Eating Too Salty, High Blood Pressure, Heart Problems? Doctor Zhu Danxi’s “Ru Dan Lun” (Essay on Eating Bland): Dial Down the Salt and Taste Food Itself
Patient search terms: eating too salty / high blood pressure / heart problems / heart disease and salt / what is bland food / Doctor Zhu Danxi diet / reducing salt intake / low-salt diet for the elderly / can’t taste natural flavor anymore / seasonings and health
Corresponding medical names: excessive sodium intake · hypertension · cardiovascular burden from high salt · taste-threshold elevation · post-illness dietary care
Opening: For Doctor Zhu Danxi, the single most important thing in health was “bland”
We continue with the medical thought of Doctor Zhu Danxi. Running through his entire theoretical system there is one thing he took with the utmost seriousness — dan shi, eating bland.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This “bland” has two layers. The first layer: eat as little rich, fatty, heavily seasoned food as possible — fat meat, greasy dishes, overpowering flavors. Following your cravings is not good; if you want fatty meat every day and eat it every day, that won’t do. But if you think “bland eating” only means giving up fatty meat, your understanding is still too narrow.
The second layer is what Doctor Zhu Danxi really meant — eat “bland flavors.” For this he wrote a whole essay, called Ru Dan Lun (Essay on Eating Bland).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This “bland” does not mean going vegetarian or giving up meat — that is not the point. Doctor Zhu Danxi is talking about the palate itself being bland — bland to what degree? Use as little seasoning as possible. The ancients said it outright — in Doctor Zhu Danxi’s time, he was already calling on people to cut back on seasonings.
At seventy, Doctor Zhu Danxi is challenged to his face: no salt, no vinegar — is that in accord with the Way?
Back then people actually asked him: you are past seventy, and you eat no salt and no vinegar — is that in accord with reason?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The original text records someone asking him: “Zi jin nian mai qi shi yi, jin que yan xi, qi zhong dao hu?” — “You are over seventy and have given up all the flavorful things like salt and vinegar — how can this accord with the Way of nourishing life?” And yet “zi shen mao er se ze ye” — “your spirit is radiant and your complexion is moist and fine.” Other people season their food normally; you eat none of it, and your body is all the better for it — why?
Doctor Zhu Danxi’s answer is exactly this essay, Ru Dan Lun.
Doctor Zhu Danxi’s answer: food already has its own flavor
Doctor Zhu Danxi said that food itself has flavor — the “five flavors” are innate to the food.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhu Danxi divided flavors into two kinds: “flavors that come from Heaven” — given by nature, present in the food itself; and “flavors that are made by human hands” — added during cooking. The Heaven-given flavor is the “naturally harmonious flavor” (zi ran chong he zhi wei). Every food has it — it does not depend on seasoning.
You say food has no saltiness? It does. The saltiness of barley and millet — the grains themselves carry a salty note; boil seafood in soup and the broth is naturally salty. Rice and Huai yam are sweet — chew them slowly and you will find a faint sweetness. Scallions, chives and the like bring their own pungency. These flavors are given by Heaven; they are the naturally harmonious flavor inherent in food itself.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The flavors added later — pepper, spices, salt, MSG — are put in by human hands during cooking. What is the difference between the two kinds? The naturally harmonious flavor can nourish the body directly — the body accepts it; it replenishes the yin essence, the body’s energy and substance, and is therefore excellent. The flavors added by human hands, on the other hand, are easy to overdo.
Why added flavors are dangerous — the cook piles them in spoonful by spoonful, and your palate’s threshold climbs higher and higher
Why do artificially tuned flavors cause trouble?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Restaurants and food businesses, to lure you in, must make the flavor as intense as possible. Once it is intense, you find it delicious, the saliva flows, your senses are stimulated. But eat this heavy-flavored food for long enough and you can no longer taste the naturally harmonious flavor at all — go back to plain food and you cannot experience that freshness anymore. So many people today have fallen into a state where their appetite has been tuned up by the cooks: in the kitchen, the seasoning goes in by the ladle, spoonful after spoonful, in huge amounts. Once the sensory stimulation has been raised, ordinary food no longer works for you — when mealtime comes you fret over what to eat, and you go to whichever restaurant has the most flavor and skip the ones that don’t. The result: your taste threshold climbs ever higher, your palate grows ever worse, and ordinary food becomes increasingly unacceptable.
Doctor Zhu Danxi’s meaning is the opposite: we should accustom ourselves to the flavor of food itself and appreciate its harmonious quality; the things added by human hands — avoid them where you can; they do you no good.
Doctor Zhu Danxi himself: no salt, and after illness, “the blander the better”
Doctor Zhu Danxi promoted “bland flavor” especially — he was particularly serious about avoiding salt. He himself ate no salt and no vinegar.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhu Danxi instructed his patients: during recovery from illness, the food must be bland — the blander the better. In his system of thought, the blander the palate, the better; eating the natural flavor of food is the best of all. He wrote essays explaining this principle, and he actually lived it — his records show he would not touch salt at all, keeping clear of salty and pickled things alike.
So the theory was stated — but does it really work? Can a person actually eat this way? Doctor Luo says he was in the middle of discussing exactly this when, as luck would have it, the matter presented itself — he met a man who had been practicing this for years.
Doctor Luo meets a kindred spirit: the “Flying Dragon” acupuncturist of Shenzhen, who lives without salt
Doctor Luo has a good friend who practices acupuncture in Shenzhen, known as the Fei Long Zhong Yi — the “Flying Dragon” practitioner of Chinese medicine.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This brother has unique insight into acupuncture and needles exceptionally well — he trained in qigong as a child, and the effect of his needles is excellent. A few days ago he came to see me in Sanya, partly to relax, and we exchanged notes. He said: I have recently discovered a very serious problem — people are eating far too much salt; the salt hiding in seasonings is enormous.
The Flying Dragon practitioner explained his reasoning: eat too much salt and the salt concentration in the body rises; to keep its balance the body must keep drinking water — when something is salty you have to drink hard, because the body cannot tolerate the concentration and uses water to neutralize it. Once large amounts of water pour in, the excess fluid cannot always be properly transformed and transported; the burden on the whole circulation of qi and blood increases, and the diseases that follow are many — the heart problems of the elderly, all kinds of blood-pressure conditions — trace them to the root and salt is intimately involved.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He said he has kept this up for many years — simply eating no salt. When we ate together I could really feel the difference: I was still using seasonings normally; he finished his hotpot with nothing dipped in it at all — straight from the pot; when the stir-fried dishes came, he rinsed them in water before eating. He told me: taste it carefully — the flavor inside is actually very fragrant. Each dish has its own flavor; once you use seasonings you can no longer feel it, your mouth is full of seasoning instead. Eat this way and you will find every single ingredient delicious. This is no-salt eating, or rather low-salt eating — because the food itself still carries a little salt.
Does the body do well on this? The Flying Dragon practitioner’s condition is excellent — and his needle qi is especially full; a man who practices qigong has abundant qi and a completely normal body.
The story of salt: once more precious than life, now everywhere — the salt-craving gene
Why do we always feel a dish needs salt? It goes back to the history of salt.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In ancient times, how much salt was there? Transport was difficult; getting sea salt inland was hard, and digging salt out of rock inland was hard too — so in antiquity salt was extremely precious. Being able to secure an adequate supply of salt was no small achievement, and smuggling salt was a grave crime. But today? Salt is cheap and everywhere; when it is everywhere, it is easy to eat too much of it.
Why do we overeat it? Doctor Luo says our bodies carry what we might call a salt-craving gene — in the past, when salt was scarce, a person who met salt wanted to take in as much as possible; that was a survival instinct. Now that the supply is abundant, that gene works against us — people eat it frantically, and their palates grow heavier and heavier.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Eat this much salt and the consequence is growing pressure inside the body, drinking too much water, and various heart problems, high blood pressure, and so on. And yet someone like the Flying Dragon practitioner, who eats no salt and adds no seasoning, lives perfectly well — which tells us normal people simply do not need that much salt. Our current salt intake overshoots by far too much.
The Flying Dragon practitioner’s clinical experience: no medicine — just less salt, and the illness went away
Does no-salt eating really work? The Flying Dragon practitioner has plenty of practical evidence — he has advocated it for many years.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He says many patients took no medicine at all — they simply cut the salt, stopped eating so salty, ate only the natural flavor of food every day, and the body recovered, slowly but surely: some heart conditions eased, some people’s high blood pressure came back to normal, and some lost weight beautifully — he had just received a WeChat message from one of them: 30 jin (about 15 kg) down. He said: many patients now — I do not even treat them; I just tell them to eat this way, and their bodies keep improving and their original illnesses disappear.
The Flying Dragon practitioner also has a particularly striking observation:
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Some elderly people get leg pain the moment the weather changes — joint pain, as accurate as a weather forecast. He said: for such seniors, as long as they see a weather change coming and stop eating salt three days in advance, you can rest assured — this time, when the cloudy day arrives, their joints will not hurt. So he believes many problems of the rheumatic and arthritic kind are tied to high-salt diets.
Doctor Luo was fascinated: your thinking and your practice match Doctor Zhu Danxi’s almost exactly — Doctor Zhu Danxi himself ate no salt. The Flying Dragon practitioner said: I enjoy reading Doctor Zhu Danxi too, and I fully accept his theory. Two men, different paths, arriving at the same point.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I was delighted to hear it. This encounter was like finding treasure — I had met a fellow practitioner who lives Doctor Zhu Danxi’s theory, and the results are this good, which proves Doctor Zhu Danxi was not talking nonsense. His own refusal of salt was well founded, and this is how he looked after his family’s health. In the past, reading his writings, I sometimes found it hard to believe — was Doctor Zhu Danxi going too far, eating no salt at all? Then along came a kindred spirit who had verified the practice himself. When practitioners exchange notes, you really do learn a great deal.
Doctor Luo’s summary: total no-salt is not realistic, but low-salt is — especially for the elderly, control the salt
Some friends will ask: if we add no salt at all, what about the sodium-potassium balance in the body?
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Let me say this plainly: when we speak of a “no-salt diet,” it is in fact impossible to achieve — when you eat out, the salt is certainly high, and you cannot cook every meal at home with zero salt. So what we call no-salt eating is really low-salt eating. Nor do I advocate being too absolute: sometimes your family feels the food is tasteless and objects, and you cannot carry it out anyway; an occasional low-salt, low-oil meal with a little adjustment of flavor is all right. But persistently using fewer seasonings brings real, tangible help to the body.
This is especially true for the elderly — the Flying Dragon practitioner believes many geriatric illnesses are tied to eating too much salt.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Bring the salt under control and the elderly face far fewer dangers. In treating heart disease, he has many patients who finally stabilize on a low-salt diet. Health agencies may recommend a certain number of grams per day, but let me tell you — in China that is impossible: restaurant cooks add salt as if it cost nothing, generous with it, and the actual amount can be several times the standard. You must be on guard against this; it is a major factor in our unhealthy bodies.
And finally Doctor Luo says: think about whether this reasoning holds, and give it a try where you can — cook without putting salt in, experience the dish’s own flavor, and see if you can accept it. And there is a fellow practitioner proving through clinical practice that many illnesses really can be relieved, even cured, this way.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: We really are using more and more salt, and our palates are heavier and heavier. Controlling salt intake and tasting the natural flavor of food — this is knowledge worth knowing. Give it a try. Tomorrow we continue with the clinical stories of Doctor Zhu Danxi.
What to take away
- “Bland” was Doctor Zhu Danxi’s first rule of health — and it had two layers: cut the rich, fatty, heavy food, and let the palate itself go bland, meaning drastically fewer seasonings.
- Food has its own Heaven-given flavor — the natural saltiness of grains, the sweetness of rice and Huai yam, the pungency of scallions and chives. This naturally harmonious flavor nourishes the yin essence directly; flavors added by human hands are easy to overdo.
- Heavy seasoning is a trap of the appetite industry: the more the flavor is cranked up, the higher your taste threshold climbs, until plain food no longer tastes like anything.
- Clinical evidence exists: patients who simply cut the salt — no medicine — saw heart problems ease, blood pressure normalize, weight fall, and even weather-sensitive joint pain stop when they stopped salt three days before a weather change.
- The realistic goal is low salt, not zero salt — and for the elderly above all, controlling salt spares the body a great deal of trouble.
Based on Doctor Luo Dalun’s lecture series on Doctor Zhu Danxi.