Chuck: My guest today really
does not need any introduction, but we're going to do one
anyway because his resume is second to none, and it is such
a thrill to have him here. He has been recognized
by time magazine. As a Time 100 Innovator
is one of the 50 most influential members of
his entire generation. He's been named people magazines
one of the most interesting people of the year, Forbes has
said he's one of the worlds seven most powerful teachers. He's been a physician
consultant to president Bill Clinton since 1993. Also won the inaugural lifetime
achievement award from the American College of Lifestyle
Medicine, he is the founder and president of Preventative
Medicine Research institute and a clinical professor of
medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. With that, we welcome Dr. Dean Ornish to the Exam Room. My friend, it is so
good to have you here. Thank you for making the time. Dr. Ornish: Thank you, Chuck,
it's such a pleasure to be back. Chuck: You're such a
humble guy to you mention all of those accolades. You and I have just spent
the previous 20 minutes talking prior to the interview
and you're just so nice. And your message is so true. So on a personal level, I just
wanted to say much gratitude to you uh, you know, for
everything that you have brought forth into the world. Dr. Ornish: Thank
you, back at you. Chuck: It is an exciting day,
uh, by the way, happy new year. It, uh, it is an exciting day
because your book "Undo It, How Simple Lifestyle Changes
Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases" now out in paperback. And the thing that, Dr. Ornish, I love about this book
is that I think it really opens a lot of people's eyes to the
fact that if they're living with diabetes, it doesn't
necessarily have to be that way. If they're living with heart
disease, they may even be able to reverse that, but certainly
can live a healthier life. It just brings a lot
of, of, of hope forward. And you've been practicing
medicine now for so many years. Are you still surprised that
there are people who don't know that there are simple
changes that they can make that can have a dramatic
improvement on their health? Dr. Ornish: Well, I appreciate
the question and that's one of the reasons we're here today
is, to me, awareness is always the first step in healing. And your podcast or writing
a book or doing things around that, can raise awareness. And I think our unique
contribution over the last four decades has been using these
very high tech, expensive state of the art scientific measures
to prove how powerful these very simple and low tech and low
cost lifestyle changes can be. I think one of the biggest
obstacles, I find, and I think you probably at PCRM find the
same thing, is that people think, oh, diet and lifestyle,
that's kind of boring. How powerful could that be? It's gotta be something really
high-tech and expensive, a new drug, a new laser,
a new device, new surgical procedure to be powerful. But you know, what we're
finding is that these simple lifestyle changes what we
eat, how we respond to stress. How much exercise we get,
how much love and support we have can be, can not
only help prevent, but can often stop and even reverse
the progression of the most common chronic diseases. We showed for the first time
that even severe heart disease could actually be reversed. The arteries could get
less clogged over time. But at that time it was thought
that the best you could do would be to slow down the
rate at which you get worse. We found that kind of like
ounce of prevention, pound of cure— it takes a lot more
to reverse a disease than it does to help prevent it. But if you're willing to make
big enough changes, which is essentially, uh, a whole fat,
uh, I mean a whole foods, low fat, uh, plant-based diet,
fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products
as they come in nature, uh, moderate exercise walking
a half an hour a day, for example, it's a little bit
of strength training, various meditation and yoga based
stress management techniques. And what we call social
support or love and intimacy. Or to reduce it to it's
essence, to eat well, move more, stress less, love more. Boom. That's it. That these simple changes
could have such far reaching implications. You know, I was trained like
most doctors they view heart disease and type two diabetes
and prostate cancer and breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease
as being fundamentally different diseases, different diagnoses
and different treatments. And yet we found these same
lifestyle changes could affect the progression of
so many different diseases. Over the years, I began to
wonder like, well, why is that? You know, with all this interest
in personalized medicine, it was the same lifestyle changes
that had such could affect so many different conditions. And then it kind of hit me in
a, you know, a blinding flash of the obvious that the reason why. Different diseases have all
respond to the same lifestyle changes if they're not really
so different from each other, you know, 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 immune function over stimulation of the sympathetic
nervous system and so on. And each one of these
mechanisms in turn is directly influenced by what we eat,
how we respond to stress, how much exercise we get and
how much love and support. And the more diseases we study,
the more scientific evidence we have to show how powerful
these simple changes can be and how quickly we can measure
people getting better or worse, depending on what they're doing. So, um, I wrote "Undo It"
as a way of presenting this new unified. That, um, it begins with a
quote from Albert Einstein that says, if you can't
explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. And I tried to reduce it
down to its essence, you know, again, eat well, move
more stress, less love more. And, and that, you know, you
don't have to have one set of diet for treating heart
disease another one for diabetes another one for,
uh, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, et cetera. And the reason is again,
because, and it's one of the reasons why you often find
the same patient will have what are called comorbidities. They'll have high blood
pressure, high cholesterol be overweight, have heart
disease, type two diabetes. And so on or entire countries,
you know, in China, 50 years ago, they had very
low rates of these diseases. And so they started to eat
like us and live like us and all too often die like us. And so we know that these
changes can affect our health and our well-being for better
and for worse, very quickly. And the reason is, is that
they're really just the same disease manifesting
and incense masquerading in different forms because they
all share the same underlying biological mechanisms, which
are directly influenced by the lifestyle choices we make. Chuck: And you just mentioned
China as an example, just a couple of weeks ago,
I was speaking with Dan Buettner from the Blue Zones
and he was talking about very much the same thing. When it came to Okinawa, Japan
said in ear— in the early 1990s, they had the longest
life expectancy pretty much of anywhere on the world,
but then incomes the standard American diet, the standard
Western diet with a lot of fat, a lot of ultra processed foods
just to generally unhealthier lifestyle and all of those
positive health outcomes began to really plummet here. So it's, if you take
a step back, Dr. Ornish, and you look at it
from that 20,000 foot point of view, it really is almost
impossible to say that the two don't go hand in hand. Dr. Ornish: Well,
Dan's a good friend. And you know, the
standard American diet has a great acronym, the
SAD diet, which it is. I mean, we even found during
World War II, you know, when there was rationing in certain
countries and they couldn't get the meats and the cheeses
and the butter and so on and eggs that their rates of
chronic diseases went way down. And then the rationing ended. It went back up. These were large large-scale,
you know, unwitting, but real, uh, experiments
involving millions of people. The evidence is clear. You know, so then the
question is, well, why would I want to do that? And what I've learned is that
what really motivates people to make sustainable changes in
diet and lifestyle is not fear of dying but joy of living. If you tell somebody, you know,
put that burger . Down, you're gonna get a heart attack or
put that cigarette down you're gonna get lung cancer maybe
for a few weeks after they've had a heart attack, they'll
do pretty much anything the doctor or the nurse tells them. But even then they tend to
go back to their old patterns because fear is not really
a sustainable motivator. What's sustainable is
joy and pleasure and love and feeling good. And when people understand
how dynamic these biological mechanisms are, that it's not
about living to be 86 instead of 85, that doesn't really
motivate most people it's about, oh, my skin gets more blood. I, I look younger, you know,
my, um, heart gets more blood. My chest pain goes away for
someone who's got such severe heart disease that they cant,
you know, walk across the street without getting angina
or chest pain, or make love with their spouse or play with
their kids or, or go back to work without severe chest pain. Within a few weeks in most
cases we found most people can do all those things. Then they say things like,
you know, I like eating junk food, but not that much
because what I gain is so much more than what I give up. It's not just about preventing
something bad from happening like a heart attack or
stroke years down the road. It's like, oh, I
feel so much better. I can think more clearly. You know, there's a wonderful
film that came out a while ago called the Game Changers, which
looks at athletes who became elite athletes and Olympic
medalists and the NFL champions and so on when they changed
their diet and lifestyle. Uh, there's a great scene in
there where three athletes in their mid twenties, uh,
their, uh, sexual function and the frequency and hardness of
their erections after a single plant-based meal was three
to 500% more frequent and 10 to 15% harder when they slept
at night than after a single meat-based meal, you know,
everything gets more blood flow. And so when people understand
how powerful these biological mechanisms are, how they affect
so many different conditions and how quickly you can
experience the benefits so that what you gain is so much
more than what you give up. That's ultimately what
makes this sustainable. Chuck: There was a point in
my life when I was that guy who couldn't walk across
the street without my chest beginning to tighten. I mean, it was 10 steps and
I felt like I was going to keel over from a heart attack. It felt, it literally felt
like an elephant was sitting on my chest, but still when
I decided to make changes and live a healthier life. I was still just of the
mindset that if I could lose weight, I would be okay. And that's all I was focused
on, but the deeper I got into my health journey,
the more I realized that it was about so much more
than just losing weight. I noticed very quickly, as
you said, that those chest pains began to dissipate and I
could walk greater and greater distances, uh, without issue. And then, you know, it dawned
on me that Alzheimer's, that cancer, heart disease
all run in my family. And now I'm able to
reduce my risk drastically for all three of those. And so what begins is just
a weight loss journey. I think for a lot of people
then can wind up checking a lot of those boxes and to me, and
maybe you've experienced this with your patients as well. That can be a heck
of a motivator. Dr. Ornish: Well, it is. And, um, you know, Alzheimer's
runs in my family, my mom, and all of her siblings died of
that I have one of the APOE four genes for Alzheimer's and
we're actually in the middle now of doing the first randomized
control trial to see if the same lifestyle changes may stop or
even reverse the progression of early stage Alzheimer's. I think we're at a place with,
Alzheimer's very reminiscent of where we were with heart
disease 40 some odd years ago when I started doing research. In other words, the same
biological mechanisms are play less intensive interventions. Back then could slow the rate at
which your arteries got clogged, more intensive ones like ours. We found could actually,
the arteries got less and less clogged over time as
opposed to more and more clog. And I think the same may
be true of Alzheimer's less intensive lifestyle. They slow, the rate of
progressive dimension about what's good for your heart
is good for your brain. We're hoping that more
intensive interventions may stop or even reverse it. So stay tuned for that,
but it's, it's encouraging because unlike heart disease. There are no effective
drugs that can even stop the disease from getting worse. So, yeah, it's still an F
at this point, but if we are able to show that we can stop
or reverse the progression of Alzheimer's in many
patients, it can inspire and give millions of people,
new hope and new choices. In areas they don't
have, but it's also true for other diseases. I mean, COVID is of course
a big issue now with the new omicron variant, which is
even more infectious, uh, people are really, you know,
everybody, you know, yes. Vaccinations good of course,
but vaccination doesn't keep you from everyone from getting. Second just gives you
a milder case of it. I can help prevent it. Masks of course can be good
social distancing could be good, but lifestyle
changes can also be good. We already know that people
who have chronic diseases are much more likely to get
COVID and to die from it. Um, but, uh, We also know that
when people make these changes, I mean, there was a study that
came out just a month or so ago that looked at, um, 3000,
almost 3000 frontline healthcare workers in six countries. These are people who get
exposed to COVID-19 every day. And, uh, those that were
following healthy plant-based diets were 73% less likely to
get moderate to severe illness where those following, uh,
you know, high animal protein Atkins, paleo keto kind of. We're 400% more likely
to develop moderate to severe disease. And likewise, um, at Harvard
they found, uh, the Harvard nurses and physicians health
study over a hundred thousand men and women that they, that
those, um, who, who made these changes were 43% less likely. To get severe COVID. So it's not just
avoiding the virus. It's how your body interacts
with it, which in turn is also a drug function
of our lifestyle changes. So when you make these lifestyle
changes, it has so many far reaching implications, both
for prevention, as well as, uh, enjoying life more fully. What you gain is so much
more than what you give up. No question about it. And I think that. Looking back, uh, at early on in
the pandemic, when I was doing shows every day with, with Dr. Barnard, we would always
get asked by the viewers the question of, well,
how can a plant-based diet help me with this? And at that point, we really
didn't have any answers. And it wasn't until those
two studies that you just referenced, uh, came to
light that we started to be able to fill in a
little bit of that picture. Chuck: Were you surprised
at all when those results began to come in? I mean, I think you said it was
73% reduction that certainly a statistically significant, Dr. Ornish: Well, it was
statistically significant, but 73 percent reducing
your likelihood of getting moderate to severe illness
versus a 400%, 400% increase. You know, that's not subtle
as you, as you know, these things really are important,
but again, uh, there was an article there, Sheldon Cohen,
uh, did a study with a different variant of the coronavirus,
not the one that causes COVID-19, but a cousin of it. And, uh, and rhino
virus, the virus that causes the common cold. And I don't know how I
got this through the human studies committee, but he got
volunteers that were otherwise. And drip, these viruses into
their nose, a hundred percent of them became infected,
but not everyone who got infected developed the signs
and symptoms of being sick. And what they found was
that those that had four or more social contacts, it was
defined as either a phone or a zoom call or a visit from a
friend over a two week period. We're four times less likely
to develop the signs and symptoms of being sick as
those who had two or fewer. So the social isolation is
important in terms of avoiding exposure to the virus, but we
want to make sure we're not emotionally isolated, that
even if you're living separate, you know, reach out and touch
somebody, you know, make a zoom call a phone call, even a
letter, you know, a, an email, just something that, you know,
we are, we are creatures of. Uh, the study after study
has shown that people who are lonely and depressed are three
to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely
than those who have a sense of love and connection community. I don't know anything of
medicine that has that powerful and impact. So diet's important exercise
is important, stress management is important,
but people say, well, I got all that, but the love more. Well, I don't quite get that. What does that have
to do with health? It may be one of the most
powerful determinants, both directly and indirectly
because in doing studies over the years, I'd ask people,
you know, why do you smoke? And why do you overeat and
drink too much and work too hard and abuse, opioids, and video
games and work all the time. These behaviors seem
so, so maladaptive. And they look at me and they
go, they're not maladaptive. They're very adaptive. They help us deal with our
loneliness, our pain, our depression, you know, the
real epidemic in our culture. Isn't just, COVID, it's a
loneliness and depression. With the breakdown of the
social networks that used to give people that sense of love
and connection and community, you know, 50 years ago, most
people had an extended family that they grew up with. They had a neighborhood with
two or three generations of people that they saw regularly. They had a, a church or
synagogue or mosque or club that they went to regularly. They had, uh, a job that
felt secure, that they'd been out for 10 years or more,
and many people today don't have any of those things. And we pay a price for that. You know, the kind of
intimacy that you get from being on Facebook is not
an authentic intimacy. In fact, studies, one of
the studies that I quote in my new book and the undo
it book is that the more time you spend on facebook,
The more depressed you are. It's like, why is that? Because it's not an
authentic intimacy. It's like, it's like, here I
am with my perfect life here. I am with my family in
front of the Eiffel tower. And here I am with, you know, my
son at graduation or whatever. But when you grow up with a
group of people and you spend time with them, they know you,
they don't just know your bio, this wonderful biosketch of
mine that you read earlier. You didn't in my biosketch
it doesn't say that I was suicidally depressed when I was
in college, which I was, you know, but they know that when
you grow up with them or they know when you got busted or
where you failed or whatever, and they're still there for you
and there's something really primal about, you know, I see
you, all of you, not just your good stuff, and I'm still there. And so I think we're kind of
learning that when we have our support groups in our study,
for example, that it's not just helping people stay on the diet,
it's creating a safe environment where people can let down their
emotional defenses and connect deeply and authentically with
other people in ways that are powerfully healing that go
beyond just helping people stay on the diet or, or, or quit
smoking or take their medicines. You know, even the word
healing comes from the root to make whole, uh, yoga is
from the Sanskrit, to unite you, to bring together union. Anything that brings
us together is really. Chuck: Let's stay on
this for a second. This is fascinating. I want to throw a scenario at
you say there's a person who is just hyper-focused on nutrition,
eats the cleanest diet ever known to man, however, in their
personal life uh, they are very much isolated they're alone. Uh, they're a bundle
of stress at work. And they're really not at this
point during the pandemic, even getting out of the
house and going for a walk. So, you know, even though they
are eating this ultra clean, super healthy diet, are they
in your opinion, still at that increased risk for mortality, Dr. Ornish: There are less
risks, but there's some of the increased risk. Somebody, I think it
was Rom Doss, said years ago, it comes out of your
mouth is more important than what goes into it. So I think that really all
of these things together, and frankly, it's actually easier
in many cases to make big changes in a lot of things
at once than just small ones. There was an article that came
out last month from university of California, San Diego, where
they compare it to traditional cardiac rehabilitation program,
which is just exercise with our reversing heart disease program,
which includes the exercise. But also, you know, the
eat well, move more, stress less love more components. Uh, and they found that,
uh, every marker was better. You know, the cholesterol, their
blood pressure, their weight, their inflammatory biomarkers,
their hemoglobin A1C etcetera. When people made bigger changes,
which isn't surprising, but what was surprising is that
only 40% of people finish the exercise component, uh, and
the traditional cardiac rehab but 94% of people finish the
more intensive intervention. That's so counterintuitive. It's like, well, gosh, you know,
the more you ask people to do the less likely they are to. But not really because
when you make big changes all at once, you feel so
much better so quickly. Because again, in all of our
studies, we found the more you change your lifestyle,
the more you improve and the better you feel and the more
we can measure improvement. And so when you make a lot
of big changes and a lot of things at the same time, most
people feel so much better. So quickly, as we talked about
the chest pain goes away. That. You say, oh, I get it. You know, what I gained is
so much more than what I give up and what I gained is,
you know, it's like, I like eating junk food, they'll say,
but not that much, you know? Cause I like not
having chest pain. I like being able to make
love with my partner. I like being able to
play with my kids. I like being able to have my
memory coming back, you know, and thinking more clearly,
you know, all the things that really make life worth living. So the paradox is that sometimes
it's easier to make big changes than to make small ones. And by the way, Medicare. Has been, you know, created
a new benefit category to cover my reversing heart
disease program in 2010. Uh, but just a few weeks
ago, they agreed to cover. My program when it's offered
virtually, uh, through zoom. Um, and we were finding that
I never would have, you know, if anything good came out of
COVID it was learning that when we offer our program
via zoom, it works almost as well as what we do in person. So now you can live anywhere
in the country and Medicare will cover my reversing
heart disease program, which we're now doing through a
company called Sharecare. You can go to ornish.com
or sharecare.com. You'll find it. And, um, you know, this helps
reduce health disparities and health inequities, because
now you don't have to live within driving distance of one
of the hospitals or clinics we train, and you can live
anywhere even in rural areas and still have it available to. Chuck: I love to hear that. And I think I could be wrong,
but I'm pretty sure that I saw a study at some point during
the pandemic when we've really saw this boom for telemedicine,
um, that these virtual visits can be virtually as impactful
as a face-to-face visit. Are you finding that with
your virtual patients as well? Dr. Ornish: We are. I mean, we, um, as I mentioned,
we're in the middle of. Randomized trial to see
if we can stop or reverse the progression of men
and women who have early stage Alzheimer's disease. And we have been meeting with
them in person several times a week, but when COVID hit almost
two years ago, we had to stop doing that because either one of
the most vulnerable populations. So we ended up doing
it all by zoom. Uh, four hours at a time,
several times a week. And had we not been
forced to do it? I probably never would have. I just always assumed
that it wouldn't work as well, but I was wrong. It turned out it worked almost
as well as doing it in person. And now that we're finding
that we're now collaborating with the heads of neurology at
Harvard medical school and the mass general hospital at the
university of California, San Diego at renown and in, uh, in
Nevada probably assumed that Cleveland clinic and others. Uh, because it doesn't
matter where you live now. So when they do the recruitment
and testing of the patients locally say at Harvard, but
we do the intervention from here with our staff and we
drop ship the food to them. So it really opens up the whole
country and ultimately the whole world to making these
lifestyle changes in a way. Um, that are also
made just as powerful. And now that Medicare is
covering the program when offered virtually, um, our
hope is that, um, many more people will take advantage. You know, I've been doing this
work for 46 years and I'm as passionate now, maybe more
passionate now than I was even when I first started doing it. I mean, how often in life do
we get an opportunity to help people in their suffering and
empower them with information that can transform their lives. You know, I mentioned I got
suicidally depressed when I was in college and having that's
what got me interested in making these changes because
I found what a difference it made in my own life. And so, you know, unfortunately,
as doctors were not trained to about nutrition, I mean,
I'm on the nutrition working group of the American college
of cardiology, just like Dr. Neal Barnard is, and we ended
up, we published a study last year that the average
doctor gets four hours a year. Of nutrition training and the
average cardiology fellow in four years of fellowship, it's
none, you know, because we doctors get trained to do and
what we get paid to do, and we get, um, you know, uh, So for
me, that's why I spent 16 years working with Medicare to create
a new benefit category because I felt like Medicare could cover
these kinds of interventions. Then other insurance
companies would, and they are. And if you change reimbursement,
you change medical practice and even medical education. So it's been a slow
process, but I'm encouraged by how far we've come. And yet we somehow still so
much farther we have to go, but I just love being able to work
with people in their suffering because when you're suffering,
there's an opportunity for change because change is hard. But if you're in enough pain,
like I was when I was depressed or when someone else is when
I first got diagnosed with heart disease or diabetes,
Type two diabetes or prostate cancer or Alzheimer's disease. There's an opportunity. There's an interest in change. And if properly done published
in the leading peer review journals, as we've done with
the leading investigators, and we can show, for example,
that heart disease can actually be reversed and early
stage prostate cancer can be slowed, stopped, and reversed. And when you change
your lifestyle, it changes your genes. Over 500 genes. It's turning on the good genes,
turning off the bad genes or lengthens your telomeres. The ends of our
chromosomes that regulate. Uh, you know, reducing aging at
a reversing aging at a cellular level, um, when we can show that
it can redefine what's possible for people and by doing so,
that could be self-fulfilling in a good way and give
millions of people, new hope and new choices in the areas
of our life that matter most. I mean, what could be better? Chuck: Not a whole
heck of a lot. Dr. Ornish: It's part of
our conspiracy of love. You might say. Chuck: Oh, we're going to talk
about that four letter word. That's got a little bit of taboo
behind it here, the L word, uh, in just a minute, but I
want to throw another scenario at you, um, really quickly. Um, and this is, I think
at the heart of the message that we try to get out
here at the Exam Room. So let me ask you this. Say there is a person
who has had diabetes now for say two decades. They've struggled with their
weight, their entire life. Now they are in their late
sixties, early seventies. They're noticing that other
parts of their health are, are starting to decline as well. And they feel like
all hope is lost. It's too late for them to
make any sort of changes that that can benefit them. So why, why even bother? What would your message to that? Dr. Ornish: One of the things I
thought when I first began doing these studies many years ago,
was that the younger people who had less severe disease would
do better, but I was wrong. With heart disease with type
two diabetes with prostate cancer, it may be true with
Alzheimer's, but we'll put that aside for a moment. But otherwise, for these
other conditions, it doesn't matter how old you
are or how sick you are. All that really matters
is the more you change, the more you improve. And we've found a dose
response correlation between the degree of lifestyle
change and the degree of improvement in every study. We've done that was
statistically significant. Even the length of telomeres,
you know, the more you change your lifestyle, the longer
your telomeres get the more your genes change and so on. And that's a very empowering
message because it's saying like, if you're still alive and
you're stable and you're willing to make these changes, even if
you've got a really bad disease. You're likely to get better. There's no guarantees, but
you're likely to get better. In fact, uh, in the lifestyle
heart trial the youngest, I mean the oldest patient was 86 and
he showed the most improvement, but he was also very, uh,
disciplined and made the biggest changes in lifestyle. So I find that a profoundly
empowering and, um, and optimistic message that
we can give people. Chuck: Do you think it's
because that older demographic kind of realizes that there's
more to live for than the Yolo younger generation? Dr. Ornish: Well, again,
we found that across the board, it wasn't that the
older people did better. They did just as well. So it doesn't matter
how old you are. Doesn't matter how sick you
are to the degree you're willing to make these changes. You're likely to
get better to that. Yeah, it's out of
prevention, pound of cure. If you're trying to just lose
a few pounds or lower your cholesterol or blood pressure,
a few points, you know, what matters most is your overall
way of eating and living? You know, if you indulge
yourself one day, it doesn't mean you cheated or you failed
or you're bad— eat healthier the next, you know, you don't
have time to exercise one day, do a little more than next. You don't have time to
meditate for an hour, do it for a minute, whatever you do,
there's a corresponding benefit. And so it's a more compassionate
approach because you can't fail. There's no diet to get on
there's no diet to get off, but if you're trying to
reverse disease, which is what the "Undo It" book is about. That is more prescriptive. And, and, you know, I'd love
to be able to tell people that, you know, moderate changes
can reverse disease, but generally it's the pound of
cure, it takes a lot to do that. That's why we were the first to
prove that in so many different conditions is that most
people didn't go far enough. But again, when you're really
sick and you can make big changes, you really experienced
the benefits so dramatically. I mean, we have several
people who are on the heart transplant list, who, uh,
one guy who I wrote about in chapter one of the "Undo
It" book, a guy named Dr. Robert Treuherz is an internal
medicine doctor himself living near Los Angeles. And he had a massive heart
attack to the point where his heart was beating so poorly. Uh, it was pumping at
about between 11 and 15% of the blood with each beat. Normally it should
be 50% or greater. Uh, he was told the only
thing that could save his life was a new heart. And so he enrolled in my
reversing heart disease program at UCLA for nine
weeks while they were looking for a new heart donor for
him, to get in better shape for the heart transplant. And he improved so much during
that nine weeks, he didn't need the heart transplant. So like what's the more
radical intervention here on a heart transplant or, you
know, eat well, move more stress, less, love more. This is a guy who literally
couldn't walk more than a couple of steps without
getting chest pain. He had to be carried
up to his room. He, you know, he, he told me
that, you know, he had dead patients who look better than
he did when he started this. And within just nine weeks, he's
able to, you know, work at, uh, at 6,000 feet of lake Arrowhead. He has gone back to work
full time as a doctor, he almost never gets chest pain. His heart began to
pump so much better. His ejection fraction was 30%. He called me a few weeks ago. It's almost close to 40%
now, four years later, um, it just shows again how powerful
these simple changes are and how quickly people can
experience the benefits and ways we can also measure. Chuck: Man those stories. I mean, it's it just, it
never ceases to amaze me. Uh, just how dramatic these,
these improvements can be. Um, you've been so very
generous with your time Dr. Ornish, but I can't let you
go without talking about that, that four letter word,
which in a lot of circles is a little bit taboo. You've mentioned it a number
of times here on the program and that word is love L O V E
and one of the things you and I were talking about before
the interview was, um, love, not really being tossed around
all that much in the military. I was telling you about my own
grandfather, who really didn't even use that word until the
final weeks of his entire life. And it seemed like his entire
outlook on life changed during those final two weeks. But can you talk to us about
the importance of love. And how you can even express
that emotion in these most rigid of circles,
such as the millitary. Dr. Ornish: Well, the
military or cardiologists, you know what I mean? It's ironic that cardiology,
which is the study of the heart, which is always
the symbol of love. I think I might've been the
first person to talk about it at the American College of
Cardiology, annual scientific session many years ago. Uh, the irony was not lost
on me, but also I was asked to give the keynote address. Uh, at the american— at the us
army war college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania for four or five
years in a row a few years ago. And I asked the first time,
former four-star general Stan McChrystal, if he can make a
video on the power of love, I figured he had a lot more
street cred than I would talking about to a group of
military people, you know, that you know, California touchy,
feely, and we're in county guy. Um, and then the second time I
asked for former, uh, Admiral four-star Admiral Eric Olson
who was worldwide in charge of all special forces, you
know, the army Rangers, the Navy seals, the Delta force
the green Berets, and so on. These are guys, guys talking
about the power of love. And they said, look, when
you're, you know, in the battlefield, um, you know, it's,
it's you, it's, it's the love that really gets you through
these horrible situations. You know, you'll do you know
your, your buddy and you love each other that you're, you're,
you're giving your lives are in each other's hands. That's what makes it so. Um, you know, it's so easy
to make fun of these ideas. Oh, they're so touchy, feely,
but you know what we are, touchy-feely creatures,
we're creatures of community. That's how we survived as
a species, but by learning how to love each other and
take care of each other, it's what really brings the
most meaning into our lives. And I think a lot of
people are looking for that sense of meaning. You know, we have so much
choice, but we don't have often have a lot of meaning. And one of the ways of,
of getting meaning is to love more, to love yourself
and then to love others. You know, sometimes when
I lecture, I'll say. Which organ does your
heart pump blood to first. And then people say, oh, the
brain or whatever, actually pumps blood to itself first
so that it can then pump blood to the rest of the body. Is that selfish or unselfish? Well, it's both, you
know, because you have to take care of yourself. You have to love yourself so
that you can then take care of and love other people. If you can't get what you
don't have, the more you love yourself, more love,
you have to give others. And so. What I find is that when I talk
about this conspiracy of love, it gives me permission to talk
about things that I have found the most meaning in my life. I, when I was suicidally
depressed, I can take all the meaning out of life. That's why that's what
being depressed is. You know, that sense of
helplessness and hopelessness is that you feel like you're
seeing things clearly for the first time, things were bad. They've always been bad,
you know, who cares? So what nothing
matters, big deal. Why bother all these
kind of existential? Thanks because you can take
all the meaning out of life. But I later learned that I can
imbue my life with meaning. And one way to do that is by
loving other people and to make my life an expression of love. You know, love made manifest. Another way by the way
is to, is by choosing not to do certain things by
not eating certain foods. For example, people say,
oh, you don't eat this. You don't eat that. Oh, that must be horrible. I say, well, actually, no,
it makes my life that much more meaningful because
I know when I'm choosing not to eat certain foods. Um, I'm, you know, freeing up
resources that help prevent global warming global warming is
caused by livestock consumption and all forms of transportation. Um, you know, there's
7 billion animals that get killed every year. They don't need to be. So I'm helping reduce suffering
from all these sentient beings. It takes 14 times more
resources to make a pound of meat-based protein
than plant-based protein. There's enough. Food to feed everyone. If people, you don't, again,
you don't have to be vegan, but just to the degree you have a
meatless Monday, or just moving that direction, it frees up
resources to feed the hungry. The deforestation of the Amazon
is largely due to creating more grazing land for cattle. So when we can imbue our lives
with meaning by choosing not to do certain things, or if you're
in a monogamous relationship and you choose to only be with
one person, is that, you know, the, you know, the ball and
chain, well it can be, or is it like, oh, I'm creating something
really sacred in my life. That makes it so much more
meaningful and much more intimate because I can
only be intimate to the degree that I can open up
my heart and be vulnerable. And I can only do that to
the degree I feel safe. And if I'm totally committed
with someone else, we can feel safety and layers of safety
that allowed our hearts to open up more and more and
more, the more intimate it is, the more erotic it becomes. And so, you know, having
these amazing experiences, different experiences with
the same person, instead of the same kind of experiences
with different people, it's not a value judgment. It's like, oh, What you gain
is so much more than what you give up, whether it's in the
area of, you know, you're, whether you're monogamous or
what you choose to eat, or whether you exercise or however
you choose to live your life. If what you gain is more
than what you give up, which it is, and the ways that
bring the most pleasure and meaning that's ultimately
what makes it sustainable. And that's what gives me
the most passion and meaning in my life is to be able
to share that with others. Chuck: I don't think you
could hide your passion if you tried you, I mean,
you are just beaming right now talking about this. And, and so it has really been
such a joy to have you here on the Exam Room today, and
I wish you nothing, but the best here in 2022, uh, Dr. Ornish and the book is "Undo it:
How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases"
available now and paperback. So if you haven't checked
everybody off of your holiday list, yet, this is a great,
great, great book to give to someone who you love. Dr. Ornish. Thank you very much. Dr. Ornish: Thank
you so much, Chuck. It's great to be back. Chuck: If your health IQ is a
couple of points higher than it was a few minutes ago. Go ahead and like this video
or subscribe to the YouTube channel and to take it even
higher, head over to apple podcast or wherever you
get your favorite shows. Look for the Exam Room by
the Physician's Committee. Hit the subscribe button
there as well and help to make your world a healthier place.
