What Causes Poor Appetite in Renal Failure

For the patients with Renal Failure, when the glomerular filtration rate (GFR)/kidney function is below 10~20 ml/min, they often have poor appetite, vomit, nausea and other uremic symptoms. With the renal function aggravation, the above symptoms will become more serious leading to less protein and calorie intake. As a result, the patients’ nutritional status decline greatly.
There are various kinds of causes of poor appetite for the patients with Renal Failure. When the kidneys begin to fail, the metabolic wastes will accumulate in body and metabolic acidosis occurs thus leading to gastrointestinal dysfunction. Especially for those patients are accompanied by Diabetic Neuropathy and peritonitis, their gastrointestinal symptoms are more serious.
In addition, dialysis also has certain influence on the patients' appetite. During dialysis, the cardiovascular system keeps in an unstable state so they are very likely to have nausea, vomit and digestive tract symptoms. For the patients on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, the dialysis fluid in the abdominal cavity also can cause gastric emptying and peristalsis slowing down and abdominal distention. These also can lead to poor appetite. The patients on peritoneal dialysis can absorb much glucose from the dialysis fluid, which can restrain the protein and sugar intake. Generally speaking, the poor appetite will alleviate after dialysis. However, some moderate molecular substances accumulating body can influence the patients' appetite. Therefore, dialysis can not correct poor appetite fundamentally for the patients with Renal Failure. With the dialysis goes on, the residual renal function will decline further. Consequently, the poor appetite will become more serious.
In order to correct poor appetite, the patients with Renal Failure should follow the below tips.
1. Correct metabolic acidosis, infection and so on.
2. Improve the food intake amount and quality. The patients with Renal Failure should limit the protein intake and also should not neglect the calorie supplement.
3. Correct anemia in time.
The patients with Renal Failure should improve poor appetite from its root cause so as to guarantee enough nutrition supplements.
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