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Hi there! This is Mathea Ford, the creator of Understanding Your Kidney Test Results course and today I want to tell you a little bit about me. If you have been with me for a while you may know some of this stuff but I'm a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist and I'm licensed in the state of Oklahoma which just like your doctor you get a license when your Registered Dietitian and I also have a Masters in Business Administration. I have always enjoyed the business side of being a Clinical Dietitian. I've also taught classes at the college level to new RDs or to people who are training to become a dietitian and I'm the owner of renaldiethq.com. I'm an advisory board member for the company RenalMate and I've been a Registered Dietitian for 22 years plus and working mainly in the foodservice and clinical sides but mostly in hospitals so I understand food a whole lot. And I want to talk to you a little bit about what made me realize that I needed to create this Understanding Kidney Test Results course because with the information that I have about kidney disease tests, what I've learned.

When I worked in the hospital, I worked in foodservice. I managed the menus and I really enjoyed creating great recipes. I worked with a lot of people. I always tried to make their diet healthier but tasty and I never really worked with them a lot to understand why the food that they ate was so important. You might understand that now because you've done research but the food that you eat makes a big difference in your kidney disease outcomes. But there are some things that you may not understand why but you just follow them because you read the information.

So, when I was in private practice, I'm working with people individually and I get lots of individual emails every week from people asking questions about their lives and wanting to know if they're in stage 3 or stage 4 and how fast their kidney disease will progress, do they need to worry about dialysis, should they eat this food or that food and I realized a lot of those questions were answers that I had but they weren't readily available online because it does take some interpretation. It takes some explanation of the way things work and why these labs are valid, why they mean certain things to change and those are things you get when you're a Registered Dietitian.

When you learn about labs, when you learn about the biochemical processes in people's bodies. And I always found it a challenge because even my own mom would ask me these questions and want to know more about her labs and what they could be and I could tell her on an individual basis what that means and if you came to see me individually you would pay to see a dietitian and I would go over your labs and talk to you but you wouldn't necessarily have the individual knowledge of why. You might understand what and you might understand what next, you wouldn't necessarily understand why and how to change.

I would have explained to you how to change but then the next time you get labs then you would need to come back to see me again and have me explain how those worked that time. And it can get really frustrating because sometimes the answer you might get from a doctor or a nurse. All they do is hand you a sheet of paper especially if they don't know in detail about the clinic about the chronic kidney disease diet. They would hand you the paper that says you know "Eat this, don't eat this!" You really just have to you know it's kind of a list of products or a list of foods that you can or can't eat so they rarely ever give you the can list don't they because that's a lot bigger
but they give you this list of foods you can't eat. They don't explain why and you follow it for a while but it's hard to follow overtime because you don't always know why and to me that's a big important thing like why does this affect my kidneys? Why your kidneys do things with certain medications? Do you want this line to go up or go down so when you're looking at trends over time?

When you're looking at if you're eGFR gets higher say goes from 45 to 50 that's a good thing but if your potassium does the same that's not a good thing. So, what is it that you're looking at with trends and what is it that it should be and I'm not necessarily special because I have the knowledge. These are things that you learn in college and you learn as a dietitian and overtime talking to so many people you start to see trends and understand how they change but I know what those labs mean and then the information that's what I want to share with you because you can understand and even if you don't understand all the science and the chemical reactions behind it, you can
understand enough to know this is a good thing and this is a bad thing and this is what I need to do next to change. And I'm glad to help you by sharing this Understanding your Kidney Test Results course.

It's going to be a simple walkthrough of the different labs that you have in different modules. So, it's Module 1 is you know basic kidney labs and then Module 2 is looking at different areas in those and Module 3 is talking about bone disease and Module 4 talks about what are the kidney labs that you need to worry about with you're related to conditions if you have diabetes or anything related to that.

Once you've watched these you can come back and watch them again they're yours forever and you'll not be so anxious and nervous and overwhelmed about your kidney disease because you'll know what you need to do so you'll know if my eGFR is a 45 that means this and these are the steps that I should take. But not only that, you won't have just part of the picture you'll know that your eGFR is just one piece of the puzzle and what other labs do you need to understand to know how fast your kidney disease is progressing. You won't be overwhelmed.

If you're interested in learning more about my course the Understanding your Kidney Test Results, I would love for you to head on over to renaldietHQ.com/waitlist-for-uktr Understanding Kidney Test Results (UKTR). You'll get on the waitlist and I'll put that in the comments below and I'm hosting a webinar all about this course and about the 4 Phase Method for Improving your Kidney Test Results on August the 1st 2019. I'd love it if you
join me there.

If you sign up for the waitlist I'll be emailing out in the next couple days a link that you can sign up for the webinar and even if you don't if you're not able to make it to the webinar at that time then you will be able to see the replay. So, you can watch later and see and understand what the course is going to be about and understanding some about your labs and if you're on dialysis, how this is important and all the different labs and not into everything related to kidney disease.

Diabetes is related to kidney disease, blood pressure is related to kidney disease, cholesterol is related to kidney disease. All those things put them together and how they mesh to make you healthy or what you want them to do overtime. And that way when you get your lab test results you'll know and you'll be able to go home look it up and then at that point you can call your doctor say "I see that this is trending down or I see that this is trending up that's a good or a bad thing? What steps can we do? Is there any medications I need to change?" that type of thing and then you're with your doctor making those important health decisions about yourself.

I want to thank you for joining me today and I will talk to you soon. I look forward to August 1st. Get on the waitlist and I will send you the email to sign up for the webinar. A webinar is just like a training maybe last an hour long and I'll talk through all the things and like I said you can watch the replay if you don't make it to the webinar.

Thanks! Talk soon!