Diseases That Affect the Kidney

Diseases that affect the kidney

Kidneys are small sized filtering units of the body that take around 40% shares in managing and balancing the internal environment of the body. Genetics could gift you resilience or sensitivity to disease when it comes to kidneys.

Co morbid diseases like hypertension and diabetes, frequent infections and renal stones cause 75% of the kidney failures seen worldwide. Renal Cancer and polycystic kidney disease are rare as they have strong genetic and environmental factors involved.

Co morbid diseases are usually linked with chronic kidney diseases and failure, while in certain conditions infections have been linked with acute renal failure.

It is important to discuss the common causes for kidney diseases as these give the kidney a slow poisoned death over a period of 5 to 10 years. The dysfunction in kidneys due to these diseases starts so low that it usually ends up being ignored in the initial stages. By the time one starts to notice the serious symptoms, it is usually too late to go for recovery.

Hypertension is a disease that affects the majority of the mankind at older age. It causes the stiffening of the major arteries and later the stiffening of the vessels supplying the kidney.

This stiffening leads to decreased oxygen and nutrition supply to the kidneys and later decreased filtration of the blood. In this way the kidney starts to dysfunction slowly. Early signs of kidney dysfunction would show increased levels of urea and Creatinine, BUN and some proteins in the urine. Serious signs of damage show a high amount of proteins in the urine with glucose, nutrients and blood with a decreased urine output later on

. If hypertension is efficiently controlled with medicines and lifestyle modifications, kidney failure due to hypertension could be very well prevented.

Diabetes is another condition that leads to kidney disease with progressive renal failure. This is because of the impaired filtration of blood due to high glucose levels. A normal kidney with normal blood sugar should not excrete sugar in to urine, with uncontrolled diabetes this situation changes and the kidneys face irreparable damage due to high sugar filtration.

Infections are another big cause for chronic kidney disease and renal failure. Urinary infections are higher in women and children. In most cases these infections are exacerbated if the water intake of the patients is low.

That’s why it is important to have 2 liters of water to have well-functioning kidneys. Usually a kidney infection will spike temperature and pain of enough intensity to force one to go to the doctor, but if this condition is somewhat milder it could be ignored.

This leads to unresolved kidney infections which later lead to large obstructive renal stone and later renal failure if the patient doesn’t come in time. Renal stones are also caused by mineral imbalances, decreased water intake and increased protein intake.

Signs of renal stones are severe pain in the loins, burning and difficulty in passing urine, increased frequency of urination and thick, cloudy blood tinged urine. Large kidney stones are a medical emergency and need to be treated as soon as possible. Treatment options regarding these diseases will be discussed in the next articles.