How to use Folia if you have IgA Nephropathy
IgA Nephropathy, like many chronic conditions, affects everyone differently. IgAN may manifest differently across individuals with the disease; relevant symptoms, triggers, and treatments vary!
At Folia, we want to make sure you can track whatever you want, however you want. One person with IgAN may choose to track their fatigue level daily, whereas someone else may prefer to track swelling and foamy urine only when it occurs. We want it to feel like a handwritten journal in the sense that you can choose what you capture each day, but unlike a written journal, Folia automatically summarizes what you track to enable you to see insights into your health.
While you can use Folia in many different ways (here’s more general information about using Folia for IgAN), below are two examples of how you could use Folia for IgAN:
Faster flare-up recovery
Sherri gets upper respiratory infections (URIs) quite often in the fall and winter, so she wanted to understand how URIs affect her IgAN. She uses Folia to track each night as part of her evening routine, and she began also keeping track of when she developed URIs in the “What Else Happened” section of her Journal.
She also tracks her flare-ups using the Flare feature, and notes “Illness” and “Respiratory Infection” as a trigger on the flare form, along with the symptoms that are flaring.
She was able to see in her Insights section that Illness/URIs were coinciding with increased severity of back pain and fatigue. What helped her most during these flares was making sure she got enough sleep and rest.
Now, when she feels a URI coming on, she preemptively moves upcoming plans around as much as possible to make sure she can get plenty of rest and sleep to help her recover as quickly as possible.
Beating the bloat: Uncovering the real trigger
Chris was put on prednisone, and started noticing frequent bloating. He had a hunch that it was related to this new medication, so he started tracking when he was feeling bloated so he could show his doctor how the prednisone doses were coinciding with bloating. He tracked what time of day he would start to feel bloated so he could figure out if it always happened a certain amount of time after taking his medication.
Chris also tracked his meals regularly, and he soon realized that his bloating would happen shortly after eating, but not after every meal.
When he dug into food groups and allergens more closely, he saw if he had gluten, dairy, red meat, or tree nuts that his symptoms were worse. He soon discovered it was actually gluten and dairy that was causing his bloat more than the prednisone. With some diet changes, he’s able to manage the bloat most of the time.