unsettling

I watch a lot of Dr. Sten Ekberg videos, and in his most recent one about kidneys, he mentions something I'd never heard before: your kidneys are the biggest factor in regulating your blood pressure. Here's the video:

Ekberg mentions the kidney-BP relationship within the first couple minutes of the video, so you don't need to watch the whole thing.

Such news has huge implications for me and my soda-swilling ways. While overall health might be a matter of diet, the specific issue of kidney health is a matter of what I'm imbibing. This means that I need to do something about a habit I've had since I was a teenager: drinking soda (Mom wouldn't let us drink much soda when we three brothers were kids). Granted, I've heard the "cut soda out of your life" rhetoric before—plenty of times, in fact. But something clicked in my head when Ekberg noted that your kidneys are the primary regulator of your blood pressure. This means that lowering my BP can involve a quick fix. It won't be an easy fix, to be sure, but simply cutting the liquid crap out of my diet could end up doing wonders for my blood pressure. All this time, I'd been thinking that intense cardio, as with stair-climbing, would help me keep my BP down. I also associated lower BP with weight loss: the heart labors less when you're lighter (said he alliteratively). I associated the cutting-out of soda with lower blood sugar and reversing diabetes. But all of these things are interrelated, and Ekberg's video has highlighted an important connection that I'd been missing.

The lunar new year represents a symbolic chance to (cue Billy Idol) start again. Let's see what I can do about my soda addiction.