Demystifying Kidney Disease for the Average Joe!

I set off to try and answer this question after one of my patients brought along an article that claimed that " nettle leaf lowers creatinine level in the blood ". This by extension would mean that it could perhaps cure CKD? I was quick to admit that not once during my typical "western medicine" training had I heard of that claim. To me, CKD had always been this inexorable malady that can be, at best, controlled or slowed down from progressing further. "Cure" is not a word that gets thrown around a lot when you talk about CKD. As I had discussed earlier , once kidney function declines chronically, it can typically not be regained.    But I do try to have an open mind, the good old scientific temper and all that. So rather than dousing disdain over my patient's excitement, I tried to look for evidence to see if the article's claim was indeed true.

Most people know that getting a stress test is a way to test your heart's function. But how do you test your kidney function? You might have heard doctors mention words like "creatinine", or "GFR" when checking how good or bad your kidneys are doing. Although there are a lot of methods by which the kidneys' performance can be measured, I will explain the ones that are used most often in clinical setting

Cysts, or abnormal pockets of fluid filled sacs, are a common finding on imaging studies like ultrasounds that are done on the kidney. I often see concerned patients in consultation about this finding. The question in that situation is...should you be worried if you discovered that you have cyst/s in your kidney? HOW COMMON ARE KIDNEY CYSTS? Cysts in the kidney are a pretty common occurrence. They tend to get more prevalent in the older age groups. For instance, 11.5% of individuals aged 50-70, and 22.1% of all individuals aged over 70 yrs will have at least one cyst in the kidney . However, the challenge is to identify whether it is a benign age related finding or something as serious as cancer (which can present as cysts). Cysts often will have no symptoms, and will usually be discovered incidentally as part of imaging of the kidneys for unrelated reasons.

A frequent conundrum that I see patients run into almost everyday, is understanding the link between chronic kidney disease (CKD) and coronary heart disease (CHD). They are surprised when I tell them that most CKD patients are more likely to die from heart disease, than from kidney disease (or require renal replacement therapy/dialysis). Why is that so, and is there a link between kidney and heart disease? Lets explore.