Dr. Dodge: Passion for Health

Love is the underlying matrix of health. It is more powerful than the best of medical or surgical remedies. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that medicine and/or surgery are not helpful. They often are. I am simply saying that love is the most effective healing modality known to science.  

You may wonder about this assertion, and I would not blame you. Some scientists are skeptical about the power of love as a therapeutic agent. Thinking that love is mostly a “touchy-feely” type of quality not easily measured, such scientists say it cannot be ranked with therapeutic interventions that are backed by hard data. Other scientists disagree.  

In his book, Love & Survival, Dr. Dean Ornish concludes that if any new drug had the impact that love does on health, virtually all doctors would prescribe it for their patients. He says, “It would be malpractice not to prescribe it.” Dr. Ornish is one of the foremost cardiologists in the world, so when he speaks, people take note.  

In 1984, Ornish founded the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, bringing together an extraordinary group of dedicated people. His program involves factors like diet, exercise and stress reduction in a comprehensive plan of lifestyle change for patients with critical coronary heart disease. The statistics emerging from his program were so impressive that skeptical insurance companies began to cover its costs for patients. Net savings came to $30,000 per patient, compared to patients who had traditional treatment with surgery.  

While the full program is important, Ornish found that social support was a key factor in helping patients reverse severe coronary heart disease. Social support consists of a mutually supportive network in which subjects feel esteemed and cared for. If one defines love as caring respect for others, social support is really love in action.  

The healing power of social support has been documented in excellent scientific studies involving millions of people around the world. Ornish cites many of them, and the verdict is consistent. The risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and many other serious diseases, is dramatically reduced in people who live in networks with loving social support.  

Ornish is not the first or last physician to discover the healing power of love. Dr. Bernie Siegel wrote two best sellers on the healing power of love: Love, Medicine and Miracles, and Peace, Love & Healing. Dr. Gerald Jampolsky wrote Teach Only Love, in which he outlined the principles of attitudinal healing. More recently, Dr. Greg Baer has written the book, Real Love, in which he shows how unconditional love changes lives profoundly.  

If love is so healing, why don’t we bring it into our lives more effectively? The answer is complex. Part of our problem is that we value independence so highly that we downplay social support systems. Individual rights often trump community values, and so we have become more and more fragmented as a society. Yet, it is in families and other kinds of support groups that love can truly thrive. Involve yourself deeply in these kinds of support systems. The quality of your life literally depends on this investment!