Overview
The kidneys are a pair of red, bean-shaped organs located on either side of the lower back. Your kidneys’ major function is to filter waste and toxins from the blood then excrete them along with excess water as urine, but the activities of your kidneys affect many other important processes in the body.
If you have kidney disease, it means your kidneys are no longer functioning optimally. It does not necessarily mean your kidneys have stopped working, but the efficiency may be dangerously low. When your kidney is unable to properly rid the blood of waste products, many organs in your body will be negatively affected.
The only way to know for sure you have kidney disease is to get tested. The National Kidney Foundation estimates that as many as 37 million Americans [1] suffer from kidney disease. Most of these people are unaware they have it. Only about 10 percent of people with kidney disease know they have it. This is because the early stages of kidney disease may not cause any symptoms even though the filtering efficiency of the kidneys is falling. Once the filtering capacity of the kidneys has declined significantly, you may start to experience noticeable symptoms that hint at kidney disease.
Here are 10 signs you may have kidney disease.