Nuts and Kidney Disease | Eat Nuts to Live Longer with Kidney Disease

“Going nuts to protect kidneys and to live longer with kidney disease”

That’s the name of the study thats we’re going to be talking about nuts and kidney disease and how it applies to people with kidney issues. This piece of research from the American Journal of Nephrology in March, 2022.

They found people with chronic kidney disease who ate some nuts in their diet lived longer. They had a significantly less chance of dying compared to people who didn’t eat nuts in their diet, and why is that? It’s because nuts are so nutritious. They have so many good nutrients in them. They don’t raise your blood sugar, they have fiber, they have plant sterols, it helps your heart, it’s got a nice mix of proteins, carbs, and fats. Not a lot of protein though if you keep the amount of nuts small in your diet.

They do have phosphorus but as they mentioned in this piece which I’ve mentioned before phosphorus doesn’t absorb very well from plant sources so generally you don’t have to worry about the phosphorus and nuts. If you are worried about it because you need to be on a lower phosphorous diet, you might have to avoid it or take a phosphorus binder. There’s prescription and natural phosphorus binders that you can take with the nuts because there’s so many good benefits to them but the amounts i’m going to recommend you generally don’t have to worry about phosphorus.

They also said there was very low risk of people developing hyperkalemia high potassium, so you don’t have to worry about potassium because you’re not going to be eating large large amounts of nuts. What they recommended here was that people with chronic kidney disease have nuts between one and six times per week. Now you can fit in nuts if you keep the serving sizes small into any type of renal diet. If it’s low protein you generally can fit in small amounts.

The top four nuts the ones that are lowest in phosphorus are macadamia, pecans, hazelnuts, and walnuts. Those are the four lowest in phosphorus so you can say the most kidney friendly for the most part. If you’re going to eat them like one day a week two days a week you don’t have to be too concerned with a serving size as long as you don’t have a lot, meaning you can have one to two ounces and be okay.

If you are concerned about serving sizes because you’re doing a low protein or a very low protein diet you can do between five to seven of any of those nuts because. The five to seven nuts gives you about a half ounce, which is gonna allow you to have some nuts in your diet up to five six days a week. I know it’s not a lot but you can break them up into smaller pieces, you can put them in things, you can add them to salads, you can just eat them as is I tend to eat a little bit of nuts every day keeping it to those small amounts.

So you want to keep those small amounts because those will generally be okay for everybody. You don’t have to worry about it if you have other nuts in your diet try to keep the serving sizes small to a half ounce which is a really small handful.