Next time you or your kid decide to skip on brushing your teeth after dinner, it’s important for you to remember that having clean and healthy teeth is intimately related to having a healthy heart. People who have gum diseases are actually at a much greater risk factor for heart disease than those who don’t.
The going theory according to Harvard Health is that bacteria in the gums end up in your blood, thus causing your organs to get infected with bacteria and become inflamed. This pressure makes your arteries tighter and greatly increases the risk of stroke. Many studies have found this correlation to be true. Remember to brush your teeth at least twice a day and even floss while you’re at it, this will help you maintain a healthy heart and healthy kidneys.
Don’t Abruptly Stop Taking Your Medication
When you take medicine, you put a great deal of pressure on your kidneys, either due to having a lot of junk to filter out of the pill, or because they are getting a smaller amount of blood, as we’ve explained in the painkiller section above. These sudden and strong demands on your kidneys tend to put them under a lot of stress, so it's best to train them on a consistent routine if you want to avoid a catastrophe.
When people abruptly stop taking their medication or continually go on and off their prescription, it causes an immense amount of instability for these vital organs, as they attempt to predict just how much junk they’ll have to filter throughout the day. Remember, your kidneys love a routine. This will keep your body and emotions regulated, and provide you with many benefits that far outweigh the cost of discipline and consistency.
Keep Track of Your Blood Pressure Regularly
Your kidneys depend on your blood pressure to perform their job adequately, and vice versa. The kidneys help filter out the toxins and waste that build up in the blood, and the blood helps transfer oxygen to your vital organs, including your kidneys. This is why having high blood pressure is actually the second leading cause of kidney damage, even kidney failure.
The American Heart Association recommends getting your blood pressure checked at least once every two years, even if you consider yourself an athletic or healthy person. It’s a quick procedure and is completely painless, so if you don’t have one of these at home, make sure to ask your family doctor to check it. We recommend you to put a reminder on your phone that sets off every year just in case, you definitely won’t regret it.
E-Cigarettes Are Also Dangerous
Many smokers choose to replace their cigarette smoking habit with that of smoking e-cigarettes, with many teenagers simply skipping directly to vaping and e-cigarettes because it's considered "cool". Since e-cigarettes and vapes have been relatively new to the market, there hasn't been a lot of time to evaluate their safety potential as of yet, and so they are considered strictly experimental.
However, recent studies have begun to find that there is, in fact, a connection between e-cigarettes and illness, as many states have begun banning these devices in the last few months due to growing concerns over a number of reported lung illnesses and death cases across the United States.
Avoid Processed Foods
It's pretty intuitive that eating natural foods is better for our health, but without the proper understanding, there’s really no reason to avoid the temptations of these tasty and easy meals. One of the main reasons is the high amount of sodium in processed foods that help them stay fresh for longer. It is often in amounts that even exceed the daily recommended limit.
Two other nutrients that are likely to cause kidney damage over time are potassium and phosphorus. These nutrients usually get filtered by our kidneys without too much hassle but when there’s too much of them it leads to a huge strain on our vital organs. Just like with painkillers, if you moderate the number of processed foods eaten daily this shouldn’t be a problem, however, when you consume these foods on a daily basis, it might lead to a kidney complication further along the way.