Career
Ornish takes a lifestyle-driven approach to the control of coronary artery disease (CAD) and other chronic diseases. He promotes lifestyle changes including a quasi whole foods, plant-based diet,[6] smoking cessation, moderate exercise, stress management techniques including yoga and meditation, and psychosocial support.[3][1] While Ornish promotes a Plant-based diet, he does not advocate for a strictly vegan diet as his program allows for the occasional consumption of other animal products.[7]
His interest in vegetarian diets began as a college student when he first met Indian yoga guru and religious teacher Swami Satchidananda Saraswati.[8][9] Satchidananda advocated a vegetarian diet for its health, ecological, and spiritual benefits.[10] He established the first vegetarian health food store in New York City, in 1972.[11] Satchidananda inspired Ornish's dietary research.[12] In 1986, Ornish wrote the foreword of Satchidananda's vegetarian cookbook, The Healthy Vegetarian.[13] Ornish's interactions with Satchidananda eventually led to decades of research beginning in the 1980s on the impact of diet and stress levels on people with heart disease. This research, published in peer-reviewed journals, became the basis of his "Program for Reversing Heart Disease". It combined diet, meditation, exercise and support groups, and in 1993 became the first non-surgical, non-pharmaceutical therapy for heart disease to qualify for insurance reimbursement.[14] With the exception of chiropractic care, it was the first alternative medical technique, not taught in traditional medical-school curricula, to gain approval by a major insurance carrier.[2][15]
Ornish worked with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 16 years to create a new coverage category called intensive cardiac rehabilitation (ICR), which focuses on comprehensive lifestyle changes. In 2010, Medicare began to reimburse costs for Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease, a 72-hour ICR for people who have had heart attacks, chest pain, heart valve repair, coronary artery bypass, heart or lung bypass, or coronary angioplasty or stenting. In addition to the Ornish program, Medicare and Medicaid pay for ICR programs created by the Pritikin Longevity Center and by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.[1][16]
Ornish has been a physician consultant to former President Bill Clinton since 1993, when he was asked by Hillary Clinton to consult with the chefs at The White House, Camp David, and Air Force One. In 2010, after the former President's cardiac bypass grafts became clogged, Clinton, encouraged by Ornish, followed a mostly plant-based diet.[17]
In 2011, Barack Obama appointed Ornish to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.[18]
Diet
Ornish has promoted a diet known as the "Ornish diet" to prevent and reverse heart disease. The Ornish diet is lacto-ovo vegetarian as it includes non-fat dairy products and egg whites in moderation.[19][20] On the Ornish diet all meat, fish, poultry, fat dairy products, coconuts, margarine, nuts, seeds, avocados, olives, and cooking oils (apart from canola oil) are forbidden.[19] The diet is very low in fat with 10 percent of fat from total calories and low in cholesterol. The Ornish diet emphasizes consumption of fruits, legumes, vegetables and whole grains.[20] The diet also recommends the use of fish oil supplements.[20] The Ornish diet is part of Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease which also includes exercise, meditation, stress reduction and yoga.[19]
