Potassium

Potassium is the main electrolyte inside your cells and is essential for nerve signaling, muscle contraction, and a steady heart rhythm. Because both high and low levels can affect the heart, it's tightly regulated and closely watched on metabolic panels. It's usually reported alongside sodium, chloride, and CO2 as part of the electrolyte group.

The typical reference range is about 3.5 to 5.2 mmol/L (reported as mEq/L on many US panels, the same number). High potassium can reflect kidney dysfunction or medications like ACE inhibitors, while low potassium often comes from diuretics, vomiting, or diarrhea. Read your value against the range on your report and let your physician interpret anything outside it.

Very often, yes. A falsely high potassium, called pseudohyperkalemia, is extremely common and usually caused by red cells breaking open in the tube (hemolysis), a tight or prolonged tourniquet, or the sample sitting too long before processing. Labs frequently flag a hemolyzed sample for this reason. If your potassium is high but you have no symptoms and normal kidney function, your doctor will often simply repeat the draw before treating it as real.

Not meaningfully for most people. Testosterone therapy doesn't change blood potassium, and ordinary training or creatine supplementation doesn't push it outside the range in someone with healthy kidneys. A high reading is far more often a hemolyzed sample than a real change, so a repeat test with your physician is the usual next step.