We must change the prejudices of mainstream medicine against lifestyle intervention - opinion

It’s difficult these days to get on the front-page of any newspaper. Here in Israel, there is a war in the South and another in the North of the country. In Europe, the Ukraine-Russian conflict continues. There is plenty going on in the political realm in Israel and a presidential election is getting closer in the United States. It’s easy to see why space in the paper or on online sites is hard to come by. 

But a little over a month ago, there was news in the world of medicine that was so big, it should have been on the front page. One has to wonder why it wasn’t!

Any of you who have read my columns before have seen the name of Dr. Dean Ornish on more than one occasion. Dr. Ornish is not afraid to go against the status quo. He has spent his long and illustrious career in cardiology and medicine in general investigating how to prevent and reverse chronic disease using lifestyle.

He was the first to show in a randomized controlled study in 1990 that you can actually reverse heart disease with a whole food plant-based diet along with other lifestyle interventions like exercise and stress management. That was a great accomplishment and should have been instrumental in curing heart disease.

Unfortunately, mainstream medicine didn’t buy in and they continue with drugs, procedures and surgeries that at times save lives, but have nothing to do with treating the causation of disease. Ornish subsequently has shown that early-stage prostate cancer can be reversed and that we can even reverse aging on a cellular level by reversing the deterioration of telomeres on the DNA strand. 

The results of Ornish's trial

Now, Ornish and his colleagues have finally finished their trial on reversing early stage Alzheimer’s disease. And the results are astounding.

Alzheimer’s has become prominent in society. There are almost seven million people in the United States and 55 million people worldwide with Alzheimer’s, and these numbers are steadily growing. It is the most dreadful and feared disease. When you lose your memories, you really lose everything. Billions of dollars have been spent trying to find a drug that works. 

In 20 years, two drugs have been approved and many feel that Aducanumab should never have been approved. Its effects are negligible and the newer drug, Secukinumab at best slows down the rate of deterioration. These drugs cost about $26,000 per year for the patient and the side effects include brain bleeding and brain swelling. 

We all want a cure, but much more emphasis needs to be put into prevention. We know that a proper diet, proper sleep and keeping alcohol low in the diet or eliminating it altogether will prevent 90% of the occurrence of this disease.

As the 20-year-long Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP) showed, saturated fats are particularly bad. Multiple studies have shown that high consumption of fruits and vegetables are particularly good, especially green leafy vegetables. A study in 2018 at Rush University showed that eating a large amount of greens was the equivalent of being 11 years younger in age. People whose diets are prominent in meat, chicken, and fish are twice as likely to get the disease.

According to Drs. Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, neurologists who head the Alzheimer’s research project at Loma Linda University, 90% of the cases of this dreaded disease are preventable. But now we know that we can even reverse the disease – and it’s not with a drug, but with an intensive lifestyle intervention.

In Ornish’s study, not every patient showed improvement, but most did. In the control group, those not using the lifestyle intervention and instead underwent standard care all showed decline. In some people who got the intervention, cognition improved and fibrous protein amyloid aggregates retreated.

The subjects walked 30 minutes every day and did online strength training sessions. They were introduced to meditation and yoga. The patients were asked to get a good night’s sleep.

They were also given certain supplements. They ate a strict healthy vegan diet. Overall calories were unrestricted but protein and fat were limited to 18% of the total diet. There was no added sugars, alcohol or ultra-processed foods allowed.

In an interview with CNN, two participants in the program told of how much better they are doing. Mike Carver said that he is now thinking more clearly and his physical health has also improved. Tammy Maida is now sleeping better and is doing all her regular tasks once again like laundry, cooking, reading and tracking her finances. “The cloud of Alzheimer’s slowly started to lift,” she said. “Honestly, I am more me than I had been for the years prior to starting Dr. Ornish’s program. “

This study was limited both in time and in the number of participants. It could be that a longer and more comprehensive trial will show even better results. Minimally, it seems we can substantially slow this disease down; maximally, we can stop it in its tracks and even reverse it to some extent. 

But what has me bothered is that when the Alzheimer’s drug that don’t really do anything at all to reverse or stop the disease come out, it is splashed all over the newspapers, websites, television and radio. Yet here we have something that seems to work better than the drugs, but only got a mention here and there. It seems to me that it should have gotten a lot more air time.

Lifestyle medicine is amazing. It prevents and has reversed many chronic conditions and even auto-immune ones. There is no question that for reversal, whether regarding heart disease or Alzheimer’s, there needs to be strict adherence to lifestyle change, but isn’t it worth it? One of the people who dropped out of the Ornish study just couldn’t do it. She needed to stop at McDonald’s on the way home from her daily walks—every day!

That has me scratching my head. Pharmaceuticals and surgeries have their place. But when they have been proven ineffective, and lifestyle has shown to be effective, what’s holding us back? Imagine a world where heart disease, diabetes, many of the cancers and dementia are rare occurrences. I don’t see that as a pipe dream. I see it as a very attainable goal. But we must change the prejudices of mainstream medicine against lifestyle intervention. When we can do that, we will all “add hours to our day, days to our year and years to our life.”

The writer is a health and wellness coach and personal trainer with more than 25 years of professional experience. He is director of The Wellness Clinic and can be reached at alan@alanfitness.com.