Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:Dr. Dean Ornish, of the University of California San Francisco Medical School and Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center, wanted to learn whether lifestyle changes could reverse the progress of heart disease. At first, he found little support for his research, and several of his grant requests were turned down. Eventually he secured funding from private contributors.Ornish recruited forty-three men and five women, ages forty-one to seventy-one, all with very serious heart disease. A statistician randomly assigned the subjects either to a group that followed their own doctor's recommendations for diet and lifestyle changes or to a group that would follow a mild exercise regimen coupled with stress-management

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counseling and a low-fat vegetarian diet with no meats, poultry, or fish and with restricted intake levels of cholesterol and fat.Six people in this group did not complete the testing. Among the remaining twenty-two participants, eighteen showed reversal of the blockages in their coronary arteries after one year. In the comparison group, one person dropped out, and ten of the remaining nineteen developed measurably worse heart disease, while three showed no significant change. Six people in the comparison group showed measurable reversal. This was due, says Ornish, to the lifestyle changes they made on their own.Dr. Alexander Leaf, former chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Harvard University Medical School, says, "For the first time, we have a carefully done scientific study that shows, even in advanced stages, this disease can be reversed with lifestyle changes." Ornish's findings have prompted sizable grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and other foundations.-Adapted from Reader's Digest

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