Kidney Day Quotes

at first I thought you were just using me" she said "I definitely am." I just wasn't sure for what. "Asshole!" she said, and punched me in the side. And she laughed as my kidney began to hemorrhage. That's the beauty of honesty. Everyones so unused to hearing it they just assume you're kidding, and you get to feel very good and forthcoming without suffering any consequences except for traces of blood in your urine for the next day or two.

Imagine saying to someone, “I have a kidney problem, and I’m having a lot of bad days lately.” Nothing but sympathy, right? “What’s wrong?” “My mom had that!” “Text me a pic of the ultrasound!” Then pretend to say, “I have severe depression and anxiety, and I’m having a lot of bad days lately.” They just look at you like you’re broken, right? Unfixable. Inherently flawed. Maybe not someone they want to hang around as much? Yeah, society sucks.

What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania. “She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—” “Where did she get it from?” “Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.” Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut. Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.” Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound. He was barely breathing. “The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure, told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage, to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?

The kidney was removed with great skill. We have an image of the kidney taken from that broadcast. Viewers are advised that the following image is quite graphic, and-" "I am getting so sick of looking at this kidney," I said. "It's a farce," Jazza replied. "They act like they're shocked and horrified, and then they show it off twenty times a day." "Have you seen the singing kidney video?" I asked. "Ugh. No." "It's really funny. You should watch it.

Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I Don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk-or why. It sounds like a twelve-step mantra and I'm not in Anything Anonymous, though to read some of the crap they write about me, you'd think I should be. I have the kind of like a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.

Delaying a meal brings about symptoms most people call "hunger." These symptoms include abdominal cramping, weakness, and feeling ill-the same as during drug withdrawal. This is not hunger. Our dietary habits, especially eating animal-protein-rich foods three times a day, are so stressful to the detoxification system in our liver and kidneys that we start to get withdrawal, or detoxification, symptoms the minute we aren't busy processing such food. Real hunger is not that uncomfortable.

When he arrived, he found that the two most important women in his life—his mother and his young wife—were dying. At 3:00 a.m. on February 14, Valentine’s Day, Martha Roosevelt, still a vibrant, dark-haired Southern belle at forty-six, died of typhoid fever. Eleven hours later, her daughter-in-law, Alice Lee Roosevelt, who had given birth to Theodore’s first child just two days before, succumbed to Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder. That night, in his diary, Roosevelt marked the date with a large black “X” and a single anguished entry: “The light has gone out of my life.

We have body clocks not just in the brain but all over—in our pancreas, liver, heart, kidneys, fatty tissue, muscle, virtually everywhere—and these operate to their own timetables, dictating when hormones are released or organs are busiest or most relaxed. Your reflexes, for instance, are at their sharpest in mid-afternoon, while blood pressure peaks toward evening. Men tend to pump more testosterone early in the morning than later in the day.

Arabella squinted back. “You’re almost nine months pregnant. Shouldn’t you be soft, and happy, and glowing? When are we gonna see some glow?” Arabella clearly had a death wish. Nevada finished her pickle spear and licked honey off her fingertips. “I’m the size of a house, the kid inside me keeps kicking me in the kidneys, I have to pee every five minutes, my legs cramp, and I can’t get out of bed by myself. I have to roll to the side like a walrus, which is harder right now since my husband is somewhere in the Russian Empire and he isn’t there to steady me. And how was your day of being young, beautiful, skinny, and carefree? Why aren’t you glowing?

If you eat a destroying angel, for the rest of the day you’ll feel fine. Later that night, or the next morning, you’ll start exhibiting cholera-like symptoms—vomiting, abdominal pain, and severe diarrhea. Then you start to feel better. At the point where you start to feel better, the damage is probably irreversible. Amanita mushrooms contain amatoxin, which binds to an enzyme that is used to read information from DNA. It hobbles the enzyme, effectively interrupting the process by which cells follow DNA’s instructions. Amatoxin causes irreversible damage to whatever cells it collects in. Since most of your body is made of cells,4 this is bad. Death is generally caused by liver or kidney failure, since those are the first sensitive organs in which the toxin accumulates. Sometimes intensive care and a liver transplant can be enough to save a patient, but a sizable percentage of those who eat Amanita mushrooms die.

Imagine saying to someone, “I have a kidney problem, and I’m having a lot of bad days lately.” Nothing but sympathy, right? “What’s wrong?” “My mom had that!” “Text me a pic of the ultrasound!” Then pretend to say, “I have severe depression and anxiety, and I’m having a lot of bad days lately.” They just look at you like you’re broken, right? Unfixable. Inherently flawed. Maybe not someone they want to hang around as much? Yeah, society sucks. My mental problems made me feel ashamed. I felt like I had to hide them until I could “work through it” on my own. Which I never did, because I didn’t know how. And I didn’t feel brave enough to make fixing my mind a priority because I didn’t think anyone would understand.

H appears no different from the corpses already here. But H is different. She has made three sick people well. She has brought them extra time on Earth. To be able as a dead person to make a gift of this magnitude is phenomenal. Most people don't manage this sort of thing while they're alive. Cadavers like H are the dead's heroes. It is astounding to me and achingly sad that with 80,000 people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more than half the people in the position H's family was in will say no, will choose to burn those organs or let them rot. We abide the surgeon's scalpel to save our own lives, our loved one's lives, but not to save a stranger's life. H has no heart but heartless is the last thing you'd call her.

Owing to the circumstances of my grandmother’s death, the subject interested me, and I had recently read in a book by a great specialist that perspiration was injurious to the kidneys, by making moisture pass through the skin when its proper outlet was elsewhere. I thought with regret of those dog-days at the time of my grandmother’s death, and was inclined to blame them for it. I did not mention this to Dr. E——but of his own accord he said to me: “The advantage of this very hot weather in which perspiration is abundant is that the kidney is correspondingly relieved.” Medicine is not an exact science.

It's classical mythology, Cohen," said the minstrel. "I thought everyone knew. He was chained to a rock for eternity and every day an eagle comes and pecks out his liver." "Is that true?" "It's mentioned in many of the classic texts." "I'm not much of a reader," said Cohen. "Chained to a rock? For a first offence? He's still there?" "Eternity isn't finished yet, Cohen." "He must've had a big liver!" "It grows again every night, according to the legend," said the minstrel. "I wish my kidneys did," said Cohen.

He remembered the black sands beach along California’s lost coast where his mother finally gave up the fight. He hadn’t even realized she’d been injured so badly after running into his father in Seattle. She’d bled most of the way though Oregon, but he hadn’t thought it was serious. He hadn’t known she was bleeding out on the inside, a kidney and her liver ruptured, her intestines bruised beyond repair. […] They stopped six feet from the tide and she made him repeat every promise she’d ever dragged out of him: don’t look back, don’t slow down, and don’t trust anyone. Be anyone but himself, and never be anyone for too long. By the time Neil understood she was saying goodbye, it was too late. She died gasping for one more breath, panting with something that might have been words or his name or fear. Neil could still feel her fingernails digging into his arms as she fought not to slip away, and the memory left him shaking all over. Her abdomen felt like stone when he touched her, swollen and hard. He tried pulling her from her seat only once, but the sound of her dried blood ripping off the vinyl like Velcro killed him. […] He hadn’t cried when the flames caught, and he hadn’t flinched when he pulled her cooling bones out. […] By the time he found the highway again he was numb with shock, and he lasted another day before he fell to his knees on the roadside and puked his guts out.

His addiction scares me sometimes. Alcoholism can destroy livers and kidneys, and one day, he may not wake up from a night of bingeing. But how

Everyone has had that inkling, right? Like for some reason you are just not meant to pair. And on your good days, you think, hey, it’s because my heart is too big to get through anyone’s tunnel. And on your bad days, you think it’s because my heart is this tiny petrified piece of shit and it passes through other people like a kidney stone. Like it’s either nothing or it causes excruciating pain.” “Zach,

Medical journals from 1905 to 1915 are rife with articles on “vibratory massage” and the many things it cures. Weakened hearts and floating kidneys. Hysterical cramp of the esophagus and catarrh of the inner ear. Deafness, cancer, bad eyesight. And lots and lots of prostate problems. A Dr. Courtney W. Shropshire, writing in 1912, was impressed to note that by means of “a special prostatic applicator, well lubricated, attached to the vibrator, introduced to the rectum” he was “able to empty the seminal vesicles of their secretions.” Indeedy. Shropshire’s patients returned every other day for treatment, no doubt also developing a relationship with the vibration machine.

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That’s it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I’d give a kidney to and best guy friends I’d ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That’s being a girl. That’s being a person. It’s the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I’m happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome.

Maj Thapa rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and served till he retired. He continued to attend almost all the Republic Day parades from 1964 to 2004. Sick and undergoing dialysis for kidney failure in Delhi, Lt Col Thapa would slip in and out of consciousness in his last year. Poornima, who was taking care of him, pleaded with him to not attend the parade that year, but he refused gently yet firmly. ‘When I wear my uniform and go for the parade, I represent my soldiers; those men who fought a war with me. I cannot let them down,’ he told her. Though he could hardly stand for long or even stay alert, he put on his uniform, pinned on his PVC, tilted his Gorkha hat at the perfect angle and went for the parade, remembers Poornima. Through sheer willpower, he managed to stand in the jeep till he had saluted the President. After that, he sat down. That would be the last Republic Day parade he would attend. On 5 September 2005, Lt Col Thapa died of kidney failure. He was 77 years old.

In Murakami's short story 'The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day,' the main character is a writer. In describing the act of writing to a tightrope walker, he says, 'What a writer is *supposed* to do is observe and observe and observe again, and put off making judgments to the last possible moment.' I think that is a beautiful description of writing; it lets the world be, but also there is a moment, finally, of some kind of opinion. There is that moment, but to hold it off is a lovely and worthwhile goal.

The day before, they had started eating the saltwater-damaged bread. The bread, which they had carefully dried in the sun, now contained all the salt of seawater but not, of course, the water. Already severely dehydrated, the men were, in effect, pouring gasoline on the fire of their thirsts—forcing their kidneys to extract additional fluid from their bodies to excrete the salt. They were beginning to suffer from a condition known as hypernatremia, in which an excessive amount of sodium can bring on convulsions.

―When you kick out for yourself, Stephen―as I daresay you will one of these days―rememer, whatever you do, to mix with gentlemen. When I was a young fellow I tell you I enjoyed myself. I mixed with fine decent fellows. Everyone of us could lo something. One fellow had a good voice, another fellow was a good actor, another could sing a good comic song, another was a good oarsman or a good racket player, another could tell a good story and so on. We kept the ball rolling anyhow and enjoyed ourselves and saw a bit of life and we were none the worse of it either. But we were all gentlemen, Stephen―at least I hope we were―and bloody good honest Irishmen too. That's the kind of fellows I want you to associate with, fellows of the right kidney. I'm talking to you as a friend, Stephen. I don't believe a son should be afraid of his father. No, I treat you as your grandfather treated me when I was a young chap. We were more like brothers than father and son. I`ll never forget the first day he caught me smoking. I was standing at the end of the South Terrace one day with some maneens like myself and sure we thought we were grand fellows because we had pipes stuck in the corners of our mouths. Suddenly the governor passed. He didn't say a word, or stop even. But the next day, Sunday, we were out for a walk together and when we were coming home he took out his cigar case and said:―By the by, Simon, I didn't know you smoked, or something like that.―Of course I tried to carry it off as best I could.―If you want a good smoke, he said, try one of these cigars. An American captain made me a present of them last night in Queenstown.

His addiction scares me sometimes. Alcoholism can destroy livers and kidneys, and one day, he may not wake up from a night of bingeing. But how can I tell him to stop? How can I judge him when I am nowhere near ready to let go of my crutch? So for right now, this is the best I can do.

She gets down on her knees to demonstrate, her small clenched fist rising and falling, and her mimicry makes me see myself as I was: utterly unraveling, screaming and pounding the floor. The news is like a vicious uprooting. I am yanked away from the world I have known since childhood. And I am resistant: my father read the newspaper that afternoon, he joked with Okey about shaving before his appointment with the kidney specialist in Onitsha the next day, he discussed his hospital test results on the phone with my sister Ijeoma, who is a doctor—and so how can this be?

Feeling Faint Issue: I’m happy losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet, but I’m always tired, get light headed when I stand up, and if I exercise for more than 10 minutes I feel like I’m going to pass out. Response: Congratulations on your weight loss success, and with just a small adjustment to your diet, you can say goodbye to your weakness and fatigue. The solution is salt…a bit more salt to be specific. This may sound like we’re crazy when many experts argue that we should all eat less salt, however these are the same experts who tell us that eating lots of carbohydrates and sugar is OK. But what they don’t tell you is that your body functions very differently when you are keto-adapted. When you restrict carbs for a week or two, your kidneys switch from retaining salt to rapidly excreting it, along with a fair amount of stored water. This salt and water loss explains why many people experience rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks on a low carbohydrate diet. Ridding your body of this excess salt and water is a good thing, but only up to a point. After that, if you don’t replace some of the ongoing sodium excretion, the associated water loss can compromise your circulation The end result is lightheadedness when you stand up quickly or fatigue if you exercise enough to get ‘warmed up’. Other common side effects of carbohydrate restriction that go away with a pinch of added salt include headache and constipation; and over the long term it also helps the body maintain its muscles. The best solution is to include 1 or 2 cups of bouillon or broth in your daily schedule. This adds only 1-2 grams of sodium to your daily intake, and your ketoadapted metabolism insures that you pass it right on through within a matter of hours (allaying any fears you might have of salt buildup in your system). This rapid clearance also means that on days that you exercise, take one dose of broth or bouillon within the hour before you start.

We advise tea for the whole nation and for every nation. We advise men and women to drink tea daily; hour by hour if possible; beginning with ten cups a day, and increasing the dose to the utmost quantity that the stomach can contain and the kidneys eliminate. [Quoting Dr. Cornelius Buntekuh, Dutch physician in the pay of the Dutch East India Company, c. 1680]

It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more than half of the people in the position H’s family was in will say no, will choose to burn those organs or let them rot. We abide the surgeon’s scalpel to save our own lives, our loved ones’ lives, but not to save a stranger’s life. H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you’d call her.

Without carbohydrates, the body will use protein and fat as fuel—this is called ketosis. When your body is in the metabolic state of ketosis, it turns fat into ketones in the liver, which will supply energy instead of glucose, as if you were fasting. You may have heard of the ketogenic diet, in fact, which focuses on protein and fat intake, while maintaining a very low carbohydrate intake. This diet, newly trendy, may have benefits such as weight loss and improved blood sugar levels. However, it is very restrictive; eliminating healthy fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other nutritious complex carbohydrates seems unnecessary and no fun. Also, we don’t know the long-term effects of ketosis (though if you do go too long without any carbs, it can lead to heart or kidney disease). What I do know, after years of studying nutrition, is that any diet that is very restrictive or eliminates entire food groups can be unrealistic and difficult to sustain. That’s why Zero Sugar Diet eliminates added sugars—but allows natural ones. Pretty sweet deal.

Yes. Do you remember?” Once more a shrug of the shoulders. “How should I remember? We have questioned thousands—” “Questioned! Beaten into unconsciousness, kidneys crushed, bones broken, thrown into cellars like sacks, dragged up again, faces torn, testicles crushed—that was what you called questioning! The hot frightful moaning of those who were no longer able to cry—questioned! The whimpering between unconsciousness and consciousness, kicks in the belly, rubber clubs, whips—yes, all that you innocently called ‘questioning’!” “Don’t move your hands! Or I’ll shoot you down! Do you remember little Max Rosenberg who lay beside me in the cellar with his torn body and who tried to smash his head on the cement wall to keep from being questioned again—questioned, why? Because he was a democrat! And Willmann who passed blood and had no teeth and only one eye left after he had been questioned by you for two hours—questioned, why? Because he was a Catholic and did not believe your Fuehrer was the new Messiah. And Riesenfeld whose head and back looked like raw lumps of flesh and who implored us to bite open his arteries because he was toothless and no longer able to do it himself after he had been questioned by you—questioned, why? Because he was against war and did not believe that culture is most perfectly expressed by bombs and flame throwers. Questioned! Thousands have been questioned, yes—don’t move your hands, you swine! And now finally I’ve got you and we are driving to a house with thick walls and we will be all alone and I’ll question you—slowly, slowly, for days, the Rosenberg treatment

Dear patient (first name, last name)! You are presently located in our experimental state hospital. The measures taken to save your life were drastic, extremely drastic (circle one). Our finest surgeons, availing themselves of the very latest achievements of modern medicine, performed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten operations (circle one) on you. They were forced, acting wholly in your interest to replace certain parts of your organism with parts obtained from other persons, in strict accordance with Federal Law (Rev. Stat. Comm. 1-989/0-001/89/1). The notice you are now reading was thoughtfully prepared in order to help you make the best possible adjustment to these new if somewhat unexpected circumstances in your life, which, we hasten to remind you, we have saved. Although it was found necessary to remove your arms, legs, spine, skill, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, other (circle one or more), rest assured that these mortal remains were disposed of in a manner fully in keeping with the dictates of your religion; they were, with the proper ritual, interred, embalmed, mummified, buried at sea, cremated with the ashes scattered in the wind—preserved in an urn—thrown in the garbage (circle one). The new form in which you will henceforth lead a happy and healthy existence may possibly occasion you some surprise, but we promise that in time you will become, as indeed all our dear patients do, quite accustomed to it We have supplemented your organism with the very best, the best, perfectly functional, adequate, the only available (circle one) organs at our disposal, and they are fully guaranteed to last a year, six months, three months, three weeks, six days (circle one).

Jules had listened in on nearly every word exchanged while they’d been back there together, and it was more than obvious that Max had yet to pull Gina into his arms and do his imitation of the Han Solo and Princess Leia big-moment kiss from The Empire Strikes Back. Maybe when Jules and the E-man walked out of the garage and climbed into that ancient Escort—which turned out to be part of the Testa fleet-Max would take the opportunity to plant a big, wet one on this woman that he still so obviously adored. Or maybe not. “Sweetie, I love the haircut,” Jules told Gina as he gave Max back his cell phone. “You look fabulous for a woman who’s been dead for five days.” “What?” she said, but it was time to go. “Max’ll fill you in,” he said. There. There was no way Max was going to be table to tell Gina about receiving the report of her death without getting a little misty-eyed. At which point Gina would, at the very least, throw her arms around him. If Max couldn’t manage to turn that into a truth-revealing kiss, he didn’t deserve the woman. “Ow,” he added as Emilio pressed his weapon into Jules’s kidney. “Sorry,” Emilio managed to put the right amount of apology into his voice, but he was obviously so stressed that he didn’t quite get the right facial expression to match. It was pretty odd. Particularly when he jabbed Jules again. “Let’s go.” Wow, wasn’t this going to be fun? Max, meanwhile, had stepped protectively in front of Gina. He caught and held Jules’s gaze. “We’ll wait for your call.” Silently, he sent another message entirely. If Emilio gave Jules any trouble, he should shoot him. Never mind the fact that Emilio was the one with the drawn weapon. Never mind that Jules’s hands were out and empty, and that he’d have a major bullet hole in his body if he so much as put said hands near his pockets.

Eat either three regular-size meals a day or four or five smaller meals. Do not skip meals or go more than six waking hours without eating. 2. Eat liberally of combinations of fat and protein in the form of poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs and red meat, as well as of pure, natural fat in the form of butter, mayonnaise, olive oil, safflower, sunflower and other vegetable oils (preferably expeller-pressed or cold-pressed). 3. Eat no more than 20 grams a day of carbohydrate, most of which must come in the form of salad greens and other vegetables. You can eat approximately three cups-loosely packed-of salad, or two cups of salad plus one cup of other vegetables (see the list of acceptable vegetables on page 110). 4. Eat absolutely no fruit, bread, pasta, grains, starchy vegetables or dairy products other than cheese, cream or butter. Do not eat nuts or seeds in the first two weeks. Foods that combine protein and carbohydrates, such as chickpeas, kidney beans and other legumes, are not permitted at this time. 5. Eat nothing that is not on the acceptable foods list. And that means absolutely nothing! Your "just this one taste won't hurt" rationalization is the kiss of failure during this phase of Atkins. 6. Adjust the quantity you eat to suit your appetite, especially as it decreases. When hungry, eat the amount that makes you feel satisfied but not stuffed. When not hungry, eat a small controlled carbohydrate snack to accompany your nutritional supplements. 7. Don't assume any food is low in carbohydrate-instead read labels! Check the carb count (it's on every package) or use the carbohydrate gram counter in this book. 8. Eat out as often as you wish but be on guard for hidden carbs in gravies, sauces and dressings. Gravy is often made with flour or cornstarch, and sugar is sometimes an ingredient in salad dressing. 9. Avoid foods or drinks sweetened with aspartame. Instead, use sucralose or saccharin. Be sure to count each packet of any of these as 1 gram of carbs. 10. Avoid coffee, tea and soft drinks that contain caffeine. Excessive caffeine has been shown to cause low blood sugar, which can make you crave sugar. 11. Drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day to hydrate your body, avoid constipation and flush out the by-products of burning fat. 12. If you are constipated, mix a tablespoon or more of psyllium husks in a cup or more of water and drink daily. Or mix ground flaxseed into a shake or sprinkle wheat bran on a salad or vegetables.

For to conceive the sum of Joseph’s efforts for master and steward one must add that he had every evening to say good-night to Mont-kaw, and every night in different phrases. For that service he had originally been bought; and Mont-kaw had been too favourably impressed with the first instance to forgo the pleasure in the sequel. He was a poor sleeper, as the pouches under his eyes betrayed. Only hardly did the overburdened brain relax from the occupations of the day and find the good highway to slumber. The kidneys too were bad and helped to make the transit difficult. So that he could well use a few sweet words and mellifluous murmurings at the end of the day. Thus Joseph might never neglect to come before him at night and drop soothing speech in his ears—which, besides everything else, had to be prepared during the day, for it must have comeliness of form.

Dream Meditation Practices are best performed in an isolated (close to nature) chamber that is clean and dry. Diet should be modified before practice so that solid food is reduced and a sense of lightness is obtained. This meditation is best done after bathing; the student can be nude or wear a light robe. Begin by lying on your back. Focus your mind on the lower tan tien. Summon the spirits residing in the organs by chanting their names in the order of the creation cycle: Houhou or Shen (heart), Beibei or Yi (spleen), Yanyan or Po (lungs), Fu Fu or Zhi (kidneys), and Jianjian or Hun (liver).20 Repeat the chanting and gathering until a bright light and warmth appear in the lower tan tien. Opening this place will automatically open the Microcosmic Orbit. Coordinate your breathing with this meditation to assist the process: inhaling stimulates the kidneys and liver, while exhaling moves the heart and lungs to the centerpoint—the stomach and spleen. Bring the merged five spirits from the lower tan tien (you can also include the other four spirits) up to the heart, and then to the Crystal Palace (also known as the Divine Palace or Hall of Light). The team of merged spirits—now the Yuan Shen or Original Spirit—can exit via the crown. Being conscious during the whole dream, or alternatively remembering the dream after waking, completes the process. You also have the choice of practicing meditation during your dream state. Process the content of the dream during the day, taking any actions in the material world that are now necessary. Remember that one of our goals with the Kan and Li practice is to merge the everyday mind with your dream landscape and meditation. Fusion of these three minds (different from the three tan tiens) is a feature of the developing sage. Ideally, dreaming can include the practice of Microcosmic Orbit, Fusion, and even Kan and Li.

Try to eat at least three of these foods per day—the more the better—rotating your consumption so that in a given week or two, you get all of these foods into your system. Wild blueberries: help restore the central nervous system and flush EBV neurotoxins out of the liver. Celery: strengthens hydrochloric acid in the gut and provides mineral salts to the central nervous system. Sprouts: high in zinc and selenium to strengthen the immune system against EBV. Asparagus: cleanses the liver and spleen; strengthens the pancreas. Spinach: creates an alkaline environment in the body and provides highly absorbable micronutrients to the nervous system. Cilantro: removes heavy metals such as mercury and lead, which are favored foods of EBV. Parsley: removes high levels of copper and aluminum, which feed EBV. Coconut oil: antiviral and acts as an anti-inflammatory. Garlic: antiviral and antibacterial that defends against EBV. Ginger: helps with nutrient assimilation and relieves spasms associated with EBV. Raspberries: rich in antioxidants to remove free radicals from the organs and bloodstream. Lettuce: stimulates peristaltic action in the intestinal tract and helps cleanse EBV from the liver. Papayas: restore the central nervous system; strengthen and rebuild hydrochloric acid in the gut. Apricots: immune system rebuilders that also strengthen the blood. Pomegranates: help detox and cleanse the blood as well as the lymphatic system. Grapefruit: rich source of bioflavonoids and calcium to support the immune system and flush toxins out of the body. Kale: high in specific alkaloids that protect against viruses such as EBV. Sweet potatoes: help cleanse and detox the liver from EBV byproducts and toxins. Cucumbers: strengthen the adrenals and kidneys and flush neurotoxins out of the bloodstream. Fennel: contains strong antiviral compounds to fight off EBV. Healing Herbs and Supplements

In that moment, I finally understood for the first time why -- throughout this journey -- I kept thinking about that day when I got terribly sick in rural Vietnam. When I yelled for drugs to stop my worst symptoms -- the extreme room-spinning nausea -- the doctor told me: "You need your nausea. It is a message, and we must listen to the message. It will tell us what is wrong with you." If i had ignored or silenced that symptom, my kidneys would have failed, and I would have died. You need your nausea. You need your pain. It is a message, and you must listen to the message. All these depressed and anxious people, all over the world -- they are giving us a message. They are telling us something has gone wrong with the way we live. We need to stop trying to muffle or silence or pathologize that pain. Instead, we need to listen to it, and honor it. It is only when we listen to our pain that we can follow it back to its source -- and only there, where we can see its true causes, can we begin to overcome it.

He listened with icy calm, and without replying, to my mother’s final objections, and as he left us without having condescended to explain the reasons for this course of treatment, my parents concluded that it had no bearing on my case, and would weaken me to no purpose, and so they did not make me try it. Naturally they sought to conceal their disobedience from the Professor, and to make sure of it avoided all the houses in which they might have run across him. Then, as my health deteriorated, they decided to make me follow Cottard’s prescriptions to the letter; in three days my rattle and cough had ceased, I could breathe freely. Whereupon we realised that Cottard, while finding, as he told us later on, that I was distinctly asthmatic, and above all “batty,” had discerned that what was really the matter with me at the moment was toxaemia, and that by loosening my liver and washing out my kidneys he would clear my bronchial tubes and thus give me back my breath, my sleep and my strength. And we realised that this imbecile was a great physician.

In the past, people practiced the Tao, the Way of Life. They understood the principle of balance as represented by the transformations of the energies of the universe. They formulated exercises to promote energy flow to harmonize themselves within the universe. They ate a balanced diet at regular times, arose and retired at regular hours, avoided over stressing their bodies and minds, and refrained from overindulgence of all kinds. They maintained well-being of body and mind; thus, it is not surprising that they lived over one hundred years.“These days, people have changed their way of life. They drink wine as though it were water, indulge excessively in destructive activities, drain their jing – the body’s essence that is stored in the Kidneys – and deplete their qi. They do not know the secret of conserving their energy and vitality. Seeking emotional excitement and momentary pleasures, people disregard the natural rhythm of the universe. They fail to regulate their lifestyle and diet, and sleep improperly. So it is not surprising that they look old at fifty and die soon after.

Sunday brunch is an easy, pleasant way to entertain a largish group, especially in the country. Americans who overslept invented the word brunch, but the ingredients and the casual atmosphere bear a strong resemblance to breakfast in an English country house or to a French midnight supper. The choice of menu can be as wide as the imagination. Practically anything goes — from hearty breakfast dishes such as filled omelettes, kidneys, chicken livers and bacon, sausages, and eggs Benedict. Something pretty in aspic, or a salmon mousse in a fish-shaped mold, makes a lovely centerpiece. Best of all, most of the meal can be prepared way ahead of time and it can be managed without outside help — if, that is, the hostess puts in a lot of work the day before and early that morning. People can wander in when they feel like it, so there’s no need to tint this one. Drinks are no problem. A big punch bowl with chunks of fresh fruit makes a nice starter, and mixings for bloody Marys, screwdrivers, or bullshots can be left on a table for guests to serve themselves. Of course there should be a big pot of very good coffee.

Daily Fertility Protocol GI cleanse formula on days 1–10: Take 1 to 3 a day to cleanse the candida. Probiotic defense formula on days 11–15: Take 1 capsule, three times a day to feed your body the good bacteria and support your immune system. Detoxification complex: 2 a day to help nourish and detox body filters, liver, kidney, spleen. Detoxification gel caps: 2 a day to help open up the liver ducts so it doesn’t become clogged with the cleansing you are about to do. Lemon essential oil in all your water to assist liver in its work. Basic vitality supplements: Take as directed to nourish your body with the perfect amount of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and omega 3s it needs. Women’s estrogen complex: 1 a day to help eliminate bad estrogens in your body. Bone complex: 4 a day for bone and hormone support. Grapefruit essential oil: 10 to 15 drops under tongue or in veggie capsule once a day to help balance progesterone. You can split this up into a dose in the morning and another in the evening. Women’s monthly blend: Apply to low abdomen, wrists, and back of neck to help balance hormones and mood swings. Avoid sugar, grains, dairy, fruit juice, and caffeine. Follow this protocol until pregnant, then discontinue GI cleansing complex and continue everything else.

We always thought it was cool that my mom only had boys, you know? Doug said, for once dropping his gangsta accent. “Who knew that we actually needed a sister?” Megan looked down at her hands. “Oh, man! Are you gonna go all blubbery on my ass?” Doug asked. Megan laughed. “No.” “So are you comin’ back with me or what?” Megan lifted her head and sighed. “I have a few conditions.” “Shoulda known,” Doug said, rolling his eyes. “First of all, I did not sign up for a truck stop bathroom,” Megan said. “You guys need to start cleaning up after yourselves in there. No more blood, no more hair, no more random stains that I don’t even want identified.” “All right, all right,” Doug said. “That it?” “Hardly,” Megan said. “I want a hands-off rule on all my stuff. Including my bike.” “Okay…” “And I want everyone to stop calling me Megan C Cups behind my back.” Doug’s jaw went slack as he flushed. “How did you know about that?” Megan raised her eyebrows. “All right, fine. Is that all?” Doug said. “You think you can do these things for me?” Megan asked. “Well, I may have to put the beatdown on a few people, but yeah. No problem,” Doug said casually. “Don’t beat down anybody,” Megan said. “Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Doug said, cracking his knuckles comically. “Okay,” Megan said, standing. For the first time all day, she felt calm--certain. “I’ll come back.” “Thank God!” Doug said. “Let’s get the hell outta this place.” “Oh, wait! One more thing,” Megan said, stopping Doug in his tracks. His shoulders slumped and he turned around. “What? You want my kidney?” “I want in on the next ultimate Frisbee game,” Megan said. Doug grinned. “You’re playin’ skins.” Megan grinned back. “We’ll see about that.

The thought is immediately accompanied by a dull ache below her shoulder. It is a phantom pain, she knows, a psychosomatic ache, but still she feels the hurt. After all, it has been many years since the blow that made her arm swell and ache for days. On the other hand, who knows? Perhaps the body has its own memory system, like the invisible meridian lines those Chinese acupuncturists always talk about. Perhaps the body is unforgiving, perhaps every cell, every muscle and fragment of bone remembers each and every assault and attack. Maybe the pain of memory is encoded into our bone marrow and each remembered grievance swims in our bloodstream like a hard, black pebble. After all, the body, like God, moves in mysterious ways. From the time she was in her teens, Sera has been fascinated by this paradox—how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth—from before birth, even—is still a stranger to us. After all, almost everything we do in our lives is for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm. And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we have never read. Sera plays with this irony, toys with it as if it were a puzzle: How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn’t recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties. But if this is true, surely the body also remembers each kindness, each kiss, each act of compassion? Surely this is our salvation, our only hope—that joy and love are also woven into the fabric of the body, into each sinewy muscle, into the core of each pulsating cell?

6 Eight days before he died, after a spectacular orgy of food, François Mitterrand, the French president, ordered a final course of ortolan, a tiny yellow-throated songbird no bigger than his thumb. The delicacy represented to him the soul of France. Mitterrand’s staff supervised the capture of the wild birds in a village in the south. The local police were paid off, the hunting was arranged, and the birds were captured, at sunrise, in special finely threaded nets along the edge of the forest. The ortolans were crated and driven in a darkened van to Mitterrand’s country house in Latche where he had spent his childhood summers. The sous-chef emerged and carried the cages indoors. The birds were fed for two weeks until they were plump enough to burst, then held by their feet over a vat of pure Armagnac, dipped headfirst and drowned alive. The head chef then plucked them, salted them, peppered them, and cooked them for seven minutes in their own fat before placing them in a freshly heated white cassole. When the dish was served, the wood-paneled room—with Mitterrand’s family, his wife, his children, his mistress, his friends—fell silent. He sat up in his chair, pushed aside the blankets from his knees, took a sip from a bottle of vintage Château Haut-Marbuzet. —The only interesting thing is to live, said Mitterrand. He shrouded his head with a white napkin to inhale the aroma of the birds and, as tradition dictated, to hide the act from the eyes of God. He picked up the songbirds and ate them whole: the succulent flesh, the fat, the bitter entrails, the wings, the tendons, the liver, the kidney, the warm heart, the feet, the tiny headbones crunching in his teeth. It took him several minutes to finish, his face hidden all the time under the white serviette. His family could hear the sounds of the bones snapping. Mitterrand dabbed the napkin at his mouth, pushed aside the earthenware cassole, lifted his head, smiled, bid good night and rose to go to bed. He fasted for the next eight and a half days until he died. 7 In Israel, the birds are tracked by sophisticated radar set up along the migratory routes all over the country—Eilat, Jerusalem, Latrun—with links to military installations and to the air traffic control offices at Ben Gurion airport.

some patients they experience quite definite symptoms of depression. The available evidence indicates that fish oils that have been exposed to the air may develop toxic substances. My work and that of others with experimental animals has demonstrated that paralysis can be produced readily by over-dosing. Serious structural damage can be done to hearts and kidneys. I have reported this in considerable detail. (4) My investigations have shown that when a high vitamin natural cod liver oil is used in conjunction with a high vitamin butter oil the mixture is much more efficient than either alone.4 This makes it possible to use very small doses. Except in the late stages of pregnancy I do not prescribe more than half a teaspoonful with each of three meals a day. This procedure appears to obviate completely the undesirable effects. As stated elsewhere fish oils should be stored in small containers to avoid exposure to the air. Rancid fats and oils destroy vitamins A and E, (5) the former in the stomach

January 29: A deposit of $5,750 ($5,000 of which is borrowed from Joe DiMaggio) is paid to secure the Brentwood home that Eunice Murray found. It is built like a Mexican hacienda. Dr. Greenson accompanies Marilyn on her first visit to the home. In need of repair, the house, with its red-tiled roof, stucco walls, cathedral ceilinged sitting room, small solarium, three bedrooms, and kidney-shaped pool, appeals to Marilyn. It is well-landscaped and only ten minutes from the Fox studios. Over the front entrance, on Mexican tiles, appears this legend: Cursum Perficio (My Journey Ends Here).

loudspeakers.

STEP TWO: Writhe in unbelievable, mind-numbing, soul searing agony for three interminable days while the poison seeps into your veins and solidifies all of your bodily organs. This is much like alcohol destroys your kidneys, or like listening to Justin Bieber music destroys your ear-drums, only worse.

There’s no credible evidence from any long-term study showing that low-carbohydrate diets work for good health. In fact, just about every study shows that long-term carbohydrate restriction is associated with serious complications, from cancer, increased serum cholesterol, osteoporosis, kidney stone formation, and even sudden death.63

The concentration of sodium in the blood is controlled to within a very narrow range. When intake rises, the kidneys excrete the excess. When intake falls below 3 to 4 grams a day, the body compensates by activating powerful hormones, called the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), which helps the kidneys hold on tightly to salt.65 The problem is, receptors for RAS are present not only in the kidneys, but also in fat cells, muscle, the pancreas, the lining of the blood vessels, and elsewhere. Overactivity of this system has been shown to cause fat cell dysfunction, insulin resistance, and inflammation—the fundamental problems linking obesity to diabetes and heart disease.

Immerse the grains and legumes in filtered water for a certain number of hours (based on the following chart), drain, and rinse. If you don’t have a sprouting tray, you can leave smaller seeds like quinoa and buckwheat in a stainless-steel mesh strainer, and the larger lentils and chickpeas in a colander. Rinse morning and night until you see tails forming. When you see little tails, aka sprouts, you know you’re on the right track. Avoid kidney beans and black beans on this diet. Sprouting them is toxic! Soaking and Sprouting Quick Reference Table FOOD DRY MEASURE SOAK TIME IN HOURS GROWING TIME IN DAYS APPROXIMATE YIELD Adzuki beans 1 cup 24 to 36 3 to 5 3 cups Alfalfa, clover,broccoli, radish 2 tbsp seeds 4 to 12 4 to 6 1-quart jar Almonds 1 cup 12 to 15 1 1¾ cups Amaranth 1 cup Overnight 2 to 3 3 cups Barley, hulled 1 cup 24 1 to 3 2 cups Brazil nuts 1 cup 8 hours or overnight 1 cup, soaked only Buckwheat, hulled 1 cup 30 minutes to overnight 1 to 2 2 cups Chickpeas(Garbanzo beans) 1 cup 24 to 36 3 2½ cups Dried fruit 1 cup 8 hours or overnight 1⅛ cups Filberts 1 cup 12 to 15 1 1¼ cups Flaxseed ¼ cup Don’t soak. Spray to keep moist. 3 to 5 2¾ cups Lentils, green 1 cup 24 1 to 3 2¾ cups

Insulin is the primary hormone that tells your body whether to store energy or burn it. When you eat—particularly when you eat the typical high-carb, heavily processed foods that most Americans eat at all hours of the day—your blood glucose levels become elevated to unhealthy ranges. Your body then increases your insulin in an effort to lower those glucose levels. Sadly this results in an enormously foolish medical strategy that many physicians use to treat tens of millions of diabetics—they frequently put type 2 diabetics on insulin in an effort to lower their blood sugar. What they fail to realize is that higher insulin levels, and secondary insulin resistance, are a far more serious issue than elevated glucose. The way to lower insulin and glucose and to treat insulin resistance is to lower your carbohydrate intake and become metabolically flexible, as co-author of The Complete Guide to Fasting and a nephrologist (kidney specialist) in Canada, so eloquently demonstrated in his 2018 case report published in the British Medical Journal. In this report, Dr. Fung was able to use intermittent fasting to reverse insulin resistance and resolve type 2 diabetes for three patients who had their diabetes for 10 to 25 years. All were taking insulin.1 One result of insulin resistance is that you gain weight because higher levels of insulin signal your body to store energy as fat. Another result is that the receptors for insulin in your cells begin to get desensitized, so you need to release more and more insulin in order to move the glucose out of your bloodstream and into your cells. As a result of the insulin resistance, your body is in constant fat-storing mode.

His eyes weren’t red anymore. His skin no longer had that washed-out look. He had already been happily guzzling ice-cold water from the pink plastic hospital pitcher to his heart’s content. “They told me to drink,” he said, grinning. I grinned back. I was so happy for him. Gone were the days of having to limit how much liquid he took in between dialysis treatments. Now he had a kidney that could pee out any fluid his body didn’t need. He focused on learning about all the new antirejection medications that would keep his new kidney healthy. He was eager to get on with making up for the six years he lost to dialysis. The six years he had to curb his ambition and planning for the future because he didn’t know what the next hours, days, weeks, months, years would bring.

In 1999, a bunch of researchers published a study of about 1,600 adults examined in order to come up with equations to estimate kidney function. Just plug in the patient’s creatinine, age (because adults tend to lose muscle mass as we get older), and gender (because men tend to have more muscle mass than women), and voila!—an estimate of kidney function. Most laboratories can do this for us now. A rising creatinine level in the blood means the kidneys are not able to pee creatinine out as well as they used to, so the person’s estimated kidney function is lower. But wait—if the patient is Black, the study determined that you have to multiply by 1.2 to get a more accurate estimate. This finding was attributed to Blacks in the study having higher muscle mass than Whites and, therefore, higher amounts of creatinine in their bodies. Laboratories report the eGFR, and just below it, the eGFR if Black. Of course one of the problems with generalizations is that they aren’t always true. In medicine, in particular, they make us lazy and we often accept them without question—especially when they are in line with our underlying assumptions and beliefs. Like the belief that Black and African are inherently different from White and European at a DNA level, a belief that dates back to the days when American researchers were measuring Black-White differences in skull size to prove Black inferiority and justify slavery. But I wonder how often health-care providers make the mental adjustment that the “race adjustment” is really a proxy for muscle mass rather than just focusing on the race of the person in front of them when they are assessing lab results. I wonder if the person in front of them were a White male bodybuilder how many would tell him the race-adjusted estimate of kidney function, or a skinny Black woman the non-race-adjusted estimate. Then too I wonder how many health-care practitioners realize that equations derived from the original study of 1,600 people only included about 200 Blacks—and no American Samoans, no Hispanics, no Asians. These groups have very different body frames, but all are simply “not Black” in our equations. The implication, then, is that only Black people are different. This shortcut has the potential for a significant negative impact on Black patients who happen to not have a high muscle mass. Patients like Book of Eli. When the non-race-adjusted eGFR is 20 (when a person can be placed on the waiting list), the race-adjusted value is closer to 25. Just as the difference between eGFRs of 20 and 10 can be several years for many patients, so can the difference between 25 and 20. Years of accruing time on the kidney transplant waiting list when thirteen people on the waiting list die every day waiting for a kidney.

The Heir and the Spare – there was no judgement about it, but also no ambiguity. I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide back-up, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow. This was all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced thereafter. I was twenty the first time I heard the story of what Pa allegedly said to Mummy the day of my birth: Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare – my work is done. A joke. Presumably. On the other hand, minutes after delivering this bit of high comedy, Pa was said to have gone off to meet his girlfriend. So. Many a true word spoken in jest.

The foods we eat, the air we breathe, the toxins we absorb through our skin, and the stress we manage all factor into our body’s pH. And although there’s a consensus among nutritionists and medical experts well versed in these matters that somewhere in the range of 80 percent of the foods we ingest should be alkaline-forming and 20 percent acidic, the typical American diet—combined with our fast-paced, stress-inducing urban lifestyle—is overwhelmingly acid-forming. Processed foods, sodas, meat and dairy proteins, polluted air, and simple life pressures all contribute to what is called “metabolic acidosis,” or a chronic state of body acidity. Why is this important? When the body is in a protracted or chronic state of even low-grade acidosis, which most people’s bodies these days are, it must marshal copious resources to maintain blood pH somewhere in the optimal 7.35 orbit. Over time, the body pays a significant tax that manifests in a susceptibility to any array of infirmities: fatigue; impaired sleep and immune system functionality; a decrease in cellular energy output, nutrient absorption, bone density, and growth hormone levels, which over time lead to a reduction in muscle mass; an increase in inflammation and weight gain, leading to obesity; the promotion of kidney disorders, tumor cell growth, mood swings, and osteoporosis. And I haven’t included in that list a variety of bacterial and viral maladies that flourish in the acidic environment.

In New York,” he said, looking directly at me, “people ask if you have a good internist. This is where true power lies. The inner organs. Liver, kidneys, stomach, intestines, pancreas. Internal medicine is the magic brew. You acquire strength and charisma from a good internist totally aside from the treatment he provides. People ask about tax lawyers, estate planners, dope dealers. But it’s the internist who really matters. ‘Who’s your internist?’ someone will say in a challenging tone. The question implies that if your internist’s name is unfamiliar, you are certain to die of a mushroom-shaped tumor on your pancreas. You are meant to feel inferior and doomed not just because your inner organs may be trickling blood but because you don’t know who to see about it, how to make contacts, how to make your way in the world. Never mind the military-industrial complex. The real power is wielded every day, in these little challenges and intimidations, by people just like us.

Tibetans also discovered a niche that was almost uniquely their own: collecting medicinal herbs. Herbs were commonly used in both Chinese and Tibetan medicine, and many of the more valuable were found on the Tibetan plateau. Beimu, an alpine lily used to treat coughs, grew at altitudes of more than 10,000 feet, and Tibetan nomads were perfectly situated to collect it. Most lucrative was Cordyceps sinensis, a prized ingredient in traditional medicine, believed to boost immunity, stamina, and lung and kidney function. Tibetans call it yartsa gunbu, meaning “summer grass, winter worm,” or simply bu, “worm,” for short. The worm is actually a fungus that feeds on the larvae of caterpillars. In the past, the worm was commonplace enough that Tibetans would feed it to a sluggish horse or yak, but the Chinese developed a hankering for it that sent prices soaring. Chinese coaches with gold-medal ambitions would feed it to athletes; aging businessmen would eat it to enhance their sexual potency. At one point, the best-quality caterpillar fungus was worth nearly the price of gold, as much as $900 an ounce. Tibetans had a natural monopoly on the caterpillar fungus. Non-Tibetans didn’t have the local knowledge or the lung capacity to compete. The best worm was in Golok, northwest of Ngaba. Nomadic families would bring their children with them, sometimes taking them out of school because their sharp eyesight and short stature allowed them to more easily scan the ground for the worm amid the grasses and weeds. The season ran for approximately forty days of early spring, the time when the melting snow turned the still-brown hills into a spongy carpet. The families would camp out for weeks in the mountains. In a good season, a Tibetan family could make more in this period than a Chinese factory worker could earn in a year. The Communist Party would later brag about how their policies had boosted the Tibetan economy, but the truth was that nothing contributed as much as the caterpillar fungus, which according to one scholar accounted for as much as 40 percent of Tibetans’ cash earnings. Unlike earnings from mining and forestry, industries that came to be dominated by Chinese companies, this was cash that went directly into the pockets of Tibetans. The nomads acquired the spending power to support the new shops and cafés. The golden worm was part of a cycle of rising prosperity.

This is how we know that Anthony Fauci was well aware of remdesivir’s toxicity when he orchestrated its approval for COVID patients. NIAID sponsored that project. Dr. Fauci had another NIAID-incubated drug, ZMapp, in the same clinical trial, testing efficacy against Ebola alongside two experimental monoclonal antibody drugs. Researchers planned to administer all four drugs to Ebola patients across Africa over a period of four to eight months.10,11 However, six months into the Ebola study, the trial’s Safety Review Board suddenly pulled both remdesivir and ZMapp from the trial.12 Remdesivir, it turned out, was hideously dangerous. Within 28 days, subjects taking remdesivir had lethal side effects including multiple organ failure, acute kidney failure, septic shock, and hypotension, and 54 percent of the remdesivir group died—the highest mortality rate among the four experimental drugs.13 Anthony Fauci’s drug, ZMapp, ran up the second-highest body count at 44 percent. NIAID was the primary funder of this study, and its researchers published the bad news about remdesivir in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2019.

We have already mentioned the advantage to snakes that feed on very large items of prey of not needing to feed very frequently, typically no more than once every week or two, and often they can survive without any food for several months. To save energy in between meals, snakes reduce their metabolic activity, and the temporarily unused digestive organs shrink. But within only six hours of taking in food, a python, for example, increases its metabolic rate some sixfold, and after two or three days organs like the small intestine, liver, pancreas, and kidney have doubled in size, and active digestion is taking place.

Keeping Hydrated The significant risk of kidney stones and dehydration on the Ketogenic diet (less-so with Modified Atkins Diet [MAD]) makes hydration an essential element to your child’s health. But getting your little warrior to drink around 30 to 40 ounces of water a day can be tough. Some children are natural drinkers, while other seem to completely lack interest. When it comes to hydrating your toddler, you might need to get clever. Here are a few tricks we picked up along the way.

What to remove? Dairy. From cows, goats, and sheep (including butter). Grains. For the more intensive version of this 30-day diet, eliminate all grains. This is important for those with digestive or autoimmune conditions. If this feels undoable for a full month, add in a small serving a day of gluten-free grains like white rice or quinoa. If that still feels undoable, consider a whole-foods diet rich in vegetables that is strictly gluten- and dairy-free. Legumes. Beans of all kinds (soy, black, kidney, pinto, etc.), lentils, and peanuts. Green peas and snap peas are okay. Sweeteners, real or artificial. Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, honey, agave, Splenda, Equal, NutraSweet, xylitol, stevia, etc. Processed or refined snack foods. Sodas and diet sodas. Alcohol in any form. White potatoes. Premade sauces and seasonings. How to avoid common pitfalls: Prepare well beforehand. Choose a time frame during which you will have limited or reduced travel, and that doesn’t include holidays or special occasions. Study the list of foods allowed on the diet and make a shopping list. Remove the foods from your pantry or refrigerator that aren’t allowed on the diet, if that makes it easier. Engage the whole family to try this together, or find a friend to join you. Success happens in community. Set up a calendar to mark your progress. Print out a free 30-day online calendar, tape it to the refrigerator door, and mark off each day. Pack snacks with you, pack your lunch, call ahead to restaurants to check their menu (or check online). Get enough vegetables and fats. If you feel jittery or lose too much weight, increase your carbohydrates (starchy vegetables like yams, taro, sweet potatoes). Don’t misread withdrawal-type symptoms as the diet “not working.” These symptoms usually resolve within a week’s time. Personalize it. Start with the basics above and: * If you’re having trouble with autoimmune conditions, eliminate eggs, too. * If you’re prone to weight gain, eat less meat and heavier foods (ex: stews, chili), more vegetables and raw foods. * If you’re prone to weight loss or having trouble gaining weight, eat more meats and heavier foods (ex: stews, chili), less raw foods like salads. * If you’re generally healthy and wanting a boost in energy, try short-term fasts of 12–16 hours. Due to the circadian rhythm of the digestive tract, skipping dinner is best (as opposed to skipping breakfast). Try this 1–2 times a week. (This fast also means no supplements or beverages other than tea or water during the fasting time.)

The ideal amount can vary from person to person, but the data suggest that for active people with normal kidney function, one gram per pound of body weight per day (or 2.2 g/kg/day) is a good place to start—nearly triple the minimal recommendation.

The next day, 11 June, was my father’s appointment with the kidney specialist.

How much protein do we actually need? It varies from person to person. In my patients I typically set 1.6 g/kg/day as the minimum, which is twice the RDA. The ideal amount can vary from person to person, but the data suggest that for active people with normal kidney function, one gram per pound of body weight per day (or 2.2 g/kg/day) is a good place to start—nearly triple the minimal recommendation.

The body is a very different place during the day compared with the night: the kidneys are less active at night, which means that we produce less urine and need to pee less; core body temperature is lower, as are our reaction speeds; and our immune systems respond differently to invaders. Then, as the sun comes up, and day begins, blood pressure and body temperature rise; hunger hormones kick in; and our brains and muscles shift into a higher gear.

Those taking 1,000 mg or so of vitamin C a day may have a one-in-three-hundred chance of getting a kidney stone every year, instead of a one-in-six-hundred chance, which is not an insignificant risk, given how painful they can be.

Normalcy?” I ask, louder than is probably necessary, surprising myself with the unusual amount of animated expression in my voice. “A regular human being? Jesus, what the fuck is there in that? What does that even mean? Credit card debt, a mortgage, a nagging spouse and bratty kids and a minivan and a fucking family pet? A nine-to-five job that you hate, and that’ll kill you before you ever see your fabled 401k? Cocktail parties and parent-teacher conferences and suburban cul-de-sacs? Monogamous sex, and the obligatory midlife crisis? Potpourri? Wall fixtures? Christmas cards? A welcome mat and a mailbox with your name stenciled on it in fancy lettering? Shitty diapers and foreign nannies and Goodnight Moon? Cramming your face with potato chips while watching primetime television? Antidepressants and crash diets, Coach purses and Italian sunglasses? Boxed wine and light beer and mentholated cigarettes? Pediatrician visits and orthodontist bills and college funds? Book clubs, PTA meetings, labor unions, special interest groups, yoga class, the fucking neighborhood watch? Dinner table gossip and conspiracy theories? How about old age, menopause, saggy tits, and rocking chairs on the porch? Or better yet, leukemia, dementia, emphysema, adult Depends, feeding tubes, oxygen tanks, false teeth, cirrhosis, kidney failure, heart disease, osteoporosis, and dying days spent having your ass wiped by STNAs in a stuffy nursing home reeking of death and disinfectant? Is that the kind of normalcy you lust for so much? All of that—is that worth the title of regular human being? Is it, Helen? Is it?

BUSTER You may have heard the myth that higher-protein diets lead to kidney dysfunction. The data tell us otherwise. A meta-analysis conducted by prominent protein researcher Stu Philips looked at higher-protein (HP) diets (≥ 1.5 g/kg body weight or ≥ 20% energy intake or ≥ 100 g/day) and their effects on kidney function. The indicator known as glomerular filtration rate (GFR) reflects any change in the efficiency of kidney function. When compared with normal- or lower-protein (≥ 5% less energy intake from protein/day) diets, HP diet interventions did not significantly elevate GFR relative to diets containing lower amounts of protein. Researchers concluded that HP intake does not negatively influence renal function in healthy adults.2 A systematic review of randomized controlled trials and epidemiologic studies conducted by Van Elswyk et al. found that HP intake (≥ 20% but < 35% of energy or ≥ 10% higher than a comparison intake) had little to no effect on blood markers of kidney function (e.g., blood pressure) when compared with groups following US RDA recommendations (0.8 g/kg or 10–15% of energy).

Remdesivir, it turned out, was hideously dangerous. Within 28 days, subjects taking remdesivir had lethal side effects including multiple organ failure, acute kidney failure, septic shock, and hypotension, and 54 percent of the remdesivir group died—the highest mortality rate among the four experimental drugs.

Dr. Fauci’s 2019 Ebola study proved that remdesivir, by day three, four, and five, caused acute kidney failure in upwards of 31 percent of patients. In less than five days of remdesivir treatment, 8 percent of all people died or experienced life-threatening multiple organ failure or kidney failure so severe they had to be taken off the drug. “So it may not be a coincidence that roughly the same number of hospitalized COVID patients—8–10x were dying in the first week,” says Cole. Dr. McCullough gives us a stark and clear summary: “Remdesivir has two problems. First, it doesn’t work. Second, it is toxic and it kills people.

It looks like she’s losing her mind, and it’s clear she had no idea where the kidney came from. Not that it changes anything. I’m still going to make her suffer for the rest of her life. The way I have to suffer every day I’m forced to live without Giulio.

Plant proteins are not only free of animal fat and cholesterol; they are also free of two problems caused by animal proteins. First, animal protein is linked to osteoporosis, apparently because it causes the kidneys to lose calcium in the urine. If you were to check urine samples from people following meaty diets—especially high-protein Atkins-style diets—you would find that they lose calcium rapidly.3 Sodium does the same thing, as we’ll see below. Second, animal protein is also linked to gradual loss of kidney function. Harvard researchers studied a group of women who had already lost some kidney function, as many people do, due to high blood pressure, diabetes, urinary infections, or other factors. As the years went by, the researchers found that those women who tended to get their protein from animal products were much more likely to experience continued loss of kidney function.4 Protein from plants did not have this effect. So if you get your protein from beans, grains, vegetables, and other foods from plant sources, your kidneys will breathe a sigh of relief.

What about protein? Egg white is essentially solid animal protein. That is not an advantage; that is part of the problem. As I mentioned above, animal protein—including that from eggs—is hard on the kidneys and encourages calcium loss. Instead of building you up, it is gradually tearing you down. You are much better off getting protein from plant sources.

This wasn’t merely how the press referred to us—though it was definitely that. This was shorthand often used by Pa and Mummy and Grandpa. And even Granny. The Heir and the Spare—there was no judgment about it, but also no ambiguity. I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide backup, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow. This was all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced thereafter. I was twenty the first time I heard the story of what Pa allegedly said to Mummy the day of my birth: Wonderful! Now you’ve given me an Heir and a Spare—my work is done. A joke. Presumably. On the other hand, minutes after delivering this bit of high comedy, Pa was said to have gone off to meet with his girlfriend. So. Many a true word spoken in jest.

The toxic effects of acetaminophen are accelerated by alcohol use. Chronic acetaminophen use and chronic alcohol abuse have been separately linked to kidney and liver disease, according to Dr. Martin Zand, medical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant programs at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. If you want to give your liver a break, avoid acetaminophen.

5. The Salt Paradox When the human body adapts to a low carb diet, the kidneys fundamentally change how they handle sodium. Removing most carbs from the diet causes your kidneys to aggressively secrete sodium (and along with it, extra fluid). This is why many people experience a dramatic early weight loss with carb restriction. But this means that a continuous moderate intake of sodium is necessary to keep your circulation adequate to handle ‘heat stresses’ like hot weather, endurance activity, or even a hot shower. If you are eating less than 60 grams of carbohydrate per day, you need to purposefully add 2-3 grams of sodium to your daily intake (unless you are still taking diuretic medication under a doctor’s direction for high blood pressure or fluid retention).

15. A fellow motorist lets you pull out in front of them. What's your response? A: I wouldn't notice them from so high up in my truck B: I wouldn't notice them because I haven't looked in my mirrors for about seven years C: Thank them with every flashy device my car has, as if they've just donated me a kidney

Being alarmingly over-enthusiastic when able to tell the stranger that, 'Yes, this seat is free, and you may take it.' Tanking someone on being told that, 'Yes, this seat is free, and you many take it,' as if they've just given you a kidney.

It is nine o'clock, and London has breakfasted. Some unconsidered tens of thousands have, it is true, already enjoyed with what appetite they might their pre-prandial meal; the upper fifty thousand, again, have not yet left their luxurious couches, and will not breakfast till ten, eleven o'clock, noon; nay, there shall be sundry listless, languid members of fast military clubs, dwellers among the tents of Jermyn Street, and the high-priced second floors of Little Ryder Street, St. James's, upon whom one, two, and three o'clock in the afternoon shall be but as dawn, and whose broiled bones and devilled kidneys shall scarcely be laid on the damask breakfast-cloth before Sol is red in the western horizon. I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jackets, that some M'Culloch or Caird would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky ; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny haddocks and the Yarmouth bloaters, that grace our morning repast. Say, too, Crosse and Blackwell, what multitudinous demands are matutinally made on thee for pots of anchovy paste and preserved tongue, covered with that circular layer - abominable disc! - of oleaginous nastiness, apparently composed of rancid pomatum, but technically known as clarified butter, and yet not so nasty as that adipose horror that surrounds the truffle bedecked pate  de  foie gras. Say, Elizabeth Lazenby, how many hundred bottles of thy sauce (none of which are genuine unless signed by thee) are in request to give a relish to cold meat, game, and fish. Mysteries upon mysteries are there connected with nine o'clock breakfasts.

To pay the extortionate fare to Europe and escape their countries, every day, desperate migrants sell their own kidneys. At first, I did not want to believe accounts of kidney selling, and dismissed them as sensationalist journalism. But the reports are true, and increasingly the migrants I treat have the scars to prove it.

In Israel, living kidney donors are now offered forty days’ pay at their current wage, even if they don’t miss that many days of work, and they are promised priority on the deceased-donor waiting list, in case they should ever need a transplant themselves.)

I like to slice or chop a raw potato to include in salads, blend a chopped raw potato or green banana into a smoothie, add a couple of teaspoons of powdered inulin to various dishes, and dip vegetables or grain-free crackers into hummus. Consuming small quantities—e.g., no more than ¼ cup per meal—of lentils, chickpeas, and starchy beans (black, kidney, white, lima) adds to your daily total.

A deep strike to the kidneys will send the human body into immediate shock, rendering it unable to fight or flee.

To pay the extortionate fare to Europe and escape their countries, every day, desperate migrants sell their own kidneys.

The Right Intake Protein, protein, protein. Is there any other food group that causes so much angst? Have too little and you may be in trouble, have too much and you may be in greater trouble. Proteins are the main building blocks of the body making muscles, organs, skin and also enzymes. Thus, a lack of protein in your diet affects not only your health (think muscle deficiency and immune deficiency) but also your looks (poor skin and hair). On the other hand, excess protein can be harmful. “High protein intake can lead to dehydration and also increase the risk of gout, kidney afflictions, osteoporosis as well as some forms of cancer,” says Taranjeet Kaur, metabolic balance coach and senior nutritionist at AktivOrtho. However, there are others who disagree with her. "In normal people a high-protein natural diet is not harmful. In people who are taking artificial protien supplements , the level of harm depends upon the kind of protein and other elements in the supplement (for example, caffiene, etc.) For people with a pre- existing, intestinal, kidney or liver disease, a high-protein diet can be harmful," says leading nutritionist Shikha Sharma, managing director of Nutri-Health.  However, since too much of anything can never be good, the trick is to have just the right amount of protein in your diet.  But how much is the right amount? As a ballpark figure, the US Institute of Medicine recommends 0.8 gm of protein per kilogram of body weight. This amounts to 56 gm per day for a 70 kg man and 48 gm per day for a 60 kg woman.  However, the ‘right’ amount of protein for you will depend upon many factors including your activity levels, age, muscle mass, physical goals and the current state of health. A teenager, for example, needs more protein than a middle-aged sedentary man. Similarly, if you work out five times a day for an hour or so, your protein requirement will go up to 1.2-1.5 gm per kg of body weight. So if you are a 70kg man who works out actively, you will need nearly 105 gm of protein daily.   Proteins are crucial, even when you are trying to lose weight. As you know, in order to lose weight you need to consume fewer calories than what you burn. Proteins do that in two ways. First, they curb your hunger and make you feel full. In fact, proteins have a greater and prolonged satiating effect as compared to carbohydrates and fats. “If you have proteins in each of your meals, you have lesser cravings for snacks and other such food items,” says Kaur. By dulling your hunger, proteins can help prevent obesity, diabetes and heart disease.   Second, eating proteins boosts your metabolism by up to 80-100 calories per day, helping you lose weight. In a study conducted in the US, women who increased protein intake to 30 per cent of calories, ended up eating 441 fewer calories per day, leading to weight loss. Kaur recommends having one type of protein per meal and three different types of proteins each day to comply with the varied amino acid requirements of the body. She suggests that proteins should be well distributed at each meal instead of concentrating on a high protein diet only at dinner or lunch. “Moreover, having one protein at a time helps the body absorb it better and it helps us decide which protein suits our system and how much of it is required by us individually. For example, milk may not be good for everyone; it may help one person but can produce digestive problems in the other,” explains Kaur. So what all should you eat to get your daily dose of protein? Generally speaking, animal protein provides all the essential amino acids in the right ratio for us to make full use of them. For instance, 100 gm of chicken has 30 gm of protein while 75gm of cottage cheese (paneer) has only 8 gm of proteins (see chart). But that doesn’t mean you need to convert to a non-vegetarian in order to eat more proteins, clarifies Sharma. There are plenty of vegetarian options such as soya, tofu, sprouts, pulses, cu

Every month she opened the alleys for a fete. Beer and beef, oysters, pints of ice cream, brandy, a cake riddled with cherries, pies of all sorts (pork, treacle, kidney), more beer. Each fete lasted the entire day, was serially every kind of gathering: in the morning, a party for children, then a ladies' lunch, then a tea, cocktails, then (as the day began to unravel) a light supper, a frolic, a soiree, a carousal, a blowout, a dance, and as people began to drink themselves sober, a conversation, an optimistic repentance, a vow for greatness, love.

I never reply with LOL (laugh out loud) as most people seem to do these days. Or PMSL (piss myself laughing), LMAO (laugh my arse off) or ROFL (roll on floor laughing). I don’t use these abbreviations, as I don’t know the order that they should go in. Does laughing your arse off rank higher than pissing your pants? I’ve never had a reaction like that to any joke to be honest. I’ve ROFC (rolled on floor crying) with kidney stones, but I don’t laugh that much. When I do, it’s normally at things that you shouldn’t laugh at.

All day long, her small compact body, sweating through one hospital gown after another, had been racked with coughing fits and spasms. Her long black hair, tied into a tight braid, had lashed the pillows like a whip. Her platelet count plummeted, her blood gases revealed she had entered into metabolic acidosis, her breathing became so faint that a mechanical ventilator had to be wheeled in; her major organs began to shut down like dominoes falling in a row. Lungs, liver, central nervous system; when her kidneys failed, Slater had had to immediately put her on dialysis.

The best thing to do," said one of the malingerers, "is to sham madness. In the next room there are two other men from the school where I teach and one of them keeps shouting day and night : 'Giordano Bruno's stake is still smoldering ; renew Galileo's trial !'” “I meant at first to act the fool too and be a religious maniac and preach about the infallibility of the Pope, but finally I managed to get some cancer of the stomach for fifteen crowns from a barber down the road." "That's nothing," said another man. "Down our way there's a midwife who for twenty crowns can dislocate your foot so nicely that you're crippled for the rest of your life.” “My illness has run me into more than two hundred crowns already," announced his neighbor, a man as thin as a rake. "I bet there's no poison you can mention that I haven't taken. I'm simply bung full of poisons. I've chewed arsenic, I've smoked opium, I've swallowed strychnine, I've drunk vitriol mixed with phosphorus. I've ruined my liver, my lungs, my kidneys, my heart—in fact, all my insides. Nobody knows what disease it is I've got." "The best thing to do," explained someone near the door, "is to squirt paraffin oil under the skin on your arms. My cousin had a slice of good luck that way. They cut off his arm below the elbow and now the army'll never worry him any more.” “Well," said Schweik, "When I was in the army years ago, it used to be much worse. If a man went sick, they just trussed him up, shoved him into a cell to make him get fitter. There wasn't any beds and mattresses and spittoons like what there is here. Just a bare bench for them to lie on. Once there was a chap who had typhus, fair and square, and the one next to him had smallpox. Well, they trussed them both up and the M. O. kicked them in the ribs and said they were shamming. When the pair of them kicked the bucket, there was a dust-up in Parliament and it got into the papers. Like a shot they stopped us from reading the papers and all our boxes was inspected to see if we'd got any hidden there. And it was just my luck that in the whole blessed regiment there was nobody but me whose newspaper was spotted. So our colonel starts yelling at me to stand to attention and tell him who'd written that stuff to the paper or he'd smash my jaw from ear to ear and keep me in clink till all was blue. Then the M.O. comes up and he shakes his fist right under my nose and shouts: 'You misbegotten whelp ; you scabby ape ; you wretched blob of scum ; you skunk of a Socialist, you !' Well, I stood keeping my mouth shut and with one hand at the salute and the other along the seam of my trousers. There they was, running round and yelping at me. “We'll knock the newspaper nonsense out of your head, you ruffian,' says the colonel, and gives me 21 days solitary confinement. Well, while I was serving my time, there was some rum goings-on in the barracks. Our colonel stopped the troops from reading at all, and in the canteen they wasn't allowed even to wrap up sausages or cheese in newspapers. That made the soldiers start reading and our regiment had all the rest beat when it came to showing how much they'd learned.

Protein and the Story of the AGEs Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) can do some serious damage, especially over time. An article in The Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology makes several important points about protein and its relationship to many of the diseases of aging: • Human studies indicate that excess dietary protein promotes progressive kidney damage by increasing the AGE burden. • A prudent approach is to recommend that people with chronic kidney disease achieve the recommended dietary allowance of protein—0.8 g/kg per day, or about 10 percent of total caloric intake— with an emphasis on high-quality protein, low in AGEs. • Conversely, very low dietary protein intake may lead to malnutrition, especially in those with advanced chronic kidney disease. • The dietary AGE load can be minimized by consuming nonmeat proteins. • There are several culinary methods that reduce AGE formation during cooking—steaming, poaching, boiling, and stewing. Frying, broiling, or grilling should be avoided, as they promote AGE formation. • Limitation of dietary AGEs seems prudent in those with obesity, diabetes, and other risk factors for chronic kidney disease.i With the gradual onset of kidney failure, acidosis again ensues and will lead to all types of inflammation and metabolic abnormalities. The preceding recommendations for how to avoid turning a meal into AGEs should become a major agingmanagement technology for Baby Boomers everywhere. — Leonard Smith, M.D.

Since the beginning of humankind, loved ones have put a hand on each other for support. Massage is our oldest form of therapy, and it remains to this day one of the most powerful methods of healing. A quality 45-minute full-body massage will promote circulation throughout your body and help draw out toxins, especially from your liver. The massage is likely to boost your adrenal glands and kidneys, relax your heart, and ease tension. Ideally, drink two 16-ounce glasses of fresh lemon or lime water directly following your massage. This will optimize the detoxing benefits of your session. CASE HISTORY: Alzheimer’s Under Arrest It had long been a family joke that Whitney was forgetful.

Finn wanted to collect the plants he knew he could sell, and he was teaching Maia. He climbed to the top of the leaf canopy and came back with clusters of yellow fruits which could be boiled up to treat skin diseases. He found a tree whose leaves were made into an infusion to help people with kidney complaints and brought back a silvery fern to rub on aching muscles. Most of these plants had Indian names, but as they sorted their specimens and put them to be dried and stored in labeled cotton bags, Maia learned quickly. “You’d be amazed how much money people give for these in the towns,” said Finn. But not everything he collected was for sale. He restocked his own medicine chest also. And every day he bullied Maia about taking her quinine pills. “Only idiots get malaria in the dry season,” he said.

An interesting point: A cell in your brain and a cell in your kidney contain the exact same DNA. And while in utero (in the womb), the nascent (emerging, developing) cells differentiate into either a brain cell or a kidney cell only when crucial epigenetic processes turn the right genes on or off. So God has designed perfectly timed epigenetic signals to switch on in the womb as the baby is developing. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer. 1:5). Our

Well,” he said. “The troublesome two.” “Troublesome to whom?” asked Andrew. “Us at the Yard. Though I’ll admit you’ve given a certain amount of trouble to a few yobbos, too.” “I should say we have,” said Sara. “You wouldn’t have solved half the cases you have if it wasn’t for us. Where’s Wyatt?” “He’ll be along. He was on his way here when the commissioner sent for him. So he sent me over to tell you why he was late and that he’d be here when he could.” “Something up?” asked Andrew. “There’s always something up at the Yard. What do you think we do all day, sit around figuring form for the races?” “I know you do most of the time. But I meant something important. There must be if the commissioner sent for Wyatt.” “How do you know he didn’t want to ask him who his tailor is?” “He probably asked him that a long time ago,” said Sara. “Come on, Sergeant. Tell us.” “I will not. That’s how the trouble always starts. Someone tells you three words about a case, and the next thing we know you’re in it up to your sit-me-downs.” “All right,” said Andrew. “Just tell us if it’s animal, vegetable or mineral.” “I’ll tell you nothing. I’ll tell Frank here,” he said to the waiter who had reappeared, “what his nibs is having for lunch. And by the time it gets here, he’ll be here. A steak and kidney pie for the inspector, Frank.” “And a pint of your best bitter, of course.” “Of course.” Sara and Andrew decided to have steak and kidney pie, too, and Tucker proved to be as good a prophet in this as he was in most things, for about the time the waiter reappeared with their order, Wyatt came hurrying in. “Sorry I’m late. You explained?” he asked Tucker. “I did.” “I left a note on your desk. Take care of it as soon as you can.” “Aren’t you having lunch with us?” Sara asked Tucker. “Someone has to hold the fort,” said the sergeant. “I’ll grab a bite at the pub, but I suspect I’ll be seeing the two of you again sometime soon.” And giving them an exaggerated salute, he left.

Sugar can cause kidney stones ●

foods each day, the damage might be stopped or even reversed. Well, Dan took this advice to heart (and to kidney!), and he allowed me to share his e-mail: Well, I went home that night and we cleaned house. Got rid of everything that didn’t grow out of the ground, everything processed. And guess what, over the next year, I lost my beer belly and the high blood pressure. Life is so much better without those medications—they made me feel so tired all the time. And my kidney function is back to normal. It makes me mad that no one told me this sooner and that I had to feel so bad before I felt better.

Reflex points for the key organ groups of adrenals, liver, kidney, colon, and stomach are located above and approximately one inch to the left and right of the navel. Closest to the navel and below the other two are the kidney pressure points (or reflexes). One inch above the kidney reflex points are the adrenal points (one inch to the left and right and two inches above the navel). Three inches above and one inch to the left and right of the navel are the reflex points for the liver. Stimulation of tender accupressure points for twenty to thirty seconds two to three times a day activates lymphatic (the body’s sewage system), blood, and energy flow to the muscles, organs, and glands. For daily maintenance, stimulate all the reflexes identified in the following illustration for three to five seconds. If a spot is especially tender, continue to “work” the spot for sixty seconds or until the tenderness is reduced. During athletic competition, stimulation can continue for two to three minutes.

Aged garlic extract 600 mg one to three times a day. Aged garlic extract is used to protect the heart and blood vessels, and is reported to help decrease oxidative stress markers, including those related to blood sugar regulation problems. Aged garlic has also been reported to reduce liver enzymes and fatty liver, as well as decrease the formation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), which are implicated in various health problems, such as heart disease, kidney problems, and cancer.

Perhaps the most significant thing to be aware of here, for anyone who works a desk job, is that sitting is an independent health risk factor—meaning that even if you do exercise, sitting for eight hours each day will still damage your health.124 According to Thomas Yates, MD, “Even for people who are otherwise active, sitting for long stretches seems to be an independent risk factor for conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease.”125