SHAPE OF KIDNEY

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!

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^-, HPO₄^2-.
• 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.