The New Science of Nutrigenomics Unveiled

Can you reverse prostate cancer by changing your diet or reverse aging by eating a whole foods diet? Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman, welcome. These were the findings actually from Dr. Dean Ornish and his colleagues at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute which he recounted in his new groundbreaking book called the Spectrum. 30 years ago, Dean Ornish showed us how you can actually reverse heart disease through eating a whole foods plant-based diet, exercising, meditating, doing yoga, and being part of a support group. Now he shows us even cancer and aging can be reversed using the same principles of healthy living and whole foods. And he shows us why this can happen. Now in 1996, I went to a small nutrition conference in Northern California and I heard Dean speak. He spoke very plainly and clearly about his compelling research about how you can reverse clogged arteries, prevent the need for bypass and heart transplants by simply changing your diet, exercising, learning how to relax and connect with other people. Okay, I thought, this is it. Now clearly medicine will take this evidence and change. And I think Dean thought that too. Why wouldn't we trade the 400,000 invasive bypass surgeries as a cost of a hundred billion a year proven to be mostly ineffective and to not prolong life, or the $15 billion a year in cost for Lipitor for a treatment that was not only more effective but dramatically cheaper and full of additional side effects such as weight loss, improved energy and vitality. It's a no-brainer. Insurance companies at Medicare will pay billions of dollars for these surgeries and medications even when they're not the best treatments. One of my patients, a 65-year-old man, developed both heart disease requiring medications and angioplasties and prostate cancer. After working with him to improve his diet and exercise and nutritional status for five years, he had a repeat angiogram that showed his coronary arteries were dramatically better. They were unblocked. And his prostate cancer is now only a memory. On his 70th birthday, he called me to tell me he felt better at 70 than at 60 and he was off all his medications and free of disease. How could this happen and happen so consistently with the right treatment? Well, as Dean Ornish explains in his new book, when we change our diet and substitute a whole foods, low glycemic load, plant-based diet for a high sugar, trans and saturated fat, full nutrient deficient diet, and do just a bit of exercise, learn to relax and manage stress, and connect to our friends and family and community, we change our genes. So when we change our lifestyle, we change our genes. Let's look at what this new research showed. Telling someone not to use chemotherapy or radiation if they have cancer is generally not good medical practice. But in the case of prostate cancer, the benefits of treatment of early stage cancer are kind of questionable. And many men elect to take a wait and see approach because the treatment often makes them incontinent and impotent. Now some progress to more serious cancer but many others don't. So this was a perfect model of cancer for Dr. Ornish to study. At his pioneering Preventive Medicine Research Institute, he proved that early stage prostate cancer can be slowed, stopped, and even reversed. He studied 93 men who decided not to have conventional treatment, and then divided them into two groups. One group didn't change their diet or lifestyle, and the other group made comprehensive lifestyle changes that Dr. Ornish describes in his new book, the Spectrum. And they were the basis of his work in reversing heart disease. He published his dramatic finding that the PSA, which is a marker of cancer and prostate cancer, went down in the lifestyle change group but went up in the control group and that prostate cancer growth was reduced by 70%. And after four years, only six of the lifestyle change patients needed more aggressive treatment while 21 of the control patients needed more aggressive conventional treatment like chemotherapy or surgery. But what was even more astounding was that the genetic analysis that he did after he changed our lifestyle. By changing the diet and lifestyle, different genes are switched on or off. That means that eating a whole foods, plant-based diet and doing a little exercise, relaxation literally controls your gene expression. You can stop or reverse cancer by switching on different genes by changing what you eat. This is a lot of what I talked about in my book, UltraMetabolism, but this applies to every chronic disease such as cancer, heart disease. It's called Nutrigenomics, which is how food talks to your genes. In his life-changing book, the Spectrum, Dr. Ornish also tells us of his incredible work with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, one of the pioneering researchers in the study of aging. She and her colleagues at the University of San Francisco School of Medicine studied the effects of stress in mothers who are caring for children with chronic illness. They looked at the length of the mother's telomeres, which are these little repair enzymes and systems on the end of your chromosomes that protect your DNA. The shorter the telomeres, the shorter your life. So the mothers with the highest levels of perceived stress who felt the most stress internally had the shortest telomeres, equivalent to about a decade of additional aging compared to the mothers who didn't feel as stressed by their circumstances. Dr. Ornish then applied the comprehensive diet and lifestyle changes described in his book, and he found that the telomerase which is the enzyme that keeps your telomeres long and healthy, was higher, reversing the aging effects of chronic stress. So literally you can reverse the effects of stress on your genes and on the aging process by simply eating a whole foods, plant-based diet, doing some exercising, and learning to deeply relax. Now when General Motors spends more on healthcare than steel and Starbucks spends more on healthcare than coffee beans and when we have such an effective, proven, and safe and low-cost way To stop and reverse diseases like cancer, we have to ask ourselves, what is going on? Now, Dean Ornish has been a courageous, persistent, and tireless advocate for change in medicine, and his latest contribution to the spectrum and his new program to address all chronic disease, not just heart disease, is coming at a time when we need it most. Despite enormous obstacles, he has contributed fearlessly for 30 years by working to change government and corporate policies and making a difference for millions. Now over the last few years, I've gotten to know and see Dean up close and personal, and rarely have I met a person with more courage, a more generous heart, or a clearer vision of what needs to be done or how to do it to change medicine, healthcare policy, the insurance industry, and corporate behavior. In his new book, the Spectrum, it's a powerful account of his work over the last 30 years and the latest evolution of his work based on how to change your genes and your life by changing your lifestyle and your diet. Buy this book, give it to your doctor, your congressman or congresswoman, give it to your friends and family because it holds his more than 30 years of accumulated wisdom and research and the answer to our current healthcare crisis and your personal health problems.