Top 10 No Side Effect Foods for Toxic Kidneys | Kidney care Tips by Dr. Eric Berg DC
I want to share with you the number one best food for toxic kidneys. when you're diagnosed with kidney disease, especially at the end stage don't really have any good solutions that give you a good prognosis.
Doctors might say that you have to get kidney dialysis, that's just terrible to go through. Kidney is a filter so any drugs that they give you are going to be more toxic to the kidney. so, when we're dealing with a damaged filter we need to use something natural that has virtually no side effects.
Understanding the kidneys
The kidney filters out chemicals, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, heavy metals, plastics, and excess minerals and it recycles a lot of things too, it gets rid of excess sugar. Of course, if you're eating a lot of sugar it destroys the filter because diabetes is the number one cause of kidney disease, it also gets rid of excess protein byproducts. so, when we eat protein and that breaks down it goes to a chain reaction of things that end up with ammonia which is very very toxic to several parts of the body, especially the neurons in your brain, and this is why if someone has too much ammonia that goes up into the brain because it's too much in the blood it can end up with dementia.
Normally, what happens is the body has this urea cycle where this protein that turns into ammonia then turns into a lesser toxic thing called urea, that's supposed to be excreted through the urine.
The liver is also involved in this process, so if you have a really toxic kidney, chances are you also have a toxic liver because they work closely together. unfortunately, you are swimming in a sea of toxicity. What I mean is that there are over a thousand new chemical compounds created every single hour. so we are just getting hit from every different angle.
We need healthy kidneys and a healthy liver to deal with all this toxicity. the kidney is the main organ that helps activate vitamin D the liver is involved too but the kidney is even more important in the conversion of the inactive Vitamin D to the active form of vitamin D. I believe you know how important Vitamin D is to our body. As I said before diabetes is one of the main big causes of kidney disease.
What are the symptoms of toxic kidneys?
Symptoms of toxic kidneys
You can have gout which is uric acid building up usually in the joint of your big toe and that mainly occurs because the kidney is not able to get rid of this uric acid effectively.
Kidney stones:
Kidney stones are Super concentrated calcium oxalate stone that develops in the kidney. You can prevent stones by consuming enough liquids.
Puffy eyes: you can look at someone's face and just look around their eyes and you can see kidney problems so if it's puffy, especially underneath and on top, usually they have kidney issues because the fluids backing up.
Edema: They also have edema in their lower ankles when you press on the lower ankle it leaves an indentation.
They might have itchy skin, they might have glucose in the urine or protein in the urine, and their urine might smell very very strong of ammonia. and as I said before if the kidney was doing its job you would just have urea, but if there's too much ammonia this whole breakdown process is not occurring because the kidney is damaged and ammonia is very very toxic to the brain.
Your urine might look very very dark and foamy which usually means that the filter is not filtering, just like, if you have to change the oil filter in your car but if you haven't changed it for a couple of years, it's going to be a really dark color.
The foamy part means is usually too much protein in the urine because it's not being recycled properly and you may even experience high blood pressure.
What is the best food out of all the foods that can support toxic kidneys?
What is the #1 food for toxic kidneys?
When you have toxicity in your kidneys
#1 Bok Choy
Bok choy be the number one food. it is a cruciferous vegetable and that means that it has enzymes to help with something called phase two detoxification, consuming more cruciferous vegetable is going to help you in the detoxification process because it takes these poisons and it turns them into harmless particles, so it takes the stress off the kidney. Bok choy has high potassium. potassium is very protective of the kidney. you need to increase potassium because potassium is a mineral it's very protective, it's also high in magnesium which is also protective.
And the good thing about bok choy is it has no oxalates like almonds and spinach and a lot of other vegetables and legumes and beans and grains and these things are high in oxalates, and eating too many foods with oxalates could cause you to create kidney stones. so, bok choy is low in oxalates and low in protein. if you have protein in the urine you don't want to be consuming a lot of protein why because it's going through. you have to consume less protein but just higher quality protein but with bok choy, it hits all the different factors. so, you can just steam it, put some garlic on it, maybe a little sea salt and it's actually quite healthy.
#2 Apple Cider Vinegar
Consume Apple cider vinegar with some water throughout the day. the acetic acid in apple cider vinegar is kidney-protective. it'll help you okay, it will also help your blood sugars which again is the big cause of kidney problems.
#3 Ketogenic diet and Fasting.
#4 Juices:
Lemon juice: lemon juice has citric acid and that can reduce the risk of getting stones, even though it's an acid turns into an alkaline solution in your body and that can help with gout too because any time when you have these uric acid crystals that are depositing into the joint if you alkalize the body a little bit it'll stop that process.
Celery juice: Celery juice or just celery by itself is fine. it decreases ammonia and urea helps detoxify this ammonia and helps decrease the risk of stones.
#5: Protein
When someone has end-stage kidney disease, 3 ounces of protein would be perfect. The worse off your kidneys are the less protein they can handle. If you have protein in the urine, you should cut back on your protein because your body is not processing it correctly. However, low protein doesn't prevent kidney problems. It's only when it's damaged will you have problems.
#6 High Potassium Diet:
Make sure your diet is high in potassium you need big salads with small to moderate protein and huge salads with no grains or sugars or anything like that but a high potassium diet would be protective of the kidney, As I said before it's not about lowering your sodium because you need certain amounts of sodium and chloride but you really need correct ratios. so, we usually need to increase the potassium and not really touch the sodium.
#7 Distilled Water:
Distilled water is water without the minerals and the other chemicals when you consume distilled water it can help detoxify a lot of poisons in your body, it pulls things out that way you can take the minerals that you really need without the minerals that you don't want like excessive amounts of things like calcium. so, distilled water is really good for kidney stones it's good for gout and toxicity in general. the worst thing you can do is to drink tap water when you have bad kidneys because there are so many chemicals fluoride and chloride and all sorts of things.
#8 Probiotics
Probiotics in your gut contributes to making ammonia so if you were to just consume either food with probiotics like kimchi or sauerkraut or take a probiotic that could take some of the load off the kidney same thing with the liver you could take like milk thistle that would be a good thing to do to take more stress off the kidney.
#9 Zinc
Zinc has been known to decrease ammonia and urea in the urine so just make sure you have enough zinc in the diet.
#10 Arginase
Arginase is an enzyme that helps convert some of this byproduct of protein into something that you can get rid off. so, it's great to detoxify the kidney and especially the biochemistry that occurs at the end of this urea cycle. Arginx is really good for gout, good for kidney stones, removing toxicity in the kidney and you would take a good amount of this per day.