Let’s say, for example, that you want to lower your cholesterol or get your diabetes under control. You begin by making moderate changes that you choose. There’s no pushback because you set the pace. We’ll help track your progress, and if the changes are enough to accomplish your goals, great; and if not, then you can do more.


Who seems to benefi t most from this approach, and to what degree?


One of our most interesting research findings was that the primary determinant of improvement wasn’t how old or sick people were, it was how much they’d changed their diet and lifestyle. The body has a remarkable capacity to heal itself if we simply stop doing what’s causing the problem. We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of patients slow or reverse the progress of life-threatening diseases when they make good changes. Such lifestyle changes can work not only as well as drugs and surgery, but oftentimes better, and at a fraction of the cost. Plus, the side effects are all good ones. When you begin to make improvements in diet and lifestyle, your brain gets more blood, so you think more clearly and need less sleep. Your brain can grow so many new brain cells that it can get measurably bigger in just three months. Your face gets more blood so you don’t wrinkle as fast. Even your sexual organs get more blood flow, similar to the way Viagra works... and so on. That really motivates people to continue. We even found that when you make these positive lifestyle changes, your genes begin to change. We found


alterations in more than 500 genes within the first three months—turning on or up-regulating the disease-prevent- ing genes, and turning off or down-regulating the genes that promote disease.


You stress the importance of individual lifestyle changes, but what about changing our sick health care system?


We do need to look at the politics of health care and hold our leaders responsible for some of decisions that have cre- ated the mess we’re in.


For example, after 16 years of lobbying, working with Medicare and members of Congress, we learned a few months ago that Medicare is finally covering our program for reversing heart disease. It’s game changing. If Medicare covers it, all the other insurance companies will follow their lead, and we can make these sorts of programs available to people who most need them, rather than just those who can afford it.


If we change reimbursement, we change not only medi- cal practice, but also medical education. Otherwise, I could do a thousand studies with a million patients and it would always remain on the fringes of medical practice.


For more information visit pmri.org or OrnishSpectrum.com.


April Thompson is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. See AprilWrites.com


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