Be Kind to your Kidneys

Because Kidneys have to work overtime to expel salt from the body

- Shri K.K. Bajaj

Four inches long and two and a half inches in width, the tubes compressed inside kidneys would stretch for over 50 miles if extended. They are located behind the 12th rib cage and on either side of the spinal column. To look at, they are dark red, smooth-skinned and shaped like beans. The human body has two kidneys and although they are quite small, they are vital to the correct functioning of the human body.

The kidneys purify our whole bloodstream every hour throughout day night. The blood, which is pumped through the kidneys at the rate of more than two pints every minute, takes just a short five minutes to travel around the body and find its way back to the kidneys again. The kidneys have over a million filtering units for wastedisposal management.

Our kidneys remove waste products from the 200 quartz of blood they filter every day.

The primary function of the kidneys is to remove waste products and excess water from the body. Some of the waste products filtered by the kidneys include potassium and sodium and foreign substances such as caffeine and drugs. Healthy kidneys do an amazing amount of work.

It is estimated that the kidneys filter approximately half a cup of fluid each minute, or about 750 cups each day.

Extra salt damages the kidneys.

An average person takes ten times more salt than what is required by the body. Besides the actual intake of salt, we get salt through vegetables, fruits, water, etc. The kidneys have to work overtime to expel salt from the body and regulate our blood pressure. Hence, one should take less salt to avoid an increase in blood pressure.

In the United States, over 40 per cent of the 80,000 new cases of kidney failure a year are believed to have been caused by diabetes