How to Have Good Kidney Health
Your kidneys are your body's filters, removing toxins, wastes and unnecessary fluids from the body. If you have a family history of kidney disease, heart conditions or diabetes, you need to maintain healthy kidneys to keep your body functioning properly.
Instructions
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Steps To Maintaining Good Kidney Health
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Have a full kidney screening performed. The National Kidney Disease Education Foundation recommends a full kidney screening through a blood and urine test to check your kidney performance. For people with diabetes or a history of kidney disease, testing once a year is absolutely necessary since these conditions can lead to preventable acute or chronic renal failure prematurely. Your doctor may recommend getting CT or MRI scans to your kidneys to check for any visible damage to your kidneys, but this generally occurs if your blood and urine test shows your kidneys are compromised.
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Follow proper nutrition to keep from stressing your kidneys. Proper nutrition is vital to maintaining kidney health. On Dr. Ben Kim's website "Experience Your Best Health," Dr. Kim advises doing things to prevent your kidneys from overworking and getting worn down as you age. Among these preventative measures are not drinking too much water, because it only forces your kidneys to work harder unnecessarily. Another major thing is to avoid eating too much protein because it can potentially cause premature breakdown of the glomeruli in your kidneys. Other tips to maintaining healthy kidneys is to restrict sodium and avoid taking anti-inflammatory medication on a daily basis, as these can damage your kidneys.
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Maintain your ideal weight and a healthy blood pressure. Any excess weight you have puts pressure on your organs and forces all of them to work harder. By keeping in your ideal weight range you can avoid making your organs work harder than they need to, especially your kidneys.
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Lower your blood pressure. When you have high blood pressure, your arteries force a large amount of blood at a higher pressure into your organs. The kidneys can become overwhelmed and wear down over time under such conditions. The National Kidney Disease Education Program also recommends limiting your intake of caffeine and alcohol, and avoiding nicotine altogether. These toxic substances lodge in your blood stream and need to be cleaned out by your liver and kidneys. Large amounts of any of these substances will cause irreparable damage over time not only to your kidneys, but other major organs as well.
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Exercise more. Along with maintaining a healthy balanced diet full of fresh fruits and vegetables, and lean proteins, the North Shore Medical Center recommends adults exercising 30 minutes or more on a daily basis as key to maintaining proper kidney health. Exercising can reduce your cholesterol levels, improve cardiovascular health, reduce blood pressure and weight, which are all excellent things for your kidneys.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have diabetes or high blood pressure, the medications you take may cause liver and kidney damage, so even if you have healthy kidneys it is extremely important to get regular yearly screenings.
As part of your balanced diet you should consider taking a multivitamin to make up for any possible imbalances, but avoid the 'megadose' vitamins unless otherwise recommended by a doctor.
Before you start on any kind of diet and nutrition program, consult your doctor. If you are not careful with your diet, you risk creating a nutritional imbalance and irreparable damage to your organ systems.
Before taking any extra supplements or products, consult your doctor or a nutritionist to make sure you are not consuming something dangerous to your health. Overdosing on vitamins can cause your kidneys to become overwhelmed and shut down, so do not risk your health based on a label.
