Bismah Irfan, MD

Dr. Bismah Irfan is a double board-certified nephrologist (ABIM Internal Medicine and Nephrology, plus Lifestyle Medicine through ABLM) and the founder of the Kidney Holistic Institute in Houston, Texas. She completed her nephrology fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, her internal medicine residency at the University of Illinois, and previously taught as an assistant professor at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She has practiced for over 14 years and has cared for more than 1,000 patients with kidney disease.

Her approach was shaped by her own health story. A rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis during residency led her to the Institute for Functional Medicine and to a root-cause style of practice she now applies to kidney care, combining conventional nephrology with nutrition, functional and regenerative medicine.

She is the author of Your Kidneys Can Heal and hosts the weekly Kidney Wellness podcast. She writes and speaks about slowing chronic kidney disease progression, plant-forward eating with CKD and the potassium question, the gut-kidney axis, autoimmune disease and the kidneys, and what lab numbers such as creatinine and eGFR do and do not tell you.