Not everything that lowers HDL is bad for you. If you change from

The words of Dean Ornish, “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,” rise beyond the realm of medicine into the philosophy of life itself. For though he speaks of cholesterol, HDL, and diet, his wisdom touches a truth that echoes through the ages: that not all reductions are loss, and not all declines are decay. Sometimes, to have less is to be healthier. Sometimes, when the burdens of excess are removed, what appears as a lowering is in truth a purification — a return to balance.

In his analogy, Ornish compares the body’s HDL to garbage trucks, carrying away the refuse created by harmful habits — the fats, toxins, and impurities that accumulate from indulgence. Yet when the diet is cleansed, when the body no longer overflows with waste, there is simply less need for removal. And so, the number of trucks diminishes not because the system has weakened, but because it has become clean. This is not decline, but harmony. The lesson is ancient: when you remove the cause of struggle, the instruments of struggle also fade away. The warrior lays down his sword when peace has come.

This teaching finds a mirror in the ways of the natural world. Observe the river after the storm: when the floodwaters recede, the roaring current grows calm, yet its calmness is not weakness. It is restoration. The river does not lament that it no longer thunders; it rejoices in its quiet clarity. So too with the body, and so too with the soul. In times of inner chaos, we develop defenses — pride, anger, ambition, justification — the HDL of the heart. They are useful when we carry garbage within us, but when we cleanse our hearts of envy and greed, those defenses need not remain. Their absence is not emptiness, but purity.

The ancient philosopher Lao Tzu once wrote, “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” This, too, is the spirit of Ornish’s teaching. The modern world glorifies accumulation — of possessions, of success, even of health markers like “high HDL.” Yet wisdom teaches us that growth is not always measured in increase. Sometimes, it is the art of subtraction — of releasing what no longer serves us. A life simplified, a body cleansed, a mind at ease — these are not losses, but awakenings. The wise do not mourn the fading of excess; they celebrate the birth of balance.

Consider the story of Buddha, who, in his youth, was surrounded by abundance — rich foods, fine pleasures, endless luxury. Yet none of these brought him peace. Only when he left the palace, shedding his wealth and his indulgences, did he find enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree. His outer deprivation led to inner sufficiency. He became like the body freed from toxins — needing fewer “garbage trucks” because he had ceased to create the waste that bound him to suffering. In this way, the spiritual journey and the physical mirror one another: health, whether of body or spirit, is not gained through accumulation, but through purification.

The modern mind often confuses more with better. We measure success by increase — more wealth, more strength, more speed. But nature whispers a different truth: the strongest trees grow not endlessly upward, but deeply inward; the healthiest body is not one that fights endlessly to compensate for imbalance, but one that lives in equilibrium. Thus, when Ornish tells us that a drop in HDL may be a sign of health, he invites us to see with wiser eyes — to perceive that the absence of struggle can look, to the unknowing, like decline. Yet to the awakened, it is the return of peace.

So let this be the teaching: Judge not health by numbers alone, nor life by appearances of growth. Seek instead the hidden order beneath the surface. Strive not always to add, but to refine; not to inflate, but to purify. Eat with care, live with intention, and remove from your days that which clutters the heart and clouds the body. When the garbage within is gone, you will find you need fewer garbage trucks to carry it away — for purity sustains itself.

And so, walk the path of the ancients — the path of balance. Let go of the unnecessary, cleanse both body and mind, and measure your health not by abundance, but by harmony. For the truest strength lies not in accumulation, but in the freedom that comes when nothing remains to be cleansed. In that quiet state — where body, heart, and spirit are light — you will discover what the wise have always known: that wholeness is not the fullness of things, but the absence of impurity, the gentle peace of a life made clean.