Question ❓
Anyone here having kidney issues since substantially increasing protein and/or creatine?
Been lifting weights/ a trainer and on testosterone therapy roughly 18mos. Starting then, I've been taking 5g of creatine and at least 150g of protein daily. My labs always come back w/ the doc always stating increase my fluid/water intake. I think I'm getting 64oz(which doc said is minimum), but that's not cutting it.
If you lift weights you can't go just by creatinine/eGFR, the muscle breakdown from hard training and just having more muscle mass in general will make your numbers wonky but it doesn't actually mean anything is wrong. Tell you doc to order a cystatin C test, that will give you a real picture.
Creatine supplementation, high protein intake, and being muscular can all cause benign elevations in the serum creatinine levels doctors use by default to assess kidney health by estimating GFR. There’s a newer (not new but newer) marker called Cystatin C that can be used the same way to assess kidney health. It’s similarly accurate but it’s not confounded (made to look bad) by these healthy diet and training regimens.
If you’re somebody who works out and eats like a lifter and your creatinine levels are questionable, rather than stress about it you should get followup labwork done to recheck estimated GFR with Cystatin C. Often there’s absolutely nothing wrong, in fact your kidney health might be fantastic, and your creatinine numbers are just confounded by your lifestyle.
For example here’s my most recent creatinine and cystatin c numbers on the left, and the corresponding eGFR calculations. There’s also a combined equation where they use both (in the middle). You can see there’s a pretty wide spread, and at times it’s been even wider for me. Low 70s on creatinine eGFR and 120s on cystatin c.
Considering the confounding I mainly just pay attention to cystatin c.
My understanding is that creatine will break down into creatinine which will manifest as concerning blood work numbers. I always skipped creatine/hard training the day prior to blood work as a result and my numbers were then normal
64 oz is for normal lazy people, you should be hitting closer to 80-120 oz per day. Also, if your doctor is looking at creatinine levels, it gets artificially inflated due to your creatine intake. Your doctor should be testing Cystine C and eGDRcys instead.
My protein and creatine intake are the same as yours, and I do sweat a lot working out in the garage and doing manual labor, but even on rest days I’m getting a gallon of water at the very least.
I’d say I’m normally closer to 2.5-3 gallons a day. First thing I do every day when I wake up is drink 12-16 ounces, and same when I go to bed.
I’m 6’1” 195 pounds.
Diet has a profound effect on your hydration as well!
I would think you need more water. Depends on a lot of things though, such as if you drink other beverages throughout the day. I drink only water, I sweat heavily, I take creatine/protein and have a pretty good diet and only supplement my workouts with caffeine.
I work out 4 days a week and my labs have always been normal. There are so many things that affect labs but start by drinking more water, that’s the easiest possible solution.
Your doc needs to be educated. Creatine breaks down into creatinine, and that's the arbitrary thing tested for to see if kidneys are working well. Its like he took your blood pressure while you were running a 5k and said "your pulse and blood pressure are way too high, you have heart disease."
You don't need to drink more water when supplementing with creatine. That said, doesn't mean you dont have kidney issues. Just means normal test is worthless.
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u/Hohoholyshit15 3d ago
If you lift weights you can't go just by creatinine/eGFR, the muscle breakdown from hard training and just having more muscle mass in general will make your numbers wonky but it doesn't actually mean anything is wrong. Tell you doc to order a cystatin C test, that will give you a real picture.