Understanding the Impact of Diabetes on Kidney Health

Could your morning glucose spikes be damaging your kidneys?" Today, our resident RN, Kimberlee, sheds light on this essential yet understated topic. Kimberlee, with her expertise in healthcare and unique ability to simplify complex medical terminology, breaks down the intricacies of kidney disease, especially as it relates to diabetes. She opens up a thoughtful discussion on the often overlooked connection between our heart, kidneys, and liver health, highlighting how diabetes can have a profound impact on these vital organs.

Kimberlee doesn't just alarm us with the issues but also brings powerful solutions to the table. She emphasizes the role of professional guidance in managing chronic kidney disease and shares inspiring stories of patients who have significantly improved their kidney functions through education and lifestyle modifications. This episode, filled with practical tips and actionable insights, is not just about understanding diabetes and its repercussions on kidney health but also about empowering oneself in their health journey. So tune in, and equip yourself with knowledge that could potentially revolutionize your health journey. Be ready to tackle related health issues such as sleep apnea, heart failure, and fluid volume overload.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hey, hey, friends, good morning. It's Kimberly, registered nurse and business development director here at specialty care management. I hope you're off to a wonderful week. You know, this month at specialty care management we're talking a lot about kidneys and risk factors for kidney disease. As many of you know, diabetes is the number one driver of kidney disease. There are multitude of mechanisms as to how this, how we, how this actually happens.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Diabetes and high blood sugars. Whether you have diabetes diagnosed or not, high blood sugars, even momentary spikes in blood sugars, cause damage to delicate blood vessels and structures. So a lot of times, if you want to throw around a fancy word, throw around the words cardio, renal or a hepatocardiorenal right, but diabetes definitely has a profound impact on our cardiac, our kidney and our liver health. Cardio is the heart, obviously, renal is the kidneys and hepatoc that's your liver. And when we think about how this damage is being done, a lot of times when I'm talking with members, I use very general terms and basically illustrating how the plumbing is the same throughout the body. The system, the plumbing system in our body, is comprised of our blood vessels, our, our vasculature, if you will. And when we have these, these vascular changes, diabetes, when we have these high blood sugars. What we have is basically this thicker blood that requires more work to push, and so the heart has to work a little bit harder to pump high blood sugar volumes. The damage that's happened is blood sugars are elevated. There's damage being done on the inside, the intimal lining, the inner layer of the blood vessels. And so what happens? Because of this damage? This triggers a complex pathway, a complex set of mechanisms that are geared to help prepare that damage. So this is why we see an uptick in cardiac disease, coronary artery disease, blood blood levels, cholesterol's increase. Cholesterol, I think of as kind of, has a function like sparkling to fill a hole in a wall. Cholesterol smoking does a similar thing. Smoking, because it inhibits vitamin C and we can't make enough collagen, the inside of the blood vessels become damaged, calling in more cholesterol. So we see an affinity for cholesterol to the inside of our blood vessels in smoking, as we as same thing. We see this also with diabetes to repair this damage that happens.

Speaker 1: 3:16

So, with this cascade of responses to high blood sugars, what we find is the plumbing, the vasculature is damaged, and not just in the heart, but also in the kidneys and the liver, the kidneys and the liver, both highly vascular, and so within the kidneys what we'll see is a multitude of things, but we'll see a narrowing, a decreased perfusion or or oxygenation, some blood supply to the kidneys. We see the same thing in liver disease. So a lot of times people can develop cirrhosis of the liver, not from alcohol, but from diabetes as well. We call that non-alcoholic or fatty liver disease, if you've heard of that. But basically in hepatic or hepato-cardiorenal syndrome or where you have this cascade of damage that's happening to the liver and the kidney, sometimes what you'll see is portal hypertension, meaning that the blood pressure and the blood supply to the liver climbs, and with that what we find is the kidneys actually experience too much volume. So as those blood vessels open up, because of that, what's happening in the liver, then what you'll find is actually sometimes this profound, even constriction of blood vessels. You'll find people pee off too much sodium and that decreases their renal function and eventually what happens is these people end up with too much volume, fluid volume overload. We find that with congestive heart failure. There's a lot of pathways that happen that damage the kidneys. We find fluid volume overload with congestive heart failure and often times that's driven by sleep apnea. Did you know that If you're snoring, make sure you ask your doctor about the connection with snoring, sleep apnea and heart failure? But what happens when the kidneys become overloaded? Besides all the damage that's happening to the inside of the blood vessels because of high blood sugars, as the kidneys take on too much fluid, there's damage that happens because we have lots of pressure there. So it's complex.

Speaker 1: 5:42

It's super important that for your members that have diabetes, it's really important to make sure that they're plugged in with an expert, our chronic kidney disease management program. Our nurses are especially suited to help explain what's happening at a level that makes sense to members, such that it's actionable, such that they can determine on a daily basis what items, what day-to-day things do they have control over, that are meaningful, that make sense, that can actually turn that cascade around. And I've seen people with very low kidney functions be able to sometimes double their kidney function in just a few months, working with a nurse coach who's specially suited to educate these members, and not just educate these members, but to help walk with them and give them the actionable tools that they can employ on a day-to-day basis in terms of lifestyle that are really going to make a difference. If you want to know more about how we can help your members, give us a shout. It's one of our favorite things to talk about. Make it a great day. Bye, friends.