When we realize that something as primal as the food that we choose to eat each day makes such an important difference in addressing both global warming and personal health, it empowers us and imbues these choices with meaning. If it's meaningful, then it's sustainable - and a meaningful life is a longer life.

Dean Ornish

Think about it: Heart disease and diabetes, which account for more deaths in the U.S. and worldwide than everything else combined, are completely preventable by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. Without drugs or surgery.

Dean Ornish

change heart death

Eating a vegetarian diet, walking (exercising) everyday, and meditating is considered radical. Allowing someone to slice your chest open and graft your leg veins in your heart is considered normal and conservative.

Dean Ornish

vegetarian-diet exercise heart

Love and intimacy are at the roots of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing...I am not aware of any other factor in medicine- not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery- that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes.

Dean Ornish

sadness stress healing

People tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, a laser, or a high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle. What we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and support can be as powerful as drugs and surgery. And they often are.

Dean Ornish

stress powerful believe

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

cutting health food

Poor health is not caused by something you don't have; it's caused by disturbing something that you already have. Health is not something you need to get, it's something you have already if you don't disturb it.

Dean Ornish

care health needs

Stress is not so much what you do, but how you react to what you do.

Dean Ornish

stress

We all have an inner teacher, an inner guide, an inner voice that speaks very clearly but usually not very loudly. That information can be drowned out by the chatter of the mind and the pressure of day-to-day events. But if we quiet down the mind, we can begin to hear what we're not paying attention to. We can find out what's right for us.

Dean Ornish

intuition voice teacher

At a time when 20% of people in the US go to bed hungry each night and almost 50% of the world's population is malnourished, choosing to eat more plant-based foods and less red meat is better for all of us-ourselves, our loved ones, and our planet.

Dean Ornish

red night people

People who are lonely and depressed are three to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely than those who have a strong sense of love and community. I don’t know any other single factor that affects our health - for better and for worse - to such a strong degree.

Dean Ornish

lonely strong people

When I talk about forgiveness, I mean letting go, not excusing the other person or reconciling with them or condoning the behavior. Just letting go of your own suffering.

Dean Ornish

suffering letting-go mean

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well...I am not aware of any other factor in medicine-not diet, not smoking, not exercise-that has a greater impact.

Dean Ornish

impact roots exercise

I've found that if I tell somebody 'Eat this and don't do that,' it's not only not helpful, it's counterproductive because even more than being healthy, we want to feel free and in control, and as soon as somebody tells us to do something, there's a tendency to do just the opposite.

Dean Ornish

healthy opposites want

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

Dean Ornish

air water needs

Although scientists can often be as resistant to new ideas as anyone, the process of science ensures that, over time, good ideas and theories prevail.

Dean Ornish

scientist often-is ideas

An educated patient is empowered; thus, more likely to become healthy.

Dean Ornish

educated patient healthy

Even more than feeling healthy, most people want to feel free and in control.

Dean Ornish

healthy feelings people

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

powerful change people

People don't dislike change, they dislike being changed.

Dean Ornish

dislike changed people

Real power is not given to us or even created; real power is realized. It comes from realizing an inner sense of peace, self-worth, and happiness.

Dean Ornish

self-worth real power