Q: My brother, aged 38 years, has been detected for kidney malfunctioning. That time serum creatinine was 4.6 and serum urea was 180. He is under the care of a reputed Nephrologist at Hyderabad and is maintaining the diet as per the doctor's advice. Later the creatinine went up gradually to 5.8. Now, we are using Ayurvedic medicines along with regular medicines and doing rigorously Pranayama (Kapala Bhati) as shown on Astha TV. After 10 days we found the creatinine reduced first time to 5.4 and urea to 99. Shall we hope that it may reduce further? I also understood that there are no normal medicines for this.

A:Your brother has chronic kidney disease, which is a permanent defect and as a result the kidney functions will not return to normal with medicines. However, any temporary defect over & above the permanent defect is likely to show improvement with time, dietary restrictions & after having taken care of the temporary and reversible factors and that is what seems to have happened in his case. The fall in urea and creatinine values will get arrested after a while and subsequently there would be the risk of the gradual deterioration of the kidney functions. However with good treatment and due precautions which his doctor must already have told him the rate of progression of the disease can be significantly slowed down. It would be difficult to comment on the efficacy of alternative systems of medicine including Ayurvedic although he can safely continue with Yogic exercises.