Top 146 Quotes & Sayings by Dean Ornish - Page 2

Nowhere is the power of the Internet for improving people's lives more evident than in health care.

In a global economy, the Bush doctrine of unilateralism - going it alone - has been disastrous. It's becoming increasingly clear that we're all in this together. Your happiness is my happiness, your suffering is my suffering, your recession is my recession.

When we torture people, even if we win the battle, we've already lost the war for hearts and minds. Especially our own.

If you indulge yourself one day, you can eat more healthfully the next. To the degree you move in a healthful direction on the food spectrum, you're likely to feel better, lose weight, and gain health.

There is often a simplistic view that HDL is good, so that anything that raises HDL is good for you, and anything that lowers it is bad for you. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Having the BRCA mutation significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, but it is not always the only factor. Lifestyle choices may increase or decrease the risk of breast cancer, but that knowledge is an opportunity to empower ourselves, not to blame.

Concepts such as 'risk factor modification' and 'prevention' are often considered boring and they may not initiate or sustain the levels of motivation needed to make and maintain comprehensive lifestyle changes.

When the U.S. claims the right to invade any country unilaterally and then defines a country like Iran or North Korea as 'evil,' then it is a rational response for these countries to develop nuclear weapons as the only military deterrent to invasion. We create what we most fear.

Earlier in my life, I had a tendency toward depression.

Your genes are not your fate... if you change your lifestyle, you change your genes.

Although many people believe that the primary emphasis of my work is about diet, it's not. What we eat is important, of course, but what comes out of our mouth may be more important than what goes into it.

Preventing cardiovascular disease can help free up critical resources for treating HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

Knowing that changing lifestyle changes our genes is often very motivating - not to blame, but to empower.

How you eat is as important as what you eat. If I eat mindlessly while watching television, I get all of the calories and none of the pleasure. Instead, if I eat mindfully, paying attention and savoring what I'm eating, smaller portions of food can be exquisitely satisfying.

Even a small amount of dark chocolate can be exquisitely satisfying if you meditate on it.

Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. As telomeres become shorter, then cells age and die more quickly. In simple terms, as your telomeres get shorter, your life gets shorter.

For much of my career, I've studied health and how it's intrinsically tied to lifestyle.

Eating bad food does not make you a bad person.

You can meditate on almost anything: a prayer, song, image or word. Close your eyes; sit in a comfortable position. Take a breath, and say the word out loud, emphasizing the humming sound at the end. When you come to the end of the breath, take another one and say the word again. And so on.

All divisions are man-made.

Too much power in any institution tends to stifle innovation.

When you eat mindfully, by paying attention to what you eat, you get more pleasure with fewer calories.

In our experience, when people make comprehensive lifestyle changes, they usually can reduce or discontinue medications such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, anti-hypertensives, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, nitrates, insulin, and so on.

The biological mechanisms that control our health and well-being are much more dynamic - for better and for worse - than most people realize.

When it's good business to make healthier food, then it becomes sustainable.

Lifestyle changes may help reduce risk, but no study has shown that lifestyle changes alone can eliminate the risk of breast cancer, especially in those carrying the BRCA mutation.

I'm as deeply suspicious of big government as anyone. I'm strongly in favor of universal coverage but not single payer.

Chronic emotional stress shortens your telomeres.

When we forgive someone, it doesn't excuse their actions; it frees us from our own chronic stress and suffering, so it's in our own self-interest.

To the degree you eat less of the bad carbs and fats and enough of the good carbs and fats, you're likely to look better, feel better, lose weight and gain health.

Not everything that lowers HDL is bad for you. If you change from a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet to a healthy low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, your HDL levels may stay the same or even decrease because there is less need for it. When you have less garbage, you need fewer garbage trucks to remove it, so your body may make less HDL.

Our emotions resonate with each other - for better and for worse.

Nobody wants to feel controlled or treated like a child.

Smaller portions of good foods are more satisfying than larger portions of junk foods, especially if you pay attention to what you're eating.

If you're with a close friend, your anger may raise his blood pressure as well as your own, whereas loving feelings may lower blood pressure in both of you.

When you're feeling stressed, your breath becomes more rapid and shallow. Take some slow, deep breaths, which will reduce your stress level almost immediately.

The power of the Internet is also its limitation - it provides access to large amounts of information without providing guidance on how to sort out what is credible and what is not.

Intimacy is healing.

If you're at high risk or are trying to reverse heart disease or prevent the recurrence of cancer, you probably need to make bigger changes in diet and lifestyle than someone who just wants to lose a few pounds and is otherwise healthy. If you just want to lower your cholesterol, weight or blood pressure, begin by making moderate changes.

In business, when you can meet an unmet need that is this primal, even meeting it in a superficial way can create a multi-billion-dollar business - e.g., the chat rooms in AOL when it first came out, or the lounges in Starbucks, or the billion people who are on Facebook - even though these are hardly the most intimate of life experiences.

Physical exercise is a great way to discharge stressful feelings that accumulate during the day.

The choices you make each day in your diet and lifestyle have a direct influence on how your genetic predisposition is expressed - for better and for worse. You're only as old as your genes, but how your genes are expressed may be modified by exercise, diet and lifestyle choices much more than had previously been believed - and more quickly.

Intimacy and community buffer stress.

When we realize that something as primal as the food that we choose to eat each day makes such an important difference in addressing both global warming and personal health, it empowers us and imbues these choices with meaning. If it's meaningful, then it's sustainable - and a meaningful life is a longer life.

What's personally sustainable is globally sustainable.

In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole-foods, plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates.

If you go on a diet and feel constrained, you are more likely to drop it. But if you see your food choices each day as part of a spectrum, then you are more likely to feel free and empowered.

In our home, we serve mostly healthful foods.

The diets and lifestyles in many other countries are much healthier than in the United States.

When we are angry with someone, we empower the person we hate the most in that moment to make us stressed out or even sick. That's not smart.

Multinational food companies can play a large role in helping to prevent chronic diseases around the world by offering healthier choices in the United States and abroad.

Trust leads to intimacy, which leads to healing and meaning. We can only be intimate to the degree we can make ourselves vulnerable. But when we open our hearts, we can get hurt.

Meaningful health reform needs to provide incentives for physicians and other health professionals to teach their patients healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing primarily drugs and surgical interventions.

As a veteran of the diet wars, I think it's time to call a truce. Rather than hear experts argue, most people want practical information they can use.

It costs less to eat and live more healthfully. Walking, loving, meditating, and quitting smoking are free and require no special equipment.

No one has all the answers, so whatever a woman who has the BRCA mutation chooses to do requires courage and an element of faith. And a lot of love and support.

'I resolve to eat less food' sounds good in theory, but it's often hard to sustain. And if you believe that it's all willpower, then you're likely to be upset with yourself if you don't succeed.

What we do eat is at least as important as what we don't eat.

Eating a stick of butter will raise HDL in those who are able to do so, but that does not mean that butter is good for your heart. It isn't.

When we exercise, it feels like we're really out there doing something, whereas spending a few minutes with your eyes closed in meditation may feel a little, well, wimpy.