Good health habits are healthy kidney habits

by Michael Gannon Senior News Editor

Kidney disease can strike people young or old, and can do so without warning. But with March being National Kidney Month, Dr. Michael Goldman, a nephrologist with Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, said routine checkups and common-sense care can avoid problems, or at least catch them early enough to make an important difference.

“The job of a kidney is to filter blood,” Goldman said. “They’re vital organs. Most filtration and other things happen in the liver. But what the kidneys do is generally unique to the kidney, so you can’t live without them.

“There happen to be other functions. For example, they’re involved in the signaling for making blood, so ... when people get a kidney problem they can get anemic. They also have to do with the bones in terms of hormonal signaling.

“When things go wrong, there’s a little bit of a problem.”

And the elderly, Goldman said, are more prone to kidney disease.

“The elderly are more prone to everything,” he noted.

Goldman said hypertension, or high blood pressure, is well-known as “the silent killer.” But it is not the only condition that can be insidious. Hypertension and diabetes, he said, are major causes of kidney disease.

“When somebody has appendicitis, they know,” Goldman said. “Their belly hurts and it’s off to the hospital. With the kidneys, you don’t know.

“Most of the time, when people get chronic kidney disease or kidney problems, it’s asymptomatic, meaning they don’t feel it.”

Sometimes there are no symptoms at all.

“So when it happens they can go on not knowing about it,” Goldman said “Which is why it is so vitally important to go on getting regular checkups and, as determined by their doctor, when people need lab work. A lot of time, we find kidney problems and can do something about it; meaning before it’s become problematic. We find it in blood work. People don’t have symptoms.”

While blood can be visible in urine, trace amounts or excessive protein in the urine can be detected only through testing.

Goldman used the example of live kidney donors to show how a loss of function caused by illness can go unnoticed for some time. He said when the donor gives up one kidney, they in effect lose half their kidney function and can still not only survive but be healthy and well.

An asymptomatic kidney condition likewise in some cases can reduce a patient’s kidney function considerably before a problem manifests itself.

‘The person could lose half the function in their kidneys and we wouldn’t pick it up on a blood test,” Goldman said. “The difficulty is by the time we pick up something there’s a lot of damage.”

“That person can have plenty of kidney in reserve if we can catch it early,” Goldman said. “But we have to slow down the process of what is bothering their kidneys. So it’s important for people — young and old — to get checked out.” continued on page 10

Along with regular checkups, Goldman said, healthy lifestyle habits are healthy kidney habits.

“In terms of diet and lifestyle, what you have to remember is that the kidneys have one million to two million filters,” he said. “Those filters are basically tiny blood vessels. The things I tell people to do or to avoid are because they’re heart-healthy. They’re going to be healthy for the kidneys.