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.
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Dean Ornish’s TED Talks
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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. Day 4 included talks curated […]
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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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