Hi there. I've been getting mixed answers, I have CKD 2 at 27. My doctor, nutritionist, and some articles I read online have said with the current level of treatment it is possible to halt disease progression at the early stages but I've also read national studies implicating that isn't possible. I am still waiting to see a Nephrologist, scheduled for July. Has anyone been in CKD 2 and tell me how long they have been in this stage or are currently in it with no changes? I'm having a hard time believing I'll live very long right now and it could be all in my head.
CKD questions : Hi there. I've been getting... - Kidney Disease
CKD questions
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Live4Hope
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I have been CKD3b with only one kidney for several years now. I had to have the other kidney removed. If you follow the diet well, don't take NSAIDs and drink lots of water you will be living a long life.
I really appreciate you sharing. Hearing other people's stories is really helpful. Have you had any other complications?
The only issues I have is a fluctuating eGFR and now hypertension.
I'm glad you're managing! Do you ever allow yourself a meal that you really want or is it strict kidney diet everyday?
Have you seen the blog that I linked in my post in February re ckd with a single kidney? You may find some or all, scientifically-underpinned points helpful and relevant to you.
I think you can find by searching my posts.
Hi! Can you link it to me? Having trouble finding it.
Here it is, hope its useful (let me know eg by pm). healthunlocked.com/nkf-ckd/...
BassetmommerNKF Ambassador
It all depends on the cause of the CKD. There are certain CKD conditions that the progression will continue, but you can slow it. And then there are more that you can slow it completely or stop it. So until you have a clue as to the cause, o one can tell you the prognosis. But know this, you can slow the progression no matter what and live a healthy life. Learn what causes CKD and what you can do about it. There is way too much to put down here. Major causes that you can do something about is diabetes, High blood pressure, bad diet and abuse of medications, such as ibuprofen and other pain meds, and having infections. Let us know what you figure out is the cause. For now, put your energy in becoming educated.
For an example, I put of being on dialysis at stage4/5 for 6 years. I had CKD for 20 years.
I really appreciate you sharing. The speculation is due to High Blood pressure since everything else comes back normal. I decided to get a cardiologist as well since I'm aware of the potential complications and wanted to make sure there is nothing else to attend to. I'll share more when I know. Thanks for commenting. 🙂
Others have given good advice, but I would add that kidney disease can be hereditary. I was wondering if any of your family members have a history of kidney disease?
None that I know of on either parent's side.
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a long-term condition where the kidneys do not work as well as they should. Being diagnosed with CKD Stage 2 means you have mild kidney damage with a glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of 60-89 ml/min. While CKD is a progressive disease, there are several steps you can take to slow its progression and maintain your kidney function. Here are some general recommendations:
### Lifestyle Changes
1. **Dietary Adjustments:**
- **Limit Sodium Intake:** High sodium levels can increase blood pressure and worsen kidney function. Aim for less than 2,300 mg per day.
- **Control Protein Intake:** Consuming too much protein can put additional stress on the kidneys. Consult a dietitian to determine the right amount for you.
- **Healthy Fats:** Choose healthy fats like those from fish, nuts, and olive oil. Avoid trans fats and limit saturated fats.
- **Balanced Diet:** Focus on a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins. Consider a renal diet if recommended by your healthcare provider.
2. **Regular Exercise:**
- Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, like brisk walking, per week. Exercise helps control weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels.
3. **Maintain a Healthy Weight:**
- Achieve and maintain a healthy weight through diet and exercise. Excess weight can strain your kidneys.
4. **Quit Smoking:**
- Smoking can worsen kidney disease and cardiovascular health. Seek support to quit smoking if needed.
5. **Limit Alcohol Consumption:**
- Drinking alcohol can increase blood pressure and add extra calories, making it harder to manage weight and blood pressure.
### Medical Management
1. **Control Blood Pressure:**
- High blood pressure can damage your kidneys. Aim for a target blood pressure as recommended by your healthcare provider, often less than 130/80 mmHg.
- Medications such as ACE inhibitors or ARBs are often prescribed to protect kidney function.
2. **Manage Blood Sugar:**
- If you have diabetes, keep your blood sugar levels within the target range. This can prevent further kidney damage.
3. **Monitor Kidney Function:**
- Regularly check your GFR and urine albumin levels as recommended by your healthcare provider to monitor your kidney function.
4. **Medications:**
- Take all medications as prescribed by your healthcare provider. Avoid over-the-counter NSAIDs like ibuprofen and naproxen unless advised by your doctor, as they can harm your kidneys.
5. **Treat Underlying Conditions:**
- Address any other health conditions, such as high cholesterol or heart disease, that could impact your kidney health.
### Regular Check-ups
- **Follow-up Visits:**
- Regularly visit your nephrologist or primary care doctor for monitoring and to adjust your treatment plan as needed.
### Stress Management
- **Mental Health:**
- Manage stress through mindfulness, meditation, or therapy. Chronic stress can negatively impact your overall health and well-being.
### Education and Support
- **Stay Informed:**
- Learn as much as you can about CKD. The more you know, the better you can manage your condition.
- **Support Groups:**
- Join support groups for individuals with CKD. Sharing experiences and advice can be very helpful.
### Collaboration with Healthcare Providers
- **Communication:**
- Maintain open communication with your healthcare providers. Report any new symptoms or concerns promptly.
By following these steps, you can help slow the progression of CKD and maintain your quality of life. Always consult with your healthcare provider before making significant changes to your health regimen.
Good luck to you!
Whilst I agree with most points youve listed, I believe some of your "Dietary Adjustments" are debatable for early stage ckd eg 1-3. For example, kidney organisations, related scientists etc have indicated that a specific kidney-friendly diet may be unnecessary at that stage with a healthy one sufficient.
Personally I believe it should be patient-specific but a risk-benefit assessment (rba) is warranted for all e.g. risk of low protein intake balanced against its kidney benefit. We do this for my mum (stage 3a) and monitor rba regularly.
That’s probably true, but it’s your kidneys. Most doctors are not concerned about kidney disease until you reach end stage.
Indeed - hence we gave up on medics a long time ago! That includes my mum's nephrologist who clearly adopted the end-stage approach that youve indicated (well, he's a kidney surgeon too so sadly that may also explain his focus!). In brief, we:
1. Adopt a healthy diet & lifestyle for mum. This is consistent with NHS guidelines (link below) except that its based on Nutritional Therapy rather than dieticians, for key reasons.
2. Regularly monitor her serum and urine test results. Most of those which dieticians are often alerted to e.g. potassium or phosphate as per NHS link, are in range and quite stable so we feel no need to consider adjusting her healthy diet, at present.
The key one that has been a concern for a few years is increasing albuminuria but, as outlined in a blog I linked in my post on here in February, that may be due to my mum's single-kidney status and her proteinuria is better than her albuminuria. But, if/when we believe the kidney benefit of lower protein intake outweighs its risk e.g. sarcopenia, we will adopt that if other measures dont help first.
ALL the general health advice says to avoid salt. You really need to eat to your labs. I NEED salt and potassium because dehydration is the cause of my CKD. don't jump on the kidney diet bandwagon without labs and understanding how and why things are recommended. NOTHING applies to all people.
We do need salt, but you still need to limit it . Don’t stop it.
I DO NOT need to limit salt in any way. I try to point out that we are all different. The "universal" kidney diet calling for low salt, low potassium, low phosphorus, low protein is NOT the best for everyone. We should eat to our individual labs and our individual conditions. NO dietary advice is universal. I have no colon. I have lived without a colon for 31 years. The colon has two jobs, absorbing liquid and holding stool long enough for our digestive juices to neutralize. My CKD is caused by 31 years of dehydration. I NEED salt and potassium. If I followed the standard CKD diet I would have for sure been on dialysis by now, instead my eGFR has increased from a low of 7 to the low 30s. I know I'm special, but I'm not alone. The only universal diet advice should be "eat to your labs."
I understand and agree. We are all different and in different situations. When I was in the military they made us eat salt tablets like crazy. They said it would sweet out 😐
Generally stage 2 and 3 should be manageable with no further decline possible, if treated. Nutrition & lifestyle is key for that.
Do you know what your underlying condition is that is causing kidney issues? Kidneys rarely fail on their own - something initiates it like diabetes and high blood pressure (two most common reasons), autoimmune disorders, polycystic disease, acute injury, etc. There are different medications and treatments for the different conditions. Yet diet improvement can also help the kidneys process waste depending on circumstances. (For example, lowering sodium can help with high blood pressure, better control of sugar and carb will help with diabetes.) So it's important to find the reason for your diagnosis. Then look at your labs and find the items that are flagged, and address improvement of those with your doctor through diet (if possible). Keeping everything in the normal range is a good thing to do. At CK Stage Two, you will likely live a long and productive life if you and your doctor keep on a eye on things and manage the situation well.
It has only been recently that labs have even released eGFR scores above 60. I was diagnosed at stage 4 three or four years ago. I don't know why they call "normal functioning" stage 1. That's confusing for people. As I said, most of us never even got any state 2 scores. Many labs just said >60 is normal. They only showed detailed lab results below 60. I wasn't even told I had CKD until I hit stage 4. I got as low as 7. After losing 50 pounds and taking steps to avoid dehydration (the cause of my CKD, 30+ years of dehydration from living without a colon) I'm now in the low 30s. Conventional wisdom and med school training tell people you can never get better, you can only slow down progression. this is based on the fact that kidney's don't "heal" But if your kidney has less work to do then are eGFRs can go up. My CKD is NOT cured, but I've slowed down the progression and hope that will let me avoid dialysis. I'm on the transplant wait listed based on my low of 7. My life expectancy will greatly increase if I can avoid dialysis and jump straight to transplant when the time comes. Good luck. If you find the underlying cause of your function decline you can work to avoid further decline. Remember, for years and years you wouldn't even get a CKD diagnosis at stage 2. Use it as a wake up call to work on whatever is causing the decline. If I'd have know earlier I would probably never gotten as low as 7.
I appreciate your input. I'm working hard to find the cause and we speculate it was high blood pressure. I'll hopefully know more soon. I've been pushing for test. I never knew that the earlier stages were a recent development.
Yeah. A bunch of clinics still give >60 scores for everything above 60. Get the blood pressure under control is the key to delaying CKD for you!
Thanks for your time, it's really appreciated. So far the blood pressure has come down to 122/84 and sometimes even lower than that! Hoping to find the right dose combination. Before all this happened I lost about 80 pounds just because I wanted to be healthier, now I hope to lose a total of a hundred. Hopefully that will help the blood pressure.
I was in Stage 2 for at least 20 years. Now in stage 3a.
That's amazing you stayed in that stage for so long and I'm sorry you moved to another stage but happy you shared this with me. May I ask what caused your ckd?
They don't know, but I suspect it was many years of poor hydration combined with a couple of small kidney stones, and a few years of a nephrotoxic drug called sulfasalazine which my primary said should be taken with lots of water....which I didn't. I wish he would have told my WHY I should have drank so much water...ie...to prevent kidney damage.
When I was first diagnosed, I was in stage 4. I had a number of other conditions, but this was one too many and I immediately went on the kidney diet. I was also taking losartan for high BP, which is one of the ARB drugs that's supposed to help CKD a bit. Long story short, in the last 3 years, the kidney diet and exercise has brought my eGFR into stage 2, actually above 70 on the last labs. My other chronic conditions are no longer symptomatic. And I'm 71. This is not typical though. I had lupus and tend to get weird lab results.
All I'm saying, at 27 and stage 2, you really don't need to worry. Enjoy life!
I have had CKD Stage 3 since I was in my 50s. BTW I am now 81 and healthy. The one thing I did was stop taking NSAIDS. That is really bad for kidneys. I think you will have a long life catching it this early.
It's given me strength to keep trying. I was scared when I saw that my eGFR put me at stage 3b. I sat on my couch at the end of Dec/beginning of January and spiraled for about 2 weeks. I was scared, depressed and miserable. Saw the nephrologist and he eased my mind a lot. I just had bloodwork last Friday, and my eGFR has risen to 47, now putting me in stage 3a. So yes, some forms of CKD can improve, but it will never be cured without a transplant. My nephrologist said that we are striving for stopping progression, and that happens a lot, and people live normal lives and die of something else. Stopping progression for me means a lifestyle change to a low sodium diet, cutting out processed food, preparing fresh food meals at home a lot. No NSAIDs (only Tylenol now), no omeprazole (had to switch to famotidine), lowering meat consumption, lower carb consumption and exercise. Depending on your lab values, is what you will be counseled to do. Try to relax until you see your nephrologist. Start changing your eating habits now. Good luck!🍀
I really appreciate you taking the time to comment. I know everyone's different but knowing that there are people out there living long lives gives me some hope. I've made a lot of changes to my diet even before I discovered my kidneys were an issue, I wanted to look better and feel better so I lost a lot of weight. What actually had me go to the doctor was unrelated but I am glad I did. Do you ever allow yourself one meal you want? Like a dinner out from time to time?
I keep a running milligram count each day of my sodium intake. Most days I am less than 2000 mg, some days less than 1000 mg. And yes, I have occasional "cheat" days. If go out to eat with my husband or friends, I will relax a little, with that meal often being the only meal I will eat all day (or no to very low sodium food before I go out). I still don't go crazy, even on cheat days. It has not been easy, as I was a salt lover before my diagnosis.
Sorry to come back to the post so randomly but I was wondering, do you remember how old you were when diagnosed?
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