Drinking alcohol with kidney disease can cause serious kidney damage. Alcohol can further accelerate kidney disease as drinking large amounts can cause dehydration which is bad for your kidneys. Alcohol should be consumed in low to moderate amounts with kidney disease as it can contain small amounts of oxalate content which are notorious for the formation of kidney stones. Binge drinking with kidney disease is strongly discouraged as it raises your blood alcohol to dangerous levels and puts a tremendous amount of stress on your kidneys. Drinking a lot of water and keeping your antioxidant levels in a healthy range can make alcohol more tolerable for your kidneys.

 

Today’s video is about alcohol and kidney disease. This is Robert Galarowicz, naturopath, nutritionist, kidney survivor, still having my av fistula from dialysis. Our channel has the sole purpose of giving you information to help your kidney health. So let’s get started and if you haven’t already, make sure to subscribe to our channel.

 

Alcohol & Kidney Disease
We’re going to talk about alcohol and kidney disease. What we know about alcohol is that if you don’t have kidney disease a lot of alcohol will damage your kidney. Generally, over time you’re going to need a lot of alcohol to cause kidney damage. If you have small amounts of alcohol, we’re talking like a couple of drinks a week, preferably red wine, then you don’t have to worry about that. That is shown to possibly have some protection against developing kidney disease so that’s in reference to people who don’t have kidney issues.

 

We’re going to talk about alcohol and kidney disease so if you have kidney disease, ideally, you shouldn’t drink all right. Drinking causes all types of damage to the kidney and the more you drink, the worse it is. If you have kidney disease and you want to have one-two drinks spaced out over a week or three drinks over a week, that has shown to be okay for the most part and won’t cause you any accelerated kidney damage. If you do anytime you have alcohol, you want to offset it by having a lot of
water because alcohol does dehydrate you, so drink a lot of water if you’re going to have those drinks. If you want to drink more than that like a lot of people like to go to a barbecue, a party, a wedding, whatever it may be and they’re going to have a few drinks they want to get a buzz they want to get drunk they want to get that feeling and if you have kidney disease ideally you shouldn’t do this okay because it’s going to damage the kidney further but if you are going to do it, let’s talk about ways to minimize that kidney damage. What happens is when you have the alcohol what it does lowers these antioxidant systems that protect the body and protect the kidneys. Because the alcohol is creating ROS or reactive oxygen species, which is cell damage, your body has these antioxidants to prevent and heal that cell damage.

 

What Happens When You Drink Alcohol With Kidney Disease?
When you have alcohol, you’re depleting those systems because you’re causing cell damage. Two things are going on: more kidney cell damage and then you’re depleting those things that help prevent kidney cell damage. You’re gonna go out there, you’re gonna get drunk, you’re gonna get buzzed, you’re gonna have more than two drinks, three drinks let’s say. Preferably try to keep them cleaner drinks meaning don’t have alcohol mixed with a red bull or any of these stimulant types of drinks out there.

 

Avoid malt liquors, things with a lot of toxins you want to stick to that cleaner pure form of alcohol whether it’s wine, red wine is one of the preferred ones for kidney disease. If you do alcohol really straight, alcohol without all the mixers, and things that are bad for your health and kidneys. Straight alcohol, try to do it on the rocks you can use club soda. A lot of other creative ways to have alcohol but those are really safe basic ways now you know you’re going to go out and have a few drinks tonight or during the day or whatever you’re going to, what you ideally want to do so that you can keep those antioxidant systems higher to combat that cell damage.

 

Important Advice For Kidney Disease Drinking
Vitamin E and Vitamin C are the two most important minerals because they help keep those antioxidant levels up which then help prevent the kidney damage that’s going to come in from the alcohol. Vitamin c vitamin e, lots of water if you’re going to drink alcohol remember. It dehydrates you, it’s bad for the kidney. For supplements, there’s something called N-acetylcysteine NAC, for sure you’re gonna need quite a bit of it you’re gonna need about 1600 milligrams which tend to be like three pills of what you can get over the counter online at a vitamin store but most important really stick with those two.

 

These three things: hydration, vitamin c, and vitamin e pills before you go out drinking. If you know you’re going to have a hangover, later in the night, you should take that vitamin c pill again or later in the day or when you wake up the next morning to build up those antioxidant levels.

 

To your best kidney health everybody, this isn’t a video saying go get drunk but take these nutrients, it’s saying you shouldn’t drink alcohol if you have kidney disease. Thanks for watching everybody comment, like, and subscribe. To your best kidney health, bye.

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