Hello! - Christine

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Christine

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Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
welcome to the forum ! have a good read around and remember no question is silly here and usually someone will come up with some sort of advice 🙂

Hello everybody hope you all had a good Christmas. I am new to this site. Let me introduce myself. My name is Christine and I am a type 1, recently I have been told by my doctor that my Kidneys are leaking protein, can anybody explain this, or do other people suffer from this?
 
Welcome to the forum.

Protein being leaked into urine is dependant on the levels of the protein that's been detected. Some protein is acceptable, but only a trace.

What your levels are will determine the degree of any problem. There are various options available, the first is the management of your diabetes and getting your levels in check as a matter of urgency.

Then there are various medications that can be prescribed to work on this layer of the filter, again without knowing what your levels are it's a bit tricky to give any more detail.

The drugs are quite effective. What has your GP said or done with the results?

I always work on the basis that if they've not sent you straight off to the hospital it's not too serious.

Hope this helps a little? Good luck.
 
Hiya Christine!

I'm new too, but I can help a bit with the physiology.

Kidneys 'filter' your blood. Basically, a kidney is a cluster of tiny tubes (tubules). When blood passes through the kidney, most of the blood passes into these tubules and the 'useful' bits are then reabsorbed back into the body and continue to go round in the blood. The bits that the body doesn't think are useful remain in the tubes - i.e. they don't get re-absorbed - and the tubules eventually lead to the ureters, the tubes which go to the bladder, and from there this 'waste' product goes out of the body (we call it 'urine' like one of the waste products that doesn't get reabsorbed, 'urea').

The important bit here is that 'most of the blood passes into the tubes'. Not ALL of the ingredients of blood pass into these tubes and one of the ingredients that doesn't (as far as I understand it) is a certain protein (lets call it X). Protein X is too big to pass into the tubules, so it never leaves the blood.

If you find protein X in your urine, then logically it must have come from the kidney. But it isn't normal for protein to pass into the tubules. Therefore, it must have 'leaked'.

Doctors monitor our urine for protein regularly, so that if the kidney is 'leaking,' they can find out very quickly and treat / monitor as necessary. What has your doctor advised?

There are other reasons for finding protein (other proteins, not necessarily protein X) in your urine and not all are related to leaky kidneys, but if your doctor has said that it is down to that, they would have ruled the other things out.
 
hi christine and welcome i could not have put things better myself lizziie good explanation there x
 
Hi Christine and welcome to the forum.
 
Hi Christine

Great advice so far by other members!

Good luck

Toby
 
Hi Christine, welcome to the forum 🙂
 
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