handoflixue comments on Boring Advice Repository - Less Wrong

56 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 07 March 2013 04:33AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (557)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: handoflixue 08 March 2013 01:43:59AM 1 point [-]

no one has had potassium related issues on a 30 bananas a day (12,000mg) diet.

If I eat 1 banana per day, every day, I will get horrible leg cramps within a week. I really like bananas, so I've spent a lot of time testing this, although it's hardly a double-blind high-sample-size study.

Comment author: AlexSchell 08 March 2013 03:00:40AM *  2 points [-]

That's surprising. Muscle cramps are a symptom of hypokalemia (low potassium). Hyperkalemia is usually asymptomatic until you have heart beat irregularities. Also, based on the renal excretion of potassium, I would expect it doesn't accumulate much, and it would probably reach equilibrium in much less than a week, in a person with normal kidney function.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 08 March 2013 03:17:32AM 0 points [-]

To determine whether the problem with bananas is potassium, try other sources, eg, eat a potato every day. or KCl.