I have seen clinical research data, saying that among Chinese people, there are many people with kidney disease, and one out of every ten people has kidney disease. This is a very huge data, but it is indeed medical data, so , we need to raise awareness of kidney disease and learn to protect the kidneys.
So, what exactly is kidney disease?
How far is it from us?
First of all, I want to clarify a problem to everyone, that is, kidney disease is a disease of the kidney parenchyma, and it is not a problem with the kidney deficiency mentioned in traditional Chinese medicine.
The kidney in Chinese medicine is a system, including filtering urine, including reproduction, including storing essence, etc. It is the foundation of the human body. After kidney deficiency, the human body will grow slowly, or even decline, and there will be abnormal sexual function, and the whole body will be affected , Of course, also includes the function of filtering urine.
The kidney in Western medicine is a specific organ, which is what we usually call "waist". The main function of this organ is to filter the waste in the blood, and then metabolize it out of the body through urine.
The kidney disease we are talking about now means that there is a problem with this organ in Western medicine, and it cannot filter urine normally. This series of lesions can be divided into pyelonephritis, acute glomerulonephritis, chronic glomerulonephritis, and renal failure (representative Compensation period), renal failure (decompensation period, which is what we usually call uremia) and other diseases.
This kidney disease is not a concept at all with the kidney deficiency mentioned in traditional Chinese medicine. Some of the contents are related, but the essence is completely different, so it should not be confused.
Confusing the two issues is one of the reasons why some traditional Chinese medicines did not work well in the treatment of kidney diseases.
What we are mainly talking about today is chronic glomerulonephritis, commonly known as chronic kidney disease, which is the most harmful to people.
According to medical data, one out of every ten people has kidney disease, which mainly refers to this disease.
So, what are the symptoms of this disease?
In fact, this disease is not easy to identify. Many people feel uncomfortable and go to the hospital for an examination, only to find out that it is renal failure.
1. In the early stage of kidney disease, there may be backache and weakness in the waist, which will become more serious after exertion. Therefore, everyone will think that this is "kidney deficiency". In fact, most of them are caused by damp heat, or it may be a mixture of deficiency and excess.
2. Changes in urine, for example, more foam in the urine, cloudy urine (not necessarily all appear), urine color turns red, etc. However, because the syndromes of kidney disease are different, changes in urine also Not one.
But in some stages, hematuria will appear, so when hematuria occurs, more attention should be paid.
3. Changes in the frequency of urination, such as frequent urination, increased or very little urine output, and increased nocturia.
4. There will be symptoms of elevated blood pressure. This is because kidney disease causes the blood vessels in the kidneys to be blocked, and the body needs to pressurize to maintain normal operation. Therefore, blood pressure will not recover until the blood stasis in the kidneys is cleared.
5. Symptoms of fatigue all over the body, frequent fatigue and weakness.
The most important thing is the change of the urine test. You can go to the hospital, call the internal medicine department, and then issue a urine routine test form and do a urine routine test. As long as the indicators in it change, you must pay attention. One of the most important changes is the increase of red blood cells in the urine, the increase of urine protein, and the increase of white blood cells. Among them, urine protein and red blood cells have the most diagnostic value.
If it is really confirmed that you have chronic kidney disease, you need to do a blood test to check the creatinine and blood urea nitrogen in the blood. If they are both high, it means that you have reached the point of renal failure.
However, the compensatory ability of the kidney is too strong. Even if the general kidney function is lost, the remaining kidney can still finish the work. Therefore, when the creatinine and blood urea nitrogen tests are abnormal, it means that half of the kidney has been lost. The above functions are over.
This is where kidney disease is scary and hidden. Therefore, when many people find that they have symptoms, they are already in the terminal stage.
So, why does kidney disease occur?
what is the reason? Can we prevent it?
There are several causes of kidney disease:
1. Heredity. Kidney disease has the characteristics of familial clustering. If the elders have kidney disease, it is very likely that the offspring will have a higher rate of the disease. Studies have shown that this inheritance has genetic changes.
2. Invasion of external evils. I'm sorry that I used the expression of Chinese and Western medicine in this article at the same time. Exogenous evils include various infections, such as colds, which cause throat inflammation. Bacteria and their metabolites will travel along the blood and eventually reach the kidneys, causing an immune response to the glomerular basement membrane, and kidney disease occurs. According to traditional Chinese medicine, this is an infestation caused by external pathogens directly entering the kidney meridian.
This reason is the most important cause of kidney disease, genetic factors are only a small part, and many people without any genetic factors will also cause kidney disease due to cold infection.
Therefore, the common cold is not terrible, such as just catching a cold, sneezing, etc., but if the external evil continues to penetrate and causes throat inflammation, one consequence is kidney disease, and it may also cause myocarditis. Therefore, I have always emphasized eliminating colds in the first stage, the external cold stage.
Most kidney diseases, also known as chronic nephritis, occur after a cold. Many of them have never had a urine test and never knew they had kidney disease.
3. Take medication. There are many drugs that can damage the kidneys. Modern pharmacological research has found that some traditional Chinese medicines, if used improperly, can cause kidney damage. For example, Guan Mutong, Han Fangji, Aristolochia, etc. Because of the recognition of these problems, these traditional Chinese medicines are rarely prescribed in traditional Chinese medicine. Frankly speaking, I think this is where Chinese medicine should thank modern pharmacological research. Otherwise, if you continue to use them, the consequences will be serious.
However, there are not many traditional Chinese medicines that cause kidney disease now, and basically no doctor prescribes prescriptions related to Akebia. The most harmful to the kidneys are more western medicines, such as many antibiotics, which have nephrotoxicity and will directly damage the kidneys. Therefore, controlling the abuse of drugs is very important.
In addition, there are some reasons for the occurrence of kidney disease from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine:
1. Kidney deficiency. People with kidney deficiency are more likely to feel exogenous evils, which make exogenous evils go deep and go straight to the kidney meridian. Western medicine can find that kidney disease is caused by a cold infection. However, why do some people have kidney disease and others have a cold but do not have kidney disease? Western medicine can't explain it clearly. Our Chinese medicine believes that for people with kidney deficiency, external evils are more likely to penetrate directly.
2. Catch a cold. This is also a reason why Western medicine is not clear. According to traditional Chinese medicine, the human body is most afraid of catching cold, especially the lower Jiao, because the kidney meridian runs through the lower part of the body, so the lower limbs are very taboo to catch cold. I have seen such a patient, young man, in winter in Northeast China, wearing single leather shoes, went to play on the frozen lake, and got nephritis when he came back. This is a relative of mine, so I was very impressed.
Another friend also suffered from nephritis when he went to play in the icy cold stream in the deep mountains.
Today, due to space constraints, we talked about the ins and outs of nephritis, but did not talk about treatment. In fact, when it comes to treatment, the means of Western medicine are limited. Western medicine is very advanced in the examination of kidney disease, but the only treatment is hormone shock. And the nephrology departments of many Western medicine hospitals I have seen also prescribe Chinese patent medicines, and Western medicine believes that all chronic nephritis will eventually develop into renal failure, and this process cannot be terminated.
However, traditional Chinese medicine has great advantages in the treatment of kidney disease. This, we will talk about in the next article!
