The Importance of Exercise for CKD Patients
Podcast #82 Released on February 26, 2018
I want to talk about the importance of exercise for people with chronic kidney disease and I think it’s really important to understand that there are some simple things that you can do that can increase the amount of exercise you have and you do in your life and then over time you can build up to a little more.
When you’re diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, usually you have a few other issues going on. May have some heart problems, you may have diabetes, you may have high blood pressure so any of those things means that you need to talk to your doctor first before you begin any sort of exercise program. So, don’t take this podcast or live as a license to go exercise without talking to your doctor. 
Now, if your doctor has told you to start exercising then that start definitely something that you should do. If you aren’t active, make sure you talk to your doctor.
I also attach to the article that I’ve put in the link  renaldiethq.com/importance-exercise-CKD-patients. 
I want to just talk about exercise first in general because it’s a really important concept and you might not think that it makes that much difference or maybe you think it makes a lot of difference but you just can’t do it. But the thing is you can, as long as your doctor says it’s okay it’s going to benefit you in a lot of ways. One of the main things that I’ve found that it does is it reduces your fatigue.
Exercising even just a small amount and building up it reduces your fatigue. If you’re tired at the end of the day, doing a little exercise which may seem counter intuitive; doing a little exercise is going to change the way you feel at the end of the day and you’re not going to be as tired. It’ll take a week or so for that to start happening but if you continue it that you will see it happen. It helps with weight management. Exercise helps lower your blood sugar, it helps lower your blood pressure, it helps with weight management, it burns off calories that your body has stored over time for you and the form of fat or other compounds in your body so exercise helps with weight management.
If you’re already at a healthy weight, exercise helps you again in many other ways like lowering your blood pressure. Making your heart work a little harder and then relaxing on a regular basis is something that is amazing for your blood pressure, your body learns to recover, your body learns how to manage that stress that you’re creating and it learns how to speed up “Okay, I need a little more heart blood pressure” and then slow down when you are done exercising so your body adjusts much more quickly when you’re doing that in real life. Say, your doctor just tells you some bad news or something. Yes, your heart’s going race for a minute but then it’s going to recover. Just makes it a lot easier for you to recover and it also improves your blood pressure level which is always good for people with  kidney disease.
Exercise can reduce anxiety and depression. It may seem like why would I do that or maybe I’m not depressed maybe I don’t feel anxiety maybe you do but what it does is it releases hormones into your body and then your body learns how to manage those better so you won’t feel like if you have anxiety because your body suddenly you know had a feelin...