Kidney Patients Are Taking Harmful Supplements

People with chronic kidney disease (which can affect one in 9 adult Americans) are careful about their health; the problem is many of them don’t know they’ve got a renal condition.  But another problem is that these patients tend to try to improve their health by taking dietary supplements, which may, in fact, do more harm than good.  This was the subject of a presentation at the recent American Society of Nephrology.

Analysis of a large governmental database – NHANES - showed that over half  the respondents were taking dietary supplements; and between 10% and 15% of patients with chronic kidney disease reported taking dietary supplements which were, in fact, potentially toxic to the kidneys.  The self-reports from different groups of respondents put supplement usage at 16% in subjects with no kidney disease, 13% in those with stage 1-2 chronic kidney disease, and 10% in those with stage 3-4 kidney disease. However, when adjustments were made to these figures to allow for differences in age, gender, education, etc, people with kidney disease were as likely to be taking a potentially harmful supplement as those with no kidney disease.

There is a good fact sheet on this subject at the National Kidney Foundation website.  It lists the 39 herbal supplements that are known to be harmful to the kidneys.  There are few, if any, herbal remedies that are efficacious without being toxic.  I advise everyone, including chronic kidney disease patients, to stick to physician-prescribed medications or simple over-the-counter remedies that your pharmacist can recommend.