High blood pressure affects nearly half of all American adults — roughly 120 million women and men. While most of us associate hypertension with heart problems (or cardiovascular disease), your kidneys can suffer, too.
That’s because hypertension takes a toll on your blood vessels, including the tiny vessels inside your kidneys. Here, our team at Houston Kidney Specialists Center explains the link between high blood pressure and chronic kidney disease (CKD) — and why managing your blood pressure is vitally important not only for your heart health, but for your kidney health, too.
When most of us think of our kidneys, we think of the urine they produce. But that’s just part of the story: Your kidneys produce urine by filtering excess fluid and waste from your blood. In fact, your kidneys filter about 200 quarts of blood every day.
To perform that function, your kidneys rely on a network of tiny blood vessels that help filter out waste and excess fluids, returning “cleansed” blood to circulation. When your blood pressure is high, over time that added pressure can damage the filtering mechanism, eventually leading to serious kidney problems.
While this type of damage is definitely serious, the good news is it doesn’t happen overnight — that means you have a chance to prevent permanent damage before it happens. Unfortunately, most people don’t notice any symptoms during the early stages of damage, which is why it’s so important to play a proactive role in managing your blood pressure — even when you feel perfectly fine.
That said, it’s important to know that high blood pressure is the second leading cause of kidney failure in the United States (after diabetes), and about 36 million adults are affected by CKD. Together, these statistics underscore the importance of managing your blood pressure.
While high blood pressure takes a toll on your kidneys, the relationship between blood pressure and kidney disease doesn't stop there. When your kidneys are damaged, they can’t remove excess sodium and fluid from your body, which can cause your blood pressure to rise.
At the same time, though, that rise in blood pressure makes it even harder for your kidneys to do their job, increasing the risk of kidney damage. This bidirectional relationship can make it even more challenging to manage your overall health.
That's why your blood pressure readings are so important when it comes to caring not only for your heart but also your kidneys. If you have CKD, keeping your blood pressure under control can help slow the progression of underlying kidney damage. And, if you have hypertension, monitoring your kidney function can help catch problems early, too.
Neither CKD nor hypertension cause noticeable symptoms early on. As a result, without regular checkups and blood pressure monitoring, you probably won’t know you have a problem until your kidney function has already declined from normal levels. In fact, about 20% of people with high blood pressure also have CKD, according to the CDC.
In addition to monitoring your blood pressure, simple blood tests and urinalysis provide essential clues about how well your kidneys are working. These tests measure how well your kidneys filter your blood, using a metric called the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). Urine tests also look for albumin, a protein that could be a sign of kidney damage.
If you have high blood pressure or other concerns about your kidney health, we can help you learn and practice simple strategies to lower your risk of CKD and related health issues. To learn more, request an appointment online or over the phone at our practice locations in Cypress and Houston, Texas, today.
