My mother has been diagnosed with kidney failure and is now on dialysis. She always liked raw fruits and vegetables. Sadly now due to the common dialysis diet she has to eat vegetables which were cooked for hours and have no flavor anymore, and not to mention have not much nutritional value for the body. I have looked in many places and tried to find a raw food diet for her that agrees with dialysis ( meaning low phosphorus, potassium and lots of protein and a limited amount of fluids). Dietitians and doctors are not very cooperative to try something new.Has anybody any information at all????
Please let me know.

Ulla, I sent you a personal message.

A credentialed member of PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) might be able to prescribe a healthier diet program for your mother. Someone you might contact is Dulcie Ward, a registered dietitian who is a member of PCRM and has experience with Renal Dialysis. If nothing else, she may be able to advise you on how to proceed, and/or refer you to a qualified professional in your area.

[www.pcrm.org]

It may be expecting too much right now for your mother's doctor to approve of a 100% raw vegan diet. Registered dietitians are required to prescribe diets that are evidence-based, and currently that doesn't include an all-raw vegan diet for kidney failure. But a vegan diet is evidenced-based, and has helped patients with kidney failure. A qualified vegan registered dietitian would probably be your most likely resource for working with your mother and her doctor to improve her diet.

I wish you the best!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2010 08:41PM by suncloud.

Another option might be to contact the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group of the ADA and ask them if they could help you find a vegan dietitian in your area who is qualified to help patients undergoing renal dialysis.

[www.vegetariannutrition.net]

Hi Ulla,

Wishing you and your mother the best.

Hi Ulla,
Your mom and yourself will be in my thoughts~

I'm relatively new to this forum...wouldn't freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juices be perfect for her??

Perhaps the seasoned veterans here would have the answers~

I personally would be suspect of the Dr.'s dietary recommendations...most Drs. know very little of nutrition & healthy food choices. The stuff they tell my mom to eat is atrocious.

My mom has been a diabetic for many years, heart problems, has occasional fluid buildup and a myriad of other problems, much stemming from SAD...

It would seem to me that the best diet for a person in ill heath (or anyone for that matter) would be a diet that is easiest on the body. What could be easier on the body than raw unprocessed foods...

Juices & smoothies as well, great choices.

Keep searching Ulla; check out sunclouds' links. I would definitely try to find a dietitian that would work with her from a raw/vegan healthy foods standpoint.

Ulla,

Sorry that your mother is going through this. Unfortunately, in advising her to consume foods that will not burden her kidneys too badly they are also advising her to consume foods that won't, in the long run, help her. The types of foods that are bad for the kidneys are dehydrated and acidic; they cause calcifications in the kidneys, and this has likely already occurred. If her potassium is elevated, she should avoid potassium rich foods like potatoes, bananas, spinach, tea, chocolate, etc. If not, witholding potassium could aggravate her condition. Protein is not necessary to the functioning of the kidneys in crisis(the more byproducts a food has, the harder the kidneys would have to work), so don't know why the doctors advise that. If she is able to process liquids, I would encourage you to discuss hydrating her with filtered water, and very diluted fruit and green juices. There are some herbal teas that act as diuretics--dandelion root, nettle, marshmallow root--and celery seed and parsley seed tisanes would help a lot, provided her kidneys are still able to process liquids. Basically, anything alkaline will help to clarify the kidneys' tissues, and break down waste matter, depending on how far along she is. The doctors shall have to go back to their old chemistry textbooks to remind themselves of this stuff, but hopefully they'll try. I wish you luck and all the best.

Thank you so much for your reply. It is good to know that somebody else cares. I will explore all of you considerations. Here is one I just found yesterday. It is a book from Joan Brookhyser Hogan, R.D.. It is called The Vegetarian Diet for Kidney Disease. Preserving Kidney Function with Plant-Based Eating. I think that this is one step closer but I already know that this is not the entire answer, because most foods cooked are acidic and this can not be good for sick kidneys. So someone has come this far already, why not go one step further and make it raw vegetables and fruit?

Thank you so much for your reply. It feels wonderful not to be alone and have the support of people that care.- I agree with everything you write. We have used herbs
and heeded all the other things you have mentioned. But being on dialysis changes the diet for kidney disease to the opposite. The need for protein goes back up to a normal level once you begin dialysis treatment. The dialysis machine filters protein waste from the blood out and it also filters some viable amino acids out with each treatment. So you have to watch out that you body gets enough proteins.If someone on dialysis looses his appetite and doesn't eat enough he begins to suffer form something called protein wasting. This means, that the body starts to burn energy from protein in muscles and cells.
I'm determined to figure this raw food thing for dialysis patients out and will take all the help I an get.

Ulla,

Protein wasting is a misnomer(and I'm guessing the doctors won't know this, as doctors aren't required to take a lot of nutrition courses in medical school): catabolysis[protein wasting], the consumption of muscle tissue under stress, occurs only in a state of carbohydrate deficiency. The human metabolism runs on carbs, not protein; that's why starving children in Africa aren't fed steak tartar by aid workers, but starchy pap--this immediately resets the metabolism to burn carbohydrates for fuel. Primary protein overconsumption is one of the main causes of nephritis, as it overburdens the kidneys with metabolic waste. Certainly your mother's amino acids should be maintained, but in crisis, that should not be the main focus, IMO. Enzymes and micronutrients are paramount in importance to someone with your mother's disorder, and a diet with the right complement of raw fruits and vegetables, especially juiced ones, should be very healing. The book sounds like a good start. Please let us know if we can offer any more help. Good luck.

My father in law has been on the prescribed renal failure diet and has been following it very well for just two months and already his function has gone from 18%-23% - that's a five percent increase in just a short time - so hope is on the way!

I don't know much about doing this veg., but I suppose if one were to start with that maybe a veg. diet could be achieved in the future? Just a guess.


Me (30), Joseph (24 mo.) Jeremiah (4 mo.)

We are enjoying spring and being outside!!!

My mom has diabetes and could be on dialysis in the future. In fact they say she will be. This thread/topic is very interesting to me. I'd like to see if I can get some help for my mom too.

I would like very much for you to go to www.goutwell.com and read the information there. You can contact the Dr.'s there as well and they will give you good advice. I know of a couple of people who have taken kidneywell and have escaped the dialysis. Please try everything possible to get away from dialysis. I wish I had known that my mothers kidneys were failing I would have done anything to prevent this. aIt might seem to you that they only want to sell their herbs but I can assure you this is not so. They truly help.
I really hope that this helps you.-

There might be something on www.curezone.com about this.