Help maintaining health diet with Chronic Kidney Disease

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Annie1968

Hi,

I was told yesterday off my GP that i have CKD stage 2. Apperently i have had this since being very young. I am 56 yrs now, female. My kidney readings have always been at CKD stage 2. I was a premature baby and the doctor thinks that what has caused this. I am worried sick now even though my GP said whatever i have been doing all these yrs continue as readings have not declined much. I live in the UK. My blood pressure is fine I am not overweight and i don't have any thing traced in my urine. Can anyone suggest ideas for maintaining a healthy diet and to help me stop worrying !!

Thanks

Anne

Jimm_Alumni

Hi @Annie1968, welcome to the community 🙂 I'm sorry to hear you're having to face this now. It does sound like you're already living quite a healthy lifestyle! As you mention your blood pressure is fine and you aren't overweight. Of course with Chronic Kidney Disease you do have to keep a closer eye on it. From what I know about it one of the biggest things is just keeping an eye on your salt intake. Both sodium and other salts like Potassium as @Nightcity mentions. Sodium will be provided on food labels under Salt, so that's easy to keep an eye on.

Exercise is also recommended, but this can just be ensuring you are walking a lot and doing around 75 minutes (one hour and 15 minutes) of 'vigorous exercising'. So around 10-11 minutes a day Vigorous exercising are things like running/jogging, swimming, or even just going up and down stairs counts.

Kidney Care UK have ways to help with things like Potassium intake, which is more difficult to track than sodium: Lowering your potassium levels | Kidney Care UK

There's a lot more information on their site too that you might find helpful!

I know it's a lot of changes and that can be scary. I had a similar feeling when I was diagnosed with Crohn's. I actually live and feel a lot healthier now actually! Knowing what was causing my fatigue and pain, I was able to make changes to help with it.

I'm just going to move this over to our Talking about your impairment category too 🙂