What is Creatinine and How Does it Measure How Well the Kidneys are Working? | The Cooking Doc®

ever wonder what creatinine means on your blood test reports stay tuned let's find out [Music] thanks so much for watching make sure you like this video make a comment and then subscribe to my channel so you never miss a new recipe or new health tip my name is dr blake schusterman i'm a board-certified kidney doctor nephrologist and i'm also the cooking doc i spend most of my days either in the hospital or in the office or in the dialysis center taking care of people who have kidney disease or who are at risk for kidney disease one of the things that i use and that all doctors use to help figure out how well somebody's kidneys are working is a measure called creatinine creatinine which is different than creatine shows up on your blood work in something called a renal panel or a basic metabolic panel or a comprehensive metabolic panel and it is one of the best ways that we have to understand how well your kidneys are filtering because that's what the kidneys do that's one of the things that those great kidney organs do in your body is they filter out waste products now it's very difficult to see exactly how the kidneys are filtering it's cumbersome the tests can be expensive and so we use the creatinine as a surrogate or as an estimate marker for how well kidneys are filtering out waste products in your body creatinine itself is something that everybody has in their body and what happens is that it comes from muscle cells so everybody's got muscles in their body and those muscle cells go through a cycle where new muscle cells are formed and old muscle cells die and that's just the nature of turnover of cells in everybody's body now when those cells die they release creatinine into the blood and that creatinine circles around the blood until it goes through the kidneys and then the kidneys excrete some of that creatinine into the urine that's their job so if the kidneys are not filtering as well as they should that creatinine level will go up kind of like a sink with a drain so if that drain is working properly all the water will be coming and filtering through but if that drain is not working properly or is clogged that drain will fill up a little bit and much more slowly get rid of things and your kidneys are the same way so if the kidneys aren't filtering right you can get a rise in the creatinine in your blood so we as doctors and other medical practitioners use that creatinine as an estimate to see how well your kidneys are filtering everything else and it's a pretty good measure a typical reading in the blood is anywhere from 0.6 to 1.3 but is dependent on a lot of different things so while creatinine is one of the best things that we have to measure how well your kidneys are working it is absolutely not perfect and there are some caveats that we need to consider when trying to figure out how well that creatinine measure actually reflects your kidney function so let's talk about them first creatinine comes from the breakdown of muscles as we talked about so somebody who is really muscular is producing more and more creatinine every day they have more muscle cells that are dying more creatinine released in the blood and if that's you your creatinine may typically in your blood be a little bit higher because even though your kidneys are filtering out as much as they can sometimes they can't handle really really high levels of creatinine so muscular people often have a higher creatinine in their blood even with normal kidney function that's one of the reasons why creatinine is not a perfect measure of how well the kidneys are filtering now this is different for everybody so does not apply necessarily to your circumstance and again i am a doctor but i am not your doctor so make sure that your doctor or your nurse practitioner or your physician's assistant is interpreting your labs with you in mind this is generic information the creatinine can also work the other way if you are really skinny or malnourished and don't have a lot of muscle mass then your body is just not going to create a lot of creatinine here's the bottom line is muscle mass can impact the creatinine levels in your blood and that is one of the reasons why the creatinine is not a perfect measure for how well your kidneys are filtering other things can also impact the creatinine medicines can make it go up certain medicines change the way that your kidneys process creatinine and so depending on what medicines you are may make your creatinine look higher that can happen both with a change in how your kidneys are processing everything else and without a change in how the kidneys are processing everything else that's why doctor interpretation of the blood work is so important and you can't just look at your blood readings and get an understanding for exactly what's going on based on that creatinine you need an expert opinion like a kidney doctor like me lastly there are things that you can eat that can impact your creatinine levels the most important one is creatine now creatine is not creatinine but creatine is used as a supplement for bodybuilders helps build muscle now that creatine is converted into creatinine in the body and so people who have a large intake of creatine because they're trying to build muscle mass often can have a higher creatinine level in their blood because of all that creatine does this happen every time no do you need a doctor's interpretation yes yes yes yes the other thing that has been shown sometimes to increase the creatinine level in the blood is really high animal protein diets especially right after you have a large animal protein meal so if you were to eat a 48 ounce steak before having your blood work done it's very possible that that could cause a transient meaning a temporary and short-lived increase in creatinine in your blood the most recent study i looked at showed that that should last less than 12 hours and only happens if you eat a gargantuan amount of meat which you shouldn't be doing anyway because it is bad for your kidneys and bad for your heart so it probably isn't affecting you because i know you're not doing that but it's interesting to know if you're just eating a typical meat diet or animal protein diet it shouldn't have too much effect on that level in your blood this is for massive meat feasts and blood work that's done almost immediately after you have that large amount of meat intake what else do you need to know about creatinine creatinine is used then to go into a formula to help measure the gfr your estimated glomerular filtration rate of your kidneys so you'll also see that on your blood work that'll tell us a little more specifically how well your kidneys are filtering and finally if you get dehydrated volume depleted out in the sun not eating or drinking well nausea vomiting diarrhea those kind of things that can definitely make the creatinine go up so creatinine is a vital measure for us kidney doctors to use to see how well your kidneys are filtering it's not perfect and make sure you discuss your results with your doctor or your practitioner it is important for us to see but not the be all and all for how well your kidneys are actually working thanks so much for watching today i'm dr blake i'm board certified nephrologist and i'm also the cooking doc i hope you learned something about creatinine and kidney function make sure you subscribe to my channel like and share this video and we will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Cooking Doc

Views: 256,973

Keywords: kidney disease, nephrology, nephrologist, kidney health, health, doctor, kidney doctor, nutrition, ckd, kidney diet, diabetes, diabetic, salt, low sodium diet, kidney dietician, diabetes diet, recipe video, chronic kidney disease, kidney failure, dialysis, kidney disease supplements, kidney disease cure, creatine, creatinine, gfr, blood test, bloodtest results, muscle mass, bodybuilding, medications, high protein, meat diet, kidney filter, metabolic, metabolic panel, renal panel

Id: l2tf-Pxc0wU

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022