Sunday, November 8, 2009

Book: Coping with Kidney Disease: A 12-Step Treatment Program to Help You Avoid Dialysis

I've just read the following book and recommend it for anyone with kidney disease, or susceptability to kidney disease:
Coping with Kidney Disease: A 12-Step Treatment Program to Help You Avoid Dialysis

The book distills the 45 years of kidney experience of the doctor who wrote it and is written in a strictly factual style regarding what has shown to be useful and what not. The basic message I got from the book is "we're still fairly clueless about the kidneys but a low protein diet, with amino-acid supplements, is the only thing that seems to conclusively slow or stop the progress of the disease". What I found interesting was the clear explanations of the different kinds of disease and the significance of the different tests and treatment options. Despite having read just about everything about kidneys on the Internet, I found the book provided some very useful information and clarifications.

In my particular case, the good news is that I'm doing everything the book recommends with the exception of monitoring serum carbonate levels to check for acidosis (excesive acidity in the body). In the case of acidosis, the recomended treatment is sodium bicarbonate, a treatment I had been trying previously.

If you have an iPhone (I borrowed my wife's) you can buy the kindle (electronic) version of the book from just about anywhere in the world.