Diet Principles for Patients with Acute Nephritis in Acute Period

A healthy diet plays an important role in protecting renal function and slowing down the disease progression. Therefore, the patients with Acute Nephritis should pay more attention to what they eat in their daily life.

Most patients with Acute Nephritis have retention of water and sodium so they often have edema, high blood pressure, which is very likely to cause Heart Failure. Therefore, the patients should eat more light food and limit the salt intake in the daily diet. The patients had better make a scientific diet plan based on their disease condition under their doctors’ guidance. The patients with Acute Nephritis should keep the following diet principles:

1. In the early stage of Acute Nephritis, the patients should limit the water and salt intake firmly so as to alleviate burden to heart and kidneys. Especially for those with serious edema, high blood pressure or Heart Failure, they should have more limitation on their salt intake. The adult patients with Acute Nephritis, they should keep their salt intake within 3 grams and 1 gram for child patients per day. If the disease is too serious, the patients should have no salt and alkali for a short time. Moreover, the fluid intake should not more than its excretion, especially for those with serious edema.

2. The patients with Acute Nephritis should keep a low protein diet so as to reduce the production and retention of nitrogen. The patients should adjust their protein intake based on their creatinine clearance rate. Generally speaking, the patients should keep 0.5~0.8 grams of protein intake per day.

3. As the patients with Acute Nephritis limit the protein intake, they should increase the sugar intake so as to guarantee enough calorie supplements. Therefore, the patients should have more food with high sugar.

4. The patients with Acute Nephritis should have enough water-soluble vitamins, especially vitamin C.


After the disease improves, edema disappears, blood pressure declines, proteinuria decreases, the patients should recover their normal diet gradually. The above article has just introduced the general diet principles for the patients with Acute Nephritis. However, the disease condition varies with different patients. Therefore, they should make a personalized