hello everyone michelle krosmer and dr hoshmi here with plant-based kidney health and the question today for dr hashmi is can you explain the impact that heavy lifting or very um intense exercise and muscle building has on the kidneys on creatinine levels is it something that makes kidney disease worse um and can people with kidney disease do these more strenuous levels of exercise i think michelle this is one of her most popular questions and for those of you guys watching the show for the first time remember creatinine is a byproduct of muscles so if you make more muscles you're going to make more creatinine now why do you care because the way that we measure kidney function is indirectly we use creatinine as a blood marker for kidney function so in other words if your creatinine in your blood is high we assume that your kidney must not be able to filter all that creatine out therefore the kidney function must be low so once again it's not a direct measure of kidney function it's indirect so if you have more muscle you're going to have more creatinine that doesn't mean that your kidneys are worse it can just mean you have more muscle going on so does creatine make your kidneys worse the answer is no now keep in mind for those people who are younger who take creatine supplements we'll do an episode on creatine because it's such a popular topic and we get a lot of questions creatine when you take it it converts to creatinine so people who take creatine supplements they'll come to the doctor's office the doctor will freak out and say you have kidney disease you don't it's just creatine you stop the creatine the creatinine levels will drop and your kidney function will look like it's right back to normal then the other part of this is should you be doing strenuous exercise if you have ckd so if you have chronic kidney disease or you don't the answers you should absolutely be exercising to the best of your ability so if that means you're able to lift weights go lift weights if you want to run triathlons go run triathlons the things to watch out for kidney disease is because of the fact that you may have a little bit more acid the acid is not being cleared as much your recovery may be slower you do need to look at things like potassium shifting so your potassium could theoretically be higher your lactic acid could be higher but beyond that you have freedom to be able to do that as long as you feel safe so if you've never ran a marathon and you have kidney disease today is probably not the best day to start with the marathon but you can certainly build up to it so really bottom line is go have a great time exercise is amazing it does so good for your body don't let the word creatinine scare you it's an indirect measure remember we can do 24-hour urine collections we have different ways of measuring and if you take creatine please stop it before you go do your blood test so that we can get an accurate idea of what your kidney function is truly like with that thanks so much for watching guys and we look forward to your questions and we'll see you on the next episode