Patients with kidney disease often ask us, “what can I do myself to improve my health?”
For most individuals with kidney disease, the sorts of things you can do to improve your health are the same sorts of things that everyone in the general population can do to improve their health. Only in very advanced kidney disease (e.g. CKD stage 4 or on dialysis) are additional lifestyle modifications usually advised. (These may include things like dietary modifications or restricting fluid intake but will be bespoke advice from the kidney team that will vary from patient-to-patient.)
Contents
What is a healthy lifestyle?
The main components of a healthy lifestyle are:
- a healthy diet (i.e. lots of fruit and veg; not too much processed food)
- physical activity (i.e. exercise)
- not smoking
- not drinking excessive amounts of alcohol (i.e. not exceeding government recommended limits)
- maintaining healthy body weight (BMI)
- maintaining a healthy blood pressure
- having good sleep
These aspects of healthy lifestyle are emphasised by the World Health Organisation and the UK and Scottish Governments. To find out a little more about the evidence behind this, see “Further information” at the bottom of the page.
Individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have increased risk of developing stroke, heart attack and heart failure and so the benefits of following a healthy lifestyle to reduce these risks is likely to be exaggerated. In other words, it is all the more important to follow a healthy lifestyle if you have kidney disease.
What can I do?
If you would like to take active steps to improve your health then you could consider:
- improving your diet – see our advice on diet in CKD
- exercise – see advice from NHS Inform and the UK Chief Medical Officers
- calculate your BMI to find out if you have a healthy body weight: a good online calculator can be found half-way down this webpage from the British Heart Foundation
- if you are overweight, try to lose weight – see advice on NHS inform and consider self-referral to the excellent NHS Lothian Weight Management programs
- monitor your blood pressure at home: see how to do this in this Brisith Heart Foundation blog post and information leaflet from the British Hypertension Society
If you would like to be able to see your own test results and message your kidney doctor directly then sign up for a free account with Patients Know Best.
Where can I find out more?
If you would like to find out more about healthy living and / or living with kidney disease then the following websites provide good, reliable information:
- the other pages on this Edren site – particularly within Edren Info
- NHS Inform: health advice from the Scottish Government
- KidneyCareUK: UK patient support charity for people with kidney disease
Further information and references
How do we know the key components of a healthy lifestyle and how important are they? The effects of the lifestyle factors listed above have been explored in observational studies, where individuals complete lifestyle surveys and are then followed up to see what happens to them in later years. Each of these above factors is associated with an additional two to three years of life-expectancy, and the effects are additive. So, for example, people following a healthy diet, regular physical activity, not smoking and maintaining a healthy body weight will – on average – live for 8 to 12 years longer than people ticking none of those boxes. This is not quite the same as saying that, for any one individual, choosing to follow any of these lifestyle factors will extend life expectancy by two to three years, but there is a lot of other evidence that following a healthy diet, exercising, not smoking etc. is very likely to improve the duration and quality of your life. If you are interested in these sorts of studies then the links to some original research articles are here: Li (Circulation, 2018), Khera (NEJM, 2016), Nguyen (AJCN, 2024), Bian (BMJEMB, 2023).
Acknowledgements
This page was written by Robert Hunter (Sep 2024).