Cleansing the kidneys is an important part of doing a thorough or holistic detox. Although the word “detox” means different things to different people it is really as simple helping your body do its job properly by doing an internal spring clean.
First you prepare to do the detox over a period of a few days by dropping junk food such as burgers, fries, sodas etc and replace them with healthier options – soups, salads and more veggies. NO particular amount of water can be advised because that depends on many factors but most people are advised to drink several glasses of water per day.
To do a holistic kidney cleanse a colon cleanse is done first. That takes some of the toxic burden off your system and gives the kidney some “breathing space”.
After a week or so you’ll be ready for the kidney cleanse to begin in earnest. Exactly what to eat and what to avoid will depend on your total health picture. Are you diabetic? If so then you avoid fruit juices because although they sound healthy they will boost your blood sugar too quickly and too far.
Your breakfast can be a simple dish of oatmeal porridge with whatever healthy milk you can get. Standard cow’s milk is not suitable since it often has antibiotics and other chemicals injected into the cow.
Organic is good and you can use any of a variety of milk substitutes such as Rice dream or soya drinks. A green smoothie made from greens and a small amount of sweet fruit is a healthy cleansing alternative if you don’t need a hot breakfast.
A large salad with avocadoes and a good variety of green salad vegetables along with tomatoes, bell peppers – with an olive oil or flax oil as a dressing. Please avoid store bought dressings since they are often high calorie and full of chemicals we wish to avoid.
Snacks through the day can be fresh organic fruit and fresh nuts
For a main meal – Tofu or cottage cheese or soya mince may be served as a main protein source.
Add lightly cooked vegetables along with perhaps wholemeal aka brown, short grain rice, or couscous or some other easy to digest grain. Along with this simple cleansing diet drink easily available herb teas and plenty of water.
This is a pretty easy kidney cleanse to follow and because it is balanced although you may well feel some cravings from lack of sugar and coffee. Add some stretching exercises or a long walk and your kidney cleanse will go very smoothly.
The exact kidney diet recipe you need to follow will depend not just on your kidney health – whether you have stones or not and whether you are diabetic or not. But we can look at some common factors for a diet designed to raise your kidney health.
Before we start please check any advice you have received up to now. There are many myths in the area of kidney health and especially around kidney stone patients. I will give some links to explore at the end of this article to help you check your kidney diet.
And also your own lab results factor into this as well so you may need advice from a renal nutritionist.
Your diet needs to have a medium to low protein content and a high fibre content. Since vegetarians as a group have a lower risk of developing kidney stones the best advice has to be to follow a vegetarian diet.
Breakfast ideas:
fresh fruit – not fruit juice which produces a sugar rush
green smoothie – go easy on the fruit content tho’ to avoid sugar rush
oatmeal porridge – my fave breakfast. Simmer for 5 to 10 minutes and add a little coconut milk or a tiny amount of organic honey
miso soup – another hot alternative – dilute sufficiently to get a low salt level
muesli / granola – homemade is best. Avoid overly sweet mixes with too many raisins etc
Lunches
Green salads and cottage cheese or tofu for added protein
Whole grain toast with healthy peanut butter from a health store
Rice and selection of veggies or salad
Stir fried tofu and kidney beans served with side salad
Homemade Cauliflower or macaroni cheese
Dinners
Follow the same principles and you can make up as many recipes as you like – low to medium protein and high fibre – meaning high fruit and vegetable content. Note – it is important to get “high fibre” right – it does not mean buying a bag of something labelled fibre – it means a diet rich in fresh vegetables and fruit.
Lots more kidney recipes
For many years the standard advice for kidney patients was to reduce protein content and to follow a low protein diet for their kidney disease.
For many people this was good advice since it is common to over consume protein in a diet heavy in meat and burgers. And reducing the amount of junk food reduces the burden on the body and in particular on the liver and the kidneys.
If you like data then a low protein diet has less than 0.7 g/kg body weight while the medium protein diet that is usually used nowadays is around 1 g/kg body weight.
For a person of 60 kg the protein content of a low protein diet would be 42 grams and for a medium protein diet 60 grams protein
There has also been some research at Johns Hopkins University on even lower protein diets specially fortified with selected amino acids. The findings so far are that such a specially controlled low protein diet has beneficial effect in particular types of kidney disease and that further research is needed.
A vegetarian diet is known to have a lower risk of kidney stone formation although whether this is simply because most vegetarians have a lower protein intake or whether it is due to their presumed higher intake of dietary fibre is not yet clear.
To sum up – a healthy low protein diet for kidney disease has around 1 gram per kilogram of body weight which is around 2 oz. protein daily.
Unless you want to count protein ounces like some people count calories the simplest way to consume a low protein / medium protein diet is to have one meal a day where you have a typical high protein food such as cheese, tofu or meat.
