How to have healthy kidneys with vegetarian kidney diet

Can a vegetarian diet be dangerous for kidney patients?

If not properly planned, a vegetarian or vegan diet can be dangerous for your health – and for your kidneys. Vegetarian diet can cause important nutrients to be missing from your diet. This can be even more dangerous if you’re a kidney patient.

Vegetarians should be even more careful to get the right nutrients, especially proteins, calcium, vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acids.

Nevertheless, a well-planned vegetarian – or vegan – nutrition plan can be really helpful in treating kidney failure and kidney disease.

What are the benefits of a vegetarian diet for the kidney patient?

The primary dangers to kidney health are hypertension and diabetes.

Vegetarian diet has been proven to help with both. Several studies show how a low fat vegetarian diet is richer in vitamin C – crucial factor for the prevention of diabetes.

Another study established that glutamic acid, most common amino acid in vegetal protein, lowers blood pressure.

This is why plant-based diets have been shown not only to prevent kidney function decline, but to be useful to treat kidney failure too.

how to set up an healthy – whole food, plant-based – diet for the health of your kidneys.

When planning a vegetarian kidney friendly diet, the main focus should be to decrease waste products created by digested foods.

A well balanced vegetarian diet should provide the appropriate amount of protein while maintaining potassium, phosphorus and sodium balance.

It is also very important to ensure adequate nutrition, while minimizing waste products.

Patients in 4th and 5th stage of chronic kidney disease should also be very careful with fluid intake.

How to get the right amount of protein in a vegetarian diet

In order to reduce the quantity of waste products generated from digestion, the primary source of proteins should provide high quality protein.

These foods will provide enough high quality protein, and are suitable for vegans: tofu, tempeh, beans, peanut butter (do not exceed with that).

Be sure to include soy protein too.

Textured vegetable protein – soy meats – are high in quality protein and in sodium, potassium and phosphorus, so keep this in mind if you want to add them to your diet.

How to balance sodium and potassium.

To reduce sodium is healthy for almost everybody, but especially for kidney patients.

Rule of thumb should be to opt for foods that have less than 150mg of sodium per serving. Always avoid processed foods.

Potassium should be consumed in moderated quantities too. Ideally, your potassium level should be monitored monthly. In case your potassium level tends to be high, avoid potassium rich foods like tropical fruits, Raisin, beans, coffee, tea, chocolate and starches.

How to maintain an adequate nutrition

Even if a low caloric diet is good for an healthy individual, kidney patients need to maintain their weight.

If you’re losing weight, eating just a little bit more could be a solution.

This is not always easy. So could be useful to add a bit more olive oil when cooking.

If you always feel full, make more frequent small meals. Some shakes made with soymilk, tofu, rice milk can be a good option. Even adding some extra sugar can be good.

In conclusion, can a well-planned vegetarian or vegan diet help with kidney disease? It has been proved, thanks to several studies, that this is definitely the case.