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Kidneys are Amazing
Kidneys are Amazing
Did you know that about 1000 liters of fluid are filtered by your kidneys every day? Our blood contains toxic molecules taken up from food or metabolic degradation, which our kidneys filter out. The kidneys are highly selective and sensitive, and know exactly how much salts and minerals to remove or balance. If the kidneys fail entirely, that person has only days to live without dialysis.
How Your Kidneys Work
How Your Kidneys Work
(Source: US Department of Health)
The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs, each about the size of a fist, located just below the rib cage one on each side of your spine.
Healthy kidneys filter about a cup of blood every minute, removing wastes and extra water to make urine. The urine flows from the kidneys to the bladder through two thin tubes of muscle called ureters, one on each side of your bladder. Your bladder stores urine. Your kidneys, ureters, and bladder are part of your urinary tract.
Your kidneys remove wastes and extra fluid from your body. Your kidneys also remove acid that is produced by the cells of your body and maintain a healthy balance of water, salts, and minerals—such as sodium, calcium, phosphorus, and potassium—in your blood. Without this balance, nerves and muscles do not work normally.
Your kidneys also make hormones that help control your blood pressure, make red blood cells, and keep your bones strong.
How do my kidneys filter?
Each of your kidneys is made up of about a million filtering units called nephrons. Each nephron includes a filter, called the glomerulus, and a tubule. The glomerulus filters your blood, and the tubule returns needed substances to your blood and removes wastes.
As blood flows into each nephron, it enters a cluster of tiny blood vessels—the glomerulus. The thin walls of the glomerulus allow smaller molecules, wastes, and fluid—mostly water—to pass into the tubule. Larger molecules, such as proteins and blood cells, stay in the blood vessel.
A blood vessel runs alongside the tubule. As the filtered fluid moves along the tubule, the blood vessel reabsorbs almost all of the water, along with minerals and nutrients your body needs. The tubule helps remove excess acid from the blood. The remaining fluid and wastes in the tubule become urine.
Blood flows into your kidney through the renal artery. This large blood vessel branches into smaller and smaller blood vessels until the blood reaches the nephrons. In the nephron, your blood is filtered by the tiny blood vessels of the glomeruli and then flows out of your kidney through the renal vein.
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