I have had a number of blood tests over the lasts 12 months and my Glomerular filtration rate a cause of concern for my GP.
It varies a little but is always below 90, which suggests some level of reduced kidney function, and most recently came in at 61 which is 1 point off chronic kidney disease.
This is troubling but i do not know a lot about this and how a bodybuilding lifestyle/diet may effect the reading.
I have found some studies that suggest due to how the Glomerular filtration rate is calculated automatically in the lab, use of creatine and a high protein diet can cause a miss diagnosis.
Has anyone come across anything like this with their bloodwork and/or has any insight on it?
not sure about that kind of medical info, but email some doctors man, or go in and see one. An expert an any given field related to this, where just a bunch of assholes on a forum board, this is your health
but ill offer up some of my limited knowledge on this topic and Im sure others will too, Im guessing a super high protein intake would negatively effect your kidneys, same with creatine, whats your protein intake or creatine intake look like in a day?
Thanks for the reply - current protein intake is 240g and creatine is 10g so not that high.
To give some more context, i am currently working with my GP in the UK. Over the last 4 years with have done 8 blood tests in relation to low testosterone, giving an average across the tests of around 280ng/dl, so pretty low.
Treatment in the UK for this is pretty poor and almost never prescribed for someone of my age, 29. If you do get treatment it is generally in the form of Gels or injections once per fortnight. Specialists rejected my case due to age.
So i self administer TRT and told my GP about it. Due to the kidney results i am being advised to discontinue the TRT, however this appears to have been an issue long before starting TRT and as far is i can tell is not generally an area of concern for TRT users.
i am wondering if anyone else has ever come across this with their bloodwork or knows of any other factors that may effect the results?
As an example of a similar scenario we had issueās with some of my liver values, specifically ALT and Creatinine. GP was concerned as these were high however it is pretty common knowledge that intense weight training elevates these so after looking further at the liver we decided that this was the cause.
I generally weight train every day, maybe having 2 days off per month. TRT dose is currently too high as i suspected it would be @ 200mg per week. Iām well above normal range.
I have done some more reading on how they calculate the estimated GFR and its from measuring a waste product called creatinine, the higher it is the worse the kidney function results. This can be elevated slightly by muscle mass and also by protein intake. It can also be significantly elevated by the use of the supplement creatine which i do use.
Itās difficult to discuss this with my GP as a possible reason for the results as they are so unfamiliar with TRT and believe i should discontinue it immediately and look at other medications to replicate the positive changes i have experienced from TRT. (mood/libido/self esteem etc)
Given that the GFR was low before starting TRT, and that i was using creatine for previous tests, i believe that creatine is the most likely cause. I canāt really find any info suggesting that TRT would negatively impact the kidneys and it is not a test that is routinely done/monitored by TRT docs.
I think my next step should be too lower TRT dose to 125mg a week to put me in normal range and discontinue creatine and then do bloods again.
We did comprehensive blood work and everything else was great, it was just the kidney function that raised concern.