Popping pain medicines from your local drug stores without consulting a doctor may help you get relief from headache, fever, or muscle pain but it can be dangerous to your kidney’s health. Also, wrong dietary choices, stress, and improper lifestyle habits may make it difficult for the already overburdened excretory system to remove toxins efficiently, leaving it exposed to health problems like kidney stone, renal failure, blood in urine, protein in urine, high urea levels and others.
These warnings among others have come from doctors and health organisations against the backdrop of World Kidney Day 2019 marked on Thursday with a theme “Kidney Health for Everyone Everywhere.” They not only called for early treatment to help prevent or delay more serious health problems but also adopting healthy lifestyle to ensure health of this vital organ.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, as many as 3 per cent to 5 per cent of new cases of chronic kidney failure each year may be caused by the overuse of these painkillers. Once kidney disease occurs, continued use of the problem drug makes it worse.
“If you take OTC or prescription medicines for headaches, pain, fever, or colds, you may be taking a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). NSAIDs include popular pain relievers and cold medicines that can damage your kidneys if you take them for a long time, or lead to acute kidney injury if you take them when you are dehydrated or your blood pressure is low,” said the US-based National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD).
So ask your pharmacist or health care provider if the medicines you take are safe to use. In fact, opioids that are given to the patients with chronic kidney disease for pain management too could increase the risk of hospitalisation and even death, as per the new research that was presented on Tuesday at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions conference in Houston.
The researchers had examined electronic health records for about 1,00,000 adults in a Pennsylvania health care system and compared people with and without opioid prescriptions over a two-year period.
Regardless of their kidney function level, people who filled the opioid prescriptions had about 1.5 times higher risk of dying or being hospitalized than those who did not have an opioid prescription.
The risks, however, were more pronounced in people who had worse kidney function, said Dr Tessa Novick, the study’s lead author.
Dr Saurabh Pokhariyal - HOD Nephrology, Manipal Hospitals at Delhi’s Dwarka talked about latest advancement in the sector and that how over the last few years it has become possible to do kidney transplants across blood groups. “Recent advances in technology and immunosuppressive drugs that prevent your body from rejecting a transplanted organ, have now made blood group-incompatible transplantation possible.”
Dr Partap Chauhan, Director, Jiva Ayurveda vouched for herb plants like Punanrnava Palash, Gokshura, Gudduchi which can ensure kidneys healthy for life while Head of Department of Banaras Hindu University’s Dravayagunavigyan Vibhag KN Dwivedi batted for herbal formulations like Neeri KFT which is based on these plants can be an alternate to dialysis to some extent. Dr Manoj Arora, senior consultant, Department of Nephrology, Fortis Hospital, Shalimar Bagh, Delhi stressed on making sustainable long term healthy lifestyle changes.
Prof Vivekanand Jha from the George Institute for Global Health informed that were working on developing an affordable dialysis machine that will bring down the cost of dialysis.
Over 850 million people worldwide suffer from kidney diseases--chronic in nature (2.4 million deaths per year; 6th fastest growing cause of death) and acute (1.7 million deaths per year) while in India, the incidence rate of end-stage renal disease is estimated to be 229 per million population, and more than 1,00,000 new patients enter renal replacement therapy annually.
