Earlier this year, Jeri Greenberg signed up for a three-month program at Beth Israel Medical Center to study the effects of stress on women’s lives.
She changed her diet to one that is primarily plant-based, upped her exercise routine, started stress reduction activities such as yoga and meditation, and forged deep bonds with the others in the group.
By the program’s end, Greenberg had reduced her cholesterol level by 55 points, stopped her cholesterol-lowering medication, and learned coping skills to deal with the overwhelming stress of two parents in the hospital and other family issues.
“It turned out to be lifesaving for me,” says Greenberg, 57, a painter and mother of two from Mountainside, NJ. “I credit this program with getting me on the right path of my health and taking control of who I want to be for the next 50 years of my life.”
The program Greenberg followed is the Dr. Dean Ornish program for reversing heart disease at the Continuum Center for Health and Healing at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. The program has conducted studies, published in top medical journals, that show that these lifestyle changes can reverse even severe heart disease without drugs or surgery.
Ornish’s recent research has shown for the first time that these lifestyle changes can even reverse aging at a cellular level by lengthening telomeres — the ends of chromosomes that control aging and how long we live.
“It’s unbelievable,” says Dr. Vivian Kominos, a cardiologist and medical director of the program at Beth Israel. “This has been shown to work on an actual chromosomal level to make us healthier.”
Ornish worked for the last 16 years to get Medicare to cover this program, which is also covered by many private insurance companies.
“There’s a real opportunity here to make a big difference at a time when it’s so badly needed,” said Ornish, founder and president of the Non-Profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Program participants meet twice a week for the first six weeks and once a week for the second six weeks of the Beth Israel program, the only one in New York City. The next course begins on January 6 and is still enrolling participants.
Each session includes the four aspects of a heart-healthy regimen: exercise, stress management, a plant-based, low-fat diet and group support. Yet it is not only for those who have heart disease, but also for those with risk factors for it.
“It’s an incredible program for someone who wants to reduce their risk,” says Kominos. “When you combine everything it’s hard to isolate just one aspect of the program, but it’s just a wonderful way that everything combines and adds up.”
But it was the importance of group support that most impressed her about the Ornish program.
“He brought in this connectedness and group support aspect to it —something that we’ve lost in our modern society,” Kominos says. “Social isolation, not having connection to friends, not having two to three people you can call and count on is very dangerous. Your chance of dying younger, of having a cardiac event, even your risk for cancer is higher.”
Ornish himself met with and helped participants from the New York program, who appeared recently on “The Dr. Oz Show” to talk about their experiences.
When Greenberg told Ornish she joins things but doesn’t follow through, “He said, ‘You’ll finish because of all the support you get’ and it was true,” she says. “It came at a time I really needed it. It was motivating for me.”
For more details or to sign up: Continuum Center for Health and Healing, Department of Integrative Medicine, Beth Israel Medical Center, 245 Fifth Ave. 646-935-282; healthandhealingny.org.