Imagine you are one of the many adults living with chronic kidney disease (CKD).
That’s when your kidneys, which are super important for cleaning your blood, don’t work as well as they should. This is a big problem, affecting about 15% of people in places like the UK and the US.
Now, a team of researchers has shared some exciting news. They published a study in the journal “Renal Failure” saying that eating a diet with less carbs and sugar might help adults with CKD live longer.
Current Food Guidelines
The World Health Organization (WHO) gives us tips on what to eat to stay healthy. For most people, they suggest eating low amounts of fats and carbs.
Instead, they recommend protein to be the main source of energy in our meals.
However, they say something different for people with CKD. They tell them to eat less protein. That’s because too much protein can make their kidneys get worse faster.
The problem is, we don’t know much about how eating carbs affects people with CKD. That’s why this group of researchers decided to investigate.
A Special Study
The main researcher, Qidong Ren from Peking Union Medical College Hospital in China, led a study involving 3,683 adult CKD patients in the US.
They wanted to see if there was any link between how much fat, protein, and carbs the patients ate and their risk of dying.
They found something interesting. The CKD patients who ate 30% to 45% of their energy from carbs had a lower risk of dying. This was compared to those who got 60% of their energy from carbs.
Similarly, those who ate 5% to 20% of their energy from sugar also had a lower risk of dying compared to those who got 40% of their energy from sugar.
Changing One Thing for Another
The researchers then tried something called an iso-caloric replacement analysis. This means they replaced some types of food in the diet with others while keeping the total energy intake the same.
They found out that replacing some carbs with protein and replacing sugar with non-sugar carbs helped reduce the risk of death for CKD patients.
What Does This Mean?
The study suggests that CKD patients should tailor their diet according to their specific needs, especially in terms of carb intake.
However, Qidong Ren emphasizes that more studies are needed before we can say for sure that a high-protein diet is beneficial for CKD patients.
So, while these findings are promising, they need to be confirmed with more research. In the meantime, they provide a good starting point for helping CKD patients lead longer, healthier lives.
If you care about kidney health, please read studies about how to protect your kidneys from diabetes, and drinking coffee could help reduce risk of kidney injury.
For more information about kidney health, please see recent studies about foods that may prevent recurrence of kidney stones, and eating nuts linked to lower risk of chronic kidney disease and death.
The study was published in Renal Failure.
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