On this day in vegan history · December 16, 1998
The Five-Year Proof: Ornish Shows Reversal Wasn't a Fluke
Eight years after Dean Ornish first reported clogged arteries opening up on nothing but diet and lifestyle, his patients came back for another angiogram, and the arteries had kept clearing, with no statin in sight.
The facts
- Published
- JAMA, December 16, 1998 (vol. 280, no. 23, pp. 2001-2007)
- The cohort
- 48 patients with moderate to severe coronary heart disease, randomized 1986-1992; 35 completed 5-year angiography follow-up
- The intervention
- A 10%-fat whole foods vegetarian diet plus aerobic exercise, stress management training, smoking cessation, and group support, sustained for 5 years, without lipid-lowering drugs
- The numbers
- Arteries narrowed 7.9% less on average after 5 years in the lifestyle group; the control group's narrowing worsened 27.7%, with 45 cardiac events against 25 in the lifestyle group (risk ratio 2.47)
On December 16, 1998, JAMA published the five-year follow-up of Dean Ornish's Lifestyle Heart Trial, the study that had made headlines in 1990 for reversing coronary artery blockages without drugs or surgery. Forty-eight patients with moderate to severe coronary heart disease had been randomized between 1986 and 1992 to either an intensive lifestyle program built around a 10%-fat whole foods vegetarian diet, or to usual care. Thirty-five stuck around for repeat coronary angiograms at both the one-year and five-year marks. The question the new paper answered was whether people could actually sustain a program that demanding for half a decade, and whether the arteries kept responding if they did. They could, and they did: the lifestyle group's blockages had regressed further at five years than at one, while the control group's disease kept progressing and threw off more than twice as many heart attacks and other cardiac events.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
To determine the feasibility of patients to sustain intensive lifestyle changes for a total of 5 years and the effects of these lifestyle changes (without lipid-lowering drugs) on coronary heart disease.
Dean Ornish et al., stating the study's objective, JAMA, December 16, 1998
Source: PubMed -
More regression of coronary atherosclerosis occurred after 5 years than after 1 year in the experimental group.
Dean Ornish et al., in the study's conclusions, JAMA, December 16, 1998
Source: PubMed
Why it still matters
The 1990 trial had been small and easy for skeptics to wave off as a fluke or a short-term placebo effect. Five years of data, with more reversal at year five than at year one and no cholesterol drugs in the mix, turned a striking pilot result into durable evidence that a vegetarian diet and lifestyle change alone can keep reversing heart disease rather than just slowing it down.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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