27, November 2014

Your sugar and your kidneys – What’s the connection?

Diabetes can damage the kidneys and cause them to fail. Failing kidneys lose their ability to filter out waste products, resulting in kidney disease. 

How Does Diabetes Cause Kidney Disease?

When our bodies digest the protein we eat, the process creates waste products. In the kidneys, millions of tiny blood vessels (capillaries) with even tinier holes in them act as filters. As blood flows through the blood vessels, small molecules such as waste products squeeze through the holes. These waste products become part of the urine. Useful substances, such as protein and red blood cells, are too big to pass through the holes in the filter and stay in the blood.

Diabetes can damage this system. High levels of blood sugar make the kidneys filter too much blood. All this extra work is hard on the filters. After many years, they start to leak and useful protein is lost in the urine. Having small amounts of protein in the urine is called microalbuminuria.

When kidney disease is diagnosed early, several treatments may keep kidney disease from getting worse. Having larger amounts of protein in the urine is called macroalbuminuria. When kidney disease is caught later during macroalbuminuria, end-stage renal disease, or ESRD, usually follows.

In time, the stress of overwork causes the kidneys to lose their filtering ability. Waste products then start to build up in the blood. Finally, the kidneys fail. This failure, ESRD, is very serious. A person with ESRD needs to have a kidney transplant or to have the blood filtered by machine (dialysis).

All people with diabetes have a risk of developing diabetic kidney disease. There are certain risk factors that increase the risk of developing this condition. These are:

A poor control of your blood sugar (glucose) levels.

The length of time you have had diabetes.

The more overweight you become.

Having high blood pressure- The higher your blood pressure, the greater your risk.

The better a person keeps diabetes and blood pressure under control, the lower the chance of getting kidney disease. Hence, it is vital to see a doctor regularly. The doctor can check blood pressure, urine (for protein), blood (for waste products), and organs for other complications of diabetes.

Source: www.timesofindia.com                   27.11.2014

Early maturity ups depression risk in boys too

Entering puberty ahead of their peers increases depression risk over time in both sexes - not just in girls as commonly thought, new research shows.

The researchers, however, noted that the disorder develops differently in girls than in boys.

"It is often believed that going through puberty earlier than peers only contributes to depression in girls," said study author Karen Rudolph from University of Illinois.

"We found that early maturation can also be a risk for boys as they progress through adolescence, but the timing is different than in girls," Rudolph added.

Youth who entered puberty ahead of their peers were vulnerable to a number of risks that were associated with depression.

They had poorer self-images; greater anxiety; social problems, including conflict with family members and peers; and tended to befriend peers who were prone to getting into trouble, the researchers found.

For the study, the researchers measured pubertal timing and tracked levels of depression among more than 160 youth over a four-year period.

Levels of depression among early-maturing girls were elevated at the beginning of the study and remained stable over the next three years.

"While early maturation seemed to protect boys from the challenges of puberty initially, boys experienced an emerging cascade of personal and contextual risks - negative self-image, anxiety, social problems and interpersonal stress - that eventuated in depression as they moved through adolescence," Rudolph stressed.

The study appeared in the journal Development and Psychopathology.

Source: www.timesofindia.com                 

27.11.2014

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