With World Kidney Day on Thursday next week, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) yesterday urged people with chronic kidney disease to keep close tabs on their “three highs” and refrain from smoking to spare themselves from the suffering of lifelong dialysis.
“Three highs — high blood pressure, high blood lipids and high blood sugar — are not only one of the primary causes of kidney disease, but could also further deteriorate a person’s renal function and put the sufferer on the fast track to lifetime dependence on dialysis,” Health Promotion Administration Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) told a press conference in Taipei.
Chiou said research conducted by the administration in 2007 on people with the three highs found that nearly one in 10 adults suffers from chronic kidney disease.
Photo: Wu Hsin-tien, Taipei Times
While it is common knowledge that the three highs can cause further kidney damage, Chiou said a 2013 survey carried out by the agency found that more than 53 percent of subjects with chronic kidney disease did not monitor their blood pressure, while 70.3 percent and 64.6 percent failed to monitor their blood sugar and cholesterol levels respectively.
“More alarming is that nearly 20 percent of individuals with chronic kidney disease still smoke on a daily basis, higher than the national smoking rate of 17.3 percent,” Chiou said. “Research shows that smoking can lead to heart damage, renal impairment and proteinuria.”
A 61-year-old woman surnamed Hsu (徐) said she had done nothing about her high blood pressure discovered in a physical checkup 13 years ago because it had not caused disturbing symptoms until she was diagnosed with kidney failure and put on dialysis two years later.
“Because of my condition, I had tried every folk remedy that I had heard of until they eventually led to me having a stroke last year. I only realized I had been doing this all wrong when my doctor told me that high blood pressure and high blood sugar level were detrimental to my kidneys and that the key to regaining kidney health lie in proper medication and careful management of my three highs,” Hsu said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching