Potassium burns

[garyfritz]

@barbc56, for me knotted or trembling muscles are just as clear a "test," with just as direct a connection to potassium, as "thirst" is to water. I don't need a doctor's test to tell me to drink when I'm thirsty, and I don't need it to tell me I need potassium when my muscles cramp.

I don't care about wasting a bit of money or making expensive urine. And I'm not worried about hyperkalemia because I only take about as much potassium (when I'm cramping) as I'd get from a banana, an avocado, or a cup of yogurt.

@PatJ, this morning my calves were a bit crampy. I tried your taste test. The potassium gluconate powder didn't exactly taste sweet, but I wouldn't say it had no flavor either. After I took it, my muscles relaxed.

 

[PatJ]

for me knotted or trembling muscles are just as clear a "test," with just as direct a connection to potassium, as "thirst" is to water. I don't need a doctor's test to tell me to drink when I'm thirsty, and I don't need it to tell me I need potassium when my muscles cramp.

It was the same for me. When I was doing Freddd's treatment my potassium need would increase over the course of several hours. Waiting for tests would have left me in agony, or dead. There is no doubt that potassium relieved the symptoms. It wasn't a placebo effect. The combination of supplements in Freddd's treatment has effects that are unusual and only happens to certain people so the potassium demand I am talking about is far outside the ordinary.

@PatJ, this morning my calves were a bit crampy. I tried your taste test. The potassium gluconate powder didn't exactly taste sweet, but I wouldn't say it had no flavor either. After I took it, my muscles relaxed.

It tasted sweet for me when I really needed it. I had a few times where I had muscle spasms so severe that it looked like a lower body seizure. The potassium certainly tasted sweet at those times.

 

[barbc56]

As @ahimsa says, there are no easy answers. Nor is there a one size fits all recommenation.

This is just off the top of my head so hopefully not coming from another part of my anatomy.

Can you get a rebound effect from taking too much potassium?

I get concerned when it comes to the whole electrolyte issue. I had bouts of low sodium from a medication and was hospitalized several times.. It would happen so quickly. An imbalance of electrolytes can be life threatening.

 

[manoj]

Update: Potassium gluconate scalds me worse than potassium citrate. So now I take potassium ascorbate. So far it appears to be very mild. I make it by squeezing fresh juice from a lemon and adding a quarter teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate to the concentrated juice. I wait about 10 minutes to let the effervescence finish but it doesn't seem to really finish (I can hear it still bubbling like Sprite when I put my ear to the cup). Then I add a little sweet syrup (called "Sarbath" here in India) plus a cup of water. I learnt about potassium ascorbate from the Pantellini foundation. Anyone here taking pure potassium ascorbate?

 

[u&iraok]

Update: Potassium gluconate scalds me worse than potassium citrate. So now I take potassium ascorbate. So far it appears to be very mild. I make it by squeezing fresh juice from a lemon and adding a quarter teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate to the concentrated juice. I wait about 10 minutes to let the effervescence finish but it doesn't seem to really finish (I can hear it still bubbling like Sprite when I put my ear to the cup). Then I add a little sweet syrup (called "Sarbath" here in India) plus a cup of water. I learnt about potassium ascorbate from the Pantellini foundation. Anyone here taking pure potassium ascorbate?

Manoj,

Has the burning gone away? I'm having that problem even when I take it with food. Drinking a lot of water helps a little. I'm taking potassium chelate.

Are you saying that adding lemon juice to potassium bicarbonate makes it potassium ascorbate? What is the reason for this? Less burning?

 

[Justin30]

I supplement potassium because I am taking Florinef for POTS, and low blood potassium is one of the adverse effects of Florinef. I also drink salt water for POTS, so I add "No Salt" brand salt substitute potassium chloride to the mix. This eliminates the possibility of potassium pills causing any burning on the way down.

A recent lab report showed that sodium, potassium, and magnesium were all slightly low or at the bottom of the reference ranges. I sometimes wonder just how these sorts of results should be interpreted: do they represent slightly inadequate intake of the nutrients, or the levels that biochemical processes have determined are "correct" for conditions? In other words, if I increased these nutrients, would they just make expensive pee, as you suggest, and blood levels would stay the same?

I just want to put out a warning with Florinef....i was supplementing with salt and Potassium as per the POTS Dr.....my Potassium went to seriously low levels 1 week ago and I was hospitalized.

3.5 to 5 is the reference range and should be kept somewher in the higher ranges if you have ME.

I knew this was supplmenting but didnt notice the monthly large drops in Potassium.

My magnesium also dropped low normal as did phosphates...

Scariest time in my life thought I was done. Be sure to identify all potassium leaching supplements B12 and B Complex, medications, etc.

 

[Justin30]

Have you tried mixing the Potassium with salt?

 

[Justin30]

Do you have IBS or other bowel disease?

 

[manoj]

Manoj,

Has the burning gone away? I'm having that problem even when I take it with food. Drinking a lot of water helps a little. I'm taking potassium chelate.

Are you saying that adding lemon juice to potassium bicarbonate makes it potassium ascorbate? What is the reason for this? Less burning?

Hi u&iraok, yes burning is completely gone with the potassium ascorbate. All other potassiums still burn me, even potassium gluconate. Only the potassium ascorbate is fine. On days when I want to take more vitamin C, I crush a few ascorbic acid tablets and add the powder to the lemon juice before adding the potassium bicarbonate. The effervescence is so intense that the bubbles almost spill out of the cup. But it tastes horrible without adding sweet syrup. You may read about potassium ascorbate at http://www.pantellini.org/?page_id=498&lang=en

 

[manoj]

Do you have IBS or other bowel disease?

Nope

 

[manoj]

Have you tried mixing the Potassium with salt?

Yes, still burns...

 

[Jemima]

Not a chemist either it seems dannybex. Potassium chloride is neutral. Potassium citrate is alkaline like bicarbonate. Even potassium chloride can cause oesophageal stricture.

I appreciate that people like to chat about these things but if it is an exchange of scientifically erroneous pseudofacts and we are talking about something potentially lethal I worry. Is everyone quite happy now that potassium supplements can kill you? At least it is worth keeping in the back of the mind.

Its very interesting to pick up this thread as I had low potassium blood test this weekend after my heart rate went funny, sinus tachy with ectopics, i had episode the week before and ignroed it, then it started up more severely this past weekend so I sought help and blood test showed low potassium, 3.3, which i did t think was a low number? I wouldnt have expcted it to cause these heart episodes? Anyway the hospital insisted I ha some SandoK, tablets you dissolve in water. I am gald to see Jonathan's words of sense about potassium anyway, even though this is an old thread I have picked up.

 

[frozenborderline]

In the days of rheumatic heart disease potassium tablets were notorious for been said to cause strictures of the oesophagus through irritation - because the tended to get stuck and erode the lining. I don't know if this is ever a problem nowadays.

I wonder if there is any need to take potassium anyway? There is lots in food and being short of potassium is uncommon - almost entirely due to diuretic treatment. For most people if they take more it just gets peed out in the urine.

i apparently had low potassium in an electrolyte panel although Im not sure how low. doctor prescribed potassium tablets, 600 mg... I wonder if this was overzealous? I tend to eat potassium-rich foods

 

[Sundancer]

I am sorry , but I can see no reason whatever to think potassium is relevant to ME

On the advise of @Mary I started taking potassium, at that moment I was barely able to walk, hart racing, and continual arrhythmia. Brain-fog, and an really overwhelming fatigue, about half an hour after downing my first mug I could walk again, think again, heart behaved much more normal.

It does work, and I am grateful for the enormous about of best practices I find here.

My blood-levels were in the low range at this intermezzo

 

[Sundancer]

I am listening, listening, listening, but anecdotal accounts of 'I got better' are no use to me because I have spent forty years hearing that from people who quite clearly were just hoping they were better or had got better at the same time as a treatment by coincidence.

If methylation protocols were really dangerous in terms of inducing hypokalaemia then it would be unethical to recommend them in the absence of any evidence of them being beneficial. A medical practitioner would likely be struck off for doing so. And nobody has that evidence of benefit in ME - that we can say for sure. Nothing is published and no data are available for public scrutiny. I find it hard to accept that someone who recommends a dangerous protocol of unproven benefit is being helpful. In reality I am pretty sure it is not dangerous at all but you cannot have it both ways.

yes, I think I see your point, but as am a patient, not a scientist, I look for thing that help me function a little better. Nobody is gonna do that for me.

I find that the use of B12, folate and some potassium has helped me from say 3% energy to say 6%/

I can now wash my hair without crashing, have a conversation ( not at the same day though)

For this body, I do not think that is coincidence so I'll continue happily. It probably won't heal me. But it gives a little more quality of life. Which is precious to me.

 

[Sundancer]

Forgive me if I don't accept your automatic dismissal of my personal experience. I'm very aware of the placebo effect. But I don't accept that I could wake with painful knotted calf muscles, which continue to hurt as long as I don't do anything, but relax shortly after I take a dose of potassium -- and I did it all with the power of my mind. That powerful placebo effect never worked for me with aspirin, for example. I don't take aspirin for headaches because it doesn't work for me.

yes, so it is for me

 

[pamojja]

Update: Potassium gluconate scalds me worse than potassium citrate. So now I take potassium bicarbonate. So far it appears to be very mild. I make it by squeezing fresh juice from a lemon and adding a quarter teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate to the concentrated juice. I wait about 10 minutes to let the effervescence finish but it doesn't seem to really finish (I can hear it still bubbling like Sprite when I put my ear to the cup).

Actually by using lemons juice instead of ascorbic acid powder with potassium ascorbate, a very tiny amount of ascorbic acid is created. Since a lemon only contains about 20 mg of ascorbic acid, that little bid would produce not much more that that (about 0.175 mg of potassium combines with each 1 mg of ascorbic acid to form potassium ascorbate).

I suspect the much more plenty citric acid and less malic acid in lemons combines mainly to potassium citrate again. Therefore I'm surprised you found relieve with self-made potassium citrate, while the commercially available did cause you trouble.

Anyone here taking pure potassium ascorbate?

I do take high dose ascorbic acid (about 23 g/d) mixed with a quarter teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate and a bid sodium bicarbonate. Mixed in water they combine as pure as it gets for all present bicarbonates. While premade ascorbates would cost a fortune at such a high intake. And with some mineral ascorbates - like with calcium ascorbate - one would get too high an intake of the calcium.

 

[frozenborderline]

None, other than oesophageal stricture, really. But if all the levels are monitored and normal what is the point of taking potassium? The whole point of taking potassium was if it was low as I understood it. It just makes no sense at all.

I was told by my dr that potassium was low in electrolyte panels despite the fact that i consume decent potassium sources all the time. So she prescribed me tablets. Seems reasonable but also want to avoid hyperkalemia. What's a safe dose range in your opinion?

 

[pamojja]

So she prescribed me tablets.

Personally use potassium powders (bicarbonate, citrate or chloride) well dissolved in a glass of water throughout the day. The main problem with potassium when it comes in concentrated form in contact with the mucous layer of the stomach is, that it can burn and irritate. Therefore I avoid all tablets, that's also the reason supplemental potassium tablets/caps are limited to 99 mg.

With the dose, as with all other nutrients, I slowly titrated and monitor symptoms or blood test, where available. Am at 2.5 g/d of elemental potassium at the moment (and about 4.2 g from diet).

A contrarian view on potassium supplementation: https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/salud/salud_potassium.htm

 

[iwillwin1day]

I do take high dose ascorbic acid (about 23 g/d) mixed with a quarter teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate and a bid sodium bicarbonate. Mixed in water they combine as pure as it gets for all present bicarbonates. While premade ascorbates would cost a fortune at such a high intake. And with some mineral ascorbates - like with calcium ascorbate - one would get too high an intake of the calcium.

Any benefit of such a high dose ascorbic acid? Any study that you knew which shows such high dose Ascorbic acid helps me/CFS? Thanks.