Dean Ornish

I've found that if I tell somebody 'Eat this and don't do that,' it's not only not helpful, it's counterproductive because even more than being healthy, we want to feel free and in control, and as soon as somebody tells us to do something, there's a tendency to do just the opposite.

I grew up in Texas, eating meat five times a day, and I liked meat. But I began being a vegetarian when I was 19 because I found that I felt better.

If we're not careful, we become that which we most fear.

In general, losing weight is a good thing for those who are overweight, but it's important to lose weight in a way that enhances your health rather than one that may compromise it.

Anything that takes you out of the context of being separate is healing. Anything that takes you out of the context of separateness is intimacy.

Awareness is the first step in healing.

Your body has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself, and much more quickly than people had once realized, if you simply stop doing what's causing the problem.

Intimacy is healing.

There's a tendency to dismiss anything having to do with love and intimacy in medicine because it's hard to measure.

The need for love and intimacy is a fundamental human need, as primal as the need for food, water, and air.

Rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us survive at a time when an increasingly balkanized world so badly needs it.

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.