“Bypass surgery became a metaphor for an incomplete approach; we’re literally bypassing the problem without also treating the cause, and I wondered what would happen if we treated the cause, which to a large degree is the lifestyle choices we make each day,” says Dr. Dean Ornish, as he reflects on his experience during medical school. Dr. Ornish has since become a well-known and well-respected physician who emphasizes the impact of diet and lifestyle on overall health.

On today’s episode, he discusses a growing amount of research which shows that a whole foods plant-based diet, moderate exercise, stress management, and love can reverse countless chronic diseases, including early prostate cancer, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and that it can even reverse ageing at the cellular level.

He also discusses numerous specific benefits associated with a whole foods plant-based diet, some of the main topics in his latest book Undo It! How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases, how loneliness and depression affects physical health, his perspective on the ketogenic diet, and how to begin changing your life in ways that will improve and lengthen it.