Your kidneys are located right behind your lowest ribs, which are known as floating ribs. These ribs are only fastened to the rib cage by the spine though, so they do not offer much protection for your kidneys. Because of this tenuous placement, they are susceptible to damage if you are hit in the back. They are sensitive organs that rely on the health of countless capillaries to properly filter the blood. Damage can be painful and very dangerous.
Your kidneys are responsible for filtering toxins and unnecessary nutrients out of your bloodstream. They do this through the use of tiny capillaries that go through nodes called nephrons. The nephrons act as a sieve, pulling the unnecessary things out of the blood and sending it back to the circulatory system. The centralized placement of the kidneys ensures that it has access to a majority of your blood at all times.
The kidneys are covered in fatty tissue, which are capable of withstanding some damage, but it’s not nearly as protected as your organs behind your ribs. If you get hit in the kidneys, you risk damaging these small capillaries and causing them to not function properly. The kidneys are sturdy little organs – they can actually lose as much as a third of their capacity and you may not notice, or even if it is discovered, you could still live a pretty normal lifestyle.
But if you lose more capacity than that you can face serious medical problems. If your kidneys were to stop working entirely then waste would start piling up in the blood. Very quickly, within a day or two, your blood would become diluted and you’d get very weak. The waste would start infecting your blood and you would get septic, an extremely dangerous situation. Needless to say, death would be fast, and probably pretty painful too.
Doctors can temporarily replace the kidneys with a dialysis machine, which can filter the blood, but this is an expensive and inefficient solution. The only real solution to losing kidney function is to get replacement kidneys, which, like any vital organ, is a dicey situation. There are only a few organs to go around, and the odds of getting one are slim to none.
This all adds up to a good reason to keep your kidneys healthy. Drink plenty of fluids to make their job as easy as possible, and do everything you can to avoid being injured in the lower back. It will do you a world of good to protect your kidneys.
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