The Transformative Power of Lifestyle Medicine
Lesson Description
Lifestyle medicine uses lifestyle changes to reverse and prevent the most common chronic diseases.
Instructor: Dean Ornish
Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSD.
For over 40 years, Dean has directed clinical research demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery. Medicare created a new benefit category, “intensive cardiac rehabilitation,” to provide coverage for this program. He directed the first randomized controlled trial demonstrating that comprehensive lifestyle changes may slow, stop or reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer. His research showed that comprehensive lifestyle changes affect gene expression, “turning on” disease-preventing genes and “turning off” genes that promote cancer and heart disease, as well as the first controlled study showing that these lifestyle changes may begin to reverse cellular aging by lengthening telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes which regulate aging (in collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine & Physiology). He is currently directing the first randomized controlled trial to determine if comprehensive lifestyle changes can reverse the progression of early Alzheimer’s disease.
Dean is the author of seven books, all national bestsellers. UnDo It! (co-authored with Anne Ornish) was published by Random House as their lead nonfiction title in January 2019. His three main-stage TED.com talks have been viewed by over six million people.
Dean was appointed by President Clinton to the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy; by President Obama to the White House Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health; and by Governor Newsom to the Governor’s Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention and Preparedness.
The “Ornish diet” has been rated “#1 for Heart Health” by a panel of experts at U.S. News & World Report.
Dr. Ornish was recognized as “one of the 125 most extraordinary University of Texas alumni in the past 125 years;” by TIME magazine as a “TIME 100 Innovator;” by LIFE magazine as “one of the fifty most influential members of his generation;” by People magazine as “one of the most interesting people of the year;” and by Forbes magazine as “one of the world’s seven most powerful teachers.”