I Am Your Kidney!

CEBU, Philippines - Howdy! I’m your kidney. Like your eye, your ear and your limb I come with a twin. Don’t you find it amazing that the moment I stop functioning, my twin can easily perform the job for both?

However, I don’t want to watch you go through that stage because two (functional) kidneys, like brilliant heads, are always better than one.

Since June is National Kidney Month, allow me to reintroduce myself to you. You’re too preoccupied with other things you tend to forget that I - an important part of your urinary system, found at each side of the spine, below the rib cage of your body - perform vital life-maintaining functions: I monitor and regulate your body fluid.

I really deserve a break but since I am responsible in helping excrete fluids when your body has an excess of them and retain the substances necessary for your body’s continuing function, I cannot have my way. Therefore, the simplest and most important lifestyle change you could take to compensate for my efforts is to prevent all kinds of kidney stones from developing in me by drinking more fluids. Need I say water is best?

Drinking one to two liters of water a day aids me in producing and in releasing a variety of chemicals to keep your body healthy, as well as in filtering the entire blood supply every two minutes, excreting waste materials through the urine.

Let me underline this: I can also be considered an endocrine gland. I produce erythropoietin, a hormone that controls the production of red blood cells by the bone marrow.

Further, I do play a major role in the control of blood pressure. This happens through the regulation of blood volume and the amount of sodium in your body.

Ask me on my work values so you will learn to be grateful to me all day, everyday. First, blood is carried into units called nephrons when it enters either me or my twin. Each nephron functions as an “intelligent” blood filter that prevents substances needed by the body from passing through me while at the same time allowing waste materials and excess fluids from the blood to pass and be excreted by the body through the pee.

I and my twin each has about one million nephrons composed of small clusters of blood vessels called glomeruli which are attached to tubules (small tubes). The tubes and filters, of each of us, if placed end to end, would cover approximately 140 miles. That’s 225.30816000000001 kilometers to be exact!

The filtration process or separation of waste products from the blood happens at the glomeruli.

I and my twin are as big as your fist. Each weighs a quarter of a pound and we do look like kidney beans. I wonder if the beans took their name from us or it’s the other way around. Anyway, I fine-tune the composition of minerals in your blood. You would know I am going through some kind of a disorder once you begin to experience fluid retention or edema as you may develop puffiness around your eyes and swelling in the feet and legs.

This disorder is caused by the formation of kidney stones. You see, human urine contains many kinds of crystals which under normal conditions remain in a dissolved state because of their low concentration and the presence of inhibitors that prevent the crystals from sticking to each other.

When something happens to disturb the equilibrium of the urine, the crystals form aggregates which grow bigger and bigger until they become kidney stones. These conditions include those that lead to: too much solute as in people with high uric acid secretion, too little solvent as in people who drink too little water; and a deficiency in inhibitors of crystals aggregation.

As the stone grows or moves, blood may be found in the urine, and as the stone moves closer to the bladder, a person may feel the need to urinate more often or feel a burning sensation when relieving. If fever and chills accompany these symptoms, an infection is also likely to be present.

Let me reiterate: Water is best. There are many proponents of various “cures” by drinking other liquids such as buko juice, pito-pito tea, banaba and sambong teas and many other teas, but scientific studies have not proven their efficacy and safety. This lack of proof, coupled with the financial constraints under which many patients are subject to, makes it logical to advocate pure water above any other beverage.

To prevent increase of uric acid level in the blood and urine, please avoid consumption of internal organs, legumes such as mongo beans, chick peas, string beans, and garbanzos; fishes such as tulingan, tanguigue, tambakol, dilis, alumahan and matambaka. I can serve even better if you could follow a low salt diet.

If you have time to visit the Department of Health-7 along Osmeña Boulevard, Cebu City, and get to gather advocacy materials on the prevention of kidney disease, prepared by the Renal Disease Control Program, National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Philippine Society of Nephrology, Philippine Information Agency and the Philippine Society of Transplant Surgeons, you will be able to gain a thorough understanding on how to further take good care of me.

You don’t want to go through the hassles and be burdened by the cost of a two-to-three-times-a-week hemodialysis, do you?