Dietary guidelines for hypokalemic periodic paralysis

Dietary guidelines for hypokalemic periodic paralysis
Changes to your diet may help reduce the frequency of episodes of paralysis. However,
you will still need to take your potassium tablets as prescribed by your doctor.
Recommendations:
• Reduce your salt intake.  Do not add salt in cooking or at the table. Choose salt
reduced foods (eg margarine, canned foods).
• Reduce and modify your carbohydrate intake. Choose carbohydrate foods which are
digested slowly by the body. These include breads and cereals, starchy vegetables,
fruit and milk and yoghurt.
Food group  Choose
Breads and cereals  ™ Wholegrain breads, wholegrain bread rolls and toasting muffins,
fruit loaf, pita bread.
™ Wholegrain/multigrain crackers, plain sweet biscuits e.g. Rich
Tea, shredded wheatmeal.
™ High fibre breakfast cereals e.g.allbran, miniwheats, toasted
muesli, special K, guardian, rolled oats, vita brits.
™ Pasta of all types, long grain rice such as basmati or doongara
rice.
Starchy vegetables  ™ Sweet potato and corn, pontiac potatoes.
™ Legumes: kidney beans, lentils, chickpeas, baked beans.
Fruit  ™ Apple, dried apricots, cherries, orange, kiwifruit, bananas,
peaches (in juice), pears, plums.
Milk and yoghurt  ™ Milk, artificially sweetened yoghurt, ice-cream, custard.
• Include plenty of high potassium foods which are low in carbohydrate.
For example:
o Avocado, almonds, walnuts, macadamias, pecans, cheese, eggs, brussel
sprouts, cauliflower, pumpkin, tomatoes, spinach, asparagus, cabbage,
broccoli, mushrooms, nuts, peanut butter.
*Avoid alcohol.