PopTech : Blog : Dean Ornish and Joy, Freedom, and Pleasure

Dean Ornish and Joy, Freedom, and Pleasure

Kristen Taylor ( Bio / Posts ) | Saturday, October 24, 2009 UTC

Dean Ornish’s overall message was that “joy, freedom, and pleasure enable us to make sustainable choices.”

He began by pointing up how the language of behavioral change has a moralistic quality and that terms like “patient compliance” are manipulative and not about freedom or pleasure or joy. He went on later to say that this language leads to false choices (the dicotomy of ‘good for me’ versus ‘fun for me.’

CC image by Kris Krug.

He also mentioned neurogenesis (“I’m only the messenger”) and then proceeded to give examples of the body’s capacity to heal itself.

Echoing earlier PopTech speaker Ashley Merryman, who spoke about parenting and amazed the audience with her statistic that fifteen minutes of sleep can be the difference between an A and a B student, Ornish talked about growing brain cells by walking for three hours a week.

Ornish had the audience raise their hands if had children, and teased the majority of the audience with the slow raising of their hands—“You forgot?” He used the event of having children as a way to illustrate our ability to change lifestyle (as explanation for disease survivors that say the disease was the best thing to happen to them because it changed their lifestyle and they were happier in their new, healthier choices.

Following on Michael Pollan’s food talk from this morning, he talked about how the current generation’s expected lifestyle is shorter than their parents, said “what you include in your diet is as important as what you exclude,” and everyone took note of the three ounces of fish oil he prescribes daily.

Ornish explained the French Paradox by returning to his focus on joy, freedom, and pleasure—eat mindfully and savor your meal (channeling Pollan again), and talked more about transformation.

Using Christy Turlington’s site smokingisugly.com as a way to effectively target teens, Ornish made the audience smile at a parody ad of the Malboro Man with a droopy cigarette and “Impotent” emblazoned on the sky behind him. Half of men who smoke are impotent, he says, and this is a much more effective argument (for men) with teens, who care less about living a few less years.

Other things we learned:

500 genes can change in three months, and meditation can assist with this. “Your genes are not your fate.”

telomeres – chronic emotional stress may shorten your lifespan

diet “If you are on a diet, you are likely to go off a diet.”

75% of 2.1 trillion in healthcare costs are due to things that can be prevented like heart disease.
(Heart disease is reversible, preventable for 95% of people, he says.)

In 2006, 1.3 angioplasties were performed, more than $60 billion (and did not reduce risk of death, heart atack, or other major cardivoasuclar events)

Ornish is concerned with reimbursement-driven medicine and that our overarching depression and loneliness have led to antidepressants being the prescription drug most often prescribed over the past few years.

“Lifestyle as treatment, not just prevention”—joy, freedom, pleasure. And walks to grow brain cells.

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