Healthy Habits: Environment and Kidneys

 

This National Kidney Month, let’s take the conversation deeper than just talking about how diet and exercise play a role in kidney health. Both of which are true. However, the environment that we live and work in has just as much of an impact that many people just simply aren’t talking about.

Environmental specialist Douglas Mulhall and author of The Calcium Bomb, the first popular book on calcification that hardens arteries. Douglas provides commentary as he has uncovered that there is much more than what meets the eye when it comes to the impact that the environment has on our health, especially when it comes to the kidneys and the treatment of its diseases. 

“Environmental pollutants are a risk factor for chronic kidney disease, for a very simple reason. The kidneys filter out toxins. The relatively new field of epigenetics focuses on the reversible impacts of the environment on genetic behavior. Studies are showing that these factors early in life could affect whether you develop kidney disease and hypertension later. Because the impacts on genetic behavior are reversible, scientists are looking at which early preventative actions could reduce the risk of kidney disease,” says Mulhall.

What was once a life sentence to medication after medication, is now being turned into conversations about reversals that can get people on track to living healthier and happier lives. 

Mulhall goes on to say that, “Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are more prone to heart disease and especially hardening of the arteries, in particular a condition known as peripheral artery disease (PAD), where the leg arteries get blocked and have to be surgically replaced, or in hundreds of thousands of cases, the leg is amputated. However, since 2017 clinical studies have shown that the damage caused by PAD are reversible without surgery. Oddly, many doctors and their patients are still not aware of this finding. There may be a link between improved outcomes and removing heavy metals from patients. This is consistent with evidence that environmental toxins are risk factors for both kidney and heart disease.