Creatinine high after exercise??

[Radtastiical]

Hi all! Hoping to get some answers as to why my creatinine dropped before my MRI but I think I have an idea? I have headaches so my nephrologist ordered an MRI with contrast. I'm in the stage 3A range. Well, before I went to get the MRI at 4, I wound up working out from about 11-12. I do vigorous workouts for a 5'3 125lb female anyways when they tested my creatinine prior to the dye injection it was at 1.6 and my GFR dropped to 43 so they couldn't do the contrast! It's never been that low! Is it because of the exercise? I hydrated with 4 bottles (1/2 gallon) 4 hours prior to going in...any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone!

[WYOAnne]

Yes, it has been my experience that exercising right before you have labs, will effect your creatinine numbers. It seems that it puts more stress on your kidneys

[Radtastiical in reply to WYOAnne]

Then you! It's only temporary tho right?

[Gorsemoor in reply to Radtastiical]

Wrong

[Gorsemoor]

I was told by my doctor that when you exercise your muscles produce creatinine the more you exercise the more you produce,if you go over the top your kidneys cannot cope and GFR falls.So if you are stage 3a and want to hold there has long has poss stop working out so much and do light gentle exercise like walking.

If you don’t your GFR will fall quicker than you wish.

You’ve been warned!

[Radtastiical in reply to Gorsemoor]

I appreciate the warning! However, I'm trying to get into fire school to be a firefighter so hard work is definitely unavoidable

[Marvin8 in reply to Radtastiical]

Keep up your hydration.

[Marvin8 in reply to Gorsemoor]

If you have CKD, light gentle exercise will probably kill you faster than vigorous exercise due to muscle wasting. Ok, that was as unknowledgeable and authoritative a statement as you just made. The reality is that doctors have no freaking clue as to how much light, gentle, vigorous, strenuous, or other exercise is good, bad, or indifferent. There just aren't the studies to back it up other than to say that CKD tends to cause muscle wasting and that you shouldn't exercise for at least a few days before having your bloods drawn. Btw, vigorous exercise will also temporarily raise your CK (creatine kinase). I'm a small 61yr old male (5'6, 143lbs) and told my neph that I can squat over 400 lbs on the leg press machine. He said I should probably back it off to 200 and do more reps instead. He said if I can do 15 reps, that's probably safe. In other words, THEY...DON'T...KNOW. They guess. Maintaining muscle mass is a good thing, but when is it too much of a good thing? They don't know. When does losing muscle mass (catabolization) start to harm your kidneys? They don't know. How much exercise is too much or too often? They don't know. Here's a warning sign: If your neph starts making a bunch of authoritative statements on the subject, be wary. Ask him/her to point to the studies that back up those statements, then watch the hemming and hawing.

[Radtastiical in reply to Marvin8]

My neph knows I'm going to be a firefighter, which of course was the main fear I had when first going to her, that she was going to say I couldn't do it. But she's cool. Says as long as I'm hydrated and my electrolytes are good then I'm good keep on grinding and thanks for the help!

[Batony718]

The general rule is no strenuous exercise 48 hrs before you have the test. So that definitely didn’t help your results.

[Radtastiical in reply to Batony718]

I wish my kidney doctor who knows I exercise would have told me -_-