Overview
Your kidneys perform the essential work of keeping your blood clean and chemically balanced. The most common causes of chronic damage to the kidneys are diabetes and high blood pressure. When your kidneys become damaged, they become less efficient at filtering the blood and excess amounts of minerals, such assodium, phosphorus and potassium, which build up in the bloodstream. If your blood potassium level gets too high, you will need to decrease your dietary potassium intake.
About Potassium
Potassium is a mineral that assists in muscle contraction, maintaining fluid and electrolyte balance in body cells, sending nerve impulses, and releasing energy from protein, fat and carbohydrate during metabolism. Potassium lowers blood pressure levels and decreases the effect of sodium on blood pressure. Because of these benefits, you do not need to restrict dietary potassium until your blood potassium levels get too high.
Hyperkalemia
Healthy kidneys measure potassium in the blood and remove excess amounts through the urine. However, as kidney damage progresses, your kidneys may not remove excess amounts, allowing potassium to build up in the bloodstream. Certain medications also decrease the amount of potassium that the kidneys remove. High blood potassium is known as hyperkalemia. A normal blood level is 3.5 to 5.0 mEq/L. If your blood level gets above 5.0 mEq/L, you need to reduce your intake of high potassium foods. You may not feel symptoms when you have hyperkalemia. However, if you experience irregular heartbeat, nausea, muscle fatigue, weakness or a low, weak or absent pulse, you should go to the emergency room or call 911. Severe hyperkalemia can cause arrhythmias and heart attack.
Reducing Dietary Potassium
To reduce your dietary intake of potassium, choose foods that are low in potassium and avoid or have only very small portions of foods that are high in potassium. Use herbs and spices in cooking and at the table. Most salt substitutes contain potassium so you should not use them. Also, limit packaged foods with potassium chloride on the ingredient list. Potassium chloride can be used in place of sodium in "low salt" products. Drain canned fruits and vegetables before eating to remove potassium. Leaching helps decrease the potassium content of vegetables. To leach, slice and soak vegetables overnight in water, then drain and boil them in fresh new water.
Low Potassium Foods
Choose fruits that are lower in potassium such as apples, canned apricots or apricot nectar, berries, cranberry juice, fruit cocktail, grapes and grape juice, grapefruit and grapefruit juice, honeydew melon, lemons, limes, mangoes, papayas, pears, peaches, plums, pineapple, rhubarb, tangerines and watermelon. Lower-potassium vegetables include alfalfa sprouts, bell peppers, canned bamboo shoots, fresh broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, raw celery and onions, corn, cucumber, eggplant, green beans, kale, lettuce, fresh mushrooms, okra, and cooked summer squash. Choose white rice, white bread and pasta, cooked rice and wheat cereals and rice milk.
High Potassium Foods
Avoid or eat only a very small portion of high potassium foods. High potassium fruits include fresh apricots, bananas, cantaloupe, dates, nectarines, kiwi, prunes and prune juice, oranges and orange juice and raisins. High potassium vegetables include acorn and butternut squash, avocado, baked beans, cooked broccoli, cooked Brussels sprouts, chard, chili peppers, greens, cooked mushrooms, potatoes, pumpkin, cooked spinach, split peas, lentils and beans, sweet potatoes and yams, vegetable juices, tomatoes and tomato sauce. Other high potassium foods include brown and wild rice, whole wheat bread and pasta, bran cereals, milk and yogurt.
source: livestronge.com
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