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Sept. 20, 2024 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:49
Oz Files: Solving Medical Mysteries & A Near-Death Experience | Dr. Oz | S7 | Ep 90 | Full Episode
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Time Text
Bizarre.
Most people thought I was crazy.
Obscure.
Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me.
Out of this world.
It was through dying that I truly learned how to live.
Medical mysteries solved.
Let me show everybody what goes into this diagnosis.
And botched butt implants.
I started to lose my breath.
I honestly thought I was going to die.
The new cosmetic procedure putting women in danger.
coming up next.
We'll save lives today.
We'll save lives today.
We are ready to get healthy.
Everyone is talking about the reboot of one of the most popular shows ever made, The X-Files.
So today, we are opening up The Oz Files.
We're about to embark on a journey, uncovering medical mysteries, the obscure, the bizarre, and even the out of this world.
Just like Mulder and Scully, we're getting to the bottom of the medical mystery cases you will be talking about, because the truth is out there.
Woo!
And ours today, first we're going to talk about a patient who baffled doctors everywhere when she revealed she could hear inside her own body, including her own heartbeat, even her digestion.
Then you're going to meet a woman who says a routine doctor's visit caused her to cross over to the other side.
And stay tuned, because we have an urgent warning on a mysterious new cosmetic procedure trend that's leading women in a severe chronic pain syndrome.
Plus, we're giving you the three questions that all of you need to ask, all you need to know about, in order to avoid falling prey.
But first, let's open up the Oz Files.
It's the case of the woman who could hear inside her own body.
Ever since I was a little girl, I could hear my heartbeat.
It was more than just hearing it.
It was like a thumping inside of my ears.
I just thought it was normal.
Then, a little over a year ago, I got really dizzy at work and I passed out.
So they took me to the hospital and they said I was a little bit dehydrated.
They sent me home.
But then I continued to have dizzy spells and a couple doctors told me I had migraines but then they sent me home with no game plans.
But even worse, I started hearing strange sounds inside of my body.
I could hear my food going down my throat.
I could hear my stomach digesting my food like it would just swish around inside.
When I would talk, it would sound like a kazoo inside of my ears.
I heard my own breathing, kind of like if you're on a phone with someone and they're breathing heavily.
There were times I could even hear my eyes moving in my head inside of my ears.
Everyday sounds would drive me crazy.
The dropping of the keys, cell phone ringing.
I couldn't watch TV, couldn't listen to any kind of music.
It would just send me into a spin.
Even when I laid in my bed, there were times where I would just wake up out of a sleep and my heart was just beating and thumping.
I was in a dark place.
It was debilitating for me.
I didn't want to leave my house.
I felt like a prisoner in my own body.
I was never able to escape.
I felt defeated, like I was never going to be at peace again.
So Rachel is joining us in the studio.
She says she was like a prisoner inside her own body.
How would you try to cope?
It was really hard.
I was in my room a lot, in my dark, quiet room.
I would spend a lot of time there.
I'm really close to my nieces and nephews, and just the sounds of their voices and their laughter would just send me into a spin.
So I couldn't spend a lot of time with them.
That was one of the hardest parts for me.
I wore earplugs all the time to work, driving, at home, even in my quiet house.
It was hard.
I couldn't hardly function a normal day life.
You traveled the entire country.
You saw dozens of doctors.
Did you ever just think to yourself, I'm never getting better?
Did you ever think of giving up?
I did.
I felt like I gave up every day.
Luckily, I had a lot of support.
My family was very supportive.
My mom kept pushing me, kept making more doctor's appointments for me.
Every time I went to a doctor, I came out feeling the same way I went in.
Just kind of defeated.
Nothing new.
Nothing helpful.
But my mom just kept pushing for me.
Actually, Mom's here.
Yeah, she is.
Thanks to Mother Lisa.
How are you?
I'm great.
Thank you.
So, I hear your daughter describe what it's like to be locked into your own body, literally drowned out by the noises your own body is making and the world around it.
What was it like watching your daughter go through that?
It was a very difficult time because we'd all be together and having a family get together and within five minutes Rachel would be over laying down on the couch and after several doctors diagnosed her with migraine associated vertigo and they just dismissed her as this is something you have to live with I just decided that that that was not true and there had to be something else wrong with my daughter so I Literally day and night spent on the internet
searching her symptoms and when I came across superior canal dehiscence I knew that I had found the condition and the cure and I knew it was brain surgery and I called Rachel and I said I found it now I need to find a doctor that's gonna agree with me and find and prove that that's what you have and so I called the best doctor near us that dealt with superior canal dehiscence and And I convinced him to please get the CAT scan, get the testing.
And once he did and it came back positive, he still told me she still has migraine-associated vertigo and I will not perform the surgery.
And I said, well, then I'll take her to the top doctor in the nation, I thought, where the condition was founded.
And I did.
And he told me the exact same thing.
So you can imagine when we left there, Rachel had no hope.
She said, if the top doctor in the nation is not going to fix me, this is my lot in life.
And so, Lisa, you found another doctor who said, I'll give it a shot?
Yes.
Luckily, we were on a support group, and everybody was talking about UCLA and a doctor out there that had recently been doing these surgeries.
And so I contacted them, and they were able to get Rachel in.
And the minute we walked in his office, he said, it sounds exactly like what she has.
You have a CAT scan right here to prove it.
I don't know why they would tell you she has migraines.
I said, thank you.
That's exactly what we've been saying all along.
But then the twist was, he said, I don't know that Rachel only has it on one side.
I think she may have it on both sides.
And he sent us to Boston for more testing and she did have it on both sides and had to have two brain surgeries, one on each side.
So it was worth it for you to have two brain surgeries.
That's how bad it was.
It was very much worth it.
I'm very happy with the outcome from both surgeries.
Can I show everybody?
I know you're probably the world expert, literally, on this.
Your mom certainly is.
She is.
Maybe show everybody what goes into this diagnosis.
And then I want to explain, because I have a real model of it.
Let me just orient you.
Here's the ear canal here, and there's the eardrum there, and there's so much happening here that this has to be insulated from the rest of your body, because you don't want to hear those orange waves banging into your eardrums.
Normal sound waves, like me speaking now, hit the eardrum, create this movement with the smallest bones in the body, and it sends this message through the hearing nerves.
Now, that bone, see that bone that's bluish up there?
If it's too thin, and you're often born with this problem, but trauma can do it too, it comes loose, and there's no insulation.
Sounds from your heart, from your intestines, begin to bang into this hearing area.
So you don't just hear it normally, you hear it through a whole different mechanism and you can't process that.
So by putting a new patch of bone on there, you can block out those extra sounds and fix the problem.
Which is unbelievable that something this small can be so influential.
And I'm sure you're not the only one with this issue.
No.
But you may be one of the few people who's actually been able to diagnose it and fix it.
So I brought you, I don't know if you've ever seen this, this is the left side Of your skull like this.
Hold it up like that.
And you see inside of this, there's the place where you actually hear when there's the ear canal, the hearing canal.
On the inside of the skull, there's this little piece of bone.
That little piece of bone there.
Go ahead and hold it.
That was ruining your life.
All that turmoil from that itty-bitty fragment of bone.
Yeah.
Makes you want to squash it, doesn't it?
It does.
No, it makes me want to build it back up.
And how are you now?
I'm doing really good.
I can do the everyday things that I used to do right now.
The sound of the clapping right now would have sent me under a bad spin before.
I would have never been able to be on a show like this before.
So I'm just really grateful for my health now and it just puts a bad day into perspective for me.
What do you have to say to your mom?
I'm so thankful for my mom.
She's been there through it all for me, and she's pushed and pushed and pushed like any mom probably would or should do.
So thank you mom.
That's a mother's intuition.
Congratulations, Dr. Lisa.
Up next, the case of a woman who says she crossed over to the other side and came back to tell us what she saw.
But first, as we go to break, any fan of the X-Files?
You like the X-Files?
Yeah.
You're gonna love this.
You know, we couldn't do at least one extraterrestrial case, so we found one.
Take a look at the new medical theory behind alien abductions.
Millions of people have reported being abducted by aliens, and you don't have to be from Roswell to be fascinated by their stories, which happen to have many similarities.
Lying down, unable to move, looming figures standing over you, bright lights above your head, and probing of their bodies.
Researchers from the Royal College of Anesthetists say that's no coincidence.
They've come up with a new scientific theory behind alien abduction stories.
It's called anesthesia awareness.
And this new research claims people who believe they were abducted by aliens could actually be recalling waking up during surgeries they've had in the past.
And they say the probing, the lights, the tools, those aren't from aliens in a UFO. It's a surgeon in an operating room.
Coming up next, a routine procedure that took a terrible turn, leaving this school teacher and new mom knocking on heaven's door.
I knew that I was home.
I call it heaven.
But she says she knows about life after death.
Next.
The same way you catch a cold or flu, can you catch a mental illness?
Why a simple infection could be to blame?
Then, could man's best friend become our first line of defense in detecting disease?
Compared to humans, they have more of the little receptors in their nose that capture the odors.
Elizabeth is back to investigate what these animals with superior sense of smell are capable of.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
23-year-old construction worker Patrick Lawler was suffering from a horrible toothache.
When he finally went to the dentist, Patrick and his dentist were shocked by what they found.
A four-inch nail that had penetrated Patrick's brain, barely missing his eye.
The only possible explanation?
An accident while Patrick was using a nail gun on the job.
Yet, astonishingly, Patrick had no recollection of the mishap.
That's a big nail.
All show long, we are opening up The Oz Files, the obscure, the bizarre, and the out-of-the-world medical mysteries.
Next, the case of the woman who says she crossed over to the other side and came back.
Today, she's here to tell us about her out-of-body experience and what she knows about life after death.
After my twins were born, I began to not feel very well.
I went to doctors to try to find out what was going on, and they scheduled a routine endoscopy.
What was supposed to be routine quickly turned into more of a nightmare.
During the procedure, my pancreas was nicked, and so I woke up with pancreatitis.
They put me in the hospital to recover, and the last thing that I remembered was looking at my mom and telling her that I loved her.
And then I closed my eyes and I went into respiratory arrest.
What happened next is a mystery to everyone.
That was the day that I died and crossed over to the other side.
So while your family members stood over you, where were you?
I was in the most beautiful tunnel of light.
I was surrounded with a peace that surpasses understanding.
I knew that I was home.
I call it heaven.
So what was in heaven?
What did you see there?
I remember being surrounded by so much love and intensity that it actually brought me to my knees.
And at one point God showed me my four children and He showed me that I could go back to be their mother or I could choose to continue on towards the gates of heaven with Him.
And I knew that I wasn't leaving them.
I knew that I was still going to be a part of their life and I continued with Him.
And then I heard my mom call my name and when she did I remember stopping and saying can I go back just to tell her that I'm okay.
So you do go back.
I did.
And you tell people what you saw.
Yes sir.
How did the doctors explain it?
The moment that I heard my mom's voice, I asked if I could come back to tell her that I was okay.
And he said, the choice is up to you.
And as I turned to find her voice, he said, tell them what you can remember.
And I remember saying, I'll remember everything and I'll be right back.
And the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital room with the doctors and the nurses performing CPR. And I immediately began to ask them to please stop.
That I just wanted them to know that I was okay and I wanted to return to where I was.
But why would you want to go back when you have family here and so much to live for?
Right.
Well, because I knew that that was ultimately where I wanted to be.
I was with the creator of the universe.
And I knew that I was home.
And it was through dying in that moment that I truly learned how to live.
Pretty profound.
I think you've come out of this with a sense of tranquility and peace.
You know, I gotta say, there's a lot of mystery in the world, and we're usually afraid of mystery.
Yes, sir.
But there's a beauty to mystery as well.
So not understanding at all and wondering what's out there.
Yes, sir.
So I'm glad you came back.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, it's not every day this happens to schoolteachers, is it?
No, it's not.
Thank you for sharing it.
Thank you.
You can hear more of Crystal's story in her book, Waking Up in Heaven.
We'll be right back.
Next, she got the butt of her dreams.
Then feared for her life.
An implant procedure gone awry.
What she did to have it removed.
What's actually being injected to bulk up the behinds?
Botched plastic surgeries you won't believe.
Next.
Thanks to women like Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, and Beyonce, bigger behinds are becoming a must-have trend.
But are they safe?
Today, an urgent warning on a new cosmetic procedure leaving women in severe chronic pain, even threatening their lives.
It's spreading from the stars of pop culture, celebrities promoting bigger behinds, to everyday women on the street.
But butt implants and fat transfer procedures can be costly.
So Sophie opted for less expensive silicone injections.
Injections that immediately made her sick.
I started to lose my breath a little bit.
I felt like I was gonna pass out.
My heart started to race like really really fast.
I honestly thought I was gonna die.
It wasn't until after her injections that Sophie learned her doctor wasn't licensed.
She says the fact he was working out of a house and not a hospital should have been a warning sign.
A part of me thought, you know, what if something goes wrong, of course.
Then again, I seen my friend do it and she was perfectly fine.
And I thought I was untouchable and I thought, you know, nothing could happen to me.
But I was wrong.
Over the next year and a half, Sophie's symptoms became worse.
Eventually, her breathing became so impaired she feared for her life.
I was afraid to fall asleep because I felt like my lungs just stopped working when I fall asleep.
I knew it was the injections because prior to the injections, I've never been sick.
I was very healthy.
My breathing was great.
I mean, after the injections, my whole health just went downhill.
I've been to the hospital over 30, 40 times.
The worst part was just thinking that maybe I'll never get help and that I just have to prepare myself to die.
It's pretty scary, Sophie.
It is.
So you mentioned that the procedure was in a house, not in a doctor's office.
Right.
Did you have any reservations when you realized that?
In the back of my mind, I knew that, you know, not everything was supposed to, you know, look like that.
I don't know.
I just felt like a part of me was just thinking that maybe, what if something goes wrong?
Why did you not listen to that gut instinct?
Women have such a powerful sense of what's right.
Yeah.
I just wanted, you know, to have that surgery done so bad and, you know, I've been doing a lot of research and I just went for it.
There's a lot of pressure on women to look perfect, to look maybe the way they don't look.
Right.
Did you feel that?
Yeah, I mean, watching TV all the time and seeing all these perfect Barbie doll looking girls, of course, it definitely pressured me to do that.
I want to make sure that women aren't making bad decisions because of that pressure.
I asked Dr. Michael E. Jones to be here.
He's one of the busiest practitioners in the butt enhancement field in the country.
I have been stunned at how much we're seeing these bigger butts become part of The zeitgeist, part of what we all think.
But now I'm seeing relatively innocent women feeling that pressure and taking big risks.
So, please show everybody.
We have a bunch of substances in front of us.
What's actually being injected and what is this foreign material that's being used to bulk up the behinds?
Well, that's the problem.
When you go somewhere that's not a medical office, you don't know what you're getting.
You don't know if you're getting vegetable oil.
You don't know if you're getting injected with baby oil.
You don't know if you're getting injected with soap.
I use this in the kitchen.
Absolutely.
Silicone, cement, mineral oils, car oil, they use that too?
Even car oil.
Even cement is sometimes injected.
And that's what these butts will feel like as the healing process occurs at times.
Let's show everybody what's actually happening inside of the female body when these are injected.
I'll do the crazy, wacky stuff that's happening and you tell me how it should be done, right?
So, let's rotate the body and you take a needle and you inject it into this gluteus muscle area here and then you infuse the substance.
Now, if it's a material that's not supposed to be there, It doesn't stay where it's supposed to stay.
It slips away to the back of the thigh, to the back itself.
It informs scarring, which is important, but it also causes inflammation in the body.
Which is, Sophie, why I think your life was at risk.
Your lungs are getting beaten up because your body was reacting to this foreign substance and it's not supposed to be there.
But there is a way to increase the size of the buttocks that does work.
That's right.
And taking autologous fat, your body's own fat, not a foreign substance, taking it from your abdomen, taking it from the sides, taking it from your back or even from your thighs, and putting that into the gluteal area can really give a nice enhancement to the gluteal area.
And it doesn't move.
Exactly.
And your body's not going to run away from it.
So as opposed to this scarred, beaten up, inflamed area, you get the cosmetic result you want, but you're also getting it safely.
And it's a twofer, right?
It's a twofer.
You lose the fat around the belly, they're putting it where you want it, which is, I think, a surprising way to go.
We'll be right back with Michael in a second.
So the team of doctors at Lenox Hill Hospital was able to remove the silicone from Sophie's.
Take a look.
Our technique does not involve spreading the silicone.
The most important thing is removing the foreign material and getting the patients healthy.
We're doing this in a staged manner, where the first operation is to allow us to debulk and reduce the foreign body burden.
And then allowing us to take advantage of the resources that we have and use a special device that will suck out the liquid silicone and any bacteria that may be in there, while allowing us a second opportunity to go back in, remove any more foreign body, and then perform a buttock lift, which will hopefully give a cosmetically acceptable result.
Sophie's doctor is here.
Dr. Mir, how successful was that operation?
Thank you for doing it.
Thank you very much for having me.
Sophie's surgery was incredibly successful.
It's been exactly six months since we operated on Sophie, and she hasn't been hospitalized once, and both of her surgeries that we did at Lenoxville Hospital went very smooth without any complications.
She was very compliant.
So, I want you to talk to everyone in America who's thinking about having these, in this case, butt augmentation procedures, but any plastic procedure.
They're thinking of doing it in an unsafe way.
What do you have to say to them?
First of all, just love yourself.
You know, just don't go by what you see on the media.
Learn how to just look in the mirror and love yourself before you go and do any cosmetic procedure.
And before you go do any cosmetic procedure, just make sure that that doctor is in fact a licensed cosmetic surgeon.
You know what?
I'm going to take that little advice from you and take it one step further because I think it's really important.
But you got the first part beautifully stated.
Any better than I could ever state it.
So thank you, Ben.
Please trust the Dr. Muir's of the world.
Oh, he saved my life.
Now, I'm going to ask Dr. Jones to stick around and to follow up on what Sophie's saying.
There are three things that you have to ask a doctor before having any cosmetic procedure.
So stick around.
Coming up next, not everyone is suited for plastic surgery.
Which one do you prefer?
The important questions you need to ask your surgeon before putting yourself at risk.
They forget that these procedures have real significant complications.
Coming up next.
The same way you catch a cold or flu, can you catch a mental illness?
Why a simple infection could be to blame.
Then, could man's best friend become our first line of defense in detecting disease?
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Today's show is all about the medical mystery cases you'll be talking about tomorrow night.
You just heard the horrific story of when a cosmetic procedure goes wrong.
I don't want it to happen to you.
So Dr. Jones is back with us.
He's got the three things to ask your doctor before having a cosmetic procedure.
He says the first thing you got to do, ask this question, are you board certified?
How can someone be sure if that answered is correctly?
Well, there are several board-certifying organizations.
American Board of Plastic Surgery, American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
There are countless boards.
But what the patient should do, or the person interested in having surgery, they should go to those websites.
They have databases.
People can even look for this information on their cell phones.
But it's very important to find out if your doctor is certified or not.
Alright, second thing I want you to ask is, am I the right candidate for this particular procedure?
So how do you know if you're suited for what's being offered?
Well, let's face it, not everyone is suited for plastic surgery.
These are elective procedures.
These are procedures that you may want to have, but you don't have to have.
Luckily, we have 3D imaging technology now that can kind of give you a sense of what you could look like.
In the future, after having plastic surgery.
I don't like to use this in my own practice because I think it gives people a false impression, but it is a window into what you could look like.
And I think, you know, now we all know that Dr. Oz is probably one of the hottest men in America, right?
Oh, please.
But the bad news is coming now.
And it's kind of hard to correct anything wrong, anything with him, because he's absolutely perfect, right?
I wish my wife was listening.
We do have, I believe, a picture of you on this 3D imaging device.
Oh, here I am.
There it is.
I'm not so perfect.
I got bags.
I got all kinds of stuff happening.
As we age, we all have We all age.
And one of the things that happens as we age is our cheek muscle and our cheek bone actually recedes.
And as it recedes, the skin around the lower eye starts to hang.
And so you can see that there's a little extra skin and there's some puffiness, some of the orbital fat or the fat that houses the eyeball is starting to prop forward.
Sounds worse and worse.
I know, I'm sorry.
I thought you weren't going to fix perfection.
No, no, this is all perfect.
So what we're going to do, we're going to take this eye area and give you a sense of what it would look like if you had a blepharoplasty.
So you circle it with your imagery.
Oh, it's gone.
Ooh.
Look at that.
I like that a lot, actually.
Maybe taking off maybe 10 years or so.
Just by that.
Yeah.
Can you make me look like Jay Leno?
Oh my goodness.
Let's see.
Let's take this chin here.
We're going to elongate it a little bit.
Let's have some fun.
Look at that.
That's it.
I tell you, Lisa was going to love this.
All right.
Okay.
When can you do it?
Next week.
Next week.
All right.
What do you guys think?
Which one do you prefer?
This one?
This me?
Or do you prefer this me?
All right, I got a reprieve.
All right, come on, Dr. Jones.
The last thing we're going to talk about, and this is a question you have to have to ask, is what complications should I expect and how many people get them?
Don't just ask the complications.
It's a laundry list.
Ask how often they occur.
That's right.
I mean, you know, hematoma, bleeding into the area, can occur.
And you want to know not just that it can occur, but how often can it occur?
And how often does it occur in the hands of your doctor?
Right.
Nerve damage is also something that can occur.
Infection can occur.
Infections can occur in any surgery, but specifically in butt enhancement surgery.
And the appearance and dissatisfaction.
People have to have realistic expectations of what they're going to achieve.
If you go in thinking you're going to achieve something that is not real, you're going to be dissatisfied.
Thank you for the wonderful advice and for the offer to fix my bags.
I appreciate it.
Check out DrOz.com.
We're going to actually have a wonderful example of how you can learn more on the web.
Three of the most common cosmetic procedures are going to be outlined and the most common complications they can cause as well.
Be right back.
Next, we're taking the guesswork out of toning up.
Our celebrity fitness expert shows us how.
Get rid of lung handles and that tricky tummy fat you're always complaining about.
If it's the first time you've ever worked out in your life, you're still going to be able to handle this.
The Tone Zone Challenge, coming up next.
We are bringing a healthy back this season and want you to bring it too.
Grab your prescription pad for fun and sign up for free tickets today.
You can go to DrOz.com slash tickets and sign up.
I know a lot of you have set fitness goals for 2016, so I want to help you take the guesswork out of toning up.
I'm going to start off with that quickly tummy fat and the love handles you guys are always complaining to me about.
Today's fitness expert has trained celebs like J-Lo and Gwyneth Paltrow, just to name a few.
Tracy Anderson joins me now.
We also have some ladies who are very excited to work with her.
How are you?
Hi, I'm good.
How are you?
You guys ready?
I'm ready.
You have issues down here you want to deal with?
Yes.
Oh, we hear it all the time.
All the time.
So the key is to be inclusive and not exclusive.
So all those crunches that you're doing all the time, you can forget about them if you want to get rid of your love handles.
What do you do in place of them?
Well, we're going to do the back-facing crab press.
All right.
You have a beginner level for mortals like me.
Yes, and then we're going to take you to an advanced level as you get ready for it.
Okay, everyone can do this at home.
If it's the first time you have ever worked out in your life, it's still okay.
You're still going to be able to handle this thing.
Absolutely.
It's so important for everyone.
So we're going to lay on the mat here with our tummies facing up.
And I just want you to go down onto your elbows.
And what you're going to do first is just put your hands on your lower back just to be aware of it.
And you're going to gently just lift up to the ceiling.
Come down, roll to the side, and then stack your hips and extend the top leg forward.
Let the arm go with it.
And then you're going to use the momentum of the leg coming back, stabilize, and just press up again.
Pelvis to the ceiling.
Drop, roll, and extend the leg.
Good job.
Nicely done, ladies.
How are they doing so well back there?
Yeah.
It's hard to get your hips up like that.
As soon as you can do 10 of these, yes, good job.
As soon as you can do about 10 of these well, you might be ready to move on to the advance.
The key is to have, you know, to really grow with the exercises and not become, not plateau.
So one arm is going to reach up to the ceiling and you're going to really lift your hips high.
Good job.
Really reach.
And then you're going to drop down to the ground.
Same thing.
Roll and kick.
So because you're really working your entire body, you're going to burn more calories, which you also need to be doing to get rid of stomach fat.
And you're going to be really waking up the lower back muscles so that the skin can come back to something.
So it's not just sitting there loose as a place where stubborn fat can hang out.
I'm glad you're talking because I'm out of breath.
Are you guys okay over there?
Do you want to try the other side?
We did 15 of those at least right now.
And you did the advanced.
So normally in your workouts, you do that how many times?
How many reps?
I would actually do 30 of those.
30 of them?
And then would you do it just once a day?
I would do them in a sequence of about nine different movements.
But that is a go-to move.
Alright.
We get a step-by-step guide to this tone zone.
It'll be on my Facebook and Pinterest pages.
And Tracy just launched a new streaming program for fitness.
It's called Real Time with Tracy.
And she's giving you all a bonus video on DrRoz.com that targets that tricky lower tummy fat.
Thank you for doing that.
I appreciate it.
We'll be right back.
Next, with so many vitamins and supplements on the market, how do you know which to buy?
We cut through the clutter and confusion.
An easy guide to see which are safe and effective.
How to tell if the supplement you're taking is really doing what it claims.
Coming up next.
The same way you catch a cold or flu, can you catch a mental illness?
Why a simple infection could be to blame.
Then, could man's best friend become our first line of defense in detecting disease?
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Today I'm helping you sort out the clutter of vitamins and supplements because there are literally hundreds out there on the market that But which ones are safe to take?
Which ones work well together?
And which ones should be part of your daily routine?
So is the supplement you're taking really doing what it's claiming?
That's the big question today.
And here to help us out is a world-famous biochemist who served at the request of Canada's former Minister of Health.
He's also the author of the Nutri-Search Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements.
Lyle McWilliam, welcome.
Thank you.
I love this book that you have.
Thank you.
It's actually the go-to book I use to figure out which supplements make sense or not.
Why in the very beginning did you start to write all this down?
It takes a lot of work.
Well, it all happened about 17 years ago.
I was working as a consultant with Health Canada to help develop the regulations that are now in place in terms of the sale and manufacture of health products in Canada.
I began to realize that, wow, people really don't have a clue about how to figure out what's a good quality supplement for them.
So after finishing that term, I set out on my own to devise a kind of...
Evidence-based, scientifically-based system to separate the wheat from the chaff.
And that's the beginning of the first edition of the comparative guide.
We're in the fifth edition now, and it's been 17 years in the making.
It's a field guide, folks, to figure out what you should be doing.
And let me go over just at a high level.
You covered this in the beginning of the book, if you're a man.
What are the reasons for taking a daily supplement?
So let's go through them.
A, we eat a poor diet.
You may not think you do, but most people, the overwhelming majority, don't eat the healthy vegetables and fruits and all the foods we want you to eat.
Secondly, a lot of us overcook our food.
And because of that, we actually lose nutrients because we destroy them in the foods that naturally would have had them.
And then, of course, we're all getting older.
We don't want to acknowledge it, but it's true, and that changes our metabolic rates, and body processes don't always function at full speed.
So we ask, if you're willing to take some questions, our viewers to pose a few of the big challenges that they face.
So let's look at the first question.
Hi, Dr. Oz.
My name is Kendi.
I take over 10 supplements a day.
Is that okay?
How many really is too many?
How many is too many?
Well, you know, it's a good question.
And there's really no set answer to it.
I take probably about 14 different supplements a day.
And if you look at the broad-spectrum supplement...
Well, he's 106, by the way.
Which is, you know, one of the reasons...
If you look at the broad spectrum supplement, that probably has 30, 35 ingredients in it.
So I'm taking a lot of stuff.
But it's not a question of how much or how many.
It's a question of how are they manufactured.
And it's a question of knowing what to look out for.
There are a few nutrients that can be problematic.
For example, vitamin A. If you have too much preformed vitamin A in your supplement, women, for example, in their first trimester of pregnancy, too much vitamin A, about 5,000 international units a day, can cause birth defects.
A lot of women don't recognize that.
The other one is iron.
Iron can be really, really problematic in a product, and there's a lot of products that I've seen in the market that are very high in iron.
About 25% of the population in North America has a genetic A defect called hemochromatosis, where you absorb too much iron from your diet.
Now if you take a supplement that's got lots of iron, combine that with vitamin C that enhances the absorption of iron in the supplement, you've got a problem.
So when you're walking into a store and about to buy a supplement, how do you actually know which one is the best one for you?
And how does your book go through the process of outlining it?
Walk us through those details.
Well, what we've done in the book is we've taken a scientific discipline to evaluate the product.
First of all, we developed an analysis model based upon the published recommendations of 12 other nutritional authorities.
We didn't want to put our particular bias into it, so we stood on the shoulders of others, so to speak, and developed this criteria.
And then we applied it to what we call 18 different health support criteria.
Such as heart health, metabolic health, level of inflammation, and on and on and on.
And so it's 18 different ways of kind of kicking the tires and looking under the hood.
So, you found companies that were doing a good job.
Absolutely.
A lot of good companies, a lot of mediocre companies.
A lot of companies whose products are very popular in the market, that when you look at what's actually in the product, it's pretty mediocre.
What we did is we based it on a scale of one to five stars.
Pretty intuitive.
It's like a one-star hotel.
You probably don't want to stay in a one-star hotel.
You'd probably like to stay in a five-star hotel.
Same thing with selecting these products.
And then those products that scored five out of five stars, we invited every company that we evaluated that scored five stars, and we said, hey, put your money where your mouth is.
Take your product, run it through an independent assessment body like the US Pharmacopeia Program or the NSF Vitamin Supplement Program.
Demonstrate to us that you are manufacturing to basically pharmaceutical standards And show us the GMP of certification.
And then what we want you to do is take your product off the shelf and have an independent lab assess that product so what it says on the label we know is actually in the bottom.
So give us the final answer.
Who do you like?
Who did the best?
Well, there are some good companies out there.
And one of the companies, I think it's a trusted partner with your show, USANA Health Sciences, outstanding products.
And this company manufactures to pharmaceutical standards.
As a matter of fact, USANA Health Sciences is even registered with the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, as a pharmaceutical manufacturer.
So it's audited regularly to ensure that the manufacturing practices are at the very highest level.
They've always, ever since we've done the guide, scored in our top five-star products.
But they've also demonstrated by going that extra mile and showing that their manufacturing practices are at pharmaceutical standards and also by taking their product and running it through an independent analysis.
These products are excellent products.
The company has done an outstanding job with it.
What I like about the company as well is the commitment.
It's a company that doesn't run with the market hype.
It runs with the science.
And if the company is putting the science first, I've got a lot of confidence that the product is exceptional.
Well, it's one of the reasons that we're proud to have USANA as one of our trusted sponsors, because they actually have the highest rating in your book.
I thank you for all the work you've done, which is...
You're very welcome.
Thanks to our trusted sponsorship partner, USANA. You can go to draz.com right now and enter for a chance to win one of a thousand copies of The Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements.
And you know, studio audience, we love you so much.
You're all going home with a book as well.
We'll be right back.
Extinguish heartburn in less than 60 minutes.
There's a new therapy that may reverse your heartburn for good without surgery or pills.
This sort of jumps past that, which is what makes it exciting.
Plus, Hoda Kotb's rules for waking up energized.
I want to learn those secrets.
Her handy trick, you've got to see.
Got it.
Pull up.
There we are.
It's almost there.
No!
All new eyes.
She got it!
That's coming up on Friday.
Today's show has been all about medical mystery cases.
Now a new MRI video that has just emerged may have unlocked one of the biggest body mysteries of all time.
I'm talking about...
Knuckle cracking!
Nick is here, and he cracks his knuckles all the time.
He says it drives his wife, Stacia, crazy.
Is that true?
Absolutely disgusting.
Listening to him sit there and crack him.
He'll do it while driving, sitting.
I'm worried it's going to cause arthritis.
He's also passed it on to our son.
So, an 11-year-old's sitting there cracking his knuckles, too, and it just makes...
I've always wondered, is that genetic or behavioral?
I can't tell.
But the worry you had, nevertheless...
I think it's both.
It's both.
Is it hurting his knuckles?
That's the question.
So, you want to see what's happening on the inside?
Sure.
Instead of just looking from the outside, come on over here, station.
Come on over.
Nick can join us as well.
So, thanks to Greg Kolchak at the University of Alberta, now you can all look inside the body and see what's happening.
This is really cool.
Now, scientists used to think that the cracking sound was made because we had little bubbles between our fingers, and we pushed on them, we were knocking the bubbles out of, you know, so we were making a popping sound, like...
Like that.
However, watch very carefully.
They found that it's actually a cavity being formed between the joints.
See the cavity right there?
Watch.
See it pulled apart.
Snap!
See that little black there?
Joints pulled apart.
As it's pulled apart, it creates a little cavity, and that cavity makes that sound.
It's so cool because the joint is lubricated by the synovial fluid, and you're making a bubble inside the fluid by putting negative pressure.
Now, the good news about all this, to allay your fears, for you and your son, is that it doesn't cause arthritis.
Oh, good.
If it doesn't hurt you, it's not dangerous for you.
That bubble is literally with your tongue going...
It's not dangerous to your tongue, your mouth.
Similarly, if your fingers, you get away with it.
So if it makes you feel good, make all the noise you want.
Make you feel better, Bob?
A little.
I'll forgive him for the arthritis and not worry about the arthritis, but I'll just kind of...
What else are you worried about?
I can help you with that, too, if you want.
They didn't bargain for that.
Thank you for being here.
I put a stamp on this solved mystery.
I'm going to share this on Instagram because I'm the biggest geek out there.
I know that others like me who are curious about this.
Remember, happy and healthy starts at home.
I'll see you next time.
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