I read a report recently from the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 2009 which said that kidney disease was not nearly as fatal as doctors have previously believed. Instead, sufferers are more likely to die from an inactive lifestyle. They believe that people with chronic kidney disease could dramatically extend their life expectancy just by getting off the couch and exercising!

A study team from the University of Utah found that 28 per cent of people with kidney disease lead very inactive lives, more than twice as many as in the healthy population. Most kidney disease sufferers die before the condition becomes end-stage renal disease, suggesting that they are dying from something else. As simple as it sounds, regular exercise seems to be the key, and life expectancy could increase by 56 per cent just by moving around more, the researchers found. They had monitored the health and life expectancy of 906 kidney disease sufferers, and compared them with around 14,000 healthy controls. I know that it must be hard to think about exercise when you feel rotten, but it must be worth a try?