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The Rice Diet Changed The Fatal Prognosis That The Cardiologists Gave Me Twenty Years Ago
My name is Samuel Halpern, MD*, and I am a retired orthopedic surgeon living in Providence, Rhode Island for the past ten years. Twenty years ago, at the age of 46, I had an acute myocardial infarction with occlusion of three of the major coronary vessels. My weight at time of heart attack was over 315 lbs, and because of my weight I was not considered to be a good candidate for a bypass surgery.
My father was a physician, and he died at the age of 58 of a heart attack. His brother (my uncle), also a physician, died at the age of 38 of a heart attack. I represent the first male in the family to survive the MI to have an angiogram which showed ectagia of the coronary vessels, and if you smoke (which we all did) you are dead. I remember lying in the coronary care unit at New York Hospital when a young physician came in and said, "Stop smoking or die." After five failed angioplasties the mantra changed to "You have six months to live" because the just-opened coronary vessels closed off and I was discharged with the same severe chest pain that I was admitted with. Nothing could prevent the severe chest pain from returning, and the cardiologists were very reluctant to do another angioplasty. So I was left to die.
In was then that I turned to the Kempner Institute at Duke University for the Rice Diet that represented the ultimate solution for my cardiac ischemia and my damaged heart. Since I had five physicians and 42 employees in my five offices in the greater New York area, business could go on as usual while I was in North Carolina. I stayed in a motel about one mile from the Rice House, which guaranteed that I walk at least six miles a day just to go for the three meals of pulverized rice and fruit.
It was then that I learned that the salt of a tomato is in the skin, and the skin has to be pealed off. Once a week my 24-hour urine was checked, to see if I was "cheating." It took two weeks (10 lbs) for my severe chest pain to be gone forever, and for Dr Kempner's Rice House to prove the cardiologists at New York University Hospital were wrong about my prognosis. My blood pressure became normal, as I lost over 100 lbs during my stay at the Rice House. As the only physician-patient there, I did get to save a rich Texas woman's life by performing the Heimlich maneuver on her when she choked on the piece of chicken they gave us once a week as a treat (she was so excited to get her piece of chicken).
I have not had significant chest pain since my experience with the Rice Diet, and its low salt, right kind of carbohydrate concept. The new Porsche which I bought in Durham, North Carolina was broken into five minutes after my arrival in New York City, and the radio was stolen (it was untouched in a motel parking lot for months in Durham), but I have never been better. I never did get to thank the people at the Rice House for my life.
*Name changed
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