Kempner Rice Diet

[TradClare]

What fruits were suggested in the diet? Could it have been from being a low "vitamin A" diet?

No, the Kenpner patients were prescribed a daily vitamin that contained vitamin A. Genereux has this info somewhere on his site if you search. I remember it being in the ballpark of RDA

 

[charlie]

No, the Kenpner patients were prescribed a daily vitamin that contained vitamin A. Genereux has this info somewhere on his site if you search. I remember it being in the ballpark of RDA

Thank you for the info.

 

[JudiBlueHen]

I'm not knocking low salt - it very much depends on your individual biology and state of health. I do know that my daughter with severe mental illness has gone catatonic on several occasions and was not able to speak or respond to commands until given a saline drip in the ER. Her sodium was measured below the lower limit at about 127 (normal is mid 130's). This happened on multiple occasions.

For some reason, there are people who lose electrolytes. Those people learn that they cannot over-consume water and they must have a little slat in their diet.

 

[ecstatichamster]

I'm not knocking low salt - it very much depends on your individual biology and state of health. I do know that my daughter with severe mental illness has gone catatonic on several occasions and was not able to speak or respond to commands until given a saline drip in the ER. Her sodium was measured below the lower limit at about 127 (normal is mid 130's). This happened on multiple occasions.

For some reason, there are people who lose electrolytes. Those people learn that they cannot over-consume water and they must have a little slat in their diet.

Right, Dr. Neelon and someone else, maybe it was McDougall, said that some people need more and can get a rare but very dangerous condition if they are on a diet too low in salt. Recommends 500mg for most people as that avoids this dangerous but rare issue.

 

[gabys225]

@JudiBlueHen Said it right there. When I was in the first year of my vA detox, I needed higher amounts of sodium, while simultaneously being very sensitive to it. I was on a seesaw where too much clearly caused hypertension (I've tested this over and over again on myself and salt can reliably give me hypertension when I reach an excessive amount) and too little gave me crippling cramps and brain fog that made it hard to speak and string words together. This was not due to other electrolytes, I tested them all individually when I would feel I was approaching that state, as well as trying different forms.

When I tried the Kempner diet I would simply add a tiny pinch of salt to my rice for the day, and if I felt that I was too low I always had a water bottle with some salt on me, or a small salt shaker in my pocket. The diet gave me relief of my hypertension, but pushed detox much too fast for me since there was practically no fat, so I stopped.

What remains of my trial is the knowledge of my own personal sodium set point, as my health currently stands. Salting every meal liberally is enough to make hypertensive after about 3 weeks, then I need to back off and focus on potassium + glucose and things calm down after a few days.

When I am low sodium, I have incredible heat tolerance. It just doesn't bother me even if it's scorching out, whereas when I am high sodium I am bathed in sweat and the thermogenic effect is counter productive.

I mostly feel positives from low sodium, one of the indicators that I have crossed the threshold into too low is a drop in body temperature. I believe my current state of health makes this balancing act more difficult for my body as it should be automatic, but I'd rather manage my electrolytes than resort to drugs.

 

[ecstatichamster]

@JudiBlueHen Said it right there. When I was in the first year of my vA detox, I needed higher amounts of sodium, while simultaneously being very sensitive to it. I was on a seesaw where too much clearly caused hypertension (I've tested this over and over again on myself and salt can reliably give me hypertension when I reach an excessive amount) and too little gave me crippling cramps and brain fog that made it hard to speak and string words together. This was not due to other electrolytes, I tested them all individually when I would feel I was approaching that state, as well as trying different forms.

When I tried the Kempner diet I would simply add a tiny pinch of salt to my rice for the day, and if I felt that I was too low I always had a water bottle with some salt on me, or a small salt shaker in my pocket. The diet gave me relief of my hypertension, but pushed detox much too fast for me since there was practically no fat, so I stopped.

What remains of my trial is the knowledge of my own personal sodium set point, as my health currently stands. Salting every meal liberally is enough to make hypertensive after about 3 weeks, then I need to back off and focus on potassium + glucose and things calm down after a few days.

When I am low sodium, I have incredible heat tolerance. It just doesn't bother me even if it's scorching out, whereas when I am high sodium I am bathed in sweat and the thermogenic effect is counter productive.

I mostly feel positives from low sodium, one of the indicators that I have crossed the threshold into too low is a drop in body temperature. I believe my current state of health makes this balancing act more difficult for my body as it should be automatic, but I'd rather manage my electrolytes than resort to drugs.

What were your detox symptoms that were “too fast”. Your info is very helpful. Thank you. @gabys225

 

[Nik665]

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.

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?

This was a 400 calorie diet of rice and sugar VERY LOW could explain rapid weight loss which helped improve all those health markers

 

[belcanto]

I'm wondering how people came off the diet and maintained their results.

 

[Dolomite]

I'm wondering how people came off the diet and maintained their results.

If you listen to the second video posted, there is a patient X who stays on the diet even on vacation.

 

[Sinjin]

It is not surprising, therefore, that commercial interests which represent the salt manufacturers and extractors, e.g. the Salt Institute in the US and the soft drinks industry, together with many sections of the food processing industry, have co-operated in perpetuating the idea that salt is not involved in hypertension. They have also suggested that dietary salt only effects a small number of people and that therefore it is not worthwhile for the normotensive population to reduce its salt intake. They also perpetuate the myth that reducing salt intake can be dangerous.”

Considering potassium seems to be much more abundant in fruits and vegetables, it always seemed strange to me that potassium supplementation is villified as being dangerous, even by respectable sites like Dr Lonsdale's, whereas salt supplementation is encouraged.

I've experimented with low salt in the past and found it helpful. I always thought it was more likely to be the choride portion of the salt that's causing issues as it's known to be acidifying on the body. The kempner rice diet would seem to be alkalising due to the relative lack of protein and salt.

"The Primary Sources Of Acidity In The Diet Are Sulfur-containing AAs, Salt, And Phosphoric Acid"

 

[Nebula]

This was a 400 calorie diet of rice and sugar VERY LOW could explain rapid weight loss which helped improve all those health markers

Where have you seen that? I recall the published study said well over 2000 calories.

Considering potassium seems to be much more abundant in fruits and vegetables, it always seemed strange to me that potassium supplementation is villified as being dangerous, even by respectable sites like Dr Lonsdale's, whereas salt supplementation is encouraged.

I've experimented with low salt in the past and found it helpful. I always thought it was more likely to be the choride portion of the salt that's causing issues as it's known to be acidifying on the body. The kempner rice diet would seem to be alkalising due to the relative lack of protein and salt.

"The Primary Sources Of Acidity In The Diet Are Sulfur-containing AAs, Salt, And Phosphoric Acid"

Potassium supplementation is dangerous on any empty stomach and without an abundance of carbs to accompany the potassium. Along with a balance of all the other important nutrients. I got myself to dangerously high potassium levels last weekend sipping on a potassium citrate solution without eating enough. Definitely not the way to go about it. In the past I was fine taking maybe 1/2 tsp potassium citrate powder after a large meal all at once. Sipping the same amount over hours on an empty stomach seemed to rise potassium levels much higher. Dangerously high. Which gave me severe panic attacks. Everything went back to normal after drinking a lot of water to dilute and urinate it out of my system. But learn from my mistake. Do not supplement potassium that way.

 

[Blossom]

Considering potassium seems to be much more abundant in fruits and vegetables, it always seemed strange to me that potassium supplementation is villified as being dangerous, even by respectable sites like Dr Lonsdale's, whereas salt supplementation is encouraged.

I've experimented with low salt in the past and found it helpful. I always thought it was more likely to be the choride portion of the salt that's causing issues as it's known to be acidifying on the body. The kempner rice diet would seem to be alkalising due to the relative lack of protein and salt.

"The Primary Sources Of Acidity In The Diet Are Sulfur-containing AAs, Salt, And Phosphoric Acid"

It definitely seems logical to me that the ratios that occur in foods in their natural form would generally be better tolerated by our body and that’s been my exact experience. I only need/benefit from additional supplemental potassium if I’m eating at a restaurant or at someone’s home where I can’t control the amount of salt used in preparation.

 

[ecstatichamster]

I can’t imagine supplementing potassium under normal circumstances. I do use “NoSalt” sometimes if I have had a lot of salt, eating out, etc, and then I get some cramping. The NoSalt KCl gets rid of the cramps in a few minutes, even though drinking juice or something with a bunch of organic potassium doesn’t help.

 

[Sinjin]

I'd not experimented much with reducing salt since seeing this study which seemed to suggest it lowered dopamine

But I certainly didn't feel like reducing salt lowered my dopamine (as gauged by motivation/mood) when experimenting with it.

Perhaps the idea that higher serum dopamine is always better may be an oversimplification, and maybe it's the amount of dopamine that gets to the receptor that's more important.

I know Garret Smith has mentioned that dopamine breaks down to a aldehydes/acetaldehyde and he doesn't buy into the dopamine = happiness angle. There certainly seem to be downsides to high dopamine:

"The induction of oxidative stress is another important mechanism by which dopamine drives several disparate effects that are primarily associated with the development of pathologic conditions. Oxidative damage associated with dopamine includes dopamine auto-oxidation, α-synuclein aggregation, glial cell activation, alterations in calcium signaling, mitochondrial dysfunction, and excess free iron (Juarez Olguin et al., 2016)... ...These products [dopamine quinones, 6-hydroxydopamine and reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as O2-] can be particularly harmful to cells by reacting nonspecifically, causing irreversible cell damage and apoptosis. The interplay of oxidative stress and neuroinflammation is a major factor in the impact of dopamine on immune function and has been shown to synergistically promote the progression of neurodegenerative diseases such as PD and Alzheimer’s disease (Asanuma et al., 2003; Jiang, Sun et al., 2016)." Link

 

[ecstatichamster]

I have never realized but there is a difference between

salt to appetite (which may be high due to acclimation)
salt that is "reduced" like say 3g per day
ultra low salt = less than 500mg per day

I never saw low sodium as fixing hypertension. But that was because I was looking at "reduced" salt diets, which have almost no effect.

Ultra low salt I think does in fact greatly help hypertension and also helps to make blood vessels more flexible.

Still not ready to give up adding salt but the experiment is ongoing and interesting. I couldn't eat porridge without a little salt, even maybe 300mg made it much more appetizing.

I had a real salt craving yesterday for the first time. I'm probably eating 1500mg per day, because I'm eating food that has a little salt added by the chef.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2245976/

After 6 week of 'no added salt diet' systolic and diastolic BP significantly decreased during the day (mean decrease: 12.1/6.8 mmhg) and at night (mean decrease: 11.1/5.9 mmhg) which is statistically significant in comparison to control group (P 0.001 and 0.01).

Urinary sodium excretion of 24 hour urine decreased by 37.1 meq/d ± 39,67 mg/dl in case group which is statistically significant in comparison to control group (p: 0.001).

Only 36% of the patients, after no added salt diet, reached the pretreatment goal of 24 hour urinary sodium excretion of below 100 meq/dl (P:0.001).

 

[Blossom]

Taking it slow seems reasonable. The second time I quit after a period of getting lax due to work demands I weaned off gradually. The first time I was not working outside our home so it was much easier to simply stop.
Here’s another good write up on salt.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7309298/

 

[ecstatichamster]

Taking it slow seems reasonable. The second time I quit after a period of getting lax due to work demands I weaned off gradually. The first time I was not working outside our home so it was much easier to simply stop.
Here’s another good write up on salt.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7309298/

thank you!!!

 

[Blossom]

@ecstatichamster, you’re welcome sir.

 

[cremes]

Low salt equals higher mortality rates. It’s another one of those U-shaped curves similar to cholesterol.

So low or no salt doesn’t seem to be overall protective.

 

[LizRey86]

Thank you for sharing this sir. I’ve heard of him but never looked into it much. I incidentally stopped adding salt to my food back in 2022 and it counter-intuitively helped improve my low blood pressure.

Reduction of salt helped your low blood pressure? I have struggled with my blood pressure for my entire life its never been above 95/55 and many time was lower. Do you have any idea how that works?