- It is so counterintuitive. Eat meat, eggs, cheese, lose weight. NBC chief science correspondent
Robert Bazell tonight with a new study. - And here's the most
important thing to remember. The studies-- - This study that takes on one
of the biggest diet debates. Is it more important to cut carbs or fat if you wanna lose weight and stay healthy? Here is what the researchers found. - Is one healthier than the other? Is one healthier? - I think the no carbs is metabolically and nutritionally is healthier. - There's certainly
doctors out there who like to say things that aren't true because the media loves stories like that. They love to have a doctor say, "Oh, meat is good for you." - Hey everybody. This is
Klaus from Plant Based News. So in this video, I
interviewed Dr. Dean Ornish, the pioneering heart health doctor. I interviewed him at PCRM's Nutrition and Medicine Conference. And I want to say if you're interested in any of the topics
discussed in this video then you'll definitely be
interested in a free summit which I've linked down below. It's put on by Ocean Robbins. It's 100% online so you can access it from anywhere in the world. There'll be some more
information by Ocean Robbins at the end of the interview. But in the meantime, I hope
you enjoy the interview with Dr. Dean Ornish. Dr. Dean Ornish, thank you
so much for doing this. - My great pleasure. - You were recently featured
in The Game Changers, which has been getting a
huge amount of attention. How was that experience? - It was great. I think that this film is
really gonna be a game changer, hence it's name. It addresses the most common
misconceptions people have about eating a plant based diet, which is that you're a wimp and you don't get enough protein. And so, having all these elite athletes who raised their game and
became Olympic medalists and heavyweight boxing champions, mixed martial artists, national champions, NFL super stars and so on is really gonna help
people understand that when you go on a plant based diet, it makes you stronger and more powerful and more effective. - I think there's gonna
be a lot of backlash and haters and naysayers
when the film come out. In fact, online in the keto community, the ketogenic diet community, there's a lot of people
saying, for example, that Arnold Schwarzenegger could
never have built his muscle off tofu and lentils. - Well, the best narrative is to listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger himself. He says he knows this world. He grew up in that world. And when he says that this
is the best way to be strong, why wouldn't you believe
him of all people? - Some people in social
media are saying the film has a plant based agenda.
What do you say to these? You've probably had these
people in your career saying your work is just
some holistic agenda. - Well, if an agenda means
you're trying to present that's scientifically based so that people can make informed choices, yeah, that's what it is. It's an agenda to try to educate people about the power of these simple choices that we make everyday. That's exactly what it is. - Some other critics of the film say that it's fear mongering around fat. You obviously promote a low fat diet. What do you say to these sort of naysayers and haters and shot jots that
are making these accusations? - Well, there's lots of
people that recommend things that aren't good for
you that may sound good. The reason I spent 40 years conducting the highest quality research published in the leading peer reviewed journals is that's really the
whole point of science, is to help people sort out
what's true and what isn't and we've been able to show in studies over the last 40 years that
these simple lifestyle changes, the whole foods, plant based diet that's low in fat and sugar, moderate exercise, various
stress management techniques including medication and
psycho-social support or love and intimacy or to
reduce it to it's essence, to eat well, move more,
stress less and love more can actually reverse the progression of the most common chronic diseases. And it's not all or nothing. To agree that you move in this direction, there's a corresponding benefit. Even if you're not ready to go on a entirely plant based diet, have a meatless Monday. Whatever you do, in all of our studies, we found the more you change, the more you improve at any age. - You've obviously done
so much over the last 30, 40 years, yet it's not
integrated significantly, I think it's fair to say, into the kind of mainstream system, certainly not as much as we'd like. How much of the kind of keto camp, do you think, has held back your work in sort of plant based lifestyle
medicine kind of movement? - After doing this work for 40 years, this is finally the right
idea at the right time. On the one hand, Medicare
and most insurance companies are now covering my program
for reversing heart disease. We've been training hospitals and clinics around the country, we're getting bigger changes in lifestyle, better clinical outcomes,
bigger cost savings and better adherence
than anyone's ever shown. Now, the keto or paleo are
just the latest versions of the Atkins diet which
itself is the later version of earlier kinds of things like this. It's worth mentioning
that when Dr. Atkins died, his autopsy was released
which showed he died of massive heart failure. Studies have shown that
when you go on a keto or paleo diet, your risk
of dying prematurely from heart disease,
diabetes, prostate, breast, colon cancer goes up significantly. There's certainly doctors out there who like to say things that aren't true because the media loves stories like that. They love to have a doctor say, "Oh, meat is good for you." And then you say, well, how much nutrition training do doctors get? And I coauthored an article in one of the leading peer review journals
here a few months ago with my college from the
American College of Cardiology's nutrition committee and we
found the average doctor in the US gets four hours
of nutrition training a year and the average cardiologist
in four years of training gets zero in training. So doctors may say all kinds of things because they don't know any better. The media love that because they're always looking for clicks and
they're looking for readers. - Playing devil's advocate here that I guess your argument is
that doctors don't recommend plant based nutrition
because they're not trained in their nutrition field. But then people argue that well, dieticians or people studying dietetics also don't recommend
plant based nutrition. - Well, the American Dietetic Association recommends a plant based diet. So I think things are changing and it's good that they are because we actually have
over a dozen men and women who had such severe heart disease they were waiting for a heart transplant. Their heart was in such bad shape. They said the only thing
that's gonna save your life is to get a new heart. And while waiting for a donor, they went through my program and nine weeks later, their
heart is so much better they didn't need a heart
transplant anymore. It's like what's the more
radical invention here? A heart transplant or eat well, move more, stress less, love more? There's more evidence than
ever people wanna see that. - You've obviously just
said that keto people are pretty good at getting airtime and that's probably because
they're telling people what they want to hear. You, however, have been
able to navigate the system and you've influenced a lot of people, got a lot of sort of mainstream attention. How have you been able to do this? - Well the truth is very powerful and the whole point of science
is to find out what's true and my role is to first do
the highest quality research to see what's true and
then to get it out there like interviews like this to having seen what a powerful difference
these changes can make. I want to make it available to people so they can make informed
and intelligent choices. And what happens on a keto
or a paleo, an Atkins diet was shown very graphically in an article that was in the New
England Journal of Medicine by Steven Smith a few years ago and said what actually happens in arteries in different diets. And at the top, they
showed an artery of someone on a whole foods plant based diet. It's clean, it's unclogged. The blood is flowing
through very normally. On a standard American diet
or a typical British diet, they're partially clogged. And on a ketogenic or
paleo or Atkins diet, they're severely clogged. Even if they lose weight, even if their blood chemistries
may look a little better, if you look at really what matters, which is really what's
happening in the arteries. You get much worse on those kinds of keto and paleo and Atkins diet. So I'm not here to get
anybody to do anything. I just want to make sure that people, when they make choices,
do it on the base of scientifically based,
accurate information. - You've affected a lot
of people in your career. You've had a lot of influence. Can you just talk about
what happened last night at the Physicians Committees Gala where Bill Clinton came up
on the screens to thank you? - That was a nice surprise. Bill Clinton made a testimonial
talking about 10 years ago, his bypasses clogged
up and his cardiologist had a press conference and said, oh, it was all in his genes, and his diet and lifestyle
had nothing to do with it. And having been working
with him since 1993 when I was asked to train
the chefs to cook for him at the White House and Camp
David and Air Force One. And so I became one of
his consulting physicians. I knew that his diet and lifestyle had everything to do with it.
So I sent him a note, we met. He then went on this lifestyle
program that I developed and he's been doing it now for 10 years and he's continuing to get better. And so, I think whatever your politics, when a former president, especially one that wasn't
eating very healthily makes these changes, I think that's a beautiful example for everyone. - You mentioned off camera that you've recently been to London, which is where I'm from. What were you doing there? - My wife and I met with His Royal Highness Prince Charles again. He's very interested in our work and the possibility of the
national health service making the program available and also this whole new movement of what's called social
medicine, social prescribing. It turns out that the real epidemic in both the UK and the United States and so much of the world is what I call emotional heart disease, loneliness and depression and isolation, the breakdown of the social networks that used to give people a sense of love and connection and community. And study after study
have shown that people who are lonely and depressed
are three to 10 times more likely to get sick
and die prematurely from pretty much all causes when compared to those that have that sense
of connection and community and I don't know anything in medicine that has that big an impact. So in the last three years in the UK, they've come up with something
called social prescribing where the NHS will
cover a doctor referring because the average visit
for a doctor is 10 minutes. You really don't have much time to talk about diet or
exercise or what's going on in your family or your job or your school or your work or your kids. And so, you can prescribe,
if you're a doctor, other ancillary personnel
to spend time with patients to help them with their
diet, with their lifestyle, with what's going on in
their families and so on and realizing that that's not
only the right thing to do but it's also cost effective as well. - Think there's less or
more stigma when it comes to talking about creating
awareness around mental health and love and connection
compared to, for example, getting people to ditch animal products? Both there are obviously stigmatized. Yeah, from your experience,
what's been harder to promote? - Well, it's hard to understand
why someone would have a resistance to teaching
people how to love more and to be more compassionate
and altruistic and forgiving. These are spiritual truths that are found in all cultures and all religions and all pathways because they work. The one emotion that's
been most constantly and consistently linked with heart disease and so many other chronic
diseases is chronic anger. If I'm angry with somebody, it hurts me as much as it hurts you. If I point my finger at you, there's three fingers pointing back at me. And so, the most selfless thing we can do is to learn to be more compassionate and loving and altruistic and forgiving. When you forgive somebody,
it doesn't condone or excuse what they've
done but it frees you from the suffering that
goes along with that. - Last question. Are things happening, are
things changing fast enough? - Well, I've been doing
this work for 40 years but I think we're
hitting a point now where these changes are happening exponentially because on the one hand, the limitations of conventional approaches
are becoming clear. At the same time, the power
of these lifestyle changes is also becoming more well documented. Things are changing in the United States. It took 16 years but Medicare
created a new benefit category to cover my program for
reversing heart disease. And most of the major
US insurance companies are doing the same thing. And they're finding that it's
actually cutting their cost in half in the first year by 50%. Now, the National Health Service
is reaching a crisis point and that's happening in the US as well. Simply paying more drugs, more surgery isn't really reducing costs. It's only increasing them. In my new book which is called Undo It!, I review all of these
studies and say why is it that the same lifestyle
choices can reverse and prevent so many
different chronic diseases? And the theory that I put forth here, which I think is true
is that you was trained, like all doctors, to view
heart disease and diabetes, and prostate cancer
and high blood pressure and high cholesterol
as different diseases, different diagnosis, different treatments. But to me, I'm realizing that they're really the same disease, manifesting and masquerading
in different forms because they all share the same underlying biological mechanisms, which in turn are directly influenced by these lifestyle
choices we make each day. And that's why it's not
like there's one set of diet and lifestyle
recommendation for treating or for preventing or
reversing heart disease, a different one for diabetes and so on. It's the same one that we
found that can help prevent and reverse all these conditions. That's why you often
see that the same person will have multiple what are
called chromo divinities. They'll have heart disease
and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes,
be overweight and so on because they're really the same condition coming out in different ways. (swooping) (crash) (piano music) - Heart disease has
become a global epidemic. It's the number one causes
of death on this planet. Have you or a friend or family
member had a heart attack? Chances are you know somebody who has. A heart attack occurs every
40 seconds in the US alone but the good news is there is a growing and overwhelming body of evidence now. Your choices can be absolutely critical to preventing and even to
revering heart disease. So what's the number one
factor you need to focus on if you want to help heal and
prevent cardiovascular disease? It is the food on your plate. My name is Ocean Robbins. Each year, my dad and
colleague John Robbins and I host the Food Revolution Summit. You may have heard of his work. He's the two million
copy best selling author of Diet for a New American and
a lot of other books as well. In the Food Revolution Summit, he interviews 24 of the top
food experts on the planet. During this free online global event, you'll get access to some
of the most brilliant, revolutionary experts and
ideas about food and health. You will leave the Food Revolution Summit with trustworthy, actionable,
empowering information that you can use right away. So enter your name and email right on this page to join in the free summit and to get your heart
healthy super foods handbook. The truth is you were meant to thrive. So grab the tools you need to put this life changing wisdom into action. Enter your name and email and
I will see you in the summit. (bright music)
