The potassium to sodium ratio is something I've seen a couple people on the forum ask about. The general consensus seems to be sodium requirements tend to be a more important focus since potassium levels are maintained more closely by the body and sodium ingestion than by exogenous potassium intake. And while this all has made sense to me, my experience with eating a high potassium diet says there's most certainly a ratio to keep in mind and that like most things too much exogenous potassium ingestion even from whole natural food can be a bad thing.
According to Cronometer for the last 3 weeks I've gotten an average of 7-8grams of potassium that's right, grams. My diet consists of potatoes, milk, orange juice, mangoes, papayas, apples, watermelon, white rice, eggs, beef, lamb liver, spinach, pork tenderloin, gelatin, Celtic salt, small amounts of organic ketchup, mushrooms, carrots, Gerolsteiner mineral water, vitaminE, calcium carbonate, Zinc picolinate, k2(mk4), occasional coconut oil tortilla chips, about 6 shots of espresso a day, Hydrogenated coconut oil, maple syrup, blueberries, and grassfed butter....I mentioned everything I eat and supplement so you know the parameters in which I've experienced things lol.
I also had been getting in about 15-1800mg of sodium a day total. Over the last couple weeks I've gotten multiple dizzy spells. It started during a workout and persisted until I realized I had signs of low bp so I quickly put a pinch of Celtic salt in my mouth and let it dissolve and just like that the dizziness disappeared. It happened a couple more times after that followed by a slight case of diarrhea in the evening and each time I would grab some salt and knock it back only to have the symptoms disappear. I started to realize I was waking up in the morning craving salt, normally I crave sugary items like orange juice or an apple. I started salting my orange juice and my hands would go cold immediately. "Too much adrenaline" I thought. But why? I eat plenty of carbs, more than most could handle without compromising other macros or gaining weight. Potassium knocking down my sodium? I had never heard of potassium actually interfering with sodium (I'm still new to biochem lol) but I figured it was plausible since I was having signs of hypotension and the only thing that had changed was adding an extra 8oz of oj to my daily intake.
I've now lowered my potassium intake to 5-6g a day through diet and during the dizzy spells getting in a daily total of 3-4g of sodium seemed to quell the dizziness and sporadic diarrhea. So I believe a 1:2 ratio of sodium:potassium is optimal. Anything under half the amount of potassium for sodium intake could give you hypotension and diarrhea like I experienced and anything over 21mg/lb of bodyweight in potassium per day may be harmful since on one of those days of 8g of potassium (24.5mg/lb of bodyweight for me) I ingested 4g of sodium over the course of the day to try to stop the bad effects (which it did) but I also got a high pitched tennitus which signifies high bp. That tells me there a diminishing point of return for potassium ingestion and sodium in relation to one another.
Hope this helps others have more of a grasp on the elusive potassium:sodium ratio!
According to Cronometer for the last 3 weeks I've gotten an average of 7-8grams of potassium that's right, grams. My diet consists of potatoes, milk, orange juice, mangoes, papayas, apples, watermelon, white rice, eggs, beef, lamb liver, spinach, pork tenderloin, gelatin, Celtic salt, small amounts of organic ketchup, mushrooms, carrots, Gerolsteiner mineral water, vitaminE, calcium carbonate, Zinc picolinate, k2(mk4), occasional coconut oil tortilla chips, about 6 shots of espresso a day, Hydrogenated coconut oil, maple syrup, blueberries, and grassfed butter....I mentioned everything I eat and supplement so you know the parameters in which I've experienced things lol.
I also had been getting in about 15-1800mg of sodium a day total. Over the last couple weeks I've gotten multiple dizzy spells. It started during a workout and persisted until I realized I had signs of low bp so I quickly put a pinch of Celtic salt in my mouth and let it dissolve and just like that the dizziness disappeared. It happened a couple more times after that followed by a slight case of diarrhea in the evening and each time I would grab some salt and knock it back only to have the symptoms disappear. I started to realize I was waking up in the morning craving salt, normally I crave sugary items like orange juice or an apple. I started salting my orange juice and my hands would go cold immediately. "Too much adrenaline" I thought. But why? I eat plenty of carbs, more than most could handle without compromising other macros or gaining weight. Potassium knocking down my sodium? I had never heard of potassium actually interfering with sodium (I'm still new to biochem lol) but I figured it was plausible since I was having signs of hypotension and the only thing that had changed was adding an extra 8oz of oj to my daily intake.
I've now lowered my potassium intake to 5-6g a day through diet and during the dizzy spells getting in a daily total of 3-4g of sodium seemed to quell the dizziness and sporadic diarrhea. So I believe a 1:2 ratio of sodium:potassium is optimal. Anything under half the amount of potassium for sodium intake could give you hypotension and diarrhea like I experienced and anything over 21mg/lb of bodyweight in potassium per day may be harmful since on one of those days of 8g of potassium (24.5mg/lb of bodyweight for me) I ingested 4g of sodium over the course of the day to try to stop the bad effects (which it did) but I also got a high pitched tennitus which signifies high bp. That tells me there a diminishing point of return for potassium ingestion and sodium in relation to one another.
Hope this helps others have more of a grasp on the elusive potassium:sodium ratio!
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