Kidney failure is alarmingly becoming a major cause of death for Indians. It comes suddenly without warning and just like a heart attack, kidneys cannot be healed. However as a concerned citizen you can take certain steps right now for a healthy kidneys for life.
Kidney problems
Either there is a physical injury to a kidney like in case of an accident or there is a progressive degradation of a kidney over time. The latter is called Chronic Kidney Disease or CKD in short.
Chronic Kidney Disease is a condition when the filtration mechanism inside the kidney gets damaged and no longer able to filter waste and excessive water from the blood.
As a disease it can happen over a period of years. There are no early signs of kidney damage as the work of the damaged portion of the kidney can be carried out by the undamaged portion.
A damaged kidney cannot be repaired. The damage is permanent.
How to measure kidney damage
Kidney efficiency is measured in terms of Glomerular filtration rate or (GFR). It is a simple blood test and works as an estimate of the efficiency of the kidneys. The other is a urine test which measures albumin. There should be little or no albumin in your urine. If it is there, means your kidneys are leaking protein from the blood.
The first and early visible sign of kidney damage is frequent urination especially at night. This is followed by at a later stage frothy or foamy urine and swelling of legs, especially the feet area. Fatigue, tiredness and lack of energy to do even the basic things usually is another key sign.
How does the kidney gets damaged, the real reason
Not too much information is available on the internet about the cause of CKD. But a little bit of research points towards the usual suspect, metabolic syndrome.
Sugar acts like sand paper inside the arteries. Too much of sugar and carbs keeps glucose levels in our blood high. Why does this happen? To understand this we shall go into the structure of a Red Blood Cell or RBC.
It is the responsibility of a RBC to carry oxygen from the lungs to different parts of the body. Oxygen is required for generating energy at the cellular level. RBC is like a disk which bends in the centre. This provides red blood cells to become flexible enough to enter into the tiniest arteries which are called capillaries. One of the tiniest capillary is the retina of the eye. The presence of glucose in the blood leads to the RBCs sticking to each other and forming bunches of these cells. The RBCs lose their flexibility to enter into capillaries. Insufficient blood supply starts damaging the skin tissues hindering their repair and resulting in darkening of skin especially around areas like neck.
This bunching of RBCs also leads to inflammation in the inside of the artery wall further leading to plaguing of the artery. Inflammation actually causes a tear in the inside of the artery. Liver dispatches cholesterol to plug the gap and help the artery wall to heal itself and fill in the gap. From here on it is a race against time to heal the tiny arteries of inflammation and the cholesterol trying to repair it. Cholesterol is actually trying to heal things but it is labeled as the villain because it was found at the crime scene.
Coming to the kidneys, the capillaries inside the kidneys are really very tiny. Bunching of RBCs moving inside the tiny walls of the capillaries in the kidney creates a lot of damage to the tiny and sensitive blood vessels which filter the blood within the kidneys. The presence of excess blood glucose keeps damaging the blood vessels slowly over a period of time.
As metabolic syndrome takes shape all over the body, the increase in blood pressure accelerates the damage.
Once metabolic syndrome kicks in, the danger to kidney gets real.