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Sept. 28, 2023 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:46
Medical Mystery: Caught Drunk Driving But Wasn't Drinking | Dr. Oz | S11 | Ep 51 | Full Episode
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Time Text
Slurred speech.
Stumbling.
Reeking of alcohol.
Why are you recording me?
Some even caught drunk driving.
The cops told you you were four times over the legal limit.
But never had a drink.
I didn't know what was going on with my body.
A true medical mystery.
Plus, former teen idol, Leith Garrett.
Opening up about the addictions that nearly took his life.
What really happened that night?
Coming up next.
Season 11 starts now.
Imagine being pulled over by the police.
They give you a blood alcohol test.
And then they tell you that your levels are two or three times over the limit.
You know what?
They charge you with drunk driving.
Yet you didn't have a single drop of alcohol.
What's going on?
Today we investigate the mysterious medical cases of people who reek of beer, wine, and liquor, even stumble, slur their words, and get into dangerous accidents, but who were not drinking any alcohol.
It's more common than you think.
Stranger than fiction.
Reports of drunkenness, secret alcoholism, and DUI arrests.
But they all claim they haven't been drinking.
In North Carolina, a man pulled over for driving while intoxicated, refused a breathalyzer test, swearing he hadn't taken even one drink.
But at a local hospital, his blood alcohol was reportedly found to be two and a half times over the legal limit.
In upstate New York, a schoolteacher was charged with DWI for having four times the legal limit in her system.
But subsequent medical monitoring reportedly revealed that despite consuming no alcohol, she continued to fail breathalyzer tests.
In Oregon, another case made a messy splash on a freeway when a truck carrying 11,000 salmon crashed.
The driver claimed his increased blood alcohol level was not from drinking.
Another man reportedly seemed drunk all the time, but had no idea what was causing his inebriation.
Nick says this mysterious drunken condition got him into a car accident when police say he blew twice the legal limit for alcohol.
And for years, he lived in between feeling intoxicated and hungover.
Nick is here.
He's been struggling with mysterious symptoms for a few years.
Take us back to the very beginning.
And thank you for being here.
I know this has changed your life in a big way.
Absolutely, thank you for having me.
At the very beginning, what were your symptoms?
That was about 10 years ago.
I was at work.
I displayed symptoms of having a stomach bug or maybe a beat in something bad.
Nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain.
A few days later, it goes away.
A couple weeks later, it comes back.
After about a year or so of on-again, off-again symptoms, it got so persistent that it was daily.
I was vomiting abdominal plane.
I couldn't really leave my couch.
It was debilitating.
So for medical purposes, Nick's wife had been documenting his behavior when he seemed a little off, a little impaired.
So take a look at this video and you tell me what you would think.
Why are you recording me?
Because I want to show this to the doctors.
Please tell me how you're feeling.
Why are you recording me?
Okay.
Does that look familiar to anybody here?
Had you been drinking when that video was taken?
I'm assuming if I were with you, I would suspect you were slipping some alcohol in.
Absolutely.
So with her, she thought, maybe I'm being naive.
I've seen him sitting on the couch.
Maybe he's got a bottle under the couch or something like that.
You know, she was skeptical at the time, but I do want to say through this whole process, my wife has been everything to me.
If it wasn't for her, I would not have met my doctors.
I would not literally be here today if it wasn't for my wife.
A little testimony to marriage.
I feel the same way, by the way.
I don't even have the condition.
So while this is all going down, obviously if you're trying to live your life and you're behaving intoxicated, you start getting in trouble with the law.
So just to put it out there, Nick got into a car accident, took a breathalyzer test.
What went through your mind when the cops told you you were four times over the legal limit?
I was blown away.
When I got in my car accident, I was roadside.
The officers that arrived on the scene, I thought it was kind of odd that they directed their attention directly at me.
I'm the one that called the police and the accident wasn't my fault.
I thought it was really peculiar that the officers were really interested in me and not the other people.
Well, they administered a roadside sobriety test and given me a breathalyzer.
I blew zero alcohol roadside twice.
When I got to the station, I blew.298, which is over three times the legal limit of like.08 in Ohio.
And the officer and I both were blown away.
I had actually even made a joke that I'd blown through a liquor bottle tip instead of a sanitized breathalyzer tube.
It's so strange, right?
To have zero at the scene, but such a high number later.
So, at this point, I'm sure the police thought you were drinking.
They have evidence now.
What was it like to have a DUI? A DUI, everybody who's rational around you think that you've got a problem with sobriety.
It was terrible.
It was heartbreaking because I knew what was going...
I knew I hadn't.
But I didn't know what was going on with my body at the time.
Through this conviction, I lost my license.
I was forced to ride a bicycle as transportation.
And during that, this was within a couple months of my conviction, the front tire of my bicycle came off.
I was in a terrible accident.
Broke all the bones in my face.
It was a very terrible accident.
I ended up at the hospital.
They could not administer pain medications for me or prep me for surgery because when the blood test came back, I had.10 alcohol in my system.
Now, this was two times that I'd had Documented evidence of alcohol in my system without having anything to drink, and I'm starting to think something is definitely going on.
I eventually took a stool test, a DNA stool test, that when the results came back, I had 400% more yeast than any person that he had ever seen before.
So there was like an aha moment, that I was fermenting sugars and carbs into alcohol through the yeast in my stomach.
Does it all make sense to you?
This is called auto-brewery syndrome.
You have a brewery in your gut.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm going to talk about the problem.
Did it feel a little bit good to know that you actually weren't what everyone said you were?
It was good to have that relief, but at the same time, now we know what's going on.
What do I do to fix it?
And that's where we're at now.
Let me bring in Dr. Barbara Cordell.
She's an expert and she's researched this auto-brewery syndrome.
She said this all started actually when your husband started reflecting the symptoms that Nick had.
What were his issues?
That's right.
It was back in 2004 and he was, first of all, he would slur his words a little bit, loss of coordination, foggy in the brain.
It was very much a mystery.
Folks, if you're running around, just stop for a second.
What you're saying, all these symptoms, brain fog, a little dizziness, exhaustion, fatigue.
Sleepiness.
This may be a cause of auto-fermentation.
So, explain, what's going on inside of our gut that's causing this issue?
So I went to the academic literature, and what I discovered is that when our guts get imbalanced and the yeast can overgrow, then that yeast is just taking on and fermenting.
And we all have a little bit of fermenting yeast, but when it grows out of control, that's when somebody like my husband, Nick, can make alcohol.
And is it all carbs that are the problem, or do you get away with it if they're healthy carbs, like from vegetables or fruits?
I've been in touch with over 200 patients now that have a diagnosis of autobrewery syndrome.
200 people have this?
Well, that we know of.
There may be more out there.
I bet there are thousands out there because we're just figuring it out now.
Absolutely.
But each person seems to be a little bit different.
Come on, Becca.
Let's show everybody what we're talking about.
This is so interesting.
I'm fascinated by it.
Okay, so let's say you take a piece of bread, right?
But potatoes can do it.
Fruit can do it.
You put it in your belly, right?
And any carb can cause this.
When you have these carbs, your GI tract turns the carbs into sugar, right?
Literally.
It's the same sugar you might have at table sugar.
And that gets turned into a bit of alcohol by the yeast in your GI tract.
That happens normally.
That's not a problem.
If you get a sip of beer, you're not getting drunk.
But some people have a lot more yeast in their GI tract.
Remember Nick had the highest that doctor had ever seen.
When you've got a lot of yeast in your intestinal tract, and the sugar's hanging out with it, well, that's what a brewery does.
And it ferments, and it turns into an abundance of alcohol.
Very different scenario.
So how soon after you have your carbs would a patient normally start to experience symptoms?
Again, that's very variable.
Depends on the person.
Some people ferment right away within 30 minutes or an hour.
Other people, like my husband, didn't ferment until the next day.
Maybe there's some of that brain fall we get after having carbs.
Well, sure.
That happens to a lot of us where we just feel sluggish.
This might be the explanation for it.
It'd be so cool.
Don't you love it when you actually find some big epiphany, big breakthrough idea?
Up next, could this happen to you?
The surprisingly common trigger that causes the syndrome.
Plus, find out how Nick finally got control of his self. - Wendy Williams.
Wrong.
When I found out that my soon-to-be ex-husband is having a baby, I'm not sitting around for that.
Real.
Nobody else's opinion counts but mine.
And not holding back.
I will get married again.
There will be a prenuptial agreement.
Plus, the truth about fast food chicken.
What you need to know before your next bite.
You can change them on with dark food coloring.
Oh my goodness.
Next Oz.
That's coming up on Monday.
We're back investigating a shocking and mysterious condition that causes you to act, feel, and be physically drunk without having a drop of wine, beer, or liquor.
It's called auto-brewery syndrome.
Brewery, like a brewery, but it's inside of you.
It's caused numerous arrests of drunk driving, cases of intoxication, even car accidents have been caused by this, so it's a big issue.
Researchers say there could be many undiagnosed cases out there, and it could affect even more children than we could imagine.
Dr. Barbara Cordell is back.
She says there's a common theme in your medicine cabinet that could trigger your gut to build up yeast and ferment carbs.
What is that?
Antibiotics.
That's the one thing that we've probably all had, but if you have a lot of them, it can cause an imbalance in your intestines and really cause problems with that yeast growing out of control.
So besides antibiotics, what are the other big causes you're identifying?
Carbohydrate diets.
We have lots of kids that are eating junk, a lot of junk food, snacks, donuts for breakfast, for heaven's sakes.
Come on over here.
We have a whole list over here I want to show people.
And this is important because these are not things that you normally suspect.
So, you mentioned junk food, right?
The medical conditions are a problem as well.
Yes, we have underlying Crohn's disease, short bowel syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome.
So a lot of our diabetes, a lot of our patients have underlying diseases, but it can also happen in someone that is otherwise healthy.
Yeah, but don't forget this one, guys.
Obesity.
Now, let's talk about the kids issue, which I just touched on a little bit earlier.
There are lots more cases among kids probably because we never suspected in them.
There are.
We've had several published cases in the academic literature of children who've had short bowel syndrome or some underlying condition that actually ferment alcohol and they've demonstrated it in the hospital.
But my guess is there may be a lot of children out there that have it that we don't even know.
Like you said, they have brain fog or they're tired in the afternoon and nobody's really diagnosing them.
Other than appearing intoxicated, what are the other classic signs of this auto brewery syndrome?
It can mimic a lot like chronic fatigue syndrome.
It can be vomiting, gassiness, lots of belching, flatus.
There are lots of, you know, GI symptoms, dyspepsia.
Do you feel like you're not coordinated?
Like a clumsy?
Yes.
Like you're drunk?
Think about it.
All right, let's bring Nick back in here.
And since you're the expert, I'm going to ask you to help Nick because I know he's been going through a lot.
So what have you tried so far to address a problem that has almost destroyed your life?
I've done all the traditional medications, antifungals, anything that the doctors have asked me.
I've changed my diet.
I've actually eliminated everything from my diet at one point.
My symptoms seem to be worse in the wintertime.
I'm lucky enough to have a wife that grew up in Hawaii.
My symptoms are almost 90% better when I'm on the islands.
Maybe we should prescribe Hawaii for you.
No kidding.
Not a bad idea.
I think everybody should be prescribed Hawaii.
That's not a bad idea.
So, Barbara, is there hope for Nick and others who are suffering from auto-brewery syndrome so they don't have to fear it?
You have carbs for the everyday for the rest of their life.
Yes.
There is hope.
And we're starting to explore a lot of alternative complementary therapies, holistic.
Probiotics is a big one.
But I think some of the complementary therapies are really starting to work.
Dick, I know this is frustrating for you.
But medicine progresses often because there are unique people with unique conditions where we learn so much that we can help millions.
You've opened my eyes, and I think folks with auto-brew syndrome are changing the way medicine thinks about how we digest food.
If it could make you so drunk that you could kill yourself by accident or others by being in an accident, and the milder versions just make you a little, you know, clumsy, well, that's a lot of this spectrum.
It's a lot we can learn from you.
So thank you for being the experiment.
Thank you very much for having me.
Check out Barbara's book, My Gut Makes Alcohol.
It's fantastic.
We'll be right back.
Up next, I sit down with former teen idol, Leif Garrett, who is baring his soul about his darkest moments with fame and addiction.
I'm sharing the truth you haven't heard.
Here's one of the biggest teen idols in the world with hit records, global tours, and TV specials.
His face was all over magazines and posters that plastered the bedroom walls of millions of teens.
But for actor and singer Leif Garrett, the glare of all that instant fame led him to self-destruction and to addictions that almost took not only his life but his friends as well.
Today he's burying his soul and revealing his darkest secrets about how he survived.
He shot onto the scene in the late 60s, appearing in the hottest TV shows, and even landing a role in the movie that defined the decade, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
But his teen heartthrob status skyrocketed to pop superstardom when he recorded the hit single, I Was Made For Dancing, in 1978. From there, the sky was the limit for 16-year-old Leif Garrett.
But being raised by a single working mom, Leif lacked a father figure in his life.
Like many child stars with little or no adult supervision on the road, he would turn to drugs and alcohol at an early age.
With international fame, Leif was running with an A-list crowd and was given a free pass to do whatever he pleased.
He was exposed to an endless supply of alcohol, drugs, women, and near brushes with death.
By the 90s, the handsome teen idol looked like this.
His downward spiral continued, with Leif making headline after headline for drug arrests and relapses.
Now he's coming clean about all of it and what saved him from his addictions and painful past.
Dave Garrett is here in person.
You know, we heard the highs and the lows, how you survived.
So a miracle for many of us to contemplate.
Why did you decide to open up now to tell your story?
It was the right time.
I've lived with some of these, if you will, secrets for quite a while and I just needed to clear my conscience.
And also, if anything, if I can help somebody give advice what to look out for or something like that, then that's even better.
But I really wanted to just tell my story and let people know directly from me what it's about.
In your book, which is fantastic, Idle Truth, you talk about your childhood, about the difficulties in your family.
So your mom's by herself, as you and your sister, decides to put you into acting, and all of a sudden, overnight, you're an incredible child star.
What was that like?
It was great.
I loved it.
First of all, I didn't have to go to school, regular school.
That's good.
So, you know, it was just fun, too.
It was like playtime, almost, you know?
So you're riding high.
Now, on our show, we have talked about pedophiles in Hollywood.
This is something that you all become aware of because we've been harping on it because these are unprotected young people.
There was a producer since passed away that was reported by others, not you, to have been a sexual predator of young boys.
I know you know this story and apparently he approached you and your mom actually more about your career.
Yeah, it was under the, you know, we just came back from Israel for six months, and I did two films over there, and we came back.
You know, all of a sudden, we've got somebody who's Warren Beatty's cousin, who's associate producer on all of his films and things like that, and he, you know, was basically under the guise of, you know, get you into a film with Warren and all this, and further your career, and Nothing ever came of any of that.
It was creepy.
My mom didn't...
I don't understand the train of thought of trusting somebody that you don't really know, someone you just met, just because they're involved in the film business in a rather good position, so to speak, and Warren Beatty's cousin.
As you look back on interactions with that gentleman, were there signs that he may have been grooming you?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I was very naive as well, but also very young.
How old were you?
I was 15, 16. Yeah, I was 15. And...
We play racquetball.
First of all, he knew Led Zeppelin was my favorite band, so bringing me to a concert, Led Zeppelin 77, getting a really nice Jaguar rent-a-car, and here's the keys, kid, drive, and oh, hey, let's smoke some marijuana.
Let's, you know.
Stuff like that, you know?
And you were 50, how old was he?
I'm guessing around 30, late 30s, something like that, you know?
Maybe mid-30s.
And yet it was an innocent time for all of us.
It was.
Nowadays, it just wouldn't go down like that, you know?
So let's talk about November the 3rd, 1979. I'm sitting in Boston in college.
And you're almost dying.
You're high on quaaludes.
Yep.
Your 18th birthday is around then.
Yeah, it was five days later.
So about the same age.
Dave's car is on an L.A. freeway.
He crashes it, and it leaves his friend in the passenger seat, a paraplegic for life.
Yep.
What really happened that night?
What led to the accident?
Well, just a group of young people hanging out together, drinking.
Taking substances, and because we were feeling the down effects, looking for something to lift us up.
And we were elected the ones to go find cocaine.
So you're high on quaaludes and drinking, so you're partying with your friends.
The two of you leave.
Would you drive in that state now?
Hell no.
Do you remember the accident?
Yeah, absolutely.
Quite vividly.
We'd actually passed the exit that we knew we were supposed to get off on a couple of times, apparently higher than we thought.
And heading back towards the house, he fell asleep and I had no idea that sometimes he fell asleep with his eyes open.
And I'm holding the steering wheel like this, and I reached over to, you know, see if he's okay, and just carved, you know, with the steering wheel.
We clipped the rear end of another car, which spun us around, and then hit the curb, and it went like that, down an 80-footed bit.
Flipped over.
80 feet?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, and he was yelling at me to straighten his legs out.
And his legs were already straight.
And the scent of gasoline was rather overwhelming.
And the people who I clipped were standing up at the top.
Yelling at me, you know, was I crazy?
You little and I'm just trying to get help.
So there used to be the call boxes.
And so went up and I actually was the one to make the phone call to call the police and have them come.
You divide your life into before November 3rd and after the accident.
Yeah.
How has it changed you?
Well, I'm a big-time advocate of take a cab.
Don't drink and drive.
And I wasn't as close a friend with the gentleman as, you know, Roland, as I was, is his name.
He has since passed on.
Sorry.
Yeah.
But it's kind of, you know, I had to make better decisions.
I wasn't making great decisions.
I was...
Disillusioned in my own career and my life at the time.
Taking things I should not have been taking, but didn't have the parental guidance that I truly needed.
I honestly wish that I had more discipline in my life.
I truly honestly wished I had somebody telling me no instead of always being told, sure kid, whatever you want.
So coming up, the rock bottom moment that Liv says changed everything.
Stick with us.
Natalie Wood's Death.
An Oz exclusive.
Her boat captain reveals never before her details.
Robert Wagner was in that jealous rage.
That's coming up on Tuesday.
We are back with former teen heartthrob Leif Garrett, who's revealing the truth about his addiction.
Now, in the wake of a car accident that rendered his friend a paraplegic for life, Leif says his life continued to spiral out of control.
And one of the rockiest times, you argue, is when you broke up with Nicolette Sheridan, which I can understand how it hits you hard on top of all the other things that were going on.
Why did the relationship end?
How did it end?
My career was, at that time, started down.
Her career was starting up.
And we were best friends in the whole world, or we cleared rooms.
I mean, it was...
Was she the love of your life?
Yes, yes.
She was my first real, deep, deep love.
So, in the meantime, you turned to partying.
And you continued to crumble under the weight of your addictions.
I'm going to read this little excerpt from Idle Truth, because I think it was compelling.
I could handle the drinking.
I could handle the cocaine.
I could handle the Quaaludes.
The heroin was a whole other story.
Let me just start using heroin.
Oh, man.
It was much later on in my life.
It was when I was trying to resurrect the musical career, and all of my heroes in music We're known to partake.
And a lot of them, like Keith Richards, any of the guys from the Stones, Aerosmith, Zeppelin.
I thought being categorized in that sort of group would maybe further or help my moving on to the rock and roll, the real rock and roll.
So you get up to $300 a day smoking black tar heroin.
Yes.
When did you finally hit rock bottom?
I think three months in county jail was pretty much...
Yeah, that was...
Yeah, that's a great photo right there, isn't it?
That haunts the hell out of me, that photograph.
For good reason.
Shia LaBeouf came out this week and said, getting arrested...
Which happened when I was making my brother-in-law's movie, by the way.
Wow.
Saved his life.
Did these guys save your life?
Huh.
I guess in a very profound way, yeah.
Because being locked up is...
Not having your freedom is a really strong signal.
It's very...
I don't think you realize how important it is until you lose it.
As such with many things.
How has your recovery been?
I've had my ups and downs with it.
Let's take it one day at a time.
I found though it's interesting because a lot of people Subscribe to the meetings and things like that.
I personally found every time I went to the meetings, I wanted to use more afterwards.
Because people get up and talk and they're like, oh man, I remember when we did this and it was so great and we were hiring a kite.
And it's a big pickup joint.
Is that right?
Oh, I swear to God, it's so funny because everyone is there changing one addiction for another one.
And you cannot get sober unless you want to quit.
But you have to check out the things that made you start using in the first place and then want to not do it.
Come on over with me.
I want you to share something.
This audience loves you.
I love them.
Thank you.
We're representing the pain that a lot of Americans feel because addiction is such a big part of our lives.
So come join me on the stoop here.
Have a seat.
All right.
I'll turn it over to you.
What's the advice you would give folks about addiction?
What would you have to say to folks who are struggling right now?
Where you were when you got put in jail?
You got to figure out if that's the road you want to continue down.
It's not a pleasant road.
It's a lot of...
It's a lot of pain and suffering, and it's important to want to not do it.
Because you can't stop unless you want to stop.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Very well set.
Thank you.
Thanks for your story.
Next memoir, I Don't Truth is fabulous.
Pick it up.
There he is, Handsome Devil.
We'll be right back.
Coming up, health court is in session, and my next case is mom versus everybody else.
She's suing her whole family for not cleaning the house.
You won't believe what our expert witness, Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran, has to say.
Bickering couples, warring neighbors, friends and family divided.
When it's time for resolution, it's time to take them to health court, where Dr. Oz rules.
The plaintiff is fed up with her entire family.
She says they've turned her house into a health hazard by not cleaning up their messes.
The defendants are tired of their mom nagging them about cleaning and think she's overreacting.
They want Dr. Oz's help convincing their mom that their mess isn't a health risk.
It's just a little messy.
Health court is now in session.
So, Elena, this is a first.
You have brought your entire family to health court.
Are they all guilty?
Undeniably.
Why did you decide to bring this case to health court rather than just grounding everybody?
You have that power.
Because I think that when I say things over and over again, it almost becomes like they don't hear it.
So I'd like an expert to weigh in on the situation.
Is that true?
Do you ignore your mother's opinion?
Let me speak to the oldest son.
No.
Not true.
You have a video evidence I believe you wish to submit.
I do.
May I roll it now?
Please.
Please roll the footage.
Good morning, Dr. Oz.
This is a typical morning.
Food, plates, art, even a bagel being used as a phone prop.
Behind me now is our bathroom, which is basically a clothes hamper and towel rack.
Enter, if you dare, is appropriate.
This is the little boy's room, and as much as my dog is really good about helping clean up, there's always a trail of goldfish everywhere, as well as bowls of tomatoes.
And while I applaud their healthy eating habits, they need to bring them back to the kitchen.
The children seem to be enjoying this.
Is it an accurate representation of the mess in your house?
Their room.
Their room.
Not your room.
Even within the siblings it's robbery.
No.
No.
Order in the court please.
Order in the court.
So, Blake, you brought a bag of evidence.
I'd like to show you exhibit A. Please bring it up to the bench.
This is every mother's pain.
They're called goldfish.
They crack very easily.
They get spewed about.
And I even have a dog, and it does no good.
Well, I must say I understand why.
If these were crunched up, I gather this is what happens.
Oh, please.
That happens, right?
And then you end up with pieces of goldfish.
Oh, millions.
So...
Let me ask the father, defendant, when you witness this bag of goldfish, crumbled little pieces of cheese-like substance all over the house, how do you defend yourselves?
What do you have to say?
Um, I just kind of point at the three of them.
Let's take it from me, if you don't mind, because I got a big family.
Big families mean big messes, right?
It takes a big boss to be able to handle that kind of family business.
So my expert witness today is a real estate mogul who's bought and sold hundreds of houses.
She's the home expert who has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Please welcome the Shark Tank's shark with the biggest bite, Barbara Corcoran.
Barbara, thank you for joining us. thank you for joining us.
You may be seated.
Okay.
We're in trouble.
We'll find out who's in trouble in a second.
I see them blushing a bit.
So you say you have some evidence that will serve as a reality check for this family, and they need it.
Okay.
I have a few questions, please.
First, for the defendants.
That's you, kids.
Who takes out the garbage?
Who's in charge of walking the dog, setting the table?
Okay.
Number one.
You've created your own problem.
You haven't imposed discipline whatsoever.
There's no clarity.
No one really knows what their job is.
That's a problem.
How about you, Dad?
What's your job in the household?
I do everything.
I'm asking Nathan.
What does your dad really do, Nathan?
Um, well...
Nothing.
Nothing?
Oh, my gosh.
Order in the car, please.
Okay.
They weren't listening before this.
Mom, number one, your role is to be the chief executive officer of your household.
You're in charge.
Yes.
You can't run a thing unless you take charge.
And to take charge, you have to have clarity.
And that's why we're going to test this little theory.
We're going to spin it and see who's really in charge of...
Laundry, mom.
Clean room, mom.
It's gonna come out mom every time because you dictated it that way, right?
Well, before we go further with this line of questioning, the case has become really about the health and the science behind that health that this family needs.
So I've asked my med unit to biopsy the areas of your house that the plaintiff felt most grossed out about.
We're gonna reveal those results.
The complications created by this mess that the defendant apparently is creating when we come back.
We are back with our biggest case yet.
Mom versus everyone else.
The plaintiff is so fed up with her family not cleaning up around the house that she's actually suing them in health court.
She says this is so bad it's a hazard to their health.
The defendants, her own family, think mom is overreacting and wants her to stop nagging them about cleaning.
Joining us as our expert witness is real estate mogul and host of Shark Tank, Barbara Corcoran.
So we tested around the toilet seat, in the bathroom.
Lab results are all in for all the different places we biopsied around the house.
Do you have the results?
Thank you very much, Ms. Corcoran.
Oh my.
My, my, my.
Okay.
The highest amount of bacteria count you can get is 1.5 million.
The test doesn't go higher than that.
Keep that in mind.
The toilet seat in the bathroom had...
More than 1.5 million coliform bacterial units, which basically means coliform bacteria, of course, they're found in your poop, means you've got stuff hanging out there that shouldn't be hanging out there.
Is that a possibility?
I asked the young men in the defendant's guide.
Maybe.
Okay.
An honest answer.
We also tested your kitchen sink.
Results?
Again, greater than 1.5 million coliform bacteria.
Those are the same bacteria I talked about in the toilet.
They're also in the kitchen sink.
Plus, plus, you had more than a half a million yeast units.
Also a problem.
We have one more lab test result.
The teddy bear.
Which we also studied carefully, I'm happy to report, had a very low bacterial count.
So if we come back, we're gonna set this little guy free.
Come back over here.
You may have your teddy bear.
No longer quarantine is an exhibit.
Hope that makes you happy.
So Fabi, how do you feel about these lab test results?
Surprises, defendant, plaintiffs?
I wouldn't say I'm surprised.
I think it's disgusting.
But I think that that's the problem, is that I think that that constant need to clean up or whatever, you end up spending, you know, I don't know if I want the kids touching chemicals, and so I need to do it, but then there's other things going on, so I feel that that's where if they could help with the picking up the goldfish and such, then I could do the other.
What do you think about these petrifying results, so much coliform bacteria floating around the house?
Are you sure that's not exaggerated?
No, these are...
Order, please.
These are official health court documents.
They were biopsied by my medical unit, run by the laboratory tests.
We trusted all these tests.
I'm quite certain they're accurate.
You know why?
Because it's pretty common to have these numbers in America.
Because there are lots of families who actually should be defendants today.
But you were dragged in front of me, so now you have to represent them.
Alright.
I'm ready to make my ruling.
Barbara, I need you to help me on this one.
Running a family is like running a business.
You've been successful at both.
I've been successful at raising four stepchildren, two kids of my own, and I can tell you this is your lifesaver.
You need a clear chart as to who's in charge of what.
That's your job as the chief executive, and your job, Dad, is to back her up and make sure it happens.
May I ask you, Ethan?
Ethan, I have to ask you, do you text your friends on your cell phone?
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, I do.
Do you enjoy your friends?
Do you have nice friends?
Yeah.
Okay, Mom, that's your weapon.
Oh, I know.
Oh, no.
This is called execution.
They don't do their chores for a day.
They don't have their phone for the day.
Easy to remember.
Oh, no.
And Dad, I noticed you're not on here.
As Barbara pointed out, dads don't need to be told what to do.
They should be looking around to see where there are opportunities to help.
Yeah.
Fill in the gaps.
Yeah.
Alright, we've got a difficult decision here, but I am ordering my ruling that the whole family is grounded.
And you will remain grounded until all of your chores are completed.
You can use your new chore chart from Barbara Corcoran and get your house healthier and make your mom healthier and happier at the same time.
And while you're grounded, while you're grounded, let me finish here, you can only watch The Dr. Raj Show and Shark Tank, which airs on Sunday.
Why not?
Kinda made some sense, guys, right?
No.
I think so, and I think this, Barbara, I definitely think that this was the right thing to do.
I can't wait!
Wait a minute, I'm taller, I'm taller!
You wanna take someone in your life to HealthCorp?
Go to DrRoz.com slash HealthCorp to submit your case.
Holiday time means holiday photos and no family escapes the awkward Christmas photo.
My family?
No exception.
We just took this.
It was a battle, right?
Let me just show you a couple things.
First of all, we want to get the whole family, all 11 of us, in one photo.
And there are some people who are really good at it, like Zoe and Daphne.
They're really good smilers.
Some people don't like to smile, like these two guys up here.
Oliver and Little John, who are basically cut from the same cloth.
And then other people looked like they were eating something lemony.
But the rookie was these two ones, the young ones.
Little Gigi and Little Nika.
These guys, they usually are crying.
When they're in Tammy photos.
We finally got one picture of the Nika that looked good, but this, we couldn't deal with this.
And I was gonna Photoshop Gigi out of the shot, that didn't go over too well.
And I was gonna then change her head so she wasn't crying, but every picture looked like this.
So we just made her a ho, ho, ho.
And I think actually it's not a bad way of going.
You poke fun at the whole thing.
And I was feeling down.
I was feeling less than it.
And then I came across these equally awkward family photos that went viral.
And I knew we were in good company.
So meet the Pierce family.
Their holiday photos are very beautiful, sometimes.
There's Santa Claus, who's also crying, by the way, right?
As the kids are in front of him.
I learned you always back the child up to Santa.
Never let the child see Santa.
No child runs to Santa.
Because he doesn't look...
Oh, I mean, you think about it.
Would you run to that man normally if you didn't know the story?
All right, the second photo, the daughter, Ellie, she takes off running, which is what I would do.
And by the third photo, the only one that anyone ever saw, they look like this, right?
Not quite what the reality is.
Look at this next photo.
This is a family falling out on the beach.
Happy, happy, happy.
What happened here next?
Look at that.
Like you know, no babies are hurt in the making of this photo.
They're trying to get a candid photo of them jumping in the air.
It didn't work out so well, which is why we gave that up in the Oz family a long time ago.
Now, you've seen the bad photos.
Let's now break down the science of an awkward pose.
First, there's the double chin.
You've all been there, right?
It's not the beard here, it's the chin I want you to look at.
Then they say you can avoid this by bringing your chin forward slightly, and then slightly tilt to the left or to the right, right?
Then you can relax your shoulders.
Then there's the deer in the headlights look.
Right?
Now you can avoid this by relaxing your face, and in the last second, just before the camera snaps, look up.
And smile, right?
And then there's the over-grin.
I'm guilty of this, right?
He's not really happy, is he?
Right?
They avoid this by not saying cheese, right?
With all your might.
You simply smile.
And then you put all that together, and your before look will look like this.
I think this is pretty cool.
Now, according to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, taking photos increases enjoyment of experiences, so awkward or not, keep taking the pictures, keep posting them.
Happy holidays from my family to yours.
Remember, the power of change lies in the power of you.
Just one person with one voice speaking the truth.
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