Kidney Disease and Chemotherapy Protection! How to Protect Your Kidneys From Chemotherapy Damage

Thanks for watching this video about how to protect your kidneys from  chemotherapy. If you have cancer, a common treatment is going to be chemotherapy, which a lot of people are very familiar with. Chemotherapy kills cancer, but it also affects healthy cells and a lot of times people end up with kidney damage. People can end up with chronic kidney disease from the chemotherapy. If you’re taking chemotherapy, there’s a lot of things that you can take to help protect from kidney damage.

You always want to ask your doctor about this, but just to let you know because a lot of people aren’t familiar– there are integrative oncologists even at very large cancer hospitals. Located in New York City, not far from Mt. Sinai is an integrative cancer specialist that can complement your treatments. You might want to seek out someone to really personalize it for you. 

With chemotherapy, let’s talk about some of the nutrients and what it depletes. Peer review journals state chemotherapy depletes a lot of nutrients and that’s why people get really sick from the chemo. It depletes magnesium, potassium, and calcium. It throws off your good bacteria including probiotics and you need those probiotics for good kidney health.

It can deplete glutathione, which is an antioxidant in your body and  interfere with sodium levels. It depletes taurine amino acids so when you’re on chemotherapy or going to begin you want to start some vitamins. Make sure to have some quality protein if you’re going in with kidney disease already then make sure to not have too high protein. You don’t want to have more than what your kidney diet suggests.

Some things you can take are vitamin c, and vitamin e. There’s something called n-acetylcysteine which makes glutathione– a really important substance in your body that helps reverse cell damage. With any of these check with your doctor. Those are some of the main ones. Also drink lots of water before your treatments.

You can use a little bit of sodium bicarb. Make sure your vitamin d levels are adequate because that’s also going to help with protection. Make sure you know your levels. If you need to supplement, supplement properly with a high quality multivitamin. I really recommend something that gives you some of that selenium and zinc which are all things that chemo can affect.

These are things that you need to keep your body and your kidneys healthy. We know zinc and selenium have very high deficiency rates in people with kidney disease and dialysis. Good diet always helps. Lots of fruits and vegetables will help protect your cells and your body.