Lately we’ve received a surprising number of letters from
people who have kidney disease, wanting to know if their
diet plays a part in it.
The answer is your diet has a HUGE effect on the health of
your kidneys. When your kidneys are not healthy, you are
not healthy.
Here’s a down and dirty on kidneys.
Your kidneys have several crucial functions in your body:
- They filter out wastes from your bloodstream — 1 liter
(about 34 oz) of blood passes through them every MINUTE,
every single day. That’s a LOT of filtering, around 380
gallons of blood a day.
- They provide your bloodstream with glucose, water and
amino acids that your body needs to function properly.
- They excrete toxins by pulling them out of your blood
and dumping them into your urine. (They produce 1 1/2 – 2
1/2 quarts of urine a day.)
- They help regulate your blood pressure through hormone
production.
- They work to maintain proper fluid, mineral and pH
balance in your body.
- They help regulate red blood cell production.
Clearly we don’t want our kidneys to be stressed out or to
fail.
But people cause exactly that to happen by what they do
three times a day, everyday.
Eat.
That’s right–our high protein, highly acidic diets are
causing kidney disease to rise. The National Institute of
Health currently estimates that 26 million people in the US
alone have chronic kidney disease.
Here’s how diet and kidney disease are linked:
Your body must break down protein foods (especially animal
products) into their amino acids when you eat them, so it
can then form human protein from the cow, pig or chicken
protein you just ate.
The kidneys step in to eliminate the acid waste products
(called urea) from this process.
However, the trouble brews when you’re eating more protein
than your kidneys can handle. Then the kidneys get a build-
up of urea, and that makes them unable to do their job of
filtering wastes from your bloodstream.
If the kidneys are unable to filter your blood, all the
acids and toxins glide freely through your blood vessels
and are deposited in the tissues all over your body. This
leads to inflammation of all types, muscle and joint aches
and pains and obesity.
Now, this isn’t just a problem for the meat eaters of the
world.
Even if you don’t eat any animal protein, if your diet is
highly acidic, the kidneys get extremely stressed trying to
filter all that acid out of your bloodstream. The wastes
accumulate in your kidneys and become kidney stones.
(Note that many people associate kidney stones with excess
calcium in the body. Not always true. Where the calcium
often comes in is when you’re acidic, your body moves
calcium from your bones to try to neutralize the acid. But
it’s the acid build-up that’s causing the stones–the
calcium is just the body’s natural defense against the
acid, and it ends up guilty by association.)
Long-standing, repeated stressing of the kidneys from
animal protein and/or acidic meals leads to kidney damage,
disease, and ultimately, kidney failure.
Then the prognosis becomes very dim–transplants and
dialysis are your only options.
So maintaining kidney health is just another reason to eat
for alkalinity with Great Taste No Pain.
Low acid foods and food combinations mean less acidic
wastes for the kidneys to handle…and that’s great news
for your kidneys AND your entire body.
To your health,
John Hodgson
Tags: glucose, protein foods






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