According to the WHO, an estimated 50,000 Spaniards are treated for chronic renal failure. However, more than two million are unaware that they suffer from it. Knowing how the kidneys work and when kidney disease appears is essential.
“How is it possible for me to suffer from kidney disease if my kidneys do not hurt?” This is the question many people ask themselves when the nephrologist tells them they have kidney disease, sometimes advanced.
“But I haven’t noticed anything!” patients usually say. And the reality is that. Even if someone has a severely affected kidney, the feeling of normality of their body can be almost absolute and they can even continue to urinate normally until the disease is already very advanced.
It is an invisible disease because it shows few symptoms and only becomes evident when it is already very advanced. Hence the importance of knowing what the kidneys are used for, what possible warning symptoms they can give, what controls we have to do to detect early kidney failure and what I can do to avoid it.
Function of the kidneys
The kidneys have an important mission in the body, unknown to many, and do not alert us with an easily recognizable symptom, such as pain. It is important to know a little more about these two bean-shaped organs located in the back of the body on both sides of the spine and measuring about 10 cm, to be able to consult early, and above all, to prevent possible problems arising from them.
The kidney is one of the organs we pay the least attention to. We all know well the function of the heart, the digestive system, the lungs, the brain, etc. We know what symptoms they can give us and we know which specialists we should consult, but if we ask what the kidney’s mission is, most people will tell us that it only serves to produce urine. The mission is not only this. Another function of the kidney is to filter, purify, clean, level and counteract everything we eat and drink; it is in charge of controlling all the internal environment of our organism that makes the rest of the organs work properly and, as a consequence, urine is produced. That is why a kidney can be severely diseased and still produce urine normally, giving the false impression of being healthy.
The kidney, among other things, has a purifying function (it eliminates toxic substances, reabsorbs those we need and then returns them to the blood) and this work is carried out equally by the two kidneys.
Kidney disease: when it appears
Renal insufficiency appears when both kidneys are affected, because if one of them suffers problems, or is removed, the other takes over the function of the first one, and even increases its size to be able to compensate the work of both of them. The problem is that there are a great number of diseases that can cause the kidneys to lose their function without giving any warning symptoms. This loss of the purifying function of the kidneys is called chronic renal insufficiency. Doctors classify chronic renal failure in 5 stages, according to the filtering capacity of the kidneys. Thus, it is considered the fifth and final stage when the kidneys are unable to perform the tasks assigned to them and it is necessary to initiate renal replacement therapy, by means of dialysis or transplantation.
It is estimated that some 50,000 Spaniards are being treated for chronic renal failure, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath is a large number of citizens who suffer from kidney failure without knowing it. More than two million Spaniards are unaware that they suffer from this disease, which is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, and is responsible for the death of one million people a year, as noted by the World Health Organization.
Informing the population about the disease is vital to prevent it. According to sociological studies, 84% of Spaniards know that a cardiologist treats heart diseases but only 12% recognize that the nephrologist is the doctor who deals with kidney diseases.