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May 2, 2024 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:41
Queen Latifah's Heart Disease Wake-Up Call | Dr. Oz | S7 | Ep 32 | Full Episode
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Today on The Dr. Oz Show.
It was pretty scary at the time.
Queen Latifah opens up about the number one killer of women.
We rushed to the emergency room, you know, to see what was going on.
I remember you called me once and I panicked.
An issue close to her heart.
One in five people could develop this in America.
That hit her close to home.
I never thought it could happen to me.
A wake-up call for women everywhere.
coming up next.
We'll save lives today.
day You guys ready to get healthy?
Today's show is about one of the most important things in life.
Resilience.
Resilience.
Save your applause.
You're going to need the resilience today, whether it's an everyday illness or an unexpected tragedy.
So we're going to focus on my specialty to get us started, the resilience of the heart, both physically and spiritually.
And we're going to start with one of my favorite people out there, a true friend of the show and of mine.
Queen Latifah is here.
Latifah has an important heart message that comes from direct experience.
It's really important to hear what she has to say.
After Latifah, we're going to find out how the age of your heart can be older or younger than your chronological age.
And we're going to meet a woman who has a heart in the truest sense.
She's a heroic teacher who saved her entire first grade class during the Sandy Hook tragedy three years ago.
But first I'm happy to have my good friend here.
So please welcome Queen Latifah Everybody We have time to talk about...
Thank you.
Love you, too.
I heart you, too.
That's right.
We love you, too.
I heart you, too.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
It's a very personal show for you, and we've talked offline a little bit about the heart, so I'll get to that.
But first, I want to congratulate you.
Bessie, you all know, executive produced it.
It was Bessie Smith.
Four Emmy wins, is that right?
Four Emmy wins, yep.
She's taking on a new role in something very close to her heart.
You'll find out why in a second.
And she is now talking publicly about the underappreciated epidemic of heart failure in this country.
It may be the single greatest threat to African-American women, heart disease.
It's the number one killer of all American women, but it affects African-American women even more disproportionately, killing 50,000 every year.
Perhaps the most significant risk factor is hypertension.
About 70 million Americans over the age of 20 have high blood pressure, and that sets the stage for heart failure, which will strike one in five Americans with symptoms that include shortness of breath, swelling of your legs, feet, and ankles, even trouble sleeping.
Do you know the risk factors or the steps to take to stop heart failure before it ever starts?
Every minute, at least one person is diagnosed with heart failure, and one of them is Queen Latifah's mom, Rita, who joins us.
- Yes! - And she looks so good.
That's right.
Take it out.
- Come on, mama!
Break it! - Let's talk about your reaction.
I love the way you're at there for her.
What happened when you found out your mom had heart failure?
Well, she can tell you, but she was in school and I got a call that my mom had passed out.
She's a high school teacher at the time.
I got a call that she had passed out in class.
And so we rushed to the emergency room, you know, to see what was going on.
And after a bunch of testing, it was determined that she had a congestive heart failure, which was pretty scary at the time.
Say hi, mom, so they know you can speak.
Hi, I can speak.
I'd love to hear your story a bit.
So, I know that you passed down school.
Did you have any inkling that there was a problem before that?
Well, I felt very tired and I had difficulty sleeping, but I never would have thought it was connected to my heart.
And when they told you that you had heart failure, had you ever heard of that before?
Very vaguely.
I never really thought much about it because I never thought it could happen to me.
Which is why you're here today, which I appreciate.
What kinds of lifestyle changes are you making now?
So easy.
I exercise a little bit every day.
I cut out the sodium in my diet.
I keep track of my weight gain.
And primarily, that's it.
Of course, my doctor is very important because he put together a treatment that was good for me.
So the medication was specific for me.
Yeah, so taking all those medications on time.
And the oxygen is probably the most powerful medication we have.
I noticed that's what you're getting in your nose.
All this, by the way, makes a big difference for folks whose hearts aren't working that well.
Yeah, and honestly, Dr. Oz, you've been around for a lot of this journey of ours.
That's why this campaign is so important, and we partnered with the American Heart Association, supported by Novartis, to spread the word about this Rise Above Heart Failure movement, because, I mean, one in five people, one in five people could develop this in America.
That is a huge amount of people, especially something that affects women, and then again, African American women.
So, It's really important for us to get the information out there so that people who may be affected by this and not even know it, like my mom, who was completely healthy up until this sort of happened, can get more information about it.
I love you putting your heart and soul into this.
It means the world because people think of these illnesses as abstract concepts.
Mom, Rita, you said it right.
They think it's someone else's problem.
Let's show everybody what the heart looks like.
I brought you a little present because you came all the way here to visit with us.
Is this when I give you your invisible glasses so you can't see?
Well, you talked about this ahead of time, huh?
Well, you know I was a doctor in another life, Dr. Oz.
That's right.
Yet still may play one on TV. She really does.
Notice how well she put those gloves on.
She snapped them right up.
She's had enough practice with me.
Everything is the gloves.
Is that right?
Yeah.
All right, so here's a healthy heart.
Just hold that in your hands if you don't mind.
Notice it's about the size of your fist.
Okay.
Don't drop the heart.
I'm good.
Don't drop the heart.
Now, when you get heart failure, it looks like this.
And mom, can you hold that up?
I sure can.
So in heart failure, if you just put them next to each other, you can see one's a lot bigger than the next.
And the heart gets big to compensate.
It's trying to keep up with the needs of the body.
What does that feel like to you, mom?
It's like a reality check.
I mean, this is inside of me.
Was inside me.
Was, because yours is the crease.
Because mine is the crease.
Good for you.
Your heart is more like this.
You're good.
Isn't that cool to actually feel that and see how thick the walls are?
It is.
Is this the aorta?
Yes.
It's massive.
Dr. Latifah.
She went from a queen to a doctor.
Yes.
Why, thank you, doctor.
I'll be the patient of both of you.
Look at that.
That's a big difference.
Everything gets bigger.
Mom, you stay there for a second.
Queen, come with me.
I'm going to show everybody what heart failure really means.
I want you guys to understand this.
We have not talked about it quite so graphically.
You can keep the gloves if you want, but I think you're better without them.
Am I touching something else?
You never know here.
So, this is what normally happens.
Just to recap, because this audience is so darn smart.
You have the right side of the heart, you have the left side of the heart.
The left side of the heart has all the red blood, right?
And it pumps into the brain, all the other parts of the body, including the legs.
And then the blue blood comes from the legs, goes into the right heart, and then goes up to the lungs, right?
So, two sides, they're next to each other.
That's why we're so efficient.
Now let's talk about heart failure and focus on the legs and the lungs.
That's where the action is.
So in heart failure, let's start with the right side.
The blood very slowly, knows how slow it is, goes up towards the right heart.
But because it can't pump, the legs, they swell up like that.
So one of the first things you look for in folks is whether or not they've got swollen legs.
Mom, did that happen to...
Oh, definitely.
We always keep an eye on her feet, on her legs to see if there's any swelling, for sure.
So, again, everyone can pay attention to that.
Yes, they do.
Not everyone with swollen legs has heart failure, by the way.
They'll go panicky out there, but it's one of the things we look for.
Then, the other thing we look for is the left side of the heart.
How well is it getting the blood from the lungs?
Now, watch the lungs.
See up there, pink up there?
But they'll fill up like a sponge.
They'll get boggy if the left heart's not working well.
So, problems with the left heart.
To have breath problems and breathing, problems with the right heart cause leg swelling problems.
Together, that's called heart failure, which is what we're talking about.
And as you mentioned, that happens pretty commonly, and Rita has been through some of that.
Yeah.
So I'm going to invite Dr. Kathy Bagliato here.
She's a good friend of mine from years and years ago.
A cardiothoracic surgeon from St. John's Medical Center in Santa Monica, California.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Help us a little bit.
Quickly, causes of heart failure that you worry about.
So the most common cause, as you know, is coronary artery disease.
So blockages in the arteries that decrease the blood supply to the muscle and cause that muscle to get weak.
So anything that causes coronary artery disease causes heart failure like hypertension, diabetes, smoking, all of the things that we hopefully can correct and shouldn't do.
Lowering risk.
How do you do it?
You know, this is a perfect, I'm just going to say, this is the dream team of heart failure, because this is the perfect, compliant patient, and of course, Dr. Latifa taking care of mom.
But everything, really, it's everything Rita said, right?
So it's leading a heart-healthy lifestyle, something that you talk about so often on your show.
Eating right, low sodium, you mentioned.
You really hit them all, by the way.
Low sodium, a little bit of exercise every day, and then to not smoke, control your diabetes.
And the big one is high blood pressure, hypertension, especially in African-American women.
So controlling that is really key, too.
Yeah, and if you put these symptoms off thinking they're not important, but when you actually realize they can cause heart failure, which is what we're all worried about, now you can focus.
Let's talk about how you manage your mom.
I remember you called me once in a panic from an ICU. Doing what a daughter should do.
Getting on top of everything.
Chasing out every little lead.
You know, it's been a journey with us.
And once again, I can't reiterate how important it is that, you know, people go to RiseAbove.org and really find out more because it's something that had we known a little more about, we could have gotten on top of it.
But we can't look at the past.
We've just embraced where we are and surrounded.
We kind of circled the wagons.
We surrounded my mom with a lot of support, a lot of love.
Unfortunately, I'm in a position where I was able to hire a chef.
I really wanted to make sure she had nutritious meals every day.
And when we don't have a chef, we just make sure we cook really healthy food, get rid of all the salty things.
You know, some people put salt on their food before you even taste it.
Your meal comes and you're just instantly doing this.
And that's something that we can break ourselves out of.
And because of her, everyone around, we've all broken ourselves out of those sort of habits that we had.
So between my cousin and my sister, myself, a nurse, one of my best friends, we all sort of take care of my mom and just support her because she's the one that's fighting the fight.
It's a little bit of a role reversal.
You're a strong woman.
You raise some wonderful kids.
What's it like to have people waiting on you for a change?
Meet my mother.
It's funny because that's one of the hardest things as a caregiver, and this campaign also talks about supporting the caregivers, is that it's hard for me.
I've always been very respectful to my mother, so for me to say no to my mom is hard, but I had to learn how to do it because I knew it was for For her own health.
So even in the hospital, people would be bringing her like, all these cakes and cookies and candy.
I'm like, no!
She is not here for that.
You know, she's here to get well.
You're giving us stuff to keep her here longer.
So we've even had to sort of train everyone around us, but it's actually made us all more cognizant that just doing simple things could make us more healthy.
You know what I love the most?
She's got blisters taking care of you here.
All the cooking she's doing.
God bless you.
Even in that kitchen.
Me and Bessie.
In the kitchen.
Thanks for being here, Kathy, as well.
We come back.
How old is your heart?
I'm really asking about that.
How old is that?
I'm going to show you how your heart age could actually be older or maybe even younger than your chronological age.
That's next. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Next, we're taking the show outside our studio and into our mobile clinic and finding out what is the real age of your heart.
We're putting these women to the test.
It could be older or younger than your age.
I feel young and vivacious.
I want to see if it's really true.
All New Oz.
Almond milk is making headlines.
But are the health benefits as promised?
I thought it would be healthier and fewer calories.
We're sorting through the confusion.
Today I want to be your fuel guide to try to navigate this area because it's a little complicated.
And what about other popular nut milks?
We're going to break down their benefits to find out which one is right for you.
Plus, is bread causing Alzheimer's?
Meet the guy who says he has the answer.
All New Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Today's show is all about resilience, especially resilience of the heart.
Now, I've taken the entire show outside of the studio where we set up the Dr. Raj Real Age Heart Clinic.
Now, you all know your chronological age, but how many of you know your real age?
That's how old your heart thinks it is.
Based on certain factors, it could be older or younger than your age.
So today, the easy steps to find out the real age of your heart and how to reverse it.
And it all starts right here.
My audience lined up at our mobile heart age clinic ready to find out the real age of their hearts.
I'm here today because my blood pressure is high.
I need to know how old my heart is.
And I need to know if that heart is going to keep me pumping for the rest.
I'm a little nervous and I'm concerned about what the real age of my heart could be.
Your heart's real age is determined by many factors, including your chronological age, your BMI, your blood pressure, whether or not you smoke, and, believe it or not, how much you sit during the week.
My medical team, along with nurse practitioner Kristen O'Dell, guided our participants through each step of the test, checking their height and weight, taking their blood pressure, and walking them through a short questionnaire.
You guys got up early.
I came by to check up on the checkup.
Thank you for being here.
Are you nervous?
Very nervous.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
I wonder what that real age is going to show.
Most people going through the clinic had no idea that real age is a better reflection of heart health than actual age.
I never thought that the age of my heart could be different than my real age.
Once all the questions were answered and the information compiled, we were able to determine everyone's real heart age with some surprising results.
So I'm here with Nurse Kristin who is leading our clinic.
So how eager will all the wonderful women define the age of their heart?
Everybody was actually extremely eager to find out they aged.
Some were actually a little anxious, but everybody was eager.
Were you all anxious, is that true?
Yes, they're anxious there.
So, you know, the results are in.
I've got them all for everybody.
Are you surprised by what you found?
I am surprised, actually, extremely.
Some were more, some were less, so I'm very surprised.
Here's the part that's perhaps most interesting to a lot of folks.
It turns out that half of us have a real age of our heart that's five years older, five years older than our real age, in our chronological age.
So I'm not shocked if the numbers aren't right, but the good news here is you can change it.
You can reverse it.
So I've got Regina, Kimberly, and Florence.
And I've got on the line here.
Regina, why did you want to find out what your heart age was?
My dad passed when he was 45. I'm 46, so I'm in that age bracket, and I feel young and vivacious, so I want to see if it's really true.
Kimberly, Regina looks very calm, but you look a little nervous to me.
I am very nervous.
I'm interested to find out what it is.
I'm stressed a lot, I have a long commute, and I sit all day, so I'll be curious to see what it says.
Florence, you're sort of confident, but quizzical.
You think your number's going to be better or lower than your chronological age?
I have high blood pressure.
I'm on medication, but I still think it's going to be higher than my real age.
So you're not in the right direction.
But again, the whole point of doing this is because you can make a difference.
So, when you come back, and by the way, Kristen, thank you very much.
Oh, you're welcome.
And there's a lot of work to do this.
And for all the nurses out there, you represent them all.
You're always showing up to help out and make things happen.
Thank you.
I have to tell you, I think some of the blood pressure were a little elevated because you gave them a little white coat syndrome.
Is that true?
Was it the white coat or me?
Him!
Alright, so, how can you figure out your real age of the heart?
Teach you that and the steps to lower it next.
Later in the show, it's changing the way we carry and drink our H2O.
The future of our water consumption.
I'm sure you're all wondering, what the heck is this little blob?
Is this the new breakthrough to replace your water bottle?
It's like eating the bottle with the water.
Coming up.
At our mobile heart age clinic, my audience came to find out the real age of their hearts.
We took their height, weight, and blood pressure.
Then they filled out our real age heart questionnaire.
Now, it's time for the results.
That was from this morning's Real Age of Your Heart Clinic.
Kimberly, Regina, and Florence are back, and I've got their heart age results.
Now, please remember, what you're about to hear can be reversed.
That's true for everybody.
I'm going to show you how you can do that today.
Don't worry, I got your back.
We're there.
We can make it happen.
Don't panic yet.
It's not like getting your grades at the end of school year.
So, let's get with Kimberly.
She's 46 years old, has a blood pressure of 120 over 75, but you do have one risk factor that increases your real age, which I bet you don't know about.
I bet most folks don't know about.
It has to do with sitting.
What kind of work do you do?
I work in a hospital.
I work in the foundation raising money for the organization.
So you're sitting down calling people and organizing things to help people.
So you sit more than 75% of the time.
Yes, and I drive an hour each way to work.
So across the entire day, that amount of sitting actually does something to your real age that I don't like.
It increases it because your real age of your heart is actually 48, even though you're only 46 years of age.
And a very beautiful 46, by the way.
Thank you.
But those two years are, I bet, frustrating to you.
Yes.
Because you're doing so many other things correctly.
Trying.
So let's think about this.
If sitting more than three quarters at a time can increase your heart age by one to two years, which it did for you, all we have to do to fix that is stand, is move around.
That's the good news.
So what we want everyone to do in the studio is please stand.
I want everyone at home, if you can, please stand with me.
All right?
Spend 10 minutes of every hour standing.
And for the rest of this segment, if you don't mind, do you have the endurance to do this?
I want you guys to stand.
You into this?
You can do it?
All right.
Just that standing can lower the age of your heart by two years.
And you're standing anyway, so you're doing it already without even trying.
Okay.
Could you do that at work?
I'm going to try to do it at work.
I do work in the hospital, so hopefully they would give me a standing desk or something to help me with that.
Or, you know, put a wireless on your ears and walk around when making phone calls.
Just find a way for 10 minutes out of every hour to get yourself moving.
Okay.
I'll go get my own mail.
Exactly.
That's a good way of doing it.
All right.
Regina's next.
Now, Regina was very nervous outside, although she's only 45 years old.
She's got a blood pressure of 134 over 85, which was, I understand, pretty normal for you.
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty good for me.
Now, here's the challenge, though.
There's something about you that's going to change your real age in the wrong direction, and the real age of your heart in particular.
And I can smell it on you.
See, the reason I hug people is actually to smell them.
You learn a lot about people by smelling them.
How long have you been smoking for?
20 years.
So smoking, unfortunately, changes the heart age a lot.
And yours is 52 now.
Instead of 45, it's up to 50. It's okay.
Again, I'm here for you.
We can make this happen together.
And I know it's hard.
And I'm not here to finger wag at you.
If anyone out there is smoking, that's not what I do.
But since you know this, and since you should also realize that, you know, you're doing everything else right, all you got to do is deal with the cigarettes and your heart age will drop right back down.
It's reversible.
It's absolutely changeable.
I'll quit today.
Well, I know.
You probably will.
But let me ask you this.
How many times...
Have you tried to quit?
I would say in the past 20 years about five or six times.
Alright, so let me give you some numbers.
The first time you try to quit, 98% of the time you'll fail.
Second time it's better.
The third time it's even better because it shows that you're learning from the prior ones.
The average person takes six times Of trying to stop smoking before they actually succeed.
So you're right where you are.
Well, I'll break the pack now.
Yeah, throw that third thing away.
You're right where you're to be.
Yeah.
And get some help to do it because it's not easy to do.
And then I also have the weight of the world on my heart because I pray every night for everybody.
So, you know.
You know, wouldn't it be a tragedy to have that beautiful heart that, yes, it's bearing the weight, but it's the foundation of loving your community to not be there because it's being damaged by cigarettes or other things that were doing wrong to it.
That's true.
That's why we do this show.
That's why I'm talking about the heart age.
I want you to know that you've got seven less years of praying in your heart, but you can reverse that and get it back again.
Okay.
All right, you're in.
It's gone.
All right, thank you.
Thank you.
You too.
All right, finally, Florence is here.
She's 46 years old, blood pressure 130 over 70, and a body mass index up 26.5.
So, this is a big bit of news, if you don't mind.
Regina's smoking issue got us all scared because it put seven years on your heart.
But your blood pressure will actually age you even more than cigarettes.
More?
I didn't know that.
Yeah, even more than cigarettes.
It's that big of a problem.
People don't realize it.
You know when you're smoking, but you don't know if your blood pressure is high half the time.
So, your blood pressure has been high.
I know you're on medications.
I'm going to talk about that.
But because your heart blood pressure has been high, your heart age is actually 53. Wow.
Again, this is all reversible.
This is all good news today.
That's like your interim score because we know we're going to change that.
So weight loss is one big issue, but I'm going to do something else for you.
A little recommendation.
It's a trial that was done looking at ways of getting blood pressure down naturally.
Looked at the role of music.
You like music?
I love music.
I sing.
Do you sing?
I do sing.
Sing something for me.
You know what?
It's my mother-in-law's birthday today.
Her name is Emily.
All right.
Let me hear it.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
You know, don't finish because she's never come on the show.
When she comes on the show, we'll sing to her together.
That was a beautiful voice.
Thank you.
I want you to listen to soothing music, 30 minutes a day, everyone at home do the same thing, while taking slow, deep breaths.
Again, 30 minutes, soothing music.
I'm giving you something fun to do, and studies have shown that that by itself can reduce your blood pressure significantly.
Okay.
Enough that it actually makes it a worthwhile investment for your well-being.
Okay.
I want all your hearts doing well, because you've got big ones.
Keep supporting what you're doing.
Thank you.
To find out your real heart age, and for tips on how to lower it, you can go to DrRoz.com, and don't forget, take that heart age quiz.
You'll learn lots of things about yourself that you can improve.
Up next in today's conversation, how your water bottle may one day get replaced by a shapeless blob.
You'll find that more when we come back.
Later, a terrifying school shooting.
The heroic teacher who protected her students from harm amid horror and fear.
Imagine 15 kids and an adult in an area this size.
Now she speaks out for the first time.
Coming up...
Almond milk is making headlines.
But are the health benefits as promised?
We're sorting through the confusion.
Today I want to be your fuel guide to try to navigate this area because it's a little complicated.
Plus, is bread causing Alzheimer's?
Meet the guy who says he has the answer.
Almond.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Today's conversation, today's shapeless blob, it looks like that.
Could that shapeless blob replace your water bottle?
Think about this, hard to believe, but right here may be the future of our water consumption.
Now I'm sure you're all wondering, what the heck is this little blob?
It's actually made of something called calcium lactate, a little powder, with sodium alginate, like algae, comes from seaweed.
It only costs about two cents, you put these together in the drinking water that you want to have, and it creates a burst of hydration in your mouth with each bite.
Mmm.
It's like eating a, I don't know, an oyster.
A watery oyster.
Who likes oysters?
Oh, good.
Lots of oyster lovers.
So, I spilled it on my lips and my tongue.
Anyway, so, I don't want you to taste this stuff.
Can I taste this stuff?
Well, you can taste it.
You do what you want to do with it.
Go ahead.
Take one of these things.
First, feel it.
Take the whole thing.
You've got to spill it on yourself.
So, you're going to spill it on yourself.
On this...
Like a jellyfish?
Yes.
Thank you.
It's like eating a jellyfish.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Let me have one of them back.
Trust me on this.
Here, open your mouth.
No.
See, when you look at it, if you pop it like this, see how the water's inside there?
And so it has a sort of gooey feeling to it.
It's a little stickier.
I don't know what to describe this as.
It's sort of like jello in a water.
But the thing is, you can make these and they're coming out with these hard capsules so you can actually just toss them in your purse.
They trap the water.
It's like eating the bottle with the water.
Which is why I'm always telling you to have more water.
This might be sort of a cool way of getting it without so much plastic.
What do you guys think?
It's good.
Oh, very brave.
You ate it?
Don't eat it.
It's too late, and I'm only kidding.
It's good to go.
Alright, we'll be right back.
Do whatever you want to do.
Next, unthinkable tragedy, overshadowed by one teacher's heroism to save her students.
And later, Queen Latifah wants to inspire you to get heart healthy with one small change to your daily routine.
Can I teach you how to do it?
Sure.
Coming up.
Whoever said a doctor's visit isn't fun has obviously never been to the Dr. Oz show.
Is that right?
Make your appointment today.
Go to DrOz.com/tickets and sign up for free tickets.
Today's show is about one of the most important things in life, resilience.
And I recently read a post on Facebook that really struck a chord with me.
Bad things happen to all of us, but it is not those moments that define us.
That post was written by Caitlin Roig de Bellis.
Now, you may not know her by name, but during one of our country's most horrific tragedies, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Caitlin protected her 15 students from harm, proving that in the midst of that horror, there was incredible heroism.
December 14th, 2012. Newtown, Connecticut.
The day the unthinkable became tragic reality.
At 9.30 that morning, a former student shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School with an assault weapon.
Before taking his own life, the gunman had brutally murdered six women and 20 children.
All first graders between ages six and seven.
But even in the depth of that day's unimaginable terror, heroes found the courage to make selfless, rapid decisions to help others.
Caitlin Roigd DeBellis, a young first grade teacher, was one of them.
Her quick thinking saved the lives of her 15 students.
Caitlin has worked hard to overcome the tragedy and trauma of Newtown, forging her way past anger, despair and grief to choose and today share a powerful path of hope.
So Caitlin piled 15 first graders into a bathroom in her classroom.
Imagine 15 kids and an adult in an area this size.
Unimaginable.
So, Caitlin's quick thinking and swift action saved her students' lives.
So I'd love to introduce you all to Caitlin Hroyg-Tibelis.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me.
I have so much to ask you about, but I got to start with that closet.
I mean, it is tiny.
It's three by four feet, maybe.
How do you get 16 human beings into a space that small?
Until that day, I had never set foot inside that bathroom.
It was too uncomfortably small for a grown adult to fit.
However, in that moment, the decision that I had made for us to survive far outweighed how unreasonable it seemed for us to fit.
The impossible needed to become possible, and thankfully it did.
Did you have the kids on each other's shoulders?
Literally, I can't even physically imagine how it was doable.
Yeah, I picked them up, put them behind the toilet, on top of the toilet.
I sat my tiniest student on top of the toilet paper dispenser.
It was our only option at survival.
We were feet from where you saw the shooting.
And how'd you keep all those kids calm?
You know, kids are very aware of what's happening around them and what they heard.
They might not have known exactly what it was, but it was so loud and it was so scary and it was in such imminent proximity to them that they knew that staying quiet meant that that was staying away.
It's been three years.
Do you replay those moments over and over again in your head?
It has been two years, nine months, 15 days.
It is constant.
It is always.
It is every second of every minute of every day.
I don't even know how you ever recovered from that.
When you first realized what had happened and you were finally saved, how did you process that?
What happened over those first few weeks?
Sure.
Great question.
At first, I was very much walking around in a daze.
My sense of safety, of security were completely gone, taken from me.
And at the same time, I was trying to answer why.
Why did this happen?
Why our school?
Why those beautiful lives?
And eventually I came to realize I was never going to answer those whys.
Not then, not now, not ever.
And I had to shift my attention.
I had to focus on questions that could be answered because there are so many questions that can.
I think for so many of us, especially during the darkest times, we focus so much energy on questions we're never going to answer.
And we forget there are so many we can and that there's so much power in that.
And for myself there were two questions I had to answer.
The first was, how do I make sure this day does not define my students and myself?
And the second was, how do we get our control back?
And those two questions were my guiding light.
You know, when it comes to the control issue, the second part, I was struck.
I went to Newtown that evening.
Thank you.
And that was almost therapeutic for me.
And I was with many others who had felt called as well.
We were outside of a church.
And you could sense the passion that people had for each other, the need just to be there to provide support and encouragement just because you needed something to do besides just mourn some tragedy.
It was inexplicable.
I'm sure you felt that for many who are coming to try to support you.
You actually have lived through it.
I should point out to everyone that Ken has written a wonderful book.
It's an inspiring memoir.
It's called Choosing Hope, Moving Forward from Your Life's Darkest Moments.
And you talk about that here.
How difficult is it for you, whether in a book form or even talking about it on the show, not to revisit that day in December?
You know, I think for myself, as I said, it's constant and it's always.
So I might as well use my own darkest hour to empower others to know that they can overcome their own because they can.
Everyone has pain.
Everyone has hard times.
And to know that it's a choice how you react to it.
It's a choice every day.
You know, I think that what is so important is that the things that happen to us in our lives don't have to define us.
We can define them.
And we can make a conscious choice that what seems insurmountable does not have to be.
We're going to continue this discussion and introduce my new core expert who specializes in resilience when we come back.
Later, Queen Latifah and I promote heart health and what you can do to help.
Almond milk is making headlines.
But are the health benefits as promised?
We're sorting through the confusion.
Today I want to be your fuel guide to try to navigate this area because it's a little complicated.
Plus, is bread causing Alzheimer's?
Meet the guy who says he has the answer.
Almond.
That's coming up tomorrow.
When tragedy happens, it feels like our lives have been shattered into pieces.
But each one of us has the ability to recover.
It is called resilience.
And the shattered pieces can be transformed into something new and beautiful.
I brought in Pastor Van Moody.
He's an internationally known motivational speaker and is one of my core experts this season.
Your priorities are your value.
Ivy League trained with a background in business, marketing, and ministry.
Pastor Van, as he's known to his loyal congregation at the Worship Center in Birmingham, Alabama, is a welcome addition to our core team of experts.
Pastor Van uses his spiritual and practical expertise to help people build meaningful relationships that enhance both their personal and professional lives.
Reconciliation takes two people, but forgiveness is a one-player game.
He's even written a book based on his teachings, fittingly titled, The People Factor.
Today, Pastor Van Moody is here to help you build happier, healthier relationships, and to show you how to get back up when life knocks you down.
Welcome one of my core experts, Pastor Van.
So we're talking about resilience.
How do you define it?
Well, resilience is the ability for people to go through the tragedies and the issues of life and to emerge better and stronger than ever.
When people are not resilient, the problems and issues of life overwhelm them and ultimately defeat them.
So how do you become resilient?
I mean, it's something we all want.
Some folks seem to have it and others don't.
Have you ever paid attention, Dr. Oz, to how a toddler learns to walk?
I have one now.
It's called the granddaughter for me.
Excellent.
What you notice is that they start taking a few steps and then ultimately they're going to fall and then after they cry a little bit and maybe whine, after a little bit of time inevitably they're going to get back up and they're going to start walking again.
See, resilience is about choosing what's been inside of us because all of us have that thing that causes a toddler to get back up again.
And resilience is really about making the choice to tap into what's been inside of us the whole time.
You know, that's so beautiful.
That's what Caitlin said.
Different words, same basic message.
You choose.
It's in there.
You have the ability.
You may not realize it, but it's there.
So, to become resilient, the pastor has four A's that he wants to talk to us about.
It's called the 4A approach, right?
Come on back here.
We're going to start with the first A. It's to accept.
Now, how is this different from get over it, you know, it's done, get over it?
Well, when I say accept, you've got to allow yourself to grieve, and that means that you've got to acknowledge the range of negative emotions that you're going to feel when you go through trauma.
The people who tell you to just get over it or to move on, first of all, it doesn't work.
Because when you try to do that, you stuff those emotions down on the inside, and what happens is your body keeps the score.
Have you ever seen someone who's gone through a negative experience, and it may be even an isolated thing, but it just feels like their whole life is impacted?
Stress and inability to sleep or anxiety.
That's our body's way of telling us that while you've been trying to stuff those emotions down and just get over it, your body's been keeping score.
Of course it has.
Beautifully stated.
And we sense that internally.
Excellent.
Adjust.
This is about figuring out emotionally where we need to go.
And the real key to adjusting is to make healing choices.
The big issue for people who want to be resilient is really to get away from what they've been through.
Many times we're married to the pain.
So you'll see widowers or widows, for an example, Who will really have a hard time cleaning the closet out of their deceased spouse because holding onto those clothes binds them or keeps them connected to them.
But as long as they do that, every single time they open their closet they have to relive the pain.
And so when you do that, you don't step back long enough to recognize that you can and should heal.
Those healing opportunities are around us all the time, but they're not going to force themselves on us.
We have to choose them.
So by adjusting, you've got to make healing choices.
Support group for others, maybe family and friends for some.
If you're part of a faith community, possibly it's faith practices, even licensed medical professionals.
Those opportunities are there.
They're all around, but we have to choose them.
Caitlin, can I hear from you a little bit about how you adjusted?
What are the things that you were able to take advantage of to get past Sandy Hook?
The first thing is a really clear distinction.
I will never move on from that day, but I will always move forward.
I think that's a really important point to clarify.
For myself, I had two choices.
I could let the actions of a monster define my life, or I could decide to choose hope in the face of it.
And in doing so, evil can never define me or my students.
And so...
Beautiful story.
Thank you.
Aspire.
I love the word I always have, but you say this is like something new.
Well, it's about dreaming again.
Part of the reason that pain and tragedy for many people is so difficult is because often what we lost represented or was our dream.
But just like a phoenix rising from the ashes, you have to remember that there's something powerful and beautiful that wants to come out of your pain.
But you've got to give yourself permission to dream again.
That's why aspiring is so important.
The fourth A is a very important one, is that you have to actually act.
I can get the first three.
This is the most difficult one.
How long should you permit yourself to do the other three A's, accept, adjust, and aspire before you act?
Well, all three of the four A process leads up to this one.
This is the biggie.
Because once you accept, adjust, and aspire, you've got to act.
Which means you have to get out there and do something.
And every single day, just focus on taking one step in the direction of your new dream.
And after you do that, Each day, a day becomes a week, a week becomes a month, a month becomes a year, and then all of a sudden you look up and you're closer to your dream and at the same time you're further away from your pain.
I love this.
This issue of hope came up with Caitlin.
I want to go back to you on it.
When tragedy happens, why and how do you choose hope?
Well, you absolutely have to choose hope because you have to know that, as Caitlin stated so beautifully, it's not about what happens to us.
Life is really not about that.
It's about how we handle it and the decisions that we make as a result.
You have to choose hope because life is not over.
There's still so much that's in front of you, but it won't come into fruition unless you choose it.
Life is left to be lived.
Go after it.
Thank you very much.
I love having you on board.
When we come back, a final message from Queen Latifah about resilience.
You won't want to miss this.
Thanks for that.
It's beautiful.
The search is on.
We're looking for a nurse to join our core team of experts to provide wisdom, expert commentary, and advice.
If you'd like to nominate yourself or a nurse who's made a difference in your life, go to DrOz.com and click on hashtag nurse search.
My name is David Knight, and I am thrilled to nominate my wife, Jennifer Knight, for your nursing search.
She's high energy.
She's a lot of fun.
She's compassionate, hardworking.
She was born to be a nurse.
She was made for this.
So tomorrow, you'll be talking about the American Heart Association Healthy Heart Want You to This is a fabulous idea.
I'm back with one and the only, Queen Latifah, who's going to help us walk through how to share a hearty one sheet.
Here's the number.
Five million Americans live with heart failure.
Five million, but by making any bitty small changes, you can make a big difference.
You want to make these changes for everybody?
Yes.
Can I teach them how to do it?
Sure.
All right.
Now, you're the boss here.
The first thing is, you tell me we've got to make a pledge.
Yeah, we're going to make a pledge.
And I pledge to ride my bike more often.
Instead of walking past it and looking at it, I'm going to ride it more often.
I like it.
I want to ride it more often.
Oh, there it is.
See the gasket blue right there on that bike.
The Lord didn't believe me.
God, I'm serious.
Now he's in.
Okay, I'm really going to ride the bike.
I promise.
I'm going to do it.
All right.
So first, the pledge.
It can be small, it can be big, but it adds up.
Second, you've got to take a picture.
You've got to get a hearty picture.
So a solo hearty you can always do, but make a hearty with a friend.
So we're going to do a little selfie of this?
Yeah.
You've got to put the heart there.
Don't forget the heart.
The heart.
How do we get in the picture?
How do we look, guys?
I'm up here now.
Now I'm down here.
We're pretty good at this.
We're not bad at the hearty deal.
So, you get that picture and you got your pledge.
Here's what you're going to do.
You're going to send this picture, step three is to pass it on.
You're going to send your picture with your pledge, whatever it is, riding the bike.
That's right.
Trust me, Lord, I'm going to do it.
Yes.
I'm going to ride the bike with hashtag my change of heart.
And send it to your friends.
You're going to see my hearty, the one we just took together with Queen, on my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram pages.
I want you all to enjoy this because if you have a heart, If you really haven't, use it.
Share the message.
Have a heart-to-heart with your families.
Share this with people you care about.
And make sure everyone knows about heart failure because we can beat this thing.
I love having you here.
Thanks for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Remember, health and happiness starts at home.
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