Top 5 Tips to Keep Both Kidney and Heart Healthy
The headbone’s connected to the jawbone, the jawbone’s connected to the neckbone…and the kidney is connected to the heart. People whose kidneys have failed are three times as likely to have heart disease and high blood pressure causes both kidney and heart disease.
In honor of National Kidney Month in March and World Kidney Day on March 11, the National Kidney Foundation offers some health tips that may help prevent both kidney and heart disease.
| 1. | Don’t smoke. The strongest modifiable risk factor for both kidney and heart disease is smoking. There is nothing you can do that is more important in the prevention of both heart and kidney disease as stopping smoking. Smoking causes hardening of the arteries which causes both coronary artery disease and nephrosclerosis. Smoking is also a risk factor for high blood pressure which can cause both heart and kidney disease. |
| 2. | Control your blood pressure. High blood pressure causes both kidney and heart disease. High blood pressure puts stress on the heart to cause enlargement and thickening of the heart. This ultimately leads to heart failure. High blood pressure causes damage to the blood vessels leading to the kidney filters (we call them glomeruli). You are born with 3 million filters and as you damage the blood vessels going to the filters, they stop functioning and when you get down to 300,000 filters you will need dialysis or transplant. Heart failure will complicate your chances of effectively performing dialysis or having a kidney transplant. ACE-inhibitors and ARB agents are high blood pressure drugs that are effective in treating both kidney disease and heart disease. |
| 3. | Eat a proper diet. This should be patterned after the DASH diet. The DASH diet encourages low salt intake with increases in vegetables and low fat dairy products. The DASH diet has been shown to lower blood pressure and help to maintain a healthy body weight. In general, you should take in about 2000 to 3000 milligrams of salt per day. Calorie intake should be 20 to 25 kilocalories per kilogram of body weight. You should limit fat and cholesterol intake to no more than 30% of calories and if you have a high cholesterol, fat and cholesterol should be limited further to no more than 20% of calories. You may need to consult with a dietitian for specific eating recommendations. |
| 4. | Maintain a healthy body weight. This requires balancing calorie intake with exercise and activity. Each pound of fat accounts for approximately 4000 kilocalories of food intake in excess of activity. Hence, to burn off a pound of fat you must exercise to 4,000 kilocalories in excess of your intake. Ideal body weight is a Body Mass Index (BMI) less than 25 kg/meters squared. Overweight is between 25 and 30 and obesity is defined as a BMI in excess of 30. |
| 5. | Have your physician test you for both heart and kidney disease. It turns out that heart disease is a risk factor for kidney disease and kidney disease is a known risk factor for heart disease. Hence, if you know you have one, you should have yourself tested for the other. |
The National Kidney Foundation urges all Americans to love their kidneys. To learn more about CKD risk factors, prevention and treatment, visit www.kidney.org. The National Kidney Foundation will also offer free kidney screenings to people at risk for CKD in a number of cities across the U.S. on World Kidney Day, March 12. For locations and schedules, visit www.kidney.org
The National Kidney Foundation is dedicated to preventing kidney and urinary tract diseases, improving the health and well being of individuals and families affected by these diseases, influencing public policy in support of the kidney community and increasing the availability of all organs for transplantation.
The National Kidney Foundation would like to thank the following sponsors for their support of World Kidney Day activities in the United States.
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