Stress, Diet, & Your Heart

Description

This book describes a remarkable new program for treating and helping to prevent coronary heart disease. At the same time, it is the only program without additional durgs or surgery that has been tested in a controlled scientific study and found to produce significant improvements in the heart's function.

In an era of technological medicine when the complex, new, and expensive are revered, it may seem surprising that simple, inexpensive approaches can be beneficial - yet they are.

Dr. Dean Ornish and his colleagues demonstrated through rigorous research that a combination of stress management techniques and dietary changes could produce extraordinary improvements in just a few weeks. Most of the research participants reported a marked reduction in chest pain caused by heart disease, and many became virtually pain-free. Most had significant increases in their exercise capability and substantial reduction in weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and medication requirements.

In this book, Dr. Ornish explains why the program works - with step-by-step instructions for following it at home. There is an extensive section on the diet, with delicious original recipes by Martha Rose Shulman. Dr. Ornish offers a new view of the causes of cardiovascular disease and explains why drugs and surgery, while often helpful, are usually insufficient. He describes why stress and diet are among the most important causes of coronary heart disease and shows how treating these causes can modify the progression of the disease and often reduce the need for drugs and surgery.

The emphasis of the program is not on what you have or have not done in the past, but what you can do for yourself now. For anyone who suffers from coronary artery disease or who is concerned about preventing it, this is an important book.

Dean Ornish, M.D., is currently a Clinical Fellow in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a resident on the Medical Services of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.