Abstract
Improper Diet and Kidney Diseases

"Improper diets" are the common pathogenic factors in the etiology of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Although improper diets usually directly damage the spleen and stomach in TCM theory, the improper diets also damage the kidneys. The presentation mainly introduces the roles of high sugar, alcohol and high fat diets and its possible mechanism on kidney diseases. The main mechanism is to regulate different signaling pathways, such as TGFβ/Smad, NFκB, PPAR-α, etc., by affecting gene expression or post-transcriptional modifications, leading to inflammation, cell death, and fibrosis in the kidney.