Quotes from 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.

In our experience, when people make comprehensive lifestyle changes, they usually can reduce or discontinue medications such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, anti-hypertensives, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, nitrates, insulin, and so on.

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

Sometimes, people do the darkest acts in the name of helping protect their loved ones.

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

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.

A little humility goes a long way.

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.

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.

The biological mechanisms that control our health and well-being are much more dynamic - for better and for worse - than most people realize.

I strongly believe that the Founding Fathers of our country got it right: power corrupts, and any time you have too much power concentrated in one place, it tends to get abused, so checks and balances are always needed.

When we torture people, even if we win the battle, we've already lost the war for hearts and minds. Especially our own.

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.

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

The healing power of love and relationships has been documented in an increasing number of well-designed scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world.

The Internet has transformed many parts of our daily lives, touching everything from how we find information to how we go shopping, get directions, and even stay in touch with friends and family.

Anything that takes you out of the context of being separate is healing. Anything that takes you out of the context of separateness is intimacy.

Intimacy is healing.

Meditation is the practice of giving something your full attention and awareness. When I eat a truffle, for example, I focus fully on it and involve as many of my senses as possible.

Nobody wants to feel controlled or treated like a child.

Preventing cardiovascular disease can help free up critical resources for treating HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

Lifestyle changes may slow, stop, or even reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.

Even a small amount of dark chocolate can be exquisitely satisfying if you meditate on it.

Smaller portions of good foods are more satisfying than larger portions of junk foods, especially if you pay attention to what you're eating.