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Having good kidney function is essential to living your optimal life, but there is a lot of misinformation out there. If you listen to it, you can end up avoiding things that do not really protect your kidney function, or ignoring things that really affect your kidney function negatively. I'm Dr. Ken Berry, a family physician with over 20 years of experience helping people protect their kidneys. Let's talk about seven things that will destroy your kidney function, and then five big fat lies that doctors tell patients every day that do not protect their kidney function in any way.
The most important thing you have to understand about your kidneys is that they have a filtering role. They filter your blood, and that is indeed one of the things they do, but they do many other things as well. Having sub-optimal kidney function can really affect your life in a negative way. So let's go through the list of things that will destroy your kidneys, and then at the end of this video I'm going to tell you five big fat lies doctors tell patients every day. I don't think it's them trying to be deceptive; I just don't think they know better yet. But with your help, we can educate every doctor in the world about what actually destroys kidney function and what helps preserve it.
The number one thing that will destroy your kidney function is high blood sugar: pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, or uncontrolled type 1 diabetes. When you run a chronically high blood sugar every day, you are destroying your nephrons. Nephrons are the little individual cell packets in your kidneys that do all the work, and when you've destroyed enough of these nephrons, you're going to be diagnosed with something called chronic kidney disease. Everything I'm going to talk about in this video also applies to someone with polycystic kidney disease as well, so if you have that, everything I say in this video applies to you too. The number one thing you can do to protect your kidney function is to get your blood sugar back down to normal. You do this by eating a very, very low carbohydrate diet, which will keep you from having blood sugar spikes, even if you're a type 1 diabetic.
Number two on the list of things that destroy your kidneys is chronically high insulin levels. If you're eating a high carbohydrate diet, and you've been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, and you're taking one of the type 2 diabetes medications that lowers your blood sugar, that medicine actually works by raising your insulin. The problem is there's tons of research out there showing that chronically high levels of insulin, also known as hyperinsulinemia, damage your kidneys as well. Again, the way to fix this is to lower the amount of carbohydrates you eat each and every day. This keeps your blood sugar lower, therefore your pancreas won't make extra insulin, and you won't have to inject extra insulin or take a pill that makes your pancreas secrete too much insulin.
Number three on the list is uncontrolled high blood pressure. Most people think this comes from eating too much salt, or that it's genetic, or other explanations. The truth is that 80 to 90 percent of essential hypertension in the world is caused by chronic hyperinsulinemia, which causes an inordinate amount of fluid to be held in the body in an unhealthy manner. This is called edema. Once you lower your carbohydrate intake, which lowers your blood sugar and therefore lowers your insulin, all of a sudden you're able to shed all this extra unhealthy fluid you're holding, and your blood pressure will come back down to normal or very close to normal.
Number four on the list is taking anti-inflammatories on a daily basis. These can be over-the-counter anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen or naproxen, or prescription anti-inflammatories like celecoxib or any of the other anti-inflammatories. Taking these on a daily basis is very, very hard on your kidneys, and over the years will cause some degree of kidney damage. Now, a caveat: it's fine to take an anti-inflammatory occasionally. If you strain your back or twist an ankle, you can take an anti-inflammatory for a few days. That's how they're intended to be used. But many doctors allow their patients to take anti-inflammatories for days and months and years, and this is going to destroy your kidneys.
The next thing on the list is smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco, or dipping tobacco. Tobacco in any form creates inflammatory molecules that wreak havoc on your kidney function. If you use any form of tobacco, please wean down and stop. Number six on the list is drinking too much alcohol on a continuous basis. If you have a birthday and drink two beers and then don't touch a beer again for months, that's not a big deal in the big picture. But daily alcohol abuse, overuse, or especially abuse will harm your kidney function. If you're currently drinking alcohol on a daily basis, I would highly advise you to wean down so that you're having an alcoholic drink on occasion, but not on a daily basis.
Number seven on the list is eating or drinking a high oxalate diet. There is a long list of vegetables that are very high in oxalates. Some are so high that if you eat them without cooking them thoroughly, they can actually give you an acute oxalate reaction. Some have lower levels of oxalate but still too many. The most common kidney stone that plagues mankind is the calcium oxalate stone. A lot of doctors like to focus on the calcium part of that, but I contend that we need to be lowering oxalate intake, especially in someone who has had a previous kidney stone. Kidney stones can damage and destroy your kidney function if you have a stone large enough to completely occlude your ureter. Then you can have back pressure on that kidney, and kidneys don't like back pressure. Too much of that for too long will destroy your kidney function.
Now let's talk about the five things doctors very commonly counsel patients to avoid, implying that this will protect your kidney function, that somehow these five things are bad for your kidneys. In every single case, there is either not a shred of evidence to support that, or there is copious evidence that refutes it.
First and foremost is the claim that eating too much protein, especially animal protein, is hard on your kidneys or will harm them or cause kidney damage. There is not a shred of evidence to support this. There are multiple research studies showing that people who have eaten lots of healthy animal protein over their entire life have not had their kidney function affected in any negative way. This is a myth; some people would call it a big fat lie. You can eat as much animal protein as you want and you're never going to harm your kidney function. If you're gorging on protein shakes with highly concentrated, pulverized protein, you could potentially ingest too much protein and harm your kidneys. But getting protein from animal-based sources, basically the place where humans have gotten protein for the last two and a half million years at least, is not going to harm your kidneys. It just doesn't even make good sense.
Number two is the claim that you're getting too much saturated fat and should cut down on saturated fat to protect your kidneys. It's a very common thing doctors tell patients. The next time your doctor tells you this, I want you to say very politely and respectfully, "Doctor, could you please print off the research study that proves this?" and then listen to the crickets chirp as your doctor is unable to come up with any research whatsoever. This is an opinion, a fad belief in the medical community right now. There is no research showing that eating a diet high in healthy saturated fat, whether from coconut oil or from animal foods rich in healthy saturated fat, will harm your kidneys. That is a big fat lie.
Number three is the claim that you shouldn't eat keto or carnivore because it's bad for your kidneys. I think most of this comes from the high amounts of animal protein and healthy saturated fat in a ketogenic or carnivore diet. But I also think there's a second layer of healthcare providers who simply believe that keto or carnivore is magically bad for your kidneys. There is not a shred of controlled research proving this or even suggesting it's true. If your doctor says keto or carnivore will hurt your kidneys, you need to start looking for a new doctor, because it shows that they do not understand the basic physiology of renal function and that they are very susceptible to buying into popular myths and fads. Not a good look for a doctor.
Number four is the claim that you need to limit caffeine because caffeine is bad for your kidneys. Doctors have been trying to prove for decades that caffeine is bad for any part of your body, and there is not a shred of research evidence showing that drinking a reasonable amount of caffeine a day, say one, two, three, or maybe four cups of coffee, will harm your kidneys or your kidney function. There is zero research showing that. It's just not true.
Number five is a big one. Many nephrologists, internal medicine doctors, and family doctors will tell patients you have to lower your salt intake to protect your kidneys. Again, this doesn't even make good physiological sense, especially when you consider that ancestrally, human beings have been seeking out sources of sodium and salt in their diet for hundreds of thousands of years. When you look at the research, there is literally no research showing that eating an adequate salt diet will harm your kidneys in any way. By adequate salt diet, I mean you salt your food to taste. Let your taste buds be your guide. If your food is salty enough to make your taste buds happy, that's not a sin, and you're not a glutton or a loser. That's what mammals are supposed to do.
If you've already had some degree of kidney damage due to previous insults such as a bad diet, smoking, alcohol, or whatever else, I encourage you to check out one of the two playlists in the show notes below: Keto 101 and Carnivore 101. We have had hundreds, if not thousands, of people reach out to us and say, "Hey, I had stage one CKD, stage two, stage three, even stage four, and when I gave keto or a carnivore diet a try, after 90 days or 180 days, my kidney function actually improved." Their doctors were blown away and couldn't explain it, and some doctors basically said, "Well, I don't care if your kidney function got better; keto still will kill your kidneys." So please, I implore you to avoid the seven things I talked about at the beginning of this video and completely ignore the final five things I covered. I hope this helps you a lot. Here's to your kidneys and long-term kidney health. This is Dr. Berry, and I'll see you next time.