Senior citizens who struggle to against high blood pressure may want to add more potassium to their diet to treat their condition.
An online news provider catered to senior citizen issues cites a study that found potassium has the ability to lower sodium levels in people, which can also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Through various urine samples taken from various trials, researchers were able to examine the effects of sodium and potassium in the human body.
Researchers found people with the highest sodium-to-potassium ratio in their urine were 50 percent less likely to experience heart disease when compared to those with lower ratios.
"There isn’t as much focus on potassium, but potassium seems to be effective in lowering blood pressure and the combination of a higher intake of potassium and lower consumption of sodium seems to be more effective than either on its own in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease," Dr Paul Whelton, senior author of the study, said.
Previous studies replied on people’s memory of what foods they ate to estimate their level of sodium consumption. Whelton called this new study a "quantum leap in the quality of the data compared to what we have had before."
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