Until recently, science and medicine didn’t deal with matters like love and intimacy and spirituality. The scientists are trained to be particularly skeptical in such subjective matters. Doctors in previous generations used to give their patients love—it was called bedside manner—but it seems modern doctors are trained to give prescriptions and referrals in place of love. This is why I was so touched and impressed by a new book, written by a great physician who is also a very good scientist. Dean Ornish, M.D., has written a fantastic fusion of science, medicine and spirituality titled Love and Survival, and subtitled The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy.

Published by HarperCollins, this is a book that has something for all of us. Dr. Ornish is that rare Galileo clone who has the courage to research forbidden topics. The topics in this book are usually not discussed in scientific circles, for fear that they are not subject to objective scientific investigation. Dr. Ornish shows us in chapter after chapter that it is possible to do objective clinical research in these human areas and come away with clear-cut and reproducible results.

More than 20 years ago Ornish launched a research program to investigate whether and how atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) could be reversed. This was a time when the vast majority of cardiovascular researchers, including me, doubted that could really be accomplished. But lots of carefully designed research proved that atherosclerosis could be healed, even in its advanced stages. Dr. Ornish and his team developed a holistic program that can cure atherosclerosis and has saved countless lives.

This accomplishment by itself was sufficient to gain Ornish fame and fortune. His book Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease reached the pinnacle of publishing stardom, number one on The New York Times bestseller list, and stayed there for many weeks. Life magazine recognized him as one of the 50 most influential members of his generation. He even spent a night in the White House.

The Ornish program for reversing heart disease stresses life style and dietary revisions, together with meditation, all aimed at eliminating the underlying causes of heart disease. Bypass and angioplasty do not address these causes and are mere stop-gap solutions. The program was picked up by more than 40 insurance companies as a model for preventive health coverage and one of these companies now offers the program in-house to its own employees. The program also has been institutionalized into nine medical centers across the nation and Medicare is now reviewing it to confirm that for every dollar they spend they will save several more.

The Ornish program creates such cost-effectiveness that it is receiving considerable attention as a potential model for managing other diseases. Dr. Ornish’s group has now begun research toward reversing prostate disease using a similar program. At the School of Medicine’s Integrative Medicine Center of the University of California at San Francisco he is coordinating the implementation of an integrative breast cancer treatment program that is caring and compassionate as well as cost effective. But now he has gone even further out of the bounds of the physician scientist. He has tackled that most challenging of questions for the scientist: spirituality.

In Love and Survival, which I know will become a bestseller, Ornish reviews the clinical research that established the healing power of intimacy. He writes in a style that is thorough and scientifically beyond challenge, yet is easily read by the layperson. The body of research in this area is actually considerable and the conclusions he draws are surely reasonable even to the most conservative scientific observers.

Love and Survival begins with the area of medicine in which its author has been immersed for decades: cardiovascular disease. He states something that not many laypeople are ever told yet which is crucial for managing heart disease: that high cholesterol levels, even when combined with genetic factors and all the other known risk factors for heart disease, account for no more than one-half the risk of premature death from heart disease. This means that other factors contribute to the other one-half of the risk. Some of these are lack of a social support network—not enough relatives and friends who truly care.

Dr. Ornish writes in his book that our hearts are more than blood pumps; that we also have an emotional heart, a psychological heart, a spiritual heart, that we yearn for sweethearts, not sweetpumps. He adds that the real heart disease epidemic these days is not only physical, but emotional and spiritual—fueled by the loneliness, isolation, alienation and depression that pass for culture in this society.

At Yale University scientists studied men and women who had blocked heart arteries. After carefully eliminating other factors such as diet, smoking, exercise, cholesterol, genetics and other standard risk factors, the researchers found that those patients who reported being most loved and supported had the least blockages of their arteries. This finding was confirmed by a study on women in Sweden.

At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland researchers studied 10,000 married men with no prior reports of chest pain (angina), then followed them for five years. Those men who answered “yes” to the simple question, “Does your wife show you her love?” had a different rate of angina after five years than those who answered “no.” A similar study conducted by the same researchers found essentially the same for 8,500 men and their risk of developing ulcers over five years.

So since the love of a spouse appears to be so important, what about those of us who aren’t married? Here the pivotal issue is called social support: if you became ill, could you call someone to get you to the hospital, or would you have to take a cab or call an ambulance? Would there be someone to take care of your kids while you’re in the hospital? If you had a financial emergency, is there someone who would loan you money? The answers to these basic questions have profound implications for health, as detailed in chapter 2.

Many of us have spent good money with counselors to try to understand why our parents weren’t ideal or didn’t teach us all the things that seem to matter in life. Love and Survival reviews the studies on parenting. One Harvard study began in 1952 to question male undergrads about their relationships with their parents, then tracked their health status for 35 years. To learn the outcome of this study, you’ll have to read the book. Clue: love is involved.

This physician’s scientific story of love and intimacy extends beyond parents and family, even. At the community level, the extent of social bonding is related to the frequency with which the local inhabitants die prematurely from all causes. Pretty strong stuff: if you don’t talk to your neighbors and can’t relate to your community, you’re not likely to live as long as someone else who does.

What about living in the country of America? Is this good for us, or bad for us? Last week I read in my daily newspaper that first-generation immigrants who come to America from Mexico arrive with relatively few mental disorders, as compared with the American society into which they arrive. Then, as they stay in America they develop more and more mental problems, until their frequency of mental disorders is almost as high as in those who are born here. Love and Survival reviews the Hi-Hon-San study, which showed that Japanese immigrants develop a 3–5 times higher rate of heart disease as they assimilate into American society.

Religion is also a proven factor in our ability to survive under pressure. A study conducted at the University of Texas Medical School found that people who went through heart surgery were much more likely to survive if they belonged to a religious or other organized social group. One doubting scientist designed a study to disprove that psychosocial factors could prolong life in cancer patients, then found to his great surprise that his study came out the opposite of what he intended. Other scientifically rigorous studies indicate that people who are prayed for at a distance do better in the hospital than people who are not prayed for. The explanations for this remarkable finding are discussed in the last chapter, titled “Dialogues on Science and Mystery.”

These are only a few of the many scientific studies that are discussed by Ornish to make his case that love is the strongest force in health and healing. The research shows a 3–5 times risk of premature death and disease when people are lonely. In his opinion, “No other factor—not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery—has more impact on your health than love and intimacy.”

After giving us so much good research on the connections between love, intimacy and survival, Ornish takes another angle on the whole story. That is, he opens his own heart to share with us the journey he went through to overcome his own skepticism and insensitivities in order to allow himself to do this work. This section of the book I found quite remarkable for its candidness. Dr. Ornish ought to be accorded the greatest respect for his courage in placing these personal experiences on paper. Other scientists and physicians (not to mention politicians, of course) would do well to emulate this degree of self-examination.

Dr. Ornish’s account of his personal journey could remind us that in the face of the invitations to self-centeredness, materialism, vice and apathy thrust upon us by modern society, we human beings still have the potential to be positive and loving individuals. Sometimes life’s hard knocks can make us cynical, self-pitying or angry. But now the objectivity of science done well assures us that when we give our kids, our spouses, our parents the caring and attention they need, we’re helping to keep our own selves healthy. When we go out into the world to spend time with our friends and other loved ones, we’re feeding our souls. When we organize to clean up our neighborhood environment or publicly oppose ill-treatment and discrimination, we’re contributing to saving ourselves and our children.

The biggest take-home message that I get from Love and Survival is that if everyone else is not healthy and happy, neither can we expect to be. Many of us already feel this in our hearts and now the body of scientific research proves that our instincts are on target. As Dr. Ornish puts it, “Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy and relationships. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. As individuals. As communities. As a country. As a culture. Perhaps even as a species.” (Love and Survival, page 1.)

There’s a lot more to healing than having love and good relationships with other human beings. But the most skeptical, cautious, conservative scientist or physician reading Love and Survival would have to be swayed by its message that love and intimacy are crucial for survival. The book’s scientific content is solid and is backed up by extensive referencing and a long bibliography. Its spiritual reasoning is free of prejudice and wholly persuasive. With this book Ornish has succeeded where others have consistently failed: he has convincingly built a bridge between science and spirituality.

“Love is the word.” That’s what my ailing mother tells me every time I see her or talk with her on the telephone. Dr. Dean Ornish’s life of love and love of life, gushing forth from this wonderful book, prove that love should be the word for all of us.