There’s a lot of awareness about how to know if you have kidney disease.
I think we should do more about knowing HOW kidney disease starts!!
Over the last month or so I’ve been investigating time-based eating, also known as intermittent fasting. I’ve been so guilty all my life of taking my body and all my organs for granted. I have always had a super sensitive system which would tell me when it didn’t like what I was eating.
And I just didn’t care.
If I wanted to eat something, I remember telling my body, “I don’t care what you say, I’m eating this anyway.” So, my liver, pancreas, gall bladder and kidneys had to do extra work to deal with the “substances” I’d put into it. Doritos, candy, processed foods from the center aisles of the grocery store. I’d bloat, burn, constipate, doze off, but never did I imagine I was doing any real damage.
Instead, my little cells were frantically trying to accommodate my indulgences. And my kidneys obviously didn’t like it much. While an autoimmune disease took my kidney function, diet certainly had something to do with the initial cause of the disease.
I’ve got this part of me which is driven to learn about something new and devour (LOL) all kinds of information about it. I’ve been doing that with intermittent fasting, which is something I’d heard about for years. Eating less often and within an 8-hour window has shown remarkable results for people with liver, heart, insulin and even bone issues. Studies have shown remarkable results with longevity as well. I have a vested interest in living a long, healthy life since my husband is 30 years younger than I am!!
One of the conditions I’ve learned about most recently through my research is called Insulin Resistance.
This happens when we eat too much simple sugar such as candy or cake, or things that convert to sugar such as carbs from processed food. Adding fuel to the fire, we eat constantly, never giving our liver and pancreas a chance to rest.
Insulin resistance results in when the cells in our muscles, fat and liver don’t respond well to insulin and can’t easily take up glucose from our blood, so the pancreas makes more insulin to help glucose enter our cells. It’s turned into a very common problem with more than 80 million people per year impacted. And because high blood glucose damages the blood vessels in the kidneys, this can lead to high blood pressure which also damages them.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, one in 3 people in the US are at risk for kidney disease. As it is, 37 million people have chronic kidney disease, 660,000 people live with kidney failure and 100,000 are waiting for kidney transplants. And the numbers continue to rise.
We’re all so conditioned to eat fast food and products from the middle aisles of the grocery store. Marketing and advertising make sure we keep eating.
Part of our population live in food deserts and fast food or processed food is all there is.
As a result, more and more people will continue to live their lives in such a way they’ll likely end up with kidney failure.
I heard a teaching story once, about if dogs kept being found floating down the river, rather than continue to pull them out, it would be a good choice to go up river and figure out the source of the issue.
While this is what I’ve learned, and what’s worked for me, if you’re interested, I encourage anyone who reads this to take charge of your eating; what you eat and how often. Take care of your gut/microbiome, stop eating sugar, eat within an 8-hour window and don’t snack between meals.
I’d rather not have you be one of the kidney statistics when there’s such an easy alternative.
The sources I’ve been using:
US Center for Disease Control
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