So, you surely have heard about this new miracle drug for PKD called Jinarc, or Tolvaptan. This is the one drug that has been approved in many countries to treat PKD. Isn’t that awesome? Well, let’s examine first, why Tolvaptan was chosen to be the first drug to be released for this condition. Most importantly, it is low-hanging fruit. Drug companies don’t like developing something new, as it is very expensive.

They like, however, to find new applications for stuff they already have lying around in their drawers. Such is the case with Tolvaptan. It was first studied in 1998 and developed by the japanese company Otsuka and they have a patent on it, so they are very interested to sell more of it. In 2010 it was approved for use in hyponatremia. (Low blood sodium) Tolvaptan is a vasopressin receptor antagonist.

The company gave it a try in PKD patients, since vasopressin is one of the many factors that is dysregulated in PKD. And sure enough, it did something. In fact, it lowered cyst growth by as much as 50%. Sounds great huh? Put that into perspective. While you would normally expect your kidneys to grow about 3% per year, now they would only grow about 1.5% per year. You lose 2.7 points in GFR per year instead of 3.7. So if you start out with a GFR of 100, you would gain 10 years of kidney function.

To get this, you’ll be constantly in need of a bathroom for the rest of your life – and your kidneys will still shut down eventually. To add to this, you will likely have to stop the medication a couple of years in, because it may harm your liver. To quote the FDA: “…cannot rule out the possibility that patients receiving the drug for hyponatremia also are at a potential higher risk for irreversible and potentially fatal liver injury.” – Then you will have more organ damage than before. Great. On top of that, it is very likely that the whole reason Tolvaptan works is because it makes you drink a lot.

You can also just drink a lot if you want these effects. 7 liters per day is the target here. I don’t recommend this. Going for the development of a vasopressin receptor antagonist like Tolvaptan is far from the optimal route to choose though. There are many other mechanisms that are dysregulated in PKD, of which I have 12 listed in my previous article #2: “12 Mechanisms (for now)”. Many of these mechanisms have shown similar or more promise than Tolvaptan in animal studies or in the lab. Even better, they can all be triggered with diet and natural supplements, so they are very low risk.

If you trigger multiple of these daily with the methods I have suggested, you will probably see an effect, and feel healthier and more vibrant overall. Unfortunately, there wont be any big studies done on those. Why? Natural approaches are: 1. always better for you 2. but impossible to profit off of This is why you have to do it yourself. I did the first test for you. I got 7% reduction in Total Kidney Volume in three years of following the Bulletproof Diet and optimizing my health.

I should have gotten 9% growth. That is all the difference we need to stay healthy for a long time. If you ask my neph- this is impossible. Yet, he was looking at it. Get going friends! You can DO IT!