Sickle Cell Nephropathy Treatment | Vitamins and Supplements for Sickle Cell Disease

In this video we’re discussing some options for people that have sickle cell nephropathy treatment. That’s sickle cell disease.

Sickle cell is a genetic disorder where it affects the red blood cells. Red blood cells deliver oxygen and nutrients. People that have sickle cell have a higher requirement for the basic vitamins in their body because study after study has shown that even though they may have adequate intake, they still become low in these nutrients from the disease process. If you have sickle cell nephropathy, all the other videos that we discuss here on my channel are still going to apply but we want to make sure you’re doing a couple of basic things.

So since your body is always stressed and it doesn’t have the nutrients it needs to function properly, you’re always going to be low in antioxidants, which are things that help your body combat and reverse cell damage. So we always want to make sure you’re getting plenty of nutrients. First off you want to take a good quality multivitamin. You want to complete your spectrum of nutrients. A good quality multivitamin is very important. Another this that is really important is omega-3. Omega-3s help sickle cell but they also help your kidney, so you’re getting a double benefit. That’s a great thing about nutrients: one nutrient can do 10,15,20,200, 500 different things in the body.

So with sickle cell disease make sure to get your multivitamin. Make sure you get your omega-3s. If you’re unsure about what we’re talking about, take a look at our other videos. We have videos that just talk about omega-3s. Make sure you have adequate Vitamin D. Vitamin d3 is so important. Now the blood levels for majority of tests on the actual lab test will be 30 and below will be deficient. 30 and above is sufficient with sickle cell. You want to make sure you get to at least 40 on that blood work so don’t just use the viewpoint of “my doctor said it was fine.” That’s what a lot of people say to me.

“My doctor didn’t say anything, oh he said it was fine.”

What does fine mean? If fine means 33, technically yeah you’re not deficient, but you’re not going to get anywhere near all those good vitamin d3 benefits unless you get your levels higher. We know that higher levels (not talking extreme levels here) we’re talking about like 40 to 60 area.  Very safe lots of research and a lot more benefits you’re going to get than having a lower vitamin d level. Vitamin a and vitamin c also very important. Don’t do high-dose vitamin c. Do  up to thousand milligrams a day is. You want to use ester c. Ester-C is a preferred form of vitamin c. It’s less acidic, less harsh on the stomach, so ester c as the form of vitamin c. 

Vitamin e is excellent to take. You want to definitely start out with those base nutrients. Make sure you take those before moving on to other things. Another one that you want to consider in that base nutrients is coq10. So one of the big problems with sickle cell is a lack of blood flow lack of oxygen. Coq10 helps bring more oxygen to your body. We have a whole video on that. 400 milligrams a day. If you can’t afford 400, 200 milligrams a day, even 100 milligrams has shown benefit. We really like that 200 milligram mark or higher, but even 100 milligrams has shown benefit. So coq10 is super important.

We covered the multivitamin, omega-3s, make sure you optimize your vitamin d, vitamin e, and vitamin c. It is so important to get all those nutrients, because one in ten one in ten people that have sickle cell will end up with end stage kidney disease. By taking these precautions, doing all the other things we talk about in our videos, making sure to stay on top of your doctor’s appointment ,you should do much better than you would otherwise if you weren’t doing all these things to manage your health.