Posts Tagged “kidney diseae”
A 10-year clinical trial involving 108 adults with stage 3 chronic kidney disease (CKD) and metabolic acidosis found that dietary acid reduction through fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with fewer hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and cases requiring dialysis.
The findings will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2026, held from October 22 to 25.
Participants were randomly assigned to three groups of 36 patients each. One group received fruits and vegetables to reduce dietary acid by half, another received oral sodium bicarbonate, and the third received usual care.
Over the 10-year follow-up, researchers recorded 115 hospitalizations, 166 emergency department visits, and 34 patients requiring dialysis.
The fruit and vegetable group recorded 14 hospitalizations compared with 64 in the usual care group. Emergency department visits totaled 20 versus 88, while four patients required dialysis compared with 16 receiving usual care.
No differences in these outcomes were observed between the sodium bicarbonate and usual care groups.
According to corresponding author Nimrit Goraya of Baylor Scott and White Health, the dietary intervention was associated with improved clinical outcomes without increasing overall health-system or societal costs.
Patients with kidney disease eating three to four more servings of fruits and vegetables every day could lower their blood pressure and nearly cut medication costs by 50 percent, new research suggests.
The findings stem from the multi-year tracking of a small group of patients, in which standard medical treatment was compared with the simple nutritional intervention. The goal: to see which approach did a better job at driving down both blood pressure and drug expenses.
The result on both fronts showed a clear win for healthy food.
Dr. Nimrit Goraya, author of the study, described the links seen between increased fruit and vegetable intake, kidney disease control and lower medication expenses as “huge.” And “the impact was visible from the very first year. This study has been done over five years, but every year since the therapy with fruits and vegetables began, we were able to lower medications,” she noted.
The program director for nephrology with Baylor Scott & White Healthcare in Temple, TX and her colleagues recently presented their findings at an American Heart Association meeting on blood pressure, in Orlando, FL
The heart association points out high blood pressure is the second leading cause of kidney failure. The kidneys and the circulatory system depend on each other for good health.
In all, 108 kidney disease patients were enlisted in the study, all of whom were taking similar doses of blood pressure drugs. Patients were divided into three groups. One group was treated with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), the standard treatment designed to neutralize the lingering acid that kidney patients typically struggle to excrete. Failure to excrete can lead to abnormally high acid levels, a condition known as “metabolic acidosis.”
A second group was not prescribed sodium bicarbonate, but instead was provided three to four servings of fruits and vegetables a day. These patients were not instructed to alter their usual diet beyond consuming their new fruit and vegetable allotment.
A third group was not treated in any way.
The result: After five years, systolic blood pressure (the top number in a reading) was pegged at 125 mm Hg among the fruit and vegetable group, compared with 135 mm Hg and 134 mm Hg, respectively, among the medication and no treatment groups.
What’s more, those in the food group were taking considerably lower doses of daily blood pressure medication than those in the other groups, the study authors said.
This translated into a near halving of the food group’s total expenditure on such drugs, down to roughly $80,000 over five years compared with an average total of more than $153,000 among each of the other two groups.