Digestive Problems Caused by Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD)

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) refers to the disorder of kidney, but it can affect our other organs or systems like digestive system. Well, what digestive problems will people with Chronic Kidney Disease experience?

Common digestive problems in Chronic Kidney Disease include:

1. Loss of appetite: Poor appetite is a common digestive problem among people with CKD and under such a circumstance, even if they are not hungry, they need to eat and keep good nutrition. In daily diet, Chronic Kidney Disease patients need to avoid foods high in protein, salt, potassium and phosphorus.

2. Nausea/vomiting: Nausea and vomiting symptoms are especially common for Chronic Kidney Disease patients with high toxins in blood and they occur easily in the morning. Kidneys are responsible for discharging wastes and toxins out of our body and when kidney function is seriously affected, toxins build up in the blood. High levels of toxin in blood affect their digestive tract and thus cause nausea and vomiting. At night, patients drink no water, lead to the high concentration of toxins in the blood, which will aggravate these two symptoms. Therefore, for people with nausea and vomiting symptoms, drinking some water in the morning will be helpful.

3. Bad taste in mouth: Some Chronic Kidney Disease patients may found they have metabolic tastes in their mouth which actually results from high blood urea nitrogen level in blood. Similar with creatinine, urea nitrogen is also one of the wastes produced by our body and normally discharged by kidney. Urea nitrogen is the major end product of protein, so limiting protein intake will be helpful for lowering blood urea nitrogen level.

4. Hemorrhage of digestive tract: the incidence of hemorrhage of digestive tract is higher among people with Chronic Kidney Disease than that in healthy people and it usually results from ulceration of gastric mucosa.

Usually, digestive problems do not occur until patient’s illness condition develops to advanced stage, so having a tight control about disease progression will help Chronic Kidney Disease patients to avoid these digestive problems.