I think they have a headline wrong, Taiwan remains “Kidney Dialysis Island”.
They don’t really talk too much about prevention or cause in the article but they do mention Chinese medicine.
The biggest contributor is what goes into your mouth which in Taiwan, it’s the food including food supply, hygiene, and preparation, Chinese medicine, etc.
Edit: I guess should also mention that Taiwan has great healthcare so if people need it, they can get it. Many places in the world it’s just too expensive, people cannot afford it and insurance doesn’t want to cover it.
A lot of people in my taiwan family have had to get transplants. A few of them are coming up on 20 years since the transplant, so it’s not looking good.
My Taiwanese uncle is a Chinese medicine doctor and most (but not all) of the renal failure comes from that side of the family. Really makes you think . They also went from extremely poor to extremely rich and only eat “luxury” food which to them is 99% red meat, lobster/crab (veggies are for ghetto farmer losers) maybe diet also comes into play?
Everyone who had a transplant got their kidney from China (550,000ntd) for the kidney and the operation in Taiwan.
Does anybody know how much $ is covered by the NHI if you need dialysis?
It really comes down to terrible food safety. A government that doesn’t seem to care to enforce food safety, gangster owned night markets that use illegal ingredients and the contaminated tap water from our sinks are all real problems. Until these things change, it’s going to remain kidney dialysis island. Things you can do to protect yourself is to not eat in night markets, invest in an RO system and cook at home with safe (if possible, imported from Japan or some other safe country) ingredients.
There’s all kinds of crap inside the water and how good your water depends on where you are located. In general; I’d advise using an RO system. Since you said you are already using one, you’re all set. Just make sure you change the filters on time. The silly thing is, the water is said to be drinkable by the Taiwan water companies when it leaves the facility but it gets contaminated on the way to your sink.
This seems highly unlikely. Do you have some hard data showing these as the culprit, and why?
Taiwanese egg production methods are basically copied from the worst practices of the West. AFAIK there is little or no local production of cooking oils, and in any case lard/pigfat is the primary cooking oil for traditional foods. In other words there appears to be no significant difference between the eggs and oil consumed in Taiwan vs. eggs and oil consumed in neighboring countries.
So there must be a bit more to it than that. Chinese “medicine” and environmental pollution seem like more plausible culprits.
“The World Health Organization considers fipronil to be “moderately toxic” to humans. Long-term exposure to Fipronil can cause damage to kidneys, the liver and the thyroid gland.”
That doesn’t mean that eggs are responsible for acute kidney failure. People don’t eat that many eggs. One or two a day perhaps. The amounts quoted in the article are tiny bearing in mind the quantity of pesticides that people are likely to ingest from other sources.
Never said this was the number one cause but combine this with everything else toxic here and you have kidney problems down the road. Oil and eggs are just two things that come off the top of my head and everyone here should be familiar about. There’s many others as well.
1)toxic illegal chemicals in night markets
2)fake beef patties at breakfast stores
3)chemically injected shrimp (makes them larger)
there’s obviously a lot more but you get the idea.
What’s kept my kidneys healthy these past 10 years in Taiwan has been to live by these guidelines for food and water:
1)if it’s too cheap, there’s probably a reason for that.
2)stay away from night markets as much as possible
3)use RO
4)buy imported when possible
5)avoid companies that have had problems in the past if possible
. They also went from extremely poor to extremely rich and only eat “luxury” food which to them is 99% red meat, lobster/crab (veggies are for ghetto farmer losers) maybe diet also comes into play?