Demystifying Kidney Disease for the Average Joe!

I had covered why excess protein in the urine needs to be treated in my earlier post.  Lets talk briefly about how we go about achieving that.

Pain, both acute and chronic, is commonly prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) . This is due to the myriad diseases that often coexist in kidney disease patients (like arthritis, diabetes, obesity, etc). I had earlier written a post on how certain painkillers adversely affect the function of the kidneys. So we know that many pain medications are bad for your kidneys. We also know that even if some pain medications are not directly toxic to your kidneys, they can still accumulate in your body and affect other organs in patients who have kidney disease. It saddens me when patients with pain come to my office after being told that they can't take a particular pain medication because "their kidney numbers have worsened". Granted that could certainly happen; but not coming up with an alternative and leaving patients "marooned" is also a disservice to them. What then could be some viable options for patients with kidney disease to deal with thei...

I often call kidney disease the "Rodney Dangerfield of Medicine". It gets no respect! Well, outside of the medical community, the same could be said for nephrologists (to a certain extent)! No one is quite sure what they do, or why does anybody need to see one anyway.  For some, we are just another version of urologists. Nephrologists, as the readers of this blog know are physicians who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of kidney disease, electrolytes, high blood pressure, dialysis, kidney stones, etc.