Potassium Deficiency Leads To Hypertension?
Potassium is also an important constituent of body fluid. It resides mostly inside living cells like red blood cells, muscles, tissue, nerves and brain. Its concentration is low in body fluids but is a very important determining factor of cardiac function, especially rhythm. American society of nephrology raised a concern of low potassium intake in diet over a long time, as important, but a neglected cause of hypertension. African American population was found to be more affected and genetic linkage was also found. WNK1 is the culprit gene involved. In more simple language, we may transmit a particular tendency to our progenies. In a large study, urine samples were evaluated for knowing potassium deficiency in the body, and it was more strongly correlated than sodium to cause hypertension.
DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) is another prominent study confirming the same effect. Rather, it also linked low potassium intake to increased risk of stroke. Stroke means neurological damage to the brain or nerves. Potassium is also necessary to prevent muscular cramps, maintain sugar levels and to maintain optimal fluid balance.
Potassium deficiency leads to hypertension foods that are rich in potassium importance in managing high blood pressure because potassium lessens the effect of sodium. The more potassium you eat, the more sodium you lose through urine. Potassium also helps, to ease tension in your blood vessel wall, which help, further lower blood pressure.
Potassium can be harmful in a patient with kidney disease, any condition that affects how the body handles potassium or those who take a certain medication. So the decision of whether to take excess potassium should be discussed with your doctor.
Recommended Potassium intake for an average adult is 4700mg/day fruits, vegetables are good natural sources of potassium.
Potassium is only one component of a well-rounded plan for blood pressure control and with your effort to break up with that excess salt and develop other healthy eating and lifestyle habits to control blood pressure.
So important question is, how to avoid the deleterious effect of low potassium levels. Low dietary intake of potassium accounts for less than 1.5 gm/day or 40 meq/day. Normally 80 to 90 meq/ day or 4 to 4.5 gm/day intake is recommended. Fruits, citrus especially, bananas, leafy green vegetables, lemon, coconut water, kidney beans, lentils, zucchini, mushrooms, peas, apricot are potassium-rich food. So it’s obvious that potassium-rich foods are healthy and mostly vegan. Even energy drinks, ORS solutions and intravenous fluids have a balanced amount of potassium, showing the relevance of the ion in the body.
So a healthy vegan diet would suffice for our daily requirement of potassium. The study also let us reconnect with the famous dictum, vegan diet keeping us healthy. So maybe, being vegan may be a new trend. But balance is always delicate and the fact implies here too. We need to understand the need for medical supervision before we ourselves start consuming a normal or high potassium diet. Hypertension, as a symptom, may arise from various diseases. Kidney disease, muscular diseases like dystrophies, diabetes and liver disease require special mention here. Hypertension may be a symptom in many of these diseases and potassium levels may already be raised in them. So checking with your physician before following the advice in the article, is highly recommended. Otherwise increased potassium levels may be deleterious to the health, even at times some sudden cardiac event, rare but a possibility if we inappropriately increase potassium intake. So we would like to call it a “double-edged sword”.
We would like to conclude that normal intake of potassium from a vegan diet, natural resources, has proven to reduce hypertension risk, so do a risk of stroke. But there are other factors like diabetes, uncontrolled lipids, excess of sodium intake in the diet, before mentioned medical conditions which need to be addressed. So eating a healthy vegan diet, rich in potassium is essential but with advice from your doctor.
