It is my contention that potassium deficiency is either causing, or greatly making worse, rheumatoid arthritis, which I will shorten to "arthritis" in these articles. In assessing the possibility of this hypothesis people have little to go on. Virtually any textbook in the past would devote no more than a paragraph to potassium which would state that potassium is never deficient in the diet, or give one exception to the dozen or more known, or in some only under clinical conditions.
The reason for this careless treatment of potassium is probably because potassium is present in almost all foods as grown in large quantities. Professionals think about it as if it were air or water. However even air and water can be deficient and if voluminous texts are not written about these deficiencies, it is because both deficiencies can be detected by our senses. Extremely powerful emotions and instincts impel people to correct these deficiencies immediately and at any cost. Potassium is odorless, colorless, and, in the usual concentrations, tasteless. There is no way to detect a deficiency and cell content can not even easily be assessed in the body by modern analytical procedures. Whole body cell content is virtually "invisible".
There is not any indication in the literature that potassium has ever been tried by scientists as an arthritis corrective. A rather exhaustive search of the medical literature has failed to disclose any experiment. This includes Exerpta Medica 1947 to 1974, and a computer search by the Central Library of the American Medical Association from 1965 on back. In addition no search of mine since has revealed an experiment.
I will discuss potassium physiology and nutrition and what can be done to remove an actual deficiency and thus heal any tissue which has not actually been destroyed. Please keep in mind, though, that potassium ramifies through every cell and process in the body, has no storage, and has a dangerous dependence on its precise control for nerve impulse transmission. This makes it a mineral to be cautious about. In particular I recommend getting as much as possible from food. Even food requires some care because it has a wide range of concentrations. You must take responsibility for your own intake and I assume no liability for the correctness of advice in this article. You use this information at your own risk.
Getting potassium from food is reasonably safe for normal people with reasonably sound kidneys. Even if you doubt my thesis of a connection between arthritis and potassium, you have nothing to lose by getting all the potassium that was originally in your food. It will even taste better. It will, in addition, help protect you from potassium's known link to heart disease. As the 12th century physician Maimonides expressed it: "A doctor should begin with simple treatments, trying to cure by diet before he administers drugs. No illness that can be treated by diet should be treated by any other means" or as Hippocrates expressed it in 460 - 377BC "If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health."
Anything a doctor or dietitian can learn about nutrition, you can also. If you do not know the meaning of a word in these articles, for a definition click on http://www.m-w.com (Mirriam-Webster), - or a medical encyclopedia or better a search for abstracts of journal references, "Gateway". For those which have abstracts available, click on "expand" or for definitions click on "find terms" may do for unknown words.
