So, I was informed by my doctor that my kidneys are at risk. So, naturally I rushed to find out everything I can do to address the problem. It turns out this is the kind of problem that might be turned around partly through diet and perhaps some other measures. So, I began checking out how to do that. Lowering the amount of protein that I was ingesting was part of the answer. I had been dosing myself with a little turkey every now and then, thinking that this would help me lose weight. Not. It put too much strain on my kidneys. So, that's out. Now, I am looking into other ways to be certain I stay on a kidney friendly diet. Turns out my beloved bananas need to go or be scaled back.
Too much potassium and too much phosphorus is not good for the kidneys. I never paid much attention to that earlier. I try to walk about three miles a day, and in the heat of South West Texas, if you don't have some potassium, you're asking for trouble. So, I'm not sure how that's going to work. I'm just happy we're close to the fall when the temperatures drop.
But what's got me a little annoyed now is that I was looking for an unsweetened oatmeal. I found one. I'm not going to say what brand, but suffice it to say, it had what I needed, or so I thought. Turns out many kinds of oatmeal are high in iron. Now this is probably good for men. But for women, an excess of iron, I have heard, can lead to breast cancer issues. So, in the past, I tried to limit my iron intake to avoid that complication. But, what infuriates me is that oatmeal producers and other food manufacturers add things that are not friendly for women. Why in the heck do they do that? Anyway, I'm on the hunt for oatmeal that is lower in iron but still doesn't have the high phosphorous and potassium content that complicates things for those trying to protect their kidneys. Meanwhile, I think it's Burdock root that will block some excess iron. That's not for everybody, but, hey, you do what you got to do.
My ancestress -- Hester -- would completely understand my frustration. In the 1860s, she hunted for the best herbs to help her patients before medicine as we know it became widely available. Hester's Journey under my pen name Kate Ayre Campbell. She believed in checking out the relationship between health and what we put in our bodies.
