Medical Understanding the Role of Potassium in Blood Pressure Regulation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Spirochete
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Blood Pressure
AI Thread Summary
Increased potassium intake is linked to lower blood volume and blood pressure primarily due to its effect on sodium excretion. The discussion highlights that potassium (K+) enhances the rate at which sodium (Na+) is excreted, which in turn reduces osmotic pressure within the blood vessels. This mechanism is not thoroughly explained in standard physiology texts, leading to confusion among learners. The Na-K pump, which moves sodium out of cells and brings potassium in, plays a crucial role in this process. The conversation also touches on the challenges of accessing relevant research articles and the frustration with vague explanations in academic literature regarding complex physiological mechanisms. Overall, the relationship between potassium intake and blood pressure is acknowledged as intricate and not fully understood in current educational resources.
Spirochete
Messages
125
Reaction score
0
I am confused about how increased potassium intake lowers blood volume. I understand that K+ is the primary intracellular cation, and Na+ is the primary extracellular one. I also know that the Na-K pump ejects 3 Na+ from the cell for every 2 K+ it brings into the cell.

My book physiology book is very vague about how this works. Anyone have an explicit explination for how this works?
 
Biology news on Phys.org
I found this article that seems relevant (I haven't read the full article yet, just scanned the abstract):
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WN4-4B3NCPD-M&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9cd76136713fee0969a58c9f181cfcc2

It looks like what potassium is doing is increasing the rate of sodium excretion, and it's really the shift in sodium that's reducing blood volume and thus blood pressure. I'm not completely sure on that though.
 
Hey thanks for looking around. I guessed that this would be something someone would know off the top of their heads, apparently it's more complicated than I'd thought. Sadly I don't have think I have access to ScienceDirect. I'll have to ask a professor whether I can access through my school.

I think you may have misread the abstract slightly, though. Were you referring to this sentence about sodium excretion?

"The fall in blood pressure was not related to urinary sodium excretion before entry to the trial or while on placebo."
 
Hmm...I think I pasted in the wrong link! I had two articles, one that referred to sodium excretion and was a more recent article, and one that was older and said it wasn't in their experiment. I think I got the older one but not the newer one if that's the quote you got from it. :confused:

This isn't even touched upon in my old books, so I'm guessing it's something added since I was in school, and I'm not finding it easy to locate research articles on it either. Since cardiovascular physiology isn't my specialty, I'd have to spend more time thinking through the whole system to try to reason through an explanation...might not do much better than you have on your own here. Maybe there's a reason the book is vague...sometimes it's because the authors don't know the mechanism either.
 
Yes that's probably my biggest pet peeve with science texts. I spend hours racking my brain trying to come up with an explination for something, finally give up and ask a professor only to learn that nobody knows the answer. Or even if the answer is just too obscure/complicated to address in the text, the author could at least acknowledge that something isn't being explained adequately.

The article you're referring to might be there somewhere, I'm trying to navigate the cumbersome, giant fonted science direct website. . .
 
I think i have an explanation, Na is responsible for the osmotic force intravascularly ( as well as interstitially) urinary sodium excretion will led to lessened osmotic pressure and lowered blood pressure.
 
Popular article referring to the BA.2 variant: Popular article: (many words, little data) https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/health/ba-2-covid-severity/index.html Preprint article referring to the BA.2 variant: Preprint article: (At 52 pages, too many words!) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1.full.pdf [edited 1hr. after posting: Added preprint Abstract] Cheers, Tom

Similar threads

Back
Top