There aren’t many conditions I take more personally or seriously than high blood pressure. I dedicated a whole book to it, in fact (“The Blood Pressure Miracle”).

The menagerie of ways in which to most effectively lower blood pressure are too numerous to list here, which is why I encourage you to read my book. In the meantime, here’s one of the best tips I can give to maintain a healthy blood pressure: eat foods rich in potassium.

You’ve likely heard of potassium before, the fact that bananas are loaded with potassium or that Gatorade replenishes the body with potassium due to what’s lost through sweat.

But just what is potassium? What real role does it play in the body?

Well, if you’ve moved a muscle in the past minute or so, know that potassium played a role in that. Need I say more?

Potassium is an electrolyte that helps keep the body in proper balance by delivering nutrients to the body’s cells (potassium works in tandem with sodium in this task). In addition, as aforementioned, potassium plays a key role in muscle contraction and relaxation. Without potassium, the brain would not be able to tell the body’s nerve endings what to do and how to move.

Potassium deficiency is rare, but when it does arise, it’s called hypokalemia. People most likely to suffer from this are those who lose massive amounts of potassium due to improper dieting, excessive vomiting or excessive sweating. People known to have had problems with hypokalemia include athletes, alcoholics, bulimics and anorexics. More than anyone else, these people require more than the average person due to the low potassium storage bank they have. Symptoms of hypokalemia can be relatively minor (e.g. bloating, stomach cramps) to downright deadly (e.g. heart arrhythmias, which can be deadly, or muscular paralysis).

Researchers say that diets lacking in potassium rarely lead to such serious conditions, but they can lead to a number of diseases. High blood pressure happens to be one of them.

High blood pressure killed almost 55,000 people in the U.S. alone four years ago, and while most people know they have the condition (about 72 percent), there remains a significant swath of people who don’t know…until it’s too late. That’s why they call it the “silent killer.”

Prior research has shown the effect of potassium on high blood pressure, but this most recent study confirms it. The results will be presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s 41st annual meeting.

After analyzing medical data from a heart study done in Dallas, Texas. The data came from 3,300 people, half of whom were black (blacks tend to get high blood pressure more frequently than whites).

After analyzing 3,300 participants’ urine sample data and comparing those numbers to their blood pressure data, researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found reason to affirm prior studies done on potassium and blood pressure. That’s because those whose urine samples contained the highest amount of potassium (in addition to sweat, potassium and sodium are excreted through the urine) had the lowest blood pressure levels. Conversely, those with the lowest levels of potassium in their urine had the highest blood pressure levels.

The relative amounts of sodium in the urine samples bore similar results, but the inverse relationship was stronger with potassium than with sodium.

This leads researchers to conclude that their low potassium levels are due to – duh! – not getting enough potassium in their diets.

As the researchers say, there’s more to decreasing blood pressure levels than by simply lowering salt intake. Potassium levels need to be well-balanced, at least 3,500 mg per day for those with low potassium levels and 2,500 mg for those with normal levels (there are no recommended dietary allowances for potassium).

So, what are the best sources for potassium? Well, bananas are probably the most well-known supplier, but lesser known potassium potentates include potatoes (one potato with the skin on has almost double the amount of potassium a cup’s worth of banana has), raisins (again, a cup of raisins has more than a cup of banana), lima beans (yep, them too), winter squash (yet again), brussels sprouts and oranges.

The key to fighting off any disease is knowledge about it and what to do to avoid it. This study – which backs up a series of other studies done on potassium and high blood pressure – provides people with the proactive measures they need.