Chronic Kidney Disease and Kidney Problems

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filtering your blood.

The stages of CKD are:

• Stage 1 – Kidney damage (protein in the urine) and normal GFR (>90)
• Stage 2 – Kidney damage and mild drop in GFR (60-89)
• Stage 3 – Moderate drop in GFR (30-59)
• Stage 4 – Severe drop in GFR (15-29)
• Stage 5 – Kidney failure: dialysis or kidney transplant needed (GFR <15)

Checking Your Kidney Function

Since kidneys clean the blood and make urine, blood and urine tests are a good way to check whether the kidneys are doing their job. If your blood or urine has high levels of substances the kidneys should filter out, something may be wrong. Knowing the names of your tests and what the results mean is a way for you to track your kidney function and see how you are doing over time. The two most common kidney function tests are creatinine (blood) and albumin (urine).

Creatinine

Creatinine is a waste product that forms each time you move a muscle. Healthy kidneys remove creatinine from the blood. A blood test can ...

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are doing routine tasks like climbing a flight of stairs or walking to the mailbox. Feeling very, very tired can be a symptom of anemia.

Other symptoms of anemia are:

• Muscle weakness
• Shortness of breath
• Pale skin, gums, and fingernail beds
• Feeling dizzy or lightheaded
• Feeling cold all the time (when other people are not)
• Fuzzy thinking (memory problems or trouble focusing)
• Erectile dysfunction in men
• Changed periods in women
• Pica (a desire to eat ice or non-food items, like ice, dirt, laundry starch, or clay)

Tell your doctor right away if you have any of these symptoms. Anemia can be treated with iron and injections of EPO. In just a few weeks, you can ...

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