i have come to the conclusion that although there may have been some nephrotoxic elements, caused by sucralose, acesulfame-k and dehydration from caffeine and alcohol, it's probable that i also have had a developing bunch of kidney stones

i am now keeping a lemon juice thing and using it in almost every drink i make (water or other) and it's definitely causing the pain i was getting intermittently in my kidney areas on left and right basically go away

the vision problem is reducing too, which i can assume means that it was also related to low kidney function, not fully resolved yet but probably i still have stones and kidney damage to resolve

avoiding further damage means a few things - avoiding artificial sweetners and avoiding maltodextrin

the maltodextrin is fairly easy to motivate avoidance of, it causes pain in my bottom-right half broken rear molar, and basically all kinds of potato chips now have it in them, even when they don't even have a flavor

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I hope you get back to good health

i'm sure i will

i'm at least half way there

Stay hydrated and take care of those kidneys.

yeah, they gotta be healed, it's not negotiable, the symptoms were unbearable

- muscle weakness

- double vision

- brain fog

- irritability and frustration at everything

- depression

- constent sense of impending doom, and accidents caused by lapses of attention

i know i'm at least half way recovered because i am starting to be able to build muscle strength finally, after nearly 2 years of weakness emerged end of 2023

What happened if you don't mind my asking

idk... it just emerged during a period where i was drinking a lot of monster zero, so i suspect sucralose and acesulfame-k

plus on top of that, i was eating a lot of stuff with maltodextrin (starch treated with sodium hydroxide) the maltodextrin is especially nasty... i was suffering for several weeks with tooth pain from its effects while my kidneys were being hammered by dehydration and artificial sweeteners

I worked with an ER doc one time whose son used to drink a ton of monsters. This was back in around 2010. The kid was in great shape, played on the college baseball team and ended up with an acute kidney injury that was attributed to monster. He only drank the white monster. I'm not sure which one that is though. So I could totally see that being the case. That stuff is awful for you

all artificial sweetners are nephrotoxic i think

due to the fact that they make the sweet sensation due to similarities to the chemistry of simple sugars, and thus also those same sites that bind to the sense of sweet also bind to the processing of sugars in the kidneys

some of them bind irreversibly, which is definitely causing damage, some are partial agonists, which interferes with normal carbohydrate metabolism

they should just not be approved additives at all, at all, and they have found their way into everything

and the same goes for modified starches, maltodextrin is the most common but there is dozens of variants from different source materials and different hydrolysis mechanisms, they are also very likely nephrotoxic

for sure they are also causing issues with nerves because my experience says that they stimulate nerves to go into signal-on similar to what happens when you get burnt, probably it is a literally chemical burn going on, selective to the nerves

Pretty interesting. I need to read more into the nutrition and chemistry of artificial additives