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.
Health Benefits of One Daily Drink
There is growing evidence that drinking alcohol in a moderate fashion, especially a red glass of wine, actually contributes to good health. A 2001 meta-analysis in the Postgraduate Medical Journal found that moderate alcohol consumption fortifies heart health and improves blood pressure.
Dr. J. Michael Gaziano, a preventative cardiologist with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Aging explains: “It comes down to moderation, A safe amount–about one drink per day–may support a healthy heart and lower your risk of heart disease, while too much can be damaging.” When scientists and physicians refer to "one drink", they mean about 12 ounces of beer or five ounces of wine.
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.
Brushing Your Teeth Helps Prevent Stroke
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.
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.