Eight golden rules for the health of your kidneys

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a progressive loss of kidney function, over a period that can vary from months to years. In its early stages, it produces no signs or symptoms, the global campaign reports World Kidney Day, which was established on March 9 as the day of this body, with the motto “Prepare for the unexpected and support the vulnerable”.

The kidney has millions of filters or nephrons that are damaged and stop working in CKD. For a while, healthy nephrons do the extra work, but eventually there won’t be enough of them to filter the blood well enough to maintain health.

The Andean Health Organization – The Hipólito Unanua Agreement, which brings together the health ministries of Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador, published a book at the end of 2022 Chronic kidney disease in Andean countries. Doctors Vanessa Villavicencio and Fabián Ortiz Herbener, from Ecuadorian Society of Nephrology.

Regarding the current state of CKD in Ecuador, with data from the Ministry of Health, it is clear that It is estimated that 10% of the adult population, or 1.1 million people, have some degree of chronic kidney disease. But only 35,000 patients are registered in the country. More than a million should be identified.

“The small number of reported patients is striking,” the book states, “which underscores lack of effective and efficient prevention strategies, lack of early detection and control and this allows us to conclude that many people in the early stages could die prematurely”.

Nephrologist Fabián Ortiz, current vice president Latin American Society of Nephrology and Hypertension (SLANH)shares what he calls “eight golden rules for keeping your kidneys healthy.”

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Along with these habits, there is a new one that Ortiz recommends, which is full sleep, eight hours a night. The belief that as you get older you sleep less, says Ortiz, is not healthy. “The body repairs itself at night; waste products must leave the body. If we accumulate them, we will have problems, it is like taking out the garbage from the house”. The brain produces two waste products, tau protein and amyloid beta, and to eliminate them he needs sleep.

Less sleep doesn’t seem like a problem when you’re young, but in the long term it’s visible as dprogressive deterioration of the brain, starting with recent memory loss, where he left the keys, where he parked the car. Getting enough sleep is part of the American Heart Association’s ‘Essential Lifetime Recommendations’.