Kidney Disease Frequently Asked Questions FAQ 2019

Can I still have a good life with CKD?

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How can I improve my kidney function if I have CKD?

Is it possible to improve kidney function when we have CKD?



 Disclaimer: seek appropriate professional advice before taking any action based on the info provided on this channel.

When people get diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, they have a lot of questions.

A lot of very important questions about kidney health

which need answers the kidney disease frequently asked questions.

• 1 what is chronic kidney disease? 
• 2 what is actually damaging our kidneys? 
• 3 can I still have a good life if I have chronic kidney disease? 
• 4 I’m always tired. Is there anything that I can do? 
• 5 Will I have to follow a special renal diet?
  6 what are the symptoms of CKD? 
• 7 Is it possible to improve kidney function when we have CKD?
  
  

Want to know more? - why is the human kidney is an organ of vital importance - what are the wastes and toxins present in the body - what are the cause of kidney damage ( like high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes and kidney stones) - what can lead to kidney disease and dialysis. - why are you experiencing fatigue

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Potassium the definitive guide for kidney disease pt3

Read first part here: Potassium-the-definitive-guide-pt1
Read second part here: Potassium-the-definitive-guide-pt2

Potassium Content Foods Listing - Low Potassium Diet plan

Below is a number of popular food items which have been ordered within ‘low potassium’ or ‘high potassium’.
This is simply a simple quick tips and for that reason will not include virtually all meals, nor include the quantity of potassium contained inside each and every food items.

For a more detailed list and a complete dieting plan, I would like you to read Beat Disease Disease from Duncan Capicchiano (if I'm suggesting this to you is just because it almost saved my life).

Avoiding fruit and vegetables in disease disease: not a good idea at all

After glancing within the above listing of meals, it might appear very logical to determine that fruits and veggies have to be prevented to improve your health to enhance, maybe your doctor too has most likely said this. But You can be assured that avoid to eat fruit and vegetable is not good idea at all. But not just that, it could be what is holding you back from getting well!
So hear me out… Fruit and veggies are best meals available, full of healing minerals and vitamins everyone knows this, ask any kid. *Potassium aside* Kind you imagine cutting these meals out altogether, and live off empty meals, for example grain, pasta, breads (empty meals= non nutrient dense meals)?
Phytonutrients in specific plant foods are some of the most powerful biological reaction modifiers scientists have however discovered. (Jeffrey Bland Ph.D.) Phytonutrients can be explained as plant derived vitamins and minerals.

And secondly fruits and vegetables are also chock-full of nutrients. Phytonutrients can be defined as: chemical substances such as isoflavones that occur naturally in plants. Plants produce these types of substances for various factors, including, structure, chemical messengers, protection from harmful organisms or insects or even attracting pollinating insects. Once eaten by humans though, these ingredients take on a new role. Using isoflavones as an example, isoflavones may balance the female hormonal system and protect all of them from breast cancer.

Persuaded yet? No? How about the people have healed themselves from disease disease using juicing alone! (Albeit hardly ever)

Great I have got your attention! My point with all this really is this: eat a well balanced diet using well balanced meals, do not forgo meals that are high in potassium, most of these are the very foods that calp heal you and reverse your problem. Just make sure when you perform eat them, that you simply factor the blood potassium content in for the day.

Some Other Suggestions To Reduce Potassium Levels

• Talk to your naturopath, diet professional, or physician, and encourage them to do all of the effort and encourage them to devise an agenda for you personally.
• Confer with your physician regarding your current medicines. Certain medicines can increase serum potassium levels, for instance: nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, ACE inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs), and potassium sparing diuretics.
• Have a food diary for 8 days keep note and monitor your everyday consumption of potassium. Through the finish of 8 days (or sooner) you will be aware things to eat without it aid, and also have a feeling of freedom while you live daily.
• Fresh is better, however when you are utilizing canned fruits and veggies always drain the liquid.
• Avoid salt substitutes because they generally use potassium salt (potassium chloride) as a substitute.
• Read food labels. Especially ‘low salt’ or ‘low sodium’ packed meals, these meals also employ potassium chloride like a salt substitute. Check labels for symbols listed as KCl, K  or potassium and steer clear of these meals.
• Be familiar with portion dimensions when talking to potassium content food lists. Whenever a meals are listed like a low sodium food, request yourself “what meal is that this for?”. Don’t consume a pound of something, when it's listed being an ounce.
• Treat underlying conditions: it's very easy to get obessesed out reducing potassium in the diet, without searching in the bigger picture… what triggered your potassium to increase to begin with? You've high potassium levels since your renal system aren't functioning correctly, it is therefore smart to deal with your renal system first.
• Get some exercise regularly: working out regularly helps in reducing excess potassium levels within the bloodstream. The mechanism is the fact that through act of sweating potassium sheds with the skin. Exercise no less than 3 occasions per week, at half an hour every time. Increase your sweat, and shed that potassium.
• Completely avoid dairy: not just is dairy full of potassium, but it's also dangerous for your renal system. Which includes dairy from milk, cheese, yogurt, cream, ice-cream, propagates, dressings, etc. Note: it's also full of phosphorus - another problematic mineral for several disease disease patients.
• In additional serious cases however, you will have to employ the bit of support of natural treatments to create your potassium levels lower.

Natural Remedies To Lower Potassium Levels

• Magnesium: magnesium works by balancing the potassium amounts in the blood.
• Garlic: reduces the absorption of potassium via the digestive tract.
• Calcium supplement: reduces the absorption associated with potassium via the digestive tract. Caution: Do not use for those who have high calcium amounts, get tested first.
• Note: Licorice is a superb herb to lower potassium levels (maybe the greatest), but it comes with its very own problems. Firstly licorice is actually contraindicated in disease disease for periods going above 4 weeks, and licorice also has the potential to increase blood pressure. Do not use this herb unless under the guidance of a health professional.

Conclusion
Remember potassium is important for your kidneys, but like most things, too much can cause problems. The trick is to get your potassium consumption harmonized with your blood potassium levels, to still eat a balanced diet, to have regular blood assessments, and to monitor, monitor, monitor your blood potassium intake for the day.

Potassium: the definitive guide for kidney disease pt2

Read first part here: Potassium-the-definitive-guide-pt1

What Potassium Levels can cause in Kidney Disease

Ordinarily the physique can take in, assimilate, and utilise potassium til its heart’s content material, and then when completed, excrete this life giving mineral out by way of the urine. Easy. However when you could have chronic kidney disease, this can POSSIBLY change. For loads of kidney disease sufferers, just like the myriad of other substances the body could as soon as excrete through the kidneys and urine (creatinine, uric acid, and metabolic wastes), potassium can not move throughout the filtering membrane within the kidneys nephrons, and cross over into the urine collection “funnels” (renal pelvis) that eventually result in the bladder. And due to this incapacity to “cross-over” and be eradicated, the potassium ranges increase inside the blood and open the body up to many well being problems.

Consequences of High Potassium Levels:

• Kidney failure
• Paralysis
• Renal necrosis
• Convulsions
• Heart arrhythmia
• Diarrhoea
• Depression
• Tingling
• Dehydration
• Mental confusion
• Adrenal exhaustion
• Weakness
• Fever

But this is not always like this. In reality a LOT of kidney disease patients have regular potassium levels Which makes me think this:

In which cases you shouldn't listen the doctor

Therefore the most important you can do for yourself when treating this situation is to develop into aware, hearken to your physique, and track and monitor your blood work like you were a doctor.
This is ONLY manner you will know who to hearken to.
All too usually I discover docs are advising their shoppers incorrectly, and potassium is likely one of the commonest.
It has develop into a ‘throw away’ prescription: “You have kidney? Oh, then you will need to keep away from potassium and go on a low potassium food regimen.” But this is so not true as you've got seen. You only need to reduce potassium levels when you have high potassium levels.
Remember potassium is necessary, so eat potassium meals freely till your blood work says otherwise.

How to reduce potassium level in kidney disease

OK, you have waited long sufficient, you have high potassium levels and also you need to know what to do about it.
Firstly it is all about consuming the correct amount of potassium. You can't completely avoid potassium, nor that you simply want to, so it is a good suggestion to know the rules on consuming the correct amount of potassium in your stage of kidney disease; in different words, eat a low potassium weight-reduction plan.
Typically the advisable day by day allowance for potassium in a wholesome individual is 2 to 5 grams a day (some establishments state four.7 grams a day).
In kidney disease this changes relying in your stage of kidney disease…

Low Potassium Diet: Potassium Recommendations
• Kidney Disease Stages 1 to 2 (eGFR of 60 to 90+): 2 to 5g a day
• Kidney Disease Stages 3 to 4 (eGFR of 20 to 60): 2 to 4g a day
• Kidney Disease Stages 4 to 5 (eGFR of 5 to 20): No more than 2 to 2.5g a day
Remember the above is only a rough guide, so if you have very high levels and you are in only stage 1 or 2 kidney disease then it is prudent to eat a low potassium diet to match your blood potassium levels.
What is a safe level of potassium in my blood?
A better way to eat a low potassium diet is in accordance with your blood potassium levels.
Potassium Reference Range
• Low Range: less than 3.5 mEq/L
• Safe range: 3.5 – 5.5 mEq/L
• Unsafe range: 5.6 – 6.0 mEq/L
• Dangerous: more than 6.0 mEq/L

Normal serum potassium levels are 3.5 to 5.5 mEq/L (though some labs quote a reference range of 3.5 to 5.0), and so if you are slightly over that, try eating no more than 4 grams a day of potassium. If it is at a level of say, 6.0 to 7.0, you definitely not be eating more than 2 grams a day until your high potassium levels have been corrected.
Although this can be a challenge, eating a low potassium diet is probably the easiest, and single most important way to reduce blood potassium levels – so it is definitely worth the effort.
If you want to know this topic better, I suggest you to read the last book from the Naturopath Duncan Capicchiano: The Kidney Disease Solution Program


In the last part  we're going to see how to choose the right foods for a healthy kidney diet.

Potassium: the definitive guide for kidney disease pt1

Let’s immediately clarify one thing: you NEED potassium, even in kidney disease diet. Further to that, you do not need to run for the hills if a sure meals has high potassium levels. Eating a well balanced food regimen stuffed with vegatables and fruits is a GOOD thing, and should even aid you reverse your kidney disease…

 Confused as a result of it goes towards every little thing you have learn and have been informed? Don’t be, there may be good purpose, and I’ll do my best to explain…

 The goal of this article: to dispel the mis-conceptions round decreasing potassium in kidney disease; element easy to comply with steps on the best way to lower potassium ranges naturally by way of weight loss plan and different strategies; to educate you on all issues potassium, so the subsequent time you might be in front of your doctor you possibly can keep up, and possibly even educate him or her a factor or two.

Why Do I Need Potassium in a Kidney Disease Diet? 

 If you are new to this blog, it is very important know that before I start to get too deep into subject matter, I like first to carry it back a little so I can talk about the basics. This gives you a good frame work to understand some of the principles that I talk about, and lets you make better judgment calls once I, or your physician, says one thing. This means that you can be in command of your health. The way it should be, sure?

 

What is potassium?

• Potassium at its most basic stage is a smooth silvery-white metallic (mineral), sharing a really related chemical construction to sodium. Behind only to calcium and phosphorus, it is the most ample of all the minerals totalling 225 grams of your body weight – that’s the weight of the palm of your hand.
• Potassium is also called an ‘electrolyte’, due to its capacity to be electrically conductive. An necessary feature in the human body, contemplating you and I are a community of electrical pulses.
• Potassium naturally occurs in nature, and is discovered present in many foods (see additional on for a list of foods).
• Potassium is 19th on the periodic desk (K is the chemical symbol for Potassium in Latin)
• Fact: 1/three of the physique’s total energy is required to carry the situation of potassium and sodium in and round our cells.
• Note: Normal serum potassium levels are: three.5 and 5.5 mEq/L (reference vary)

 

Why do I need potassium?

Our body depends on this mineral for its survival… no potassium, no humans. Amazingly by our evolution we have utilized the earth from which we now have sprung to hold out and permit certain capabilities to occur in the physique. You could have heard that potassium is sweet for the center, good for muscle contractions, and therefore good for reducing blood strain, and even that it's beneficial in nerve conduction. All of that are true, but there may be so much more that this mineral does for you.

Here is a list of other things that Potassium does for you health:

• Helps to thin the blood
• Increases secretion of hormones: ADH, FSH and aldosterone
• Maintains water/fluid balance
• Eye health
• Regulates pH balance
• Regulates blood sugar
• Regulates cell permeability
• Aids protein synthesis
• Acts as a capacitor within our cells to store energy

In addition, here is a list of symptoms that may occur in case of Potassium deficiency  

• Kidney damage (I know that this may seem unexpected)
• Lung problems
• Metabolic acidosis
• Thirst
• Joint and bone pain
• Tachycardia
• Fatigue
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Mental confusion
• Bone fragility
• Muscle weakness
• Constipation
• Edema
• Abnormal heart beat
• Headaches
• Paralysis
• Insomnia
• Death

So I think that we can assume that you need potassium, even if you suffer from chronic kidney disease. 

If you want to know this topic better, I suggest you to read the last book from the Naturopath Duncan Capicchiano: The Kidney Disease Solution Program
In the next part we're gonna see how to manage potassium levels in a balanced kidney disease diet.