PKD DIET

Low Sodium

My doctor told me to lower sodium, what do I do?

Request a visit to a dietitian. Rid your cupboards and refrigerator of all canned and processed foods. Give away your can opener. Avoid salty snack foods such as chips, olives, popcorn, nuts, cookies. By preparing your own meals you will have eliminated much of the excess sodium.

Table salt contains aluminum that makes it free flowing. Excess aluminum has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease. Higher levels of aluminum increases calcium deposited into the urine, making individuals more prone to calcium stone formation. Processed foods are unusually high in this aluminum laden salt. In such a fast paced society people often lack the time or the energy to cook for themselves. This is where juicing can help.

Try juicing something, then prepare your meal. Or have an alkaline fruit: a sweet apple, banana, kiwi, pear, pineapple, or some local sweet in season fruit. Juice made from fresh raw ingredients is one of the fastest fast foods available. Raw juices when taken first have the additional advantage of releasing their enzymes to aid in the absorption of the meal. I have just read recently that as we age, we tend to produce less enzymes and less hydrochloric acid to digest foods. Some of us never experience heartburn or reflux, by assuring we get natural enzymes from raw fruits and vegetables daily.


Foods High in Sodium

anchovies bacon scones
BBQ beans BBQ meats biscuits
bouillon bread bread stuffing
breads buttermilk cake
celery canned goods canned soup
canned vegetables catsup celery
celeriac cheese, all cheese spread
chips cookies corn bread
crackers dairy dry soup mixes
frozen dinners frozen vegetables prepared in sauce frozen foods
garlic salt gravies ham
hot dogs instant cocoa mix instant pudding
luncheon meats margarine mayonnaise
meat sauces meats smoked/pink molly mcbutter
muffins nachos olives
onion salt packaged mashed potatoes pack pasta mix
pimento cheese prepackaged foods packaged rice/noodle
pretzels popcorn processed food
ramen noodles salt pork salted snacks
sausage soups soy meats
soy sauce spice mixes tomato canned goods
tomato juice V-8 juice veggie hot dogs

Limit added salt from a shaker or grinder to 1/8 teaspoon per day. Try Himalayan Pink Crystal salt. This salt contains many of the essential micro minerals useful for the body to buffer the acid processes that are taking place on a cellular level. The Himalayan Pink crystal salt is known as halite. If Limit added salt from a shaker or grinder to 1/8 teaspoon per day. This salt contains many of the essential micro minerals useful for the body to buffer the acid processes that are taking place on a cellular level. The Himalayan Pink crystal salt is known as halite. If you take one of these crystals, place in a beautiful blue glass bottle with spring water, let it sit for twenty four hours so the solution becomes isotonic. Take one drop of this solution in a full glass of spring water or mineral water each morning. This is solé.
Water and Salt, the Essence of Life, is the book.

Why is Table Salt Detrimental?

You may be thinking ah, minerals, I know minerals, how about table salt? Table salt is sodium chloride. Sodium found its soul mate in chloride. These two molecules are so incredibly attracted to one another that nothing can pull them apart. The body cannot separate these tightly bonded minerals. Heat cannot do it. Evaporation does not do it. Adding moisture to it will not do it. The result is any ingested table salt goes through your body untouched. Table salt is eliminated in the urine. Because the blood is loaded with this inseparable couple called sodium chloride they pull water from the body as they exit. They cannot help but pull water along with them, drying the cells. This is due to the higher concentration of sodium outside the cell. One becomes dehydrated. Dehydration prevents the kidneys from being adequately bathed and nourished with blood. Dehydration causes the blood pressure to rise, the circulating blood volume to fall. The blood goes zipping by the kidneys barely touching them as the race to run faster and faster to compete with the increasing blood pressure is on. Dehydration is known to be very detrimental to an individual with polycystic kidney disease.

When the body has an abundant source of minerals that are easily broken apart into their components, the body then gladly uses these minerals to aid in the neutralization of acid processes within cells. When this source is not available to the body, the body will rob other places to obtain the needed minerals. It will pull calcium from bones, or sodium from the gallbladder. This creates illness within the body. The theft of calcium causes bone loss and demineralization. Ingesting sugars and excess proteins causes the body to rob sodium from the gallbladder to neutralize this acidic process. The innate intelligence of the body continues to do its job to survive and it will obtain needed minerals firstly from its own mineral reserves. Once these are depleted it will turn to our organs, and after the organs, the body draws needed minerals from the bones. Lastly the body will make ammonia with a pH of 9.2 to neutralize the produced cellular acid. This last attempt by the body to neutralize acids causes a rise in blood urea nitrogen, the BUN. BUN and serum creatinine are two blood tests which doctors rely on to give them an indication of kidney health. If one eats almost exclusively protein foods and tested the urine with litmus paper and it tests 8.0 alkaline, it probably means your body is manufacturing ammonia. Cranberry juice might do just the trick to change the ammonia to ammonium. This transition can be required while one is slowly fine tuning the diet.

Adjustments to diet need to be made slowly and deliberately, whereas the decision to attempt these changes needs to be decided instantly. I had found for myself the most solid commitment came as I was threatened with the possibility of a transplanted organ in my immediate future. This was the trigger which turned things around for me.

We are  sharing our experiences with PKD/PLD Diet, an adjunct diet envisioning it complementing a physician's prescribed medical therapy. Consider testing this with your doctor's prior knowledge, who can  adjust it according to your own uniqueness by adding it to your current  treatment.

Medical Disclaimer