Swelling Lesson

Today has been another miserable day in the aftermath of some serious fluid purging, which I've been doing over the last few days. Whenever I get agressive with my water pills, it literally drains me. I get moody and, generally, not a nice person to be around. It's days like this I tend to stay inside and wait for it to pass. At least I've been able to get rid of all of the fluid. For today, at least.

Why do I swell up, and why do I feel so miserable? Good question. So let's talk about a couple of things -- protein and diuretics -- and how it affects your body. Before I begin, let me say that I'm not a doctor (nor do I play one on TV), so I may not be entirely accurate. (But I think I'm pretty close.)

Oncotic pressure

Your body would also swell up like a sponge if in wasn't for the oncotic pressure that proteins in your bloodstream generate. These digested proteins are huge cells, and as they travel through your body they act like the offensive line of a football team, preventing the fluid from leaving the bloodstream and getting into the cells in your tissues.

Your kidneys filter and digest the protein, and help maintain equilibrium in your body. They do this via the glomeruli, which sorts out all kinds of stuff travelling in your blood. Imagine how you use a pasta strainer to remove water out of your spaghetti -- they work in the same manner. These guys are pretty good at letting fluid, salts and other stuff out of the system, but letting the proteins stay, allowing your body to use it.

When these glomeruli become damaged, as it my case, it's like punching large holes in the strainer. Proteins, which are usually kept, are now lost with the other "garbage" into your urine. Houston, we have a problem.

What kind of problems? Where do I begin? First, you've got less pasta on your plate, since half of it just got dumped into the sink. Your body is now hungry for protein, for now it has a deficiency. Remember the oncotic pressure I talked about earlier? Well, now your offensive line of protein is gone, and now your cells are getting sacked. The fluid in your bloodstream has a field day, leaking into all the tissues of your body, which causes edema. It's all a big mess. (This also causes a chain reaction in your body to produce more cholesterol, but that's a topic of another post.)

There isn't an easy solution to the problem. You might think, "Well, if you are leaking half of your protein, just eat twice as much." But studies have shown that eating more protein does not help your body asborb more protein. You are stuck with the protein deficiency until the kidneys heal (or get a transplant).

Diuretics

The best thing we've got are diuretics, which override the kidney's ability to sense when it is letting out too much fluid. These "water pills" force the body to get rid of fluid by any means necessary.

This is good, right? Uh, no. When your body purges fluid, it doesn't discriminate -- it takes the good with the bad. That means that any nutrients and minerals such as electrolytes in your body tend to be the first victims of this purging. As a side effect of high water pill usage, you can suffer from dehydration as well as an electrolyte imbalance. The side effects differ for different people, but for me I feel miserable, sluggish and, well, just awful.