Every healthy people were born with two bean-shaped-organs,
which is called the kidneys. Yes, we
always heard people talking about kidney disease, kidney failure or renal
disease. But, do you really know, what
is kidney? And what actually are the functions of kidneys? Again, and, what if
the functions of kidneys shut down? What are the effects or consequences that
we will face?
If you do know, congratulation! You are aware of your health and you really
love your body. If you don’t know, it’s
ok, we are here to tell you more about this!
Let’s start our journey to explore the mystery of the kidneys!
First, before we go further, let us have a look at the
kidneys. What are they actually looked
like?
Just now we mentioned
about the bean-shaped like of the organ, I am not lying, they really looked
like the red bean!
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Ok, you are already known how they are, now; maybe you would
like to know where they are located in our body. Here is it.
From the illustration above, we can see that the kidneys are
located just above the abdominal cavity.
The left kidney is slightly higher than the right kidney because there is
liver that occupied the space at the upper right site of the cavity.
Now I will show you the inner structure of our kidneys, what
are the accessories that made up of the kidneys.
Please refer to the figure below:
These are the components that made up of our filtration
machine (kidneys). Note that the Gingko biloba –shaped component (kidney
medulla), this is where all the ‘factory works’ done. It is made up of numerous small subunits
called ‘nephrone’.
Ok, now you might ask, why am I showing the bath soap
since all the way from the beginning we were busy talking about the
kidneys? What are the relationship
between the bath soap and our kidneys?
No idea?? Aha! That’s my job to tell you this. I bet most of you will be surprised that our
kidneys (adult) is about the size of the bath soap! And from now onwards, you will be amazed how
this tiny object can do great things!
Now, we move to the most important part of this topic, how
our kidneys work? What are the functions
of the kidneys?
- Regulation of blood ionic composition – Na+ , K+, Ca2+, Cl-, HPO42-.
- Regulation of blood pH.
- Regulation of blood volume.
- Regulation of blood pressure – renin (renin-angiotensin-aldosterone pathway)
- Maintenance of blood osmolarity.
- Production of hormones – calcitriol (calcium homeostatsis) & erythropoietin (red blood cells productions)
- Regulation of blood glucose level -gluconeogenesis.
- Excretion of waste and foreign substances – urea & toxic.
Now, I think you already have the basic knowledge on
kidneys, the next topic we will discuss about the pathology of kidney. If you wish to know more detail on this
topic, kindly leave your comments/ message here, we will try our best to solve
your curiosity.
Lastly, thank you for spending time on reading this
article. See you.