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July 8, 2024 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:49
Dr. Oz Tackles America’s Sleep Crisis & Cortisol Overload | Dr. Oz | S6 | Ep 125 | Full Episode
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Today on Dr. Oz.
The new sleep crisis keeping America up all night.
Your body is exhausted, but your mind is in overdrive.
You're wired and tired.
I'm gonna tell you why it happens and how you can finally get the rest you need.
Plus, when her dream of losing weight came true.
It wasn't the fantasy she expected.
The dark side of skinny.
What did you think would happen?
The hard truth she didn't see coming.
Coming up next on Dr. Oz.
Welcome to the show.
Best question.
You lie awake at night, unable to shut up your brain and get to sleep.
Your body's exhausted, but your mind, oh, it's in overdrive.
You, my friends, are wired and tired.
And you're not alone.
It's the new sleep crisis.
And today, I'm going to tell you why it happens and how you can finally get the rest you need.
It's the reason you're wired and tired.
Cortisol.
Throughout your day, this stress hormone courses through your body like a wild roller coaster.
The stress of your commute, your job and your family causes your cortisol to rise.
Loop the looping higher and higher.
Crash dieting, drinking to calm your mood can trigger more cortisol surges and more twists and turns on your roller coaster.
Your mind is racing.
Your body is exhausted.
It's all because of the wired and tired ride on the cortisol coaster.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
Cortisol can actually be a great benefit to your body, boosting energy, regulating blood sugar, even improving your mood.
Cut your stress and your cortisol coaster can look more like this.
Starting high in the morning and slowly rolling down a slope that ends in a good night's sleep.
Today, get off the wired and tired cortisol coaster.
Stop stress and start sleeping better.
Naturopathic medical doctor Dr. Alan Christensen says he can stop you from feeling wired and tired.
Why is it so crucial to figure out this hormone cortisol?
Why is it the base of this problem?
Cortisol is so important.
We need a good burst of it to be awake and alert and energized.
But then at the same time, we've got to shut the darn thing down in order to get proper sleep and have our bodies really restore and rejuvenate.
So based on his experience with patients, Dr. Christensen has created a plan to end your sleep crisis of being wired and tired.
The first thing we want to do is change what you do in the morning.
We're going to jumpstart your cortisol.
Dr. Christensen says we can do this by eating half a cup of resistant fiber.
This is a novel concept he developed from his own patients.
We've tested it there.
What have you found so unique about resistant fiber, especially in the morning?
You know, it's pretty amazing.
When you start the day with resistant fiber, for the next six to nine hours, your cortisol stays right where it should on that roller coaster.
The cool thing about that is you're more energized, and also you're going to see less cravings for sweets later on in the day.
Give us some examples of the best of these resistant fibers to bring down our cortisol levels.
For sure.
Here's some of my favorites.
So, a great one is actually peas.
The plain old garden vegetable.
Peas.
All right.
How do you make them?
You just puree them up?
You puree those up, and they work really good on eggs.
They taste great.
Green eggs.
I've read about them, never actually had them.
All right.
You can skip the green now.
We have rolled oats here, I see.
So I got to tell you, Dr. Oz, this is like my favorite.
It is.
This is my personal go-to breakfast, pretty much nine days out of ten.
So you get some good, organic, gluten-free, old-fashioned rolled oats.
You don't even have to cook them.
All you do is take some coconut milk, some nuts, some berries, and that's it.
That's breakfast.
There are coconut flakes in this too.
Do you do that?
Yeah.
Yeah, they're awesome.
A little bonus.
And then I see there's a smoothie here, but why do you have, are these beans?
Yeah.
Those are.
So those are navy beans.
So navy northern cannellini, and especially navy, those are all beans that are exceptionally high in resistant fiber.
And in a smoothie, believe it or not, you don't even taste them at all, but they actually make the texture nicer, and you get all those same benefits.
Alright, so you got up in the morning, you began to control the problems with your early morning cortisol.
Now you gotta go to work.
So let me ask you a question.
Does your morning commute sound like this?
Yeah.
For a lot of you, it does.
Dr. Christensen says the morning commute is one of those first triggers that makes our cortisol go crazy.
It goes haywire, you know, spurring up and down through all kinds of wacky things, which is what you don't want.
So I asked Christen to join us.
She says her morning drive is just like I illustrated here.
Hi.
How are you?
Good.
Come over here, Christen.
You're running away from me.
So what is it about your morning drive that's messing up your cortisol, you think?
Well, I have a toddler, so it's not easy to get out of the house in the morning.
As soon as I get in the car, I'm hitting every red light.
I'm stuck behind every bus and truck on the road, so I'm constantly watching the clock.
I'm thinking I'm going to be, you know, super late for work.
I end up only being like one minute late for work, but the anxiety, you know, just to get there is just, and then by the time I get to work, I can settle down and have my coffee.
So let me bring the expert here.
Dr. Christensen says you actually would have put the brakes on your wired state with something called orange oil.
I got to say, I wasn't taught about this in medical school.
I, in fact, didn't know anything about this until before the show.
We actually found a scientific paper supporting this, which is always encouraging to me when it's feasible.
So what is it about orange oil that's so effective?
You know, it's pretty neat.
Just smelling it.
So we don't eat this.
We don't put this on our skin.
All we have to do is smell it.
And just having it in your environment makes you more stress resilient.
So even though the world still goes on, it will not jostle you as badly.
Now, the key thing here is you're not going to apply it on your skin.
It's not perfume.
It doesn't go behind your ears.
It'll dab into your neck.
You're going to put it in the car.
You put it on the upholstery?
Where do you put it?
You know, I wouldn't even do that.
Some essential oils can harm fabrics.
The easiest way to do it by far is take a drop, put it on a cotton ball, and just set that on the dashboard and do a new one each morning.
What do you think?
Would you take that for the commute?
Definitely.
This will make you feel like you're, where did it go?
Oh, here it is.
It'll make you feel like you're a minute early than a minute late.
Oh, nice.
Good luck to you.
Thank you.
Next, we've got to ward off the midday cortisol.
And to do that, you've got to keep track of what's happening in the middle of the day.
And one way Dr. Christensen says really is effective is to add basil to your lunch.
Why basil?
Why at this point in the day?
So basil is an oxymum genus plant.
Don't say it again.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
No, but there's a lot of data showing that those types of plants, they actually help to lower cortisol, but not too fast.
So they're a perfect fit for midday when you're trying to transition your cortisol from the high point to that low point.
It's all about this move, not being loop-to-loops, but sort of generally melting where you need to go.
So by the time, at the end of the day, you're not so wired and tired.
Dr. Christensen's patients like this cortisol-busting basil so much, they created a Pinterest board.
This is some of the pictures from that board.
This is actually your patients, Dr. Christensen.
So there's basil and green juice.
They call this wired and tired juice, which I sort of like the idea of that.
You can brand that.
You have basil in sandwiches and wraps, and there's basil of chicken over there.
You can sort of baste it in that, all of which are very tasty looking, but they get the effect on the cortisol you described.
They do, and it just takes about four leaves of fresh basil or about a half a teaspoon of the dried leaf, so not even a ton of it.
Alright, so we've got to that midway point of the day.
We're sort of heading in the right direction.
Now, for everyone who feels wired and tired, this is really critical.
Your cortisol at dinnertime is messing with you.
Let's go show everybody what's happening metaphorically.
I'm going to actually climb the stairs of our studio here.
Come on up, that's Christensen.
I'll race you.
Way up here.
And I'm coming up here for a reason.
Because most of us are spending our evenings with our cortisol way up here.
It's supposed to be here in the morning, not in the evening.
So you just can't relax back down.
So to lower your cortisol, we've got to do some cool things.
Which includes using carbs.
We don't think of it that way.
We want the majority, the bulk of our carbs at dinner.
Sounds counterintuitive.
Why is that so important?
By the way, thank you very much.
What's your name?
Gina.
So Gina's holding.
This is a plate of what you think we should be eating at dinner.
Yeah.
So if you can, explain this.
For sure.
Carbs have gotten a bad rap.
You know, at one point we ate nothing but carbs, then we thought we should eat none.
But they really help in the evening.
What happens is, if your blood sugar is too low, your body will put out more cortisol to raise your blood sugar.
And you don't want that at night.
That's going to get in the way of your sleep.
So I'm so excited to have hard data showing that.
Just good, simple foods that are good in other ways can help heal your cortisol rhythm.
It's about a cup of carbs total?
About a cup cooked, and I love a variety of types.
You know, like whole grain brown rice like this is wonderful.
Quinoa is great.
I love beans and legumes.
And then vegetable starches too.
You know, sweet potatoes, squash, beets, those are all great.
It's a present from me to you.
Thank you very much.
If we do that, we start coming down the cortisol, and we're starting to go where we need to be.
Christensen says it's important to continue to lower the cortisol just before bed.
So now we're not as high as we would have been, except we ate this meal, thankfully, so we're coming back down.
Two ways to do this.
One is take a negative ion shower.
I've never thought about negative ions in showers.
Is it something special?
There is.
You know, people love being in natural settings, you know, woods or by mountains, and by rivers, by flowing water.
So moving water releases ions, and they make us euphoric.
They raise our mood, and they help bring us out of that wired and tired type state.
So any shower does?
Any shower does.
Cold, hot, anything you want.
You know, warm is nice in the evening.
That's the best fit.
Thank goodness.
And about an hour before bed.
Yeah, you don't have to freeze.
Okay, cool.
So we actually put one of the audience members on this.
Shawn, how are you?
I'm great.
How are you?
So you did this little experiment for us.
Yes, I did.
How did it work for you?
It was awesome.
It was awesome.
What I did is, instead of taking my showers in the morning, I started taking them at night.
Between work and being taxi mom to my son, I needed something to unwind me.
So I found out taking my shower at night, it just ran, all the stress of the day just ran it down the drain.
You want another tip on top of that one?
What's that?
Come on over here.
This will get your cortisol even lower.
This is the last thing we're going to ask you to do to finish that little descent to a low cortisol so you can get to sleep at night.
You're going to dim your lights about a half hour to an hour before bedtime.
Okay.
You can all dim the lights in the studio here.
Have you done this?
I did it.
Oh, you did this too?
It's a candlelight.
Use candlelight?
Candlelight.
That's a good idea.
Candlelight.
Why is it so important?
You know, our brains control this cycle that we have, and they're used to the light being different from morning and night.
And they're used to it getting dim around dusk.
So by turning off your extra lights, but having one good reading lamp, that really makes your brain think, hey, it's time to wind this stuff down and get ready for bed and repair this body and get it set for a good day tomorrow.
It helped.
You're looking sleepy to me.
I'm curious to thank you for the advice.
He's got a new book out.
It's called The Adrenal Recept Diet.
It's out now.
You can find his plan to end your seat prices at Stop Filling the Water at dros.com.
- Ta, be right back. - Next, do you believe all your issues and problems will go away if you're thin?
Controlling your weight may not be the answer to everything.
Meet a woman who says that there's a dark side of being skinny.
Learn how accepting the body you're in can still make you happy and healthy.
Next.
The Dr. Oz Show.
Emmy nominated.
All new.
Dr. Oz gets you in the know now.
Breaking down the latest controversial topics and trends and how it impacts you.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
You dream about what life would be like when you finally hit your weight loss goal?
Andi Mitchell lived that dream.
She lost 135 pounds.
Go ahead and applaud.
But I'm going to warn you, it wasn't the fantasy she expected.
Instead, she discovered a dark side to Skinny.
In her new book, It Was Me All Along, she shares her struggle.
I want to welcome Andy to the show.
How are you?
So Skinny was your goal all along, but you get there and you find this, as you call it, dark side.
Yeah.
What was that?
Well, you know, for 20 years I was the biggest person that I knew and I thought that thinness was going to be some sort of a holy grail or some finish line with a solution and that it would be kind of an answer to my problems, but I wasn't expecting that it would come with any sort of problems.
I think the visibility that I got when I lost weight was really challenging because on the one hand I had no idea how I was going to stay thin so there's a little bit of a pressure with people now noticing me now in this new kind of foreign body and then also you know There was something sad to me about feeling like I'd changed this superficial, you know, part of myself and I was somehow more validated because of it.
You know, if a man would notice me, I would talk myself out of it because I still viewed myself as, you know, this fat girl.
What did you think would happen?
I thought, I just thought that life would be easier.
I thought that it was kind of going to be, you know, doors opening and that it would be easier to know, you know, how to go after my dreams, how to, you know, pursue relationships and all of the things that I wanted to do with my life.
But the reality is, you know, you lose weight and a new chapter of life just begins.
You still have problems and stress and all of the things that come at you.
Only now you can't turn back to food as your coping mechanism.
Can I read something to you?
This is a quote from the book.
I was left with the emotions.
This is after you lost the weight.
I was left with the emotions I'd eaten for 20 years.
How are things different?
You must be tempted to eat your emotions since you used that for the first part of your life.
Yeah, I think there's like a fleeting moment when I feel discomfort where I'm like, am I hungry?
And I have to work against it and touch base with what is going on.
So when you walk in front of a mirror and you look in the mirror, which I'm hoping you do, what do you see?
You know, it's taken me 10 years to find a weight where I finally feel like, you know, I'm good here.
You know, food is a neutral entity and I have an appreciation for my body and myself where I can kind of separate myself from my weight.
But I think, you know, at the end of the day, I think I'll kind of always view myself through the lens of my middle school self.
Your middle school song.
Yeah.
That's actually true, right?
We're all middle school, ultimately.
Yeah, right?
I mean, it's just like...
A little awkward, gawky, whatever you look like.
Yeah.
I was a nerd, by the way, just so you know.
Okay, okay.
That's who I am.
Guys, keep that in mind.
Let's go to the audience.
There's some women who have some questions for you, not surprisingly, after they know the topic of the book, because it's a false promise we have so often that we'll lose weight and everything will be fine.
Who's got questions?
Here, you can go first.
What's your first name?
Hi, I'm Jamie.
I recently lost 50 pounds last year.
And one of the things I struggle with is that sometimes I'll look in the mirror and I'll feel like that's not real.
That's not really what I look like.
I still feel like I used to look.
And it's hard for me to grapple with that.
Is that something that you've struggled with and how have you overcome it?
I do.
I think, you know, I struggle with that, but it just, it takes time.
And I think you kind of just have to give yourself time to live in that body and to just accept that, like, you know, you're just, you're getting used to it, number one, and that you're just every day kind of, you know, working on, like, kind of connecting the mind and the spirit and the body.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
Hi.
My name's Lisa.
I've recently lost 60 pounds.
Congratulations.
You lost a lot of weight today.
A lot of people lost weight.
Yeah.
I'm curious how you keep your motivation up.
Oh, let's really keep going.
Like, I just think of the higher goals that I have and just always just wake up every day and kind of re-energize by that.
And not to say that it's not every day.
You know, like there are cupcakes.
You know, I mean, it's hard.
But, you know, like, I just, I think of the greater goals that I have and the confidence that comes with, like, feeling strong every day.
Yes.
So.
Hope that's helpful.
Thank you.
Go ahead.
So I also lost some weight for my wedding in November.
I lost 40 pounds and since then I've had trouble maintaining my weight loss and I'm very very hard on myself and so I was wondering how you've been able to separate your self-confidence from your gains and your losses.
That is a really hard thing because like the scale can kind of be like our judge of ourselves.
One bit of advice, don't use the scale.
There's no finish line on the scale.
Oh, it's true.
You can't win the scale.
Pick other things that you can win that you can truly define yourself by.
Congratulations to the marriage.
Yes?
How are you?
I want to lose weight, but there's certain characteristics that Correspond to us.
You know, I'm very outgoing.
I'm very bold.
So I'm scared that if I lose weight, I'll lose who I am as a person.
So how did you deal with those struggles?
That's a good question.
But the thing that I would say is, like, you are never going to lose that.
Like, the things that have come up with me through when I was big and whatever, like, I titled it It Was Me All Along because, for sure, those will be with me forever.
And you are probably fierce and funny and bold and awesome.
And you're going to be...
Great.
And if you lose weight and gain a little bit of confidence, you're just going to be, like, fiery cracker.
That makes sense, yeah.
You will always have that, though.
You'll always have your personality.
Thank you.
Love you just the way you are.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
You can read an excerpt from Andy's memoir with me all along on DrRogs.com.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
All month long we're boosting your budget giving you simple ways to save money but let's face it sometimes spending feels really good until the bills come and that good feeling turns into a sinking feeling.
I'm talking about debt stress.
I know a lot of you are dealing with it right now.
Today we've got a simple plan to pay off your credit cards and break free from overspending for good.
It's exactly what my next guest Leah needs.
I love shopping and spending money.
It is probably my favorite thing to do.
I shop almost every day of the week.
When I have a bad day, it's the only thing that makes me feel better.
This is cute!
My daughter was born eight years ago in the middle of winter.
She was born close to the weekend, and my husband had to go back to work Monday, so I was stuck in the house with her by myself.
Can't go out for a walk when it's snowing.
So we ended up going to the mall, and I started to buy things.
I need this.
Then realize that it felt really good.
I was depressed and unhappy and I just kept buying.
Thank you so much.
When I shop, it's like the thrill of the hunt.
Euphoria is a really good word.
It makes me feel fantastic.
25 bucks?
By the time I swipe the card, I'm like triumphant.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Have a good day.
When things are really hard at home or if I have a lot of things that I need to be doing and I feel overwhelmed, I'll go out and I'll be like, oh, I need to go meet a friend for lunch.
Thank you.
I'm kind of stuck.
Am I stressed out because I'm spending money or am I spending money because I'm stressed out?
Right now, I'm about $12,000 in credit card debt.
I maxed out every single credit card.
I've hid bills because I didn't want my husband to be upset.
We have no savings at all.
Our daughter doesn't even have a college fund set up.
We're one big emergency away from losing everything.
I feel like I dug myself this super deep hole and I am buried in it, I'm trapped in it.
I would love it if Dr. Oz could help me find a way to break the cycle, stop the spending and take control of the mess that I'm in.
Thanks for being with us, Leah.
So you describe this euphoria you get.
What is it that shopping's giving you that you're not getting anywhere else in your life?
I feel like it's a way I can do something for myself.
So I feel like I do so much for everybody else that when I go out to lunch with a friend or if I go to the mall and buy something, it's doing something for myself that nobody else is doing and it gives me this feeling that I'm like, okay, I deserved that and I just treated myself.
A lot of folks use spending to fill a void like we do with food.
We celebrate with it.
We deal with crushing emotional issues.
We deal with stress.
When you have a piece of cake and you solve it the same way, there's this downer afterwards, right?
Right.
Come on back here.
I want to take you to the truth tube.
I was thinking of ways of expressing this to you.
And normally I'd put a blood pressure in here, but I'm going to give you something else that will actually affect your blood pressure, but not your blood pressure.
I have your current credit card numbers.
May I share that with you and everybody else?
Yes.
So we added it all up.
You have eight credit cards and you're about $13,000 in debt.
Yeah, that's about right.
Is that about right?
Yeah.
That's a big number.
It's a huge number.
It's a really, really scary number.
Sitting down and looking at what I owed and writing everything down to get it ready for the show was sobering, to say the least.
Well, the follow-up question, and I asked you and you gave me an answer I think is pretty accurate, is how often you think about this?
How often this stresses you out?
I think about it all day, every day, multiple times a day.
It's what keeps me awake at night.
So we took that tally and it's about 10 times a day.
It's ridiculous.
I put that up there because that stress, which is what our focus is with you and affects so many people right now, is the problem I'm worried about.
In exchange for that one euphoric moment of feeling joy and bliss because you bought something, you're spending 10 times a day coping with it.
So, I don't want you worrying 10 times a day about something that you can address, if we can address them in an open way, which is why I appreciate you letting me put this up in the truth, too.
So, to help us out, I brought in an expert who doesn't just deal in dollars and cents.
He actually helps people make sense of their finances.
His name is Rick Edelman, who's a New York Times bestselling author and top financial advisor.
So, you're hearing an emotional story.
Very much so.
This attachment that we have to spending money, even if it's overspending.
Why is this happening?
We use money as a release.
We find an emptiness or a longing somewhere in our lives, and money is a narcotic.
It gets us through the day, as you've pointed out.
We don't have to worry about the long-term implications at that momentary high that we get at the cash register, and that's all we really are thinking about.
The good news is it is easily fixed, and we can do that for you if you're willing to let us help.
Oh my god, I would love it.
I would give anything for the help.
Give us the first step.
We're going to walk you through this like everyone else can do this the same way, simple steps done right the first time.
What we need to realize is that there is a pattern, there is a method that we can apply to this to get you from here to there.
That sounds great.
Give me a goal that she can stay focused on.
Something simple.
The real key is I'm not going to tell you to stop spending.
Here's the key.
A lot of folks don't want to enter into this kind of concept because they, frankly, like the spending.
I'm not going to tell you to stop spending.
All I'm going to tell you to do, Leah, is to change what it is you're spending on.
Instead of spending on a soda at lunch or a blouse in the afternoon or a stuffed toy for your I'm going to instead say, let's focus that spending on what really matters, such as your child's college education.
Let's focus the spending on eliminating the debt.
Sounds like a plan.
Well, I want to hear what your plan might be.
Rick gave you a couple examples.
Some of these are pretty daunting ones.
What's a straightforward plan that you could focus on right now?
My daughter is eight years old.
She just turned eight.
And she's been asking me for probably five years to take her to Disney.
Excellent.
That's a perfect place to start.
So all we've got to do are two things.
Number one, figure out how much would that trip cost.
Second, once you identify the cost, now set a date.
What's the time you want to go with your daughter?
Maybe it's three years from now, maybe it's five years from now, whatever.
Now we know the target we're aiming for.
And once we know the target, we can begin to set up a savings plan.
So instead of you spending money on frivolous things during the day that fritter away, we can't remember them tomorrow, now we are building toward a really big goal.
So taking our eye off the daily activity, we'll discover that our spending is still going on.
It's now going on in a healthy, productive way that is truly meaningful in your life.
And the fact that we're making daily progress will be rewarding and uplifting and spiritually unbundling.
You'll love it.
When we come back, Rick's Practical Plan.
Anyone can use to pay down those bills and conquer their debt stress.
Stay here.
Next.
Do you lose track of what you spend money on?
Do you owe on every credit card?
Get motivated to curtail your shopping habits.
Simple, actionable steps to pay off one card at a time.
The plan to conquer your stress and your debt.
Next.
The Dr. Oz Show.
Emmy nominated.
All new.
Dr. Oz gets you in the know now.
Breaking down the latest controversial topics and trends and how it impacts you.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow. - If you know what it's like to avoid your mailbox, stash away your bills, and screen your calls, you've probably experienced debt stress.
Rick Edelman is back with the rest of his plan.
He's going to give you small, actionable steps you can take to conquer your credit card debt.
The next step is something that's going to give everyone a sigh of relief, at least I think it will.
Everyone watching, listen carefully.
He wants you to ignore budgeting.
No budgets.
That always is the first advice I get from anyone in the financial world.
But aren't you thrilled to hear that?
You don't have to budget.
Yeah.
I'll clap.
Budgeting, Dr. Oz, is a complete waste of time.
First of all, I don't know anyone who successfully budgets.
Look at Congress.
They have a budget.
Look what it does for them.
And anybody who attempts to do a budget and stick with it, well, they're usually a pretty boring person.
I mean, it just doesn't work because unexpected things come up in life that we're not anticipating, and that blows our budget.
The reason a budget doesn't work is that a budget is a promise of how you will spend.
Throw it away, it doesn't work.
There is a much better approach that you should use instead.
You call it the one-week reality check.
It's so simple, and Leah, you did it, and...
Anybody else can do it.
All I want you to do is to continue doing exactly what you do the way you do it.
In other words, keep spending.
Don't change a thing.
All I want you to do is track it.
And track it for a week and then tally it up.
And we'll discover where your money really is going without having to budget.
And what we discover is that when people track their expenses, they're shocked to discover that they're spending 10% of their income on coffee and soda and donuts during the day.
And I don't have to say a word as a financial advisor because it hits you in the face and you realize, this is nuts!
Common sense says, I need to stop doing this.
And you immediately do because you realize it's silly.
And the only reason we're engaging in that spending behavior today is because we're not noticing.
When you do it a dollar at a time, it doesn't seem like a big deal.
But when it adds up over the course of a week or a month, all of a sudden you realize it's hundreds of dollars.
Money that can be best used in other ways.
Next big step is to tackle the debt by focusing on one card, one credit card at a time.
Why is that such an important decision?
Well, most of us are overwhelmed by our credit cards.
Most people have, the average American has six credit cards, and they have different balances, they have different interest rates, they have different payment minimums required, and it becomes daunting.
How do I juggle them?
Which one do I pay?
And they have different dates due and so on.
So let's boil it down and make it really simple and easy.
Let's do this.
There's a little exercise.
I want to put you through the wringer here.
I want you to be...
Pretend that you're at home making this decision with us.
These are actually five of your credit cards.
Yes.
We wrote down the amount of money you have outstanding and the interest rate you're paying on each of them.
So which card you think...
Actually, I'm going to ask you because I think you might have learned a little bit from Rick already.
Rick, tell us.
Quiz the audience.
How do we know which one to pay first?
Well, most people we discover say that what they need to get rid of is the card with the lowest balance first.
Because look at that.
You owe a couple of grand to several cards, but one of them is only 300 bucks.
You can get rid of that really quick and easy.
It'll feel really good.
Bad idea.
Why?
Because the interest rate is zero on that card.
It's not costing you any money to maintain that balance.
On the other hand, you've got a card over here at 29% interest.
That is causing the most damage.
So we need to focus on getting rid of that card first.
So here's how you do it.
First, you make the minimum payment to every card.
Because you don't want to miss a payment.
You don't want to be late on a payment.
You don't want to bounce a check.
That hurts your credit record.
Make the minimum payment to every card.
Then take all the extra cash and throw it all at the card with the highest interest rate.
That's the most damage.
Focus your energy on that.
Even though it might take you a while to get rid of it, so what?
That's where you target.
So what do you do with this card when you're paid it off?
Oh.
Done with it.
Done.
Does that feel good?
It feels incredible.
I wish that was for real.
I wish that I could literally just take them and crack them and toss them and it would be done.
This is for real, actually.
A card that has a 29% interest rate, you should crack up and get rid of it or do other crazy things with it.
You got a little tip you like to do with your credit cards?
You can actually, if you find that that credit card is causing you a lot of damage because of the high interest rate, you know what you do?
Take it out of your purse, put it in a little tub of water, a little jar, and shove it into the freezer and freeze it.
This way, if you ever are tempted to use it, you would have to go to the trouble of going home, going to the freezer, defrosting it, and by the time you go through all that, the need to engage in that impulse buy will be gone, will be dissipated, and you won't incur the spending.
That's a great idea.
Hashtag ice the card.
You've got an express lane tactic you argue will also help us a lot.
And I want you to pay attention to this.
Can I say one thing about, we don't understand money as a people.
We really don't.
Because it's hard to understand it.
What Rick's pointing out are simple concepts that make a big difference.
This next one is critically important.
How do you create an express lane strategy?
It's really very, very, very simple, Dr. Oz.
You want to recognize that the longer it takes you to pay off the debt, the more debt you are ultimately paying in interest.
So, don't simply make the minimum payment to a card.
If you double that payment, you get rid of the debt in a dramatically faster period of time.
Take a look at this example.
A $2,000 credit card balance with a 17% interest rate.
If you make the minimum monthly payment, it'll take 21 years.
Wow!
To get rid of that card.
That's crazy.
But if you double the payment, if you make twice the payment every month instead of just once, you'll get rid of that card in two years.
Wow.
I think there's an applause.
Leah, are you willing to work with Rick?
He's willing to help you, but I want you to take that beautiful eight-year-old to Disney World.
I want to take her, too.
And I want to stress that done, the ten times a day of worrying that it causes you and the sleepinesses and all the things that are destroying your health, I want them gone.
For you and everybody else, will you work with Rick on this?
Absolutely.
I would love it.
All right.
Good for you.
You guys bond together.
Thank you so much.
You get the full plan we're talking about today and all the information from our Truth To Bexperts on DrRoz.com.
And make sure to check out Rick Edelman's book, The Truth About Money.
We'll be right back.
Next.
Are you overfeeding your pets?
Has your love for them turned into pet obesity?
America's vet, Dr. Marty Becker, is here to help.
Give your pet a new leash on life.
A simple three-step plan everyone can do to help their pet get to a safer way.
next.
I do my best to practice what I preach, I I eat healthy, maintain an active lifestyle, and almost all of my family follow suit.
That is except one member of the Oz household.
Please meet my Labrador, or as I like to call her, Flabrador, Rosie.
Come on, Rosie.
Come on, girl.
Come on, little beautiful one.
Oh, so beautiful.
This is Rosie, and I promised Rosie, I promised Rosie, I wasn't gonna put her in the truth tube, but I'm gonna talk a little bit about her weight.
She's got one problem.
She's so perfect in every other way, but she's not alone.
These are some of your pets.
These pictures behind me, I've never seen a response like this on my Facebook page.
Thousands of you posted pictures of animals you love like Rosie.
So today I asked America's vet, Dr. Marty Becker, to come over here and help us out.
He's got a plan to get any obese pet to throw a safe weight.
There we are, Rosie.
All right, so how big a problem is the weight that Rosie, for example, has and the weight of all my viewers out there with their pets?
Well, here's the problem.
We love our pets.
We give them a treat.
They wag their tail just like she's doing.
We rub their belly.
We give them another treat.
They wag their tail.
So it starts this cycle.
So now one out of every two of America's pets are overweight or obese.
Half of them?
Half of them.
Oh my goodness.
Well, how do we know if our dogs in particular, how do we know if they're obese?
Well, you don't need the truth tube to know this one's obese, right?
Rosie, that's so mean!
I'm sorry, Rosie.
Well, here's what you do.
There's no stick-thin dog models on Animal Planet.
There's no bikini season.
They don't have to get into last year's pants, you know.
So they're scavengers.
They'll happily dig their grave with their food balls.
So here's the basic way.
You should be able to feel their ribs under a light layer of fat.
There are ribs under there, Dr. Oz, somewhat.
They're deep.
I guess I always thought the dogs were like little babies.
If they're a little chubby, it's sort of cuter.
Oh boy, that's the problem.
You know what?
Fat cats and pudgy pooches are funny in cartoons, but in real life it's like tubby time bombs taking away their health.
And you'll see this in the same, almost a mirror image of humans.
Increase in type 2 diabetes, increase in joint problems, increase in cardiovascular respiratory problems, increase in skin problems, and the worst, an increased risk of cancer.
Alright, let's get to it.
We got a three-step plan that everyone can use to help their pets get safe and stay at a safe weight.
How long will it take us if I do this with Rosie the right way?
She's gonna lose about, she's about a hundred pounds.
Just like the great weight loss plans that you've talked about for years, she's gonna lose one to two percent of her body weight per week.
So she could lose one to two pounds per week.
So if you're at that from three to six months, she'll get most of the benefit.
She'll get, you know, she'll have to lose all the weight to get most of the benefit.
Right, so portion control, I knew this is coming up.
So I, you know, I feed her twice a day.
Twice a day.
The one thing, the taboo thing of anything is don't feed free choice.
Dogs never knew when they were going to eat in the wild, so they'd eat as much as they could.
They'll wolf it down.
So you want to look on the bag of food.
And look at their weight and feed on the lower end.
So if it says to feed two to three cups a day, feed two cups a day.
Take that two cups and split it into three portions.
So if you feed morning, when you first get home from work late at night, they're gonna actually lose more weight than if you feed, you know, once a day or twice a day.
So as many times a day as you can split it up.
No, that's easy to do.
I actually give her a little extra thinking that I'm not going to be around for a while, so why not?
Yeah, and we measure ours out.
We have small dogs, eighth of a cup.
That's how precise we measure our pet's foods out.
All right, so Stacy's got a question about portion size.
This is on Facebook.
She says, I love my cat, but he's way too fat.
That is a big cat.
How would it be for him to skimp on portions and make them smaller until he loses weight?
Are you sure that's not a tick with whiskers?
I don't know.
It looks like it.
I'll tell you the problem with cats.
Dogs will never starve themselves to death.
You know, a 35-year veteran veterinarian, they'll never stop eating.
A cat will actually stop eating and they can cause some serious damage called Yep.
little search for it. - All right, come on Rosie.
Next you say we gotta give them appropriate treats.
Rosie loves her treats.
She loves her treats.
But you say I've been giving them the wrong ones.
I usually give her scraps off the table. - I saw that by the way in your magazine I saw you giving treats on the table.
I do.
I always do.
She sits right next to me every meal.
And she's very smart.
She knows what she likes and what she doesn't like.
See, here's the problem.
She looks so happy when you give it to her that you just keep giving it to her.
That's what everybody does.
So, Rosie, we're going to go on the PAW plan, Rosie.
The PAW plan?
The PAW plan.
Now, the PAW is portion control, which we talked about.
And we're talking about appropriate treats.
Now, here's the thing about treats.
There's two kinds of treats.
There's healthy treats.
Jackpot treats.
The healthy treats are what we have here.
Blueberries, apple slices, carrots.
Rosie, you's a good girl.
Do you want one, Rosie?
Oh, yeah.
Right down the hatch.
Oh, no, right out the hatch.
I've never given her a blueberry before.
We'll try this one.
No, she doesn't want...
once you know what?
I knew it wouldn't work.
All right.
I like this stuff!
All right.
She rejected everything.
No, she dropped that.
The other one she rejected.
Okay, so here's the key.
You want to give them healthy treats most of the time, but every once in a while you give them a jackpot treat.
You give them a little piece of deli turkey.
You give them one of the treats that you bought at the pet store.
But it's always erratic.
You never know when.
So for every 10 baby carrots and 20 blueberries, all of a sudden you go, oh, Rosie, use it.
Girl, do you want this one?
And so they always have that expectation like Vegas that you're going to pay off.
And one other thing you can do, too, we always think you've got to pay off with food.
These are called food puzzles or food dispensing devices.
This one's from Kong.
And inside is the kibble.
So as they knock this around, the kibble actually comes out.
So your dog will smell this, and they move it around, and it's like a slot machine.
So she's already sniffing it.
She can't figure out how to get the food out of it.
But what it does, it gets them out of that boredom, that constant binge eating of going back to the bowl into something that this actually feeds their mind, not just feeds their body.
All right, finally you say, we've got to walk off the weight.
So come on, Rose, let's walk with you a little bit.
Oh, look which one she picks up, right?
Yes, she's smart.
She knows what she's doing.
Notice the blueberry is still where we left it.
So how much do we have to walk?
Okay, what you want to do is two blocks or 200 yards, because not everybody lives in the city, for 10 pounds of body weight.
So Rosie's about 100 pounds.
Don't exaggerate.
Rosie, I would just weigh her 99 pounds.
Oh, good.
Please.
See, she notices that.
She was insulted by that.
And so you're going to say, like a lot of people, she's just got a lot of hair.
That's what I always hear.
She's not really fat.
You'll see one to two pounds going off per week, and in three to six months, she's going to be back to her ideal body weight.
I've got a little video from Mandy.
She wants to know about overweight pets who don't go for walks.
Hi, Dr. Oz!
This is Guinness.
He is a big, lazy rabbit.
His favorite pastime is laying around.
I was wondering if you had any tips on how to make him more active.
That's a big rabbit.
Wow, that's the beaster bunny, man.
The beaster bunny, right?
Yeah, wow.
Well, okay, for rabbits, one of the things, people feed them the wrong kind of food.
So rather than alfalfa, hay, grass, hay.
So number one, it's feeding the right kind of food.
Number two is to take a cardboard box and, you know, get something from Amazon or somebody, cut holes and let them walk around.
Make sure it's a bigger cage so they're active.
And just like you would think, they love to chew, and chewing burns calories is to give them carrots or something to chew on.
I want to thank you very much.
Dr. Becker has given every pet owner a new leash on life.
Pardon the pun.
I'll be here all weekend.
You can share photos and pictures of your overweight pets with me on my Facebook page.
You can find tips on how to help your pet get even healthier on DrOz.com.
And everyone in our audience today is going home with a copy of April and May issue of Dogster Magazine.
We'll be right back.
The Dr. Oz Show.
Emmy-nominated six seasons in a row.
All new.
Dr. Oz gets you in the know now.
Controversial topics and trends affecting your health.
Dr. Oz puts it in context, breaks it all down, so you know now how it impacts you.
Plus, people think you need this in order to stay healthy.
The biggest budget boosters to stay healthy even when you're broke.
And I'm going to prove it to you right now.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
It's the age-old question we've been pondering since childhood.
Exactly how many licks does it take to get to the center of a lollipop?
Well, science has finally solved this mystery for us.
A new study looked at how candy dissolves and how the licking process I fixed this process.
So, are you ready for your final answer?
Here, you can put your minds at ease and your tongue's at rest.
The researchers calculated an estimate of about a thousand licks, a thousand licks, to get to the center.
Now, I'm not sure how many of us have ever tried to make it to that number before.
Most of us just bite into the lipop after a while.
But you can give your tongue a treat today if you want and try to get there with a thousand licks.
Okay, now it's time for in case you missed it.
First up, the new sleep crisis that's feeling wired and tired.
It's when your body is exhausted but your mind is in overdrive.
And the culprit just might be your stress hormone, cortisol.
Now ideally, you want your cortisol to be high in the morning and then slowly come down so that at night it's really low that we can fall asleep.
Now this is something we did not know in medical school.
I was never taught this as a doctor.
But in the afternoons, to put a break on that wired state, there's some evidence to say you might want to try to wind down with orange oil.
This new research shows that orange oil can reduce anxiety, perhaps by lowering your cortisol.
Here's what you're going to do.
You're going to keep the orange oil in your car.
Then take a few drops.
Don't put it on your skin or the upholstery.
Put a little bit on one of these cotton balls, for example, and just leave it in the car.
It'll give you that nice odor and help relax you and hopefully deal with some of that wired feeling.
You can check out the full plan on DrRoz.com.
Next, do you have an obese problem like my Flabrador Rosie over here?
Come here, Rosie, honey.
Come here, Rosie.
Oh, I'll come to her.
Rosie, she doesn't move as much as I want her to sometimes.
But you can put your furry friend on a little bit of a paw plan.
The P in paw stands for portion control, the A is for appropriate treats, and the W is for walking.
So here's something that might surprise you as a treat, because I never thought of this.
You can add in blueberries, baby carrots, and apple slices.
Now, Rosie, you didn't like them, did you?
No, Rosie's gonna nap here.
She didn't like them at all, but maybe your pet will give it a shot.
I never knew there were even options.
And to walk the weight off, walk your pup or your dog, two blocks for every 10 pounds of her body weight.
So Rosie here, beautiful she is, weighs 99 pounds, so I should be walking her about 20 blocks each day.
Wanna walk Rosie?
Come on, honey.
Let's go.
There we are.
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