Dean Ornish > Quotes

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”
― Dean Ornish

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced, vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open.”
― Dean Ornish M.D.

“Someone once asked Swami Satchidananda, a spiritual teacher, “What are you, a Hindu?” “No,” he replied, “I’m an Undo. I’m trying to teach people how they can undo the patterns that cause damage to their minds and bodies so they can begin to heal.”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“In short, the more inwardly defined I became, the less I needed to succeed and the less stressed I felt. The less I needed success, the easier it came. The less I had to get, the more I got. The less I needed to acquire power, the more power I realized I already had; before I realized that, I used to give my power away.”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“People don’t dislike change, they dislike being changed.”
― Dean Ornish

“Our genes are a predisposition, but our genes are not our fate,” I wrote to him. “If they were, then you’d be a victim, but you’re not—you’re one of the most powerful people on the planet.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“The importance of insulin is becoming more well recognized. Unfortunately, some people are writing books that fail to distinguish between simple and complex carbohydrates. They recommend that people minimize intake of carbohydrates and increase intake of protein, even high-fat, high-cholesterol animal proteins, which is most unwise.”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“Each of the program’s four components—eat well, move more, stress less, and love more—has profound and dynamic beneficial effects on all of these shared mechanisms that cause us to get sick and enable us to heal. Because of this,”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“So the best combination for reversing heart disease is to exercise, stop smoking, eat a vegetarian diet, and practice stress management techniques—in other words, to follow the program”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”
― Dean Ornish

“Listen, here’s what I think. I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do. By what we deny ourselves. What we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include. —From the movie Chocolat”
― Dean Ornish, The Spectrum: How to Customize a Way of Eating and Living Just Right for You and Your Family

“Yet almost all of these techniques ultimately derive from yoga. It’s a testimony to the power of these techniques that entire careers have been built around different aspects of yoga, sometimes even renamed after the person who rediscovered that practice.”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“Even if you can’t open your heart to people, open your heart to God; then you will know how to open your heart to people also.”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“But for many people, an even more motivating example than increasing blood flow to your brain and your heart can be found in The Game Changers, a powerful new documentary film produced by legendary filmmaker James Cameron”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“For example, the latest studies are showing that lifestyle changes are often actually better than drugs and surgery in treating and even reversing many of the most prevalent chronic diseases, including stable coronary heart disease and early-stage prostate cancer.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“Besides regulating your blood sugar level, insulin plays an important role in fat metabolism. Because insulin increases the secretion of lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme that increases the uptake of fat from your bloodstream into fat in your body’s cells, when your body produces more insulin, you are more likely to convert dietary calories into body fat. When you try to lose weight”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“Over half of the American population has type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, at an annual cost of over $322 billion. Yet these conditions are completely preventable in most people today by following the lifestyle medicine program described in this book.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“On the Reversal Diet, most people will be able to eat somewhere between 15 and 35 grams of total fat per day, or between 5 and 12 grams of saturated fat per day. (Most Americans eat over 100 grams of fat per day.)”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“Group is about connection, not correction. We do not need to be fixed. We need to feel loved. We each deserve to be seen, heard, and accepted. Another program participant, Julie, describes her experience”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“In short, these are the rules of engagement, whether in a group or one-on-one: Identify what you’re feeling. Express what you’re feeling. Listen empathically to what others are feeling. Our group support sessions allow you to witness how to use your wounds as catalysts for transforming your pain—allowing your suffering to subside, your wounds to begin healing, and your heart to begin feeling safe enough to open a little wider.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“Science makes progress funeral by funeral: the old are never converted by the new doctrines, they simply are replaced by a new generation. —Max Planck”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“What are you, a Hindu?” he replied, “No, I’m an Undo” (another reason we chose this book’s title). “Peace comes not from doing, but from undoing; not from getting, but from letting go. It’s there already until you disturb it. The purpose of all spiritual practices is to stop disturbing what you already have.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“Love, social support, and intimacy. People who feel lonely, depressed, and isolated are three to ten times more likely to get sick and die prematurely from virtually all causes when compared to those who have strong feelings of love, connection and community. Chapter 7 describes how we can transform isolation into healing.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“Hundreds of oncogenes that promote prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, and other conditions were switched off in only three months. We published this research with Dr. J. Craig Venter (the first person to sequence a human genome) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“The Reversal Diet is a very low-fat vegetarian diet, with no animal products except egg whites and nonfat dairy.”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery

“The best things in life make you sweaty. —Anonymous”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“Here’s the bottom line: the only diet that has been scientifically proven to reverse heart disease, to slow, stop, or reverse early-stage prostate cancer, and to reverse aging by lengthening telomeres (among other benefits) is a whole-foods plant-based diet low in both fat and refined carbohydrates. No one has ever done a randomized trial proving that a high-fat, low-carb diet can reverse heart disease. It actually makes it worse.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“As Benjamin Franklin is thought to have wisely advised, “Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“Like all revolutionary new ideas, the subject has had to pass through three stages, which may be summed up by these reactions: (1) “It’s crazy—don’t waste my time.” (2) “It’s possible, but it’s not worth doing.” (3) “I always said it was a good idea.” —Arthur C. Clarke”
― Dean Ornish, Undo It!: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

“In short, anything that promotes a sense of isolation leads to chronic stress and, often, to illnesses like heart disease. Conversely, anything that leads to real intimacy and feelings of connection can be healing in the real sense of the word: to bring together, to make whole.”
― Dean Ornish, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery