How I Discovered & Reversed My Stage 3 Kidney Disease – A Personal Health Journey

https://www.drhughwegwerth.com/post/my-stage-3-kidney-disease

How I Discovered & Reversed My Stage 3 Kidney Disease – A Personal Health Journey

Episode Overview:
In today’s episode, I take you through my shocking discovery of stage 3 kidney disease—something I never expected. I’ve lived a clean, healthy lifestyle for decades, but a surprising health scare led me to take action fast. I’ll be sharing my lab results, my investigative journey, and the exact protocols I used to turn my health around.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• How I discovered my kidney dysfunction – A surprising symptom that led me to get lab work done
• Breaking down my lab results – What my numbers revealed about my kidney function, cardiovascular health, and hormone levels
• The critical markers for kidney health – Understanding GFR, creatinine, homocysteine, and ferritin
• How inflammation and iron storage impact kidney function – And what you can do about it
• My exact supplement protocol – The key nutrients I used to restore my health
• Why cardiovascular health is key – And how it connects to kidney function
• The role of DHEA and testosterone – And what my lab work revealed about my hormones
• What I did to improve my kidney function in just a few weeks – The powerful steps that worked

Key Takeaways:
✔️ Kidney health can be improved – Your labs don’t define your future!
✔️ Early detection is crucial – Regular blood work can reveal hidden health issues
✔️ Your lifestyle matters – Small changes can have a huge impact on your well-being
✔️ You can take control of your health – With the right plan, you can reverse damage

If you’re struggling with kidney issues, inflammation, or unexplained health concerns, this episode is for you! I share everything I did, step by step, so you can take action too.

📢 Listen now and take charge of your health!

👉 Need help connecting the dots in your own health journey? Reach out—I can guide you!

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to today's webinar. And yes, you saw that. Right? Right. I'm going to go over my stage three kidney disease that I found out on myself roughly about oh, I would say about eight weeks ago. Um, so I've completely revamped, uh, my lifestyle and everything because this I'm taking this as a serious matter. I am a very light drink drinker. Never did any drugs, exercise. I'm 51 years old. I've been exercising since I've been 15 years old. I've lived a very, very clean life. I've gotten my spine adjusted almost weekly since I've been 25 years old, so I've done lots and lots of things. So today what I want to go over is my labs, and I'm going to go over exactly what I've done to change my course. And, um, the reason why I got these labs is because. So today's date is just to give you a date. Today's date is January 16th, 2025. I had these labs done my first set of labs. I'll be showing you three different labs in all in December. And the reason why I had this because late in November, I had a two week spell where, um, Mr. Little Huey that I call him my horizontal. My horizontal, um. Mambo. Right. It really wasn't, um, working the way I thought it should. And that concerned me. And, um, my wife and I, we enjoy that activity very, very much. So I had about two weeks of that, and then that two weeks got in my head, and then I'm like, I better get blood work. I've been meaning to get blood work because I haven't got blood work for three years since the whole Covid thing. So then I ran and got some blood work, and, um, this is what I'm going to go through. And to let you know that, um, I've changed many, many different things. Things are much, much better. My horizontal mambo activity has greatly improved. In fact, it's better than what it was prior, even with my stage three kidney disease. So I'm going to go through this whole thing. I'm going to have full, uh, transparency on my case and my health and everything. Okay, so here we are. This is my stage three, uh, kidney disease right here. And these are my labs. So you're going to see my personal labs. And you can see here how I've went and, uh, I've put in the dates there. So let's start off. So this is the first thing right here. This is called the metabolic panel right in here. And these are some of the initial labs that I went through. So let me kind of blow these up a little bit so you can see these things. So the first thing here that you want to pay attention to is this right here this GFR. So this is a kidney marker right in here. And you can see right there that it's 59 right. It's low. So that's lab low. And then if I scoot over here and you can see the range right here is you can see the range right here is you want this to be greater than 59. So, uh, so mine's at 59. So that's that's low right. So that's concerning. Also, when you start to have kidney malfunctioning your creatinine starts to elevate. And you can see that is elevated at 1.43. And you can see the range right in here. All right so what was my initial reaction. I thought it was like lab error right. There's no way this could be happening. Lab error. So anytime it's lab error what do you do. You rerun labs. So I re I reran those labs. Okay, so here we are. I reran those labs on December 12th, and, um, it looks worse, right? Guess what. My GFR right here is 55. So it was 59 and then it went down to 55. So what does that mean. It got worse. So in this lab in here what happened is my labs actually got worse. So am I concerned at this point? Yes, I'm very concerned at this point. My creatinine was also what that was also elevated. So let me just show you these numbers here so you can see these. So here's my GFR was basically 59 right there. My creatinine is 1.43. My creatinine is 1.53. My GFR is 1.53. So things got worse. So this is not lab error. This is something that needs my attention. And I took immediate immediate attention. Now before I go through that I'm going to show you my other labs here. I also did some other labs on um when I did these labs on December 15th. So let me just show you all these things here. Now, before I get into that, let me show you this right here. This is the different stages of, uh, kidney disease. Right. So you can see these different stages right in here. So stage one here is if you want that GFR and you see this right. We're talking about this number right in here the GFR right. So if we go up in here you go back to these labs. We are looking at this number right in here. That's the that's the GFR right. So that's what we're looking at right in here. Let's go back down. So what we want to see is you want to see your kidney function your GFR higher than 90 right. So that's what you want to see. You want to see your GFR higher than 90. So get your blood work out I'm sure we've had this done. And these are the different stages of kidney disease. Yes this is actually a disease process. So stage two here is 60 to 89. Then we have stage three which is 45 to 59. So I'm in stage what. I'm in stage three a what does this say about stage three. A it says mild to moderate kidney damage. Kidneys don't work as well as they should. Omg! This is not good. I'm concerned. So let's go through some more labs. Okay, so these are some more labs that I took on the initial December 5th. Uh, December 5th. Homocysteine right here is 12.1. The sweet spot is 5 to 6. Why is that so significant? Is because homocysteine will affect cardiovascular damage. Now, initially remember I went there because my horizontal mambo was not functioning well. So this right here, this can be a contributing factor to that and also a contributing factor to just the poor kidney function because it's also an inflammatory marker. Another marker I checked right here is what we call ferritin. It is 235. The sweet spot is between 40 and 80. Now what is ferritin? Ferritin is an iron is a marker for iron storage. So if you're storing too much iron this marker is going to be elevated. You do not want to store too much iron. Too much iron will cause oxidative stress in your body. And I see lots of chronic illness, a lot of chronic diseases, and lots of people have high ferritin. So that's another thing that I found right there. What I want to show you right here is just some research here on high ferritin. Can high ferritin actually cause chronic kidney disease. And guess what it can. Lots of research on that. So high ferritin is bad. Guess what. High homocysteine. Can that cause chronic kidney disease. And guess what. That that's a big yes. So that's bad. Here's some other markers that I ran December 15th or December 5th, which was my initial my initial bloodwork, my hemoglobin A-1c here is 5.6. I don't like that. In the past it's been it's been In 5.0. Now, one thing I will omit is in the last. In the last three years I've gained weight. I've gained 30 pounds. So I'm 250. I should be 220. So I'm actively trying to bring down my weights to get that under control. So this is all the things that I found. This is in an investigative, uh, you know, labs, right? Why isn't Little Huey working properly? Why can't I perform the horizontal mambo? Mambo. Mambo the way I used to. And we're just covering evidence now. Here. This is also DHEA, which is the most abundant hormone in the human body. And DHEA makes testosterone, right? So if you possibly have low DHEA, you can possibly have low T. Well, that's what's my DHEA. It's 69.6. What's the range. Let's see the see the range right here. So you can see I'm on the low range. So we also did some hormones and it shows that I'm low DHEA. Now let's check my testosterone. Here's my testosterone the last time I had it checked. If you can see that let me kind of blow this up. The last time I had my testosterone. Testosterone checked. There we go. You see the date? Right? Here it is, 1213. Well, let me move it over a little bit. 1213 2001. Right. So that's the last time I had that checked. Now back then it was 740 and now it's eight 7 or 783. So what does that tell me. So that tells me that in the last three years my testosterone has actually gone up. So not being able to do this the horizontal mambo. Is this a testosterone thing? No, it's not a testosterone thing. It's a cardiovascular thing, right? So now I have a whole different scope now. Guys will go and they'll get tested. They'll they'll guys that have this problem. Right. The horizontal mammal, they'll go to the doctor. You need testosterone. And they have all these other problems that are never, never addressed. But again, I went in there for the horizontal mambo and I found out that I had kidney dysfunction. So what does the research show about having low DHEA? Guess what? That can contribute to a kidney malfunctioning or a kidney that's not working properly. Then another test that I did right here is we checked for magnesium. Now this magnesium in here, this is really important. You see this marker right here? It's RBC magnesium RBC magnesium. Now, you might have had magnesium checked, but it wasn't RBC. It was. It was in plasma. You want to check RBC? So what the heck is that? That's where you actually take a red blood cell and see how much magnesium is in the cell of the red blood cells. And you can say, well, if that's how much magnesium is in your your red blood cells, that's probably the amount of magnesium that's in your body. Now here you can see this. It's 5.2 I like this to be greater than six. And what does magnesium do. Magnesium dilates arteries. And every man needs good blood flow down there. But again remember I went in there for this. But I found out that I had a kidney malfunction problem. Here's another research article. Can low magnesium cause kidney function? And the answer to that is yes. So this is all in the medical research. It's all there. It's all there just to be figured out and taken. So what did I do? I already showed you this. These are the labs that I went and got immediately. And my kidney is still a problem. Kidney is still a problem. Then at the same time I also checked a few other markers. So when my DHEA came back low. Right. So here's the 12 five. Right. And my day was basically 69. I started supplementing with this. Started supplementing with this with 50mg of THC. And guess what. You can buy DHEA over the counter. You can buy it in three milligrams, ten milligrams, 25mg, 50mg and 100mg. Right. So I just had that sitting around my house. I had 50mg. So that's what I started to use. And then I rechecked it. And you can see it went up to 4.75 which is way too high now, so I overshot. So I'm going to need to figure that out. And I decreased my dose by 25. I went to 25mg. So that should handle that problem. Now also a week later I checked my homocysteine. It was 12.12 and then a week later, five days later, it's 11.5. Now I already started taking action between the fifth and the 12th. I already started taking my health more seriously. I already started to implement more supplements, so I was already on the path. I already changed the things that I was actually going to do. Then I rechecked my ferritin just to make sure, you know, just to make sure that was legit. 235 right, initially and then five days later it's 240. Okay. So now here this brings us to December 17th. So we had labs on the fifth, the 12th and now on the 17th. Now between the fifth and the 17th lots of protocols were implemented. And I'm going to be showing you my protocols in a short bit. I'm going to show you everything that I've done. Now also, one thing I also did is if I have high ferritin. High ferritin is a marker for iron storage. It's very, very bad to have high ferritin because just imagine if you put your bike outside and it rusts, your bike is going. Or you if you put your bike outside and it rains, your bike is going to going to rust, so your body's rusting from the inside out. So between the fifth and the 17th labs. So between the fifth and the 17th, between the fifth and the 17th, I also donated blood at the Red cross. So you can just easily give blood at the Red cross. And I did that. I'm going to show you my, uh, ferritin marker here in a short bit. So basically the fifth to the 17th I've implemented protocols and look at my GFR. It's now 68 so it's gone up. So it was 59. Then it went down to 55. And now it's at 68. So I'm making progress I'm making progress. So what does this mean. That means if you have any kind of condition you can make progress. You can change your labs for sure. All right. Here's a couple markers here. So I rechecked my. Let me get this in here I rechecked my, um, DHEA, you can see right there. Right I rechecked that. Remember, it was 69. So it was low and I took 50 50mg of DHEA way too high. Then I went down to 25mg and then it's 164. So that's much better. So I like that much, much much better. Then also here I also rechecked my testosterone. And initially here on the fifth it was 783 and now it's 838. So what happened there? So within a matter of ten days, just changing the things around, I've also increased my testosterone and also my libido, and my performance has gone up drastically just in a matter of two weeks, just changing these things in my body. All right then I also checked ferritin. In here. You can see the ferritin marker right in there. So remember it was 235. And then basically five days later, I gave blood. Just not gave blood. I'm sorry, I, I went and get my labs checked again. It's 204. And then and then from the fifth to the 17th. Right. 12 days. I also donated blood to the Red cross to the Red cross, and now it's 180. So I've come down quite a ways and I'm going to I'm going to be giving blood again here. I'm going to be giving blood here again in November and I'll be checking my labs again. Alright. So what I want to show you right now is my whole protocol. I'm going to show you everything what I've done. So the first thing is, what did I do? I took my lab serious, right? Like I I'm not messing around like it showed that I have. It showed that I have a kidney dysfunction problem. Um, I checked it three times. It's there. I'm taking this stuff seriously. I'm not messing around. I gave blood to the Red cross because I want to decrease my ferritin. Next time I can give blood is in February. Um, I started doing more of a carnivore diet. I wanted to lose 30 pounds. I started a very specific, a very specific supplement program, and I became more consistent with my sauna use. So we have a sauna here. So I started doing that as well. Now what I'm going to go over is I'm going to go over my protocol. This is this is my exact protocol. The supplements that I use. I'm going to walk you through this so you can understand what it looks like. So the first thing I did is I started taking DHEA 25mg at night. These two, um, products right in here. These two products right in here, those homocysteine plus right here, and then the B complex. This is all to reduce my homocysteine. And if you if you remember about the homocysteine, the homocysteine is an inflammatory marker and it causes endothelial damage. So I immediately started taking that. My magnesium was also low. So I started taking this product right here. Optimal magnesium. So these are the three things that I immediately started to go with. And start to implement into my regimen right there. And then some other products. I got this kidney care from Quiksilver. So this has a variety of different products that help your kidney. I went with NAC, which is basically a sulfur product to help increase your antioxidants. Ginkgo and then vinpocetine. So both of these right here are for endothelial health. And they increase vascularity and they increase blood flow to all your areas in your body. Right. So if you remember like I wanted to get better performance. So I make sure I have good cardiovascular markers good blood flow to the areas in my body. So that's why I started taking that. And this is kind of a side note these things right here. So these are all different products that I take. Um, not every day I kind of stagger the things that I take. But this right here is body PC body bio PC. This is for cell membrane health. This is fish oil. This is, uh, fats that are three, six and nine fatty acids. And this is for my brain. So these are some supplements I'm also taking, um, on top of all these things for my, my kidney. So what's what's the process. So today I'm recording this is January 16th of 2025, I hope tomorrow, uh, I'm going to go and maybe get some spot checks on labs. Maybe, um, if I can squeeze that in. But soon I'll be getting other labs and I'll be posting those things. So I hope you found some value in this. I'll let you know if you're suffering. You do not need to continue to suffer. You need to reach out. Things can be changed. Things can be helped. You just need a provider that knows what they're doing and can and can connect the dots for you, right? So with that being said, um, remember is where there's help, there's hope. Take care. Bye bye.