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Dean Ornish（医学者）: 親密さや社会的つながりが健康に与える重大な影響 : 各種の研究結果や臨床的データ

· 48 min read

前置き​

以下の動画から、AI(NotebookLM) に内容を整理させた。

この動画の内容を元にして同じ AI が男女の会話形式の解説音声を生成したのが下。7分の音声。後述の AI 要約を読むのすらダルければ、この音声対話だけでもかなり参考になる。ただし、 Ornish の主張には疑問がある（後述）。

音声対話による解説(7分) ： https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/f9854918-f607-424a-a501-122d5cbf4786/audio

Youtube 動画(27:58)​

The Healing Power of Intimacy with Dean Ornish

プロンプト入力

Me:

ソースは Youtube 動画の文字起こしです。内容は心理学者と医学者の対話です。この対話から、主要な医学的なデータや客観的な事実を抽出して。その上で、この二人の対談者がどういった見解なのかも整理して。

NotebookLM

承知いたしました。提供されたYouTube動画の文字起こしソースから、主要な医学的なデータや客観的な事実、そして対談者の見解を抽出してご説明します。このソースは、心理学者ジェフリー・ミシュラブ氏と予防医学研究機関の創設者である医学者ディーン・オーニッシュ博士との対談の記録です。

主要な医学的データや客観的な事実​

ソースからは、親密さや社会的つながりが健康に与える影響に関する様々な研究結果や臨床的な観察が、客観的な事実として語られています。

  • 親密さ、愛、コミュニティの感覚は、食事、薬、手術などを含む他のどの要因よりも、多くの異なる健康状態に対して、より強力かつ広範囲にわたる正の影響を与えるとディーン・オーニッシュ博士は主張しています。
  • 孤独や孤立を感じている人々は、愛、つながり、コミュニティの感覚を持っている人々に比べて、病気になりやすく、早死にする可能性が3倍から5倍（300%から500%）高いという研究が多数示されています。
  • 結婚している人は長生きする傾向があると一般的に知られています。
  • テキサス大学医学部ヒューストン校での研究では、オープンハート手術（バイパス手術または弁置換術）を受ける患者に対して、「宗教的信仰から力 draws strength を得ているか」と「定期的に集まるグループの一員か」という2つの簡単な質問をしました。
    • この2つの質問の両方に「いいえ」と答えた人々は、手術からわずか6ヶ月後に、両方に「はい」と答えた人々の7倍（700%）も多く死亡していました。
    • 片方にのみ「はい」と答えた人々は、死亡率がその中間に位置しており、約4倍の違いが見られました。
  • 血管形成術（動脈の詰まりをバルーンで押し広げる処置）を受けた動脈の3分の1から半分が、4〜6ヶ月以内に再び詰まることが知られています。
  • 不整脈のある人の突然死を防ぐために設計された薬剤が、実際には突然死を増加させたという研究がありました。しかし、同じ研究で、犬を飼っていた人は、飼っていない人に比べて突然心臓死が4分の1しかなかったことが分かりました。
  • ある研究では、ボランティアに風邪ウイルスを鼻に滴下したところ、ほぼ全員がウイルスに感染しましたが、実際に風邪の兆候や症状を発症した人は全員ではありませんでした。
    • この研究では、2週間ごとに6回以上の社会的接触（友人からの電話や訪問など）があった人は、2回以下の人々に比べて、風邪をひく確率が4分の1でした。社会的接触の数は、深い精神的・感情的な親密さの最も深い尺度ではありませんが、感染が確認されている場合でも、実際に病気になるかどうかには3倍の違いが見られました。
  • 1960年代の医学生を対象とした研究では、敵意を評価する質問票に回答させ、20年後に追跡調査した結果、敵意のレベルが上位半分の学生は、下位半分の学生よりも死亡率が5倍高いことが分かりました。これは、コレステロール、血圧、食事、その他の要因とは独立した結果でした。敵意は、かつてタイプA行動と呼ばれていたものの最も有害な要素である可能性が高いと述べられています。
  • ロゼト・ペンシルベニアのような地域では、3世代が一緒に住んでおり、非常に貧しい食事、喫煙、飲酒など、いわゆる「間違ったこと」をしていましたが、近隣のコミュニティよりも病気の発症率がはるかに低かったという研究があります。これは、そのような地域には、人間関係における世代を超えた安定感があったためと考えられています。

対談者の見解​

ディーン・オーニッシュ博士の見解:

  • 親密さと愛の力は医学的に最も強力な要因であると強く信じており、自身の著書『愛とサバイバル』でその重要性を強調しています。
  • 医療訓練ではこれらのテーマがあまり扱われず、文化の中でも十分に価値が置かれていないと感じています。
  • 親密さへのニーズは、食事や呼吸、睡眠と同じくらい基本的な人間のニーズです。
  • 現代文化における最大のエピデミックは、離婚だけでなく、孤独、孤立、疎外感、うつ病であると考えています。社会的なネットワークの崩壊（仕事、近所、教会、家族など）がその原因の一部です。
  • 医学界は測定しやすいもの（コレステロール、血圧など）に焦点を当てがちですが、親密さのように測定しにくいが非常に重要な要素を見落としていると指摘しています。これは、時計を暗い路地で失くしたのに、光が明るい街灯の下で探す話に例えられます。
  • 心臓病の治療において、放射性ステントのような証明されていない高リスクの「クイックフィックス」が容易に受け入れられる一方で、食事やライフスタイルの改善、そして「心を開く」ことのような介入が「ラディカルなアイデア」と見なされる現状を批判的に見ています。
  • 心臓病はしばしば可逆的であり、肉体的なレベルだけでなく、心理社会的、感情的、さらには精神的なレベルで「心を開く」ことが重要であると主張します。そして、PETスキャンや核種心室造影などのハイテク技術を使って、これらの「古代的でローテクで低コストの介入」の効果を測定できることを示しています。
  • 「心を開く」とは、感情的にオープンになり、他者に対して脆弱になることであり、これには傷つくリスクが伴うため、人々は壁を作り孤立しがちです。
  • 皮肉なことに、自己防衛のために作った壁が、私たちを孤立させ、生存を脅かすものとなります。
  • **痛み（身体的または感情的）は、人生を変えるための「触媒」や「入り口」**になりうると考えています。心臓発作のような出来事が、ライフスタイルや内面の変化を始めるきっかけとなることがあります。
  • 自身のうつ病との闘いや、親密な関係における困難を乗り越える経験が、これらのテーマへの自身の関心の出発点であり、他の人々を助ける能力を高めたと語っています。
  • 患者をサポートグループに入れたことで、彼らが食事や運動だけでなく、失われたコミュニティの感覚の再創造を最も必要としていたことに気づきました。これは、裁かれることや見捨てられることへの恐れなく、ありのままを表現できる安全な場所でした。
  • これらのニーズは、心臓病患者や彼自身の個人的な問題に固有のものではなく、文化の中で満たされない基本的な人間のニーズであると認識しています。
  • 敵意と怒りは非常に有毒な感情です。怒りへの対抗策は、それを発散することではなく、**自分自身と他者への思いやり（コンパッション）**であると考えています。
  • コンパッションは、自分自身の「闇」を受け入れ、光を当てることから始まり、それが他者の「闇」へのコンパッションを容易にし、双方を解放すると説明します。
  • 関係の問題で他者を非難しがちですが、自身も経験したように、問題は自分自身にあると気づくことが、変化のための最初の一歩であると強調します。彼の師であるスワミ・サッチダナンダの言葉を引用し、「彼女ではない、お前だ (it's not her, it's you)」と述べています。
  • 科学的、心理的、精神的な側面はすべて相互に関連しており、同じコインの異なる側面です。
  • 最終的な目標は、単に病気を治したり延命したりすることではなく、「どのように生きるか」であり、心を開くことを学ぶことが、どんな外的な成功よりも内なる喜びと平和をもたらすと述べています。
  • 健康と幸福は外から得るものではなく、内にあるものであり、それを妨げている行動をやめることが重要であるという、一般的な文化とは根本的に異なる見解を持っています。内面の自己定義が強まるほど、外的な達成も容易になります。
  • 親密さへの「8つの道筋」があり、コンパッションと許しはその一つです。許しは相手の行動を容認することではなく、怒りや憎しみを抱える苦しみから自分自身を解放するものです。

ジェフリー・ミシュラブ氏の見解:

  • ディーン・オーニッシュ博士の親密さが健康に与える影響に関する主張を非常に印象的だと感じています。
  • 医学界が、コレステロールのような測定可能な要因に比べて、非医学的要因のデータを受け入れにくい傾向があることを指摘しています。
  • 医療従事者がライフスタイルよりも非試験的な外科的介入に積極的な傾向がある例を引用しています。
  • 心臓の生物学的な機能と、心臓が愛の象徴として比喩的に使われることの間に相関関係があるのではないかと問いかけています。
  • 感情的な防御と体への影響に関するヴィルヘルム・ライヒの「ボディアーマー」の概念に言及しています。
  • 親密さが単一の病気だけでなく、様々な病気に影響する普遍的な現象であることの重要性を強調しています。
  • 親密さにおける感情的な相互作用の質が、単に結婚しているという事実よりも重要である可能性を示唆しています。
  • ディーン・オーニッシュ博士が自身の個人的な経験や苦悩を公開していることに言及し、それを評価しています。
  • **フロイトの『文明とその不満』**における、文明が感情の抑制につながるという考えに言及しています。
  • 怒りや敵意を溜め込むことが病気に寄与する可能性を指摘しています。
  • コンパッションに関連して、**「彼らは神の恵みでしか行かない (there but for the grace of God go I)」**というフレーズに言及しています。
  • 親密さには**測定可能な側面だけでなく、より深い「謎」**があると感じており、パート2の対談でさらに探求することを示唆しています。
  • ディーン・オーニッシュ博士の著書で触れられている親密さへの8つの道筋に言及しています。

この対談は、親密さや社会的つながりといった、しばしば見過ごされがちな非医学的要因が、人間の健康と生存に極めて重要であるという強力なメッセージを伝えています。両者ともに、科学的なデータと個人的な経験、さらには精神的な側面を結びつけて、この基本的な人間のニーズの重要性を強調しています。

FasterWhisper AI(large-v2 model)​

文字起こし

Thinking Allowed. Conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove. Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Our topic today is the healing power of intimacy. (0:01:47)

With me is Dr. Dean Ornish, who is the founding director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, a non-profit organization in Sausalito, California. Dr. Ornish is also a clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center and is a physician, a clinical physician and an internist at the California Pacific Medical Center. He is the author of a number of books including Eat More and Weigh Less, Stress Diet and Your Heart, and Love and Survival. Welcome, Dean. Thank you. (0:02:24)

It's nice to be here. It's a pleasure to be with you. You make a really striking argument in your book, Love and Survival, that of all of the factors that medicine has researched, no other factor has more of a positive effect on as many different health conditions as the healing power of intimacy itself. Well, that's true. I think there's nothing, including diet or drugs or surgery or anything, that has as powerful an effect and as across-the-board effect as the healing power of love and intimacy. (0:02:58)

And yet, these are things we generally don't learn much about in our medical training. We tend not to value them in our culture. So I decided to write an entire book about it so that people would understand just what a powerful role these make, not only in the quality of our lives, but also in the quantity of our lives. (0:03:16)

In other words, our very survival. I think awareness is the first step in healing. And if people really understand how much these things matter, then we can begin to make different choices. I suppose the most obvious statistic that people have probably heard is that married people live longer. (0:03:33)

Married people do tend to live longer. And yet, I think the real epidemic in our culture is not just divorce, but even beyond that, the loneliness, isolation, alienation, and depression that are just rampant in our culture, in part because of the breakdown of the social networks that used to give people that sense of connection and community. Many people don't have a job that they've been at for very long. (0:03:51)

They don't have a neighborhood where they know their neighbors, or if they do, most of them have often moved away. They don't have a church or synagogue that they go to regularly. They generally don't have an extended family or often even a nuclear family that they see regularly. And you might say, well, that's... so what? You know, that's just life in the 90s. What does it matter? Well, it matters a lot. (0:04:09)

And most people don't realize that the need for love and intimacy is a basic human need, as fundamental as eating and breathing and sleeping. (0:04:14)

And study after study has shown that people who feel lonely and isolated are three to five times, three to five hundred percent more likely to get sick and to die sooner than those who have that sense of love and connection and community. So we ignore these ideas at our own peril. I found it very interesting in your book that the medical profession itself seems to have a lot of resistance to the hard data for these kinds of non-medical influences on the disease process. (0:04:46)

Well, it's true. And I think part of the reason that is in science, we like to believe what we can measure. We can measure cholesterol easily. We can measure blood pressure easily. So we tend to focus on what we can easily measure, even if that may not be what's most interesting or even most important. It's a little like the story of the man who loses his watch in the dark alley but looks for it under the street lamp because the light is better over there. (0:05:08)

And yet, if you look at the data, and I summarize the data extensively in my book, it's compelling to me. I mean, one study, for example, from the University of Texas Medical School in Houston asked people who were about to have open-heart surgery, either bypass surgery or a valve replacement, two simple questions. Do you draw strength from your religious faith, whatever that faith might be? (0:05:27)

And are you a member of a group of people that meets together regularly? It could be a group support session, but it could be a bowling league or a bridge club or a bingo club, you know. And it's, to me, a measure of how powerful and how basic these human emotions are that those who answered no to both questions, they weren't a member of a group that met regularly and they didn't draw strength from their religious faith. (0:05:52)

Just six months after open-heart surgery, seven times, 700 percent as many of them had died, not just felt bad, but were dead compared to those who answered yes to both questions. And those who answered yes to just one of them were right in the middle, about four times difference. Now, I don't know anything in medicine that affects mortality after open-heart surgery by seven-fold, and I also don't know any surgeons that ask those two simple questions to their patients, but they matter. (0:06:16)

They matter a lot, not just to the quality of our lives, but to our survival. You even quoted, as I recall, a group of cardiologists who seem more eager to try a totally non-tested intervention that involved, as I recall, surgical implantation of a radioactive mesh into the arteries that could potentially damage people rather than look at lifestyle. (0:06:42)

Well, in medicine, like in our culture in general, people are looking for the quick fix. The problem is that the quick fix doesn't last, and I think bypass surgery and angioplasty are good examples of that. We know that somewhere between a third to half of the angioplasty at arteries, where you blow up a balloon and squish the blockage, clog up again within four to six months, and we spend billions of dollars. (0:07:02)

So one group of cardiologists came up with these radioactive stents designed to reduce the likelihood of them clogging up again, and Dr. Mimi Guarneri, who's an interventional cardiologist at Scripps, which is one of the hospitals throughout the country that has my program there, was lecturing there first on these radioactive stents, and they just couldn't get enough of it. (0:07:20)

They were just on the edge of their seats. Even though it's totally unproven, nobody has any idea what the long-term effects of putting something highly radioactive in the middle of your coronary arteries might be. (0:07:29)

And then in the second half of her talk, she talked about my program, about teaching people that have changed not only their diet and lifestyle, but also these deeper issues, and how meaningful it is for her and for the patients, and the tests showing that the blockage has become much smaller over time, and the chest pain diminishes often radically in just a few weeks. (0:07:47)

And they just thought that was such a radical idea, you know, that putting radioactive stents is conventional, teaching people about diet and exercise and opening their hearts and love and intimacy is this radical idea. So we still have a ways to go. On the other hand, medicine now has come to believe that heart disease is often reversible. (0:08:07)

And now what we're talking about is not just opening the heart in a physical way, but also the psychosocial, the emotional, and even the spiritual dimensions of opening your heart. And ironically, when we work at those levels, we can use these very high-tech, state-of-the-art, very expensive scientific technology, like cardiac PET scans and radionuclide ventriculography and so on, to measure the power of these very ancient and low-tech and low-cost interventions. (0:08:34)

And that even on a physical level, the heart begins to improve in ways that we can measure. And yet if you talk with the patients who go through my program, they'll often tell you that they got into it because of their physical heart disease. What was most meaningful to them were the things that we couldn't yet measure. So it's as if there's some kind of a correlation between the humanistic metaphorical use of the heart as the organ of love and the biology of the heart. (0:08:59)

There is. And I think poets and mystics and artists and songwriters throughout the ages have known the heart is more than a pump. The heart is a pump. We need to deal with it on a physical level. But we are more than just physical creatures. Dr. Dennis Burkett, an eminent doctor, once said, not everything that counts can be counted. (0:09:18)

In other words, not everything that's meaningful is measurable. And again, the people who go through my study will often tell you, or my program will often say, I got into it because I wanted to unclog my arteries. But what kept me there and was ultimately so much more meaningful is my heart began to open in ways that are harder to measure. (0:09:37)

When I talk about opening your heart, what I'm referring to is the willingness to make yourself emotionally open and vulnerable to another person. The fear is, though, if I do that, I might get hurt. And all of us have been hurt. And so people in our culture tend to wall themselves off and to isolate themselves. And it's not that you shouldn't be without those emotional defenses. (0:09:57)

But if you have nowhere that feels safe enough to let down those walls, nowhere that you feel safe enough to open up and really just be who you are with those people, those same walls that protect you also isolate you because they're always up. (0:10:08)

And that isolation, ironically, the very thing that we think that we're doing to protect ourselves is the very thing that's actually threatening our survival. Now, I know the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich talked about body armor, some kind of armoring that happens when we develop emotional defenses. The intriguing thing about the scientific aspect of this is that intimacy, being able to open, have an open flow of emotions with people, it affects diseases across the board. (0:10:41)

That's what, you know, you're dealing with a very basic human issue when it's not just affecting one disease, but virtually all diseases and not just a little bit, a lot. I mean, let's face it, being a member of a bingo club or a bridge club is not the most, the deepest and most intimate type of human relations. (0:10:59)

And yet, even that level of intimacy, as we talked about earlier, can reduce mortality after heart surgery by up to sevenfold. You know you're dealing with something very fundamental and very basic when it affects across the board and to that degree. Now, there's a lot we can do about that. And I also talk about in my book about eight pathways to intimacy, things that you can do. (0:11:18)

But here again, awareness is the first step. If you don't think it's that big a deal, then why bother? And most people in our culture don't think it's that big a deal. It's not real high on our list of priorities. You know, your boss tells you, you got to move across the country, you'll get a raise and a promotion. So you drag your husband or wife or kids along with you. (0:11:36)

It's just like, well, that's just life in the nineties. What can we do? But if we realize that we threaten not only our quality of lives, but our survival, when we make choices like that, maybe we can make different ones. If you come home from work and it's late and your kids are already asleep and you don't really have maybe a few minutes for your wife or husband or lover, you don't have time to call your friends or be with them, that just seems like a luxury. (0:11:57)

If we, again, understand this is a fundamental basic human need, then we can make different priorities. And maybe we can begin not only at a personal level to open up more to each other and to take those kinds of risks of opening up, but on a social level, we can begin to reverse this tribalization, balkanization, fragmentation that's been happening in our culture in the last 50 years, because we can begin to realize that we've lost something very important. (0:12:22)

And if we become aware of that, we can change that. So what you're saying, it's not necessarily the fact of being in a marriage that is the crucial variable here. And in fact, I recall one study in which people were questioned, do you think that your spouse loves you? And that seemed to have... it's really the quality of the emotional interactions. (0:12:45)

It's both. And it's not even necessarily even between people. When I talk about intimacy, I talk about anything that takes you out of the experience of being separate and only separate. Now, certainly, you know, romantic intimacy is the kind that we often think about, but it can be closeness between a parent and a child, between friends, between one study, which I thought was pretty interesting, looked at a drug that was designed to prevent sudden death in people with irregular heartbeats. (0:13:10)

They found that the two drugs actually increased sudden death, but those who had a dog had four times less sudden cardiac death than those who didn't. Now, you can be sure if the drug showed that, every doctor in the country would be prescribing it, but when was the last time your doctor suggested you get a dog, or a cat, or a pet? (0:13:23)

I mean, for many people, that's their only source of unconditional love. You come home, the dog's glad to see you. They jump all over you. They didn't ask you, how did your day go, or how much money did you make, or what accomplishments did you have? They're just happy to see you. Intimacy can be in a spiritual way. (0:13:40)

Meditation, prayer, anything that can give you the direct experience of interconnectedness that, you know, on one level, we're separate. You know, you're you, and I'm me, we can enjoy talking to each other. On another level, a part of something larger that connects us all, that direct experience of interconnectedness, is also healing. I mean, even the word healing comes from the root, to make whole, or even to realize the wholeness that's already there. (0:13:59)

So these are very old ideas that we're rediscovering. You know, in your books, you've done a lot of self-disclosure, which is unusual, I think, for a medical doctor. You even talk about your own personal battle with depression, and how working through those issues for yourself has contributed to your understanding of these emotional nuances. (0:14:28)

Well, it's true, and you know, if I'm talking about the importance of self-disclosure and opening up as a way of being more intimate, I decided I should probably practice what I preach. So in my earlier book on reversing heart disease, I describe my struggles with depression, and how that really was my own doorway towards getting interested in these ideas that have ultimately not only helped transform my personal life, but also enabled me to help a lot of other people with issues that they struggle with, along a similar line. (0:14:53)

I really think that any kind of pain, whether physical or emotional, or more often both, can be a catalyst or a doorway for transforming our lives, because change isn't easy. But if you're in enough pain, and the strategies for numbing that pain, or coping with it, or distracting yourself from it, aren't working that well, then suddenly the idea of change becomes more appealing. (0:15:12)

And then, I mean, I can't tell you how many patients have said things to me, you know, like having a heart attack was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now, on one level, you say, well, that sounds absolutely crazy. How could that be? And what they mean is, that's what it took to get my attention to begin making the kinds of changes, not only in diet and lifestyle, but in intimacy, and meditation, and rediscovering inner sources of peace, and joy, and well-being, that made my life so much more joyful, that had I not gone through that, I probably never would have gotten my attention to begin interested in doing this. (0:15:45)

And in my new book, I talk not only about my earlier struggles with depression, but my difficulties in learning how to be in an intimate relationship. I mean, I was able to help a lot of other people do what I couldn't do in my own life. (0:16:00)

Because I, you know, it's hard to say, I was afraid to open my own heart. I was afraid to deal with my own stuff. And understanding and working on my own issues helped me give, be able to give more, and to understand other people who struggle with this. And when I first began doing this work with heart patients, I thought, oh, here's something really unique to heart disease, this problem with intimacy. (0:16:20)

And then we put people together in support groups that were originally designed to help them stay on the diet, and exercise, and all of that. (0:16:24)

And what I realized was that we had stumbled onto something that was, something that they needed even more, which is that recreation of that lost sense of community. A place that felt safe enough for them to let down their defenses and talk about what they were really experiencing without fear that somebody would judge them, or abandon them, or criticize them, or give them, you know, glib advice on how to fix it. (0:16:48)

And then I began to realize that this isn't just something due to heart disease or my own personal issues. These are basic human needs that so often go unfulfilled in our culture. And we pay a price for that. And the price is much higher than most people realize. As I recall, Freud wrote in Civilization and its Discontents that there's something about civilization itself that causes us to inhibit the expression of all of our emotions. (0:17:10)

Maybe. I don't know. I think it's more the dislocation of our culture. You know, as we talked about earlier, most people don't live in the same neighborhood they were born and raised in or their neighbors have moved away. They don't have a job or a church or a synagogue that feels stable. (0:17:30)

And the nice thing about having a neighborhood where people know you, where you're, you know, two or three generations of people, and studies have shown in many places like in Rosito, Pennsylvania, that they had three generations of people living together. They had very poor diets. They smoked. They drank. They did all the so-called wrong things. And they had a much lower rate of disease than the neighboring communities that didn't have that intergenerational sense of stability. (0:17:52)

And part of what you get when people know you, when you grow up in a place, is that they know you. They don't just know your best side. They know your dark side. They know all your stuff. And you know that they know, and they know that you know that they know, but they're still there for you. So it's safe to express... It's safe to be who you are. It's safe. It's not just a catharsis of expressing emotion. (0:18:08)

It's more a place where you feel seen and heard and acknowledged and loved, not just for the good stuff that you do, but for all of you. And many people in our culture don't have that. But isn't there also a sense that when you're building up resentments, when you're holding in a lot of anger, that that can contribute to disease? Anger and hostility are very toxic. (0:18:35)

And one study of medical students in the 1960s found that gave them a questionnaire designed to assess hostility. And 20 years later, those who were in the upper half of the class in hostility were five times more likely to have died than those in the lower half, independent of their cholesterol or blood pressure or diet or any other factors. (0:18:53)

Hostility is probably the most toxic component of what used to be called type A behavior. But then the question is, well, what do you do? I mean, one approach is say, well, let's just ventilate and make everybody else around you angry, that kind of cathartic approach. (0:19:02)

I, in my own life, have found that not to be particularly helpful, that in a way only feeds the anger. That to me, what the antidote to anger is not ventilating it, it's compassion for yourself and for other people. And to the degree that we can bring that sense of compassion in, then I think the anger subsides and the heart begins to open. (0:19:25)

One of the features of compassion that you have written about is recognizing that, you know, there but for the grace of God go I. When you see a person who's misbehaving or who is the dark side may come out in another person, sometimes we tend to think, oh, that's not me. (0:19:43)

That's, you know, some bad person. Yes. Well, I think we all have that dark side. And ironically, we often keep it in darkness because we fear it. And then we project it on other people and then try to hate them or kill them or get rid of them as a way of dealing with our own darkness. (0:19:58)

But if we have that compassion for ourselves and you say, yes, that's also me, it's like shining a light in the darkness. And then we realize that it's only in darkness when we fear it and we try to compartmentalize it and say, that's not me and split it off and disown it. And when we can have compassion for ourselves and shine a light there, we realize that it's no longer dark. (0:20:18)

It makes it much easier than to have compassion on other people's darkness when we see it. And it helps to free both of us. There's a chapter in your book where you emphasize that often in relationships, and I think you referred to yourself as this example, that the tendency is to blame the other person for the problems that are going on. (0:20:34)

Well, it's always easy to blame the other person. And yet it keeps, for me, and I certainly have done that and I still do that from time to time, but at least I'm more aware of when I do that and I can catch myself earlier. What I had to realize is it wasn't them, it was me. (0:20:48)

And the spiritual teacher that I've been studying with for many, many years, Swami Satchitananda, I remember when I was in college, I called him up and I was complaining about my girlfriend at the time. And I'd say, oh, she's doing this and she's not doing that and da-da-da-da. And there would be this long pause and then he'd start laughing. (0:21:04)

And I'd say, what are you laughing about? This isn't funny. And he said, look here, boy, it's not her, it's you. And as long as you think it's her, you're going to be suffering. As long as you realize, when you begin to realize your part in it, you can do something about it. (0:21:21)

Well, now we're really talking about kind of a bridge from the scientific side of the healing power of intimacy to the psychological or even the spiritual side of it. (0:21:27)

Well, they're all interrelated. It's not this or that. It's all different facets of the same. And when we can understand and see it from as many different perspectives and many different dimensions as we can, then the healing is that much more powerful. But, you know, we're all going to die. (0:21:48)

The mortality rate is still one per person. The goal really is not even reversing heart disease. I mean, we can forestall death. People can live longer. Certainly those are good things. But in the final analysis, we're all going to die. So then the real question is how do we live? And to me, I have found that no award, no accomplishment, no anything external brings me anywhere near the joy and just the plain fun of being alive and waking up every day and being happy as learning how to open my heart. (0:22:16)

And only making a few steps down that road has changed my life in ways that are profound. And the reason that I wrote this book and the reason why I'm happy to be on this show is to say to other people, this is an experience available to all of us. It's our birthright. (0:22:30)

It's to learn to be happy and peaceful. And we're born that way. It's not even getting it. It's learning what we're doing that's disturbing it. And all of these spiritual practices and all these techniques, many of which I write about, many of which are available everywhere, are really designed with one purpose in mind. To identify where our health and happiness are being disturbed and to learn how to stop doing that. (0:22:50)

It's a radically different view of where health and happiness come from than most of our culture teaches us. You know, buy this product, do this, get this. It's something you get as opposed to the truth of it, which is it's not something you get. It's something you are. It's something you have already. And one of the great ironies of life, and maybe the great irony of life, is that not being mindful of that, that our happiness, our peace come from within. (0:23:14)

As cliche as that sounds, we often end up running after all these things thinking that we're going to get it. It's very seductive because in the short run, it's like, ah, I got it. It's mine. It feels great. But it doesn't last. It's like, well, now what? You know, it doesn't, it's never enough, or so what? Big deal. It didn't really provide that lasting sense of joy and meaning. (0:23:32)

And it's like we're always running after this, this, this, and this as opposed to letting go of these things, focusing on what really matters and rediscovering those inner sources of joy and well-being. And ironically, the more inwardly defined I am, the more outward accomplishments I'm able to do because I don't have the fear and the anxiety that used to go along with that, that got in the way so much. (0:23:51)

What you seem to be suggesting here is that if not today, someday science will be able to demonstrate that a spiritual approach to life is good for your health. (0:24:03)

I think there are a lot of studies already that show that, many of which I write about, but there are literally hundreds of studies that show that. And, you know, you can look at it on a spiritual level or you can look at it on a very basic level. I mean, one study, for example, I would never volunteer for a study like this, but they paid volunteers to drip cold viruses into their nose and virtually all of them got infected with the virus. (0:24:28)

But not everyone who got infected developed the signs and symptoms of a cold. And they looked into it further and they found that those who had six or more social contacts every two weeks, a social contact being a phone call or a visit from a friend, had four times fewer colds than those who had two or fewer. (0:24:49)

Now, again, the number of social contacts is not the deepest measure of spiritual intimacy and emotional intimacy, but even something as crude a measure as that, even when we know people are infected with a virus, has a threefold difference in how many of them actually get sick. There are so many studies that show the same thing. Well, of course, these studies are looking at the measurable components of human behavior, how many contacts you've had. (0:25:11)

In part two of our two-part series, we're going to look a little more at the mystery of life as is reflected in relationships, because it seems as if there's really a lot more to intimacy than the measurable aspects. Absolutely. You mentioned that there are eight pathways to a greater intimacy in life. Now, I know we only have about a minute left, but perhaps you can touch on one or two of those before we finish up this segment. (0:25:41)

Sure. Well, one of them is compassion and forgiveness we talked about. And it's often misunderstood that if you forgive someone that it condones their behavior, and it doesn't. What it does is it frees you of the impact of carrying around all that anger and hatred, not to get a gold star, not to go to heaven, not to get good karma, not for some external reward, but in that moment, it frees you from the suffering. (0:26:01)

In my first study, we had two men who got into a big fight. They both got chest pain. I'm going to need to interrupt you, though, because we are out of time. All right, we'll start with that. It happens faster, but thanks, Dean, for being with me. Thank you. It's a great pleasure. And thank you for being with us. (0:26:22)

Check your TV listings for part two of our two-part series on the healing power of intimacy, and we'll explore the mysteries of life and the spiritual dimensions of intimacy as they impact on our health. Book three in the New Thinking Allowed Dialogue series is UFOs and UAP. Are We Really Alone? Now available on Amazon. New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body, and spirit. (0:27:06)

The topics that we cover here, we are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. (0:27:16)

Visit their website at cihs.edu. You can now download a free PDF copy of issue number eight of the New Thinking Allowed magazine or order a beautiful printed copy. Go to newthinkingallowed.org. (0:27:36)

コメント 1​

Dean Ornish の主張が事実なら（後述するように疑わしいが）、仕事に忙殺されている孤独な 現代人/都会人 は、人に懐きやすい品種の猫を飼え…って話になる。

いずれ、高性能な AI を搭載した愛玩用ロボットが孤独を癒やしてくれるだろうが、その癒やしのレベルも値段相応で、金持ちには最高級・高品質の癒やし、貧乏人には最低限・低品質の癒やしが与えられる。

なので、賢い金持ちは健康で長生きし、愚かな貧乏人は病気がちで早死する…この一般的状況は変わらない。

コメント 2​

Dean Ornish は

  • 親密さや社会的つながりが健康に強い影響を与える

と主張しているが、これは因果関係ではなく、相関関係だと思える。

つまり、

  1. 親密さや社会的つながりを重視する人間は、自分の生活習慣や健康管理も自ずと重視する → それゆえ、健康で長生きしやすい

  2. 親密さや社会的つながりを軽視する人間は、自分の生活習慣や健康管理も自ずと軽視する → それゆえ、不健康で早死しやすい

ということだろう。 実際、不良連中は仲間意識が強いが、彼らが健康で長生きだという話は聞かないので、

  • A : 仲間意識や親密性

がキーなのではなく、

  • B: 周囲を取り巻く多層構造（＝家族、仲間、地域、職場、国家）の中で良好かつ安定した自分の立ち位置を確保し、長期的に維持できるかどうか

これがキーなのではないか。不良連中は A はあるが B に欠けている。平たく言えば、A は狭い仲間内に限定された局所最適解、B は全体最適解。

よって、A ではなく B が健康や長寿の要因。B の能力があれば、A は自ずと達成されるが、A だけでは B は達成さない。

「怒りや敵意を溜め込むことが病気に寄与する」という話も、怒りや敵意が B を破壊する方向へ作用する結果として十分に説明できる。

要約すると、

  • 親密さや社会的つながり

といった単純化したスローガン的な要素が主因なのではなく、より複雑かつ多層化した

  • 周囲を取り巻く多層構造の中で良好かつ安定した自分の立ち位置を確保し、長期的に維持できるかどうか

が左右している。

(2025-05-11)