Why you should listen

A bestselling author of six books, Dean Ornish, MD, is founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and the University of California San Diego. He directed groundbreaking randomized trials that showed, for the first time, that a healthy lifestyle — eating well, moving more, stressing less, loving more — could often begin to reverse many common (and costly) chronic diseases, without drugs or surgery. Medicare created a new benefit category to reimburse patients of his lifestyle medicine program, and the "Ornish diet" was rated "#1 for Heart Health" by U.S. News & World Report.

Dean Ornish’s TED talks

More news and ideas from Dean Ornish

Live from TED2025

Babies, brains and breakthroughs: Day 4 of TED2025

April 11, 2025

Day 4 of TED2025 was a jaw-dropping tour of everything from the “girl internet” to what homes could look like in outer space. Learn more about how babies’ minds work, why voting by phone might be the reboot democracy needs and a future where roads can mend their own cracks. Here are some things you […]

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A heavy education for New York City commuters

October 8, 2008

Many of us don’t know how to eat. (And it’s making us fat, sick and disconnected.) This poster and three more like it are turning up in New York subways, confronting us with the vagueness that goes into our food choices. If you really knew that a fast-food burrito meal was 1170 calories — more […]

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Your genes are not your fate: Dean Ornish on TED.com

June 24, 2008

Back online: Dr. Dean Ornish shares new research that shows how adopting healthy lifestyle habits can affect a person at a genetic level. For instance, he says, when you live healthier, eat better, exercise, and love more, your brain cells actually increase. And new findings show that a healthier lifestyle can turn off disease-provoking genes […]

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