Eating a vegetarian diet, walking (exercising) everyday, and meditating is considered radical. Allowing someone to slice your chest open and graft your leg veins in your heart is considered normal and conservative.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how natural health practices are often viewed as extreme, while invasive medical procedures are considered standard.
In this quote, Dean Ornish contrasts the perception of healthy lifestyle choices like a vegetarian diet, regular exercise, and meditation with the societal acceptance of aggressive medical interventions such as heart surgery. This suggests a critical view of how society prioritizes conventional medical solutions over holistic and preventive health measures, encouraging a discussion about what constitutes 'normal' in health practices.
In practice
In a speech about holistic health, I might use this quote to emphasize preventative measures.
When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it's easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as luxuries, we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our well-being and survival.
Your body has a remarkable capacity to begin healing itself, and much more quickly than people had once realized, if you simply stop doing what's causing the problem.
I've found that if I tell somebody 'Eat this and don't do that,' it's not only not helpful, it's counterproductive because even more than being healthy, we want to feel free and in control, and as soon as somebody tells us to do something, there's a tendency to do just the opposite.
If we can reach populations in developing countries and help them understand the value of their indigenous diet and lifestyles rather than copying ours, perhaps we can reverse the exponential rise in cardiovascular disease that is plaguing them.
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.
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.
Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins have accumulated, illnesses will suddenly appear.
Running is a basic ingredient for your health, just as much as eating and sleeping, but going out for a run by yourself and taking a moment to think also creates a certain peace.
If you don't make time for exercise, you'll probably have to make time for illness.
Let's face it, in America today we don't have a health care system, we have a sick care system.
If a product has an endless list of ingredients, and you can't pronounce half of them, I would think twice about bringing them into your home.
People with Alzheimer's deserve to be seen, so that we can find a cure!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.