The kidney connection continued: Hi everybody... - PMRGCAuk

PMRGCAuk

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The kidney connection continued

Cobnut profile image
32 Replies

Hi everybody. Thanks for all those kind people who replied to my recent posts. Im now back at home and slowly recovering from five hectic days catching up with four different lots of friends. When we moved from Sussex to Shropshire we left behind some good people we had known for a long time. Unfortunately many of them are now poorly and can no longer come to us. This is a problem with us all getting older but we moved to be closer to family and that is lovely. Anyhow back to the kidneys. Before we went away I saw the kidney consultant and he confirmed that I have CKD and that it is under control with the help of Mycrophenolate. Now I have received a copy of a letter sent by him to a GP at my local with my recent blood readings. I had to look up the various names but I think I am right in thinking that GFR 51ml/min and albumin 46 relate to kidneys and are not too bad. Creatine 94, haemoglobin 142 and ESR 6 complete the test. So I have decided to try and lower my salt and potassium intake and as I already stick to a low sugar diet for diabetes, its proving quite difficult. For instance with diabetes wholemeal bread and brown rice are recommended and for CKD ,they are not. Bananas, oranges and apricots, even tomatoes are banned. If anyone out there has any diet advice I'd love to hear from you. However he did say that I was in reasonably good health so that's a plus!

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Cobnut profile image
Cobnut
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32 Replies
piglette profile image
piglette

Hi Cobnut, how are you feeling? I looked up my blood test readings and they are similar to yours although no one has talked to me about CKD. They put it on my computerised records in 2015 and that was it! I have GFR 50, albumin 40, creatinine 96, haemoglobin 132 and ESR 67. You say you have a rare kidney disease, what were the symptoms if you don’t mind me asking? Did you go to the GP or did they contact you? Does the Mycrophenolate help? It is quite a strong medicine I believe.

Cobnut profile image
Cobnut in reply topiglette

Apparently I should have been told before I left hospital that the GCA had affected the cells in my kidneys which is very unusual. I had a MRI scan plus the biopsy and loads of blood tests whilst in hospital. I only had the severe headache and difficulty swallowing plus double vision. I assume the blood tests showed up the kidney problem as I was assigned to nephrology straight away. I go every four months and am always asked about headaches and breathing. So no obvious symptoms.

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toCobnut

Thanks for letting me know. I only have PMR, so do not have the GCA problem re the kidneys.

Cobnut profile image
Cobnut in reply topiglette

That's good but as I have PMR as well I know its not much fun. Thanks for your reply.

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toCobnut

I have never been told that I have CKD, although it says CKD stage 3 on my on-line notes. I don’t know whether I should be careful of what I eat re the kidneys although I am anyway because of the steroids, also I have not been told to take any medication.

Cobnut profile image
Cobnut in reply topiglette

It's very difficult to know what to do. I take microphenolate as the doctor has said I must and never to forget even one dose. They are keeping my kidneys under control which steroids alone were not. I take 7mg of prednisolone which he seems happy to leave me at as I feel ill when I decrease however slowly. I think a healthy diet is best with just the occasional treat as life is nothing without a bit of pleasure after all.

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply topiglette

Jeepers - where do they come from - I have reported it!!!!!!

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh

CKD Dx. Low protein diet and cut out red meat - also cut out processed mrats. Processed are high in salt and protein plus the additives. Not good for kidneys.

Fish, wildfowl, white meat / poultry. Are OK. Better if organic.

Try to avoid fried foods.

Limit eggs. Limit salt, potassium, phosphorous. Also alcohol. Stay away from sodas, adjuvants. Nasty. Not too much by way of liquids.

Good vegetables, though limit starchy veggies - starch = sugar (diabetes). Fruit, OK but to remember the fructose - sugar, your diabetes. Try to ensure foods are organic - apples, grapes and all berries are heavy with pesticides and shelf life sprays. (Our food chain is soooo adulterated). Ditto also for many vegetables, sprayed to death.

Don't buy packaged leaf salads, buy whole and wash, clean, at home. Pre-washed and bagged, are washed in chlorine and when bagged the bags are filled with a gas too prolong shelf life ! Plus, unless organic, will be sprayed.

Diabetes, low carb high fats will be better than high carbs and low fats - this is the latest advice. Carbs / grains turn to sugar, as indeed do starches.

Check out quinoa, bulgar, buckwheat, pearled barley and couscous - these are OK. A nice drink is home made lemon barley water. Recipes on the internet. Delicious and helpful for kidneys. Not too much; remember, curtail liquids !

In addition. Stay clear of the polyunsaturated fats. Best with coconut oil - a very little goes a long way i.e. for a fried egg just a couple of teas is sufficient. Cold pressed olive oil. Nut oils, as in walnut oil etc. Good butter, unsalted.

Remember that oils go rancid quite quickly, so only buy a small bottles of. Coconut oil lasts and lasts. I have a 1.5 kilo jar now past two years use. Keep in a cool dark place.

Reasonable website on CKD, with a list of foods and beverages is : healthline.com/nutrition/fo...

(Many years ago I had acute nephritis. Was on the kidney diet for 'n' number of years ! Got used to it, and now, cannot stand salt and will not touch processed meats !)

There is a load of info now on the internet, with excellent and well written papers, and also check out professional journals. Take care and go well.

Cobnut profile image
Cobnut in reply toRuadh

Thank you so much for your advice. Its going to be difficult for me after 77 years of red meat and pies. I am quite used now to the low sugar diet which is keeping me pill free for the diabetes because I was never a chocolate or cream cake person but I do love cheese and savoury crackers and will find it so difficult to cut them out. Also I have a very healthy OH who is 81 and loves sausages and bacon and loathes the summer because he has to eat lots of salad. I will endeavour to be good but as I am only in the early stages of CKD which is being controlled by drugs, if I relapse sometimes I will not worry. I have not been told to keep to a salt free diet, but then I didn't know I had had it for three years plus until two weeks ago. Thanks again and I will become a green salt person when looking at the traffic lights in supermarkets and learn to love bulgar wheat.

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply toCobnut

You have my sympathy! OH has been ill over the last 15 months or so and had lost a lot of weight so finally something is being done; he has nutritional supplements from the hospital and he tops them up with as many chocolate biscuits as he can put away! But his normal meal is meat and chips, in the UK pies and sausages and bacon and chips. I eat salad and veg and fish or meat. He won't eat what I eat and I won't eat what he eats...

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply toPMRpro

Jack Spratt would eat no fat...etc etc Quite amusing <smile>

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toPMRpro

Chocolate biscuits are definitely a good supplement!

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply toCobnut

You can still eat cheese, head for the lower salty one. Believe Cheddar is quite salty (I like a good Cheddar) but there are a myriad of good cheeses : Wenslydale; Leicester; any of the goat cheeses - they are very mild; White Stilton. Check with a specialist cheese shop.

Crackers...a few along the way !

Bacon and sausages...limit these, and preferably no sausages, unless you know the butcher who made em. Thought. Could make your own ! Sausage making machine and those skins. You could add all sorts of goodies to your own recipes, including apple.

Agreed though. It is a tiresome diet. Take it in stages. The better you can stick to the diet the better for your kidneys.

Fried egg on Sunday - sprinkle Herbs Provencal and fresh ground black pepper and a toss of Himalayan pink salt to on the top whilst it is frying. Amazingly good. And as I have an inflammatory condition, I also add a good sprinkle of organic turmeric. Now, that is soooo good, that will have to have one on Sat and one on Sunday <smile>

Take care, go well.

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply toRuadh

joseph-heler.co.uk/our-chee...

make a lower salt Cheddar and it is said Tesco stock it. Of course, Tesco has changed all sorts of things...

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply toPMRpro

PS other supermarket suppliers are available...

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply toPMRpro

Thank you PMRpro - just checking a very good looking - and yummy looking - website. Great selection of cheeses and add-ons. The presentation boxes are certainly a draw - spiff pressies. Will pass the info around, see who else puts their hands up.

Again,many thanks -

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toPMRpro

What a dreadful name for a cheese, Eatlean. Waitrose sell it, there is a huge discount on it at the moment.

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply topiglette

I know - but isn't that just the high protein, low fat one? They make Blackstone cheddar too - which I have tried and find very appealing! Nice and sharp...

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toPMRpro

Blackstone is quite a nice name for cheese, but Eatlean, please. Who does their marketing?

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply topiglette

There was a Japanese company doing market research for an isotonic drink, sort of grapefruit-ish flavour and it is actually very pleasant, even I would drink it. Couldn't persuade them that the name Pocari Sweat wasn't ideal for the English speaking market.

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toPMRpro

I used to work for a multi national company and they were always making mistakes about product names in foreign languages!

Here are some:

Braniff International translated a slogan touting its finely upholstered seats "Fly in Leather" into Spanish as "Fly Naked."

Clairol launched a curling iron called "Mist Stick" in Germany even though "mist" is German slang for manure.

Coca-Cola's brand name, when first marketed in China, was sometimes translated as "Bite The Wax Tadpole."

Colgate launched toothpaste in France named "Cue" without realizing that it's also the name of a French pornographic magazine.

Coors translated its slogan, "Turn It Loose," into Spanish, where it is a colloquial term for having diarrhea.

Electrolux at one time marketed its vacuum cleaners in the U.S. with the tag line: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Ford blundered when marketing the Pinto in Brazil because the term in Brazilian Portuguese means "tiny male genitals."

Frank Perdue's tag line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," got translated into Spanish as "It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."

Gerber marketed baby food in Africa with a cute baby on the label without knowing that, in Ethiopia, for example, products usually have pictures on the label of what's inside since many consumers can't read.

Ikea products were marketed in Thailand with Swedish names that in the Thai language mean "sex" and "getting to third base."

KFC made Chinese consumers a bit apprehensive when "finger licking good" was translated as "eat your fingers off."

Mercedes-Benz entered the Chinese market under the brand name "Bensi," which means "rush to die."

Nike had to recall thousands of products when a decoration intended to resemble fire on the back of the shoes resembled the Arabic word for Allah.

Panasonic launched a Web-ready PC with a Woody Woodpecker theme using the slogan "Touch Woody: The Internet Pecker."

Parker Pen, when expanding into Mexico, mistranslated "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you" into "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

Paxam, an Iranian consumer goods company, markets laundry soap using the Farsi word for "snow," resulting in packages labeled "Barf Soap."

Pepsi's slogan "Pepsi Brings You Back to Life" was debuted in China as "Pepsi Brings You Back from the Grave."

Puffs marketed its tissues under that brand name in Germany even though "puff" is German slang for a brothel.

The American Dairy Association replicated its "Got Milk?" campaign in Spanish-speaking countries where it was translated into "Are You Lactating?"

Vicks introduced its cough drops into the German market without realizing that the German pronunciation of "v" is "f" making "Vicks" slang for sexual intercourse.

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply topiglette

Desperate, larf a minute. Thar's why one only uses a translator who is translating into their own language and then, another to check. Wonderful howlers happen. Love yours. May I share with a couple of translator friends ? Hoots of laughter here - wunnerful.

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toRuadh

Feel free. There have been some real mess ups over the years, it very funny.

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply topiglette

Thank you very much piglette - will give them a laugh on the morrow - :)

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply topiglette

I've learnt 2 German expressions there!!! But yes - as Ruadh says, you can ALWAYS tell when someone whose English isn't their first language did the translation! We usually use the German destructions for new items as they are slightly more accurate - then we read the English for a laugh

PS, even OH laughed!

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply topiglette

piglette - One back for you from a chum : There’s also the Vauxhall Nova, marketed in Spanish speaking countries where “No va” means “it doesn’t go!”

More amusing still, a driver's seat fell apart under the owner who was a tad heavily built and the Vauxhall was not robust enough ! <LOL>

piglette profile image
piglette in reply toRuadh

It was the correct name then!!!

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply topiglette

Mebbe no one is buying it ! Sounds rather 'industrial'...wonder what it tastes like...!

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply toRuadh

Suppose there is only one way to find out - I would try it once...

Ruadh profile image
Ruadh in reply toPMRpro

Await your careful evaluation and report...!! ~<:)

PMRpro profile image
PMRproAmbassador in reply toRuadh

Unfortunately - not available here!! We have our own traditional very low fat, high protein cheese up the valley called Graukaese (grey cheese) and which sells very well! Marinated in vinegar and onions for your supper...

Hollyseden profile image
Hollyseden in reply topiglette

No wonder. Doesn't sound very appetising at all. Eatlean ☹️

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