All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 28, 2023 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:30
Arsenic in Rice? Alternatives and Solutions | Dr. Oz | S6 | Ep 51 | Full Episode
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
First, it was arsenic and apple juice.
Now, a new bombshell.
Today on Dr. Oz, arsenic found in a food you eat every day.
Dr. Oz reveals what it is and what you can do about it.
Plus, TV star NeNe Lee.
I'm very worried because I don't want one to come back.
The condition that has her scared to travel with her castmates.
Coming up next on Dr. Oz.
Two years ago, there was a lot of controversy when we reported there were high levels of arsenic in one of your most trusted and wholesome foods, apple juice.
Now that problem has been fixed.
But today, breaking news, a new bombshell from Consumer Reports.
They're saying that arsenic has also been found in another of your most basic foods, rice.
It's the latest development that raises the question, why is one of nature's most dangerous poisons, arsenic, in our food?
It should be one of the most wholesome drinks for you and your kids.
Apple juice.
But we have discovered that apple juice can contain arsenic.
Virtually overnight, our investigation of arsenic and apple juice turned this everyday staple into a source of national controversy and concern.
Two months after our initial report, Consumer Reports conducted their own investigation, and their results were just as alarming.
We looked at 88 samples of apple and grape juice, and what we found is about 10% of those samples exceeded the drinking water limit for arsenic.
Together, our investigations helped pave the way for an FDA proposal to set a new limit on arsenic in apple juice.
Dr. Oz gained widespread attention when he claimed apple juice may contain arsenic.
Acclaimed studies later backed up.
You were right.
Thank you very much.
Now, Consumer Reports has widened their investigation of arsenic in America's food supply.
Today, their latest findings.
Taken from nearly 700 samples of rice and rice products.
Their most surprising discovery?
Some of the rice grown here in America had the highest levels of inorganic arsenic.
The most harmful form compared with rice from other parts of the world.
The Consumer Reports analysis also looked at popular alternative grains like quinoa, millet and amaranth and found they all had significantly less arsenic than rice.
So today, what you need to know to reduce your family's exposure to arsenic in rice?
Which grains are safest and where to buy them?
Rashi Rangan from Consumer Reports is here.
So what did your investigation reveal?
Well, Dr. Oz, we've been looking at rice since about 2012 when we released our first investigation, and then we did this follow-up.
The two main points are that rice from the South Central United States, that includes Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, tends to be higher in arsenic than rice from other regions.
Also, what we know is that brown rices tend to be higher than white rices.
How does the arsenic even get into the rice in the first place?
Well, you know, rice is one of those commodities that likes to take up arsenic if it's there in the environment.
It's grown in water-flooded fields.
It's grown in conditions that lack oxygen.
Those are all really conducive conditions to taking up arsenic.
And rice is one of the top foods that seems to take it up.
You know, I heard the murmuring in the crowd when you said that brown rice actually surprisingly has higher amounts of arsenic than the white rice.
In fact, I'm going to share with everybody why this is the case.
And this is important for us all to understand because we've been talking about brown rice and how it's usually good for you.
Now, brown rice is better for you.
Why?
Because basically, white rice is brown rice that's had that outer shell removed where the bran is.
And you want that bran.
It's got fiber in it.
So polishing it gets rid of that and makes it white rice.
Brown rice keeps that outer layer intact, but in that outer layer, if it's in, for example, soil or water with arsenic, the arsenic is accumulated, it's present in that outer layer.
So when you polish it and are able to get rid of that outer layer to make it white rice, you, by coincidence, by accident, also get rid of the arsenic.
Now, I'm especially concerned about this because I recommend brown rice on this show all the time.
And for many of us, it's part of our daily diet.
We're trying to do the right thing for our families by picking brown rice, yet Consumer Reports is telling us it actually has more arsenic, which is, again, for many of us, very unsettling.
Let me ask a couple of moms.
Michelle, am I speaking to this?
Oh, you're Michelle?
Yes.
How are you?
Hi, how are you?
So when you hear that brown rice is rich in arsenic, and more importantly, rice in general has arsenic, how does it make you feel?
It's very distressing because I eat it all the time and so does my family.
We eat a lot.
We substitute it for white rice.
Alicia, speak to the whole issue of rice in general and having arsenic in it.
I was shocked to find this.
I have a toddler at home and we eat brown rice all the time and to find out that there's arsenic now in brown rice.
First it was apple juice.
He's a toddler so he was getting apple juice and now it's brown rice.
It's very shocking and it's very disheartening and it's scary.
It's a bit frustrating, isn't it?
Yes.
I feel that way as well.
But I have good news today.
There are some ways we can actually improve the amount of arsenic in our rice, and there's some selections, choices we can make in the stores.
We just have to be a tiny bit more careful.
So I'm going to go over those right now.
Thanks for being part of this.
All right, so Consumer Reports breaks down rice into specific categories from highest levels of arsenic to the lowest.
I'm going to go through those very carefully so we're all clear on this.
They found high levels in many types of rice that are grown in this country in our southern states, specifically Arkansas and Louisiana and Texas, south central states.
So Ravashi, walk us through the specific kinds of rice you're worried about.
Yeah, so, you know, we looked at rices and we know that brown is higher, for example, than white, but we also looked at a number of different rice products.
Rice is in a lot of different processed foods, but for all the things you see here, hot cereals, cold cereals, rice pasta, the crackers, and the milk.
One to two servings for an adult is going to put them just about at or over our recommended weekly limit for arsenic.
So we have a whole lot more online in terms of how you want to navigate, how much you can eat of what.
We also have something for children.
But these in particular fell at the highest of our list in terms of foods that have the highest levels of arsenic that have rice.
Alright, so just to be clear about this, the traditional white rice that you all eat, and the brown rice that you eat, and all these are the places where we often find rice now, in general, in general, you're going to have to pull back Or do some things I'm going to talk about in a moment to modify the rice.
Otherwise, you're going to be getting more arsenate than Consumer Reports thinks makes more sense.
All right, let's go over here because it's not all bad news.
This report, because you looked at a lot of different types of rice, showed that there are some that actually test very low.
These regions of the world, one of these regions is California, so in this country, but also from India and from Pakistan, the Basmati rices.
Explain specifically what you found and what makes sense.
Yeah, so after looking at hundreds of data points on rice, we wanted to drill down in this investigation to see if we could give people some good news and some better news, and we did find that.
So, depending on the type of rice and where it's grown, you can see big differences in the amounts of arsenic.
White basmati rice from India, Pakistan, or California was all significantly lower in arsenic than other rices.
Sushi rice, it turns out, grown anywhere in the United States, including the South Central United States, was also low in arsenic.
So these are good alternatives.
We're recommending that people can actually have up to four and a half servings a week of this type of rice, compared to two servings a week, which is our upper limit we recommend for regular rice.
Now, if you're looking for brown rice, and I think a lot of people are and it has good nutrition, we recommend that you choose basmati rice from California, India, or Pakistan.
Just like the white, it's got relatively lower levels than other brown rices from other parts of the world.
So again, you could have a brown rice selection, but it's got to be the basmati type.
You've given us ideas of where these rices are safe.
But if you didn't know that, how would you know if your rice had arsenic in it or not?
It's really, you just can't tell.
You just can't tell.
So there's no label for it.
There aren't even any standards for it.
So it's a real sort of Wild West out there in terms of arsenic levels in your food.
You can't see it.
But you can know, based on our analysis, what to choose.
And that's why we felt it was so important to look at so many data points so we could make that recommendation.
All right, so that's the general rules of thumb.
Now, I've got some good news.
You can reduce your risk no matter what.
I'm going to share with you some insights that I've never talked about in the show, but we did a lot of homework because I realized taking away rice, a basic staple of our food supply, doesn't work well for most people.
So here's what you're going to do.
You're going to rinse the rice that you buy thoroughly before cooking it.
Put it in some water.
Shake it around with your clean hands.
Do that two or three times.
Just wash it in some water.
That's done in a lot of cultures anyway.
We should be doing it.
Secondly, I want you to cook your rice like pasta.
You're going to use a ratio of about six cups of water to one cup of rice and then drain the excess water when you're done.
The research says that can actually lower the amount of arsenic in rice by up to a half.
It's a big deal.
Just by cooking our rice differently, it gives you a lot more flexibility.
You can have more rice in your food supply.
And the last thing I want to ask you to think about is varying the kinds of grains you're getting.
You can substitute rice with quinoa, with millet, with amaranth.
There's other choices out there.
These tend to have less arsenic, and they're all found in your supermarket, and they're all affordable.
I think we've given a lot of helpful advice to moms, especially, so our families can be healthier.
But let's just turn now to our nation.
You know, part of the reason there was such a stink about arsenic in apple juice, and now I think there'll also be a lot of noise about arsenic in rice, is that we are starting to understand that our food supply is not quite as safe as it needs to be.
Now, we made huge inroads with apple juice.
Where's the government on brown rice?
So where the government is right now is they've assessed maybe 1,200 different data points on rice, 1,200 different products.
They've actually measured arsenic levels.
So that's a good thing.
They put those out.
We've carefully analyzed those.
That helped lead us to our recommendations that we could make.
Where the government is now is in looking over that data and determining what the risk actually is.
And so until they finish doing that, we don't have any standards for rice and arsenic.
So let me challenge you if I can.
We reached out to the USA Rice Federation for a statement on the safety of U.S. rice.
Here's what they said.
This is their response to what Consumer Reports is sharing with us today for the first time.
Research conducted by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. rice industry shows arsenic levels around the U.S. grown rice are below safe maximum levels established this year by the World Health Organization.
They seem to disagree.
Yeah, so let's talk about what arsenic is.
It's a very potent leukemogen, and there is no safe amount of arsenic.
Now, at the world global level, they've been trying to set a standard, and we think it's great that they actually have set something.
But the standard that they set is not a threshold of safety.
It's just a threshold.
And so they're saying below which is still not necessarily safe.
And our recommended limit is actually far lower than what was set at the global level, and we think that rices can actually achieve that lower level.
At the end of the day, less arsenic is better, and we shouldn't be setting levels for things where all products can already meet that standard already.
All right, so I'm going to offer some thoughts here.
Again, I'm appalled that an everyday food staple like rice that's at homes across our country can contain levels of arsenic that are higher than desired for our safety.
As we continue to shed light on the weakness in our food supply, I'm calling on the FDA to please take a careful look at this investigation, which was very well done by Consumer Reports.
The FDA needs to set a limit for the amount of arsenic in rice this year.
They ought to be able to do it.
They need to do it in order to protect our families from this toxic element.
We'll be right back.
Coming up, she's one of the most outspoken personalities in reality TV. Actress and real housewife NeNe Leakes always has something to say.
From toxic relationships to taking center stage, NeNe gets vocal with Dr. Oz.
Next.
All new Dr. Oz.
Three things Dr. Sanjay Gupta wants you to know now.
There are some misconceptions out there.
People should be more aware of it.
Could hurt them if they don't know the truth.
All new Dr. Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Media Leaks of The Real Housewives of Atlanta is here today for important health advice that can also help you.
Take a look at NeNe in action on Atlanta Housewives.
I love you, Cynthia.
You're my sister.
I'm just seeing a Cynthia that I didn't know existed.
Delete, erase, unfollow, whatever.
Have you been an orgy?
That's an orgy, because that's got to be something that's stinking and funky.
Threesome, foursome, fivesome, none of that works for me, honey.
They're going to have to have a lot of hand sanitizer.
No ma'am.
Please welcome Nene Leakes.
You look wonderful.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
How are you?
Welcome back.
Come join me.
Thank you.
So you're here.
Isn't you wonderful?
Last December when you were here, we were worried.
You had this big health scare with pulmonary embolism.
How's that doing?
Oh, my gosh.
So we still haven't found out where they came from, but I'm on a daily medication, and I'm doing well.
There's no clots, but I'm still very worried because I don't want one to come back.
We worry about most things we don't understand and when you don't know why you had the clot.
But the things you can do to prevent it, and I noticed that, this is a rumor, so I'm gonna find out if it's true, that when your whole team went off to the Philippines, with all that drama that happened over there, you didn't join them.
I'm hearing you didn't go because you were worried about a clot.
I was worried about the clot.
It was a 19-hour flight.
The first leg was going to be 13. No, the first leg was 15, and then four more after that, so I just didn't think it was safe.
You're very wise.
Yeah.
That would have been an unsafe thing to do.
Are you sad you missed the trip?
Um, no.
All right.
Not really.
I love the fact that you put your health first.
Yeah, thank you.
And you could have had a blood clot, and you know that they can die.
Yeah.
Speaking of health first, let's go.
Toxic relationships cause stress.
Stress causes physical problems.
And we see this happen over and over again.
You certainly have had your slew of toxic relationships you've addressed on the show.
So I'd love to hear your advice for women who are watching right now who are trapped in toxic relationships.
Well, if you're talking about a toxic relationship as in with your partner, I would have to say that you probably should seek counseling.
I would say you would take baby steps.
You would probably make a plan before you just escape, if you could.
But as far as friendships are concerned, sometimes friendships just come to the end of the road where you have to say goodbye, and that's okay.
I think it's okay if your friendship ends.
If it has to end, it just has to end.
If it's toxic, if it's not meaning you any good.
How do you end it?
Goodbye.
Goodbye?
So Nini said she always knew she'd become a star, and her star is about to shine a bit brighter.
She's making her Broadway debut as the wicked stepmother in the musical Cinderella.
She actually recently tweeted this photo of a costume fitting.
That's very nice, very becoming.
You're probably nervous, you're excited, panicked.
You know what?
I rehearse every single day.
It is very stressful.
It's very hard.
I'm singing, dancing, acting all at the same time.
So that's a lot for me.
I'm scared.
I'm scared.
I hope I'm able to do it justice.
I really am.
But I'm going to need your help.
I need your help because, as I said, I sing.
I sing a lot.
I want to stay healthy.
It's important to me to keep my voice healthy, just to be healthy while I'm here in cold New York City.
I'm from Georgia.
We're not as cold.
No.
I got a couple tips.
These are tips for everybody, by the way, not just wonderful actresses.
Come on over here.
Yeah.
So the first is humidifier.
I don't know if you own one.
I don't have one, but I know about these.
So just laugh this in.
Just...
It feels really fresh.
So it makes the room feel fresh, makes you feel fresh.
But most importantly, when you breathe in moist air...
Wow, this is like blowing my hair off.
It lubricates your sinuses.
You know, your sinuses dry out, all the stuff in there that you're supposed to be able to get out, get stuck.
Then you get full sinuses, you feel congested, you're not going to have the right notes anymore.
But for the rest of the mere mortals like me who can't sing...
You can sing.
Well, we're going to find that in a moment.
We'll find out...
But it becomes a big issue.
So I think every home in America, especially if it's chilly outside, should have a humidifier to deal with the dry air.
That's what happens, right?
Cold air gets heated in your house, but there's no moisture in it.
Okay, so I see one bit of advice I have never given on this show before.
It has to do with keeping your voice in perfect Broadway shape.
I actually brought a world expert.
These are vocal exercises.
I want you to warm up your cords for 10 minutes before every show.
Can you do that?
Yeah.
When you're getting wicked, when you're about to get into the role.
Laura's joining us.
You're on top vocal coast when you're being wicked.
Top vocal coast in New York.
Thank you for joining us.
Hi, thanks.
So show NeNe what you should be doing.
Great.
Well, I'm going to show both of you what you should be doing because you use your voice every day as well.
Yeah.
So first thing I want you to do is a couple of sirens.
Eee!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I hear that symphony in your brain right now.
I hear that symphony in your brain right now.
One more.
There you go.
Now to relax your jaw.
I feel like I'm in Shrek.
I can't stop smiling.
Smiling is good.
You should have fun when you're singing.
Now we're going to loosen up your jaw a little bit.
Just what we call lip trills.
Okay.
Audience, can you please help me on these?
I can't do this.
You need to have four lips.
Now, your lips are much more. - If I had lips like that, I'd make them work.
Great.
Now, let's open up that throat, which is your big speaker.
Yeah.
This is why my kids won't let me sing.
You keep going.
Be sure to check out Nini.
I'm Broadway in Cinderella.
You can watch her and her fellow housewives of Atlanta every single night.
I'm Bravo.
Be right back.
Coming up, does food occupy your thoughts every part of the day?
Is your eating out of control?
Feelings of failure?
Then guilt.
If emotional binging is taking over your life, break the vicious cycle today, next.
Our next guest says food occupies your thoughts every second of the day.
She can't stop until the whole pizza is gone or the entire carton of ice cream is empty.
She is struggling with binge eating and has taken over her life.
Take a look.
My name is Natalie and I'm a 29-year-old mother of three.
I'm obsessed with thinking about food.
I'm binging all the time.
It is a constant fight with food.
It's an internal struggle that pulls at me all day long.
For as long as I can remember, I've turned to food for comfort.
When I was about 11 or 12, I was teased by other kids when I was in school because I was chubbier than the other girls, and I would come home and use food to dissociate from reality.
Emotionally, I was torn apart.
I cried every day, and I'd come home and binge, and over time that just became my normal.
When I was in junior high and high school, it was very normal for me to eat half or more than half of a 17-inch pizza by myself.
To this day, I consider myself a pizza addict.
I love pizza.
Pizza is my best friend of food.
I obsess over pizza sometimes.
When the pizza arrives, I pick out the kids' pieces and I would work around which ones I secretly want.
Pieces that have the most sauce.
I use food to cope with life.
I'm constantly stressed.
I'm a stay-at-home mom and food helps me get through day to day.
When I wake up, I immediately think of what I'm going to eat and what kind of snacks I can have through the day.
I'll make two batches of cookies and there's none there at the end of the day.
I have eaten them all.
They're gone.
I have binged on a dozen donuts.
I've eaten a pint of ice cream by myself.
I've eaten an entire box of honey buns in like 30 minutes.
I go through these craving kicks where I just pick one or two snacks to obsess about.
Currently I'm in this kick where I eat this rice cereal.
And it has peanut butter and chocolate and some powdered sugar on it and once you mix it all together it's a peanut butter chocolatey heaven.
All through the day I'll just keep going back for more and more and by the end of the day it's usually gone.
I feel a tremendous amount of shame when I binge eat.
This is where I have my secret drawer and this is what I go to when I want some sweets and the kids don't know about it.
At bedtime, I can sit in my room and I can go ahead and just grab something out of my drawer and eat it.
I know my binge eating is unhealthy.
I have gained up to a hundred pounds over the last several years.
I have constant headaches.
I feel like a failure.
My biggest fear is that if I don't get my binge eating under control, is that I will have secluded myself and eaten myself into a miserable existence.
It's time to break the cycle, not just for me, but for my family.
Natalie's joining us.
How does eating make you feel out of control?
It's all I think about.
It's taking time away from my kids.
It's taking over my life.
And what do you feel when you're binging?
You're actually putting all that food down.
I'm pushing my feelings down and I feel like I'm different from other people, that I'm disappointing and I feel like a failure.
Those are interesting words you're using.
Disappointing and failure.
I want to come back to those.
But I want to first take you to the truth tube.
And just go through some of the numbers that we've observed on you.
Come on back.
So when I think about binge eaters, I think about these issues more than anything as a physician.
So I put the three top ones up there.
The first is diabetes.
The second is hypertension.
The third is high cholesterol.
The good news is that your blood sugar and your blood pressure are just fine.
Just fine.
And your cholesterol is on the edge, but I'm going to give you a pass.
Okay.
So I want to transition from my biggest concerns as a medical doctor to my biggest concerns as someone who deals with the minds of people as well, the minds of patients.
Let's get to the cycle that you're in.
The failure, for example, you feel you don't want to sense.
So it seems like you're looking for comfort.
True.
Is that right?
So let's put that up there at the very top.
How does food bring you comfort?
How does it make you forget about the failure and the sense of worthlessness maybe that goes along with it?
I'm able to relax and I'm able to zone out and forget about my day.
So you can forget.
It's interesting to use the word forget because it's not what I would have thought because comfort usually is about feeling good about life.
Right.
It's almost like you're describing relief from life.
Right.
All right, so we get the comfort.
And then describe what happens when you move in that comfort zone to feeling when you're in the middle of a binge of being zoned out.
What's that like?
I'm able to forget about my day, anything that's happened through the day, or anything that I have responsibilities left to do with the rest of my day.
Alright, so it's soothing from that regard.
I'm going to use the word numbing.
Yes, okay.
Is that okay?
And then after a while, I gather you realize that what you did probably wasn't what you wanted to do in life.
True.
And then what's the feeling you sense then?
Failure, inadequacy.
How about guilt?
Guilt.
Number one.
Number one guilt.
Alright, let's put guilt up there.
And now we're starting to form a circle here.
Is that why you hide your food?
Yes, absolutely.
Because who wants to deal with the guilt if you can put it away?
In fact, when you feel guilty, and the numbness is worn off, then you have to actually eat to comfort yourself to get rid of the guilt.
So the cycle now is completely one that trains you, and you're sort of spiraling out of control in this.
And it's a vicious circle, if you look up there.
It's not where you want to be.
Today, I want to break that circle.
So when you are eating these foods and you say that you're not good enough and you're feeling guilty, what are you trying to fill up?
What are you eating the food to address, deepen your emotions?
Now I see some of the habits in my kids and now I'm failing them as a mom.
What habits are you seeing in your kids?
They hide wrappers under their bed or some of the kids sneak their food and so I can see that I'm in a sense poisoning their minds because they don't know any different.
You blame yourself a lot, don't you?
I do.
I mean, how would it feel to be able to break free of some of those emotions that shackle you right now?
Liberating.
I would finally feel like I've done something good with myself.
You haven't done things that you think that are good or worthy?
Most of the time, no.
Is there an example of one you have?
Just looking at my kids.
That's a good place to start.
Let's start with them.
When we come back, I'm going to break that cycle.
And together we're going to do this.
And you're not going to blame yourself anymore for things that are out of your control.
Because from now on, I'm able to deal with them.
Okay.
We'll be right back with the binge eating plan.
Stay with us.
Next, is struggling with food taking over your life?
Do you eat your feelings to comfort and numb?
Learn to recognize your emotional triggers.
Small steps to take today to end your binge eating for good.
Coming up.
All new Dr. Oz.
Three things Dr. Sanjay Gupta wants you to know now.
There are some misconceptions out there.
People should be more aware of it.
Could hurt them if they don't know the truth.
All new Dr. Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
If you ever have trouble stopping at one potato chip or one scoop of ice cream, then I want you to listen up.
I brought a nationally renowned psychologist, Dr. Brenda Wade, who helps women just like Natalie cope with food addictions like binge eating.
So Dr. Wade, let's start off with the basic definitions.
Define overeating and compare it to binge eating.
How are they separate?
Overeating is there might be one sandwich on the plate you'll eat.
If they're four, you'll eat four.
If they're eight, you'll eat eight.
You're just going to eat everything in front of you.
A binge eater could actually eat one sandwich, but later she'll go to her secret drawer and eat what's in the drawer.
So a lot of the binge eating is just going to be spasmodic.
A little bit here, a lot over here.
And I don't think you're alone, Natalie.
I really don't.
How many people in the audience have ever turned to food when they were unhappy or she alone?
Look around.
Because one of the things that's important to me is I heard you say you feel ashamed, and usually people who feel ashamed feel alone.
You're not alone.
We've all done it.
I've got that ice cream in my freezer.
Dr. Wade has come up with a plan to stop binge eating and that cycle of comfort, numbing, and guilt that we talked about a little bit earlier with you, Natalie.
First, you say we need to identify what we are trying to comfort by keeping a food feelings journal.
So we had Natalie.
We're very good about this.
Write down how she felt before, during, and after a recent binge.
And I have those numbers and names and words right here.
The ones that you used, alright?
So before the meal, you felt empty and anxious and irritable.
And that word lonely, that Brenda just brought it up.
During the meal, you felt happy, zoned out.
And after the meal, a bunch of other words including guilty.
So Dr. Wade, what do these tell us?
What this tells me is that the loneliness is one of the drivers for you, Natalie.
So how do you interrupt that binge trance?
Whether it's the happiness that's driving you towards it or the sense of loneliness.
You know, I just went through this big cycle and I'm hearing over and over again that you get into that mood and it's numbing.
You want to be there.
Yeah, so I'm going to give you a really simple but powerful tool because we've got to stop your body from reacting with the anxiety.
Your body acts like there's a lion in the grass.
And then you think all of these failure thoughts that create more anxiety.
And everyone in the audience, I want you to do this with Natalie.
At home, everybody can do it because it really is simple.
Start tapping here.
We're going to do what's called tapping it out.
Take a breath.
And the first thing I want you to say is, I am worthy.
I am worthy.
I can't hear you, Natalie.
I am worthy.
And I am worth taking care of.
I am worth taking care of.
Yeah.
And you are worth taking care of.
Why does it make you cry?
I don't feel worthy.
Right.
The fact that you don't feel that way means we've got to get this new thought into your brain.
But if you stop before you reach for the food and say, I am worthy and I am worth taking care of, you can stop yourself, give yourself just a moment to pause and make a different choice.
But the most important thing is we want you to learn to love yourself and feel good about yourself.
Okay.
How do we deal with the guilt issues that surround us?
And I know when you've had that numbing sensation and it does wear off in all of us, you're going to repeat the binge pattern whether you try to say you're worthy or not.
That's right.
If you have a slip and everybody does, the place to go is not, oh my god, I did it again and go into more guilt.
The place to go is, okay, fell off the horse, get back on the horse.
You've got to give yourself a pass.
Okay.
Is this sinking in?
Yeah, it is.
This is the hard part.
It is.
But I'm going to give you some steps.
I'm going to move to one right now that I think will be very valuable.
I want you to stop thinking about the quantity of food and start thinking about the quality of food.
It's a simple little mind shift, but it takes away, it upsets the axis you've built, the cycle you're stuck in.
Come on over.
I'll show you why.
Dr. Wade has demonstrated a couple examples, but this applies to everybody.
And again, we're not talking about just, Natalie, your issues.
This is something that's going to apply to everybody who can hear me right now.
Give us an example of how we can move from quantity to quality and take that cycle that's crushing you and twist it and get rid of it.
So what you've been doing is stuffing yourself but starving yourself at the same time because there's no nutrient in the doughnuts and the things you've been eating.
So if you look at these healthy snacks, there's chocolate here, Natalie, and you were making that, what did you call that?
Muddy buddy?
Muddy buddy.
Please demonstrate.
I want Natalie to demonstrate.
She looks very good at it.
Okay, put the chocolate on the healthy fruit.
You still get a little bit of that old ritual, but this is dark chocolate that's healthier for you.
And maybe dribble some of the nice apples over there.
Now I want you, after you dribble it on the apple, to take a bite of one of the apples with chocolate.
Will you do that?
We don't care if you get it on your shirt.
And I like the fact, Brenda, that you're dealing with rituals.
There you go.
Which is so much of what this is about.
How is it?
Sweet.
Sweet.
Is it good?
Do you get some crunch?
Yes.
It doesn't matter how much of this you eat, by the way, because you're getting some nutrition.
You won't be so hungry.
Okay.
There's one other thing we're going to talk about.
This drawer you have.
Yeah.
So I bought you a little drawer here.
Okay.
So Dr. Waite, this is something that you claim is very important.
It's very important because you used a word that was a big flashing red sign for me.
You said, I feel shame.
Shame comes from keeping things secret, which makes you feel ashamed.
So I want you to take, now we loaded the drawer with healthy snacks.
Pull the healthy snacks out, put them out here.
Now, Natalie, you get to eat as much of this as you want in the open.
So, we're going to deal with the portion control as we get to know each other a little better, but we can't start there.
We have to start at a place that deals with some of these big emotions you were feeling, the loneliness, the guilt, the shame that goes along with so many things you're doing.
Once you can feel truly proud because you are worthy and you really are.
Yes.
Isn't that true?
Yes.
We are worthy.
So Dr. Wade and I are going to stay with you.
We're going to support you through this.
And for Dr. Wade's full plan to stop binging, you can go to DrRoz.com and we'll be right back.
Next, how this everyday mom took a trunk of inspiration to invent a child helping device.
Her passion caught on.
Now it's changing the lives of children and families everywhere.
Get inspired by great ideas from even greater moms.
Coming up next.
Ordinary people do extraordinary things to help others.
Like Tiffany, a mom and caretaker who had a simple idea to make giving medicine to children easier.
She pitched her invention, Ava the Elephant, on the hit show, Shark Tank.
And guess what?
She got a bite.
My name is Tiffany Krumans.
I live in Auburn, Georgia.
It's a tiny little town with about a thousand people.
It's got one light.
I am a nanny for a little boy named Gibby.
- One, two, three. - He is a big part of my life and actually one of the biggest inspirations for my product.
Hi guys!
I have a great idea for you and hopefully you will want to invest in that.
I'm asking you ladies and gentlemen for a $50,000 investment.
For the past two and a half years, I've worked with a little boy named Gibby.
He has Down Syndrome.
And because of that, he gets ear infections a lot.
It came time to take out that medicine dropper every time, and Gibby would go from angel to pro wrestler.
So, I thought to myself, there has to be a better way to do this.
So, this is her.
You take the medicine dropper out.
You suck up the right amount of medicine.
Put it back in.
And you press the button.
She says one, two, three, open wide, and then she tells them a good job.
And as you're doing that, you press it out in their mouth, and it works every single time.
Have you tested this repeatedly against a child's interest in it, again and again, to see if they tire of it?
I feel like I've tested it on the hardest child I could ever test it on.
I just don't know how to make money with it.
It's got to be a business.
It can be.
There's nothing wrong with what you're doing.
No, Tiffany, I'm out.
Tiffany, if you could give me 55% of your business, I'd be very happy to hand you over that $50,000.
What are you going to do about it?
Do you want it?
You know what?
I'd love to take your offer.
I walked into the Shark Tank with a hand-molded prototype and just an idea.
And I never would have thought it would turn into something this big.
Now millions of parents caring for millions of kids are going to have my little Ava the Elephant to help with medicine time.
Tiffany Grubbins and her investor, Shark Tank, Barbara Corcoran, are here.
Now, you all know how this works.
The little stopper goes in there with your medicine.
You put it in there.
You count the kid down, and then it gives you a little applause, like, good job.
So what has been the most rewarding part of bringing this really cool, simple, but really cool idea to market?
By far, the most rewarding part has been emails I've received from all over the world of moms saying, my kids used to hide under the kitchen table.
I used to have to chase them down and hold them down.
And your products completely changed our lives.
Barbara, how are the sales doing so far with Ava?
Oh, that's the good news.
Much, much more than we ever dreamed possible.
We're almost at $2 million in sales, we're happy to say.
And $15,000...
Let's win!
Let's win!
We sell them like crazy online, and they're also at 15,000 retail outlets, so we never saw that one coming.
No, I bet those other sharks are really jealous of you.
Let them be jealous.
Who cares about those other boy sharks?
This is the first product you ever invested on in Shark Tank.
What was it about Tiffany that gave you confidence she could do it?
Oh, come on.
Well, first of all, she's drop-dead gorgeous.
I mean, who wouldn't want to be her partner and just hang out with her?
I get better looking when I'm with her.
But more importantly, she had passion.
She had it from the top of her head to her toe.
And her product was appealing to me because I'm a mom.
I had been up in the middle of the night getting my kid to force them to take the medicine.
Those other sharks, they missed it because they had trophy wives that had never been up a day in their life.
Oh, I like it.
I like it.
You can see there's a lot of blood in the water here.
So Tiffany, after the Shark Tank episode ended, you actually had to do a lot of work, a lot of ups and downs to get this product on the market.
How did you keep motivated?
How did you keep your confidence?
My real motivation was the kids that I volunteered with at Children's South Care of Atlanta.
I saw the real struggle that they had and how some of them had to take 20 or 30 medications a day.
They were cancer patients, I think, right?
Yes.
I myself fought cancer shortly after Shark Tank, so that desire became even stronger.
You had cancer?
I did.
I had thyroid cancer right after Shark Tank.
I'm sorry.
I hope you're doing well.
I am doing well.
I'm cancer-free.
Good for you.
Good for you.
But that just further motivated me to push forward.
What's the next step?
It sounds fantastic.
How do you get it to all the kids who need it?
Well, it's now made in the USA, which we fought very hard for.
Good for you.
Thank you.
Ava the Elephant made in the USA. Yes, made in the USA. But the most exciting thing that we're doing with Ava is I've always wanted to make her available to those same kids in the hospital.
And it is now...
And it needed to be sterilized.
Yes, it had to be sterilized to go into the hospital.
So we now have a new version of Ava that is sterilized for hospital use.
And we are actually very excited to be donating 1,000 Ava the Elephant to Children's Hospital.
Good for you.
First hospital.
Good for you.
It's a great idea and I'm proud that moms came up with it.
Kudos to you guys.
We'll be right back.
Thank you.
Three things Dr. Sanjay Gupta wants you to know now.
There are some misconceptions out there.
People should be more aware of it.
It could hurt them if they don't know the truth.
Are you doing everything you can to protect your health?
Plus, blast bloat into oblivion.
See the biggest mistakes women make when it comes to bloat.
How to banish bloat and get your body back.
All new Dr. Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
It's time for a case of the mayor.
I've got a little twist at the end for you as well.
First, we have breaking news.
Big story.
Another bombshell from Consumer Reports has found that arsenic is one of the unfortunate realities and it's one of your most basic foods, rice.
We found the highest levels in brown rice, which is startling, but it's also found in all these products in front of me.
Some of the cereals, cotton cold, crackers, even some pastas, and even some of the milks that are made from rice.
So, So the health risks concern me because when you have too much arsenic, you can get heart disease and diabetes and cancer.
But there's good news.
You can reduce your risk right now.
We talked about the fact that there's some rices that are okay.
But across the board, I want you to take your rice and rinse it thoroughly before you cook it.
A couple times, put it in water and mix it around.
And then I want you to cook your rice like pasta.
Use a ratio of about six cups of water to one cup of rice, and then drain the excess water after you're done.
Research shows this could lower the amount of arsenic in rice by a half, which is a big deal.
I also want you to vary the grains you use.
For example, you can substitute rice for quinoa, millet, or amaranth.
It's a smarter way, I think, to get some of those grains, because we don't want you to have more than two servings of these types of rice in a week.
Next, a tip on how to keep your voice in the best shape possible.
I want you to sleep with a humidifier in your bedroom, the heaters in our homes.
Dry us out, and a humidifier can help your sinuses stay moist, because when they get dry, they get clogged up as well.
Now, finally, speaking of comfort, let me ask you, after a bad day, how many of you turn to your furry friends for comfort?
Short hands?
Yeah, we have more pets than kids in America.
Well, me too.
In fact, Watson, come join me, Watson.
Come on, Watson.
Oh, here she is.
Come on.
Oh, here he is.
Come on, Watson.
Oh, I love this.
Ah.
Look, Watson is something else.
Here's the reality.
This little guy, Watson, is from a Broadway play.
Come over here, Watson.
You love eating all this stuff.
It's called The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime, which is fantastic.
And there's also lots of research that's showing, besides enjoying plays, you get the benefits of a pet in your own home.
Because if you have a pooch, or a cat, or anything else, frankly, puppy love could help you lower your blood pressure, your cholesterol level.
It's natural.
It can decrease anxiety, even boost immune function.
Get all that benefit plus the love of being with another being that's enjoying themselves.
So next time you feel a sniffle is coming on, snuggle up to your furry friend.
It can be good for your heart and for your soul.
Is that right, Watson?
▲
Export Selection