So if you eat a meal with 1200mg of salt, then eat a bunch of fruit containing 500mg of potassium. How much of that salt cancels out because of the potassium?
Is there a limit to how much potassium can help?
Out of curiosity, what are you trying to “cancel” from salt? I’ve never heard about potassium canceling salt but I suppose you could google it just like me :)
Something that in my opinion that can help with salt is to go get sweaty. Go workout and you’ll get more benefits than just canceling the salt. Science says you lost salt too, but you don’t want to lose too much. So workout then feel good about eating a nice meal when you cool down. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26841436/
https://www.healthyfood.com/ask-the-experts/the-sodium-potassium-balancing-act/
>The INTERSALT study analysed urinary excretion of sodium and potassium (as a measure of intakes) as well as blood pressure from over 10,000 adults aged between 20 to 59 years in 32 countries around the world. Analysis from this study published in 1988 reported that: higher potassium intakes were associated with lower blood pressure, and higher sodium intakes were related to an increase in blood pressure with age. The report also found that the sodium to potassium ratio to blood pressure followed a similar pattern to that of sodium, but the association was actually stronger and more consistent than for sodium by itself. In other words, keeping the sodium to potassium ratio low can be even more beneficial than just lowering our sodium alone.
>Since this study many other population studies have confirmed the relationship between the prevalence of high blood pressure or risk of stroke and potassium intakes. A 2009 study from the Trials of Hypertension Prevention Collaborative Group also found the sodium to potassium ratio was more strongly associated with CVD risk than sodium or potassium by themselves. The ideal ratio of sodium to potassium intake is roughly 1:3 — that is, potassium intake would ideally be around three times our sodium intake.
So basically, you’re not going to cancel out the effects of a high-sodium diet with a high-potassium intake, but lowering sodium intake and increasing potassium intake has health benefits.
If you read about sodium pottasium transporting. They work at a 3 sodium to 2 pottasium ratio. That can give you a fair estimate. But the other posts are correct eating a high sodium and high pottasium diet is although technically better then the alternative of just a high sodium diet. It is still not good for your health cause it does not work like simple maths. If you are talking about a one time deal. Then eating more pottasium will of set the sodium. Keep that diet up and unless you are really active/have good genes you will end up with high blood pressure and other problems.
Heads up, this is going to be a really long explanation. Scroll all the way down if you want the short answer.
Everyone here keeps mentioning the sodium-potassium pump, but the cells in your body are much more complicated than that. First of all, the potassium pump is meant to basically move sodium back into your cells and potassium out so that your cells continue to have a concentration gradient so that it can use it as a way to generate voltage. It does not care about how much sodium is in our outside of your cells. It does not care about potassium either.
The more important concept is maintaining osmolality and making sure the concentration gradient doesn’t shrink or grow too much. Your cells will be at “equilibrium” at around -70 mV and will try to revert to that voltage depending on what type of cell it is and what its purpose is. You have to consider the effects of high sodium in your serum (hypernatremia). If you have a high concentration of sodium outside of your cells (for example, in the serum), it makes a huge concentration gradient which will cause water from inside cells to move out into the serum to change the osmolality in the serum. That causes your cells to shrink in size which may make metabolic processes unlikely to happen because cellular processes require specific environments in order to work. Also, because now you have all this extra fluid in the serum, it causes an increase in pressure within your vascular which leads to something called hypertension (high blood pressure). Hypertension in its early stages may not cause any symptoms. However, it doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. With high pressures in your vasculature, it can cause kidney damage, stroke, vision changes/loss, etc.
High levels of potassium can be dangerous too. It’s not common for people to get high levels of potassium in their serum due to eating too many vegetables or fruit with potassium in them. But if you start dosing yourself with over-the-counter potassium supplements when you aren’t deficient in it (check with a blood draw), you can actually cause an excess of potassium (hyperkalemia). Hyperkalemia is dangerous because it can lead to changes in your EKG (electrical activity of the heart) which may progress to potentially fatal abnormal heart rhythms. Torsades de Pointes is the name of an abnormal EKG finding; you will NOT feel good if you are in that rhythm. But more importantly, you may progress from Torsades to another arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation. If you do not know, if you’re in ventricular fibrillation, you would be considered to be in cardiac arrest. That means your heart is not working correctly and will not be able to pump enough oxygenated blood throughout your body but most importantly to your brain. No oxygen to brain for more than 10 minutes=brain death. You would need defibrillation, heart meds, oxygen supplementation (usually through intubation), and CPR.
TL;DR NO, potassium intake DOES NOT cancel out sodium intake. An excess of anything is never good. Increased sodium in your blood leads to hypertension (high blood pressure). Increased potassium levels in your blood can lead to FATAL OUTCOMES. AVOID TAKING POTASSIUM SUPPLEMENTS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A TRUE DEFICIENCY IN POTASSIUM THAT IS VERIFIED WITH A LAB TEST. Your heart may stop working correctly and be in ventricular fibrillation (cardiac arrest), and you won’t be able to get enough oxygen to your brain which can lead to brain death. Only treatment for ventricular fibrillation is multiple rounds of CPR, defibrillation (shocking your heart), heart meds, and oxygen supplementation (may include intubation).