Dean Ornish

One of the reasons I'm excited by what visionary Elon Musk has done with the Tesla is to show that you can reduce global warming and drive a powerful, fun car. A cool car helps make a cooler planet.

If we can reach populations in developing countries and help them understand the value of their indigenous diet and lifestyles rather than copying ours, perhaps we can reverse the exponential rise in cardiovascular disease that is plaguing them.

With everything that you can imagine at our fingertips, many of the social interactions that help tie people together in a community have faded away. Are communities traditionally built on relationships, trust and familiarity a thing of the past?

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.

People who are lonely and depressed are three to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely than those who have a strong sense of love and community. I don't know any other single factor that affects our health - for better and for worse - to such a strong degree.

Intimacy and community buffer stress.

Fear leads to more fear, and trust leads to more trust.

It's true, you can lose weight on these high-animal-protein, Atkins-type diets, but you're mortgaging your health in the process.

Educators and school personnel work on the front lines of childhood obesity, but every day they face the challenges of budget cuts, mandated tests, rushed lunch periods, and a decrease in time for physical activity.

Nobody wants to feel controlled or treated like a child.

Sometimes, people do the darkest acts in the name of helping protect their loved ones.

Let's all be more humble about the evidence behind medical advice but also respect the challenges to providing accessible lifestyle guidance.