Five Signs that Your Kidneys are in Danger

Five Signs that Your Kidneys are in Danger

Kidney health is tied to our general health. Whether your kidneys are healthy or have become weaker, you make every effort to maintain or improve your kidneys’ health, taking your medicine regularly, following your nephrologist’s instructions, and keeping tabs on the latest research on kidney disease treatment. Yet, we often overlook a few fundamental health parameters that can enhance or ruin our kidney health. They can put our kidneys in danger. If you fail to manage the following five things, they sure will damage your kidneys.

High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure is perhaps the most dangerous sign that your kidneys are at risk. Kidneys are essentially a tuft of blood vessels held together with the supporting tissue. An ultimate blood pressure-controlling organ, the kidney has been endowed by nature with unique sensors that pick up even small changes in blood pressure. On the other hand, kidneys are equipped to withhold large swings in blood pressure so that their filtration function remains unaffected by changes in blood pressure. But to a certain limit only and not forever. This adaptability of kidney blood vessels in the face of blood pressure variation, known in the medical jargon as autoregulation, finally starts to falter if high blood pressure remains persistently high, allowing it to damage the inner lining of blood vessels in the kidney.

While any blood pressure higher than 120 mmHg of systolic and 70 mmHg diastolic is concerning for kidneys, episodes of a sudden rise in blood pressure can be devastating. To make my patients understand the importance of well-controlled blood pressure, I always give the example of kidney disease patients with proteinuria. A kidney disease patient with well-controlled proteinuria can easily be derailed with a few episodes of very high blood pressure, starting to leak protein again, and losing all the gains of the past few months. The impact of high blood pressure on a healthy kidney or a diseased kidney without proteinuria is no different. It damages the blood vessels of the kidney all the same.

Kidney disease patients should strive to keep their blood pressure below 130 systolic and 80 diastolic. The target for patients with protein in the urine is more stringent: below 120 systolic and 70 diastolic.

High Blood Sugar

As a sign of danger to kidney health, poorly controlled blood sugar is at par with high blood pressure. Our body tightly controls blood sugar levels, and for good reasons. If the body loses this control, as it does in patients with pre-diabetes and diabetes, it fails to keep the blood sugar levels within range, particularly after meals, resulting in blood sugar spikes. Such high sugar levels have a baneful influence on kidneys. Poorly controlled blood sugar damages the blood vessels of the kidney directly, making them more leaky to the proteins. In addition, high blood glucose levels are invariably associated with high insulin levels in the body, which cause kidney injury above and beyond the damage caused by high blood sugar.

Better blood sugar control is the key. You can control your diabetes with a concoction of drugs, or you can go a step further and reverse your diabetes with a daily regimen consisting of all the ingredients of a healthy lifestyle: exercise, sleep, diet, stress management, and social health. Guidelines recommend keeping your Hemoglobin A1c, a test that gives a rough average of your daily blood sugar levels of the last three months, below 7%. If you plan to achieve this goal using medicines, it is perfect. But if you want to reverse your diabetes with a healthy lifestyle and get rid of all medication, the goal should be 5.3 % or below, easily doable for most type 2 diabetics in 3 to 6 months.

High Uric Acid

Uric acid can be a roaring sign of both kidney disease as well as kidney danger. In the last decade, uric acid has assumed new clinical importance. It is no longer just a by-product of food metabolism. Uric acid is now increasingly recognized as a marker of inflammation and insulin resistance, indicating poor metabolic health. With kidneys, uric acid has a two-way relationship: poorly functioning kidneys build up uric acid in the body, while high uric acid levels can damage kidneys.

Good kidney care demands well-controlled uric acid. Starting a medicine should not be the first step, though. Considering it a marker of an unhealthy lifestyle, I steer my patients away from their body-damaging behavior first and keep them at it for a good four months. If their uric acid remains high despite these healthy changes, my usual next step is to prescribe a medicine with the goal of keeping it within the normal range.

Big Belly

Though many of us struggle with our sagging sides or protuberant belly or double chin, we, in general, still consider obesity unhealthy, and rightly so. True, extra weight is not good for your general health, but for kidney health, it can be devastating. You all are aware of the unhealthy consequences of obesity—diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, to name a few. All these metabolic derangements take their toll on kidney health. Yet, obesity can damage your kidneys independent of these metabolic disturbances.

You can be overweight, or even outright obese, and still have normal health parameters, such as blood pressure, blood sugar, and heart rate, But even then, many cellular and hormonal changes lurk behind that extra weight like impending doom. The best example I quote is FSGS, short for Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis, a glomerular disease that can be caused by obesity alone.

Another example of the noxious nature of obesity is the chronic kidney disease in obese patients who have no other obvious explanation, and surprisingly enough, this kidney disease disappears after the loss of those extra pounds, noted most clearly in bariatric surgery patients. In short, extra fat in your body carries the potential to harm your kidneys. Hence, you are better off without that extra burden.

Unhealthy Behavior

A patient’s unhealthy behavior should always raise red flags, suggesting that the patient’s kidneys are in danger. Unhealthy habits such as insufficient sleep, a sedentary lifestyle, and unmanaged stress can significantly harm kidneys. It’s crucial to be mindful of how you structure your daily routines and nightly rest.

Poor sleep, particularly lack of deep sleep, deprives you of tissue restoration, a process that repairs the body’s damages at the cellular level to prepare it for the inevitable traumas of the new day. Furthermore, on our sleep depend innumerable hormonal cycles, which go haywire if we don’t pay attention to our sleep time and quality.

Immobility has become an important part of modern life. The sedentary phase of our day, more than 10 hours for most people, is not without its consequences. And though many people know the benefits of exercise, very few know that just sitting has its own health ramifications. Being inactive derails many metabolic pathways at the cellular level: lipid metabolism slows down, the pumping power of the heart weakens, and many hormones, including sex hormones, suffer considerable alterations. Some processes even come to a complete halt during rest: glucose transporters in the muscles, for example, cannot take up the glucose and move it into the muscle, leading to higher blood glucose levels after and between meals.

Stress is a pervasive issue, affecting millions of people either overtly or covertly. Regardless of its form, stress can have a detrimental impact on kidney health. It can lead to high blood pressure, disrupt metabolism, alter hormone levels, and increase sympathetic nervous system activity, all of which are unhealthy for the kidneys.

Take Home

Our kidneys are fragile, and we should be looking for signs that suggest danger for our kidneys. Kidneys are made of tiny blood vessels held together with connective tissue, literally two balls of blood vessels off shooting from the Aorta. As such, they form a part of the body’s vascular system. This connectivity, essential for kidneys to play their vital role, also makes them vulnerable to unhealthy bodily shifts. Therefore, kidneys cannot remain indifferent to even minor metabolic changes. Your kidney health relies heavily on your metabolic health. If you want healthy kidneys, focus on your general health.

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