Critical Alert from wp_options Table
You may receive an alert at times if there is too much data being listed in your wp_options table. I had one concerning a bug that is fixed now, but found other resources on how to manage the growth of the options table.
wp_options Table Background
The wp_options table is a list of information that is loaded with every page that WordPress serves to a client. Naturally, the goal is to keep it as small as possible. I found a great resource describing different causes of problems for wp_options growth at Kinsta WordPress Hosting that is worth a read. You may find old data stuck in a “transient” type of entry or left-over stuff from a plugin that has been deleted, or some plugins may put too much in the table that should be in one of the plugin’s tables.
You can access the wp_options table by going to Cpanel, in the Databases section, and use the application phpMyAdmin. It might seem confusing if you haven’t worked with a database before and don’t do anything until you have made a full backup of your site and know how to restore it. On the bright side, running a query against the database will not alter it in any way. Here is what the interface looks like.

Here are a couple of queries you can run to find out what is being kept in the options table and the size of different entries. I think I got the SQL from the Kinsta link above.
--All rows with autoload.
SELECT * FROM `wp_options` WHERE `autoload` = 'yes'
--TOTAL size of autoload.
SELECT SUM(LENGTH(option_value)) as autoload_size FROM wp_options WHERE autoload='yes';
--Top 10 largest autoloads by size, change last # to get more...
SELECT option_name, length(option_value) AS option_value_length FROM wp_options WHERE autoload='yes' ORDER BY option_value_length DESC LIMIT 10;
--From a certain source.
SELECT 'sum size in KiB', ROUND(SUM(length(option_value))/1024,0) FROM wp_options WHERE autoload='yes' AND option_name like "um_cache_userdata_%"
SELECT *
FROM `wp_options`
WHERE `autoload` = 'yes'
AND `option_name` LIKE '%jetpack%'
SELECT *
FROM `wp_options`
WHERE `autoload` = 'yes'
AND `option_name` LIKE '%transient%'
My Particular Solution
I did not find a lot of resources on the internet about this problem, but there is one place with a huge discussion about the problem I had and the bug fix. The discussion about the _transient_dirsize_cache is set to autoload=yes and kills db performance if it grows is on the WordPress.com site and you should go there to get the full story.
In my case, I read down far enough and took someone’s word for it that the bug fix wouldn’t be active unless I deleted the the _transient_dirsize_cache line in the wp_options table. From what I read, I think the “transient” lines are meant to be recreated but if you only follow my hunch and don’t do more research you are an idiot and I can’t help you.
Anyway, I used phpMySql to open the wp_options table, highlight the line “_transient_dirsize_cache” and delete it. This did solve my problem. For example, size before deletion of whole table was 1,141,616bytes. After deletion, the size of the table was 111,394bytes. Big difference.
While this bug fix should prevent me from having the same problem, I want these notes here on how to navigate the table and research the causes of it growing too large.