A Unifying Theory of Lifestyle Medicine: Unique New Findings with Alzheimer’s Disease

The inaugural recipient of ACLM’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Dr. Dean Ornish is a renowned physician/scientist often referred to as “The Founding Father of Lifestyle Medicine,” as his seminal research helped create this field.

For 47 years, he has directed randomized controlled trials showing, for the first time, that lifestyle medicine can often begin to reverse the progression of many of the most common and costly chronic diseases, without drugs or surgery.

These include heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and early-stage prostate cancer, beneficially changing gene expression and improving cellular aging by lengthening telomeres. Medicare created a new benefit category to reimburse his cardiac program, the first time Medicare covered a lifestyle medicine program. His latest clinical trial was the first to show that lifestyle medicine often improves cognition and function in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Ornish’s unifying theory emphasizes that many chronic diseases share similar underlying biological mechanisms such as chronic inflammation and oxidative stress and thus can often be improved by similar lifestyle choices. These include a plant-predominant diet, regular physical activity, stress management, and social support—"eat well, move more, stress less, love more.”

Dr. Ornish was recognized as “one of the 125 most extraordinary University of Texas alumni in the past 125 years;” by TIME magazine as a “TIME, 100 Innovator” and also as a “TIME 100 Most Influential Global Health Leader;” by LIFE magazine as “one of the fifty most influential members of his generation;” by People magazine as “one of the most interesting people of the year;” was the topic of a New Yorker cartoon and two “Jeopard" answers; and by Forbes magazine as “one of the world’s seven most powerful teachers.”