Tina Turner admitted she put her life in danger by neglecting kidney disease, hypertension

Two months before she died, Tina Turner announced that she had joined an international campaign to support kidney health, revealing that she had put her own life “in danger” by long ignoring her need to treat her kidney disease and its underlying cause — hypertension — with daily therapy and conventional medication.

“I have put myself in great danger by refusing to face the reality that I need daily, lifelong therapy with medication,” the legendary singer wrote in on Instagram and in an accompanying story posted in early March  by the European Kidney Health Alliance. “For far too long I believed that my body was an untouchable and indestructible bastion.”

The singer with her powerful bluesy voice and frenetic dancing style died Wednesday at the age of 83 at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich. Her death came after what was described as a “long illness.” Turner had been open in recent years about her struggles with kidney disease, cancer and other illnesses.

For the EKHA site, she explained that she had suffered hypertension — high blood pressure — for decades; she was first diagnosed in 1978. But she said she thought it could be “normal” and didn’t think “much about it.” She said she also didn’t recall getting an explanation for the role that hypertension plays in kidney disease.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, high blood pressure can can constrict and narrow blood vessels, which eventually damages and weakens them throughout the body, which, among other things, can cause kidney damage.

The “Proud Mary” singer said she was given a prescription for medication to treat her hypertension in 1985, and it sounds like she took the pills but she also said she didn’t give her condition “any more thought.”

Fast forward to 2009, when she said she suffered a stroke because of her poorly controlled hypertension. As she tried to get back on her feet, she learned that her kidneys had lost 35% of their function.

“I tried to learn more about these organs’ function and meaning,” Turner wrote. “Most people probably don’t even know where their kidneys are located and what they are for until their health is at stake.”

Another blow came in 2016 when she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer and she had to deal with the unpleasant side effects of the treatment, according to People. Even after suffering a stroke, Turner said she stopped taking her prescription medication for hypertension, convincing herself that the pills made her feel worse. “I remembered relishing life before I started taking them and wished I could be as clear headed and energetic as I used to be,” Turner wrote.

Turner said she was open to a friend’s suggestion that she she visit a homeopathic daughter in neighboring France. “I didn’t hesitate,” Turner wrote. “He replaced my conventional medication (with) homeopathic medicine. …  I started feeling better after a while.”

Turner admitted she had not told her doctors about her homeopathic experiment, but was excited for an upcoming exam to see if the alternative medicine had reduced her blood pressure and improved her kidney function.

“Rarely in my life had I been so wrong,” Turner wrote. “I had not known that uncontrolled hypertension would worsen my renal disease and that I would kill my kidneys by giving up on controlling my blood pressure. …Thanks to my naivety I had ended up at the point where it was about life or death.”

Turner’s kidney function reportedly dropped to 5% and she began dialysis while awaiting a kidney transplant, Today reported. “It was depressing to be connected to a machine for hours,” she wrote about the months she had to be on dialysis. She got the transplant in 2017, with Erwin Bach, her longtime partner and husband, as the donor, People reported at the time.

The months after her transplant surgery were precarious, with “never-ending” ups and downs, she wrote. Sometimes, her body tried to reject her new kidney and she’d land back in the hospital. “I kept feeling nauseous and dizzy, forgot things, and was scared a lot,” Turner wrote.

“These problems are still not quite resolved,” Turner explained. As of March, she said, she was still on multiple prescriptions and said she took great care to follow her doctors’ orders “meticulously.”

Turner said she was lucky that her husband was able to donate a kidney. She explained that her main purpose in writing about how her denial harmed her health was to urge other people to realize the importance of taking care of themselves.

“Chronic kidney failure is called ‘silent killer’ because symptoms do not become noticeable until 80% of renal tissue is lost,” she wrote. “As it happened to me, hypertension is one of the most frequent causes of kidney failure.”

“That’s why I’m telling you today: Show your kidneys love!” Turner wrote. “They deserve it.”