Hello Health Champions. The kidney is a remarkable organ. If it were to fail you would be really sick
within a couple of days and you would probably be dead within a week so today I want to talk about
some of the most important signs and symptoms of chronic kidney disease and kidney failure
but more importantly I want to help you understand how to recognize it in the very early stages
so you never have to walk down that path of kidney failure, dialysis and kidney transplant. Coming
right up. Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg. I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if
you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe,
hit that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video. I was shocked
when I did some research I watched some other videos on this topic that had tens of millions of
views that did nothing more than list some signs and symptoms scare you to death and tell you to
go see a doctor. Now of course there's a time and a place to go see a doctor but if we understand a
little bit about the kidney and appreciate how amazing it is and how to take care of it then
we may never have to go see a doctor. The kidney is often described as a filter and while that is
correct it does so much more. It is a sensor. It senses various different metabolites in the body
and then it produces hormones in response to that so it helps regulate various things in the body
one of the things it's sensitive to and regulates is pH it can get rid of acid it can get rid of
base to regulate the pH of the blood it is very sensitive to oxygen which we'll talk about more
in a little bit but most of what the kidney does is reabsorption all right The kidney filters the
blood so it pushes fluid out through a very very fine filter but then it reabsorbs most of it so
it filters out over 200 liters of fluid every day but because it wants to keep certain things while
getting rid of others it is a selective filter. It reabsorbs 99% of all the water and all the sodium
so it's very good at getting rid of the extra sodium that it doesn't want. When it comes to
potassium it reabsorbs 88% of it when it comes to glucose and amino acids which are
precious fuel and building blocks it doesn't want to lose any of those so it reabsorbs 100 percent
unless you're a diabetic or your blood sugar is so high that you exceed the reabsorption threshold
then you're going to be spilling glucose in the urine but again that's not a normal state. Then
there are some things that the body wants to get rid of like creatinine and it's so good at this
that it eliminates 100% it reabsorbs nothing of the things that it doesn't want so it's
incredibly clever and very very selective. Now here's where creatinine comes in handy.
We know that the kidney is supposed to filter out 100% of it so there's only supposed to be a tiny
amount left and based on that we can estimate the glomerular filtration rate that's a number that
tells us how well the kidneys are working. If the kidneys start getting clogged up then that number
changes it goes down. The creatinine is based on muscle activity if you have more muscle activity
or more muscle mass it can skew the numbers a little bit if you have muscle breakdown like
from an injury or from a hard workout that can change the number and they estimate this number
based on age, race and gender because people are a little bit different but the whole point of this
is that the eGFR is a pretty good way to measure how your kidneys are working and how to give you
little hints long long before you have symptoms. There are five stages to chronic kidney disease
and all the other places that I looked they listed signs and symptoms as if they happened
randomly or equally through the different stages of degeneration but understanding when they happen
makes all the difference in knowing what to look for. In stage one of kidney disease the number is
normal the glomerular filtration rate is all still working but the kidney may still have taken some
damage. There may still be some infection some bacteria something that's breaking it down that
we find something abnormal going on maybe in the blood maybe in the urine but then in stage two now
we have a reduced filtration rate so it's down to 60 to 89 milliliters per minute. Stage 3 is 35 to
59. Stage 4 is 15 to 29 now it's really really starting to shut down and when it reaches less
than 15 milliliters per minute now we have stage 5 and we have pretty much a complete shutdown
of the kidneys and we certainly want to avoid this we want to find out we want to understand
what to do in the early stages and recognize that. Now this is a complex topic and I'm only
covering one variable which is the eGFR estimated glomerular filtration rate but in real life you
never just look at one marker you're going to look at the bigger picture you're going to look
at the other things that the liver and the kidney are doing but I'm using this just to illustrate
what can happen. In stage one you're probably not going to have any or very few symptoms what you
might see is some changes in urination if you have an infection it might burn upon urination you
might see a change in color or smell and if that happens and you haven't eaten a bunch of asparagus
then that might be a sign that your kidney is having some trouble. If there's a change
in frequency if there's a change in appearance if there's some discoloration or cloudiness or foam
that's not a good thing. If there's protein in the urine or bacteria that could give rise to a change
in in any of these above. In stage two of chronic kidney disease now we're seeing a reduction in
filtration rate the filter's getting a little clogged up we might see about a 30 percent
reduction in filtration rate but you're probably going to have still none or very few symptoms and
a lot of people will come into my office with numbers in this range and they have
absolutely no idea no symptoms. Now here's the interesting thing that I don't understand
is this is called normal on the blood work and even though it's called stage 2 chronic kidney
disease this range is considered normal. If you look down here the reference range is you're good
as long as you're over 59 but I would pay very close attention to this because it means
something and if someone comes in with an 80 I'm going to look extra carefully at what to
do with that kidney. When we get to stage 3 of chronic kidney disease now is where the real
problems happen the filtration rate is down to about half 30 to 59 milliliters per minute
and we're starting to get a lot more symptoms. Not everybody gets them but they're becoming
more frequent and there's quite a few you could get high blood pressure because the kidney senses
blood pressure and so if it's not working so well then it can't regulate blood pressure as
well but also it can work the other way that the high blood pressure puts a lot of damage
pushed a lot of stress on the kidney the friction actually hurts the kidney so the kidney can cause
and be the result of high blood pressure. Now anemia number three. How does that happen well
the kidney senses how much oxygen is in your blood and if there's not enough it's going to produce
a hormone called EPO or erythropoietin that means making red stuff basically and what it's making is
red blood cells so if you go up into the mountains for a few weeks your kidney senses there's less
oxygen let's make more red blood cells but if there's damage to the kidney then it can't keep
up with making enough of this EPO and you're not making enough red blood cells and you get anemic.
Symptom number four that can happen in stage three as things get more serious is bone disease. Normal
bone looks like this osteoporotic bone looks like that and this is because there's a mineral called
phosphate and phosphate needs to be balanced with calcium. The ratio is much more important
than how much you actually have of each. So if the kidney gets damaged now it can't keep up
with eliminating with getting rid of so as it loses the ability to clear the phosphate
the phosphate builds up in the blood and now we have to balance it with calcium. So the body
makes a hormone that is going to pull calcium from the bone to balance that phosphate. So that's how
kidney disease can actually cause osteoporosis. But there's even more stuff going on in stage 3
we can have edema and primarily in hands, feet and in the face around the eyes
and this happens because as the kidney starts getting really damaged and really leaky now the
protein spills out of the kidney into the urine and one of those proteins is called albumin and
it's the number one blood protein and it acts like a sponge. It has an osmotic pull that keeps the
water in the appropriate amount inside the blood vessel. As we start dropping as we lose albumin
we also start losing water it just leaks into the surrounding tissues, causing swelling
called edema. Back pain is also very common and there's two ways this can show up
if it's more diffused if it's like all over and not in a non-general way in the back
then it's usually a referred pain and any time an organ has a lot of distress we can get some
referred pain around that organ now if this pain is more sharp if it feels like someone stabbed
you in the back and won't let go that's probably a kidney stone and one way that you can distinguish
this from other severe back pain is that a kidney stone typically is not gonna ease up no matter
what you put your body position in. It's like you just can't get out of that pain because the kidney
stone is like a glass shard that's just sitting trying to make its way out through a tiny tube
and it doesn't matter how you move your body it's just still gonna hurt. Stage 4 of chronic kidney
disease now it's getting really really serious the filtration is close to shutting down 15 to 29
milliliters per minute. The symptoms are going to be the exact same ones as in stage three
but they're going to happen more frequently to a greater percentage of people to a more severe
degree. And so all the symptoms become more severe the damage to the kidney goes from moderate to
severe and now we're in a very very serious state. We really want to catch it way way way
before it ever gets to this because it's rare that you can do anything about it at this point
now you're very near kidney failure and they typically they give you counseling to start
preparing you for dialysis or if you're fortunate to get a transplant. You really don't want to get
to this point stage 5 of chronic kidney disease now we're pretty close to complete failure.
We're less than 15 milliliters per minute if it hasn't shut down completely it's really close.
And now we're going to start seeing some more extreme symptoms that you would never get in the
earlier stages. And breathing is going to suffer why you're almost drowning in your own lungs
because this fluid that's leaking out into the tissues from edema from a lack of albumin now it
can start filling up your lungs known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. You also get
things like sleeping trouble you can't sleep through the night because your body gets so
toxic your whole nervous system is basically on fire. You have ammonia breath. Ammonia
is something you normally get rid of through the urine but nothing's getting out that way
so the body is desperately trying to rid of it any way it can such as through the lungs. And you
also can find a metallic taste as more toxins to start building up trying to leave the body
and overall your toxicity levels just keep increasing keep increasing and you're going to
see things like itching, like nausea and vomiting. Like I said the body should try and get rid of the
toxins any way it can and at this point obviously you're not going to have much appetite because the
body doesn't want anything coming in. It's just trying to get rid of stuff very commonly you see
things like muscle cramps because your minerals, your electrolytes are a mess because your kidneys
can't regulate any of that anymore. So at this point there's not a whole lot you can do
it's really just a matter of time before there's dialysis kidney transplant or death. Now I think
you agree that's a pretty unpleasant picture that's pretty dark none of us would ever want
to get to that point. So here's the big question what does it look like before it ever gets
to any of these stages? Would you agree that that is the time that you want to do something about it
so here is the early way that you can tell. The earliest it can tell it's called
insulin resistance and if you watch some videos on this channel you probably recognize that
but why is it related to the kidney because type 2 diabetes is the number one cause of kidney failure
and how does it do that because diabetes destroys tiny delicate blood vessels and the kidney has
lots of them another place they're common is in the retina so diabetes is also the number one
cause of blindness and it can also destroy fine nerve endings and tiny blood vessels
in the periphery of the body so it's also the number one cause of amputations and the
list goes on and on but if you really want to take care of your kidneys then start learning
about insulin resistance and reverse that. If you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more
that one would be a great one to watch next. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time