Food Fit for Your Kidneys

What heart helper can also keep your kidneys feeling fine? It's fish.

That's right. The omega-3s in fatty fish (like salmon) not only help your heart stay healthy, but they seem to keep kidney cancer away, too. Women in a study who ate fatty fish on a fairly regular basis lowered their risk of kidney cancer by 44 percent.

Mega Omegas
It's no fish tale! Almost 15 years of data show that when salmon and other fatty fish (like sardines and herring) regularly show up on your dinner plate, you could be giving kidney cancer the big kiss-off.

Researchers suspect that certain omega-3 fats in the fish may change the immune response of cancer cells in a way that thwarts their invasive process. But it's got to be fatty fish; slim swimmers (like cod) can have 20 to 30 times less omega-3s.

Fatty fish are also chock-full of vitamin D, which may play a protective role as well. (Look up more D sources with this online tool.)

Fishing for Smarts
Did you know? Fish -- as well as these five other foods -- can help keep your mind young, too.

Long-term fatty fish consumption and renal cell carcinoma incidence in women. Wolk, A., Larsson, S. C., Johansson, J. E., Ekman, P., Journal of the American Medical Association 2006 Sep 20;296(11):1371-1376.