Kidney & Water Balance
The Animations (6)
Kidney Nephron
Follow blood into the glomerulus and see filtration and reabsorption turn 180 litres of filtrate into urine — then toggle dehydration or diabetes and watch it change.
Launch animation →Thirst, ADH & How Your Body Guards Its Water
Get dehydrated and watch osmoreceptors fire thirst and ADH, opening aquaporins so the kidney reclaims water — then drink too much, or lose ADH in diabetes insipidus, and watch the urine run clear.
Launch animation →Osmosis & Tonicity: Why Cells Swell or Shrink
Drop a cell into salty or plain water and watch it shrivel or swell to bursting as water chases solute — then see why an IV bag has to be mixed to just the right strength.
Launch animation →SGLT2: Why Diabetes Drugs Make You Pee Sugar
Watch the kidney reclaim every gram of glucose — until blood sugar passes the threshold and it spills into the urine, or an SGLT2-inhibitor drug dumps it there on purpose.
Launch animation →How Kidney Stones Form (and How to Prevent Them)
Watch minerals in concentrated urine crystallize and clump into a stone — then feel it drop into the ureter and block it (the worst pain there is), and learn why water and calcium actually prevent them.
Launch animation →How You Pee: The Bladder & Its Reflex
Fill the bladder, feel the urge build, then release the micturition reflex to void on command — and see why infants can’t hold it, why the prostate weakens the stream, and what an overactive bladder does.
Launch animation →How the nephron filters plasma and reclaims what the body needs, and how water balance is defended: osmosis and tonicity at the cell membrane, ADH and thirst, glucose recovered at the SGLT2 transporter, the bladder filling and emptying, and the chemistry by which a kidney stone crystallises.
Every page here is a hands-on animated diagram, not a video — press play, slow it down, break the mechanism on purpose, and read the live values in real clinical units. They explain how a process works; they are not medical advice, and the evidence for any treatment lives on the topic pages each animation links into.