Diabetes and the Prevention of Kidney Diesease

Your kidneys are a pair of reddish, bean-shaped organs essential to removing waste products and excess water from your bloodstream. Your kidneys use a filtration process based on differentiating blood pressures, removing waste while allowing proteins and nutrients to remain in circulation. Kidneys are delicate organs that can be damaged a number of ways, including by medical conditions such as diabetes. The best way to prevent conditions like diabetes from damaging kidneys is to have your condition diagnosed early and manage it properly.

Diabetes

• Diabetes (also known as diabetes mellitus) is a condition where your body does not produce enough insulin or does not respond to insulin it produces. Insulin is a hormone that aids cells in absorbing glucose (also known as blood sugar) and turns it into energy. There are several types of diabetes, but the most prevalent are Type 1, Type 2 and Gestational diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is caused by your body not producing any insulin, and generally treated by injecting outside insulin into the body. Type 2 can be caused by an underproduction of insulin or an overproduction of insulin, with the body being resistant to insulin. It can be treated through diet, weight loss and oral medication. Most people who are diabetic have Type 2 diabetes. Gestational diabetes occurs when diabetes develops in women who are pregnant and have never before experienced diabetes. It is generally treated through diet and careful medical supervision. While gestational diabetes can put the woman at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes later in life, it generally improves or disappears after childbirth.

How Diabetes Leads to Kidney Disease

• Diabetes and kidney disease are often linked. Although not everybody who has diabetes will develop kidney disease, those who have diabetes are at risk for developing kidney disease. Diabetics cannot produce insulin or use the insulin that their pancreas produces. This results in an excess of blood sugar in the diabetic's blood. Too much blood sugar can make the kidneys filter too much blood, causing stress on the kidneys. The kidneys cannot do their job, and waste products begin to build up in the blood stream. As the damage continues, the filtering structures of the kidneys also begin to leak and allow beneficial proteins to slip through. Over time, these effects can continue to grow, causing irreversible kidney damage and eventual kidney failure.

Early Testing

• The easiest way to prevent kidney disease from developing from diabetes is early detection. Kidney disease often has no symptoms until it is far too late. By receiving regular checkups with blood screenings, you can catch diabetes in its early stages. If you can begin treatment before the kidneys are affected by the increased blood sugar, you can prevent kidney disease from diabetes-related causes.

Diet and Exercise

• Changing your diet and exercise routine can improve your diabetes, and prevent it from causing kidney disease. Diabetics should stay away from salty and sugary foods. They should avoid alcohol and tobacco altogether as these can aggravate their conditions. Regular exercise will also prevent your diabetes from worsening and developing into kidney disease. Watching your diet and establishing an exercise routine will help you lose weight, too. Obesity is yet another risk factor of kidney disease.

Insulin and Drug Therapies

• Although changing the diet and exercise routine may help many diabetics manage their health, there are just as many who will need to regulate their body's blood sugar though insulin therapy. Synthetic insulin can be injected into the diabetic's body to make up for the insulin that he is not producing. If not responding to the insulin is the problem, your physician may prescribe oral diabetic medicine to regulate the production of your own insulin. By treating your diabetes with these therapies, you can prevent your diabetes from worsening and causing kidney disease with elevated blood sugar levels.