Dean Ornish

Dean Ornish is an American physician, clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and founder of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute. Since the late 1970s his group has tested intensive lifestyle change in heart disease, prostate cancer and, more recently, early Alzheimer's disease.

Best known for

The Lifestyle Heart Trial, published in The Lancet in 1990, which reported that narrowed coronary arteries opened slightly in patients on his program. In 2010 Medicare began to cover the Ornish program as intensive cardiac rehabilitation.

Approach

Four parts treated as one program: a very low fat whole foods diet built on plants, regular exercise, stress management such as yoga and meditation, and group support. The diet is low in refined carbohydrates and sugar; nonfat dairy and egg whites are allowed.

Main talking points

• Comprehensive lifestyle change can reverse heart disease, not only slow it, according to his trials.
• Love and social support are part of the treatment, not an extra.
• His group reports that lifestyle change can affect gene expression and telomere length.
• His short summary of the program: eat well, move more, stress less, love more.
• A 2024 trial by his group reported that intensive lifestyle change slowed early Alzheimer's disease.

Books

• Undo It! Undo It!2019
• The Spectrum2007
• Love & Survival1998
• Eat More, Weigh Less Eat More, Weigh Less1993
• Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease1990