Zinc and Kidney Disease | Most Kidney Sufferers Need This Mineral

This video is about zinc and kidney disease, a really important mineral. You need it for every single cell in your body for repair and growth. It’s needed for over 300 enzyme reactions so enzymes create other things so they create cellular change and you can’t have cellular change unless you have adequate zinc.

You need zinc for your immune system, you won’t have a strong immune system if you don’t have enough zinc and so many other good things come from zinc. Hundreds and hundreds of good things and if you have kidney disease there’s a really high likelihood that you’re going to be deficient or low in zinc.

So we’re talking about zinc today. This important mineral and as I mentioned when you have kidney disease or you’re on hemodialysis dialysis peritoneal dialysis you generally have a low zinc level. This is reported from the journal of renal nutrition april 2022 “zinc levels lower in patients with ckd on hemodialysis than controls.” So we know this before it just reiterates a lot of what we know that if you have a kidney disease ideally the best thing to do would be to get your blood levels tested.

That would be the best thing that’s what they recommend here. In this big meta-analysis they looked at thousands of people. 42 studies they combined together they really recommend getting it tested. Now I know from experience and working in the field that I really haven’t seen any nephrologist ever test for zinc so you’re going to have to request it. You can ask a nephrologist, you can ask your medical doctor, but the best thing to do is to have that level to know if you need extra zinc.

Now everybody with kidney disease ideally should be taking a multivitamin and usually a multivitamin is going to have a little bit of zinc which is good for you. So you’ll be able to get some through there. You could supplement it on its own, you can buy just a zinc supplement, you can supplement there so those are the couple ways that you can get zinc in your diet. As far as dietarily it’s tough to correct a deficiency through getting enough zinc through food alone because you don’t get the high values. You can’t eat enough of the food a lot of the food that zinc is in is high in animal proteins or animal foods.

You got oysters, seafood, chicken, maybe you can have small amounts but you can’t eat your way out of the deficiency and get enough through food. That’s why supplementation is really important knowing your zinc level would be best and what they do mention in this article that if you take a high dose zinc you could develop a copper deficiency and then copper could affect urethral point in treatment. So generally that’s not going to happen unless you take high doses of zinc like 50 milligrams and generally got to take it for like six months is where we start to see possible lowering of zinc.

You can take zinc lower doses like in a multivitamin for long term if you’re taking it separately you can do it for three-four months. That should build up your levels and then you may not need it again for six eight months or you may stay stable with getting a little bit through a multivitamin so something really important everybody with kidney disease on dialysis if you can’t get that blood level tested if not you still can take a multivitamin or a small dose of a separate zinc. So thanks for watching everybody to your best kidney health.