Quotes from Dean Ornish

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

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.

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.

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

The Reversal Diet is a very low-fat vegetarian diet, with no animal products except egg whites and nonfat dairy.

The Trusting Heart, Dr. Williams describes how this research evolved.) In particular, the factors most toxic to the heart are self-involvement, hostility, and cynicism.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Our feelings connect us in powerful ways. As Maya Angelou once wrote, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

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.

As Benjamin Franklin is thought to have wisely advised, "Never ruin an apology with an excuse.