10 Signs Your Kidneys Are Toxic

Hello Health Champions. The kidney is a remarkable  organ. If it were to fail you would be really sick  

within a couple of days and you would probably be  dead within a week so today I want to talk about  

some of the most important signs and symptoms  of chronic kidney disease and kidney failure  

but more importantly I want to help you understand  how to recognize it in the very early stages  

so you never have to walk down that path of kidney  failure, dialysis and kidney transplant. Coming  

right up. Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg. I'm a holistic  doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if  

you want to truly master health by understanding  how the body really works make sure you subscribe,  

hit that bell and turn on all the notifications so  you never miss a life-saving video. I was shocked  

when I did some research I watched some other  videos on this topic that had tens of millions of  

views that did nothing more than list some signs  and symptoms scare you to death and tell you to  

go see a doctor. Now of course there's a time and  a place to go see a doctor but if we understand a  

little bit about the kidney and appreciate how  amazing it is and how to take care of it then  

we may never have to go see a doctor. The kidney  is often described as a filter and while that is  

correct it does so much more. It is a sensor. It  senses various different metabolites in the body  

and then it produces hormones in response to that  so it helps regulate various things in the body  

one of the things it's sensitive to and regulates  is pH it can get rid of acid it can get rid of  

base to regulate the pH of the blood it is very  sensitive to oxygen which we'll talk about more  

in a little bit but most of what the kidney does  is reabsorption all right The kidney filters the  

blood so it pushes fluid out through a very very  fine filter but then it reabsorbs most of it so  

it filters out over 200 liters of fluid every day  but because it wants to keep certain things while  

getting rid of others it is a selective filter. It  reabsorbs 99% of all the water and all the sodium  

so it's very good at getting rid of the extra  sodium that it doesn't want. When it comes to  

potassium it reabsorbs 88% of it when it  comes to glucose and amino acids which are  

precious fuel and building blocks it doesn't want  to lose any of those so it reabsorbs 100 percent  

unless you're a diabetic or your blood sugar is  so high that you exceed the reabsorption threshold  

then you're going to be spilling glucose in the  urine but again that's not a normal state. Then  

there are some things that the body wants to get  rid of like creatinine and it's so good at this  

that it eliminates 100% it reabsorbs nothing  of the things that it doesn't want so it's  

incredibly clever and very very selective.  Now here's where creatinine comes in handy.  

We know that the kidney is supposed to filter out  100% of it so there's only supposed to be a tiny  

amount left and based on that we can estimate the  glomerular filtration rate that's a number that  

tells us how well the kidneys are working. If the  kidneys start getting clogged up then that number  

changes it goes down. The creatinine is based on  muscle activity if you have more muscle activity  

or more muscle mass it can skew the numbers a  little bit if you have muscle breakdown like  

from an injury or from a hard workout that can  change the number and they estimate this number  

based on age, race and gender because people are  a little bit different but the whole point of this  

is that the eGFR is a pretty good way to measure  how your kidneys are working and how to give you  

little hints long long before you have symptoms.  There are five stages to chronic kidney disease  

and all the other places that I looked they  listed signs and symptoms as if they happened  

randomly or equally through the different stages  of degeneration but understanding when they happen  

makes all the difference in knowing what to look  for. In stage one of kidney disease the number is  

normal the glomerular filtration rate is all still  working but the kidney may still have taken some  

damage. There may still be some infection some  bacteria something that's breaking it down that  

we find something abnormal going on maybe in the  blood maybe in the urine but then in stage two now  

we have a reduced filtration rate so it's down to  60 to 89 milliliters per minute. Stage 3 is 35 to  

59. Stage 4 is 15 to 29 now it's really really  starting to shut down and when it reaches less  

than 15 milliliters per minute now we have stage  5 and we have pretty much a complete shutdown  

of the kidneys and we certainly want to avoid  this we want to find out we want to understand  

what to do in the early stages and recognize  that. Now this is a complex topic and I'm only  

covering one variable which is the eGFR estimated  glomerular filtration rate but in real life you  

never just look at one marker you're going to  look at the bigger picture you're going to look  

at the other things that the liver and the kidney  are doing but I'm using this just to illustrate  

what can happen. In stage one you're probably not  going to have any or very few symptoms what you  

might see is some changes in urination if you  have an infection it might burn upon urination you  

might see a change in color or smell and if that  happens and you haven't eaten a bunch of asparagus  

then that might be a sign that your kidney  is having some trouble. If there's a change  

in frequency if there's a change in appearance if  there's some discoloration or cloudiness or foam  

that's not a good thing. If there's protein in the  urine or bacteria that could give rise to a change  

in in any of these above. In stage two of chronic  kidney disease now we're seeing a reduction in  

filtration rate the filter's getting a little  clogged up we might see about a 30 percent  

reduction in filtration rate but you're probably  going to have still none or very few symptoms and  

a lot of people will come into my office  with numbers in this range and they have  

absolutely no idea no symptoms. Now here's  the interesting thing that I don't understand  

is this is called normal on the blood work and  even though it's called stage 2 chronic kidney  

disease this range is considered normal. If you  look down here the reference range is you're good  

as long as you're over 59 but I would pay  very close attention to this because it means  

something and if someone comes in with an 80  I'm going to look extra carefully at what to  

do with that kidney. When we get to stage 3 of  chronic kidney disease now is where the real  

problems happen the filtration rate is down  to about half 30 to 59 milliliters per minute  

and we're starting to get a lot more symptoms.  Not everybody gets them but they're becoming  

more frequent and there's quite a few you could  get high blood pressure because the kidney senses  

blood pressure and so if it's not working so  well then it can't regulate blood pressure as  

well but also it can work the other way that  the high blood pressure puts a lot of damage  

pushed a lot of stress on the kidney the friction  actually hurts the kidney so the kidney can cause  

and be the result of high blood pressure. Now  anemia number three. How does that happen well  

the kidney senses how much oxygen is in your blood  and if there's not enough it's going to produce  

a hormone called EPO or erythropoietin that means  making red stuff basically and what it's making is  

red blood cells so if you go up into the mountains  for a few weeks your kidney senses there's less  

oxygen let's make more red blood cells but if  there's damage to the kidney then it can't keep  

up with making enough of this EPO and you're not  making enough red blood cells and you get anemic.  

Symptom number four that can happen in stage three  as things get more serious is bone disease. Normal  

bone looks like this osteoporotic bone looks like  that and this is because there's a mineral called  

phosphate and phosphate needs to be balanced  with calcium. The ratio is much more important  

than how much you actually have of each. So if  the kidney gets damaged now it can't keep up  

with eliminating with getting rid of so as  it loses the ability to clear the phosphate  

the phosphate builds up in the blood and now  we have to balance it with calcium. So the body  

makes a hormone that is going to pull calcium from  the bone to balance that phosphate. So that's how  

kidney disease can actually cause osteoporosis.  But there's even more stuff going on in stage 3  

we can have edema and primarily in hands,  feet and in the face around the eyes  

and this happens because as the kidney starts  getting really damaged and really leaky now the  

protein spills out of the kidney into the urine  and one of those proteins is called albumin and  

it's the number one blood protein and it acts like  a sponge. It has an osmotic pull that keeps the  

water in the appropriate amount inside the blood  vessel. As we start dropping as we lose albumin  

we also start losing water it just leaks into  the surrounding tissues, causing swelling  

called edema. Back pain is also very common  and there's two ways this can show up  

if it's more diffused if it's like all over  and not in a non-general way in the back  

then it's usually a referred pain and any time  an organ has a lot of distress we can get some  

referred pain around that organ now if this pain  is more sharp if it feels like someone stabbed  

you in the back and won't let go that's probably a  kidney stone and one way that you can distinguish  

this from other severe back pain is that a kidney  stone typically is not gonna ease up no matter  

what you put your body position in. It's like you  just can't get out of that pain because the kidney  

stone is like a glass shard that's just sitting  trying to make its way out through a tiny tube  

and it doesn't matter how you move your body it's  just still gonna hurt. Stage 4 of chronic kidney  

disease now it's getting really really serious  the filtration is close to shutting down 15 to 29  

milliliters per minute. The symptoms are going  to be the exact same ones as in stage three  

but they're going to happen more frequently to  a greater percentage of people to a more severe  

degree. And so all the symptoms become more severe  the damage to the kidney goes from moderate to  

severe and now we're in a very very serious  state. We really want to catch it way way way  

before it ever gets to this because it's rare  that you can do anything about it at this point  

now you're very near kidney failure and they  typically they give you counseling to start  

preparing you for dialysis or if you're fortunate  to get a transplant. You really don't want to get  

to this point stage 5 of chronic kidney disease  now we're pretty close to complete failure.  

We're less than 15 milliliters per minute if it  hasn't shut down completely it's really close.  

And now we're going to start seeing some more  extreme symptoms that you would never get in the  

earlier stages. And breathing is going to suffer  why you're almost drowning in your own lungs  

because this fluid that's leaking out into the  tissues from edema from a lack of albumin now it  

can start filling up your lungs known as chronic  obstructive pulmonary disease. You also get  

things like sleeping trouble you can't sleep  through the night because your body gets so  

toxic your whole nervous system is basically  on fire. You have ammonia breath. Ammonia  

is something you normally get rid of through  the urine but nothing's getting out that way  

so the body is desperately trying to rid of it  any way it can such as through the lungs. And you  

also can find a metallic taste as more toxins  to start building up trying to leave the body  

and overall your toxicity levels just keep  increasing keep increasing and you're going to  

see things like itching, like nausea and vomiting.  Like I said the body should try and get rid of the  

toxins any way it can and at this point obviously  you're not going to have much appetite because the  

body doesn't want anything coming in. It's just  trying to get rid of stuff very commonly you see  

things like muscle cramps because your minerals,  your electrolytes are a mess because your kidneys  

can't regulate any of that anymore. So at  this point there's not a whole lot you can do  

it's really just a matter of time before there's  dialysis kidney transplant or death. Now I think  

you agree that's a pretty unpleasant picture  that's pretty dark none of us would ever want  

to get to that point. So here's the big question  what does it look like before it ever gets  

to any of these stages? Would you agree that that  is the time that you want to do something about it  

so here is the early way that you can  tell. The earliest it can tell it's called  

insulin resistance and if you watch some videos  on this channel you probably recognize that  

but why is it related to the kidney because type 2  diabetes is the number one cause of kidney failure  

and how does it do that because diabetes destroys  tiny delicate blood vessels and the kidney has  

lots of them another place they're common is in  the retina so diabetes is also the number one  

cause of blindness and it can also destroy  fine nerve endings and tiny blood vessels  

in the periphery of the body so it's also  the number one cause of amputations and the  

list goes on and on but if you really want to  take care of your kidneys then start learning  

about insulin resistance and reverse that. If you  enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more  

that one would be a great one to watch next. Thank  you so much for watching. I'll see you next time