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A recent diet fad that has swept the nation is the high protein, low carbohydrate diet. Sometimes know as the Atkin's diet, a high protein, low carbohydrate diet can indeed help you to lose weight. However, doing so long term may cause damage to your kidneys. People that already have problems with their kidneys need to avoid high protein diets all together.

Although there have been no studies that definitively link a high protein diet with the development of kidney disease, many physicians and medical researchers feel that such a diet is not healthy even for people with normal kidney function for a long period of time. For one thing, if you restrict carbohydrates too much in your diet, you may make your body deficient in certain nutrients that it needs for normal functioning. You can have problems with digestion, develop diverticulitis, have issues with constipation, and may increase inflammation. You can also trigger diseases like gout and even increase your cancer risks. Next, adopting a high protein diet can make you consume more red meats, which are high in fat and cholesterol. A diet high in fat and cholesterol has been shown to put individuals at a much higher risk of having a heart attack and/or stroke and other cardiovascular diseases like hypertension. High protein diets can also cause you to have problems with kidney stones.

For a person with reduced kidney function, staying away from a high protein diet is essential. A person may develop decreased kidney function as the result of age, Diabetes, trauma, and/or high blood pressure. By consuming a high protein diet, they may be inadvertently damaging their kidneys even further. This is because consuming a high protein diet increases the workload on the kidneys. The kidneys are made up of tiny capillaries and blood vessels, which filter out waste products from the blood. High protein diets can increase the pressure within these capillaries and blood vessels as the kidneys have to work harder. As the pressure increases, the blood vessels can burst and rupture, which decreases the functionality of the kidneys. In people that already have impaired kidney function, eating a high protein diet can send them into kidney failure prematurely. Indeed, most nephrologists recommend a low protein diet for their kidney patients because research has shown that restriction of dietary protein can slow down the progression of kidney disease, which can ultimately lead to kidney failure and the need for renal replacement therapies like kidney transplantation and dialysis.

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