We all have been told from early childhood about the importance of healthy eating. Until adolescence, we were forcibly fed all kinds of cereals, and as an adult, we ourselves began to learn about the beneficial properties of other products. Read, for example, about the anti-aging properties of pomegranate juice, and you probably want to buy a bottle and drink it tonight. But do not overdo it - an excessive enthusiasm for "healthy" products can cause irreparable harm to your body. Proof of this can be seen in the case of an 81-year-old lover of foods high in antioxidants. With his diet, he wanted to stop oxidative processes in the body and slow down the aging of cells, but the unusual diet almost destroyed his kidneys.
An unusual medical history was shared by the non-profit organization Allegheny Health Network, which owns several hospitals in the United States. The protagonist of the story was an 81-year-old man who had good health all his life and, despite type 2 diabetes, almost never was in the hospital.
A harmful diet that can kill you
However, once his body malfunctioned - during the examination, the doctors revealed that his creatinine concentration was twice as high. This substance is formed in human muscles and enters the bloodstream, and then is excreted from the body along with urine. The increased content of creatinine in the blood indicated the malfunctioning of the man's kidneys, but the doctors did not find the reasons for the renal failure. As mentioned above, the patient was in good health and did not have any bad habits.
Antioxidants can cause kidney failure.
However, he still had one bad habit and it turned out to be very unusual. A blood test of the man showed that a huge amount of oxalic acid salts accumulated in his kidneys, which led to the destruction of kidney tissue. The situation worsened to such an extent that the patient began to complain of nausea and sudden weight loss. His relatives noticed that in a few days he seemed to have aged by several years.
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The harm of antioxidants
The reason for the accumulation of oxalic acid salts was the man's adherence to a healthy diet. Apparently, he read somewhere about the benefits of antioxidants slowing down cell aging and began to actively eat foods rich in them. Doctors found out that every day a man drank a liter of almond milk, peanuts, hazelnuts, cocoa powder and other similar products. An unusual diet led to the fact that daily, along with food, about 1,500 milligrams of oxalic acid entered his body, which is 10 times the daily rate.
As soon as the cause of the man's ailments was identified, the doctors began to treat him. By banning the killer diet, which the patient considered rejuvenating, they reduced the amount of oxalic acid in his body. Subsequently, his kidneys began to work better, which led to a decrease in creatinine in his blood. However, it did not drop to normal values.
Sounds very scary, right? This story can be considered another proof that you need to know when to stop in everything. Yes, many foods such as olives and olives can have beneficial effects on our health. But if there are too many of them, the amount of nutrients to our body can become even worse than without them.
Ramis Ganiev