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Feb. 28, 2019 - Dr. Oz Podcast
41:53
Naomi Judd on Surviving Hepatitis C

In this interview, actress and singer Naomi Judd opens up about her battle with hepatitis C. She shares a message for those also suffering not to let a bad diagnosis become a self-fulfilling prophecy – and why you should never give up fighting to get better. Naomi also discusses what it’s really like to live in a celebrity family and how she’s learned to develop boundaries in order to live a happy private life, despite the constant spotlight. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Time Text
When a doctor standing there in a starched white lab coat with some big degree on the wall tells you, it's really programming your body because the mind is the body's information pathway, the body's control tower.
And you and I know that your belief, whatever you believe, literally becomes your biology.
Hey, everyone. everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
We'll see you next time.
you Naomi Judd, thank you for joining us today.
I love you.
I love you for who you are, and I love you for what you're doing for America.
Well, you're very kind.
There's so much information out there, and anybody, I mean, I have a little bit of an edge because I'm a former RN, but we're absolutely overwhelmed, and you are sort of the go-to guy.
You're very kind, Naomi.
I must say, when we first met on the show, I was struck by your passion and your insight into what illness is and how it can change you.
I remember when we were doing the interview talking about how down and out you are at a certain point in your life and how you actually were able to get everything back together again with your great daughters and pull up.
For the very few of you out there who don't know A lot about Naomi Judd.
Let me just give you the quick brief.
Besides being a TV host and a best-selling author, she's a five-time Grammy award-winning singer, as well as a songwriter.
She's a humanitarian, and she really is.
We're going to talk about that today.
A wonderful motivational speaker, and she's a survivor.
And it's that survivor element that gives her so much authority when we speak to the different health challenges that all of us face in our lives.
In Naomi's case, it was hepatitis C. Naomi, take us back to your hepatitis and how you sort of figured out what it was and coped with the illness itself.
It's a very mysterious disease.
Let me lead off by acknowledging, I love to be able to say this, this is why I salute programs like yours, but I was a nurse here and I'm coming to you from my little valley in Leapers Fork, Tennessee.
I'm here and I'm also in the land of Oz at the same time.
But I was a nurse.
I actually had this noble romantic fantasy of becoming an MD. In my pocket of the world, Appalachia, I'm from Ashland, Kentucky, until Winona exhibited this extraordinary talent and I took a detour into singing.
So I've always had this yearning to be part of the healing process.
But when I worked as a nurse, I primarily worked in ICU. I see you.
And 85, you never thought of that?
No, you know, I'd say all these years, I have never thought about that.
That's right.
Intensive care unit, I see you.
I love that.
Well, I'm a wordmeister.
I see the whole world in signs, in symbols, in archetypal language.
I kind of live in the invisible world a lot of the time, I guess, because I'm a spiritual person.
I don't use the word religious.
But basically, I think we're spiritual beings.
We've had a human experience, but when I worked as a nurse in the hospital, and we now have something like 85,000 healthcare workers, nurses every year, we get stuck.
But anyway, it's a very...
If you guys have seen ER or anything about the trauma bays, it's a very hazardous place.
You get bodily fluids of all sorts.
You get stuck.
So, I was one of those.
And I only say that because in most cases with hep C, you don't know the etiology.
You don't know the origin of the disease.
I never did IV drugs.
I'm pretty old-fashioned.
The girl, Sam, is the square I can't roll out of bed.
I was one of those people that didn't, you know, I've never, I think, technically been drunk.
I love my margaritas, but I mean...
So, I'm not one of these real at-risk people.
I got Hep C probably, well, I don't know, but I was diagnosed with non-A non-B non-C in 1990. Winona and I were at the top of our game, thanks to the dear fans.
We were just rocking and rolling out there in life's highways, and bam!
You know, change is the true nature of the world, and that's one of the things that illness does to us.
It just stops us dead and flips our world upside down.
So as you said, you're cruising along.
You're singing.
Everyone loves you.
You find that you've got hepatitis.
So what happened in your life then?
I've been outrageously healthy my whole thinking life.
I mean, I was like an 18-year-old cheerleader.
I never had anything.
I had balance energies.
Frankly, you have to because you're waking up in a different city, a different subculture in America every day.
And we're performing thousands of sold-out concerts every night, and it just takes an inordinate amount of energy because I am a sponge, too, not only writing the songs, traveling, doing the concerts, all the PR and media, but, Maimon, every night there would be so many people who, and for me it's really about the exquisite reality of meeting people.
I mean, Tripping out on six Grammys and doing all the TV specials and all that just because of the hoot.
But I know there's nothing different or special about me.
I've always felt like service is the work of the soul.
And I've always felt like whatever I was doing, it was just a chance for me to expand.
So having said that, here I am in my glory, having had a rough life, poverty, raised the kids on welfare, survived domestic violence.
But myself through college to get my RN degree while I was raising the kids.
Thank you very much.
And then all of a sudden, you know, it just stops my show.
So I really had to understand that it's not what happens to us.
It's what we choose to do with it.
And when I was diagnosed, they were saying non-A, non-B, non-C, because back then we didn't have a diagnosis of hepatitis C. We know that A is...
Fecal oral contamination, restaurant workers, whatever, not washing your hands, you're on the couch six weeks, you get up, you're okay.
B, much more serious.
B is blood-borne.
It's like ten times more infectious than AIDS, the actual viruses.
And B can lead to liver cancer and other serious problems.
Yeah, Naomi, I should point out, by the way, we're with Naomi Judd, her new book, Naomi's Guide to Aging Gratefully, is what we're going to talk about for the rest of the show.
But Naomi points out that hepatitis B is a more infectious agent than AIDS. When you guys are out there and worried about getting blood transfusions, for example, during surgery, It's not the AIDS virus that we worry about.
It's a one and a half a million odds that's going to happen.
But hepatitis caused by one of the viruses can occur in up to one in a hundred cases.
That's a much bigger problem for us and folks who have a risk of getting blood than anything else.
I'm sorry, Naomi, go ahead.
Well, let's stop there and acknowledge what the causative factors are for hep B and hep C as well.
Anytime we say the word blood-borne, why don't you speak into that?
What is blood-borne?
So these are bodily fluids that have blood in them and most obviously your own blood.
So if you give someone a blood transfusion or if you stick a needle in you and then somebody else, whether it's a healthcare worker who does it by mistake or a drug abuser who's sharing needles.
These are the reasons, by the way, that folks get really concerned about drug addicts and how to limit the intravenous contamination that occurs with these folks.
There are other bodily fluids as well that can contaminate you.
Sexual activity, and frankly, biting somebody sometimes can transmit a virus that's in your bloodstream to somebody else.
Well, also getting a tattoo.
I'm going to go ahead and say this because we were talking on a cell phone.
She knew it wasn't a landline, and I think it's okay.
But Pamela Anderson, the Pamela Anderson, who got hep C, called me, and her first husband, Tommy Lee, They shared tattoo needles on their honeymoon.
How romantic is that?
That's funny.
So anyway, you can get it if you share any kind, like a razor, if you happen to have, even a toothbrush, if you happen to have an open gum, bleeding gum, any sort of open, certainly if you get an organ transplant, if you, but hepatitis B is incredibly dangerous.
Thank God we now have a series of vaccines.
It's a series of three, so you can get that.
Certainly if you're a healthcare worker, please, please.
But then Hep C, and it's always interesting to me how we come upon this stuff, the VA hospital is a great way to diagnose illnesses because these guys have their permanent records on one file for years and years, and we really get a lot of information from our veterans.
It's like the good news, bad news.
But they started noticing in the 80s that these veterans had this very deadly, mysterious virus.
And again, hepatitis, ITIS on the end of means inflammation of, like bronchitis, tonsillitis, appendicitis.
EPA means liver.
So they were having this hideous virus of their liver, and it was an A and it wasn't B. Did I have hepatitis C finally diagnosed?
Right.
We used to call it non-A, non-B, just to show you, you know, sometimes we're sort of limited in coming up with names.
Well, that's what they said for me in 1990. And dig this, and this really talks about how all of us fall through the cracks.
I mean, I'm on the cover of People Magazine and Rolling Stone, and these doctors kept misdiagnosing me.
They just said non-A, non-B, non-C. And in 1990, well, 1991, I'm going to go ahead and say...
They finally came out with an inclusive test for hep C. They gave it to me, but I didn't have it.
But in fact, I did.
So, Naomi, you make a great point about celebrities and how they're treated.
I must say, whenever I have friends, I tell them, never get VIP care.
Because when you get VIP care, people start doing things for you and to you that they normally don't do.
So that changes the norm.
And guess what?
The norm often works pretty well.
So, for example, if the chairman of the department is doing a blood draw on you, they don't normally draw blood.
So you're not going to get the best job done that you could get done because usually it's a technician that does that and they do it pretty darn well.
And I must say I'm reminded of one very moving event in my life.
I was about to operate on a physician.
I take care of a lot of doctors.
And this was a young orthopedic surgeon who needed a valve change in his heart.
And as I was walking around his table as he was going to sleep, I said, okay, doctor so-and-so, I'll see you in a couple hours after the case.
He looked over to me just before they put the mask on his face.
It was like out of a TV movie.
And he said, it's Mr. So-and-so to you.
And it was very clear.
He didn't want to be different.
He knew, as I do, and I think you appreciate as well, since you're in the healthcare field, you don't want to be different when you go to the hospital.
You want to get the average care, as long as the people who are giving average care are pretty good at it.
And that's a lesson, I think, for all of us to keep in mind.
More questions after the break.
More questions after the break.
You're winning all these Emmys.
Everyone's putting you on their covers.
You're getting honored by...
Actually, you have been honored as one of the 40 greatest women in country music, so everyone knows who you are, and you're struggling with a very difficult diagnosis with the organ, the liver.
That's our ultimate detoxifying organ.
I mean, there's a reason why it's the foundation of Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine.
It's just so important in cleansing the body, and it's inflamed and toxic itself.
So how do you get your life together?
The first thing you do is spend time alone.
Well, I had to because I was in a fetal position in a dark room.
I was a very sick little girl.
But I think the first thing anybody listening to the sound of our voices right now needs to do is to spend some time alone and realize that if a doctor gives you a very deadly diagnosis, You really have to appreciate this is another human being, and they probably are putting a medical hex and a curse on you.
So many of us listen to doctors as if they're demigods.
And when this doctor, and I'm not going to say the name of the institution, but it's sort of the Rolls Royce here in America, when he told me I had less than three years to live, it was a sticky wicket because all of a sudden I'm the patient in the wheelchair instead of the nurse.
It's my little hillbilly butt sticking out of that hospital gown.
And I am so vulnerable.
I don't know where I am.
I can barely finish sentences because, as you said, the liver detoxifies.
It's the ultimate filter.
We call it the factory.
I was so poisoned by my own body.
I was flipped out because I was going to lose my career.
Winona and I had contracts for a year of concert.
I felt like I was the CEO of a big corporation.
If I didn't sing, the people didn't eat.
We had like 80 people.
It was hideous.
Everything that could go wrong.
So what was Winona thinking through this?
Were you telling them about your illness and the high risks that it was creating for you?
Interestingly, when I was starting to be symptomatic, I took her to the doctor because she has severe asthma.
This is a problem for a singer, believe me.
We were getting ready to go on to her.
I know all the doctors here because I used to work with them at the hospital before I started singing.
So I take her to our allergist.
And while I was there, I know the nurses because, like I said, they were my partners on the team at the hospital.
And I pulled one aside and I said, you know, do a liver panel on me.
I'm tired.
I'm kind of achy.
I have a low-grade fever, a chronic headache.
I am just not myself.
Well, we went back to adjust one of those asthma medications.
This is a good...
Example of how nurses and doctors don't take care of themselves.
So we go back for Wynonna's death, and then Dr. Miller pulls me in the other room, and in front of Wynonna says, Kiddo, your ALT, AST are through the roof.
There's something wrong with your liver.
You're the sick puppy.
So Wynonna was actually right there beside me when he said, You've got to cancel your winter tour.
Forget about it.
You're not going to be able to put on pantyhose, let alone jump off pantyhose.
Hour and a half on stage.
And Winona started descending into clinical depression.
I had to go to a psychiatrist for the first time in my life.
Actually, it was a psychologist.
And told my husband in front of a psychologist, because I didn't know how to do it alone, we found a Christian therapist here in Franklin to tell Ashley and everybody in the family.
Because he said I was going to die.
He said I was going to take a six-foot dirt net.
And I just remember when a doctor standing there in a starched white lab coat with some big degree on the wall tells you, it's really programming your body because the mind is the body's information pathway.
It's the body's control tower.
And you and I know that your belief, whatever you believe, literally becomes your biology.
So I just want to caution people.
There are so many intelligent...
Educated folks who don't understand the power the mind has.
So your body literally will manifest, will make real whatever you believe.
And if you've got a doctor telling you that you're going to die or this is going to happen, I just want to caution people.
Get out of the bleachers and get into the game and realize nobody can do that to you.
It does become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So I, the first thing I had to do was step away from that, start becoming a detective.
One thing, by the way, Naomi, I've heard your quote as saying that a dead end is just a place to turn around, which I think is a pretty good way of looking at it.
Whenever you get a diagnosis, investigating alternative approaches, getting second opinions, which only 10% of us get, but a third of the time it changes the diagnosis or the treatment.
These are all no-brainers for all of you out there listening, especially if you've got a diagnosis that your folks taking care of you aren't sure about.
It doesn't mean they're not good docs and aren't doing their best, but the reality is we're all humans.
We've got limitations in our ability to make diagnoses, and it's worth getting more folks thinking about your well-being.
Well, the first time I discovered the cover of Life magazine, what was that, 10 years ago?
Probably, yeah.
It was back when I was still suffering, and I remember somebody actually brought it to me, and there was this gorgeous doctor who rode his bicycle to work every day at a hospital in New York City who talked to his doctors, and more importantly, Listened to his patients.
Practiced the art of...
I don't know if it was Reiki, but some sort of...
Energy medicine, right?
Energy medicine, yes.
And I was so right in the thrall of investigating the power of the spirit and the mind over the body.
And in my huge heap of study material was your issue in Life magazine.
And I thought...
My God in heaven, there's a doctor.
Not only all of us patients out here are trying to figure out how we can save our lives and participate and find a partner in the healing journey, because that's what it is.
It's a partnership.
And I just really latched onto you, and I remember looking at your pictures, and you were happily married, you had kids, and I was like a fan.
Well, you're so kind.
And then we meet, because we're speaking together later on, At a symposium on integrative medicine and I meet your wife and then I see the show on TV and it is called Second Opinion.
I get a second opinion from my vet.
It's that important!
Right?
It's so true.
But the other thing that I love about you, as you said earlier, you're a wordmeister.
You think about common problems in uncommon ways, which is a talent that is so endearing and so useful, which is one of the reasons it's a great honor to have you on the show.
But even with your family, you guys, it's been said, you sang like angels and fought like the devil.
But you loved each other.
Through the struggle, you actually triumphed in part because the family pulled together and you knew how to get folks who could have gone apart through the chronic illness that besets you, but instead got the family to grow together.
I mean, how does a mother do that?
How do you get people to be winners by fighting back the way you're arguing that they should?
Well, the bottom line is, and I actually preached my first sermon this past Sunday.
I had a girlfriend who I was ordained, installed as the first female pastor of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York City.
And that's what I talked about, that the deepest source of your identity, the deepest source is the God of our understanding.
I'm going with a girlfriend to AA meeting.
Whatever your belief is, a higher power, all that, you have to appreciate that it's not what happens to you, it's what you choose to do with it.
And we're all here to grow in love and wisdom.
And every time I get smacked in the face, I realize the deepest source of my identity is God.
And I tried to teach or show, not speak, because what you are speaks louder.
But I tried every day to show Winona and Ashley.
Even if we were eating beans and cornbread, bologna and crackers, and sleeping in one bed and had no heat and all that stuff, it's life.
It's not what matters.
It's your spirit.
It's what you choose.
And I had them be insatiably curious from the minute they could understand.
So it's really about just opening up your eyes and your heart and saying, okay, now we've got a family issue.
What are we going to do?
Are we going to implode?
Nope.
We're going to all realize the bottom line is we have separate realities.
I love to say shift happened, and a major shift in our family happened.
I'm going to say 15 years ago.
Because you think everybody in your family thinks alike and you've all had the same experiences because you share it.
You're from the same gene pool.
You live under the same rug.
Nope.
What was the event 15 years ago?
Oh, Ashley appeared nude in a movie.
That's the first time I've said that.
But she played Marilyn Monroe on an HBO special.
She and Mira Savino played Marilyn Monroe, the before and the after.
She was the before.
She was the...
Norma Jean Baker, before Marilyn Monroe became a celebrity.
And Ashley was living at home.
She sat us down at the supper table, and she said, I'm just going to go ahead and tell you guys.
I did a nude scene in a movie where my husband, you know, spit his iced tea through his nose, pushed back away from the table, and Winona just sort of walked around on the back porch for a minute and came back in.
And I thought, okay, we are all three in the entertainment world.
It never had occurred to me, and I know that sounds bizarre, but we're such normal people.
It never really hit me that we've got to develop boundaries.
For instance, I can't talk about Ashley's marriage or Winona's problems in public without them giving me permission.
Of course, of course.
I have emotional incontinence.
I have diarrhea of the mouth.
I won't tell you anything.
I'm going to use that.
Emotional incontinence.
Well, speaking about dealing with the emotions, you mentioned shift happens, and that's part of the theme of the first chapter of your great book, Naomi's Guide to Aging Gracefully.
Oh, gratefully, I apologize.
It is gracefully as well, by the way, and we do talk about that later.
And these are the facts, myths, and good news for the boomers.
So talk to me a little bit about the birth of a notion, the first chapter in the book.
Well, I get really ticked off.
Again, I just feel like the average person's representative out there in the world.
And I've had this exquisite privilege of doing stuff that ordinary folks read about through the media.
And I know all the tricks of the trade.
And I know movie stars because I've actually been in movies.
I know, of course, the royalty of country music.
And I travel in all 50 states.
So over the years, I've been so...
We're dismayed by our culture's preoccupation with youth and beauty.
And it doesn't make people happy.
And that's what bothers me, is that...
Well, let me ask you.
You're the big guy.
What do you think is the number one cause of unhappiness?
And I will say that Americans are the most depressed and unhappy in history.
My girlfriends and guy friends who are psychiatrists, behavioral therapists, have taught me That Americans are more depressed and unhappy than ever.
Well see, for me, Naomi, happiness has always been about gratitude.
Because when you're grateful about the things in your life, whether it's having the bologna sandwiches, the sleeping in one bed, as you recounted earlier, or it's because you got some new gig going, or you got on the Oprah show, that's not it.
Those are the single little high moments.
Anyone's gonna be grateful about those.
It's the day-to-day gratefulness that we feel towards being blessed to be alive, the people who are dear to us, people who truly love us and we love them back.
That's what ultimately brings happiness.
And so when you're not happy, that introduces a whole bunch of other headaches because why the heck are you here?
What's the point?
And then it all begins to implode from there.
And I think one of the challenges we face in this country is that, you know, we have access to everything, you think, right?
And we have enough money to eat, most of us.
No matter where you are in the social system, you've got a lot more stuff going on than just about anybody else in human history has ever had.
But you're always looking out there and seeing what somebody else has and forgetting about the fundamentals of what truly drive Happiness.
And as you have said yourself, you've traveled all over, you've been in the right circles, and not everyone's happy there.
And this is an old saw, but the reality is if you don't focus on those fundamentals, valuing and being grateful for your own body and how cool it is, appreciating the relationships that are dear to you, then you're not going to be happy no matter what.
And by the way, the people who I admire the most are the folks who look only at those simple things to bring them happiness because you know what?
They're always happy.
Because if you're looking for those things, you can actually get those things.
And that is the human plight.
That's actually what makes humanity click.
Well, you win the keys to the new Buick Riviera.
Oh, yeah!
Yeah, baby!
Because the answer is, today's Americans don't know who they are.
So your answer is right in there.
Today, Americans have no clue who they are and what their values are.
And that's because we have cultural ADHD. Everybody is so busy, so stinking, wrapped up in going and doing.
And you've heard the saying, you're a human being, not a human doing.
Every night I go sit.
I mean, you would be astonished to see where I am right now.
By the way, Winona lives over the hill behind me and actually lives up the road.
We share a valley.
I've never owned a diamond ring.
I don't give a hoot about cars or...
Designer clothes.
I would never buy one of those stupid $1,000 purses.
Every night, my husband and I cooked supper last night.
We grilled up.
We sit on the front porch every night.
And I've got my hummingbird feeder, my dogs in the glider with me.
I live such a stripped-down life.
And it's because I have learned through my travels and meeting an encyclopedic range of people That what you said is absolutely true.
And today people don't have a clue who they are.
They're spending too much time in the media.
They're hypnotized by advertisers.
So you're right.
It's not knowing who you are and what makes you feel like all is right in the world.
In the book, you highlight some of the key items that I feel are important for us as we try to come to grips with the reality that aging is normal and it can be okay.
You point out, by the way, that you want us to be inspired to change.
Choose having a new growth experience.
That's what the acronym stands for in the book.
But you also say that the next big cultural shift Will be the redefining of aging.
And when we come back from the break, I wanted to ask you to be a little clear on what that really means to you.
How is it that you think the nation is going to shift its goals?
So we begin to actually reward wisdom, to help us declutter spiritually, to find the purpose and meaning that we want in life.
And by doing that, practice the positivism that you've been articulating so beautifully on this program.
And I say that in part because there are a lot of folks out there struggling with that very reality.
There's lots more when we come back.
I'm clear on some of the basic issues, but the one that really gets me is whether or not we can really make this big cultural shift that you're arguing we need to be able to make.
What do you think?
I think we should because the reason I wrote the book is that there are 78 million of us with the largest demographic in In the history of humankind, and I don't understand why we don't acknowledge and then utilize our personal power, our economic clout, boomers, and it's obviously because of the Second World War.
The soldiers came home, everybody got busy in the bedroom, and we started having these big families so that now, I mean, I'm 61. How old are you?
I'm 46. Well, you're still a boomer.
I mean, Winona is 43 next week.
She's a baby boomer also.
This age range right now is predominant in our culture.
We have the wisdom, meaning we have experiences if we choose to use them wisely.
We've got the deep pockets.
We have disposable income.
Why aren't we using that and Obviously, the shift is we've got to get to the advertisers and the marketers because they're not keeping pace.
You've got poor little Paris Hilton, Britney Spears shaving her head, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, these little girls in rehab.
They're miserable people.
I mean, they've got pathology going on.
Somebody needs to help them, not put them on the cover of magazines and hold them up as some poster child for happiness.
They're the exact...
What's the world, Mamet?
What's the word?
They're the antithesis.
Exactly.
Well, let me ask you though, because in the book you talk about some of the things that we can do actively in our lives today.
So I think we all grasp the fact that there's a culture war going on and we're going to have to influence that process.
At the same time, there are things that we can do just to make ourselves happier because I think a lot of the reasons people go for the bait of wanting to look like the magazine cover is because they're not happy with the status quo.
Why aren't we happy with the status quo?
You talk about decluttering ourselves, right?
Physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
How did you do that in your life?
How should we do that?
How does the listener out there do that?
Well, if you think back to your past, and you're still acting out of your beliefs, your beliefs are based on your early memories and experiences.
And I was very blessed.
I didn't realize at the time.
I'm from a pocket of Appalachia, and my grandparents, aunts and uncles, I lived in the country.
They didn't even have running water.
I mean, I can make life soap.
I can cook on a wood cook stove.
I can recognize a poisonous snake and raise a garden.
And when I lived with my aunts and uncles and Ogden Judd, my granddaddy, in the country, our lives were so stripped down.
For us to sit out on the porch in the evening and listen to the whippoorwills and go pick stuff out of the garden, wash it off with well water and eat it, There was just this stripped-down connection with nature, with our capacity to do things ourselves, solitude.
They didn't have a TV. There was no television in their house.
They didn't even have a radio.
If a car came down our road, it was like, ta-da!
It's hard, Naomi, to create that.
For a lot of folks who are still in the workforce, but boomers, they're living in an urban environment.
I grew up in a place, I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, which is not as rural as where you grew up, but I had grass in my front yard.
I couldn't see another house when I woke up in the morning.
So I'd love to be able to live in that environment.
I try to create it where I live now, but it's tough.
Thank you for pointing that out, because I kind of was going off on my tangent.
But what I do now, and you know what?
Being on the road 30 or 40 years later after my childhood experience sort of jump-started the process for me because when you live on a bus, I don't know if you've ever, have you ever been on a big tour bus?
Not like you've been.
I mean, you've got bunks, you've got a little tiny bathroom, you've got your microwave, your coffee maker.
It's like a little loom.
So you wake up on the sidewalk or in the parking lot the next morning and you're in New York City or you're in Rooster Poot, Texas.
We're brain-dead North Dakota.
I haven't been there.
Yeah, I've been there, done that.
You go to the hotel room, and you've got a bed and a toilet and a TV set, and somebody brings you food on a tray.
What a deal.
So I started learning again that it's kind of like what David said when they, I mean, Michelangelo, when they asked about David, his magnificent culture.
He said, how did you create this masterpiece?
He said, I got rid of everything that wasn't David.
And I've had the privilege of being able to buy land in the wilderness now.
And I choose, that's the word, I choose every day.
I just got back from New York City, and I have to live in a motel room in downtown Manhattan.
Well, come stay with us.
I could.
And then I also still travel a lot to speaking engagements.
I was, last week I was in Pueblo, Colorado.
They have a big problem with domestic violence, so I went out there.
So everywhere I go, I choose to I spend an hour in solitude in the morning by myself.
I take my little dog.
I have my little rituals.
I don't watch TV. So I really choose what I read, what I listen to, and even the people I'm around.
If I get around energy vampires, people who have this dark energy.
Chee drains.
Chee drains.
Yes.
But I got to say, Naomi, these are so good.
Why are they called energy vampires?
Energy vampires, and you guys know who I'm talking about.
And I do a whole thing in my book about emotional housecleaning, and I have to kind of fuss at girls.
I'm having a party at my house tomorrow night.
We're having about 35 people over, and I'm cooking, and I've got a friend bringing horses, and we've got fireworks.
One of the things that always happens is the girls all get together, the ladies, out under the big tree, We call it the world according to us.
A circle of girlfriends.
And it always comes down to talking about emotional house cleaning because we have the disease to please.
We are control freaks.
We're perfectionists.
We've got to get rid of the energy vampires around us.
It's about stripping down.
The older I get, the more I get rid of.
I love that quote about David, Michelangelo, the idea of...
Except for underwear.
I'm wearing less makeup, more underwear.
Well, I noticed you say that, by the way.
You said to focus on the size and condition of your heart, not your bra size or the number of wrinkles in your face.
That's a quote from the book, by the way.
Well, when you talk about numbers, pay attention to your cholesterol.
What's your triglyceride?
What's your blood pressure?
But pay attention to those numbers.
And I was...
Patty LaBelle last week, who has diabetes, she's injecting seven times a day, and we were talking about how critical it is to, and I love being around my girlfriends, like Dolly Parton and all, because we have our own little club.
We're so put upon with pressures in the media to look our best and all that, but, so we, you know, we're always talking in sort of esoteric little, like, who's your favorite makeup artist, and And who do you go to for...
I don't do Botox, but, you know, that kind of stuff.
So I was talking to Patty about the numbers we should pay attention to.
Or, you know, if you're a guy, what's your PSA? Prostate-specific antigen.
Those are the only numbers that matter.
In addition to the actual numbers, which we actually should focus on, you also touch on some sensitive issues, like sex.
I mean, most folks think that when you get older, sex is done.
And it turns out, actually, that there's a pretty sizable cohort of folks who are able to be sexually active way into their 80s and longer.
So, I mean, how do you get folks to realize that the things they think they're supposed to do when they're old aren't the things they should be doing?
You get away from the stinking media.
That's why I keep saying you have to be discerning.
But Naomi, you know, not watching television, or watching television, if you're not watching, maybe you'll do whoopie more often, but a desire or craving to have sex is something that folks have to intellectually get comfortable with, too, especially for women, where Ford plays a 24-hour event.
Yep.
Yeah, I'd say men are like a microwave, and women are like a confection oven.
The deal is being healthy.
And if you start...
Shutting down and spending, and I'm such an enthusiast of solitude, spending some time with yourself in the morning and saying, you know, what worked for me yesterday?
What were the moments where I felt like I was in the zone?
What were the moments where I was in the flow yesterday?
And who am I around that makes me feel like, phew, I like being around this person?
Start paying attention to yourself, and then if you start getting healthy, And of course, I saw you the other day on Oprah's After Show where you were talking about people that come in that haven't loosened their belt.
They come into the ER with abdominal issues.
Right, exactly.
Tight belt syndrome.
Yes.
And we call it the Dunlop disease.
Dunlop over.
So that's the disease.
That's when you're not paying attention to basic stuff.
If you get yourself healthy, and then in the book I talk about bioidentical Hormone replacement therapy.
And I talk about getting a...
If you decide to do this with your doctor and you don't have health risks like cancer in your family, reproductive cancer, if you pay attention to your estradiol level, and there's four forms of estradiol, which is human, the female hormone, progesterone, female, the other part of estrogen, And then you might want to do a little testosterone, which is the male.
It's an androgen, but also it's essential for a sexual appetite.
The doctor that I go to does bioidentical.
I alluded to this in the book.
And you can take a little bit of the testosterone cream so that it's transdermal.
Just put it on the inner aspect of your arm once or twice a week.
That'll keep everybody happy!
Do you do that?
Oh, yes!
Huh.
Oh, yeah.
All right, so one more time for everybody.
You take a bioidentical estrogen.
What kind of progesterone do you take?
I take...
Well, let me get back to that because I talk about it in the book.
Now, here again, I'm not a doctor.
But you're a practicing woman, so it's okay.
I don't even play one on TV. I'm just a woman who's 61. I say 60 plus one.
I'm a very happy woman.
You take bioidentical hormone replacement therapy because...
You're born with all the eggs you're ever going to have.
It's a simple math thing.
By the time you hit 50, ding, you're out of eggs.
If you do ovulate once a month and you start at age 13. Okay.
You're out of eggs.
I came downstairs about 11 years ago.
I told my husband, I'm out of eggs.
He said, it's okay, I'll have Cheerios.
How perceptive of him.
I'm going through the chain.
It's okay, I've got my poker money upstairs.
So you start recognizing...
If you're a candidate, again, if you don't have a family history of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and all that, and you haven't had a hysterectomy, and you want to do something that's exactly going to mimic the estrogen that you used to make,
and estrogen is only half the equation, I take a little transdermal patch, a little tiny thing about the size of a quarter, it gives me the lowest dose, the lowest possible dose Of female bioidentical estrogen.
I'm so thrilled that the Women's Health Initiative blew the horn on this awful, awful, awful Premarin, which was conjugated.
It was so slowly excreted.
It was pregnant.
And then I take every night the most bioidentical form of progesterone.
Again, you have to have both to balance out.
So I take bioidentical hormone progesterone at night.
And then once a week, a little bit of the bioidentical testosterone on the skin.
So the only thing you take by mouth is the progesterone, is that right?
Naomi Judd, as always, a wordmeister, a rich person in many ways, spiritually, emotionally, verbally, despite your emotional incontinence.
I love you.
You've got a standing invitation in New York.
Come stay with us.
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