Dean Ornish Quotes

You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.

The public needs to know - they need to know as much about atrial fibrillation as they do about cancer and diabetes.

We are also in the process of defining how best to work together with food and other companies to address diet and physical activity factors in order to prevent chronic diseases.

In the African-American community, we struggle with a lot of health problems that have a lot to do with our diet.

That the AIDS pandemic is threatening sustainable development in Africa only reinforces the reality that health is at the center of sustainable development.

Far too many times over the next 12 to 15 years, it was brought to my attention that people who followed my exercise guidelines exactly but ignored their diet, their weight and their cigarette smoking had heart attacks at age 55.

I saw many people who had advanced heart disease and I was so frustrated because I knew if they just knew how to do the right thing, simple lifestyle and diet steps, that the entire trajectory of their life and health would have been different.

Things like depression and obesity are global challenges.

No other health disparity is so stark; virtually every woman who dies giving birth lives in a poor country.

I really do believe that America has this weight problem - obesity issues - and we have all these diseases that we get - heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases - that are primarily lifestyle diseases.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it's one that's easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

Excess dietary salt is most notorious for increasing blood pressure. Americans have a 90 percent lifetime probability of developing high blood pressure - so even if your blood pressure is normal now, if you continue to eat the typical American diet, you will be at risk.

One out of every 100 American men is HIV positive. The rate of infection has reached epidemic proportions in 40 developing nations.

The American diet causes disease. It is composed of 25 percent animal products and 62 percent processed foods and only 5 percent of calories from fruits and vegetables.

I don't have the best family history heart-wise, so I really try to keep my heart strong.

Studies of immigration show that this resistance to heart disease is not just something in African or Chinese genes. When people move from low-risk to high-risk areas, disease rates skyrocket as they adopt Western diets and lifestyles.

In today's world, it is shortsighted to think that infectious diseases cannot cross borders. By allowing developing countries access to generic drugs, we not only help improve health in those nations, we also help ourselves control these debilitating and often deadly diseases.

Preventing cardiovascular disease can help free up critical resources for treating HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

Multinational food companies can play a large role in helping to prevent chronic diseases around the world by offering healthier choices in the United States and abroad.

In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole-foods, plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates.

In terms of medicine, I've generally been pretty interested in public health issues as they relate to sub-Saharan Africa on a broad scale - HIV/AIDS, malaria etc.

In the United States, I feel like polio doesn't exist, but it very much does. I've been to many countries and saw how lucky we are that we can go straight to the doctor or the ER in the U.S. I would love for moms in other countries to not experience my fears.

Let's make the best use of technology to work for patient safety as well as to fight the rising problem of non-communicable diseases, a big challenge to our country and the world.

Get your heart checked. I've always looked at myself as healthy, but I wasn't.

Poor diet and sedentary behaviour have led to an increase in obesity and lifestyle-related disease and a huge rise in chronic medical conditions.