I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Organs Zone. It has scientists studying health and disease in various parts of our bodies. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Very little….they help to filter things from the blood and remove wastes. 🙂
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I don’t know much either!
You have 2 kidneys, and occasionally you have three! And it’s definitely possible to live with just 1. It’s important for filtering the nasty things, and other wastes you no longer need, and producing urine!!
Also, in England they make steak and kidney pie, But with kidney from ox, lamb or pig 🙂
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It’s your bodies refinery!
Yes you have 2, and you can survive with just 1. It filters alcohol, drugs as well as your bodies waste to produce urine (pee). It has 2 “layers” the inner medulla, and the outer cortex (there is a 3rd protective layer which doesn’t do much!). The structures that filter are termed nephrons, having a glomerulus head where very thin blood vessels come in to allow the remove of waste.
Let me know if you want more detail 😉
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Kidneys form about 1.5 litres of urine a day. They also produce important hormones such as renin (important in water balance) and erythropoetin (helps produce red blood cells). The kidneys are actually a network of very fine tubes that filter blood and reabsorb water and other important nutrients such a proteins and sugars. If you have problems with your kidneys they may not be able to filter blood properly which means you can lose important nutrients.
To test for Type 1 diabetes (mellitus) would be to taste urine and see if it was sweet (meaning sugar loss from abnormal functioning insulin) – luckily there are better methods for testing this today!
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I loved learning about the kidney at school. They filter our blood about 50 times a day!
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