Many in the health and wellbieng world will have heard of Dean Ornish, and his advocacy of health improvement through plant based diet.
He is, of course, a Medical Doctor, and has had good verified results with his work on cardiac rehabilitation.
This book, written with his wife, is about his three stage approach to heading off, and reversing, chronic disease such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, depression, weight gain and high cholesterol.
Thats quite a wide spectrum of conditions to take on. The authors address this by looking at the science behind lifestyle medicine – promoting health through lifestyle rather than medical treatment. In particular through a whole food plant based diet, moderate exercise, stress management and love, social support and intimacy – summarised as “eat well, move more, stress less, love more”. Its a persuasive combination, which the authors cover well, and, quite correctly, they caution not to disregard personal medical advice and treatment, including prescribed drugs, at the same time. If I had a couple of criticisms of the book, first would be that its American in its outlook and some of the terminology reflects this, and secondly half of the 500 pages are recipes, again with an American orientated ingredient list.
Those two criticisms don’t detract from an otherwise useful book, and a useful contribution to the lifestyle medicine field. I’d endorse it to anyone who is facing chronic conditions.
