Excerpt: Dean Ornish's 'The Spectrum'

Jan. 3, 2007 — -- Dr. Dean Ornish has spent the past 30 years studying the effect exercise, a low-fat diet and stress reduction can have on health. Ornish was the first to show that these lifestyle changes could actually reverse severe heart disease without drugs or surgery.

Ornish's latest book, "The Spectrum," offers advice on how to personalize a health plan to fit your goals and preferences — without diets, deprivation or guilt.

Read the first chapter of "The Spectrum" below.

Chapter One: It Works!

The one thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on others.-- Marcel Proust

I just had a piece of chocolate. Dark chocolate. Really high-fat gourmet dark chocolate. It was delicious. I have a little chocolate almost every day.

Now, you may be wondering if I'm cheating on my very own diet. Well, no, I'm not. I'm enjoying my very own diet.

I'm writing this book to help you understand that you have a broad spectrum of choices when it comes to what you eat, how much you exercise, how you manage stress, and how you live. It's not all or nothing. In the process, I hope to dispel some misconceptions about what I recommend.

In short, this book will show you how to personalize a way of eating and living that's just right for you, based on your own needs and preferences. It has been scientifically proven to help you feel better, live longer, lose weight, and gain health.

It works! Why? Because it's based on pleasure, not pain; abundance, not deprivation; science, not myth; freedom and power, not restriction and manipulation. Joy of living is sustainable; fear of dying is not.

There are many myths and false choices that are confusing to many people. These include:

You really don't have to make these choices.

This is a book about how to enjoy life more fully while enhancing your health and well-being. It's based on our latest research showing that you can actually change how your genes are expressed just by changing what you eat and how you live.

In short, this book can empower you to transform your own life.

By now, many people are thoroughly exasperated by the seemingly contradictory information they read about what a sound nutrition and lifestyle program should be. Nowhere are the claims more conflicting than in the area of diet. I often hear, "Those damn doctors! They can't make up their minds. To hell with 'em, I'll eat and do whatever I want and quit worrying about it!"

I understand why many people feel that way. It can be really confusing when even the experts don't seem to agree.

Fortunately, at a time when people are more confused than ever, there is an emerging consensus about what to eat and how to live. The jury is in: a convergence of scientific evidence can help us resolve conflicting claims and distinguish what just sounds good from what is proven to be true.

Now it is possible to cut through the confusion and to customize a diet and lifestyle program just right for you based on your own needs and preferences. You have a spectrum of choices.

People have different needs, goals, and preferences. The medicine of the future is personalized medicine, which this book brings you today.

The recipes and cooking instructions, by the renowned chef Art Smith, are for foods that taste good and also make you look good and feel good. Many of them have several versions, so you can customize them to meet your own needs and preferences.

It seems that many people have misconceptions about what I eat and how I live my own life. For example, a few years ago, the playwright and producer Mike Nichols came up to me at a benefit for a foundation and said, "Hey, Dean, I'm on your diet -- if it tastes good, I can't eat it"-- echoing Mark Twain, "The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."

This is the most common misunderstanding about my work -- that I recommend one really strict diet and lifestyle program for everyone. "Yes, it works, but it's almost impossible to follow."

It's understandable why so many people believe this. Many of the media stories on the work my colleagues and I have conducted have focused on our research showing that heart disease and other chronic diseases can be reversed--and they often can!--just by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. Reversing a disease does require the stricter version of the diet and lifestyle program--the pound of cure--whereas if you're just trying to feel good and stay healthy you need only the ounce of prevention. However, for people who aren't sick, I recommended a spectrum of choices.

In this book, I'm not trying to get you to do--or not do--anything. Food and lifestyle choices are deeply personal decisions. Having seen what a powerful difference changes in diet and lifestyle can make, I want to share these findings with you so that you can make intelligent choices in what you eat and how you live. How much or little you want to change, if at all, is entirely up to you. More on this later.

Whenever I go out to dinner, people often comment on what I'm eating or apologize for what they're eating--"I have to be careful what I eat around you"--as though I'm going to be the sheriff or the vice principal of the high school waving my finger at them, judging them, and shaming them into eating differently.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. So I usually make a sign of the cross and say, jokingly, "You are forgiven," and we all have a good laugh about it. I then tell them that it doesn't matter to me what they eat or how they live as long as they're happy. When I order dessert, they often feel both surprised and relieved.

PROVEN PROGRAM

What makes this book unique is that it's based on three decades of research proving what works, what doesn't, for whom, and under what circumstances. Most books are written based on anecdotal testimonials (which are often unreliable), or on the experience of others, or on wishful thinking. They may make promises that often remain unfulfilled.

Instead, this program is grounded in science, and it's been proven to work:

Let's examine these.

The program works to prevent and even reverse disease.

People often think that advances in medicine have to be a new drug, a new laser, or a surgical intervention to be powerful--something really high-tech and expensive. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices we make in our lives each day--what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke, how much we exercise, and the quality of our relationships--can make such a powerful difference in our health, our well-being, and our survival, but they often do.

Awareness is the first step in healing. When we become more aware of how powerfully our choices in diet and lifestyle affect us--for better and for worse--then we can make different ones. It's like connecting the dots. In my experience, many people are not afraid to make big changes in their lives if they understand the benefits of doing so and how quickly they may occur.

Part of the value of science is to raise our awareness by helping us understand the powerful effects of the diet and lifestyle choices we make each day and how changing these may significantly--sometimes dramatically--improve our health and well-being. In many cases, these improvements may occur much more quickly than people once believed possible.

In our studies, we used the latest in high-tech, expensive, state-of-the-art measures to prove how robust these very simple, low-tech, and low-cost interventions can be.

For more than thirty years, I've directed a series of scientific research studies showing, for the first time, that the progression of even severe coronary heart disease can often be reversed by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. These include a very-low-fat diet including predominantly fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and soy products in their natural, unrefined forms; moderate exercise such as walking; various stress management techniques, including yoga-based stretching, breathing, meditation, and imagery; and enhanced love and social support, which may include support groups.

In these studies, we also documented that other chronic diseases may be reversible simply by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. Our findings are giving literally millions of people worldwide new hope and new choices, options that are more caring and compassionate as well as more cost-effective and competent.

More recently, we published the results of a randomized controlled trial in collaboration with Peter Carroll, M.D. (Chair, Department of Urology, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco) and William Fair, M.D. (Chief of urologic surgery and Chair of urologic oncology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, now deceased) showing that the progression of early-stage prostate cancer may be slowed, stopped, or perhaps even reversed by making similar changes in diet and lifestyle. This may be the first randomized controlled trial showing that the progression of any type of cancer may be modified just by changing what we eat and how we live. What's true for prostate cancer may be true for breast cancer as well, as I describe in chapter 14.

Our research has been conducted in collaboration with the most credible scientific investigators at major academic medical centers. Our findings have been published in the leading peer-reviewed medical journals, including The Lancet, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The American Journal of Cardiology, Circulation, Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation, Journal of Urology, Yearbook of Medicine, Yearbook of Cardiology, The New England Journal of Medicine, Homeostasis, Urology, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Hospital Practice, Cardiovascular Risk Factors, World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics, Journal of Cardiovascular Risk, Obesity Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and others.