Potassium is a mineral found in many foods and supplements. But, you would never find pure potassium in a health food store or pharmacy – it’s a highly reactive metal that bursts into flame when exposed to water. The potassium you eat in common or fortified foods, or take as a supplement, is composed of potassium atoms bound to other nonmetallic substances – less exciting perhaps, but chemically stable.
Potassium is one of the major electrolytes in your body, along with sodium and chloride. Potassium and sodium work together like a molecular seesaw: when the level of one goes up, the other goes down. All together, these three dissolved minerals play an important chemical role in every function of your body. The most common use of potassium supplements is to make up for potassium depletion caused by diuretic drugs. These medications are often used to help regulate blood pressure, but by depleting the body of potassium they may inadvertently make blood pressure harder to control.
Potassium is an essential mineral that we get from many common foods. Minimum daily requirements of potassium for children range from 1,000 to 2,300 mg. True potassium deficiencies are rare – existing in cases of prolonged vomiting or diarrhea, or with the use of diuretic drugs. But potassium deficiency is, in a sense, common – at least when compared to the amount of sodium we receive in our diets. It’s probably healthy to take in at least five times as much potassium as sodium (and perhaps 50 to 100 times as much), but the standard American diet contains twice as much sodium as potassium. Taking extra potassium may be a good idea – even just to balance the excessive amounts of sodium we consume.
Bananas, orange juice, potatoes, avocados, lima beans, cantaloupes, peaches, tomatoes, flounder, salmon, and cod all contain more than 300 mg of potassium per serving. Other good sources include chicken, meat and various other fruits, vegetables and fish. Over-the-counter potassium supplements typically contain 99 mg of potassium per tablet. There is some evidence that, of the different forms of potassium supplements, potassium citrate may be most helpful for those with high blood pressure.
Research indicates that when taking potassium, it is important to make sure you get enough magnesium. It might be wise to take extra vitamin B12 as well.
Potassium and vitamin B12 are just two of the many nutrients that Fortitech can incorporate into a nutrient premix, custom-blended for your particular needs. Utilizing either of them in a premix requires the product formulator to take several factors into account during the product development stage. The challenges associated with premix formulations that incorporate multiple nutrients include the type of finished product as well as the desired taste, flavor and color of the finished product, solubility, bioavailability, pH level, safety/toxicity, interactions among various ingredients and bioavailability and stability of the individual ingredients. Among the many factors that can contribute to minimizing interactions, a manufacturer can separate vitamins and minerals into two individual premixes, or encapsulate certain vitamins or minerals or utilize a particular form of a specific ingredient. For example, iodine’s ingredient form may be potassium iodide, magnesium’s may be magnesium phosphate, zinc’s may be zinc oxide, copper may be copper gluconate and calcium’s could possibly be tricalcium phosphate, dependent upon what other ingredients are utilized in the premix.
