Posted on 04/15/2025 6:08:46 AM PDT by Red Badger
In a nutshell
Potassium can lower blood pressure, even on a salty diet. Simulations showed that increasing potassium intake significantly reduced blood pressure, even when sodium levels stayed high, with drops of up to 14 mmHg in men and 10 mmHg in women.
Men and women respond differently to potassium. The models revealed that female kidneys handle sodium differently, offering natural protection against high blood pressure, while men showed a stronger blood pressure response to dietary potassium.
Balancing potassium and sodium may matter more than cutting salt alone. The study suggests that boosting potassium-rich foods like leafy greens, beans, and sweet potatoes could be a powerful, underused strategy for managing blood pressure.
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WATERLOO, Canada — Want to lower your blood pressure? Skip the salt shaker and reach for a banana instead. A new study reveals that boosting your potassium intake might be a powerful way to combat high blood pressure.
Scientists from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that high-potassium diets can significantly reduce blood pressure, even when you’re still consuming a fair amount of salt. This study, published in the American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology, challenges what we’ve long believed about managing hypertension and suggests potassium deserves more attention in our dietary choices.
High blood pressure affects millions of people worldwide and remains the leading cause of heart disease and premature death. Its prevalence has been climbing in recent years, thanks in part to our aging population and lifestyle changes, particularly our love affair with processed foods that are typically loaded with salt but lacking in potassium.
How Potassium Fights High Blood Pressure
Using computer simulations showing hypertension scenarios, researchers found that doubling potassium intake reduced blood pressure by up to 14 mmHg in men and 10 mmHg in women. To put that in perspective, many blood pressure medications aim to reduce readings by similar amounts.
Potassium’s beneficial effects continued even when salt consumption remained high. This suggests that you might be able to partially offset the harmful effects of that salty pizza or bag of chips by making sure you’re also eating plenty of potassium-rich foods.
Instead of testing these theories on human subjects, the researchers built complex mathematical models that simulate how the body responds to different mineral intakes. These computer models captured the intricate dance between the kidneys, heart, nervous system, and hormones involved in blood pressure regulation.
It’s well known that women typically have lower blood pressure than men of the same age before menopause, and these simulations helped identify why that is the case.
The research team found that women’s reduced response to hypertension triggers, including high salt intake, appears to be largely because of the different way female kidneys transport sodium, giving women some natural protection against blood pressure spikes.
In the short term, when you consume potassium-rich foods, your digestive system sends immediate signals to your kidneys before your blood potassium levels even change. This “feedforward” system triggers increased potassium excretion in urine, helping prevent dangerous spikes in blood potassium.
Blood pressure meter and heart
Research shows incorporating more potassium into your diet can effectively lower blood pressure. (New Africa/Shutterstock) In the longer term, high potassium intake causes your kidneys to decrease sodium reabsorption in multiple parts of their filtering units. This leads to greater sodium excretion, reducing fluid volume in your blood vessels and consequently lowering blood pressure. This explains why potassium can help offset the effects of high-sodium diets: it essentially helps your body eliminate more sodium through urine.
Balancing Your Diet for Heart Health
Loading up on potassium-rich foods like sweet potatoes, spinach, avocados, and white beans could be a simple dietary approach to help keep your blood pressure in check. The ratio of potassium to sodium might matter more than your total sodium intake alone, emphasizing the importance of a balanced diet.
And, because men and women respond differently to dietary changes and potentially to blood pressure medications, doctors might need more personalized approaches when treating hypertension.
Overall, consuming more fruits and vegetables while limiting processed foods is a great first step. The potassium-rich diets our ancestors ate likely protected them from hypertension, even with relatively high salt intake, a balance that modern eating habits have increasingly disrupted.
Paper Summary
Methodology
The researchers created sex-specific computer models to simulate how sodium, potassium, and fluid balance affect blood pressure throughout the body. These models accounted for known biological differences between males and females, including kidney function, hormone levels, nervous system activity, and blood vessel responses. The models captured interactions among the kidneys, heart, digestive system, and various regulatory systems. They then ran simulations with different combinations of sodium intake, potassium intake, and various types of hypertension to see how these factors affect blood pressure differently in men versus women.
Results
The simulations showed that high sodium intake raised blood pressure in both sexes, but the effect was smaller in females. When potassium intake was doubled, blood pressure decreased significantly—by up to 14 mmHg in males and 10 mmHg in females with certain types of hypertension. Notably, higher potassium intake counteracted the blood pressure-raising effects of high sodium intake. Women’s different kidney transporter pattern appeared largely responsible for their protection against hypertension, as they reabsorb less sodium in the early parts of the kidney filtering system. High potassium intake triggered several kidney adaptations that lowered blood pressure, including reduced sodium reabsorption in both early and later portions of the kidney tubules, increasing sodium excretion.
Limitations
The study used computer models rather than actual human subjects, and had to extrapolate some sex-specific parameters from rat studies due to limited human data. The models represent normal blood pressure or mild hypertension conditions and may not apply to severe hypertension. The researchers acknowledged their representation of the hormone system involved in blood pressure regulation was simplified, potentially underestimating sex differences. Additionally, the models didn’t explicitly account for nitric oxide or oxidative stress, which show sex differences and play important roles in blood pressure regulation.
Funding and Disclosures
This research was partially funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Publication Information
The study titled “Modulation of blood pressure by dietary potassium and sodium: sex differences and modeling analysis” was authored by Melissa Stadt and Anita T. Layton from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It was published in the American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology (Volume 328, pages F406-F417) in 2025, first published online on October 24, 2024.
We eat all those on a regular basis, except Swiss chard, whatever that is...............
Bananas make me barf. True since I was a baby.
My blood pressure is fine. Don’t eat anything with salt in or on it. Don’t have a salt shaker.
Problem with eating a banana everyday is that it can raise your potassium level too much. Same thing with citrus juice. I had to stop drinking my favorite orange, banana and strawberry juice and eating bananas regularly, because my potassium level was too high in my bloodwork. Too much potassium is just as dangerous as not enough.
My problem is exactly opposite. My bloodwork showed that I was chronically low on potassium for some odd reason.......
Bananas are good for preventing and getting rid of acid-reflux.
I was taking a diuretic prescribed by my doctor for many years. He had also prescribed a potassium pill at the same time. I ended up in the hospital for three days back in 2016 with low potassium, low salt, and low magnesium. When they discharged me, they told me to stop taking both of those medications, saying too high potassium levels is just as bad as too low. They can both cause cardiac arrest. My doctor then prescribed me a different blood pressure medication, and other then being warned not to eat bananas and citrus juice regularly because they raise my potassium level too high, my blood work has been fine.
Bananas have 3 grams of fiber, help make stools softer, and are recommended for gut health.
Your body eliminates most of your potassium in your urine. You can also lose it through sweating and your stool movements. Do you go to the bathroom, or sweat a lot? I'm an old lady. I've had an irritable bladder for many years which requires me to go to the bathroom many times during the day. I'm surprised my potassium levels are always normal in the blood work I have done every 6 months. Dehydration can cause problems with those levels too. My doctor is always telling me to drink more water, but then who wants to pee even more?
The produce guy will tell any lie to keep the fruit flies away.
Cant get anything but deep solid green rock hard micro-pineapples around here any more either. I once stopped at a store and they had a big rolling grey trash can at the pineapple display and the employee was throwing away all the ones that showed any hint of yellowing. When I asked why she complained that they were no good “once they start turning color” and complained that she didnt know why they kept getting them because no one bought them.
I explained that theirs were picked too early and small so they tended to rot before ripening and therefor their customers were likely waiting for color before buying them. This person claimed that they had never seen a golden pineapple and seemed to think I was kidding claiming to have only ever eaten them green. When I told her to look for the “hint of lint on the bellybutton” she clearly thought I was a loon and rolled her bin away.
Thanks!
Be aware: high potassium
Indeed My doctor said it will increase blood pressure and oranges.
Ended them and it went down.
I wanted to buy one the other day. Northern Wisconsin so there certainly arent any fresh ones available. Went to the asian grocers to try to find a frozen one. The cheapest/lb I could find brought a cantaloupe sized one to $88.
So its not just that their isnt much call for their unusual flavor. Its also a matter of financial responsibility in relation to the family food budget, adding even a few of those a month could easily destroy the average food budget.
A while back I bought some longan that have started coming out of Florida that were really good. As I sat there eating them I thought to myself that it was really hard to believe that as many ag zones as the US covers, its hard to believe that there isnt a good place to grow jackfruit or durian.
MrsMaw was at a level where cardiology was going to put her on meds because she was about to pop but she didnt want to. Picky eater and for the most part wont eat “high potassium” foods.
After discussing it I came up with some ideas. She decided that switching to fruit smoothies with a banana and spinach for breakfast would be good. After she started seeing movement in the right direction I got her to start drinking green or hibiscus tea and since I do the cooking I try to come up with a way to put beets or winter squash into supper whenever she is home.
She went from well into stroke waiting to happen range down to the high end of normal without meds.
C.M. thanks!
Bananas and Sweet potatoes. No problem eating these.
R.B. Erred and replied to Conservative Mind instead of you!
Thanks to both of you for your medical articles!
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