Mathea Ford's Blog, page 64
February 5, 2018
Mindful Eating Tips for Following your Renal Diet
Your renal diet is one of the most important pieces of the “living with chronic kidney disease” puzzle. You have to fuel your body with the right foods, and avoid those that aren’t beneficial to your condition.
With mindful eating, you can be sure you are following your renal diet and feeling happy and satisfied when doing so.
What is Mindful Eating?
Mindfulness refers to being in the moment and aware of what is going on. As far as mindful eating, it’s all about paying attention to the foods you are choosing, the portion sizes you are filling up your plate with, and how these foods affect your mind, body, and mood.
When you are eating mindfully, you’ll notice you are making the best decisions for following your renal diet. You won’t have to worry so much about getting too much potassium or phosphorus – two minerals you need to be careful of when suffering from CKD – since you are will be choosing the right foods based on the renal diet your doctor has given you.
Mindful Eating Tips for Following your Renal Diet
Assess your mood at mealtime. Comfort foods are likely your renal diet’s worst enemies. They usually aren’t healthy, and more often than not, they are on your food restriction list. These typically include foods that are loaded with carbs and sugar, such as cookies, cake and chocolate.
While these items may be okay in moderation, if you are mindlessly eating them to feel better, forget the sadness, or to reduce stress, you are putting your health at risk. Rather than grab the sweetest item in the store when you are feeling down, find other ways to handle your emotions, including yoga, walking, or talking to someone.
Turn off the television. Eating while you watching your favorite show is the easiest way to eat mindlessly. You won’t realize how much you have eaten, and you can totally blow your renal diet out of the water if you are occupied while you snack. Be sure to put all electronic devices, books, and magazines away while you eat, so you can focus on the task at hand and be more mindful with your eating.
Keep a food journal. Reflect on your meal choices each day. Note the amount of food you are eating, and what ingredients they contain (especially important if you are limiting intake of sugar, potassium, phosphorus, or other nutrients). This written account of your daily diet will show you where you need to make better choices, or where you need to keep up the good work!
Learn portion control. Many people do not know true portion sizes when it comes to eating meals. They lob spoonfuls of meats and sides onto their plate until it’s full before sitting down to eat. However, portion control is a VERY essential part of mindful eating. When you know how much is “enough,” you’ll be able to better follow your renal diet.
Keep healthy choices on hand. When you don’t have any unhealthy or restricted food in your home, you won’t be breaking your diet rules! Healthy snacks already properly portioned in storage containers or Ziploc bags make it easy to eat mindfully. Preparation is key in following your renal diet!
As you can see, mindful eating is important for following your renal diet. When you are aware of the foods you are consuming each time you sit down for a meal or snack, you can be sure you are eating only foods that are healthy for your body, and for your chronic kidney disease.
Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Pre-Dialysis Diet – Tips For Eating On The Go
Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 055 – Tips For Traveling And Eating On The Go
Renal Diet Grocery List Tips- Low Sodium Choices
February 4, 2018
Renal Diet Podcast 080 – CKD And Diabetes Medications
CKD And Diabetes: What Medications Are Affected By Your Stage Of Kidney Failure
Podcast #80 Released on February 4, 2018
If you have diabetes and you have kidney failure, your amounts of medications or specific medication that you’re taking may be affected. I want to go over some of that.
There’s a lot of information on that. An article from my renal dietitian nutrition group and it’s reprinted from an article in a 2015 journal. It should encompass most of the medications that we use for diabetes today but the bottom line is this – there are certain medications, medications are processed your by your kidneys or by your liver usually or some other fringe ways things are processed but for the most part it’s your kidneys your liver. The medication that are processed by your kidneys are going to be most affected so it’s kind of the opposite of what you might think, your kidneys are not eliminating this medication so you may think it’s less effective and you need more but what actually happens is you maintain that level of medication in your blood for a longer period of time and therefore you may need less of the medication.
I just want to go over some of the medication and the highlight for you the differences and then you need to talk to your doctor about it. What you can do is go to them with the information and ask them if your medications are properly done or if there’s a different medication you should try based on your stage of kidney disease.
Basically, there are different types and ways that medications affect your kidneys and affect how they adjust your blood sugar. A lot of people with kidney disease got it because they have diabetes because they may have had poorly controlled or just over a long period time it caused damage your kidneys.
There are medications called DPP-IV inhibitors and what they do is they increase a peptide in your body that by reducing an amount of an enzyme that usually takes out that peptide.
These are typical because they’re not affecting your insulin directly or your blood sugar directly, they tend to not have a high incidence of hypoglycemia, low blood sugar so these medications just to help you understand specifically are like Januvia also known as Sitagliptin, Onglyza and Nesina.
A lot of medications like Januvia, this says has a 3.8 fold increase in the availability of patients with severe renal impairment so they recommend that you decrease the dose if you have a certain level of Creatinine clearance which is less than 50 mils per minute. Also, they recommend for Onglyza that the dose be decreased because it’s also effective renally, released renally.
There’s another medication called Trajenta, also known as linagliptin and it’s more useful because only about 5% of it is eliminated through your kidneys so it’s not as likely to affect your kidneys so they recommend that that one be more used more often.
There’s another class of medications that basically, they are called glp-1 agonists and they stimulate your glucose dependent insulin secretion so that means when you have too high of a blood glucose these glp-1 agonists help that to stimulate the release of insulin to bring down your level of Glucose.
Byetta and Bydureon have been studied a little bit and then Victoza is also studied but not very much so there’s another one called Trulicity and the recommendations on those are: the Abliglutide, Tanzeum is recommended levels of creatinine clearance and liraglutide which is also Victoza. Just those are the shots they usually take, they’re pretty popular they work pretty well but but they can be affected by the amount of kidney damage you have. Haven’t been studied highly so it’s going to matter, you just want to watch your blood sugar.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Renal Diet Podcast 076 – Diet, More Important for Kidney Disease?
Grapefruit and Kidney Disease, and Medications
Renal Diet Podcast 063 – Commonly Prescribed Medications
Renal Diet Podcast 079 – Easy To Make Casseroles Kidney Disease
Easy To Make Casseroles For Kidney Disease
Podcast #79 Released on February 3, 2018
Making casseroles is really easy to put together and freeze ahead of time. Casseroles that you can then take out and put in the oven to make for an hour or so and you’ve got a full meal because you have a starch or a pasta and your vegetables and your meat and it’s all put together in one dish so you just add a salad or add a soup next to it and you’re good to go.
I want to talk about how you can of make your own casserole recipes because I think it’s fun to use you use the ones we can find but I also think what if you have five or six things in your refrigerator and you’re like “I’d like to make a casserole!” I know that just never occurs really usually.
You’re able to eat based on how much your kidney disease is so you’re able to eat a certain amount protein. That’s where you probably want to be the most concerned depending on if you have a phosphorus or potassium restriction but pre-dialysis, you’re going to try to go for like a half gram of protein per kilo so if you weight 75 kilos which about 160 lbs then 75 kilos you’re going for about 35 to 45 grams of protein a day so you are going to get just one or two ounces of meat per serving.
Think of your casserole dish and depending on how big it is, how big is your portion that you’re going to want to have because your biggest concern is protein. If you’re going to say for example, you got a 9×9 casserole dish and you’re going to cut it into fourths, so, you’re going for about 2 ounces of protein per section at 2 x 4 is 8 ounces of protein, 8 ounces ground beef, eight ounces of beef or chicken shredded or beans counted as protein as well. That’s your biggest part of the recipe you’re concerned about.
Get that out of the way. Figure out how much meat you’re gonna put into it and then the next step is to add chopped vegetables so you’re thinking about low potassium, high potassium or not. If you’re not on a potassium or phosphorus restriction, you putt tomatoes in there if you want, you put citrus if you feel like it, if you are then you watch and you’re trying for green beans, or peas or trying to think like zucchini, peppers onions – those types of things.
Put those in there. You’re going to put in starchy rice or like noodles, whole grain pasta, you can even use biscuits if you’d like to just put biscuits on top. Biscuits can be kind of salty so you got to watch that. You’re putting your meat in there, your vegetables and your pasta, some sort of liquid.
You can make Vegetarian Lasagna. You just look in your fridge and you found peppers and onions and zucchini and broccoli and have some beans, some rice. You put that all together, add a little bit of vegetable broth and you’re off to the races and mix it up and bake it for about 30 to 45 minutes at about 350 degrees.
Obviously with noodles or ice, you are going to pre-cook them, they’re going to absorb some more of that vegetable broth or whatever you put in there so you can undercook them slightly so they continue to absorb that and not get like really soggy.
I want to give you a quick guide to do in like your casserole. Obviously, this is how most casseroles are made. A lot of people just add things together so if you’re doing like a Mexican type casserole, you could add some cumin, a little bit of cayenne, a little bit of garlic powder, onion powder and a little bit of maybe Fajita meat and need and you can layer it with tortillas. Add a little of liquid in there so you could do a little bit of the broth or juice to kind of give it some sogginess together to kind of make it mash. You can use rice. Rice is excellent in Mexican or that type of meal but just do that. Try it out.
If you make a casserole with that small 9×9 pan, you can cut it into 4 portions. If it’s just you and one other person, then you take that other half and you either eat it the next day or you freeze it so you can freeze that dish.
What I like to do is put like a layer of plastic in there in the dish, freeze it in the dish and then you can pop it out of the dish with plastic and stick it in a little container Ziploc bag then when it’s time to cook it, you pop out, take the plastic wrap off and you’re ready to go, put it in the dish and cook it.
Try those types of things. Other things that you can do is have some dishes like plasticware that’s about the same size as your casserole dish and freeze in that. Do the same thing and pop it out, make sure you do a little bit of pan spray on that plastic wrap so it’s easy to get off because you don’t want to cook plastic. It doesn’t taste very good.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Renal Diet Podcast 078 – Vegetarian Meals For Kidney Failure
Renal Diet Casserole Recipe – Make Your Own Casseroles
Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 033 – Grocery List for Renal Diets And Making Casseroles At Home
Renal Diet Podcast 078 – Vegetarian Meals For Kidney Failure
Vegetarian Meals For Kidney Failure
Podcast #78 Released on February 2, 2018
I get lots of e-mails, lots of questions whether I have vegetarian meals or not.
Vegetable broth that you can make, anyone can make, its delicious and it fits into a lot of recipes.
If you’re trying to make some, you know flavorful additions to your food and you need a vegetarian broth then it’ll be excellent so I encourage you to watch out for that.
Stay tuned I’ll have it on the Renal Diet HQ Facebook page.
The other thing about vegetarian meals is that they have a lower amount of protein. The things you watch for in kidney disease are potassium, phosphorus, sodium and protein. Protein is the most important in my opinion especially when you’re just beginning.
Vegetarian is whether you’re a lacto-ovo vegetarian or whatever type but vegetarians basically I know there’s more details of this but they basically don’t eat meat. Vegetarians are not going to get as much protein naturally in their food. They tend to eat more vegetables, cheese, milk, eggs – those types of things so cheese, milk and eggs have the same amount of protein. One egg has as much protein as one ounce of meat 7 grams, an ounce of cheese has about the same. So you are going to count those as the same but anything else you might replace with some protein within a vegetarian meal like vegetables or fruits or beans. Even beans are going to have the same amount of protein to. It’s just that they’re going to be easier to kind of fill up with so you’re going to be able to get more volume to your diet just by eating these vegetables and beans and protein.
In terms of protein, your going to get more bang for your buck because you are going to get less protein and more of the vegetables.
I wanted to give you some ideas of some things you can have a vegetarian meals even if you just want to add one or two vegetarian meals to your week. You can reduce the amount of protein that eat and when you reduce the amount of protein you naturally reduce the amount of phosphorus and potassium because those are naturally in protein foods. When you are the amount of protein actually reduce that which is why I tell a lot of people if they are concerned about potassium and phosphorus that if you’ve already lowered your protein intake just continue unless your doctor tells you differently. Continue to see how that affects your levels, your GFR because you may find that’s enough of a change to make the difference that you want and then you don’t have to worry about the other pieces for a while until your kidneys continue become damaged.
Couple of ideas, vegetarian chili is basically a chili with beans and no meat. You could put a little bit more in there like onions, green peppers and some celery, garlic, different kinds of beans instead of meat and that will help you to get more volume fullness with the food.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
VEGETARIAN RENAL DIET: WORTHY OR NOT?
Easy Vegetarian Diet To Help With Kidney Failure
Snacks for Vegetarian Renal Diets
Renal Diet Podcast 077 – Disaster Preparedness Tips
Disaster Preparedness Tips For Kidney Disease
Podcast #77 Released on February 1, 2018
There’s a lot of stuff going on in the news today but it’s always going to be a case where there’s a tornado or a hurricane happens. Something like a personal thing happens like a fire. All those things you need to be prepared for with kidney disease because you have special conditions or needs that other people don’t necessarily have.
I want to give you some tips. One of the biggest tips I can give you is to take pictures of your medications. Obviously, you are going to bring your medications with you but take pictures of the labels and that way you have the prescription number and the prescription information, your doctors information so if it’s like a hurricane and your doctor is in the area and you’ve evacuated, you’re not going to be able to call their office to get more medication. You can usually take that picture of those bottles and go to a pharmacy wherever you are and get like an emergency fill.
The next thing you want do is use an app like dropbox or Google notes or something on your smartphone to keep up-to-date information on your medication so which doctor prescribed you, what it is, how much, how often, and why you take it. If something happens let your family members know, “Hey, I have this in my phone and so I have to go to the emergency room, we can share this information with them.” Those are both related your medicines but that’s super important. Those are things that you don’t want to be stuck without.
If you’re on dialysis you should definitely ask your dialysis center in case of emergency what do you do, how do you find another center. Obviously, it’s a big one like Fresenius or Divita, you can usually go to another location that has it and you can talk to them and get arrangements to get into that facility.
Medications are super important. If you’re going to be traveling, eating healthy foods is important, taking good snack foods. You could be on the highway evacuating for hours and you really don’t want your blood sugar to get too low or to run out of something to eat it and get sick and you want to avoid having to stop and get really expensive bad for you food in the grocery store and not in a grocery store at a convenience store.
Although I did show you earlier in another video about some little snack packs that they have so that’s what I want to encourage you to do is if you know you’re going have to evacuate, you take and make yourself some snack packs for travel. Put some cheese, put some grapes, put some carrots, put some meat, cubes of meat, take some bread and some peanut butter and jelly so you can have those with you in the car and I don’t want to make it sandwiches because you don’t necessarily know that how long it’s gonna be but do you take this the sandwich preparation materials. Take yourself some beverages that you can know you can drink water and that way if you’re in the car on the highway and you’re just traveling really slow or your even stopped, you have something just in case is are having a reaction or having a problem so foods and medications are too important things.
If you’re going to be gone for a long time then you can try to find arrangements to find a new doctor in that area that you can communicate with. Check with your insurance company or your Medicare and find out what who is approved doctor in this area.
Those are the main concerns that you probably have with kidney disease – it’s an emergency, it is going to be stressful but do you think like having making sure someone knows where list of your medicines is on your phone. Making sure you have the pictures of them because it’s really hard to remember all these names of foods and all these names of medicines that you take. Take with you a cheat sheet that you can use to have along with you like what foods are good that you know you can eat that are healthy for you and that way you have something to go on.
I want to encourage you because of cases like a fire or an event like a hurricane or an event like a tornado you’re going lose your access to the local area and to your information. If you have it stored on your phone, in the cloud, even if you just have a computer and you have access to dropbox and you’re able to make yourself a file in dropbox, you don’t have to have it on your phone you can go to another computer like the library, log into dropbox and print that off of you need to that we have your information.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 010 – 10 Tips To Heart Healthy Living
Renal Diet Podcast 076 – Diet, More Important for Kidney Disease?
Renal Diet Podcast 063 – Commonly Prescribed Medications
Renal Diet Podcast 076 – Diet, More Important for Kidney Disease?
Is Diet More Important Than Medication For Kidney Disease
Podcast #76 Released on January 31, 2018
Is diet more important than medications for kidney disease?
I want to let you know that both diet and medications are important but let’s talk about the different things that can happen with diet medication.
Lots of people think that they can just take a pill and that’ll make their condition better, they won’t have to worry about their diet, they won’t have to exercise, they won’t have to do anything but medication can only go so far and medication is highly affected by your diet.
If you’re continuing to eat high potassium foods, high phosphorus foods and you have a potassium level in your blood and you really need to lower that, it’s not going to help to take medicine because your just kind of contradicting that.
I think that diet and medication work together really well but they also work against each other well. Diet has such an effect on your kidney disease because you can really change what you have contribute to that with your body so your body has salts.
Let’s take salts for example. Eating more salt is going to affect your blood pressure and you can take blood pressure medicine but what if you didn’t have to take as much medicine because you lowered your sodium intake? Or the same with potassium and phosphorus, what if you didn’t eat as much of those so you didn’t have to take your potassium and phosphorus blockers.
Your protein intake is affected your kidneys. Your protein leads to how much waste your body builds up and so if you give it a less protein it doesn’t have to do as much work and that saves your kidneys for a little bit longer and helps them to manage a little easier.
So those components of your diet – the fluid, this protein, the sodium, potassium, phosphorus – those all affect what your body does and if you change your diet and you eat better and you manage kidney disease diet then you’re gonna be a lot better off with whether you take your medicine or not.
Medicine can impact your kidneys as well, in both a positive and negative way. Medicines help your kidneys by reducing your potassium and phosphorus, they lower your blood pressure, they help you control your diabetes – all those are good things. But some medicines like Ibuprofen and Metformin are known to have effects on your kidneys which is why I tell you to ask your doctor how will this affect your kidneys. Because those medicines even though they’re helping you they may not be the right choice because they do affect your kidneys so make sure you’re checking on that and seeing if that’s going to make a difference.
Overall, you can make a huge difference in your kidney disease by watching your diet and watching your medicine.
As a dietitian I think diet has a lot of importance to where your outcome ends up being and I think it’s significantly can help slow down the progression of kidney disease just by a managing a good diet.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
Share This Page
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Renal Diet Podcast 065 – Grapefruit, Kidney Disease, Medications
Renal Diet Podcast 063 – Commonly Prescribed Medications
Renal Diet Podcast 058 – Different Kinds of Important Fats
Renal Diet Podcast 075 – Its Too Late To Change, Other Concerns
Its Too Late To Change And Other Concerns
Podcast #75 Released on January 30, 2018
“It’s too late for me to change. I should have started sooner! Why is this happening to me? How long do I have?”
Do you have these concerns?
I will be giving you my feedback on what those questions really mean.
I want to start with if you say to yourself it’s too late to change. You’re stage four stage five. You’re on dialysis and you just think “its already decided, to late to change. I should have changed back when I was stage 3 and now it’s too late.”
My answer to you is it’s never too late. Just making the changes now will improve your life going forward. You can have a better quality of life you make changes and you get your food and medication and process going in the right direction. It’s never going tp be too late in my eyes for you to change. You can make small changes everyday at that’s exactly what I encourage but as long as you’re alive, it’s not too late.
I had a friend who I was talking to this morning and she kept saying to me “I should’ve started soon.” That’s what brought on this thought for today’s talk because she kept saying she should have started sooner. It’s kind of the opposite of its too late to change but it is the same excuse like if you say “I should have started sooner,” you’re saying it’s too late.
But it’s not. Because the answer is yes, you should have started sooner but what good does that do?
That’s saying, “I should have stopped.” You’re not being proactive and accepting that that’s the past, so honestly that’s the past and you can start today, you can start right now. It’ll still change the future. The good thing about the future is it’s not determined already. Past is the past, it’s done, the present is right now and you make a choice in the right now and do that but the future changes based on what you do in the right now and every minute that you delay making those changes, making the improvements is a moment that you’re missing out so I say you make the changes and see what happens. Because what if your life does improve?
The worst that can happen is it stays the same right? You make better improvements and it doesn’t get you a whole lot better. You’re not any worse off than you were before but if you make those changes and you start feeling better and things improve then you’re doing pretty good. So, I encourage you to start right now and stop saying to yourself, “I should have started before or it’s too late” because the answer is it’s never too late and you should start right now.
Making those changes, what are those changes I’ve talked about are in the other videos. You got my website renaldiethq.com, I have lots of information on what to change.
Asking yourself “how long do I have before something happens?” The truth is medical science doesn’t know exactly. All of that depends on what you’re doing right now, what changes you’re making, meds you’re taking and kind of your predisposition to that. Just know that you have time and even if it does change, even if you switch to stage 4 or stage 5 tomorrow, you still can make positive changes that will improve and slow down the progression of your kidney disease.
Asking why is this happening to me is kind of self defeating so I get that you want to kind of being frustrated and angry and upset why is this happening to you but it’s happening regardless of whether you are upset about it or you’re happy about it or you’re agnostic to it I guess.
I suggest that you have your little bit of upset and frustration but then you take the positive route of saying, “this is happening to me and I can change it so I don’t have to just accept that I have kidney disease and I have to wait till dialysis.”
You don’t have to wait till dialysis make changes. You make changes right now and you’ll change that amount of time before you start on dialysis or you’ll change and be able to get a transplant or maybe you’ll never make it to dialysis but you can change that future again.
Asking like what’s foods are best. In my opinion, the best foods for you are the foods that you’re going to eat because what’s going to happen is you’re going to start to feel weak, you’re going to feel tired, you’re not going to feel like making things and so if something that you like is on the “Naughty list” so to speak. If you are eating a little bit of that will get you, so you’re eating and hungry and eating the rest of your regular healthier food for you then I think maybe you should try that to get you eating.
If you’re having no problems eating and you’re just having difficulty with accepting that foods are best for you then know that it’s healthy foods like whole grains with fiber to help with getting things through your body and its things with healthy fruits and vegetables, lower amounts of protein, plenty of fluid and that’s pre-dialysis.
I want you to know, in my opinion there’s no cure. Lots of people will tell you there’s a cure for kidney disease which isn’t really a cure but it’s an improvement is a transplant. And I hope that everyone who wants a transplant can get one. That’s just not the case usually so in my mind if you’re thinking there’s a cure then that means you’re delaying action or you’re trying to think, “Well maybe I don’t have to behave because there’ll be a cure and I’ll be able to not have to deal with this.”
Deal with this right now. Deal with your kidneys and use that to improve your life and improve the life of those around so let people know you need certain things to help your kidney disease. Exercise, eat healthier, take advantage of this opportunity you’ve been given to improve your health.
I’m feeling a little bit today like I need to tell you that this is a reality. The reality is if you have kidney disease you need to deal with it. You don’t need put it off until tomorrow and you need to say, “I can’t change anything” because both of those are not good options.
You can change right now, you can do what you need to do, head on over renaldiethq.com I have a kidney diet starter kit that gives you 7 days worth of meals – breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, recipes, grocery lists – all that stuff and it gives you some videos to talk about what’s going on. It has a short little audio that you can listen to that is me going over how to change some recipes.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
Share This Page
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Renal Diet Podcast 066 – Progression of Symptoms
Renal Diet Podcast 071 – Eating Whole Wheat Bread
Renal Diet Podcast 060 – Small Steps Mean Big Results Motivation
February 1, 2018
Renal Diet Podcast 074 – Things To Talk To Your Doctor
Things To Talk To Your Doctor About On Your Next Visit
Podcast #74 Released on January 28, 2018
Here is a list of about 10 different things I think you need to talk to your doctor about when you see them again.
I get the newspaper my dad reads it most the time but we get the newspaper like to just read the health and lifestyle articles because it was think there’s good stuff in there.
I want to talk about ten things you should ask your doctor on your next visit. While I don’t think all ten of them are relevant to you with kidney disease I do think a lot of them are so I wanted to check over them and give you my opinion.
Number one is which health websites do you trust. A lot of times you are trying to find information and you want to know what websites they think has the right descriptions and talking about medicines and where you can discover more information about your conditions. Obviously I think renaldiethq.com is a great resource for people with kidney disease but ask your doctor if there a really good website to go to learn more about other conditions. That way when you get the information you’re getting it from a trusted source.
Number two that they have in there is what is this medication I’m taking and why am I taking it. You’ve probably been taking some meds for a while and you may or may not remember when they were prescribed what they were for. If your condition is improving may ask, “Can I take less of this? Can we change this medicine? What are some of the side effects? What types of things are caused by this? How does interact with my other medicines? How does it interact with my kidney disease?” All those things are important for you to know the answers to.
If you smoke, you can ask your doctor how you can get help stopping to smoke. A lot of states but here in Oklahoma, we have a State Tobacco Helpline and you can call and get free nicotine patches. Stopping smoking is a huge thing you can do for your health. The other thing you can do for your health is get to a healthy weight or stay at a healthy weight and exercise so ask them your doctor what is considered a healthy weight for me and how do i get there, how do I exercise healthily.
Ask your doctor also if you screenings are today. If you’re over 50, you may need to get screened for colon cancer or at 40 they started doing regular mammograms for women. Ask your doctor if all you screenings are up to date and if you need to do any of them, if you need new vaccinations, do you need a flu shot, is it time for a pneumonia shot that everything.
What should you do to stay in shape like, “Is it healthy for you to walk every day? What sort of things should you be looking for if you’re having problems? How do they recommend you to exercise to stay in shape.
This is a very good one that they suggest is asking what can you do before your next appointment to help improve your health. That is a good thing. Doctors don’t always think about preventive things, they are so concerned and have a lot of people that they’re trying to work on so you asking what you can do to improve your health for the next appointment. They may say exercising, losing weight, taking a multi vitamin daily – who knows but they should have some ideas on what you can do to improve your health. So ask him and just let him know that you’re interested in doing those things.
If your doctor ordered the tests, ask your doctor why you need to take the test and what sort of outcome you can expect from that so for example of my dad he gets a Carotid scan so he knows what that is and why he’s getting in and what should happen next time.
We just recently when they said you know what kind of in the same for like three years and so we wanna do an additional scan just to make sure nothing has changed. That’s good to understand why you’re getting tests.
If your doctor recommends a certain treatment for something like if they say “We need to do surgery on your credit to open up.” Ask if there’s other options, ask if there are other lifestyle changes that you need to make, ask what is the expected outcome of that procedure.All those things, a lot of times you can get into discussions where you can either make a decision that you need surgery and get it done quickly and you’ll be at peace or if you’re a little concerned and you don’t feel quite comfortable, the answers to those questions should make you more comfortable with the answer that you’re doing.
I just wanted to go over that with you. I thought it was a really good review of things to talk to your doctor about whatever condition you have. But certainly with kidney disease asking about meds, asking about exercise, asking what you can do to improve your health and asking them what they would recommend and why you taking certain meds and how it interacts with your kidney disease.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Renal Diet Podcast 073 – Your Questions About Metabolic Syndrome
Renal Diet Podcast 063 – Commonly Prescribed Medications
So, The Doctor Has Ordered A Renal Diet
Renal Diet Podcast 073 – Your Questions About Metabolic Syndrome
Your Questions About Metabolic Syndrome Answered
Podcast #73 Released on January 27, 2018
Metabolic syndrome is a set of diseases or conditions that tend to go together and they tend to cause their own set of problems so doctors refer to them as metabolic syndrome.
Sounds a little scary. With kidney disease, you have a higher chance of having metabolic syndrome so I wanted to talk about it because it really can be something that you can manage and deal with your kidney disease.
Metabolic syndrome is a term used to define a group of symptoms or conditions that often occur together. Usually, it’s like diabetes or high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and sometimes kidney disease. A lot of times, in addition to those things, you may be overweight, you may have excess body fat around your waist.
Who’s at risk for metabolic syndrome are people with chronic health chronic health conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic kidney disease. Mix those altogether and if you are overweight or you smoke or you have a poor diet, you’re even more at risk.
If your doctors never told you if you have metabolic syndrome, you may ask them, “Do I have metabolic syndrome because I have diabetes, high cholesterol, kidney disease?”
It’s caused by a lot of factors. Lifestyle, poor diet, the genetics, the conditions kind of feed into each other so having diabetes makes you more at risk to have chronic kidney disease. If you have both of them, you are more at risk to have the other conditions as well.
Insulin affects you and it’s important to be aware that it can affect your hormones. It is a hormone and it can do different things to your body.
When you have metabolic syndrome, you are more at risk for heart problems or cardiovascular disease. If you have type 2 diabetes, you have more risk for developing the condition. It’s 80% of people with type 2 diabetes eventually end up having metabolic syndrome and it is estimated that a third of our population in general has metabolic syndrome.
There’s no specific symptoms for the condition and the risk factors are often the reason why they start testing for it and it’s not going to just go away. It is something that you need to manage and work on. Always improving your diet, living a little healthier, eating a little better, exercising – all those things help you manage your conditions which then manages the metabolic syndrome.
I want to encourage you that if you have these conditions and you like do if you have chronic kidney disease, then, talk to your doctor and find out what you can do, eat a little healthier. Start small as it’s always important to not jump off the deep-end in my opinion.
You should do things like eating more fruits and vegetables and replacing part of your sugary foods that you may snack on with healthier foods like replacing your fried potato chips with baked potato chips. Actually, counting out a number of potato chips, that’s already a portion.
If you don’t want to use potato chips, you can use portion control cups and portion out the food that you are eating for a week. Don’t try to measure calories, don’t try to do anything else. Just measure your portions and when you’re looking at how much you’re eating, how much the volume is just be aware that it’s two portions or that’s technically one portion. I recommend just start to get control of your regular conditions.
Metabolic syndrome is not going to go away but you can control it better by controlling your related conditions, controlling your diabetes, controlling your heart disease, controlling your kidney disease.
I encourage you to head on over to the website if you have kidney disease and get the free meal plan related to just plain pre-dialysis, renal with diabetes, or dialysis and we also have informational guides on there to help you if you’re just new to kidney disease.
If you’re helping someone with kidney disease, I encourage you to find out like are they consistently taking their meds? Are they managing their diet fairly well? Do they have some sort of meal plan? Are they seeing their doctor on a regular basis? Keeping up with their labs? What do you need to do to help them do better with that?
I want to be encouraging about metabolic syndrome and let you know that it is something that you should be concerned about, something that you can talk to your doctor about, something that you can manage just like every other part of this diet, you have control over where it goes.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
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Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Your Questions About Metabolic Syndrome
Renal Diet Podcast 061 – Common Risks for Chronic Kidney Disease
Lesser Known Facts about Chronic Kidney Disease
Renal Diet Podcast 072 – Planning For Success with Kidney Diet
Planning Ahead For Success With Kidney Diet
Podcast #72 Released on January 26, 2018
In your life there are big events that you can plan ahead for that will make you successful with kidney disease and some of those are things like Christmas and Thanksgiving and Memorial Day picnics, going on family vacation, going to your doctor’s appointments. All those things, planning ahead will make you more successful.
Planning ahead are things like knowing that you are going to be gone all day and so you need to take a snack; packing away your little containers and making sure that you have that snack with you. Or how do you know where you are going, what you are doing this week as this week might be a busy week.
For example, for me. My daughter has guitar lessons, my son has Boy Scouts, we have Taekwondo, we have school meetings. All those things, I have to plan ahead for so I have to think about our dinner meals like, “Am I going to put food in the crock-pot and make a meal or make sandwiches or are we going to grab something on the way, is my husband going to do it, is he out of town – all those things.
Those don’t usually just happen like you woke up this morning and you just found out. Usually, you know ahead of time so I want to encourage you to plan ahead because that is going to help you to be successful with your kidney disease and I want you to be successful with your kidney diet.
Planning ahead, going to Walmart has grocery store pick up so if you get really tired, you find it difficult to do grocery shopping you can go at walmarthasgrocery.walmart.com. Check if you have grocery pick up in your area and if you don’t like Walmart, Homeland, Kroger’s, any of those type of stores. Check and see if there is online grocery delivery.
Those things help you and then you plan your meal ahead and you say, “Okay, this week we’re going to have meatloaf and chicken and turkey. I need to buy those things so you have them so you’re prepared.
Success leads you to have more success so when you’re doing well with your kidney diet or you’re losing weight or you’ve got your blood sugar under control, you’re more inspired to continue doing that. I want to encourage you that if you try to do it and you are not that good at it, just know that as time goes on and you get better at it you’ll continue to want to do it so it becomes easier.
Like with the grocery pickup, a lot of times what I do is I just kind of go in there and look because it’s got you ordered this before and I am like, “Oh yeah! We need those snack bars. Oh yeah! We need Capri Suns or we need food for lunches or whatever. It kind of reminds you but it didn’t do that in the beginning, I had to realize all the things that I wanted to order.
My thought for you is big things don’t just happen like usually you wake up now, there are big events that do just happen but a lot of times you have preparation time so I encourage you to be prepared and to do things to be prepared.
Thinking about Thanksgiving, what you can do ahead of time, what you can bring to the family meal, how you can prepare those, who are maybe making the food, or who are coming into the meal to be prepared and understand how you eat and your condition don’t make it like its not their responsibility to do everything they way you want it but just try to help them to understand, “Hey, it’s helpful to me if we have some of these types of vegetables or if we have some of this salad or can I bring something to the meal and that’s helpful to the hostess.
Think ahead, plan ahead, try to do that to make yourself more successful with your kidney diet.
Send in your questions about all things related to Chronic Kidney Disease to podcast@renaldiethq.com
Don’t forget to check out my blog.
Email me at podcast@renaldiethq.com for suggestions
Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes
Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher
Share This Page
Tweet
Renal Diet Menu Headquarters - Renal Diets That You Will Love!
Suggested Reading:
Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 024 – Grocery Shopping and Meal Planning with Kidney Disease
Weekly Meal Planning for CKD
Renal Failure Meal Planning
