NOW Foods Supplements, Potassium Gluconate Pure Powder 175 mg, Essential Mineral*, 1-Pound

Easy to use, has no taste.

Halfway thru the bottle, my blood pressure has lowered from 172/105 to average of 130/80. Of course there are other factors as well... you need exercise, etc.... I take almost double the recommended dosage but I'm also 200lbs and spend 4 hours a day lifting weights.I got the potassium for leg cramping and to help with the blood pressure. I recommend their calcium/magnesium powder as potassium will not work as effective if your magnesium is deficient. Heres know I take mine:1 large G2 Gatorade emptied (divided equally) into 3 water bottles. I Put a scoop of potassium in each bottle, a scoop of magnesium/calcium in 1 of the bottles along with BCAAs. (You don't need this unless u bodybuilding). Then i fill the bottles up with the water that was in them.I take all 3 bottles to the gym. Within 1 week (daily drinking all three (4 days a week) ... no more hamstring cramps!! Blood pressure down to NORMAL with NO meds.This is not meant to be medical advice... only a testament this product works, if you keep track of your mineral levels (blood tests). In other words if you are deficient in magnesium... all the potassium in the world won't help.... also keep in mind that potassium is one of the chemicals used in lethal injection to stop your heart. Of course the lethal dose is like over 100 X's the recommended dosage... so pay attention to the manufacture recommendations. Do not copy what other people do and consult your doctor first.

Some are under the delusion that this is a pure product. In the real world, no product is ever 100% pure. This product is evidently 93% pure, and you need nothing more than basic math to understand why. I am not a chemist but here is my rational explanation. Potassium has a standard atomic weight of 39.0983. Potassium gluconate has a molecular mass of 234.246 g/mol. As such, potassium is 16.69% of potassium gluconate. However, each 3.48 g serving of the product provides only 540 mg of potassium, or 15.52% potassium. The provided percentage is therefore 15.52/16.69 or 93% of the expected percentage, also indicating the purity of the product. This makes me wonder - what is the remaining 7%? Note that this estimate is valid only under the assumption that none of the impurities are other potassium compounds. If some of the impurities are other potassium compounds, the purity percentage can then be different, but most likely lower still.Now Foods informed me in an email that the product is tested to be 98.5% to 101.5% pure and USP standard, but I don't see how this is possible because of my aforementioned logic. They failed to mention the name of the specific purity test used.I believe the simplest explanation is that the unaccounted impurity is water. The test mentioned by Now Foods probably applies to dry weight, i.e. to the portion excluding any water.The product label indicates that each serving providing 540 mg of potassium constitutes 15% of the daily value of potassium. This, however, would be a lie, as it assumes the daily requirement is 3.6 g, which it is not. The undisputed adequate intake (AI) of potassium is 4.7 g per day, as noted in the official "Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate" document, provided by none other than the National Academy of Sciences. As such, each serving of the product only provides 11.49% of the AI. In the absence of eating potassium containing foods or supplements, you would need 8.7 servings, i.e. 30.3 grams of this product distributed throughout the day to meet 100% of the AI goal for the day. Well, I admit this is a bit of a simplification, because technically one's potassium requirement is also correlated with one's sodium intake. In practice, to be on the safe side, for long term use, you probably would not want to take more than about 3 g of supplemental potassium daily anyway.From a safety point-of-view, if you do choose to consume one or more servings of this product, be sure to dilute it very well before you drink it. I dilute each dose in 22 oz of water, but at least 16 oz should be fine too. Depending on the number of servings you consume, it might help to give your body a few days to a few weeks to get used to the product. Read about and watch out for side effects from excess potassium.Even when consumed with a lot of water, the solution tastes mildly salty. This taste is quite bearable for me. Because the taste is mild, it is possible that some people find it tasteless.I measured each level teaspoon to weigh 4.64 g. Given 15.52% potassium, this means each teaspoon provides 720 mg of potassium. This was measured using a measuring spoon [ASIN B0014Y4X3G], a calibrated scale [ASIN B0012N1NAA], and multiple readings. I take 2 of these teaspoons twice daily, providing me a total of approximately 1.44 g of potassium.For such bulk dosing, I prefer potassium gluconate to potassium chloride. The latter is too salty for my taste.

I emailed NOW Foods and inquired about the 540mg worth of potassium in this product and the law regarding the limit on 99mg in potassium supplements. They told me this product does in fact contain a FULL 540mg of potassium FROM potassium gluconate. In other words, each serving has 3480 mg of potassium gluconate of which contains 540mg of potassium (15% RDA). They went on to tell me the 99mg limit does NOT apply to powder, only capsules and pills.Furthermore, the LD50 on potassium GLUCONATE (notice this emphasis, because the LD50 on potassium doesn't exist as potassium alone is a violent substance when in contact with water, even water in air), is over 9000 mg/per kg of body weight. The LD50 of any chemical is what the dosage would need to be before it proved fatal to 50% of the test subjects. To put that in perspective, the LD50 of caffeine is 192 mg/per kg of body weight. The LD50 for table salt is 3000 mg/per kg of body weight. Yes, you read that right, you're far more likely to die drinking coffee or salting your food than supplementing with this product.To further understand LD50 -- for a 160lb person, that would be approx 72 kg, so for that much body weight the LD50 would be 648,000 mg. One bottle (1 pound) of this product contains 3480 mg (3.48 g per serving) * 130 (servings) = 452,400 mg. In other words, if you ordered and consumed 1.4 pounds of this product you'd have a 50% chance of death.The product was tasteless for me. It dissolved quickly in water.

I prefer the powder to the tablets from NOW. I notice an immediate refreshment.