5 Things You Need to Know About Ornish Diet and the Heart

1.The Ornish Diet Prevents and Reverses Heart Disease

Studies done by the University of California, San Francisco show Dr. Ornish's diet heals heart disease, even in patients headed for heart surgery. Eating this way will open up clogged arteries and reduce the chances of having a heart attack. More studies done by the California Pacific Medical Center, University of Texas Medical School, and the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Institute, shows that the Ornish diet will help you reduce disease risks better than any other major diet yet studied. Not only can the Ornish diet reduce disease risks, but it can actually reverse heart disease. That's something modern medicine can't do with drugs or surgery, which only addresses symptoms, not the underlying disease, which is just about always nutritionally caused.

2.The Ornish Diet Helps With Weight Loss

Dean Ornish talks about the importance of whole foods that retain water and fiber. The Ornish diet helps you ingest more water and fiber in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables, so the volume of food increases while calories decrease, helping people to lose weight and keep it off, as demonstrated in peer-reviewed journals. Weight loss for obese individuals radically reduces heart disease risks. Few other diet programs show these results under close scientific scrutiny.




3. The Ornish Diet Is Not Just a Diet—It's Exercise, Emotional Awareness, and Stress Management.

As a progressive cardiologist, Dr. Ornish recognizes that our heart rates respond dramatically to emotion, and these changes directly affect the brain. The heart keeps time for the brain's electrical impulses, so when stressed, our entire system becomes disordered. Because of this, stress can and does kill, so Dr. Ornish advocates exercise, stress management and emotional awareness, including cultivating strong personal relationship skills and personal connections, all of which help reduce heart disease.



4.The Ornish Diet Misses the Heart-Healthy Benefits of Nuts & Seeds

Because the Ornish diet recommends only 10% of your calories from fats, you might miss heart-healing nutrition in nuts like walnuts, almonds, and Brazil nuts, and seeds like pumpkin, sunflower, and flax. These contain heart-healthy unsaturated fats, including the rare and important Omega 3 fats. Ornish advocates taking fish oil, yet the same or similar benefits can be obtained from nuts and seeds.
Nuts and seeds also contain significant quantities of several often-depleted minerals. Brazil nuts contain selenium, for example, and pumpkin seeds contain zinc, both minerals most people don't get enough of.



5. The Criticism of the Diet

While the Ornish diet shows excellent results under research conditions, it may be difficult for some people to sustain. In addition, this diet is low in certain nutrients, namely Vitamin B12, iron, calcium and Omega 3 fatty acids, which are all recommended for supplementation for anyone strictly following this program.
Other people may have difficulties taking in enough calories to sustain themselves on this diet. Those include children and adolescents, the elderly and pregnant and lactating women.
In addition, athletes who compete or train with anaerobic exercises, such as power lifting, may have trouble meeting their nutritional needs, especially fat, protein and total calories. The Ornish diet is best suited for overweight and obese adults, especially those who have been diagnosed with coronary artery disease or who have had one or more heart attacks.