Success Case Study

In 1986, cardiologist Dean Ornish, M.D. conducted a one-year trial study with heart patients in San Francisco, California. Patients who took part in the study went through a week-long orientation in which they were taught stress management techniques that included breathing, stretching and visualization. They were also educated in healthy eating and exercise.

Following the orientation, patients returned to their homes and met twice a week in support groups with a psychologist. Ornish asked patients to practice the stress management techniques for an hour a day, eat a healthy diet, and exercise at least three hours a week.

After a year participants experienced these results:

• 91 percent decrease in frequency of chest pains.
• 82 percent of patients had reduction in artery blockages.
• Patients averaged a twenty-four pound weight loss and dropped from 30 percent to 6 percent body fat.
• Five years later, study participants continued to practice breathing, stretching and visualization techniques five times a week for forty-nine minutes per day. Their cholesterol consumption remained at less than 10 percent of what it had been before the study. Artery blockages fell from 54 percent to 13 percent. Participants managed to keep off thirteen of the twenty-four pounds they had lost during the one-year program.

Following the trial study, Mutual of Omaha agreed to pay for a three-year study with 333 heart patients from eight states around the country whose insurance programs were willing to pay for angioplasty and coronary bypass surgeries.

194 patients volunteered to participate in Ornish’s lifestyle change program while the other 139 patients underwent heart surgery. Ornish trained support teams in each study location that included a cardiologist, nurse, dietician, fitness trainer, yoga and meditation teacher, and chef.

For the first three months the participants met with support team specialists three times a week for four hours each time. Patients spent an hour exercising, an hour practicing yoga and meditating, an hour in the support group and had an hour-long meal. Then for nine months, patients met once a week. The second and third years patients were left on their own.

Mutual of Omaha’s study reported the following:

• 77 percent of participants avoided the need for heart surgery.
• Study participants lowered their fat intake, averaging an 8 percent caloric intake from fat, and they continued practicing yoga and meditation two hours a week.

Ornish’s program cost $7,000 per patient while bypass surgeries averaged $46,000 each and angioplasties cost $31,000. The Ornish program saved $30,000 per patient.