Be good to your kidneys and stay active

October 20, 1:36 PMSenior Fitness ExaminerJim Evans

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Putting one foot in front of the other
MICROSOFT OFFICE ONLINE

DEAR JIM:  At 63, I have recently been diagnosed with early-stage chronic kidney disease.  According to my doctor, it is probably the result of my high blood pressure and diabetes which have plagued me for many years.  I’ve never been very physically active, but my doctor says that it might help if I start walking for 30-60 minutes a day. Do you think exercise would make any difference?  SKEPTICAL IN SKOKIE

DEAR SKEPTICAL:  Never underestimate the power of exercise.  A recent study in the JClinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN) and reported by Newswise (http://www.newswise.com/) indicates that exercise can have significant health benefits for patients with kidney dysfunction, so your doctor is giving you some good advice.  The full article, “Associations of Physical Activity with Mortality in Chronic Kidney Disease: NHANES III,” appeared online at http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/ on October 8, 2009, doi 10.2215/CJN.01970309.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) refers to the gradual – and usually permanent – loss of kidney function over several months or years, and your doctor is probably right that there is some causal relationship with your high blood pressure and diabetes.  High blood pressure can damage the kidneys over a period of time, if not controlled, and diabetes can cause diabetic nephropathy, which is the leading cause of kidney disease in the U.S.    

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (http://www.cdc.gov/), 16.8% of adults over the age of 20 – one out of every 6 people - suffer from chronic kidney disease, so you have lots of company, and almost 67,000 people die every year from kidney failure.  Your age and ethnicity are also factors as CKD is more common for adults over the age of 60 and among African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asians.

Researchers in the new study found that patients with CKD were even less physically active than those without CKD and that physically active CKD patients were 56% less likely to die during the study than inactive CKD patients.  Patients without CKD experienced similar survival rates which seems to support the overall value of physical activity for everyone.   

You haven’t indicated any symptoms, if any, that you might be experiencing, but CKD patients typically feel fatigue from the accumulation of waste products in the body, a frequent need to urinate (especially at night), itching, loss of appetite, nausea, swelling in the lower extremities, and more.

Exercise has many overall health benefits, and this latest study seems to indicate that it can have a positive effect on your disease too, so follow your doctor’s advice and start walking – today.