Kidney weakness: Beware of salt!

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Kidney weakness is not uncommon, especially in old age. Serious physical problems are inevitable if the blood is no longer properly cleaned. Above all, heart and circulatory problems. With a simple diet trick, however, you can significantly reduce the risk.

The kidneys filter the blood, extracting excess water and toxic metabolic products from it. In doing so, they regulate the body's water and salt balance. If it gets mixed up because the detoxification is no longer working properly, this also affects the blood vessels. The result: patients with chronic kidney failure are more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke or heart failure (heart failure).

The scientist Jiang He and his colleagues from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medecine in New Orleans wanted to know whether patients can support their broken kidneys through an adapted diet - by reducing their salt consumption. And whether that also has a positive effect on cardiovascular health.

Salt concentration in urine as a measure

To this end, the researchers recruited more than 3,500 kidney patients with an average age of 58 years, with roughly equal proportions of men and women. To determine their salt consumption, they determined the salt content in the urine of their test subjects at three points in time: at the start of the study, after two and after four years. In fact, the researchers found a connection between salt consumption on the one hand and cardiovascular problems on the other: Those who consumed plenty of salt had a 23.2 percent probability of developing heart failure. Subjects with the lowest salt consumption, on the other hand, only had a risk of 13.3 percent. For myocardial infarction, the risk was 10.9 versus 7.8 percent, for a stroke it was 6.4 versus 2.7 percent. In total, 804 of the study participants had suffered a heart attack or stroke or developed heart failure during the observation period of ten years.

The link between low salt intake and heart health persisted after the researchers calculated differences in total caloric intake and blood pressure readings. "Kidney patients who eat a lot of salt could significantly improve their heart health by means of a medium reduction in salt consumption," the authors write in their study. KDIGO (Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes) recommends that patients with chronic kidney disease consume less than two grams of salt per day.

Artificial blood purification

Renal insufficiency has far-reaching consequences for the whole body. For example, it can cause water to build up in the body called edema. High blood pressure, disorders of the nervous system, anemia and bone loss are also consequences of reduced kidney performance. The further the kidney failure has progressed, the more severe the symptoms. In the worst case, the kidneys work so little or not at all that the patient has to go on dialysis - this is an artificial blood purification. (away)

Source: Jiang He et al .: Sodium Excretion and the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease. JAMA, 2016; 315: 2200 DOI: 10.1001 / jama.2016.4447

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