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Medicines and your kidneys: the blood pressure medicines, your pharmacist and your list, NSAIDs, and a plan for sick days
For adults with kidney disease, diabetes or high blood pressure, anyone who takes a blood pressure medicine that affects the kidneys, and the people who help them. It passes on, by name, what the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK, part of the NIH) says: how to tell an ACE inhibitor (-pril), an ARB (-sartan) and a water pill; why to use one pharmacy and keep one up-to-date list; how many pain, fever and cold medicines are NSAIDs that can harm the kidneys; the questions to ask before you get sick; and why being dehydrated changes things. It builds the questions to ask and prints a sick-day card for your wallet. Nothing is saved.
Right now
- Trouble breathing, chest pain, fainting, or someone who cannot be woken? Call 911 (ours).
- Too much of a medicine, or the wrong one? Call Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222, free, any hour (ours). If the person is not breathing or cannot be woken, call 911.
- Sick and cannot keep liquids down, or urinating much less than usual? Call your health care team the same day; do not stop or skip a medicine on your own (ours).
- Thoughts of suicide, or all too much? Call or text 988, any hour, free (ours).
More help
- Kidneys on this site: When it’s your kidneys · High blood pressure and kidney disease · Diabetic kidney disease · Kidney failure: choosing a treatment · Kidneys, bladder and urine: find the right page.
- Your medicines: My Medicines (your list, on your own device) · When you can’t afford your medicine · Flu · When pain doesn’t go away.
- For you: When you need a doctor and can’t pay · Get ready for your appointment. In an emergency: Help right now (988, 911). All our free tools.
Kidneys, bladder or urine, and not sure this is the right page? The pages on this site for bladder infections, kidney stones, blood in the urine, bladder pain, bladder leaks, the prostate, kidney disease and bedwetting, on one list.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse or pharmacist has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 21, 2026 on NIDDK’s (NIH) page Keeping Kidneys Safe: Smart Choices about Medicines, last reviewed in June 2018; NIDDK has no Spanish version of it. One line comes from another NIDDK page, and says so: that ACE inhibitors and ARBs are not safe during pregnancy is from NIDDK’s page Diabetic Kidney Disease (February 2017). The medicines named are the ones NIDDK names, as its examples, with no brands and no doses, and we never say what to take for pain or fever: NIDDK says to ask. Ours: the 911, Poison Help and 988 lines; calling the same day if you are sick and cannot keep liquids down or are urinating much less than usual; never stopping or changing a medicine on your own; calling soon if you take a -pril or -sartan medicine and are or may become pregnant; asking for the generic name; the questions to ask; the card; the links to our other pages; and the order of the steps. What we left out: NIDDK’s video (we did not watch it), its picture of a Drug Facts label, its section on clinical research, and the other NIDDK pages it links to, which we did not read. Nothing you tick or type here is saved or sent.