What is it?

              So what is Chronic Kidney Disease after all? The kidneys are one of our body's largest aspects of filtration. When blood is being pumped through our bodies, it passes through our kidneys, and navigates its way through a series of twisted tubules. As it passes through these tubes it is constantly being sifted through and filtered. Nutrients, salts, and water pass between our blood and the tube membranes, balancing our blood until its just right. The wastes that are taken out of the blood are excreted as urine, and the filtered blood exits the kidney and continues through circulation. When this network of filtration within our kidneys begins to stop working, you can guess it might cause some problems.

            Imagine you are making a pot of coffee but there is a hole in your coffee filter, the grounds would drip through, and your coffee wouldn't taste very good. When you develop Chronic Kidney Disease, the same thing is essentially happening in your body with your blood. Those simple processes of filtration, re-absorption, and secretion become very hard to carry out. All the waste in your blood is not properly taken care of and excreted, but instead begins to build up in your bloodstream. The fault in blood filtration then has the potential to eventually lead to many other significant health problems.

Click here to watch this short video and get a little more background on how our kidneys work!