Chronic kidney disease, or CKD, results from a number of different conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, lupus, kidney stones, polycystic kidney disease, or even frequent urinary infections. CKD is a condition in which your kidneys are unable to do their job of cleansing your body and blood from wastes and excess.
Without your kidneys to flush out unwanted materials, you’ll begin to feel sick and your body starts to become weak and deteriorate. It goes without saying, kidney care is of the utmost importance.
The weakness you feel with CKD can be a deterrent when it comes to physical activity or exercising. Many kidney doctors recommend against it for CKD patients. However, studies show the benefits of exercise are substantial on an individual with CKD not being treated with dialysis.
As CKD is often caused by high blood pressure or diabetes, exercise plays a big role in helping to manage those conditions to prevent CKD from becoming worse.
At Coastal Nephrology in Jupiter, we recommend our kidney patients incorporate light exercise into their treatment. Your renal physician, Dr. Abbas Rabiei, works with you to create an exercise plan.
Just as your diet is important to follow strictly, so is regaining your strength through exercise. Resistance training in small increments may help to slowly improve your physical functioning. More research has been done on the effects of aerobic exercise, and it shows benefits for CKD patients. Particularly in pre-dialysis patients, a little aerobic exercise each day has shown great improvement in one’s oxygen consumption and ability to control blood pressure.
Dr. Rabiei starts you off with a low intensity exercise program. He progresses you slowly through your program as is tolerable to prevent injury and ensure that you can continue. The benefits of a healthy diet in conjunction with exercise does wonders to help prevent CKD from taking over.
In severe cases your kidneys may be lost altogether, forcing you to look either to transplant or dialysis. Through natural methods however, you can retain your kidneys and their remaining functioning, potentially even turning back the clock a bit to become a healthier you.
Coastal Dialysis Center in Jupiter serves CKD patients, and we make kidney care our top priority. We want to make yours as healthy and efficient as possible. Call Dr. Rabiei today for an appointment at 561-253-8121.