Rejuvenating ageing kidneys
A plant-based vegetarian diet and even eating less preserves youthful kidney activity.
Midway through 2024, Channel Nine, forever the masters of the moment, featured a reality TV show entitled Do you Want to Live Forever? During this four-week spectacle, four couples, most of whose daily devotion to junk-food consumption, smoking and alcohol hardly qualified them for gold-pass membership to an ensemble of longevity devotees, underwent a lifestyle overhaul embracing regular exercise, a healthy diet, stress reduction and adequate sleep to observe who could de-age the most. While these adjustments were hardly revolutionary, one of the protagonists, an outlier, unlike the others, had committed a sizeable proportion of his riches to availing himself of every modality he could acquire to remain forever youthful. His home was bedecked with a gym, infrared sauna, ice bath and plunge pool. He was also prepared to hand over a staggering $700,000 to an American doctor promising to turbocharge his brain and his body with a gene called klotho.
For those who can be forgiven for never having heard of klotho, it’s a protein that is made predominantly in the kidney, as well as in other parts of the body, which has the capacity to rejuvenate our brains, protect our hearts and our kidneys and shield our bodies from the ravages of ageing. In short, the most radical age-defying elixir we could ever desire. Some, like the above gentleman, might have even tried it out. The problem is it might promise more than it can deliver. Most of the research on klotho has been carried out in the test tube and on mice and, while those creatures undoubtedly benefit profoundly when administered this substance as they age and conversely go into rapid decline when they are genetically recalibrated to be deprived of klotho, research on humans is hardly out of the starting blocks.
For klotho to gain access to the brain where it can execute its magical regeneration smarts, it has to cross what is known as the blood-brain barrier, an entry point that nature has not yet provided. No problem for the above-mentioned American physician who has devised a special chemical which when attached to klotho will overcome this obstacle. In the series, we witness an operative procedure during which under anaesthetic klotho, with its supercharged delivery system, is injected into the nose of our anti-ageing aficionado, hopefully its launchpad for a guided journey directly into the brain.
What we do know is that the kidney, which is our principal filtration and waste-elimination system, starts to go into decline midway through our 30s and this dysfunction escalates as we age. As kidney function erodes, its capacity to manufacture klotho diminishes. Both need each other to survive and endure and as their powers ebb, mostly under the radar, how do we become aware of and avoid this potentially catastrophic outcome before it becomes an insurmountably devastating downward spiral?
By the time that we experience fatigue, swollen ankles and climbing blood pressure levels, our kidneys might have already started to implode — this is not a good place to arrive at. Blood tests that measure our kidney’s filtration capacity, known as the eGFR, the accumulation of protein in our urine, a marker for
kidney deterioration and the lesser-known blood test indicator, cystatin C, are all investigations that track how our kidneys are operating before their capacities take a dive.
Preventing a negative trajectory involves taking care of the usual suspects including optimising our blood sugar status, normalising our blood pressure, maintaining a healthy weight, avoiding excess alcohol consumption and attending to our diet. The Western diet, rich in pre-packaged foods, red meat, high-sugar drinks, processed meats and high-fat dairy products, corrodes kidney function, while a plant-based vegetarian diet and even eating less preserves youthful kidney activity.
If klotho does turn out to be the next best thing, a kidney-salvaging and brain-restoring juggernaut, are there any steps we can take to ramp up its production? As it turns out, there are a number of natural substances, including astaxanthin, quercetin and vitamins A and D, that can boost our stocks of klotho. Investing in these might not be a $700,000 jolt to the brain but it’s certainly a safer and easier way to promoting what’s potentially our kidneys’ most powerful ally.
