How The Nutrients Work When Your Engine Is Running #4

The fourth major output when your body is functioning well is the waste and recycling. The fiber you eat helps you eliminate the solid waste. Yes, we have our own internal recycling plant in the form of our kidneys. Once cells have grabbed the nutrients from the food we eat to nourish themselves, they send the rest back into the blood stream to get filtered and recycled.

Basically the blood carries the waste to your kidneys (your own person recycling center). The kidneys filter about 45 thousand gallons of fluid every 24 hours. In the filtering process, they return needed water and chemicals to the blood. Only about 1% of filtered fluids gets turned into urine.

Prescription Medications - Questions To Ask #3

The next question to ask is are there any side effects to this medication? I was always a bit hesitant to answer this question because I knew that some patients would automatically develop any side effects that I mentioned. But you do need to know.

For example, if you are taking an anti-cholesterol medication, you should know that it can cause muscle weakness and that this is not an OK side effect. This is something that warrants stopping the medication immediately no matter what.

You should also know whether any tests are required to monitor the drug. The best example of this is the statin drugs (anti-cholesterol medications) which can cause problems in the liver. Liver function tests should be checked to be sure that your liver, which you won't sense, isn't getting into trouble.

Any drug that may effect the liver, the kidneys or any other major organ system must be checked to be sure that you are not developing a side effect.

Sucralose

I was talking about sucralose yesterday and I want to give you more information about this artificial sweetener. I mentioned the problem with chlorine yesterday, but there are other problems with this product. One of the most significant findings in the research is the shrinking of the thymus gland as well as shrinking of the lymph follicles in the spleen and thymus. This is all part of your immune system. So what is happening here is that sucralose affects your immune system decreasing it's abilit to function properly.

Is this important? Yes, by all means! Without a strong immune system your body is not only unable to fight off disease, but it also cannot win the fight against cancer cells which are in our bodies every day of our lives. The reason that most of us don't get cancer is because of our immune system.

Sucralose also affects the liver and kidneys, which in turn affect our ability to produce red cells to carry oxygen around our bodies. It can also affect pregnancy and your unborn child.

Lastly, sucralose can result in diarrhea. Not a lethal problem, but certainly an unpleasant one.

One last thought here for the diabetics out there. Sucralose is not the answer for you. Studies have shown that the hemaglobin A1C actually rises. This blood test is an indicator of glycemic control and we know that as it rises so does the number complications for diabetics.

Cleansing the Kidney

Since the kidneys are the other way in which you get rid of wastes and toxins, it makes sense that you would want to cleanse them at the same time that you're cleansing the bowel. Cleansing the kidneys is pretty easy.

Since the kidneys are a filtering unit, the best way to help clean them out is to drink lots of water. I've already spoken about water in the September of 08, and in the dieting tips #6. I do in fact mean water here and not coffee, tea, sodas, juices or other liquids.

Our bodies are 50% water, so the minimum amount of water you should be drinking each day is to take your weight, divide by 2 and that's how many ounces of water you should be drinking. Here's an example: if you weight 160 pounds, divide by 2 you get 80 - 80 ounces of water is the minimum you should be drinking.

Now if you want to cleanse the kidneys, you will need to drink more than the minimum amount of water. Also keep in mind if you are doing heavy physical activity or exercise, you will need even more water to not only replace what you are losing with activity/exercise but to cleanse the kidney. If you don't replace what you're losing, the kidneys are challenged with more toxins to filter out with less volume. Think of the kidney's as a sifter. The more water through the sifter, the easier it is to filter out the particles. If the particles become too big, they clog up the tiny filtering units in the kidney.