All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 29, 2025 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:43
What Happens After We Die? Experts Explain | Dr. Oz | S10 | Ep 136 | Full Episode
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
What do we really know about heaven?
It's another dimension of existence.
We investigate the science.
10 to 15% of the entire population will probably have some kind of near-death experience in their life.
And tackle some of your biggest questions.
When you go to heaven, who will I see?
This is a marriage now, medicine and spirituality.
Plus extreme x-rays you have to see to believe.
How did that get in there?
Coming up next.
Are we ready for season 10?
Yeah!
I love you, Becca.
That's our topic today, heaven.
It's a place that so many of us have questions about.
But no matter what you believe, what really happens after death is a topic that sets off hot debates.
So today, we're answering your biggest questions about heaven.
Now, over the years, my guests say that they have been there themselves.
Take a look at how they describe heaven.
A window opened, and through this cloud, I saw this huge, beautiful city.
I saw colors I've never seen these kinds of colors on earth before.
Beautiful, radiant colors.
And I saw angel wings going in and out of the lights.
I just remember getting glimpses like it was a preview of a movie almost.
By all means, I don't believe I saw everything that heaven has to offer by any means.
Many of us believe there's something more beyond this physical world and is often called heaven.
But what will heaven be like?
I entered what felt like the most peaceful, beautiful realm.
And I felt as though I was surrounded by beings.
Will heaven be as beautiful as portrayed in religious books?
It felt very peaceful.
It's this peace that you can't express in human words.
You can't express them even writing them.
It's amazing feeling.
There are many descriptions of what heaven will be like, but still, questions remain.
Here to help us investigate what we know about heaven are Pastor A.R. Bernard, who leads one of the fastest growing churches in America, Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn.
We have Kim Rousseau, a medium who has studied life after death.
And Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist who has researched and published many studies on spiritual experiences.
This is the marriage now of medicine and spirituality.
Now, according to our poll on droz.com, 90% of us believe there is a heaven.
Overwhelmingly, we believe it's the case.
We also asked you to submit your biggest questions.
And the number one question many of you wanted to know was who gets into heaven?
Pastor Bernard, who does get into heaven?
Oh, my goodness.
First of all, it's the abode of God and the eternal home of all God's people of all ages, all races throughout history.
And in our faith tradition, it's another dimension of existence that is total good.
And eventually, hopefully, it'll be here on earth.
Total good.
Who gets there?
God ultimately determines that.
In our faith tradition, we believe that he's offered a sure way to get there through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
But at the end of the day, God is the one who makes that judgment call.
Kim, you have a slightly different perspective.
I'd like to hear yours.
Well, in my findings over the years, and I communicate with the other realms, heaven is a non-physical reality that's vibrating at the highest vibration, which is equal to love, which is the highest vibration there is.
Okay, and we all come from love.
So we're never separate from heaven.
So who gets into heaven?
Anybody who wants to.
It's ours to have.
We find love.
Dr. Newberg has studied near-death experiences.
For those people who say they've been to the other side, the question I always want to know is how many of these people actually went to heaven.
You've done the science on this.
Well, right, and this is really the only way we can use science to explore this question about who goes to heaven by the descriptions that people provide for us when they have these heavenly experiences.
The data actually showed that about 10 to 15 percent of the entire population will probably have some kind of near-death experience in their life.
I'm sorry, 10 to 15 percent?
That's what the data suggests.
Oh my goodness.
And of that, about 80 percent have an experience that they talk about in terms of the most dazzling light that they have ever seen.
Seeing deceased relatives, it's incredibly comfortable and peaceful.
But what I want to caution also is what we conclude from these experiences, because one answer could be: are these just brain phenomena?
Is this just the brain dying?
When we talk about visions, we can talk about the visual areas of the brain.
One other interesting aspect of these experiences is that about 15 to 20 percent of them are actually not that nice.
In fact, they're actually horrific.
I was going to ask you about that.
That's the scary part.
There are some, you know, images of bodies being ripped apart.
I mean, horrible suffering, pain, just like what we often think about when we think about the concept of hell.
It does resonate with me, though, that some of these near-death experiences might be some of the ways we're interpreting where we're going.
It may not be exactly how God is actually preparing the next world or what love would look like, but that's how our minds, finite as we are, can interpret it.
I think one of the studies that Dr. Newberg did at the University of Pennsylvania was about the phenomena of glossolalia, which in Pentecostal context is speaking in tongues.
And they had things hooked up to test the brain waves, and they found that the frontal lobes were disengaged, right?
That's right.
That's right.
During that active process of spiritual experience, there was a disconnect from the body.
And we talk about spirituality and a difference between soul and body and out-of-the-body experiences.
So it's wonderful when science and faith can come together and say, hey, this is real.
Absolutely.
Dr. Newberg, get the groundbreaking work, and kudos to you because it's not so easy to step out of the ivory tower or even stay in it and do this kind of research.
Folks aren't always open to it.
Religions can take many forms, even in science.
The next question comes from our audience.
It's from Sherry.
You have a question about heaven.
Yes, I was just wondering: when you do go to heaven, who will I see?
Pastor, will we recognize our loved ones when we get to heaven?
I believe we will recognize our loved ones, neighbors, family, people we never met, people we didn't expect to be there.
We'll run into them too.
I love when pastors rib us a little bit.
What are you doing here?
After all that?
I don't understand.
But I think that's part of it.
You know, my wife and I lost our son, our firstborn son.
He's 39 years old.
I'm sorry.
He died in 2015, and that was a traumatic experience for us.
I look forward to seeing him again, being reconnected with him again.
Of course, you do.
And Kim, you say you've spoken to folks on the other side.
What have they told you?
Mostly who we see are any connections we had through love and through association.
You can see the person that you worshipped your whole life and you believed in.
And the good news is, there is an animal kingdom on the other side, just like there is here.
It just vibrates at a different speed of light.
So we do get to see our pets absolutely.
Good.
100%.
They will be waiting for us along with all of our loved ones that we can reunite.
The bonds of love can never be destroyed by physical death.
Dr. Newberg, any thoughts from the science side about who we might see in heaven or what we might see?
We've asked lots of people, and maybe not unexpectedly, what happens is that we tend to see things that we are familiar with.
So we will see our grandparents, not somebody else's grandparents in general.
If I may add, I think it's important that recognition will be less dependent on physical appearance and more towards who the person is in soul and spirit and who they are in love.
I agree 100%.
I love this topic.
It resonates because we're all searching, we're all looking.
Thank you for three very thoughtful responses to all the audience's questions.
Up next, people who say loved ones on the other side have contacted them, but can science prove it?
Stick around.
Supermarket iced coffee.
A quick pick-me-up.
But do we really know what's hiding in those bottles?
There's two servings there.
So you're getting 50 grams of sugar.
And could the ice in your iced coffee make you sick?
The ice cubes be as dirty as toilet water.
I'm never eating out again.
Plus, the hip-hop health revolution.
How Fat Joe lost the fat.
You feel as good as you look right now.
All nuance.
That's coming up on Monday.
One of the hardest parts of being a doctor has been watching people say goodbye to loved ones.
But over the years, I've heard many stories of people who say somehow they still communicate with loved ones who have passed.
And it's always made me wonder: what does science have to say about that?
Today we're investigating the new research into death.
And the question we all want to know, can you really contact your loved ones on the other side?
My son passed away five years ago, and to this day I still have him right with me forever.
I keep getting signs all the time.
Even when I'm not expecting, I get signs.
I'm always like, hello, John, I know you're here.
I have a gift in that I'm able to speak with my dad who passed away.
Occasionally, I get signs from my father with the lights, like the night table lights flashing on it off.
I know this sounds crazy, but I have the same red bird that comes to my window every day.
And I call him Matthew.
I go out and I feed him and I'm like, is that a sign?
I lost my father a few years ago, and it would mean the world for me to speak to him one last time, but it's even possible.
So many things I wanted to ask him.
I was wondering if there's a way to talk to him still.
Do I need to be a medium to be able to speak to my father?
I haven't seen a sign.
I haven't felt a connection and I want to know how.
Ginny's father died eight years ago, but she says her father connects with her almost every week in different ways.
So Jenny, tell me about your father.
What kind of a person was he?
He was a loving and caring man.
He had a generous and big heart.
He wanted to just help everybody he could.
He would help people find jobs.
He would coach us all throughout our youth sports teams and all things like that.
He was just a good guy.
He loved to laugh.
And you lost him from a heart attack?
He had congestive heart failure, yes.
What was that like for you when he passed?
It was hard, but he had some heart issues earlier, so we kind of knew like his health was declining.
He'd spend some time in the hospital, so we just, it wasn't a shock, but it was still hard to have him leave us.
True is painful.
So you having signs, ways that he's connecting with you.
Can you give me some examples?
So it started as soon as he passed.
I would get a lot of electrical things happening in the house, like a touch lamp going off in the middle of the night, an iPod playing in the middle of the night, a doorbell ringing.
So it started electrical, then he would come to my bed, and he would sing me songs, songs that he used to like.
I would just hear him in the middle of the night.
What would he say?
He came to me once when I was staying with my mom and he told me that there was an incident, an accident before he passed.
And he told me how he was supposed to die that day and he was given extra time.
We had a big, a big flood, a big hurricane came into our town.
It was Hurricane Irene and it flooded all the internal New Jersey towns.
And he said that my mother would not be able to handle that flood by herself.
So they gave him extra time.
My goodness.
And does it sound like him when he's his voice?
It's his voice.
So my dad had a strong New Jersey accent, and that's the voice I hear.
It's the voice I hear when he talks to me in the car.
It's the voice I hear when he's called out my name.
Now, if I'm correct, he was a Roman Catholic.
Yes, strict Roman Catholic.
So Roman Catholics don't really believe in connecting with the dead.
They don't.
They don't.
So despite your religious upbringing in a faith that doesn't acknowledge this as possible, you don't think this is grief or your imagination that's making you sense these voices of your father?
No.
He'll tell me, he'll tell me, Ginny, I'm at the cemetery.
Come see me.
And I'll go to his stone and there'll be a bird there just sitting on his stone.
He'll tell me things like, you know, go, it's our anniversary, my mom's anniversary, go buy red roses for her.
And I'll hear him and I'll be like, and I'll be like, no, I didn't just hear that, you know.
And then he'll come back and he'll say, Ginny, you did not, you forgot.
Go buy the red roses.
Oh, my goodness.
He's nagging you.
Yeah, he nagged me.
He nagged me.
He loved to do that.
That was his thing.
He stayed on, there's six of us, so he stayed on top of all of us.
He always supported us and always wanted the best for us.
When was the last time you connected with your dad?
I connected with him yesterday.
I told him I was coming on to Dr. Oz.
I said, what do you want me to, you know, what can I do to have people realize that their deceased loved ones are trying to connect with them?
And he says, tell them that, you know, we can come in dreams and they're real visitations.
Tell them about, you know, if they're accessible to music, that we can come in music or in lyrics.
You bet you're one of six.
One of six, yeah.
So, what do your siblings think about this?
What does your family say?
These are very precise observations.
They are.
They've all had incidents happen.
So, I have three brothers who, two brothers are doctors.
One is a high school science teacher, so they're scientists.
And they've all had incidents happen.
I have two sisters.
One of my sisters, her nephew, actually was speaking to my dad when he was young.
My father came to visit him.
Yeah.
You know, I actually called your sister.
Good.
My team did.
And she confirms what you're saying, which I just want to share with the audience because when I hear these stories, I'm always troubled as well how to process them.
Because I hear them so often.
Sure.
And they've now been studied more and more by physicians, but it's good when multiple members of the family, because there's a mountain of grief around the loss of a parent.
And so when multiple children are feeling signs, it moves us away from just emotion and the thinking there's something scientifically valid here, something that we might be able to triangulate and get some insights into.
All right, so when we come back, what does science have to say about what Ginny is experiencing?
Can you contact your loved ones on the other side?
We have some scans.
Ted Bundy, his last brutal attack before his capture, a college sorority house.
One survivor speaks out.
When he attacked me, my jaw was shattered.
My cheek was torn open.
That's coming up on Tuesday.
We're back investigating: can you contact your loved ones on the other side?
And can science explain the signs that some believe are messages from the dead?
Joining us now is grief counselor and medium Anna Mundi.
Along with her is Dr. Andrew Neuberg, who has been researching neuroimaging in those who have religious and spiritual experiences.
Actually, looking in their brain.
So Anna, you talk to folks every single day, people who've lost their loved ones.
You say their loved ones are talking back to them.
How did you find out that you could speak to folks on the other side?
It's interesting because I don't have one of those phenomenal stories that I was like hit on the head and all of a sudden I'm seeing things.
I'm a born medium.
So I've always been able to do this.
I think when I realized that the people that I was speaking to were not alive, you know, in addition to my extended family members saying, what is she talking about?
is when I first saw Mary.
So when I first saw the Blessed Mother, I knew that she wasn't a live person.
And that's really, so I was about five when I realized that I was seeing something that perhaps other people couldn't see.
When you hear these voices, what do they sound like?
Are they all the same?
Do you hear them or do you feel them?
Most times it's telepathic.
So it kind of just coming in me and out.
And how do you know it's really a message from someone else that it's just a coincidence because someone's having pain and they're feeling things.
If someone's watching right now and believes they're hearing a loved one, how do they know it's real?
How do they know it's real?
Usually there's a tingling, there's a feeling of undeniable love.
Like you feel the love coming through.
They may hear the voice, okay?
They may hear the accent, like, you know, some people hear the accent in the voice.
Mostly it's a feeling, you know, just I know they're here.
For me, it gets validated by the people I'm talking to.
You know, they'll say to me, oh, yeah, you know, my grandfather did what you're describing.
So Dr. Neuberger studied many spiritual practices and their effects in the brain.
How common is it, do you think, for folks to be able to connect with a loved one that has died?
Just in your research.
The actual research suggests that about at least about 50% of people who have lost a loved one will have some kind of experience of connecting with them.
They might be.
50%.
At least.
Half.
Yeah, about half.
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, and in fact, it's been a challenge to figure out exactly what that means because it's sort of, we think about it in psychiatry as like a hallucination, that you're hearing something, seeing something.
But in many ways, this is sort of a normal hallucination if 50% of people are actually having it.
And it's often very comforting for people.
They feel that they've made that connection.
They feel that they're still somehow connected to that loved one, and that can be very beneficial for helping them through the grieving process at times.
So Dr. Neuberger's done some grand, groundbreaking work that's been, I've studied and followed your work for a long time.
And he recently studied the brains of 10 mediums who say they were connecting with spirits.
So describe the experiment you did, on these 10 people.
So they were actually doing a very interesting kind of practice called psychography, where they would actually, they would write down what the spirits were telling them to write.
They felt that they were taken over by the spirit and it would make them write down whatever messages they saw fit.
So what we did was we did a brain scan.
We used something called spect imaging that allows us to see the activity levels in the brain at different points in time.
And we scanned them when they were just writing normally and then we scanned them again when they were in this trance state and writing whatever they felt the spirits were actually telling them to write.
Curious, Anna?
This is fascinating to me.
Come on over.
When science can meet spirituality, that's it.
You're enlightened.
All right.
So, Dr. Newberg, explain to us what we're looking at.
This is a before image of the brain.
You can narrate our point.
Okay, so what we're looking at, these colors represent activity.
So the red areas are the most active, followed by the yellow, the blue, and the black.
And what we're looking at sort of towards the top of the image is the frontal lobe.
This is right behind your forehead.
This is an area of our brain that turns on when we're concentrating, when we're purposely doing things.
So if we're trying to write, we're going to use our frontal lobes.
And we see a lot of activity on the brain scan when they were just doing the normal writing.
But we see something very different when they're doing the psychology.
Look at this.
This is before.
Now, this is what the brain looks like after.
Okay, come on over here.
Now, I've got the before here, and the after is over on my side.
So you notice my side, the brain looks a little different.
So explain why.
What happened to all the red that was over here?
Yeah, so all of this red activity seems to go away.
It's just a little bit of pink and yellow, and that means that their frontal lobes were shutting down.
So how we interpret that is that if the frontal lobes normally are on when we think we're doing something purposely, when that frontal lobe shuts off, it feels like it's just something that's happening to us.
We're not making it happen.
It's something that's kind of taking us over, if you will.
And that's exactly the experience that the mediums were describing, this feeling that they weren't doing the writing, but something was writing for them.
And the scan findings are consistent, at least with that kind of an experience.
What do you guys think about that?
Isn't that unbelievable?
That the brain itself is telling us that there are things that aren't quite what we thought happening inside of us.
I mean, Anna, when you think about these scans, what goes through your mind?
I love this because this will validate, I think, what so many people are looking for validation for.
So put your hat, your doctor hat back on.
What does this tell us about connecting with loved ones, people who have passed?
Well, I think that in large part this may be part of the ways in which this happens.
If we start to think about the experience, that means that there's something going on in our brain that helps us to have it.
So it's possible then that as our frontal lobes turn off, that we feel like something's coming to us, that maybe the voice of our loved one or an image of our loved one.
Now, where might that happen?
Well, if we're hearing the voice of our loved one, there are hearing centers of our brain that might be turning on, that might be either receiving something or might be generating something.
What I love about your work is you at least study what's happening in our brains.
Exactly.
It's the first step to making sense of these big, big questions.
Up next, can you connect with your loved one who's passed away?
What would they say to you?
What would you say to them?
Would you get the answers that you've been looking for?
Ted Bundy, his last brutal attack before his capture, a college sorority house.
One survivor speaks out.
When he attacked me, my jaw was shattered.
My cheek was torn open.
That's coming up on Tuesday.
We're back investigating, can you contact loved ones on the other side?
Let me bring back Grief Counselor and Medium Anna Ramondi.
Now, some people in our audience today wanted to connect with those they have lost.
We're going to start with Elizabeth.
Who do you want to contact and why?
I'd like to contact my dad.
He passed away a few weeks ago, and I was his caregiver for eight years.
He had stage four COPD.
And I feel like his presence is here.
My sister, after he'd passed away, we all got together, kind of had some laughs, talked about memories, and my sister took a picture of me.
I was wearing my dad's hat, and in the shadow, it looks like my dad.
It doesn't look like me.
Oh, my goodness, yes.
There's like someone sitting there facing away from you.
Yeah.
Your dog is...
Looks like he's petting her.
Yeah, at least it caught the dog's attention.
So what are some of the questions you would have for your father?
I would wonder if there's anything left unsaid.
Because although it was a long process, it seemed to unravel really quickly.
Okay, first of all, your father just passed three weeks ago.
When they first passed, they're still very attached to the material world.
And they can appear like he did in the shadow or walking across your bed or you could smell him very stuck here for about four to six weeks.
Okay?
It's usually very hard for a medium to bring through messages because he just passed.
They really become strong at around when they're past around nine months.
That being said, okay, he adores you.
You were the only one really by his side, really, yeah, because he's saying you were it.
You were it.
He depended on you.
And he's sorry that he had to put that burden on you.
But you were the only one that could do it, okay?
The only one.
He's going to start sending you big signs, okay?
You just need to keep yourself open to them and keep talking to him.
I hope it's helpful.
Thank you, Very.
Bless you.
All right, let me bring in Diane.
She says she wants to connect with her husband who passed away suddenly.
I'm sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So what happened?
It was three and a half years ago.
My husband, he went into the hospital.
He was diagnosed with pancreatitis.
It's not cancer, it's inflammation.
I had pancreatitis 30 years ago.
I'm fine, never got it again.
I thought it was a blessing.
I said, great, you know, you're going to be fine.
And left him that night because I have two teenage boys and went home the next morning.
I come back.
And there's something about a secondary infection he got.
And he was like out of nowhere.
He just, everything started failing.
And next thing you know, that noon the next day, I had to sign a waiver because he was under multiple organ failure on life support.
And he was 46 and he wasn't sick.
So it was shocking.
And his boys never got to say goodbye to him.
And I never really got to have like true closure.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's too fast.
It's too fast.
I miss him.
I love him.
He was an amazing father.
So I would just love to know, is there anything he'd love to say to his boys?
Well, your older son seems to be having a little bit more of a struggle than your younger one, but he's saying he wants you to celebrate this weekend.
He wants you to have a party in honor of him.
Do you know what he's talking about?
Absolutely.
Okay.
It's going to be his 50th birthday.
Yes.
50 is a big one.
Even for them, it's a big one.
But he wants you all to celebrate.
He is completely around you.
And he sends angels to you too.
He doesn't really like how you drive though.
He's saying like you're really not paying attention to what you're doing and you really need to pay attention.
Like this is a warning, pay attention, okay?
I feel like there's been things in the past that he has helped you with and you're driving, but he wants you to pay attention.
Your older one, is your older one in school right now?
He just turned 17.
Is he looking at colleges?
Yes, he's looking at college.
He's clapping.
He's clapping and he's saying, I'm so proud of him.
I'm so proud of him.
Okay.
Sometimes he just needs a little bit of motivation.
But he's going on his way.
I hope it's helpful.
Thank you.
Let me walk about.
I'm going to walk Anna over here because I want to ask her about how we can all have connection with someone that we have lost.
It can help us work through grief, through issues, help people heal.
What are the signs that folks at home who've lost loved ones should be keying into to know when they're being spoken to?
Well, there's a lot of signs, but one of the ones that the Spirit World really likes is turning lights on and off, playing with anything electronical, turning on radios, shutting off televisions, you know, things like that.
But they also like to play with numbers.
So the day they were born.
Could even be the numbers of your birthday that you keep seeing.
But these are repetitious.
It's not like you see it once.
It's like you get change, you know, on $2.08 if your birthday is February 8th, you know, or and then you move into a house and it's 208.
You know, those kind of things.
You wake up in the morning and it's 2 o'clock and 8 minutes.
They tend to do that as well.
Anna, thank you very much.
You're very welcome.
We'll be right back.
I love getting to talk with you on my show every single day.
But when the cameras stop rolling, the conversation is not over.
I still have a lot that I want to talk about.
So download the Dr. Odd podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
It's a hidden epidemic that could be attacking your liver.
It affects one in 30 baby boomers.
And there's a good chance they may not even know they have it.
I'm talking about hepatitis C. It's a treatable liver disease that too often goes unnoticed.
But guess what?
That stops today.
We're going to tell us, because there's lots more to speak about this.
Dr. Eddie Irons is joining us who's here on behalf of my trusted sponsorship partner, Abby, and he's going to educate us about this.
So hepatitis C is something that a lot of folks fear.
What is it?
Hepatitis C is a virus that causes inflammation in the liver.
Many people that are impacted by hepatitis C don't even know that they have symptoms.
It usually starts as a short-term infection, but hep C usually lingers in the body and can become long-term.
So the CDC has been very outspoken in wanting every single baby boomer to get tested.
Why are they so focused on our age group?
Because I'm a boomer, guys.
Well, the reason why baby boomers in particular are concerned is that in 1992, the United States came up with different screening methods for blood.
Anyone who may have received a blood transfusion, any type of blood product or donor organ could have been exposed to hepatitis C. We're also learning that younger people are becoming more and more impacted by hepatitis C. Those that share syringes for drug use, being exposed by an accidental needle stick or even being born to a mother with hep C can increase the risk of you being exposed.
So here's the deal.
I want to clear up some of the confusion around hepatitis C because it's actually a good story.
The first fact people get wrong about hepatitis C is that you always feel symptoms.
Dr. Irons, your specialty area.
Why is that incorrect?
That is not true.
Approximately 3.4 million Americans are living with hepatitis C and greater than half of them don't even know it.
I'm sorry.
Three and a half million people almost have it and what?
Greater than half do not know that they have hepatitis C. Oh my goodness.
Yes.
And the reason why that is indeed the case is that often you do not have symptoms.
If you experience symptoms at all, you should contact your doctor.
But the way in which you find out if you have hepatitis C is if you are tested.
Simple and easy to do.
Yes.
Right.
Next fact folks get wrong about hepatitis C is you don't have to have any symptoms, right?
Hepatitis C is going to go away on its own anyway.
Why shouldn't you wait for symptoms?
And is it true that it might go away?
As you know, over time hepatitis C can cause chronic damage to the liver.
I would encourage anyone who thinks they're exposed to hepatitis C to simply have a conversation with their doctor so they can get tested and take control of their health.
But just so I'm clear on this, if I don't have symptoms, will I generally develop symptoms over my life or it's completely unpredictable?
It is unpredictable, but most persons that have hepatitis C do not have symptoms.
Which is why we all got to wake up to this.
So let me show you what Hep C can do to your body over time.
If I show it to you in a little animation, maybe, maybe you'll pay attention to this.
So just to be clear, that's the liver.
It's the biggest organ inside your body, really critical.
It's the filter for all the things happening in your body.
So once you get infected with a virus, like this little blue thing flying in there, that's pretend that's the hepatitis C virus, it can replicate inside your body, producing over 10 trillion new copies each day.
And they target the liver cells.
These are the liver cells here coming out of the blood vessels.
In most people, the immune system is not strong enough to clear the virus.
So over time, the virus continues to attack the liver cells, causing them to swell and get inflamed.
This can lead to serious liver damage, including cirrhosis.
Big problem, you've heard of it, right?
Cirrhosis?
Don't want cirrhosis.
And it can potentially cause liver cancer.
So that's why this is a big problem to focus on, especially if you got some solutions.
So the next fact people get wrong about hepatitis C is that treatment doesn't work.
That is not true.
In the past, we depended upon injections for treatment.
And all persons that had hepatitis C were not always eligible to receive treatment and cure rates were quite low.
Now almost all agents are oral.
We have so many more options.
So how do you know if you're getting treated that it's working for you?
While you're being treated, your doctor will order blood tests during and after.
Several months after you complete treatment for hepatitis C, if there's no detectable virus in your blood, that means that you have been cured.
And I'm happy to share that now most people that are treated for hepatitis C are cured.
And if you do have hepatitis C or you're flurried about it, it's fantastic news.
Obviously got to do something about it.
What's the next step you recommend for viewers?
The next step is to simply have a conversation with your doctor and share your concerns.
Also, educating yourself about the virus, going to websites such as hepc.com can be very useful.
Again, there's no reason for us to fear hepatitis C anymore because if you're treated, you can't be cured.
Did I see a smile?
I just saw a smile.
Perhaps.
This is what a happy doctor looks like if he's got options offer you.
To learn more about Hep C, visit drz.com.
I'll be right back.
This segment was brought to you by AbbVie.
We'll be right back.
Working in hospitals, I've seen a lot of things that will shock you, but I'm always amazed at what can get stuck in the human body.
Today, the extreme x-rays that you have to see to believe.
I'm about to show you the craziest objects you'd never expect to see in the human body.
They're going to make you wonder, how did that get in there?
For example, see this little cartoon toy?
You recognize it, right?
You can see the exact outline, the eyes, little smile, right?
You can see it so clearly.
So lots more things like this are in your body sometimes.
Here to break it down for us is gastroenterologist Dr. Rashini Raj.
Thanks for being here.
He brought examples of the kinds of things that you find and sometimes have to remove from the human body.
That's right, and we're talking here about things, particularly children in general, tend to swallow.
They just get their hands on everything.
They love to put things in their mouth.
We see coins.
These button batteries, these can actually be very dangerous if swallowed.
Pen caps, doll heads, those little action figures, little doll accessories.
I have soldiers like this at home.
Yeah, I know, I do too.
I have two boys.
So you have to be very careful with children.
Really try to monitor them and don't have loose things like this around where they could put them in their mouth.
Not just kids, it's adults too.
For example, these little pen caps.
How many of you guys are always chewing on them like this?
I know.
Chewing our graphics.
Bad idea.
Don't do that because you can swallow it.
However, all that stated, are they really a problem?
So let's go through our X-ray Hall of Fame to show things that are more of a concern.
First off, this image, I don't think, ever gonna be able to forget.
I know.
It's a safety pin.
I have no idea how it got stuck up in someone's nose.
Please outline it for everybody.
Okay, so right here, you see the safety pin.
Here's the head, and here's the sharp edge to it.
Now, this was just a 10-year-old girl who was using a safety pin to kind of clean her nose, as kids tend to do sometimes.
And unfortunately, she kind of lost control of it.
It got lodged in her sinuses, and it took several hours to get out.
Oh, my goodness, that would have been a challenge.
Yes.
Okay, next image.
Check this out.
This is a nail.
That's right.
It's a nail, the kind you put in wood.
And it's not juxtaposed.
That's literally through the palate of his mouth up into the behind towards the eyeball.
Yeah, I mean, when it comes to jarring x-rays, I think this one hits the nail on the head as we.
Oh, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.
She'll be here all week.
Try the corned beef.
Anyway, this was a young man who was working in construction, and his nail gun actually misfired.
The crazy thing about it is he did not realize this nail was lodged in his mouth.
Actually, here in his hard palate, didn't really put two and two together until he had this nagging toothache.
Went to the doctor.
This is what the x-ray found.
Can you imagine the dentist getting the image?
I know.
And how lucky was this young man that it didn't go somewhere crucial in his brain?
That this is where what happened?
He was actually fine after that.
They use a hammer to pull it out.
How do you do that?
I don't know.
I'm not exactly.
I think it was more of a tool to take it out.
Yeah.
All right.
This image, look carefully here.
You all see the pen, the pen in the belly.
Yeah, so this is pretty dramatic as well.
And this was a woman who was examining her tonsils.
Maybe she had a sore throat using a pen as a kind of tongue depressor, lost control of it, accidentally swallowed it.
She knew she swallowed it, but she went to get an x-ray the next day because the pen was plastic, it didn't show up on a regular x-ray.
25 years later, she ended up getting a CAT scan.
25 years.
And this pen was still there in her intestine, believe it or not.
Now, I know what you're all asking.
You're all thinking, does this still work?
That's the question on everyone's mind.
So, crazily, look at this.
Not only did it work, that's the actual lettering made by that pen after 25 years in her belly.
It was a felt pen.
That's a company you want to be involved with.
Next up, this shiny little object.
I see it on the x-ray.
See it there?
It's a diamond earring.
Right?
Now, everyone's lost an earring before, right?
But check out what happened when McKenzie realized her lost earring was in her infant son.
So, Bennett swallowed an earring.
But he was playing, and I look over and he gets something in his mouth, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what did you just eat?
So I'm like trying to scoop it out.
And I look over on the nightstand to see what he could have eaten and saw one earring.
There it is, you guys.
Here's my earring.
It sure is.
Mackenzie and her son Bennett join us now.
Mackenzie, how did you get the earring out?
What did doctors tell you?
They said to wait it out.
Yeah.
And I had the fun task of checking his diapers and finally after two days discovering the earring.
Oh, he passed it.
Yes, Docie.
Yes, yes.
No, I'm not daddy.
That's not right.
Yeah.
Well, he's obviously very active.
So where is that earring now?
Do you wear it to remember the event?
Yes, the earring, as happy as I was to see the earring, I was just as happy to throw it away because it was disgusting.
Thank you for sharing your story.
God bless you both.
Say thank you.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
So cute.
So cute.
Up next, just how long should it take for a swallowed object like a diamond earring to pass?
The extreme experiment scientists did to find out the answer for you.
Supermarket iced coffee.
A quick pick-me-up.
But do we really know what's hiding in those bottles?
There's two servings there.
So you're getting 50 grams of sugar.
Plus, the hip-hop health revolution.
How Fat Joe Lost the Fat.
All Nuaz.
That's coming up on Monday.
We're back with Dr. Lushini Raj taking a look at some extreme x-rays.
Now we've been investigating how the heck some things get stuck in the human body.
And now we're going to find out how long it takes for something to, well, come back out.
Now, as a grandfather, I'm always afraid of my grandkids getting some of these beautiful toys, right?
Then they swallow one of these, like the head here, right?
And all of a sudden, you've got to figure out what to do about it.
So one of the questions we always ask is how long will it take to come out?
So Dr. Raj, there was an experiment that pediatricians did.
That's right.
They try to figure out exactly that answer.
Yeah, they were from the UK and Australia, and they actually swallowed these exact type of toys, and then they measured how long it would take.
They did x-rays to really monitor how long it would pass through their system.
Right, so there's the actual illustration.
Imagine doctors doing this, by the way.
You can see the little pictures of the head and the measurements, and we've got all kinds of curves and results.
So let's just play it through.
That's right.
So to reveal what they were showing to us.
Yes.
So let's say you're looking inside of me.
All right, there I am.
Got a muster today, don't I?
And let's say I take this little plastic toy head.
Don't try this at home.
All right, it's down.
Now, first off, you're going to see it.
There it is right in my esophagus.
Now, hopefully it doesn't stay in my esophagus too long.
This is actually a very dangerous place because, for example, those batteries, they can do some real damage to the thin wall of the esophagus.
And things like chicken bones can get stuck in here and really hurt, and that can cause problems.
But if you're lucky, and most people are, and it goes through that swallowing tube, which doesn't take very much time, boom, it's in your stomach.
Now what do you do?
Pump us through.
Okay, so like you said, it went through the esophagus.
Thank goodness it's now in the stomach.
You have the digestive enzymes there, the acid of your stomach working on this object, but it will eventually pass from the stomach into here we are now in your small intestine.
Lots of feet to go through here.
It almost looks like a video game, but as it's passing through, usually if it's soft and it doesn't have any jagged edges, it won't do too much damage.
And finally we get to the end of the journey, your large intestine, also known as your colon, and here we are on our way out.
That feels good.
That feels so good.
So we accelerated that a little bit, but they actually wanted to figure out the answer to the question we started with.
So they created something called a FART score.
Is that what you think?
These are real doctors actually making this up.
It is the Dr. Raj.
And retrieval time.
So how long does it take for these objects to pass through?
I mean, it's a pretty clever idea.
So what was the FART score for one of those tiny little toys that I just swallowed?
When's it coming out of me?
It's coming out in one to two days.
Not too long, actually.
Oh, that's good.
And what should we do if a child or loved one swallows a toy head or something a bit more concerning for an object?
Well, it's very important.
You can't be too careful in this situation.
Call your doctor.
All right, so.
Like so many things, like everybody, this too shall pass.
Dr. Raj, wonderful advice.
We got the change is happening.
▲
Export Selection