Medical and Biological Uses
- A nutritional source of potassium is keeping plants healthy
- Potassium has lots of differents foods that contain it such as; baked potatoes, avacadoes, yogurt, and mushrooms
- Potassium's reactions are reactive violently in oxygen and water in air
- Potassium compounds emit a lilac or violet flame color when burned.
- Low potassium level can cause hypokalemia
- Hypokalemia is a metabolic disorder that occurs when the level of potassium in the blood drops too low
- Supplements of potassium in medicine are most widely used in conjunction with loop diuretics and thiazides, classes of diuretics that rid the body of sodium and water, but have the side-effect of also causing potassium loss in urine
- Loop diuretics are diuretics(any substance that promotes the production of urine) that act on the ascending loop of Henle in the kidney
- Thiazides is type of molecule and a class of diuretics
- Potassium salts are also available in tablets or capsules, which for therapeutic purposes are formulated to allow potassium to leach slowly out of a matrix, as very high concentrations of potassium ion can kill tissue.
- Potassium is essential to life, and non-toxic
- Potassium is a mineral (electrolyte) in the body. Almost 98% of potassium is found inside the cells. Small changes in the level of potassium that is present outside the cells can have severe effects on the heart, nerves, and muscles.
- Potassium is the eighth or ninth most common element by mass (0.2%) in the human body, so that a 60 kg adult contains a total of about 120 g of potassium.