Guide To Kidney Disease Diagnosis And Treatment

Maintain Healthy Blood Pressure

An individual who is affected by kidney disease may be advised to maintain a healthy blood pressure for their treatment to be effective. Blood pressure is the amount of force of the blood pushing on the walls of blood vessels as it is traveling through them. The blood vessels throughout the body can stretch to accommodate a certain extent of increased blood volume, but they become damaged when the pressure exceeds that threshold. The blood vessel damage induces a repair process by the body to the vessel walls with scar tissue, or tissue that is denser and more fibrous than the original vessel tissues. This scar tissue on blood vessel walls can cause problems with how the blood vessels work around the body and in certain organs like the kidneys. Damaged blood vessels in the kidneys that have accumulated scar tissue are not able to filter extra fluids, toxins, and wastes from the blood like they should be able to. A kidney disease patient must maintain healthy blood pressure to stop their disease from progressing rapidly.

Control Blood Sugar

The most common cause of kidney failure in the United States is diabetes because these patients have uncontrollable high levels of glucose in their blood more frequently than unaffected individuals. High glucose in the blood causes kidneys to be put under twice the workload they would be with healthy blood glucose. In high blood sugar, the kidneys will filter too much blood too quickly, causing the small filters in the kidneys (glomeruli) to become compromised. Proteins in the blood that are important to the body start to leak through the filters and are excreted through the urine inappropriately when the filters in the kidneys are compromised. An individual already affected by kidney disease should carefully manage their blood sugar because even a slight increase in blood sugar and blood pressure can compound the damage to their kidneys.