Did you know that there’s one type of food that’s particularly good for toxic kidneys? The big problem when you’re diagnosed with kidney disease, especially if it’s end stage kidney disease, is that there aren’t many good solutions that give you a good prognosis. For example, they might say you have to get kidney dialysis, and that’s just terrible to go through.
Kidney Disease Solution: Don’t give up on your kidneys;
But the thing with kidneys is that it’s a filter, so any drugs that you’re prescribed will end up harming your kidneys in the process.
So when we’re dealing with a damaged filter, it’s best to use something natural that has virtually no side effects.
Why you can’t live without any kidneys…
The kidneys filter out chemicals, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, heavy metals, plastics, excess minerals and recycles a lot of things too!
It’s also very efficient and gets rid of excess sugar. But eating a lot of sugar can damage these tiny filters. There’s a good reason why diabetes is considered the number one cause of kidney disease.
Kidneys also help get rid of excess protein byproducts. One of the byproducts that’s produced from digesting protein is ammonia, which is very toxic to several parts of the body, especially the neurons in your brain. This is why if someone has too much ammonia in their blood, they can end up with dementia and neurodegenerative diseases.
In the body, the liver works closely with your kidneys to remove ammonia safely through something called the urea cycle.
Under normal circumstances, the liver breaks down ammonia into urea, and the kidneys remove urea from the blood through tiny filtering units called nephrons.
Because our body is constantly exposed to environmental pollutants, it’s important to keep both your kidneys and liver healthy.
The kidney is the main organ that helps activate vitamin D, and the liver is involved too, but the kidney is even more important in the conversion of the inactive form to the active form of vitamin D, which is vital to staying healthy.
So what are the symptoms of toxic kidneys?
Well, you can have gout, which is uric acid building up usually in the joint of your big toe. This mainly occurs because the kidney is not able to get rid of this uric acid effectively.
You can also have kidney stones, where you have this super concentrated calcium oxalate stone that develops in the kidney. You can prevent stones by consuming enough liquids.
Puffy eyes are another sign that you might have kidney problems, especially if they’re puffy underneath and on top.
You might also experience edema in your lower ankles. If you press on your lower ankles and it leaves an indentation, then your kidneys may not be working properly.
You might also have itchy skin.
If your urine looks dark and foamy, that usually means that the kidneys are not filtering correctly. Just like if you were to change the oil filter in your car, if you haven’t changed it for a couple years, it’s going to be really really dark and filled with all sorts of things. Now, the foamy part is usually caused by the presence of too much protein in the urine because it’s not being recycled properly.
You may even experience high blood pressure.
Okay, so now the question is: what is the best food out of all the foods that can support toxic kidneys? After going over what kidneys are supposed to do and what occurs when you have toxicity in your kidneys, the answer comes down to bok choy.
Now why would bok choy be the number one food?
Well first of all, it is a cruciferous vegetable. And that means that it has enzymes to help with something called phase two detoxification.
Since we’re trying to detoxify the body, consuming more cruciferous vegetables is going to help you in that process because they help convert harmful toxins into harmless substances. This helps reduce the workload on your kidneys.
Number two, bok choy is high in potassium, which helps balance out the electrolytes in your body.
Bok choy is also high in magnesium. And unlike foods such as almonds, spinach, legumes, grains and other foods, bok choy is that has very little to no oxalates. Eating too many foods with high oxalate content can lead to kidney stones.
Bok choy is also low in protein so if you have protein in your urine, you don’t want to be consuming a lot of it because it’s going through you.
You can just steam it, put some garlic on it, maybe a little sea salt, and it’s actually quite healthy.
All right, number Two ACV. Consume apple cider vinegar with some water throughout the day. What is that going to do? The acetic acid in apple cider vinegar is kidney protective – it’ll help you – and it will also help your blood sugars, which again is the big cause of kidney problems in the first place. And of course, I didn’t mention this but you would definitely want to get on the ketogenic diet and do fasting for sure.
Number Three, Lemon Juice. Why? Because lemon juice has citric acid and that can reduce the risk of getting stones. Also, lemon juice even though it’s an acid turns into an alkaline solution in your body and that can help with gout too because any time when you have these uric acid crystals that are depositing into the joint, if you alkalize the body a little bit it’ll stop that process.
Number Four, Celery juice or just celery by itself. Okay, it decreases ammonia and urea. It helps detoxify this ammonia and it helps decrease the risk of stones.
Number Five, Lower Protein. Lower the amount of protein like I just mentioned to about three ounces of protein per meal especially if your protein is high in your urine.
All right, number Six, Increase Potassium. Make sure your diet is high in potassium. You need big salads – small to moderate protein – huge salads no grains or sugars or anything like that but a high potassium diet would be protective to the kidney like I said before. It’s not about lowering your sodium because you need certain amounts of sodium and chloride but you really need the ratios correct so we usually need to increase the potassium and not really touch the sodium.
Number Seven, Distilled Water. Distilled water is water without the minerals and other chemicals. When you consume distilled water, it can help detoxify a lot of poisons in your body. You can take the minerals that you really need without the minerals that you don’t want, like excessive amounts of things like calcium and things like that.
You don’t want too much calcium and other minerals, which is why distilled water is good for kidney stones and gout.
Number Eight, Probiotics. Your gut contributes to making ammonia, so if you eat foods with probiotics, or take a probiotic supplement, it could help take some of the load off your kidneys. The same goes for the liver – you could take something like milk thistle to help take some stress off your kidneys.
Lastly zinc has been known to decrease ammonia and urea in urine, so make sure you have enough zinc in your diet.