Improve Mood and Longevity with Aerobic Exercise

Your kidneys are essential organs that help remove waste from your blood, regulate levels of sodium, potassium, and other chemicals, and even help control blood pressure. But when kidney function begins to fail, your health is at risk.

Dialysis and medication can support kidney function, but modern medicine isn't the only answer to maintaining your health. New research suggests benefits of aerobic exercise. It can help kidney dialysis patients live longer and protect against depression.

In the study published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, researchers followed 11,733 kidney dialysis patients in 12 countries. They compared their exercise habits to rates of mortality (life expectancy) and depression. They found connection between aerobics and health. The most active patients reduced their risk for early death and depression by 40 percent. Even being somewhat active reduced the risk for early death and depression by 16 percent.

If you want to maintain your health, live longer, and see the world with an optimistic outlook, regular aerobic exercise can help. And you don't have to run a marathon. Thirty to 60 minutes a day of moderate intensity aerobic exercise like walking, cycling, or swimming is all it takes. Moderate intensity means, you should still be able to carry on a conversation with a friend while exercising, without gasping for air.

Managing kidney disease also means eating the right foods and limiting the amount of sodium, phosphorus, potassium, protein and water in your diet. Adjusting your diet to support your kidneys can be a challenge, but it doesn't have to be. At MagicKitchen.com, you'll find a wide variety of meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner to match your dialysis diet needs. Take a look at the meal packs and entrees created for your dialysis diet.