Types Of Kidney Disease
All types of kidney diseases can be life-threatening, if you come to think the vital role kidneys play in the human body; located below the rib cage (one on each side), they are responsible for filtering waste products and additional water out of your blood, and we are talking about 200 quarts of blood every day. After the filtering process, wastes and water are expelled from your system through the urinary tract. For example, when you drink a glass of milk, the body first absorbs all the nutrients it needs and the rest of it is released into your bloodstream, and it is then up to your kidneys to do the ‘cleaning’ job.
Moreover, your kidneys release hormones like rennin, erythropoietin, and others, that adjust for the example your blood pressure levels, and promote the production of red blood cells. It is easier to understand now how the various types of kidney diseases can be very dangerous, since any kind of kidney failure would mean that all these waste products would stay in your body and continue to build up.
There are certain risk factors that can cause kidney damage, and the various kinds of risk factors can account for the various types of kidney diseases. Chronic diseases, an infection or an inflammation, as well as genetics can all cause kidney problems. The most common of all types of kidney diseases is what we call an acute kidney failure. It basically means that your kidneys’ ability to filter out water and wastes is decreasing rapidly, and unless you deal with the problem effectively within 48 hours, you will have probably run out of time. The cause of such as an acute condition can be a serious illness, or an infection which lowers your blood pressure so much that you go into a septic shock; acute kidney failure can also be the result of internal hemorrhage or even an injury caused by a blow.
Other common types of kidney diseases are: analgesic nephropathy, acute tubular necrosis, and diabetic nephropathy. Diabetic nephropathy, or KImmelstiel-Wilson syndrome in scientific terms, means that slow but surely there is a serious decrease in the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), consistent albuminuria, and high blood pressure due to diabetes, which in turn causes kidney failure. Acute tubular necrosis, on the other hand, is a kidney disease that is caused when the kidneys’ tubule cells die due to lack of oxygen or due to a poisonous substance. It can be caused by an injury, by a persistent low blood pressure, or by blood transfusion. As for analgesic nephropathy, it is one of those types of kidney diseases that you bring upon yourself by ingesting too many unnecessary analgesics and mixing them together.
Most types of kidney diseases include symptoms like a decrease in your urinary production (or even blood expelled with your urine), vomiting and nausea, as well as disturbances in your sleep cycles and a serious decrease in your appetite. If you are experiencing such symptoms, you should seek medical help immediately. If you are not, however, it does not mean that you shouldn’t do a check up every once in a while just to be sure.
