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 never give up hope.

~ Dean Ornish

In an era in which war and terrorism - at home and abroad - are often based on racial, religious and ethnic differences, rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us increase our survival at a time when an increasingly divided country and world so badly need it.

~ Dean Ornish

One of the reasons I'm excited by what visionary Elon Musk has done with the Tesla is to show that you can reduce global warming and drive a powerful, fun car. A cool car helps make a cooler planet.

~ Dean Ornish

No one has a monopoly on truth, and science continues to advance. Yesterday's heresies may be tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

~ Dean Ornish

When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it's easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as luxuries, we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our well-being and survival.

~ Dean Ornish

When you grow up in an extended family, or in a stable neighborhood with two or three generations of families who live there, you feel seen. Not just the good things you've done, the stuff you put on your resume. You know they've seen you in your dark times, when you've messed up - but they're still there.

~ Dean Ornish

The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.

~ Dean Ornish

The need for love and intimacy is a fundamental human need, as primal as the need for food, water, and air.

~ Dean Ornish

The power of the Internet is also its limitation - it provides access to large amounts of information without providing guidance on how to sort out what is credible and what is not.

~ Dean Ornish

Knowledge and engagement are a powerful antidote to forces that often work against our kids being healthy.

~ Dean Ornish

When the U.S. claims the right to invade any country unilaterally and then defines a country like Iran or North Korea as 'evil,' then it is a rational response for these countries to develop nuclear weapons as the only military deterrent to invasion. We create what we most fear.

~ Dean Ornish

Because the biological mechanisms that affect our health and well-being are so dynamic, when people change their diet and lifestyle, they usually feel so much better, so quickly; it reframes the reason for changing from fear of dying to joy of living. Also, the support that patients give each other is a powerful motivator.

~ Dean Ornish

If you're at high risk or are trying to reverse heart disease or prevent the recurrence of cancer, you probably need to make bigger changes in diet and lifestyle than someone who just wants to lose a few pounds and is otherwise healthy. If you just want to lower your cholesterol, weight or blood pressure, begin by making moderate changes.

~ Dean Ornish

Although many people believe that the primary emphasis of my work is about diet, it's not. What we eat is important, of course, but what comes out of our mouth may be more important than what goes into it.

~ Dean Ornish

As a veteran of the diet wars, I think it's time to call a truce. Rather than hear experts argue, most people want practical information they can use.

~ Dean Ornish

In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole-foods, plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates.

~ Dean Ornish

An Asian way of eating and living may help prevent and even reverse the progression of coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, prostate cancer and breast cancer. Incorporate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products and fish in your diet. Eat at home more with your family and friends.

~ Dean Ornish

The choices you make each day in your diet and lifestyle have a direct influence on how your genetic predisposition is expressed - for better and for worse. You're only as old as your genes, but how your genes are expressed may be modified by exercise, diet and lifestyle choices much more than had previously been believed - and more quickly.

~ Dean Ornish

Small changes in diet don't have much effect on preventing coronary heart disease and cancer. But bigger changes in diet and lifestyle may prevent heart attacks in almost everyone.

~ Dean Ornish

When most people think about my work, they think about diet. To me, diet has always been the least interesting part of it.

~ Dean Ornish

Whether you're six or sixty, if you go on a diet and lifestyle program and feel constrained, you're likely to go off it sooner or later. Offering a spectrum of choices is much more effective; then, you feel free and empowered.

~ Dean Ornish

If we can reach populations in developing countries and help them understand the value of their indigenous diet and lifestyles rather than copying ours, perhaps we can reverse the exponential rise in cardiovascular disease that is plaguing them.

~ Dean Ornish

Not everything that lowers HDL is bad for you. If you change from a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet to a healthy low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, your HDL levels may stay the same or even decrease because there is less need for it. When you have less garbage, you need fewer garbage trucks to remove it, so your body may make less HDL.

~ Dean Ornish

If you go on a diet and feel constrained, you are more likely to drop it. But if you see your food choices each day as part of a spectrum, then you are more likely to feel free and empowered.

~ Dean Ornish

Whether it's by helping us search for health-related information, connecting us with doctors through online portals, or enabling us to store and retrieve our medical records online, the Internet is starting to show the promise it has to transform the way people interact with and improve their own health and wellness.

~ Dean Ornish

Reimbursement is a major determinant of how medicine is practiced. When reimbursement changes, so do medical practice and medical education.

~ Dean Ornish

I am as non-accepting of medical quackery and unscientific approaches as anybody else. I've grown up as a card-carrying scientist, and I know the power of science to answer questions, and for many questions I don't know of anything better than scientific approaches to answer them.

~ Dean Ornish

Let's all be more humble about the evidence behind medical advice but also respect the challenges to providing accessible lifestyle guidance.

~ Dean Ornish

No one has all the answers, so whatever a woman who has the BRCA mutation chooses to do requires courage and an element of faith. And a lot of love and support.

~ Dean Ornish

Alas, bacon and eggs are not health foods.

~ Dean Ornish

Trust leads to intimacy, which leads to healing and meaning. We can only be intimate to the degree we can make ourselves vulnerable. But when we open our hearts, we can get hurt.

~ Dean Ornish

With everything that you can imagine at our fingertips, many of the social interactions that help tie people together in a community have faded away. Are communities traditionally built on relationships, trust and familiarity a thing of the past?

~ Dean Ornish

Fear leads to more fear, and trust leads to more trust.

~ Dean Ornish

Rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us survive at a time when an increasingly balkanized world so badly needs it.

~ Dean Ornish

If you're with a close friend, your anger may raise his blood pressure as well as your own, whereas loving feelings may lower blood pressure in both of you.

~ Dean Ornish

Lifestyle changes may help reduce risk, but no study has shown that lifestyle changes alone can eliminate the risk of breast cancer, especially in those carrying the BRCA mutation.

~ Dean Ornish