Two amazing marvels: the Kidney Conundrum
- Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Your kidneys are amazing! How many times have you heard someone say this? I’d like to wage a little bet with you and say that your answer would be, never! The reason I know this is because unfortunately the kidneys are the Cinderella organs of our bodies - often unappreciated for all the hard work they do to keep us alive.
That’s why World Kidney Day was set up in 2006 by a number of kidney organisations across the globe to raise awareness about the importance of our kidneys in relation to our overall health. It takes place on the second Thursday of March every year.
When your kidneys go wrong you’re in trouble. They clean your body of waste products and toxins and filters around 180 litres of blood a day. They also secrete a range of hormones to help control blood pressure and the production of red blood cells in the bone marrow. That’s an awful lot of work for two small organs, each approximately the size of a computer mouse.
So what happens when they go wrong? Well, anyone at any age can suffer from end stage renal failure, which is when your kidneys completely fail.
Kidney Research UK often receives phone calls from teenagers who are in complete shock to discover that their kidneys have failed – they simply had no idea. The bad news is there are very little signs or symptoms of the disease until it’s quite advanced. But if you take a little bit more notice of your kidneys and are ‘in the know’, there are subtle indications that could be the warning sign that you may be at risk - we’ll come to that later.
But let’s first dispel a couple of myths. Alcohol is not a cause of kidney disease, nor can you be cured for the illness, only treated for it. The current options for treatment are dialysis, where you’re hooked up to a machine for a number of hours two to three times a week, unable to get up and move around. Or if you’re lucky, a kidney transplant, which lasts on average 10-15 years before you may need another. But there is a huge demand for donated kidneys - 90 per cent of people on the organ donor register are waiting for a kidney).
If caught early enough there are ways to slow the progression of kidney disease down, by making diet and lifestyle changes. For those who are at end stage renal failure, some 50,000 people in the UK, well, they live in hope for charities like Kidney Research UK to find better treatments or ultimately a cure for them.
For over 50 years Kidney Research UK have been raising money to fund medical research in the hope to save the lives of over three million people in the UK who are currently at risk of kidney disease.
Thanks to the donations made from our supporters the Charity has made many advances in renal medicine, including the discovery of new genes responsible for many kidney diseases including kidney stones, establishing new treatment for anaemia in kidney patients, discovering a white blood a cell called the macrophage to help reduce kidney scarring and a major breakthrough in helping to increase the life expectancy of kidney cancer patients.
The Charity recently carried out a study looking at how elderly patients manage their kidney failure, where shockingly our researchers found from that they only had a basic understanding of kidney disease but often attributed their failing health to old age and other illnesses and were opting out of receiving treatment.
So now you have been awakened to these marvellous organs I want to hear you say to yourself– my kidneys are amazing, I want to keep them that way. How? I hear you ask. Simple take regular exercise, keep your weight down, reduce your salt intake and don’t smoke. Being ‘in the know’ in terms of warning signs also helps. Feeling tired, difficulty concentrating, itchy skin, breathlessness on exertion, poor appetite and feeling sick, can all be signs that you are at risk and you should speak to your GP.
Why not take the Kidney Research UK health check online: http://www.kidneyresearchuk.org/health/health-check.php and whilst you’re there you can also take a look around and find out what we’re doing to fight the Cinderella of diseases, not just on World Kidney Day, but every day. What will you do?
50 years of funding research to save lives
For more information visit www.kidneyresearchuk.org or call free on: 0800 783 2973 to make a donation.
