The Spectrum: A Scientifically Proven Program to Feel Better, Live Longer, Lose Weight, and Gain Health - Couverture rigide

Ornish, Dean

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0345496302 ISBN 13 : 9780345496300

Editeur : Ballantine Books, 2007

Synopsis

L'auteur le plus vendu du programme du Dr Dean Ornish pour l'inversion des maladies cardiaques présente un programme pratique de nutrition, de mode de vie et de santé que les lecteurs peuvent personnaliser pour répondre aux besoins individuels de leur propre situation familiale. 300 000 premières impressions.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

In THE SPECTRUM, Dr. Ornish shows us how to personalize a way of eating and a way of living based on your own health goals, needs, and preferences. Here’s how it works:

Since THE SPECTRUM is about freedom of choice, there is no diet to get on and no diet to get off. Nothing is forbidden. No guilt, no shame, no pressure. THE SPECTRUM is based on love– joy of living, not fear of dying. Feeling better, not denying yourself pleasure.

First, determine your health and wellness goals. Do you want to lose weight? Do you have high cholesterol? Is diabetes a problem in your family? Based on your individual needs and goals, THE SPECTRUM has examples of six individually-tailored lifestyle programs ideally suited for you: lowering cholesterol, losing weight, lowering blood pressure, preventing/reversing diabetes, preventing/reversing certain types of prostate and breast cancer, preventing/reversing heart disease.

Each personalized plan in THE SPECTRUM has 3 components: Nutrition, Stress Management, and Exercise.

The Nutrition Spectrum
The Nutrition Spectrum consists of five groups. Group 1 is the healthiest end of the spectrum and Group 5 is the least healthful end. To determine your current place on the Nutrition Spectrum, find the group that contains the foods you tend to eat most of the time. Then, according to your needs, preferences, and goals, decide how far and how quickly you want to move in a more healthful direction. For example, if you typically eat predominantly foods in Group 4 and you want to lower your cholesterol 50 points, begin by incorporating more foods from Groups 2 and 3. If that’s sufficient to achieve your goal, great; if not, you can move more towards the healthier end of THE SPECTRUM by consuming more foods from Groups 1 and 2.

In general, the closer you move towards Group 1, the more benefits you’re likely to gain and the more quickly you’ll experience them. If you’re healthy, you many not need or want to make very many changes at all–the “ounce of prevention.” On the other hand, if you are trying to reverse heart disease or diabetes, you’ll probably need to make bigger changes–the “pound of cure.”

The recipes by Art Smith for THE SPECTRUM are designed so that each base recipe is in Group 1. Depending on your health and wellness goals, each recipe offers healthy variations. For example, the Vegetable Chili recipe is a delicious version of a classic recipe that begins in Group 1 with predominantly plant-based whole foods that are very low in fat, sugar, salt, and calories. Variations listed at the end of the recipe include adding a cup of pitted higher-fat black olives (which moves this recipe to a Group 2 dish) and/or adding one pound of turkey breast sausage to the recipe (which moves this recipe to a Group 4 dish).

The Stress Management Spectrum
Stress can have a negative impact on just about every part of your body. It can suppress your immune function, cause a heart attack or stroke, increase your risk of cancer, delay wound healing, promote inflammation, cause you to gain weight, impair your memory, cause depression, exacerbate diabetes, and worsen sexual function. Just for starters. Stress also makes you age faster even at a genetic and cellular level.

(over)
Some people thrive on stress, and it doesn’t cause them to get sick. Studies have found that they can turn it on when needed, but they can also turn it off.

They have appropriately elevated levels of stress hormones at work during the day, but their stress hormones drop sharply at night. In other words, they can turn it off. In contrast, people who feel chronically stressed and anxious have stress hormones that remain elevated, and this predisposes them to a wide variety of illnesses.

Stress-management techniques can help you turn it off. They are not about withdrawing from the world; rather, they enable you to embrace it more fully and effectively.  When you're feeling less stressed, you can think more clearly and creatively, making it easier to find constructive solutions.  When you’re less stressed, you’re more empowered.

THE SPECTRUM provides you with the fundamental tools for stress management. These include:

• Breathing• Enhancement of social support
• Yoga & Meditation• Reduction of stimulants (both physical and mental)
• Exercise• Practicing forgiveness, altruism, compassion, service

A DVD of inspiring, beautiful, and peaceful guided meditations by Anne Ornish is included with every copy of THE SPECTRUM. Anne is Vice President of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute where she directs all activities related to stress management training and psychosocial support. She has advanced training in yoga and meditation and was featured on the cover of the August 2006 issue of Yoga Journal magazine.

This DVD has guided meditations of different lengths depending on where you are on the Stress Management Spectrum. Even one minute a day has value; those who would benefit from doing more are given the tools and resources enabling them to do so.

The Exercise Spectrum
You already know that exercise is good for you and that regular, moderate exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health and well-being. What you may not know is that new research is showing that exercise beneficially affects your genes, helps reverse the aging process at a cellular level, gives you more energy, makes you smarter, and may even help you grow so many new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis) that your brain actually gets bigger. Really.

Here again is another demonstration of the theme of THE SPECTRUM: your genes are not your fate. The choices you make each day in your diet and lifestyle have a direct influence on how your genetic predisposition is expressed–for better and for worse. You’re only as old as your genes, but how your genes are expressed may be modified by exercise, diet and lifestyle choices much more than had previously been believed–and more quickly.

To gain all the health benefits of regular exercise, you don’t have to join a gym, hire a personal trainer, or organize your life around 10K’s. For example, in the Women’s Health Study, a major ongoing research project involving tens of thousands of women, those who walked briskly for just 60 to 90 minutes a week–just 15 minutes a day–cut their risk of death from heart attack and stroke in half.

Do what you enjoy, make it fun, and do it regularly. That’s it. THE SPECTRUM shows you how.

FOODS IN THE NUTRITION SPECTRUM

Here is a basic breakdown of the foods in each group of the Nutrition Spectrum:

Group 1
These are the most healthful foods, predominantly fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products, nonfat dairy, and egg whites in their natural forms, as well as some good fats that contain omega‑3 fatty acids. These are foods that are rich in good carbs, good fats, good proteins and other protective substances. There are at least 100,000 substances in these foods that have powerful anti‑cancer, anti-heart-disease and anti-aging properties.

Group 2
These are also predominantly plant-based but somewhat higher in fat (predominantly monosaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat) such as avocadoes, seeds, nuts. Oils are included but in small amounts, since they are so dense in calories. Group 2 also includes foods canned in water (rather than sugary syrup or oil), canned vegetables (if sodium is not too high), low-fat dairy products (1%), decaffeinated beverages, low-sodium soy sauce, and so on.

Group 3:
These foods include some seafood, some refined carbohydrates and concentrated sweeteners (in moderation), some oils that are higher in saturated fat, some reduced fat (2%) dairy products, margarines free of trans fatty acids, sweeteners containing high fructose corn syrup, and higher sodium.

Group 4
In this group foods contain additional fat, higher animal protein and fewer protective nutrients. These include poultry, fish that are higher in mercury, whole milk/dairy products, margarine, mayonnaise, pastries, cakes, cookies, and pies.

Group 5
In general, these foods are considered the least healthful. They are the lowest in protective substances and are highest in “bad fats.” Some food included in this group are red meat, egg yolks, fried poultry, fried fish, hot dogs, organ meats, butter, cream, and tropical oils.

We all need to find our place on the Nutrition Spectrum that’s comfortable and congruent with our own personal values as well as with our health needs. And it may evolve over time. The point of THE SPECTRUM is to provide you information that you can use to make informed and intelligent choices. Only you can decide what’s right for you, for only then is it sustainable.


HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR LIFESTYLE AND YOUR LIFE

1)You have a full spectrum of nutrition and lifestyle choices.
2)Even more than feeling healthy, most people want to feel free and in control.
3)Eating bad food does not make you a bad person.
4)How you eat is as important as what you eat.
5)Joy of living is a much better motivator than fear of dying.
6)It's important to address the deeper issues that underlie our behaviors.
7)There’s no point in giving up something you enjoy unless you get something back that’s even better–and quickly.
8)Make small gradual changes or big rapid changes to create sustainable transformations in your diet and lifestyle.
9)How we approach food is how we approa...

Extrait

IT WORKS!

The one thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on others.
—Marcel Proust
I just had a piece of chocolate. Dark chocolate. Really high-fat gourmet dark chocolate. It was delicious. I have a little chocolate almost every day.

Now, you may be wondering if I’m cheating on my very own diet. Well, no, I’m not. I’m enjoying my very own diet.

I’m writing this book to help you understand that you have a broad spectrum of choices when it comes to what you eat, how much you exercise, how you manage stress, and how you live. It’s not all or nothing. In the process, I hope to dispel some misconceptions about what I recommend.

In short, this book will show you how to personalize a way of eating and living that’s just right for you, based on your own needs and preferences. It has been scientifically proven to help you feel better, look better, lose weight, and gain health.

It works! Why? Because it’s based on pleasure, not pain; abundance, not deprivation; science, not myth; freedom and power, not restriction and manipulation. Joy of living is sustainable; fear of dying is not.

There are many myths and false choices that are confusing to many people. These include:

·If I live and eat healthfully, am I going to live longer or is it just going to seem longer?

·Is it fun for me or good for me?

·Low-fat or low-carb?

·Fast food or good food?

·Atkins indulgent or Ornish ascetic?

You really don’t have to make these choices.

This is a book about how to enjoy life more fully while enhancing your health and well-being. It’s based on our latest research showing that you can actually change how your genes are expressed just by changing what you eat and how you live.

In short, this book can empower you to transform your own life.

By now, many people are thoroughly exasperated by the seemingly contradictory information they read about what a sound nutrition and lifestyle program should be. Nowhere are the claims more conflicting than in the area of diet. I often hear, “Those damn doctors! They can’t make up their mind. To hell with ’em, I’ll eat and do whatever I want and quit worrying about it!”

I understand why many people feel that way. It can be really confusing when even the experts don’t seem to agree.

Fortunately, at a time when people are more confused than ever, there is an emerging consensus about what to eat and how to live. The jury is in: a convergence of scientific evidence can help us resolve conflicting claims and distinguish what just sounds good from what is proven to be true.

Now it is possible to cut through the confusion and to customize a diet and lifestyle program just right for you based on your own needs and preferences. You have a spectrum of choices.

People have different needs, goals, and preferences. The medicine of the future is personalized medicine, which this book brings you today.

The recipes and cooking instructions, by the renowned chef Art Smith, are for foods that taste good and also make you look good and feel good. Many of them have several versions, so you can customize them to meet your own needs and preferences.

It seems that many people have misconceptions about what I eat and how I live my own life. For example, a few years ago, the playwright and producer Mike Nichols came up to me at a benefit for a foundation and said, “Hey, Dean, I’m on your diet—if it tastes good, I can’t eat it”—echoing Mark Twain, “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”

This is the most common misunderstanding about my work—that I recommend one really strict diet and lifestyle program for everyone. “Yes, it works, but it’s almost impossible to follow.”

It’s understandable why so many people believe this. Many of the media stories on the work my colleagues and I have conducted have focused on our research showing that heart disease and other chronic diseases can be reversed—and they often can!—just by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. Reversing a disease does require the stricter version of the diet and lifestyle program—the pound of cure— whereas if you’re just trying to feel good and stay healthy you need only the ounce of prevention. However, for people who aren’t sick, I recommended a spectrum of choices.

In this book, I’m not trying to get you to do—or not do—anything. Food and lifestyle choices are deeply personal decisions. Having seen what a powerful difference changes in diet and lifestyle can make, I want to share these findings with you so that you can make intelligent choices in what you eat and how you live. How much or little you want to change, if at all, is entirely up to you. More on this later.

Whenever I go out to dinner, people often comment on what I’m eating or apologize for what they’re eating—“I have to be careful what I eat around you”—as though I’m going to be the sheriff or the vice principal of the high school waving my finger at them, judging them, and shaming them into eating differently.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. So I usually make a sign of the cross and say, jokingly, “You are forgiven,” and we all have a good laugh about it. I then tell them that it doesn’t matter to me what they eat or how they live as long as they’re happy. When I order dessert, they often feel both surprised and relieved.
PROVEN PROGRAM

What makes this book unique is that it’s based on three decades of research proving what works, what doesn’t, for whom, and under what circumstances. Most books are written based on anecdotal testimonials (which are often unreliable), or on the experience of others, or on wishful thinking. They may make promises that often remain unfulfilled.

Instead, this program is grounded in science, and it’s been proven to work:

·My colleagues and I at the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute have proven that this program works to help prevent, and to slow, stop, and even reverse the progression of the most common and most deadly diseases, including coronary heart disease, prostate cancer, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, elevated cholesterol levels, arthritis, and many other chronic diseases.

·We recently conducted the first study in men with prostate cancer showing that our program of comprehensive lifestyle changes may change how your genes are expressed—in general, turning on (upregulating) the good parts of the genes and turning off (downregulating) the harmful ones. More on this in chapter 4.

·We recently conducted the first study showing that comprehensive lifestyle changes may improve how quickly your cells age. Telomeres are the ends of your DNA, and they affect longevity. As they become shorter and their structural integrity is weakened, cells age and die more quickly. In simple terms, as your telomeres get shorter, your life gets shorter. In our new study, we found that the telomerase enzyme (which repairs telomeres) increased significantly in those who went through our diet and lifestyle program after only three months.

·We learned what really works to motivate people to make and maintain comprehensive lifestyle changes in the real world. We’ve consistently shown that our program can motivate many people to make and maintain bigger changes in diet and lifestyle, and to achieve better clinical outcomes and larger cost savings in diverse groups of people than have ever before been demonstrated.

Let’s examine these.

THE PROGRAM WORKS TO PREVENT AND REVERSE DISEASE

People often think that advances in medicine have to be a new drug, a new laser, or a surgical intervention to be powerful—something really high-tech and expensive. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices we make in our lives each day—what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke, how much we exercise, and the quality of our relationships—can make such a powerful difference in our health, our well-being, and our survival, but they often do.

Awareness is the first step in healing. When we become more aware of how powerfully our choices in diet and lifestyle affect us—for better and for worse—then we can make different ones. It’s like connecting the dots. In my experience, many people are not afraid to make big changes in their lives if they understand the benefits of doing so and how quickly they may occur.

Part of the value of science is to raise our awareness by helping us understand the powerful effects of the diet and lifestyle choices we make each day and how changing these may significantly—sometimes dramatically—improve our health and well-being. In many cases, these improvements may occur much more quickly than people once believed possible.

In our studies, we used the latest in high-tech, expensive, state-of- the-art measures to prove how robust these very simple, low-tech, and low-cost interventions can be.

For more than thirty years, I’ve directed a series of scientific research studies showing, for the first time, that the progression of even severe coronary heart disease can often be reversed by making comprehensive lifestyle changes. These include a very-low-fat diet including predominantly fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and soy products in their natural, unrefined forms; moderate exercise such as walking; various stress management techniques, including yoga- based stretching, breathing, meditation, and imagery; and enhanced love and social support, which may include support groups.

In these stu...

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Ballantine Books
• Date d'édition: 2007
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0345496302
• ISBN 13: 9780345496300
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 386
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible