Diabetic nephropathy is a complication which may occur in a diabetic’s lifetime. Diabetic nephropathy treatment is therefore needed to keep the condition under control or from getting worse. The cause is still unknown, but poor blood sugar is thought to be the cause of kidney damage, and in people with high blood sugar the damage is also more likely. Smokers or people whose type 1 diabetes started prior to age 20 are also at a higher risk of this kidney damage.

Our kidneys are made of hundreds of thousands of nephrons. These are small units which filter blood and remove waste from the body. In diabetic nephropathy, the nephrons thicken and become scarred overtime. This causes the kidneys to begin to leak and a protein called albumin begins to pass into the urine.

The best diabetic nephropathy treatment, of course, is to prevent it from occurring by eating healthily, not …