Potassium

STREET - Linda Billings didn't know how close her family lived to Pennsylvania's Peach Bottom nuclear power plant until she received an e-mail recently informing her that they were within the 10-mile emergency zone and could receive free medication to help protect them if an accident happened there. So yesterday, she stood in line with more than 330 people at the Highland community center in this tiny Harford County village to pick up doses of potassium iodide for herself, her husband and their two teen-age children.

The federal government is about to provide 80,000 Marylanders who live near nuclear power plants with free doses of a common over-the-counter medicine that can protect people who survive high doses of radiation from developing thyroid cancer years later. The potassium iodide pills are courtesy of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which in December offered to give any state that asked for them enough doses for everyone living within 10 miles of a nuclear plant. The offer, made weeks before the NRC warned nuclear plant operators of possible terrorist attacks, is meant as a supplement to evacuation plans.

Q. I have been eating an energy bar with extra potassium and taking a potassium supplement along with a multi- vitamin containing potassium. About a week ago, I woke up in the night with heart palpitations. They disappeared by morning, but this event scared me. I quit taking the potassium and eating the energy bar. Can you tell me if too much potassium could have caused my heart to beat funny? A. Excess potassium can be dangerous, even lethal. Symptoms might include heart palpitations, weakness, numbness or tingling in hands, feet or lips, difficulty breathing or anxiety.

Q.My husband takes coated aspirin, furosemide and vitamins. He has just purchased a big package of licorice twists, which he loves. Did I read in your column that licorice can interfere with medicines? I am a bit concerned. A. Your concern is justified. Natural black licorice contains glycyrrhizin, an herbal ingredient that can deplete the body of potassium. In combination with a potassium-wasting diuretic furo-semide (Lasix), this could lead to a life-threatening situation. If potassium levels sink too low, heart rhythm may be disrupted.

Q. My husband takes DHEA because he thinks it keeps his skin from damaging easily. Without it, a slight bump or putting his hands in his pockets can cause bleeding abrasions.He works outdoors in the Florida sun and won't wear sunscreen. He is 54, very slim (no body fat), tanned (blond), smokes but is otherwise healthy.Since taking DHEA for a year, he has developed erectile dysfunction. When he stopped DHEA for a month, that problem disappeared, but the skin fragility returned, so he resumed DHEA.

Q.I was raised to believe that a daily bowel movement is essential for good health. If we couldn't go, we had to have an enema, which was terribly embarrassing.Now that I am older I sometimes need a laxative to get things moving. I recently heard an ad on the radio touting the benefits of an herbal product for inner cleansing. It contains a lot of things, including aloe vera, cascara sagrada and senna.A natural laxative should be safe, but the label said to check with your doctor if you have a medical condition.

A simple, inexpensive treatment that could be used successfully by low-technology hospitals worldwide can dramatically reduce the number of deaths caused by heart attacks, researchers report today.In the United States, the treatment, which involves giving the patient a mixture of sugar, insulin and potassium to nourish heart muscles deprived of oxygen by a heart attack, might prevent about 75,000 heart attacks a year, the new research indicates.The treatment was first devised in the 1960s, but was then discarded because poorly conducted clinical tests led doctors to doubt that it worked.

With the widow of slain Baltimore police Officer Vincent Adolfo watching through the window of the sealed death chamber, Flint Gregory Hunt was executed this morning by lethal injection, ending his legal odyssey to avoid becoming the first man in Maryland to die against his will since 1961.The execution also ended a torturous 12 years for the family, friends and fellow police officers of Adolfo, who was gunned down at age 25 after he spotted Hunt running from a stolen Cadillac in a Baltimore alley on Nov. 18, 1985.

Did you ever eat a whole pint of strawberries all by yourself? Cathy did, and it saved the day.She called me at work to say she was starving and wanted to indulge in some diet-breaking treat. I suggested, instead, that she walk to the store and stop at the produce department instead of the cookie aisle.It worked. Succulent strawberries were too tempting to pass up. And eating them all was a complete indulgence instead of a diet deprivation. Best of all, she ended the day feeling virtuous instead of guilty, and that helped keep her diet on track.

You've waited all year for this moment.Through the winter, while your garden patch slumbered under a quilt of pine straw. Through the spring, when it finally got warm enough to plant a feathery sprout that would surely never get big enough to hold up a butterfly, much less a full-grown Best Boy.You tapped your knife and loosened the lid on the mayonnaise jar while the yellow blooms appeared and slowly swelled into green Ping-Pong balls.And then -- is that a patch of red, peeking from the tangle of summer growth?