When To See Your Urologist
While it would be nice to avoid the doctors office for kidney pain, its not always possible. Sometimes, the pain is not treatable using an at-home remedy and youll need to see your doctor or urologist to get relief. It should also be noted that just because you experience pain relief, doesnt mean that your infection is gone. To make sure that the infection doesnt spread to other parts of your body and cause further complications, you need to get a proper diagnosis and treat the problem. If you have a high fever, blood in your urine, vomiting, or chills, see your doctor immediately.1 If you experience back, groin, or abdominal pain, see your doctor.3 always better to seek medical treatment early to treat any serious infections and reduce the risks of complications or severe problems.
If you have kidney stones, but the pain is persistent and youre unable to pass them on your own, your urologist will recommend additional treatments. There are a number of different things that can be done to reduce the size of kidney stones and make them easier to pass naturally. Call your doctor if the pain persists and youre unable to pass kidney stones on your own.
Consume Apples And Apple Juice
Apples are also nutrient-dense. Their high acid content may help the kidneys to maintain acidity in the urine, possibly inhibiting further growth of bacteria. They also have anti-inflammatory properties, which may be beneficial in helping the kidneys to heal following the infection. Learn more about the many health benefits of apples.
Ways To Keep Your Kidneys Healthy
Overview
Your kidneys are fist-sized organs located at the bottom of your rib cage, on both sides of your spine. They perform several functions.
Most importantly, they filter waste products, excess water, and other impurities from your blood. These waste products are stored in your bladder and later expelled through urine.
In addition, your kidneys regulate pH, salt, and potassium levels in your body. They also produce hormones that regulate blood pressure and control the production of red blood cells.
Your kidneys are also responsible for activating a form of vitamin D that helps your body absorb calcium for building bones and regulating muscle function.
Maintaining kidney health is important to your overall health and general well-being. By keeping your kidneys healthy, your body will filter and expel waste properly and produce hormones to help your body function properly.
Here are some tips to help keep your kidneys healthy.
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Diabetes And Kidney Disease
About 20 to 30 per cent of people with diabetes develop a type of kidney disease called diabetic nephropathy. This is a serious disease and may worsen other diabetic complications such as nerve and eye damage, as well as increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Diabetic nephropathy is the main cause of kidney failure .
How Is A Kidney Infection Diagnosed
Your doctor will ask about your symptoms, do a physical exam, and likely run some diagnostic tests. Those include a urinalysis, to check your pee under a microscope for bacteria and white blood cells, which your body makes to fight infection, and a urine culture to help find out what kind of bacteria is causing the infection, the NIDDK says. Your doctor may even take a blood sample to check for bacteria or other organisms in your blood, the Mayo Clinic says.
Other tests that might come up include an ultrasound, a CT scan, or a form of X-ray called a voiding cystourethrogram, which involves injecting a contrast dye to take X-rays of your bladder when its full and while youre peeing, per the Mayo Clinic.
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Do Not Smoke Or Drink Too Much Alcohol
Try to stop smoking completely and limit the amount of alcohol you drink.
Both men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units of alcohol a week on a regular basis.
Drinking too much alcohol and smoking both raise your blood pressure. High blood pressure is one of the most common causes of kidney disease.
When Should I See My Doctor
If you notice any of the symptoms above, see your doctor. If you have one or more of the risk factors for kidney disease, it is particularly important to look after your kidney health and get your kidney function checked every 1 to 2 years.
The body can cope with the kidneys not working properly for quite a while. People can lose 90% of their kidney function before they experience any symptoms. This makes it particularly important to take notice of any symptoms that do appear, and seek medical advice.
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When To Seek Medical Advice
Contact your GP if you have a high temperature, persistent pain, or if you notice a change to your usual pattern of urination. Contact your GP immediately if you think your child may have a kidney infection.
If you have blood in your urine, you should always see your GP so the cause can be investigated.
Kidney infections require prompt treatment with antibiotics to help relieve symptoms and prevent complications developing.
Your GP can carry out some simple tests to help diagnose a kidney infection.
See diagnosing kidney infections for more information
Maintain Normal Cholesterol Levels
If you have high cholesterol, then this increases your risk of developing plaques, which can be blockages in your arteries. If you develop blockages in your arteries, you may block or cut off your supply to your kidney arteries or your renal arteries. And if this happens, you can get a renovascular disease, which can lead to high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease. And so you definitely, want to make sure that you maintain normal cholesterol levels in order to keep your kidneys healthy.
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Signs Of A Kidney Infection
What does a kidney infection feel like? According to the NIDDK, the most common kidney infections symptoms are:
Nausea
Vomiting
But depending on a persons age, they may not experience all of these kidney infection symptoms. Children younger than two may only experience high fever as a sign of kidney infections, the NIDDK says, and people older than 65 might only present with cognitive issues, like confusion, hallucinations, and disorganized speech.
Watch Out For Signs Of Kidney Disease
A person with kidney disease has progressive loss of function of their kidneys. Kidney disease is sometimes called a silent disease because it often doesnt cause symptoms until the disease has progressed significantly. Its not uncommon for people to have lost up to 90% of their kidney function before experiencing symptoms of kidney disease.
Keep an eye out for the below signs and symptoms of kidney disease, and if you have any concerns, see your doctor.
Signs of reduced kidney function can include:
- high blood pressure
- change in how often you need to go to the toilet and how much urine you produce
- changes to your urine for example frothy or foaming urine
- blood in your urine
- increased puffiness around your legs, ankles or eyes
- pain in the kidney area
- tiredness and fatigue
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Tests To Check Kidney Function
When kidney function is decreased, substances such as urea, creatinine, and certain electrolytes begin to build up in the blood. The following tests measure levels of these substances to show how well your kidneys are working.
- A blood creatinine test helps to estimate the glomerular filtration rate by measuring the level of creatinine in your blood. The doctor can use the GFR to regularly check how well the kidneys are working and to stage your kidney disease.
- A blood urea nitrogen test measures how much nitrogen from the waste product urea is in your blood. BUN level rises when the kidneys aren’t working well enough to remove urea from the blood.
- A fasting blood glucose test is done to measure your blood sugar. High blood sugar levels damage blood vessels in the kidneys.
- Blood tests measure levels of waste products and electrolytes in your blood that should be removed by your kidneys.
- A blood test for parathyroid hormone checks the level of PTH, which helps control calcium and phosphorus levels.
- Urinalysis and a urine test for microalbumin, or other urine tests, can measure protein in your urine. Normally there is little or no protein in urine.
What Causes Chronic Kidney Disease
Chronic kidney disease is caused by damage to the kidneys. The most common causes of this damage are:
- Uncontrolled high blood pressure over many years.
- High blood sugar over many years. This happens in uncontrolled type 1 or type 2 diabetes.
Other things that can lead to chronic kidney disease include:
- Kidney diseases and infections, such as polycystic kidney disease, pyelonephritis, and glomerulonephritis, or a kidney problem you were born with.
- A narrowed or blocked renal artery. A renal artery carries blood to the kidneys.
- Long-term use of medicines that can damage the kidneys. Examples include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs , such as celecoxib and ibuprofen.
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Feeling Faint Dizzy Or Weak
Why this happens:
Anemia related to kidney failure means that your brain is not getting enough oxygen. This can lead to feeling faint, dizzy, or weak.
What patients said:
I was always tired and dizzy.
It got to the point, like, I used to be at work, and all of the sudden I’d start getting dizzy. So I was thinking maybe it was my blood pressure or else diabetes was going bad. That’s what was on my mind.
Start Your Day With A Glass Of Lemon Juice And Baking Soda
This natural remedy will help improve your bodys pH balance, promoting better pancreatic and kidney health and revitalize your liver. Just the simple habit of drinking this mixture on an empty stomach will do wonders for your body.
It improves kidney function, helping your body detox itself, and prevents problems like the accumulation of fat in the liver. It also improves overall digestion.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup of water
- 1 tablespoon of baking soda
How should you consume it?
Its as simple as dissolving the baking soda in a cup of water and then adding the lemon juice. Stir it well and sip it slowly. You can drink this for up to four days straight, then take a break for a week before repeating.
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How To Make A Dog With Kidney Failure Comfortable
Now that you know all about chronic kidney failure including what to look for and how its treated, lets talk about how to keep your dog comfortable during chronic kidney failure.
Often times, the treatment itself will make your dog feel much better.
Flushing all the toxins out of his system and easing the strain on his body will have him feeling much better in relatively little time.
A dog with chronic kidney failure will require special care for the rest of his life, and the best way to keep him comfortable is to follow his treatment exactly.
The following steps will help you keep your dog comfortable throughout his chronic kidney failure management:
- Follow diet and medication prescriptions exactly.
- Dont feed extra snacks.
- Feed your dog small meals throughout the day rather than one or two big meals. Small meals are easier on his kidneys.
- Keep clean, fresh water on hand at all times and never withhold water for any reason.
- Warm your dogs food up just a bit if his appetite is poor. This can often entice him to eat.
If your dog is diagnosed early enough and you follow the treatment laid out by your vet, your dog could do very well with his chronic kidney failure.
Remember, diagnosis, treatment, and adherence to medical advice are the keys to both treating his chronic kidney failure and to keeping him comfortable throughout the rest of his life.
If you do those things, and your dogs kidney failure isnt too severe, he could have several years of good living left.
Tips To Be Water Wise For Healthy Kidneys
Keep your kidneys healthy by being water wise. This means drinking the right amount of water for you. A common misconception is that everyone should drink eight glasses of water per day, but since everyone is different, daily water needs will vary by person. How much water you need is based on differences in age, climate, exercise intensity, as well as states of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and illness.
About 60-70% of your body weight is made up of water, and every part of your body needs it to function properly. Water helps the kidneys remove wastes from your blood in the form of urine. Water also helps keep your blood vessels open so that blood can travel freely to your kidneys, and deliver essential nutrients to them. But if you become dehydrated, then it is more difficult for this delivery system to work. Mild dehydration can make you feel tired, and can impair normal bodily functions. Severe dehydration can lead to kidney damage, so it is important to drink enough when you work or exercise very hard, and especially in warm and humid weather.
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Drink Plenty Of Fluids
Theres no magic behind the cliché advice to drink eight glasses of water a day, but its a good goal precisely because it encourages you to stay hydrated. Regular, consistent water intake is healthy for your kidneys.
Water helps clear sodium and toxins from your kidneys. It also lowers your risk of chronic kidney disease.
Aim for at least 1.5 to 2 liters in a day. Exactly how much water you need depends largely on your health and lifestyle. Factors like climate, exercise, gender, overall health, and whether or not youre pregnant or breastfeeding are important to consider when planning your daily water intake.
People who have previously had kidney stones should drink a bit more water to help prevent stone deposits in the future.
The Water Hydration Technique
You know how most of us generally go for long periods without water, become thirsty and scull the next available glass in about 30 seconds? Have you ever thought what this does to your body? No? I dont blame you.
The actual fact of the matter is that every time you a drink a glass of water in a hurry, you are placing pressure on kidney function. How? Well, seeing as one of the functions of the kidneys is to keep the fluid levels in the blood stream balanced, by drinking a full glass of water at once you are essentially dumping a large amount of water into the blood stream, which the kidneys now need to balance out . By drinking slowly, a mouthful at a time, you reduce the pressure on the kidneys and increase hydration. Sound too simple to do any good? Good. Now try it.
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Urine Tests For Kidney Disease
Damaged or inflamed kidneys leak substances such as blood or protein into the urine. The preferred test for detecting protein in the urine is a urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio test, which shows the amount of albumin in the urine.
A urine ACR test should be done at least once a year if the person has diabetes or high blood pressure, and every two years if the person has any of the other identified risk factors for developing chronic kidney disease.
A urine ACR test is performed by sending a sample of your urine to a laboratory for analysis.
What Is Chronic Kidney Disease
Having chronic kidney disease means that for some time your kidneys have not been working the way they should. Your kidneys have the important job of filtering your blood. They remove waste products and extra fluid and flush them from your body as urine. When your kidneys don’t work right, wastes build up in your blood and make you sick.
Chronic kidney disease may seem to have come on suddenly. But it has been happening bit by bit for many years as a result of damage to your kidneys.
Each of your kidneys has about a million tiny filters, called nephrons. If nephrons are damaged, they stop working. For a while, healthy nephrons can take on the extra work. But if the damage continues, more and more nephrons shut down. After a certain point, the nephrons that are left cannot filter your blood well enough to keep you healthy.
One way to measure how well your kidneys are working is to figure out your glomerular filtration rate . The GFR is usually calculated using results from your blood creatinine test. Then the stage of kidney disease is figured out using the GFR. There are five stages of kidney disease, from kidney damage with normal GFR to kidney failure.
There are things you can do to slow or stop the damage to your kidneys. Taking medicines and making some lifestyle changes can help you manage your disease and feel better.
Chronic kidney disease is also called chronic renal failure or chronic renal insufficiency.
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Things You Cannot Control
The main risk factors for chronic kidney disease are:
- Age. The kidneys begin to get smaller as people get older.
- Race. African-Americans and Native Americans are more likely to get chronic kidney disease.
- Being male. Men have a higher risk for chronic kidney disease than women do.
- Family history. Family history is a factor in the development of both diabetes and high blood pressure, the major causes of chronic kidney disease. Polycystic kidney disease is one of several inherited diseases that cause kidney failure.