I have trouble with my right hand kidney. My neighbour, Roger, has trouble with his left hand kidney.
I can only eat yang and neutral foods (according to Traditional Chinese Medicine): so no cheese or other ferments, no spinach, rhubarb, parsley nor beetroot, but plenty of hot and spicy stews, meat.
Roger can only really eat yin and neutral foods.
Basically, everything which is bad for me is good for him and vice versa. Very handy as we live next doors: anything wrong, we just toss it over the fence, as it were.
I have to urinate very soon after drinking. For Roger, it takes ages before he has to go.
I looked it up, and indeed, the left and right kidney work quite differently.
Why do we never hear about this in ‘straight’ medicine? Why are kidney diets one size fits all?
Western medicine wouldn't recognise the concept of yin and yang or kidneys reacting differently. They can only go with what there is good evidence for.
Is there no 'good evidence' for kidneys reacting differently? In an opposite way, in fact?
My mother had one kidney removed when she was in her fifties. She was not allowed cheese after that, and complained about it bitterly all the time. Shortly before she died, at 76, she was told that actually, she could have cheese after all.
Could she have intuited that cheese was actually good for her? Unfortunately, I don't know which kidney she lost.
Is there no 'good evidence' for kidneys reacting differently? In an opposite way, in fact?
My mother had one kidney removed when she was in her fifties. She was not allowed cheese after that, and complained about it bitterly all the time. Shortly before she died, at 76, she was told that actually, she could have cheese after all.
Could she have intuited that cheese was actually good for her? Unfortunately, I don't know which kidney she lost.
There is no evidence that I know of (I am a pharmacist so I have a conventional background) With only one kidney she would have been fine. No need for any dietary changes at all as long as that one kidney was working OK. Patients can donate a kidney for transplant and still live healthy lives. The only advice we give these days is the normal healthy eating advice we all get. If someone has kidney failure they need to reduce the amount of protein they eat and be careful about sodium and potassium.