“For diabetes in particular, we know there’s a relationship between lack of glucose regulation and complications like blindness and kidney failure. So if you were diabetic and you knew that you could get your glucose in a tight, normal range just by adjusting your lifestyle, wouldn’t that be great?”
Eric Topol MD, (born 1954 who is an American cardiologist, geneticist, and digital medicine researcher.)
Kidney failure occurs when the kidneys lose their ability to function. To treat kidney failure effectively, it is important to know whether kidney disease has developed suddenly (acute) or over the long term (chronic). Many conditions, diseases, and medicines can create situations that lead to acute and chronic kidney disease. Acute kidney injury, also called acute renal failure, is more commonly reversible than chronic kidney failure since the chronic condition has lasted longer in the body affecting systems for several months to years (some decades). Acute Renal Failure is new to the body as opposed to chronic; making it higher odds this can be treated and cured.
When acute kidney injury occurs, the kidneys are unable to remove waste products and excess fluids, which then build up in the body and upset the body’s normal chemical balance.*
The most common causes of acute kidney injury are:
-dehydration
-blood loss from major surgery or injury
-medicines such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), antibiotics, or the dyes (contrast agents) used in X-ray tests.
Symptoms depend on the cause of the problem of acute renal failure and can include:
Further your doctor will do the following to diagnose the condition other than blood tests:
The treatment of acute kidney injury includes:
–correcting the cause and supporting the kidneys with dialysis until proper functioning is restored. Most people who develop acute kidney injury are already in the hospital.
Chronic Renal Failure:
In giving a short and easily understandable definition Chronic kidney disease happens when your kidneys no longer filter your blood the way they should, so wastes (toxins, usually end products of an acid) build up in your blood. This has probably been going on for years, and it may keep getting worse over time. Just like a car engine damaged but still using the car without getting the engine repaired sooner or later in time the engine no longer functions the same with any organ of the body getting damaged by some long term condition. If your disease gets worse and worse over time, you could have kidney failure for some multi organ failure, depending on the condition causing this.*
The most common causes of Chronic Renal Failure are:
-Diabetes (uncontrolled diabetes (Type 1 or 2) for many years.
*-High blood pressure for many years.
These are the top 2 causes of most chronic kidney disease. Controlling these diseases can help slow or stop the damage to the individual’s kidneys who has one of these, if not both.
Other causes that can lead to chronic kidney disease include: -Kidney diseases and infections, such as polycystic kidney disease, pyelonephritis, and glomerulonephritis, or a kidney problem you were born with.
-A narrowed or blocked renal artery. A renal artery carries blood to the kidneys.
-Long-term use of medicines that can damage the kidneys. Examples include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as celecoxib and ibuprofen.
Know this for starters, each of your kidneys has about a million tiny filters, called nephrons.The nephron is the tiny filtering structure in your kidneys. Each of your kidneys contain more than a million tiny filtering nephrons that help clean your blood removing toxins dumping them into your urinary bladder so you can evacuate them though urine (urea, urine; get it). Your nephrons play a vital role to our essential daily living. They help all humans do the following if there kidneys or one kidney is functioning properly. They:
How well your kidneys work is called kidney function. As your kidney function gets worse, you may show these symptoms:
-Urinate less than normal.
-Have swelling and weight gain from fluid buildup in your tissues. This is called edema.
-Feel very tired or sleepy.
-Not feel hungry, or you may lose weight without trying.
-Often feel sick to your stomach (nauseated) or vomit.
-Have trouble sleeping.
-Have headaches or trouble thinking clearly.
To diagnose chronic renal failure is the same listed above on acute renal failure plus:
One way to measure how well your kidneys are working is to figure out your glomelular filtration rate (GFR). The GFR is usually calculated using results from your blood creatinine test. Then the stage of kidney disease is figured out using the GFR. There are five stages of kidney disease, from kidney damage with normal GFR to kidney failure.
There are things you can do to slow or stop the damage to your kidneys. Taking medicines and making some lifestyle changes can help you manage your disease and feel better.
Chronic kidney disease is also called chronic renal failure or chronic renal insufficiency.
Chronic kidney disease may seem to have come on suddenly. But it has been happening bit by bit for many years as a result of damage to your kidneys.
There are five stages of kidney disease, from kidney damage with normal GFR to kidney failure.
Chronic kidney disease is also called chronic renal failure or chronic renal insufficiency.
Chronic kidney disease is caused by damage of the kidneys whether the cause of it be primary a Renal or Kidney problem or a secondary, another disease or disorder that affects the kidneys in doing their job, like hyperglycemia related to a individual with uncontrolled diabetes, for instance.
Your doctor will do blood and urine tests to help find out how well your kidneys are working. These tests can show signs of kidney disease and anemia. (You can get anemia from having damaged kidneys.) You may have other tests to help rule out other problems that could cause your symptoms.
Your doctor will do tests that measure the amount of urea (BUN) and creatinine in your blood. These tests can help measure how well your kidneys are filtering your blood. As your kidney function gets worse, the amount of nitrogen (shown by the BUN test) and creatinine in your blood increases. The level of creatinine in your blood is used to find out the glomerular filtration rate (GFR). The GFR is used to show how much kidney function you still have. The GFR is also used to find out the stage of your kidney disease your in if you have it and its to guide decisions about treatment.
Your doctor will ask questions about any past kidney problems. He or she will also ask whether you have a family history of kidney disease and what medicines you take, both prescription and over-the-counter drugs.
You may have a test that lets your doctor look at a picture of your kidneys, such as an ultrasound or CT (Cat Scan of the kidneys). These tests can help your doctor measure the size of your kidneys, estimate blood flow to the kidneys, and see if urine flow is blocked. In some cases, your doctor may take a tiny sample of kidney tissue (biopsy) to help find out what caused your kidney disease.
Treatment for Chronic Kidney Failure:
There are things you can do to slow or stop the damage to your kidneys. Taking medicines and making some lifestyle changes can help you manage your disease, prevent further damage to the kidneys, if their functioning at all and make you possibly feel better.
Very hard, never a complete 100 % resolution. It is like emphysema done by smokers the damage is done or like a heart attack the area of the infarction is heart muscle now scared and the damage is done, so its get the organ to its optimal level of functioning.
Kidney disease is a complex problem. You will probably need to take a number of medicines and have many tests. To stay as healthy as possible, take your medicines just the way your doctor says to and work closely with your doctor. Go to all your appointments for the MD to see a increase in function or decrease in function of your kidney or kidneys you have still functioning to a level. To do that you can’t just go every 6 months especially when first diagnosed with it or with a collapse of an exacerbation of kidney failure in a worse level that brought on new symptoms that brought you to the ER. Lifestyle changes are an important part of your treatment. Taking these steps can help slow down kidney disease and reduce your symptoms. These steps may also help with high blood pressure, diabetes, and other problems that make kidney disease worse or made the kidney disease happen with the secondary diagnosis you had originally for years (ex. Hypertension or Diabetes if not both especially is uncontrolled).
Virginia Postrel (born January 14, 1960 is an American political and a cultural writer).
The kidneys are important organs with many functions in the body, including producing hormones, absorbing minerals, and filtering blood and producing urine. While they are important and kidney failure can be fatal, a human only needs one healthy kidney to survive.
The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs that extract waste from blood, balance body fluids, form urine, and aid in other important functions of the body.
They reside against the back muscles in the upper abdominal cavity. They sit opposite each other on either side of the spine. The right kidney sits a little bit lower than the left to accommodate the liver.
When it comes to components of the urinary system, the kidneys are multi-functional powerhouses of activity, for if the kidneys aren’t working, meaning they don’t filter toxic wastes out of our blood stream (with other functions it does) than the waste products don’t get dumped into the urinary bladder from the renal tubes, called right and left ureters. In human anatomy, the ureters are tubes made of smooth muscle fibers that propel urine from the kidneys to the urinary bladder. If the kidneys are not working they are not filtering our blood (same principle as filtering beer to make it to perfection, the kidneys do it for our blood to be able to have the cells do their function to the optimal levels with keeping toxins out of the body in preventing many blood problems with more due to acidosis (toxin build up). In the adult, the ureters are usually 25–30 cm (10–12 in) long and ~3–4 mm in diameter.
The kidneys have multiple functions. Some of the core actions of a healthy kidney or kidneys of a human body include:
“I would not have traded two minutes of the joy and the grief with that man for two decades of anything with another.”
– Lou Gehrig’s wife, Eleanor
ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. A-myo-trophic comes from the Greek language. “A” means no. “Myo” refers to muscle, and “Trophic” means nourishment – “No muscle nourishment.” When a muscle has no nourishment, it “atrophies” or wastes away. “Lateral” identifies the areas in a person’s spinal cord where portions of the nerve cells that signal and control the muscles are located. As this area degenerates it leads to scarring or hardening (“sclerosis”) in the region.
Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their demise. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, people may lose the ability to speak, eat, move and breathe. The motor nerves that are affected when you have ALS are the motor neurons that provide voluntary movements and muscle control. Examples of voluntary movements are making the effort to reach for a smart phone or step off a curb. These actions are controlled by the muscles in the arms and legs. Motor neurons are nerve cells located in the brain, brain stem, and spinal cord that serve as controlling units and vital communication links between the nervous system and the voluntary muscles of the body. Messages from motor neurons in the brain called upper motor neurons are transmitted to motor neurons in the spinal cord which are lower motor neurons and from them to particular muscles. The problem with ACL, both the upper motor niurons and the ower motor niurons degenerate or die which causes stoppage of sending messages to muscles. Unable to function, the muscles gradually weaken, waste away (atrophy), and have very fine twitches (called fasciculations). Eventually, the ability of the brain to start voluntary movement with messages is unable to work anymore.
Symptoms:
The onset of ALS may be so subtle that the symptoms are overlooked. The earliest symptoms may include fasciculations, cramps, tight and stiff muscles (spasticity), muscle weakness affecting an arm or a leg, slurred and nasal speech, or difficulty chewing or swallowing. These general complaints then develop into more obvious weakness or atrophy that may cause a physician to suspect ALS. Regardless of the part of the body first affected by the disease, muscle weakness and atrophy spread to other parts of the body as the disease progresses.
The parts of the body showing early symptoms of ALS depend on which muscles in the body are affected. Many individuals first see the effects of the disease in a hand or arm as they experience difficulty with simple tasks requiring manual dexterity such as buttoning a shirt, writing, or turning a key in a lock. In other cases, symptoms initially affect one of the legs, and people experience awkwardness when walking or running or they notice that they are tripping or stumbling more often.
There are two different types of ALS, sporadic and familial. Sporadic which is the most common form of the disease in the U.S., is 90 – 95 percent of all cases. It may affect anyone, anywhere. Familial ALS (FALS) accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all cases in the U.S. Familial ALS means the disease is inherited. In those families, there is a 50% chance each offspring will inherit the gene mutation and may develop the disease. French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot discovered the disease in 1869.
The cause of ALS is not known, and scientists do not yet know why ALS strikes some people and not others. An important step toward answering this question was made in 1993 when scientists supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) discovered that mutations in the gene that produces the SOD1 enzyme were associated with some cases of familial ALS.
Recent years have brought a wealth of new scientific understanding regarding the physiology of this disease. There is currently one FDA approved drug, riluzole, that modestly slows the progression of ALS in some people. Although there is not yet a cure or treatment that halts or reverses ALS, scientists have made significant progress in learning more about this disease. In addition, people with ALS may experience a better quality of life in living with the disease by participating in support groups and attending an ALS Association Certified Treatment Center of Excellence or a Recognized Treatment Center. Such Centers provide a national standard of best-practice multidisciplinary care to help manage the symptoms of the disease and assist people living with ALS to maintain as much independence as possible for as long as possible. According to the American Academy of Neurology’s Practice Paramater Update, studies have shown that participation in a multidisciplinary ALS clinic may prolong survival and improve quality of life. To find a Center near you, visit http://www.alsa.org/community/certified-centers/.
ALS usually strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70, and approximately 20,000 Americans can have the disease at any given time (although this number fluctuates). For unknown reasons, military veterans are approximately twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease than the general public. Notable individuals who have been diagnosed with ALS include baseball great Lou Gehrig, Hall of Fame pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Toto bassist Mike Porcaro, Senator Jacob Javits, actor David Niven, “Sesame Street” creator Jon Stone, boxing champion Ezzard Charles, NBA Hall of Fame basketball player George Yardley, golf caddie Bruce Edwards, , musician Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), photographer Eddie Adams, entertainer Dennis Day, jazz musician Charles Mingus, former vice president of the United States Henry A. Wallace, U.S. Army General Maxwell Taylor, and NFL football players Steve Gleason, O.J. Brigance and Tim Shaw.
More than 12,000 people in the U.S. have a definite diagnosis of ALS, for a prevalence of 3.9 cases per 100,000 persons in the U.S. general population, according to a report on data from the National ALS Registry. ALS is one of the most common neuromuscular diseases worldwide, and people of all races and ethnic backgrounds are affected. ALS is more common among white males, non-Hispanics, and persons aged 60–69 years, but younger and older people also can develop the disease. Men are affected more often than women.
In 90 to 95 percent of all ALS cases, the disease occurs apparently at random with no clearly associated risk factors. Individuals with this sporadic form of the disease do not have a family history of ALS, and their family members are not considered to be at increased risk for developing it.
About 5 to 10 percent of all ALS cases are inherited. The familial form of ALS usually results from a pattern of inheritance that requires only one parent to carry the gene responsible for the disease. Mutations in more than a dozen genes have been found to cause familial ALS.
About one-third of all familial cases (and a small percentage of sporadic cases) result from a defect in a gene known as “chromosome 9 open reading frame 72,” or C9orf72. The function of this gene is still unknown. Another 20 percent of familial cases result from mutations in the gene that encodes the enzyme copper-zinc superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1).
Treatment:
No cure has yet been found for ALS. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first drug treatment for the disease—riluzole (Rilutek)—in 1995. Riluzole is believed to reduce damage to motor neurons by decreasing the release of glutamate. Clinical trials with ALS patients showed that riluzole prolongs survival by several months, mainly in those with difficulty swallowing. The drug also extends the time before an individual needs ventilation support. Riluzole does not reverse the damage already done to motor neurons, and persons taking the drug must be monitored for liver damage and other possible side effects. However, this first disease-specific therapy offers hope that the progression of ALS may one day be slowed by new medications or combinations of drugs.
A Japanese legend says that if you can’t sleep at night its because you are awake in someone else’s dream. (I must be in a lot of people’s dreams).
Insomnia is a sleeping disorder that is characterized by difficulty falling and/or staying asleep. People with Insomnia have one or more of the following symptoms:
ChronicInsomnia caused by:
*Symptoms of insomnia can include:
“A Baker’s cyst, also called a popliteal (pop-luh-TEE-ul) cyst, is usually the result of a problem with your knee joint, such as arthritis or a cartilage tear.”
MAYO CLINIC
A Baker cyst is swelling caused by fluid from the knee joint protruding to the back of the knee. The back of the knee is also referred to as the popliteal area of the knee. A Baker cyst is sometimes referred to as a popliteal cyst. When an excess of knee joint fluid is compressed by the body weight between the bones of the knee joint, it can become trapped and separate from the joint to form the fluid-filled sac of a Baker cyst. The name of the cyst is in memory of the physician who originally described the condition, the British surgeon William Morrant Baker (1839-1896).
When cartilage tears or other internal knee problems are associated, physical therapy or surgery can be the best treatment option. During a surgical operation, the surgeon can remove the swollen tissue (synovium) that leads to the cyst formation. This is most commonly done with arthroscopic surgery.