Dr. Dean Ornish: UnDo It! Reversing Chronic Disease with Lifestyle

here we go welcome to the healthy human revolution podcast i'm dr. laurie Marvis and today i'm so beyond honored to welcome dr. Dean Ornish how are you sir I'm happy to be on your show thank you well thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule today we wanted to really talk not only about you but you do have a new and also here's the link here the undo it book by you and your lovely wife and but before we dive into undo it which is phenomenal because I think it incorporates so many things that we ignore in medicine as physicians that we need to be speaking to our patients about but can you give us a little background briefly of how you even discovered the value of you know this lifestyle modifications outside of even nutrition but what is your own personal journey sure well let's see long long ago in a galaxy far far away when I was a second-year medical student I was learning how to do bypass surgery and you know we cut people open we bypass her clogged arteries the doctor would tell them they were cured and more often than not they'd go home and do all the things that had caused the problem in the first place you know eat junk food and smoke and not manage stress not exercise and often there are new bypass arteries would clog up and we'd have to cut them open again sometimes multiple times so for me bypass surgery became a metaphor of an incomplete approach and we're literally bypassing the problem we weren't treating the cause and so one of the nice things about being a medical student is you'll try things you wouldn't do a few that you had already been indoctrinated and quote new better so I took a year off between my second and third years of medical school to begin the first study this was back in 1977 78 over 40 years ago and we showed that heart disease could be reversed and it was the first time that had been shown it was really thought impossible to do anything other than slow down the rate at which you got worse so the fact we could actually reverse it was was revolutionary and I also taught me that when you're doing something that's really disruptive it's not always met initially with great acceptance you know it's very threatening and so people say well you know how do you know they would have gotten better anyway and I said well how many patients are loose you know that they're not and Jenna went away by you know ninety one percent you know we should improve blood flow to the heart the ability to heart to pump blood improved and people who literally couldn't walk across the street without getting severe pain or they club with their spouse or play with their kids or go back to work without getting severe antigen or chest pain within a few weeks were able to do all those things I said well yeah we didn't have a randomized control group but how likely how often do you see this and so it was really held to a different standard so but it got me interested in doing this and it became my life's work and so we did a subsequent studies it did have randomized control group so we were able to replicate that and show that even though severely cognitively less clogged and over even more reversal after five years than after one year and so we helped create a new field called lifestyle medicine which is using lifestyle changes not only to help prevent disease but actually to treat it and often even reverse it sometimes in combination with drugs and surgery often as a direct alternative to these and you know the more diseases we study and the more underlying mechanisms we look at the more reasons we have to explain why these simple changes are so powerful and how quickly people can get better so we found that heart disease could be reversed type 2 diabetes high blood pressure high cholesterol obesity and you know Lori when people can put on these medications to lower their blood sugar their blood pressure and their cholesterol they say doctor how long do I have to take these what do we usually tell them you know forever right it's like I've been showing this cartoon for literally decades if doctors busily mopping up the floor around the sink that's overflowing and no one's turning off the faucet it's like how long do I have to mop up the floor like forever well why don't we just create the cause turn off the faucet and to a much larger degree than we had once realized the cause or the lifestyle choices that we make each day what we eat how we respond to stress how much exercise much love and support we get and the more diseases we look at and the more underlying biological mechanisms we study the more reasons we have to explain why these simple changes are so powerful and how quickly can people can get better so we went on to show that early stage prostate cancer we did the first and as far as I know the only randomised trials showing that the progression of early stage prostate cancer can be slow stopped and often even reverse by making these same lifestyle changes that if it's true for prostate cancer there's a good chance it'll be true for breast cancer as well we did a study with craig Venter who first decoded the human genome and published it showing that when you change your lifestyle it changes your genes over 500 genes in 3 months the genes that keep us healthy turning off the ones that cause us to get sick we did a study with dr. Elizabeth Blackburn who got the Nobel Prize for her pioneering work with telomeres the ends of our chromosomes that regulate how long win then when we found for the first time that we could actually lengthen telomeres and when we published this in the international medical journal The Lancet they called it reversing aging at a cellular level and we're now directing the first randomized trial to see if the same lifestyle changes can reverse the progression of men and women who have early to modern Alzheimer's disease and so one of the the radical unifying theory that we're presenting in our new book and undo it is the idea that although you know you and I and all doctors were trained to view heart disease as a very different disease than diabetes or prostate cancer or Alzheimer's whatever that they're really not that they're really the same disease manifesting and masquerading in different forms because they all share the same underlying biological mechanisms things like chronic inflammation oxidative stress changes in the microbiome and telomeres and gene expression and angiogenesis and so on and each one of these mechanisms is directly influenced by what we eat how we respond to stress how much exercise we get and how much love and support we have and it's one of the reasons why patients often have several of these diseases at the same time you know they'll have high blood pressure and high cholesterol and be overweight and have heart disease and so on and it also explains why you know with all this talk about personalized medicine in the forty years of doing studies it wasn't like there was one set of diet lifestyle recommendations for reversing heart disease and different one for diabetes for prostate cancer or whatever it was the same for all of these because again they are all the same disease just masquerading and manifesting in different ways and so in our new book on doing my wife and I wanted to make it radically simple and it begins with a quote from one of my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein that says if you can't make it simple you don't understand it well enough and because we've been doing this for our mostly my whole adult life I understand it really well and so we want to just radically simplify it down to eat well move more stress less love more boom that's it and everything else just commentary on that I don't think he can get much more simple than that but I I really like the point that you discussed you know where people try to silo certain chronic diseases and that's how we were on primary care I'm a family medicine physician also were certified - some of us I took the first board test that was very exciting but I felt what an honor to be a part of that and but the the thing here is that you know as family medicine we're getting so much complicated Conley disease patient that we didn't go to the endocrinologist and to the pulmonologist and to the cardiologist but nobody takes the time because we don't have much time either we're checking off the list okay I've met these criteria these guidelines but nobody gets better and we don't discuss like you said the loving relationships the stress and when we do patients are so astounded and surprised and delighted it actually that someone would take the time to take interest in their overall health and I think it's so very important and I I do like the book how it you break down even the science in each part that you had just discussed and I think it's very easy to understand even those without a scientific background so I do really appreciate that however I did have a question when you back in the beginning because you said you were a medical school what was the latest though what was the one thing because it did just pop in your head or like what was it what was the little sprout because I know how I discovered lifestyle medicine what was it for you what was it that thing that led you into this amazing research career well it was I guess in two levels one is I was suicide depressed when I was in college and I found that these lifestyle changes really transformed my own life and so when I got to medical school and I saw that we weren't really addressing the cause of the problem we were literally and figuratively bypassing it and if you don't treat the cause then the same problem often comes back again bypasses clogged up or angioplasty restenosis or if you take medication you have to take it to for the rest of your life with all the attendant side-effects and often in ever-increasing dosages so I went to these things called back then they called them libraries they have these things called books in journals that most people don't even see anymore because everything's online and I started reading Horatius Lee and I realize in dogs and cats and pigs and rabbits and monkeys you can cause them to get heart disease if you have them unhealthy high-fat high-sugar foods if you put them under emotional stress you can make them even smoke cigarettes if you disrupted their social networks but you could reverse it if you change them so why should people be any different we said I feel that oh no it's impossible I said well we're not that different from all these other animals and every animal we looked at why should people be any different it was really kind of an interesting lesson for me how we tend to get stuck on our world views and they color our thinking and they filter out so many so much information that if we didn't bring those preconceptions there we could see it with the beginner's mind or fresh eyes or without those preconceptions and so that's and again I think because I was only a second year medical student I hadn't been fully indoctrinated so it gave me the chance to see with was pressurized and people who had already been through the system had and we called the book undoing because my favorite key on the computer has always been the undo button I thought wouldn't it be nice if we had something in our lives and now we do but also the spiritual teacher that I studied with when I was suicide depressed was a NICU medical teacher named Swami Satchidananda and people say what are you a Hindu he'd say no I'm an undo you know so that as well but but part of the book is really not just about unclogging arteries or you know lower your blood sugar as important as those things are because what I learned when I was ready to do myself in was that we have to deal with issues that we're really not trained in medical school like love and community and meaning and purpose and so on you know if you the real epidemic in our culture isn't just heart disease or diabetes or cancer it's loneliness and depression you know we're more prescriptions are written for antidepressants than just about anything else and it's because of the disruption of the social networks that used to give people a sense of love and connection community you know 50 years ago most people had an extended family they'd see regularly they had a neighborhood with two or three generations of people that they grew up together they had a job that felt secure that they didn't you know they really got to know your co-workers they had a church or a synagogue or a club we won't spend time with their friends and today many people don't have any of those and what that's what the science teaches us is that people who are lonely and depressed or three to ten times more likely to get sick and died prematurely from virtually all causes when compared to those who have a strong sense of love and connection community and I don't know anything in medicine that has that big an impact even smoking and in fact a lot of these behaviors are direct way of people coping with your pain just like when I was in so much pain when I was in college when telling somebody who's lonely and depressed that they're gonna live longer if they just change your lifestyle is it doesn't work they're they're just trying to make it through the day I mean if I didn't even if I wanted to live at all a lot of people feel that way and I was able to take all the meaning out of life you know who cares so what nothing matter is big deal why bother you know all that kind of nihilism which is so pervasive and and and you know I think the opioid epidemic that I'll show they're like they are in a sense of 20 friends in this part limit turn my phone off here I've got 20 friends in this package of cigarettes and they're always there for me and nobody else is gonna take away my 20 friends what are you gonna give me or food fills that void or alcohol numbs the pain or opioids numb the pain or video games them the pain or too much you know working all the time there's a more socially acceptable way of distracting yourself from that pain and so for me the pain is the messenger saying hey listen up pay attention you're not doing something that's in your best interest and so you know giving people information is important but you know we're drowning in information with Google and so on it's not like people in the smoke don't know it's bad for them it's on every pack of cigarettes so you know we have to work in a deeper level beyond the information beyond the the behavior to say why are we doing these things and so if we can address the underlying loneliness and depression and help people use these techniques of meditation and yoga and so on not just a manage stress better but to quiet down our mind and body enough to experience more of an inner sense of peace and joy and well-being and to realize that's our natural state know everything in our culture especially the whole advertising industry teaches us that we get our health we get our peace of mind we get our self-worth and our self-love from outside ourselves if only I could get more whatever more money more power more beauty more accomplishment is what we often fill in the blanks well then I'd be happy then I wouldn't feel so stressed then I love myself and good about myself and once you set up that view of the world however it turns out you generally feel bad because until you get it you feel bad if someone else gets it then you feel really fast it makes you feel like we live in this very doggy-dog zero-sum game world though or you get the lessers for me and all that and even if you get it it's very seductive in the moment because it's like I got it I'm happy but it doesn't last it's usually followed by either no what it's never enough or so one big deal and say well that didn't do it maybe this will and so part of the value of suffering and disease which you and I were not really trained in medical school to deal with is there's an openness to change because when you're in pain the idea it's like okay this stuff might be kind of weird but boy I'm hurting so bad let me try this weird stuff and because these underlying biological mechanisms are so dynamic when you make these lifestyle changes we've been talking about most people feel so much better so quickly there Angela goes away they their brain gets more blood they think more clearly they have more energy they need less sleep you can actually grow some and a new brain neurons your hippocampus gets a bigger part of your brain gets bigger the part that controls memory which is often the first thing to go as you get older your skin it's more blood you look younger your heart gets won't block your sexual organs get more blood in the same way that viagra works and so for many people these are choices worth making and you start to connect the dots between what you do and how you feel it's like well when I eat this way when I manage stress when I exercise when I love more I feel good my pain goes away when I don't it comes back so let me do more of this and less of that and then it comes out of your own experience not because some book or doctor or whatever told you you can actually literally connect the dots between what you do and how you feel and I've also gotten in the habit of asking people why do you want to live longer which is not a question again that you and I were taught to ask in our medical training and because again telling somebody who's lonely and depressed and they're gonna live longer they're not sure they want to live long and so there's inherent assumption that everybody wants to live longer and they create a lot of pain a lot of people don't but if you can get people and so I ask people that and they'll say oh yeah no one's ever asked me that before during their doctors I wanna watch my kids grow up I want to dance at their wedding I want to write a book I want to make love with my partner I want know whatever it is that brings meaning and joy and pleasure into your life that's what makes it sustainable and then you're much more likely to make and maintain lifestyle choices that are like enhancing and 1/2 their self-destruct right absolutely and I it's funny because I once I discovered the whole food plant-based diet by accident lawyer with the patient about seven years ago when I started speaking to patients that was exactly it was hope right and I think giving providing hope of a different outcome than the one that they were prescribed literally by medications or physicians and that's what was intriguing to people and that's what people would stick with the lifestyle changes that we started incorporating and then they started moving more the relationships improved they were happier and so it was really fun I call it veggie crack for me I felt it was a very selfish endeavor because I felt better guys getting this dopamine it's like yes I get happy that's what makes the system and you mentioned earlier that as doctors it's frustrating because in a managed care environment if you have to see a new patient every eight or ten minutes you don't have time to talk about what matters most you basically go through the electronic medical record the problem list it was a heart lungs write a prescription they're out the door it's not fun for doctors or patients so we're trying to create this new paradigm you are creating this new paradigm of lifestyle medicine and we were able to get after 16 years of dialogue with CMS Medicare created a new benefit category for which were really grateful call intensive cardiac rehab which covers my lifestyle program we've been training hospitals and clinics and physician groups and health systems throughout the country and so instead of just having eight or ten minutes it's they're paying for 72 hours of training and it's thinking just being the doctor it's a whole team of people the doctor the nurse the meditation seats for the exercise physiologist the dietician and the psychologist and all work together towards a common goal people come for four hours twice a week for nine weeks again an hour of supervised exercise an hour of meditation and yoga who would have thought Medicare do you think of that and now our support group which is key to create recreating that sense of community which we can talk more about in an hour of a group meal with the lecture and after they finished their 72 hours the the nine weeks then they continue to meet in their support group virtually using the same zoom technology that you and I are talking together now and it's why we're getting bigger changes in lifestyle better clinical outcomes bigger cost savings and better adherence anyone's ever shown before the we're working not just behavior level or the informational level but what really motivates people to make these changes which is pleasure and love and feeling good and meaning and purpose and when you can help people to tap into that and when they're suffering there's an opportunity and a receptivity that you don't lose them find that that's a kind of a window that we don't often take advantage of then it's incredibly transformative and I'm sure you've had patients tell you the same thing like having a heart attack was the best thing that ever happened to me or being diagnosed with cancer the first time I heard that I said what are you nuts and they say no that's what it took to get my attention to begin making his lifestyle changes that have made my life so much more joyful and meaningful and fun and pleasurable and sexy and all the things that make my fun I might not have done them otherwise and so just like for me getting suicidally depressed was my doorway for someone else it could be being diagnosed with a life-threatening ailments and so that's something I'm trying to bring into medical training is to say we have the sacred privilege as physicians to work with people when they're suffering when there's an openness and receptivity to change if we can show them how to do that in ways that that are transformative in and sustainable and I think it's so encouraging my daughter's a my oldest is a second year medical student in Texas and she didn't go to Baylor but um she's at Texas Tech and what's fun is to see her have she's already embraced these type of Tina's she's seen my own practice and sharing that information and then seeing this this new generation of physicians hopefully bring that into their everyday practice whatever specialty they choose and it's highly encouraging yes I'm more optimistic now than ever and I think lifestyle medicine is a is that is a tidal wave that hasn't even begun to crest yet I think there's an urgency forces that really finally make this the right idea at the right time on the one hand the limitations of drugs and surgery becoming clear for so many chronic diseases there now a randomized trials that have shown that in stable patients with stable heart disease Denson angioplasty s don't work they don't prolong life they don't prevent heart attacks so that only reduce angina on the case of who have early stage prostate cancer there are two randomized trials and showed after ten years then who did nothing lived as long as those who had surgery radiation and get those treatments often named guys in the most personal ways they're often either impotent and can't have sex or incontinent wearing a diaper for no real benefit if you checking on the cost there's only about one out of 49 or 50 men who have really aggressive prostate cancer and do benefit from these operations and dr. Carroll who's the chair of urology UCSF who I collaborated with is one of the busiest and best urologist on the planet but he's also has the largest cohort of men who are doing what's called active surveillance you know what used to be called watchful waiting so he can find the ones that really do need surgery radiation and operate on them but the other is instead of just saying well watch and wait for something bad to happen to say here's what you can do there's a third alternative between doing nothing and doing treatments that they may not help you which is lifestyle medicine type 2 diabetes as you know getting your blood sugar down with drugs doesn't prevent the horrible complications of diabetes you know amputation kidney failure and blindness and impotence and heart attacks and strokes nearly as well as getting it down with diet and lifestyle so and then the cost you know eighty six percent of the three point six trillion dollars we spent last year in the US alone on what are called healthcare costs for early sick care costs are for treating chronic diseases that are often preventable and even reversible through a changing lifestyle in a fraction of the cost and the only side effects are good ones so I think we're really living in a transformative time now and it is exciting because I found that you know I've been practicing medicine for 16 17 years and that was a point I was in the active-duty Air Force and I was seeing I was in what they call a board where we'd actually remove people from active duty because of these chronic diseases diabetes sleep apnea obesity heart disease and it was really unfortunate because these are people who are bright and well trained but they had to be removed from certain activities or to be you know sent overseas when I was you know deployed overseas you don't want someone who's maybe pending heart attack er Constantino he's insulin for their diabetes when you're in a very serious crisis situation so um you know we years ago we we did a pilot with it and we called it the pilot study because it was study of Air Force fighter pilots on there and as if they just often you know you know just incidentally find that they have like a 20 or 30 percent blockage and one of their coronary arteries they get grounded Ellie spends literally millions of dollars training fire pilots and and there's nobody more motivated to get up in the air than a pilot that's been grounded as I don't have to tell you and so we thought well this would be great if we could show them how they could reverse it through lifestyle and they really motivated to get back up in the air that would be a really good thing so that's just that first of all thank you for them an amazing service to to our country thank you but you can appreciate the opportunities there as well and I've had the opportunity to give the matriculation lecture at the US Army War College the last five years until about a year ago I never even heard of it as you probably know it's in Carlisle Pennsylvania where they train the the elite of the elite the future generals and Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Army Navy Air Force Marine and Coast Guard and I learned that more soldiers are die each year of suicide than a combat which you know as I've talked about earlier or something that's dear to my heart and I said you know you've got a problem here so I decided to the last three lectures I gave over three years were called the power of love at the Army War College which was kind of funding and I think it like I have no street cred it's kind of the woods California doc talking about these things in gathering the first time I asked former four-star ad general Sam McChrystal if he would do a little video on the power of love and he did he said you know it's the most powerful thing that motivates soldiers you know he said when you're on the battlefield you know you'll do anything to help the person on the left and the person on the right and the second time I did it with is former four-star Admiral Erik Olson who was in charge of all Special Forces worldwide all the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers and Delta Force and Green Berets and so on really guys guy and he gave an amazing talk on the power of love and he saw he said love is the most powerful force he says it crushes caution and fear was the way he put it you know love for your fellow soldiers love for your country love for yourself for your family and so the same power can be harnessed in healing as well which is really what lifestyle medicine is all about it's not just about unclogging arteries and lengthening telomeres as important as those are we're all gonna die some point how do I want to live my life how can I live the life that's filled with joy and pleasure and meaning and and make it as fun and juicy and sexy and loving and and intimate as we can and then we along with that we find that we get healthier as well absolutely and I think that's a nice segue back into the book because you do have those four tenets of move more eat well love more stress less so can you just give a little rundown in each of those segments and what that exactly means because all the science and everything is in here but you and and an actually do a nice job of reflecting on each of those sections together and which I really enjoyed because you have some very good things in here so can you give me a little bit of that please sure and and I work together for 20 years she's just incredibly brilliant she developed a whole learning management system for all of the training that we're doing in the hospitals and clinics and by the way if people are watching and they so want to know more about these sites that offer our program just go to Ornish calm everything on their street and also you know it's worth noting that with all this debate about what to buy best side is the only diet that's really actually been proven to reverse heart disease is a Whole Foods plant-based diet that's naturally low in fat and low in sugar you know fruits vegetables whole grains legumes soy products in their natural unrefined form and you can eat food that's delicious and nutritious we have you know 70 some-odd recipes in the book we have two weeks of commercially available foods that you can order we don't have any financial relationship with any of them just to make it easy and as you start to eat this why you start to feel so much better than you want to learn how to cook and do all these things the move more is just basically when if you like it you'll do it you know it's not like there's one kind of exercise for this another con for that but there's you know aerobic exercise strength training and resistance and so some combination of all those but I generally find that if you can incorporate it into your daily life you're more likely to do it I mean I buy a portable phone just walk around the office when you're talking on the phone I have a treadmill desk that that I can do my email at I studies were showing that you know short bursts of intense exercise which if you don't have heart disease I'll give you the same benefit as a much longer workout that's more moderate so just run up the stairs a couple of flights you know really really hard you know I used to get annoyed when I couldn't find a parking spot near the gym I thought that's ridiculous no so I park a little farther away that sort of thing is not so much avoid stress but rather manage it more effectively if you just spend a few minutes a day doing some simple stretching breathing meditation and so on it makes your fuse longer things you can do the same work the same family the same environment but you don't react in the same way you know people say things like either we have a short fuse and I'd explode easily now might uses longer and a lot more is not just romantic love although it certainly encompasses that but love more in the sense of anything that creates a sense of intimacy it can be a parent and a child it can be an animal it can be you know a community member it can be anything that brings you together with these just service to the community anything that brings you together is really healing and even the word healing comes from the root to make whole you know you know those from the Sanskrit to yoked Union unite these are really old ideas that were rediscovering and anything that really you know helps us develop compassion for ourselves and for others is healing anything we've all people out you know can lead to chronic stress and illness when you start to see people as being fundamentally different from yourself the other then you can do bad things to them but if they're just you in another form and that's part of the value of meditation only that it helps make your fuse longer but you know as we talked about earlier the ancient Swami's and rabbis and priests and monks and nuns didn't develop these techniques just to unclog their arteries or get their blood pressure down even though it can help do that there are really powerful tools for quieting down our mind and body to experience that inner sense of peace and joy and well-being and to realize that it's always there until we disturb it and one of the ultimate irony's of life is not being aware of that ended up running after all these things that we talked about earlier if only I could get all this done then I'd be happy and in the process of running after it we would discern what we could have it would just stop doing that the other thing that happens is when you meditate in your mind quiets down if you can get more and you can listen to your own inner wisdom your inner voice your still small voice within whatever name that goes by the voice that speaks very clearly but very quietly it's the one that gets drowned by the chatter of everyday life well that wakes me up and through the morning hey Dean listen up pay attention you're not doing something here's an IDE I really thought about before all of the studies that we've done had never been done before people thought was impossible but they all were because I listened to that little voice and say okay let's see if we can reverse engineer a study and see if that's true or not and also if you take it even further it gives you a direct experience of transcendence that on one level were separate are your you and I me another level we're not we're part of something larger that connects us and if we can have that double vision to see had the duality as well as the oneness that to me is when we could be most effective and also where healing can occur in its most profound levels and I think that is so powerful but there's a couple of things there that I think we could even unwrap for quite some time talking but one thing that I found is interesting I was listening to a different podcast and someone had mentioned you know they had interviewed one of the most wealthy individuals in the world and what they found is that the point that they got to where they could buy anything that they wanted they were the most lonely and I think it's so powerful this statement so that meaning has someone who has the ability literally to buy quote-unquote whatever would make them happy they were still in lacking that so what they found is that they began to search out community in a religious setting or whatever you know that's so very very powerful night I speak I think it speaks volumes to what you're saying but also this perception of stress it's not just stress you know you talked a little bit about the sympathetic and the person but the nervous systems in your book in how then actually that just that perception about how you react to it well really makes a difference can you go into that just a bit saying it's really powerful for people to understand that well that's up you mentioned two things let me talk about the first one first which is that I've had the privilege of working with some very successful people who are household and you're known by one name or you know her billionaires or whatever and they're often the loneliest and most unhappy people not always but if they're not as despite that not because of it and the reason is is that before people at least have the myth they say oh if I could just get a million dollars or a billion dollars or be famous or whatever then I'd be happy but once you actually get that and you realize it doesn't bring you that it often can even be more isolating then it's like at least before you have the myths to keep you going it's now well know what it really really depressed from that and and and if you say it's not so much what we do it's how you react to what we do there's a wonderful study that dr. Elizabeth Blackburn who I mentioned earlier who was at the Nobel Prize for her pioneering work with telomere instead of studying with Lissa Apple with women who were caregivers of either kids with autism or parents with Alzheimer's and they found that the more stress they were in the longer they felt stressed the shorter their telomeres were and when they compared the high stress and low stress women they found that there was a 9 to 17 years shortening of their lifespan in the stress women compared to the unstressed hears it wasn't the external environment that that really determined that it was the women's perception of it and so the women you can have two women who are very comfortable life situations but one was coping with it they were doing all the kinds of stuff that that we write about in our new book and undo it and the others weren't and that mitigated this stress so that it didn't happen that way and in fact you know this goes back to a book that I was written 50 years ago called man's search for meaning where they looked at concentration camp survivors in World War two found that you have two people the same bunker and one survived and one didn't and it wasn't strong listened to healthiest it survived so it's often the one that had the strongest sense of meaning and purpose like I have to survive so that I can whatever you know bear witness or be reunited with my loved ones or whatever it happened to be people realize that we can't always choose the environment we're in it's something even as extreme as a concentration camp or taking care of a kid with autism it's not like you can you know just throw them away and go you know something like you're stuck with them but there's a lot that you can do to transform what could be a horrible situation to one that's bearable and sometimes even transformative right absolutely and I I think that's very powerful is a very good book by the way my grandmother lived with my husband and I we've been married 26 years and she developed breast cancer very aggressive breast cancer while she was with us while I was a third-year medical student with three small children so the stress but what was always intriguing to me her perception of the situation really affected how I took care of her into things she was like I'm gonna beat this she was a totally she had been depressed before she left a long-term marriage and she had came to live with us and was feeling you know loss of independence when she had that flip that diagnosis he says that life-altering diagnosis really changed her outlook for life so she ended up she'd be the cancer yeah Beno was some amazing things so when she beat the cancer when she was in this process of chemotherapy and I'm literally shaving her hair off her her hair is beautiful golden mane and then I'm sitting here going how can she be so happy I guess I better be happy too and so that's kind of how we did it it was a family affair of how we made you know grams is gonna make this and she did and she didn't died many years later from nothing else but it was a very powerful experience and I think when you see speak about children my middle child who's he's 22 Jonathan he's about to finish college like nine when you started having kids [Laughter] yeah I'm closing on 50 next year I'm excited about it so yeah you look very good I know I'm 95 you would never know it but my Jonathan he he had really severe developmental disorder and I honestly I think it was related to I developed hypothyroidism when I was pregnant with him and he end up with severe dyslexia but we had a very different approach to it than the majority we looked at it as a blessing and it really changed Jonathan's outlook on how he approached his own day-to-day challenges and it really made a world of difference on bringing him up to par now he's you know doing great without any issues what gave you the wisdom to be able to do that I'm curious you know I think it was I I couldn't ever live with the fact that my child would not have hope and so I think it was an inner desire as a mom to get everything I could to my child because if I can do that I've at least done everything I could and the first thing I did was I will find a way to make this as easy for you as can and make your life good and loving and wonderful and and his brother and sister really rallied around him husband and it was it was really powerful to see that he's such an amazing young man now having great kids and I'm really blessed but it was such a bit strong but you're exactly right it's those experiences and those relationships that make the difference it's not a prescription of a you know go do this or take this medicine it's the power of that community and love and it is so strong so I applaud you for bringing that to the forefront it was really incredible well I applaud you for being such a good mom that's the value of research is to really redefine what's possible for people by doing so we can give so many people a new hope and new choices not a false hope and not a sense of blame but a sense of empowerment I know where we began the first randomized trial to see if we could reverse early states Alzheimer's isn't and there are no good drugs for treating it or for preventing and my mom died of Alzheimer's and so when she was a true genius and just watching her brilliant my decay which is so painful for everyone and you know when when James Watson and Watson and Crick you know discovered DNA structure was one of the first say I have his human genome sequence he said I wanna know everything except I don't want to know about the apoe4 gene that controls Alzheimer's because why would I want to know if I'm at high risk I can't do anything about there's a lot you can do about and so by the way if anyone's watching this and you live in the Bay Area and you're interested in enrolling in our Alzheimer's study it's all free to you I just go to Ornish comments on there but I think it's where to place with Alzheimer's very much we were with all these other conditions and I'm cautiously optimistic if we can show that we can stop or reverse the progression of early-stage Alzheimer's disease it'll give millions of millions of people new hope and the choices that they didn't have before that's why I spend so much of my time during the last 40 years doing research because he can really redefine and therefore empower people about what's possible Wow and I think that's it the word empowerment I mean you undo it but you empower at the same time so I think that's it's amazing and I will definitely put all the links you do and I did tonight I saw that your Alzheimer's study and your link and I'll make sure to put that because there you know I what is it I if you we make it to 85 in the United States half of us will have dementia yeah you know again it's about empowering people to make it different then you know when you lose your memories you lose everything and so they're a very motivating group of people right absolutely and whatever sitting again again the book is called undo it and dr. Ornish if there is there any one last little bit maybe there's someone who's walking that line and going huh should I do it it seems like a lot of trouble what is that one little bit of advice that you you've used over the decades of your experience to just kind of help push people in that direction to just give it a change because I always tell patients I've yet to be proven wrong challenge me and so but woody what do you say I say look to the degree you make is changing there's a corresponding benefit you're gonna look better feel better these will help all these things and so you don't have to mean you don't have to believe me and except enough to try it and because these mechanisms are so dynamic if you did the bigger the change you make the more dramatically you'll feel better and then it comes out of your own experience and then you know I would I do this I feel good when I do that I don't feel so good so then you'll want to do more of this and less of that because it comes out of your own experience and again not out of fear of dying which is not sustainable but out of joy and pleasure and love and feeling that that's really our right absolutely so they combine both of those avoiding the pain and then looking for the joy it's a win-win it's so much more than what you give up and that's what makes it Stan absolutely well thank you dr. Ornish again for your brilliant insight and your work and lifestyle medicine it's such a joy to speak to a pioneer someone who I now get to enjoy and reap those benefits of your hard work and hopefully generation the positions after us thank you so much and thank you for bringing such awareness awareness is always the first step in healing and you're really doing an amazing job so I'm grateful to be on your show thank you No thank you so much [Music]

Channel: Mora Medical

Views: 25,366

Keywords: dr dean ornish, ornish diet, reverse diabetes, reverse heart disease, ornish reverse heart disease, reverse prostate cancer, weight loss, whole food plant based diet, plant based diet, wfpb, healthy human revolution, dr laurie marbas

Id: giaB5GZezzU

Length: 40min 16sec (2416 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 28 2019