Kempner Rice Diet

[Cow]

Interesting. Those all may have consequences as food that may not be so great though. Estrogen in yeast, nitrites in celery seed, for instance. I’m just not sure how low it benefits us to go as far as salt. I think salt may be very helpful when we are stressed.

Thanks I will take that under advisement. I still use a sprinkle of salt, but before it was a snowy blanket of salt on everything. My BP had climbed into the high 130's and 140's, so I feel I need to do something. Hopefully I can use the other seasonings as a stepping stone and eventually learn to love the natural taste of food, as Blossom has. I have lost three pounds of what I assume is fluid in just a few days since cutting back.

 

[Blossom]

@Cow, that’s fantastic! Salt actually tastes over powering to me these days. I do enjoy never having any (seemingly random) edema, swelling or puffiness as a side benefit. Speaking as a woman I think that can be more extreme for females and might not be as pertinent for men.

 

[Cow]

Thx @Blossom , now that I am paying attention to it, I can't believe how much sodium is in everything.

 

[Blossom]

Thx @Blossom , now that I am paying attention to it, I can't believe how much sodium is in everything.

Yes. It’s very hard to find anything without added salt in the supermarket. The plain fresh meats are free of added salt but anything flavored, brined, smoked or marinated is out of course. Most frozen meats have added salt except plain beef and turkey patties as far as I’ve seen anyway. You can’t go wrong with fresh fruits and vegetables but venturing out beyond these things you really have to start looking at labels. In the center of the store plain rice, pasta, beans or flour shouldn’t have any added salt but nearly everything else seems to have it. My general impression is that the best bet is to go for food that’s as minimally processed as possible. For any type of convenience foods all bets are off. The Low Sodium Gal that got off dialysis and the kidney transplant list recommended baby food for traveling believe it or not. I’ve been looking at the labels of those because we have a vacation coming up in July and she seems to be right. I never thought I’d be considering baby food! I always wondered why I would swell a little and gain a bit of weight on vacation but now I think it was just eating more processed and restaurant foods while traveling even though I tried my best to keep it ‘healthy’. I’ve also found no added salt rice cakes-Lundberg makes one that’s good.
It’s definitely not a convenience friendly lifestyle but can be done if a person is motivated enough to keep it up for whatever personal reason they might have. Most of us aren’t facing a kidney transplant of course so may not need to go quite that low but I still think it might be worth looking into for people who have tried everything else and still have nagging symptoms. It was pretty much my level up moment when I realized I was using multiple electrolytes in various combinations all to no avail searching for a sweet spot and then decided to stop all of them and just get off the roller coaster and let my body manage without unnatural inputs. It certainly may not work for everyone and there are camps that think doing that is dangerous but I’m just going to keep doing what works for me.
The Ted Talk MRI results does make me wonder if part of what we think of as normal aging (and disease because the two go hand in hand) might actually be a gradual build up of salt above what our body is designed to have? When you no longer view it as a benign additive it is eye opening to see truly how much is added to foods most people consider healthy.
Best wishes and keep me posted please on how you do. It’s pretty lonely in the no added salt world. :)

 

[ecstatichamster]

How much fluid are you consuming daily, you who are limiting salt a lot?

I consume about 2 liters of milk and about 5 large cups of coffee, two large glasses of coconut water and maybe some cups of tea.

So I think without salt that would be a problem.

What is your experience with fluid consumption and salt restriction?

 

[Blossom]

@ecstatichamster, I consume about 2.2 L total of all fluids. I’m 100 pounds though. My thirst seems better regulated on no added salt.

 

[Cow]

I drink about 16 oz of coffee (1/2 milk, 1/2 water), 12 oz milk, juicy fruits like melon, and I drink water as thirsty which usually amounts to about 20 oz a day. That does not seem like a lot, but it is all I am thirsty for. Maybe because I already have fluid build up inside me. Maybe I will be thirstier will less salt. But also, when I look at other animals (and I'm sure early humans), they are not sipping water all day long. They take a good drink when they want one, or when they come across a watering hole and that seems to be all they need.

@Blossom thanks for the tip on baby food, although the organic stuff is quite expensive. As a single person, it is really hard to keep a variety of fresh veg in the house. It spoils quickly, before I can eat it. I don't like it as much, but I mostly have to go with frozen. At least I can still find some without salt.

Ugh, I just looked at my Kerry Gold butter and it's loaded with salt. Will have to eat that up before I switch to unsalted.

 

[youngsinatra]

I ate and still eat quite a lot of salt (~6g elemental sodium) and had high blood pressure in the last years. Like 160/90 and took blood pressure drugs and gotten it down only slightly. (to 140/80)

My blood pressure has been perfectly fine since I started taking thyroid. (120/80 mmHg)

 

[youngsinatra]

I do think the acid:base ratio is quite important tho.

So adequate calcium, magnesium and potassium to buffer the acidity (sulfur and chloride) of the diet.

 

[youngsinatra]

I remember one paper that spoke on hypothyroidism and hypertension and apparently it can raise blood pressure by up to 40 mmHg.

 

[ecstatichamster]

@ecstatichamster, I consume about 2.2 L total of all fluids. I’m 100 pounds though. My thirst seems better regulated on no added salt.

interesting, that's quite a bit of liquid actually. I guess the body conserves sodium in case our dietary sodium is very low.

I felt weird and weak when I stopped salt and was consuming this much liquid (probably 5L per day for me, and I'm 183 pounds.)

 

[Blossom]

@Cow, I eat a lot of frozen foods too.

 

[Blossom]

interesting, that's quite a bit of liquid actually. I guess the body conserves sodium in case our dietary sodium is very low.

I felt weird and weak when I stopped salt and was consuming this much liquid (probably 5L per day for me, and I'm 183 pounds.)

I do think it takes a while to adjust. Here’s my labs from 5/20 fwiw.

 

[Ras]

I do think it takes a while to adjust. Here’s my labs from 5/20 fwiw.View attachment 62532

Doctors probably hate you - no money to be made.

 

[Blossom]

Doctors probably hate you - no money to be made.

Thank you sir. I’ll take that as compliment. You definitely have to be willing to put in work and effort to keep learning, growing and adjusting to stay out of the sick care industry. There’s a lot in place to funnel everyone in that direction. I’m sure you already know.

 

[teds]

An excellent video memoir of a Harvard trained MD who knew Kempner and documents Kempner’s work.


View: https://youtu.be/8Xkr8Zh-s1s?si=yXQ6ylzLYmiXlCrr


Remember, Kempner’s diet cured terminally ill patients with extremely high blood pressure, end stage kidney disease, heart disease. Pills and crutches thrown away, people recovered instead of dying. And huge weight loss that was primarily water weight shed, taking the pressure off the heart.

Diet is rice and fruit.like

The doctor says this diet is like penicillin for someone at death’s door who recovers completely. And it takes only 2 - 3 weeks for people to feel so much better.

Diet is very low sodium but doesn’t seem to be a problem. Low protein isn’t a problem either.

This is similar to the potato diet that is faddish in some people today.

Don’t you wish we had physicians like Dr. Neelon and Dr. Kempner today?

so i sat down to listen. It seems kempner was pro starvation diet protocols - like this guy was talking about animals eating ad libitum if given the choice but that humans could make the choice.. it was hard to discern if he was talking about choices in food or amounts of food- or both. As I've been reading through people's accounts of going low salt I've wondered if this has also included those that find benefit from bicarb?

 

[Blossom]

@teds, I haven’t used any baking soda/sodium bicarb recently but if I felt the need for more sodium I’d probably go that route or eat something naturally high in sodium first. I’ve read several times that chloride is the problem part of sodium chloride (added salt). I don’t know though. My labs for sodium, chloride and potassium are all within normal limits fwiw.
I don’t do Kempner’s diet but simply eat a no added salt/minimally processed omnivore diet and it works out well for me personally. One gentleman pointed out that after salt (sodium chloride) leaves the gut it’s broken down into the anion (sodium) and cation (chloride) parts and what is stored in our tissue is the sodium anion. We know sodium is a critical electrolyte but the question I keep running up against is how much do we really need? Obviously it’s going to be a bit different for each person and their individual context but I do think our modern mismatch due to ultra processed foods in sodium:potassium is causing a lot of under appreciated issues. Some people seem to have great success with just adding supplemental potassium (which is great btw) ) but I found that quite cumbersome and hard to dial in while salting my food so I just opted to see how my body would respond to not adding any salt or potassium.
@Nebula, The gentleman that mentioned that it’s the sodium ion from salt that’s stored in our tissues also made this comment,
“The lymphatic system can remove the sodium from the skin. Extra activation of the lymphatic system removes extra sodium. So … exercise drops blood pressure, who knew ? You can stimulate this lymphatic removal by standing on a vibrating plate (and not doing much exercise at all): Whole-body vibration combined with exercise may be more effective in lowering blood pressure and arterial stiffness than exercise alone in older adults with hypertension - PubMed 2
Sweating is also great at removal.” It seems possible that lymphatic stimulation would potentially help remove excess sodium from other tissues as well. Although I exercise and sweat regularly today I decided to go to the gym (today is a rest day) and stand on a vibrating plate for nine minutes. It’s been a few years since I had done it because I remembered it feeling a bit overwhelming after a while. So far so good but I only used the beginner setting. I’m going to try to do this regularly and see if I have a different experience this time around. The problem is it’s a combination device that also uses red light so it might be hard for me to separate out any pros or cons of my n1 as solely due to the vibration. I just figured I’d mention this possible sodium detox angle since you had mentioned it.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Kempner was ad libitum for rice, fruit and sugar, but people that were obese were limited in calories.

 

[mosaic01]

@Blossom Thank you for all the interesting links on salt. I realize now that salt is another one of those topics where Peat got everything wrong, by favoring short-term symptom suppression over long-term health. An omnivore diet seems to be sufficient to meet the sodium needs.

 

[Blossom]

@mosaic01, You’re welcome sir. I’ve just been trying to figure out why something so counterintuitive helped me so much. You might also enjoy this video I found. The speaker points out that our Western sodium intake had increased in just the last 1,000 years. Most of the video applies to the critically ill in the ICU but there’s a few good nuggets in the 16 minutes.

View: https://youtu.be/gEhEijQnAg0?si=oz-V9jpKPbjYkvD5