KIDNEY DISEASE!

I think they are just being extra careful to make sure to check your creatinine levels before they give you the contrast. It's probably designed more for people like me that have only 1 kidney and who is consistently just barely over the 1.5 creatinine level allowed for contrast.

It's a step in their procedure for folks with kidney issues. 

They may not see a lot of patients missing part of a kidney.

Where I go (a national cancer center) they see a lot of people with missing or malfunctioning kidneys. The doc's orders say if my creatinine is below 1.5 I can have the contrast if and if not, no. 

You might look at the technical definition of CKD. You might actually already fit the definition of CKD Stage 2. I fit the definition of CKD Stage 3 with my single kidney and creatine over 1.5 (or whatever my eGFR is, I forget). So technically they might be correct. If your GFR is 60-89, you have Stage 2 CKD. 

Best to you!

Todd

Most of us with less than 2 kidneys have reduced Kidney function than those     of our 2 kidney brothers and sisters. Contrast is not Kidney friendly and they check all or almost all club member for Kidney function (gfr and or creatine numbers) before scans with contrast. Many times our GFR numbers fall between 31 and 60 which  is classified as Stage 3 CKD (Chroniic Kidney Disease. Most Doctors are not alarmed with numbers slightly below 60 GFR and half the population has numbers under  60 as they reah 70 years old anyway. 

icemantoo

Crashte,

Mine was as low as 39 about 7 or 8 years ago. After I lost 70 pounds it goes above 60 some of the time.

icemantoo

Steve.Adam said:

Protein

Kidney disease.... Yeah. This is one of my little worries in life. Of course!

I'm trying a little experiment. There's a general idea that too much protein destroys kidneys. I've decided to ignore this idea and just eat a normal or slightly higher amount of protein. I don't mean stupidly high amounts, but at least 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight. I haven't yet seen any reason to reduce protein unless one's kidneys are actually failing.

The background to this decision is that I have found that even small amounts of carbohydrate in my diet are enough to keep my blood glucose levels higher than I want them. Therefore I am now eating as close to zero carbs as possible. Even eating sheep liver spikes my blood glucose, no doubt due to glycogen stores.

Anyway... I'll get some blood tests in a month or two and let you know how I go.

Steve.

You might want to consider talking to a nephrologist about your plan. Once kidneys start to fail, it's too late to fix them. From what I understand they don't recover from this kind of damage. I've no idea if the amount you're eating is anywhere near a problem.

My nephrologist said she's seeing more and more healthy young men that are slamming these protein supplements to build muscle that are permanently damaging their kidneys. All excess protein is excreted through your kidney and wasted, so there's really no point in eating extra protein that what you need. All it does is make things hard on your kidneys.

They have very well balanced diabetic diets around to keep blood glucose levels stable. When you say your glucose spikes, are you diabetic or pre-diabetic?

Hope my 2 cents didn't offend. I'd hate to see you damage your kidneys (or is it kidney?)?

Todd

P.S. By the way, the fact that excess protein damages kidneys is not a general idea. It's been proven scientifically. Ask your nephrologist about the experiments that have proven this. My nephrologist went over this with me and even went into how the experiments were done. It was a big change in the field of nephrology when this experiment came out because before that they used to advise patients with protein in their urine to eat more protein. This turned out to be really bad advice.