Is Chronic Kidney Disease Caused By The Brain?

For centuries, scientists have suggested numerous possible causes of chronic kidney disease (CKD)—but never the brain.

However, this is all changing with a new study in The Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, which reveals a specific brain function that can cause CKD.

This means that changing this brain function may reverse CKD.

A large team of Chinese scientists wanted to specifically test the progression of kidney disease (or the deterioration of kidney function) in people with and without depression, so they needed to start with people whose kidneys were still functioning normally or relatively well.

To do this, they obtained information on 4,763 people from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. All of them had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (EGFR) higher than 60.

An EGFR score indicates the amount of creatinine in your blood. Healthy kidneys remove creatinine from your blood because it is a waste product. The way they calculate it, a lower score means that your kidneys are functioning poorly.

1. A score greater than 90 means that your kidneys are functioning normally, but that they may have been damaged.
2. A score between 89 and 60 means that you have stage-2 kidney disease, with mild loss of kidney function.
3. A score between 59 and 44 means you have stage-3 kidney disease, with moderate loss of kidney function.

From there it goes downhill to less than 15, which indicates kidney failure.

At the beginning of the study, the participants completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale to test their depression levels. On this scale, a score of 10 or more points out of 30 signifies moderate or severe depression.

During an average follow-up period of four years, the researchers discovered the following:

1. Kidney function was 15% more likely to decline rapidly for every five-point increase on the depression scale. They defined a rapid decline as an annual EGFR score decline of five points or more.
2. More severe depression increased the likelihood of a rapid decline in kidney function.
3. For every five-point increase on the depression scale, participants were 26% more likely to progress to stage-3 kidney disease, with moderate loss of kidney function.

This strongly indicates that depression can cause CKD. But the two conditions could also tend to progress hand in hand, rather than having a cause-and-effect relationship.

Regardless, if you have already been diagnosed with CKD, you absolutely must address it now. Thousands of readers have already halted or even reversed their CKD, using the simple and natural steps explained here…