One of the reasons I'm excited by what visionary Elon Musk has done with the Tesla is to show that you can reduce global warming and drive a powerful, fun car. A cool car helps make a cooler planet.

When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it's easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as luxuries, we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our well-being and survival.

When you grow up in an extended family, or in a stable neighborhood with two or three generations of families who live there, you feel seen. Not just the good things you've done, the stuff you put on your resume. You know they've seen you in your dark times, when you've messed up - but they're still there.

An Asian way of eating and living may help prevent and even reverse the progression of coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, prostate cancer and breast cancer. Incorporate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products and fish in your diet. Eat at home more with your family and friends.

Because the biological mechanisms that affect our health and well-being are so dynamic, when people change their diet and lifestyle, they usually feel so much better, so quickly; it reframes the reason for changing from fear of dying to joy of living. Also, the support that patients give each other is a powerful motivator.

If we are going to find sustainable ways of dealing with global warming, we have to base it on love and feeling good, not fear and loathing. If it's fun, then it's sustainable.

Whether it's by helping us search for health-related information, connecting us with doctors through online portals, or enabling us to store and retrieve our medical records online, the Internet is starting to show the promise it has to transform the way people interact with and improve their own health and wellness.

To the degree you eat less of the bad carbs and fats and enough of the good carbs and fats, you're likely to look better, feel better, lose weight and gain health.

The biological mechanisms that control our health and well-being are much more dynamic - for better and for worse - than most people realize.

With everything that you can imagine at our fingertips, many of the social interactions that help tie people together in a community have faded away. Are communities traditionally built on relationships, trust and familiarity a thing of the past?

Trust leads to intimacy, which leads to healing and meaning. We can only be intimate to the degree we can make ourselves vulnerable. But when we open our hearts, we can get hurt.

Fear leads to more fear, and trust leads to more trust.

In an era in which war and terrorism - at home and abroad - are often based on racial, religious and ethnic differences, rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us increase our survival at a time when an increasingly divided country and world so badly need it.

No one has a monopoly on truth, and science continues to advance. Yesterday's heresies may be tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

Rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us survive at a time when an increasingly balkanized world so badly needs it.

I strongly believe that the Founding Fathers of our country got it right: power corrupts, and any time you have too much power concentrated in one place, it tends to get abused, so checks and balances are always needed.

Too much power in any institution tends to stifle innovation.

The power of the Internet is also its limitation - it provides access to large amounts of information without providing guidance on how to sort out what is credible and what is not.

I am as non-accepting of medical quackery and unscientific approaches as anybody else. I've grown up as a card-carrying scientist, and I know the power of science to answer questions, and for many questions I don't know of anything better than scientific approaches to answer them.

Let's all be more humble about the evidence behind medical advice but also respect the challenges to providing accessible lifestyle guidance.

Reimbursement is a major determinant of how medicine is practiced. When reimbursement changes, so do medical practice and medical education.

If you're with a close friend, your anger may raise his blood pressure as well as your own, whereas loving feelings may lower blood pressure in both of you.

No one has all the answers, so whatever a woman who has the BRCA mutation chooses to do requires courage and an element of faith. And a lot of love and support.

In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole-foods, plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates.

The choices you make each day in your diet and lifestyle have a direct influence on how your genetic predisposition is expressed - for better and for worse. You're only as old as your genes, but how your genes are expressed may be modified by exercise, diet and lifestyle choices much more than had previously been believed - and more quickly.

If you're at high risk or are trying to reverse heart disease or prevent the recurrence of cancer, you probably need to make bigger changes in diet and lifestyle than someone who just wants to lose a few pounds and is otherwise healthy. If you just want to lower your cholesterol, weight or blood pressure, begin by making moderate changes.

Small changes in diet don't have much effect on preventing coronary heart disease and cancer. But bigger changes in diet and lifestyle may prevent heart attacks in almost everyone.

When most people think about my work, they think about diet. To me, diet has always been the least interesting part of it.

Whether you're six or sixty, if you go on a diet and lifestyle program and feel constrained, you're likely to go off it sooner or later. Offering a spectrum of choices is much more effective; then, you feel free and empowered.

If we can reach populations in developing countries and help them understand the value of their indigenous diet and lifestyles rather than copying ours, perhaps we can reverse the exponential rise in cardiovascular disease that is plaguing them.

Not everything that lowers HDL is bad for you. If you change from a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet to a healthy low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, your HDL levels may stay the same or even decrease because there is less need for it. When you have less garbage, you need fewer garbage trucks to remove it, so your body may make less HDL.

As a veteran of the diet wars, I think it's time to call a truce. Rather than hear experts argue, most people want practical information they can use.

If you go on a diet and feel constrained, you are more likely to drop it. But if you see your food choices each day as part of a spectrum, then you are more likely to feel free and empowered.

Although many people believe that the primary emphasis of my work is about diet, it's not. What we eat is important, of course, but what comes out of our mouth may be more important than what goes into it.

The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.

The need for love and intimacy is a fundamental human need, as primal as the need for food, water, and air.