in one of those collaborative chart-documenting initiatives, if they ever made that work.