Demystifying Kidney Disease for the Average Joe!

I had covered why excess protein in the urine needs to be treated in my earlier post.  Lets talk briefly about how we go about achieving that.

I set off to try and answer this question after one of my patients brought along an article that claimed that " nettle leaf lowers creatinine level in the blood ". This by extension would mean that it could perhaps cure CKD? I was quick to admit that not once during my typical "western medicine" training had I heard of that claim. To me, CKD had always been this inexorable malady that can be, at best, controlled or slowed down from progressing further. "Cure" is not a word that gets thrown around a lot when you talk about CKD. As I had discussed earlier , once kidney function declines chronically, it can typically not be regained.    But I do try to have an open mind, the good old scientific temper and all that. So rather than dousing disdain over my patient's excitement, I tried to look for evidence to see if the article's claim was indeed true.

Pain, both acute and chronic, is commonly prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) . This is due to the myriad diseases that often coexist in kidney disease patients (like arthritis, diabetes, obesity, etc). I had earlier written a post on how certain painkillers adversely affect the function of the kidneys. So we know that many pain medications are bad for your kidneys. We also know that even if some pain medications are not directly toxic to your kidneys, they can still accumulate in your body and affect other organs in patients who have kidney disease. It saddens me when patients with pain come to my office after being told that they can't take a particular pain medication because "their kidney numbers have worsened". Granted that could certainly happen; but not coming up with an alternative and leaving patients "marooned" is also a disservice to them. What then could be some viable options for patients with kidney disease to deal with thei

I often call kidney disease the "Rodney Dangerfield of Medicine". It gets no respect! Well, outside of the medical community, the same could be said for nephrologists (to a certain extent)! No one is quite sure what they do, or why does anybody need to see one anyway.  For some, we are just another version of urologists. Nephrologists, as the readers of this blog know are physicians who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of kidney disease, electrolytes, high blood pressure, dialysis, kidney stones, etc. 

This is a question that often comes up when I see patients in my office for treatment of chronic kidney disease ( CKD ). As always, I tend to emphasize the huge role that diet plays in the management of CKD. I noticed that my recent posts might be becoming too wordy, so I am going to keep myself very brief today!