7 Foods that Are Actually Damaging Your Kidneys

Do you think you take adequate care of your kidney health? If you are a religious yoga practitioner, you must remember the instructions of breathing in deeply so you can feel the air fill up your kidneys, and even though we all know it hardly makes any sense, we can still feel the potency of breathing into our kidneys, right?

You see, the kidneys are the most essential organs within the body and they have an extremely important job of filtering the bloodstream clean of all waste products. The kidneys are tucked right underneath the rib cage, on either sides of the spine, and they are no larger than the size of your fists.

Research reveals that our kidneys filter nearly 200 quarts of blood every single day, along with filtering out 2 quarts of waste products. The kidneys filter out the waste products, from there, the waste products and water travel to the balder, from where they get excreted in the form of urine. This is extremely detrimental process, and if the kidneys fail to perform this function adequately, it can lead to a great many ailments and haywires across the body.

It is extremely essential to ensure that the kidneys remain healthy and perform their function adequately because this function is essential to detoxify the body, clean up the bloodstream and get rid of all the waste products you may have consumed. In order to make sure the kidneys remain healthy and strong, and continue to filter out wastes to detoxify the body, we must take care of them, ply them with essential nutrients, and most importantly eliminate certain harmful foods from our diet.

Unluckily, there are countless foods that can cause harm to the kidneys, lead to the developments of kidney stones and even cause kidney failure. We’ve picked out the 7 most harmful foods for the kidneys so you can reduce their intake or eliminate them entirely. Here, take a look:

1. Meat

Research reveals that individuals who tend to have diets rich in animal-based protein are highly likely to suffer from kidney damage. Basically, a high-protein diet is capable of causing or aggravating already existing kidney ailments because metabolising and processing protein creates a severe strain upon the kidneys, since the load is heavy, it becomes difficult for the kidneys to effectively eliminate all waste products.

A study attempted to examine the effects of animal-based protein and vegetarian diets upon the health and functioning of the kidneys. The results revealed that diets that were rich in animal-based proteins increased the risk factors of forming kidney stones from uric acid. On the other hand, vegetarian diets aided in reducing uric acid content and preventing the development of kidney stones.

Uric acid is one of the most prevalently common culprit of the formation of kidney stones, and basically, it is a by-product that results from consuming certain foods that are rich in purines, for instance fish, meat and seafood. These foods, when eaten excessively, also tend to contribute to the risk factors of various other common kinds of kidney stones, primarily calcium oxalate stones. These usually occur due to the increased quantity of calcium excreted into the urine, along with affecting the digestive probiotics.

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You see, animal-based proteins create an acidic residue within the body while being metabolised, and since the body prefers to remain in an alkaline state, it extracts the calcium and all other mineral salts from the bones to return the body its alkaline state. These residues of calcium are capable of forming calcium oxalate kidney stones.

Instead of consuming excessive amounts of animal-based protein, you can always get your protein density from other plant-based and poultry sources, such as chicken, turkey, vegetables, seeds, grains, lentils and nuts.