Category: Health Tips

For the past two of decades, tens of thousands of people living in rural Sri Lanka have been devastated by kidney failure due to unclear causes, also known as CKDu (chronic kidney disease of unknown aetiology). Similar incidences of mysterious kidney diseases have emerged in tropical farming communities around the world.

In a highly concerning development, researchers have found a potential link between the herbicide glyphosate and CKDu in Sri Lanka. The study also revealed that glyphosate might form long-lasting compounds in hard water areas, which are prevalent in the regions with high CKDu incidence.

When glyphosate encounters certain trace metal ions that make water hard, like magnesium and calcium, glyphosate-metal ion complexes can form. Those complexes are quite stable and can persist for up to 7 years in water and 22 years in soil.

“It was always thought that this chemical would break down very quickly in the environment, but it seems to stick around a lot longer than we expected when it complexes in hard water,” said Nishad Jayasundara, the Juli Plant Grainger Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Health at Duke.

“We have to consider how glyphosate is interacting with these other elements, and what happens to glyphosate when you take that into your body as a complex.”

In certain agricultural areas of Sri Lanka, the dry climate combined with its geological formations creates the perfect conditions for hard water. It is also in these regions that CKDu has reached epidemic levels, with as many as 10% of children aged 5 to 11 years exhibiting signs of early onset kidney damage.
The researchers found significantly higher levels of the herbicide in 44% of wells within the affected areas versus just 8% of those outside it.

“We really focused on drinking water here, but it’s possible there are other important routes of exposure—direct contact from agricultural workers spraying the pesticide, or perhaps food or dust,” said Ferguson.

The researchers also found elevated levels of fluoride and vanadium, both of which are linked to kidney damage, in the drinking water of almost all of the communities with high incidence of CKDu, suggesting a possible interaction with the glyphosate.

https://scitechdaily.com/the-mysterious-kidney-epidemic-scientists-discover-surprising-potential-source/

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.3c00504

Allegedly from a cardiologist:

When you stand up, gravity holds water in the lower body and swelling of the legs appears.

When you lie down, your lower body is at the kidney level. It is believed by some that it is easier for the kidneys to process fluids when the body is in a horizontal position.

The body needs a certain minimum of water to remove toxins from the body.

Drinking water at a certain point maximally affects the function of the body:
2 cups of water after waking up – helps activate internal organs
1 glass of water 30 minutes before eating – helps digestion
1 glass of water before bath – helps lower blood pressure
1 glass of water before bed – reduces risk of stroke or heart attack

In addition, water before bedtime also helps prevent leg cramps at night.

The leg muscles need fluid because they contract, and due to lack of fluid, you can wake up with a muscle spasm.

(Tom: How many people do you know that say they don’t want to drink water before bed because they have to get up at night because of it?

The solution to needing to get up at night is simple. Just don’t drink between 5 o’clock and your glass of water at bedtime.

It’s not the bedtime drink of water that is the problem. It is that bedtime drink of water added to what you drank during the preceding 5 hours that causes the need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.)