These 7 pills KILL your KIDNEYS
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, this is Katherine, welcome to 00Kidney.
THERE ARE 7 kidney killer medications you need to stop taking RIGHT NOW if you care about the health of your kidneys.
Knowing what these very dangerous prescription and over-the-counter pills are, will be the MOST IMPORTANT STEP to protect your kidney health and to repair kidney damage.
And this is also true for people with healthy kidneys, right?
I’m not exaggerating here, when people ask me…” Katherine, what can I do to improve my kidney function? “
One of the very first thing I tell them is to watch what medications they’re on.
Because taking the wrong medication, one of the 7 of today’s video, can do VERY serious damage to your kidneys VERY fast.
And most of the medications I’m going to talk about today are used by a VERY, VERY large number of people worldwide.
So, share this video with anyone you know you may want to protect from the dangers posed by drugs and medications.
Because, remember, no matter what kind of medicine you take, whether over-the-counter or prescription, it is destined to TAKE A TRIP TROUGH YOUR KIDNEYS.
Now, what I want to focus on today is improving your kidney health, and find ways to lower your creatinine.
So, what medications can damage your kidneys?
Let’s start from a very CONTROVERSIAL – and COMMON – prescription drug a lot of people take to manage cholesterol. This drug is supposed to PROTECT your kidneys, but is it true?
Number 7 Statins
Question, can statins cause kidney problems?
People who take high doses of popular cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins may be more likely to develop kidney problems, a new study suggests.
Specifically, those participants who took higher doses of statins were 34 percent more likely to be hospitalized for acute kidney injury during the first 120 days of treatment, compared to their counterparts who were taking lower doses.
This risk remained elevated two years after starting treatment.
The findings appeared in the journal BMJ, a peer-reviewed medical journal.
What does this mean? These numbers are pretty scary, if you ask me. Statins are very commonly prescribed to people suffering from kidney disease.
But, as we are seeing here these drugs can cause more troubles than they solve.
We must understand that statins are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for treating high cholesterol in the United States.
People with kidney disease often suffer from heart problems and high cholesterol, so if you have kidney disease, the chance of being prescribed these medications is pretty high.
Do you take them?
Seven types of statins are available in the United States:
simvastatin (Zocor)
pitavastatin (Livalo)
fluvastatin (Lescol)
lovastatin (Altoprev)
pravastatin (Pravachol)
and moreNow, doctors prescribing these medications are not unaware of the risks:
Currently, they recommend that people take a liver enzyme test before or shortly after they begin taking statins. The issue of kidney damage as seen in the current study, however, is relatively new.
And this is a risk for patients.
Now, statins are only available by prescription. Your doctor will typically prescribe a statin if your LDL cholesterol levels are above 100 mg/dL and you have other risk factors for heart disease or are in a high-risk group.
Now, There’s a big debate going on right now about statins in the scientific community. Some research say that they help, some say that they are dangerous and that can cause kidney and liver damage.
Let’s try to be clear, here: Do statins increase creatinine levels?
Although there’s little dispute that statins are effective at lowering your cholesterol, there is scientific debate over whether or not they’re safe for people with different stages of kidney disease.
More research is still needed, particularly studies that focus on people with kidney disease.
A very important question: what should you do if you have been prescribed statins?
Now, what you should do about this is very simple indeed. If your doctor prescribed you a statin therapy it means that he has already decided that the benefits of the drug outweighs the risks.
Doctors carefully weigh the benefits of statin therapy against the risks for people with kidney failure. For example, if you have been diagnosed with both kidney failure and heart disease, you’re more likely to be prescribed a statin than someone with kidney failure who doesn’t show signs of heart disease.
And, yes doctors, may make mistakes too, I know this, don’t go in comment section telling me that I’m defending doctors because I know nobody’s perfect.
But you cannot just stop taking something your doctor prescribed you, right? That would be very, very dangerous.
Luckily, there are ways you can lower your cholesterol levels, foods you can add to your diet and small changes to your lifestyle you can do to improve.
That would be a great way to lower your cholesterol and your need for these controversial drugs, alright?
So, we have seen that a medication that’s supposed to help you keep your kidneys healthy can damage them. And it’s just our number 7.
What could be worse?
Number 6 ACE inhibitors
Just like statins, these medications can be good and bad for your kidneys.
ACE inhibitors are medications that slow down the activity of the enzyme ACE or angiotensin converting enzyme. I’m not going too in dept on this, what you need to know is that ACE inhibitors are popular drugs for high blood pressure and heart failure.
Now, high blood pressure is very, very common in people with kidney disease and this makes the risk associated with ACE inhibitors very serious.
Because ACE inhibitors are metabolized by the kidneys.
Everything that’s metabolized by the kidneys come with a risk of causing kidney damage.
This is even more likely to happen if you are dehydrated, which is often the case in people with existing kidney problems.
We are talking about medications that tend to end in “-il,” like lisinopril, enalapril, and ramipril.
Be very careful with them.
If you are at a higher risk for kidney damage but need an ACE inhibitor, you will likely start on a low dose, and your doctor may need you to come in for routine blood creatinine tests to monitor the health of your kidneys.
So, yes, they know this one can do damage, problem is that in some cases not taking this drug can cause even worse problems.
The next one is even worse.
A lot more dangerous than statins and ACE inhibitors.
Because while there’s still a debate about the dangers of stains and ACE inhibitors, the nephrotoxic effects of our number 5 are proven.
Number 5, Antibiotics.
Antibiotics can be very dangerous for your kidneys.
Ok, let’s face it: antibiotics can be lethal. And, there’s no debate here, this is not like statins. Nobody can doubt that antibiotics are dangerous.
If you take the wrong antibiotic, or too much or for too long, your kidneys are at risk.
This happened to someone I know. They were hospitalized for an infection and had to take a long course of antibiotics. Obviously, doctors monitored their kidney health, but that wasn’t enough to stop the damage.
This is why antibiotics are medications that should be treated as potential poisons and respected for the impact they impose. However, researchers consistently find that public perceptions surrounding antibiotics are suboptimal.
And this lack of understanding puts individuals and society as a whole at risk.
Especially for the patients who are unnecessarily exposed to antibiotics: they risk nephrotoxicity, a poisonous effect on the kidneys.
This is why people with kidney disease need to pay particular attention to this class of drugs.
Antibiotics can affect your kidneys in different ways. For example, some can make crystals that don’t break down and can block your urine flow. Others have substances that can damage certain kidney cells when they try to filter them out.
All these things are more likely to happen if you take antibiotics for a long time or your dose is very high.
Let’s see what the worst offenders are.
- Vancomycin
Vancomycin is used to treat an infection of the intestines, which can cause diarrhea.
But this medication can cause kidney damage and acute interstitial nephritis (swelling in the kidneys) in some patients.
If you need this antibiotic, your doctor will closely monitor your kidneys for any injury while treating your infection. - Aminoglycoside antibiotics are broad-spectrum antibiotics, commonly prescribed.
But they are known for causing kidney injury-even at low doses. People with chronic kidney disease, dehydration, or those who have been taking these antibiotics for a long time are at particularly high risk. The most toxic aminoglycoside is neomycin, followed by gentamicin, tobramycin, and amikacin. Streptomycin is the least toxic. These medications are very frequently prescribed and are used in hospitals too, so they are important to keep at the back of your mind!
What can you do to avoid this risk?
Antibiotic is not something you should take if your doctor is not 100% sure that you need them.
If you are a kidney disease patient, you should be prescribed a smaller amount of antibiotics than people with healthy kidneys.
So, be very aware of your kidney health. This means that you should know in what stage of kidney disease you are, what is your kidney function and if you have other conditions.
Bring with you your last lab result when you go to see your doctor or your pharmacist.
So they may understand if your prescription is safe for you.
And, obviously, take only medicines ordered for you by your healthcare provider.
Number 4 PPI. This is short for proton pump inhibitors. These are used for heartburn and acid reflux.
Very common conditions.
Studies suggest there is an association with increased risk of kidney damage in people taking PPIs.
This is also true for people without kidney disease.
Individuals who have normal kidney function before using a PPI have shown an increased risk of chronic kidney disease.
I’m linking these studies in description if you want to check.
PPI is a very big class of drugs.
There’s Prilosec, Nexium and Pentaprozole and others.
Again, be careful with them
If your healthcare provider gives you a prescription for one of these be sure to ask if there’s a good reason why you’re taking it and also be sure to never exceed the recommended dosage and course of treatment.
Number 3 NSAIDs
Definitely one of the worst risks for your kidneys.
If you been around people with kidney disease lately, a lot, and I mean a lot of them used to take NSAIDs before discovering they had a kidney damage. Yes, this is how dangerous these pills are.
None of these medicines should be taken daily or regularly without first talking to your healthcare provider. Thousands of Americans have damaged their kidneys by using these medicines regularly for too long.
Several studies have proven their nephrotoxicity.
So drugs like Ibuprofen, Aleve, Aspirin especially when used to manage chronic pain, have been shown to cause serious kidney problems.
These do not require any prescription so patients usually think that they are safe.
Well they are not.
So just because these are over-the-counter it doesn’t mean that they are safe.
A lot of the drugs that are over-the-counter can be potentially very toxic not just for the kidneys but for other organs as well.
Let’s see what are the most commonly used NSAIDs:
- Aspirin (Bayer or Bufferin)
- Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin)
- Naproxen (Aleve or Anaprox)
And others.
Now, unlike the precedent drugs, when it comes to NSAIDs you can decide to lower your dose or, if you can, avoid to take them at all.
This is not easy, I know. If you take one of these medications it’s because you need them, right?
But there are alternatives.
Tylenol for example.
NSAIDs and the pain relief medication Tylenol work differently, so sometimes doctors recommend taking both medications so you can lower your dose for NSAIDs.
This often offers better pain relief than taking one type of pain medication. But it comes with some downsides too.
There are also several herbal remedies and alternative treatments that can be used.
Bottomline, if you’re taking NSAIDs REGULARLY to manage pain, talk to your doctor and find a way to stop taking them as soon as you can. The risk for the kidneys here is too significant to be ignored.
Number 2 is not a drug but it’s so dangerous I cannot avoid to include it here.
Number 2 on this list is contrast.
I’m talking about CT scans with intravenous contrast.
Angiograms, like a cardiac angiogram when they inject dyes into your vein in your hand or arm…
and MRIs or magnetic resonance imaging.
These tests are routinely used, they are being done every day on millions of people, because they provide information that can be helpful for a correct diagnosis.
In many cases, they use a contrast dye to enhance these tests and get the results needed.
But there’s a problem here: these dyes can both lead to kidney problems and cause problems in patients with kidney disease.
It happened; I’ve seen this with my eyes. There was this patient in stage 3, doctors gave them an
Angiogram and in less than a week they were on dialysis.
So, what should you do if you have kidney disease and your doctor prescribes you a CT scan, and Angiogram or an MRI?
Know your GFR and if you have CKD. Telling your doctor what your GFR and creatinine numbers are will help him understanding if the test can be dangerous for you.
So talk to the doctor ordering the diagnostic test and make sure they know know about your kidney problems.
This way they can take due precautions, which includes hydration.
Water can help detoxifying your kidneys from the dangerous substances present in the contrast.
We are talking about plenty of water here, a gallon of water the day you do the test, another gallon when you have done the test. The sooner you flush out the substances the better.
So avoid these tests as much as you can but if you can’t, talk to your healthcare provider and take precautions.
Ok, what’s even worse than this?
Number 1 DRUG INTERACTIONS
This is a lot more frequent than people think, unfortunately.
Patients often require multiple medications, and this puts their kidneys at risk.
When you take more than one medication, there’s the risk that one of these alters the effect of another one.
It may make its effect more powerful, less powerful or it can damage something, usually the kidneys.
And, I know, I know patients cannot memorize all their prescriptions and all the possible interactions.
Their doctors should do this for them.
Now, what you could do is to help your doctor and your pharmacist doing this extremely important job for you.
How?
Bring a complete list of what you’re taking and why you’re taking these medications along with your last lab results every time you see your doctor or any physician that’s supposed to prescribe you something.
If you have kidney disease or a reduced kidney function, you need to take drugs at lower doses. And they need to know this.
Before taking a drug, ask your doctor or pharmacist the following questions:
Can I take it with other drugs? Should I avoid certain foods, beverages or other products?
And most of all, be very careful.
Now if you want to know more about how to protect your kidney health, this one up here is a very interesting video.
This is all for today, thank you for watching.
About the Author
Michaelw Hi, my name is Michael and in this blog I'm gonna share the story of how I got off kidney dialysis for good. Getting off dialysis isn't easy at all, and that's why I'm trying to help people as much as I can.
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