Can a nutritious diet increase glomerular filtration rate?

At present, there is no unified conclusion in the academic community that "nutritional diet can definitely improve the glomerular filtration rate." However, reasonable nutritional intervention can indeed help stabilize the damaged kidney function. A few patients with early kidney damage with very mild illness can even see a slight rebound in the glomerular filtration rate.

Many nephrologists who hold opposing views believe that as long as chronic kidney damage occurs, the decline in glomerular filtration rate is irreversible. Nutritional diet can at best slow down the decline, but it is impossible to increase it. I met a 32-year-old patient with early-stage diabetic kidney disease before. When he was first diagnosed, his glomerular filtration rate was 62ml/min/1.73m², which was just on the threshold of stage 2 chronic kidney disease. He watched a lot of short video popular science at that time, saying that eating high-protein foods and drinking kidney-nourishing tea can bring the indicator back. After half a year of supplementation and rechecking, the indicator dropped directly to 58, and his face turned pale.

But you said that nutritious diet is completely useless? There are indeed many positive cases in our clinical follow-up. It was the same patient just now. Later, he came to the outpatient clinic for personalized dietary guidance. We calculated the amount of low-protein diet for him based on his weight. Every day, he replaced one-third of the low-protein staple food with polished rice and white flour. Red meat was limited to one or two a day, and salt was strictly limited to every day. 3 grams a day, choose fresh vegetables with low potassium and eat one pound a day. He gritted his teeth and strictly followed it for 9 months. When he was re-examined, the glomerular filtration rate actually returned to 61. Although it did not return to the completely normal range, it was able to go back a little bit. We were all surprised.

In fact, the reason why there is such a big controversy is that the scenes that everyone refers to as "improvement" are completely different. For a healthy person with completely normal kidney function, the glomerular filtration rate is already in the normal range above 90. No matter how much you eat a nutritious and balanced diet, it is impossible to raise this indicator higher. It cannot be said that adding 98 gasoline to an ordinary family car can increase the displacement of 1.5T to 2.0T, right? But if you are a patient with early-stage kidney damage, many people have previously experienced a decline in glomerular filtration rate. This is originally caused by a high-salt, high-protein, and high-oil diet that increases the burden on the kidneys. If you remove these excess burdens, the remaining compensatory capacity of the kidneys can be brought into play, and they will naturally return to their original level, which looks like "improvement."

Don’t think about relying on eating “special kidney-nourishing foods” to raise your targets. I have seen many patients randomly eat so-called kidney-tonifying products such as pork loin, ginseng, and cordyceps. Instead, they eat high levels of uric acid and creatinine, which puts a burden on the kidneys. The core of a nutritious diet is never to find some god-level ingredients, but to accurately adjust the intake according to one's kidney function status, and not to cause trouble to the kidneys. Only then can the kidney function be stabilized, and even better than expected.