Kidney Failure Symptoms: 10 Warning Signs of Kidney Diseases That You Should Not IGNORE

and produce urine. Kidneys maintain water balance in the body and regulate and produce many hormones important for blood pressure control, bone health and synthesis of hemoglobin.

Millions of people are living with various types of kidney diseases and most of them don’t even have the faintest idea about it. This is why kidney disease is often known as a ‘Silent Killer’ as most people do not feel any difference until the disease is advanced. While people get their blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol levels checked on a regular basis, they fail to get a simple creatinine test done in their blood, to detect any unidentified kidney problems.

There are a number of warning signs of a kidney disorder, however, most of the time these are ignored or confused with alternative pathologies (because of their non-specific nature). While the only definitive way to diagnose a kidney, disease is to get confirmatory tests done, here are some early warning signs of kidney disease.

10 Early Signs of Kidney Diseases That You Should Not IGNORE

1. Weakness or Early fatigability is almost always a universal symptom of kidney disease. As renal dysfunction progresses this symptom becomes more and more prominent. This is largely due to the accumulation of toxins and impurities in the blood, resulting from poor kidney function. It is often ignored by most people and not thoroughly investigated.
2. Decreased appetite Secondary to the accumulation of toxins the appetite of an individual is suppressed. Also, as kidney disease advances, there is a change of taste, often described as metallic by the patients leading to poor appetite.
3. Early morning nausea and vomiting: Another one of the earliest signs of worsening renal function in the presence of early morning nausea, which is often classically described as hitting the person when he or she goes to the bathroom in the morning for brushing his or her teeth. It also contributes to the poor appetite of the individual. At end-stage renal failure, the patient tends to have multiple episodes of vomiting and complete loss of appetite.
4. Presence of Anemia without any apparent site of blood loss from the body, is one of the common complications of kidney disease. The cause of anaemia is multifactorial which includes low Erythropoietin levels which are produced in the kidney, low iron levels, and toxin accumulation causing bone marrow suppression.
5. Changes in urine frequency: One has to keep a very careful watch on his or her urine output. For instance, the urinary output may decrease, or you may feel the need to urinate more often, especially at night.
6. Foamy urine or leakage of Protein and blood in urine: This happens When the filtering mechanism of the kidney has been or is being damaged, protein, and blood cells start to leak out into the urine.
7. Dry and itchy skin: As the renal function falls, toxins tend to accumulate in the body leading to itchy, dry and foul-smelling skin.
8. Backache or lower abdomen pain and appearance of swelling over the ankles, feet, or legs
9. High Blood Pressure: A presenting sign of kidney disease may be high blood pressure. Any person being diagnosed with hypertension must have a detailed workup of renal functions and kidney imaging to rule out the renal etiology of hypertension. As kidney function deteriorates there are sodium and water retention leading to high blood pressure. Symptoms of hypertension include headache, abdominal pain, visual blackouts and maybe the early presenting symptoms of kidney disease.
10. Periorbital Edema swelling or puffiness around the eyes is one of the earliest signs of a kidney disorder.

Recognition and awareness of warning signs and timely intervention can mean the difference between early detection and treatment of kidney disorder or kidney failure which could end up with dialysis, kidney transplant or even death.

(With inputs from Dr Anuja Porwal, Additional Director & Head Nephrology & Kidney Transplant

Fortis Hospital, Noida)