3 ms·
Not a biologist or a doctor, but I'm pretty sure you don't pee out damaged cells.
by Florin_Andrei 8y ago
Not a biologist or a doctor, but I'm pretty sure you don't pee out damaged cells.
- gojomo 8y agoI was referring to the products of cell degradation. Autophagy – destruction of cell components or full cells – is a constant, natural, necessary process. Its waste products have to go somewhere, and biomarkers related to autophagy, and all the other waste-eliminating functions of the kidneys and liver, can be detected by byproducts in urine. It's also the case that full red and white blood cells, and epithelial cells, are found in urine, and at higher-than-trace levels in various disease states... but that may just be incidental to kidney/urinary tract functioning. Still, more peeing from regular use of a diuretic like caffeine, and commensurate higher water intake, is going to mean more flushing of anything unwanted in your blood, like the broken DNA strands detected by this study. Which raises my question: is there really less DNA damage, or has the detectable evidence of the damage just been swept out more rapidly?
- Florin_Andrei 8y agoMy semi-educated guess would be that kidneys work best when the volumetric output is average. These are not 100% passive systems like coffee filters, they have some active filtering mechanisms. If you overwhelm them with fluid intake, I would suspect they start to underperform.