You may not think about them much, but your kidneys are like workhorses in your body. They perform several important functions in the body to help keep it up and running. Sadly though, almost a third of the adults in the United States are at risk of developing kidney diseases. People who have been taking medications for condition like hypertension and diabetes for many years have a higher risk of kidney diseases, and this is a pretty big percentage of our population. Even worse, too many people are taking more more than one medication for BOTH conditions.
What we don’t want is for our kidneys to stop doing their basic jobs, because many are tied in with keeping us alive! Some of their basic functions include:
- Regulating our blood pressure
- Maintaining adequate electrolyte (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and phosphorus) balance in the body
- Maintaining healthy levels of red blood cells in the body
- Filtering out various wastes and toxic products from the body
- Regulating proper salt–water balance in the body
- Maintaining healthy bones by activating vitamin D
These are just some of the more important functions but understand that they also have many more daily tasks to perform. The risk with the kidneys is that you must maintain their good health throughout your life. Unfortunately, most people with kidney diseases don’t develop noticeable symptoms until very late. By the time they are diagnosed, a lot of irreversible damage will have already occurred, leaving them with really only two options: dialysis or a transplant.
Your best bet is a lifestyle plan for optimal kidney health, and we will discuss more on that later.
