Chronic kidney disease is considered a global public health problem with a prevalence rate of 13.4%.
Chronic kidney disease is a condition where your kidneys can no longer efficiently filter your blood. What happens is things that should go out in the urine accumulate and start affecting your body negatively. While nutritional therapy in many chronic diseases is a complementary therapy, in chronic kidney disease nutritional therapy is the base. The reason is if you do not limit with food the number of products your kidney is needed to filter.
What does the Chronic Kidney Disease diet consist of?
This diet limits the amount of sodium (salt) and proteinyour body consumes. In addition, in some cases foods that are high in potassium and phosphorous are limited. There are no set rules, each diet plan is tailored based on your current body weight, height, age, and blood tests. So we cannot state many general guidelines for patients with chronic kidney disease because each restriction is done depending on the depth of the progression of the disease.
Does the diet work?
The issue with chronic kidney disease is that it is notreversible. In most cases, we cannot undo the previous damage. However, what we can do is with the proper diet plan we can manage the disease early on and prevent further complications such as End-Stage Renal Disease that requires
dialysis.
Why it is essential to see a dietitian?
While some doctors may hand you some educational material,it is not enough. A dietitian will not only provide you with a list of foods to eat or avoid, but also with meal ideas and specific portions for proteins and potassium/ phosphorous based foods. I managed some cases and for the past 8
years have been having stable blood tests.
