U.S. News & World Report has awarded the Ornish Diet
the No. 1 ranking for the Best Heart-Healthy Diet for the fifth year in
a row, every year since the rankings began.
The U.S. News rankings are determined by a panel of nationally
recognized health experts in diet, nutrition, obesity, food psychology,
diabetes and heart disease. The experts reviewed information on 35 diet
plans, scoring each in seven categories: short-term weight loss,
long-term weight loss, ease of compliance, nutritional completeness,
health risks and ability to prevent or manage diabetes and heart
disease. In addition to the No. 1 heart healthy diet ranking, the Ornish
diet ranked third for Best Diabetes Diet and third for Best Plant-Based
Diet.
Dr. Ornish’s whole foods plant-based diet is naturally low in both fat
and refined carbohydrates. The diet is one of four equally important
components of his transformational “Dr. Dean Ornish Program for
Reversing Heart Disease.”™
“Our program is based on addressing the underlying causes of heart
disease and many other chronic diseases, which are the lifestyle choices
we make each day: eat well, stress less, move more, and love more,” said
Dr. Ornish. “My colleagues and I appreciate U.S. News for helping
people understand that these comprehensive lifestyle changes can not
only help prevent but even reverse heart disease, early-stage prostate
cancer, and type 2 diabetes and help people reduce or discontinue
medications for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels (under
their doctor’s supervision).
“Also, we proved that changing diet and lifestyle changed over 500 genes
in only three months – turning on genes that keep us healthy, turning
off genes that make us sick. We also found that these diet and lifestyle
changes begin to reverse aging at a cellular level by lengthening
telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live.
It’s not all or nothing – the more closely people followed our diet, the
more they improved.”
The Ornish program, supported by nearly 40 years of rigorous clinical
studies by Dr. Ornish and colleagues, published in the leading
peer-reviewed journals, addresses the root causes of heart disease by
using lifestyle changes as a less invasive and more effective treatment
option than drugs or surgery.
Healthways (NASDAQ: HWAY), the nation’s leading provider of well-being
improvement solutions, launched a partnership with Dr. Ornish in 2013 to
deliver the nationally-renowned comprehensive heart disease reversal
program to patients through health systems, health plans, hospitals and
physician groups throughout the country, which is now being reimbursed
by Medicare and many major insurance companies (www.ornish.com).
Since that time, nine health systems have signed on to offer the program
to patients and many commercial payers, including Highmark Blue Cross
Blue Shield, Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield West Virginia, Hawaii
Medical Services Association (HMSA), and WellPoint under its
subsidiaries, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Anthem Blue Cross, Empire
BlueCross BlueShield and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, now
cover the program. The partnership demonstrates the shared vision of
Healthways and Dr. Ornish to help people live healthier and more
fulfilling lives through best-in-class solutions that go beyond physical
health to improve overall well-being.
“It is gratifying to see the nutritional component of Dr. Ornish’s
program recognized nationally as the best diet to improve heart health,
but even more exciting to hear the stories from the front lines of
patients whose lives are being changed through the program,” said Ben R.
Leedle, Jr., president and chief executive officer of Healthways. “The
Ornish program, including the diet, is a sustainable lifestyle plan that
addresses all of the factors that contribute to poor health and gives
participants a roadmap to make long-term changes to improve their
overall well-being.”
About Dean Ornish, M.D.
Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the non-profit
Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of
Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Ornish
received his M.D. from the Baylor College of Medicine, was a clinical
fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and completed an
internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts
General Hospital. He earned a B.A. in Humanities summa cum laude from
the University of Texas in Austin, where he gave the baccalaureate
address.
Dr. Ornish was appointed by President Barack Obama to the White House
Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and
Public Health in 2010 and, previously, by President Clinton to the White
House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy in
2000. He chaired the Google Health Advisory Council 2007-2009.
He has received numerous national and professional awards including
being honored by LIFE magazine as “one of the fifty most
influential members of his generation,” being recognized as “one of the
most interesting people of 1996” by People magazine; and having
been described in Forbes magazine as “one of the seven most
powerful teachers in the world.”
The Ornish diet, a critical component of the Ornish Program, was rated
No. 1 for heart health by U.S. News & World Report in 2011,
2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.
About Healthways
Healthways is the largest independent global provider of well-being
improvement solutions. Dedicated to creating a healthier world one
person at a time, the Company uses the science of behavior change to
produce and measure positive change in well-being for our customers,
which include employers, integrated health systems, hospitals,
physicians, health plans, communities and government entities. We
provide highly specific and personalized support for each individual and
their team of experts to optimize each participant’s health and
productivity and to reduce health-related costs. Results are achieved by
addressing longitudinal health risks and care needs of everyone in a
given population. The Company has scaled its proprietary technology
infrastructure and delivery capabilities developed over 30 years and now
serves approximately 68 million people on four continents. Learn more at www.healthways.com.
Copyright Business Wire 2015