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Dr. Dean Ornish (1953– ) is president and founder of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, as well as Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Ornish is widely known for his lifestyle-driven approach to the control of coronary artery disease (CAD). Dr. Ornish and colleagues showed that a lifestyle regimen featuring meditation, a low-fat vegetarian diet, smoking cessation, and regular exercise could not only stop the progression of CAD, but could actually reverse it.

This result was demonstrated in a randomized controlled trial known as the Lifestyle Heart Trial, with data published in the Lancet in 1990, which recruited test subjects with pre-existing coronary artery disease. Not only did patients assigned to the above regimen fare better with respect to cardiac events than those who followed standard medical advice, their coronary atherosclerosis was somewhat reversed, as evidenced by decreased stenosis (narrowing) of the coronary arteries after one year of treatment. Most patients in the control group, by contrast, had narrower coronary arteries at the end of the trial than the start. Other doctors claim good results with similar metheods, for example: Caldwell B Esselstyn [1]; and K Lance Gould. [2]

This discovery was notable not only because it had seemed physiologically implausible, but also because it suggested a cheaper and safer weapon against cardiovascular disease than invasive procedures such as coronary artery bypass surgery.

Dr. Ornish is also a member of the boards of directors of the U.S. United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the Quincy Jones Foundation, and the San Francisco Food Bank. He was appointed to The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and elected to the California Academy of Medicine. He has received several awards, including the 1994 Outstanding Young Alumnus Award from the University of Texas, Austin, the Jan J. Kellermann Memorial Award for distinguished contribution in the field of cardiovascular disease prevention from the International Academy of Cardiology, the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association, and the Beckmann Medal from the German Society for Prevention and Rehabilitation of Cardiovascular Diseases. He was recognized as “one of the most interesting people of 1996” by People magazine, featured in the “TIME 100” issue on alternative medicine, and chosen by LIFE magazine as “one of the 50 most influential members of his generation.”

• http://www.webmd.com/content/pages/4/3080_453
• Watch or download a Dean Ornish lecture on the dramatic rise of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease at the 2006 TED Conference

Preventive Medicine Research Institute weblink: *http://www.pmri.org/?p=krf

• Ornish, Dean Dr. Dean Ornish's Programme for Reversing Heart Disease Ivy Books, U.S. (Jan 1996) ISBN 0-8041-1038-7
• Ornish, D et al (1990). Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary heart disease? The Lifestyle Heart Trial. Lancet Jul 21;336(8708):129-33.
• Ornish, D., Scherwitz, L. W., Doody, R. S., Kesten, D., McLanahan, S. M., Brown, S. E. et al: Effects of stress management training and dietary changes in treating ischemic heart disease. JAMA, 249: 54, 1983
• Ornish, D., Scherwitz, L. W., Billings, J. H., Brown, S. E., Gould, K. L., Merritt, T. A. et al: Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. JAMA, 280: 2001, 1998
• Dunn-Emke, S., Weidner, G., Pettengill, E., Marlin, R. O., Chi, C. and Ornish, D.: Nutritional adequacy of a very low-fat vegan diet. J Am Diet Assoc, 105: 1350, 2005
• Ornish, D.: Intensive lifestyle changes in management of coronary heart disease. In: Harrison's Advances in Cardiology. Edited by E. Braunwald. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002
• Sumner, Michael D. PhD 1; Weidner, Gerdi PhD 1; Merritt-Worden, Terri MS 2; Studley, Joli MS 2; Ornish, Dean MDF 1 ADHERENCE TO A MULTICOMPONENT LIFESTYLE MODIFICATION PROGRAM. Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation. 25(5):291, September/October 2005.
• Ornish, Dean High-Fiber Diet and Colorectal Adenomas. New England Journal of Medicine. 343(10):736-738, September 7, 2000.
• Ornish, Dean; Brown, Shirley Elizabeth; Kottke, Bruce A.; Shea, Steven; Barth, Jacques D.; Bryan, Gregory K.; Hokanson, John E.; Austin, Melissa A.; Ginsberg, Henry N.; Tall, Alan R.; Deckelbaum, Richard J.; Hunninghake, Donald B.; Criqui, Michael H.; Heiss, Gerardo; Sox, Harold C. Treatment Of And Screening For Hyperlipidemia. New England Journal of Medicine. 329(15):1124-1128, Oct 7, 1993.
• Gould, K. Lance MD; Ornish, Dean MD; Scherwitz, Larry PhD; Brown, Shirley MD; Edens, R. Patterson PhD; Hess, Mary Jane RN; Mullani, Nizar; Bolomey, Leonard; Dobbs, Frank PhD; Armstrong, William T. MD; Merritt, Terri MS; Ports, Thomas MD; Sparler, Stephen MA; Billings, James PhD Changes in Myocardial Perfusion Abnormalities by Positron Emission Tomography After Long-term, Intense Risk Factor Modification. JAMA. 274(11):894-901, September 20, 1995.