harka

Hi there,

I have a feeling you must have been diagnosed with some type of kidney impairment via a high creatinine measurement.

Creatinine is only a MARKER of kidney function, and its level in isolation isn't all that helpful. Creatinine is a byproduct of your muscles and the more muscle you have in your body, the higher the amount of creatinine spilling in to your blood will be. Creatinine is cleared by the kidneys so if you measured the blood creatinine level it gives a rough idea of the level of kidney function. You can guess that if all of a sudden the kidneys weren't working properly, the level of creatinine would raise in the blood. So lowering the creatinine isn't exactly what you are trying to do; rather it is improving kidney function.

Improving kidney function is a difficult question to answer. If the kidney function has been deterioriating over a long period of time (like in damage from diabetes) you can't really do much to IMPROVE the kidney function as much as you can SLOW down the progression. However, if the kidney function is ACUTELY impaired (as in severe dehydration or obstruction from a large prostate for example) the function can be improved by dealing with the underlying problem by giving fluids or relieving the obstruction.