Are your Kidneys Ok? Detect Early To Protect Kidney Health (Here’s How)

Tomorrow (at time of publication) will be World Kidney Day (WKD). Perhaps not the most well-known initiative, but it celebrates its 21st year this year!

For those of us who celebrated our own 21st year quite some time ago now, it’s as good a reason as any to check in on our kidney health.

Here are some things they’d like us to know about Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD):

❝CKD is a silent disease, people with CKD have no signs or symptoms until the late stage of the disease.
CKD usually does not go away, instead, it progresses, unless early treatment to slow or halt the disease is ensured.
CKD can progress to kidney failure – a condition when kidneys cannot maintain their function anymore, posing a life-threatening risk.
CKD ranks number 7 in the top ten causes of death among noncommunicable diseases worldwide.
CKD increases the risk of premature death from associated cardiovascular disease.
CKD is more common among certain ethnic groups due in part to high rates of diabetes and high blood pressure.
CKD is more common among women, here is why.❞

Source: World Kidney Day: Your Amazing Kidneys

How can we check our kidney health?

There are clinical tests that can be done (they’ll just need a urine sample from you; ask your doctor about it), but there’s some screening that can be done at home already:

Are Your Kidneys Healthy? Take This One-Minute Quiz To Find out

👆 this is about medical indicators; there are also non-medical factors that affect risk, including:

• Where someone lives
• Where they work
• The foods they eat
• How much exercise they do
• If they are able to get the medical care they need

For more information on this, see: Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Especially After 60) ← there’s a lot more to it than just hydration!

What can we do for our kidney health, besides the obvious “hydrate”?

Some top things to do include:

Hydrate, yes. See also: Things Many People Forget When It Comes To Hydration

Don’t smoke. It’s bad for everything, including your kidneys. So, just don’t. See also: Addiction Myths That Are Hard To Quit

Look after your blood. Not just “try to keep it inside your body”, but also:

• Keep your blood sugar levels healthy (hyperglycemia can cause kidney damage)
• Keep your blood pressure healthy (hypertension can cause kidney damage)

Basically, your kidneys’ primary job of filtering blood will go much more smoothly if that blood is less problematic on the way in.

Watch your over-the-counter pill intake. A lot of PRN OTC NSAIDs (PRN = pro re nata, i.e. you take them as and when symptoms arise) (NSAIDs = Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, such as ibuprofen for example) can cause kidney damage if taken regularly.

Keep an eye on your urine. Hydration is only one side of the story, and our urine can say quite a bit about our health. Indeed, we have written about this before:

12 Things Your Urine Says About Your Health (Test At Home) ← no special equipment required!

On which note, see also: To Pee Or Not To Pee ← spoiler: there’s a flood of reasons to not hold your pee

Want to know more?

Check out the WKD website’s…

8 Golden Rules Of Kidney Disease Prevention

Take care!