Why Sodium Should Be Low For CKD Patients

Diet and lifestyle play significant role in slowing down illness progression and it is especially important for kidney disease patients. Besides proper medications and treatments, proper diet can help reduce burdens to the kidneys and preserve residual kidney functions.

Low-salt is one important diet principle for CKD (chronic kidney disease) patients. Knowing why sodium should be low for kidney disease patients, you will know how important it is to monitor your daily salt intake.

Eating too much salt can cause a series of health problems such as high blood pressure, kidney diseases, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc. This is especially important for CKD patients. All CKD patients should have low-sodium diet even in the early stage when their kidney functions are still normal. Most CKD patients have high blood pressure and about 80% high blood pressure cases are related to retention of fluid and sodium. Low-salt diet help ease fluid and sodium retention and help control high blood pressure so as to help slow down illness progression of CKD and protect residual kidney functions.

Once there is one patient suffering from refractary high blood pressure. He took several high blood pressure drugs, but the curative effect is not very good. A renal dietitian suggested him to stop taking these drugs and adopt a low-sodium diets and his blood pressure is lowered after a period of time.

Besides, high-sodium diet is closely related to various metabolic disorders in the patients. Researches have found that too much salt intake can intensify the activities of amylase, promote the digestion of starch and the absorption of glucose in the gastrointestinal tract, therefore it often will further elevate blood sugar levels and make illness conditions even worse. Experts have suggested that diabetes patients should adopt a low-salt diet to reduce the risks of stroke, cardiovascular diseases.

Actually low-sodium diet applies to both healthy and CKD patients. A low-sodium diet can help reduce the incidence of many health problems and enable a more healthy life.