*How Cholestrol Causes Ckd* Why Having High Cholesterol Puts You At Risk Of Developing Kidney Disease. Unless you live with kidney disease or someone you’re close to has been affected, then you might not know that much about it and what causes it in the first place. A number of things can cause kidney disease — a term used by doctors to include any abnormality of the kidneys, even if there is only a bit of damage — such as existing conditions that put a strain on the kidneys like diabetes and high blood pressure. But did you know that high cholesterol can increase your risk of developing kidney disease? We often associate high cholesterol with cardiovascular diseases, but it can cause problems with your kidneys too. In this post, we’ll be taking a closer look at the relationship between high cholesterol and kidney disease; read on to have your questions answered. What is cholesterol and why is it so important? First of all, what is cholesterol? Despite many people experiencing high cholesterol levels in their lives, there is a lack of knowledge around it. Cholesterol is a fatty substance (lipid) found in your blood. Your body makes cholesterol (it’s made in the liver) and we also get it from eating meats and other animal products. Cholesterol plays a vital role in how your body works and we all need cholesterol to keep us ticking over — it’s used to keep your bones, teeth, and muscles healthy, as well as to digest the fats that you eat. It is also integral to the structure of every cell in your body, forming part of the cell membrane. However, when you have too much cholesterol in your blood, it can cause damaging fatty buildup and blockages in your arteries and blood vessels. Having high cholesterol can be a result of eating too much fatty food, being overweight, not exercising enough, smoking, and drinking alcohol excessively. It can run in families too. How does high cholesterol put you at risk of developing kidney disease? High cholesterol is mostly associated with heart problems: when too much cholesterol builds up in your heart vessels, it can increase your risk of a heart attack (known as coronary heart disease) or stroke,ckd,blood pressure etc However, it’s not just the heart that this build-up of fatty deposits affects; it can impact blood supply to other parts of the body, such as your kidneys. Too much cholesterol can build up in the blood vessels supplying your kidneys. This makes it much harder for the kidneys to work properly. Compared with other organs and tissues, the kidneys have a particularly rich supply of blood; despite their relatively small size, the kidneys receive around 20% of the heart’s blood output for filtration. This filtration regulates the body’s fluids, filtering waste out and keeping the important stuff. Kidney function is highly dependent upon sufficient blood pressure, so any interruptions in the blood flow to the kidneys (such as that caused by a build-up of cholesterol) might result in loss of kidney function and tissue damage (i.e. kidney disease). *Cholesterol-lowering drugs may be linked to kidney disease* secondary reason that high cholesterol puts you at risk of developing kidney disease is that cholesterol-lowering drugs — called statins — have recently been linked to kidney problems. Statins are a group of medicines that can help lower the level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) — often referred to as ‘bad cholesterol’ — in the blood, by reducing its production inside the liver. People who take higher doses of statins (rather than lower doses) to control their cholesterol levels are more likely to develop kidney problems and even be admitted to hospital for acute kidney injury.