A Maryland doctor gives tips on how to be proactive about kidney health.
The DC area has the highest rate of kidney disease anywhere in the country: 8,000 people are waiting for the transplant and 80% of them are from minority communities. A Maryland researcher believes that the work in progress may eventually help to reverse these numbers.
“In this era of regenerative medicine [we’re] thinking about what components are needed to use your own potentially healed kidney to serve as a scaffold for it to regenerate its own function? ”Said Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers, director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
“This is a very active area of research at the moment,” said Rodgers, who is also a master at the American College of Physicians.
Until science finds out how to encourage bodies to repair their own damaged kidneys, Rodgers recommends people consider becoming an organ donor – check the organ donor box on your driver’s license.
“We all kind of have to think – should I take all my organs with me?”
As a living donor, you can lead a perfectly healthy life, said Rodgers, with just one kidney.
And since you only need one kidney, people don’t develop symptoms when there is a problem until serious damage is done. Rodgers said that people most at risk of developing kidney disease should be proactively diligent. You can learn about some of these risk factors by watching the video below.
The risk factors for kidney disease are high if you are African American or Hispanic and if you have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease or a family history of kidney disease.
“When you see your doctor – if he doesn’t do it automatically – be proactive and say, ‘Doctor, how are my kidneys doing?'” Said Rodgers, adding that simple tests can reveal whether someone has kidney damage.
“Depending on how extensive it is, there are measures that can be put in place that can reverse or certainly slow the course of this future kidney damage,” said Rodgers.
You can find advice on how to prevent kidney disease on the NIDDK website.
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