The Connection Between Potassium Levels and Cranberry Juice

Several years ago my daughter – who was fifteen at the time – was having a problem with dizzy spells. These were usually occurring when she was playing volleyball, and at one point got to where everything went black for a moment. Needless to say, I took her to the doctor. The first they checked was her heart, going so far as to do an EKG on her. The idea of there being something wrong with her heart didn’t do much for MY heart, I have to tell you. They did not find anything abnormal, so they did some blood tests and sent us home with the advise that she drink plenty of water during volleyball – something that she had not been real good about.

A few days later, the clinic calls to tell me that her potassium was too high, and that they would like to recheck her in a week. It turns out that potassium, while necessary for good health to a point, can have adverse effects when it is too high. We went through her diet, trying to pinpoint where she would be getting too much potassium, and really could not come up with anything that would lead to too much potassium in her system. But we cut out what we could that contained the mineral and went back in a week – and her potassium was still too high. For the next week we really cut out every conceivable thing that could be effecting her potassium level – STILL too high.

So my mother – a big proponent of natural remedies – suggested that she drink a couple of glasses of cranberry juice a day for the next week and see what happened. Potassium is processed through the kidneys, and cranberry juice is supposed to be good for cleansing the kidneys. Now cranberry juice happens to contain a small amount of potassium, but since cutting down her potassium intake did not seem to be making a difference anyway, we decided to give it a try. This was not particularly pleasant for my daughter, because she does not like cranberry juice, but she did it anyway. I’ll be darned if the next trip to the doctor didn’t show that her potassium level had gone back down into the safety zone. When I mentioned what we had tried to the doctor, he just shrugged and said, ‘anything’s possible’. Got to love a helpful doctor.

Did the cranberry juice actually cause her potassium level to get back to normal? Well, she was tested three weeks in a row and that potassium level did not budge, despite cutting out everything in her diet that had potassium in it. After a week of drinking cranberry juice, it fell back into the safety zone. And, may I add, she no longer had the dizzy spells. If you are having problems with potassium, and are not allergic to cranberry juice, it just might be worth a try. No guarantees, though.