If your serum potassium levels fall too low, your muscles can pay a price. Potassium plays an important part in maintaining your muscle strength, and a severe potassium deficiency can cause life-threatening results by weakening the muscles of your heart, or those that enable you to breathe and swallow.
Potassium
Potassium is an essential mineral that you need to consume daily because your body cannot produce potassium on its own. Along with sodium, potassium forms an important electrochemical gradient across cell membranes, called the "membrane potential." Maintaining the balance between sodium, which is concentrated in the fluid outside your cells, and potassium, which is concentrated inside your cells, is necessary for the normal function of both your skeletal and smooth muscles.
Skeletal Vs. Smooth Muscles
Skeletal muscles are those that you can voluntarily control, while smooth muscles are involuntary muscles necessary for proper organ function. Smooth muscles enable your heart to pump, your blood vessels to constrict and dilate, and your gastrointestinal system to push food through your intestines. Skeletal muscles allow you to move. Potassium deficiency can cause you to feel weak, but that's not the most dire consequence. When potassium levels fall, weakness in your smooth muscles can lead to heart palpitations and bloating with abdominal pain due to intestinal paralysis as your gastrointestinal system is not able to properly empty its contents.
Causes of Potassium Deficiency
Potassium deficiency rarely is caused by a lack of enough potassium in your diet, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Potassium deficiency most often results from an underlying condition that prevents the adequate absorption and utilization of potassium. This is often due to disorders that cause nutritional malabsorption, such as Crohn's disease, alcoholism or severe diarrhea and vomiting. Genetic conditions such as hypokalemic periodic paralysis also can cause potassium deficiency. Some foods, such as licorice and cola soda, have been known to result in potassium deficiency when consumed in excessive amounts. Certain drugs such as thiazide and loop diuretics, theophylline, laxatives and antacids can cause decreases in potassium levels as well.
Sources of Potassium
In severe cases of potassium deficiency, your doctor might prescribe potassium supplements, but as the University of Maryland Medical Center says, you should not take potassium supplements without a doctor's orders. Fortunately, plenty of dietary sources are rich in potassium and safe to consume. Beet greens, sweet potatoes, clams and halibut are some potassium-rich foods recommended by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
References
- Linus Pauling Institute: Potassium
- MedlinePlus: Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Health Facts -- Sodium and Potassium
- Physiology of the Kidney: Potassium Homeostasis
- "Cases Journal"; "Chronic Hypokalemia Due to Excessive Cola Consumption: A Case Report"; Clifford Packer; 2008
- "Nippon Jinzo Gakkai Shi"; "Clinical Characteristics Of Five Elderly Patients With Severe Hypokalemia Induced By Glycyrrhizin Derivatives"; T. Yamamoto et al; 2010
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