“I think our unique contribution has been to use these very high-tech, expensive, state-of-the-art scientific measures to prove how powerful these very low-tech and low-cost interventions can be,” stated Ornish, a professor of medication on the University of California, San Francisco.
“What’s good for your heart is good for your brain and vice versa,” Ornish stated. “Prior studies have shown moderate changes in lifestyle can slow the rate of progression of dementia and Alzheimer’s. So, my hypothesis is that more intense lifestyle changes could stop or even reverse the decline.”
“It’s low-fat, but that’s just a small part of the overall diet,” Ornish stated. “It’s essentially a vegan diet, low in fat and sugar, eating foods as close as possible to nature.”
The program additionally consists of an hour a day of yoga-based stress administration utilizing stretching, respiration, meditation and rest strategies. Strength coaching and strolling or different cardio train are required for half-hour a day or an hour thrice every week. Smoking isn’t allowed.
“There are also support groups,” Ornish informed CNN, “not just helping people stay on the diet but creating a safe environment where people can let down their emotional defenses and talk openly and authentically about what’s really going on in their lives, warts and all.
“That was the half that shocked me probably the most — these help teams are actually intimate,” he added. “Sharing issues like ‘I could appear to be the proper father, however my children are on heroin,’ or no matter. Even by Zoom, they’re attending to the identical degree of intimacy inside one or two classes as a result of there’s such a starvation for that.”
Those people are “three to 10 occasions extra more likely to get sick and die prematurely from just about every thing” when compared with people who say they have a sense of love, connection and community, Ornish maintained.
“Why? In half since you’re extra more likely to smoke, overeat, cease exercising and different unhealthy issues whenever you’re feeling lonely and depressed,” Ornish said.
Impact on other chronic diseases
By 1993, insurance giant Mutual of Omaha began reimbursing policyholders for the cost of Ornish’s program, making it the first alternative therapy besides chiropractic to win insurance reimbursement. Medicare began covering lifestyle interventions for heart disease in 2006.
“And in October 2021 Medicare agreed to cowl my reversing coronary heart illness program when it is completed through Zoom, which is mostly a sport changer,” Ornish said. “Now we are able to attain individuals at residence, in rural areas and meals deserts wherever they reside, which can assist scale back well being inequities and well being disparities.”
“With all this curiosity in personalised drugs, simply how is it that these identical life-style adjustments cease, and infrequently reverse, the development of such a large spectrum of the most typical and expensive power ailments?” Ornish asked.
“Because all of them share the identical underlying organic mechanisms: power irritation, oxidative stress, adjustments within the microbiome, adjustments in gene expression, overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, adjustments in immune operate and so forth,” he said.
“And in flip, every one among these is instantly influenced by what we eat, how we reply to stress, how a lot train we get and the way a lot love and help we have now,” Ornish stated.
“After simply three months on the Ornish life-style program, the analysis discovered quite a few genes that regulate or stop illness are turned on, and genes that trigger lots of the mechanisms that trigger all these completely different circumstances are turned off,” Ornish stated.
“You’re not technically altering your genes, however you are altering the expression of these genes with chemical switches, turning them on or off,” he said. “So, which means it is now not all in our genes, making us victims of our genetic destiny. We’re not victims. There’s so much we are able to do.”
“We discovered that telomerase, the enzyme that repairs and elongates telomeres, elevated by 30% after simply three months on this system,” Ornish said. “Then we discovered that individuals who had been on this system for 5 years had telomeres that have been about 10% longer, an indication that growing older is being reversed on the mobile degree.”
Will these same lifestyle interventions be enough to slow or even reverse cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s and other dementias? Time will tell. Ornish’s study is still underway, and while preliminary results appear promising, all the data must be gathered, analyzed and peer-reviewed before an outcome can be reported.
“But I imagine that it isn’t one weight loss program and life-style intervention for coronary heart illness, one other for diabetes or prostate most cancers, and but a special one for Alzheimer’s. It’s actually the identical for all these completely different circumstances,” Ornish told CNN.
“To reverse the illness, it’s essential observe the interventions almost 100%. If you are simply making an attempt to forestall illness, then the extra you modify, the extra you enhance. But what issues most is your general method of consuming, residing and loving in order that we are able to all die younger as previous as attainable.”