How do water tablets/diuretics work?

Diuretics are really important in heart failure as they can really help alleviate the symptoms of swelling, both in the legs and fluid in the lungs. Of course, when you take diuretics, they help get rid of extra fluid and they do that by making you pass more urine and that can be particularly troublesome. What I usually say to people is that if you know you're going out and about you could perhaps skip the dose until you return from going out and about so you don't get caught short. The idea is to reduce the overall volume of fluid in your body so if you take a diuretic tablet and you're weeing out a lot more urine, then what we don't want you to do is to then drink more fluid or more water to try and catch up with the amount you're losing because the whole idea is we're trying to reduce your overall fluid in the body. There are different types of diuretics available. There is the main one called fruzemide and another one called bumetanide. Those are both loop diuretics. So they work when you take them in the morning usually pretty shortly afterwards you will need to pass urine. On occasion if you're taking your diuretic but you don't see that your leg swelling is improving it may be that you need an increase in the dose of the diuretic that you're taking and it's worth going to see your GP or your doctor to go and discuss that with them further. You won't take both the fruzemide and the bumetanide at the same time you will take one or the other and perhaps if the fruzomide is not doing the job then you may need to switch to something stronger like bumetanide. As well as the loop diuretics there are also thiazide diuretics which work in a slightly different part of the kidney. What they do is again help excrete excess fluid from the body out through the urine. And it is possible to combine a loop and a thiazide diuretic. So you may take something like fruzemide and then have a drug like bendroflumathiazide which is an example of a thiazide diuretic added in to help with diuresis, especially if the fruzemide on its own is not doing the job. The common difficulty with taking diuretics is that people worry about the kidney function. There is absolutely evidence that taking high doses of diuretics can slowly cause your kidney function to get worse but it's really important to understand that your doctor will only be prescribing you high doses of diuretics if you really need it to get rid of extra fluid. If If your kidney function gets a bit worse because of that, then I'm afraid that is a necessary evil in order to get rid of the fluid swelling because fluid swelling that's left untreated can lead to ulcers and also fluid buildup in the lungs that can really cause problems that need you to go directly into hospital. So it's a constant tightrope between having too much fluid on the legs and also slightly injuring the kidneys, but it's really important that the focus is on reducing the swelling in the legs. The decline in your kidney function is usually very slow, as long as you're on the right dose of the diuretic. And unfortunately, as I say, it is a necessary evil in order to get rid of the fluid that you have on board. To be honest, the vast majority of the time, it doesn't affect the kidneys, but in a small proportion, it will. you