Kidney Diseases - All You Must Know!

Hello,

Friends, I am Dr. Sunil Prakash, I am head of Nephrology and dialysis, transplant service. I take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about kidney diseases. Today worldwide kidney diseases are increasing exponentially and nearly 8 to 10% of people have some sort of kidney disease. This is a huge number, the problem with kidney diseases is that they are without any symptom, they are like silent killers, so we have to be very careful and only by some tests we can diagnose kidney diseases. First of all, I would like to tell you that most of the kidney diseases are due to diabetes, high blood pressure, glomerulonephritis which is inflammation of the kidneys and sometimes some hereditary diseases and then stone diseases or obstructive diseases. Let’s concentrate on the common causes of kidney diseases which are diabetes and high blood pressure and obesity. In modern lifestyle today we are facing an epidemic of diabetes and obesity, even school children are obese, they are fat, they are not playing physically, they are busy with their video games and mobiles. So this obesity and diabetes cause stress on the heart and kidneys and other organs of the body and we have an epidemic of kidney diseases. So we must endeavor to keep our blood sugars, our blood pressure, our weight under check and under control. For this, a healthy lifestyle is most important and in that the foremost thing of the importance is our diet. We are what we eat, if you don’t eat a good diet, a regular diet then we will fall into problems.

Today due to the stress of life we are used to fast food, we are running and having coffee, having meals while driving or doing other things, this is certainly deplorable. We have to get time for ourselves and for our food and enjoy our food in a way it should be and besides having the right diet, it should contain the right amount of proteins, the right amount of carbohydrates, salt. You should not fall for fats. Another thing is that sometimes youngers fall for the prey to strong protein products which are recommended by the people who are running the gym and all those institutions and they sometimes have very very fast renal failures requiring dialysis. So if we take care of our diet, if we are physically active, we walk for 30-40 minutes or do some brisk exercise like jogging, cycling, swimming or maybe you go to a gym, do regular aerobics, cardio, will remain fit just by these two things and third thing of importance will be to avoid strong medicines, pain killers, or other indigenous medicines are also not safe. We should be very careful about what is going in our body, in our mouth.

Finally, it is said that our air, water, our food chain is polluted and this is perhaps also giving rise to an exponential geometric progression of kidney diseases. I would like to say in the end that the diagnosis of kidney disease will depend upon early symptoms which could be very very vague. So I would say that if any young person who has high blood pressure, should not ignore that high blood pressure. He should investigate himself by doing simple urine and a blood test and an ultrasound of the kidney. These three simple tests will tell him most of the times and if whatever treatment is required, that person must take. So young person having high blood pressure, people having anemia, less blood in their body or young people who are unable to complete their family and people who have lot of aches and pains, sometimes people who are passing lot of urine especially at night, If there is froth in the urine, so all these symptoms point to some kidney ailment and they should go for a check-up to their physician and do simple blood and urine tests which I have already envisages. So if by the act of good diet, regular physical activity, by avoiding unnecessary stresses in our lives we can be living a healthy life, we can have a healthy kidney, healthy heart and we must regularly take some checks to diagnose the diseases early. I thank you for your hearing.

Thank You!