The Kidneys Act Like Human Garbage Collectors

The kidneys can be considered as the ‘garbage collector” of your body, however, they are much more than “garbage collectors” because they don’t just dump the garbage somewhere and leave; they filter waste materials collected, make them useful again and recycle them, and make them perfect for your body. Just imagine a city street with all garbage uncollected. The street will become clogged, stinky, and impassable. Thus, if your kidneys fail to perform their duty, your blood will be clogged with impurities, you would stink as hell, and your body will shut down. Is it not a miracle that yor kidneys can prevent the shut-down of your whole body and prevent death? Many health-related problems can be created by malfunctioning or disfunctioning sets of kidneys. Since blood pressure is closely associated with the amount of fluid in your body, and the kidneys control the quantity and quality of fluids within your body, blood pressure may increase to a very dangerous level if your kidneys fail to function properly. When your kidneys malfunctions, fluids, toxic substances, and waste products, such as urea, may accumulate in body tissues, poison the cells, create a life-threatening situation, and eventually leading to death. The important conditions, substances and minerals that your kidneys help to control include sodium, potassium, calcium, phosphate, magnesium, chloride, bicarbonate, and pH (acidity). Disorders of the kidney include chronic kidney disease, kidney failure, kidney stones, and kidney cancer. These diseases can lead to build-up of harmful waste in your body, increase your blood pressure, or cause fluid retention throughout your body, ultimately resulting in kidney failure and/or death. Although some kidney diseases can be treated with medication, chronic or severe kidney diseases require more intense treatment. A treatment option for patients with malfunctioning kidneys or kidney failure is called dialysis. In this treatment strategy, the patient's blood is pumped through a dialysis machine which filters waste products of metabolism from the blood and returns the clean blood to the body. The machine acts as artificial kidney and restores adequate levels of fluids, nutrients and ions to the body. However, kidney transplant is the most radical treatment for chronic kidney disease.