Creatinine Is High, What Does It Mean?

If your creatinine level is slightly high and reduces to the normal range naturally later, it might mean nothing. However, if your creatinine level keeps in a high level and increases over time, I am afraid you have kidney problem.
Creatinine level reflects kidney condition, but it is not sensitive enough to tell us kidney condition timely, that is to say creatinine level fail to indicate kidney problem in early stage. Well, how does high creatinine reflect kidney condition and why it can not indicates early stage kidney disease?
Creatinine is a kind of waste produced by our body and the level of it is kept in a stable range in normal condition. As creatinine is the end product of meat and our muscle, it increases when we eat lots of meat or do lots of drastic physical exercises at one time. But elevated creatinine level caused by these condition decrease naturally when excessive creatinine is excreted by our kidneys. Therefore, if our creatinine level is slightly high and reduce to a normal range again after a few days.
Creatinine fails to indicate kidney problem in early stage just because it can not increase immediately when kidney damages appear. In our kidneys, there are totally about 200 million nephrons which are the major component of kidneys. For Chronic Kidney Disease, it is progressive and runs to end stage renal disease (ESRF) without timely and effective control. When only several or a small group of nephrons are damaged, we feel nothing different. However, when about a great deal of nephrons fail to work, kidney function decreases and creatinine level increases. Therefore, mostly, high creatinine level always indicates serious kidney damages.
When creatinine level is as high as 4.66, patients are suggested to start dialysis. Therefore, many patients seek methods of lowering creatinine level so as to reduce their creatinine and avoid dialysis. However, they forget the fact that creatinine is high because damaged kidneys fail to excrete the excessive creatinine and only when kidney damages are repaired, can high creatinine level decreases naturally.