Watch me lose kill myself!

Honeybee2 posted some information regarding one of the members featured on the "watch us lose" section of the kimkins.com front page. This story, if true, is extremely disturbing. From the Low Carb Friends "Fascination" threads:

What came as a huge, I mean huge, shock to me was the posts I read about the new member on the front page. The member looks wonder and I think she truly has lost the weight. She does appear to be legit in her success in losing the weight.

However, I was distressed when I read that the member had started KK on 1-25-07 and 6 months later became ill in August of that year. She was having breathing difficulties and thought she had asthma, but then ended up in the hospital. The diagnosis- CHF -CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE! She posted about this diagnosis on 8-23-07 or so and then was gone from kimkins.

She returned in 12-27-07 and started back posting about doing kimkins. Her plan was to do bootcamp for a week, K/E for a week and then get right back into Kimkins. She is doing KK with exercising/weight lifting and to say the least I am deeply concerned that she is doing more harm to her already struggling heart.

I'm concerned too. This woman is in grave danger.

To that kimkins.com member: I'm not a medical doctor. But I know a lot about congestive heart failure, having nursed a beloved cat through the feline version of it for nearly two years, and you are risking your life. I don't know what caused your initial bout with CHF, but I can tell you this much -- if you use this very-low calorie diet, and you for whatever reason suddenly increase your calories, you can trigger another round with it. It's called refeeding syndrome, first noticed in survivors of Nazi concentration camps who were allowed free access to food. It's a long story as to what happens, but in the case of congestive heart failure, an increase in electrolytes after a period of depletion leads to uncontrolled edema. Some links on the subject:

New England Journal of Medicine
Pediatrics
Facts and Comparisons

You need to tell your physicians what you are doing by way of a diet, immediately. Whatever you do, don't go off Kimkins by yourself, you need to do this under medical supervision.

Heidi, I know you read here. Let me tell you this right now, I know you don't care about your members but you do care about what happens to you. You tell this woman to get off your "diet" right now and to do it under the supervision of a physician. If something happens to her, you're going to be held criminally liable for it, regardless of your small-print disclaimers. She has a known medical condition for which a very-low calorie diet, like yours, is contraindicated. And you know it.

For all that that I've ever said that Kimkins was going to kill someone, someday, I always hoped I was wrong about that.

Elle