Why Should You Care About the Potassium Levels in Your Blood?
Potassium is an essential mineral that plays a vital role in ensuring the proper functioning of your body’s cells, tissues, and organs. Maintaining the right amount of potassium in your body is a delicate balancing act, and this responsibility falls primarily to your kidneys. Kidneys juggle your potassium intake against your potassium excretion to help regulate the amounts of this important mineral in your blood. Potassium is also an electrolyte, a substance that conducts electricity in the body. It is crucial to heart and nerve function and plays a key role in skeletal and smooth muscle contraction. But too much of this good thing is just as dangerous as too little. What is hyperkalemia? This term describes a potassium level in your blood that’s higher than normal. “Hyperkalemia is a common cause of life-threatening heart rhythm changes, or cardiac arrhythmias,” explains WebMD . “It can lead to an emergency condition called ventricular fibrillation . . .(causing) the lower parts of