If you have diabetes, your physician has likely warned you about your risk of developing kidney disease. Why is kidney disease so common among people with diabetes?
What is Diabetic Kidney Disease?
Diabetes injures the small blood vessels throughout your body. When that happens in your kidneys, it’s harder for them to do their job. The kidneys are responsible for cleaning your blood, and damage to the kidneys can lead you to retain water, which creates swelling, or edema, in your legs and feet.
Diabetes also causes nerve damage, which can affect your bladder. This can cause urine to back up into the kidneys, causing further injury.
Signs of Diabetic Kidney Disease
When diabetes injures your kidneys, it usually develops very slowly over a number of years—you may not even realize it’s happening.
Your physician may notice it after finding excess albumin in your urine and running additional blood tests. Albumin is a protein that helps maintain fluid in your bloodstream, so it doesn’t move into other tissues. It also transports hormones, vitamins, and enzymes throughout the body.
If you have diabetes, you should get tested every year. If you do have kidney disease, it is best to detect it early. If kidney disease progresses, you may experience nausea, muscle cramps, loss of appetite and anemia, as well as notice a lower need for insulin.
Preventing Kidney Failure
Over the course of their lifetimes, around 30% of people with Type 1 diabetes will progress to kidney failure, as will up to 40% of people with Type 2 diabetes, according to the National Kidney Foundation.
While it can’t be prevented in every case, worsening diabetic kidney disease can be avoided by meeting your glucose and blood pressure goals. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, including losing weight, eating a healthy diet, quitting smoking, and getting plenty of exercise, can also help.
Diabetic Kidney Disease Treatment
If you have diabetic kidney disease, you may be prescribed medication to help your kidneys function. You may also be asked to avoid other medications, like over-the-counter pain medications, that could further damage your kidneys. You will likely have to follow a strict diet that is low in sodium and sugar, especially if your disease is advanced.
If your kidney disease progresses to the stage where they are only functioning at 10 to 15 percent, you will need dialysis. Some patients may be candidates for kidney transplants. In rare cases, patients may need a simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplant, where a pancreas is transplanted with a kidney.
The University of Maryland Medical Center, the University of Maryland Medical System’s academic medical center, offers advanced kidney transplantation services.
