Welcome to The Rise – your weekly dose of circadian sunshine, decentralised health wisdom, and actionable tips to help you live healthier, stronger, and more empowered.
This week, in honour of World Kidney Day, 12 March, and the release of Australia’s sobering new Code Red report, we’re going deep on your hard working kidneys. Get ready to learn…
- what silent epidemic is sweeping the globe
- the stunning new science on how damaged kidneys secretly harm your heart
- the diagnostic gap your doctor may not even know about, and
- why protecting your circadian rhythm isn’t just about saving your sleep
Have suggestions — or something you’d love to see covered here? Help me better serve this vibrant community of health rebels and send me your feedback here.
Much love and sunshine, ☀️
Sandy xx
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Issue #112 • 22 March, 2026
🌅 Rise Report
Chronic Kidney Disease Now Among Top Causes of Death Worldwide
Cast your mind back to 1990. Shoulder pads were big (like really big!), everyone was watching Pretty Woman, and roughly 378 million people worldwide had chronic kidney disease (CKD). Fast-forward to 2023, and that number has more than doubled, to 788 million people. That’s nearly one in ten adults on the planet walking around with progressively declining kidney function, most of them completely unaware.
Researchers from NYU Langone Health and the University of Glasgow analysed 2,230 scientific papers from 133 countries for the Global Burden of Disease 2023 study, published in The Lancet November 2025. CKD now sits among the top ten causes of death globally, and accounts for 12% of all cardiovascular deaths worldwide. The biggest drivers? High blood sugar, high blood pressure, and obesity, the exact conditions modern life is doing a great job of manufacturing at scale.
Chronic kidney disease has surged to nearly 800 million cases and is now among the top causes of death worldwide.
Here in Australia, Kidney Health Australia’s hot off the press Kidney Code Red report confirms 1 in 7 Australian adults are affected, and a staggering 2.5 million don’t know it yet. In the US, that figure is an estimated 35.5 million Americans walking around equally unaware.
The takeaway? Optimising our daily habits and circadian health isn’t just about reducing our risk of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. It’s also about protecting our precious kidneys. If you’re at all concerned, a simple Kidney Health Check, three tests: blood, urine, and blood pressure, could be life-changing.
The Hidden Link Between Kidney Disease and Heart Health
One of the saddest and most poorly understood aspects of CKD is that many people don’t lose their life to failing kidneys, they lose it to a failing heart. It’s one of medicine’s long-standing mysteries: why do so many people with kidney disease develop serious heart complications, even when their heart health seemed fine?
A January 2026 study published in Circulation by researchers at UVA Health and Mount Sinai has finally shed some light. It turns out diseased kidneys release tiny particles called extracellular vesicles into the bloodstream, carrying microRNA that travels directly to the heart and disrupts its function. Importantly, these vesicles are only produced by diseased kidneys, they’re absent in healthy individuals entirely.
In lab models, blocking these vesicles improved heart function significantly. The researchers hope a blood test could one day identify who is at highest risk early and that targeting these vesicles becomes a new treatment pathway. Honestly? My greatest hope is that one day, everyone has the knowledge and tools to optimise their circadian health so they never have to walk down this path in the first place.
The decentralised wisdom? Your kidneys and heart are in constant conversation. The good news is the lifestyle levers that support your kidneys, quality sleep, stable blood sugars, healthy blood pressure, daily movement, are all protecting your heart at exactly the same time.
How Aligning Your Body Clock Could Protect Your Kidneys
After everything we’ve just covered, I know the stats about kidney disease can feel confronting, but fear not my friend, I’ve got you. Because there is also a growing body of research that shows that some of the most powerful kidney protection available is already in your hands.
A large Korean population study of 17,408 adults found that sleep onset time was independently associated with CKD risk ie. people with later, misaligned sleep patterns had significantly higher CKD prevalence, even after adjusting for every other risk factor. Flip that finding around and it shows consistent, well-timed sleep is genuinely protective for your kidneys.
Supporting this, a 2025 study published in Scientific Reports found that time-restricted eating preserved kidney tissue, reduced inflammation, and protected against early markers of kidney damage in an obesity model. Researchers believe the mechanism responsible runs through the circadian clock directly.
The decentralised wisdom? You don’t need a prescription for this. Consistent sleep timing, morning light, and closing your eating window before the evening are all free and available today. And your kidneys, which are quietly working their hardest while you sleep, will thank you for it – for many years to come.
🤓 Smarty Pants
eGFR — The Number That Tells You How Well Your Kidneys Are Really Filtering
You’ve probably seen the letters “eGFR” appear on your blood test result at some point. Maybe you gave it a quick glance and moved on. But this single number, your estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate, is one of the most important metrics for understanding your kidney health, and most of us have never been properly introduced.
The eGFR estimates how many millilitres of blood your kidneys are filtering per minute per 1.73 square metres of body surface area. Think of your kidneys as a pair of biological water filters, producing around 180 litres of filtrate every single day, extracting waste, balancing electrolytes, and regulating your blood pressure. The eGFR tells you how efficiently that filtration process is running. A healthy younger adult typically scores above 90 mL/min/1.73m², though this number naturally declines with age. A result below 60, held for three months or more, is how CKD is formally diagnosed.
Here’s where it gets interesting, and slightly unsettling. Your kidneys are extraordinary at compensating. Significant loss of function can occur before symptoms appear, and early declines are often missed if results aren’t tracked over time. This is why the eGFR is so important to track over time rather than in isolation, a slow decline, even within the ‘normal’ range, tells a story that a single snapshot misses.
The reframe: your eGFR is not a pass-fail test, it’s a trajectory. Two results a year apart tell you far more than one. Ask for it, track it, and if you’ve never had the urine albumin test (uACR) alongside it, that’s the conversation to have with your GP next visit.
P.S Want to know what the official “normal” eGFR numbers are? In adults, the normal eGFR number is usually more than 90. eGFR declines with age, even in people without kidney disease so here’s a chart to show the for average estimated eGFR based on age.
☀️ Sandy’s Sunshine
Your Kidneys Run on a Clock. Are You Working With It or Against It?
When people think about circadian health, they usually think about getting a good night’s sleep. Maybe melatonin. Possibly what time to eat breakfast. But kidneys? No-one really thinks about that. But here’s something that may surprise you: your kidneys have their own built-in circadian clock, and they’ve had it since before you were born. Research confirms that virtually every cell in the kidney contains its own molecular clock, governing everything from how much sodium you excrete, to how your blood is filtered, to how your blood pressure behaves at night.
And here’s the thing (which you’re probably guessing I’m going to say…) when that clock gets disrupted, your kidneys feel it. So here’s what you can do.
One of the biggest connections to healthy kidneys is blood pressure. Most people don’t realise that your blood pressure is supposed to naturally dip by around 10–20% while you sleep. It’s called the “dipping pattern” and it’s your body doing exactly what it’s designed to do. But when your circadian rhythm is out of whack, late nights, artificial light after dark, irregular sleep times, eating too close to bedtime, that dip doesn’t happen properly. And research shows that people whose blood pressure doesn’t dip at night have significantly higher rates of CKD. One study of 257 CKD patients found that 75% showed a non-dipping pattern. Seventy-five percent.
The other big pathway is blood sugar. Diabetes is the single biggest driver of CKD globally, and circadian disruption is one of the sneakiest contributors to insulin resistance. Late eating, disrupted sleep, and artificial light at night all quietly push your metabolism towards blood sugar dysregulation, which puts your kidneys directly in the firing line over time.
I know that might sound a little heavy after everything else in this edition. But here’s what I really want you to take away from all of this: the things that protect your kidneys are the same things we talk about every single week in The Rise. Morning light. Consistent sleep and wake times. Dimming the lights after sunset. Closing the kitchen a couple of hours before bed. Moving your body every day.
You cannot out-supplement or out-gadget a disrupted body clock. But you absolutely can, starting tonight, for free, give your kidneys the rhythm they were built for. And that, my friend, is very good news. ☀️
🔢 Number Crunch
90%: You can lose up to 80–90% of your kidney function before obvious symptoms appear. By the time most people feel unwell, the damage is already advanced which is exactly why optimising your circadian health should be priority numero uno and why simple kidney checks matter.
“The greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it.” — Hippocrates
The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and not intended as medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional for personal health decisions. This post may contain affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.
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