National Kidney Disease Awareness Month

Hattiesburg, Miss. - March is known for the last part of Winter and the beginning of Spring.

But what most people don’t know, is that March is National Kidney Disease Awareness Month.

26 million Americans have kidney disease.

Merit Health Wesley Hospitalist, Deepu Thoppil said, “We have approximately 95,000 people that are waiting on a list for a transplant. Once you get to that point, it’s a little bit too late. There are a lot of things we can do in between to make sure that we don’t get to that point and we can take care of our kidneys and keep every organ happy. The risk factors that we look at are anybody that has diabetes, high blood pressure, and particularly with a family history of kidney disease. But having a healthy lifestyle is very important. Every organ is affected by it.”

1 in 3 Americans are at risk for kidney disease and most don’t know it because there are often no symptoms until the disease has progressed.