How much potassium supplement?

After years of vagal type AFIB coming on during my sleep I have had one episode of AFIB that came on after dinner and two episodes of PVC's coming on after or during a meal. I have been taking 500mg TAURINE twice a day and 200mg MAGNESIUM GLYCINATE twice a day---both of these with breakfast and dinner. I see that potassium is being used as a supplement or in low sodium V8. Please comment or refer me to a relevant post. Thanks much, Tom Hopkins

Hello Tom Hopkins. The way to tell how much K to suppplement is to find out how much K your present daily diet provides and then to supplement either by eating more potassium [K] containing foods or by consuming enough of some K supplement to bring your level of intake up to what our government recommends. By no coincidence at all, that turns out to be almost exactly the amount that experimenters posting here have found to be sufficient in keeping afib episodes away. Use one of the free online nutrient calculators like the one at

www.fitday.com

for a few days to a few weeks, until you are pretty sure how much potassium your usual everyday foods contain, and compare that to the 4700 mg our government advises.

Incidentally, is that amount of magnesium the most your gut will tolerate without diarrhea? Add to your present twice a day schedule by adding one tablet more each day until you find out how much it takes to give you diarrhea, then reduce that amount by one tablet each day until you find a dose that makes for one or 2 soft bowel movements a day, but no liquid diarrhea. This amount is different for each individual person and is called the bowel tolerance amount.

PeggyM

Peggy,

I took one 200mg capsule of magnesium last night and I had pretty bad diarrhea that night. Should I scale back to 100mg? (cut the pill in half?) Could this mean I'm already getting enough mag daily? I'm 35 years old, so on the younger side of a fibbers

Will I eventually be able to ramp up the mag intake? or will I be stuck at 100mg forever? The problem is I have a very bad GI tract due to years of not knowing I had a gluten allergy. 10+ years of daily gluten :/

-Eric

Thanks Peggy! Now my question is: What kind of K supplement works best, powder or pills? I can work on the magnesium dosage also. Tom

Eric - you should probably consider a plan to heal your gut lining if you didn't begin that protocol once you learned about your gluten sensitivity. Healing the gut is the first order of business regardless of what the ailment is. Check these links and send me a PM after you've waded through that if you need clarification on any of the points.

Jackie

[www.afibbers.org]
[www.afibbers.org]