Hyperkalemia (High Blood Potassium Levels) – Hyperkalemia Symptoms & Treatment – Dr.Berg

We're gonna talk about high levels of potassium in your blood .

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First thing you need to know is the name of that is hyperkalemia .

When you have a deficiency of potassium in the blood , that's called hypokalemia .

The other thing to know , which is very important , is that 98% of all your potassium in your body is inside your cell , not outside the cell , and not in your blood .

So when we're evaluating hyperkalemia , we're really looking at this 2% .

So we don't really see the whole picture of what's going on .

It's very rare .

There are very little symptoms that are associated with this .

If it's severe , you can get palpitations .

You can be very tired and have muscle pain and weakness .

There's a condition called pseudo hyperkalemia .

In this situation , when they're drawing your blood to do get the sample to do the testing , If they damage your blood cells as they're drawing it out , there's some type of trauma involved , what happens is it cracks open these cells and leaks out more Potassium giving this pseudo or false impression that you have high levels of Potassium .

So just wanna bring this point up right here .

Now there's a couple reasons why you might have high levels of potassium in the blood .

Advanced kidney disease is probably the number 1 because when the kidney is damaged , you don't release certain minerals , especially potassium .

Addison's disease is another reason .

This is an autoimmune condition of your adrenal glands in which you're losing a ton of sodium .

And when you're losing all the sodium , you're also retaining potassium .

So you would not necessarily ever wanna give someone potassium if they had advanced kidney disease or Addison's disease .

There's a couple medications that can also raise your potassium in the blood .

NSAIDs for pain and certain high blood pressure medications .

Now the other thing to know is excessive intake of potassium is not a primary cause of hyperkalemia .

Why ?

Because your body has certain mechanisms to get rid of excessive potassium .

And this is very different from sodium .

We tend to retain sodium , so if we take too much potassium , our bodies can get rid of it very easily through the urine .

Now what's interesting is the treatment for hyperkalemia is taking certain types of calcium or injecting the person with insulin , and I'm talking medical treatment , or dextrose , which is a sugar , or sodium bicarbonate , which is baking soda .

Now what I find interesting is these 2 things right here , insulin and dextrose .

So if you're in a high carb diet and you're raising insulin or you're gonna elevate sugar , you're gonna create more of a problem with this right here , not this right here .

Now it's also important to talk about the opposite of hyperkalemia , hypokalemia , which is way more common .

It's the most common form of electrolyte imbalance when someone's hospitalized .

And here are a few symptoms , leg cramps , weakness , constipation , abnormal heart rhythm issues , arrhythmias , etcetera .

And the main point I wanna bring up , which is the last point , is you have to realize that the majority the vast majority of potassium is inside the cell .

And so measuring it based on the blood is not a good way to determine if you have too much or too little potassium .

There is another test .

It's an intracellular potassium test , which is much more valuable .

And I'm gonna put a link down below if you wanna know more information about that .

I would highly suggest to get this test if you're interested in knowing your intracellular potassium and intracellular magnesium .

It gives you a lot of great data , and it can also tell you if you're at risk for getting arrhythmias because that would be 1 of the big symptoms of that , or even high blood pressure .

Alright .

Thanks for watching , and I'll see you in the next video .

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