Anemia in Chronic Kidney Disease Video #2 Treatment for Renal Anemia; Vitamins, Drugs, and More
This is video number two about Anemia and managing and treating it in kidney disease. If you haven’t yet, make sure you check video number one because that covers a lot of the main points and the main therapeutic things you can do including iron medications.
There’s a lot of other medications besides what I talked about in that video but that’s up to you and your doctor to decide on. In the previous video, we cover hemoglobin levels and what the ideal levels are. This video talks about iron infusions as an option for people with Anemia. Infusions are another way you can get iron, besides orally. Iron can help raise hemoglobin levels, but first speak to your doctor or maybe a hematologist. Also make sure you have a good Nephrologist.
Another thing I want to talk about is what one of my professors used to call completing the “Spectrum of Nutrients” as a way to help treat Anemia in kidney disease. This spectrum ranges from 30 to 40 different nutrients depending on what you’re counting and what list you’re going by. These nutrients include, micronutrients, vitamins and minerals. We have 8 to 10 B vitamins along with fat soluble and water soluble nutrients. Minerals in the spectrum include selenium, zinc, iron, magnesium, calcium, and potassium.
When you have kidney disease, you run a higher risk of having imbalances in a lot of nutrients. Completing your Spectrum of Nutrients is going to help with Anemia. Studies that back up this basis include The Nephrology Dialysis Transplant Journal in 2002 Adjunctive Therapy and Anemia Management in which they talk about Vitamin E and something called L-Carnitine helping with Anemia and raising hemoglobin levels.
The Association of Physicians: India 2017 February “Affect of Vitamin D Deficiency on Anemia and Erythropoietin Hypo Responsiveness In Patients of Chronic Kidney Disease” mentions how up to 80 percent of people with kidney disease have a Vitamin D deficiency. When this deficiency is present, individuals don’t respond as well to Anemia medications. That is why it is essential to make sure Vitamin D levels are sufficient. Folate is also essential for treating Anemia.
This study: “Vitamin C Plasma Level In Response to Erythropoietin in Patients on Maintenance Hemodialysis” mentions how a deficiency in Vitamin C causes patients to not respond as well to EPO medication. Another way to ensure your completing your Spectrum of Nutrients is by taking a multi-vitamin. Even if it’s a basic multivitamin, it’s going to help you complete your spectrum of nutrients so that your body has what it needs to help make that hemoglobin to respond to the medications properly to allow your kidney to function better. I don’t recommend the major renal vitamins out in the market because they only have around 9 or 10 nutrients and you need way more than that as you see from some of these studies. There are hundreds of thousands of additional studies on how essential these nutrients are for Anemia in kidney disease.
My next recommendation is L-Carnitine. This is an amino acid which I talked about in the previous video. There’s another good study out where they use L-Carnitine and Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) which is an omega fatty acid and shows them to improve some parameters of kidney health. They recommended 2.4 grams a day. Most CLA pills are going to be around 1.2 milligrams, so two of these pills with the L-Carnitine can have a drastic improvement on hemoglobin and Anemia levels in kidney disease.
