Your kidneys and your lungs are two primary emunctories (organs of elimination). They are essential for helping your body eliminate wastes and toxins. (Check out this previous post of mine for an introduction to your emunctories.)
Let’s first talk about your kidneys!
Your kidneys are responsible for filtering your blood and excreting metabolic waste products and toxins via the urine. Your kidneys also maintain electrolyte balance and produce a number of hormones that regulate blood pressure and stimulate red blood cell production.
What about your lungs?
Your lungs are the organs that eliminate gaseous waste from your body by breathing it out. These exhaled wastes include carbon dioxide, nitrogen, unutilized oxygen, hydrogen, water vapor, ammonia, and trace amounts of a variety of volatile organic compounds, including acetone.
Both your kidneys and your lungs work together to maintain acid-base balance in your body, which keeps your blood pH stable. The lungs regulate carbon dioxide concentration, while your kidneys reabsorb and excrete various metabolic compounds to keep the pH within a narrow range.
Your kidneys and your lungs work together to keep your body balanced. What a team!
As an emunctory, the kidneys are your most important organ for excreting water-soluble waste, just like your lungs eliminate gaseous waste. If they aren’t adequately filtering out toxins (or something is hindering that ability, like dehydration or mineral imbalances), then your eliminatory function is going to be reduced and symptoms of toxicity can manifest, like acne, skin rashes, menstrual issues, brain fog, mood swings, and a variety of other symptoms.
Your Kidneys & Their Role in Hormonal Balance & Skin Health
Your kidneys are responsible for excreting hormone metabolites via the urine. If your kidneys aren’t functionally optimally, the ratios of hormones can get thrown off, as metabolites are reabsorbed into circulation instead of being eliminated in the urine.
Aside from toxicity building up, inefficient emunctory function can lead to hormonal imbalances, since excess hormone metabolites build up in the body when they aren’t properly eliminated. These hormonal imbalances can be associated with skin conditions like acne.
Your Kidneys, Your Lungs & Your Emotions
In traditional forms of medicine, including Chinese medicine, the kidneys are associated with fear and anxiety. The lungs are related to grief.
If you have impaired kidney or lung function (functional or overt), then it’s possible to experience the emotion associated with the affected organ. Likewise, if you’re struggling with emotions like fear or grief, they can sometimes translate to the physical organs, creating symptoms of disease in the corresponding organ system.
Addressing the emotional component and moving through our emotions in a healthy way can often help improve the associated physical symptoms.
A Naturopathic Approach to Keeping Your Kidneys and Lungs Happy (& Eliminating!)
Stay Hydrated
It’s important to drink pure, filtered water daily to support proper filtration of toxins and metabolites through the kidneys. Chronic dehydration is much more common than you might think, and it can certainly impact the health and function of your kidneys. I’ll be posting an article all about how to stay hydrated soon, so stay tuned! (FYI: It’s much more than just drinking 8-10 glasses of water per day.)
Deep Breathing
If you’re like most people, you may often find yourself breathing from your upper chest, rather than fully engaging your diaphragm by breathing into your abdomen. Shallow breathing is often due to tension and being unaware of the body, yet it promotes a continual state of stress and anxiety.
Shallow breathing also means that you’re disrupting your body’s ability to breathe out and eliminate gaseous waste products!
By practicing deep breathing, you not only promote a more relaxed state, but you support your body’s natural eliminatory functions.
Try these simple exercises to improve your ability to breathe deeply:
- Once per hour, stop and take 3 mindful deep breaths. Inhale deeply through your nose and allow your belly to expand, then exhale for as long as possible.
- Another simple exercise is 4-square breathing. Simply breathe in for a count of 4, hold your breath for 4, exhale slowly for a count of 4, then hold your breath out for 4. Repeat several times.
Since the kidneys and lungs are connected, this is one reason why deep breathing can help with anxiety and fear—emotions that are associated with the kidneys!
Stay tuned for my next post in the emunctory series, all about how your gut affects skin health and hormonal balance!
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