Increase potassium from food
More vegetables, legumes, potatoes and fruit. Lowers blood pressure, especially when sodium intake is high.
Order of magnitude
Eat potassium-rich food, not a supplement, while the kidney is unremarkable.
This is the one lever in the database with a genuine safety ceiling.
Effects in detail
Each row is a directed edge from our database, with range, latency, evidence grade and the condition under which it applies at all.
| Marker | Effect | Latency | Mode of action | Outcome | Evidence | Condition | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diastolic blood pressure | helps. Lowers Direction known, size not established A dose-response meta-analysis of 32 randomised trials found a U-shaped relationship between potassium intake and blood pressure, with the benefit concentrated at modest increases and a reversal at high ones. No effect size is entered because the source gives a dose-response shape rather than a single pooled mmHg estimate. | 4–4 weeks | chronic | unclear | Evidence grade B | applies regardless of the starting value | |
| Systolic blood pressure | helps. Lowers Direction known, size not established A dose-response meta-analysis of 32 randomised trials found a U-shaped relationship between potassium intake and blood pressure, with the benefit concentrated at modest increases and a reversal at high ones. No effect size is entered because the source gives a dose-response shape rather than a single pooled mmHg estimate. | 4–4 weeks | chronic | unclear | Evidence grade B | applies regardless of the starting value |
What this measure costs
Counteracting effects of the same measure.
No counteracting effect is on file for this measure. That does not mean there is none, only that we found no defensible edge.
Moves without implying progress
Informational or no established effect: the marker moves or was checked, and that is not progress.
| Marker | Effect | Latency | Mode of action | Outcome | Evidence | Condition | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creatinine | checked, nothing happens. No established effect Potassium chloride supplementation raised urinary potassium excretion from 72 to 107 mmol/day and plasma potassium from 4.3 to 4.7 mmol/L, and left blood pressure, eGFR and albuminuria unchanged. A no-effect row on the kidney marker that must be read together with the safety finding in the same trial: 11 % of participants developed hyperkalaemia. | not specified | chronic | unclear | Evidence grade C | applies regardless of the starting value |
Sources
Full details of every study the rows above rely on.
Potassium Intake and Blood Pressure: A Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Filippini et al. · Journal of the American Heart Association · 2020 · Meta-analysis
Effects of Short-Term Potassium Chloride Supplementation in Patients with CKD
Gritter et al. · Journal of the American Society of Nephrology · 2022 · Randomised trial