Healthy Potassium Intake for PKD Patients

2014-07-31 07:10

How much potassium should PKD patients take in their daily life? What what is the healthy potassium intake for PKD patients? As we know, for PKD patients, they should have many limitations in their daily diet, and the potassium limitation is an common one, so PKD patients should know exactly how much potassium they can take in their diet, which will be helpful for their illness condition.

What is the normal potassium level in blood?

Potassium is a kind of electrolyte in blood, which can help regulate the heart beating and lowering the blood pressure. And the normal potassium level in blood is 3.5-5.0 mg/dl. As we know, healthy kidneys have the function of regulating the electrolyte balance in blood. However, when the kidneys are damaged, it will fail to work well, and then patients will have imbalance in electrolyte. And the high potassium level is a common one in kidney disease patients, so PKD patients are often recommended to keep a low potassium diet.

How much potassium should PKD patients take in their daily diet?

As we know, PKD is a kind of progressive disease. In early stage of PKD, the kidneys can still work well, and it can still keep the electrolyte balance, so PKD patients will have normal potassium level in blood. However, PKD patients also need to take proper amount of potassium in their daily diet, which can help lower the kidney burden and protect the kidney function. The recommended potassium level for PKD patients in early stage is to take 4.7 g each day.

However, with the increase and enlargement of kidney cysts, patients will finally have kidney damage, and they fill suffer from a low kidney function. In this condition, they will have high potassium level in blood, so they need to limit the potassium intake. And the suggested amount of potassium intake is 1.5-2.5 g each day.

Since most of the fruits are high in potassium, so PKD patients need to choose the proper fruits and avoid the high potassium fruits such as oranges, banana, etc. And PKD patients should follow a well planed diet, which can help slow down the progression of kidney failure.

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