5 Smart Diet Changes for Managing Kidney Disease

Your diet has a vital role in managing kidney disease. The foods you eat can support kidney health and slow disease progression. Or, they can contribute to kidney damage and accelerate the progression to advanced disease and kidney failure.

Diet is crucial, but you don’t have to figure it out alone. At Deon D. Middlebrook MDPC, our caring team monitors your kidney health, recommends dietary changes, and helps you create meal plans that you can stick with for the long run.

Here are five diet tips to follow:

1. Reduce sodium

Sodium causes high blood pressure (hypertension), which is the second leading cause of kidney disease. After kidney disease develops, consuming too much sodium increases the kidneys’ workload and accelerates kidney damage.

You reduce sodium by limiting salt. For people with kidney disease, that means aiming for a daily intake of 1,500 mg or less. For comparison, the recommended daily intake for healthy adults is 2,300 mg (about one teaspoon of table salt).

Most salt comes from the foods you buy, not from adding salt when cooking or at the table. Products with a high salt content include:

Frozen meals
Canned foods
Vegetable juice
Tomato sauce
Baked goods (including bread, bagels, and cakes)
Condiments (like mustard, ketchup, and salsa)
Restaurant foods (including fast food)
Hot dogs, cold cuts, and other cured meats
Potato chips, pretzels, corn chips, and other salty snacks

Limit high-salt foods and buy low- or no-salt products. Be careful about using salt substitutes. They’re often high in potassium, another nutrient that people with kidney disease need to limit.

2. Follow a heart-healthy diet

The sooner you get in the habit of eating healthy foods, the better for your kidneys (and overall health). A balanced diet supports kidney function and slows disease progression.

Heart-healthy diets aren’t restrictive. They recommend food categories, and you can choose what you want from the many foods available in each one.

The key categories include:

Fruits and vegetables
Whole grains
Low-fat dairy products
Fish
Poultry
Lean meat
Beans
Nuts
Eggs
Vegetable oils

Two heart-healthy plans to explore are the Mediterranean and DASH diets.

3. Limit sweets

Diabetes is the primary cause of kidney disease. At the same time, kidney disease raises the risk of diabetes because you need healthy kidneys to regulate blood sugar.

If you have one of these conditions, there’s a good chance you’ll develop the other. For both, keeping blood sugar in the healthy range is crucial.

To manage blood sugar, you must limit sugary foods and refined carbohydrates, such as:

Crackers and other snacks
Cakes, cookies, and candy
Sweetened beverages
White bread, pasta, and rice
Honey, syrup, and agave nectar
Starchy vegetables (potatoes, sweet corn, and peas)

Getting regular exercise and losing weight also help reduce blood sugar levels.

4. Monitor protein

The more protein you consume, the more waste the kidneys must filter. Too much protein speeds up kidney disease. Limiting daily protein is important for everyone with kidney disease — unless you’re on dialysis.

Dialysis removes more protein waste than the kidneys. As a result, your protein needs increase after you begin dialysis.

Balancing protein — getting enough to support your body while not overworking your kidneys — can be challenging. We work closely with each person, recommending optimal protein intake based on their kidney function.

5. Adjust your diet when needed

Kidney disease progresses through five stages. We routinely run tests to evaluate your kidney health and identify the stage. Then, we discuss dietary changes to make based on your health.

As kidney function declines, it’s essential to limit:

Potassium: Too much potassium stays in your body if your kidneys aren’t working up to par. High potassium causes weak muscles, an irregular heartbeat, and heart damage.
Phosphorus: Poor kidney function lets too much phosphorus build up in your blood. High phosphorus causes joint pain and weak, brittle bones.
Fluids: The kidneys control the amount of fluid in your body. As kidney disease progresses, they can’t filter out fluids. That means limiting beverages to prevent fluid buildup.

You can still eat a wide range of foods, but choose foods that are low in potassium and phosphorus. For example, oranges and bananas are high in potassium, while apples and peaches are low-potassium choices.

Need help with a kidney diet?

Call Deon D. Middlebrook MDPC or schedule an appointment online if you need help creating a healthy kidney diet or have any questions about kidney disease.