What do you understand by Diabetes kidney?

Kidney disease is a known and common complication of diabetes and diabetes is leading cause of kidney disease. Anyone who has diabetes can develop kidney disease and kidney failure. Diabetes usually affects both the kidneys and worsens if not treated appropriately. The damaged kidneys are not able to filter the waste products from the body properly. This leads to accumulation of wastes products and water in your body---which makes you feel sick, and tired.

Most people with kidney diseases do not develop any symptoms until late stage or extensive damage to the kidneys has occurred. Hence doctors recommend that people with diabetes should be screened regularly for kidney disease.

The risk of developing kidney disease is higher in people with type 2 diabetes. Everyone with type 2 diabetes should be screened annually for kidney disease (after diagnosis of type 2 diabetes) and screening in people with type 1 diabetes should start after 5 years of living with diabetes.

Your doctor will regularly examine you for:

• High blood pressure to rule out hypertension. High blood pressure increases the risk of kidney disease .
• Protein in urine—this is detected by urine test for protein. Protein in urine is an early sign of kidney damage in diabetes.
• Creatinine levels: This test measure overall kidney function

Progress of kidney disease in people with diabetes can be slowed down or even arrested with good blood pressure and blood sugar control. Lifestyle changes that can slow the progress of kidney disease include;

• Losing weight,
• Regular exercise
• Avoiding smoking, and alcohol
• Eating healthy diet

If the kidneys fail in a person with diabetes the treatment options include dialysis, kidney transplant or conservative treatment.

Dr Poonam Sachdeva, our in-house medical expert talks about the why what and how in diabetes.

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