I’ve been having some leg cramping issues that I thought a potassium suppliment might help with. May not be the cause, but it won’t hurt to take a little extra.
Anyway - I looked through the vitamin aisle at the store. 3 or 4 seperate brands of potassium suppliment - every one had 99 mg doses. The daily recommended value for potassium is 2g. The bottle lists the amount of potassium as 3% of RDA. The bottle also says to take one per day.
That seems ridiculously low. Taking one of these per day barely adds to my potassium intake at all.
I know that potassium can be lethal in relatively small doses, but 99mg is nowhere near that. From this site, it says a baked potato contains 610 mg of potassium. So if you were to eat 2 baked potatos, that’s more than 12 times the amount of potassium available in these pills and it’s not going to kill you.
I also found it a bit strange that all the different types of vitamins had exactly 99mg of potassium. Is there a law that suppliments are not allowed to be labelled for 100 or more milligrams of potassium per day?
So what’s the deal? And given that one pill a day is a drop in the bucket, could I take several spread out throughout the day safely?
IANAD but I would not take potassium supplements until you’ve spoken to your physician. Seriously. Too much potassium can harm your kidneys and I think even your heart. An accidental pottasium overdose almost killed my grandmother.
Paging Dr. Qadop The Mercotan. Can you shed some light please?
Too much potassium can stop your heart cold. It’s what they use to paralize the muscle during heart surgery, and one of the lethal injection drugs. If a person has an undiagnosed kidney insufficiency, potassium could be quite dangerous.
How common that scenario is, or how realistic the FDA limit on supplements is I wouldn’t hazard a guess
ETA medical potassium is usually measured in milliequivalents, so the 99mg might just be a conversion anomaly, otherwise I got nothing there.
It’s tough to OD on oral potassium supplements, unless you’re seriously trying to do some damage. Healthy kidneys just piss out the extra stuff. Unhealthy ones might not be able to do that, though.
IV potassium will be rapidly fatal if given too much or too fast, though.
To prevent potassium depletion in persons prone to this (those on certain diuretics or having certain salt-wasting nephropathies) 10 to 20 Meq a day are all that is needed.
How much that is depends on what type of potassium supplement you’re getting:
Potassium acetate
Potassium bicarbonate
Potassium chloride
Potassium citrate
Potassium gluconate
How many mgs those are is something I don’t know…
Frankly, leg cramping issues are infrequently a potassium issue anyway, despite what you read in the lay press.
I had severe leg cramps in the past and my doctor told me to drink about 4 ounces of Canada Dry Tonic water before going to bed. He said that the quinine in the Tonic Water helps to stop cramps. It worked very well for me. No more cramps.
My bottle of potassium gluconate here says it has 595 mg, which provides 99 mg of elemental potassium, and it says that 1 tablet provides 3% of the daily value.
I have found that 1/2 of the 99 mg potassium is enough to help my leg cramps- usually taken with a Tums EX 750 mg. If I take the full 99 mg, I end up with a metallic taste in my mouth. (“Natural alternative: 8 oz milk and a banana”-not as easy in the middle of the night but works equally quickly)
I get leg cramps at night if I have done alot of walking or if I have cut back on my carbohydrate intake. When they are really bad, they are not just calf cramps, but shin cramps and toe cramps too.
I sometimes get these deep muscle cramps in the muscles of my inner thighs. It hurts like hell. I always had heard it was either a potassium depletion issue, or dehydration. Mom wisdom was to eat a banana and/or drink a glass of milk. It seems to work, but it could just as easily be the walk to the kitchen that fixes it.
What’s the Straight Dope, doc? Are there common reasons for muscle cramps?