It's true, you can lose weight on these high-animal-protein, Atkins-type diets, but you're mortgaging your health in the process.
The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.
Alas, bacon and eggs are not health foods.
If you're with a close friend, your anger may raise his blood pressure as well as your own, whereas loving feelings may lower blood pressure in both of you.
If you're at high risk or are trying to reverse heart disease or prevent the recurrence of cancer, you probably need to make bigger changes in diet and lifestyle than someone who just wants to lose a few pounds and is otherwise healthy. If you just want to lower your cholesterol, weight or blood pressure, begin by making moderate changes.
There's a tendency to dismiss anything having to do with love and intimacy in medicine because it's hard to measure.
Bureaucracies tend to perpetuate themselves, whether they are multinational corporations or large government institutions such as Medicare, often at the expense of those that they are supposed to serve.
An educated patient is empowered; thus, more likely to become healthy.
People who are lonely and depressed are three to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely than those who have a strong sense of love and community. I don't know any other single factor that affects our health - for better and for worse - to such a strong degree.
One of the reasons I'm excited by what visionary Elon Musk has done with the Tesla is to show that you can reduce global warming and drive a powerful, fun car. A cool car helps make a cooler planet.
There is often a simplistic view that HDL is good, so that anything that raises HDL is good for you, and anything that lowers it is bad for you. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
There's no point in giving up something you enjoy unless you get something back that's even better, and quickly.
Preventing cardiovascular disease can help free up critical resources for treating HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.
Curious patients are more receptive to new ideas, and those who engage their health practitioners in a dialogue are much more likely to adhere to these recommendations.
A little humility goes a long way.
When most people think about my work, they think about diet. To me, diet has always been the least interesting part of it.
If you go on a diet and feel constrained, you are more likely to drop it. But if you see your food choices each day as part of a spectrum, then you are more likely to feel free and empowered.
The need for love and intimacy is a fundamental human need, as primal as the need for food, water, and air.
How you eat is as important as what you eat. If I eat mindlessly while watching television, I get all of the calories and none of the pleasure. Instead, if I eat mindfully, paying attention and savoring what I'm eating, smaller portions of food can be exquisitely satisfying.
The diets and lifestyles in many other countries are much healthier than in the United States.
Parents and kids know they should pass up the fries for an apple and exchange the video game for a game of tag - but knowing and doing are certainly different things.
Knowledge and engagement are a powerful antidote to forces that often work against our kids being healthy.
You can meditate on almost anything: a prayer, song, image or word. Close your eyes; sit in a comfortable position. Take a breath, and say the word out loud, emphasizing the humming sound at the end. When you come to the end of the breath, take another one and say the word again. And so on.
Connections with other people affect not only the quality of our lives but also our survival.
In an era in which war and terrorism - at home and abroad - are often based on racial, religious and ethnic differences, rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us increase our survival at a time when an increasingly divided country and world so badly need it.
Lifestyle changes may slow, stop, or even reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.
Meaningful health reform needs to provide incentives for physicians and other health professionals to teach their patients healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing primarily drugs and surgical interventions.
When you're feeling stressed, your breath becomes more rapid and shallow. Take some slow, deep breaths, which will reduce your stress level almost immediately.
Eating bad food does not make you a bad person.
When we forgive someone, it doesn't excuse their actions; it frees us from our own chronic stress and suffering, so it's in our own self-interest.
Just like navigating in the open sea, triangulating the information you collect from media with your doctor's advice and some common sense will help map a sound path to safety.
If you indulge yourself one day, you can eat more healthfully the next. To the degree you move in a healthful direction on the food spectrum, you're likely to feel better, lose weight, and gain health.
What's personally sustainable is globally sustainable.
The biological mechanisms that control our health and well-being are much more dynamic - for better and for worse - than most people realize.
When we are angry with someone, we empower the person we hate the most in that moment to make us stressed out or even sick. That's not smart.
Anything that takes you out of the context of being separate is healing. Anything that takes you out of the context of separateness is intimacy.
Whether you're six or sixty, if you go on a diet and lifestyle program and feel constrained, you're likely to go off it sooner or later. Offering a spectrum of choices is much more effective; then, you feel free and empowered.
Having the BRCA mutation significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, but it is not always the only factor. Lifestyle choices may increase or decrease the risk of breast cancer, but that knowledge is an opportunity to empower ourselves, not to blame.
If we're not careful, we become that which we most fear.
Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. As telomeres become shorter, then cells age and die more quickly. In simple terms, as your telomeres get shorter, your life gets shorter.
When it's good business to make healthier food, then it becomes sustainable.
Although many people believe that the primary emphasis of my work is about diet, it's not. What we eat is important, of course, but what comes out of our mouth may be more important than what goes into it.
I strongly believe that the Founding Fathers of our country got it right: power corrupts, and any time you have too much power concentrated in one place, it tends to get abused, so checks and balances are always needed.
I never give up hope.
Reimbursement is a major determinant of how medicine is practiced. When reimbursement changes, so do medical practice and medical education.
Meditation is the practice of giving something your full attention and awareness. When I eat a truffle, for example, I focus fully on it and involve as many of my senses as possible.
In general, losing weight is a good thing for those who are overweight, but it's important to lose weight in a way that enhances your health rather than one that may compromise it.
With everything that you can imagine at our fingertips, many of the social interactions that help tie people together in a community have faded away. Are communities traditionally built on relationships, trust and familiarity a thing of the past?
All divisions are man-made.
