Why do we so often hear only about what people with kidney disease should avoid eating, while so little is said about where the real, hidden risks lie? This video explains how preservatives and excessive salt—often concealed in “convenient” industrially processed foods—can silently damage the kidneys and lead to severe exhaustion of the organ. Learn about the link between kidney-overloading hyperfiltration and store-bought foods, and discover why your own kitchen may be the most effective “pharmacy” for protecting kidney health.
The content of the video in written form
Hello, this is Dr. Zsom. Dear patients!
In today’s presentation, we are going to talk about diet in general. We already talked about the fact that salt is potentially harmful to the kidney because it causes hyperfiltration. It overworks the kidney, and at the same time it changes gut flora and it causes great inflammation in the blood vessels. We also talked about refined sugars, trans fats, and in our next presentation we are going to go into great detail in terms of protein intake. But now let’s talk about more general issues.
We already talked about potassium and phosphorus, but what about preservatives and other additives that are present in ready-to-eat foods, highly processed foods? Well, we need good nutrition in chronic kidney disease, especially because we have to prevent infections. And infections that cause muscle breakdown also cause heart disease, and they also cause blood vessel disease. So it’s very important to prevent these infectious problems. Otherwise, our life quality suffers, and at the same time our heart and circulation also suffers.
So to eat or what to eat, that is the question. Well, to eat or what not to eat? Obviously there is a lot of excessive expectations, misunderstandings. Dietary counseling is often based on restrictions, in other words, what not to eat, and this kind of approach rarely produces the results that we want. So we need a dedicated renal dietician. But what can we learn from a busy physician, and what is it that we actually should eat?
Well, let us clear up the basics and start protecting the kidney. First things first, we need to avoid hyperfiltration. We already talked about salt and carbohydrates, and we’re going to talk about protein in the next presentation. So especially when much of the kidney tissue is already damaged because of some kind of disease or removal of one kidney, for whatever reason, then it is especially important to avoid hyperfiltration. So in these instances, the remaining kidney tissue will try to take over the function that the damaged kidney tissue is not able to perform, and that causes overwork in the remaining kidney tissue. So it is better if our filtration is lower, and much of the kidney protective medications do exactly that. In other words, they decrease filtration. So our filtration goes down, but it’s going to be stabilized, and it will remain at that level for a long, long time.
So here is what we need to blunt hyperfiltration. Well, first of all, we need to understand that one of the many things that can cause hyperfiltration is salt. Salt is the oldest preservative. You know, it’s not just flavoring, but it is a preservative. And because in excess it will damage the gut flora, causes blood vessel wall inflammation and hyperfiltration, we need to understand that our old instincts that we put a lot of salt in everything will not be a good thing if we already have kidney disease or high blood pressure or heart disease. So salt is a preservative, so we can avoid it by eating fresh. So if we eat fresh food, this is a Hungarian goulash, by the way, that is an opportunity for us to avoid the salt that is in processed food. So we do not need to preserve the food if it’s fresh, right? And so with that, we avoid not only hyperfiltration, but also gut flora changes and blood vessel wall inflammation.
So if we eat fresh, then of course we do not need a lot of salt to preserve the food. When you cook, whatever you cook, the salt content of your food is regulated by you, and you can adjust it to your own specific needs. So for instance, we give the advice to patients who suffer from high blood pressure or heart or kidney disease that they need to reduce their salt intake. But of course there are exceptions. If your blood pressure is low, if you had diarrhea or an acute illness, or if you just simply sweat a lot, then the salt content can be increased, and you have that flexibility. If you, knowing your condition, will adjust and put as much salt in your food as much is needed in your specific situation. Now, mass-produced food may not have that option. It just has a fixed salt content, and if you eat as much of it as you usually eat, then that salt content is going to be a standard.
Surely, it takes time to cook food, but it does protect the kidney and spare you extra preservatives and all kinds of chemicals that are present in processed food. Now, you do not even realize that they are in there, yet salt and all kinds of preservatives are here in all kinds of processed food products. So professional cooking and fine dining is very nice and very social, yet your actual needs are best met when you control the content of your food. What are the ingredients? You control it if you cook at home. How much preservatives in there? What is the salt content? All those kind of things. It is your opportunity to change according to your actual needs.
Now, please remember that if you subscribe to professional cooking, which is very good, but if you do that too often, then the salt content of the food tends to be high, since it is used not only as a preservative but also as a flavoring. That you might then adjust to your needs, and you add other flavoring such as spices that do not have all those harmful effects.
So fresh is naturally beautiful. Whatever is preserved is colored. So that you make it look beautiful, but that has a price. All those chemicals that make all these food products good-looking may harm you on the long run. Salt, trans fats, and other chemicals are very good for transportation. Why? Because trans fats, palm oil, and all other kinds of things that are present here, they make food ingredients easier to transport. Transportation makes things cheap, but for this cheapness, your body will have to eventually pay, because you also take in with the food all these kind of things like trans fats, palm oil and other things, salt and other things, that are necessary for transport, easy transportation.
Fast food makes our lives more comfortable on the short run, very uncomfortable on the long run. Why is that? Because fast food is full of chemicals, and they directly affect blood vessels, the kidney, and gut flora. So normally they have all kinds of chemicals that are low-dose poisons. That’s the basis of preservation. In other words, you kill off all the bacteria that you don’t want, because you don’t want to have food poisoning. The problem is that when you eat these in large quantities, and you eat these for a long period of time, and especially if you have your kidney already damaged, so that these poisons accumulate in time, then these theoretically not harmful substances will become harmful. And then you have the cardiovascular disease, and you have the kidney disease because of their harmful effects.
Do you know your chemicals? They can cause cancer, asthma, immune deficiency, blood vessel inflammation, thyroid disease, obesity, gut flora changes, and eventually chronic kidney disease. And this is a positive feedback loop. In other words, once they cause kidney disease, the kidney will not be able to filter as many of them, or if you have liver disease that can also contribute to this, and so they accumulate faster. So all these kind of additives will accumulate in your body, and then obviously they will have harmful effects.
So during pregnancy, it is only a trend that there may be all kinds of harmful effects from these industrially processed foods. But relative risk for childhood obesity and childhood diabetes type 2, this type of diabetes, tends to be quite a bit higher, and it may take some time, a few years, but there is a clear trend toward a greater risk for these problems.
Baby formula, not an exception. You may have metabolic diseases later in life, all kinds of metabolic disease, including kidney failure. So the baby formula, the immediate consequence is that you don’t have immune protection. Remember that in breast milk you have all kinds of immunoglobulins that go into the body of the infant and protect the infant. So immediately what you will see is that these infants have less of the strength of the immune system. But the long-term consequences, metabolic disease, may start quite early, and then the effect accumulates, and then later on in life you will have a much, much higher chance of diabetes, of high blood pressure, and kidney disease. Chronic kidney disease is a very late consequence of metabolic disorders, so your kidney disease may have something to do with baby formula use, but that is quite hard to prove.
So let’s just take an example. Bulking agents, to make your food a little bit bigger, more voluminous. So ascorbic acid is vitamin C. Vitamin C may have its own problems, kidney stones and whatnot, depending on the dose, but that’s relatively not so harmful. But all these kind of phosphates are going to be a problem, like we mentioned in the phosphate presentation, especially if you have already advanced kidney failure. Then there is sodium content, potassium content, ammonium carbonate, which is an organic acid. Then you have gluconate, which is another bulking agent that may cause all kinds of problems. And notice that the classical way would be a combination of lemon and sodium bicarbonate, so simple baking soda. And so you do all of these because you don’t want to use this, which is a little bit more expensive, not because of the baking soda, which is cheap, but because of the lemon.
So flavor enhancers, preservative, stabilizer, flavorings, coloring agents, and soy. And soy, yes, can also have problems. It not only has estrogens, but they may be genetically altered soybeans that you get those from. They are all in your food without you noticing it. So this little Hungarian, you know, preserved meat has 63% meat content, but it also has all these other kind of things. And, you know, among others there are all these stabilizers, flavorings, flavor enhancers, coloring agents, and of course preservatives. And so once again, immediately these kind of things will not harm you and will not harm your kidney, but if you eat these in large quantities over a long period of time, and especially if you have already kidney failure, they can damage your kidney.
So processed food is full of chemicals that can affect the gut flora, the endocrine and vascular systems, and along with all these changes, the kidneys also. If the kidney failure is already present, the intake of these chemicals, including sodium, may be especially harmful. So if possible, especially if you have kidney disease or risk for high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, blood vessel or heart problems, then as much as possible, as much as practical for you, you will need to cook your food yourself, prepare your food yourself, and use as little processed ingredients as possible. Now, it may be very difficult, but it definitely will be very important for the long run in terms of kidney preservation, because this way you can avoid any of these artificial industrial products and spare your kidneys. And remember that these things are reversible, because if you stop eating these kind of things, then a few years down the line, your kidneys will be healthier.
Now, in the next presentation, we are going to talk a lot about proteins. How much protein is good? What kind of protein is good for you? And this is a very controversial and very important topic. But until then, thank you for your attention and goodbye for now.
