Undo It! Book Summary - Undo It! Book explained in key points
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Undo It! summary

Anne Ornish and Dean Ornish

How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases

4.2 (99 ratings)
25 mins

Brief summary

'Undo It!' by Anne Ornish and Dean Ornish is a health and wellness book that provides evidence-based guidance on how to prevent and reverse chronic diseases through lifestyle changes. It encourages readers to adopt four key pillars of well-being, including mindfulness, physical activity, stress management, and nutrition.

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    Undo It!
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    There’s a growing scientific and medical consensus that lifestyle changes can prevent and reverse chronic diseases.

    With so much conflicting medical advice out there, and with so many quacks, grifters and charlatans dispensing it, you’d be justified in feeling skeptical toward yet another miracle cure-all. That’s especially true of the lifestyle medicine program outlined in these blinks, which claims to be able to prevent and reverse serious chronic diseases through simple lifestyle changes. However, there’s a significant body of scientific evidence and a growing consensus in the medical community that lifestyle programs in general, and this one in particular, are effective.

    Let’s start with the evidence. To begin with, the research on which the authors have based their program has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    Even more impressive is the evidence on which the authors’ stake the program’s efficacy. They have collected clinical outcomes data from tens of thousands of patients from a variety of socioeconomic, ethnic and age groups.

    Studies by the author and other scientific investigators have demonstrated that the program can stop, slow or reverse a wide range of chronic diseases, including severe coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, early-stage non-aggressive prostate cancer, depression, anxiety and certain types of autoimmune conditions and early-stage dementia.

    The program has also been embraced by a number of American hospitals, clinics, physician groups, commercial and governmental healthcare insurance providers, and leading figures of the medical community, such as the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

    For those who have followed recent developments in the field of medicine, all of this enthusiasm and evidence in favor of a lifestyle program may come as no surprise. The field is in the midst of a significant shift in thinking about chronic diseases – changing its focus from expensive, cutting-edge drugs and surgery to the low-cost power of lifestyle changes.

    That’s not to pooh-pooh drugs and surgery, which often provide necessary, lifesaving remedies for chronic diseases, especially when they lead to emergencies like heart attacks. But there is growing evidence that lifestyle changes can be more effective than drugs alone in treating many of the chronic diseases already mentioned. That evidence comes from studies and findings published by highly respected sources, such as the Harvard School of Public Health, the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study Group and the Mayo Clinic.

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    What is Undo It! about?

    Undo It! (2019) reveals the astonishing power of making simple lifestyle changes that can not just prevent, but even reverse a wide range of chronic diseases. That might sound like wishful thinking, but it’s backed by a rich array of research that has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and reflects a growing consensus within the mainstream medical community.

    Who should read Undo It!?

    • People with chronic diseases
    • People looking for motivation to change their diets or exercise habits
    • People who suffer from stress or loneliness

    About the Author

    Dr. Dean Ornish is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, San Diego. His research has been published in leading peer-reviewed medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. He is the author of six bestselling books, including Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease (1990) and The Spectrum (2008).

    Anne Ornish is the vice president of program development at the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, which investigates how diet and lifestyle affect health and disease. She is also the digital director of Ornish Lifestyle Medicine – an organization that offers a nine-week lifestyle medicine program implemented by hospitals, clinics and physician groups around the United States.

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