When Should You Not Take Extra Potassium

Hi guys .

Today we're gonna talk about potassium and when you should not take extra potassium .

The typical situation is that people are deficient potassium and they need more potassium .

And it's actually a rare , condition where you would need to cut back .

Okay .

Now when I'm talking about excess potassium , you have this condition called hyperkalemia .

This is too much potassium in your blood .

98% of all the potassium is inside the cell versus the outside the cell .

In order to really know what's happening with potassium , I would recommend taking an intracellular potassium test .

And , you can look it up online to try to find out where you could take it .

I think it'd be a very valuable thing , but that would measure how much potassium is inside the cell .

That being said , some of the symptoms with hyperkalemia would be palpitations , muscle weakness , numbness , abnormal heart rate , and shortness of breath .

And these are the identical symptoms by the way when you have hypo , kalemia , which is interesting .

So you can't really know what's happening based on the symptom .

You could take a blood test .

However , these are the top 3 conditions where you would not wanna take potassium and I'm gonna tell you why .

First 1 is stage 5 kidney disease .

That would be end stage renal failure .

Renal meaning kidney .

So if the kidneys are really diseased you would not want to take potassium .

However , this is rare and potassium normally protects the kidney .

Okay ?

It helps the kidney especially with blood pressure .

In fact , it can probably help you lower your blood pressure .

So just because you have kidney disease doesn't mean you don't need normal amounts of potassium .

So you just need to check with your doctor .

They're gonna tell you when you should avoid potassium or take potassium if you have a kidney problem .

And the real issue with this is that if the kidney is diseased and it stops filtering and you're taking more potassium , you won't be able to release it and get rid of the excess amount and too much potassium could be a problem .

But if you have healthy kidneys , it's almost impossible to develop hypercalamine , not too much potassium in the blood through taking too much potassium .

Because simply your body can easily get rid of excessive amounts of potassium mainly from the function of aldosterone .

This is a hormone from the adrenal glands and the purpose of aldosterone is to retain sodium and get rid of excess potassium .

So let me just kind of cover this next reason and that's if you had an aldosterone deficiency .

And that can come from , adrenal failure , several other diseases of the adrenal gland in which you just don't have any more aldosterone .

In that case , you won't be able to regulate properly the potassium and it can go too high .

Again , very rare .

Okay .

Addison's disease .

This is a condition also rare where you basically lose the function of your adrenal glands .

And in that state , you you lose a lot of weight , your skin gets bronzed , the inside of your lips and even your lips can get blue , your immune system is very very fragile and you lose a ton of salt or basically sodium .

So if you were to take excessive amounts of potassium , guess what you're gonna do ?

You're gonna drive down sodium even more .

Well , Addison's disease is a state where you really need more salt And a patient with this condition should be taking a ton of salt through the day to actually maintain the adrenal function .

And they should definitely avoid potassium because this is the mineral that they're having a problem with .

They have enough potassium , but they don't have enough sodium .

And as a side note , insulin helps you absorb potassium in your cells .

And if you have insulin resistance like a lot of people have , guess what ?

You're generally gonna be deficient in potassium .

You're not gonna have enough potassium in cells , which is a more common condition .

So taking more potassium will help regulate insulin and definitely help insulin resistance .

Alright , guys .

Thanks for watching .

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