If we eat American RIce for two years in areas of high incidence of CKDU the disease is reversible - and a MILLION lives will be saved

The world's largest Rice Mill owned by a Farmer Cooperative Riceland - Jonesboro Arkansas

Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown Etiology – CKDU a totally preventable ecological disaster – Kamal Gammanpila, PhD and MPhil, DIC @ the OPA auditorium on Wednesday, 21^st March 2018 @ 6pm

What an eye opener of logic from this distinguished scientist – He believes we are wasting resources in tackling the symptoms and not the disease per se, and so we are setting up Sri Lanka for a disaster and at least a Million deaths from Kidney Disease in the next few years, UNLESS his fears are addressed and proper scientific thought is used to eliminate factors, and concentrate on the main factor or factors, upon a process of elimination.

In his opinion, one has to have an engineering mind, as well as a medical one, and agricultural know how, to determine the probable cause for CKDU and use reference to similar occurrence in other countries to further prove his hypothesis.

Simply put where the three factors below all meet, we have kidney disease, and they are, Water from Hill Country Run-off for irrigation, Diet & a Pattern of consistency of this diet over a long period of time, and certain growing conditions of agricultural staples in this case rice, all play a part in this impending disaster, and where these three factors all together/ come together you have the perfect conditions on which CKDU can thrive.

He has studied this subject only for 4 years, and has approached it from the point of view not of Medicine, or Agriculture, but as an Engineer who is able to come down to a common denominator of conditions to explain the prevalence of Kidney Disease in some areas and not  at others.

SO HERE GOES HIS HYPOTHESES

Over decades forest cover has been removed and tea has been grown in the Hills, and fertilizer rich in phosphates have been used over an extended period of time to improve yields. Due to top soil erosion, and waterflows thereon, the rain water, eventually finds its way into the rivers that flow downstream and to the agricultural areas of the Rajarata,

Farmers use enormous amounts of water to grow paddy. He showed a statistic that showed a staggering amount of liters of water to produce one KG of paddy. The cadmium that runs off from these fertilizers, settle on the farmers soil. Water drains down into the soil leaving cadmium deposits far higher than recommended amounts remain in the soil and some times, Arsenic and Lead also collect, making it a triple disaster, leaving completely degraded soil, with a HIGH concentration of these heavy metals.

These farmers then grow paddy in this highly contaminated soil, and within the village, consume the rice they have grown, exclusively, and purchase little or nothing from outside instead of rice as a staple.

Added to this, it is common practice that farmers parboil their home grown rice. When you par boil, not only the cadmium in the grain remains, but also the cadmium deposits in the husk when boiled with the husk prior to milling, will leach any cadmium to the rice itself.

Even though many vegetables grown in similar soil will also contain high concentrations of these same heavy metals, as people only consume much smaller quantities, as compared with the rice they eat, the total cadmium ingested is from eating a lot of rice, compared with limited quantities of other items.

Over time, the increased concentrations of cadmium, which the kidneys clean from the body, will be so much that the kidney just cannot cope with the more than normal amounts of cadmium that average people in the Country consume and clear out of their systems.

With the production of Albumin, in larger quantities, irreversible kidney disease takes place, and medications and dialysis, merely delay the inevitable, BUT DOES NOT reverse the damage as it does not truly address the real causes, in order to eliminate it from one’s diet, before the kidney damage is irreversible.

He quashed the myths about not drinking sufficient amounts of liquid to flush the system when the farmer becomes dehydrated as not being the principal reason for this disease, but which could hasten its speed as the integrity of the kidney is put under pressure as there are not sufficient fluids to flush the out the impurities.

He further emphasized the fact that micro nutrients are also lacking in people’s diets, and this lack can also aid in the speed of the onset of CKDU, but not necessarily be the cause of the disease.

He pointed out that people in urban areas of the Rajarata, are not as badly affected because they have a choice of food intake and don’t usually eat ONLY rice grown by them alone, but would favor no rice based products, diluting the concentration of rice for consumption. That is why a person from Colombo, though including Polonnaruwa rice in his diet will not develop CKDU as he does not simply eat only rice from a particular area. He wanted to say that a varied diet of foods from all over the country will then dilute the regional influence of a particular item of food.

He used the example to say that the water that fills the Senanayake Samudra in Gal Oya does not have run off from the Hills, though it is in the foothills of the Namunukula Range, as there is NO  proportionately large run off from rivers as water merely gets absorbed into the soil and may eventually get into the water table downstream, but that is after filtration and not run off. The Hills off Bibile and Nilgala are not heavily into tea and there is virgin forest that protects the run off, and merely provides the rain water falling there into the Samudra. This is the reason the the Ampara Farmers who use the same fertilizers in similar proportions and have used this for a long time, do not get CKDU and the soil concentration of Cadmium is lower than in the Rajarata.

He also showed graphs and diagrams, to show that in a small area, if people eat rice consistently from land irrigated from rain fed tanks, the incidence of CKDU was less than from Hill Water Run off fed tanks, where the Mahaveli waters are channeled into the Rajarata.

He touched on the Glyphosate issue, as it is a weedicide, and said that studies do not show it results in a high production of Cadmium, and in that sense is NOT as toxic as it is made out to be lately, where there is a ban, but in his opinion will NOT do anything to reduce the catastrophe of CKDU.

He also showed that Nelum Ala contains a high concentration of Cadmium, but as people do not eat it as frequently as rice, it is not of such a high concentration that enters the blood stream, because one does not consume it at similar levels to rice.

He is now conducting an experiment in a small area of Anuradhapura, to prove his hypotheses by getting people in a high affected area to all eat the food that is provided for them by is organization or foundation, and not eat the food they previously ate from what they grew. He could then show that if with the lower concentration of cadmium ingested, any worrying sign of CKDU, could be reversed as the kidneys can now function in the normal way to remove the normal level of heavy metals in acceptable doses as permitted by the WHO.

If one is to IMMEDIATELY address this concern, and not wait any longer for action, until the problem is investigated and solutions found, he suggests that farmers are told NOT to eat the rice they have grown, and for them to have say Australian Rice provided for a few years, just to see if the CKDU threat is reduced, because fewer are actually developing Kidney Disease. This will provide conclusive proof that it is the DIET STUPID.

That will make it easier once the evidence is shown and the jury deliberates, to impose drastic restrictions of a pattern of consumption to reverse the disease.