Dean Ornish Quotes

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

― 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

“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

“Awareness is the first step in healing.”

― Dean Ornish

“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.”

― 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

“Make choices to empower yourself.”

― Dean Ornish

“Connections with other people affect not only the quality of our lives but also our survival.”

― 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

“A little humility goes a long way.”

― 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

“Alas, bacon and eggs are not health foods.”

― 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

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

― Dean Ornish

“When you eat mindfully, by paying attention to what you eat, you get more pleasure with fewer calories.”

― Dean Ornish

“There’s no point in giving up something you enjoy unless you get something back that’s even better, and quickly.”

― 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

“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.”

― Dean Ornish

“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

“Your genes are not your fate… if you change your lifestyle, you change your genes.”

― Dean Ornish

“Intimacy is healing.”

― 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

“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

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

― Dean Ornish

“When you’re feeling stressed, your breath becomes more rapid and shallow. Take some slow, deep breaths, which will reduce your stress level almost immediately.”

― Dean Ornish

“If I eat mindlessly while watching television, reading, or talking with someone else, I can go through an entire meal without tasting the food, without even noticing that I’ve been eating. The plate is empty but I didn’t enjoy the food – I had all of the calories and little of the pleasure.”

― Dean Ornish

“The reason I spend so much of my time doing science is that the whole point of science is to help people resolve conflicting claims by saying: ‘Show me the data.’”

― Dean Ornish

“When we forgive someone, it doesn’t excuse their actions; it frees us from our own chronic stress and suffering, so it’s in our own self-interest.”

― 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

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

― Dean Ornish

“If we are going to find sustainable ways of dealing with global warming, we have to base it on love and feeling good, not fear and loathing. If it’s fun, then it’s sustainable.”

― 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

“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

“In business, when you can meet an unmet need that is this primal, even meeting it in a superficial way can create a multi-billion-dollar business – e.g., the chat rooms in AOL when it first came out, or the lounges in Starbucks, or the billion people who are on Facebook – even though these are hardly the most intimate of life experiences.”

― Dean Ornish

“Knowing that changing lifestyle changes our genes is often very motivating – not to blame, but to empower.”

― Dean Ornish

“Getting through the day becomes more important than living a long life when you have no one else to live for.”

― Dean Ornish

“A little dark chocolate in small amounts often helps lift me out of those blue moments. When I walk into my favorite store on Union Street in San Francisco that sells high-quality chocolates from around the world, I feel like, well, a kid in a candy store.”

― 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

“It costs less to eat and live more healthfully. Walking, loving, meditating, and quitting smoking are free and require no special equipment.”

― 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

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

― Dean Ornish

“In general, losing weight is a good thing for those who are overweight, but it’s important to lose weight in a way that enhances your health rather than one that may compromise it.”

― Dean Ornish

“Educators and school personnel work on the front lines of childhood obesity, but every day they face the challenges of budget cuts, mandated tests, rushed lunch periods, and a decrease in time for physical activity.”

― Dean Ornish

“To the degree you eat less of the bad carbs and fats and enough of the good carbs and fats, you’re likely to look better, feel better, lose weight and gain health.”

― Dean Ornish

“We all know we’re going to die one day, but who wants to think about it? What’s sustainable is joy, pleasure and freedom.”

― Dean Ornish

“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

“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

“Joy of living is sustainable; fear of dying is not.”

― Dean Ornish

“What matters most is your overall way of eating and living.”

― Dean Ornish

“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

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

― 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

“I grew up in Texas, eating meat five times a day, and I liked meat. But I began being a vegetarian when I was 19 because I found that I felt better.”

― Dean Ornish

“I’m a big admirer of Walter Willett’s work. I think he’s done some really important research. He and I agree on most things.”

― Dean Ornish

“I never give up hope.”

― Dean Ornish

“While the digital age has done so much to improve our world, it has dramatically changed our social structure, often further isolating us from each other.”

― 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

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

― Dean Ornish

“Science is simply a powerful way of understanding what’s real and what isn’t, what’s true and what’s not. It can help us determine what works, what doesn’t, for whom, and under what circumstances.”

― Dean Ornish

“A valid scientific theory is predictive, verifiable, and replicable. To me, that’s beautiful.”

― Dean Ornish

“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

“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.”

― Dean Ornish

“Curious patients are more receptive to new ideas, and those who engage their health practitioners in a dialogue are much more likely to adhere to these recommendations.”

― Dean Ornish

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

― 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

“I appreciate the power of a White House bully pulpit – but kids listen and learn primarily from other kids. If your son’s friend tells him that the apple is better than the fries, he’s more likely to listen.”

― Dean Ornish

“Parents and kids know they should pass up the fries for an apple and exchange the video game for a game of tag – but knowing and doing are certainly different things.”

― 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

“Just like navigating in the open sea, triangulating the information you collect from media with your doctor’s advice and some common sense will help map a sound path to safety.”

― 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

“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

“Having the BRCA mutation significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, but it is not always the only factor. Lifestyle choices may increase or decrease the risk of breast cancer, but that knowledge is an opportunity to empower ourselves, not to blame.”

― Dean Ornish

“What’s personally sustainable is globally sustainable.”

― Dean Ornish

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

― Dean Ornish

“When it’s good business to make healthier food, then it becomes sustainable.”

― 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

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

― Dean Ornish

“If we’re not careful, we become that which we most fear.”

― Dean Ornish

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

― Dean Ornish

“’I resolve to eat less food’ sounds good in theory, but it’s often hard to sustain. And if you believe that it’s all willpower, then you’re likely to be upset with yourself if you don’t succeed.”

― Dean Ornish

“All divisions are man-made.”

― Dean Ornish

“When we are angry with someone, we empower the person we hate the most in that moment to make us stressed out or even sick. That’s not smart.”

― Dean Ornish

“Chronic emotional stress shortens your telomeres.”

― Dean Ornish

“Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. As telomeres become shorter, then cells age and die more quickly. In simple terms, as your telomeres get shorter, your life gets shorter.”

― 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

“There is often a simplistic view that HDL is good, so that anything that raises HDL is good for you, and anything that lowers it is bad for you. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

― Dean Ornish

“Eating a stick of butter will raise HDL in those who are able to do so, but that does not mean that butter is good for your heart. It isn’t.”

― Dean Ornish

“In a global economy, the Bush doctrine of unilateralism – going it alone – has been disastrous. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re all in this together. Your happiness is my happiness, your suffering is my suffering, your recession is my recession.”

― Dean Ornish

“Our emotions resonate with each other – for better and for worse.”

― Dean Ornish

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

― 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

“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

“If you indulge yourself one day, you can eat more healthfully the next. To the degree you move in a healthful direction on the food spectrum, you’re likely to feel better, lose weight, and gain health.”

― Dean Ornish

“Meaningful health reform needs to provide incentives for physicians and other health professionals to teach their patients healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing primarily drugs and surgical interventions.”

― Dean Ornish

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

― Dean Ornish

“Concepts such as ‘risk factor modification’ and ‘prevention’ are often considered boring and they may not initiate or sustain the levels of motivation needed to make and maintain comprehensive lifestyle changes.”

― Dean Ornish

“Bureaucracies tend to perpetuate themselves, whether they are multinational corporations or large government institutions such as Medicare, often at the expense of those that they are supposed to serve.”

― Dean Ornish

“Too much power in any institution tends to stifle innovation.”

― Dean Ornish

“I’m as deeply suspicious of big government as anyone. I’m strongly in favor of universal coverage but not single payer.”

― Dean Ornish

“Nowhere is the power of the Internet for improving people’s lives more evident than in health care.”

― 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

“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

“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

“For much of my career, I’ve studied health and how it’s intrinsically tied to lifestyle.”

― Dean Ornish

“Nobody wants to feel controlled or treated like a child.”

― Dean Ornish

“In our home, we serve mostly healthful foods.”

― Dean Ornish

“Eating bad food does not make you a bad person.”

― 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

“Earlier in my life, I had a tendency toward depression.”

― Dean Ornish

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

― Dean Ornish

“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.”

― Dean Ornish

“When we exercise, it feels like we’re really out there doing something, whereas spending a few minutes with your eyes closed in meditation may feel a little, well, wimpy.”

― Dean Ornish

“The diets and lifestyles in many other countries are much healthier than in the United States.”

― Dean Ornish

“Multinational food companies can play a large role in helping to prevent chronic diseases around the world by offering healthier choices in the United States and abroad.”

― Dean Ornish

“What we do eat is at least as important as what we don’t eat.”

― Dean Ornish

“How you eat is as important as what you eat. If I eat mindlessly while watching television, I get all of the calories and none of the pleasure. Instead, if I eat mindfully, paying attention and savoring what I’m eating, smaller portions of food can be exquisitely satisfying.”

― Dean Ornish

“Physical exercise is a great way to discharge stressful feelings that accumulate during the day.”

― Dean Ornish

“Intimacy and community buffer stress.”

― Dean Ornish

“You can meditate on almost anything: a prayer, song, image or word. Close your eyes; sit in a comfortable position. Take a breath, and say the word out loud, emphasizing the humming sound at the end. When you come to the end of the breath, take another one and say the word again. And so on.”

― Dean Ornish

“There’s a tendency to dismiss anything having to do with love and intimacy in medicine because it’s hard to measure.”

― Dean Ornish

“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.”

― Dean Ornish

“I’m first and foremost a scientist.”

― Dean Ornish

“Your body has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself, and much more quickly than people had once realized, if you simply stop doing what’s causing the problem.”

― Dean Ornish

“It’s true, you can lose weight on these high-animal-protein, Atkins-type diets, but you’re mortgaging your health in the process.”

― Dean Ornish