Kidneys Drive Heart Health but Pesticides Can Be Kryptonite
We mostly die from adverse heart issues, and learn how kidney health is part of protecting your heart health.
I worked for almost 10 years with Dr. Jack Moncrief, a kidney doctor that co-invented the home unit of dialysis (CAPD - continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis) and btw, also invented “telemedicine” (so we made a podcast about this).
Dr. Jack was honored at Stony Brook University a number of years back (along with 6 other renal docs) to be one of the physicians that made nephrology (study of kidneys) what it is today.
Dr. Jack would say in my ear repeatedly: “The kidneys drive the heart.”
Thus, you need your kidneys to filter blood, help maintain fluid dynamics as well as blood pressure but also to help keep your heart healthy. Most of us transit on to our next “incarnation” mainly through nasty, adverse heart events, such as potential heart attacks or strokes.
Heart health rules.
But, so does kidney health.
Most of us don’t think about our kidneys. They are in the background and we go on our merry way.
What do kidneys love? Alkaline. They long for you to eat a lot of alkalinizing veggies.
That’s why if we gave a powerful, but very inexpensive powder, sodium bicarbonate to our renal patients, this slowed down degeneration of their kidneys, giving them more time to be healthy.
It does this in sick folks - as well as healthy folks.
But veggies are renal protective. They act like sodium bicarbonate, being very alkalinizing.
Kidneys also love “sex” hormones. Like estrogen (protective in kidneys of both genders).
We lose 1% of our filtering function every year, after the age of 40, due to the waning of our hormones. In both sexes.
Hormone replacement helps slow kidney degeneration down. In both sexes. As even testosterone helps.
However… what do kidney’s hate?