natural health

The kidneys are arguably the unsung heroes of the human body. While other high-flying organs and muscles like the brain, liver, and heart bask in the attention of the health and medical world, the kidneys are hard at work keeping you alive. It’s a decidedly unglamorous job. Their role is to filter out all the unwanted compounds (i.e., waste) from your blood and send it over to your bladder for expulsion via urination. You often hear health specialists saying, “It doesn’t matter if you eat or drink too much so and so, as you’ll pee out the excess.” Ever wonder how that happens? Yup, none other than your trusty kidneys.

Without the kidneys, your body would be unable to regulate the balance of sodium and other electrolytes in the bloodstream. The downstream effects of this would be numerous, including an inability to:

• regulate pH
• maintain healthy blood pressure
• assist in red blood cell production, and
• synthesize vitamin D

When your kidneys are overlooked, health suffers

Unsurprisingly, when the kidneys are a bit under the weather, your body suffers. What is surprising, however, is the fact that we often overlook the health of our kidneys and the critical function they perform. And our kidney stats aren’t great. An estimated 14 percent of Americans suffer from chronic kidney disease, with over 660,000 Americans diagnosed with kidney failure every year. That’s over half a million of us accumulating more and more waste in our bloodstream every day.

Given the diet and lifestyle of the average American, most of us are putting some serious pressure on our kidneys. They can only process so much waste at a time, and like the overworked employee, they occasionally need some serious vacation time to unwind and recharge.

What you need is a kidney cleanse. And here are five natural diuretics to help you do just that:

Ginger

Ginger is one of my favorite go-to’s for when I’m feeling a little on the sick side or a natural detox is in order. Ginger gets plenty of attention for its ability to assist in detoxification of the liver, and it performs much the same function on the kidneys. It’s also loaded with plenty of health-supporting vitamins and flavonoids, helping your body to support robust kidney function.

Getting your daily dose of kidney cleansing is super easy. My approach is to either finely chop or grate an inch or so of fresh ginger root, pour boiling water over it and let it steep for five to ten minutes. To really get that diuretic effect and pee out more toxins, drink this ginger two to three times per day. The bonus of this regime is that you’ll be virtually immune to colds and sore tummies!

Dandelion root

Many of the most popular detox teas on the shelves these days contain dandelion root, and for good reason. It’s a powerful natural diuretic that increases urine production and helps both the kidneys and the liver cleanse themselves. But consider yourself warned: dandelion root isn’t for everyone! It took me a while to get used to the super bitter taste of this flowery root, but once I did I learned to love it.

Here’s how to make a kidney-cleansing cup of dandelion root tea:

1. Place 1 to 2 teaspoons of dried dandelion root into a cup, then pour over boiling water.
2. Cover and allow to steep for ten minutes.
3. Once it’s cooled to touch, add in an optional 1/2 teaspoon of raw honey to ease the bitterness and provide a digestive enzyme boost.

Either that or simply pop down to your supermarket or nearest health food store and invest in a pre-fabricated tea that contains plenty of dandelion root!

Parsley

You were bound to see parsley somewhere on this list, am I right? My mother always held great esteem in a good bunch of parsley, declaring that it’s one of nature’s greatest detoxifiers. And it turns out she was bang on!

A 2002 study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology found that similar to dandelion root, the diuretic effect of parsley is mediated by a potassium-sodium imbalance, creating osmotic water flow effect that encourages greater urine excretion.

That’s the science behind it, anyway. All you really need to know is how to get the most kiddy-supporting effects from that bunch of parsley. You could always make a tea by pouring boiling water over the fresh leaves and stalks and allowing the mixture to steep, but my favorite way to enjoy it is in a delicious green smoothie.

Personally, I don’t see any real need to specifying any particular ingredients for your green smoothie. You can throw almost anything in there, as long as you chuck in a good-sized handful of parsley to get that diuretic effect! Some of my go-to ingredients include raw organic milk (or full-fat coconut milk), frozen berries, banana, cinnamon, mint, and spinach.

Marshmallow root

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that marshmallow root is a powerful diuretic that can be used to cleanse the kidneys. Why? Because I’m absolutely obsessed with marshmallows! I buy a large bag of ground marshmallow root from my local health food store every couple of weeks, and along with gelatin, vanilla, and honey, I make the most delicious, nutritious marshmallows… not the fake kinds you get from the supermarket, which don’t actually contain any actual marshmallow root!

In addition to helping cleanse the kidneys of excess toxins, marshmallow root has also long been used to treat coughs and colds, increase saliva production, treat bacterial infections, and protect against free-radical damage. It’s an all-around good guy when it comes to your health, but if you don’t have the time to make real marshmallows, simply make marshmallow root tea using the same methods I’ve listed for the above herbs.

Celery

If you’re in the habit of buying detox smoothies or juices from your local “hip” cafe, you’ll probably already know that celery is almost always a key ingredient. There’s a reason for that: celery is a natural diuretic, which as we know aids in the removal of toxins from the body and increases urination. It also contains specific nutrients that stimulate the kidneys and prevent kidney infections.

Celery is a pretty darn versatile vegetable and can be enjoyed in a wide variety of ways. Whenever I’m hungry, I’ll grab a stick of celery and munch happily away on it, or dip it in some organic peanut butter for an ultra-tasty snack. It also makes a great base for juices and green smoothies jazz up a boring salad and is great in soup. There’s really no excuse!

-The Backyard Vitality Team

 

The documentary Statin Nation: The Great Cholesterol Cover-Up, presented by Rethink Productions, provides strong evidence that the widely-believed ideology that high cholesterol leads to heart disease is completely false. It details how the scientific groundwork that this belief is based upon was heavily manipulated from the start and presents large-scale studies that clearly show the lack of connection between cholesterol levels and heart disease.

In short, mounting evidence shows that our focus on lowering cholesterol, and our growing reliance on statins, a class of cholesterol-lowering pharmaceuticals, is both drawing research focus away from investigating the actual causes of heart disease, and, literally killing us.

The idea that saturated fats and high cholesterol levels cause heart disease, nicknamed the ‘diet-heart hypothesis,’ was invented by Ancel Keys, a 20th-century physiologist and advisor to the Department of Defense during World War II.

It was Keys, who had a dark history of performing inhumane medical experiments, that came up with the Seven Countries Study, which shows a linear relationship between high cholesterol levels in seven countries, and corresponding high rates of heart disease.

The graph Keys drew shows that in his chosen seven countries, the higher the cholesterol levels, the higher the rate of heart disease was in that country. However, he omitted 22 countries from his graph, which when added, showed that the relationship was not linear at all.

Many countries that he failed to include had high cholesterol levels, and low rates of heart disease. Due to his selective omissions, the Seven Countries Study was an entirely fraudulent representation that created an assumed relationship between cholesterol and heart disease where none actually existed.

Statin Nation interviews medical experts from a variety of fields, who each present a wide array of large-scale studies showing that there is no evidence-based relationship between high cholesterol and heart disease at all.

In fact, studies have found that LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol is actually LOWER in heart disease patients than in the general population, and also that low cholesterol levels are associated with earlier death. Additionally, a study performed in Japan found that those with the lowest cholesterol levels had a three-fold higher likelihood of dying of cancer.

Sweden, a nation that has rejected the diet-heart hypothesis and instead has embraced a low-carb, high-fat diet, is reporting significant improvements in the overall health of its citizens.

Today, over 40 million people worldwide take prescription statins to lower their levels of LDL cholesterol. However, in doing so, important cellular functions are severely compromised.

HDL and LDL cholesterols serve as carriers of essential CoQ10, beta carotene, and vitamin E to the mitochondria, the energy source of cells. CoQ10 is essential to the functioning of heart muscles, and cholesterol itself is vital for the body’s overall function, including brain function and hormonal stability.

When cholesterol is prevented from doing its job, the body is not able to work as it should. Numerous statin patients testify that they developed a number of new health conditions when they started taking statins, which gradually improved when statin use was stopped.

Some of the most common was severe memory impairment, a loss of energy, depression, muscle pain, and eye problems. Researchers estimate that only about 1 in 200 adverse effects of statins are actually reported by physicians.

One of the most frightening facts about statins is that in 75 percent of cases, they are prescribed to healthy individuals for preventative purposes, as a ‘primary prevention’ measure against heart disease. However, overwhelming research shows that using statins for primary prevention does nothing to increase life expectancy.

Studies show that the instances of heart attacks in statin patients were somewhat lower, but this was canceled out by the other diseases that occurred in these patients while on statins, very likely caused by the statins themselves due to their inhibition of cellular function and their blockage of vital nutrients.

In the 25 percent of patients prescribed statins after a cardiac event, stroke, or surgical heart intervention, the statins did increase life expectancy slightly. However, when the statistics were compiled, the life expectancy of these patients rose by only 14 days.

Statins are one of the most widely prescribed classes of drugs in the world and provide the pharmaceutical industry with billions of dollars in profits each year. Dr. John Abramson of Harvard Medical School explains how the scientific evidence backing statin use is entirely influenced by commercial interests.

In an interview, he details how starting in the Reagan administration, government funding for research in the public interest was significantly cut, and how the great majority of funding for research now comes from the drug companies themselves.

“You have 5 times better odds of getting the results you want if you pay for the science,” Dr. Abramson states. “The real data is not available to the editors of the journal or the peer reviewers.”

One example of how the pharmaceutical companies with a commercial interest in statins doctored studies supporting their use is the Jupiter Trial. Several years ago, this extremely popular study presented that statins reduce the risk of heart attacks by 54 percent, causing doctors worldwide to prescribe them in huge numbers.

However, Dr. Abramson explains that this was a ‘relative percentage,’ and when the actual numbers were analyzed, it was discovered that heart attacks were only reduced by 0.48 percent.

Nevertheless, the media took the Jupiter Trial as fact, and widely reported the success of statins. According to Dr. Abramson, “the only media in the United States that got it right was that renowned medical expert Dr. Stephen Colbert, who said, ‘the Jupiter Trial was a great breakthrough in figuring out how to get people to take drugs who don’t need them.’”

Heart disease is a serious problem worldwide, causing 7.8 million deaths in 2008. As the death toll continues to rise, it is no surprise that people are afraid, and wish to take preventative measures.

However, increasing evidence shows that lowering cholesterol is not the answer, and the use of statins causes great harm with very questionable benefits, at best. Statin Nation proposes a strong link between stress levels and heart disease, a link that demands further study, as it may hold the key to saving a great number of lives.

As far as statins, Dr. Abramson puts it bluntly: “hopefully when we look back on this era, and we see the fraud that went on in misleading physicians about the scientific evidence, we’ll see that this stands as organized crime…. of a higher-tech nature than robbing banks with machine guns. But there’s a lot more money in this, and in fact, many, many more people get hurt.”

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride agrees. She urges us to rethink our obsession with cholesterol. “The last thing you want to do is interfere with your blood levels of cholesterol. Your body knows what it is doing. Whatever level of cholesterol you have in your blood at that moment is the right level for you. Don’t mess around with it.”

-The Backyard Vitality Team