In this blog, we’ll explain the reasons a person might care about increasing their potassium intake, both for athletic purposes and for daily overall health.
**Image taken from krampade.com
We’ll then go over the pros and cons of the Krampade, and leave you guys with a little discount code if you want to give it a try yourself.
Potassium and Overall Health
Interestingly, there is a relationship between potassium intake and blood pressure. Without going into too much detail, the more potassium a person takes in, the lower their blood pressure (to a point, of course). Additionally, potassium supplementation can induce a decrease in blood pressure. As a scientist, this made me feel much better about this being a “causation” instead of a “correlation.” Interestingly, it is estimated that only 2% of people within the United States are meeting the daily recommended potassium intake amount of 4700 mg per day.
While we’d LOVE to get more potassium into our diet through real food sources first, this is actually rather difficult to do so. A big thanks to the “Alan Aragon Research Review” for pointing me in the direction of a great resource for potassium-rich foods. As you can see, it might be pretty hard to hit 4700 mg per day unless you really love beets and mackerel. Note that bananas, which are widely reported to be HIGH in potassium, only have about 350 mg per banana.
The Krampade site does a great job of explaining all of the connections between potassium and human health on their website.
Potassium and Athletic Performance
The major issue with low potassium and athletic performance is cramping. When we exercise, we begin to excrete potassium, not through our sweat but instead into our urine. This is especially true for high-intensity exercise (such as CrossFit). If enough potassium is excreted, this can lead to pretty extensive cramping. How can we solve this cramping?
Well, by consuming more potassium.
The problem is that to do so, you’d have to eat a TON of bananas. By comparison, one packet of Krampade, solves this problem quite quickly and inexpensively.
Personal and client experience
Overall, Krampade has a pretty great flavor. It definitely tastes salty but it’s not like drinking seawater. I started drinking one serving of their 2K product per day and overall felt as though I was performing well in and out of the gym. The major time of day when I get cramps is when I do mobility work, specifically in the bottom of my feet. I 100% ended up with less foot cramps when I was diligent about taking Krampade daily.
Outside of my personal experience, I had a few female clients that experienced bad menstrual cramps and breast tenderness before/during their period try Krampade as well. Overall, they were EXTREMELY pleased by the results with reduced cramping over that time period.
Discount code
To be honest, Krampade is extremely reasonably priced. I bought the 4 pack of all the flavors (and yes, I paid for it myself) and it cost about $36. The 4 pack has lasted me several months so the day-to-day value is quite high. That said, if you need another incentive to give Krampade a try, use the code M2PN10 to knock a little bit more off the price.