Kidneys

Location of kidneys is of particular importance in your body. There are two bean shaped kidneys in the human body. A normal kidney is about 2.5 cm thick, 10 cm long and 5 cm wide. They are reddish-brown in color. Each weighs around 130 gm in adults. Both kidneys receive blood from the renal artery. In a resting adult nearly 1.2 to 1.4 liters of blood flows through both kidneys in one minute. It means every 4 to 5 minutes all the circulating blood in the body passes through the kidneys. Kidneys help remove excess salt, water and waste products from the bloodstream.

Like other endocrine organs, kidneys also secrete important hormones such as rennin and erythropoietin into the circulation. These hormones play a significant role in the production of blood cells. In addition, they also assist in the regulation of blood pressure.

It won’t be wrong to call kidney as the natural filter in your body. Its job is to purify blood and make it free from all the waste substances that it has collected from every individual cell. but how is such an important kidneys function executed? For this purpose, you need to study the kidney anatomy.

Location Of KidneysYou can better understand the anatomy of kidneys from the labelled diagrams. One of these is shown here. In the kidney images, you can see that a nephron serves as the basic structural and functional unit. There are a large number of nephrons in each of these organs. They make a direct connection with a complex network of blood vessels.

From the kidneys pictures, you can easily distinguish among different parts, such as medulla, cortex and the renal pelvis. On the side of the renal hilum, you will come across renal artery and the renal vein. From the renal pelvis, there emerges a ureter which descends downward to reach bladder. It also indicates that the location of kidneys is directly above the bladder.

The function of kidneys is to produce urine by filtering large quantities of fluid from the blood plasma. Urine consists of approximately 95% water. Urine also contains urea, creatinine, phenols, phosphate, potassium and sulfates. There are also nitrates and a large amount of uric acid.

Urea, uric acid and creatinine are all nitrogenous waste products. Nitrogen containing compounds are among the most toxic metabolic waste substances. Your body produces them as a result of various metabolic processes.

You can express the level of nitrogenous waste products in our blood as BUN (blood urea nitrogen). In healthy adults, normal BUN level ranges from 8 mg/dL to 25 mg/dL. A high level of BUN indicates renal insufficiency, i.e. one of the kidney problems.

The volume and composition of urine that the kidneys produce and excrete every day depend crucially on various factors. These factors include fluid intake, diet, renal functions, climate, metabolic activities of cells. Meanwhile, the presence or absence of systemic diseases also has a role to play in this regard.