Saturday, January 21, 2023

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.



3 comments:

John Mac said...

Shit, one more thing to worry about.

Good luck with the soda addiction. Is it about the sugar or the beverage? I drink a lot of diet Coke; is that just as bad for the kidneys?

Kevin Kim said...

I don't think Ekberg mentions diet drinks, but I suspect they're not great for the kidneys, either. Consider, too, that diet drinks induce the "cephalic reaction," i.e., the brain perceives something sweet and sends out insulin in response. Insulin is good as a blood-sugar-lowering hormone, but it's bad because it's also a fat-storing hormone. So diet drinks can actually lead to one getting fatter.

John Mac said...

We'll see, but maybe being fat is my destiny.