How To Reduce Time Running on Dialysis | Treatment Options for Reducing Dialysis

Today’s video is about how to not run as much time on dialysis, or how to reduce your time running on dialysis.

This video is for people who are just starting dialysis, who still have some kidney function, and who don’t want to run the full amount of time. So these are things you can do and we’re going to talk about the criteria for who are good candidates for this. This is also for people that are on dialysis and looking to reduce their time.

First of all we have a lot of documented cases of this and it now it’s becoming more and more prevalent where they used to not try these approaches, now we’re actually trying them a lot. They are not running the full amount of time on dialysis. First off to be a candidate for this you have to be stable, meaning you need to have your blood pressure under control. Your blood sugar and any other metrics with kidney disease and markers need to be under good control. You need to be stable. If you’re not stable you shouldn’t try this. You also should be under the care of a nephrologist.

You should have a primary cardiologist and make sure you’re taking all your medications. You can’t do it if you’re not going to take your medications. So the first step is you have to be urinating to some degree. If you’re not urinating, you’re not going to be able to reduce your time. Unfortunately, there’s no other way to get fluid out of you unless you do dialysis or by urinating so you have to be urinating to some degree.

With that, all your sodium phosphorus levels should be under good control. That goes back to being really stable. A lower protein and lower sodium diet has shown for majority of people who are able to reduce their time or hold on to a lot of residual kidney function and not run the full amount of time on dialysis. As low as protein you go is up to you. You can go very low. You want to make sure that your albumin is at 4.0 and above.

You can take essential amino acids and you can take keto analogs of essential amino acids. We do discuss things in other videos so that you can get your albumin in the proper range. An important thing too, is you have to be having regular bowel movements. You have to be able to get kidney toxins out of your body some way, and they come out through your bowel movements or your colon. If you’re having regular bowel movements that’s good. If you’re not, you need to take something to correct it somehow by getting the proper amounts of water. Make sure you check with your doctors how much water you should be drinking. Then you can always use fibers.

Generally you need some type of fiber supplement, or something to absorb kidney toxins and keep them flushing out your body. Acacia fiber, one of the preferred fibers, we have. You can use laxative products. I don’t recommend them, but if you need to go you need to go and laxatives are okay in that situation. Other things are activated charcoal which does very well for people looking to reduce their time. You take it with each meal. Probiotics are also important to keep the toxin low down.

These are just advanced techniques. The basics are being stable, taking your medications, urinating, a low protein diet and then you can add on further which a lot of people do because they just feel better. This improves their numbers and quality of life because you’re just supporting good kidney health.