#126: Dr. Dean Ornish - UnDo Chronic Disease with These Four Simple Steps
Dr. Dean Ornish wants to help you Undo Chronic Lifestyle Disease
“What you will gain is so much more than what you will give up.” - Dr. Dean Ornish
Dean Ornish, M.D. is highly regarded as “The Father of Lifestyle Medicine,” which is the fastest-growing trend in medicine today, and today's discussion with Rip dives deep into the vast body of work and groundbreaking research that Dr. Ornish has conducted for decades.
As the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute (PMRI) for over 40-years, he and his team of researchers have demonstrated time and again how lifestyle medicine can reverse, treat, and prevent chronic disease.
How is this possible? Eat Well, Love More, Stress Less, and Move More – all of which are outlined in Dr. Ornish’s latest book, “UnDo It - How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases,” which has just been released in paperback.
From the beginning, Dr. Ornish was met with criticism and skepticism, which would cause even the strongest of physicians to reverse course. But, because of his conviction and the overwhelming data he has produced, the only thing reversing is YOUR chronic disease including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, early-stage prostate cancer, and now – the evidence is showing - even the progression of Alzheimer’s.
Medicare and many insurance companies are now covering Dr. Ornish’s lifestyle medicine program for reversing chronic diseases because it consistently achieves bigger changes in lifestyle, better clinical outcomes, larger cost savings, and greater adherence than have ever been reported—based on 40 years of clinical research published in the leading peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals. Recently, Medicare even agreed to cover Dr. Ornish’s program for reversing heart disease when offered virtually via Zoom.
Our bodies often have a remarkable capacity to begin healing if we treat the underlying lifestyle factors that cause them—and more quickly than we had once believed. All of this is great news because, as Dr. Ornish stresses, "We don't want take hope away. In fact, we want to give people a sense of hope."
He's been giving us hope for over 40 years and, thankfully, he's just getting started.
About Dr. Dean Ornish
Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, clinical professor of medicine at the UCSF, and the author of seven books, all national bestsellers. He received the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award from the University of Texas, Austin, and the National Public Health Hero Award from the University of California, Berkeley. He was recognized as a “TIME 100 Innovator;” by Life magazine as “one of the 50 most influential members of his generation;” by People magazine as “one of the most interesting people of the year;” and by Forbes magazine as “one of the world’s 7 most powerful teachers.”
Episode and PLANTSTRONG Resources:
Watch the Episode on YouTube
Preventive Medicine Research Institute
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Rip’s Rescue with Dr. Brian Asbill - "Make Yourself Heart-Attack Proof"
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Full Transcript from YouTube Interview
Dr. Dean Ornish:
When you make big changes and especially if you change a lot of things at the same time, most people feel so much better so quickly it reframes and redefines what's possible, not to prevent something bad from happening years down the road, but I feel better. My chest pain goes away, in most cases. And for someone who can't know, walk across the street without getting chest pain or make love with their spouse or play with their kids, or go back to work without getting chest pain, within a few weeks, they can do all those things and they say things like, "Yeah, I like eating junk food, but not that much because what I gain is so much more than what I give up."
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hello, my PLANTSTRONG cousins, and welcome to another episode of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. Last week, we had Dr. Kim Williams talking all about heart disease and I thought it was only fitting that this week, on the heels of Dr. Kim Williams, we bring you one of the absolute godfathers of lifestyle medicine who has also shown that heart disease can not only be prevented, but in many cases, reversed, and that is none other than Dr. Dean Ornish. Dr. Ornish, he's literally world renowned. He has been the doctor for Dr. Bill Clinton. He's made amazing inroads with Michelle and Barack Obama. He has written numerous bestselling books and he is the founder and president of the nonprofit Preventative Medicine Research Institute, PMRI for short. And for over 40 years, he and his team of researchers have demonstrated again and again and again, how lifestyle medicine can reverse, treat and prevent chronic disease.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now from the very beginning, just like my father, Dr. Ornish was met with fierce criticism and skepticism, which would typically cause even the strongest willed of physicians to reverse their course, but because of his conviction and the overwhelming data that he has produced, the only thing reversing is your chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, early stage prostate cancer, and by association, breast cancer, and now the evidence is showing very, very promising, even the progression of Alzheimer's. Now you may be asking, "How in the world is this possible?" Well, Dr. Ornish wants you to do four things. Eat well, love more, stress less and move more, all of which is outlined in his latest book, Undo It: How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases, and it was just released in paperback this week.
Rip Esselstyn:
Today, Dean and I are going to talk about the magnificent scope of his work over the last 40 years and it is awe inspiring. Now before we dive in, I want to speak to any physicians, physician assistants, nurses, and nurse practitioners for just a second. For the first time, our retreat in Black Mountain, North Carolina, which is going to be March 1st to the sixth, will provide up to 20 hours of CME credits and two CEU credits for healthcare providers as part of the registration fee. Jointly, provided by UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC, we are thrilled to reward professionals for all they learn at our immersive events. And you can still join us. Again, those dates are March 1st through the sixth by visiting plantstrong.com for all the details.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now let's keep this show moving. Most importantly for today, I want to provide you all with a sense of hope. Medicine and research is changing and as Dr. Ornish says today, "What you will gain is so much more than what you will give up." I really hope you enjoy this conversation with a true legend and pioneer, Dr. Dean Ornish. Dr. Dean Ornish, I want to welcome you to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. It is really good to see you. It's virtually the last time, Dean, that I believe that I saw you in person was at the-
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Game Changers.
Rip Esselstyn:
... at The Game Changers premier at Sundance Film Festival, a little over a week ago.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
You're a big part of that film.
Rip Esselstyn:
Listen, we both had a nice part in that film and that has really gone on to do phenomenal things, more than I ever anticipated. I don't know if you've heard, but I talked to James Wilks not too long ago and it now has over a hundred million views, which makes it the-
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Really?
Rip Esselstyn:
... most watched documentary of all time.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Amazing. That's so fantastic. Wow.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. We got a lot to be proud of with that, helping the movement.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
It's probably all due to that scene that you're in. I'm sure that's why everyone's [crosstalk 00:06:19].
Rip Esselstyn:
No, listen, which takes me right into... I definitely want to discuss the juggernaut body of work and research that you have done over four decades. It has no comparison. You are in a absolute league of your own. It is phenomenal. But before we go there, I want to go back to your childhood, where you grow up. What inspired you to get into medicine and what drives you? How is it you're so a bloody ambitious to do such good work?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Well, thank you. I feel like maybe we should just stop now and quit while I'm ahead, but let's see. Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, where shit is a three syllable word. I don't know if I can say that or not, but I'm guessing-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh yes. Oh yes.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And I was eating cheeseburgers and chilies and chalupas and all kinds of stuff three or more times a day. But what really got me interested in doing this work was when I was at Rice University in Houston and it was around 1972 and I really wanted to be a doctor. And I felt like now that I was with a bunch of really smart kids, that it was just a matter of time before the admissions committee realized what a big mistake they'd made in letting me in, that I felt like I was stupid, that I didn't know anything. My college roommate at the time was one of the four people that year who scored a perfect score on his SATs and had a photographic memory, never had to worry. And I really wanted to be a doctor and I knew I had to do well in organic chemistry.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And the more I worried, the harder it became to study and the harder it became to study, the more I worried, and I got in this downward spiral where I thought, "Gosh, I'm never going to amount to anything." And then I had this spiritual vision, which was more than I could handle at the time, which is that nothing can bring lasting happiness. And so the combination of feeling like I was never going to amount to anything, but even if I did, it wouldn't matter, I thought, "I have a great idea. Why don't I just kill myself because dead people look like they're happy," and I was really so miserable and I couldn't even sit still. I mean, I was just constantly agitated and then a week straight went by and I literally couldn't sleep at all, which is enough to make anyone crazy.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And so, pardon me, I was all set to do myself in, but my saving grace was, I was run down so much, I got such a horrible case of mononucleosis that I literally didn't have the energy to get out of bed. And meanwhile, my parents got wind that all was not well with their son and so they came down and saw what a wreck I was and they took me home to Dallas to recuperate. And my secret plan was to get well enough and strong enough to go ahead and kill myself again, as crazy as that sounds. Meanwhile, my older sister, this was in the early 70's, had been in the late 60's, a child of the 60's, and she had found that an accumedical, spiritual teacher named Swami Satchidananda really helped her. And so, my parents decided when the Swami came to Dallas to give a lecture, to have a cocktail party for the Swami.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Now you could only imagine in Dallas, in January of '73, how weird that must have been. Even today, that would be weird in Dallas, but especially back then. And so, in walks central casting's idea of what a Swami should look like, long, saffron robes and a long white beard and the whole bit, and he gave us thoughts on a lecture in our living room and he started off by saying, "Nothing can bring you lasting happiness," which I'd already figured out, except I was ready to do myself in and he was glowing. I'm like, "What am I missing here?" And he went on to say what really turned my life around. It may sound like a new age cliche, but it really had a profound effect in my life.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
It really saved my life really, which is that, "While nothing can bring us lasting happiness and health, the paradox is that for the most part, we already have that, that it's our nature in the most part, to be happy and healthy. And not being aware of that, we run after all these things." If only I had more, whatever, I think I need to be happy and healthy, more money, more power, more beauty, more sex, more accomplished, more and more, whatever, then I'd be happy, and then I'd feel good, then I'd be peaceful, and then people would love and respect me and I wouldn't feel so lonely."
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And so once I set up that view of the world, which by the way, so much of our culture reinforces. The whole advertising industry is really about that. Once I set up that view of the world, what the Swami taught me is that, however it turns out, that you feel badly, because until you get it you feel stressed. If somebody else gets it, then you feel really stressed and it reinforces this zero sum game, dog eat dog world mentality. The more you get, the less stress for me so I better get it while I can. But even if we get it, it's very seductive in the moment. It's like, "Ah, I got it. Now I'm happy." But invariably, it doesn't last. It's either soon followed by either, "Now what?" I'm sure there have been times when you thought, "Gee, if I just made X amount of dollars, that would do it," or, "If this article written about this work I'm doing, that would do it." And then that happened and you're like, "Well, maybe a little more might be better."
Dr. Dean Ornish:
It's either, "Now what..." One patient told me years ago that... He said, "I can't even enjoy the view from the mountain I've climbed. I'm already looking over the next one." Or it's not, "Now what," it's "So what? Big deal." It doesn't really provide that lasting sense of meaning. And so, another patient said that, "The let down that comes from accomplishing a goal that I thought was going to really make me happy, and it didn't for very long, was so great, I make sure I've got a dozen projects going at the same time," and so the cycle continues. And so what the Swami taught me is that meditation and yoga and other things like that, they don't bring you a sense of peace, but rather they simply help you, at least temporarily, to stop disturbing the peace and the health and the well-being that are really already there. And that may sound like parsing words and semantics and splitting hairs and all that, but the implications are actually quite profound because if it's out there, then everybody who has something that I need to be happy and healthy has power over me.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And the other most important implication is that the question then shifts from, "How can I get what I think I need to be happy and healthy," to "How can I stop disturbing what's already there?" That's something I can do something about, not to blame myself, but to empower myself. I thought, "Okay, let me give this weird stuff to try. I can always go back to plan B and kill myself." And so-
Rip Esselstyn:
How old are you right now? Are you in your-
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I was 19.
Rip Esselstyn:
19.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I was just in the middle of my second year at Rice University. And so, I transferred to the University of Texas in Austin. I went on a plant-based diet, which was a big departure for me having grown up in Texas, and began to meditate. I couldn't even sit still long enough to meditate, but I'd meditate walking around. And then I got glimpses of what it meant to feel peaceful and then I could suddenly now connect the dots between what I did and how I felt. And when I began to feel peaceful, to remind myself, or to remind myself that the meditation didn't bring me that sense of peace, but at least temporarily it enabled me to stop disturbing what was already there. And then the paradox was, Rip, when I thought I had to do well in organic chemistry so I could get into medical school so people would love and respect me, I was so agitated I couldn't read a headline in a newspaper and tell you a minute later what it said.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
But the more inwardly defined I'd became, the less anxious I became and the more I was able to just function at a higher level. And I ended up graduating first in my class and gave the baccalaureate. And I say that not to brag, but to say I experienced both ends of that spectrum, a total dark failure, feeling like a worthless piece of whatever, to being able to be very successful. And so later when I was in medical school, I began to realize that suffering can be a really powerful doorway for transforming our lives, as you know. Change is hard, but if you're hurting enough, then the idea of change becomes more appealing. And one of the reasons why I've spent so much of my adult life and over the last four decades doing research is that properly done, with the best in collaborators, the most respected collaborators published in the leading peer-reviewed journals, can redefine what's possible for people.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And so they'll say, "Gosh, this heart disease, I'm hurting. I got chest pain. I can't do all the things I wanted to do and now you're telling me that we can reverse it and you've published all this stuff? Well, okay. Exercise, I get. Okay, diet, I get, but vegetarian diet? Really? And meditation and loving more? Are you kidding me? Why would I want to do that? But, okay. Well, you've got these studies showing they work. Let me give this weird stuff a try." And now Medicare's paying for it so somebody must think it's worth doing. And so they start to do that and as you know and as your dad knows from all your extensive experience, that these biological mechanisms are so dynamic, that when you make big changes, and especially if you change a lot of things at the same time, most people feel so much to better so quickly it reframes and redefines what's possible, not to prevent something bad from happening years down the road, but I feel better.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
My chest pain goes away in most cases, and for someone who can't walk across the street without getting chest pain or make love with their spouse, or play with their kids, or go back to work without getting chest pain, within a few weeks, they can do all those things. And they say things like, "Yeah, I like eating junk food, but not that much because what I gain is so much more than what I give up," and that's really the key. If what you gain is more than what you give up and quickly... Fear of dying or fear of a heart attack, or fear of a stroke is not really sustainable. I mean, for maybe a month or two after someone's been diagnosed with a heart attack, they'll do pretty much anything that their doctor or nurse or dietician tells them, but then it comes back because we all know we're going to die.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
People don't want to think about that. The mortality rate is still 100%. It's one per person, but we don't think about it most of the time. But if we talk about how much better we feel... That's why I like The Game Changers film so much. It's shows that your academic performance improves. The scene about the three guys who had three to 500% more frequent erections and 10 to 15% hard erections at night after a single plant-based meal, I mean, the film crew went on and became plant-based apparently after watching that thing. That's why it's got a hundred million views. I mean, it's truly game changing for a lot of people to realize that.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want to take a short break from Dr. Dean Ornish and share with you an email that I received the other week. I want you to know that we receive scores of emails every day from people that have been able to turn their health around with the power of eating PLANTSTRONG and we love reading these email. We read every single one of them because it is so reaffirming that what we are doing at PLANTSTRONG is having a profound impact on reshaping people's lives. Now this particular email is from Anita and I want to read it to you because I think that it epitomizes the resiliency of the human spirit and the body's innate desire to heal itself when fueled with the proper, strong foods. Here you go.
Rip Esselstyn:
Anita writes, "I was diagnosed with insulin resistance in the early 2000's. I was told to go on a low carb diet and to avoid eating fruit, which I love, and sugar. I was given zero guidance from the doctors on how to do this so I picked up a popular book on low carb dieting. After six months of pushing through this diet, I lost a whopping five pounds. How frustrating. I decided to go on a popular point counting diet that all of my friends were on. I pretty much starved myself on this diet and still only lost five pounds. This would be the beginning of my yo-yo dieting. In 2012, I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and my insulin resistance was getting worse. I would try many calorie restrictive and low carb diets with little to no success. I would beg my doctors to give me a solution. Why were these diets not working?
Rip Esselstyn:
Then the keto diet started gaining popularity. I did the keto diet for six months and felt like garbage. I only lost a few pounds. My energy was low. My joints were killing me. My lipid panel was not good and my liver enzymes were on the rise and I was starting to get a fatty liver. On June of 2021, I turned 57 and had my bi-yearly checkup. I was experiencing heart palpitations and anxiety and my blood pressure was all over the place. I weighed in at 288 pounds and my A1C was elevated. I was sitting at my laptop and I searched, "How to reverse diabetes," and the Forks Over Knives documentary popped up. I sat at my kitchen table and watched the entire film and thought, "Well, I was willing to give up bread, fruit and grains to try and get healthy so why not give up meat, dairy, and eggs?"
Rip Esselstyn:
I will be honest. I didn't do the diet as directed in the books because I didn't have them, but I followed everything on the websites and followed Rip and Jane's YouTube channels. Within a month, I lost 13 pounds. Within two months, I was down 22 pounds. By the end of September 2021, I was down 35 pounds. And by the 1st of November at my checkup, I was down 40 pounds. My A1C went from 6.2 to 5.5. My cholesterol went from 167 to 156. Things were improving and I was not even following the diet 100%. I was eating some vegan foods like vegan cheese and such, but I figured since the holiday was upon us, I would relax a bit. I didn't lose any more weight. My heart palpitations came back and I started to gain weight. On December 28th, I downloaded the Seven-Day Rescue audiobook and started listening. Then my husband, my son, and I watched the Rip's Rescue: Make Yourself Heart Attack Proof and now we are all doing the plan 100%.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm excited to get all my numbers down this year even more now that I'm really on track. My husband has never done this 100% either and he has high blood pressure and my son wants to drop some pounds too. All I can think about is, "If doing this plan haphazardly caused my blood sugar to drop, my weight to drop, and my lipid panel to drop, what will happen when I'm all in 100%?" We shall see, but I know it's going to be amazing."
Rip Esselstyn:
Congratulations on taking the steps to get your health back on track. We're going to link to the resources that Anita mentioned in her email, including my Seven-Day Rescue Diet book, the Rip's Rescue: Make Yourself Heart Attack Proof episode, as well as a link to join our free PLANTSTRONG community. I want you all to know you do not have to do this alone. We are here collectively to help you. Now let's get back to Dr. Dean Ornish.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
When in medical school, I was learning how to do... I went to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and I did my core surgery with Michael DeBakey, the heart surgeon who had essentially invented bypass surgery, and he was really an old school tyrant. He was like, "What year are you, son?" I'd say, "Well, I'm starting my third year." He goes, "Damn. It's going to be so much harder to bust you out of here now with all these weird ideas you've got." But he's the kind of guy that will like stick you if you did move your hand quickly enough.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now when you say he said you had weird ideas, what were those weird ideas that he knew you already had?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Oh. I mean, I was teaching yoga to the other medical students and I was a vegetarian and that stuff. And I had already taken a year off between my second and third years of medical school to do my first pilot study of 10 men and women who had really bad heart disease. This was in 1977, 44 years ago, and I put them in a hotel for a month. It was just me and the cook and I taught the yoga classes and did everything and they got better. Eight of the 10 people not only felt better, but they were better. We used, what was then a new test called thallium scans to measure blood flow to the heart, which is now a standard test, and eight of the 10 showed improvement in blood flow.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And at that time, as you know, it was thought that heart disease, you could only slow down the rate at which people got worse. That was about the best you could do. And what we found was that if you make big enough changes, you can actually reverse its progression. An ounce of prevention, pound of cure. But it was also my first experience of when you're doing something disruptive, it's not always met with open arms. A lot of people say, "Oh, that's impossible. You're just a medical student. What do you know," or "How do you know the patients wouldn't have got better anyway? You didn't have a randomized control group." And I said, "Well, that's technically true, but how often do you see patients getting better like this?" They said, "Well, that's beside the point." Anyway, I went back to school... Go ahead. I'm sorry.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, but I'm just fascinated here. How could you be that precocious your second year in medical school to want to do a little pilot study with 10 people in a hotel room? Had you read about Pritikin or what gave you the idea that heart disease could even be reversed back then?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Good question. No, I never heard of Pritikin at the time, but I went to these places called libraries and they had these things called journals and books and I was just voraciously interested that in dogs and cats and pigs and monkeys and rabbits, you could cause them to get heart disease if you put them on a typical American diet, or put them under stress, or made them smoke cigarettes or made them sedentary, but you could reverse it if you changed those things. I said, "Why should people be any different?" They said, "Oh, no, people are different." And the other thing about being a second year medical student is that you're not fully indoctrinated, so I didn't know what I didn't know. Fools rush in and all that.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And the other thing is, when I decided not to kill myself of just a few years before that, I very intentionally said, "I don't really know what's true. I don't know what's real. I'm going to lead a really messy life and I'm going to do all kinds of... If it's not going to permanently damage me or hurt somebody else, I'm going to try as many different things as I can and do a lot of stupid stuff and make a lot of mistakes." And there's a lot of wisdom that comes from doing that. There's a lot of certain fearlessness that comes from that. As you know from working with people who are sick or dying, on their deathbed, most people don't regret what they did. They regret what they didn't do because if you do something and it turns out to be a mistake, you learn a lot and there's a lot of wisdom that comes from making mistakes.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I have a lot of wisdom because I've made so many mistakes in my life, but if you don't do it, you just regret it and wonder, "What might have been? What might have happened?" I just decided that I was just going to go for it and at the end of my life, I wanted to be fully spent and used up. That's what gave me the courage to do it and having then gotten a taste of how, as you know from your work, how meaningful it is to be able to empower people when they're hurting and help them use the experience of suffering as a doorway for transforming their lives. For me, it was depression. For someone else, it might be a heart attack. I'm sure people have told you many times, as they've told me, "Having a heart attack was the best thing that ever happened to me." Hasn't anyone ever told you that before?
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh yeah.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
The first time that somebody said that, I said, "What are you nuts?" And they'd say, "No, that's what it took to get my attention to begin making these changes that have improved, or the quality of life is so much better than I never would've done it otherwise." And by the way, just to digress for a moment. I got a call about four years ago from Dr. DeBakey. I hadn't talked to him in decades. He said, "Hey Dean, this is Mike DeBakey," and he had a very distinctive Louisiana accent. I knew it was him just because I recognized that accent and I said, "To what do I owe this honor?"
Dr. Dean Ornish:
He said, "Well, you know those weird ideas I used to give you such a hard time about when you were my medical student?" I said, "Oh yeah, I remember really well." He goes, "That's what's kept me alive all these years and I just wanted you know. I'm 99 years old. I'll be dying soon and I just wanted you to know my wife got interested in what you're doing and I just wanted you to know before I die." I thought, "Wow, if you live long enough, you just never know."
Rip Esselstyn:
That is so awesome. Again, good for him for picking up the phone and calling you and letting you know that.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Yeah, it meant a lot to me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to, if you're cool with it, chronologically go through some of your research, your randomized control studies, your pilot studies. The first one that I've been able to see is in 1978, that pilot study, where you able to show that in 30 days you could basically reverse and improve the blood flow to the heart.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Correct.
Rip Esselstyn:
I mean, 1978. That was so long ago.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Yeah. Well, at that time, not only was it thought impossible to reverse heart disease, but it was thought that the blockage in the arteries was really the only mechanism that kept the heart from getting enough blood and we know that builds up over decades. The idea that you could reverse it over any period of time was thought crazy, but especially in a month. How could that be? There's no mechanism to explain that. And we showed that it was true, but we didn't really know why it was true. And later, other cardiologists, other people like Attilio Maseri and others showed that the arteries are not like lead pipes. They're actually slimed with smooth muscle, as you know, that can constrict or dilate the collateral blood vessels, the built in bypasses that your body grows around blocked arteries are smaller in diameter. They can get clogged up really easily with fat and microthrombi and so on.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
When you eat healthier, that network is able to deliver more blood to your heart. There are other things that affect the vasomotor tone and preload and afterload, all these stuff. And so over time, it became clear that the blockages are just one of many mechanisms that affect blood flow to the heart and they may not even be the most important. And I think that's one of the reasons why they're now eight randomized trials, actually more than eight, but at least eight, that they all show the same thing, that in stable men and women who've got stable heart disease that they don't work. They don't prolong life. They don't prevent heart attacks. They don't even reduce angina and bypass surgery only does so in the most... Just a few percentage of people who are the most sick and we spend a hundred billion dollars a year on these two operations that are dangerous, invasive, expensive, and largely ineffective because they're focusing on the blockages in the arteries and yet the real bottom line is in blockages is how much blood your heart is getting.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I went back to school, finished my MD, then did a randomized trial before starting my residency in Boston to see what would happen if we had a randomized control group. And this time, we put people in a resort in the middle of nowhere just so we could have more control over what they were eating because we found in the first study, sometimes people were going down to the bar and having pepperoni pizza and drinks in the middle of the night. And in just 24 days, which we scientifically picked because they said we could use it for free for 24 days, we found that the ability of the heart to pump blood as a measure of their underlying heart disease improved and it was statistically significant after just 24 days and we published that... Compared to the randomized control group, which actually got worse during that time.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Again, it shows how dynamic these biological mechanisms are for better and for worse. And so, we published that in the Journal of the American Medical Association and ended up going up to Boston, to Harvard and Mass General to do my fellowship and residency. Moved to San Francisco in 1984 and began the most definitive study called the lifestyle heart trial, which used state of the art... I mean, ironically, we're using these high tech, expensive, state of the art, scientific measures to prove how powerful these very simple and low tech and low cost interventions are. I don't know about you, but one of the issues I continue to struggle with and the biggest obstacle I find in doing this work is people think, "Oh, diet and lifestyle. That's boring. How powerful could that be? It's got to be a new drug, a new laser or something really high tech and expensive to be powerful." And I think our uni contribution has been to use these very high tech, expensive, state of the art, scientific measures to prove how powerful these very low tech and low cost and often, ancient interventions can be.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
We use quantitative arteriography to measure very accurate reproducibility the amount of blockages in the arteries. We actually flew our patients to Texas, where they had the best cardiac PET scanner in the world at the time to measure blood flow most accurately. We looked at cardiac events and so on, and we found that after one year, the experimental group who made these lifestyle changes, showed some reversal. Their arteries got less clogged, which had never been shown in a controlled study before, whereas they got more clogged in the randomized control group. And then we published that in The Lancet, the leading international, peer-reviewed medical journal, and then using those... I mean, it's hard to get funding to do studies that have never been done before, and everything we've done has never been done before because they think, "Why should we waste our money? Everybody knows it's impossible."
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And it's like, "Well, let's find out." They say, "Well, why should we waste our money? We know it can't be done," and it's a catch-22. Without the money, you can't show it works and they don't think it's works and don't want to fund it. We just took this approach saying, "Look, if we're doing good work, somehow the universe will provide." And I know that sounds so California flaky, but it's the way I've always lived my life and the money always seems to come in somehow, just when we most need it. But based on the one year findings, we were then able to get a large grant from the National Institute of Health to extend the study for four more years, and we found even more reversal after five years and after one year, whereas the control group, who were doing just what their doctors had told them, showed even more blockages after five years and after one year. And we also found a 400% improvement in blood flow to the heart after five years when compared to the randomized control group.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
There were 70% fewer heart attack, strokes, bypasses, angioplasties, and stents in the group that made these changes compared to those who didn't. I began thinking, "Well, this is going to change medical practice," in a naive way. And to some degree, it did, but not nearly what I thought it would be. And then I realized it's like follow the money. We get trained to use drugs and surgery as doctors. We get reimbursed to use drugs and surgery so not surprisingly, that's what we use. It's like that old saying from Abraham Maslow, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you see everything as a nail." I thought, "Well, if we went insurance company by insurance company, it's very hard to get insurance companies to do something entrepreneurial or innovative." People don't going to that world for that reason. But Mutual of Omaha was the first major insurance company to do this.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
This was in 1986 and made the front page of the New York Times and then a few others did, and then Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield began not only covering it in 26 sites, but actually providing... I mean, covering it nationwide, but providing it in 26 sites and they found they cut their overall health healthcare costs in half in the first year. And by fourfold, in the subgroup of people, they'd spend at least $25,000 on. And then Mutual of Omaha found that almost 80% of the people who were told they needed a central bypass could choose our lifestyle program as a direct alternative and they saved almost $30,000 per patient in the first year. And it's really important to show cost savings in the first year because the insurance companies know that a third of people change jobs and change insurance companies every year.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And they say, "If it's going to take longer than a year, why should we spend our money for some future benefit that someone else is going to get?" But I knew that we could spend the rest of our lives going insurance company by insurance company so I thought, "Well, if Medicare would cover it, then would be a real game changer," no pun intended. And if Medicare covers it, then most of the other insurance companies would. I met with them and they basically weren't interested in doing it and they said, "Oh, no one will do it." And I brought with me the chief medical officer of-
Rip Esselstyn:
What year are we in? What year are we in now?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
This was in 19... Let me think about this.
Rip Esselstyn:
Because I... Yeah.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Go ahead. I'm sorry. What were we going to say?
Rip Esselstyn:
No, because maybe it took that long, but 2010, they announced coverage of their Ornish program.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Yeah. This was 1994 because it took 16 years to get this done.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Wow.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I mean, my persistence is my worst quality, lets put it that way. And so they said, "If we pay for this, everybody's got a crystal ball and the pyramid's going to want to have Medicare coverage." And I brought with me the chief medical officer of Mutual of Omaha. He said, "Look, my name's Ken McDonough. I'm the Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer of Mutual of Omaha. We're not a radical company. We're Mutual of Omaha for Christ's sake and we cover this because it's got years of randomized control trial data showing it's safe and effective," and sat down. They said, "Well, nobody's going to do this." And I brought with me a guy named Rick Collins, who was the chief of cardiology at the first hospital we trained, which also happened to be in Omaha. He said, "Look, I make my living doing stents and angioplasties and 90% of the people I would've operated on were able to choose this program as a safe alternative," and that was it.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And they still wouldn't do it. That night, it just happened that I was having dinner with Bill Clinton because I'd been working with him since 1993. He said, "How was your day," and I said, "It really was challenging." He said, "Well, maybe I can help." I said, "Well, maybe you can. You're the president of the United States. You're the head of the executive branch." And so, I had some stuff with me and it was just the two of us in the White House. I just gave it to him. I didn't have to go through staff or anything. I thought, "Well, he'll just make a call and that'll be it."
Dr. Dean Ornish:
16 years later, we got Medicare coverage and we had both the previous president. We had Newt Gingrich, who was the speaker of the House, who hated each other, and it must have been 20 members of the Senate and over 50 members of the House who all, across the political spectrum, all came together, but it still took 16 years, but they did it. And that was a real breakthrough because again, if Medicare covers it, most of the other people do, which has been happening. Now the other breakthrough is that just a few weeks ago, Medicare agreed to cover our program when offered through Zoom at the same rate as when it's done in the bricks and mortar world. Now we can reach people who don't live within driving distance of a hospital or clinic. They can be in rural areas. We can help reduce health disparities and health inequities and so on.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's huge.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Anyway, we went on from there to do... Because we found that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, because so many of these people have the same conditions, and I'll come back to this, but that's really the idea of the unifying theory. But let me just make myself a note to come back to that. Anyway, and then we did a study with the chair of urology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Bill Fair at the time, and Peter Carroll the chair at UCSF at the time, to see if these same lifestyle changes could it affect the progression of men with early stage prostate cancer, and we found that they did. It was a randomized controlled trial and we were able to stop and reverse the progression of early stage prostate cancer in the people who made these changes, same changes, whereas they got worse in the control group.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And then we did a study with Craig Venter, tried to get us some sense of what are some of the mechanisms to explain these findings. And Craig was the first to decode the human genome, as you know, and we found that over 500 genes would change in just three months, turning on the good genes, turning off the bad genes. In fact, when Bill Clinton's bypasses clogged up 14 years ago, his cardiologist held a press conference and said, "Oh, it was all in his genes. His diet and lifestyle had nothing to do with it." And having worked him for so many years, I knew it had everything to do with it. I sent him a note and I said, "The friends I value the most are the ones who tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear, and you need to know it's not all in your genes. In fact, we've shown you can actually change the expression of your genes. And if it were on your genes, you'd be a victim and you're not a victim. You're one of the most powerful guys on the planet."
Dr. Dean Ornish:
He began doing this. He's now been doing it for 14 years. I think he talked to your dad too, which is great. He's talked about this publicly. His heart disease is getting better. And I think whatever your politics, when a former president who is known for running to McDonald's makes these changes, it really can inspire lots and lots of other people. Anyway, we did a study showing that when you change your lifestyle, it changes your genes. We did a study with Elizabeth-
Rip Esselstyn:
Let me just go back for a sec, Dean.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
I just want to know. You've done all these studies, research showing that you can reverse heart disease and then what was the impetus for you to try and show that you could do something with prostate cancer?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Well, that's a good question. I began to realize that the same biological mechanisms that affect heart disease affect so many other conditions. And let me just digress a moment to talk about this unifying theory that I wrote about in the Undo It book, which just now came out paperback, and that is over these four decades of studies, it wasn't like there was one set of diet and lifestyle changes for reversing heart disease or different with diabetes or prostate cancer or changing your telomeres or your gene expression, and perhaps even Alzheimer's disease. It was the same for all these and I thought, "Why is that?" And then it became a blinding flash of the obvious. I was trained like all doctors to view all these as being different diseases, different diagnoses and different treatments, but it became clear to me that they're really not so different.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
They have a lot more in common. They're, in many ways, the same disease manifesting and masquerading in different forms because they all share the same, underlying, biological mechanisms; chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, changes in the microbiome and telomeres and gene expression and angiogenesis and overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system and immune function and so on. And each of these in turn, is directly influenced by what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much we exercise and how much love and support we have. And the more diseases we study, the more evidence we find of that. Prostate cancer, again, is affected by these same mechanism. In fact, when we found that we could effect 500 genes, we found that we were down [inaudible 00:40:22] in what are called the RAS oncogenes that promote prostate cancer, breast cancer and colon cancer were just switched off.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I thought, "Okay." And prostate cancer is a really interesting disease to study for a number of reasons. One of which is that a certain number of men choose to do what's called watchful waiting, or now called active surveillance, where they know they have cancer, but they're not having it treated. We only recruited people who were doing that so then we could randomly divide them into two groups and have one group who we knew had prostate cancer, but wasn't being treated with chemo or surgery or radiation, so we could then compare them and see what are the effects of lifestyle changes alone without being confounded with the other usual interventions. But what's true for prostate cancer will likely be true for breast cancer as well. And so, we found that we could actually stop or reverse its progression, which was exciting.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Right now what happens is, most guys, if you live long enough where you're going to get prostate cancer, but you're more likely to die with it than from it. And yet, most guys get scared to death. They have a biopsy and they, "Oh, you got to get it out now before it spreads," and they do. And most of the time, it turns out there're now two large scale, 10 year studies in the New England Journal of Medicine that only about one out of 49 or 50 men actually lives longer because they have surgery or radiation or chemo. The other 49 often get maimed in the most personal ways. They're often either impotent. They can't have sex or incontinent. They're wearing a diaper for no real benefit at huge economic and huge personal costs. But if the only choice we have is between doing nothing and doing something, most guys, we want to do something.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And now we have a third alternative, which is to you go to your doctor and make sure you don't have the most aggressive form of prostate cancer. And if you don't, then ask your doctor to go on this lifestyle program and then monitor yourself every few months with ultrasounds and other things and repeat biopsies every few years or so and see if you can avoid having those interventions, which is an aggressive, non-surgical, non-pharmacologic intervention, if you want to put it that way.
Rip Esselstyn:
Because I know you're able to show bringing down the PSA level, were you able to show a decrease in the potential size of the cancer?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
We didn't measure the size of the cancer, but we measured the tumor activity using a test called... What was the guy's name that did it? Anyways, it's a special test that enables us to look at the activity of the tumor, and we found that. And also, none of the experimental group patients needed surgery or radiation or chemo in the first year, but six of the control group patients did. And when we added the serum, the blood of the patients to a standard line of prostate tumor cells growing in tissue culture in Bill Anderson's lab at UCLA, 70% of the tumor was inhibited versus only 9% in the control group. Now think about that. These are people who went on a plant-based diet and made these other changes, drew their blood, added it to a tissue culture of prostate tumor cells growing, and it inhibited the growth 70% versus only 9% in the control group. And so taken as a whole, it's for the first, and as far as I know, still the only randomized trial showing that these lifestyle changes can slow, stop, and often even reverse its progression, which is really exciting.
Rip Esselstyn:
Incredible.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Then we did a study with Elizabeth Blackburn who got the Nobel Prize for discovering telomeres, which as you know, are the ends of our chromosomes that regulate cellular aging. They're like the plastic tips on the end of a shoelace to keep your shoe lights from unraveling. They keep our DNA from unraveling and as the DNA replicates over time, the telomeres get shorter and as the telomeres get shorter, our lives get shorter and the risk of premature death from all these different conditions goes up proportionate. And so she had done studies with Alyssa Apple showing that women under chronic stress had shorter telomeres, or people who smoked did, or even people who ate junk food or are just sedentary.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I said, "Most things in biology go both directions. If bad things make your telomeres shorter, maybe good things make them longer." We found sure enough, they got 10% longer. This was the first study showing that any intervention could actually lengthen telomeres and we would pop was just in The Lancet. The Lancet editors called it the first study showing that lifestyle changes may reverse aging at a cellular level, which I thought was really exciting.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Wow.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
The unifying theory is to say, "Look, you don't need one set of diet and lifestyle programs for this and for that. Personalized medicine is fine but these same lifestyle changes that can affect so many different chronic diseases because they all share the same mechanisms, which in turn are directly influenced by the lifestyle choices that we make each day. And it helps explain why Colin Campbell found in the China study that they had such low rates of all these chronic diseases until they started to eat like us and live like us and all too often, die like us, or why we find what we call comorbidities... I'm sure when you work with people with heart disease, they often have type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure or high cholesterol or obesity because it's just same disease, just manifesting in different ways.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And why when you put them on and the same lifestyle changes, all these different conditions often get better. And people who are told that, "These are drugs you have to take for the rest of your life to lower your cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar," that under their doctor's supervision, they can often reduce them or get off them all together.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Dean, that was quite a litany right there. Between reversing heart disease, prostate cancer, changing gene expression, lengthening the telomeres, what has you excited right now?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Oh, well, spending more time with my friends and family has been really great. Not having to travel so much during COVID has been wonderful, but what I'm most excited about professionally is we're in the midst of doing the first, randomized trial to see if we can stop or reverse the progression of men and women who have early Alzheimer's disease. And I have a personal interest because my mom and all of her siblings died of Alzheimer's. She was totally brilliant and just watching her beautiful mind decay was so tragic. And I think where at a place with, and I have one of the APOE4 genes for it, but I think we're to place with Alzheimer's very reminiscent, Rip, of where we were with heart disease, 40 some odd years ago. In other words, the same biological, what's good for your heart is good for your brain and vice versa. What's bad for your heart is bad for your brain.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
The same biological mechanisms that affect heart disease affect Alzheimer's and the less intensive interventions of Alzheimer's, what's called the FINGER study, the mind study, can slow the rate at which they get worse because they progress into dementia. Just like back then, the less intensive American Heart Association diet slowed the rate at which your arteries got clogged, but wasn't enough to stop or reverse it. An ounce of prevention, pound of cure, if you will. My hypothesis is that a more intensive intervention might stop or reverse it. And unlike heart disease where there's still other treatments that have some benefit, drugs and surgery and so on, nothing really can stop the progression of early stage Alzheimer's. There was a drug that was approved this year called aducanumab.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
It was the first drug in 20 years that has been approved for treating Alzheimer's. They spent billions and billions of dollars on these drug and they've all failed. This drug should never have been approved. In fact, three of the FDA commissioners resigned in protest because it's $56,000 per dose. It only slows the rate at getting worse a little bit and a third of people get bleeding into their brain and brain swelling and have to stop taking it. But it just shows you how desperate people are for some sense of hope because right now, if you get diagnosed, they'd say, "Rip, I'm sorry, you've got Alzheimer's. The best we can do is slow it down a little bit, get your affairs in order. And by the way, we're going to take away your driver's license," so your world starts to shrink even more and it's just this unfathomable, dark place, which I'm very familiar with having been so suicide depressed years ago of hopelessness.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And the worst thing about really being depressed like I was when I was 19, the hallmark of real depression is the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that comes when you take someone's hope away and then you're told it's only going to get worse. And that can be self-fulfilling in a way, because it's like your brain just starts to shut down almost as an adaptive response to such horrible news. I thought, "If," and it's still a big if, but "If we could show that we could stop or reverse its progression, that would be monumental because then we could empower people and give people a sense of hope," which could also be self-fulfilling in a good way, which is again, why I spend so much of my time doing these studies, which are really hard.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I'm cautiously optimistic that we might be able to show that. And if anyone is listening to this, we're still recruiting people. We provide 21 meals a week for you and your spouse or caregiver for 40 weeks. We do all the testing. It's just cognitive function testing and so on, and we had to start doing it... Just go to ornish.com, my name.com and there's information on there how to enroll in the study. And now we can reach people and have them in the study pretty much wherever they live because we were meeting with people in person as we had with the Medicare heart disease patients. But then when COVID hit, we had to stop doing that because they're such a vulnerable population. I would never have done this. I had thought incorrectly, as it turned out, that this was such a high touch intervention, it just wouldn't work as well if you did it by Zoom, but I was wrong.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
It turns out, it worked just as well or almost as well. Now we're collaborating with the heads of neurology at Harvard with Rudy Tanzi and Steven Arnold and Jonathan Rosen and Dorene Rentz, as well as at the University of California, San Diego and Jonathan Artz and others at Renown, and probably the people at the Cleveland Clinic Neurology to see where... We're recruiting patients. They'll provide and test the patients locally like in Boston, but we do the intervention from here via Zoom and we drop ship the food to them. We can now reach people wherever they live and I think it's going to be the latest example of how to radically simplify... The Undo It book starts with one of my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein, which is that "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And to try to reduce all this complexity down to eat well, move more, stress less, love more, that's it. And even with COVID, with the new omicron variant, that's just coming out, everybody's so justifiably concerned about because the vaccination's only protect you about 40%. Even if you get a booster, it's only about 78%. People are looking for new ways of trying to strengthen their immune system, even if they... Everybody should get vaccinated and wear masks and so on but even if you do that, there's only going to be a lot of breakthrough cases. And there was a study that came out about a month ago in the British Medical Journal, where they looked at frontline COVID-19 healthcare workers in six countries who were exposed to COVID every day and they found those on a plant-based diet were 73% less likely to get moderate to severe COVID.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Those on a pescatarian diet were 59% less likely. Those on an Atkins, paleo, keto diet were actually 400% more likely, so it just goes to... And then Walter Willett at Harvard looked at 600,000 doctors and nurses and found that they were 42% less likely to get moderate to severe COVID if they were on a plant-based diet. Again, the more we look, the more evidence we have of how these simple changes can make such a powerful difference as you well know.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, that leads me to my next question, is that the latest data that I have, Dean, is that annually, we're now spending $3.6 trillion on healthcare and that's almost $11,000 per person in America and less than 3% of that budget or of that cost is prevention.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I'm surprised it's that high actually. 86% of that... It's actually up to 3.8 trillion now. I've been trying [Rip - "Oh my Gosh"] there adds up. 86% of that is for treating chronic diseases, which as you know, are largely preventable and even often reversible through changing lifestyle. My approach is like yours is, is to treat the cause. And when we can treat the cause, or to a much larger degree than we had once realized these lifestyle choices we make each day, that our bodies often have this remarkable capacity to begin healing and much more quickly than we had once thought. But it's not only medically effective, it's cost effective. As I mentioned, we did a study with Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, where there was not only covering, but also providing our program in West Virginia and Nebraska and Pennsylvania. It's 26 different sites there, three of the more challenging parts of the country.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And they cut their costs in half in the first year. And by fourfold, when they looked at the people, they'd spend at least $25,000 under the prior year. If we really want to reduce costs, and these are really not healthcare costs, they're mostly sick care costs, and we want to reduce costs and make better care available to more people at a lower cost, the more democratic agenda, or empowering the individual and freedom of speech and freedom of choice and the personal responsibility, more of the Republican side, it really comes together, we have to work with people on the real basic cause, which are these lifestyle choices.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And one of the reasons why I spent 16 years of my life to work, to try to ultimately get Medicare to cover this, which they did, it is that if you change reimbursement, you change medical practice and even medical education. I'm on the Nutrition Working Group of the American College of Cardiology. We published a paper last year in the leading, peer-reviewed cardiology journal, the Journal of American College of Cardiology, that the average doctor gets four hours of nutrition training a year. The average cardiology fellow in four years of training gets none. But now that we're changing reimbursement, that's slowly beginning to change and your work and your dad's work and other people are really helping to lead the way in doing that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, over your last 40 years, I want to know what would you say, and it sounds like maybe Medicare, but what's your biggest victory and what's your biggest frustration?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I think getting Medicare... I don't know. They're all important. If we could-
Rip Esselstyn:
It's huge.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Medicare was probably will have the most impact just because for all the reasons we've been talking about, and now that Medicare is paying for it, most of the other insurance companies are, and then we can make it... Having seen what a powerful difference these changes can make. I didn't want this just to be concierge medicine. I wanted it to be available to as many people as possible. Now it is, which is great. If we can show, and it's still an if, but it's not as big an if as it was when we started, that we can stop or reverse the progression of early stage Alzheimer's, that'll be probably the biggest accomplishment because nothing else works. And when you lose your memories, you lose everything.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And again, if we can reverse it, then we can prevent it or at least help prevent it. And there's some new tests coming out, the biomarkers that can measure amyloid in your blood 20 years before it becomes clinically apparent. But a lot of people say, "Why would I want to know if I'm at risk for getting such a horrible disease if I can't do anything about it? It's just going to make me crazy." But if we can show you can do something about it, then it'll probably require less intensive changes to help prevent it then it does to stop or reverse it after the fact.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Have you communicated at all with Dean and Ayesha Sherzai at all and their work at Loma Linda?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Yeah, I think they're doing really good work. They're not doing the research that we're doing, but they're wonderful people. Anybody named Dean has to be a cool guy for one thing.
Rip Esselstyn:
I love it. What about Sanjay Gupta because didn't he just come out with a book all about, I think, Alzheimer's and stuff?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Yeah, yeah. I wrote him a quote for that book. He actually came and filmed our study. When it's finished, he may do something on that. And Louie Psihoyos, who as you know, did The Game Changers has been filming the Alzheimer's patients all the way through. We'll be able to have more than just a journal article. We can actually share people and show the struggles they go through and how they can overcome them, and actually seeing them through the year that they're getting better.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's your timeframe on this study?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I don't know. It just depends on how... Now that we're recruiting from all these different sites, we're hoping that we can get the rest of the patients a lot more quickly than it's taken us until now. And so, we're cautiously optimistic.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Well deservedly so. I was talking to my parents last night. They told me to give you a big hello.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And back to them. Please send them my love.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah and my mom wanted me to let you know that she can't wait to get your Christmas card this year, if you're actually doing one, because she said you guys send out the most fantastic, original Christmas cards ever. And she said, I think, maybe last year or the year before, everybody... You had a big boa constrictor.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Oh, that was earlier. This is the one for your mom. Let me see if I can [crosstalk 00:56:41].
Rip Esselstyn:
Anyway, and so-
Dr. Dean Ornish:
This is the one from last year. We were in London. My daughter's a big Beatles fan-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, it's Abby Road. Love it.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
It's Abbey Road there, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Love it. What I want to know is, Dean, what do I got to do to get on your Christmas card list?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Well, give me your home address. That would be great.
Rip Esselstyn:
I will. I will, as soon as we-
Dr. Dean Ornish:
You want to text it to me or email it to me?
Rip Esselstyn:
I absolutely will. Hey, tell me, I know that the US News and World Report is coming out with their number one diets pretty soon. Did you guys make it again for the 11th straight year?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
They've been rating diets since 2011 and they just announced that for 2022, the number one heart healthy diet is our diet, which is graded from a panel of experts there for the 11th year, since 2011. We appreciate that.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's fantastic. Tell me, how many Ornish-certified locations are there? Do you have any idea?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I really don't. We partner with Sharecare and they've been training hospitals and clinics and physician groups. But now that we can do it virtually, we can reach anyone anywhere and that'll just exponentially expand the number of people we can help and that's really... Just like you, having seen what a powerful difference these changes can make and now have the reimbursement to make it sustainable, it's an exciting time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, for everybody that's out there, I highly encourage you to go to ornish.com. It's a beautiful, gorgeous website. It is so well done.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
By the way, my wife, Ann, who's collaborated with me for 20 some odd years, is brilliant and one of her superpowers is making everything around her beautiful and she completely designed the website and empower our learning management system. She doesn't get nearly enough credit, but that's all really her.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, it is really... I am very envious. It's beautiful. Tell me this, Dean, what did you have for breakfast and lunch? Have you had lunch yet, and please let us know what you ate.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
I'm actually having lunch with Louie Psihoyos in a few minutes. We're going to go down to a restaurant that's called Avatar, no pun tended, since James Cameron, who did Avatar did The Game Changers. But for breakfast, I had a bowl of whole grain cereal and some blueberries and some sugar free soy milk and that was it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, nice. Did you hear that Avatar 2's coming out December of 2022, so in a year, and then three is coming out two years after that, then four and then five. And Avatar 2 is almost all underwater and these actors and actresses had to learn to hold their breath for minutes at a time.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Yeah. Well, I know that because as you know, Jim Cameron went on a vegan diet because he's an explorer as well as a filmmaker. And when he learned that more global warming is caused by livestock consumption than all forms of transportation combined, he went on this for environmental reasons and he has so much energy. He's in his 60's like I am. He's actually making Avatar's two, three and four at the same time in New Zealand. They'll be released a year apart, but they're actually doing them all at the same time. And it just goes to show you how much energy doing something like this can do. And by the way, my son who's 21, is an accomplished musician and one of his favorite indie bands is called Vulfpeck, V-U-L-F-P-E-C-K, and they gave a concert a couple years ago at the Greek Theater at the University of California, Berkeley near where I live, and they had 15,000, mostly kids in their twenties.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
And the frontman of the band is vegan and he said... We went backstage to say, "Hi," to him. He said, "In the middle of my concerts, I usually talk about why I'm on a vegan diet, and I talk about your work and other people's work, but since you're here, why don't you come out in the middle of the concert and talk about it?" I said, "What?" I said, "Okay." For 15 minutes, I was actually cool to my son. It didn't last much longer than that. But when I went out there, I didn't talk about reversing heart disease and diabetes and prostate cancer and Alzheimer's. These are kids in their 20's. I said, "It's so easy to feel overwhelmed by what's happening in the world. What can I do as one person about global warming, about feeding the hungry, about the deforestation in the Amazon, about all these animals that are kept in such horrible conditions? What can I do?
Dr. Dean Ornish:
Well, something as primal as what it in your mouth every day can affect all those things. More global warming is caused by livestock consumption than all forms of transportation. It takes 14 times more resources to make a pound of meat-based protein than plant-based protein. If enough people ate a plant-based diet, no one need to go hungry. One out of five kids in the Bay Area goes to bed hungry every night. It's pitiful. The deforestation in the Amazon is larger to clear cut, to make room to graze cattle for meat, and so on. There's seven to 11 billion animals that get held under the most horrible conditions and killed just to provide food that we don't really need to do."
Dr. Dean Ornish:
There was this roar of the crowd. And I said, "Oh, this is why people like to be rock stars. It's amazing energy like that." But again, I think that anytime we can imbue the choices that we make with meaning... When I was so depressed when I was 19, I could take all the meaning out of life and that's why I got so depressed. But I later learned that just choosing not to do certain things like not to eat certain foods so that it frees up resources to do all these wonderful things to help... What's good for you is good for the planet. It's personally sustainable. It's globally sustainable. It can imbue those choices with meaning and therefore that itself also helps to make them sustainable. That's why I think that all religions and spiritual paths have dietary guidelines, even though they're often in conflict with each other. Just whatever the intrinsic benefit is, just the act of choosing, "I'm not going to eat certain foods," imbues those choices with meaning and I think meaning is something that we're all looking for more of.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Dean, beautiful. Thank you. I just got to say that you are, and I hope you don't mind me using this term, but you're the godfather of lifestyle medicine, treatment, prevention, reversal, and this is the direction that we got to get this country moving in. And you have done such an amazing job being that just guiding light for so many people, including myself, my father, and Colin Campbell, John McDougall. We're all indebted to your ferocious, ambitious research and you are all over the map. It is the most beautiful thing. Way to go.
Dr. Dean Ornish:
You've made my day, my dear friend. Thank you, and right back at you and I look forward to the next time we can be together in person. Hopefully, we don't have to wait for another film to get made.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you so much for listening today. For a list of the resources on today's episode, visit the episode page at planstrongpodcast.com and we'll be sure to link to Dr. Ornish's new book, Undo It, as well as information on his latest research studies at PMRI. Thanks again for following and sharing and subscribing and man, plants are the best. Thank you. The PLANTSRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous, true seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth, most notably my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
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