10 symptoms of kidney disease
Most of the 10 symptoms below can be caused by chronic kidney disease (CKD). Several can be caused by other kidney diseases. For example, blood in your wee can be caused by a urinary tract infection (UTI), kidney or bladder cancer, or stones in the kidney or bladder.
1. Blood in your wee (urine; haematuria)
This can be caused by lots of different things but kidney disease is one of them.
When your kidneys are working properly, they keep the blood cells in your body when they’re filtering waste out of your blood. If the kidneys’ filters are damaged, though, some blood cells can leak into your wee.
If you see blood in your wee, you should always see your doctor urgently so they can rule out a UTI, plus more serious things such as cancer of the bladder and kidneys.
2. Puffy ankles, feet and eyes (oedema)
Noticed puffiness or swelling in your ankles and feet, or around your eyes? When your kidneys are not removing excess water and waste from your body, it can build up in your tissues.
This leads to swelling, usually in your lower body (ankle and leg oedema), although it can affect other areas, including around your eyes (periorbital oedema) and sometimes your genitals and hands.
If untreated, it may progress to excess water in the lungs causing shortness of breath. Doctors call this ‘pulmonary oedema’. This is serious and needs treating today.
3. Foamy wee
Froth in your wee is a sign there are high levels of protein in it, especially if you have to flush a few times to clear the bubbles.
Hint: it may look like the foam you see on the surface when you’re scrambling eggs, because the type of protein that ends up in urine is the same as the albumin found in eggs.
Foamy wee can be sign of CKD or nephrotic syndrome (some have both).
4. Tiredness and brain fog
When your kidney function dips, toxins build up in your blood, which can make you feel tired and struggle to concentrate.
Also, more advanced CKD (Stage 4) can cause anaemia, which means a lack of red blood cells. This can cause or worsen tiredness.
5. Poor appetite and feeling sick
A common symptom of everything from stress to a range of serious illnesses, poor appetite can happen in CKD because of a build-up of toxins.
CKD patients often also say “all food tastes the same” or “food tastes like metal”.
CKD can also cause feelings of sickness (nausea) because your kidneys are not removing toxins from your body properly.
6. Needing to wee more often (frequency)
Healthy kidneys filter your blood and pass waste out in your urine. But when the kidneys are damaged, they may make wee that contains mostly water, with few waste products.
That means you may end up needing to go to the toilet more often, especially at night.
Note. Passing less urine, surprisingly, is not a common symptom of kidney disease.
7. Dry, itchy skin
This is one of the most unpleasant kidney symptoms, and hard to treat.
And doctors don’t know why kidney disease leads to very dry, itchy skin. But it may be connected to a few different factors including toxins in the blood and an imbalance in levels of minerals in your body.
8. Muscle cramps and pain
Occasional cramps are normal, but poor kidney function can cause more muscle cramping.
When CKD is advanced (Stage 4 or 5) whole body pain can occur. It is not known why.
9. Restless legs
This symptom is not really understood (and there are other non-kidney causes) but is a feature of CKD.
10. Sleep problems
There are a few reasons CKD can affect your sleep. Toxins can build up and circulate in your blood, which can keep you awake.
Obesity is an underlying cause of both CKD and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), which can cause you to wake very briefly lots of times through the night. And needing to go to the loo in the night can seriously disrupt your sleep.
Logical and illogical ‘kidney symptoms’
For some symptoms (blood in urine, passing urine more frequently etc) is seems clear why this might be linked to kidney disease. But for others (itching, pain etc) there is no obvious link. Also there are many non-kidney causes to the latter ‘illogical’ symptoms.
Summary
We have described 10 symptoms of kidney disease, especially those of CKD. We hope it has been helpful.
