Potassium is an important mineral that your body needs to work properly. It regulates fluids and minerals in cells, including sodium. This “mineral-electrolyte” keeps fluid levels balanced in the blood vessels, muscles, intestines, and other tissues.
Your body also uses it for muscle contractions, nerve impulses, and the beating of the heart. Here are reasons why potassium is important.
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15 Benefits Of Potassium For Human Life
As potassium is necessary for good health, it’s important to get enough of it every day. Often, people don’t care about potassium because they aren’t thinking about their hearts. However, this mineral plays a huge role in keeping your heart functioning properly.
If you have heart-related problems, ask your doctor how much potassium you need to add to your diet. Here are the benefits of potassium for human life.
1. Potassium Keep Your Bones Strong
Maintaining proper potassium levels in the body is important for bone health because potassium helps keep calcium dissolved in your blood so it can be used by your bones and teeth. If you have a deficiency of potassium, calcium is more likely to be deposited in your soft tissues. This can lead to conditions like arthritis and gout.
2. Potassium Helps Control Blood Pressure
Having too much potassium in the blood is dangerous because it causes an irregular heartbeat or cardiac arrest. If you get too little potassium, on the other hand, this mineral will help control your blood pressure.
High blood pressure is dangerous if not treated, and potassium can help stabilize it.
3. Potassium Allows for Muscle Growth and Strong Muscles
Potassium helps muscles contract without wasting too much energy. If you have a deficiency of potassium, you may also have a hard time contracting or growing muscle tissue because your body can’t do it efficiently.
If you are trying to build muscle, this is an important mineral for any exercise regimen.
4. Potassium Keeps Your Reflexes Quick
Your nerves can transmit messages between your brain and body on their own, but they need the help of neurotransmitters like dopamine and adrenaline to speed up nerve impulses. These neurotransmitters are created in your nerve cells thanks to potassium, which provides the fluid inside of your neurons.
Potassium is also important for driving these neurotransmitters across synapses when it’s time to transmit a message.
Reference Video – 7 Potassium Rich Foods
5. Potassium Can Prevent Blood Clots
Potassium has an important role in the regulation of blood pressure because it helps keep your arteries and veins open. If you have too much potassium in your blood, however, this can cause problems with heart function.
Having too little potassium will only worsen the effects of sodium (salt). Sodium that is not dissolved in the fluid will be deposited into your tissues, especially your muscles. When this happens, you are at risk of blood clots forming because the liquid that your tissues need to function properly is no longer available.
6. Potassium Helps Your Muscles Contract
Muscle contractions are caused by electrical impulses along the surface of the muscle cells. These messages travel to other proteins called L-channels, which allow positively charged particles known as sodium ions to enter the cell.
This creates a chain reaction of events that trigger muscle contractions. Potassium proteins help control the flow of these potassium ions so that muscles can work properly and keep your body balanced.
7. Potassium Helps Your Nerves Communicate Better
Potassium is an electrolyte that helps your nerves and muscles work together. For example, an electrical impulse travels through your muscles via the sodium-potassium pump. This unique protein contains potassium channels that help control how long it takes for a message to get from one nerve cell to another.
If you have too much or too little potassium in your body, this can lead to problems with your nervous system.
8. Potassium Helps Keep Your Heart Rhythm Steady
For your heart to beat properly, it needs the right balance of electrolytes. One of these ions is potassium, which helps pass electrical signals between cells so that your muscle tissues can contract and relax in time with your heartbeat.
If you have too little potassium in your body, your heartbeat can become irregular. If you have too much potassium, however, this mineral can cause your heart to stop beating altogether.
9. Potassium Keeps Your Digestive Tract Regular
Potassium plays the role of the regulator in your digestive tract. This mineral helps control how fast food moves through your intestines so that waste has plenty of time to be eliminated from your body. Potassium also helps regulate the storage of glycogen that is created by your liver, which provides energy for your large intestine.
10. Potassium Helps Keep Your Energy Balanced
How you feel physically is often a barometer for how much potassium you have in your body. This mineral has an important role in many of the processes that create energy for your cells. One example is how potassium can help transport glucose, which your body then breaks down to make useable energy.
If your potassium levels are low, this can make it hard for your cells to function properly because they won’t have enough stored energy to keep everything running smoothly.
11. Potassium Helps Maintain pH Balance
Potassium can help your body maintain the proper balance of hydrogen in your blood, which is necessary for keeping your cells healthy. If you have too much or too little potassium in your bloodstream, this can alter the amount of hydrogen that’s available to function as an acid/base regulator in your body.
This ion also helps maintain the pH of other bodily fluids that are close to neutral, such as your saliva and cerebrospinal fluid. Too much or too little potassium in your body can cause problems with hydration that will put you at increased risk for many health problems
12. Potassium Helps Keep Your Muscles from Cramping
Muscle cramping is one of the most common side effects of low potassium levels. If you have too little potassium in your body, it can prevent your muscles from relaxing properly and cause them to contract involuntarily.
With continued dehydration, can result in aching or throbbing sensations that make it difficult for you to carry out your daily activities.
13. Potassium Helps Get Rid of Excess Sodium in Your Blood
Too much sodium in your body can contribute to high blood pressure, which increases your risk for heart disease or stroke. If you have too much sodium and not enough potassium, this can cause serious problems with hydration because potassium helps flush excess sodium out of your system.
14. Potassium Keeps You Hydrated
Potassium is one of the primary electrolytes that your body needs to maintain healthy fluid levels. This mineral helps keep water inside your cells so that they have adequate hydration to function properly.
Without enough potassium in your diet, you may feel tired because your cells aren’t getting the water they need and cannot carry out their many vital functions.
15. Potassium Keeps You Active
Potassium plays a role in your body’s energy metabolism. If you have too little of this important mineral, you can experience fatigue and an increased risk for chronic diseases like obesity or diabetes.
On the other hand, having too much potassium is associated with nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and even death.
Importance Of Potassium – Conclusion:
There are so many things to know about potassium, but the fact is that the human body needs this mineral to function properly. Eating a balanced diet can help you achieve healthy levels of potassium in your blood so that your cells have the water they need for optimal hydration.
If you aren’t getting enough potassium from natural sources, you can also take a supplement to assure that your cells have what they need for energy and other chemical reactions.