If you are suffering from chronic kidney disease, it means your kidneys are not functional enough to meet the needs of your body. One of the primary side effects of CKD is that your kidneys degrade over time. This creates the stages of chronic kidney disease with different severity at every stage. The symptoms of CKD depend upon the stage and the treatment of this condition is also governed by the stage of it.
When we speak of treating CKD, we mean treating the symptoms of it. This is because there is no actual treatment for chronic kidney disease. The management and treatment of CKD involves making the symptoms less aggravating in order to slow down the process of kidney degradation.
The general of treatment options for the side effects of CKD involves:
- Changing your lifestyle to be as healthy as possible
- Controlling the linked diseases such as hypertension and diabetes with medication
- Switching to dialysis if your kidney becomes non functional
- Go through a kidney transplant upon finding a donor
Changing life style for the treatment of CKD
If you are suffering from chronic kidney disease, below are the changes that you will be suggested to treat your symptoms of CKD:
- Talk to your doctor about the diet that will suit you and switch to it
- Quit smoking in case you do smoke
- Reduce salt in your diet as much as possible
- Exercise daily if your doctor has suggested it
- Quit drinking alcohol or at least reduce the intake of it
- Try not to become over weight
- Stop taking OTC medications especially NSAIDs if they are not prescribed by your doctor
Performing all these lifestyle changing activities can reduce your side effects of CKD significantly and can delay the necessity of putting you on dialysis
Medication for the treatment of CKD
Unfortunately there is no medicinal cure for CKD but, this treatment option is for to manage the health issues that can emerge out as a consequence of chronic kidney disease. It is important to manage these issues as most often the problems caused by CKD create a kidney degradation loop by which the rate of your kidney damage is increased.
Some of the symptoms of CKD that should be treated with medications are:
Hypertension
It is important for the people with CKD that there blood pressure level is below 140/90mmHg. This is because hypertension can intensify the damage to your kidney. Several medications, especially ACE and ARB, are given to manage hypertension in chronic kidney disease
Raised cholesterol level
One of the side effects of CKD is that there is always a risk of developing disease that can affect your heart and can induce heart attack. One of these diseases is high levels of cholesterol in the blood. The most common class of medications given for high cholesterol is statins or HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. These medications lower the biosynthesis of cholesterol in the body.
Lower red blood cells
If you are suffering from CDK and feel tired, breathless and/or anxious, you might have developed a condition known as anaemia. In this condition the red blood cells in your body reduce inducing the above mentioned symptoms. This happens because there is a direct link of RBCs production with your kidney. In this condition the patient is given an injection known as erythropoietin in order to enhance the production of red blood cells,
Retention of water
This is one of the primary symptoms of CKD. When your kidneys are not functioning properly, water gets retained in the blood in excess amount. Due to this secondary symptoms such as swelling of ankles can be seen in the patient of chronic kidney disease. Certain dietary changes such as salt reduction are advised to the patient. Also, in some cases diuretics are advised to release the excess fluid.
Glomerulonephritis
If your chronic kidney disease is found to be caused by a disease known as Glomerulonephritis at early stages, there is a change that the degradation of your kidneys can be stopped by the treatment of CKD.
This is because in some patients, Glomerulonephritis is caused by some autoimmune disease resulting in the attacking of kidneys by the body’s own immune system. In these cases, the patients are prescribed certain immuno-repressors to lower the functionality of immune system.
Conclusion
If you are suffering from chronic kidney disease, there are several treatment options for treating the symptoms and side effects of CKD that you should consider. As these treatment options depend upon the stage of your kidney disease, you must be diagnosed by an expert doctor to evaluate the stage of your CKD. In this blog we understood the treatments for early stages of kidney disease. However in latter stages, the patient might be put on dialysis until being able to go through kidney transplant. To know more about the treatment of chronic kidney disease contact Alfa Kidney Care
