
What Is the Connection Between Diabetes and Potassium?
Usually, your body processes the food you eat and turns it into a sugar called glucose. Your body uses glucose for energy. Insulin is a hormone your pancreas produces. Your body uses the insulin to help move glucose into cells throughout your body. If you have diabetes, your body is unable to produce or use insulin efficiently.
Type 1 diabetes isn’t preventable, but you can prevent type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, or adult-onset diabetes, usually occurs in people ages 35 and older.
Potassium is an electrolyte and mineral that helps keep your bodily fluids at the proper level. Your body can do the following if your fluids are in check:
contract your muscles without pain
keep your heart beating correctly
keep your brain functioning at its highest capability
If you don’t maintain the right level of potassium, you can experience a variety of symptom that include simple muscle cramps to more serious conditions, such as seizures. According to recent research, there may be a link between type 2 diabetes and low potassium levels.
Although people recognize that potassium affects diabetes, research is ongoing to determine why this may happen.
Researchers in one study at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine linked low levels of potassium with high levels of insulin and glucose in people who were otherwise healthy. Low levels of potassium with high levels of insulin and glucose are both traits doctors associate with diabetes.
One 2011 study found that people taking thiazides to treat high blood pressure experienced a loss of electrolytes, such as potassium. Researchers note
Continue
reading