Improve Your Quality of Life with a Balanced Diet for Dialysis Patients

 

What Should Dialysis Patients Eat

 "Improve Your Quality of Life with a Balanced Diet for Dialysis Patients"

"Discover how adopting a healthy, balanced diet can benefit dialysis patients by reducing the need for frequent dialysis sessions. Start improving your quality of life today."

Adopting a balanced diet as a daily habit can enhance dialysis patients' quality of life and decrease the frequency of dialysis sessions each month.

The kidneys are vital organs that expel waste from the body, maintain water balance, and regulate salt, potassium, and acid levels. They also help maintain a balanced level of red blood cells. The most severe kidney disease is when these organs cease functioning. Research indicates that kidney disease cases have surged from 108 million to over 700 million in the past 40 years. Kidney failure leads to an accumulation of water and waste in the body, which can be deadly. Dialysis helps remove these waste materials, but managing this process is crucial.

An increasing number of dialysis patients need to focus on diet and nutrition. Regularly consuming a balanced diet can boost the quality of life and reduce monthly dialysis sessions. Monitoring water intake, considering isogen and urine output, is critical for dialysis patients due to the body's excess accumulation. Patients receive water based on their 24-hour urine output, which includes liquids like tea, milk, soup, and juicy fruits. Sodium regulates water and blood pressure in the body; excess sodium can cause swelling, shortness of breath, and high blood pressure.

Patients should avoid items like market foods, tandoori bread, pickles, salty biscuits, canned goods, and salty foods. Both pink salt and conventional salt have similar sodium levels, so moderation is key. High sodium can lead to elevated potassium, which is dangerous for patients. Potassium is crucial for heart and muscle function, naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables. 

Fruits and vegetables like peaches, pears, grapefruit, jamon, okra, radish, brinjal, lemon, mint leaves, plums, and lychees have moderate to low potassium levels, beneficial for dialysis patients. Foods like vegetable juices, bananas, figs, apricots, Chiko, ripe mangoes, raisins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, greens, and dried fruits are high in potassium and can affect heart and muscle function if consumed excessively. These should be limited or avoided in the diet. High potassium in raw and green leafy vegetables can be reduced, but not eliminated, by peeling them, soaking them in water for two hours, and cooking them in fresh water.

Protein is abundant in milk, yogurt, lean meats, poultry, fish, and eggs, essential for muscle building and function. Dialysis increases the excretion of waste and essential proteins, leading to weakness. Therefore, dialysis patients require more protein than kidney patients not undergoing dialysis. A balanced diet plays a crucial role in managing kidney disease.