THE LIBRATOR

One of the roles of healthy kidneys is to flush waste products from the body through urination. The kidneys also control the blood pressure and sodium balance in the body. When the kidneys are not functioning to their optimal ability, a variety of metabolic processes begin to occur and eventually, the body’s systems begin to break down. Maintaining good kidney function is an important part of retaining your good health. If you have had blood tests and a diagnosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD), or see the early indications of kidney dysfunction in the blood test results, you can do something to help your kidneys function more efficiently by adjusting your diet and avoiding specific foods. 1-Dairy, Nuts and Chocolate Since kidney function is so intimately involved in the body’s electrolyte balance, when the kidneys are not able to fully do their job, foods containing electrolytes must be reduced. Too much phosphorus blocks calcium absorption so reduce your intake of the following ...

UNDERSTANDING HOW THE BRAIN WORKS It's important to understand the complexity of the human brain. The human brain weighs only three pounds but is estimated to have about 100 billion cells. It is hard to get a handle on a number that large (or connections that small). Let's try to get an understanding of this complexity by comparing it with something humans have created--the entire phone system for the planet. If we took all the phones in the world and all the wires (there are over four billion people on the planet), the number of connections and the trillions of messages per day would NOT equal the complexity or activity of a single human brain. Now let's take a "small problem"--break every phone in Michigan and cut every wire in the state. How long would it take for the entire state (about 15 million people) to get phone service back? A week, a month, or several years? If you guessed several years, you are now beginning to see the complexity of recovering from...

Fountain Flows: Oh Lord, I don’t want a good spouse…