In: Nursing
Why does potassium affects the heart rate?
1) Potassium plays a role in every heart beat. It helps trigger your heart to squeeze blood through your body. It also help your muscles to move, your nerves to work, and your kidneys to filter blood.
The flow of potassium in and out of heart cells helps regulate your heart beat. An above normal level of potassium can interfere with proper electric signals in that muscle layer and leads to different types of heart arrhythmias.
Having too much potassium in your blood is hyperkalemia and it can be dangerous. Too much potassium in your blood cause suppretion of electrical activity of the heart and cause irregular heartbeat it may leads to heart attack.
Low level of potassium called hypokalemia. It may cause symptoms like heart palpitations and leads to serious heart condition.