Dr. Dean Ornish’s program

In an age when medical science was combating heart disease with costly high­tech interventions, American physician Dean Ornish was something of a throwback. His simple, inexpensive program of lifestyle changes – which featured a low-fat, primarily vegetarian diet, moderate aerobic exercise, and daily stress management – contrasted sharply with such potentially risky treatments as bypass surgery, angioplasty, and cholesterol-lowering medication. The holistic regimen that Ornish recommended appeared not only to halt the progress of atherosclerosis – the buildup of fatty substances within the arteries – but actually to reverse it. Despite his reluctance to be labeled a guru, Ornish continued to gain enthusiastic converts following the publication in 1990 of his best-selling second book, Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery. Later highlights for Ornish included the publication of a third book, Eat More, Weigh Less: Dr. Dean Ornish’s Life Choice Program for Losing Weight Safely While Eating Abundantly, an invitation to the White House in 1993; and the announcement in August of the same year that Mutual of Omaha, an insurance company, would reimburse policyholders for the cost of participation in the program – the first time a major insurer had agreed to cover an “alternative” treatment for heart disease.