Having chronic kidney disease means that for a while your kidneys are not functioning as they should. Your kidneys have the important task of filtering your blood. They remove the waste products and excess liquid and rinse them to your body as urine. When your kidneys are not working right, wastes accumulate in the blood and make you sick. Chronic kidney disease may seem to have come up unexpectedly. But it happened gradually for many years as a result of damage to your kidneys.
Each of your kidneys has about a million tiny filters, called nephrons. If nephrons are damaged, they stop working. For some time nephrons healthy may assume the additional work. But if the damage continues, more and more nephrons closed. At one point, the nephrons that are left can not filtering the blood well enough to keep you healthy.
There are things you can do to slow or stop the damage to your kidneys. Taking drugs and make a few lifestyle changes can help you manage your disease and feel better. Chronic renal disease is caused by kidney damage. By far the most common causes of such damage are: hypertension and high level of blood sugar or diabetes.
Other things that can lead to chronic kidney disease include:
- Diseases and infections of the kidney
As the polycystic kidney disease, glomerulonephritis and pyelonephritis - A reduced or blocked renal artery
The renal artery carrying blood to the kidneys, an enlarged prostate, kidney stones or a tumor could blockade urinal flow on the kidneys. - Long-term use of drugs that can damage the kidneys
Examples include pain medications, such as acetaminophen (such as Tylenol) and ibuprofen (such as Advil), and certain antibiotics. - The lead poisoning
- Problem renal you were born with
Signs and symptoms
You can start to have symptoms only a few months after your kidneys begin to fail. But most people have no symptoms at the outset. In fact, many do not have symptoms for as long as 30 years or more. This is called the “silent” phase of the disease.
How well your kidneys work is called kidney function. As your kidney function deteriorates, you will notice this following signal, urinate less than normal, feel very tired or sleepy, sleeping disorder, often feel sick to your stomach, nauseated and vomiting, have swelling from fluid build-up in your tissues, losing weight without exercise, not feel hungry and headaches or get troubled in focusing.
If you find that one or some of those symptoms are become routine and annoying, started to aware and looked for the professional helps and suggestion soon as possible, before its to late to taking care of.
Compile and re-written based on article by Lila Havens