Podcast - Renal Diet HQ Podcast

Podcast - Renal Diet HQ

Podcast - Renal Diet HQ
Renal Diets That You Will Love!
RDHQ Podcast 108: The Mistake I Made When I First Started Working With CKD
I'm talking about my new program the Love Your Kidneys: Healthy Meal Planning and the early bird price ends on February 26th. I wanted to give you a chance. I just wanted to keep talking about it make sure that I am answering questions. I'm going to pop that in renaldiethq.com/lyk for Love Your Kidneys. Will get you to the sales page, tell you all about the course. Today I wanted to talk about the mistakes that I was making when I first started working with renal disease that my mother was diagnosed with CKD and that we kind of work with learning and changing and part of that is creating my website but is happening is that we went through a process and we made a few mistakes and so I want to mention those mistakes because you might be making it too. The first mistake is when we were first starting with chronic kidney disease, we kind of treated it like a New Year's Resolution. You know you think about everything like "I can do all this, I can do everything" and you've changed everything and then just like a New Year's Resolution, you realized it's hard and you quit. And so we would try to change everything, try to do a bunch of different changes so you're motivated. I know you're motivated when you first have kidney disease and I like that but I want you to understand that it's kind of like a long game so treating it like it's a push of a button is kind of the wrong one. I see it as more like a step-by-step process. You might be thinking like and we were thinking this too like "what if I do this?" but we don't want to do anything to make it worse. So, up to this point we didn't know but know all of a sudden and we know all these things need to change and there's this huge gap, two things they need to go through differently and then you just want to change everything and then it's completely overwhelming because you have so many things that you're trying to juggle. You're trying to get this one done, you're trying to limit your protein, you're trying cut potassium, phosphorus and you're wondering what the heck's left to eat. We often think like if some is good a lot might be better but the truth is that it is better to do some portions. Where I come from is your food changes at a time, over time and otherwise what's going to happen is the food's going to be bland and it's hard to follow. Now, all of a sudden you have alarm of things that you can't eat and those long things that you can. And my mom was just talking about it. But when you chose to keep a plan and you don't have like a step by step then you are asking for problems. I always think when you fail because you don't have a plan. So, truly you could accomplish so much in a month, in two months, in three months but all that in a week, it's going to be overwhelming and you're not going to get it done. Thinking about it like making a plan and kind of knowing what are the things that you need to do so you don't know what to do next. When you have a plan like what I'm talking about is when you go through this plan, you know the things that needs to be changed. Today, this on we change, next week. I want you to make a plan and it easy to change. So, making a plan to making it possible is as simple as writing down what you're gonna eat everyday and kind of stick to that. Now, you may not have a pattern, you may not know what's going to be on that list but you at least then you can go back over the week and you can look at that and say "okay. This is what worked. This is where I kind of fell short. This is where I kept going back." In the course, I prepare renal meal plans and patterns that you can use to start with that I just did last night but I wasn't planning on doing but I because I'm so excited with the ...
Feb 23, 2020
9 min
RDHQ Podcast 107: Frequently Asked Questions About My New Love Your Kidneys: Delicious CKD Meal Planning Program
I want to talk program Love Your Kidneys Meal Planning. I have some frequently asked questions that I kind of wanted to go through. I launched my new program and I'm so excited because it's Meal Planning. When you have kids, how do like work to commit and making it healthy yet delicious and time and it's going to be a 4-hour program. Let me tell you a little bit of the course-specific notes right here. This week through Friday, we have something which is $297 one time charge and from February 26 through March 23rd, every week on Wednesdays at 7:00 AM Central. So, the 26th of February, the 4th of March, the 11th of March, 18th of March we're gonna have calls and those are each week, we have different topics. The first week is like Meal Planning. Like understanding what those are and then the second week is some things like Meal Patterns. I'm going to give you some meal pattern samples. I'm going to teach you how to cut some foods in your list. I'm going to teach you how to use some lists to kind of how to input some foods just in there and then going to talk about recipes, how to adjust recipes, how to use some standard recipes to adjust their own recipes and then the last week is going to be about how to do Go Forward Meals. You're going to be excited, you're going to get through it to keep it going, how do you bulk food prep, how do you do your grocery shopping to some ideas. Those will be live classes so it'll be interactive. We're limited to 20 each course, because I don't want to overdo it. I don't have too many... it's hard to answer questions. The other thing that is about this is that I'm going to have three days where I do a Question and Answer. Monday the 9th of March, the second week and the third week of March, I'm going to do a question and answer with the group and just go through what questions. What things you know came up for you in the last week, answering those so it's like getting me live, getting me to answer questions about your kidney disease, questions about your diet. I'll be online. It'll be through a program called Zoom and then all the sudden, you may have questions so you're expected to attend the classes. One of the things is you're going to go to the class and you're going to provide suggestions, provide comments. Let me know what those are and then once you are onboarded, it'll be available in a members' area. We'll have transcripts, closed captioning on it. You'll be able to submit your questions before the Question and Answer call or on the call for the questions and all individual appointments. This is going to be a small group work. We're excited to do it because I want to do this little small group of 20 people. This is a program that I've done with other people that I really am excited to see how it can work in kind of the group setting. You're getting a lot of information. It's going to be the orders of education and questioning and answer. It's picking my brain. Let's talk about some frequently asked questions. A lot of questions you know "if this is for me?" and my answer is if you have if you're taking care of someone with kidney disease, this is for you. Whether you were at the patient level or at a family or friend level this is not going to be written at the medical level. I'm going to do my best to answer all the questions you have. I'll make sure that it's clear and understandable. We'll need to commit to attending the calls. It's going to be a great opportunity to learn more and get a great meal plan whether you have kidney disease or not.
Feb 20, 2020
13 min
RDHQ Podcast 105: What If You Could Get Your Meals Planned Faster?
Good Morning! Hey! It's Mathea Ford, Registered Dietitian and creator of the Love Your Kidneys Delicious Meal Planning for CKD course. Happy Saturday! It is Saturday morning before Superbowl Sunday I hope you've got some delicious food planned for that and you're going to have an enjoyable time. If you don't enjoy football, at least I hope you enjoy the commercials right? That's my favorite. I love watching all the commercials and stuff. This morning I want to talk about some what ifs in your future. Your future, my future, all of our future is not necessarily set in stone. It's something that we can change and I know some of the things that people talk to me about and tell me that they struggle with when it comes to being diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and trying to plan meals. I know that there's a lot of issues that come up for people so I wanted to talk through those a little bit. If you're struggling with these things that I talked about, you're not alone. You are experiencing things that people feel. It's really overwhelming to think about the diet, to do something about it be very overwhelming because it is a complex diet that's made a lot of times more difficult by all the restrictions that may or may not need to have and all the information that's out there. There maybe plenty of information that's out there on the internet about it but you don't necessarily know which information is the right thing to worry about or concern about. Most people are aware that it's a pretty major life event when you get diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and yet it seems like you get very little help. You get an informational sheet or you get help from Dr. Google but what do you do? Like I talked about a couple days ago, unfortunately, initially, people start out with some pretty complicated restrictions that may be outdated information. All of a sudden, you feel like [tell me if this is you] you feel like you have to cook all your meals and you don't have all the time anymore. Like you didn't have two hours to prep and plan meals before you got diagnosed and now all of a sudden, you don't have those hours either. You may have to cook meals for yourself or other people I know a lot of people my audience are women and one of the things a lot of times we as women do have to be responsible for cooking family's meals, planning family meals so that can make it even more difficult. You could eat healthier, can't we all? But you're not sure which changes you need to make. So, you have a list of Nos, things that you can't eat because will cause further damage and yet knowing what to eat is like evades you. It just doesn't seem like you know what to do. I hate it when somebody tells me I can't do something because that's the only thing I think about. Where do you start with? Many times often when people get chronic kidney disease they will have other health-related conditions. You may have had PKD, you may have a low oxalate diet because you may have kidney stones, you may need gluten-free. All those things added into these restrictions are just making it even more complicated and you think to yourself I need to be a dietitian to figure this out. How do you eat anything at all now that you have all these restrictions? Putting together a meal is kind of a one at a time thing you can even think I had to think "oh! I need a whole plan." Let's go-to recipes. Like do you love finding recipes on the internet? I love finding recipes. I love using Pinterest for recipes. But when you have chronic kidney disease, all of a sudden, you need a little more information than maybe it is in that recipe. A lot of times recipes don't even provide nutrient values but all of a s...
Feb 2, 2020
15 min
RDHQ Podcast 103: Chat with Nataliia about RenalMate and Kidney Disease
Mathea Ford: Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I'm here with Nataliia Karpenko. We're going talk today a little bit about RenalMate as you may remember I am an advisory board member with RenalMate and Natalia is the CEO and creator and she's like the inspiration behind a lot of things. She's always coming up with great ideas and why don't you tell us how you got how you came up with RenalMate? And what it is? Nataliia Karpenko: Yeah. Hi to everyone! Today, we are at ISN, a Medical Society of Nephrology event in Washington DC. It's Kidney Week 2019. It's the opening day so it's really important to be here with Ms. Mathea Ford and thank you Mathea for this occasion. I just really think that it is so important to know why people have that passion for renal space and for nephrology. I'm a former kidney patient. And beside this, I worked in a Technology Innovations Corporate Values. From the professional side, many people in the United States are dealing with chronic illness and they are overstressed, knew so little about diet and then you go to renal disease and you go to nephrology and you then realized that it is exponentially higher in terms of the amount of adherence and amount of comprehensive compliance patients have to have but sometimes Education is not there with education that is fully understood by patients as well as necessary simple work that will allow patients to feel empowered to start moving, to feel empowered to know that they can change, that they can improve their quality of life. Since, I was very passionate about my personal craft, looking at that and say, "When I was a child and given is my kidney condition, what would become better?" And I certainly knew that it could be done in better ways that my family would recede back to education. How we can work on effective ways of improving the quality of the diet, improving the quality of life management, and luckily, it is the technology. Yeah. These days, there are so many ways how we can improve the quality of vitals management. Where some medical team would be on board knowing what's happening to patients with remote monitoring well designed in one side, patients will be able to manage their rate and blood pressure and the medical team could be informed if there are any abnormalities happening to patients. There is a lot of value in it in passion, science-based approach, expertise, and technology together to really create something innovative but valuable for patients. Mathea Ford: Yeah. I think it's what you mentioned is the kidney disease is really a hard diet to follow but it's got so many other layers that we don't even realize. You know, there's the family dynamic, there's the diet, there's the medications. Everything changes with kidney disease and putting that all together can be hard. So, we're here at ASN this week because we have a program called LEP. It was Life Enhancement Program. It's like a coaching program for kidney patients and we've done it a couple of times and we're presenting to the Nephrology Conference about the outcomes and stuff but what this is is RenalMate is an app and we're working on building it to make it so it's helpful to people who have kidney disease regardless of the stage and try to focus on the different areas of kidney disease. If you're CKD 3 or CKD 4, before you get on dialysis, then it helps you to understand what is important at that phase because as your phase goes along, as you go along different things become important. You may have different medications, you may change, you're looking at your labs, you're you know you may have to have surgical prevention, surgical procedures done. All those things so you had the passion because you're a kidney patient and you love technology and so Nataliia is out in San Francisco and she's around all the technolo...
Nov 9, 2019
8 min
RDHQ Podcast 102: How To Stay Kidney Friendly While Dining Out
Hi there! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ and today I wanted to go live and talk about the fun topic of how to stay kidney-friendly when you're dining out. If you join me please make a comment. Let me know your comments or questions and I'll be glad to answer them as I'm going along. I wanted to talk about dining out because we're getting ready to get into the season where we have a lot of activities, we may have parties to go to, you may have dinners with people, you may be invited to and I want you to think a little bit ahead and plan ahead for those types of events. I know this time of the year I start going out to dinners more with people and I seem to need to be reminded of ways to do a little better. It can be a challenge, especially with kidney disease because you have the added need to follow some restrictions depending on your diet, depending on whether you need potassium phosphorus. All those types of restrictions. I don't want it to be as much of a challenge. I know it's still going to be an individual basis to challenge, but I wanted to talk through some ideas that I have for ways to make it a little easier. Number one: Foods tend to be saltier at restaurants. They add more salt or people when they bring dishes they use more salty products. They might use regular soy sauce they might use salted butter. They might add salt to foods just without thinking about it and you're probably a little sensitive to salt so you can taste it and know that "hey, this is a higher sodium food" but if you're in a restaurant you can ask them how the food is prepared so you might say "how is this food prepared? Is it pre-prepared or is it prepared locally in the restaurant?" If it's made locally in the restaurant, they can use a little less sauce. They can not add salt to your meal while they're cooking and a lot of times they'll just do salt over the burgers or whatever just ask them not to add salt. You can ask them not to add salt to fries or side dishes. Sometimes the information is on the website so sometimes you can look ahead. I know Panera is great for this. You can go to Panera. You can look at the nutrition and you can also go in and tell it to remove certain ingredients. And then that way when you go into the store you know the nutrition value for the food that you're taking in, for the food that you're asking for. You can tell them you know "No. I don't want bread on the side. I want an Apple. I don't want this" that type of thing and you've already prepared it. You already kinda know what's going to be on that and so you're ready. So, the foods on the website you can also look for some salt terms like sauces may say that it's soy sauce or fish sauce or you just need to ask like how much salt is added and if like I said if they can prepare it or fix it in the store, improve it a little bit. Number two is kind of a combo. Drink water. If you drink soda or like clear sodas or clear diet sodas then you want to drink water in between. Start out with water maybe drink some water before you go to help you feel more full. To help you stay hydrated especially knowing you're going to have more salt and choose smaller plates. I like to look at the appetizer dishes although they can be a little too salty. I mean it seems like they're mostly pre-prepared but appetizers, side dishes so you may want to start looking at like your meat as a side dish and sometimes even when you go out just eating side dishes instead of having the meat that may add to the protein that you don't need. Add those. A lot of places also have lunch menus so they'll have like the lunch menu on the back and even if it's dinner time you can ask for those lunchtime portions,
Nov 1, 2019
10 min
RDHQ Podcast 95: 5 Foods to Remove from your Kitchen Following a Kidney Disease Diagnosis
  Hi! This is Mathea Ford with Renal Diet HQ. I wanted today to talk about five things to remove from your kitchen following a kidney disease diagnosis. Now, there's a lot to learn about a renal diet and I want to talk today about some major changes, major things you can do right after you find out that you have kidney disease to help you transition easier. If you've recently found that you have kidney disease and you need to do a renal diet then there's a lot to learn. There's a lot of yes/no foods, can/can't and I'm not big on yes and no foods but I am big on kind of some major changes that you're going to need to make look going forward to improve your health. One of the easiest first things you can do is remove some of these big offenders from your diet starting out. Let's start out talking about canned soups number one. Canned soups so canned soups are basically liquid salt and you should really try to make your own soups. I have a lot of recipes for soups on renaldiethq.com. On the right hand side you can see all the recipes and there are several different soups in there but really you can do your best to make your  own broth and then try to make your own soups with that broth to improve your health and those are easy because even though they're inexpensive they're really just salt they're not a whole lot of nutritional value. Number two would be processed meats. Things like canned meats like spam, hot dogs, cured meats like pepperoni or prosciutto. Now, fresh meats like chicken or fish sometimes deli meats you can get lower sodium. Deli meats so you might look into that and you can also do like some look at some of the cans like canned chicken it may have lower sodium you may be able to find the lower sodium version of that but if you really can just cook a chicken breast. Chop it up and make your own little chicken salad or something that'll be real easy but just watch out for the canned process meats and in general highly processed foods you're going to want to look at the amount of salt that's contained in them because you're trying really to reduce the amount of salt in your diet. Number three tomato sauces. I'm not a never tomato person. I know there's a lot of people that say "you know oh! I can't eat tomatoes" but in the beginning trying to improve your diet things that are tomato sauces can be high in salt and they can be high in potassium so things like ketchup as well as pasta sauces. Things like marinara you may want to eat less of or use a little less of. I also like so if you're using marinara on a spaghetti, for example, you can do like a butter sauce or a lemon sauce maybe a little higher in fat than the tomato sauce which you can make it lower sodium. I'm seeing a question about what about pickles? Can I find no sodium pickles? No. Maybe I have never seen lower sodium pickles but I've honestly never looked for them but basically, the process of creating pickles is using a salt brine so it's definitely never going to be that you're going to find no salt pickles but cucumbers which is what pickles are made of are perfect. Raw cucumbers chop them up, salt you know put them in a little soak them in a little vinegar and they're really good but in general, you might have to look to see if they have any no salt pickles. I haven't heard low sodium pickles I've never looked for those. Number four instant ramen. A lot of times it's inexpensive and easy to make things like instant ramen and noodles are generally kidney-friendly. You usually can eat those just fine but the flavor packet in any of those pre-prepared pasta dishes are going to be really high in sodium just like all the processed foods that I was talking about. So, you might try cooking your ramen noodles and maybe putting like a light vinaigrette on them you could make your own. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago.
Aug 22, 2019
8 min
RDHQ Podcast 94: Condiments Do's and Don'ts
I want to talk to you about Condiment Do's and Don'ts. So, if you started on a renal diet you may have found out that it can be sometimes bland or taste bland without the salt that you're used to possibly eating. Don't think it has to be bland. There are ways that you can add flavor and one of those ways is through using condiments. Condiments are things like ketchup, mustard, mayo, spices, blends - all those things. So, I want to take a few minutes and talk to you about different do's and don'ts for condiments so I want you to create delicious food but I want you to be healthy at the same time. Condiments can be sneaky. Sometimes they can put you off track because you may not realize some of the things that are in the condiments so learn the basics do's and don'ts and I'm going to help you with that to spice up your next meal. One of the things you can do is to always check the sodium. Check the amount of sodium, look at the label, read the labels, see what it says amount of sodium. Sodium can be sneaky in these products so you may think of things like soy sauce or things that you know are salty but there's other things like barbecue sauce can have a decent amount of salt in it; ketchup can have a decent amount of salt, it can also have a decent amount of sugar in it so just make sure that you're paying attention to how much sodium is in there and when you read a food label its per serving so make sure you're looking at the serving size that's at the top of that Nutrition Facts label it says serving maybe one teaspoon. Make sure that you know you know that you're getting just that amount. So, don't. Aside from a do let's talk about a don't. So, don't assume that low fat or low calorie is better. Actually, in a lot of ways the regular stuff if you just use a smaller amount can taste just as good. Low-calorie versions of sauces and condiments like mayonnaise are higher in sodium a lot of the times. Obviously, you're gonna read the label but be sure to check the label. Low fat a lot of times they'll replace with salt or other things that may not be as healthy for you so always look at the label. If you want to have a little bit of mayo, read the Mayo for regular Mayo. Use a smaller amount it's probably more flavorful. Salt taste I know can be really strong so just make sure that when you're using it that you're paying attention to the amount that you're eating and then over time it'll go away but you're just going to have to work through those few maybe weeks while your sodium taste buds flavors go away and you start to be able to taste those other delicious flavors that are in a lot of foods that salt may have covered up. Back to a Do, do try a seasoning blend instead of a sauce. A lot of times sauces will have sodium, extra fat, those types of things but seasoning and you may know you can go over to Nickanny's Kitchen nickannyskitchen.com. I have three or four seasonings over there that are salt free and make great additions to any meal but any seasoning just make sure when you read it you read the label again looking for salt so you can find some low sodium seasonings. You can use them as a dry rub so putting it directly on like your chicken or your fish. You can mix it with a little bit of lemon juice or oil or vinegar and make a little marinade with that flavoring and then add it to the sauce you know when you're cooking cook it in there. So, use seasonings and sauces. Sometimes if you can do that but just make sure you're reading their labels for those because a lot of seasonings have salt in them too. So, Don't, don't use tomato-based sauces very often. Tomatoes can be high in potassium and that's one of the things that as you advance in kidney disease, you're gonna essentially have issues with. So, just watch the amount of tomato-based sauces that you use and if  you are using one just use a little less or thin it out wi...
Aug 9, 2019
8 min
RDHQ Podcast 93: Easy Renal Diet Swaps
Hi guys! It's Mathea Ford with Renal Diet Headquarters and today I wanted to take a minute and talk about something a little different than I've been talking about recently. I want to talk about Easy Renal Diet Swaps. If you're new to kidney disease or you've had kidney disease for a while but you are kind of bogged down with similar foods, I want to talk about some things that maybe you could swap out that might give you some ideas to try new things. I'm always about trying new things, getting new foods. So, today I wanted to go over some easy renal diet swaps. First of all, you probably notice if you've been diagnosed with kidney disease that it's overwhelming to be diagnosed with kidney disease. Any treatment that you might need. There are changes to your lifestyle that you have to adjust to. Going to maybe more doctor's appointments, definitely changing your diet, adjusting, talking to your family about it. All those things come about and today I wanted to give you some quick ideas to change your swap out some things in your diet. Swap number one is dressings and marinades. So, think about how easy it is to make some of your own dressings because a lot of times when you buy like a standard dressing it's going to be really high in sodium and that's one of those things that you really want to eliminate from your diet so I would encourage you to either look for some recipes online or I have on the website renaldietHQ.com, search for Zestify recipes or at the top of the page it says recipes, there are several salads and they have a salad dressing that's in them. But a lot of times vinegar and oil, some herbs and seasonings that you can get from like nickannyskitchen.com. Those can all make your salad dressing flavorful without all the salt that's in a regular store-bought salad dressing. That's one change and I honestly think they taste a lot better because you can flavor them specific to that salad or mix that you're using and a lot of times, salad dressings can be used as marinades so you might mix up some vinegar and oil and a few seasonings then marinate your meat or chicken or poultry in it. Swap number two is grains. So, there are so many options out there when it comes to grains and more than just white rice and more than just plain pasta because those can be if you're especially if you're diabetic it may be something that you're not as interested in eating as much of. So, when it comes to grains, there are things like couscous and bulgur, you can test out a few find your favorite when it comes down to both taste and texture. You may even make some vegetarian. I have a vegetarian broth recipe on my website and you can use that vegetarian broth which is flavorful to cook your grains and that will make them even more flavorful. If you're looking at high phosphorus you may want to eliminate the brown rice or brown whole-grain bread but just think about looking at some different types of grains that you might want to use instead of I understand a lot of people want to get rid of potatoes because of potassium. Number three: soft drinks. So, you might like all different kinds of soft drinks, you may like water. I drink a lot of water. The one thing you want to avoid with kidney disease is the higher phosphorus ones and the higher phosphorus ones are the dark sodas. So, things like Dr. Pepper, Cola, Pepsi you want to try to drink clear soft drinks and lower phosphorus or potassium ones. Or, you could even go to https://sodapopcraft.com and make your own soft drinks at home. These are usually much healthier than the ones you buy in stores. If you're like a diabetic and you want to adjust your blood sugar, say you've got a low blood sugar then one of the things you can do is obviously a lot...
Aug 3, 2019
6 min
RDHQ Podcast 92: How Chronic Kidney Disease has Changed my Life {My Story}
Hi there! This is Mathea Ford, the creator of Understanding Your Kidney Test Results course and today I want to tell you a little bit about me. If you have been with me for a while you may know some of this stuff but I'm a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist and I'm licensed in the state of Oklahoma which just like your doctor you get a license when your Registered Dietitian and I also have a Masters in Business Administration. I have always enjoyed the business side of being a Clinical Dietitian. I've also taught classes at the college level to new RDs or to people who are training to become a dietitian and I'm the owner of renaldiethq.com. I'm an advisory board member for the company RenalMate and I've been a Registered Dietitian for 22 years plus and working mainly in the foodservice and clinical sides but mostly in hospitals so I understand food a whole lot. And I want to talk to you a little bit about what made me realize that I needed to create this Understanding Kidney Test Results course because with the information that I have about kidney disease tests, what I've learned. When I worked in the hospital, I worked in foodservice. I managed the menus and I really enjoyed creating great recipes. I worked with a lot of people. I always tried to make their diet healthier but tasty and I never really worked with them a lot to understand why the food that they ate was so important. You might understand that now because you've done research but the food that you eat makes a big difference in your kidney disease outcomes. But there are some things that you may not understand why but you just follow them because you read the information. So, when I was in private practice, I'm working with people individually and I get lots of individual emails every week from people asking questions about their lives and wanting to know if they're in stage 3 or stage 4 and how fast their kidney disease will progress, do they need to worry about dialysis, should they eat this food or that food and I realized a lot of those questions were answers that I had but they weren't readily available online because it does take some interpretation. It takes some explanation of the way things work and why these labs are valid, why they mean certain things to change and those are things you get when you're a Registered Dietitian. When you learn about labs, when you learn about the biochemical processes in people's bodies. And I always found it a challenge because even my own mom would ask me these questions and want to know more about her labs and what they could be and I could tell her on an individual basis what that means and if you came to see me individually you would pay to see a dietitian and I would go over your labs and talk to you but you wouldn't necessarily have the individual knowledge of why. You might understand what and you might understand what next, you wouldn't necessarily understand why and how to change. I would have explained to you how to change but then the next time you get labs then you would need to come back to see me again and have me explain how those worked that time. And it can get really frustrating because sometimes the answer you might get from a doctor or a nurse. All they do is hand you a sheet of paper especially if they don't know in detail about the clinic about the chronic kidney disease diet. They would hand you the paper that says you know "Eat this, don't eat this!" You really just have to you know it's kind of a list of products or a list of foods that you can or can't eat so they rarely ever give you the can list don't they because that's a lot bigger but they give you this list of foods you can't eat.
Jul 25, 2019
8 min
RDHQ Podcast 91: What if it works? My thoughts on your future.
Hi! This is Mathea Ford, the creator of the Understanding Your Kidney Test Results course and today I want to talk about some of the things you might be struggling with my thoughts are I hear from a lot of people that they're overwhelmed about being having chronic kidney disease or in stage renal disease and on top of that they really don't understand what their doctor means when they're talking about their labs so they might tell me "I'm an eGFR of 46 but they don't know what that means and they don't even know what questions to ask so they just kind of let their doctor explain and then take it in and go back home and then what happens? You experience frustration, you're spending a lot of time looking for answers trying to understand what those labs means so you have the normal range on your paper you know you look at your lab results and it says phosphorus or potassium is 3.5 to 5 that's the normal range but maybe you don't know what to do to make sure that it stays in the normal range and you don't know what to do if it goes out of the normal range and maybe you don't want to wait until your doctor tells you "Hey! You're high on your potassium this is what you need to do!" You'd rather do some preventive things. So, you get anxiety when you're thinking about getting your labs drawn because you don't know what to do to help it or make it better and you're even maybe a little anxious because you don't want to go on dialysis, you don't want to advance your kidney disease or if you're on dialysis you want to do everything you can to make it the best possible. Then you look online, you bring home your lab, you look online, you look around you don't find anything that tells you more than like normal ranges or maybe you're not 100% sure about the source of the information if it does tell you what else to do like drink green smoothies. You're wondering how do they know that. So, you really don't know what to do next. That's the big thing like even if you understood "Okay, I'm in the normal range. I'm doing good. Done this for a while. I'm in the normal range." You don't understand what that means or had to interpret it. So, you really don't know what to do next if you think that it's at all possible to change it like you're like "okay, I don't want to be on stage ... I don't want to advance my stage of kidney disease." You call your doctor "what do I do?" You might get a sheet of paper, you might get a callback, you get a list of foods not to eat and that doesn't tell you why and it's hard to go outside of that list of restrictions and if you listen to me much and you know what I say, I don't like restrictions, I like to think about what you can do, what you can have, what you can eat not necessarily like "don't eat all these things" because then that's all you think about and you don't ever get to where what you can do. If you have a goal of you know not advancing your kidney disease, making the changes you need to make, well, let's talk for a minute about what it could be like if you did understand what your lab results were. What types of things affect your lab results and then you could eventually go back to your doctor and improve your health? What if you were to able to look at your lab results even when they just handed to them to you right there in the doctor's office and understand and ask targeted and specific questions like related to your medications or foods you eat because you know that's what affects your labs. You're not going to diagnose yourself, you're not going to change anything without asking your doctor but you're going to go in and ask your doctor he's or she is going to be sitting there across from you. You're going to know you got your CBC and all those hemoglobin numbers and you know they drew those labs and then you go into the office and you're like...
Jul 23, 2019
7 min
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