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Your kidneys are small but in charge of many functions in your body. To maintain your kidneys healthy and working efficiently, consider adding good foods to your meal. Let’s jump into this article with WhichChoose to explore 8 healthy foods for kidneys.
Kidney Information You Should Know
If you assume smoking, weight gain, diabetes, and suffering from high blood pressure will not put your kidney under pressure, let’s think again.
All factors above can affect kidneys significantly. Yet many people don’t know clearly about kidneys’ function and how they can help to keep them in tip-top condition.
Statistics show that around one in 10 adults worldwide suffers from kidney disease. Millions die prematurely of heart attacks and strokes linked to chronic kidney disease yearly. Symptoms usually are not apparent until its later stages, making people unaware of the disease’s damage.
The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs on either side of the body, just underneath the ribcage. The primary function of your kidneys is to keep a stable environment inside your body by filtering out wastes from the blood before converting them into the urine.
Healthy kidneys make sure that blood levels of water, salts, and other main substances are in perfect balance. You must take care of your kidneys since they work with your heart to regulate your blood pressure.
Although your two kidneys are just about the size of your closed fist, they process around 200 quarts of blood daily to make around two liters of urine. Your kidneys need a constant source of blood at normal pressure to do their work. Too little pressure or too little blood can lead to acute and sudden kidney failure.
According to experts, having a healthy diet helps to prevent and cure kidney diseases.
8 Healthy Foods For Kidneys
2.1. Onion
Onion is rich in flavonoids, especially quercetin, a powerful antioxidant that reduces heart disease and protects against many cancers. Moreover, it is low in potassium and a great source of chromium, a mineral that helps with fat, protein, and carbohydrate metabolism.
People who are on a kidney diet, finding to add more flavors to foods, try using various onions, including white, brown, red, and others. You can eat onions raw on burgers, sandwiches, and salads, cook them, fry them into onion rings, or use them as a caramelized topping.
2.2. Cabbage
Cabbage contains chemical compounds in vegetables or fruits that break up free radicals before they damage. Many of these chemicals are known to protect against, fight cancer, and foster cardiovascular health.
Moreover, this vegetable contains vitamin K, C, B6, folic acid, and fiber. You can microwave, boil, steam it, add cream cheese or butter plus pepper or caraway seeds and serve it as a side dish.
Cabbage rolls made with turkey are a great appetizer, and if you’re feeling fancy, you can stuff a cabbage with ground meat and bake it for a flavourful meal with nutrients.
2.3. Garlic
Garlic helps prevent plaque from forming on your teeth, lowers cholesterol, and minimizes inflammation. You can buy fresh onions, mince or powder them and add them to vegetables, meat, or pasta dishes.
Additionally, you can roast a head of garlic and spread it on bread. Garlic provides a delicious flavor, and its powder is an excellent substitute for garlic salt in the dialysis diet.
2.4. Apples
Apples help decrease cholesterol, prevent constipation, protect against heart disease, and reduce cancer risk. This fruit also contains many fiber and anti-inflammatory compounds; thus, eating an apple daily helps you keep the doctor away.
You can eat fresh apples, stew apples, bake an apple pie or apple cake or make apple juice.
2.5. Cherries
Rich in antioxidants, anti-inflammatory compounds, and vitamin C, cherries reduce gout symptoms, a concern for people with chronic kidney disease. You can eat fresh cherries as a snack, make a cherry pie or cake, and drink cherry juice. Moreover, you can use the cherry sauce with pork or lamb.
2.6. Egg whites
Egg whites are pure protein and provide the highest quality protein with essential amino acids.
For the kidney diet, egg whites offer protein with less phosphorus than other protein sources like egg yolk or meats. You can make an omelet egg white for a sandwich, add pasteurized egg whites to smoothies or shakes, make deviled egg snacks, or add whites of hard-boiled eggs to tuna salad or garden salad to add extra protein.
2.7. Fish
Fish contains protein and anti-inflammatory fats called omega-3s. Omega-3s in fish help fight diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Moreover, this healthy fat helps lower low-density lipoprotein or cholesterol (bad cholesterol) and increase high-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol, which is good cholesterol.
It is recommended to eat fish two or three times a week. Fish containing the highest omega-3s include albacore tuna, herring, mackerel, rainbow trout, and salmon.
2.8. Olive oil
Olive oil includes monounsaturated fat that protects against oxidation. Moreover, it is also high in polyphenols and antioxidant compounds that prevent inflammation and oxidation.
Studies show that citizens that use olive oil instead of other oils have lower heart disease and cancer rates. Thus, you should buy virgin olive oil because it contains more antioxidants.
You can use olive oil to make salad dressing, cook, dip bread or marinate vegetables.
8 Tips To Prevent Kidney Disease
Besides eating a healthy diet, you can do other things to prevent kidney failure:
- Keep your blood pressure at the target set by your healthcare provider. This can delay or prevent kidney failure.
- If you have diabetes, control your blood glucose level.
- Reducing salt and eating more seasonal fruits and vegetables (rich in potassium, magnesium, and calcium) can significantly lower blood pressure.
- Limit your alcohol intake.
- Be more physically active.
- Lose weight if you are overweight.
- If you smoke, take steps to quit. Cigarette smoking can make kidney damage worse.
- Ask your doctor to test you for anemia. Most people with kidney problems also have anemia, which can be found with a simple blood test.
WhichChoose shares 8 healthy foods for kidneys that you can add to your meal. Moreover, you can exercise, limit drinking alcohol, and quit smoking to prevent kidney diseases. If you know other foods that are good for the kidneys, leave your comment below. We are curious and want to know more about them!
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