The Ornish diet made me fat

I got that kind of question today that tempts me to roll my eyes and say, "Not again!"

"If I want to reverse my heart scan score, should I do the Ornish diet?" You know, the one by Dr. Dean Ornish: Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversal of Heart Disease.

I personally followed the Ornish program way back in the early 1990s. I reduced fat intake of all sorts to <10% of calories; eliminated all fish and meats, vegetable oils, and nuts; ate vegetables and fruits; and upped my reliance on whole grains. I used many of his recipes. I exercised by running 5 miles per day. (Far more than I do now!) I avoided sweets like candies and fruit juices.

What happened?

I gained 31 lbs, going from 155 to 186 lbs (I'm 5 ft 8 inches tall), my abdomen developed that loose, fleshy look, hanging over my beltline. My HDL plummeted to 28 mg/dl, triglycerides skyrocketed to 336 mg/dl, and I developed a severe small LDL pattern. I experienced a mental fogginess every afternoon. I felt tired and crabby much of the time. I sometimes struggled to suppress an irrational anger and frustration over the silliest things. I required huge amounts of coffee just to function day to day.

Hundreds of my patients suffered similar phenomena.

Few of us wear bell-bottomed jeans, tie-dyed t-shirts, or say "groovy". Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in is an "oldie", it's no longer cool to hold your index and middle fingers up in the "V" sign of peace. Even Ladybird Johnson has passed.

So should go the misadventures of the ultra low-fat diet, as articulated by Dr. Ornish. His day came and went. We learned from our mistakes. Now let's do something better.

Keep your eyes open for the New Track Your Plaque Diet.

Comments (16) -

  • JT

    7/13/2007 11:50:00 AM |

    Ooooowwwww, I like this!  I'm looking forward to the TYP diet book - not only for myself as a diet plan to follow for heart health, but also for weight loss.  will it be possible to buy signed copies?  I'm thinking ahead to the holidays and gift giving season.

  • Dr. Davis

    7/13/2007 12:06:00 PM |

    Hi, JT--

    Actually, not a book, just a lengthy Special Report on the website. However, as our program gains a brand recognition, there may be such a book opportunity.

    In all honesty, most of the concepts that are articulated in our program have already been well said by Art Agatston in South Beach and Loren Cordain in Paleo Diet. The Track Your Plaque approach adds the sophistication of lipoproteins, but the basic food practices are very similar.

  • JT

    7/13/2007 2:06:00 PM |

    Hi Dr. Davis,

    Thanks for the honest reply.  I'm going to take a look at the South Beach and Paleo diet books mentioned.  I've heard of them, but always being relatively thin never took the time to learn what they have to teach.  

    Talking with my father yesterday, I told him that I wrote about his "unexpected" weight loss while following the TYP diet/ supplement program.  He had a chuckle over it and told me he told my mother my thoughts that the weight loss came from following the TYP program.   Because of that she is now raiding his fish oil & vitamin D capsules    , adding that I better order him more.

  • Regina Wilshire

    7/13/2007 5:51:00 PM |

    Bravo!  

    Thank you for sharing your personal experience, and reasons for now discouraging the ultra-low-fat dietary principles articulated by Dr. Ornish.  It's critically important that we abandon the myths and start to seriously talk about the facts and data so we can move forward and help people learn how to optimize their health.

  • BaltimoreOriole

    7/31/2007 9:28:00 PM |

    Thank you for that.  My 36yo daughter has followed an utlra-low fat lifestyle(cites Ornish frequently). Eating entirely fruits, veggies, whole-grain high-fiber cereals and lots of water (for 10 years!), she has been proud of her "healthy eating".  Her “extra meal” of vitamins and supplements made up for anything she felt she was missing (she believed). However,  after years of excellent total cholesterol readings, VAP testing revealed her LDLs and triglycerides have been going up and HDL going down.  (HDL: 37; VLDL3:16; Tg:148!).  To top it off, her period stopped, skin got worse, and bone density test came back bad.  Thank you for raising the red flag on ultra low-fat diets from the perspective of heart health!

  • Bruce K

    6/10/2008 7:56:00 PM |

    Dr. Davis, I think we need to make the distinction between Ornish and other low-fat diets, like Fuhrman, which might be vastly better. Joel Fuhrman claims his diet will lower triglycerides and improve all the other health markers rapidly.

    Unlike Dean Ornish, Furhman limits grains. They are at the top of his food pyramid (0-20% of calories), and he stresses the importance of unbroken grains, not flours. Brown rice and oatmeal, for example. He would not allow any type of bread, except sprouted flour-less breads. Here's a photo of his food pyramid. Veggies are the base. Half-raw and half-cooked. Next level has fruits, beans, raw nuts, and raw seeds. At the top are unbroken whole grains.

    http://www.nutritionforwellness.org/img/food_pyramid.gif

    Here is an article pointing out how highly perishable whole grain flour is. It quickly become rancid and it loses vitamins. Animals fed a whole grain flour stored for 15 days were infertile after 3-5 generations. At the same time, the animals getting fresh-ground flour (or bread) were still fertile. Weston Price pointed this out in his book, too, but many people ignore

    http://eap.mcgill.ca/Publications/EAP35.htm

    Weston Price reversed dental decay in children by feeding fresh-ground whole wheat rolls (along with other things). Price: "The wheat for the rolls was ground fresh every day in a motor driven coffee mill." It is clear that most people nowadays are not eating flour of this quality or whole unbroken grains like Fuhrman suggests. Maybe this is a factor in why infertility and various chronic diseases are now so prevalent.

    http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price16.html

  • Bruce K

    6/10/2008 10:20:00 PM |

    Moreover, the Ornish Diet made Dean Ornish fat. Ornish's Diet is a poor diet, period. Dr. Fuhrman's is much better. Not that I endorse low-fat diets, but I think some people will do well on Fuhrman's plan. Few, if any, will do well on Ornish's Diet. Pretzels, bagels, and pasta are all highly processed foods, compared to brown rice, oatmeal, etc. Fuhrman's diet discourages grains, esp flour,  and Dean Ornish allows them.

    http://www.nutritionforwellness.org/guidelines.html
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-lowfat-vegan-vs-eat-to-live.html

    Here is a debate between Ornisn and Gary Taubes. Ornish looks pudgy and pasty. Taubes is lean and muscular. Who would you rather look like? Dr. Ornish's diet made him fat.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyme62niYM

  • Anonymous

    8/10/2008 10:03:00 PM |

    the Ornish diet is definitely not for me; I need my fat - BUT as far as being critical of Ornish's looks (you said pudgy,etc) Dr. Oz is a vegetarian and low fat; so looks cant really be counted here.

  • Anonymous

    10/2/2008 2:39:00 AM |

    I'm thriving by eating using WAPF principles (3 years), and I cut all gluten-containing grains out of my diet (1 year).  I'm not overweight, and I have better color in my skin than I've ever had.  I feel wonderful.

    http://www.westonaprice.org

  • Anonymous

    9/15/2009 9:41:43 PM |

    If you read his books, you'd learn that Dr. Ornish used to be much more overweight than he is now. And severely depressed. His diet and other lifestyle changes cured both.

  • Anonymous

    9/19/2009 4:01:01 PM |

    My husband and I were on the McDougall diet for 3 or 4 years.  Our most common meal was rice and beans with hot sauce for flavor and lots of bread.  McDougall(his diet is similar to Ornish's)said it
    was impossible to have a heart attack on his diet because there was NO fat!  Guess what!  My husband had a massive heart attack
    and lost half his heart.  I don't know whether to be angry with McDougall or with myself for my
    extreme gullibility.  Hy husband has passed away now and I'm on the
    Weston Price diet (without the grains) and am thriving.

  • Anonymous

    9/28/2009 5:18:36 PM |

    sorry about your husband. if memory serves me correct dr mcdougall does not recommend bread or flour unless you are interested in gaining weight.

  • buy jeans

    11/3/2010 8:26:40 PM |

    So should go the misadventures of the ultra low-fat diet, as articulated by Dr. Ornish. His day came and went. We learned from our mistakes. Now let's do something better.

  • Anonymous

    1/7/2011 11:00:43 PM |

    This post is (most likely) a great example of lying on the internet for personal gain or ideological reasons. Don't believe everything you read people!

  • Anonymous

    1/7/2011 11:20:57 PM |

    The original poster is probably leaving off some key information.

    He or she probably did not actually follow the recommendations.

    It is difficult for many people to stick to the Ornish diet. Those who do stick to it usually get overwhelmingly good results.

    If you stick to it, it is really hard to get too many calories, since fat contains more than double that of protein and carbs per gram.

    If the poster actually did what they said they did, especially with the running, they would have withered away to nothing. Unless, of course, he or she ate wheelbarrows full of food.

    If you eat less calories than you are burning, you will lose weight. On an Ornish plan, it is very hard to eat more calories than you burn.

    http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

  • Tom

    2/28/2011 10:10:23 PM |

    Whoever wrote this article simply wasn't following the Ornish plan. They said that they required large quantities of coffee to function. Coffee isn't on the Ornish menu because it's a stimulant. Therefore, if you were consuming coffee, you weren't on the ornish diet.

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Blowup at Milwaukee Heart Scan

Blowup at Milwaukee Heart Scan

A local TV investigative news report just ran a critical report of the goings-on at Milwaukee Heart Scan:

Andy Smith went to Milwaukee Heart Scan. "It passed the smell test like a road kill skunk. I mean it was bad," Smith explained.

Our hidden cameras went inside the high pressure sales pitch. "On a good day I sell eight, nine, 10 people. On a bad day probably three," sales manager Angelo Callegari told us.


What the heck happened?

Let me tell you a story.

Back in 1996, I learned of a new technology called UltraFast CT scanning, or electron-beam tomography (EBT), a variation on the standard CT technology that permitted very rapid scanning, sufficiently rapid to allow visualization of the coronary arteries. Back then, only a few dozen devices had been established nationwide.

But the technology was so promising and the initial data so powerful that I lobbied several hospital systems in town to consider purchasing one of the $1.8 million devices. I was interested in applying this exciting technology for early detection of coronary heart disease in Milwaukee. While administrators from several hospitals listened, they quickly lost interest when they figured out that the scanner was primarily a tool for prevention, and would not be directly useful to increase revenue-generating hospital procedures.

I floundered about for a year, trying to drum up support for obtaining a scanner. The manufacturer of the device, Imatron, put me in touch with a couple from Indiana who were also interested in setting up a scanner and had actually obtained the investment capital to do it. We met and, over the next year, got Milwaukee Heart Scan up and running. I served as Medical Director (but never an investor or owner).

Milwaukee Heart Scan was busy from day one, performing EBT heart scans, as well as CT coronary angiograms as long ago as the late 1990s, virtual colonoscopies, and other imaging tests. We all spent a great deal of time educating the public and physicians on what this technology meant for detection and prevention of disease.

Despite the public's perception that the owners, Nancy and Steve Burlingame, were making a bundle of money, in reality they could barely pay their expenses. As price competition heated up in Milwaukee with the lower-cost competing multidetector scanners cropping up, the Burlingames often did not pay themselves.

My interest was to keep this device afloat. I therefore told the Burlingames that they should pay their bills first--their staff, overhead, the scanner costs, and pay themselves--and not worry about reimbursing me for the (very modest) heart scan interpretation fees. For several years, I read thousands of scans without any compensation. But that was okay with me--I just wanted to be sure this device remained available.

But in 2008, some business people from Chicago contacted Steve Burlingame with prospects of applying a contract model of long-term scanning to patients,i.e.,getting people to sign a several-year contract for discounted imaging. They proposed that Milwaukee Heart Scan offer heart scans for free to get people in the door.

What was peculiar about all this is that none of the four physicians on staff at Milwaukee Heart Scan had any knowledge of these discussions at all, including myself. Personally, I figured something was afoot when I came in to read scans in the summer of 2008. While, ordinarily, there is a single stack of scans to read from the preceding few days, this time there were numerous stacks of scans, hundreds of scans in all. Not a word had been said to me or my colleagues. I quickly figured out (thanks to the staff filling me in) that they had been offering scans for free. Not surprisingly, many people took them up on the offer.

Up until then, I had been readily willing to read heart scans without compensation, provided I could perform scan readings in a modest time commitment every week on the weeks it was my responsibility. But work several hours every day for free? Impossible.

My colleagues and I were deeply upset and concerned and insisted on a meeting with all the people involved, including the Burlingames, who had engineered this new sales program. We expressed serious reservations about what they were doing and insisted that they dramatically scale back the promises being made to people. I personally asked that they fire several of the people they had hired as sales people, given what we thought was unprofessional appearance and behavior.

The Burlingames and their new business partners essentially thumbed their noses at the physicians and ignored our advice. So, of the four physicians (one radiologist, three cardiologists), three of us resigned. (The one remaining cardiologist, I believe, didn't really understand what was going on.)

Apparently, after we left, the hard sales tactics continued. The news media got hold of the story through some understandably disgruntled people, and you know the rest.

The tragedy in all this is that, as wonderful as heart scans are, they don't make money for the people who invest in the technology. In the sad case of Milwaukee Heart Scan, it meant that my former friends, the Burlingames, turned to questionable tactics to make this technology pay.

Make no mistake: Heart scans remain a wonderful medical imaging modality. EBT, in particular, remains a fabulous technology that would--even today--remain the pre-eminent means to image coronary arteries, except that GE (who acquired Imatron some years ago) decided that a more direct path to bigger revenues was to purchase Imatron, then promptly scrap the entire operation, choosing to focus on multidetector technology exclusively.

Don't let the spotty past and petty ambitions cloud the fact that heart scans remain the best way to identify and track coronary plaque. Just don't get tempted by the offer of any free scans "without obligation."

Comments (20) -

  • mbyrnes1

    3/26/2009 2:09:00 AM |

    Would this compromise the interpreted results of a recent heart scan from Milwaukee Heart Scan?

  • steve

    3/26/2009 3:05:00 PM |

    why isn't carotid artery imt study augmented by NMR Lipoprotein study good enough?

  • Dr. William Davis

    3/26/2009 9:41:00 PM |

    Mbyrnes--

    No, it should not, though I cannot vouch for the quality of readings that occurred after we left last year.

  • Anne

    3/26/2009 11:00:00 PM |

    You need to update your profile on the "Meet our Experts" page in Track Your Plaque website. It still says that you are the Medical Director of Milwaukee Heart Scan.

    Thank you for the updated information.

  • karl

    3/27/2009 1:01:00 AM |

    I just got an appointment in Wichita for a $10 heart scan.  Wonder what the pitch will be?

    xtronics..

  • Dr. William Davis

    3/27/2009 1:11:00 AM |

    Ooops!

    Thanks for catching that, Anne.

  • Rick

    3/27/2009 1:34:00 AM |

    After finishing reading Track Your Plaque recently, and noting the date of publication, I had assumed that EBT was now available everywhere in the States and that probably there were even better imaging technologies available now. But are you saying the technology has just been scrapped? That's a tragedy.

    I don't know enough about Milwaukee Heart Scan to comment on the specifics, but as a general idea doesn't it make sense, where the existing medical/insurance system isn't meeting people's needs, to come up with a subscription service where people get, say, a scan a year for five years, so that they can monitor their progress? Of course, they need to be given a chance to find out the total costs involved in anything they sign up for.

  • Dr. William Davis

    3/27/2009 1:02:00 PM |

    Hi, Rick--

    Actually, I think the Milwaukee Heart Scan people hit on a useful idea, that of subscription discounted imaging services. However, I disagreed with the way they went about it.

    Perhaps someone else will be able to construct a program that is honest and truly an advantage to subscribers.

    Those of us who were originally involved in the EBT technology lost many nights of sleep when GE unexpectedly scrapped this technology for no reason other than financial advantage. They didn't have to buy Imatron; they just could have let them continue while competing against them in their own arena. But, no, they wanted to clear the path. Very, very bad policy on the part of GE. Yet another example of excessive corporate greed that has plagued American business over the past few years.

  • Jonathan

    3/29/2009 1:27:00 AM |

    If the existing EBT scanners go out of service, will there be any alternative?

  • Stan (Heretic)

    4/4/2009 2:02:00 PM |

    Sorry to hear about the business problem.

    To amortize the machine at 6% all you needed to do is take only 2 patients a day charging 200$.  With 4 doctors and two people - the original investors available for work, I presume, you could probably take ten times as many patients, working out a decent profit for all of you.  I am curious why it did not happen, what has gone wrong?

    Did GE default on service and warranty? That would certainly kill the biz.  

    Why hiring a push saleseman if a good advertising campaign in the greater Chicago area of ~10 million people, might probably suffice?

    Why as you said, did it take long to process each scan, I thought that the machine itself would just spew out a number:  Agatson's Calcium Score which a patient would then use him/herself to tweak their own therapy using your published guidelines, periodically retesting their ACS at let's say 200$ per visit, with or without a doctor's consult.  
    Regards,
    Stan

  • Stan (Heretic)

    4/4/2009 2:15:00 PM |

    Dr. Davis wrote: But, no, they wanted to clear the path. Very, very bad policy on the part of GE. Yet another example of excessive corporate greed that has plagued American business over the past few years.

    I disagree, this was a prime example of corporate incompetence destroying their own business!  If they were truly greedy and wanted to make money they would be still selling this technology.  As it happens GE is a glamorous corporate shell that owns thousands of derelict rusted factory building all over the North America, that they bought years ago but never invested in.  One is near the place where I live, I see their ruin almost everyday each time I drive by.

    I use the knowledge of their true condition, to short this corporate loser on the stock market periodically, to profit out of their decline. People like me do the society a favor by helping eliminate the corporate waste like you the plaque.  8-)

    Dr. Davis, there is nothing wrong in making money through own your honest work and creative skills.  You deserve your pay and a greed like that is good!

    Regards,
    Stan

  • Quazimoto

    3/24/2010 5:31:28 PM |

    where do you recommend getting a heart scan in Milwaukee?

  • Anonymous

    4/27/2010 4:58:39 AM |

    haven't they reclassed the radiation those things put out ?
    I suppose if you are dying then the risk is worth it.

  • Mike C

    7/9/2010 1:51:12 PM |

    Vital Imaging, LLC is now performing EBCT heart scans. Located at 10500 W. Loomis RD. (414) 774-7600  We are in the busines of early cornary artery disease detection. $199 with no strings attached. 5 to 10 times less radiation than conventional multi-detector CT scanners and much faster with higher resolution for organs that never stop moving

  • buy jeans

    11/3/2010 4:56:10 PM |

    But in 2008, some business people from Chicago contacted Steve Burlingame with prospects of applying a contract model of long-term scanning to patients,i.e.,getting people to sign a several-year contract for discounted imaging. They proposed that Milwaukee Heart Scan offer heart scans for free to get people in the door.

  • Anonymous

    11/9/2010 12:11:02 AM |

    i am one of the unsuspecting idiots who signed the contract and now do not get what i paid for and am still paying for......unfortunately i do know that i am not alone-that is the suckiest part!

  • Anonymous

    1/14/2011 5:06:20 PM |

    We also got suckered into a 3 year long contract.  We finally decided to go for it when a friend of mine who is a nurse said she had worked with and really respected some of the doctors who were reading the scans.  Unfortunately for us, even the doctors were unaware of what was going on at Milwaukee Heart Scan.

  • Andy Teske

    6/1/2011 1:43:03 AM |

    Dr. Davis,

    Do you have any opinion on Vital Imaging, LLC?
    I was a patient at Milwaukee Heartscan before their downfall and am looking for a 5 year update heartscan.  Should I go to Vital Imaging for the EBT, or use one of the many new CT providers?  Thanks!
    A

  • Richard Blake

    10/17/2011 9:51:07 PM |

    I signed a contract with Heartcheck America in the summer of 2010. My contract included one virtual colonscopy and granted me the right to assign any of my ten annual full body scans to any relative or acquaintance. That made the deal worthwhile to me, as I had no interest in a scan that often. By the next summer they were gone. But from what I've read they did not go out of business. They were put out of business by lawsuites from states including Colorado. From what I understand, those suits complained that a potentially dangerous medical procedure was being performed without being ordered by a physician ...  and besides, the results were not all that useful ... and also some people complained that they had been pressured into signing expensive contracts. I don't want my money back, I want what I signed for and paid for, but I'm not going to get it. Thank you, Colorado.

  • Susan Talaska-Pikalek

    2/2/2012 5:42:44 PM |

    So who is taking over the contracts from Milwaukee heart scan?

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