Dr. Oz shares some tips for healthy living
Dr. Mehmet Oz is famous for his appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and for co-authoring best-sellers like “YOU: The Owner’s Manual.”
Now he is even more of a media star. You, the viewer, can see him weekdays on his new syndicated program, “The Dr. Oz Show.” It’s off to a good start, which is par for the course for Oprah spinoffs. (Just ask Dr. Phil and Rachael Ray.)
The renowned New York heart surgeon talked about his show—it’s filmed before an audience in Conan O’Brien’s old studio in Rockefeller Center — and shared his energetic, empathetic advice on such topics as stress, the health-care debate and losing weight.
Here are some of Oz’s thoughts on:
• Money and job stress: Staying connected to friends and family is important. “If you have a major financial catastrophe in your life, a bankruptcy, a divorce, litigation, . . . it actually takes about eight years of life expectancy away,” Oz said. “The good news is, if you have . . . social support around you, you can reduce that loss to less than a year. So the most important thing for you to do when you’re going through financial turmoil is to make sure you keep that social network firmly entrenched around you.”
Most of the time, women are better than men at this, he notes. “Women are the army on this matter, . . . and they have a pretty good insight on what their family needs.”
• Obesity in children: “The most important thing we can do is make it easier for kids to exercise,” Oz said. He’s in favor of fitness-promoting games at recess. “Right now, recess is 40 minutes, but 20 minutes of sitting around.” He also advises keeping high-fat, low-nutrition food out of your kitchen. “Make the difficult decisions at the supermarket. Don’t make them at home. Once the food is in the home, you’ve got to let the kids have it, because otherwise, you create a fictitious battle between you and them.”
• The health-care debate: Putting a face on the uninsured is important to Oz, who hosted a giant free clinic recently in Houston for more than 1,700 people. “We ended up breaking the record for the most number of people seen in a day at a free clinic,” Oz said. “It’s a very embarrassing record to break.” Oz says there needs to be “a mechanism of getting affordable care for all. . . . I don’t care which system you adopt; everybody has got to be in it.”
• Doing simple things to get on the road to losing weight: Walnuts, almonds and other tree nuts are a great snack (with protein, fiber and omega-3 fats) to carry around during the day, according to Oz, who brought along a plastic bag of hazelnuts for his trip to the Motor City. “They will satiate you, so . . . you don’t overeat,” he said, adding that people who don’t like nuts or have allergies can munch on fruit instead.
• Favorite ways to stay fit: “The single best exercises are pull-ups,” Oz said, who does them religiously. “First of all, to do a pull-up, you have to know your weight. Every time I eat something, I think, I have to lift that tonight,” he says with a smile. He’s also careful to maintain good posture. “Don’t think about posture as something your mother is telling you to do. Think about it as a workout.”
• What he’s learned about television from Oprah: Many things, says Oz, including the importance of trust between viewers and a talk show host. “People have to trust you to be in their home. They’re not coming to me for news. They’re coming to me for context and what matters about that news.”
• A food indulgence he enjoys: “I love dark chocolate,” he admitted.
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