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What Can I Do to Keep My Kidneys Healthy?
Life Care Diagnostic
February 22, 2021
Here’re some ways to prevent kidney disease through dietary and lifestyle tweaks.
- Protect your kidneys by preventing or managing health conditions that cause kidney damage, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
- Maintaining a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5-22.9kg/m2 can reduce your risk of getting obesity-related chronic diseases including kidney failure.
- Make physical activity part of your routine – at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week
- Stop smoking!
- Smoking slows the blood flow to important organs like the kidneys and can make kidney disease worse.
- Smoking slows the blood flow to important organs like the kidneys and can make kidney disease worse.
- Limit alcohol intake
- If you drink alcohol, limit yourself to one drink per day if you are a woman and two drinks per day if you are a man. One drink is:
- Get screened!
- Blood test that checks how well your kidneys are filtering your blood, called Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR).
- Urine test to check for albumin. Albumin is a protein that can pass into the urine when the kidneys are damaged.
- Healthy eating includes a diet that has:
- Low in sodium (salt) American Heart Association recommends no more than 2,300 milligrams (mg) a day and moving toward an ideal limit of no more than 1,500 mg per day for most adults.
- Low in fat especially saturated fat
- Low in dietary cholesterol such as fried foods and fast foods
- Minimize trans fat
- High in dietary fiber and whole grains
Tips of eating out
- Remove the poultry’s skin and fat before eating.
- Ask for less oil, less salt and less gravy in your food.
- Replace fried noodles with soup noodles.
- Ask for healthier drinks like “kosong” or take plain water instead of sweet drinks
- Reduce frequency of fast food consumption.
- Do not add extra cheese to your pizza or spaghetti.
- Ask for brown rice instead of white rice or flavoured rice
- Share your meal if the food portion is large.
Tips when you have home cooking
- Reduce the amount of salt and seasoning used.
- Use low fat cooking methods like steaming, boiling, stewing, grilling, baking, stir-fried with less oil.
- Enhance the flavour of food by using herbs, spices, lemon juice or vinegar instead of salt, seasoning, butter, margarine, lard and shortening.
- Use brown rice or wholemeal noodle.
- Remove poultry’s skin and trim off the visible fat before cooking.
KKLIU 1600/2021