Want to know more about potassium and its overall health benefits? Well, if you are potassium-deficient, your health is in big trouble as you’re likely to develop certain health conditions.
So sit back, relax and read this short but informative article to learn more about this highly essential mineral.
What is Potassium?
As a mineral, potassium is an essential electrolyte found in various foods that you often eat in a daily basis.
And as an electrolyte, potassium’s role is to conduct electrical signals throughout the body, which in turn provides essential body functions (1).
People who take additional potassium is called hypokalemia (potassium deficiency) where the levels of this mineral falls below critical range.
And why you should care to have adequate levels of this mineral? Well, because this helps with:
- Regulating blood pressure
- Normal water balance
- Relaxes muscle contractions
- Improves nerve impulses
- Aids digestion
- Improves heart rhythm
- pH balance (both acidity and alkalinity)
It is important for you to know that your body doesn’t produce this mineral naturally. With that said, it is highly essential that you know the best food sources that contains high amounts of potassium.
While having too low potassium levels can lead to serious health issues, taking too much of this mineral can also lead to health problems as well.
Your kidneys play an important role in maintaining healthy levels of potassium because they remove excess amounts of this mineral through urine.
Sources of Potassium
It is a good thing that most of the foods you eat today contain potassium. Some of them are even high in this mineral. So if you want to increase your potassium levels, pick the best foods to add to your daily diet.
Fresh fruits that you should take include:
- Bananas
- Oranges
- Cantaloupe
- Honeydew
- Kiwi
- Pineapples
- Apricots
- Grapefruit
Vegetables that you should include in your diet include:
- Leafy greens
- Carrots
- Potatoes
- Mushrooms
- Peas
- Cucumbers
- Broccoli
- Zucchini
Fresh fruit juices that contain high levels of potassium include:
- Orange juice
- Pineapple juice
- Prune juice
- Apricot juice
- Grapefruit juice
- Tomato juice
Some fish also contain this mineral such as:
- Halibut
- Tuna
- Rockfish
- Cod
- Trout
Your favorite nuts, seeds, beans and legumes also provide some amounts of this mineral.
This include lima beans, pinto, kidney beans, soybeans, lentils, pistachios, almonds, squash seeds, flax seeds, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, watermelon seeds, hemp seeds and many others.
If you love lean meats, then choose chicken breast, lean beef and turkey meat also provide decent amounts of potassium.
You can take potassium supplements too if you think that you have low potassium intake from your diet. Choose the best potassium brand supplement here at Amazon.com.
What does Potassium Do for Your Body?
As mentioned above, this mineral is an electrolyte due to its reactive properties in water. When dissolved in the body, it produces positive charge ions.
As a conductor of electricity inside your body, it provides highly important processes throughout the body.
First, potassium helps regulate fluid balance by affecting both your cell’s intracellular fluid (ICF) and extracellular fluid (ECF).
In Layman’s term, this mineral helps in maintaining equal balance of electrolytes outside and inside your cells (2).
Next benefit is for your nervous system. Since this mineral plays an important role in sending nerve signals or impulses, it is quite beneficial for your heart health, muscle contractions and reflexes and many others.
And alternative the voltage of nerve cells can greatly affect both low and high blood levels, which is the reason why this mineral is quite important in regulating blood pressure (3).
And when your blood pressure is low or high, it can also affect your heartbeat. This can lead to various cardiovascular health issues such as heart attack, heart arrhythmia, and many others.
That’s why potassium is highly recommended to people with heart problems.
Here are the summary of potassium’s health benefits:
- Protects against stroke
- Reduces blood pressure
- Prevents kidney stones
- Prevents osteoporosis
- Reduces water retention
- Reduces muscle contraction
Conclusion
There you have it! These are the food sources that are highly rich in potassium, that you should immediately add to your daily diet.
This mineral can greatly help prevent chronic diseases such as heart disease, osteoporosis, nerve damage and many others. So it is important that your talk to your doctor to learn more about this mineral.
That’s it for today! See you on my next blog!
References:
Potassium
by: Moushumi Sur, and Shamin Mohiuddin
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539791/
Physiology of Fluid Balance
by: Iain Campbell
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1472029909002215
Extracellular Potassium Homeostasis: Insights from Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis
by: Chih-Jen Cheng, Elizabeth Kuo, and Chou-Long Huang
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4131448/
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