Are You Getting Enough Potassium?

Updated July 2026

Most of the sodium conversation is about cutting back. Potassium is the opposite: it's the mineral that works against sodium in your body, and almost none of us get enough of it. If you care about your blood pressure, potassium deserves as much attention as sodium.

What does potassium do for your heart?

It counteracts sodium and helps bring blood pressure down. Where excess sodium raises blood pressure, adequate potassium lowers it, reducing the risk of stroke and lowering overall mortality. It does more than that, too: potassium helps preserve muscle mass, protects bone density, and reduces the formation of kidney stones. Adults should get at least 4,700 mg of potassium per day, but fewer than 2% of Americans actually do.

Why the sodium-to-potassium ratio matters more than either alone.

These two minerals work in tandem, so it's the balance between them that counts. The higher your sodium-to-potassium ratio, the greater your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, a heart attack, or any cause at all. The problem is how far that ratio has flipped. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors are estimated to have taken in around 11,000 mg of potassium a day against well under 700 mg of sodium, a ratio of about 1 to 16. Today the average person gets more sodium (about 3,400 mg) than potassium (about 2,500 mg), a ratio near 1.4 to 1, essentially upside down from how our bodies were designed to run.

Where do you get more potassium?

From plants, overwhelmingly. A whole-food, plant-based diet is by far the most reliable way to raise potassium while naturally lowering sodium. Some of the richest sources:

Fish and shellfish are good sources as well.

A few important cautions.

More is not always better here. People on dialysis or with advanced kidney disease need to limit potassium, not increase it, so if you're unsure whether you should be raising your intake, check with your physician first. It's also an open question whether the potassium in salt substitutes delivers the same benefit as potassium from food, so the safest bet is always to err toward real food, not too much, mostly plants.

Two servings of Step One Foods provide about 530 mg of potassium on average, among the richer sources you can find, with little to no sodium alongside, which helps tip that all-important ratio back in the right direction. For the other half of the equation, see how much sodium is too much.

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