JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Importance of promoting kidney health

by

Dr. Jawwaad Mohammed
1944 days ago
20200310

The kid­neys are as es­sen­tial to life as the heart yet do not get as much ap­pre­ci­a­tion and love.

The left and right kid­neys are or­gans that are lo­cat­ed un­der the low­er part of your ribcage on the right and left sides of your spine. They are fist sized, bean shaped and are made up of mil­lions of tiny fil­ters. These tiny fil­ters, called nephrons, al­low blood in, fil­ter out tox­ins, waste prod­ucts and wa­ter; then re­leas­ing them as urine. The cleansed blood then leaves the kid­ney and goes on to the rest of the body.

When the kid­ney stops work­ing (as a re­sult of loss/death of these tiny fil­ters), this caus­es tox­ins, waste prod­ucts and wa­ter to build up in the body caus­ing ill­ness and dis­ease. The ear­ly stages of kid­ney dis­ease usu­al­ly have no symp­toms. Chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease (CKD) has a glob­al preva­lence of 11-13%. It is the 4th lead­ing cause of death in T&T. It has a high eco­nom­ic cost with coun­tries like the US spend­ing 6.7 per cent of their Medicare bud­get on treat­ing just the fi­nal stage of the dis­ease.

Kid­ney dis­ease is both a risk fac­tor for, and a con­trib­u­tor to, many non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. Caus­es of chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease in­clude:

Di­a­betes

Hy­per­ten­sion (high blood pres­sure), Heart dis­ease

Smok­ing

Di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion are the two lead­ing caus­es of CKD. Di­a­bet­ic pa­tients with high blood pres­sure ap­pear to have the high­est preva­lence rate of chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease when com­pared to oth­er non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. Oth­er com­mon caus­es of kid­ney dis­ease world­wide in­clude di­ar­rhoeal ill­ness, HIV and au­toim­mune dis­or­ders like Lu­pus (SLE).

Pa­tients with chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease gen­er­al­ly have no symp­toms un­til late in the dis­ease where the dam­age is al­ready per­ma­nent and will on­ly get worse over time. While there are med­ica­tions to slow, but not cure, the pro­gres­sion of ear­ly stages of chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease, the treat­ment for end stage kid­ney dis­ease is kid­ney trans­plant or dial­y­sis (where a ma­chine/oth­er struc­ture does the job of the kid­neys).

How­ev­er, get­ting a trans­plant can be very dif­fi­cult and re­quires life­long med­ica­tion that weak­ens the im­mune sys­tem. Dial­y­sis can be ex­pen­sive (cost­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1000 per ses­sion with most end stage kid­ney pa­tients re­quir­ing 12 ses­sions a month), time in­ten­sive (ne­ces­si­tates spend­ing three hours or more, three times per week at hos­pi­tal/dial­y­sis cen­tre) and can have se­ri­ous life threat­en­ing com­pli­ca­tions (such as in­fec­tion, bleed­ing, stroke, heart dys­func­tion and shock).

While the ear­ly stages of the dis­ease are asymp­to­matic, kid­ney dis­ease can be de­tect­ed in­ex­pen­sive­ly through screen­ing urine and get­ting a blood test. At risks groups that should be screened in­clude those with hy­per­ten­sion, di­a­betes, fam­i­ly his­to­ry of kid­ney dis­ease, old age, obese in­di­vid­u­als, smok­ers and those with HIV. When it comes to pro­mot­ing kid­ney health and slow­ing the pro­gres­sion of CKD, it is best to en­sure:

1. Eat­ing a healthy bal­anced di­et with ad­e­quate por­tions of fruits and veg­eta­bles.

2. Keep­ing a healthy weight.

3. Drink­ing ad­e­quate wa­ter.

4. Stop­ping smok­ing /al­co­hol/co­caine use.

5. Keep­ing tight con­trol of blood sug­ars.

6. Keep­ing tight con­trol of blood pres­sure.

7. If you suf­fer from au­toim­mune dis­eases like SLE, it is im­por­tant to take your med­ica­tions.

8. Keep reg­u­lar fol­low up with your doc­tor or clin­ic if you suf­fer with di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion or heart dis­ease.

9. Get­ting a kid­ney func­tion test (a sim­ple blood test) at least every six (6) months es­pe­cial­ly if you are di­a­bet­ic or suf­fer with high blood pres­sure.

Blunt­ly, and in con­clu­sion, take care of your kid­neys to­day be­cause get­ting a trans­plant is too hard and dial­y­sis is too ex­pen­sive.

-

Dr Jawwaad Mo­hammed

MBBS (UWI)

Med­ical House Of­fi­cer,

Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex

(On be­half of the T&T So­ci­ety of Nephrol­o­gy)


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored