Who needs to be on a low-potassium diet with kidney disease?
Low-potassium diets have been recommended for kidney disease sufferers for a long time but does it actually benefit everyone with kidney disease? When you have kidney disease, your kidneys are unable to filter excess potassium from your blood which can lead to high potassium levels in your blood. While most people with kidney problems stray away from foods rich in potassium, recent studies have shown that avoiding high potassium foods doesn’t really help if your potassium levels are low to average. Instead, you miss out on the essential nutrients and vitamins found in potassium-rich foods. People with kidney disease who have elevated potassium levels are strongly advised to avoid or limit potassium-rich foods. People with healthy potassium levels can benefit from eating fruits and vegetables rich in potassium as potassium plays a big role in fluid balance, controlling blood pressure, and can place you at a lower risk of developing kidney stones.
Today’s video is about low potassium diets and kidney disease and how you shouldn’t go on a low potassium diet if you have kidney issues unless you have a real reason which would be hyperkalemia which is high potassium levels.
Thanks for watching everybody, this is Robert Galarowicz naturopath, nutritionist, kidney survivor. If you’re new to the channel make sure to subscribe and comment on your videos, we’ll get back to you usually pretty quick. Today we’re talking about a low potassium diet, there’s a lot of different diets for kidney disease, and a lot of diets, unfortunately, don’t have any real science backing them. We’re starting to really explore low potassium diets and a lot of the research that’s come out especially in the last year and a half and we’re finding that there really is no reason to go on a low potassium diet with kidney disease unless you have high potassium levels or you may be at risk for something that your doctor may have told you but using a low potassium diet to slow down to improve or prevent chronic kidney disease hasn’t shown in the research.
Research on low potassium diets
I’m going to review a few pieces of research from different studies that come out so you can always reference these. The American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week 2020 did a study on tolerance for potassium supplementation for chronic kidney disease. I never thought that we would ever see studies giving potassium supplementation to people with chronic kidney disease and they did, they gave it to stages three b, and four and found for the most part people were okay. It was a good response rate and the reason is is that we know that higher potassium levels, not out of range but higher levels and kidney disease are more protective they find cardiovascular protection your heart, your vessels, your veins, your arteries all protection for all of your cardiovascular system plus when you eat these higher potassium foods which are the fruits and vegetables, you have natural probiotics, vitamins, minerals fiber, things that don’t raise the blood sugar.
Results
This can help your blood pressure so unless recommended we don’t want to use that. Another piece of research from the Kidney Medicine Journal from June 15th, 2020 in partnership with the national kidney foundation is really interesting because that’s one of the largest leading groups of providing kidney information and services to people in the United States. In this piece of research, they looked at low potassium diets and they went through previous research and really couldn’t find what they call good quality data to really recommend a low potassium diet for kidney disease unless you have that high potassium levels or hyperkalemia.
They actually found the opposite going back to when people were on these more plant-based diets compared to those on higher potassium foods, people do better. Overall with kidney disease, there are so many more benefits you can reap from potassium-rich foods.
Myth busted
The main takeaway from this is a video that if you’re having kidney disease you’re considering a low potassium diet you’re looking into diets, don’t go on a low potassium diet unless it’s indicated by your doctor because you have issues with potassium levels so feel free to loosen up your diet more, have more of those green vegetables, some sweet potatoes, soybeans which are generally told to avoid on a low potassium diet but like anything else you should have your blood work when it comes to your health because knowing that potassium level is key so before you are going to look to incorporate more of these foods and you have kidney disease, make sure to get your blood checked thanks for watching everybody to your best kidney health take a look at our YouTube, we’ve got a lot of videos about potassium how to lower it naturally, different ways to help go about controlling your potassium levels so you can get more of those good fruits and vegetables in your diet. Helping your kidney health and best wishes to your kidney health everybody, bye.
Reducing Phosphate Intake With PKD Can Help Manage Symptoms
Foods Rich In Antioxidants Supports Normal Kidney Function, Learn How
For more information on ways to better support good kidney health, check out our YouTube Channel
